The Valkyrie Project Chapter 4: More Immediate v 1.1 – 2.5.2012 By Nels Wadycki © 2012 Nels Wadycki All Rights Reserved THE VALKYRIE PROJECT 1.4: MORE IMMEDIATE The easy part was compartmentalizing failed missions. The hard part was forgetting them. Ana's father had always advised her to fail quickly, learn from your mistakes, and try again. "The scientist's name is Lukas Huang. Yes, it sounds like an experiment in combining the differing intellects of two distinct but powerful cultures." Malcolm paused. "That was a joke." Aerin laughed. Ana and Marisol just smiled politely. The images of the children still visited Ana nearly as often as the memories of the man with the bandaged head and broken legs. They would fade in time, only to be replaced by other equally confounding and frustrating pictures. "Anyway," Malcolm continued, "We have confirmation from an independent source that Huang is going to be selling some sort of bio weapon to an agent of The Continuum. Now, since we still have no intel on personnel or operations within The Continuum, your secondary goal should be obvious. The most important thing is to stop them from obtaining the weapon, but if we obtain any sort of information on the buyer, that would be a huge step forward." Ana saw an enemy cloaked in shadow, a night stalker at the end of a pedway. He was making plans to kidnap children and to drive famished workers over freezing terrain until their feet bled or they collapsed. Would that spirit of darkness also torture people, break their legs, and steal pieces of their brains? Ana heard a voice echo into the cold black. "Memo, is that you?" Her vocal chords strained with the words. -- There are those who are to be taken. Their time has come. There are others whose time is not yet prescribed, but some would will it so. Those of our world should not command the time. Those of our world cannot command the time. Those of our world will not command the time. This is the Oath of the Valkyries. -- Previously on: The Valkyrie Project The three Valkyries dropped into the soft snow and each took a moment to assess the situation. They were looking onto an alabaster basin at least a fifty meters across, with a dark hole puncturing the vast white floor that surrounded it. There was a line of people going into and out of the hole like ants taking food to their queen. Freya attached a small blood sampling device to the large barrel, and it quickly filled with dark liquid. The three raced back through the swirling snow to where Jrue and their transport waited. "So, hey," Jrue said, "you hungry? There's a place I know that's got great warm comfort food. You know, warm up after that mission." "Warm sounds good right now." Screw the Hotel. Comfort food was better than a science diet. "Let me just check my messages real quick." Jrue was an interesting concept, the obstacles appealed to her rogue nature. But he wasn't Guillermo. "Jrue, hey. Sorry, I just got a message from Aerin. High priority. I need to go see him." "Mr. Jonze? Sir?" Ana asked. "Yes, I'm here." "I'm here to ask you a few questions." "I'm not sure if they've told you, but I don't think I'm going to be able to help you much there." "I'm pretty sure you can. The questions I have are about a man named Guillermo Tuppi." "Ah, well, that works out well, doesn't it? The one thing I remember is the one thing you want to know about." His story drew to a close and Ana looked over his torture wounds. His hand was bandaged where the nail had gone in, his head was wrapped in gauze and she could see a thin red line seeping through on his forehead. There were casts on both his legs. Odd. He hadn't mentioned that, even though it was probably the injury that needed the immediate attention of the hospital the most. "When did they break your legs?" she asked. "My what?" He looked confused and then looked down the bed, almost as if he were seeing his legs encased in white duroplast for the first time. Ana keyed her wrist comm. "Aerin, can you pull up all the video feeds for the hospital around the time our patient was admitted. See if you can find a hover stretcher coming from a van." By now the sound of internal alarms going off drowned out her thoughts. Somehow the man lying in that hospital bed had known her brother's name. Aerin's hand was shaking. It was obvious because he was holding a vial of the black liquid that they'd brought back just a day earlier. Ana softened her posture, but he still withdrew a step, bumping a table littered with technical equipment behind him. The vial dropped from his hand, falling to the floor. Ana lunged for it, but his retreat had taken it out of her reach, and it crashed on the dark cement, spilling the mysterious liquid at Aerin's feet. -- The house was a squat four stories, designed to look like a ranch home from the days when there was enough land to have a sprawling one story home spread across the landscape with only three or four stairs in the whole thing. Ana and Marisol had no blueprints or floor plans to rely on, but they knew they would find a good number of steps to climb in the odd building, which looked from the air like a stack of bricks that had been knocked over. Some pieces had chipped off in the fall, while others lay askew next to the main block, the only one still in its original place. The Agency could not locate the person in charge of the security design for the chaotic mansion, but the security staff had done their best to give Ana and Marisol an idea if what lay in wait, protecting Lukas Huang. The house was accessible from a private drive that wound its way up a hill, guaranteed to be lined with cameras and other sensors that would warn those hiding inside of their approach. So the pair of Valkyries flew by like an express train at rush hour, slowing down a few kilometers past the entrance of the discordant fortress. As they worked their way through a field of corn that abutted one side of their destination, Marisol asked "Why was it that we couldn't just go up to the front door and ring the bell?" The question was a mix of rhetorical, comical, and painful. The corn had been bred and modified to be hardy so it would stand up to increasingly harsh winters, and the added sturdiness carried over to the stalks and leaves that whipped the Valkyries in the face and slashed at their arms and legs. Ana and Marisol's arms and legs were well protected, but not their faces, and while the rough leaves didn't draw blood, they left stinging abrasions, the pain recalled with every gust of wind that blasted through the field trying to break down the hardened crop. Yet Ana knew it was nothing compared to the conditions faced by the workers they had found in the South Pole. She wished she had been selected to go with Rani, Kara, and Freya to save the miners – the slaves – down there. Malcolm had thought she would be too emotionally invested in mission. So, instead, she was working her way through a field of genetically modified corn that would do very little lasting damage, even to the unprotected workers the other Valkyries were rescuing. Much as the cold, wind, snow, and ice acted as a protective barrier for the operation down South, the rising corn stood like an inverse moat. The campesinos up in their bastard version of Falling Water probably never worried that someone might try to find their way through to surprise them. Ana tripped and nearly wound up on the hard packed dirt between the tight rows of corn. She looked back and spotted a barbed trip wire. So she was wrong. Evidently someone did anticipate intruders sneaking through the field. The wire was low, a harvester wouldn't have to worry about simply rolling over it, but it sat just high enough to catch a human right around the ankles. Ana pointed it out to Marisol. "Guess we're going to have to be a little careful here on in." "Oh good, cause I was just thinking that the corn had stopped trying to disrobe me." "Just be glad it's not any warmer out here." "Why? We'd be sweating more in these suits?" "No," Ana smiled, "We could get buried by popcorn." "And I left my salt and butter gun back at headquarters. Yes, indeed, we lucked out." The pair of Valkyries trudged on, more attentive to their surroundings, searching for potential traps. They encountered no more man-made obstructions until they found their way to what might have been considered the real moat if Huang's fortress had been made of stone several hundred years earlier. A large ditch stretched the length of the corn field. It formed a soft V where the two slopes that started at either side came together, and spat dry dust whenever a breeze came through. It was several meters across and sloped down a couple to the apex of the inverse triangle. Ana figured they could cross it without a problem, but she could also see that it would put them in a position where a sniper – or even just a decent marksman with a high powered weapon – could take them out with ease. Good thing no one knew they were coming. Ana scanned the banks of windows and the roof line of the house as the two Valkyries held close to the edge of the corn field. She spotted a second-floor window open just fifty meters or so toward the rear of the house. There were a couple more open closer to their current position, but up on the fourth and fifth floors. Ana thought that covering the ground along the wall would be safer and easier than scaling up two or three extra stories. She pointed out the second floor opening subtly to her partner and confirmed with Marisol via a quick nod, then they spread out a bit before starting across. Just as they reached the low point where the ground began to rise up toward the house, the wind died and Ana heard a keening whine. A moment later, several slugs bit into the dirt to her right, cutting a line straight down the distance the two had created between them. The dry dusty ground was heaved into the air, geyser eruptions of dirt that indicated large caliber bullets. She and Marisol were lucky that the system operating the hidden artillery had such terrible aim. But Ana didn't take the time to consider that luck nor the aim of the machine as they took off in a sprint to the house. Ana was, even while running full out, able to judge how far they'd have to make it before the angle between them and the house grew small enough that the turret could no longer reach them. As the bullets drew closer, the angle got steeper. The clean cut soft grass that covered the run up to the side of the house required more effort to speed across than the hard-packed dirt of the ditch, but it just meant that only the balls of Ana's feet touched the ground as she pushed to cover more distance with each step. Their saving grace was that the miniature fortress seemed to have only one armed weapon along its vast length which was capable of reaching them. And since there were two of them, it could not decide which target to focus on. Then a thought, much more unnerving, occurred to her: perhaps there was a human controller behind the gun who was playing a bit of cat and mouse with them. She leaned against the outer wall, sucking air, thinking about someone watching them scramble in fear away from bullets that were never intended to connect with anything but the ground. "Where did that come from?" Marisol asked in between breaths. "Looked like fifth floor from the angle." "I didn't see it up there before we left the field. Did you?" "No, but more importantly, how come it didn't hit us?" Marisol looked pensive. As pensive a she could after sprinting a hundred meters. "Broken aiming system?" "That's what I thought too. But what if someone is messing with us?" "Then we'll pretend to run for our lives and at least we'll still have them." Ana smiled. "All right. Let's get going then." They skirted the long edge of the house to the window that Ana had spotted before they crossed the dry moat. No one had come along to close it on them and the two Valkyries scaled from the first floor window to the second. They found themselves in a large wood-paneled room that seemed as though it might collapse in on itself from the sheer weight of the wood attached to the walls and ceiling. Ana and Marisol flanked to either side of the room and met at the door. "Where to?" "Prepping for a weapons deal with the Continuum? I'd be in the lower levels." "Okay. Let's head down." -- Ana and Marisol had yet to find another living person when they got to a stairway leading down to a third sub-basement. Ana had not wanted to leave the other levels behind without having gone through them more thoroughly, but Marisol was convinced that Lukas would be hiding out lower. "Any important lab will be below ground level," Marisol said, "Better protection from any outside attacks." Ana knew it was a fact, not just an educated guess. In spite of her desire to explore, she followed Marisol down. She knew that any further time spent on the upper levels would just be casting about for clues to the Continuum that she had no real reason to believe actually existed in Lukas Huang's increasingly haunting compound. The second sub-basement had been lit like a fourteenth century dungeon, and the third was no better. Ana wondered if they might not encounter a real life dungeon before they found Lukas. The corridor that led away from the stairs came off as grimy, but as the two Valkyries passed through a pool of light, Ana saw that the walls were spotless, the metal brushed to look stony, creating shadows that came off as craggy and dirty in equal measure. After fifty meters of dark hallway punctuated with creaky doors that opened on deserted rooms, Ana heard singing. Another few steps and she heard the music backing the voice. Marisol, who had been in the lead, stopped and pointed to her ear, then drew her gun. Ana nodded in response and did the same. Dim light bled from the crack under a door that was identical to the others they'd passed except for that small glow and the sound coming from inside. The singing dropped volume and the voices of two males cut in. Ana held up two fingers and Marisol nodded. They waited a moment longer. The voices stopped and the singing rose into the foreground again. Ana raised a boot and slammed it through the door. It wasn't locked, so while it was heavy, it swung open providing little resistance to the force of her kick. She and Marisol swept into the room, their backs sticking to the walls as though hooked on a wire that bounded the perimeter. The walls were much like those in the hall, a disturbing mix of shadows, echoes, and mirages. In the middle sat a terminal with three large high def monitors, a man in a chair in front, watching them. There was a woman going through identical motions on all three screens, singing the song they'd heard from outside. Around the centerpiece of the electronics setup was a motley assortment of couches ranging from shabby to opulent. Outside of the furnished area in the center of the room was nothing more than the dead space of gray cement floors. There were no other entrances or exits that Ana could see. There was also no one in the room besides the man in the chair. The door clattered as it hit the inside wall of the room and the man in the middle swiveled in his chair. When he reached an angle of about sixty-five degrees, Ana could see enough to know that it was Lukas Huang. "Ah, the Valkyries," he said, the video on the monitors muted as he spoke. "Did you have some fun getting in?" It didn't matter to Ana that he knew they were coming; she'd already suspected as much while fleeing the first shells that hit the ground in front of the corn field. She held no safe harbor for illusions. Besides, they had found him, and he wanted them there or he would have taken them out already. "You know why we're here?" Ana said. She intended it as a question, but it came out closer to the statement end of the interrogation spectrum. Rhetorical at best. "Oh, my dears, I certainly do." "Well, that makes it easy," Marisol said. "You can just tell us where your meeting with the Continuum is and we'll be out of your hair – what you have left of it." Huang touched his scalp and feigned indignation. "Not even a bit of friendly negotiation?" "We don't negotiate with terrorists," Ana cut in. "Whoa there. I am not a terrorist. That would be those Continuum folks. I mean, if you're looking to stop terrorists, that's probably a better place to start." "We're cutting off their suppliers. It's an underrated strategy, but as good as any. This seemed like a nice place to start. Although, this particular part seems austere for someone with five stories of mansion above ground." "I find that the setting helps me focus." "Focus on what? Illegally obtained musical material?" "Nobody in commercial music has taste these days. The musical stylings of Ms. Nairobi Jackson weren't illegal when they were originally released, but they're still just as beautiful even though they now qualify as illegal. I prefer the term 'underground' but I suppose if the police were to find it, they would confiscate it." He paused and a disgusting grin spread peeled out from under his lips, reminding Ana of the Cheshire Cat from the childhood story about Alice and she wondered for a moment if she hadn't fallen down her own rabbit hole. "Good thing you aren't the police, am I right?" The Valkyries closed in on him, checking sensory inputs for another person in the room. It appeared empty, so Ana guessed that he had been on a comm with the other person before they entered. Still, Better Safe Than Sorry. Ana wanted to shake her head to clear the vision of Rani that popped in with the phrase, but cordoned off that section of her mind and let it pass without an outward sign. "You are right," Marisol said, "At least, as long as you tell us what we want. Otherwise, you might be wrong, and that illegally distributed propaganda might be very important to us." He frowned. "That's the best we can do? I tell you my deepest secrets and you don't trump up some charges that my lawyer will have dismissed before we even get to a processing facility? I'd be lying if I said I wasn't hoping for something a little more immediate." A wide sneer took over his face, even more sinister than the cat-like one it replaced. Ana didn't have time to take in the full grotesque mask it formed before a new video jumped onto the three monitors that sat behind him. As it began playing Ana saw herself in a dress that was probably shorter and tighter than anyone - even someone with a body like hers - should be allowed to wear. She remembered the dress as easily as she remembered the Texan diplomat she was about to ensnare with a passionate kiss. "I've seen what you can do for the people you want something from." Marisol recoiled slightly, giving him the reaction he wanted. Ana just glared. "I killed him," she said. "Oh come now. We both know that was involuntary manslaughter at best. Besides, to go out like that? What man doesn't want that?" he gave her a slight wink. Then, looking back at the video, "Wait, here's my favorite part." On the video, Ana had secured the data card with the Surgeon List, and bent to retrieve the security alert trigger from the diplomat's pocket. The hem of the dress was not quite high enough to show the camera what Ana had on underneath, but the taught material stretched tight across her backside left little to the imagination. Lukas let go of a groan that carried a clearly perverse pleasure. "Of course, it's not as revealing as some of the other entertainment my good friend recorded," he said, flicking his fingers over the controls. The image on the screens showed the diplomat with his pants down, in flagrante with a beautiful, naked young woman. "But sometimes," Lukas said, "the subject makes up for the lack of content." His eyes held Ana's, and she fought down the hairs rising on the back of her neck. "We've made our offer. If you want anything more, you'll have to take it. Going that route, though, will result in the termination of our offer, and we will also take what we want." "Yes," he hissed, "you seem to be good at taking things from defenseless people. But, please Miss Valkyrie, do not think because I am a research scientist that I haven't any sort of combat training. I could take what I want by force, but then none of us gets what we really want." He nodded his head toward Marisol without breaking eye contact with Ana. "I think that one knows what I'm talking about. I bet she has spent more than a couple lonely nights imagining what it would be like to be sinfully intimate with her Valkyrie friend." Then he looked at Marisol with the same sly smile and fiendish eyes. "What do you think her lips taste like?" Ana snuck a glance at Marisol without moving her head. The other Valkyrie’s posture and expression remained unchanged. Lukas snapped his attention back to Ana. "Do you know what your friend the Diplomat's wife looks like?" Ana frowned. She and Marisol remained silent, their arms folded in a sign that meant Lukas would not be entering their minds with any of his all-too-obvious distractions. "I know for a fact that her breasts are not still riding as high as that young lady's." Ana clamped down on several retorts, but Marisol was ready to attack. "Is there a point to this - besides your own demented arousal - or can we get back to business?" The video monitors went black. Perhaps Lukas intended to conduct an actual negotiation. "This is business my dear Valkyrie. This is your business. These are the kinds of people you're helping when you think you're saving the world." It wasn't the first time either of the Valkyries had heard that. "Those are the people we sometimes have to help in order to help many others." "So why not help me in order to help many others?" He had been waiting for it. Ana felt stupid, ashamed even, for having walked into the statement that had been twisted around so easily. It was like a gun had choked in her hand and the blast had melted a layer of flesh. Then, just for a second, she worried that they might not be clever enough to outwit the venomous man leaning back in his chair with a devilish grin she couldn't help but want to slap off his face. The dark, metallic taste of fear and failure crept from the back of her mouth. Ana felt it marching like a sentry, a harbinger, stronger than usual, but she blinked and looked again at Lukas and knew that she had overcome adversaries much more worthy in the past. She focused on his small lidless eyes and actually felt bad. He was a man of extremely high intelligence and here he was trying to negotiate sexual favors with highly trained, explosively violent, potentially lethal government weapons. Yes, she had given up the illusion that she was anything more than a tool of the government and hadn't looked back. Had that been a mistake? Or had Lukas started to burrow under her skin? The answer to the latter was clearly yes because she already had her answer to the former. "You can help us, or we can kill you." Lukas chuckled, but there was a hint of nerves behind the laughter. "If you kill me, you won't ever find my weapons." "And neither will the Continuum." He laughed again but doubt tempered the sting of haughty condescension. Marisol spoke, offering another solution. "Or we can just leave now and then ambush you when you meet your contact from the Continuum." This time Lukas laughed boldly with no hint of nerves. "If that's your plan, Valkyrie, do you think I'm foolish enough to keep my meeting knowing that you'll be lying in wait?" "Perhaps. Or maybe I just want to see how the Continuum reacts when you contact them to alter your arrangements." A hint of fear pushed out on Lukas' eyes, causing them to bulge ever so slightly. He knew that he'd stand a higher chance of living with Marisol's new option, but he definitely feared changing the straightforward deal he currently held with the Continuum. "If they kill you out of hand, then not only have we essentially followed through on option number one, but we have a much better idea of what kind of organization the Continuum is." "Is it not the smallest of double standards that you can murder without reproach and protect those who ruin the lives of innocent children with their sexual deviances?" Ana pointed to the screens, her voice rising a few decibels. "I don't think Mr. Hutchison was taking advantage of a girl who didn't know better there." "I was talking about you, my Valkyrie. Nothing to do with Mr. Hutchison's minor perversions. Don't think that because you saved a few children from the Continuum that your side of the fight does not have its own crates of human merchandise. I have to believe you have seen the dark under belly that casts a shadow over creatures it has left behind." Ana bit her tongue, literally, but the expression on her face did not change. Marisol stood firm at her side. "Do I need to spell it out for you, Number Twenty-Four?" The number came out as a devious pejoration of her codename call sign. "I have seen where the money goes after your government extracts it from even the smallest of the people it claims to protect. Have you not witnessed the same things? Think. Not even the hint of a question?" Silence. "No? Frankly, I find that impossible. I know you have doubts. How can an agency that green lights murder with the passive wave of a hand hesitate more than a fraction of a second before giving in to the baser desires of its of its biggest contributors?" Still the Valkyries said nothing. "Do they really have you so brainwashed that you think that everyone you save is an angel? That every deed you do has nothing but a positive impact? My dears, I think that nothing might please me more than to disabuse you of that notion. These people are worth saving, but not for the reasons you think. And the reasons change. Why do you think I go for what I want whenever I can get it?" "Because you're a selfish egotistical pig," Ana barked. "No, Ms. Valkyrie, it's because while your lovely agency may want to protect me today, it will just as likely want me dead tomorrow." "Not if you - " "Not if I nothing! There is nothing you or I can do to stop the men at the top with nothing but dollar signs in their eyes!" He flicked the monitors back on. The young woman was bent over the desk, allowing the Texan diplomat to enter her in a place designed to be exit only. "Your agency, my stupid little Valkyrie, is fucking little girls in the ass and you do nothing but help because they tell you they're saving the world! Why - " There was a sharp crack and a look of astonishment smashed into Lukas's face. His head tilted down to look at the new hole in the leg of his pants which was already leaking dark red liquid. Ana watched, masking her amusement with heated disgust, as the surprise slid away, the initial shock wearing off, turning to pain and anger. Good. She felt much of the same. "What the fuck?" The only words he could manage through the wave of shock and sting. "Now we can start negotiating," Ana said, glimpsing Marisol from the corner of her eye. Her partner looked only mildly shocked. "You," Lukas started again, regaining a modicum of his previous composure, "you see? This is exactly what I mean." "Yes," Ana said, "I see. I see that this is how shit gets done. I see us waiting here, and I see only one of us with a slug in their leg, waiting to bleed out and too self-absorbed to let it actually happen. Or, I see you telling us where your meeting is taking place and Miss Twenty-Six here calling in a med-evac for you." The awareness that his options had shrunk dramatically came faster than Ana had expected for such an obstinate ox. He spat fragments of words for another few moments, and then lowered his head in defeat. You see? Didn't have to kill anybody. The Valkyries would decide who lived. -- The lock on the motel room door clicked. The door let go of a steely creak as it let in a shaft of dirty yellow light. A stooped man crept cautiously through, concealing himself in the shadow created by the open door. Ana was herself hiding in a shadow, crouched in the corner next to the window that ended at the door, partially obscured by a bulky curtain. Marisol had hidden herself just inside the door to the bathroom at the back of the room as there were precious few hiding spots in the tiny room itself. Having Marisol there would also prevent any escape attempt out the back if the agent happened to see Ana upon entering. She could cover the front door with a long stride and a half, and the bathroom window was the only other way out of the room. The agent looked around and missed Ana in the corner. She wasn't sure if she should blame slow dilation of his pupils upon entering the darkness of the room or conclude he had a distinct lack of field experience. The latter was a dangerous assumption, so she went with the former. The man moved through the room to the bathroom which, despite the window to the outside, was darker than the room itself. Ana moved to cover the door as the man reached in to hit the button for the bathroom light. Even if his eyes were used to the light outside, the urine yellow safety lights were much dimmer than the bathroom light would be. Especially in a seedy hotel without light sensors. He had to know that. It didn't take a great deal of intelligence - not even field experience – to know that anyone waiting inside could take advantage of the blinding flood the bathroom light would produce. Marisol did just that. As soon as his fingers reached the button and the light appeared, she grabbed his arm and pulled, smacking the side of the man's head against the door frame as she jerked him into a headlock. Ana had her gun trained precisely where Marisol now held him; prepared to put a slug in his gut should he attempt to struggle. But he didn't. In fact, he did just the opposite. With Marisol's arm around his neck, the man put his arms straight up in the air. "I'm not armed!" he cried. After dealing firsthand with the weaponry and technology that the Continuum possessed, Ana found it highly unlikely that an agent of theirs would come unarmed to a meeting with a bioweapons dealer. She moved in to frisk him while Marisol restrained him. As she patted him down, she shuddered with a thought of how Lukas Huang would have reacted to the contact. The small, nerdy looking man babbled about meeting Huang and working on negotiations with the Continuum and seemed to hardly notice her hands doing a quick dance over his body, deriving none of the perverse pleasure that the man he had intended to meet would have. "Are you Continuum agents? Crap. Of course. You would have the whole place staked out. Probably bought out the whole crappy little motel didn't you? God, I'm such an idiot." The man's eyes tightened behind the circle frames of his glasses. He grimaced. Sniffled. Was he going to cry? Ana examined his face, squinting a bit against the backlighting from the bathroom. She was having a hard time believing that a man as apparently inept as this one had somehow been able to get the time and location of Lukas Huang's meeting with the Continuum. Those tears seemed to come too easily. Did he possess insider knowledge simply recast as innocent questions? Ana was willing to bet on the fact that a Continuum agent would be trained to create such a façade. Yet his behavior since entering the room contradicted the possibility of professional training. "Identify yourself," Ana said. Getting a truthful answer from such a request was unlikely, but Ana's mind had entered information gathering mode in order to be able to assimilate and analyze on a rational level. If this man was not an agent of the Continuum, then they needed to subdue him to return the room to its "empty" state. "My name is Allen Poole. Dr. Allen Poole." A glittering tear rolled down his cheek, shining in the bright light of the bathroom. "What are you doing here?" "I told you, I came to intercept the androkal that Dr. Huang was to receive from the Continuum. I need to get back to my Iona. I just want to see her again before she is gone." "I'm sure that's supposed to be heartwarming, but did you honestly think you could just walk in and come out with it?" "I don't know what I thought. I…" "Allen, I'm not sure I believe any of this, but it's always the most unbelievable things that are true, aren't they?" He bit his lip and nodded. "Mari, tranq him." There was a short hiss and Allen Poole's body went limp in Marisol's arms. "I'll take him. Hit the lights." Marisol did as Ana bid. She might not have seen all the same things, but Ana knew they were in agreement on the status of Allen Poole as Continuum agent. Dubious at best. Only someone who truly didn't know what they were doing, who didn't actually have a plan, would try to come between a bioengineer and an organization like the Continuum. The lack of resistance from Dr. Poole was another clear indicator. "He should be out for at least an hour, give or take," Marisol said. The bathroom light blinked out. Ana took the body and laid it out next to the bed on the side opposite the door. She quickly checked the angle from door to make sure the doctor was completely hidden, and then resumed her watch next to the window of the room. Ana listened to Marisol and Allen's quiet breathing, hoping that the brief period of illumination had not given them away to anyone outside. It was another twenty minutes before Ana detected any movement outside the room. She had started to worry that they might have to dose Dr. Poole again when she saw two figures emerge from a shadow just beyond the light hanging next to the door. They were both imposing figures, heads perilously close to the ceiling outside that served as the floor for the walkway of the floor above. As they approached one slid a keycard from his pocket. Again Ana wondered why they would have opted for such a low security meeting spot. The keycard-only access hadn't been much of a challenge even for someone as inept as Allen Poole. Ana gave him a point for being able to come up with that one, though. She looked forward to questioning him further to figure out how a spy - or whatever he was - with such glaring deficiencies managed to survive in their day-to-day environment. The card slid through the lock and it popped open. One of the tall, dark, and probably not so handsome figures slithered through, nearly disappearing against the dark wall. The second of the pair remained just outside the door, propping it open with the back of his heel as he kept watch, head swiveling back and forth. Ana could just make out the whites of the eyes of the agent who had entered. She watched him start scanning the room and made her move before his eyes could reach the corner where she hid. Springing from the darkness, she slammed her back against the door, dislodging the heel of the agent outside and eliciting a sharp bark before the lock engaged. At the same time, she drew her gun and was ready with more than enough time to fire a shot at the man inside. She held off though, hoping to keep them in an interrogable state. The man did not hesitate once he became aware of her presence and a long arm slapped her gun across the room. Ana heard her gun hit the wall near where she had laid in wait and knew the man's size meant force as well as bulk. She would not hesitate to shoot if she got another opportunity. Ana tried to use a rebound off the door as leverage for her next attack, but he clouted her away with body blow that left her sprawled at the foot of the bed. Incapacitated momentarily, but she had at least succeeded in her primary goal of splitting the pair as well as distracting and drawing the attention of the man inside the room. Marisol fired a quick shot and with the human equivalent of the broad side of a barn in front of her, she scored a hit, a very palpable hit, on the back of his leg, just opposite from where Ana had shot Lukas Huang. The dark intruder dropped to a knee and as he sank Marisol kept her gun trained on his dipping head. Even with the newly acquired lack of coordination, the hulk inside the room turned and looked ready to charge Marisol with the same force that had sent Ana to the floor. A split second before he began to charge, his partner distracted the two duelists by putting four shots through the window of the room. It was pure blind fire that shattered the window, but hit nothing. Marisol ducked back into the bathroom. Ana scrambled through the thousands of tiny shards of glass that littered the floor to find her gun where it had been swept aside. The monkey – or gorilla – in the middle must have caught Ana's movement from the corner of his eye, because he turned to look back in her direction. Ana was about to send more bullets his way when the lock on the door clicked and the second man burst in. In his haste to help, he'd blind fired into the room and saved Marisol. Now he rushed blindly into the room, clearly unaware that Ana had regained her weapon and sat crouching like a tiger in the corner. Almost as bad as Dr. Poole. The agent became aware of his mistake a moment too late when he followed his partner's burning stare. The second man was shorter than the hulk with the bullet in his leg, and as Ana swung the gun through a quick arc, she realized she was aiming at his head. Her finger had already received the impulses from her brain to pull the trigger and she retroactively decided that it would be easier to deal with only one of these enemy agents. The Valkyries would decide who lived. She fired one bullet and hit just below where his dark hat ended and his ghost white skin began. She made a minute adjustment to the aim of the weapon and it spat two more into his chest. Ana worried that the bigger man would continue his pugilistic assault undeterred, but in the interceding moments, he'd drawn a weapon of his own and was leveling it at her. He struggled a bit to hold a steady aim on his wounded leg, and again, Marisol came through with a perfect strike, shooting through the middle of his hand and knocking the gun away just as he'd done to Ana. Not ready to give up, he lurched toward Ana but toppled after the first step, crashing to the floor where he had laid her out. Marisol and Ana approached the fallen man with caution, Marisol with her electrocuffs readied for deployment. The man rolled to his back and one arm reached up to brace against the bed as he levered himself to a sitting position. "You don't need to put the electrocuffs on me," he said. It wasn't a cry for mercy, just a statement of fact. For a moment, Ana considered that he might be telling the truth. She could see Marisol hesitate as well, but waved her gun a bit and Marisol quickly engaged one end of the cuff around the wrist resting on the bed, then hauled the large black body up by the underarm and whipped the other wrist into the waiting end of the cuff. "You can take these off," he said, lifting his hands from the bed. "I'm not going anywhere." Again, Ana wanted to believe him. But she stood with the gun aimed at him, ready for the game of possum to turn into one of cobra and mongoose. "Identify yourself," Ana said. "I have no identity." That was an answer she expected from a Continuum agent. She was tempted to pistol whip him, but instead just repeated herself. "You know who I am," was the response the second time. "You came here to meet someone," Ana said. "See," he said, "You know who I am." He stared straight at her with his large, deep set eyes. They were tinged with red. Weary eyes. Ana could see it was more than the pain from his leg and hand that he held just under the surface. The dark circles hanging under those strained eyes hadn't just appeared when he'd been shot. He was strong, but run roughshod and ragged. He'd tried to pursue her, even across the tiny hotel room and had collapsed. He didn't fight now. "You already know everything about me," he said, turning toward Marisol, "Why don't you just let me go?" Ana's partner and friend seemed to buckle under the weight of his look. Ana grabbed his head with one hand, keeping the gun on him with the other, and twisted it further, past Marisol to the other side of the bed. "We don't know everything about that guy," she hissed, "Maybe you could tell us what he's doing here?" Ana didn't see the look on his face, but she judged from Marisol's reaction to his reaction that he knew – on some level – Dr. Allen Poole. "Who is he?" she pressed. "I don't know who he is. But you do." "Bullshit!" "I'm sorry I can't be of more help, but there's really nothing more I can tell you." Ana felt a warm calm bubbling in the bottom of her mind. She expected to be angry, but somehow felt as though she'd just had a glass of wine. Her thoughts ran like raindrops down a window pane. "Marisol," Ana said, "He knows this guy. You saw his reaction. He knows him, doesn't he?" "Yes. You couldn't hide that surprise buddy. How do you know him?" "The same way you do." His voice was unnervingly steady. A sharp laugh ejected from Ana's diaphragm. "So you met him in a hotel room where you were waiting for yourself to come make a weapons deal?" "The truth is always stranger than you imagine." "That's not strange. It's impossible!" "Nothing is impossible." His eyes chiseled away at her confidence as Ana tried to think of the next question, or even just the next thing to say. Her mind seemed to be awash in something close to an endorphin rush. She'd had some adrenaline flowing, that was for sure, but not enough to make her stammer like a schoolgirl who just got the attention of the quarterback. "Impossible is this imbecile," she gestured at Poole, "finding out when and where your meeting with a bioweapons engineer is going to be. This man was practically shrieking like a little girl when we grabbed him. If nothing is impossible, how did he get here?" "The same way you did." "He shot Lukas Huang in order to get the location? Was that before or after I shot him? I'm going to have to guess after since he didn't seem to be too shot up when we were there." Part of Ana wanted to shoot this hulking oaf of a man, but in the head this time, instead of the leg or the hand. But then it started to make sense. Perhaps Dr. Poole had arrived at Lukas Huang's home away from home just after them, before the med-evac arrived. If Huang had been in shock, he might have told anyone. Poole could have offered to help him. Maybe convinced him that he could make the deal in his place. Poole knew what Huang was exchanging; making him believe the deal was still possible might have been trivial. Still, how had the agent that sat before them recognized Poole if he was truly a spur of the moment interloper? Or had he? Perhaps they had in fact overreacted. No, that was exactly what he wanted them to think. Or maybe he had simply been surprised to discover that there was yet another unauthorized person invading his meeting. Or maybe he'd thought the man was Lukas Huang. He was right. Nothing was impossible. It all made sense. "You believe me, don't you?" "Be quiet," Marisol said. "Ana?" "You're confused, too, Twenty-Six?" Ana looked at her, hoping her eyes were not broadcasting the pleading questions that were being wrung from her mind. "I think we'd better take them in. Both of them." "You already have my partner," the man interjected in his serene tone. "What am I to you now?" His gentle, deep voice reminded Ana of floating in a pool. Sometimes in between missions, she'd go to the Agency pool, and if no one else was there, she'd just float. Her face was the only thing above the warm caress of six meters of water. She wondered if anyone had seen here there, arms spread as if she hung on a crucifix. His voice lapped at her ears, as peaceful as the waves that lapped at her cheeks when she lay in the pool. "I think we have everything we are going to get from him," Marisol said. She looked as serene as Ana felt. "Yes," Ana agreed. "The doctor too. He's an idiot who got lucky." "We'll send him back to the Continuum. They'll be happy to deal with him." The man stood, Ana moved aside to let Marisol remove the electrocuffs. He limped to the side of the bed and scooped Dr. Poole up and over his shoulder. He struggled with the weight as he limped out of the room, holding the doctor secure with his good hand. As he passed through the door, Ana grew less peaceful. She'd been floating in warm subtle waves, but it grew harder to keep her mouth and nose out of the water as it turned icy and pulled at her limbs. She tried to take a deep breath, but sucked nothing but water into her chest. All of sudden she heard a note; it started in her chest and ended in her throat. Ana realized she was swimming for shore. She wasn't in the Agency pool, she was out to sea, far from a sandy shore, feeling the riptide tickle her toes. Ana grabbed Marisol by the hand and jerked her to the door. They stumbled out to the landing, Ana scanning the surroundings as fast as her drowned mind would let her. The Continuum agent was out of sight, Dr. Poole with him. "Chingon!" she yelled. Marisol looked around, still unsure what was happening. "He's gone! Fucking gone!" "No…" Marisol said, "He escaped. He tricked us." "Yeah, he tricked us like a couple of drugged up whores." Ana bent to rest her forehead on the rusty wrought iron railing of the cheap piece of shit motel. She could still feel the chill of the ocean. Maybe it was just her sweat cooling in the wind off the lake. She went back to the door jamb, pointing inside. "We have a dead guy. That's it. One dead Continuum agent." And Ana had killed him. The Valkyries decided who lived. -- Ana and Marisol had no choice but to bring back what little they had. Ana took a little consolation from the fact that they had succeeded in their primary mission of stopping Huang from selling his weapon to the Continuum. A hammer swung at that consolation moments after Ana mentioned Dr. Allen Poole in her debriefing. She'd already gone over how she and Marisol had found Lukas Huang and persuaded him to reveal the location of his meeting. When she said a man calling himself Dr. Alan Poole found his way into the musty motel room, it didn't take long for the computers recording her recap to send the audio for cross-referencing by other specialized hardware appliances, which found the doctor's name in another one of the Agency's files. An alert of the match flashed on the desk where Malcolm was talking to Ana, and they both looked down. Ana read the message and slammed the table, her fist becoming the hammer that crashed through positive emotion she'd been trying to conjure. Dr. Allen Poole (syntax indicates name) matches a name in file alias: Surgeon List. "We had him! We had him; we had a Continuum agent! We had them!" Malcolm was more shocked than upset and tried to calm her down. "Ana, you had no way of knowing." "But I knew I had a man who had found the time and location of a Continuum weapons deal!" "And you were right. Bringing in a man like that was the right thing to do." She choked back angry tears. "But I didn't bring him in!" "Ana," he said, as he'd said several times already, "you stopped the Continuum from getting the weapons from Dr. Huang. That was your mission." "Right, instead I handed them someone on the Surgeon List!" "Ana, there was no way you could have known." "Maybe I need to memorize the list. How many names are on there? How many do we have pictures of?" "Ana, you need to take it easy." "Malcolm, you need to take it less easy!" He held his hands out across the table. "Look at it this way: Allen Poole could have been anywhere in the world. But now we know where he is." "Do we really Malcolm? Three hours ago I was only as far as a sketchy motel on the outskirts of Gary. Three hours before that, though, I was halfway between Midland and Odessa in the Greater States. Where do you think Poole is after three hours with the Continuum?" Malcolm sighed. He had no answer for that question, and they both knew it. -- Justin tried to cheer them up after their report was made, and he put it well saying, "You wouldn't feel so bad if you hadn't been so close." "But we were so close," Ana replied. "But it's not like you came back empty-handed." Everyone kept making the same point. It made Ana feel a little better. Especially since the other Valkyries had come back with nothing from the South Pole. Somehow the Continuum's entire mining operation had been shut down and all traces of its existence removed in less than two days. For an organization that only made an appearance on the Agency's threat matrix after claiming their copy of the Surgeon List, they seemed to have an amazing amount of resources. To take their mind off the recent frustrations, Justin offered to them all out for drinks. "I need to talk to Aerin for a bit," Ana said. "I'll meet you guys over there." Ana took her time heading down the corridor to Aerin's lab. He was probably still going over the body they'd brought back, so no need to rush. Besides, she wanted to take a little time to feel sorry for herself. She had needed a win on this one. In the past few weeks, she'd recovered an escapee, only to be captured by him and then forced to blow him to bits. She had found thirty-six children, undoubtedly a significant part of a trafficking project, but had failed the primary mission of finding Senator Dilger's son. She had recovered a sample of the substance being mined by the Continuum only to destroy it before the examination was complete. And now she had nearly captured two enemy agents and one of the members of the Surgeon List only to end up with nothing but a corpse. The artificial light in the hallway did nothing to ease her tension or lift her spirits. She wanted to get up to the rooftop and just sit with her face turned up to the sun, or moon, or whatever planetary objects happened to be illuminating the sky. And she would, just as soon as she'd talked to Aerin. As she approached, the tiny blond man's smile was enough to keep her moving. "Good news?" she asked as the large glass door slid aside to let her in. The smile disappeared. "No, I'm just happy to see you're all right. It sounded like a bit of a dangerous situation there with a telepath from the Continuum." "So you think it's possible too?" "Well, it certainly seems like one explanation. I was able to go over the clothing you were wearing during the mission and found nothing but some blood splatter from what I assume was the agent who escaped." Ana looked down. "No, no, no, Ana, I just mean that there were no neurotransmitters or other devices that could have been used to influence your thoughts. This could prove to be truly remarkable! I know that our government has been researching anything that even has the slimmest of chances for some sort of mind control ability. If what happened is really the result of some cognitive distortion, it was truly remarkable!" "I'm inclined to go with truly dangerous." "Well, clearly, yes, that too. But the ability to have that sort of impact on someone's cognitive process..." "We're going to need some sort of tinfoil hat. Preferably before we see these guys again." "Well, you won't be seeing this guy again," Aerin said, chuckling as he pointed to the body of the agent Ana had killed. "Speaking of him," Ana said, relieved to move away from the discussion of mind control that left her with a bit of an uneasy feeling in the back of her mind, which was actually a very uneasy feeling much closer to the middle of her mind. "Speaking of him, who is he?" This made it Aerin's turn to look sheepishly at the ground. "I don't know," he said. "He's not in any of the universal DNA databases." "So either he was born in a place that doesn't do genetic tagging, or the Continuum had him expunged from whichever database he had been tagged in." Aerin knew it was not a question, not even a rhetorical one, and responded as such. "I would bet on the former. Though I did the calculation of the odds that a man of this size, build, complexion, and apparent ancestry would be born in one of the few remaining places without tagging and, let's just say there was some use of scientific notation involved." "But how hard would it really be for a group like the Continuum to get someone taken out of a DNA database?" "Don't they train you on things like that?" "Yeah, but my Hacking Into The Most Secure Systems In The World class was a long time ago. I could use a refresher." "It may come in handy in looking for that person you are trying to locate." "You mean my long lost friend from high school." "Yeah, that one." Aerin explained as briefly as his technically detailed mind could the rotating separation of systems, the specialized hardware that required programming at a level where you could almost see the electrons being pushed through biointerfaces, and the updates to security keys in facilities that made the Valkyrie Project headquarters deep within the building that housed the Chicago branch of the Agency feel as open to the outside as a fast food franchise. "You've heard of people trying to get though the biosecurity here, right?" Ana nodded. "Well, imagine doing that in 129 locations at once. There aren't even 129 people with access. The Continuum would need a programmatic solution, and believe me, a lot of people have tried." "So it's incredibly unlikely that he was born somewhere without being put in a database and it's nearly impossible that he would have been removed from any of the databases." Aerin shrugged. "Awesome." -- The large brute of a man emerged with his gawky, awkward prey slung over his shoulder, the grim reaper of cavemen, making his way to the underworld, where his cave drawings would be composed of flame, not just illuminated by it. His lumbering mulish gait carried him faster than the man in the sleek black hovercar would have imagined possible. No, check that. He just hadn't bothered to imagine how fast the ogre could have been made with an overstock supply of synthesized muscle and bio implants. The burly Continuum agent tossed the man known as Allen Poole into the back of his own shined up hovercar, and somehow managed to fit in the driver's side. The vehicle rose like a whale in dark water, through churning eddies in the thick black of the sky, giving the illusion of disappearing like a memory fading into the empty space of the forgotten. "Shall we?" the watcher asked of the man with the angular jaw and high cheekbones who occupied the driver seat of his car. "We shall." Barren skyways greeted the two ships that would not pass in the night, emptied by the witching hour of what precious little cargo they might have borne across this poor man's version of a suburb. The pursuing pair wasted little time catching the Continuum agent. He wasn't making the hasty retreat that either of them would have expected after having just escaped from two members of the vaunted Valkyrie Project. They waited for a point relatively far from the semi-regularly spaced way stations that provided rations and other supplies to the kind of people who would be out at this time of night, then flipped on lights that simulated the patriotic blazing red, sparkling white, and chilly blue of an authorized law enforcement vehicle. The man riding shotgun half expected the other car to bolt, but instead it glided to the pavement below. They followed it down out of the noiseless night, closer to the hum of civilization, though not by much. When the driver emerged he was dressed to continue the story the flashing lights had begun. A routine traffic stop. No need to panic. Dr. Poole's captor probably assumed he needed to simply hand over some money and be on his way. The toll paid to a corrupt cop, a cog in a corrupt system, for crossing his swath of sky and catching him in the wrong mood. Only the uniformed man backlit by three piercing colors of light knew that society was still in better shape than Mr. Tall, Dark, and Ugly could have imagined possible. The man who remained in the faux police cruiser chortled at how easily the ruse was perpetrated. The Continuum agent lapped it up like a homeless cat with a bowl of milk, rolling down the window after the man in the uniform gave it a quick rap with his knuckles. The man watching imagined himself as a mouse, springing a trap on the unsuspecting cat who thought he was too clever to be caught by anything so small and weak. The mouse watched with dark eyes, but in place of a true mouse's beadiness, they shone strong, clear, and expressive. His gaze remained focused and steady, unblinking, but even so, they barely registered the movement of the man in uniform as he whipped a gun from his belt, shot three times through the open driver's side window, and returned the gun to its holster. Then the mouse emerged, stretching from the car more like a puma than a tiny rodent, and together he and the man in the uniform carried Dr. Poole back to their own vehicle. ABOUT THE AUTHOR The full novel: The Valkyrie Project is available now at Amazon. Amazon Prime members can read the whole book for free on their Kindle! Nels Wadycki is a Software Engineer residing in Chicago. He's got a couple blogs (http://nelswadycki.com and http://fanaticalpupil.com) and a couple of Twitter account s (http://twitter.com/fanaticalpupil and http://twitter.com/nelswadycki). If you want to ask Nels a question about this book, other stuff he's working on, the best places to eat in Chicago, or who to draft #1 in fantasy basketball this year, try this: fanaticalpupil@gmail.com Legal Type Stuff This is a work of fiction. There’s not really any way this could resemble someone’s actual life, but if such a coincidence were to occur, just know that the names, characters, places and events depicted are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any such resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. Though I would be fascinated to meet such people or go to such places. Smashwords Edition License Notes Thank you for downloading this free ebook. You are welcome to share it with you friends (or enemies, depending on how you feel about it). This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. Thank you for your support.