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.
