Episode 7 - The Horned Hare

  Chapter 64 - Operation: Gilded Pearls (3)

  I triangulate my position inside the apartment tower by peering out a window at a lounge area between doors to apartments and finding the Skyspire. I press myself close to the glass, putting one eye right to the edge to look upwards at the dark sky. With Pooka’s vision, I scan the windows lit from within and the shape of the skyline, catching sight of myself several stories too low still. My vision always crosses when I see myself, my mind splintering at the strange evidence of the double bodies I practically occupy, and I take a breath, steading myself for a moment as I ground myself again.

  “What now?” Rhett paces behind me, hand tucked under his suit to one armpit, eyes darting from doorway to doorway as he lowers his voice.

  “Higher,” I insist, making my way back to the utility stairwell again.

  “We cannot go higher. The Apex’s Board lives up past here. Security needs to let us through.”

  “Like you need security to let you anywhere,” I chime back in reply, ignoring his warning. “The target is definitely up here.”

  “Do we have someone to spare to let security know we’re passing the 50th floor?”

  “Ashe, anyone within range?” asks Aster.

  “I got’cha.”

  “I’m a few streets away still. Any updates?” asks Nessa.

  “Continue. Nothing new yet.”

  I take the stairs two at a time as I continue my climb. In my shared vision with Pooka, I finally see the Lepus reach the highest level, a massive sky deck with covered lounge chairs and even a green clover lawn. The Lepus crosses the deck and puts her paws up against a window, peering into the living areas of a lavish apartment beyond.

  We swoop after, careful to remain airborne and hover far enough away that the small noises from the sweep of our wings will be lost in the echoes of the city below. The auditory acuity of the hare remains an unknown to us. I stumble on my step climbing the stairs and jar back to my human body a moment before refocusing my attention. Even with practice, I still find it complicated keeping tabs on us both when we are jointly active.

  A woman comes to the sliding glass doors by the balcony and opens them - potentially to catch an evening breeze. The Lepus does not hesitate and enters beneath the feet of the woman. It is then that I notice she has a packed bag that she lowers by the doorway.

  She might have been a plain if she were a free-man or serf, with short brown hair that hangs in her face as she bends down. But she has the same voluptuous figure as the men and women that were mingling in the lounges below after their meals, and a gorgeous sateen robe over her high-waisted dress marking her high status.

  Something about the curve of her belly looks proportionally a little different from the other women too, and when she crouches, she leans backwards slightly to help keep her balance, knees splaying to make room for the middle. A tiny avian symbiont perches on her shoulder, bright yellow with a white mask and short beak - a Serinus.

  “We have come, sweet loved one,” sings the Lepus, one paw lifting to touch the woman on her knee. The woman blindly fumbles, grabbing the foot with splayed hands. At first touch, her head tilts to look at her lap, and she lifts the foot slightly higher, her hands coming together and thumbs rubbing the invisible paw in her grip.

  “We must be quick. Are they far?” She begs in a hushed voice. “Soon my husband will be home from dinner. Please.”

  “Not far, not far. Soon we run.”

  “Yes, run. We must run quickly. They already know, I am sure of it.”

  The woman stands, brushing back her hair from her face. Her eyes are puffy and red. There is yellow mottling on her cheek spreading back from one eye, and a healing scab splits her upper lip.

  I gasp, halting in the stairwell and leaving Pooka to do a loop of the top of the tower again on patrol.

  “What’s wrong?” asks Rhett behind me.

  We need to save her.

  “We-” and a wave of fear chokes my words off before I can even voice them. The wound on my back is mostly closed already, the smallest of incisions that tugs when I bend, but suddenly it is the only sensation from my human body that I can feel. My heart races, and my knees threaten to give beneath me.

  Three thoughts crash within my mind against each other, paralyzing me as each screams for my attention.

  The first, we cannot fulfill this contract. We must fail somehow. I do not want to jump to conclusions about what might have caused those bruises, but being stolen seems to be a thing that she wants. She may even have asked them to come for her, given Apex seemed to know so much about the timing of this contract. This thought does not last long; it is simple in its clarity.

  And second, a memory of black. A thin puncture wound in my collar. Spasms in my stomach for days of anxiety that left me feeling sick after every meal, that linger still reminding me of how I felt when I first joined Aquila. The fear that it will happen again. Glances from others, fear in their eyes too. And the knowledge I have chosen myself over and over again, haunted by the question if I will do so now, again.

  The third thought comes with rage. Conversations one after another. Words spoken by cowards, who think they know the world because they have been hurt by it so many times their flesh no longer gives to its blades. Words from those who wear apathy as a shield, and exhaustion as a mask.

  Bloom.

  Words that claimed those broken by sacrifice should be given grace. What if said sacrifice is made for only yourself? Regina has never sacrificed; every drop of blood she has bled has been for herself, using others as her vehicle. There is no nobility in her suffering. I do not care if she has never slept a night in her life trying desperately to keep the contracts coming for Aquila. I do not care if she has given her body and mind and youth chasing her ambitions. Whether others eat or live in comfort doesn’t matter to her, they are the lies she tells herself to justify her own greed!

  What is the meaning of suffering… if it only perpetuates the cycle to another?

  Adrian tries nothing. He is practically complicit. He is complicit. He voted for my chains just as Regina and Owen did. He does nothing when he has so much power. He could be something more, and he chooses nothing. Then he tells himself that he is tired and numb to avoid having to learn to face his lack of choices.

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  Shake free your limbs of the heavy snow.

  A younger me might have immediately jumped into action. I am wiser now, tempered by growing experience. Adrian has my leash. He needs to be dealt with, but I know what makes him tick. I don’t quite know what will convince Rhett, but he has always cared about other people way more than I do. He needs to see this for himself.

  Rhett passes me on the stairs while I pause, peeking around the landing to scan above and below us. “Status?” he asks, only half paying attention to me.

  Suddenly, a single dot on the edge of my sensor catches my eye in my peripheral vision. They’re right at the range of the sensor, way out beyond the walls of the building. Too far to even be in the next building, if there were even any this tall beyond. Is it a bug?

  I peer at the label, and take a few steps to just below the landing. Rhett is taller than me with the help of a single step, he turns back to me, his curiosity piqued by my continued silence.

  Can felids fly?

  Pooka sweeps from his position close to the building, leaving the woman behind in favor of the night. We wing our way towards where the radar blip should be, if I still have my orientation right, which I may not, given the tight turns we’ve made climbing the stairwell. It does not take long for his keen vision to spot what the symbiont radar detected.

  The Caracal stands tall and proud, caramel-gold coat gleaming as it catches the lights of the city below, head lifted into the sky and ears forward. Faint sparks jump from its tufted ear-tips almost as if they were discharge from its intense concentration. Two humans are crouched just behind, seeming to stand on nothing as they float behind - Red, the Lepus host, and Yellow. As Pooka swoops closer, we make out a cast iron platform they are all standing on, vaguely elongated in its shape as if to cut through the air.

  The Caracal has lifted them all telekinetically! They’re floating through the dark, and with nothing to illuminate them for the people on the streets below to see, they blend into the night in a perfect camouflage. They must have come from the safehouse that Nessa left.

  “Green and Blue were just spotted at the back of the building. Ashe, Blake, on ‘em,” orders Aster in my ear.

  “It’s a distraction…” I mutter.

  “What?” asks Rhett, waiting in the dark stairwell with me.

  I clamp my hand across my mouth. “Nothing.”

  My mind races as Rhett withdraws from me, eyes so bright blue I can see them clearly even in the half-light. “What are you doing?”

  “I’m not doing anything.”

  “Stop lying to me,” he growls, the words tumbling out with a crack of sudden frustrated emotion.

  I’m torn. My mouth is dry, my heart races in my chest, my hands shake as I steady my screen mounted to the front of my armor. As I dart my eyes at the new dot, he sees me, and reaches out, tipping the screen downwards so he can see the radar clearly from the step above me.

  It only takes him a few seconds to put together what he sees. “There’s a symbiont in the air?” he whispers, far less incredulous than I was. “Team we’re on. It’s a distraction. They’re up here.”

  “No,” I gasp.

  “No?”

  “Nessa get up there, back them up,” orders Aster.

  “She wants to go. Please…”

  “She? Who?”

  “Come, you’ll see. Please.”

  “Conrada. Don’t make me the enemy I don’t want to be,” whispers Adrian in my ear.

  I bristle, sudden rage warming my cheeks in the dark. “Are you threatening me?”

  “If nothing else will work.”

  I push past Rhett, suddenly finding my second wind. “Do it then,” I challenge aloud to Adrian, calling what I know is a bluff. He’s never taken a real action in his life, preferring to pretend he doesn’t care and it’s not his business. “Don’t bother waking me up if you do. There are fates worse than death, anyway.”

  That comment leaves Rhett thoughtful as well, and he knits his brows together with concern. “You just told me off for joking about that.”

  “It’s not a joke. She wants to go, please. Rhett. See for yourself if you have to.”

  “What floor?”

  “Top floor. Penthouse suite.”

  “That’s the Apex Board Chair’s apartment. Do you mean one of his wives?”

  “I don’t know who she is.”

  He sucks his breath in between his teeth. “What did you see?”

  “She was… talking to herself. She knows the Covertus agents are here for her. She wants to go.”

  “It doesn’t work like that. We don’t get things just because we want them. She probably married into the Apex family to secure friendly business deals or as a trade. She’ll get used to it-”

  “She had a bruise on her cheek, Rhett.”

  He trails off. “It could be anything.”

  “And what if it’s not?”

  “That sort of behavior is against Apex company policy-”

  “You think a board member cares about company policy? Or that she can go to HR about something like this?” Rhett frowns as he seems to chew back his disapproval. It doesn’t seem directed at me, more so resignation at the truth of my words.

  “Who’d the contract come from, Adrian?”

  “Apex Board direct.”

  Rhett’s jaw rolls as he mulls over his thoughts, eyes darting upwards again to the next few floors. We’re only a few landings down. The penthouse apartment is merely meters away. I think he actually believes me.

  “You can’t help everyone.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because it has consequences. Prices to be paid. A price you might not be able to afford at the moment.”

  “I don’t need your help. I just need you to do nothing. Adrian? You gonna knock me out?”

  “I don’t know anything. Keep me out of it.” With a rush of victory that overwhelms the fear, I feel the Vespa on my ear take wing. Rhett cocks his head as his own does the same, the twin insects climbing into the air above our heads and circling.

  “Great, it’s my fucking decision,” mutters Rhett, kneading his forehead with the tips of his fingers.

  “Don’t act like you don’t care. You’re a big softie,” I say. My thrill of sudden hope can’t be contained, and I grin as I look back down at him, offering a hand back. “No one needs to know… we just failed on this mission. We’ll go watch, make sure she gets away safe. You can see for yourself.”

  “Aquila doesn’t fail,” replies Rhett, taking a step after me.

  “Maybe it’s time to try something new then.”

  Rhett pauses, fingers uncurling as he looks at my offered hand. He hides himself so well, but I can see the cogs turning when his eyes dart as he thinks. “Don’t make me regret this.” He lands his hand in my own, and I close my grip on his wrist to pull him after me.