Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) (12 page)

“You shouldn’t have
come after me, Gray Eyes.” The voice was Wolf, but the accent had a flat, South
Branbrian twang. The black of the armorcloth undersuit blended his body into
the shadows, except for the pale splash of his face, hands, and feet. Dark hair
hung in tangles around his face.

The barrel of the
pistol eased downward, away from her head, but his hand seemed to fight against
every centimeter as it moved away from his intended target. The red dot of the
sighting laser appeared on her chest, then her stomach, but it danced as if the
hand holding it was palsied. His teeth sunk into his lower lip until blood
appeared, but still he didn’t fire.

The high-pitched buzz
of an Acton broke the stalemate, but the assassin’s accelerated awareness
allowed him to dive out of the way as a bolt burned through the spot he’d
occupied milliseconds before. More shots followed as Donkenny raced toward
them, laying down a barrage of fire.

Setting her teeth
against the pain, Fitz lunged for the assassin’s leg, but he eluded her,
disappearing around the fountain toward the service entrance behind it. She
screamed as much from frustration as the wound.

Donkenny knelt beside
her. “How bad?”

“I’ll live. He’s
getting away.” She fumbled with the front panel on her dress, trying to rip it
away to use to stop the bleeding.

“I’ve seen enough
wounds on Wolf to know that should be closing up by now. What’s wrong?” He
pulled a knife, sliced through the silk, and pressed it against her shoulder.

“Nothing. You have to
stop him. Getting through the exit will slow him down enough for you to catch
up with him. Go.”

Doubt filled the merc’s
dark eyes. “I don’t feel right leaving you…”

“Either you stop him,
or I will.” Fitz tried to push to her feet. Had twenty-five years as Wolf’s
protégé instilled Fenton Donkenny with that same damnable antiquated sense of
chivalry?

He started to rise.
“No, you stay here…”

The night erupted into
a flash of light and noise. An explosion sent chunks of rock, plants, and water
sleeting across the fountain, pulverizing the quolla statue in a cloud of
whirling crystal and plexisteel shards. The force of the blast had blown toward
the front of the fountain, but needle-sharp debris rained down on them, slicing
exposed skin and bruising flesh. The force dome groaned, flickered, and more
alarms began to bleat.

Donkenny helped Fitz
up. “He must have blown the entire damn entrance. Leave it to Wolf. Even if
he’s not himself, he still doesn’t do things halfway.” He removed his cape,
draped it around her, and bent to retrieve her weapon. He handed it back to
her, then stopped and glanced around.

“Wasn’t Jumper with
you?”

Fitz remember the cat’s
wail as the assassin opened fire on them, and a cold sense of dread locked
around her chest. No, not the little guy! She couldn’t take another loss, not
now. What would she tell Faydra?

“Jumper!” she screamed,
but only the mindless howling of the alarms answered her.

The Nameless Man
grabbed handfuls of his hair, pulled it away from his head and sawed through
the offending locks with his knife, throwing the tangled strands as far away as
his enhanced muscles could hurl them. That belonged to The Other, and he wanted
it gone from his body.

It’s my body now. My
body.

He hacked until nothing
remained on the top and sides of his head but an uneven, dark stubble with pale
roots already beginning to appear close to his scalp. A short tail at the back
hid the thing in his skull. Through the remaining strands of hair, he brushed
the smooth metal of the spike’s housing. He seemed to feel that shaft of
plexisteel inside his head, penetrating his skull, invading his brain.

Just pull it out
,
the voice in his mind whispered.
Then this will all be over. Do it.

He hesitated, fingers brushing
the metal housing. It would be so easy. Just twist the knurled ring and that
alien object inside his brain would eject and he’d be free.

I’ll be dead
.

Gone like a bit of
deleted computer memory. He dropped his hand. No, that was what The Other wanted,
and he would not allow him to win. He pulled his remaining hair into a short
tail at the back of his neck and tied it with a piece of string.

Winters in the Warren
were mild, but the cold he felt came from somewhere deep within. He pulled his
jacket tight around his chest and curled into a fetal ball. Even the body armor
under his clothes did little to keep him warm. Cold sweat beaded on his face
and trickled through the stubby growth left on his head. Hunger gnawed at his
insides, hollowing him out like a gutted melon. It was always with him, this
incessant need to eat, like something inside him was starving and would never
be satisfied.

Last night he’d eaten
his fill from the banquet tables—pastries, chocolates, and spiced meats. Until
she
showed up. Gray Eyes. Despite the dress revealing all that creamy skin he
longed to caress, he knew what she was. He remembered. She was a Black Jacket.
A wirehead. The hated Special Operations. They hunted people like him, and
killed them. Like she had hunted him that night, the first night he could
remember existing.

He stared at his hands,
coiling the slender fingers into tight fists. Who was he? What was he?
Something Special Operations had built in its cyber-laboratory? All he knew was
that he shared this body with something else. The Other. He’d learned that last
night, felt something twist inside him each time he fired his weapons. Had he
killed anyone, or had that entity that shared his body fouled his aim? It
hadn’t even let him kill those guards at the gate. What good was he as an
assassin if he couldn’t even kill?

That unknown fount of
knowledge had been there since he awoke in the medical bay five nights ago. He
just knew things; whenever he needed the information, it was there. How to
spoof the security systems, the access codes, how to pull off that bizarre
twirling killing maneuver, and how to set up the ambush that brought down Gray
Eyes.

Two days earlier he’d
scouted the Imperial Botanical Gardens and planted the sparker in the tree
where the little feathered reptiles roosted, just in case he needed a
diversion. He’d also left a small explosive surprise buried in a pile of
compost next to the service entrance.

He had set off the
sparker, rousting the birds, knowing that it would cause her to think he was
behind her. She would break cover, trying to beat him to the exit, and that
would give him a clear shot. Only it hadn’t worked out quite like that.

Stubbly head clenched
in his hands, he rocked back and forth. He’d stood over the wounded Black
Jacket, ready to finish it. Ready to pull the trigger. She wouldn’t be coming
after him anymore.

But then The Other
came—screaming and boiling out of some dark recess in his brain, out of his
very cells, trying to claim his body. He couldn’t force his hand to obey him,
couldn’t force even a single finger to squeeze the trigger. Then he felt The
Other take over, felt his arm lower the weapon, and all he could do was stare
into those gray eyes. Her cohort arriving and taking a shot at him had broken
the paralysis, freeing him to scurry for the entrance like some bumbling
amateur on his first job. Fear had made him sloppy: he’d blown the explosive
charge on the entrance too early and nearly taken himself out.

He’d run without
direction, without destination, but he wasn’t the only one. Terrified festival
goers had streamed out of the Henge, anxious to be as far away as possible from
the killing field. He found himself sprinting beside a tall man in an expensive
suit. At the first alcove he’d body-checked the stranger into its darkness and
beat him, letting the fear make him mean. He changed into the designer suit and
slipped away into the night, fingering the pocketful of credit chips he found
in the jacket.

When he’d put enough
distance between himself and his victim, he ducked into an eatery for a bag of
pastries and a large coffee, then was back on the street, gobbling the food
down while he headed back to the Warren. He stopped at another coffee shop,
thinking he’d like a bit more for breakfast, but found that the cred chips had
already been canceled, and had barely made it out before the owner called the
enforcers.

He’d returned to the
plastic and cardboard hovel he euphemistically called his base of operations,
and tried to get some sleep. That was when he learned his dreams belonged to
The Other. Reptilian bugs stalked through his nightmares, swinging bladed arms.
Gray Eyes was there, fighting the creatures beside him. He’d chosen instead to
stay awake and stare into the darkness.

This far back into the
narrow alley between two tall buildings, morning was slow to appear. In the
half-light eyes glittered, scurrying through the garbage the wind had blown in.
One set regarded him steadily from behind a broken, discarded chest. Close to
the ground, the wide-spaced shining eyes belonged to something much larger than
a gerbat. As it slipped from its cover and advanced on him, he grabbed an empty
bottle and lobbed it toward the creature. It turned and fled.

He crawled out of his
den and stood, surprised to not feel stiff and sore from his restless night
curled on the pavement. A box of moldering clothing sat by the opening. He
pushed it aside to reveal a square of plexisteel set into the ground. He
disarmed the hidden flash-bang and pulled up the cover to his stash. He
exchanged the fancy designer jacket for a threadbare vest. A paper cup
contained a handful of colored plastic discs—what passed for currency in the
creditless economy of the Warren.

This was all that
remained of the advance the Smiling Man had given him. It had only been enough
to buy him some food and the supplies he needed to set up the job. He’d been
promised the sizable remainder, and safe passage out of the Empire, after
Ransahov was dead. Judging by the security he’d faced last night, he doubted
Smiley had expected him to live long enough the collect the rest of his pay.

He pocketed the money,
stuffed the fancy jacket into his hidey hole, and replaced the camouflage. As
he slipped down the narrow alley, he disturbed a scruffy cat with a dead gerbat
hanging from its mouth.

Despite the hour, the
streets of the Warren still teemed with late night operators and party goers.
Early risers with legitimate jobs hurried to work. He forced himself not to
look up as an enforcer’s aircar buzzed overhead, sirens wailing. He’d heard
them prowling the skies all night long. Looking for him.

He hunched his
shoulders and let his body sink in on itself, seeming to lose several centimeters
and altering his posture. A limp shortened his stride. He became just another
unfortunate that life on the streets of the Warren had beaten down. He knew
that facial recognition cameras measured their life span in hours this deep
inside the slum, but he kept his spine bent and his face down as he sought out
the diner he’d begun to frequent.

He didn’t want to go
back to the Smiling Man tonight, no matter how much he promised to pay. That
red-haired augie that Smiley kept on a short leash had watched him constantly,
like he was waiting for him to make a mistake. Waiting for the chance to kill
him. The Nameless Man thought he could take Red in a fight, but he didn’t want
to try.

The offhand way Smiley
had instructed him to kill Pettigrew after the fat admiral had slipped him into
the celebration warned him of the future he could expect when his usefulness
ended. They might have put some kind of program in his head that forced him to
seek out Smiley that first night, but that didn’t seem to be functioning now.

Another enforcer aircar
screamed by overhead.

No. As soon as the
manhunt cooled off a bit, he’d slip out to that starport and take his chances
getting off-world on his own. Until then, he’d have to appear to be just
another useless drudge wasting his life in the Warren.

He limped into the
auto-vend. This early, only a few patrons clustered at the mismatched tables,
guzzling coffee and picking at suspicious piles of brown mush on their plates.
The manager occupied a stool at the back, watching a newsie broadcast on an
ancient flat screen, 2-D monitor. An armorglass box surrounded the unit,
protecting it from theft—as if anyone would want the relic.

He fed far too many of
his remaining tokens into an equally old processor unit, its faceplate covered
in graffiti. Quantity was more important to him this morning than quality, so
he punched up a double order of meat pies and a cup of coffee. The additional
creamer and sugar he wanted cost him extra, nearly exhausting his finances. He
carried his breakfast to a table from where he could watch the monitor.

The textured protein in
the pie had a flat, metallic taste from the processor’s misaligned replicator
lens, but at least the unit had the grease right. By the time he wolfed down
the first one, his fingers were covered with it. He’d started on the second one
when a voice on the monitor caught his attention. He glanced up as an image of
himself sashayed through the crowd on the arm of the fat admiral.

“…and extremely
dangerous. The authorities have reiterated that she should not be approached,
but anyone who believes they’ve seen this woman, report it to Imperial Special
Security Forces immediately.”

Interesting. They were
still reporting that the assassin was a woman, but Gray Eyes knew he was a man.
She’d got a good look at him, and recognized him from their first encounter.
Why hadn’t she corrected the newsies’ misconception? Unless she hadn’t told
them. Unless…

The half-eaten pastry
fell from his fingers, and he felt the flutter in his chest of a missed
heartbeat.

Unless he’d killed her.

The wound in her back
hadn’t been that bad, and her partner had reached her quickly enough to see
that she got medical attention, but the explosion… He’d used two high explosive
grenades when one would have probably done the job. That screw-up had nearly
taken him out, too. Both Gray Eyes and her partner could have been pulverized
when that fountain came apart.

A lump of ersatz meat
jammed in his throat and he gulped his coffee to wash it down, the hot liquid
scalding his tongue. Why was he worried about that wirehead’s fate? They’d only
crossed paths twice, and both times she’d tried to kill him. Her safety should
be the furthest thing from his mind. With Gray Eyes out of the picture, there
was one less person gunning for him.

A martial flourish from
the monitor drew his attention: the Imperial Anthem. The royal seal dissolved
into the arrogant face of a red-haired woman. The Emperor. So she wasn’t dead. Not
even wounded, from the looks of her. Unless it was a computer-generated image,
but the graphic running across the bottom of the screen proclaimed the
broadcast was live. She stood before the huge window in her office, and behind
her the rising sun painted Striefbourne City’s domes and spires in rose and
gold. She assured her subjects that the perpetrator of last night’s atrocities
would not go unpunished. He returned to his breakfast, tuning out the imperial
tirade.

He’d planned to work
his way closer to the dais and strike at the climax of Ransahov’s speech, but Gray
Eyes had recognized him, forcing him to launch his attack too soon, too far
away. He’d screwed up. When he’d fled last night, he’d feared as much. One more
reason to avoid his meeting with the Smiling Man. Smiley didn’t appear to be
one who accepted failure gracefully.

But it wasn’t his
fault; it was that stupid needler. It made no sense to use a non-lethal weapon,
but Smiley had insisted on it, and not the Cauldfield, to spray Ransahov and
everyone who shared the stage with her. From the way Red handled it, warning
that even a scratch would kill him, he’d assumed the darts were poisoned. It
hadn’t been enough.

The last meat pie lay
cooling on the plate, grease congealing beneath it, but his appetite had
deserted him. He gulped the last of his coffee, found a square of rough paper,
and wrapped the remaining pastry. With his finances almost gone, he needed to
shepherd what he could. He slipped the packet into a vest pocket and shuffled
out of the eatery.