Red Shift: The Odds (Censored version) Page 11

  Chapter 10

  As Tyrol woke, he looked around the room, although it was new to him, it wasn’t at all unfamiliar, a sense of belonging ran through him. This was where he belonged. There was a murmur beside him, and he rolled back the duvet to see a naked and amazingly attractive woman beside him. She was sleeping as he rolled out of the bed and roughly pulled his clothes on. Walking to the bathroom across the marble floor, he looked in the mirror, man I must have had some serious drinks last night.

  After showering he walked down the corridor to the kitchen. The walls were lined with portraits of people with their name and DOB and DOD details. It was a linear progression of people that spanned back near a hundred years. Most were sitting in large chairs with various robes and jewellery adorning their bodies. There were a few in more recent times that were in suits and tuxedos.

  At the end of the hall, there were a few group photos. He stopped to look at one, momentarily mesmerised. In the centre was his father, with Xan to his right and the head of the Consolidated United Nations to the left.

  As he passed the galley, he saw a chef waiting at a cooking station. “Good morning Tyrol, I trust you slept well?”

  “Ahhh, yeah, sure. Coffee. Please.”

  He went and sat at the head of a long dining table across the room from the kitchen. He heard the cooktop sizzling, of all of the ready-prepped meals and bio-engineered protein bars people had become accustomed to eating these days, there was nothing more appealing than the smell of sizzling bacon on an old fashioned cooktop.

  A gold leaf detailed tray was placed in front of him; looking to his right, he saw Xan sit down beside him. “Your breakfast sir,” he said with a smile. “Looks like you had a good night.” He nodded over his shoulder as the woman from his bed walked out the front door, looking a little worse for wear.

  Tyrol shrugged his shoulders. “Couldn’t tell you, things got a little hazy later on.”

  “Anyway, to business. I want you to get to know this Trina woman you met at the party last night. Our intel suggests she may have links to Wing’Tan.”

  “How do I get hold of her?”

  “You don’t. I suspect she already has you in her sights; she will make contact soon enough. Tyrol, you have ambition, that is without doubt. But success comes with conditions, and we need to talk about your progression with the Ordained”

  “What are you talking about Xan? Haven’t I already shown my loyalty?”

  “To me, yes, but there are others who are less trusting of someone so young. I am doing all I can to help your cause, but the next move is yours.”

  “Tell me what you want Xan; I am committed. I have been part of the top one percent since birth, but now I want to be the top one percent, of the top one percent.” He gave a hand gesture toward Xan, as though to acknowledge that Xan was already holding this position.

  “Good. Go to the plasma development facility in the Jai district this afternoon. There will be a man by the name of Rock at the fifth building. He will give you further instruction.” With that, Xan got up, gave Tyrol a slight bow and left the room.

  Tyrol went to the front door of the mansion, walking to the portico with its large Corinthian style columns and soffit dripping with bio-lume lighting. During the day it wasn’t so spectacular, but in the evening it reminded Tyrol of a den or grotto. And of course it was, the lair of the dragon, giver of opportunity, and stealer of souls.

  The valet arrived with Tyrol’s chrome plated Bugatti Veyron. Although it was a classic, he had kitted it out with all of the latest tech, including holo-displays, anti-hijack features, and removed the side and rear windows. His father, of course, despised the vehicle, which made Tyrol enjoy driving it even more. He had respect for his father, but would never become an old crony like him. No, Tyrol was the new breed, and he was going to claim his throne.

  Driving down the boulevard to the main road, he speculated about the task Xan had set for him. He wasn’t entirely sure this was purely a directive from the senior management. He respected Xan, and was grateful for the opportunities, but he also knew this wasn’t a selfless decision on Xan’s part. Tyrol had money and lineage, but he still held no real power. And power after all was the one goal of all those that aspired to be above mere mortal men.

  Driving through Downtown he could see remnants of the old city. The street-side shops, now abandoned as all purchasing became centralised, for the better, as far as he was concerned. The cafés and restaurants were run-down, paint flaking, neon signs broken. But still, some shops were open, some people in a few cafés, it seemed as much as society had moved on from this primitive existence, there were always the cockroaches that wouldn’t go away.

  Why anyone could stand being on a street when there were living urban islands, or Oases as they were now known, was beyond him. Devoid of traffic, artificial light or screens, in favour of fluid-floors, bio-lights, and holo displays, they left nothing of the old city’s essence, it was clean and pure. It of course helped that workers and people without means couldn’t enter, keeping the air flawless with that familiar scent of taste and class.

  Tyrol had entered the expansive technology and industrial park. Many entrances had armed guards, all had high fences or deep lawns with proximity sensors and plenty of signs warning of the impending suffering for anyone who ignored the signs or couldn’t read.

  Near the end of the main entry road was the access road to the OND Technologies main laboratory and research centre. Tyrol pulled in and stopped at the first checkpoint. A guard stood in the booth watching on as the scanners swept past the car. A green light flashed outside the booth, and Tyrol drove forward. He could see the main entry and a man he didn’t know standing at the door, wearing a very nice suit, and close-cropped hair, he didn’t look like a time waster.

  As he pulled up to the entry, Tyrol disengaged the hijack system. The well-dressed man came to his car and looked confused, as he obviously couldn’t find a door handle. Tyrol touched the door at the back corner and it moved forward and out. Stepping out of the car, he introduced himself to the man.

  “I know who you are Tyrol, I am Rock. Follow me, sir.”

  “Lead on,” said Tyrol waving his hand out in front.

  They walked into the building. It was a fairly grand entry for a lab, but of course Tyrol knew that what the company advertised as its research and what it really did were two very different things. The Government summary of the company was a privately owned syndicate that developed technology and instruments for the health sector. The truth was it was one of the top weapons and chemical research facilities for the Ordained. The products behind these walls helped them gain much political power through sales, bargaining and espionage.

  They walked past a series of closed labs. There wasn’t anyone there, which seemed a little odd for Tyrol. Rock could see him looking in the rooms. “Kind of quiet here, huh?”

  “Yeah, where is everyone?”

  “They’re off for the weekend. The company is installing a new security system, we’re actually guinea pigs. Smile, you have about a dozen sensors on you everywhere you move in here.”

  “Impressive. I’ve always been a fan of personal safety.”

  Rock looked over his shoulder and smiled as he came to a door at the end of the corridor. He opened it and ushered Tyrol in. As he entered, he had to adjust to the new surroundings. There was a lot of artificial light, and all of the walls and floors were white. The room was the size of a sports field, with a series of large machines scattered around with line-marked walking paths around them, leading right to where Tyrol was now standing.

  “Tyrol, I couldn’t talk to you about why you are here before as I didn’t want the security, or anyone for that matter, to hear us.”

  “Sounds ominous, what is going on?”

  “I am Xan’s Security Chief. We have captured some runners that were attempting to steal information and weapons from the Ordained. U
nder the guise of standard runs, they seemed to be under a choreographed attempt to obtain at least some of this information. It seemed that whoever ordered the runs was willing to accept some level of loss, but I think we managed to get all of them.”

  “So what do you want me to do, interrogate them?”

  “No, I’ve taken care of that. Believe me, we won’t get any more information out of them than I got.”

  “So why am I here?”

  “To show your loyalty, Tyrol. To show you are willing to take part in anything the Ordained deem necessary. We want you to kill them.”

  “In cold blood?” Tyrol was visibly disturbed by the notion, but tried as hard as he could to cover it. Rock could see it from a mile away and enjoyed every second of it.

  “I wouldn’t say cold blood, Tyrol. You must understand, if our tech were made known to the authorities, they would be able to link the Ordained to multiple political assassinations; the dirt we have on some politicians in the documents they tried to lift will ensure we have the leverage we require to elevate you to political prominence. Not in the city Tyrol, in the Government.”

  Tyrol paused for a minute. There was a part of him that wanted to reject what he was saying on principal alone, but on the whole it made sense. The greater good was more valuable than any assembly of the parts. They must move forward.

  “So this is not only about protecting the Ordained, it’s about protecting what we believe in, and ensuring our rise to prominence.”

  “Exactly. This is not cold blood, these people have attacked us, this is self-defence.”

  They walked across the room and around the side of one of the large machines. There were four chairs with three men and a woman tied and gagged to them. They were all beaten heavily, and if he hadn’t seen the bubbles of blood coming from their noses and twitching muscles from time to time, Tyrol would have figured them for dead already. He stood in front of them, six metres back and pulled his pistol from his hip.

  The woman gasped, “Mr, you must believe me, we have done nothing. Believe. Please …” her voice faded out. Tyrol trained his weapon on her.

  “No!” said Rock. “No guns in here. The noise and chemical residue will mess with the equipment. Use this.”

  He pulled small device from his coat and handed it to Tyrol. “It’s a DNA destabiliser. When you compress it against their skin and press the switch on the back here, it will introduce a bio-chemical that will attack their DNA.”

  Tyrol took the device from Rock’s hand. “How long does it take?”

  “It starts immediately, within one minute their bodies will be an indistinguishable mess on the floor.”

  Tyrol looked at them, the two who were conscious looked up at him with wide eyes. For a moment Tyrol thought he felt sympathy, but he thought of what had come to do, and pierced two of them in quick succession, standing back. Immediately their bodies became rigid, they made muffled screams from behind the gags. As he watched he could see their eyes go milk white. He quickly pierced the other two, handed the device to Rock, and started to walk out of the room.

  “Don’t want to stay for the show?” Rock asked with a chuckle in his voice.

  “Not my cup of tea, thanks.”

  Really, it was all he could do to not vomit all over the white floor. Rock walked to his side and they left the facility. Once out the front, Tyrol touched his door to open it. He was about to get in, and Rock put his hand on his shoulder.

  “You did good in there, kid. The first time is always the hardest.”

  Tyrol looked at him hard. “What makes you think it was my first time?” He turned and got in the car closing the door, the engine started with a rumble. He let out a huge exhale and drove out, relieved it was over, but also angry at himself for feeling and showing discomfort at the situation.

  As he left the main gate, he saw a car across the street. Driving past he looked in the window and swore it was Trina. He stopped suddenly as the crash sensors buzzed in his ear, looking to the front there was a motorcycle stopped in the street. The bike spun around fast and accelerated so hard that Tyrol was surprised it didn’t flip. Three seconds later it was gone. He looked back to the car but it too had gone.

  Tyrol tried to bring up both vehicles on his scanner, but neither of them had tags or electronic signatures that could be identified. He gathered his thoughts and considered the options. He quickly came to the most logical conclusion, that killing his first enemies face to face had taken its toll in the present. He would go home and relieve this tension that was starting to give him a headache.

  Jack had weaved through the streets of the industrial area, out into the lower city suburbs and onto the freeway within minutes. The whole trip seemed to have been kind of pointless. They arrived at the facility, waited for a car to come out, then left. No interaction, image or audio capture, just a ride.

  “So what was that all about, Trina?”

  “The man you stopped in front of was Tyrol. Tyrol is an Alpha who has been doing a fair bit of business with us but is becoming increasingly dangerous.”

  “In what way?”

  “He’s trying to scale the ranks, and so is pushing himself to take more risks. I prefer our Alphas to be the passive type. Stay out of things that ain’t their business.”

  “So what was going on today then?”

  “We had intel that some runners and middlemen were captured by a group called the Ordained. We wanted to see if that was true, and if Tyrol had anything to do with them.”

  “Why so overt?”

  “We also want Tyrol to know we are not afraid of him, and it should be the other way around. He is not untouchable.”