The cords tied to her handcuffs went taut for the first time in months and Feng Li felt herself pulled up from the concrete floor she had grown used to since her father left her to die on the battlefield. So much dust still clung to her hair, to her uniform, to the barely-stitched up holes in her body. She stumbled upright without the help of her hands and the steel door before her creaked open to reveal her warden standing there, anger written plainly across his expression.
"There's someone here to see you," he nearly growled out at her as she glanced his way in a silent question. "Someone with connections, you lucky bitch."
Her heart slid into her stomach, pounded hollowly in her gut as the warden yanked again on her lead. The hallway outside was unfamiliar, to be honest, as the last time she had been brought through had been at the hands of physicians, after the holes in her body had been stitched up. It had seemed like a dream at the time, hazy and dark and uncertain.
Now, everything was perfectly clear, too bright against her senses as fear ground them sharper. The hallway was damp somewhere, dank, and wet and voices echoed too easily around her. Some screamed, some begged, but none of them were entirely devoid of terror. These people that she had led into war, that she had led down into this hell, and she was the lucky one being pulled from the pit.
The warden ushered her down around a corner, looking over his shoulder the entire way. At the end of the hallway a steel door blocked their path, guarded by two soldiers looking about as pleased as a pair of hungry lions.
"Watch her," the warden ordered before he reached into his pocket for his key card and swiped it across the reader. Despite the short distraction, both guards stepped up close to her, the nose of one of their pistols pressing in against her ribs. Even as the door swung open and the warden's attention turned fully back to her, the threat remained tucked neatly against her body.
Beyond the door, Feng Li could see a metal table and three chairs, two occupied by men in black uniforms. One of the men was marginally shorter than the other, his dark hair contrasting from his fellow's.
"Bring her in," the dark-haired man ordered, rising to his feet as the warden did just that, tugging her along. One jerk of the cord pulled her away from the pistol and that was reason enough to breathe.
With another tug of her lead, the warden escorted her to the empty seat across the table from the two men. She sat smoothly, trying to watch all three men at once through her peripheral vision as she stared at the wall between them.
"Just holler if you need us," the warden offered as he tied her lead down to the hooks in the table in front of her. "We'll be right outside."
"Hopefully that won't be necessary," the dark-haired man replied with a grimace as he directed his gaze more fully toward Feng Li, evaluating her in a curious once-over.
As soon as the warden disappeared behind the steel door, neither man jumped at the silence and instead let it hang in the air for a few beats before one of them finally spoke.
"Feng Li Wei," he began without much confidence. "I'm Corporal Lee Downs and this is Sergeant Avias Shields. We're with an organization known as the Deacon Project."
Everything about this mission was going wrong. Three years with the Deacon Project had not prepared her for this, but life as a soldier in a war had. Just as Feng Li looked down the sight the door behind her burst open and her world upended. The Corporal Dog leapt behind cover in an instant as the first person through the door raised an automatic weapon and leveled the nose at Feng Li. Just as she pivoted to dive the eyes behind the mask widen in recognition.
"Yaosai," their guest barely breathed out as shock quickly turned into a sudden an intense anger. Her heart dropped into her stomach. Many Deacons had the same reaction when they first met her; intense hatred was something difficult to forget and it had occurred enough times to be permanently etched in her memory.
She dove a split second before automatic fire broke out from several weapons at once. Her rifle was too heavy to carry with her as she went down behind the couch that would be her only cover. Tufts of cushion burst out around her as she pressed her body as close to the floor as possible. Bullets ricocheted against springs with wild shrieks of metal and she covered as many of the sensitive parts of her body with the bulletproof jacket as possible. She could count six, maybe seven different weapons firing and Lee had tucked himself inside the en-suite bathroom. Not a position easy to egress from, but he wasn't the one provoking the gunfire in the first place.
Her eyes found the only other exit from the room besides the window she had nearly shot through a moment ago and the suite's front door. While planning out their mission, they had noticed that the suites within the hotel were connected to each other through a peripheral door to allow larger conferences to be held more easily. Right now, that door was unlocked from their end, but she had no idea about the room beyond, but it was her only chance. The couch was quickly being shredded around her. One round struck the bulletproof vest and it was all the prompting she needed to cement her decision.
Pain pounded against her ribs, spreading through her in the same instant that the room went silent as magazines emptied. She vaulted out from cover, from behind the only protection she would have in crossing the twenty feet between her and the door. All thoughts but survival left her mind, everything but pushing her body through that doorway to the other side. She could hear the sound of metal on metal, of slides pressing into place on weapons as she yanked the door on their side open. With the same momentum, she kicked through the door on the other side and it burst into the next room with a slam of wood against something solid. If it had been locked, it did not hold against the onslaught.
If the Corporal spoke from somewhere behind her, she could not hear him over the sounds of heavy footsteps and the cocking of automatic weapons. The suite beyond was a different layout than the one she and the Corporal had staked out for several hours now. They had glanced over the blueprints out of curiosity than real need to study them. Regardless, she knew she had to get out to the hallway, out to a stairwell, somewhere she could get better cover. But for now she had to put as many doors between her and their guests as possible. Shilean voices shouted as she turned and slammed the broken door behind her and pushed over the bulky mini-fridge in front of it. It was an older model, something in a retro style that Feng Li could never agree with. For now, though, she was grateful as wood splintered from the door in a shower of sharp edges. She darted away from the door and toward the the next one across this new suite. If she could get into a position where she could pick them off, she would have much better odds of survival.
Much more quietly she sprinted out across the carpet. Like the previous room, she could unlock this side of the door with ease, as it was designed. The other side would be more difficult and she did not have much room for error. She kicked it in like she had the other and disappeared behind it with as much agility as she could manage with bruised ribs. This time, she pushed the desk over in front of the door, using the extra time bought by the refrigerator to expand that window between her and their guests. As she peeled over toward the next set of peripheral doors, though, she only opened the first, leaving it ajar before darting back across the carpet toward the coat closet.
Running would only get her so far. After all, they still had their target to kill before he got away. Dealing with this mess on top of the mission had only complicated things. As she tucked herself into a defensive position, she heard two voices out in the hallway, just beyond the wall she was tucked up against.
"Cut her off!" "Down the hall!" Two orders, two sets of sprinting footsteps. Two out of the six were separated. That meant there were less attempting to come through the peripheral doors, but still an uncertain amount. There were no sounds belonging to the Corporal, not yet. But the peripheral door she had pushed the desk in front of was now suffering the brunt of the company attempting to kill her. A grunt and a slam against the wood of the door followed by the cracking of wood that had not ever been designed to stand up to the full assault of heavily armed Shileans. If nothing else, her people were known for being ruthless, herself included. No. Not her anymore. She had changed over those three years since the War, as much as she hated to admit it. Her life had become something that no longer belonged to her. Avias Shields hunted down every step, every breath, every nod or gesture, every word. The only place she was all that safe from the prosecutor was Corporal Downs's quarters. The cameras in his room were video only. Anything she said to him there would be kept in confidence.
If she could trust the Union dog for farther than she could through him.
Right now, she figured he was running for his life, running to tell Bishop Paris that Feng Li had failed. The Yaosai had failed to predict the sudden introduction of a new variable to the equation.
She silenced her thoughts as soon as half of the door bent in over the desk and Feng Li pulled her pistol from its holster at her side. She had ten shots, no more. After all, she was not an assault trooper, she was an assassin, a dagger that only needed to be long enough to slice through an enemy, not so much as to accidentally impale oneself on it.
One head peeked in, shouting at the desk that blocked him from the room. He nearly screamed in frustration, something so angry it made Feng Li's nerves tingle. She was this hated now. Her heart pressed up into her throat. If she could not hold her position, she was dead. If she did not get back to the window she tried to shoot out of earlier, she would be dead.
There was no coming out of this alive, no matter how she tried to twist the scenario in her mind. The best she could do was make sure she took down as many of her hunters as possible. They had become no different from the Union extremists who called for the death of every Shilean. When they turned on each other like this, it would only end in more blood. She could not undo the crimes of the war, could not bring Jian Yu back, no matter how much everyone wanted her to. She was only human.
And so were they.
The desk slammed against the floor as the Shileans knocked the door entirely off its hinges. It flopped uselessly over the desk before crashing against the window. One, two, three people moved into the room. Two down the hall, three in the room with her, one unknown, not counting the Corporal. They moved into her room with a stunning quiet after the racket they had just produced, gesturing toward the ajar door. She only had one chance at this. As soon as they tested the lock on the other door, they will know she did not breach it and she had to take full advantage of that distraction. They moved closer, weapons pointed at the door. As one of them reached for it, Feng Li dove silently out from behind cover and raised her pistol. She wasted no time and no shots as three cracks of her pistol dropped them.
As soon as she fired, she ducked back into the coat closet, waiting, listening, trying to hear anything but the dull thunder of gunshots ringing in her ears, but there was nothing. No footsteps, no nothing. They knew where she was now and she had no choice but to move from her position. With a breath, she stepped out from cover again, her pistol leveled at the empty room before her. Nothing. There were at least three more to find and take down if she could not get back to the window to take the shot. Her breath tightened into tense, silent breaths as she glided across the room, pistol stretched out before her.
No one made a sound after the first step, or the second, or as she moved across the room. The danger of the peripheral doors was never quite having her six completely covered. She moved toward the one she had left ajar and gently pushed it closed and locked it. One entrance potentially covered, but if they had the power to break in the front door, then it was never truly safe to assume she had all her exits entirely covered. Looking down through the broken in door separating her from the second suite, she could not seen anyone, not even the Corporal.
She had to take a chance, then; she had to get back to take the shot. Just as she began stepping through the remains of the doorframe, though, the peripheral door she had just locked burst into the room with a spray of fire. She turned and focused, planting lead at head level. Four shots. Enough to hopefully take out anyone coming through the door. Two rounds slammed into the bulletproof jacket with heart-stopping force. She choked with the pain, ducking down behind the ruined desk as she heard one body drop to the carpet. And then another couple beats of silence. Pain radiated through her body as she glanced over the desk to find the Shilean staring right at her, automatic weapon up, ready, and now bright with fire. Bullets tore through the hard wood, another handful of rounds colliding with the jacket at her shoulder, sending white-hot pain through the joint but she answered with a bullet through the head. He was dead before the gun left his fingers.
Five down. Potentially one more to go. And the shot. The shot she had to take in the next minute or their target would escape. Sixty seconds. Counting down. She burst up from her position, her body screaming at her to stop. Her shoulder could barely support the weight of the pistol, much less anything as heavy as her rifle. She checked the second room, her steps smooth despite the pain. If nothing else, her father had taught her to push on through incredible levels of pain. She had to in order to prove that she had been worth anything on the battlefield.
This was just a new battlefield, against her own people who hated her more than the Deacons or any other Union soul. She pressed forward, pivoting with each step to cover the corners as she moved back to the window, to the door that had been broken in and this whole mess had started. There was no sign of the Corporal. Forty-five seconds. She looked through the remains of the first set of peripheral doors. Nothing. No Shilean, no Corporal. She pressed on, keeping her pistol level despite the pain ratcheting up to new levels in her shoulder.
As she moved into the room, there was still no hint as to the location of the missing variables. Her rifle laid on the carpet where she had left it, scope still set up, bullet still in the chamber, window still open to allow her the best possible shot she could take. She only had a matter of seconds to take it. Every inch of her tensed as she pivoted, checked behind her and before her as quickly as she could. No hint of the intruders except for the broken doors and the multitude of holes in the wall. She had to take the shot and she had to take it now.
She knelt down beside the rifle, raised it against the windowsill, found Senator Cucao again in her sights, the back of his head bobbing in conversation where he stood. Just as she raised her hand to the trigger, a pistol cocked behind her.
"Pull the trigger and you die, Yaosai." The last of the six Shileans stood behind her, about fifteen paces from what she could tell. He had gotten the Corporal's pistol.
Thirty seconds.
She leaned back from the rifle, carefully tugging her hands away from the gun. This was it. This was how her life was going to end. At the hands of someone who hated her with a passion.
"Get up. Hands on the window where I can see them." He commanded as she set the rifle to the side. Feng Li rose to her feet slowly, arms raised at her side. Twenty seconds.
"Against the window, Yaosai. I want them to see." The voice ordered again and she stepped to the closed window, pressing herself against it. She shuddered with the pain that slammed through her shoulder and ribs. Fifteen seconds.
"You should have died a long time ago," The voice was moving closer, but his footsteps were muted. Someone who knew how to kill almost as well as she did. Ten seconds.
"I will have the honor of---" He was interrupted by three cracks of a revolver. Feng Li turned to find Corporal Downs standing there, his traditional revolver pointed at where the body of the sixth Shilean had stood. His expression was firm as he moved into the room, standing near the couch where she had been only a handful of minutes ago.
"Take the shot, I'll cover you," he spoke only as loud as to be heard over the ringing in both of their ears. Five seconds.
She pressed down to the floor again, ignoring the agony in her body at doing so. She raised the rifle, pressed the sight to her eye, breathed, and fired.
Senator Cucao dropped in an instant and Feng Li and Corporal Downs were gone in the next.
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"Awake in a new day our fears have come to pass."
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"No different from the blood we’ve come to hate."
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"For some are too blind to see the world as it’s meant to be."
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"I see all the water rising to drown everyone."