In His Sights (short story)

 In His Sights

By T. A. Jenkins 

Q33RX steadied the barrel of the gun on the window ledge.  His cybernetic enhancements synchronised his eyesight with the muscles in his hand and arm, and he brought his prey into his sights.  It would be a clean headshot.  No collateral damage.

Nick Calon was going to die tonight.

His target looked happy, surrounded by his friends in the restaurant, a drink in hand.  Laughing.  Smiling.  But that didn’t matter.  Nick Calon had been judged guilty by the Religitron Mainframe and would face justice.  He was the enemy.

The shot was lined up, Calon’s face caught in the crosshairs.  The man smiled, almost directly at the cyborg assassin.

Q33RX stroked the trigger and… hesitated.

Déjà vu?

There was something about that smile.  Nick… Nick Calon’s smile, his face... he’d seen it before.

No.  That wasn’t right.  Of course he’d seen the man’s face before; he knew who he was going to kill.  He’d seen the mission brief.  He’d memorised the face of the man he needed to kill.

He lined up his shot once more.

But why the déjà vu?  Had the interspace teleporter messed up the wiring in his brain?  Like his arm?  He’d fixed that, but he couldn’t fix his brain.

And Calon was still there, smiling.

Q33RX had a mission.

He adjusted his grip on the rifle; the sight had slipped again, and he returned Nick Calon’s head to the crosshairs.

This was it.

Time to carry out the mission.

Time to kill an enemy of the Mainframe.

His finger stalled on the trigger; he couldn’t do it.  It should be easy.  It was his job, his mission.

Why couldn’t he do it?

Was he really that broken?

His hand held a frozen grip on the gun, ready to shoot.

Ready to kill.

This was why he was here, why he’d climbed up through the depths of the space station to get here, now.  He knew who he was going to kill.  Nick Calon had to die, no matter how he smiled, how he laughed with his friends, or how…

No.

Q33RX took a breath, steadied his resolve, and fired.

 

5 hours earlier.

 

It felt like an intake of breath, a gasp, but there’d been no air in the in-between.

Q33RX was there… and now, he was here.

A sudden, unpleasant jolt through spacetime.

It had taken a toll on him.

Colours flashed in his head; his eyes prickled as if a thousand needles had caressed the surface all at once, and his naked body dropped to its hands and knees.  He felt sick.

He’d tried to focus, to tell his cybernetic form to get its act together, but his thoughts weren’t quite in the same place as he was, almost as if they’d been left behind where he’d been and hadn’t caught up.

His stomach convulsed and he retched; he hadn’t been allowed any solid food for the last twenty-four hours and that worsened the cramps in his midriff.

He needed to move, to stand up.

He had a mission to carry out.

His blurred vision was starting to clear, and he found himself staring at a tiled ceramic floor.  It was dark, but he could still make out an alternating black and white pattern sprawling beneath him.  A chessboard floor.

The mission would be simpler than chess; an assassination, his first, but the conversion process had prepared him well.

Cyber-agent Q33RX climbed to his feet.  He was unsteady, still dizzy from the teleportation, and the robotics in his left arm had shorted out through the in-between space.  Easy enough to fix.  Inorganic material wasn’t well suited to instantaneous transport; it bore major risk, but his more human, fleshy exterior was mostly protective of his internal, non-human components.  Mostly.  He was lucky it was only his arm that’d been damaged.  He’d heard some agents had suffered complete neural overload.  They’d seen ghosts.  Gone crazy.  Failed.

He wouldn’t fail.

Q33RX found himself in a closet, abandoned, given the state of the small room.  Dried out rotten mops and decayed brushes huddled together in a corner, and, lurking nearby, a rusted bucket containing a murky and chunky liquid.  A shelving unit leant against the wall to his right, mostly empty, but he could see, amongst some other paraphernalia, the remnants of abandoned cleaning fluids and decayed toilet paper within its carcass.  An old wooden door bowed awkwardly in its jamb before him; it was closed but drastically misshapen.  Dim green light whispered though the glass panel and highlighted the word ‘MAINTAINENCE’ which was printed backwards on the surface.

He’d arrived, as planned, somewhere in the old and neglected central levels of the space station and, like many Earth cities, it had grown over time by building on top of existing structures, quite literally burying the past as the population grew.  Though in this case it had expanded outwards, an inflating sphere of twisted metal, plastic, and flesh.

He looked at his left arm, a limp limb of metal and plastic wrapped in his nude flesh.  The teleport system had only transported him.  No clothes, no weapons.  And until he made his way to the drop point, where a spy had secreted a mission case, he’d only be able to rely on his own cybernetic enhancements.  Right now, he had what he needed for a simple repair.  With his right arm he reached into his mouth and retrieved a small multitool concealed within the cavity in his throat.  He released the blade from the tool and begun to cut into the flesh of his left arm.  It hurt, but he could handle it; he needed both limbs to kill and a little pain was a fair trade off.

He got to work.  He unscrewed a panel just beneath the surface of his skin and dug into the circuits within with the tool.  He had to be quick; he knew the consequences if he failed this mission.  It was all or nothing.  He clipped a wire and swore at a painful spark.  If he didn’t succeed, or if he was detected, the Religitron Mainframe would send another cyber-agent to destroy him and finish the job.  The Mainframe didn’t accept failure.  He disconnected a couple of wires, then reconnected them onto different circuits, causing a surge through his left arm.  That should do it.  He tested every joint and muscle, flexing his fingers and rotating his wrist, extending and retracting his elbow, rolling his shoulder.  Yes, all fixed.

He found an old first aid kit tucked at the back of one the shelves.  The bandages inside were a little decrepit but would be good enough; he used one roll to wipe away the excess blood and wrapped the rest of the bandages tightly around his arm.  It was the first bit of clothing he’d worn since he’d stripped off for the teleporter.  A full set of clothes was his next step, but not because of any sense of modesty; he needed to be able to navigate the higher levels of the space station without drawing any undue attention.  Nudity in public spaces wasn’t exactly inconspicuous.

He headed for the exit.  The door handle was a little rusted, and he found he needed to shove hard against the jammed, warped door to open it.  It gave way with a splintered crunch.  Q33RX stepped out of the closet into a desolate corridor beyond.

The space station was huge, a city of cities, and he only had a vague idea where he was within its depths.  The hall was lit by dim green emergency lights, a sign that no power was diverted here, and it’s non-descript walls gave little away.  Not even the station’s homeless came here.  Not even rats.

It was a place for ghosts.

And cyborg assassins.

He could see several doors in the gloomy hall, and it only took a short search to find some old maintenance overalls and a pair of serviceable boots in one of the rooms.  He couldn’t make out their colour; they may have been brown, blue, green, or even pink; it was difficult to see the full spectrum in this emerald light.  Not that it mattered.  Clothes were clothes.  Aside from what he’d needed, there’d been very little else of note to be found; most of rooms contained old computer terminals that were useless without power, or rows and rows of filing cabinets.  Abandoned admin.

As he wandered, he found himself lost, and all he could do was choose a direction and keep going until he found something to clue him in on his location.  He had five hours to complete his mission.  Five hours to kill.

It was an hour later when he was a little less lost; he found a map.  As he approached it, he thought he saw a face staring back at him from the reflective surface; it wasn’t his own, but someone familiar.  A trick of the light.  Shadows.  It disappeared almost as soon as he’d seen it, replaced with his own grim face looking back at him from behind the diagram.

It’d been a ghost, his imagination directing him to his pick-up point.

Another hour passed before Q33RX reached an abandoned office several floors up.  It’d taken much longer than expected to get here; some of the passages had been blocked by debris.  Some had collapsed entirely.  There’d been no direct route.

The office was littered with hundreds of desks, lined in imperfect rows skewed by time, all with broken computer terminals.  Most were cracked open like rancid eggs and stripped of their electronic yokes.  They were dusty and stained.  Useless.  He walked between them, checking the desk numbers, counting along until he reached the one he needed.

Zero-thirty-three.

It was almost indistinguishable from the others, though a fractured chair lay sprawled on its back in front of the terminal.  He kicked it to one side.  There was a filing cabinet under the desk, and he yanked opened the bottom drawer to find a metal box.  The mission case, just as planned.  He lifted it out and placed it on the desk next to the busted computer.

He froze, hearing the click of a trigger behind him.

“Don’t turn around,” said a man.  His voice was deep, smooth, almost comforting.  “I just want to ask you a question.”

“Why?”  He ran a finger along the metal seems of the case; there would be a gun inside.  “Who are you?”  He wasn’t sure if he’d be fast enough to get it before the intruder could fire his own.

“I’m asking the questions.”

“Are you the spy?” said Q33RX.  “Did you leave me this case?”  He wondered if he was talking to a double agent.

“Does it matter?”

“What do you want?”

“I told you; I want to ask you something.”  The voice was coming from his back left, around five metres back.  “About what you’re about to do.”  Q33RX had clocked a doorway near there, one of only a few ways into this office.  “I want you to think about your mission.”

“It’s the only thing I’ve got on my mind,” said Q33RX.  He kept his hand on the metal case, almost willing it open to get the gun.  “I know what I need to do.”

“You should get that arm looked at.”

He didn’t reply.

“Tell me, do you know who you’re going to kill?”

“The enemy,” he snapped.  He considered throwing the box at him, to distract him, skew his gun’s aim, so he could charge at him.  “Everything I need is in here.”

“Do you know who you’re going to kill?”  The man’s voice was sterner this time, pointed.  “Do you?

“I don’t understand.”

“You will.”

“Who are you?!”  Q33RX screamed, grabbed the metal case, turned on his heel, and threw it at… nothing.  Just an empty doorway.  He, whoever he was, had disappeared.  The box clattered into the room beyond and bounced, echoing from within, the contents rattling and rolling as it settled.

He rushed after it, hoping to catch the stranger, to find out who he was, what he wanted, why he was there, what he meant by his bizarre question.

The room was empty.

A lonely computer terminal was overturned on the floor, no chair, and to its right was the remains of a battered and rusty filing cabinet.  Nearby he found the box he’d weaponised.  He squatted and opened it, ignoring the files and pulling the gun from inside.  He cocked it.  Another quick scan of the room confirmed he was alone.  There was only a sealed-up doorway to another part of the building, but there was no way he’d escaped through there, not without a welding torch.  Besides, it was sealed from the inside.

This was impossible.

Had Q33RX been wrong?  Had the man been somewhere else in the office?  No, this was definitely where the voice had come from.

And who was he?  A spy?  Double agent?  Was he working for the enemy?  Or had he imagined the man?  Another ghost?  Had the whole thing just been a product of damage to his cybernetic brain, damage caused by the teleportation?  Like his arm?

He placed his back against a wall, keeping his eyeline on the open doorway in case the disappearing man returned, and finally looked at the mission files from the box.

Nick Calon.  That’s who file told him he was going to kill.  He didn’t recognise the name, or anything else in the man’s bio.  The cyber-agent hadn’t even been to this space station before, so how could he know who he was going to kill?  The stranger’s question had been nonsense.  He turned the page to the reconnaissance photos.  Nick Calon.  The face was unknown to him.  Another stranger.  No.  Wait.  He…

His arm briefly twinged with a short, sharp pain; he grasped it instinctively, bloodying his hand.  The pain was gone as quickly as it had occurred.

Q33RX refocused his attention.  The mission was all that was important, not the strange man and his confusing words, not the pain in his arm, and not whether he know who he was going to kill.  Nick Calon was going to die.  He spent a few minutes memorising the paperwork and photos, before burning it all with the matches left in the metal case.  No evidence left behind.  There was some extra equipment in the box, some sniper attachments for his gun, and he secreted them within his overalls.

It was time to move.

He had everything he needed.

He was armed.

He knew where to go.

He knew who to assassinate.

Nick Calon was going to die in three hours.

The cyber-agent took another look around the office with its rows of terminals, searching for any sign of his ghostly visitor, but found nothing.  As he’d expected.  If the stranger was a traitor, a double agent, it made no sense.  He hadn’t stopped him.  The man had still left the files, the gun.  If he was working for the enemy, why would he do that?  The stranger had just left him with a cryptic question and gone silent.  What sort of game was being played?

‘Do you know who you’re going to kill?’

He did… now.

Q33RX headed for his next location: a recently empty tower block in the populated upper levels of the space station.  A perfect sniper spot opposite where his target, Nick Calon, would be celebrating a friend’s engagement.

An hour and a half later, and after crawling up and along crumbled passageways and corridors, he emerged from a manhole into an alleyway just off the main concourse of a busy street.  He’d heard the bustle and chaos, the buzz and clamour of the city, almost as soon as he’d started headed upwards.  It’d been getting louder and louder as he neared his goal.  It was deafening now.  The several homeless people he’d passed on the levels just below the surface, and the one or two in the alley, were unfazed by the cacophony.  Desensitised.  Vehicles zoomed through the air above.  Cars chugged along the streets.  Dogs barked.  Sirens and alarms sang intermittently in the distance, and musical genres competed for attention.  People shouted, laughed, and talked.  And even the light boomed; bright and colourful illuminations pierced every corner, a mix of tasteless advertisements and gaudy flashing neon signs.  It was an assault on his senses.

And the smell…

He tried not to think about it; it’d been bad enough picking up its hideous gaseous tendrils as he’d moved from the musty lower depths of the space station and neared the surface, but here it permeated everything.

Q33RX entered the designated tower block through the back door, making sure to disable the security system.  Just because the building was for sale and the estate agent never showed people around on the weekends, didn’t mean he could just break the lock and do whatever he wanted.  He needed to be careful not to jeopardize the mission.

It was quieter inside, the walls protecting him from the discord outside, and he tried to revel in the silence as he rode the elevator to one of the upper floors.  His thoughts filled the quiet.  He needed to focus, to try and ignore the feelings of doubt that crept up his metal spine.

Did he know who he was going to kill?

The ping of the elevator doors took him out of his contemplation, and he quickly made his way to the room where he’d take his shot.

Nick Calon was going to die tonight.

Q33RX readied himself, opening the window and allowing the frenzied sounds of the city to wash over him.

He waited.

And waited.

He kept his target’s face in his mind, trying to concentrate only on the mission, only on killing the enemy.  It was his only purpose right now.

He waited.

And waited.

It was almost time; he’d arrived.

Nick Calon.

The cyber-agent watched his prey greet his friends on the roof of the building opposite and he kept waiting.  He waited as he watched the target eat, drink, and be merry.  Calon looked happy.

He would die happy.

Q33RX steadied the barrel of the gun on the window ledge and brought his prey into his sights.  A clean headshot.  No collateral damage.

Nick Calon had been judged guilty by the Religitron Mainframe and would face justice.  He was the enemy.

The shot was lined up, Calon’s face caught in the crosshairs.  The man smiled, almost directly at the cyborg assassin.

Q33RX stroked the trigger and… hesitated.

Déjà vu?

There was something about that smile.  Nick… Nick Calon’s smile, his face... he’d seen it before.

No.  That wasn’t right.  Of course he’d seen the man’s face before; he’d seen the mission brief.  He’d memorised the face of the man he needed to kill.

He lined up his shot once more.

Did he know who he was going to kill?

He adjusted his grip on the rifle; the sight had slipped again, and he returned Nick Calon’s head to the crosshairs.

This was it.

Time to carry out the mission.

Time to kill an enemy of the Mainframe.

His finger stalled on the trigger; he couldn’t do it.  It should be easy.  It was his job, his mission.

Why couldn’t he do it?

Was he really that broken?

His hand held a frozen grip on the gun, ready to shoot.

Ready to kill.

This was why he was here, why he’d climbed up through the depths of the space station to get here, now.  He knew who he was going to kill, didn’t he?

Nick Calon had to die.  No matter how he smiled, how he laughed with his friends, or how…

No.

Q33RX took a breath, steadied his resolve, and fired.

 

He missed.

 

The bullet shattered several wine glasses and tumblers on the shelves behind the bar; no-one, not even Nick Calon, was harmed.  But the bullet had shattered the happiness.  His prey no longer smiled, no longer laughed; he was scared.  He ducked below the tables, following the lead of the screaming and shouting guests at the restaurant.  What should’ve been a precision hit, became chaos.

Nick Calon was still alive.

The déjà vu was still alive too.

Did he know who he’d tried to kill?

Had that mysterious man, the voice in the depths of the space station, been real?  Or a ghost?  Was his cybernetic brain twisted up in knots from the teleportation?  Neural overload?  No.  What was happening to him?

He leapt to his feet and screamed.  He punched the wall, plaster exploded outward, and his fist went right through.  It didn’t hurt, but he screamed again, punched again.  And again.  And again.

There wasn’t time for this; if he finished the mission, if he killed Nick Calon, maybe these feelings and thoughts would die too.

There was no other way.

Q33RX unscrewed the sniper attachments from his gun, shortening the length, and abandoned them on the floor, before climbing out the window and onto the fire escape.

His vantage point was almost at the top of the building, and his prey was on the large roof plaza of a much shorter building opposite; there was a significant height and gap between them.

The cyber-agent knew what he needed to do.  The raw calculations from the computerised parts of his brain could be accurate, if he could trust them, but it was impossible to know every variable.  The soft, squishy parts of his brain, instinct, would compensate.

He readied his stance, one foot back, one forward; he braced his legs, preparing the cyber enhanced muscles in his thighs and calves.

He eyed his target.

Nick Calon, along with the other people at the event, were still taking cover under the tables.  He could hear sirens in the distance, and it was hard to tell if they were part of the usual melodies of the city or whether they were coming closer.  The traffic, flying cars and transports, continued undeterred, and life surrounding the restaurant continued as if no gun had been fired.  People were too concerned with their own lives and used to the chaos of this place of sin.

Q33RX leapt from the building, jumping into the gaudy illumination and the cacophonic commotion of the city.  His body fell between the flying vehicles, and he felt the whoosh and zip as they zoomed around him.  He thought he’d get hit, get knocked from his path, but either luck or his calculating brain were on his side.

He hit the paved floor of the plaza and rolled, scrambling to his feet, and keeping some of the momentum as he ran.

Someone screamed, a pedestrian, but he ignored her and pushed through anyone in his way.

He kept his focus on Nick Calon.

Did he know who he was going to kill?

He raced toward the restaurant.

Did he know?

He kicked open the door and cocked his gun.

Did he?

As he entered, he saw the food abandoned on tables, drinks spilled, and the guests huddled beneath the furniture.  He heard someone sobbing to his right.  He could feel the fear in the room.  Not that it mattered.  Q33RX kept moving forward.  He needed to complete the mission, to prove to himself that he wasn’t going crazy, to prove he could kill Nick Calon.

For the mission.

For the Religitron Mainframe.

For…

His prey was in his sights.

The cyber-agent grabbed the table and threw it to one side.  Plates and glasses cascaded and flipped from its surface as it smashed against the restaurant’s bar.

He took aim at Nick Calon.

Did he know who he was going to kill?

His finger pressed against the trigger.

“Quinn?” said his prey.  His voice was deep, smooth, almost comforting.

Something changed.

It felt like an intake of breath, a gasp, but there’d been no air in his lungs.

A sudden, uneasy jolt through spacetime.

The words had taken his breath away.

Colours flashed in his head; his skin tingled as if a thousand kisses had caressed its surface all at once, and his body dropped to its hands and knees.  He felt sick.

He knew who he was going to kill.

He tried to focus, to tell his cybernetic form to get its act together, but his thoughts were suddenly in the same place as he was, almost as if they’d been left behind and had finally caught up.

Flickers of moments, forgotten memories, bombarded his brain.  Romantic meals, holding hands in the park, snuggling on the sofa.  Echoes of another life washed over him.  A kiss on the cheek, laughing at the same jokes, playing games together, splashing about and having fun in the seas of a distant planet.  How could he have forgotten so much?  His smile, his eyes… how could he have forgotten?

Those eyes, that smile… they were his home.

“Quinn? Is that really you?” said Nick.

He’d lost everything to the mission.

Wiped away, converted, by the Religitron Mainframe.

His gun clattered to the floor.

“Quinn.”  A hand, a familiar and welcoming hand, touched his.  “It’s okay.”

He looked up with teary eyes; he didn’t realise he’d been crying.  The mysterious stranger, the voice he’d heard in the lower level… it had been no stranger.  Had it been his imagination?  Memories?  A ghost from his past?  His own mind had warned him with a voice he now felt relieved to hear once more.  He blinked through watery eyes to see someone he knew with all his heart.

“Nick,” he said.  “I… I…”

“I know.”  The other man stood, guiding him up at the same time.  Nick grabbed both his hands.  “Quinn, I didn’t think I’d ever see you again.”

“I was going to…”

The other man placed his finger on his lips and smiled.  Everything melted away, all the commotion and chaos, all the past and all the future; there was only the present… and the two of them.  And those eyes.  He didn’t want this to end.  He wanted to stay lost in those eyes forever.  Q33RX… no, Quinn… pulled Nick close.  They embraced, bodies and lips meeting for what felt like the first time.  Fireworks flooded his cybernetic heart.  He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten all this.  Forgotten him.

It had been stolen from him.

He was going to take it all back.

“I don’t want to lose you again,” he said as they broke apart.  “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Nick squeezed his hand, “and you found me.”

“I… I failed my mission.”  He placed his hand on the other man’s shoulder.  “And now we’re both in danger.”

“I know.”

Quinn looked around the restaurant.  Police sirens were growing louder outside, and he could see Nick’s friends and relatives, still hiding under the tables, less scared more nervous.  They’d be okay; they weren’t targets.  But Quinn and Nick needed to flee.  “The Religitron Mainframe will be sending another cyber-agent to finish the job,” he said.  He nodded toward the door that led to the kitchen, and undoubtedly an exit.  He took Nick’s hand.  “Come with me if you want to live.”

As the words left his lips, Quinn knew that he wouldn’t just be saving Nick’s life, but that Nick would also be saving his, to be able to live as he truly was, and with who he was meant to be with.  He wanted to live.

The lovers ran, Quinn holding Nick tight, and he vowed to never lose him, never forget him, ever again.

He was finally home.