Hi all! I'm going to be busy this weekend, so I snuck in some time to get tomorrow's chapter done while I had a few spare hours last night and this morning. I figure, considering the cliff on Thursday, you'd appreciate it early, anyway.

Have a great rest of your weekend, and I'll see you with 34 on Tuesday.

-Plum

33 – No Hiding

Lemon heard car doors and voices and wanted to close her eyes and will herself into nonexistence. Kristy wasn’t listening to her, though—she wasn’t playing dead. The fox-eared merc moved her lips and tried to speak, but only gurgles came out of her mouth, accompanied by rivulets of warm, bloody saliva that drizzled onto Lemon’s cheek. It was horrifying on more than one level, but more than anything, Lemon didn’t want someone to hear her. “Shh! They’re coming!” Her words weren’t really words—just the barest of whispers.

Kristy blinked her eye, the only one she seemed to be able to open. She did it several more times, and then with an obvious effort of will, she grunted, “Gun.”

Lemon felt Kristy’s left hand twitch, patting the floor of the SUV, and when she glanced toward the movement, she saw the merc’s compact machine gun. She shook her head, eyes wide.

Kristy somehow forced herself to nod, and again, choked out two words, “Kill…us.”

Lemon felt her blood turn to ice, at first interpreting Kristy’s words literally—she wanted Lemon to kill them both before the attackers could take them. But Kristy blinked again, shaking her head ever so slightly, and Lemon realized what she’d meant: the people in the van were going to kill them. Hesitantly, as the voices grew louder, she reached for the gun.

“…no calls got out before the EMP.” The man’s voice was a deep rumble of gruff, quick syllables.

A younger, sharper voice replied, “Sure?”

“Hell yeah, I’m sure. No signals coming off that rig.”

“Goddamn!” the youthful voice exclaimed. “Look at the holes in the roof. That drone’s a sonofabitch—emptied its mags.”

The deep voice chuckled. “Swiss cheese, baby!”

“Swiss? Never had it.”

“It’s full of holes.” Lemon could picture the man shaking his head as he added, “Damn kids.” A moment later, he said, “I’ll make sure they’re all dead. You and the bot get the big guy before he recovers.”

“Yeah, sure. If the bastard’s still alive.”

“Damn right, he is. I read his dossier.”

Kristy trembled with the effort to hiss a breath into Lemon’s face, her single eye wide as she stared. The message was clear: You have to try. As gently and slowly as she could, Lemon shifted to her side, letting Kristy slide past her to the floor of the vehicle, half her body slipping under the back seat.

“Sorry,” she whispered as she crawled atop her, watching the black-tinted windows for movement as she lifted the gun.

“Ungh,” Kristy grunted, and Lemon looked down. The merc’s single eye jerked from Lemon’s face to the gun. She was trying to tell her something. Lemon looked at the weapon. It was heavy and black. It had a handle and a trigger, and a short fat box where she knew the bullets were stored. She didn’t know much more than that, but she saw a little switch near the back.

Looking more closely, she saw that either side of the switch was marked with a lock symbol, one open and one closed. It was in the locked position. Lemon thumbed the button, and Kristy wheezed out a sigh that sounded like approval. Just then, Lemon heard the front door handle jiggle, and when it didn’t open, someone started pounding on the glass. She ducked down.

“Tough damn glass! Hah! They should’ve thought of that for the roof,” the younger voice called out.

“Use the plasma torch,” the deep voice said, and it was so close that Lemon almost jumped. The man was on the passenger side of the SUV, and he was just outside her view, blocked by the seat. Lemon shifted most of her weight to her left knee, straddling Kristy, as she lifted the gun, still hiding behind the seat.

Something hissed outside the vehicle, then a matching sound erupted near the rear passenger door. The hissing intensified, and she smelled burning plastic and something sharper and more acrid. The vehicle dipped slightly as someone pulled hard on the passenger door, and then it popped open. As fresh air rushed inside, it made Lemon realize just how rank the air inside the vehicle had become. She didn’t want to think of those awful smells and where they’d come from.

Even as the thought flitted through her mind, she heard four quick pops, and she realized the deep-voiced man was shooting Dent and Sparling’s guy—the traitor. Her hands were slick with sweat and blood; her heart was hammering, and she wanted to push herself down beside Kristy and try to get under the seat to hide. She forced the panic down, though. I have to do this.

The man grunted as he climbed into the vehicle. The seat Lemon hid behind squeaked, and his big, gloved hand appeared, squishing the top of the cushion. Lemon had stopped breathing several seconds before, and she continued to hold her breath as she popped up, pointed the gun and squeezed the trigger.

The killer yelped in surprise, falling back as the gun barked in Lemon’s hands. She wasn’t prepared for the way it would move; the barrel tried to climb up as it spewed fire. She thought she hit the man, but she wasn’t sure, so she stopped squeezing the trigger and looked.

“What the fuck, man?” the younger voice cried, still outside the vehicle.

Lemon peered through the smoke, but then two flashes appeared, and to her amazement—and horror—she watched as two metal objects appeared right in front of her eyes, slowly peeling apart into tiny shreds of metal. It was like they were trying to reach her, but something had stopped them cold. Her shock lasted a second, and then she pointed the gun and squeezed again. This time, she was ready for the recoil, and she held the gun steady as it coughed fire and lead at the big man.

He was on his back in the narrow bit of floor beside the shorter second seat. His gun flashed again, but Lemon’s bullets took their toll. He had some kind of armor on his chest, but she must have shot him twenty or thirty times, and some of the bullets found his throat and face.

When she stopped shooting and the man’s dark figure didn’t move, Lemon didn’t know what to do. All she knew was that she couldn’t just stay in the SUV. What if they blew it up or something?

She clambered over the corpse, out onto the pavement. Her right foot hit the ground just fine, but her left foot caught on the dead man’s armor, and she tripped, falling onto her face and badly scraping her knuckles as she maintained her death grip on the gun.

“What the fuck, Paulie!” the younger voice yelled again, and Lemon turned to see a taller, skinnier man pointing a gun at her. It looked like a smaller version of Kristy’s gun. Lemon had been dressed for shopping—a nice pair of slacks and a pale yellow blouse that Gladia had given her. They were soaked crimson, and so were her face and hair, which was a testament to how much blood poor Kristy had lost.

When she stood up and turned toward the skinny man, he looked surprised, maybe even frightened, but he started shooting. His gun sounded different—tiny clicks and pfft sounds. Lemon watched as a dozen silvery shards of metal hit the air in front of her and smashed into tiny balls that fell to the ground. She lifted Kristy’s gun.

“What the fuck?” The man’s tone had changed—climbed an octave—and he backed up, almost tripping as he turned toward the blue van. Lemon squeezed the trigger.

In the SUV, she hadn’t really aimed, just pointed the gun at the older killer. She did that again, and maybe it was dumb luck, but her barrel happened to be pointing low, roughly at the man’s knees. As it roared and spat fire, he screamed, and Lemon watched as blood spots appeared on his blue overalls, walking up his right thigh, over his butt and then along his spine. He had some kind of armored vest on, but it didn’t cover his lower back.

Lemon fought the gun’s recoil and tried to hold the bullets below the vest, but the killer was falling by then, and the gun stopped shooting. She squeezed the trigger again, but it didn’t do anything. Lemon dropped it, her fingers tingling and vibrating. While the skinny man writhed on the ground, grunting and gasping, she walked back to the SUV.

When she reached for the first killer’s gun, she saw the heatwaves distorting the air around her wrist. How long would it last? Could the bracelet stop bullets forever? Why haven’t I asked Hector that? She supposed it had something to do with never—not in her wildest nightmares—imagining she’d be shot so many times. The man’s gun was a pistol with a stubby cylinder on the end of the barrel. Lemon knew that was to make it quiet; some of Grando’s boys used them.

There wasn’t any kind of switch on the gun, so she assumed it was ready to shoot. She walked back to the skinny killer and watched as he tried to crawl toward his vehicle. He gasped and groaned, and Lemon stared for a moment, her mind numb and blank. Something moved off to their right—metal clicking on asphalt. It snapped her out of her daze, and she whirled to see a synth standing by the driver’s door of the SUV. It was a very basic model—flat-gray plastic shell, white LED eyes.

When it saw her pointing the gun, it said, “I am not equipped with combat capabilities, nor can I harm a human.”

Lemon had seen models like it before—warehouse workers, construction units, and even hospitality workers at some of the hotels she’d frequented in her old life. By design, they had limited autonomy and very little ambition. “Sit down,” Lemon said.

The synth sat.

Lemon turned back to the killer. He looked at her with red-rimmed eyes, and it seemed to Lemon that he wouldn’t live much longer; there was a lot of blood pooling around his legs. “Why?” she asked.

“Ungh,” the killer grunted.

Lemon licked her lips, tasting Kristy’s blood, and realized she was wasting time. She pointed the gun at the killer’s head, thought better of it, and took a step closer. Then, from just a meter away, she squeezed the trigger. The killer jerked and then lay still.

Lemon approached the van. The big side door was open, and she looked inside. All she saw were some plastic crates, and a reinforced metal support equipped with a thick electric cable and some kind of mechanical collar. To hold Flint? She turned and regarded the synth. “Can you make this van drive?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Good. Help me load my friends into it.”

#

As the sun hung swollen and red near the western horizon, Hector helped Sass to her feet, and said, “Probably a good stopping point. My old decanus always said that—quit on a high note.”

“This?” Sass cried, pointing to the deep groove Hector had carved into her cybernetic arm. “You call this a high note?”

Hector chuckled. “That’s an easy fix. Anyway, you parried me twice. Maybe you don’t see it, but you improved a lot today. Ask Merlin for your latest manifestation time.”

Sass’s eyes unfocused for a second, but Hector saw the tiny muscles in her cheeks tug at her lips. She was trying not to smile as she said, “5.532 seconds.”

Hector grabbed her shoulder and squeezed, jostling her back and forth as he smiled down at her. “Think about that, Sass! Your first attempt was almost twenty seconds!”

“I mean, it’s not all me. Merlin’s been studying you and adjusting my pathways. When I leveled—”

“Merlin couldn’t do any of that stuff without a good partner.” Hector gestured to the buggy and started walking. “Now, I’m not saying you shouldn’t celebrate, but I want you to be realistic with your expectations. This is the part where things start to get hard. You’ll need to work for every fraction of a second. It seems to me that putting you under pressure really helped today, but that doesn’t mean we should do that all the time. I always had the best luck when I mixed up my training styles.”

Sass nodded along with his words, but Hector could tell she was only half listening; she was beyond drained physically, and her emotions were all over the place. At the moment, she was wearing a silly grin, but not five minutes earlier, she’d been close to tears. “I understand,” she said, climbing into the buggy.

Hector jumped into the driver’s seat and pressed the accelerator, cranking the wheel to take them back toward the ranch. “Tomorrow, I’ll let Burton run the show. I guess Sparling has some scenarios he wants to run me through.”

Sass nodded. “Do you think you’ll be ready for your, um, duels?” She reached over and tapped her chrome fingers against the hilt of his bowie knife.

“Yeah. Still almost two weeks until they arrive.”

“I wonder—” Sass started to say, but then an emergency tone came through Sparling’s local comm network, and Burton’s voice sounded in his ears.

“Hector! You need to get here—now. Something happened to Flint’s team.”

Hector stomped the accelerator and asked, “Lemon?”

“She’s… I don’t know how, but she’s okay. The rest of the team…” Burton trailed off. “Just get here. We’re coordinating a response.”

Sass said, “What’s going on? What’s with the alarm?”

As the buggy rounded the hill, throwing dirt and gravel as it slid, Hector realized he was bending the rubber-coated steering wheel. He relaxed his grip and looked at Sass. “They got attacked or something.”

“They?”

“Lemon—the team that went to town.”

Sass grabbed his arm. “Lemon?”

“Burton says she’s okay.” By then, they were speeding past the gym, and he could see the crowd outside the ranch, on the concrete drive that led up to the shuttle pad. He kept his foot stomped on the accelerator and steered around the perimeter, driving up the service road that led down to the stables. He kept his eyes on the crowd, scanning for Lemon.

He noticed a blue van that he didn’t recognize; a cluster of Sparling’s staff were wheeling stretchers toward the house. “Stretchers…” he said, frowning. Is he equipped for trauma care?

//The house is expansive with underground sections. We’ve only seen a small portion of it.//

As he jumped the curb from the service road, skipping over gravel and manicured, decorative stone, and rounding the corner onto the concrete drive, Hector saw her—tall, slender, pale hair stained with blood, eyes wide with tear- and blood-streaked cheeks. Gladia was holding her shoulders, looking into her face. The Royal’s lips moved slowly, and her face was deadly serious. Hector didn’t like the look of it.

He took his foot off the accelerator, trusting the buggy’s regenerative brakes to bring it to a stop as he activated Ghost Leap. One second, he was sitting in the buggy’s driver’s seat. The next, he emerged from a rend in the fabric of the universe right beside Lemon. The jump had been nearly fifty meters, and his accuracy was dead-on. He might have celebrated if he weren’t so worried about Lemon.

As the people around exclaimed their surprise, Hector grabbed the sides of her face and gently turned, breaking her attention away from Gladia. “What happened?” he asked, hating the way her gray eyes were swimming in pools of tears.

“Hector…” she said, and then the tears broke loose, and she fell into him. He held her close, looking over her head at Gladia. She returned his gaze with frustration writ clearly in the crease of her brows.

“We’re trying to get to the bottom of it,” the Royal said, realizing Lemon wouldn’t answer Hector anytime soon. “Lemon returned with a synthetic—Sparling’s got a technician working on it, so we should have some details soon. Kristina and Flint survived, though we’re not sure…” She trailed off, glancing at Lemon and shaking her head before continuing, “Orson Dent—you remember him? My Chief Medical Officer?” When Hector nodded, she continued, “He died, along with Sparling’s head cook. Lemon says it was the cook who betrayed them; we’re still trying to figure out how.”

Lemon pushed against Hector, pulling away enough to look up at his face as she said, “He injected something into Flint and then a drone—” Fresh tears filled her eyes, and she closed her mouth, shaking her head. Hector pulled her close again, hot fury building in his chest, replacing the earlier worry.

When he looked at Gladia, she flinched at his tone. “Another of your cousins?”

“I don’t know, Hector,” she replied. “I really don’t. It seems like they were targeting Flint, and in hindsight, it may have been foolish to send him into town. Even with my public demise, he was a known associate. There may be bounties—”

“You didn’t think of that?”

Hector was so caught up in Lemon’s emotional turmoil and Gladia’s recounting of the facts that he hadn’t realized Sparling was there until the older man said, “We have many enemies, Hector, and it’s not surprising there may be a nest of them in McRae. It’s the whole reason I sent most of my staff home when Gladia came in. It’s the reason for our comms blackout, and for selecting a small group to go into town for supplies. Flint…Flint was an oversight on all our parts.”

Gladia nodded. “Flint’s not someone we think of as a target. He’s—” She swallowed, glancing to the side. “He’s usually the kind of man who discourages attacks.”

Hector, still holding Lemon close, turned to Sparling. “It was your man. What other info did he pass on? When?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out,” Sparling said. “I have a team working on the synth and”—he nodded toward the van—“on that vehicle. I sent a team out to recover the SUV. We’ll have answers shortly. If you want to be ready to do something about it, I recommend you get yourself together and get to the shuttles. We’ll respond swiftly as soon as we have a target.”

Hector looked over his shoulder, relieved to see Sass. She was standing with the other staff who were gathered close, trying to listen and help however they were directed. “Sass,” he said, “find Kit and come to Lemon’s room. I want you to stay with them.”

She nodded and turned to run off.

Gladia put a hand on Hector’s arm. “When she’s ready—”

“When she’s ready,” Hector said, shifting Lemon to his side so that he could walk with his arm over her shoulders, steering her toward the house, “she’ll let you know.”

Gladia nodded and stepped back. He wanted to think that she was in agreement—that Lemon deserved not to be pressed until she was ready—but he was afraid she was just placating him. I hope I’m wrong about that. Everyone made way as he walked through the gathered onlookers, even Orin and Demon, though they both looked ready to commit murder.

When they got into the house and he was alone with Lemon, she said, “I’m sorry, Hector. I’m sorry I’m not more useful. There…there were two killers.”

“Hey,” he said, shifting his arm so he could stroke her blood-caked hair. “They’ll figure everything out. Don’t worry.”

“I…” she said, her voice small and tremulous. He thought she’d decided not to speak, but she tried again. “You were right—about me, I mean.”

He looked at her, and she turned her head so that he could see the corridor lights reflected in her pale eyes. “What do you mean?”

“You told me once…” She shook her head. “After you killed those rusters, I said I couldn’t hurt someone like that—that I couldn’t kill. You told me I could.” Fresh tears bloomed in her eyes, and streaked down her cheeks, and Hector decided to further take matters into his own hands. He scooped her into his arms and held her to his chest as he carried her to her room.

“Yeah, Lemon. I said that because I saw the fighter in you. That’s a good thing. Where we’re going—where we are—there’s no hiding from fights.” As he opened her door and stepped inside, he added, “You can rest now, though. Let me do some fighting.”