| From: | Rand Ratinac docwagon101@*****.com |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Sweet Oblivion - Part 9 |
| Date: | Wed, 5 May 1999 00:42:59 -0700 (PDT) |
The last part of Sweet Oblivion.
Hope you've enjoyed it.
=========SWEET OBLIVION - Part 9
Shannon scratched her neck with a frown. It had taken a couple of days
for the melanin treatment to wear off and her hair still wasn’t back to
its true blond colour. Long, brown locks with honey-gold roots was not
exactly an inconspicuous look, so she didn’t want to be out much until
she got the chance to wash it out. Of course, her Johnson’s message had
said this was urgent and concerned the rest of her payment, so there
was no question of her missing the meeting.
As she had last time, she left her SAAB in the decrepit parking lot by
the Teacher warehouse. It had come through its previous experience
there none the worse for wear, so she supposed it would be safe enough
– safer than she would be, at least.
The interior of the warehouse was as dark as it had been on her first
visit. Even though she was waiting for it, the sudden appearance of
Frankie and his shadows made her jump. The big goon grinned as he
looked down at her. "Ooh, lookin’ tough, pretty lady," he commented.
Shannon sniffed. This time, instead of the dress she had worn
previously, she was clad in clothes much more appropriate for this part
of the sprawl. Tight jeans rode snugly on her hips and black leather
boots protected her feet. Shining steel plates capped their pointed
tips. Her thin, black T-shirt was stretched across her ample bust. A
dark grey, figure-hugging longcoat draped itself over her, pulling
tight at the waist, then spreading out to allow her legs a full range
of movement. The sleeves were pulled halfway up her arms and skintight,
palmless black gloves encased her hands. "Too tough for you, Frankie.
Now, your boss said he needs to see me…?"
Frankie frowned and his expression became impassive. "This way."
As Shannon followed the big man, his clones fell into step beside her.
She glanced up at them, but they stared ahead steadily. Their
mirrorshades prevented her from telling whether they were glancing at
her, but something told her they were not. The way they flanked her
made her feel more like a condemned woman than a business associate.
The unwelcome sensation made Shannon even more wary than before and she
began to look around unobtrusively, searching for any signs of a trap.
As before, however, the darkness was complete. That did not prevent her
enhanced hearing from catching the slight scrape of armoured feet
across concrete, nor her spatial recognition system from telling her
that, based on the relative direction and proliferation of the
footsteps, she was more or less surrounded. Her features became set in
stone as they walked.
Once again, Frankie deposited her in the middle of the warehouse.
Unlike last time, however, all three of the goons stayed with her,
although they did draw back slightly. A bright flash announced the
arrival of Frankie’s boss. This time, there was no majestic platform,
no gaudy throne. The mage’s expression was neither stern nor
foreboding. Instead, he wore a self-satisfied smirk that became
something sinister under the glow of his blue flame.
Shannon’s flat expression made it plain that she was not impressed.
"You wanted to talk to me." It was not a question.
"Ah, yes, Ms. Oblivion. Or may I call you Sweet?" The mage chuckled at
his witticism, but Shannon ignored it.
"You wanted to talk to me."
The mage cleared his throat and straightened his blazer, obviously
disgruntled by Shannon’s bluntness. "Yes, I’m afraid there’s a problem
with the rest of your payment."
"And that is?"
The mage frowned. "You know, you really take all the fun out of this."
"You’re breaking my heart."
"Very well, let me put it succinctly," the mage said. "As I said the
last time we met, I cannot afford to have anything linking me or my
people to this matter. Unfortunately, you know exactly what has taken
place – for obvious reasons – and could cause me considerable harm if
you decided to speak of our little venture. Therefore, your continued
existence has become an unnecessary complication." He glanced up at the
goons. "Frankie, would you be kind enough to kill Ms. Oblivion?"
Frankie’s answering grin was nothing short of vicious. "My pleasure,
boss," he said, slipping off his mirrorshades and tucking them in his
pocket. The three goons ranged themselves around Shannon, two drawing
rather nasty-looking knives. Frankie seemed content to rely on his
fists. That told Shannon that his skeleton had probably been reinforced
with some kind of lacing, giving him the ability to shatter bones with
his bare hands. Shannon slowly began to turn, never letting any of the
goons get behind her for more than a few seconds. Hands curling into
claws, her arms began to weave sinuous patterns around her body. The
black, carbide blades that slid silently from beneath her fingernails
and through the slits in the fingertips of her gloves went unnoticed.
"You know, Frankie, I really should give you a chance to surrender,"
Shannon said conversationally as she circled around to face the chief
goon again.
Frankie just laughed. "You’re very funny, you know? The only thing I
regret about this is that I can’t return the favour and entertain you
in bed before I kill you."
Shannon smirked and beckoned him closer. "Don’t worry about it,
Frankie. I’m sure I’ll get some laughs before we’re done."
The rush came without any warning. Frankie feinted at her, then pulled
back as his two compatriots leapt at her from behind. Shannon ducked
away, then her arms flashed in a blur of motion, her razors glistening
balefully in the reflected light of the mageflame. Scant seconds later,
she came back into a combat stance, facing Frankie once more. Behind
her the two goons lay on the ground, one screaming over the tattered
ruins of his face, the other coughing out what remained of his life
through the shredded hole in his throat.
Shannon’s smile was ominous as she beckoned Frankie forward again. The
bright blood shining on the blades and the fingertips of her gloves was
a sinister counterpoint to the pale flesh of her forearms. "Your turn,
Frankie," she whispered.
Frankie’s expression was slightly uncertain as he glanced across at
the mage. The mage, suddenly pale, waved him towards her frantically.
"Kill her, damn you, kill her!"
Frankie’s features hardened and he advanced on Shannon. "You heard the
man," he growled. "You’re gonna die, little lady. Now why don’t you
just stand still and make this easier on all of us?"
"Because I’m not as stupid as you, big ox."
Frankie snarled and rushed Shannon. One huge fist arced out over her
head as she ducked low. Before she could take advantage of the opening,
his left foot came around in a pounding stomp. Shannon was forced to
hop back to avoid having her knee shattered. As she did, however, her
own hand lashed out and gouged into his thigh. Frankie bellowed at the
sudden pain and came on again with a fist, elbow and knee combination.
Shannon dodged the blows, but stumbled as she did so, evidently
unbalanced by the rapid strikes. With a grimace of triumph, Frankie
clenched his fists together like a great club and brought them
whistling down in a thunderous hammerblow aimed at the top of her
skull.
Shannon swayed out of the way sure-footedly, then fired a
stiff-fingered jab into the bottom of Frankie’s jaw. The goon gurgled
loudly as her razors found their mark. He stumbled back, his hands
coming up to his throat as Shannon straightened. She rose to her full
height, then, gritting her teeth and setting her shoulders, she lifted.
Frankie’s neck arched backwards as his feet slowly, but surely came off
the ground. Shannon held the pose for long seconds in an amazing
display of strength, then smiled at the weakly kicking goon. "Oh,
didn’t I tell you, Frankie? I’m not really very good at boxing – but
I’m deadly with these."
Frankie’s great fists clenched and unclenched pitifully as he stared
at her with a pleading expression. "Please," he whispered through
clenched teeth.
Shannon frowned as the big man’s efforts pumped a fresh gout of blood
over her hand. Her muscles surged and she abruptly twisted her wrist
and ripped her razor claws free, along with most of Frankie’s trachea.
The goon’s body crumpled into a pathetic, lifeless heap as Shannon
flicked his blood from her glove and turned on the mage. "Next."
The mage’s horrified expression dissolved into manic desperation.
"Kill her!" he screeched, scrambling across the floor. "Kill her!" In
his panic, he dropped both the mageflame and darkness spells, revealing
the entirety of the warehouse to Shannon for the first time.
There wasn’t much to see. Even without the spell of darkness, the
warehouse was almost pitch-black. With the magic no longer affecting
her senses, however, the darkness was no impediment to her. Her
thermographic vision painted a picture of ten, a dozen, no, at least
twenty heavily armed figures clad in light military armour all around
her. The mage scampered to the rear of the warehouse where he lay in a
huddled mass as the first of his enforcers approached Shannon.
AK-97s filling their hands, the goons sighted in on her. Shannon
grimaced. She knew that at this range even the armour plating in her
longcoat and the Kevlar in her T-shirt wouldn’t stop an assault-rifle
on burst-fire or full automatic. Her right hand slipped inside her coat
and reemerged, clasping her Ares Predator. The grip of the pistol
warmed in her grasp as the smartlink II circuitry in it mated with the
induction pad implanted in her hand. A red dot swept across the visor
of the lead goon’s helmet in her vision. The goon, on the other hand,
took one look at her pistol and burst into laughter. "What are you
gonna do, throw that at me?" he chortled.
Shannon said nothing, took careful aim and fired. The goon was still
laughing when the APDS round punched through his faceplate and blew
most of his brains out the back of his helmet.
His partner loosed an enraged cry and lifted his assault rifle to his
shoulder. His first burst missed as Shannon threw herself to the side.
Rolling to her feet, she scrambled towards the thug as he lugged his
rifle around towards her again. Even as he squeezed the trigger a
second time, Shannon leapt gracefully into the air and the stream of
lead passed beneath her flying form. In the middle of her somersault,
Shannon lashed out with her left hand. The diamond-coated razors in her
fingertips punched through the softer ballistic armour under the goon’s
raised arm and tore downwards. Her victim was drawing breath to scream
as Shannon landed behind him and wrapped her left arm around his
throat. She yanked the weakly struggling man down towards her and
pressed her Predator against the base of his skull. The roar of the
weapon was deafening in the confines of the warehouse.
As the corpse crumpled to the ground and the warehouse erupted with
weapons-fire, Shannon sank down on one knee. She closed her eyes,
taking a few moments to activate the incredible assortment of cyber in
her head. Low-light vision superimposed itself over the thermal
signatures of her opponents; her rangefinder calculated and
recalculated the distances between herself and her targets. Hearing
amplification, high and low frequency hearing, spatial recognition –
the flood of information pouring in through her senses threatened to
overwhelm her for a moment. Then she activated the tactical computer
buried in her head and abandoned herself to the machine.
Using her enhanced senses, the computer searched the warehouse for
enemies. It marked them as it found them, tracking and predicting their
movements. It then accessed the floor plan of the derelict warehouse
loaded in Shannon’s orientation system and projected those movements
onto it. It was almost like a three-dimensional image of an overturned
ant farm as the enforcers scurried across the floor, firing wildly as
they moved. Shannon smoothly, calmly, watched the indicated movements
of the goons as they were projected onto her retinas, aimed the red dot
of her smartlink at the recommended target point and began to put them
down.
It was a slaughter more than a battle. Even in their heavy armour,
with their heavy weapons, the goons were no match for Shannon. She
fired like an automaton, ignoring the screams of the wounded and dying
men as they fell to the blood-slicked concrete. When they began to zero
in on her position, Shannon abandoned it for another one and kept
firing. She ranged through the building, slaying her enemies
mercilessly as she found them.
She was almost surprised when the firing ceased. Replacing her
half-empty clip with a fresh one, she looked around, listening
carefully for any signs of life. All she heard were the whimpering
moans and cries of dying men. Except…there. In the distance, fifty or
sixty metres away, behind her and to the left. The sound of shoes,
plain, unarmoured shoes, scraping across the ground as a man – the
mage! – tried to sneak away.
Shannon ghosted up on the mage. The first he knew of her presence was
when she safed her pistol with a loud click. The mage spun around in
terror. His hands came up and he began to gibber out a spell. His
concentration was ruined, however, as Shannon’s arm slammed down across
his own. Her arm continued up, snaking across the mage’s throat, and
clamped down, choking off his words. Her free hand came up before his
bulging eyes. Her razors slid out again and before he could move, she
plunged two of them into his eyes.
A bubbling shriek of absolute agony erupted from the mage’s throat. He
continued to scream as Shannon clicked her tongue reprovingly. "Oh,
that wasn’t very smart," she said. "You should really get a pair like
mine. Nothing but the finest metal, you know, so they don’t pop if they
get poked." She tightened her grip on his neck again, choking off his
cries. "Do be quiet." She paused, then smiled. "You know, you can’t
cast any spells at me now that you can’t see me, can you?" She shook
her head again. "Big mistake not getting the old eyeballs replaced.
Tell me, does it hurt a lot?"
The mage gasped and squeezed his ruined eyes shut. "Why?" he moaned.
Shannon frowned. "People seem to be asking me that a lot, lately.
Anthony wanted to know why I was killing him," she said, her voice
wistful. "I expect you want to know why I don’t just kill you. Let me
put it this way. I don’t like you. I didn’t like you much when I first
met you. Then you hired me to kill Anthony. Anthony was nice. I liked
Anthony – but I still killed him, because that’s what you were paying
me to do. So that made me dislike you even more. Now, you tried to kill
me just a few minutes ago. Tell me, how do you think that’s going to
make me feel about you?"
"Please." The mage’s voice was weaker. "You don’t understand. It was
just business. My boss told me that I couldn’t leave any loose ends."
"Ah yes, your boss. That’s a funny thing. You know, while I was
checking out your data on Anthony, I did some digging of my own. Did
you know that Anthony’s last name was Bigio? That he was the nephew of
Maurice Bigio, the new Don of Seattle? I’m sure you did. So that got me
thinking. Who would want to kill the nephew of the Mafia’s top dog in
Seattle, and why? Well, to cut a long story short, what I turned up
told me that you and your boys are Mafia too. I guess you wanted to
send a message to Bigio, hmmm? Or maybe fan the embers of the mob war
that’s been going on? What was this supposed to be made to look like, a
Yakuza attack? I’m sure that would have gotten Bigio’s attention.
"That’s not important though. You see, the only thing I couldn’t
figure out is who – who exactly you are? Ciarniello? Finnigan? Maybe
even a disgruntled member of the Bigio family itself?" Shannon smiled
tightly and squeezed the mage’s neck again. "Let me make it easier for
you. Tell me who you work for and I might let you live."
The mage clamped his mouth shut and refused to answer until Shannon
slowly dragged her hand razors across his face, bringing bright spots
of blood to his skin. "Ciarniello," he whispered despairingly.
"You wouldn’t be lying to me, would you?" This time Shannon sliced a
tiny incision into the flesh of his neck.
"No, no! I swear to you, I work for the Ciarniellos!"
"Hmmm…lucky Finnigans, I guess. I suppose I’ll have to take up the
matter of my reparation with your boss. I think my fee’s just gone up."
"Please…will you let me go now?"
"Ah, I don’t think so. You see, I really don’t like you." The mage was
just beginning to struggle as Shannon’s razors tore out his throat. She
released him and his unmoving body slumped to the ground.
Squatting beside the corpse, Shannon carefully cleaned her hand razors
on its clothes. As the blades retracted, she paused, then reached out a
hand and rested it on the mage’s body. I’m sorry, Anthony.
Shannon stood and walked from the once again abandoned warehouse.
==Doc'
(aka Mr. Freaky Big, Super-Dynamic Troll of Tomorrow)
.sig Sauer
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