Page 4 of Xerxes Ascendant
“You tipped him off before he got close!”
“Shut the fuck up,” said the third. From his position tucked in a darkened doorway and holding so still he dared not breathe, Akira saw the way the man scoured the street with a trained eye, and how he held his gun in a relaxed grip rather than the white-knuckled holds of the others.
He also recognised the man: Bear, the smallest but most vicious of Mackenroth’s men who had attacked them the night the city was blown up.
“I know ya can ‘ear me, Mister M,” Bear called out, his voice warbling loudly into the evening air. A couple making out against one of the shopfronts a few doors away glanced up and then wisely decided to move their amorous attentions elsewhere when they caught sight of the weapons. Bear watched them shrewdly, cataloguing where their glances fell in case they’d spotted something he had not.
But they hadn’t seen Akira, and he didn’t let them see him now as they hurried away.
“We got this ‘ole sector locked down,” Bear added casually, thumbing his nose with his free hand. “You’re not getting outta here, Coterie scum, although I’m rather hoping to be the one to deliver your head to the boss m’self.”
Dear Mr. Mayor,
Yesterday I was in the café in Sector 12, Level C, and the couple at the table next to me wouldn't stop blabbering away to each other in some foreign language. I politely asked them to speak Universal, but they gave me these really horrible glares and carried on. The café itself refused to help even when I very calmly explained that the law says they hold liability for their patrons' conduct.
I immediately left, of course, because I had my children with me and no responsible parent would expose their kids to something like that, but the owner had the audacity to say I had to pay for the four coffees I'd ordered.
I'd like to make a formal complaint please and thank you. If I can be of any additional assistance to bring these criminals to justice, let me know.
-Yours faithfully,
K. T. Macguire
CHAPTER 2
Akira
Bear, unfortunately, hadn’t been bluffing. Akira had been able to slip out from his hiding place easily enough when the fools retreated from the balcony without bothering to leave a lookout, but escaping the sector was proving to be a challenge. Aside from the small local shops on ground level, the area was primarily residential: full of stocky apartment blocks like the one he’d just fled, and there were only three ways out of the sector. He’d counted them twice. An armed thug stood guard at each exit, soon accompanied by a second when Bear and his men joined them, and they were checking the faces of anyone who passed by.
Akira sighed. He was competent in close combat, but he couldn’t take out two adversaries who had the ability to gun him down before he even got within reach.
He briefly thought about trying to wait them out, but the loud conversation held by Bear on his runepad about bringing in reinforcements stamped out that idea. Whether it was a bluff or not, Akira couldn’t take the chance. Cornered in these two city blocks as he was, if he didn’t escape to the wider maze of Xerxes soon, he would be caught…especially when the lights came back on at sunrise.
Akira had searched for the twisty alleys and cut-throughs that were so common in the seedier areas of Xerxes, but whether by architectural design or necessity, the buildings here were packed tightly together. And climbing was out of the question with the sheer brick walls that surrounded him, even without the injuries Akira had from the last time he’d encountered the mayor’s men.
Stars. Mackenroth wasn’t playing around.
Although this operation had an air of desperation about it, an unusual largeness of scale. Six assassins locking down a whole sector? The pre-meditated planning of locating and staking out one of Epsilon’s clients to spring the trap? It felt like everything was being thrown at him at once, and perhapsthatmeant that this was all Benedict Mackenroth had left. The Xerxian police clearly weren’t on his payroll anymore, considering Akira had been attending House Epsilon each night without their interference, although the Coterie had worked hard to ensure that the fragmentation of the city had turned the balance of power on Lower Xerxes – including law enforcement – in its favour.
So if Akira could escape this last-ditch effort of the mayor to see him dead, perhaps he’d be free of...
“Master Epsilon?”
The voice, which had come from behind him, was cautious, enquiring, hesitant.
Yet the distinctive click of a gun’s safety latch was not.
“Turn around.”
Akira read the situation in an instant. One of the men had found him where he’d been tucked behind a generator box – but only one, and he hadn’t yet seen Akira’s face. He wasn’t sure if he had the correct target...yet he hadn’t fired, meaning he had enough of a conscience not to kill indiscriminately.
“I said turn around!”
Akira dropped to his knees instead.
Cold wetness instantly seeped through the fabric of his trousers from the steady streams of liquid trickling out from beneath the buildings to the nearby street drain. His arms hung loosely by his sides, fingers splayed to show he was unarmed, and he lowered his chin and shoulders in visible defeat.
Akira sensed the surprised hesitation from the other man. Then he heard soft footfalls on concrete as he circled around to get a better look, keeping the gun trained on him but drawing closer than was wise.
