Chapter #10The Quick and the Dead by: Seuzz   You exhale slowly and deeply, and let your shoulders relax. You are blind and bound in a flimsy body, your wrists shackled behind your back. But that doesn't leave you helpless.
Trouble is, Zack got that mask onto you, and then he got into it, so he knows you're not helpless.
On the up side, though, he doesn't know in what direction you can find help.
On the down side, neither do you.
Always keep a secret, even from yourself. Banks's voice sounds so clear you raise up sharply, half-convinced he spoke aloud. But he has to be with Kips. He sent Kips to Room 1608, and you're in 1606. Even now he's probably manhandling Kips as he manhandled you. You've only minutes to get out of this before he's back here, to finish you off.
You lower your head and count backwards, alternating letters and numbers, from ten. Five ... D ... Three ... B ... One ... Unbidden, three colored balls—red, yellow, and green—appear in your minds eye. But which one of them is it? Pick wrong, and you won't get a chance to pick again. Your heart thumps once, twice, thrice before the answer comes. Of course. You alternated on the countdown, a subconsciously implanted clue. The second color, yellow. You concentrate on it, and the other two fade. The yellow ball turns into a yellow blob on the knit woolen cap of a little girl bouncing on her foot. Her left foot.
Really?
You frown. You've no memory of it. Of course you don't, that's the whole point of these memory suppression tricks that Banks taught you to use. Always keep a secret, even from yourself. What will you find?
You kick off your boots, and with your right foot push the sock off your left foot. You kick your feet back until you can clasp them with your bound hands. You grip your left sole with your left hand, pressing your palm against the flesh, feeling for the tattoo.
Nothing.
You shift, feeling further down, and a bead of sweat trickles down the side your head.
Something on the bottom of your foot burns.
All the air blows from your lungs, and you feel yourself sinking fast.
* * * * *
You wriggle around, lost in the folds of the clothes, and blinking at the room that has reappeared. It is empty, so far as you can tell. The cuffs slip easily off your thin wrists and over your tiny hands. You sit up. This body can't be more than four years old. Vaguely, you wonder where it came from.
No time, no time. You wriggle free from Sullivan's uniform, then quickly bunch it up again so that it looks vaguely occupied. Quickly you take stock of the rest of the room. It's bare. Banks took your valise with him to 1608.
You'll need to surprise him when he gets back. It's already been four minutes, by the clock.
You scamper lightly into the darkened bathroom and step into the tub. You press your palm against your shoulder, and the room is so dark you barely notice the blindness that washes back over you. You hesitate only fractionally before laying your palm onto the side of your hip. Sight returns as you shift into the body of Sean Cox.
Your teammates don't know you've tattoos containing their forms stenciled onto your body. Of course not: They think that your body is Paige Knotts's body, which has no tattoos because their team leader, Paige Knotts, still insists on using masks.
You stand very still, breathing shallowly and softly, and wait. You count each second.
At three hundred and twenty-two, you hear the door open. One set of footfalls, and the door closes. He's not even trying to be quiet.
As soft as a panther you glide across the tile floor of the bathroom and around the corner. "Sonuva—?" the figure before you mutters, and that's all he has time to say before you have your arms around his torso and head. Quickly and expertly, you snap his neck.
Terry Kipper falls from your arms and slides to the floor.
You knew it was him even before you grabbed him. His carrot-top was instantly recognizable.
But survey says it's not Kips dead on the floor. It'll be Banks, returning in Kips's face, meaning to throw you off, to make you pause for that fatal fraction of a second, should you have escaped in his absence.
But he had hesitated. He had muttered "Sonuva—" before you'd caught him.
Banks wouldn't have paused for that.
The color is fading from Terry Kipper's freckled face as you put your hand to his brow. It wouldn't be a tattoo, it would be a mask if were Banks under there.
But it's not a mask. Kips's eyes are glassy as you withdraw your hand.
It's like a hammer blow falling inside your skull.
Diana doesn't lose men. That's the whole point of the disguises. You infiltrate, you do the job, and you get out without anyone being the wiser about your presence.
Kips is the first ever casualty.
And it's by your own hand.
But you'll be the second if you don't take care of Banks.
You put your hand to your other hip, and the body and face of Terry Kips replaces that of Sean Cox. "Sucks to be you, Kips," you mutter hoarsely at his corpse as you grab up Sullivan's uniform from the bed. "Sucks for both of us that I have to be you."
* * * * *
"Hey Knotts," you call as you swagger back into 1606. "That wasn't the mask we were gonna use on Zack."
Banks glances up from Little Mavin. "No, but it works," he says.
"Who was he? Where'd you find him?" With seeming casualness, you glance down into the open valise sitting on the bed. The false bottom has been ripped away, disclosing the two spare blanks you'd packed and hidden there. There would have been only one blank, if Banks had used one to disguise himself as Kips.
"A junkie I spotted going into an alley," he says. "I figured the cops would spend less time investigating a dead meth head than a dead hooker."
"Really?"
"I was wearing Sullivan's face at the time."
"Huh." You tamp down your resentment at his insult of your original body. "Were you ever in the Girl Scouts, Knotts?" You tap the valise. "Being so prepared and all."
Banks smiles thinly. "No, but Banks was a Boy Scout, and he trained me."
"Oh, that's right." You jerk your chin at the portable tattoo machine. "Little Mavin warmed up yet?"
"Just about. Take your shirt off. I'll pop this mask off, and we'll get Zack's pattern into it and onto you."
You shrug and peel off Barone's jacke and the shirt and undershirt. Banks watches impassively. Once your torso is bare, you stare back blankly and evenly at him, and put your hands in your pockets.
Your right hand brushes the syringe. The syringe he gave Kips to use on the person in 1608.
Banks blinks, and turns back to Little Mavin.
You can hardly believe it. He hasn't got a mirror where he can watch you while his back is turned.
With one smooth movement, you pull the syringe from your pocket and lunge at him, driving it hard into his hip. You're not so fast and he's not so oblivious that he can't react, and swings around, clocking you so hard on the side of the head you fly back onto the bed.
But you drove the syringe home hard and true, and even as he pulls it out, Banks sinks to one knee, then falls sideways onto the floor.
"Fuck me, Zack," you gasp. "But I'd like to think even Kips could have seen through that bonehead play. You got sloppy after you left Diana." It was transparently obvious from the way he was fumbling at the machine that he had no idea how it worked.
Still, you've no ground to gloat, not with a dead partner and a narrow escape of your own crowding the negative side of the ledger. You check Banks's breathing—irregular; the paralyzing agent will keep him inert for at least forty-eight hours—and drop one of your spare masks onto his face.
* * * * *
"I don't expect any problems, sir," you say. "They're professionals, with a lot of experience with visiting dignitaries."
President Nzingha whines a bit more in your ear; you ignore him as you stare at your reflection in the bathroom mirror, basking in Isaac Banks's relaxed, confident expression. You tug down the lapel of your suit. "I remember London, sir. I've applied the lessons we learned there." After letting him kvetch a bit more, you sign off with "I will see you on Friday morning, Mr. President."
Despite your placid gravity, a worry gnaws at you, and after tucking the phone back into your jacket pocket you finger the ruby ring.
The ring that detects the presence of Libra masks. The ring that told Banks that Ray Sullivan was an imposter after he shook his hand.
It was a gift from a Chinese economist on Nzingha's staff, one of the brain trust he imported after kicking Fane out of Cabinda. "In your job you must trust no one," Professor Hu Minquiang had told Banks during their very private colloquy. "Beware of imposters. This will help." To Banks's queries, Hu had gnomically replied, "Fane has a presence in my country too."
Is this a device that leaked out of Fane and into the hands of the Chinese government? Or was it fashioned by an outside group? Ten years ago, the Stellae Errantes recovered the Libra Personae; surely they know all about it. You've little doubt that they use it.
You would dearly like to get a copy of Professor Hu, to figure out what and how much he knows. But your primary mission is to kill President Nzingha. It will be very hard to reconcile that job with the extended goal of tagging Hu.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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