Anthology - From the Street

"They'll kill her," Roan said, quietly. He looked at his team. Pleading. "They'll kill her, after they-" he stopped. Cami put her hand on his shoulder.

"Roan, we go to the meet, they'll kill us too," she pointed out. "They'll be waiting, ready. We're walking into a trap and we know it. They know it. You think we can take them down? Three of us, against… how many?" Roan looked over at Delta. The ork shifted, uncomfortable.

"I agree with Cami," he said. "Look, Roan, she's your lady. Or was. But-hell. We go there, they'll have the drop on us. We take it to this Elijah guy's friends, they put out the word, and the heat's off us."

Roan looked at them. Cami, fresh pink scars decorating her face. Delta, his glossy black skin sweating, even in the cold. He'd been working with Delta for over two years, Cami for just under. They were his team. His job was to keep them safe, keep them alive. In the shadows, you stuck by your team. Friends and family just slowed you down. Made you weak.

And Holly sure as hell made him weak.

"Roan, you say the word," Delta said. "I'm with you, either way." The ork glared at Cami. She sighed.

"Yeah, yeah. Me too. Hell, we'll hurt 'em some, make them scream like little girls," she said, punching him on the shoulder. "But we better go. 'Bout an hour, either way. And it's almost eleven o'clock."

Roan looked at both of them again. There wasn't any place in a runner's life for friends, family. For love. Wasn't that why he'd slammed the door on Holly in the first place? Because watching her pump her veins full of drugs was killing him, just as it would eventually kill her? Because worrying about her took his mind off the job?

And if he wanted to kill himself over her, how could he drag his team into it? Cami, Delta. They had his back, they'd go down with him. They trusted him to make the right decision, just like he always had. But what was right? Sacrifice Holly, let her be tortured, or take his team into a certain trap? A choice-wasn't it always about a choice? Only this time, only one choice would leave him alive. Did he want to live with guilt, or die with it? Roan pushed Delta over, slid behind the wheel of the truck. Shifted the truck into gear. Pulled back out onto the road.

"Where we goin'?" Cami asked.

"To do the right thing," he replied, and drove into the night.

TURNABOUT

R. King-Nitschke

"Sparq, you in position?"

"Ready to rumble, Boss." Sparq's voice came back quick and strong over the commlink from the unguarded jackpoint downstairs where he'd plugged in. Zack grinned a little to himself-anything less would have surprised him, of course. They'd worked together so long they almost knew each other's thoughts. "Give the word, and the power's history. I've got control of the backup systems, too, though I don't know for how long."

"Okay, good," Zack said. He looked around at the remaining members of the team-like himself, they were all dressed in identical drab gray Clarion Electric jumpsuits. Torque's bulged a little in all the wrong places (guns and vat-grown muscle would do that to a guy) and Elena's bulged (at least in Zack's opinion) in all the right places, though he'd never have told her that. He liked life as a human and wasn't quite sure she couldn't turn him into a frog.

He hefted his metal toolbox and nodded to the others. "You chummers ready to do this?"

Torque shrugged. "Milk run. We'll be in and out in fifteen, and down at MacArthur's by nine. That's if we take our time."

Zack didn't bother to tell Torque that things rarely worked like that, but privately he thought this time it might just turn out to be true. The job seemed ridiculously easy-their Johnson, a flashy media type, had offered them five big ones to break into some upstart kid's apartment and just mess the place up. Not even to steal anything, just to trash the place. "I just want to give him a message," the Johnson had said with that oily smile that made Zack want to punch him a good one in his perfectly capped teeth. Media types made him itch. But cred was cred, and Johnson had paid half up front.

The toughest part had been figuring out the building's security, which wasn't any cakewalk. Even then, though, a little research in the right places had taken care of that. They'd hunted up the plans for the building (it was a new one, built only a couple of years ago) and Sparq had taken only an hour or so of searching to find the rarely used jackpoint hidden in a maintenance closet in the basement. That had given rise to their plan to take down the power and get in disguised as electrical contractors. Right now they were in the parking garage in their van, and Zack was about to give the word.

"You sure he's not home?" Torque asked suddenly.

Zack nodded. He pulled a newsfax from the van's dashboard and tossed it in Torque's lap. Face up was an article with the headline Charity show to benefit apartment fire victims. Torque examined it. "Says he's gonna be there," he said, nodding. "Hope he didn't get a headache at the last minute or something."

"Quit worrying, Torque," Elena said, grabbing the newsfax and tossing it back on the dash. "In and out in fifteen, remember?"

"Milk run," Torque agreed again.

"Okay, Sparq, let's go," Zack said into the comm. A few seconds later the lights went out, plunging the garage into blackness. He opened the van's door. "Showtime."

They took the service elevator up, so nobody noticed either them or the fact that they had the only power in the building. When it stopped and the doors opened, Sparq's voice spoke over their comms: "Nobody in the hallway. Not surprising, since he's got the top floor. Can't see into the apartment, though. I'll hold the elevator for you. Make it snappy, okay?"

"That's the plan," Zack agreed.

The three of them piled out of the elevator and headed down the hallway to the set of double doors at the end. Zack was already pulling out his electronics kit-any security door worth its salt had to have its own backup power independent of the building's. Behind him he could hear Torque unlimbering his Predator. "Elena, can you see if anybody's inside?"

"On it," she said, already settling down against the wall. In a moment she was back. "Nobody here but us chickens," she reported.

"Wiz." A little electronic beep indicated that he had cracked the door's maglock. He turned the knob with a gloved hand and pushed it inward.

Sparq had restored power to the apartment's front room so they got a good view in the dim security lights when they stepped inside. Torque let out a long low whistle. "Must be nice."

Zack took in the room with its exotic wood floors, soaring windows, and plush furnishings and nodded. He didn't know much about such things, but he suspected the paintings and other objets d'art that dotted the room were probably real and probably cost more than the team made in years. Still, they were here to do a job. "Let's get on with it," he said with a briskness he didn't feel. "We're here for a reason-let's get it done and get out before somebody spots the lights on and asks questions."

Torque grinned and wrapped his big hand around a tall, thin sculpture of veined stone. He picked it up and raised it like a baseball bat, taking aim at its mate at the other end of a table. "Here goes."

"I wouldn't do that if I were you," an amused voice drawled from somewhere in the shadows.

Torque stopped in mid-swing, and Zack and Elena whipped their heads around in stunned surprise. "Wha-?"

A slim figure stepped out from the darkened hallway. "Not a good idea," he said. He was smiling like he didn't have a care in the world.

"Oh, drek-" Elena started.

Torque's hand dropped to his holstered Predator.

"I wouldn't do that either," the newcomer said, his gaze flicking casually down at the gun. He was young, barely into his twenties, his stunning good looks so perfect they had to be fake. He lounged against the wall in his tres-chic clubwear, his arms crossed over his chest. "Suppose you tell me what you're doing here."