Alternia Comics

[Editor's note: This should be taken with the same grains of salt as the previous chapter. -- Karak]

Chapter Thirteen:
   "Same drill as last time." Em popped the trunk and began arming himself again. "I'll go in first. Hopefully we won't need this gear," he waved a hand at the open trunk, "but better safe than sorry." Varrow checked her pistols again and Em closed the trunk, locking the car and arming the auto defenses.
   Em wobbled a bit, unsteady on his feet as they crossed the street to the target building. "You're sure you're ready for this?"
   "No. But if we don't go now, it just gives them more time to prepare for us. We lost enough time as it is because of me." He leaned against the outer wall of the building. "Best route inside?"
   Varrow rolled her eyes back in her head, accessing floor plans and other images of the building. "Front door is least conspicuous. My sources say they're on the fifth floor. Fire escape on the North side will bring us to their back door. Other than that, elevator or stairs inside the building is the only route."
   "Right. Front door it is."

   Varrow whispered as they crept down the hallway. "Number five-oh-three. If they're smart at all they know we're here by now though."
   Em nodded and knelt at the door. He pressed his right palm to the wood and closed his eyes, feeling for shifting electromagnetic patterns that would indicate a live circuit connected to the doorknob but finding none. He opened his eyes and scanned the room with thermal vision, signaling to Varrow with his right hand. "Two warm bodies. First three meters in. Second five meters away, behind a wall." She nodded and tapped his wrist twice in rapid succession, indicating acknowledgment.
   Em turned to her and mouthed "Ready?" before moving quietly to the other side of the hallway. Varrow stood with her back to the wall next to the doorway, a pistol held ready and pointed at the ceiling. She nodded once and Em fell forward, taking one step before kicking the door with as much force as he could manage.
   The door swung in and rebounded against the wall as Varrow pivoted and aimed her pistol through the doorway to fire at anything that might be on that half of the room.
   Sadhur dropped the black cube he was holding and scrambled over the back of the couch to gain a modicum of cover. Varrow's pistol barked twice and the couch erupted in cushion filling and wood splinters before Sadhur screamed.
   Em ran in, keeping his head low, making a bee line for the wall opposite the door. "Give us the data and you can walk away!" he shouted to the room at large. A shotgun answered him from beyond the wall and the shot flew out above his head. He fired two quick shots back through the wall at a shallow incline, then ran toward the corner.
   "You gonna let us live, man?" Sadhur clutched his leg as blood gushed from a wound.
   Varrow kept her pistol trained on him as she stepped in and Em answered over his shoulder. "My contract is for the data, doesn't say anything about you. Far as I care you were out getting a burger when I came in and I got what I wanted without seeing you. Personally I hate bloodshed."
   Laughter echoed down the hallway and Em followed toward its source.
   "Izzat true?" Sadhur asked quietly, his plaintive eyes begging Varrow for compassion. She glanced down the hallway, making sure Em would not be able to see her, then shook her head slowly. She grinned as Sadhur's eyes grew wide and put a bullet through his forehead before he could scream.
   She opened a message window.
> Varrow@[domain]:
ETA? Cannot hold Em indefinitely.
> FixIsIn@TizerCorp:
Three minutes. Payment on delivery. Well done.
   Varrow smiled and sauntered to the other side of the ruined couch and picked up the cube Sadhur dropped. She reached in her bag and pulled out a dummy gate to slot between the cube and her neural net. The dummy gate would let her avoid the worst of any backlash the cube might contain, and give her a few seconds to disconnect if it sent a spike to fry her. It didn't have any defenses, so she added some after making a copy to her internal storage. She was careful to keep her digital fingerprints off of it.

   Em rolled a camera ball through the doorway and watched the few seconds of video is sent back before it was destroyed. It saw enough of the room for his Enhanced Reality implants to generate a map to overlay on his vision, providing him with detailed information about the layout of the room and the position of the man that shot the drone. He passed his gun from his right hand to his left and pointed it around the corner, firing twice without looking into the room.
   "Neat trick. Too bad you missed." Lindon's voice floated out of the bedroom.
   Em mentally keyed some acoustic modules to analyze the sound of Lindon's voice and overlay probable locations he may have been hiding in the room. It gave him two projections in the digital map of the room, one behind the bed with a 15% probability and one behind a dresser labeled with 30%. He made a note to take another look at the acoustic algorithms when this was all over. Maybe Varrow could give him some help with the code.
   "Last chance to walk away."
   "Come and get me!" The probabilities changed with the new data. The bed was now labeled 12% and the dresser 34%. A new probability shadow appeared under the bed, labeled 3%.
   Em tossed in another camera sphere and dove into the room after it, aiming at the shadow by the dresser. He'd committed himself to the action and fired a shot through the wall before he could process the information his eyes were sending: no one was there. His left foot exploded in pain as Lindon's bullet tore through the boot, tendons, and bone. Em crumpled as his footing eroded under his weight on the new injury, falling onto his left side, his back to the bed.

> Varrow@[domain]:
You want him dead or alive?
   As Em dove into the room, Varrow sprinted down the hallway and fell to her stomach with a view through the doorway.
> FixIsIn@TizerCorp:
Alive.
> Varrow@[domain]:
Better hurry.
   Lindon sidled out from under the bed and stood over Em. "Still willing to let me walk away?" he chuckled and trained his pistol on Em's head.
   "No." Em's jacket billowed slightly as his gun fired, the bullet passing through the thin material under his arm and into Lindon's chest.
   Lindon staggered backward a step and fell motionless to the floor. "Em! I'll get the medkit!" Varrow shouted, running down the hall and out of the hotel suite.
> Varrow@[domain]:
He's all yours. Wounded, but alive. Room 603. Bedroom. Data cube on the table in the living room.
> FixIsIn@TizerCorp
Pleasure doing business with you.
   Em dragged himself to something resembling a standing position, keeping his left foot off the ground as he hopped to the bathroom. A part of him wondered how Varrow was going to get the medkit from the car without his keys, but the overwhelming majority of his mind not occupied with pain was focused on how nice it felt to be cared for by his former lover. He took one of the crisply folded white hand towels and sat down on the toilet to wrap the towel around his ankle. He used his belt to tie it in place and keep pressure on the wound.
   "Varrow?" he called weakly, meaning to ask if she'd got the data but knowing she wasn't in earshot anymore. "She'll be back," he muttered to the room before hopping on his good foot to the bed and laying down. "She'll be back."