Chương 98: KK3 - #21 THE GREAT MASQUERADE (3/3)

The terminal on Ali's wrist beeped. Back on her shoulder, we ran together the little tracking program I had developed before we were interrupted. Betrayed by his digital trail, our target was moving through the tail's inside corridors. He was obviously preparing another sabotage. My partner immediately leaped towards the exit, jostling the police officers who had been drawn in by the gunshot: "Fuck off, pigs! Special mission!"

"What about Oppenheim?" I asked while taking the lead.

"Let's avoid another blunder," Nora replied over a shrill deployment alarm.

"He will hand us the key once the job's done. So, let's finish it for good." We had never run so fast. Not surprisingly, the last available elevator stalled mid-floor after a long, agonizing scream. All we had next to do was to reach the access point to the corridors by a staircase once again cluttered with robot parts. On the landings, people of all ages were sleeping, malnourished and strongly irradiated by the proximity of the station's engine.

Some were so weak they barely had the energy to move in front of us and we had to climb the bars of the stairwell.

"I really wonder what they have to gain by sabotaging this one." I saw at that moment how many of these people were covered in bruises. Some of them had unhealed fractures or gross hemorrhages that weren't caused by the constant radiation level. Yet these people were in no condition to fight each other. They hadn't even tried to rob us. We got the answer further on.

In the shadow of a disused elevator shaft, three men in police anti-radiation uniforms were taking on a young woman who no longer had the strength to scream. Ali, red with anger, already had her hand on the butt of her. 50. But it stayed in its holster. These brutes remained untouchable, because we couldn't afford to draw attention to ourselves. Access to the maintenance tunnel corridors had only minor security, and it had been easy for our terrorist to get in.

The cameras had been stolen, the patrol drones stripped, and the electronic alarm system no longer had a siren. Finally, the mechanical lock had been hacked much more recently. Opening the door, we were on his heels. Maybe too much… A dark shape hit Ali in the throat, and I fell off her shoulder. A lead bar bounced on the ground in a few inches of stagnant blue water, and I could hear our assailant fleeing down one of the three corridors facing us.

"You good?" I asked my sapiens as I began to chase the criminal down the central hallway.

"Right in my Adam's apple," she coughed, massaging her jawbone and drawing her weapon.

"Keep going. I'm heading to the left."

"I'll take the right," Nora concluded. I ran briskly towards the main passageway, avoiding the sharp trash and rusty stakes. Our target didn't have my agility, and the smell of blood alerted me that he had already been dangerously wounded in this darkened environment to which I was immune. Alas, this hacker had many tricks up his sleeve, or maybe I hadn't been smart enough. At the bend of a corridor, something crossed my right front paw and I received a violent blow in the ribs.

I was then thrown into a mud puddle, buried under a runoff of gray water. Luckily, I quickly regained consciousness. My assailant had run down the stream and, without paying any more attention to me, fled towards the illuminated exit of the tunnel.

"Halt!" I heard. Ali had just jumped from a shaft in the wall and was holding the man at gunpoint. She fired as a warning. The shot and the din of the impact on the concrete ceiling echoed almost in unison in the corridor. The footsteps had stopped. I saw a young boy, cradling a laptop computer at least as old as the Kitty. The central processing unit was mounted on his back, the keyboard hung on his arm, and wired glasses served as the screen. With such a weight on his shoulders, he was out of breath.

But that wasn't the only reason for his exhaustion. I saw him lift his hood to reveal a wide injury on his neck.

"It's over," Ali said as I limped to her in the foul water.

"Behind you is a manhole leading to the street sprawling with piggies. They will smash your skull before throwing you with the radioactive wastes."

"You think so?" The teenager typed on his computer's wrist-keyboard. Almost immediately, a roar shook the walls. A few seconds later, the exit to the corridor was completely obstructed by a green-armored ship. My ship. He'd planned the little show and hacked into the Kitty.

"Let me go!" he ordered. The two 40mm machine guns straightened and spun. He had also armed them.

"I don't have a choice. I have to finish what I started…" This novel's true home is a different platform. Support the author by finding it there.

"Imma count to three," my partner threatened.

"I want you to put down your Power Glove and raise your hands in the air. Otherwise I'll have to shoot."

"We don't have to do this… please…" this young MacGyver insisted.

"One," Ali started. The machine guns were still turning, making the cooling fins hiss.

"Two."

"Ali?" I meowed, worried. Someone shouted from a passageway on the ceiling. Our guests made a scene. Doc fell into the water, between Ali and the webrunner. The bounty hunter, clutching his secretary, stared at the hacker as he got up.

"One more step and I'll blow your spy's noggin off," Oppenheim bellowed before losing himself in disjointed curses as the Kitty's machine guns slowed.

"Doc? What are you doing?" shouted Ali, the teenager still at gunpoint. The bounty hunter turned towards us, quickly pointing his gun in our direction before thrusting it sharply into the girl's bloody cheekbone again. His eyes were lost in the horizon, without a glimmer. This poor soul was back in whatever frontline he was once thrown to. His reason had abandoned him for a wild instinct.

"I've already wiped the station's server clean," said the hacker.

"Your friend chose the wrong side; the oppressor's side. You can't do anything for him unless you kill me. But then you'll be sacrificing everyone in Down Terminal." My partner raised an eyebrow.

"Lee? Do you know what he's talking about?" I enlightened her on the situation from my previous research on Doc's PC: "The shutdown of the reactor and the economic ruin of Down Terminal as well as its corporation. But also the end of the deadly radiation for its residents. Yet if the calculations are wrong, everything will blow up."

"Fuck! What do we do?" asked Ali. I sighed. The explosion taken aside, we had found ourselves in a gray area. Back in the day, contracts avoided all those moral dilemmas, and life was simpler that way.

"That's not our concern!" shouted Oppenheim.

"There is a price on that man's scalp! We must put an end to this. Shoot him—ouch!" Monday had bitten his hand. Filled with anger, Oppenhiem hit her and threw her to the ground. With his foot on her head, he buried his face in the sludge as the Kitty's guns whirled again. Doc then turned to the young boy, who spun the 40mm on this new target, alone in the open. There was no side. Just convictions, helium balloons clattering over a windblown flame. The choice remained, as it often is, to who would aim the best.

Oppenheim fired first. The young woman, who never stopped struggling, threw him off balance and he missed. Bullets from his. 38 ricocheted against the armored windows of the Swallow. One of them struck Ali in the calf. My copilot swore before another shot rang out in the corridor. It was Nora coming up behind us. A projectile arising from her middle knuckle had traced a red curve over Ali's head and passed through Doc's shoulders before coming back to hit him again in the heart. Twice.

The bounty hunter, ex-Marine and child of Titan kneeled then collapsed on the floor like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Panicked, the hacker typed on his computer and the Kitty's machine guns aimed at us. Fortunately, nothing happened.

"They've been dry for two weeks, you idiot," Ali sneered as she grabbed me in her arms to examine my injuries.

"We're kinda broke too." Neither the webrunner nor the young woman who had thrown herself at him joined in the joke.

"Now what?" Monday asked. My partner limped towards her.

"Craft yourselves brand-new FIDs and vanish." My associate paused, pressing my wound as I winced. After a little kiss on my snoot she resumed: "Changing appearance is a rare talent, may your boyfriend put it to good use…"

"Your time on Down Terminal is over, kids," Nora explained, rearming her fist. She coldly marched over our friend and snatched the golden capsule with the Lunar key off his butchered body.

"They will always send people like him. They will hunt you down forever." The young hacker's shoulders dropped. He looked defeated when he turned to Monday.

"I told you it was futile!" he shouted.

"They have too much to lose and they're too well protected!" Using her wrist computer, Ali took control of the Swallow as I was already thinking about a good bath to get rid of that awful smell. When we reached the airlock after the ship had rotated, my human stopped and turned to the lifeless body of Ludwig "Doc" Oppenheim. Blood was flowing from the unfortunate man's back and was wasting away at my partner's feet. Ali climbed with difficulty in the Kitty.

"Was it necessary?" she asked her pitiless sister.

"We got what we come from," Nora answered as she jumped through the airlock, refusing my associate's hand.

"Job's done. Don't get emotional over Oppenheimer. He doesn't deserve it."

"He was our friend…" Ali sighed." Almost family."

"And today, he almost killed you," her sister concluded, bolting the rotative panels. Back to business!