Stiltwalker

The sudden stop set my teeth rattling. Any landing you can walk away from is all well and good, I'd just as soon use a parachute instead of these drop pods. My gear managed to come through the trip all right, but I'll never get used to the mask gripping my face like an over eager calamari.

The waypoint clicked on in my HUD, and all I have to do is follow the arrow. I readied my rifle, and took a peek down the hall. The whole block should be abandoned, but a drop pod crashing through an apartment building would draw attention. The last thing I need right now, I thought as I let the muzzle of my silenced pistol lead the way.

The stairwell was clear; so clear even the stairs had vacated. That left either the fire escape or the elevator shaft. I wasn't about to hang my bum out the window for some sentry with a sense of humor.

It took a second to pry the elevator doors open, another to secure the magnetic clamp, and five more to hook the line to my belt. The mask switched to light amplification in the darkness of the shaft, and I started walking carefully down the side.

I was halfway to the bottom when lights suddenly flashed on, blinding me before the filter kicked in. A sudden buzzing from overhead announced that power had returned to the elevator motors, and I looked up to see the car approach from the top floor.

No time for finesse, I slipped the tension on the line, falling fast. Not fast enough, the car crushed the clamp that was secured to the shaft, and my line was stuck, snapping me up a few feet at the sudden stop. Not thinking, I drew my knife and cut the cord, falling the rest of the way down.

The fall wasn't enough to kill me, but I couldn't put any weight on my right leg without it screaming at me. And the elevator was still coming. I dragged myself over to an access hatch, but found it locked. With no time to use my picks, I pressed the muzzle of my gun against the lock and fired, shattering the suppressor, but opening the hatch, giving me enough time for another graceful spill ten feet into the basement before the elevator stopped at the ground floor.

Footsteps came to me from above, and I listened to them exit through the lobby. In the meantime, I found the splint collars in my pack and secured one around my thigh and another around my calf. The nano-fiber sheath did the rest, better than a knee brace. Going from the biometric feed my mask received from the splints it was just a mild sprain and some mirco fractures. Nothing some painkillers and a shot back at the base wouldn't cure. Until then...

I got to my feet and limped over to a service door. Most of the buildings were interconnected. The line I needed led directly to an abandoned metro station, and once there I found the four wheeler left behind by the last team. It had a low charge, just enough to get me there. Getting back will have to be improvised.

It failed on me five blocks from the waypoint. I was tempted to shoot it just to put it out of it's misery. That was when I remembered the damaged suppressor. Unscrewing it from the barrel, I tossed it aside and hoped I wouldn't need it later. Not that I planned on doing any shooting with a handgun today.

My leg had stiffened up on me when I got to the next metro station. Intel was right for once, the place was still abandoned. I massaged my leg a moment and climbed up onto the platform, my mask casting the place in an odd light from visual enhancement.

The sound meter spiked on my HUD, and I brought my sidearm up, sweeping the area. Nothing. I didn't hear a thing, but my mask did. Must be getting skittish in my old age.

The stairs led me up to a brick wall, the station having been sealed off decades before. Nothing I wasn't prepared for, though I'm always jittery about using the spray can. I'm always jittery about using something that can eat through a steel girder in half a minute. Particularly in a place this structuraly unsound.

Making sure my gloves were well sealed, I held the can up, sweeping in a circular pattern as I sprayed. I didn't breath until I was a good twenty feet away even though tech said minimum safe distance was three feet. In twenty seconds I saw daylight, and a pile of red brick dust on the floor. I gingerly stepped through the opening and climbed up the stairs to the street.

Or at least to the storm drain. Even so, the roar of the crowd had an almost physical force as I peeked through the grating to the stage set in the middle of the street, right in front of Federal Hall. The crowd was separated from the stage by a hundred feet, leaving my view clear in spite of being underground. From there, I could see plenty.

The crowd was kept in check by security agents, their uniforms a sky blue shirt with Navy trousers. They looked more like mall cops than ex-military private security contractors. A conscious effort to make them look less imposing to the TV cameras, mayhaps? The protestors didn't seem any less angry at their presence, but the most they did was shout and wave signs.

Then she appeared, and the crowd went wild once more. Senator Danielle Cramer, the latest politico to push for a "restructured" network. And to think she was once a major CEO for a telecommunications company. I voted for the other guy when she shared an anecdote about changing the passwords on her webs. But personal bias doesn't matter when I'm on the job.

I set the scope on my rifle, letting the mask do most of the work. Satellite feed shows the rooftops clear of threats, I just had to keep an eye on things until the end of the speech. Then things were going to get interesting.

It was almost lost in the noise in the crowd, but the quick tapping of footsteps met my ears, and I turned in time to take a kick in the side. The carbon fiber spring blade had more punch than a mule, granting my otherwise slim assailant enough force to send me against the far wall.

I reached for my sidearm, and hesitated, nearly earning a spring blade in my face as she followed up with another kick, puncturing the wall. A gunshot this soon would be noticed, especially with my suppressor gone, I thought as I tumbled away. My leg gave out on me, dropping me to a knee as I drew a knife.

I guessed her to be about five six, not counting the spring stilts. She couldn't have been ninety pounds, but her suit was skin tight, showing every curve and ripple to it's full effect. Right down to the shape of her knickers and cybernetic enhancements. Including artificial muscle fibers molded to her legs.

She leaped at me, and I dodged the kick, but only just, grasping her leg. I hated throwing her against the wall, but at least I didn't have to look at her with a visor covering her face. She recovered fast, and I ducked another kick to slash at a tendon. My blade glanced along her boot, missing it's mark, and I was sent backward with the next kick.

I couldn't take much more of this, especially with a bum leg. I pressed the button on my blade, hearing it charge with a piercing whine. At her next attack, I caught her leg once more, bruising a rib from her kick, and jammed the blade into her thigh. She screamed. She did so again when I pulled the trigger in the ring on my blade.

It didn't have too big a charge, but it was enough to overload her cybernetics. It wasn't too pleasant for me either, but my mask was shielded. Aside from a few muscle spasms, I was none the worse for what was already worn.

With the grasshopper down, I crawled over to my rifle, and lifted it, peering through the scope at the Senator. She was at the end of her speech, and my mask fed me current satellite data on wind speed and direction. I aimed a little above her right eyebrow, and as she turned, fired.

It was a tight shot, but a window behind her rippled, and a new hole appeared right where that thermal scan said he was. From this angle, my shot hit an assassin lying in wait on the third floor of the office building a block away from the Senator. Why they wouldn't allow me to approach and engage up close is beyond me, but I had a feeling the answer may lie with grasshopper here.

As I said, she was thin, covered from neck to toe in a white body sheathe that left little to the imagination. The only bit of color was the brilliant red hair that trailed from behind her visor, drawn back in a tight braid. Aside from the artificial muscle fibers, my mask picked up micro filaments that traced along her skin. They met at a control unit at the base of her neck, and I was surprised by the logo there. I brought up the images from the crowd and compared it to the security logo. It was a match.

I filed those away for later and examined the data port on the control unit. Feeling her data might come in handy, I stashed her card in a belt pouch and pressed the catch on her visor. It fell away, clattering on the ground, and I suddenly felt a little self-conscious. 

Her skin had a sickly pallor, making her freckles and the subtle pink of her lips stand out. A side effect from her enhancements? Going by her blue eyes that peeked from between her half-closed lids, and the aforementioned freckles, she certainly wasn't an albino. She couldn't have been older than twenty-five. She might have been as young as eighteen.

She had a pulse and was still breathing. I set her down as gently as possible and packed up my gear. I tried to stifle a question, but it came to mind unbidden. Why? Irrelevant. The fact that she's young and pretty has no bearing on the life that brought her to this point. She made her choices, maybe right maybe wrong. It would be disrespectful to feel remorse for my actions, chivalry be damned.

 I left a GPS marker for an extraction team anyway. Maybe they can make her an offer. Saving souls is beyond my pay grade, but anything is possible. Hobbling back to the rail station, I started the long walk to the dust off site, seeing no light at the end of my tunnel.