Friday, July 6th, 2012
“So how much
does a fake ID cost,” Della asks Jamie as they stroll East along Sahara Avenue.
“Depends on
how many you need,” Jamie answers with a shrug of her shoulders.
“What do you
mean?”
“Well, if you
just need the one, you’ll have to pay someone to do it for you. You probably won’t know that person very
well, so you’ll pay a premium for that.
But if you’ve got contacts in that line of work, you’ll probably need it
pretty regular. That drives the price
down.”
“I see,”
Della says, thinking on the matter. “And
for us?”
“Psh, when
you need that kind of thing regular as we do, you score your own gear and do it
all in-house.”
Soon enough,
they arrive at PT’s Pub, a plain-looking beige brick building at the corner of
Sahara and Beverly. They weren’t carded
at the door, and neither of them will be drinking – Della’s identification is
simply a precautionary measure, something she isn’t supposed to need but which
would help minimize any fallout if things did indeed end up going South.
Della takes
in the scene as she and Jamie take their seats in a small corner booth. The music blares in her ears, the stench of
searing meat and volatile liquor nearly overpowering her heightened
senses. After spending a few moments to
calm herself and focus, however, she is able to tune out the deafening roar and
pick up on the subtler sensations underneath.
It feels almost like submerging her head underwater.
Jamie, as
always, is calm and collected: her
heartbeat is slow and even. She is
slightly sweaty from their walk in the warm summer night, and a mild tension
seems to hold her taut like a well-tuned violin string.
Della expands
her awareness beyond her familiar friend as she sips at her ice water. Across from an empty booth, a table full of
friends is listening to someone’s humorous anecdote. Della can feel them hanging on every word,
laughing together on cue, tuned into each other and dead to the rest of the
world.
In the other
direction, a young man and woman are apparently on a date. The woman is speaking at a comfortable,
lilting pace – about her hobbies or her job, perhaps. The man is listening closely to her, a light
tension running between them both. But
unlike the clarifying tension of Jamie’s practiced poise, these two are like pulled
springs, trying to hold their shape in spite of the forces weighing upon them. Their heightened emotions are a counterpoint
to the emptiness Della feels growing inside herself as her humanity wanes and the
predatory infection takes over.
Della’s
reverie is interrupted as their waiter arrives.
They order burgers and fries, politeness masking their indifference to
food that will not sustain them.
“What are you
noticing,” Jamie asks after the waiter has departed.
“It’s
strange,” Della says. “I can sense their
emotions – like, ‘Oh, that guy’s happy.
Oh, she’s feeling affectionate.’
But there’s no, I don’t know what, no resonance.”
“Resonance?” Jamie speaks softly, in tones that would be
inaudible to someone in the next booth over even were it not unoccupied, but
Della is able to hear her quite clearly and lowers her own voice out of
prudence.
“Yeah. Like, underground, among our kin, I can still
tell what’s going on. But it’s like
everything’s in black-and-white. Well,
black, white, and red, at any rate. And
I was getting used to that, and now we come up here, and everything’s in full
color again. I can see the colors just
fine, but somehow – it’s like I’m in
black-and-white, and I’m just noticing it for the first time.” Jamie nods knowingly and lets the moment
linger. Della reflects on the deep rift
forming between her and the rest of humanity.
“It’s going to be like this from here on out, isn’t it?” Jamie nods slowly. “How do you deal with it?”
“You get used
to it,” Jamie answers with a half-hearted shrug. “It’s jarring, at first. As you’re seeing right now,” she adds with a
humorless smile. “But humans are great
adapters, and thankfully that doesn’t change with infection. It just becomes a new normal.”
Della leans
back in the booth and watches the crowd, the paradox settling on the back of
her mind: she can identify what people are feeling with ease, but
cannot identify with them at all. Gazing vacantly at the bar, she reevaluates
her impression of Jamie – not so much like a violin string, after all. No, even a single violin string would be
capable of melodies to inspire a broad palette of emotions. Jamie’s tension was more like that of a
tightrope: an instrument put toward a
single purpose, with deadly potential if she should not keep her balance.
The food
arrives. Della squirts a small dollop of
ketchup from a squeeze bottle onto her plate, and tentatively dips a fry before
taking a bite. The preservatives are
cloying, and the flavors beneath are little better: syrupy-sweet, sour vinegar, too-savory
tomatoes, with an oily-starchy crunchy-mush beneath it all. She struggles not to make a face as she
chews. After a few seconds, the shock
passes, and Della realizes that this is the first “real” food she’s had in
weeks – of course the taste would hit her like a brick. She forces down the rest of the fry, and another,
controlling her expression. By the third
one, the taste approaches normal – but then it veers off yet again, not quite
hitting “yummy,” but instead gesturing awkwardly at “bland.”
She risks a
bite of her burger. The crunch of the
lettuce is another foray into the familiar made alien, but she is grateful that
she ordered it medium-rare. The hint of blood
– not human, not fresh, barely there but thankfully warm – is a welcome
relief. Della makes a courteous dent in
her pile of fries, eats most of her burger, and then calls it quits. Jamie, for her part, seems similarly
unimpressed with her meal, but manages to make much less of a show about
it. As Della tries to wash out the
unwelcome flavors with a gulp of her water, the waiter returns.
“How is
everything,” he asks with what strikes Della as mocking enthusiasm.
“Great,”
Jamie says without missing a beat, smiling radiantly at him.
“I guess I’m
not as hungry as I thought I was,” Della says, rubbing at her stomach and
trying her damnedest not to let her disgust show through.
“Happens all
the time,” the waiter replies with a laugh, “I get off a shift and think, ‘I’m
gonna eat everything in the house,’ then I take two bites and I’m stuffed!” Della smiles at him and chuckles, then looks
to Jamie with a slight wince.
“I think we’re
ready for the check,” Jamie says with a smile and a nod, then taking a sip of
her own water.
“OK, coming
right up!” The waiter clasps his hands
and turns on his heel to head to wherever it is that waiters go – Della is in
no mood to pay attention to anyone’s doings but her own. She had thought this might be a night of fun,
but it was shaping up to be a learning experience of the chilling and
humiliating variety.
“Don’t look
now,” Jamie says, returning to her almost subaudible tone, “But we seem to have
a secret admirer.”
Della’s
throat seizes up and her stomach turns to stone. She takes a deep breath, forces herself to
relax. Another sip of water, then a gulp,
then she swallows a couple of small ice cubes.
The cold sliding down her throat braces her, and she’s able to focus –
there it is, off to her right. A
barely-elevated heartbeat, and tension of a whole other kind: apprehension tinged with fear.
“White guy,”
Jamie says, “grey button-down, red ring.”
Della looks
out the corner of her eye, and sure enough, there he is, taking a pull off his
beer and feigning disinterest.
“Hunter, you
think?” Della looks to her left, out
through the blinds, with all the nonchalance she can muster.
“Sure as
dammit,” Jamie says, following her gaze.
Presently,
the waiter returns with his little black folder. Jamie takes some bills out of her wallet and
leaves a generous tip, then stands to leave.
Della follows without a word.
They walk right past the man, and Della takes note of his appearance as
they pass him and he reaches for his wallet.
On the
street, Jamie leads her at a brisk walk, West and then North. Della is easily able to pick up the rapid tapping
of his dress shoes on the sidewalk behind them, even at nearly half a block
away. Twisting and turning, they pick
their way out of a suburban neighborhood, through the business district and
across a couple busy streets, into an increasingly dilapidated urban
environment.
“We can’t
move too fast,” Jamie says as they turn a corner, “But we gotta lose this guy.”
“Got it,”
Della says.
Soon they turn
down an appropriately dark alleyway between a warehouse and an office
building. Behind the warehouse is a fire
escape. Jamie points to the hanging
ladder and leaps a good four yards up to grab it, pulling it down with her and
climbing up after recovering from the shock of the drop. Della follows on her heels, and the metal
squeals as they pull it back up. The
shadow of their pursuer, cast by streetlamps, is rising on the wall of the
brick building facing the opposite street.
Della and Jamie head for the roof, four floors up, finding to their
dismay that the surrounding buildings are all considerably taller. They are trapped.
“Shit, what
do we do now?”
“Wait for him
to lose interest,” Jamie says in a hushed tone, listening intently without
revealing herself at the edge of the roof.
“He can’t get up here, and there’s no way for him to wait us out without
drawing attention to himself.” Della
nods and hunkers down under the nearly-full moon.
Minutes pass
as the man paces back and forth in the alley beneath them. There is little foot traffic, but enough cars
to prevent the bloodkin from descending unseen down the building’s face. Soon, three more pairs of footsteps join the
man below: some whispered words, grunts
of assent, and then an electronic beeping.
Mechanical clicks echo softly up the brick walls, then a metallic
creaking as a door is opened. Jamie
mouths a curse and moves in a slow, quiet crouch toward the roof access
door. Della follows as quietly as she
can across the gritty rooftop.
“They’re
inside,” Jamie whispers as she tries the door.
Locked. “Shit. OK, we’ll wait for them to come out, jump ‘em,
then we’ll have to fight our way out.
Just follow my lead and don’t do anything stupid.”
“OK,” Della
says with a nod, then adds after a moment, “I haven’t done this before. What counts as stupid?”
Jamie rolls
her eyes and sighs heavily. “I guess…
don’t make any noise if you can avoid it.
Don’t get ahead of me. And don’t
act without thinking three steps ahead. Capisce?” Della nods.
Interminable
minutes pass. Metallic groans emanate
from under the door, punctuated by occasional footsteps. Della strains to hear them beneath the noise
of the passing traffic. Jamie sneaks off
to take a look over the rear of the building, then returns.
“They’ve got
a lookout at the back door,” she whispers to Della. “We’re really stuck. So again:
follow my lead, stay quiet, and don’t fuck up.” Della nods again as light sweeps back and
forth around the edges of the door.
Jamie stands just around the corner from the doorknob, positioned to
turn and strike at whoever comes through.
Della takes up her position at the opposite side of the slanted roof
access way. A metallic click comes from inside, the door slowly
opens, and a flashlight beam sweeps across the roof.
Della holds
her breath across a moment of silence as the door opens wide, blocking her
view. A slow step out onto the roof, a
wider sweep of the flashlight, then another step. In the space of half a second, Della hears
Jamie’s sneakers scritch as she
pivots around the corner, then there’s a grasp and a short cry of surprise
followed by a crunchy thud and a
clatter; two shuffling steps are followed by the sickening pop of a dislocating joint and a grunt of pain. Della begins moving around the door, first
seeing a dropped pistol, just as she hears another set of footsteps from
inside. She sees Jamie with a man in an
arm bar – well, what was an arm bar,
before his shoulder was twisted from its socket – and a twenty-something woman
just clearing the landing behind him.
Della hears the second Hunter’s heart jump as she comes into view, and
she raises her pistol, but Della is faster – she leaps into the second Hunter,
spearing her down the stairs.
The pair
tumble once, Della’s spine rolling painfully over the edges of the grated metal
steps, but the landing resolves in her favor:
the Hunter is concussed against the railing of the landing beneath where
the stairs turn, and she is knocked unconscious. Della hears a thump from above, then turns to see Jamie shuffle down the steps
behind her, pistol in hand.
“Don? Stacy?”
A voice carries up from below, echoes making the source difficult to
pinpoint. Another flashlight clicks on,
but the landing is a solid sheet of steel, and the bloodkin are invisible to
its searching beam. “Shit, man, get in
here!” Rapid footsteps sound from below,
and Della hears two hammers being pulled back into firing position. A second flashlight clicks on, the pair of
beams sweeping thoroughly but impotently through the dark warehouse.
Jamie motions
to Della in the darkness: a finger
pointed at her, “You,” a palm pressed downward, “Stay here,” and she turns her
back after Della nods her assent. Jamie
waits silently as the flashlight beams continue their oscillating sweeps,
letting the Hunters give away their positions before acting. After a few seconds, it’s clear that one is
making his way up from the second to the third floor, the other ascending the
stairs from the ground floor. Jamie
leaps down the flight of stairs to the third floor, then dashes away as both
flashlights zero in on the sound of her landing. The Hunters’ footsteps quicken, one dashing
across the grated catwalk, the other rising swiftly up the stairs to the third
floor.
Jamie has stopped
moving, but the Hunters are rushing to close in on her. Della lets the first one pass her, his
flashlight leading him across the catwalk beneath her. Seconds later, the other Hunter follows –
Della takes a moment to time her leap, then pounces on him from the fourth
floor landing where Stacy lays unconscious.
He screams as his ribs crack against the catwalk’s railing, tries to
recover, but Della snakes around behind him and winds her arm around his throat
as the other Hunter turns back to train his flashlight on her. The last Hunter shouts, “Don’t move,” and
Della is blinded by the light but assumes his pistol is trained on her as well.
Two steps are
the only warning he has. Jamie moves
from her hiding spot and leaps at him, pinning him to the catwalk before he has
a chance to fire his pistol.
There is a
brief struggle, then the click of a flashlight turning off. Della can see in the ambient glow of the last
flashlight that Jamie has the man pinned face-down, his arm locked between her
ribs and her thigh as she crouches over him.
Della’s victim struggles, and she tightens her grip around his neck to
discourage further struggle. Jamie pulls
her cell phone from her pocket and speed-dials a number.
“Hey, it’s
me,” she says. “Yeah. Can you pick up a four-pack? Uh-huh.
All right, see you soon.” She
fiddles with her smartphone some more, probably sending a location to whoever
she called, then puts the device back in her pocket. Della manages to reach for the last
flashlight and turn it off without loosening her grip on her victim. “OK, Herman’s on the way,” Jamie says in the
darkness. “Just don’t fuck up, and we
got four more for the stables.” Della
can almost hear the grin on Jamie’s face as she lets the thrill of the hunt
overtake her at last.
“I dunno,”
Della says. “Maybe we ought to let one
of ‘em go. Tell him there’s a new breed
of –“
“Shut up, Della! You done fine so far,” Jamie hisses, “Now don’t
go and fuck it up!”
“I was just –“
“Just,
nothing! Think about it. How’s it gonna help us if we turn one
loose? No way, no how – all it’s gonna
do is give them more intel on us. They
know we’re here, they know there’s a fight on, and four down is four down. Three down is one less. This scare-tactics bullshit, trying to make
your mark or whatever – it’s bullshit!
Don’t even fuckin’ try it. You
hear me?”
“All right,”
Della says, “All right. Sorry.”
As Della’s
eyes adjust to the darkness, she hears clicking and sliding as Jamie disarms
the pistols and engages their safeties.
Della looks around for her victim’s pistol, but can’t find it.
A few minutes
later, Herman pulls into the alley behind the warehouse with a cargo van. The Hunters Della and Jamie are subduing have
their hands zip-tied behind their backs, and Herman knocks them out with some
kind of drug from a syringe before loading them up. The two unconscious Hunters are retrieved
from above, as well as the pistol from the roof, and the other two which had
fallen to the ground floor. The building’s
alarm had apparently been disabled by the Hunters, but the bloodkin make sure
to re-lock all the doors before leaving.
The ride back
to the compound proceeds in silence, save for Jamie’s incessant tapping on her
phone. Della’s curiosity is overcome by
the certainty that she’s in some kind of shit for her suggestion at the end of
the fight – a certainty which is borne out by her immediate summons to Thomas’
office on her arrival.
“I understand
you and Jamie had a bit of a scuffle tonight,” Thomas says as Della shuts the
door behind herself.
“Uhh, yeah,”
Della stammers.
“Go ahead,
have a seat.” Thomas gestures at a chair
before his desk, and leans back in his own.
Della sits and stares awkwardly at the corner. “You need to understand the nature of the
conflict we’re in.”
“I know,”
Della says, “Jamie told me.”
“Jamie may
have told you, but you still don’t know,” Thomas says. “As evidenced by your little outburst.”
“No, I get
it,” Della insists, looking Thomas in the eye.
“Trying to intimidate the Hunters is a no-go, we need to just take care
of business and be done with it.”
Thomas
nods. “And why is that,” he asks after a
moment.
“Because,”
Della begins, “Because – shit, I don’t know.”
“Because this
is a shadow war,” Thomas elaborates, leaning forward to steeple his fingers
over his desk. “Because although there
is fighting in the streets, we need to keep this conflict out of the public eye,
to the best of our ability.”
“But couldn’t
we –” Della’s interjection is cut short with a narrowing of Thomas’ eyes. She feels the anger pulsing briefly beneath
his otherwise impassive countenance. It
fades, and she composes herself.
“I can see
the old question on your face,” Thomas says after a moment.
“What
question?”
“Machiavelli’s
question: is it better to be feared or
loved? If you cannot find love, cannot
feel love, then perhaps you can find satisfaction in the fear of your enemies.”
Della shrugs
and looks away. “It beats indifference.”
“That it
does,” Thomas says with a nod, leaning back in his chair once more. “But indifference still means that others are
aware of you. You must go a step
further: you must strive to be anonymous.” Della mulls this over as Thomas
continues. “We may still strike fear
into the hearts of our enemies, even as we fight in the shadows. While ostentatious shows of superiority may
provide momentary satisfaction, they are ultimately proud displays: and any kind of display risks blowing our
cover. In the end, it’s an unnecessary
risk. Ask yourself, what is more
frightening? The enemy who flaunts his
superiority, who taunts you to your face, who asks for your retaliation?” He pauses, and Della looks him in the eye
once more. “Or the enemy who remains
unseen, who you know is there but you know not where, who does not let you see
his face?”
Della thinks
this over for a moment. “OK, yeah, I get
it,” she says. “The boogeyman’s scarier
when you can’t see his face.” Thomas
arches an eyebrow, waiting for her to continue.
“Because,” Della reaches, “When you don’t know what he looks like, he
could be fuckin’ anything. But if he
stands there in plain sight, you at least have a good look at what you’re up
against.”
Thomas nods
approvingly. “You’re getting it. Consider this a learning experience. You got off easy tonight. If Jamie had been incapacitated, and you had still
come out on top, and then done things your way – well, then you’d be in much
hotter water. Understood?”
“I
understand,” Della says with a nod.
“Good. Dismissed.”
Thomas waves his hand, and Della gratefully rises to leave.
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