FORTY-SIX

 

 

THEY BROKE THROUGH the door with relative ease. To Keptra’s surprise, the interior of the restaurant was light. All of her training had told her that a perpetrator would keep it dark.

But he hadn’t.

The assassin stood in the center of the circular restaurant, at the maître d’s station. It was surreal. Her people stood in all the doorways, which were placed around the restaurant at regular intervals. Between them, booths lined up against the windows. At every third booth, hostages—most of them families with small children. The windows next them showed the crater walls. Below, the lights of the city beckoned, and above them, the dome. Just barely visible through it, the lights of the solar system itself against the blackness of space.

Usually that view held the attention of everyone, but no one looked at it now. Not even the assassin.

He had the maître d’s station on slow rotate, so his back wasn’t to anyone for very long. He clutched the laser rifle, and as he rotated, Keptra noted that he had a laser pistol tucked into the waistband of his pants.

None of the hostages sat at the tables scattered through the middle of the room. There were no employees either, and the kitchen door was barricaded. The employees, apparently, had made their escape.

Leaving families, a handful of single adults, and way too many children under five.

Just like Keptra had feared.

She cursed, then sent to her team, Remember, no one shoot until we get the hostages out of here.

The last thing she wanted was a malfunction, not of her people’s weaponry, but of that weird technical stuff the other assassin—the one in Armstrong—had worn, the stuff that had taken a knee shot and brought it all the way to his heart. If the technical stuff had malfunctioned, it might ricochet any shot around the room, randomly killing people.

Randomly killing children.

She took one small step forward.

“I’m Captain Polly Keptra,” she said. “I’d like to talk with you.”

The assassin stopped the maître d’s station from rotating, then he turned to face her. As he did, she saw a reflection around him. Something on that station was set up to mirror imagery, so that he could mask where he was really standing.

Or maybe it had a more innocuous purpose: maybe it had just been there so that the maître d’ could see anyone new who came into the restaurant, no matter what door they used.

“So talk,” the assassin said.

He had no discernable accent; she had expected an accent. She wanted an accent. She needed an accent. She needed him to be something other, more than being a clone.

She didn’t want him to seem rational and human and oh, so reasonable.

It didn’t help that he was thin and young and relatively attractive, with his unusual blond coloring and his pale eyes.

“It would be easier to talk if you let the hostages go,” she said.

He tilted his head, as if her request amused him. Then he nodded, ever so slightly, and said, “It would, wouldn’t it?”

It took her a moment to process the words. She hadn’t expected them.

“I tell you what,” he said, ever so reasonably. “I will let them go, if you let me keep this one.”

With his left hand, he lifted a man from the floor behind the maître d’ station. Given the man’s powder blue tuxedo dotted with stars, he had to be the maître d’ himself.

The man looked almost catatonic.

“How about you take me instead?” Keptra asked.

“How about everyone stay?” the assassin said, in that very reasonable tone.

“All right.” She had no idea if she was agreeing too fast, but she didn’t care. That was for the review board to decide, days from now, when this entire ordeal was over. “We’ll get the hostages out of here.”

“Actually,” the assassin said, “they’re not hurt. They can leave under their own power.”

Her heart was pounding. This had better go well.

“You heard him,” she said to the hostages. “Please leave slowly and carefully through the nearest door.”

They scrambled out of the booths, the single adults nearly knocking over children in their haste to escape. The adults who were responsible for the children grabbed them, picking some of them up and carrying them, dragging the others out by their hands.

It was a relatively quiet evacuation, and quick. They cleared the restaurant in less than two minutes flat.

If hostage situations were judged by how many hostages survived, then Keptra had just negotiated a successful deal.

Somehow, she suspected that this wasn’t about hostages.

“I’m still willing to trade myself for your remaining hostage,” Keptra said.

The assassin shrugged. “But I’m not willing to make the trade. In fact, I think I should get rid of him, don’t you?”

He brushed a hand over the man’s face. Keptra, remembering the images of the dead Armstrong mayor, tensed.

“I don’t think anyone should be gotten rid of,” she said.

I have a shot from the back, one of her team sent.

That’s just what he wants, she sent back.

She had to be willing to let that poor maître d’ die. How often had she told her people that occasionally sacrifices needed to be made? It was so easy to say, so hard to do.

“I can kill him with a touch,” the assassin said.

“I know you can,” she said. “But you’re not going to.”

“Why not?” he asked.

“Because you still have something to say to me.” She was just guessing, but that assassin in Armstrong waited to talk to the cops before he died.

This assassin looked surprised at her words. “How did you know that?”

She shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. “Because you people are running someone else’s game, and in the instructions, you’re supposed to tell me something before you force me to kill you.”

His mouth opened slightly. He was surprised. He hadn’t expected her to say anything like that.

He looked like he wanted to ask questions, but he didn’t. Instead, he flung the maître away from him, raised that laser rifle, aimed it at her, and paused, as if he was waiting for someone to shoot him.

“We’re just the beginning,” he said.

“I know that,” she said. “Your friends said the same thing. The beginning of what?”

He looked panicked for the first time. Then he moved the laser rifle slightly and shot. The bolt was brighter than any she had ever seen. It shattered the window next to her—the supposedly unbreakable window—and before she realized what was happening, he sprinted toward her.

She ran for him, but she hesitated before touching him. She didn’t want to die like Armstrong’s mayor and she couldn’t get that image out of her head.

Other members of her team were swarming around her, but somehow the assassin eluded all of them. He launched himself through that window and into the emptiness at the top of the dome.

His scream faded as he fell, then cut off abruptly.

“Son of a bitch,” Strom said beside her. “Son of a bitch.”