Aside from the momentary sound of Virginia’s synth-leather shoes as she slid to her hiding place and the squeaking noise of my own Kevlar-vinyl jeans as I crouched, the room was silent after the echo of the knocking faded away into the chipped plaster walls of the room. The din of nothingness almost made my ears ache and I hazarded a peek around the side of my desk, the Predator still trained in the general direction of the door. The frosted window of the door let in generous amounts of light pouring out of the fluorescent bulb in the hallway, a garish cold blue hue that hurt the eyes. I’d grow used to the color as it cascaded into my office and splashed on the worn tile floors, but now there was something sinister about the light - in large part as I expected a shadow to break up the regular rectangle stretching into my office space.
Generally, people continue to stand at a door once they’ve knocked on it, even if they suspect they might have gone to the wrong address. General politeness demands that you at least acknowledge your mistake whether you knock at the wrong door or enter in the wrong telecom code when you place a call. “I’m sorry, I believe I’ve got the wrong number,” is the generally accepted and appreciated offering of apologies and, unless you’re a real ass, you accept the apology and let the other person try their luck elsewhere.
While it had taken Virginia a few millisecond to register the unusual event of a knocking on my office door, my first reaction had been instantaneous as I crouched down - I looked at the office window as I drew my gun. Unless someone is wired to move a hellova lot faster than I’ve seen so far, I should at least catch a glimpse of anyone lingering in front of the door long enough to knock.
I consider it very bad juju when there’s a knock at a door with half-length of frosted glass and you don’t see a shadow where you expect to see one. It usually means that the person on the other side isn’t really intending to make a social call and implies that their intentions may have more nefarious undertones. Chances are they aren’t going to see if you wanted to grab a quick beer and skip out on work.
Risking a glance back at Virginia to see how she fared, I could see that she’d relaxed slightly and allowed her face to creep out from behind the round curves of her kneecaps. She was not a naïve tart like you might find on the western end of the sprawl, Virginia had grown up in the heart of the city and had picked up a sixth sense when it came to danger. You developed that ability for sensing danger if you wanted to survive in the city center or you didn’t last long. The violence in the area bordered by I-494 on the south and west, by I-694 on the north and east, was only barely contained by the corp security and not at all by the city badges, who focused more on drunks, vagrants and indecent exposure than the real crime happening in the city. Virginia grew up near one of the areas only a few miles from the center city, where the corps and badges didn’t even both trying to enforce a modicum of order. They’d given up on it near 2020 and hadn’t bothered to even reclaim that area since. Virginia was a survivor, she instinctually knew when to duck and cover.
Virginia’s eyes were wide with fear. She knew some serious shit was about to go down. No doubt she’d taken the time to glance at the window in the door herself was very aware of the lack of obvious signs that someone was on the other side.
We could have sat there all night, exchanging glances at each other and then the door, but I doubt it would have moved the situation towards much of a conclusion. It wasn’t my style to sit tight and wait for the inevitable so I made the decision that I’d answer the knock with a shouted and annoyed “waddaya want” from the relative safety of my desk to see if anything would happen. Before doing that, I exchanged looks with Virginia one last time to warn her and to make sure that she was ready for whatever might follow.
As I turned to her to give a reassuring smile I noticed a bright red beam dancing on the side of her head, coming from the office window behind us. My facial expression melted as I started to shout for her to move and Virginia must have guessed was what happening, but her reaction was far too late. A moment later, I was covered with blood and brains as I scrambled to my feet, the flat souls of my boots scrapping against the tiles as I threw myself into the storage closet next to my desk. It wasn’t the time to mourn Virginia’s fate. I had other business to attend to.
Sharp cracks of gunfire exploded and ancient linoleum burst into dust in a trail behind me as bullets riddled my office from the outside. Anticipating the next moment, I turned and trained my heavy pistol on the office door and was offered an excellent target by a man with more muscle than brains as he rammed the door in, gun drawn. The glass from the door cascaded and shattered at his feet and, by the time the last piece of glass had fallen, I’d put five or six rounds into his chest. I’m not one to pass up on a chance to clean up the gene pool when one presents itself. Any dumbass who thinks barging into a room occupied by a woman with a Predator is a smart move is one less idiot that needs to reproduce. He seemed surprised when bright red flowers blossomed on his chest, further proof of his stupidity. I didn’t feel the least bit of remorse as I watched the oaf slip to the ground in a pool of his own blood.
The next gorilla dressed like a man showed slightly more sense than the first, but my gun brought him down is a spray of red only moments later. Thinking his the Colt .45 he carried might draw a bead on me quicker if it entered the room before him, it was only a matter of simple extrapolation when I saw the muzzle enter the doorway and, with intentional hesitation on my part, it was an easy bit of work to guess where his chest might be a few ticks later.
Waiting for more opportunities to enhance my shooting skills, I kept the smoking barrel of my gun trained on the hallway beyond the demolished door of my office. I was surprised when, after nearly five minutes of waiting, no one appeared to take their opportunity to catch my bullets in midair - I was definitely ready to oblige any interested parties. Linoleum dust, the smell of cordite and fresh blood filled the room and I forced myself to sit patiently in the storage closet another full ten minutes before crawling along the floor towards the doorway to peak outside. Silence was in the air, aside from the traffic outside and a siren more likely heading away from my office rather than toward it. Corp security and badges avoided this warehouse neighborhood along the riverfront; they might encounter resistance and causalities with minimal gain were frequently seen as unnecessary expenditures of assets.
Using the shadows to my advantage, I snaked across the floor and chances a quick glance around the remnants of the frame that once held the door in place into the harshly-lit hallway beyond and was mildly amused to see nothing suggesting a threat lay beyond. Either the Johnson that took out a contract on me was a cheapskate, or the runners who’d taken the contract had convinced the Johnson they were better than they actually were. Two thugs and a sniper? Someone seriously underestimated me or was inexperienced enough with the shadow-world to hire amateurs. Either way, I was slightly insulted that the whole event had been essentially pedestrian in nature. If someone is going to try and cancel me, I prefer it if there is a meaningful effort behind the attempt. The whole episode had taken less than four minutes, from the knock on the door until the last bullet exiting my gun.
I looked over at the limp body of the woman once named Virginia. While I had seen shattered skulls and brain matter oozing onto floors in the past, I was glad that the night shadows obscured the details of her death. It made it easier to think of her as a thing, an object, a body, when I couldn’t see her face or her body clothed in the absurdly short tight dresses she wore that always turned me on a little.
It made it easier to walk away from her still-warm body, down the hall and the stairs, out into the street. As a mere body, I could let her be discovered by the janitorial crew in the morning - let them take care of calling the morgue to carry away the bodies I’d left behind. I wasn’t leaving a friend behind then, only a body. You can be damned sure that when I found out who had set me up, however, I would remember that I had to leave a friend behind when I became the judge and jury. Then, the bloody mess I left back in my office wouldn’t be a body any longer - it’d be the broken remains of a friend for whom I was delivering vengeance.
I walked out of the glaring lights of the warehouse and into the soft white flurries that seemed to fall all January long in this city. The snow was nothing but tiny white crystals of purity falling from the sky only to be sullied beyond redemption as they touched the ground. Part of me hated the world that night. Virginia was not pure by any stretch of the imagination, but only sloppy wet-workers kill the innocent. Whoever was responsible, I was going to make them pay.
