Chemical Burn Read online

  A Minor Secret

  The old me took over, and my conscience dissolved into fiery ash. I smiled, savoring the feel of the predator I was designed to be. Nothing remained but the hard-wired desire to eradicate the target. It was time to play.

  The instant the car came to a stop, I rolled over Natalia, grabbed the door handle, and opened it a crack. I heard Victor’s door open. A second later, the bark of a Kalashnikov filled the night as Victor fired at the SUV. I peered through the crack of the door and saw several rain-hazed shadows dive for cover. Sparks from Victor’s gunfire spattered across the side of the SUV, and I turned to Natalia as she got to her knees.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes,” she replied calmly.

  “When I say go, follow me out the door straight ahead, through the doorway, and into the kitchen.”

  “Wait,” she urged.

  “What?” I was impatient, hungry for the kill.

  She shifted her body around me to the back seat and hit a panel underneath the back seat. It flopped open revealing several weapons.

  “Here, take this,” she said, offering me a Glock .40.

  “I don’t like guns.”

  “What?” she said shocked.

  “I don’t like guns. They’re not any fun.”

  She stared at me in disbelief, blinking slowly.

  “Suit yourself,” she said finally, shaking her head as she reached in again. “I do,” she added as she slipped the Glock onto the back of her belt and grabbed a Kalashnikov. She removed her suit-jacket and shoes. “Is there any broken glass out there?”

  I quickly lifted my head over the window frame and looked at the ground between the car and the kitchen.

  “No. A few boards, some splinters of wood. I don’t see any nails sticking up either.”

  “Good.”

  Machine gun fire rattled off of the back of the car. Victor’s Kalashnikov erupted again, pinning down our assailants.

  “GO!” I hissed as I opened the door. Placing my foot on the doorframe, I leapt like a cat, spanning the eight feet to the kitchen doorway without touching the ground. Natalia peeked out the door, saw it was clear, and rolled out. She came up in a crouch, laying down a burst of suppressing fire with the Kalashnikov as she ran. Victor saw her make the dash and opened up with two fast bursts. Bullets sprayed out into the night, bouncing off the SUV and forcing several of our assailants back into cover. I turned in the doorway and watched Natalia cross the short distance like a commando, obviously combat-trained.

  “Victor! MOVE IT!” I yelled.

  Natalia spun around in the doorway, kneeling below me. She flipped the selector of the rifle to single-shot and aimed out the shattered front doorway.

  Victor rolled over the hood of the car, using it for cover, and dropped behind the door I’d left open. I could see him favoring his left leg. Wedging the barrel in the crease between the door and body of the car, Victor aimed another burst of suppressing fire into the street and then bolted towards us.

  Just as he started to move, I saw three shadows pop up from their cover and take aim.

  Crack! Crack! Natalia’s rifle barked. One shadow dropped where he stood, and the other spun off behind a tree. The third opened fire on full auto and sent a hailstorm of bullets into Victor’s path. He spun around like a top. The Kalashnikov flew from his hands and sailed off deeper into the house with a loud clatter. He dropped limply, face down at Natalia’s feet, his head and arms flung through the doorway. There was blood everywhere. Natalia looked down at the prone body but said nothing. She fired three more rounds into the street to keep the gunmen pinned down.

  I bent down, grabbed one of Victor’s arms, and dragged him quickly inside. As I pulled, Victor’s coat and shirtsleeves slid back, and I noticed a black tattoo on his wrist:

  I rolled Victor’s body over onto his back, revealing a hopeless reality. With rounds through his neck and head, he was dead before he hit the ground.

  “Leave him,” Natalia said when she turned and saw her driver. I picked up no emotion at all: not sadness, regret, shock … nothing. Victor was just a body to her. I filed that little fact away along with the others.

  “Where to now?” she asked as she flipped the double banana clip around in her rifle. She switched the selector back to full auto as gunfire came through the front doorway again, sending chunks of plaster flying from the thick, adobe-spackled walls.

  “Downstairs,” I whispered, nodding my head towards a door at the back of the kitchen.

  Natalia stuck the barrel of the rifle around the corner and, taking one quick peek, unloaded a long burst outside without looking. She heard the satisfying yelp of a man catching a piece of the burst, and we both enjoyed the sound of his screaming.

  “Nice shot,” I said, grinning.

  “Thank you, but won’t we be cornered down there?” she whispered.

  “No,” I said confidently.

  Making sure we were behind the counter, I reached into an inner pocket and pulled out a baseball-sized sphere. Translucent, like smoky glass, it had a seam down the middle and two small black rectangles embedded in the center. With a twist, the two halves came apart and, holding up the first, I pressed a few times on the small, black control. I caught Natalia looking at it, but she couldn’t possibly recognize the characters. I set the device to double-trigger, quarter-second and placed it at knee-level on the kitchen-island facing the doorway. Clicking on the readout of the second half, I set it to quad-trigger, four-second and placed it directly below the first one.

  Natalia got a confused look on her face when I grabbed a bag of potato chips off the counter, tore it open, and emptied the bag on the floor just inside the doorway. Chips scattered across the tiles and over Victor’s body. I wish I could have captured the baffled look on her face as I tossed the empty bag on the counter.

  Through the downpour, I heard someone run across the yard and take cover behind the limousine.

  “Move. Through and down,” I said quickly, pointing towards the door at the back of the kitchen with my thumb.

  Natalia ran without hesitating, crouching as she skirted around the island and scuttled to the back door leading downstairs. She reached the door, silently opened it, and bolted down the stairs, her bare feet making almost no sound at all.

  She’s good, I thought. Definitely combat trained.

  I straightened up, turned, and walked casually back towards the door to the basement. As I rounded the corner of the kitchen island, I heard a man rush up against the wall outside and then a rustle as he quickly peeked around the corner and drew back.

  “One …” I said, counting the motions in front of the burner as I closed my eyes and walked towards the basement door.

  The gunman, seeing my exposed back, took the bait hook, line, and sinker. I could almost see it in my head. He came around the corner, the second motion in the doorway triggering the first of my devices. In the quarter-second it took for the barrel to traverse from straight up to just shy of drawing a bead on me, the device I’d placed—called a burner—cooked off. An intense, metallic hissing sound filled the room, like magnesium burning. The kitchen burned with an impossibly bright light and intense heat, and the blast-wave hit the poor bastard square in the face. It cooked his skin, fused his eyelids open, and burned out his eyes. His clothes ignited as well. I knew because I’d seen it before. Many times.

  “Two.” I smiled wickedly. The gun clattered to the floor, and the man screamed in agony.

  “Mamma mia!” another gunman yelled from out near the limousine. I paused in the doorway as the burning man rolled around in the foyer, his cries pitiful. But I have no pity for men like him. Neither did his friends apparently, since they didn’t seem interested in putting him out. Instead they choose to watch his polyester clothing burn and melt into his skin. I stood in the doorway, waiting for them.

  Natalia stood at the bottom of the stairs, her body hidden behind a wall as she aimed the Glock up the stairwell. “What are you doing?�
�� she hissed.

  I looked at her calmly, pressed a finger to my lips to quiet her, and gave a reassuring I-have-everything-under-control look … which I did.

  I turned back to the kitchen to see another man peek around the corner and disappear. The heat of the first burner had charred a wide, black circle around the doorway, and the paper of a hanging notepad still burned.

  “Three,” I said to myself and headed down the stairs calmly whistling a few bars of “Singing in the Rain.” I pictured the next few seconds in my head. The gunman waited a few seconds to make sure there wasn’t another bomb. He’d certainly been horrified by what happened to his partner, and the timing between the glance and the first cook-off had been almost instant. When nothing happened, he moved through the doorway.

  I heard potato chips crunching under his feet.

  “Shit!” he blurted.

  I knew exactly where he was, the timing working out perfectly.

  He moved over Victor’s lifeless body, chips crunching with each step, and slipped into the corner of the kitchen. He probably had is back against the charred wall and his gun barrel held steady at waist level, pointed at the stairwell. If he had any brains, he’d be crouching to keep as much of the island between him and the door as possible, for all the good it was about to do him.

  “Four,” I said for the last motion trigger. Then I started counting seconds. “One …”

  “It’s clear,” he hissed. I heard a second pair of footsteps hit the potato chips. The second guy probably didn’t even register the sound his feet made as he moved. With that much adrenaline, focus can be both a friend and an enemy. Gunfights are like that.

  “Two …” I continued, looking down at Rachel and smiling.

  “They’re downstairs,” the first gunmen whispered. I heard their feet still shuffling across the chips.

  “Three …” My smile turned to vicious delight. I strolled to the bottom of the stairs, cool as a cucumber. “Four,” I said and looked up at the ceiling above me, waiting for the inevitable.

  A second metallic hiss erupted from the kitchen, and the stairwell was bathed with the acidic glow of bright light. Natalia and I heard the two men erupt into screams.

  She looked at me with a half-impressed, half-horrified look on her face. “What the hell are those things?” she asked, incredulous.

  “Oh … nothing,” I said and shrugged innocently. “I think those boys have probably had enough, but we should get going just the same. The cops have got to be on the way, although the rain and traffic will slow them down. I hope they bring a fire engine or two,” I said, a bit embarrassed. I felt kind of bad about what I’d done to Xen’s kitchen.

  I pulled off my shoes and left them at the base of the stairs. I looked up and saw both of our footprints coming down, outlined in Victor’s blood.

  “Wipe your feet,” I said.

  Natalia looked down and realized that the bottoms of her feet were covered. She wiped them back and forth on the carpet, stretching her toes to clean them.

  I walked across the main area of the basement—a nicely appointed home-theater—and stopped at a door in the corner. Natalia backed away from the base of the stairs, her Glock raised in one hand and the Kalashnikov held over her shoulder with the other. She kept looking down occasionally to make sure she wasn’t leaving a trail. We could both hear all three burning men still screaming.

  “Where are we going?” she asked over her shoulder.

  “This way,” I said with a friendly smile on my face. I opened the door and motioned for her to go in.

  “That’s a closet, Mister Case,” she said dryly as she stepped in. I found it interesting that she already knew that, and I stacked the fact on top of the others in my head. She pressed back some dusty ski-jackets and pants, crouching slightly to get under the shelf and clothes-bar inside.

  “Of course it is,” I replied calmly as I stepped in and closed the door behind me. The small closet was pitch-black. I could feel her leaning up against me, bent at an awkward angle. Even sweaty as she was, she smelled fantastic. I raised my hand, accidentally brushing up against her breast as I did.

  “Hey …” she said.

  “Sorry,” I half-apologized as I slid my hand along the top of the doorjamb. I pressed a recessed button hidden there. We heard a loud click, and a seam of pale light appeared at the back of the closet. I shifted around her and pushed open a door.

  “After you,” I said gallantly.

  “How did you know…?” she started.

  “I built it,” I said before she could finish the question. I could feel my conscience slipping back into place as the predator faded back into the depths where I keep him.

  Natalia slid between the jackets and stepped into a passage that looked to be made of smooth, gray plastic. Four florescent lamps were spaced evenly down its hundred-foot length. My foot bumped into something as I stepped through the back door of the closet. I looked down and saw a pair of small running shoes. It occurred to me that Xen and Natalia were about the same size.

  “Hey,” I said, reaching down to pick up the shoes. “These may fit.”

  I held the shoes out to her and pushed the door closed behind me with a click. She leaned the rifle against the wall. “It’s empty,” she said as she stuck the Glock in her belt, dropped the shoes on the floor, and quickly put them on.

  “Leave the rifle. I’ll come back for it later.”

  Natalia finished lacing up the shoes. “A bit loose, but passable,” she said. “Thank you, Mister Case.”

  “After what we just went through … call me Justin.”

  “Justin,” she started, “how could you possibly build this?”

  “I have a lot of tools,” I answered evasively. I strolled down the passage, and Natalia followed close behind, the Glock back in her hand. Another doorway stood at the far end of the hallway. Beyond the door lay a tight, spiral staircase going up. I flipped a light switch on the wall, but nothing happened that Natalia could see.

  We walked up the stairs, and I pushed open a trapdoor in the ceiling. We stepped up into a well-lit laundry room with a wide sink, a washer-dryer set, and a row of paneled closets. I’d bolted a tall laundry basket to the top of the trap door. As I closed the door, the seams of it were partly covered by the edges of the basket.

  “Clever,” Natalia said. “Whose house is this?”

  “It’s one of mine,” I said simply.

  From the laundry room we stepped out into a stone-tiled living room with floor-to-ceiling glass along one wall facing out onto a swimming pool. Widely spaced leather furniture made a wide conversation pit on one side, and a dining area lay beyond. Natalia yawned and stretched her arms out.

  “Adrenaline wearing off?” I asked her.

  “I believe it is,” she said a little tiredly.

  “Do you need to be anywhere tonight? This place is about as safe as it gets. You can stay till morning.”

  “How many bedrooms,” she asked suspiciously.

  “Four,” I said grinning. I knew a closed door when I heard one, although I wasn’t interested in trying to open it. Rachel’s face leapt into my mind, which caught me by surprise. I also had too much respect for Xen to try something like that. Although she didn’t show it, I suspected she was truly grieving over his death.

  “You need anything to eat or drink?” I asked.

  “No thank you. Where am I going?”

  “Down that hall,” I indicated the one on the far side of the main room past the dining area. “Do you prefer regular, foam, or waterbed?” I asked.

  “Foam. Why?”

  “Last door on the right. All the doors have locks on them,” I said and smiled.

  “Good night, Justin.”

  “Good night.”

  She walked towards the bedroom, and I headed down an opposite hallway that bordered the open-air kitchen. I entered my bedroom and locked the door behind me, reveling in the blast of 100-degree air that washed over me. Reaching into my pocket, I pul
led out my cell phone and typed in “safe—don’t worry—everything under control.” I hit SEND, and the cryptic message shot off to Rachel’s phone. I was too tired to give her the whole story, and besides, the story wasn’t over yet. I lay down flat on my back on top of the covers, closed my eyes and didn’t move for six hours.

  O O O

  I woke up at three-thirty a.m., totally alert. There were no more sirens at Xen’s house, but I could see the red and white flicker of emergency vehicle lights reflecting off the houses. The helicopters were gone as well, the neighborhood finally quiet. I rolled out of bed and went over to the large, sliding glass doors that opened onto my patio and pool. Flipping the latch, I slid them open and stood naked in the moonlight, letting the cool air slide over my body. The sound of the fountain outside the door soothed me.

  “Terminal,” I said over my shoulder. A panel folded out of the wall opposite my bed, revealing a pair of large computer screens and a small keyboard that I almost never used. I turned back into the room, leaving the doors open, and walked over to the panel. It sat at a perfect height to allow me to stand and work. I reached into a slim, tall nook between the two screens and pulled out a thin, silver circlet of metal. It slipped on easily, resting gently around my forehead.

  “Power.” Both screens came to life, revealing images of a green logo surrounded by symbols in my own language. As it was a client terminal, the system automatically connected to my mainframe. “Search: keyword SolCon,” I said.

  Boxes of data appeared, instantly filling the screens. On the left SolCon’s corporate Internet website appeared: on the right, a listing of connect points that included usernames, IP addresses and the geographic areas where they were registered. The perimeter of each box had strings of characters in the same language as the logo.

  “Scroll right, use left,” I said, and the listing on the right began scrolling upwards quickly, faster than a human eye could follow. My eyes flickered back and forth between the two screens. When I blinked on a word or symbol on either screen, it would flash red and transition to the data behind the link.

  Images, articles, reports, user data, and financials flashed across both screens as I absorbed data at an inhuman rate. My eyes bounced back and forth, digging into various facets of SolCon’s business, employees, and corporate partners. If the data was out there and connected to a system, I could get at it, and my mainframe could hack through most of the puny human security protocols it encountered.