“Yeah, mate, you’re gonna ’ave a lovely bruise. Also a nice little souvenir an’ a story to dine out on once we’re finished ’ere.”
I’ve been shot, I realize, but the body armor worked. Okay, that and I’m blind. With a massive effort of will I withdraw from the odd corner of my attention that I’ve been locked into, and force myself to open my physical eyes again. “Whoo,” I gasp. “Johnny, there’s a host-mother stashed about thirty meters thataway. Mooks are guarding it and I’ve got a, a sense that it’s concealed storage. They were setting up to pincer us from above and below. They’ve got guns—”
“We’d noticed,” he says drily. “You comin’?”
“Got to: if we don’t nail the mother it’ll summon all its offspring, and it’s rooted the airport police…”
TEN
A VERY BRITISH COUP
Being a PHANG, Mhari has blindingly fast reflexes and superhuman strength, and during her time with the Transhuman Police Coordination Force she got regular workouts and practical self-defense training, thanks to the police college at Hendon. It’s a habit she’s kept up, because even though she doesn’t have much time for super-heroics she’s come to appreciate a good workout. So she’s out of the kitchen door before Persephone has finished speaking; she bounces off the living room wall and spins through into the master suite, pulls the door closed behind her (cushioning it at the last instant), and skids to a stop in front of the mirrored doors of the floor-to-ceiling walk-in wardrobe.
“Fuck! Hide. Where?” Her palms are damp, and she forces herself to slow down, reaching for the rail rather than shoving the door aside by hand—it wouldn’t do to leave a sweaty handprint in the middle of the polished surface. She slides it to one side and confronts a hanging wall of a male occupant’s suits and shirts. Below them, suitcases. She cranes her neck back. There’s a shelf, about two meters up, entirely suitable for boxes—and it’s empty except for a couple of spare pillows in plastic storage bags. “Perfect.” She reaches up, gives a tentative tug to check that it can take her weight, then pulls herself up by her fingertips, rolls smoothly onto the shelf, and slides the door shut behind her.
It’s the work of a couple of seconds to squeeze behind the bagged-up pillows and excavate just enough space between them to breathe, hear—and if the door opens again, to see what’s going on. Then she gets comfortable, and waits.
Doors bang and more than one pair of heavy boots thud across the lobby. There are no shouts of alarm or other signs that the arrivals have seen Persephone. But after a few seconds the sound of heavy breathing and muffled swearing filters through the barricade as someone opens the bedroom door. It sounds like they’re dragging a sack of potatoes with them. “Over … on the bed. Carefully, don’t drop her.”
The bed in Schiller’s room has a memory foam mattress so there are no springs to squeak, but the muffled thud of someone depositing a heavy load reaches Mhari’s sensitive ears. She waits, heart in mouth, for their next move. Shouldn’t they have searched the flat first? she wonders. Schiller’s goons are sloppy, to be so trusting of a burglar alarm. Gary blocked the suite alarm system between the control panel and the outside world using the StingRay—intercepting the high-end burglar alarm’s GSM modem was about the only thing the box of tricks was good for—and once she got inside, Persephone installed a dodgy firmware upgrade on the in-room control panel. That sort of thing is above and beyond the call of duty for regular burglars, but even so, it’s still poor practice for security guards to believe the story the alarm head unit is telling them.
“That’s harder than it looks in the movies.” A younger voice, male. There’s something odd about it, a flatness of affect.
“Put her in the recovery position while I prep her,” says the other man—older, gravelly voice—then the wardrobe door nearest Mhari’s feet slides open without warning. She manages not to flinch as halogen light floods in. Her lower legs and feet aren’t concealed, but she’s far enough back on the upper shelf that unless he looks up, above head height, he won’t spot her. And indeed gravel-voice does not look up. Instead, he pulls out one of the drawers from the storage unit adjacent to the suit rail and rummages around. A silvery clattering tells Mhari that he’s after the bondage gear, and she dry-swallows, choking back rising bile. “Yes, like that. Wrists behind her. Ankles, like so.” More clanking of fetters. “No, not the ball gag—use the bridle instead. If you obstruct the airways while she’s unconscious, she might inhale her vomit. Nausea’s always a risk with Rohypnol when it wears off.”
“Are we done yet?”
“Nearly.” A clicking of metal on metal suggests a padlock to Mhari’s imagination. “That should hold her. Yes, we’re done here.”
“What if she—”
A snort. “That’s between her and our Lord and Savior. She’s still got time to repent. Anyway, she’s a whore: if she wasn’t, she wouldn’t be here, would she?”
“I don’t like this. Can I go?”
Another snort. “Go on, wait in the living room. I’ll finish up here. We’re not supposed to leave until our Master is on his way back.” The door opens and closes. Mhari hears the older security guard walking around, a rattle as he tugs on a chain, then the light goes out and the door opens and closes again.
“Fuck,” Mhari swears very quietly, and worms her way round until she can pull her phone out. She listens intently, holding her breath, but hears only the faint whispery breathing of the drugged woman on the bed. Lying on her back she pulls up the camera app on her phone, switches off the flash, then slowly drags the wardrobe door open and snaps away. What the camera sees is what she expected, and she swears some more. A skinny blonde in an off-the-shoulder dress and stilettos lies on her side on the bed. They’ve pinioned her ankles and wrists behind her back, and there’s some sort of gag-like contraption hugging her head, but she’s out for the count.
Mhari hits the push-to-talk icon and whispers: “Gary, got a developing problem here. ’Seph and I have gone to ground, there are guards in the living room, and they just stashed a prisoner in the master bedroom. She’s incapacitated and unconscious and I really don’t think their intentions towards her are good. What’s our countdown at?”
“Checking … you’ve been down fifty-nine minutes. Are these the same guys Schiller sent out before he left? Because they’re supposed to clock off after their last assignment of the evening.”
“Tell them that,” Mhari says grimly. “I overheard boss-man tell his assistant they can’t go until they hear that Schiller’s on his way home.”
“That’s unfortunate.” Gary sounds rattled. “Let me check something. Maybe Ms. Hazard can suggest a solution. I’ll text you back.” He drops the call, leaving Mhari alone in the darkness, trying not to count the minutes until the portal back to safety closes.