Ashley Fox - Ninja Orphan
Chapter 38 – No Remorse
Across the city, a little girl cowered in a tiny, dark cell with a floor of cold cement. The single feature of the floor was a small drain. Three walls of wood and one of brick, with a window near the top. She could not reach it. Only the faintest bits of light drifted down to her. There was more during the day, but at night, there was very little.
She heard an exterior door close somewhere in the house above. Footsteps made the floorboards creak followed by a few minutes of silence.
She thought of home, of her parents and her sister. She cried. She was scared and she missed them. She heard sounds of movement in the basement. As the sound approached her, her own cries rose in volume.
The featureless door opened and the burned Dunkirk stood before her. His face had been horribly blackened. His eyes, nose and mouth seared open; exposing charred tissue and teeth. His hair, eyebrows and the skin of his face had been burned off. He had been transformed into a perfect representation of the monster he truly was, deep down inside.
The small girl cowered against the cold brick wall and screamed.
Dunkirk tried to grin and bathed in the sound.
He grabbed her wrist; she recognized his rings and thick forearms. She screamed even louder. He dragged her from the cell and back down the corridor. She felt him purposefully aim her at the doorframe, taking the trouble to cause even the small pains in his boundless cruelty.
Now in the monster's work chamber she screamed herself hoarse. When she stopped to catch her breath, he would growl and snap at her.
The walls were covered with particleboard tool racks. All manner of weapons, knives, saws, needles and hammers were hung for easy access.
On District Thirteen, Ashley rode her hoverboard down the long terraced canyon, the prison garden on the Bolt known as the Mall. After fleeing the parking structure for a stairwell, she had climbed to the vertically central level, the ground floor of the mall, without encountering any guards or children.
Ahead, she spotted a team of guards outside their post. Remembering the news story, she set the rifle down. Rubber bullets wouldn't cut it against five of them. Ashley had no idea the weapon was loaded with live ammo.
She studied her surroundings, looking for some way to approach while remaining undetected. The mall was mostly open overhead, aside for the occasional bridges that connected one block of the prison to another.
She could get past them by taking a higher route, but she needed to enter the hall right next to them. The next crosswalk was just as far away from their post, it wouldn't help her.
There was a stairwell she could take up to the next level, but it would expose her to the guards. Ash set Lentz's head on a waist-high planter and vaulted up. From here she could reach the overhead walkway.
A bathroom and stairwell stood in the center of the bridge over the open canyon, creating two gaping maws to pass under.
She jumped, caught the edge and pulled herself up onto it. The crosswalk provided the perfect ambush point. She climbed out over the rail and crouched, concealed against the sidewall. Ash pulled the sword from its sheath and tapped the wooden scabbard against the stone a few times.
One of the guards heard her.
Two hundred pounds of ugly, nineteen year old Lance Corporal Lynch gestured for silence from his comrades. He walked toward the crosswalk and paused.
"Go check it out," the nearby officer ordered.
Lynch walked down the mall. Hallways opened onto the central walk from his left and right. The wide crosswalk looming ahead of him was attached to a large central pillar, with a stairwell, creating an island in the river of the cement floored prison garden.
"So someone wants a beating! Well, I'm here to oblige you.”
He was just barely out of sight of his comrades when he passed under the catwalk.
"I'm going to take this stick," Lynch lifted his stun-baton over his head. "And I'm going to shove it up your…”
Something heavy hit him in the shoulder, knocking him to the ground. He gurgled. Blood ran out of his mouth.
Ashley had dropped from the catwalk above and stabbed him through the soft tissue of his throat, straight down into his chest. The weight had slammed him to the ground, the blade shredding his circulatory system. When she pulled the sword out, his lifeblood burst forth in a great splash onto the gray cement. Lynch died before his helmet touched the ground.
The collision had been violent and loud. Ashley heard the approaching tromp of another pair of booted feet. She retreated back to her overhead ambush spot. Another, smaller guard rushed over to Lynch's lifeless body, bending over him, inspecting the wound.
This time she dropped to the side and brought the blade down across the exposed back of the soldier's neck. The helmeted head leapt away and the stump gave several spurts of crimson before the body fell.
She listened for more approaching soldiers, but heard nothing.
The two young men were strapped with all kinds of gear. Ashley set the Little Dragon down and unpacked the guards.
She got a helmet, a gas mask, four tear-gas grenades, two more assault rifles and two pairs of handcuffs. She secured the gas mask to her waist and snapped on shin, shoulder, and forearm bracers. They were a little too big to wear properly, but fit snugly over her shirt and pants.
She pulled on the smaller, headless soldier's vest and donned his recently emptied helmet. Even though he was much smaller than Corporal Lynch, the vest and the helmet were both several sizes too big and looked it. She left the assault rifles; if they were loaded with rubber rounds, they were useless. She was tempted to leave Lentz's rifle as well, but didn't.
Ash peaked around a corner. The mall was empty. Of the three remaining soldiers, no one was standing outside the guard post. She reasoned that they were all inside, huddled around their broken security terminal. Probably watching the camera monitors, hoping to catch a glimpse of her.
The lithe girl easily avoided the blindly panning cameras and reached the door of the guardhouse unseen. She removed the tear gas canisters from her pack, pulled the pins and tossed them inside, grabbing the door and slamming it shut. The doors to the guard posts were auto-locks, so you needed keys to open them from either side.
Ashley heard the soldiers collide with each other and the door. She stepped away, looking into the room through the bulletproof glass. The guards had regrouped from their little accident, but the room was becoming thick with the potentially lethal gas.
The soldiers appeared to be looking for their keys, but couldn't find them. They soon disappeared from view. Ashley held her weapon on the door, just in case.
After a few minutes, she collected her backpack and Lentz's head. She slung the seemingly useless rubber-bullet assault rifle back over her shoulder and walked off.
The next post was positioned behind a blind corner and in the center of another bridge, like the bathrooms behind her. Ashley climbed atop the bridge and shot three of the five soldiers with Cole’s weapon, scoring two headshots. Ashley was aiming for the head, as any shot to the armor could be ruled out as a kill shot.
The unwounded survivors dove for the guardhouse, taking cover. Two of their comrades were dead, the third fumbled with his rifle, trying to get a bead on Ashley, but she withdrew.
Ash climbed down from the bridge and slipped around the underpass to the left. She came around the corner to find the three of them staring at the crosswalk above.
Two more headshots and two more of the guards fell. Ashley had always been good at Geoff’s video games, but scoring four out of five headshots was impressive, even for her.
She shifted her aim to the wounded man, on his back against one of the planters, but he had moved on to his next life. His mouth and throat were wet with blood.
Ashley suspected the gunfire would bring more soldiers running, but she heard nothing. Her pack, swollen with booty, had only enough room for badges and ammunition. The gas grenades were too bulky.
A few minutes later,
the guards standing outside post seven forty-four heard more gunshots, immediately followed by bullets whizzing past their heads, ricocheting and careening off nearby objects. The shoot out they had heard sounded to be heading their way.
The comm. terminals were still unresponsive, so the young men took up positions to defend their post.
A gas grenade arced through the air, followed by another, tumbling to a stop close by. A nuisance, but the soldiers were still a good distance away. Even the pair of grenades weren’t enough trouble to inspire donning gas masks, not on the open mall, not yet.
A fire extinguisher on a nearby pillar exploded, spewing flame retardant into the air, ruptured with single shot. Now the smoke grew think and full. The guards tried to peer through it, but it was pointless. Another object flew toward them.
They raised their weapons.
The head bounced and rolled, coming free of its bloody, plastic.
One guard stepped forward and looked down. "Fuck, that's Lentz.”
In the distance, beyond the smoke, another guard appeared, wearing his gas mask and fleeing as-yet-unseen pursuers behind him. He ran through the smoke, paused to return fire with the rifle, and continued toward them.
The rifle pops sounded significantly different than the pistol shots they'd heard earlier. The soldier's helmet bounced painfully on his head.
Upon reaching them, he nodded and bent double to catch his breath. He kept the rifle always pointed safely away from them, generally in the direction of the smoke.
The guards watched, waiting out the next few critical moments.
The new arrival turned, positioning himself alongside them, turning to face the enemy, pursuing from behind. He leveled his rifle at the smoke, prepared for his pursuers to arrive at any moment.
The guards of post seven-forty-four stood with him, their weapons likewise pointed into the smoke, determined to put up a fight.
As soon as all their rifles were up, Ashley shifted the sling-supported rifle over to her left hand, and drew the pistol at her belt. She'd positioned herself correctly; all four of them were to her right.
The guard closest to her looked over in her direction.
She raised the handgun and put a bullet through his face, blowing his brains all over the other young men. She shot the remaining guards before the first man hit the ground.
Keeping the mask on, she dashed back through the gas and smoke to retrieve her pack, into which she deposited the newly dead soldiers' grenades, the officer's handgun, extra magazines and their badges.
Finally, the smoke dissipated. She pulled off the helmet and the gas mask. She wiped the sweat from her brow, dropped the helmet and tucked the mask back into its pouch. She left the rifles where they lie.
Across the district, the security communications were down, disrupted by the virus. Some posts tried restarting their terminals, but it didn't help. No one had ever reset an entire network before. No one even suggested it. The particle servers, sealed in their artificial environment, continued the false optimization protocol. Only a net-wide power cycle could unlock it and blindly powering down an airborne facility would be suicide.
FBI Director Trafford had been granted access to the district's security network and despite the main server's massive crash, he was still able to surf the active camera feeds.
The director watched hundreds of monitors, keeping track of Ashley and scanning for the Reverend. He was only interested in the girl as a means to locate or draw out the reclusive man of the cloth.
The cameras displayed one empty hall after another. The district was remarkably quiet, aside from Ashley's calculated assaults. As she ruthlessly destroyed the better-armed outposts, he couldn’t help laughing, enjoying the brutal show.