“Daughter.”
“Sister.”
The labels grip Alycia’s heart in an iron vice. It’s him. Well. Them? But she can’t make it past the fear to do a proper analysis.
“The trap was designed for you,” says Doctor Chin. “The leaf falls to the roots of the tree, does it not?”
“How can you be alive?” she whispers.
“Now child, I will not share such vital intelligence with you. You should know better. I assign you the task of solving this riddle yourself, if you can. I shall only perform my duty as parent, and introduce you to your younger brother. Pyrrhus Chin. Son of Achilles. Another Pyrrhus gave us the term ‘Pyrrhic victory’, a victory that is devastating to the victor. As you say, how can I be alive? My continued survival, and this boy, and my empire in some form, are my victory.”
The boy on the screen smirks and bows, and she wants to scream at the familiarity of the body language. It’s like watching a mirror.
Instead she rallies, tries to salvage her pride, her dignity, and her poise. “You didn’t just call to gloat. Do you hope that I’ll return to the fold?”
“Oh no, child, no. That probability, a mere 2.3%, is behind us now. No. I called to see, with my own eyes, that my wayward scion is thoroughly and properly disposed of.”
The security monitors show car after car rolling up. Men in military kit are emerging. More sicarios and commandos.
“They won’t be enough,” Alycia announces defiantly.
“They are merely there to follow up. The fuel-air explosives are much more reliable.”
She smells gas. She knows the ignition is less than a second away–
“Sorry,” she hears SNOWMAN say, then all is darkness.
“Alright, big badda boom,” announces Alex. They shout a direction and distance over the headset to the pilot. “We’re a few minutes away. Seismic monitoring stations picked up a localized earthquake. Pretty sure it’s our buddies. Hope they got to a safe distance.”
Emma stands at one window, a pair of binoculars in hand. Only after a minute does she report back. “There’s a big cloud of smoke. Someone torched a house. Looks like lots of goons with gunz are there to party.”
Alex’s face grows somber. “My guy’s tracking device is offline,” they report.
Probably went up in the blast. Probably Chin too. Emma feels a tightening in her stomach, a feeling that certain rebellious elements of her mind have dubbed ‘empathy’. She bites her tongue in defiance. “Fine. We are kicking legendary amounts of ass today. You coming with?”
Alex just stands, drawing their sidearm with determination.
“Alright.” Emma grins. “Samir! We need a really smelly fart down there.”
“Smelly fart, on the way,” comes the pilot’s response.
The C-130 banks sharply around the smoke rising from the former farmhouse. Like many planes, the Hercules is designed to dump its fuel if it’s coming into a landing too heavy. It does so now, spilling hundreds of gallons of Jet A-1 commercial fuel from its external pods. Gravity takes over next, pulling the flammable liquid to earth in a wide ring around the edge of the property, and conveniently where the gunmen are still hanging out.
It’s Hot Mess that leaps off of the plane’s open cargo ramp, parachute already open. She can see the line of fuel taper off from the tank, knows the dump is finished and that her plane is safe. She focuses her power and ignites the tail end of the dump, the liquid that’s still falling to earth.
The stream lights up, and spreads, like a crimson dragon coiling around the property. Men screaming, men running, desperate gunfire hastily and badly aimed at the retreating airplane.
Alex is holding onto the parachute harness, grasping for dear life. “Get ready to shoot, you idiot!” she shouts.
The parachute won’t work at such low altitudes - practically the treetops. Hot Mess doesn’t need it to. A gust of superheated air blows up thanks to her powers, and the chute billows open in response. She focuses a nexus of heat between herself and the chute, making a high-speed hot air balloon of the nylon, and starts buzzing the farm.
Alex has regained their composure and starts shooting. Their accuracy isn’t amazing from a wildly twisting position like this, but the return gunfire gives the sicarios something else to worry about and keeps them from organizing.
“Get off!” Hot Mess shouts down at Alex. The hacker grins again. “Spicy! This is only our first date!” they shout back, but to their credit they drop and roll onto the soil of the farmland.
I am definitely breaking your fucking shades.
Hot Mess lands, moves a tremendous amount of heat around in the air in a very short time, and in so doing creates a pressure differential. When she releases it, the rushing air knocks a dozen men off their feet.
“I won’t kill them,” she growls, to herself and to Nono and God and anyone else who might be listening. “I’ll just make them regret living!”
Alex ducks and sprints behind rows and rows of ruined crops. They duck, slide under, or leap over bits of the house that have landed in the field. Every so often, a human face will present itself out of the confusion, and they open fire. They don’t have to hit - just disorient. And so far, it’s working.
Not much for a hacker to do here. Guess I gotta be an AEGIS agent for awhile.
They crouch, get a good grip, and sight. Another sicario comes running out of the field, weapon raised. He’s almost as fast. Almost. Thank god. He goes down with three rounds to the shoulder and left arm, and Alex sprints forward and hunkers down over him for just long enough. Will he live? Probably, if he doesn’t bleed out. Assault rifle? Nice. Extra mags? Double nice.
Strategy. Need a strategy.
There’s a fire, a big one. Hot Mess is having the time of her life over there. But she could still be ambushed. Radios? Radios! This guy has one. Alex snatches it, punches him in the face just to be sure, and runs for where they remember the cars were parked.
Inside the car, they crack open the radio case in record time, then wire it into the cigarette lighter. That’ll give it more than enough juice to broadcast–
Every sicario’s radio suddenly screams out, and keeps screaming, a narcocorrido song from the blue Chevy’s in-dash MP3 player. Everyone with a radio is now a target, for anyone who can listen.
Alex hears more screams. Yep. Time of her fucking life.