We Build Success

 

By Paul Cesarini

 

 

 

        Jesse sidestepped cautiously over the floor sensor, knowing if he tripped it the doors would seal and he’d soon be made. That should be the last one, he thought, looking back down the dark hallway he came from.  He reached into a pocket of his grey IO Industries coverall and pulled out a cylindrical device no bigger than an autovape.  He flipped the cap up and pressed a small, yellow button, then carefully stood it next to the sensor.  Almost immediately, the device emitted a low, chirping sound, followed by small green light that grew in intensity.  That’ll take care of the cameras, he thought, grinning slightly as he turned and crept down the hallway.  I might even be back at the hotel bar by dinner.  Tonight was asado with chimichurri.  He didn’t know exactly what chimichurri was, but knew he definitely liked it.

        This wasn’t his first job on this world but he hated coming back.  It had taken him a while – nearly half a cycle this time – to get acclimated to the gravity here.  All the locals spotted him and other off-worlders almost immediately, no matter where they went or how they tried to hide. 

        The locals were born and raised at 1.17g here.  Sturdy and broad-shouldered, they were all used to it.  It was like a world full of rugby players.  None of them had that plodding hesitancy in their steps that he and others on tourist visas had.  Their gaits were just… different, and hard to fake.  He, though equally sturdy and broad-shouldered, could barely stand when he first disembarked.  He suspected his clients chose him for jobs on this moon at least partly because of his similar stature, thinking maybe he’d blend in more.  Yet, every step he took felt like he was about to fall over. 

         Plus, that extra .17x gravity made him feel like he was wearing a heavy backpack. All. The. Time.  He practiced off-world before each job here, wearing layers of weighted vests while training.  He thought he’d be fine, mostly. 

        This time, for whatever reason, he kind of wasn’t.  His joints ached, his feet hurt, he’d already had two nosebleeds, and by the Gods he needed a nap. A serious nap.  He could have compensated by wearing an exoskeletal harness.  It would have lessened his load, figuratively and literally.  Plenty of off-worlders wore them here.  But, he didn’t want to stick out any more than he already did.

        He knew the nap could wait.  He’d sleep all he wanted after the job.  After the payment for his “consulting services” cleared.  He was the best consultant they’d ever used, with a near-perfect completion rate, which is why they called on him so often.  He’d finish this one, catch the first shuttle back to Homeland, and take a marathon nap en route.  Back to beaches, with those light teal sands and fizzy drinks.  Back to normal gravity.

         This needed to be another quiet job. No visible entrance or exit wound.  Untraceable.  His specialty.  He inched up the sleeve on his right arm to expose three parallel black dots, each with registration marks.  All he had to do was press them in a sequence only he knew to activate the nano toxin in that palm. It’d take maybe a minute or so for the electrical pulse to charge enough, but he’d be good to go after that.  He only had one shot – skin-to-skin contact, usually a single handshake – before the toxin dispersed and all evidence of it vanished. 

        Normally, he’d do the job all out in the open.  He’d pretend he knew his mark, maybe flag him down on the street, make some small talk, shake his hand, then leave.  Done.  One time, he posed as a valet and shook the guy’s hand after receiving a tip.  He remembered that one fondly, appreciating the irony of his mark unwittingly tipping him to die.  It was the first and only tip he’d ever received for services rendered. This other time, he stood in line holding an autopen and notebook, waiting for his mark to finish a speech.  He came up to him after, all giddy and fanboyed, asking for the guy’s autograph, then shook his hand and left.  Easy.

        This time needed to be different.  The gravity was really doing a number on him.  He didn’t have time to stake out his mark, so he figured he’d do it old-school: breaking & entering, followed by any direct contact with his right palm.  He’d leave.  The guy would call whatever private sector rent-a-cops they had here.  They’d write it all up as attempted burglary.  His friends would buy the guy a drink, tell him how brave he was, how lucky he was to be alive.  Then a day or so later, the job would be done. 

Again: easy.

           His mark wasn’t a local, though the dossier said he’d been living and working on this world for some time.  If he was a local, Jesse wouldn’t have tried this method. Punching a local was like hitting a brick wall covered in rubber.  They were all just so… sturdy.  Indirect was the only way to go with them.  His mark was an off-worlder, pretty much. 

           Still smiling, Jesse quietly turned the corner at the end of the hallway.  Hanging neatly on the walls were a series of framed pictures and articles, showcasing the various corporate triumphs of his mark.  One article had a big headline that read, VP Delgado Opens Inaugural Biochemical Engineering Lab, complete with a picture of his mark smiling with some other bigwigs, by a banner that read “IO Industries, We Build Success!”  Another showed him receiving a medal of some sort, from someone Jesse kind of recognized, maybe.  Another, from an older holo-paper, showed him sitting at a table with what appeared to be the entire PanTech Cabinet.  Jesse recognized at least two others in that pic.  Two other former problems that required consultations.  Two other marks that shook his hand.

           One thing Jesse noticed from all the photos was that his mark wasn’t just another stuffed suit.  The guy was fit – and not just from the extra .17g.  You could see it in his shoulders, his arms.  It was something you wouldn’t notice just going by the headshot from his dossier.  Another rugby player, he thought, maybe from the Enhanced League.  Sure, the guy was older now – probably late middle age – but Jesse guessed he wouldn’t go down quickly.  Jesse was fine with that.  It wasn’t often he had a chance to really let loose on a mark.  Plus, all he really needed to do was rough the guy up a bit, plant that right palm on him at some point, then beat feet.  He couldn’t make it look obvious, though.  It’d have to be something natural, like grabbing his throat or something.

         The house was mostly dark, illuminated only by the cold glow of nightlights in each room.  He memorized the maps days ago, knowing exactly where the master bedroom was upstairs and exactly how many steps it took to get there from his current location.  He was about to head up there, but heard… sounds. From down the next hallway that he knew led to the great room, complete with a sunken living room, there were definitely sounds.  Louder.  Yelling.  Struggling?  A fight.  But with whom?

         Something was off.  He’d been sent as cleanup before, after some amateur screwed up a job, but those were rare and usually days or even weeks later. This was different.  There was another job going on.  Here.  Right now.  Time wasn’t on Jesse’s side anymore, and he knew it.  He yanked up his sleeve and punched in the code on the dots.  The familiar, tingling sensation travelled up his wrist to the tips of his fingers as the nano-toxins combined, waiting to be discharged through his palm.  He couldn’t wait to clamp his palm down and get it over with.  His whole body ached.  His ankles were swollen.  His legs felt like cement.

          Jesse rounded the corner, his right palm still tingling, then froze. The great room was a wreck. Tables and broken chairs lay strewn across the hardwood floor, along with far too much broken glass.  A fireplace, its digital feed of smoldering logs still flickering with static, had a broken granite mantle and a shattered mirror above it.  Next to it, a large, mahogany pool table, no doubt heavier than anything else in the room, somehow stood on its side, at an angle.  Billiard balls and pool cues littered the floor around it, by a pair of French doors. 

        Beneath a single, swinging lamp, he saw his mark.  He was a shorter man, clad in a torn undershirt, dress pants, and expensive loafers.  While he was smaller than his assailants, he was also clearly more skilled.  One intruder in IO coveralls lay twisted in the corner, his neck at an impossible angle. The second steadily backed against the pool table, his hands raised in a futile parry.  In one quick motion, the man snapped a pool cue over his knee and drove the jagged splinter through the man's chest. Jesse watched as the light caught the spray of red.

          The man saw Jesse’s reflection in what was left of the mirror above the fireplace, then turned and glared at him. “You have got to be kidding!” he yelled, somewhere between exhausted and exasperated, his chest heaving.

         Jesse hurled himself at the man, his bare right hand leading the way.  But, his timing was off.  Slow, he thought, grimacing.  Cement legs.  The man noticed Jesse’s hand and, alarmed, quickly scooped two billiard balls off the floor.  Before Jesse could close the distance, the man launched one ball at him, hitting him square in the eye.

           “Oof!” Jesse groaned, staggering to the left.  The man launched the other ball at him, this time hitting him right in the mouth. Blood spurted out along with two of Jesse’s teeth. 

Jesse plowed forward, managing to grab the man’s shirt with his left hand.  He yanked him closer and was about to end it by grabbing the guy’s face with his right hand, but the gravity skewed his timing again.  The man dodged Jesse’s right hand, then planted his knee into his ribs.  Before Jesse could even react, the man spun around and kicked him square in the chest.  Jesse fell backward into a cocktail table and chairs, smacking the back of head against the stone tabletop. 

          Before he had a chance to rise, the man grabbed another handful of billiard balls off the pool table and fired away.  The first one missed, crashing through the French door window behind him.  The others didn’t, with one hitting him in the face, another off the side of his head as he turned his neck to shield himself, and still another directly in the groin.  Jesse staggered up, wincing from far too many tender spots, and lurched forward. 

         He tried to lunge, but the 1.17g felt like he was moving through mud. He telegraphed every swing.  Meanwhile, the man didn't just dodge; he counter-attacked. A short, brutal elbow jab caught Jesse in the throat, buckling his trachea.

           Jesse wheezed, a wet, whistling sound from his throat. He swung his right hand wildly, desperate for the skin-to-skin contact that would end this, but the man caught his wrist mid-air with his left hand.  He deftly hooked his right arm under Jesse’s armpit, yanked up, and snapped Jesse’s elbow backward. Pain tore through Jesse’s body.  His nano-toxin-laden hand flopped uselessly, the connection to his nervous system now severed by shattered bone and shredded ligaments. The man didn't let go; he shoved him down, wedging Jesse against the wreckage of the cocktail table.

        “How many of you are there?!”

          Jesse didn’t know what he was getting at.  It was just him, of course.  He didn’t know who the other two were and didn’t really care.  Everything went blurry.  Everything hurt.  “Jus’ me.” he sputtered, barely able to speak or breathe.

          “How many?!”

          “Alone...”

          “Yeah, right,” he said, scoffing.  “I don’t think you understood my question.  So, you’ll forgive me if I don’t necessarily believe you right now.”

          Jesse tried one last time to plant his right palm on some part of the man’s exposed skin.  Anywhere would work.  Through waves of stabbing pain, he flopped his broken arm up, hoping whatever momentum he mustered would be enough to land it on the man’s now-exposed shoulder.  The man noticed this and quickly swatted his hand away.  He then pinned Jesse’s right forearm to the ground with his knee. 

         “Nice try, friend,” he said, glancing at Jesse’s hand.  “You know, I invented that nano-toxin, and the cybernetic delivery mechanism.  Well, not me literally, but several hundred of my employees did.  I’d show you the patents, but you’ll be dead by the time I could find them.  Now then, I’ll ask you again: how many of you are there?” The light above the pool table still swung back and forth, casting a wave of shadows across them both.  

          “Jus’... me,” he murmured.

         The man rolled his eyes.  “Did the Executive Committee send you?” he asked, wearily.  “One of the other Vice Presidents?  Maybe Hanson, or Okoro?  Or, was it that government task force?” Fading fast, Jesse just stared at him.  “I suppose it doesn’t matter,” the man continued.  “You no doubt worked through a handler or two.  Whoever it was, they’ve got quite a sense of irony, don’t they?” 

          The man let go of Jesse, and pulled up a holo-panel near the desk.  He flipped through several screens and tapped away at the interface.  As he hit one last button, a small cabinet opened behind the desk.  In it, the man pulled out a metallic, fingerless gauntlet.  Barely conscious, Jesse watched as he slipped it over his right hand, flipped a small control panel out over his forearm, then pressed three dots on the control panel in a very specific combination.  He walked past Jesse, ignoring him, and out the French doors.

           Jesse’s vision swam.  He felt the life draining out of him.  Blood pooling in his mouth, he looked over at one of the men lying next to him.  Then he saw his face.  And paused.  With considerable effort, he arched his head back to see the other man, lifeless and crumbled in the corner.  He paused again.  Coughing up more blood and breathing one last, raspy breath, he shook his head, smiled slightly, and closed his eyes. 

 

***

  

          Jesse sidestepped cautiously over the floor sensor, knowing that if he tripped it the doors would seal and he’d soon be made. That should be the last one, he thought, looking back down the dark hallway he came from.  I might even be back at the hotel bar by dinner.  Tonight was asado with chimichurri.  He didn’t know exactly what chimichurri was, but knew he definitely liked it.

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      Paul Cesarini’s fiction appears in 365 Tomorrows, Altered Reality, Aphelion, Andromeda, Antipodean SF, Apocalypse Confidential, Bewildering Stories, Black Sheep, Corner Bar, Close to the Bone, Dark Horses, Fabula Argentea, Freedom Fiction Journal, Intangience, Lit Nerds, MetaStellar, Mobius Blvd, Mystic Mind, Pulp Lit, Robot Butt, Savage Planets, Sci-Fi Shorts, Tall Tale TV, the Weekly Humorist, the Writing Disorder, and numerous anthologies and podcasts, with additional stories in-press.

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     Luke Lester is an artist and writer from Victoria, Canada. He has recently been published in Absolute Underground, Black Petals, Flash Fiction North, Paragraph Planet, Ultramarine Literary Review, and Yellow Mama. More of his art and writing can be found on his blog: The Other Place.