Bluebird, p.33
Bluebird, page 33
Gold lights up her vision as a hundred helltech knives cleave through the air.
They crack into the library walls, the ground.
Sliding into the guards like a hot knife through butter, shredding them into a gory mess.
Her head cracks around to see Ginka rising to her feet, lines of gold running down her prosthetics. The remnants of the net are shattered around her, disintegrating into nothingness as though her mere presence is tearing them to shreds. Fury burns in her eyes and her chest heaves from the effort – an effort that must have cut through her life as quickly and as precisely as it cut through her enemies.
“Fuck–” Rig trips over her own two feet as she straightens up. “You… okay?”
Ginka flicks her wrist, crackles of light shaking off it in white hot sparks. She winces, pressing a hand to her stomach before straightening up. “Fine. The toxin won’t kill me instantly.”
Rig’s brain shoves that into the ‘not urgent’ category and proceeds to ignore it.
Then she’s stumbling through the library doors, one hand clutching her aching side where she was punched and the other still shakily grasping one of her guns.
Stillness has sunk into the library.
Not the usual muffled quiet and dusty, undisturbed nature of a library, no, this is a forced emptiness, unthinkable and unnatural. There are no overturned shelves or smashed cases to suggest the wrongness of it all, but there are scuff marks on the soft carpet and the stench of gunpowder. When she passes through the main chamber, the glass-ceilinged sanctum, she sees sticky blood splattered on the walls. A shoe, a librarian’s silk slipper, lies discarded near a display plinth.
Bile rises to burn her throat and she has to bite it back.
They raised their hands against librarians. They desecrated this place, a sacred library, as though it was just some publica in the middle of nowhere. She’s not simply sick to her stomach, her very soul feels stained by being party to it all. This didn’t just happen. Janus – he only did this because of her.
June’s office door has been torn from its hinges.
The slab of old oaken wood has a bullet hole splintering the center of it like a rot. Panicked, fluttering coals lie in Rig’s stomach. The ruined door consumes her vision and the coals burst into an inferno.
Something inside her snarls and it’s that feeling that allows her to draw herself up and steel her expression before she’s stepping into June’s office and trying not to scream.
There must have been a fight; thousand-year-old treasures and precious documents thrown about like trash, the refrigerator that Rig gave June lying on its side, door open and a can of soda leaking onto the carpet. The fizzing pink liquid has soaked into an essayon Ascetic clay working techniques – even from a distance, she knows the shape of that document. June had spent six months agonizing over it before she felt it was thorough enough to send to her boss.
June is sitting in her chair, hunched over. Heavy cuffs bind her wrists together behind her back, a rough gag is shoved between her teeth. A muffled cry breaks free when her gaze locks with Rig’s.
She’s bleeding.
A thin stream of blood trickles down her nose, one of her nostrils a sickening purplish red. A dark, nearly black bruise is painted across her right cheek like a sweep of blush.
And Janus himself is standing behind her, casually spinning a pistol around in his hand. There’s that smug grin, worse now that Rig’s seeing it in person again.
He hurt June. He hurt June…
She’s gonna kill him.
“Hey there,” he drawls. “Let’s talk like adults, shall we?”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Change of Plans
“No guards in here?” Rig practically growls as she takes a slow and careful step towards Janus and June. Anger is burning up her fear, twitching in her limbs, ready to lash out and gut him. “Bet that you realized we know you’re former Windshadow, and your PI buddies wouldn’t take too kindly to us revealing that piece of information.”
“Not at all. Pyrite knows who and what I am.”
“And Ascetic?”
“When presented with the golden opportunity to stand back and aid in the elimination of an organization that’s decided to become the unruly and uncivil fourth enemy in this war,” Janus says cheerfully, “Ascetic decided that the loss of one more minor library was well worth the trade. I did want to have this conversation without another tagalong, but it seems that my Pyrite associates didn’t have what it took to stop her.”
“You know that if it comes down to a fight, Ginka and I can kick your ass.”
Janus keeps smiling. “Oh, I know. I’m not here to fight. Like I said, I want to talk.”
“Then let June go, you piece of shit.”
He nudges the back of June’s head with the gun’s muzzle and it’s such a struggle to keep from punching him in the face – she might get the hit in, only she wouldn’t be fast enough to stop him from shooting, and then it wouldn’t matter, would it? “She’s just a security measure. I need you to actually listen instead of resorting to your usual crass methods.”
“Like when I beat you up in the Dead Zone?”
“You and I remember that incident very differently.” He nods at Ginka. “Didn’t I kill you?”
Ginka glares at him. “I’ve had worse.”
For once in Rig’s life, trash talking just makes her feel worse because June is right there. Her heart aches to run to June, but she knows it’ll just cause her more pain. She has to think about this; she can’t simply act and damn the consequences. “I don’t care about semantics right now. Talk. Fast.”
Another tap of the muzzle, this time poking at the bruise on half of June’s face, making her wince and making Rig boil. She’s gonna kill him. She’s gonna rip his arms off and beat him to death with them. “So hasty,” he drawls. “Now I went to a good deal of trouble to ensure that you’d sit down and listen, so why don’t we all talk about this like reasonable adults?”
“You have ten seconds to blurt it out before you let June go. Longer than that, and I won’t listen to a damn thing you say.”
“Fine.” Janus’s smug grin falters for a brief second. “The truth is… I don’t have Daara anymore. Kill me, and you’ll never know where she is.”
Then he unlocks June’s handcuffs and lets her go.
What does he mean he doesn’t have Daara…
June rubs her hands together, soothing the angry red marks that have dug into her wrists. She staggers to her feet, ripping the gag out from between her teeth and spitting it onto the desk. Her hands are braced on the desk as she leans forward, drawing in a deep breath.
“Now,” Janus says, “let’s discuss–”
June slams her head backwards.
There’s a pained scream from Janus and blood flecks in June’s curls as she whirls around. Blood leaks from Janus’s nose where her skull had smacked into it. Not hard enough to kill him, just enough to shock him.
He raises a hand to prod at the injury and he’s gapes at the red smear on his fingers.
With a quick twist of motion, June grabs the slide of Janus’s gun, yanks it off the rest of the pistol so it can’t shoot, and then plants her knee firmly in his stomach. She drops the slide, grabs something from her pocket, and jams a taser into Janus’s side.
He crumples with a gasp.
Rig’s eyes blow wide. “Babe, what the fuck?”
“I’ve studied self-defense manuals.” June pushes her hair back, her hands shaking ever so slightly. A curl remains plastered to her face, stuck there by a drop of sweat. She sags and takes a few uneven steps away from Janus. “Our archived tutorials are seriously underutilized tools.”
“…Tutorials.”
“How hard could it be?”
“Clearly pretty damn easy for you. Are you…?”
“Alright? That’s not important right now.”
It is, in her opinion. Now’s not the time to argue though.
She hops over the desk to June, pulling June’s pink handkerchief out of her pocket and using it to dab at her bloody nose. “Try not to swallow any blood. It’ll make you sick.”
June presses the pink harder against her nose and winces. “Thank you.”
“Right. Let’s get him trussed up so that he’ll spill the beans as soon as he’s awake. I need to know what in the fuck he meant by not having my sister anymore, and we need to be in control of this little interrogation. No fucking chance he gets to call the shots anymore.”
Ginka moves the desk aside and picks up the chair. She sets it in the center of the room, pulling Janus into it and cuffing his hands behind it with practiced motions. Not her first torture and interrogation, then. Disturbing, in general. Very helpful, currently.
“Hand me that taser?” June passes it over and Ginka examines it. She gives it an approving nod. “Nice model. Good voltage. He should wake up soon. Sooner, if we hit him a bit.”
Spec-fucking-tacular.
Rig punches him in the face.
He draws in a sharp gulp of air, eyes snapping wide open, head cracking backwards as he flops and strains against his bonds.
“Wakey wakey, motherfucker.”
He sputters. “You… you and your damn little librarian son of a–”
She punches him again.
“Much appreciated,” June says, the words a bit unclear as she’s still holding the handkerchief to her nose.
“Any time.” She turns back to Janus. “Now start singing like a godsdamned bird. Where’s Daara and what did you do with her? You better not have killed her, or else you’re gonna start losing a lot of blood real fast from the shit ton of bullet holes that I’ll put in your chest.”
Janus coughs and spits a bit of blood onto the carpet, his – hopefully broken – nose still leaking. “She’s not dead. That’s all I can safely say, at least. She’s worth more to Umbra alive than dead.”
Yeah, of course she is, they already knew that; what the fuck does that have to do with where she is?
Ginka blows out a long puff of air that ends in a shocked little laugh. “You damn idiot. You thought I was dead and you jumped the gun, didn’t you?”
What’s that supposed to mean?
It must mean something to Janus, based on the way a vein in his forehead twitches. He ignores Ginka and keeps his focus on Rig. “I’m sure your friend has told you all about the little unicorn hunt some of us have been sent on, and yes, I was one of those unlucky few. When I couldn’t get the plans from you in the Dead Zone, I… I gave Daara to Umbra,” he admits.
“You did what?” To Rig, Windshadow is a thousand times worse than PI – unimaginably worse. Literally. PI is horrible, but she understands them, she knows how they work, how they think, what they’re likely to do. Windshadow is such an unknown, a void in her info bank, and that shadowy reputation and lack of knowledge creeps up her spine. “Umbra’s using her to get to me, right? Will he keep her unharmed while waiting for me to show? Will he torture her just… just because? What’s he going to do?”
Janus shrugs, the cuffs on his wrists pulling his shoulders back down before he can move them more than a centimeter. “How should I know?”
“The more damaged she is,” Ginka says in a calm and detached voice, “the less valuable she is. Any torture would be conducted where you can see it. That would be far greater motivation for you.”
At least there’s that. “Why give her to Umbra? You’ve clearly screwed yourself over in some way. If everything was fine and dandy for you, you’d be sitting back in Ossuary and not bothering me.”
She can see his jaw grinding as he deliberates his words. “You wouldn’t understand. I need my link back. Two and a half years I’ve been chasing you, and now that I finally got somewhere… I needed it back; I had to try, and I thought that your sister would be enough for Umbra. It would be proof enough for him that I deserved to have my link again–”
“You damn fool.” There’s no gloating in Ginka’s voice. Instead she simply sounds tired. Tired and sad. “Nothing short of the utmost perfection is good enough for Lord Umbra.”
He shoots her a dirty look. “I’m well aware of that now, thank you.”
“So what do you want from me?” Rig asks, crossing her arms. “We’re not friends, I don’t give a shit if you don’t have your precious link, and now that I know that Umbra has Daara, Ginka and I can probably figure out some way of getting to her.”
“I came here bearing a proposal of cooperation.”
“…You’re joking, right?”
“Regrettably, no.” He sighs, and explains, “Listen, we both know you don’t care about the schematics falling into Umbra’s hands.”
She looks at June in confusion. June looks right back at her with identical – if slightly bruised – confusion.
“We know what now?”
“You’ve clearly thrown your lot in with X-74 and are helping her get back into Windshadow. You only want your sister back. I understand. And I can help you. Work with me and X-74. You’ll get your sister with my help and both of us will get back into Windshadow. As a result of your cooperation, I have no doubt that Lord Umbra will keep you both safe once he and PI release the anti-Kashrini nanomites.”
That’s a lot of incorrect assumptions.
So he thinks that she’s picked a side in Umbra’s fucked up unicorn hunt? She’s on her own side.
He leans back in the chair and that grin starts to return. “I can offer you safe passage to Ossuary space. X-74 isn’t allowed in and neither am I, but I’ve hacked into a number of their communications and I have clearance codes to get us past the border checkpoints, through to the homeworld, and straight up to a landing pad in the Windshadow headquarters. And once you’ve gotten your sister back, having a Raven – me – inside the organization to ensure that you stay safe will be quite handy, won’t it?”
“Yeah…” she slowly drawls, “see, there’s one problem with all that. I’m not giving the schematics to Umbra.”
He jerks his head back in surprise. “Are you crazy? No one crosses Umbra. No one. Besides, if you try to get your sister without my help, he will catch you and he’ll just take them from you by force.”
“I’d like to see him try. No one can get them from me without me handing them over, and even if someone could, they still couldn’t access them without me. So tough shit for Umbra.” Something curious shifts in Janus’s features, but it’s gone before Rig can pin what emotion it was. “If Umbra has my sister,” she decides, “then I’ll take the fight to him.”
He barks out a laugh. “You’re a lunatic.”
“Maybe so, but I’m gonna do it anyway.”
What other choice does she have, in the end? Give up and let Daara die a slow, probably painful death at Umbra’s hands? Or let June and every single Nightbird be murdered by her own ill-conceived nanomites?
In her mind, there’s no way that wiping out one pesky organization of Nightbirds can be worth slaughtering an entire species. Would it even end there? Or would Umbra take the base research and corrupt it? Find a way to twist the designs, make them work on other species, adjusting them for each new enemy that stands in his way? She’d say it’s impossible, because she knows the intricacies of her own designs, but she has no idea what scientists he has under his command. Certainly people clever enough to figure out a work-around to helltech – albeit a shitty one.
“You can stand in my way, if you want,” she continues. “Or you can choose to work with me. You’re right, you would be helpful to have along; and since I can’t trust you enough to let you go, your options are really either help me take out Umbra and free my sister, or I shoot you here and now. I know you Windshadow people are devoted to Umbra and everything, so I get that you might prefer the bullet–”
“No need.” He interrupts her with a full-on, proper grin. Stupid, smug piece of shit. “I have no issues with killing Umbra.”
She very nearly glances at Ginka to catch her reaction. That’s not what she’d been expecting, not from someone who seems to have been kept at least partially in Umbra’s favor – or at least been the man’s favorite horse in the race. “Seriously?”
“He took my link from me,” Janus coolly replies. “All I want from him is my link back and, well, if he won’t give it to me willingly then my only option is to take it. One way or another. You’re a Nightbird – I’m sure you understand. Your little band takes whatever you want from factions without care or concern.”
Yeah, but there’s no need for him to say it like it’s a bad thing or in any way, shape, or form comparable to what he’s doing. Pyrite took whatever it wanted from her, after all, and he seems to have no problem with that.
“O…kay. Let’s be clear about a few things, then. Making sure Umbra, PI, or Windshadow in general don’t get the plans is the number one priority. If you compromise that, I shoot you. Getting Daara back safe is the second priority. If you compromise that, I shoot you. Rigging things so that no one comes back to harm June is the third priority. If you compromise that–”
“Let me guess, you’ll shoot me?”
“You’re learning.”
“Then we have an accord. I’d seal the deal but…” He wiggles his arms and the cuffs rattle. “Care to shake on it?”
June picks the slide off the ground and fixes the gun, holding it unsteadily at him. She nods. “I can shoot if necessary.”
Somewhat reluctantly, she steps behind Janus and uncuffs him; it is necessary for him to be able to move and stuff if they’re going to work together to get Daara back from Umbra, but at the same time every instinct she has is telling her that he’s going to put up a fight as soon as he’s free. He’s been her enemy too long for her to think anything else, really.
“Any funny business,” she warns, tossing the cuffs away, “and you’ve got three people armed and ready to end you.”
He rubs at his wrists with uncalled for elegancy, as though merely adjusting cufflinks. “We’re on the same side now and I have no reason to compromise that. I’ll play nice.”
