One woman, one man; they wore oxide-black Corinthian helms that reminded Damien of an iron-age Batman. They’re certainly more menacing than Batman, he thought, though they were not carrying any firearms or prop weapons. He noticed their belts carried sheaths for puglios — a weapon he’d briefly learned of in Project GATE. They were unmistakable: compact Roman daggers with a wavy edge. Their right arms were encased in some sort of gauntlet. They wore royal breastplates in rich indigo and sheaths on their hips for longswords.
The Jamaican woman wore a pearl-white Corinthian helm. It covered her face except for narrow circles around her eyes and a thin strip that ran from her nose to her neck, revealing her lips. Her sword’s sheath was etched with a headless serpent. She wore a purple cape and black boots. Blue eyeshadow streaked from one eye like fire.
‘Greetings,’ she said. ‘How you feeling this evening?’
Jensen shot her a Hollywood smile and gestured with open hands. ‘Ah, I was beginning to think you were showing me up.’
She didn’t return the smile. ‘Me boss would not allow it. Did you bring the delivery?’
Damien maintained his position behind Jensen, watching the others on the balcony through his peripheral vision. They hadn’t moved, but he noticed one of them had a bow slung over her back. They wore Corinthian battle helms — these were golden, smooth and round. They looked like something out of a science-fiction movie rather than a historical item of clothing.
Jensen adjusted a button on his tuxedo. ‘Exactly as requested. I trust you are satisfied?’
The woman stepped forward. Jensen almost leaped behind Damien.
‘Everything cool,’ she said.
Jensen turned to Jay. ‘Stay where you are.’
Damien watched as Jensen stepped around Jay and walked halfway toward the woman. A gesture of trust, he assumed. But another Corinthian soldier strode through the foyer toward them. Damien tracked him from the corner of his eyes. The soldier did not move for Jensen, but Damien kept an eye on him.
The soldier instead approached the woman and whispered something in her ear. Damien read the soldier’s lips but it wasn’t English. He watched the woman’s reaction carefully. She showed very little shift in her expression, which was already difficult to observe through her pearl helm, but it didn’t look to be pleasant news.
‘This look fishy still,’ she said. ‘You bringing the authorities?’
Jensen shook his head. ‘That would be a … poor business choice for everyone involved.’
‘Looks like you a man never hear me too good,’ she said. ‘I never said bring the authorities. They downstairs in the lobby causing a big fuss.’
Damien saw Jay’s neck stiffen.
Jensen’s arms were out, palms open. ‘I honestly have nothing to do with that,’ he said. ‘And it’s likely it has nothing to do with us.’
‘Me patience starting to disappear,’ she said. ‘Best you hand over the package now.’
Jensen moved to one side, taking refuge under an archway. Damien tracked two more soldiers through another archway on his left. They moved behind Damien and Jay and remained at a safe distance.
Damien took two careful steps forward so he was in line with Jay.
‘Is there a problem?’ Jay said.
‘Everything is everything,’ she said. ‘You be who we came for, gentlemen. Please relax now.’
Jay exchanged a glance with Damien that conveyed something between alarm and annoyance.
‘Look, whoever you think we are,’ Damien said, ‘we’re not them. We work in security. That’s it.’
She smiled for the first time and took a step closer, her dark helmed soldiers matching her movements.
‘Why are you looking for us?’ Jay said.
‘What we going to do now is put you in bindings,’ she said. ‘Little from that, we take you from here.’
‘What the hell you want from us?’ Jay said.
‘Your DNA,’ she said, ‘is a untapped market.’
‘You know what else is an untapped market?’ Jay said.
The woman blinked.
‘Yeah, I have nothing,’ Jay said.
She turned to the soldiers on the mezzanine floor. ‘Prepare them.’
STAGE 1
EVACUATION
Chapter 14
Sophia left the tree and ran for the street. The explosions had rippled beyond the museum and disintegrated city block upon city block across the upper west side. The devastation was like nothing she’d seen before.
She hit the button. ‘Aviary,’ she said. Her ears were ringing. ‘Aviary!’
There was a crackle, then a voice. ‘What … the hell was that?’
‘Where are you?’ Sophia said.
‘Sub … Eight-Six—’ Aviary said.
Aviary was cutting out. If she was in a subway station that would explain that. Wifi and cellular would cut out once her phone was deep enough in the subway station, and there weren’t any hotspots in the New York subway.
Sophia checked her iPhone again. The operatives were long gone, but she knew if she kept an eye on them they would likely regroup. And that would be interesting. On the map, she checked the corner of the subway station and found the operative Aviary was chasing. The dot was stationary for now, and Sophia worried that her friend had been spotted.
Sophia started running again, heading north for the subway station. She weaved around the vehicles that had rolled over onto the grass and crossed from the park itself to Central Park West.
The air was loaded with fine debris, making her cough. Embers and ash flakes wafted around her. She ran through it all — the discarded vehicles, the crumpled corpses, the moving bodies, the dazed and injured wandering amongst the wreckage bleeding and muttering. One man sat on the curb, face covered in blood, and began to comb his hair. Sophia ran past him, reaching the edge of the blast zone and closer to the subway station.
She pushed through the gathering crowd. She was on the corner of West Eighty-Fifth Street. Aviary had been there just moments earlier. She checked her iPhone. The operative was moving west from the station. Sophia scanned the streets. Black hat, red jacket — nowhere to be seen. West Eighty-Fifth was a small one-lane, one-way street. Cars were parked on either side and some of them were SUVs so it was hard getting visibility around them.
Then she saw Aviary, her vibrant red hair in stark contrast to the darker colors moving around her. She was walking west. That meant the operative was ahead of her, moving west along Eighty-Fifth. Sophia stuck to her side of the road and continued with them. Moving diagonally to a target on foot was the best position, so Sophia stayed on her side.
The whole fucking area had just gone up in flames.
She couldn’t believe it. She didn’t even know how many blocks, but it must’ve been quite a few. In any case, all that mattered right now was pulling Aviary out of harm’s way. She didn’t have the training and she was going to get herself killed. Or tortured, and therefore Sophia caught.
‘I have the eye,’ Aviary said. ‘West on West Eighty-Fifth, heading toward Columbus Avenue. Red jacket. Still carrying the ruck.’
Sophia consulted her phone, checking that Columbus Avenue was ahead of her. It was.
Aviary was fixated on the ruck. Sophia was curious too, but with so many operatives around she didn’t want to be seen, let alone involved. Unless I could capture and deprogram this operative … she thought. No, the risk was off the charts. She needed to get off the island. She settled on her plan. Get Aviary and get out. End of story. Forget recruiting operatives — she couldn’t handle those numbers. She could re-evaluate, try to figure out what the Fifth Column was trying to achieve with this attack, and she could do it from a safe location.