30. A Waking Nightmare

30 – A Waking Nightmare

Alright, Evie. What floor is she on?

//The ground floor.//

Oh. Why am I in the stairwell? Evie didn’t answer; the question was rhetorical, and she knew it. Hector had gone into the stairwell to give that woman and her nanny-bot the impression that he was about to climb up to the fifth floor. He glanced at his mini-map, and sure enough, Evie had filled in a dotted line that would lead him out into the lobby, around a corner, and then to the last door at the end of a long hallway.

As he pulled open the stairwell door, he glanced left and right, past the row of tenant mailboxes and the scattered bits of trash on the stained, dusty tile floor. Nobody was around. Go ahead and fire up the jammer. If those guys are watching her place, they might be close by.

He heard a faint ringing in his ears—the jammer interfering with his auditory implants—but Evie tuned it out as he slipped through the door into the lobby. Following his mini-map, he walked past the mailboxes and turned left at the corner, walking down a long, dimly lit corridor. Apartment doors lined the walls, the gap between them more generous than in the housing stacks back in Helio. It seemed that being in the middle of nowhere was a net-positive when it came to apartment size.

He was padding down the hallway, passing by the apartment before his objective, when he heard a thud and a muffled voice through the thin door. He paused and mentally asked Evie to increase the gain on his ears. The voice was still muffled, but Evie was clever, and she filtered the interference and sharpened the vocal tones enough for him to make out some words:

“…cam feed went all fuzzy.”

Hector held his breath, moving closer to the wall, just before the door. Is it gonna be this easy?

“That guy from the lobby, you think?” This voice was easier to discern—nasally and higher-pitched, though still masculine.

“…right size…face covered.”

Hector slowly blew out his breath, weighing his options. There was a good chance the two mercs—he hoped it was only two—would investigate. They were probably already trying comms and finding interference. He had to consider that they might have optics that could detect him through the wall, so lying in wait might not be the best move.

Between the space of two heartbeats, he calculated as many variables as he could think of: the availability of decent cybernetic equipment on Mars, how wealthy the men’s employer was, what they were doing in the building, and how they intended to observe. Hector decided he had to act.

He took a step away from the wall, pivoted on his left foot, and sent a surge of four aura into his Strength Boost. As his body erupted with a crimson glow and he seemed to swell, Hector smashed his right boot into the door beside the latch. The pressed-plastic and paper-fiber door split around the latch and flew open, slamming into the wall to the right. Hector charged through and took in the scene at a glance.

It was pretty much what he’d imagined. A one-way screen covered the window, letting a high-end camera see the street clearly. A single bed sat against one wall, its gray blanket tucked tight enough to bounce a bullet casing. Foodstuffs lined the narrow kitchen counter. A rifle with a suppressor and a tripod lay on the floor near the window.

At the center of the room was a card table, its top covered with a mess of puzzle pieces and a crystal-glass tablet. And, sitting at the table, quickly stealing Hector’s focus, were two bulky men in very different states of readiness.

One man, pale-skinned and bald, held a fat pistol in one hand, its magazine in another, and he looked at Hector with wide, startled eyes as he moved to slam the magazine into the gun. The other merc was shirtless, leaning over to pull on his shoes, and fell forward out of his chair as Hector burst into the room.

Strength still boosted, Hector kicked off the wall, sending himself hurtling toward the man with the gun. He twisted in the air, tracking the barrel’s trajectory as the merc’s thick finger hammered the trigger down. Hot lead snapped through the air, so close that Hector felt the pull of the air as it hurtled past his face. Then he slammed into the guy and, as they crashed to the floor, mangling the chair beneath them, he knocked the gun out of the merc’s hand.

Hector knew that every fraction of a second counted; the other guy, surprised as he was, was behind him, and that wasn’t any kind of position he wanted to be in. He grappled with his initial target, but as his Strength Boost faded, Hector’s lanky, youthful body put him out of his depth. The man was a bruiser with boulder-like shoulders and arms built by throwing around massive weights.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.