Then one day I found something.
* * *
Kurst was rather enjoying himself.
“Did you really think it would be that easy, Franks?” he asked as he ducked under a swing that whistled through the air where his face had been. “You know the quality of body that I require. You should, since you stole my first one and ruined my second.”
Franks had always been taciturn, even in the before time, so it wasn’t surprising that he was too focused on killing him to have a conversation about their shared past. He just kept whipping the table leg about in his typical, unimaginative fashion. Kurst effortlessly raised one hand and caught the descending weapon. It hit his palm with a resounding smack, glorious pain descended down his arm, but then his fingers locked around the improvised club like a vise.
Franks scowled as he struggled to wrench the table leg free. He hadn’t expected that.
The Nemesis body had been thoroughly tested. It was based on Dippel’s original design, but it was better in every way. Franks might have had a few hundred years of freedom in his stolen mass of corpse chunks, but in the end it was Kurst who had received the superior form. “The humans made a few improvements since last time.” Kurst yanked the club from Franks’ hands and swatted him across the room with it.
Franks crashed into the far wall. Kurst was on him before he could get up. He smashed Franks over the back, splintering wood and bone. The leg broke in half on the second hit. Kurst dropped it to the floor with a clatter, took hold of Franks’ suit coat, hoisted him off the ground, and flung him into another wall. Franks bounced off and landed face down in a pile of broken glass.
“Our exile has ended. I will reclaim our birthright.” Kurst followed, his shoes crunching through the glass. “What was not given will be taken.” He grasped a handful of Franks’ collar and dragged him up. “You should have stayed with us.” There was a bloom of fire in his abdomen. Franks jerked his hand away, leaving behind a large shard of glass jammed deep into Kurst’s stomach. Blood spilled out around the red glass. Franks punched the shard of glass, shattering it into a hundred razor pieces inside Kurst’s guts. He could feel the heat of every separate wound channel. Franks struck that spot again, spreading the slicing bits even deeper.
Kurst roared and hurled Franks. The unexpected agony increased his strength to surprising levels, and Franks was launched from the conference room and sent crashing through the cubicles. He lifted his blood soaked shirt, found one tiny end of glass, pinched it, and dragged it out. It was only a small piece. The rest was trapped inside of him. He didn’t mind the pain, in fact, after millennium of nothing, he savored the exquisite sensation, but his body’s rapid healing mechanisms couldn’t work around all those sharp pieces sliding and slicing about. It was insulting. He snarled and started after Franks.
There was a different kind of pain deep inside his head, and that made Kurst stop. He recognized that sensation from his conditioning training. It was from the control device the scientists had implanted inside his skull. He’d been out of radio contact for nearly a minute. Foster had probably grown nervous that he’d gone rogue.
Kurst put the ear piece back in and turned on his radio. “I’m here.”
“About damned time, First!”
That is not my name! But it was not time to put the pathetic human in his place yet. “I lost contact. Still engaging the primary target.”
“The alarm’s been sounded. Get out,” Foster ordered.
“I repeat, the primary target has not been eliminated.”
“MCB security thinks Franks has gone on a massacre. We’ve got men going in with the responders. They’ll handle it from here. Leave you bomb, grab Four and the Spider and go.”
Franks had crawled around a corner. Kurst didn’t like it, but if he hesitated then Foster would release the neurotoxin implanted in his brain and ruin everything. It wasn’t right for mere humans to destroy Franks… But it was doubtful any human would be able to kill Franks. The two of them would surely meet again. Kurst stepped through the broken wall of the conference room and began walking toward the elevator. They’d already tossed their backpacks into places they wouldn’t be noticed.
* * *
Franks stepped over his dying coworkers. The ones who hadn’t passed out from blood loss recoiled from his presence. Others saw him coming and hid under their desks. They thought he’d been the one to attack them.
It had been a clever ploy. It really made him angry.
Kurst hadn’t followed him into the cube farm. Instead he was retreating toward the elevator. The elder demon was getting away. That was un-fucking-acceptable.
He passed the spot where he’d dropped the other attacker. There was blood and some teeth, but he was gone. Resilient.
Franks had taken some damage, and he wasn’t even sure yet what was broken, but it was obvious that destroying Kurst’s new body with his bare hands was unlikely. There was a water fountain mounted on the wall near the bathrooms. It was one of his remodeling landmarks. Franks kicked it. The sheet metal bent and a pipe broke, spraying water on the carpet. Franks kicked it again, ripping the fountain completely off the wall. He reached into the hole, found the shotgun he had planted and yanked it out in cloud of drywall dust. He pumped a round of buckshot into the chamber of the Ithaca 37 and ran toward the elevator.
Someone shouted “Freeze!” as he entered the main hall. He turned to see that some of the building’s security team was coming out of the stairwell. One of the guards had spotted him and was pointing a G36 carbine his way. “Drop the gun!”
There was no time to explain. Kurst was getting away. Franks ducked through the next doorway. The agent fired and high velocity holes puckered through the walls around him. Of course, they’d been told that it was Franks who had been shooting everyone. If the resisted, they’d put him down without hesitation.
“Active shooter on the 9th floor,” one of the men shouted into his radio. “Engaging.”
“What’s going on?” asked another guard.
“Franks lost it and shot Director Stark!”
That was bad…
He’d probably trained these men, so he didn’t particularly feel like killing them. There were several metal filing cabinets in this room. Franks dropped the shotgun, and wrapped his arms around the nearest one. It was full of paper and weighed a ton. He grunted, hoisted it up, and carried it into the hall. The agents immediately opened fire, and Franks could feel the 5.56 bullets hitting the cabinet, but MCB issued silver bullets fragmented quickly. They weren’t designed for penetration, and that was a lot of paper. Franks swung the cabinet and hurled it down the hallway as hard as possible. The agents yelped as it went crashing through their ranks. Drawers tore open and paperwork flew everywhere.
Franks scooped up the shotgun and ran down the hallway. He turned and went after Kurst before the guards could sort themselves out.
The elevator door was closing. Franks caught a glimpse of Kurst and a few others standing inside. The shotgun only had a pistol grip stock, so it wasn’t conducive for aiming, especially on the run, but Franks lifted it and opened fire. An oval of buckshot holes appeared in the elevator doors. Someone inside gasped. He reached it the instant before the door closed and jammed the muzzle into the crack. He fired again, splattering somebody all over the interior, but it wasn’t Kurst. Franks pumped the shotgun and then used the barrel to pry the doors further apart. He fired again and heard the wet slap that buckshot made with the close range obliteration of meat. Something inside the elevator let out an inhuman wail.
Franks pumped the shotgun again but before he could fire something struck him hard in the back. He lurched forward and crashed into the doors. I’ve been shot. Franks pushed himself back up, but it was too late. Kurst had shoved the shotgun’s muzzle back and the doors were fully closed. The elevator was starting down.
His first instinct was to pry the doors open, then jump down the shaft after them, but there were agents firing on him, and MCB tended to
be good shots. “Cease fire,” he ordered. Franks dropped the Ithaca on the floor and raised his hands over his head in a surrender position. He turned around. “We’ve been infiltrated.”
Three members of the security team were closing on him, carbines shouldered. Franks recognized all of them. Their fingers were on the triggers and their sights were on his center of mass. “Get on your knees!” one of them shouted.
“They were using magic to impersonate me. They’re in this elevator. Call it in and seal the building.” He was glad to see that at least one of them had sense enough to repeat that into his radio.
“On your knees. Hands on your head!”
Though it pissed him off, Franks would comply. Going after them himself would be more satisfying, but the sensible thing to do was to sick the might of the MCB on Kurst. “There’s an elder demon in that elevator. Use extreme caution.” Franks slowly placed his hands on top of his head. It made the bullet hole in his back stretch and burn.
Four more men appeared, also dressed in MCB armor, but these he didn’t recognize. The one in the lead aimed a suppressed MP7 at Franks’ head. Time seemed to slow as Franks realized he was taking the slack out of the trigger.
This wasn’t an arrest. It was an assassination.
Franks jerked his head to the side as the suppressed subgun fired. The tiny, high velocity bullet cut a chunk from his ear.
So much for the sensible thing to do.
Before anyone else could react, Franks kicked the Ithaca that was lying on the carpet. The shotgun went flipping through the air to strike the shooter, who stumbled back, firing more rounds into the ceiling tiles. For the briefest instant, the lead agent’s eyes had followed the movement of the shotgun, and that was all it took for Franks to reach out, swat the G36 from his hands, grab him by the armor, and spin him around to use as a shield. Franks pulled the Glock 20 from the agent’s holster as he dragged him backwards.
Humans could never get used to just how fast Franks could be when he felt like it.
The assassin was bringing the MP7 back down as Franks lined up the front sight. He fired, placing a 10mm round through the man’s eye socket and spreading a cloud of brains across the others. The bits always reminded him of wet dough.
He pulled his hostage back around the corner. The real MCB held their fire, but the strangers let it rip. Franks yanked the helpless agent aside and sent him spinning into a potted plant and out of the line of fire. No need to get one of his innocent men shot. Franks stuck the Glock around the corner and cranked off two rounds, forcing them to duck down. Then he turned and sprinted down the hall.
More responders were coming up the stairwells. After that last exchange there would be no attempt to take him alive. They would shoot him the instant they laid eyes on him. He could only hope that his message had gotten through and the agents at the first floor checkpoint would kill Kurst. Then they could sort this out. Until then however, Franks needed to keep from getting shot to pieces.
The elevators were blocked. The stairs would be covered. It was about a one hundred and thirty foot drop to the ground, which was suicide even for him.
It was a good thing that he was so paranoid.
Franks had to make his way back toward his office, and fast. Armed responders were coming from everywhere. One of the fakes took a shot at him, and it was a normal sympathetic reaction for several of his agents to do so as well. He reached the broken drinking fountain, splashing through the newly formed puddle, and then turned toward the bathrooms.
There was a full length window at the end of this hall. He’d picked this spot during the remodel because it was the closest big window to his office. The walls here were made of black tile, so it would be a little more time consuming to punch or kick through. So Franks picked up a nearby tree and smashed the tile with the pot, then he chucked the whole thing through the glass. The tree tumbled into the night, and he didn’t even hear it hit the ground nine floors below.
Franks lifted the Glock and fired three rounds, sending them purposefully high. It was to slow his pursuers down and make them think. Incoming gunfire had a way of making you revert to your training. They’d think he was pinned, so they’d leap frog forward, taking their time. Franks holstered the Glock, glad that their issued handguns were all the same model. There was no way the pistol would stay put if he just shoved it into his waist band, considering what he was about to do.
The nylon climbing rope had been piled in the wall, already tied off to a support beam. He took up the rope bundle and tossed it out the broken window. He’d left a pair of leather gloves there as well, simply because you never knew when you’d be able to get new hands, and nothing was more annoying that friction burning your palms off. Franks tugged on the gloves, took up the rope, and left the office the fast way.
* * *
All three of them had been hit by Franks’ shotgun. Kurst had a few pieces of buckshot lodged in his torso. Four had lost an eye. The Spider had gotten the worst of it though. The illusion had slipped completely, and Tsuchigumo was sagging against the wall in its natural form, twitching and spasming, as occasional gushes of green slime pumped out on the elevator’s floor. Its hairy claws clutched at the massive hole in its body as its mandibles clicked rapidly.
They were nearing the lobby. “Disguise us now or not,” Kurst told the monster. “Either way, I will live. We can fight our way out and leave you to perish, or you can stick to the plan and perhaps Stricken’s doctors can save you. The choice is yours. Make it now.”
The Spider chittered at him, but then the air seemed to shimmer and the noise filled his ears. The hideous insect visage was replaced with the young Japanese girl. The green slime turned to red blood, but she was still injured. Four appeared to be a different MCB employee, though he was still missing an eye. He put his hand to it, as if the injury was actually debilitating. Kurst knew that he would look like another employee, who Stricken had provided the Spider a photograph of. Kurst picked up the Spider and cradled it in his arms, like he was carrying a wounded human. The illusion was so complete it even felt like a tiny human.
The doors opened.
The security checkpoint was a confused mass of excited bodies. MCB security was trying to coordinate with officers from other agencies, but there was an understandable hesitancy to involve those who weren’t cleared as to the MCB’s secret mission.
“She’s been shot,” Kurst shouted. “I need an ambulance.”
“This way.” One of Foster’s men, dressed in MCB body armor, took hold of Four and acted as if he was guiding the wounded man. “Hurry.”
The humans were looking for Franks. Any messages indicating possible assailants other than Franks would have been electronically blocked by Renfroe.
They were rushed into the parking garage. A few ambulances had already arrived. Of course, one had been prepared by Special Task Force Unicorn. Nine met them on the way. She sent him a telepathic vision of her wounding Director Stark and killing a dozen others. Foster, now dressed as a paramedic, was already in the driver’s seat. Renfroe was at the back door, but he would not come near the Spider as Kurst shoved the creature inside. Their human accomplice looked ill at the sight of the many other wounded being tended here. Kurst got in and Foster had the ambulance rolling before the rear doors were even closed.
“They’ve got Franks pinned down,” Foster told them as he turned on the siren. “The second my guys are out, I’ll blow the charges and make a mess of the place. It’ll be over soon.”
He resisted the urge to smile. You do not understand what you are dealing with. You do not understand Franks. Kurst knew this was only just beginning.
* * *
The ground rushed up to meet him, but Franks had so much grip strength that merely squeezing harder threw the brakes on his descent. He immediately slowed down, and then let go and dropped the last ten feet to land in a crouch.
There were enough trees around him that it was relatively dark here. There were red and blue lights fl
ashing on the street. The metro police would be setting up a perimeter in conjunction with the MCB. There wasn’t much time before they had it locked tight.
His suit was torn and bloody. He would stick out. There were more security cameras in this city than anywhere else in the country. He needed a vehicle. However, it was one in the morning and the police would be blocking the streets. It made his decision easy.
Franks pulled out his cell phone. As soon as the response team had their shit together they would track it. He speed dialed Dwayne Myers, and then picked the stealthiest path through the landscaping to the street. He set out in a fast walk, sticking to the shadows, while it rang. Franks could imagine the Take Me Out to the Ballgame playing on the other side. Myers had been using the same ringtone for years. Franks liked that Myers was so consistent.
He also didn’t sleep much. “Franks?”
“Listen carefully. I’ve been framed. Someone disguised as me attacked headquarters. At least twenty casualties. No idea how many dead. They shot Stark too.” Franks rattled off what he knew. Myers was smart enough not to interrupt him. “There were at least two attackers. They weren’t human. Super speed, strength, and regeneration.” Franks quickly rattled off physical descriptions of Kurst and the other one.
“Were they—”
“Nemesis. Possibly, but much better than the last batch if so.” Franks couldn’t tell Myers about the spirit that was inhabiting the body he’d fought, because to explain Kurst was to explain himself, and there were things that even Myers didn’t need to know. “There were human assassins among the responders. I killed one.”
“STFU?”
“Unknown… I’m on the run.” Franks walked through the bushes. He was getting close to the nearest police car. The officer had gotten out and was looking up at the broken window.
“Franks, wait!” Myers sounded unusually desperate. He was normally cool, even in the worst situations, though this situation probably qualified as desperate. “Is Strayhorn okay?”