Freedom Incorporated by Peter Tylee (me reader .txt) 📖

“Help… me get… clean.” She didn’t want to die in a puddle of vomit. The urge to be sick had passed, for which she was thankful, but she could feel the acid on her skin and didn’t imagine it would be pleasant for Dan.

He helped her wriggle out of her shirt and jeans and cleaned the mess from her face. Afterwards she looked respectable, despite the fact she was lying there in her underwear. Naked would still have been preferable to wearing vomit-soaked clothes. Dan removed his coat and wrapped it around her, seeing appreciation in her eyes.

Then he carried her to the couch and gently laid her down, brushing the hair from her forehead. “Shh… it’s okay now. You’re safe. You’re okay.”

And Jen believed him. It didn’t even matter what he’d done to make everything okay. People had died, but in her mind it was justified. It was over and they were both alive, and that was the important thing as far as Jen was concerned. She was tired but stubbornly fought the impulse to sleep. Her dizziness was subsiding and that was a positive sign, it meant she might live.

The not-so-distant rattle of gunfire snapped Dan’s head to attention. It was unmistakably the tinkle of a Cobra-KT, fired on fully automatic.

“What’s that?” Jen asked, prising her eyes open and fretting the situation might not yet be as safe as she’d assumed.

“Esteban’s still here,” Dan reluctantly admitted. Though maybe not anymore… that could’ve been the sound of his death.

*

Perspiration beaded unnoticed on Simon’s forehead. He was too distracted to sponge it away. She’s dead. He checked Mindy’s body again but still found no pulse. Esteban had killed her with a single well-aimed shot to the chest.

He brushed her vacant eyes closed and took the Cobra-KT from her hands, and then resumed his merciless, angry pursuit of Esteban. The man represented everything he stood against as a law enforcement officer.

For his part, Esteban was backing away. He knew the other Guild members had abandoned him and their cowardliness turned his stomach. There were only two! Surely a dozen men could overpower two intruders? He didn’t grasp that the two intruders were far more motivated than the Guild members would ever be. Dan was willing to risk his life to free Jen, a sacrifice no Guild member was willing to make.

He fired a few lazy shots for cover while dialling the destination code and making his escape through a portal.

Simon stood from cover and rotated his shoulders to release the tension. The entire assault had lasted no more than 15 or 20 minutes but it’d left him more exhausted then a two-hour ordeal in the gym. He meandered carefully back to the lounge room, still alert in case there were more.

He found Dan sitting next to Jen, who was lying immobile on the couch. She looked pale. His first thought was that she’d been shot and she was dying. “What happened?”

Dan was gently stroking Jen’s forehead and didn’t look up. “Nothing, it’s all okay now. Frank used her as a human shield, but he’s gone.”

“So is Esteban,” Simon said, sounding less than impressed.

“You got him?” Dan’s eyes flashed with that alien emotion again.

“No I mean he’s gone. He escaped through the portals… but not before killing Mindy.”

Dan hung his head and sent a silent prayer to wherever people went after death. He hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words to her but he’d sensed she was a decent person. Take care of her, Katherine. Dan thought his wife must know her way around the afterlife and was therefore the perfect person to help with Mindy’s transition. If an afterlife exists, that is. The jury was still out, and would be until the day Dan died.

Now that the danger had passed, other women started to appear. They tentatively stepped into the lounge room and eyed the intruders with as much suspicion as they’d lavished on Guild members. Simon took charge and tried to reassure them by holstering his weapon and resting the Cobra-KT next to the couch. He waved them closer. “It’s okay, you’re free now.”

“Free?” Restrained hope twinkled in the speaker’s eyes. She was short, shorter than the others. The Guild had so thoroughly beaten hope from her spirit that now it’d returned, it stung her. Tears were forming in her eyes and she wrapped her arms around her body for comfort. “We’re free?”

“You will be soon,” Jen affirmed from the couch. “We’re all getting out of here.” She sat up with Dan’s assistance and looked at him askance. “Any chance you brought microchips?” Or do we have to go spine gouging?

“We might have to make a couple of trips,” Dan said and handed over the device. Jen wasted no time cracking the case and handing out the precious rice-like chips.

One of the women did a headcount and said, “Someone’s missing.”

“Mindy?” Simon asked.

She nodded. “That’s right. How’d you know that?”

There was no easy way to say it. “She died.”

They met the news with grim silence, but also an acceptance that Simon had never before witnessed. These women had seen enough hardship, violence and death to grow a thick emotional defence that one more death couldn’t scratch.

“Come on, let’s get out of here,” Simon said, waving them toward the portals. He was nervous that the Guild members might return better prepared. Or maybe Esteban will come back with… The thought, unfinished, still sent a chill down his spine.

“Wait a minute,” Dan stopped them. “How will we get back in?”

Jen looked at him in confusion. “Don’t you have chips with proper access?”

“Ah, actually… no.” Dan shook his head.

“Then how did you get in to start with?”

“Long story,” Dan replied evasively.

“I don’t want to do it again.” Simon swallowed hard. “That’s pushing our luck too far.”

Dan nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right. You go ahead to the portal while I… find a chip we can use.”

Simon masked a shudder and led the procession to what he considered the front of the compound. The short woman sidled up to him on the way, slipping an arm around him and pulling herself close. She liked him; it was obvious. And while Simon found it flattering, he was thoroughly embarrassed. Before they were halfway to the portals, he was everyone’s hero and they showered him with attention.

Jen, who’d stayed behind, looked at Junior’s vomit-and blood-covered corpse. “Is that where you’re going to…”

“Yes.” Dan nodded distastefully. “You can go ahead if you’d like. It’s not going to be pretty.”

Jen shook her head. “No, I’d like to stay if that’s all right.”

“Yeah, that’s fine.” He didn’t know what else to say. He’d prefer to work alone; it’d be easier that way. He stripped the clothes from Junior’s torso and rolled him onto his stomach. Then he gripped the handle of his Ka-Bar and carefully selected the correct vertebrate. Parting Junior’s skin felt like peeling a peach. And when his knife struck bone, it felt as though he was grinding seed. A knife wasn’t the preferred instrument for removing a segment of a human spine and it took him five oath-filled minutes to remove the hacked and blood-smeared bit of bone. “This had better be the right one.” It was the segment from beneath the tiny scar, but Dan wasn’t a butcher and didn’t really know what he was looking at.

Jen was watching expressionlessly from the couch. “I think that’s it.” She didn’t know either, but it looked about right. The corpse had a messy hole in its back, the surrounding tissue massacred by Dan’s knife. He rolled Junior over for no other reason than to hide his untidy work. Next, he cleaned himself with help from the bar sink and wrapped the spinal segment in a tea towel.

“Okay, let’s go.” He helped Jen to her feet and supported her to the portals. When they arrived, the first six women to receive microchips had already gone. Simon keyed the destination and invited Dan to follow them. He flashed away, collected the chips, and reinserted them into Jen’s chip selector to mask their signature for the return trip. Junior’s microchip worked perfectly and he reappeared a minute later, and they only had to repeat the process once more to get everyone out of the underground nightmare.

Jen turned to Dan when the last of the women were gone. “I need to say something.”

“Uh, guys…” Simon interrupted incredulously. “This isn’t the place. Can’t you wait for another two minutes?”

“I suppose so,” Jen said with an uncertain expression. She deeply searched Dan’s eyes and found understanding there. Maybe I don’t need to say it at all. But she intended to anyway, just to make sure.

*

Sunday, September 19, 2066

9:42 Sydney, Australia

The Raven snarled at his change of luck. He hated the shackle of his omen. It hadn’t come. Yet. He’d hoped to eliminated Samantha Lee and David Coucke while Dan was busy. Now he had to contend with all of them again. On the up side, at least he knew where Jen was. Her absence had begun to bother him - since he had to get rid of them all to collect his two million Credits.

The neighbourhood was the perfect cover, for which he couldn’t have been happier - the kind of deserted urban landscape he thrived in. A raven’s paradise. Ravens haunted deserted and barren landscapes. He was a human raven, so it made sense that he’d operate best in barren human environments.

Still, it was a dismal place. So desolate. Hideous, pitiable creatures scratched a forlorn existence from the rubble. Why do they bother? He couldn’t honestly answer that question; it was beyond his capacity for reason.

The Raven was crouching in an abandoned house, which someone had deliberately converted into a dump, or so it seemed. Someone had mistaken a corner of the room for a latrine and defecated there many times, leaving a huge pile of shit. So the air reeked, but he could filter that distasteful sense through his embedded computer, attenuating his disgust at his surroundings. Indeed, the overpowering stench made it the perfect place to hide. Nobody would voluntarily come within 50 metres of the rancid hole. The flies were worse. They buzzed incessantly and frequently landed on him with their shit-caked feet. Yet he had a good vantage to observe the house where Dan and the others were hiding.

Due to an alarming lack of video equipment installed in this area of the city, the Raven was relying primarily upon his eyes - something that made him intensely uncomfortable. It was easier to trust cameras and he could use them to observe multiple angles simultaneously. Now he felt hampered, but accepted the assignment conditions without complaint.

The omen however… that was something else entirely. It frustrated him greatly that his protector hadn’t given him permission to swoop while his quarries had been apart. And still he was waiting. He was willing to take them all if the omen would just give him the opportunity. The house didn’t deter him. He’d accessed the schematics from the New South Wales Police Department’s database and he knew where contractors had skimped to complete the contract on time and budget. There were always vulnerabilities. It was just a matter of knowing where they were and how to exploit them.

So the Raven waited, and watched.

*

Sunday, September 19, 2066

9:49 Sydney, Australia

Jen and Samantha embraced as soon as they saw each other, though Samantha was the only one to shed tears as the pent up tension from the past several days came rushing to a blissful conclusion. She just couldn’t contain the overwhelming urge to cry. She didn’t know why, but it felt good.

“Shh,” Jen soothed her.