Tuesday's Short - Memory's Return
This week’s short story takes us from the creation of a science fiction vigilante to the urban fantasy world of pixie-dust crime and paranormal investigation. Welcome to
Memory's Return.
I don’t remember how I got in the alley, at least, not when I first wake up—and I don’t remember the names of these friendly faces making sure I’m okay, but it’s coming back. I just wish it would come back faster, because one of these faces is all kinds of wrong underneath the friendly veneer, with an agenda all their own, and they don’t mind putting my team in danger. If I don’t remember the whos and whats and whys real soon, one, or all, of us is going to end up dead, and who’s going to save the pixies then?Memory's Return
Hands caressed me in the dark, strong hands, narrow fingered and callous palmed, but gentle.
“She’ll live.”
And I realised the hands had not been caressing me, so much as checking for injuries, and it was dark because my eyes were closed. A finger lifted one of my eyelids, and I caught sight of a blurry face.
“You back?” the same voice asked, and my eye was allowed to close, again.
“Sure,” I said, and my voice sounded like I’d been breathing night club smoke and singing at the top of my lungs all night.
Actually, that sounded right, and also kinda wrong. I didn’t go to nightclubs. Never… ever… oh wait a minute. I sat up, and wrapped my arms around my knees, forcing my eyes to open as I did so. Smokey smell, minor injuries, smoke-scalded throat, and bruised. I rested my chin on my knees, and watched as my friends and colleagues shuffled around into view.
“We didn’t stop them, did we?” I asked, and, even to me, my voice sounded bleak.
I didn’t care. My voice matched my mood, crashing depression, an inexorable sense of loss. I wish I could explain why… or maybe not. Maybe that last feeling was something I needed to explore on my own. Yeah, definitely maybe.
I stared at the half circle of solemn faces in front of me, and tried to put names to them. The dark one right in front of me, the one belonging to the guy holding me by both shoulders, that face was one I really should remember. I stared at him, feeling my eyebrows coming together in a frown as I tried to place him.
His dark eyes stared back into mine. They were brown, a brown so dark it was almost black. I loved those eyes… and that brought back another association: those hands—narrow fingered, callous palmed, and gentle, so very, very gentle. I reached out and touched my fingertips to his cheek.
“I love you,” I said, and his eyes widened in utter, terrible surprise.
His reaction made me wonder, as I watched the expressions crossing his face, I identified fear, wonder, sheer delight, and unspoken horror. It made me want to laugh and cry and apologise all at once—and, judging from the reactions of those around us, we weren’t alone.
I took my hand away from his cheek, and wrapped it back around my knees. I kept staring, frowning harder as I tried to rediscover his name—and maybe something more, like what he was when he wasn’t rescuing damsels in distress, or confusing the hell out of me.
“Hey, Oni, you okay?”
I saw his mouth move, heard the words come out, and the world shuddered.
I saw him see the shudder cross my face, and then watched as he glanced back over his shoulder. Not only that, but the blonde to his left, and the red-head beside the blonde, also looked over their shoulders. To the right of him, the mousy guy and the albino one also looked back.
Oh shit. It wasn’t just me.
And all of a sudden, they scattered. Dark Eyes and the red-head reached back and grabbed me, yanking me in two different directions, before deciding to follow the mousy guy into the shadow of a doorstop. I saw the blonde and the albino one make another doorstop on the other side of the street I’d been lying in, and then the wind hit.
The wind, like a solid wall, sweeping the street clean, hurling rubbish before it. I saw a dumpster fly past, and a motorcycle, watched as a car slid past, metal screaming against the bitumen. I saw humans… bits of humans follow, and then the sound came.
It didn’t howl, or roar; it was just loud, pure unadulterated loud. It defied description. I knew what this was, but I couldn’t name it. Couldn’t name it, like I couldn’t name the beautiful man holding me safe, or his red-headed companion.
None of us moved, when it stopped. We sat, braced in the doorway, trying to remember how to breathe.
“What the hell did you do?” the beautiful man asked.
“Yeah, babe,” the red-head repeated. “Just what did you do?”
Babe? I looked across at him, and then stood, took a couple steps into the scoured street, where I let my legs fold beneath me. When I had wrapped my arms around my knees once more, I went back to staring. This time I was staring at him.
Babe. It felt uncomfortable, and kinda right, all at once. So, who was he?
This time both men were looking at me strangely, as they crouched in front of me.
“You remember the mission?” the dark one asked.
And I nodded. Of course, I remembered the mission: infiltrate the nightclub, find out where they were holding the pixies, plant the tracer, and get back out. Maybe get a map of the place while I was at it. I certainly hadn’t been told to dance my way as close to the stage as I could because I was under close surveillance by two of the goons, get dragged into a bit of impromptu karaoke with the leader of the band we were pretty sure was into the dust distribution trade, orto get blown up and almost burned alive when something went wrong in the dust distillery in the basement.
Basement. I giggled. We were in Australia, and I’d found a basement… in Canberra… in a suburban night club. Basement… That was important, but I couldn’t remember why.
“Why can’t I remember?” I whispered.
“I thought you said you did?” deep, dark and sexy said.
“The mission. I remember the mission, but I don’t know why the basement is important.”
“What basement?” Red was onto that like a fly on shit.
Ah, that’swhy it was important. My team hadn’t known about the basement.
My team. I looked again at the faces gathering around me.
“Team,” I said, looking at each one, and they suddenly grew tense.
“Oni?’ Tall-Dark again. “You okay?”
“What can’t you remember?” Red, demanding, to the point.
Trust Red to get to the point. Always Red.
“We need to get back,” I said, pushing to my feet.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Red again, obstreperous as usual, giving me a shove that set me back on my butt. “We’re not going anywhere, until you spill.”
I tried for innocent.
“Spill what?”
“What can’t you remember?”
I looked at them again, each of them, one at a time. I tried really hard to put names to those faces, to remember anything at all about the people I’d spent the last two years working with. Two years? Yes! I felt a grin stretch my face.
“What?” Red sounded exasperated.
“We’ve been working together for two years,” I said, and then my gaze fell on the albino. “Except for him. He’s only been with us for two months.”
Ha! Another new fact. Except that Red didn’t seem too impressed.
“You can’t remember us, can you?” he asked, and I shook my head. “Not a single thing?”
I shook my head again.
“Then how do you know we’re the right people?”
Oh no, he wasn’t getting it that easy.
“Look!” I said, and I managed to sound even crankier than I felt. “I remember we’re on the same team, we’ve been working together for two years, and spent the last six months on this case. I remember we were pretty close to breaking it, and the only way was for me to go into the night club.”
I stopped. Other things were clicking into place in my head.
“And things have been going wrong with the investigation for around two months.”
The Albino looked horrified, like he expected me to start pointing the finger at him, but I didn’t, even if Tall-Dark, Red, Blondie and The Mouse all turned their heads to give him a good hard look.
“And then I went dancing, alone… because you”—and here I turned, and pointed at Tall-Dark—“absolutely refused to let The Mouse, here, go dancing with me.”
“He’s not the type,” Tall-Dark protested, but he didn’t know I could see right through him.
“Like you know,” The Mouse muttered, and Blondie giggled.
I ignored them and got on with it.
“Anyway, I went dancing. My cover was suspect, because I had to dance with some of the club stooges we’ve been following, and then Kyrios looked out from the stage and called me up to do a duet duelling thing, and that went just fine, apart from the strange smell that started seeping up from under the stage, which was right before things went boom.”
“You were on the stage?” Tall-Dark had gone a funny shade of grey.
I glanced around at the others and they weren’t looking too crash hot, either.
“What?” I asked, and Blondie started to fidget.
I zone in on her.
“What?” and it wasn’t really a question, more a demand, and a shout, and I’m not known for either.
“It’s just that there’s nothing left of the stage,” Mouse replied —and then he glanced back at the direction the wind and noise had come from. “Nothing much left of the club, now, either.”
“That was the club?” I asked, and we all knew I was talking about the wall of wind and sound.
“Crap!” I said, remembering. “We’d better look for survivors.”
Which took us pretty much to midday, and then the paperwork had us all working back. My memory returned, in bits and pieces, and it wasn’t pretty, or real forgiving. There’s a reason I can’t be in love with Tall-Dark—his name is Dylan, by the way. I can’t be in love with him because I’m his boss, which is why we’ve been having a quiet affair, all on our lonesome, on the side.
And by affair, I don’t mean either of us are married; I just mean it’s quiet and on the sly, and not meant to be public knowledge with the rest of the team. Well, I really blew that one, didn’t I? At least, I know what the looks on their faces meant. Realising it, I called a temporary halt to my typing and headed for the staff coffee room. It took him a minute, and then Dylan followed me. I knewthe move was noted by the rest of the team, but I didn’t care.
“Well, I guess that secret’s out,” he said, coming to stand beside me, as we spooned instant and sugar into our cups.
“Eyup,” I said, and leant up to kiss his cheek.
I watched as he smiled, and then he said, “I guess that means I can do this, now, hey?”
He turned to face me and kissed me full on the lips. I didn’t need any encouragement to kiss him right back, either. There was a school-kid round of ‘oooh’ from the doorway, and we broke apart, laughing—talk about caught in the act. When they had our full attention, Blondie sashayed into the room, the rest of the team on her heels.
Blondie’s real name is Diana, just so you know, and she was really kinda sweet—unless you went around keeping secrets from her, like Tall-Dark-Dylan and I. She was waggling her cup by the handle, as she approached, so we cleared a space for her to get to the coffee, and lined up at the urn, while she made her brew, then we fled ahead of her for milk, or, at least, I did.
I like mine light and creamy. Tall-Dark likes his black. We took our cups back out to the office, and set back to work. I remembered to put in a recommendation for Tall-Dark to join another team, or to head up another one. There was a vacancy or two in the squad, and he could fill any one of them easy. I emailed that request, right after my report on the night-club explosion. Officially, I’ve been on duty since midnight. There was one more report to type, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
I got started on that one, making sure to lock it down access-wise. No way, did I want this beastie free and easy out on the range. It’s not for public consumption. The team is down enough as it is, but they seem to have forgotten my mention of things going wrong in the last coupla months. Just as I started into it, Blondie gave a whoop.
“Gotcha!” she cried, banging on the keyboard, and then charging over to the printer just as it fired up.
“Got what?” Red wanted to know, and I felt a frisson of unease.
You see, I’d remembered why ‘Babe’ sounded so right coming out of his mouth, and that was because we’d been dating a while back, way before Tall-Dark and I developed a thing, and not the cause of it. Tall-Dark and I had been sneaking around together for a few months before we started to have suspicions about things going wrong.
We both figured The Albino was just a convenient excuse. He was new, and he was being set up. The thing was, neither Tall-Dark nor I could figure out why.
Well, since having the night-club stage blown away beneath me, I was beginning to have a fair idea. It wasn’t exactly that things were going wrong because we had a plant from some dust syndicate. Quite the opposite, in fact, since the person who was busy seeing us screw up, was doing it because he wanted the syndicate to go down, in a worse way than the law would allow, and he didn’t want to get caught doing it, or to let his job get in the way.
Tall-Dark and I hadn’t been able to narrow the mishaps down to a particular information set, but we had been able to narrow it down to a person who’d had access to all the information sets—someone who stuck his nose into everything everyone on the team was doing.
It would have been easy to blame it on The Albino, who was learning the ropes, and who didtalk to every member the team, but he hadn’t had access to everything. Tall-Dark and I had made damn sure of that. We’d had the team members fill out training sheets for their performance reports, and we’d had The Albino fill one out, too. By cross-referencing the two sets, we’d narrowed out vengeful traitor down to one of two people—Blondie or Red.
They were both at the printer, Blondie excitedly sharing her latest puzzle piece with Red, who was doing his usual thing of connecting the dots. I was pretty surprised when The Mouse packed up his desk, signed out of his computer, and headed for the door.
“What?” he asked, when we all turned and looked at him… and then he yawned. “I’ve been on duty since eleven, and I’m going home to bed.”
He’d been in the surveillance car, while I’d been singing my throat raw. I’d forgotten to debrief him, but I figured I could do that tomorrow. The poor guy looked beat.
“You want me to drive you?” Tall-Dark was already acting like a team leader.
Actually, he’d been doing that for a while, now, so it didn’t matter that we’d been sprung—I’d have had to let him go, soon, anyway. The Mouse brushed away his offer, though.
“I’m catching the bus,” he said. “Always do. I’ll be fine.”
He caught the bus? And I’d thought he drove to work every day. It struck me, then, that I really didn’t know a lot about The Mouse, but he was gone, before I could think of an excuse to walk him to the stop. I shrugged, and went back to the report, thinking that, suddenly, things didn’t seem quite as straight forward as they had before. After all, The Mouse had been in easy earshot of the copier conversation.
Blondie went back to her desk, copy paper clasped tightly in one hand. She brought up her screen again, and began typing furiously, stopping occasionally to make notes on the papers she’d just printed. I worked on the report, aware that Tall-Dark was keeping a close eye on me. He had just started checking his watch in the most obvious way possible, when Blondie bounced out of her chair, and came over to my desk.
I shut down the screen and turned to see what she’d found.
“I’ve got a warehouse,” she said, and she was beaming.
A warehouse was exactly what we needed, and she knew it.
“Where?”
“Up by Old Palmerville, where the CSIRO used to be.”
“What are our chances of getting to this one without it blowing up?” I asked, seeing my chances at sleep vanishing at a rapid rate of knots. No wonder The Mouse had hit the door so fast. I guess he’d known what was coming.
“Well, we need to get someone out there to check it out,” Blondie began. She glanced over at The Albino. “It’d be the perfect job for Deloit, there, to cut his teeth on.”
“Not on his own.” Red was quick to protest, and I wondered when he’d ever started to care about someone apart from himself. He must have caught my thought, because he continued, with, “Someone should go with him, in case things go pear-shaped.”
“Thanks for volunteering,” I said, and Red’s jaw dropped, almost like he hadn’t seen it coming. Hell, the man had surely worked with me long enough to know exactly how I’d react, right? I kept going before he could protest. “I’m out of hours. I’ll catch four in the bunk room, and then come relieve you.”
I avoided Dylan’s eyes, when I said this. We both knew sending the Albino out with Red was like giving the hen to the fox. I looked over at Blondie, who looked like she was going to have a melt-down; it was her clue, after all.
“I want you to see what you can find out about the place. Plans, if they still exist. Any recent security. Traffic cams”—not that we were likely to have any luck with that one—“Check for an increase in activity at the Gold Creek Maccas. It might give us a clue. And at the pub. I’m pretty sure there’s one of those nearby. Any new road works, walking tracks. See what comes up from the traffic copter overflights, yeah?”
Blondie settled back down to her computer. She was the best person for this job, and she knew it. I was glad she’d figured out I wasn’t keeping her out of the loop. She was gonna be mighty pissed when she found out, just how bad Dylan and I hadkept her in the dark.
I shut down my terminal, and pushed back my chair, taking the time to glare at Red as I stood.
“Why are you still here?” I asked. “Get the details from Blondie, and get your tails out to the site. If we’re gonna hit it tonight, I want some intel. You think you and the kid can handle it?”
Given he’d been the one to tell me the Albino shouldn’t do it on his own, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t protest. The pair of them was heading for Dianne’s desk, as I headed for the staff showers and the bunk room. Good thing, I kept a spare set of clothes here.
Actually, I kept several; this place was my now my home away from home. Nature of the job; I was glad I’d found a guy who could understand that. And speaking of which…
Dylan had followed me out of the staff room. He was leaning against the wall next to my bunk, when I got back from the showers.
“You know what you’re doing, right?” he asked, and I glanced past him, making sure the hall was clear, as I walked into the room.
“Sure do,” I said, sitting on the bunk. “You get any sleep last night?”
“Right up until Shay said you’d gone into the nightclub alone… through the back door…”
Shay. The Mouse. Right. He’d seemed pretty sure something was going to happen, and he hadn’t been able to get a hold of Blakeney.”
Shay—The Mouse. Blakeney—Red. I made the translations in my head, not wanting to tell Dylan I had a whole new way of thinking about the team, since I’d temporarily forgotten their names.
“So, you’re out of time, too, huh?”
Dylan shrugged.
“The whole team is,” he said. “None of us should be going out tonight.”
“But we’ll miss the bust!” I protested.
“We could hand it over to another team.”
“We don’t haveanother team!”
“Yeah. So… Are you really?”
“Am I really what?”
“Planning on going to sleep.”
I’d been wondering when he’d pick up on the fact I was wearing night cam and still in my boots.
“After the warehouse.”
“You think the kid will be okay?”
“Nope, but I need Dianne’s data, and we need to cut her in.”
“Agreed.”
We headed back to the office, but Blondie wasn’t at her desk. She’d left a note on mine.
Had to go. Shay says he thinks the kid’s in trouble, and we need to talk to Red.
Had to go. I had that sinking feeling we all get just as our world goes to pieces. I handed the note to Tall-Dark, and headed for the door. Halfway there, I realised I’d left behind my gear. Maybe I was too tired to be doing this.
I turned back to get my stuff, just in time to catch the vest, Dylan tossed at me. The keys to our car were dangling from his teeth, and he was carrying the rest of what I’d left behind. He was also talking to someone over a head comms—probably the team. I caught the head set he tossed me, after I’d shrugged on the vest. Yeah. He was going to make a great team leader. And I was kinda miffed about losing him.
We made it, in double-quick time, to where Shay had parked his car—caught a bus, my ass! Dylan knew a back way onto the old CSIRO grounds, and we were hoping it was something Blondie hadn’t had time to tell the team about. Our luck wasn’t holding that well.
Dylan pulled up under a stand of pines, sans headlights, and we got out, night goggles in place. He still hadn’t been able to raise Blondie, or The Mouse, or any of the rest of the team, but he said he had back-up on the way.
Back-up, hey? I liked the sound of that.
I liked it even more, about ten seconds later, as a half dozen black-suited figures stepped out from the pine shadows.
“Not a muscle,” one ordered, her voice as close to a growl as I’ve heard coming from a human throat.
I slowly raised my hands. I had two guns pointed at my chest, could see the third one in the speaker’s grip. Behind me, from the other side of the car, I could hear more of them closing in on Dylan. Well, damn! This was one short-lived raid.
“P.O.S.?” we were asked, after a fifteen minute hike into the warehouse.
Don’t ask me which way we’d come; the dust runners had blindfolded us, just as soon as they’d disarmed us. And none of us were happy.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Small team for an op like this.”
I glared at Blondie, Mouse, and the Albino. The Albino looked mortified, and a little bit defiant, but neither the Mouse nor Blondie would meet my eye. They knew they were in it—but deep.
“Some of us went off half-cocked.”
What I really wanted to know was where Red had ended up… and if Tall-Dark’s back-up was going to arrive anytime soon. I didn’t dare ask him, and he was giving nothing away. Our captors turned away, going right back to work. The fact they’d stuck us in the warehouse proper, where we could see the still, the pixies, and the cauldrons they were going to cook the little creatures down in, was not a good sign. If Red or Dylan’s help didn’t arrive soon, we were all dead.
I experimented with the handcuffs around my wrists, but all I succeeded in doing was making them rattle against the bollard and chain they’d been attached to. That earned me a swift look, a double check of the cuffs, and a slap upside the head.
“Don’t.”
That instruction told me all I needed to know. It was delivered without rancour or rage. There was nothing personal in the cuff check, or the slap. What we saw, or didn’t, didn’t matter. Our fates were already set; we were dead.
I glanced over at Dylan, but he gave no sign he’d seen, or understood the meaning of it. I looked across at Blondie, who was cuffed to a row of bollards opposite. She was frowning, and I knew she was onto the implications. The Albino, cuffed next to her was looking worried. He knew it was bad, just not exactly how bad, so of course he was thinking the worst.
Poor kid. I wished I could reassure him, but the worst was about the size of it. Mouse was sitting, propped up against the bollard beside The Albino, his legs stretched out in front of him, his head tilted slightly back, eyes closed. If I hadn’t known him better, I’da thought he was catching a few zees, but that wasn’t like him.
He was either unconscious, aping sleep, or dead. I stared at The Mouse a little harder, holding my breath, until I saw his chest rise and fall. Even then, I watched it do that another two or three times, before I relaxed. He was waiting, conserving his energy for whatever chance he had. I decided to keep an eye on what was going on. The least I could do was see the danger coming.
I watched as dust runners tatted up like bikers, hefted boxes and carried them over to where these great, metal cauldrons were all lined up in a row. And then I watched as each one of them gave the box he was carrying a series of hard shakes designed to disorient or concuss any pixie inside. These guys knew what they were doing all right.
The bikers worked in teams. When the boxes they were holding had been well-shaken, one of them lifted the lid to the cauldron, and the one right behind him upended the box over the top. I caught glimpses of glittering wings and tiny bodies tumbling into each pot. The biker holding the lid kept a close eye on the contents of the pot, standing ready to slam the lid down, the minute any of their victims showed signs of escaping.
None of them did, and I watched box, after box, after box, carried, shaken, and tipped, before being tossed into a growing pile at the end of the warehouse. It made me feel sick. I took a good look around, taking note of how many workers, how many boxes, and the size of this particular still. It was one of the most professional operations I’d ever seen—and one of the largest.
When I’d had a good look at it all, I sighed and tilted my head back, and that was when I realised there were narrow windows set high in the walls, and a catwalk that ran around the entire building. There were more dust runners on the catwalk, patrolling. I watched them look out over the warehouse floor, and then out the windows.
Well, thatwas going to make things awkward for anyone approaching the outside.
Once I’d made one inspection of the building, I set about trying to keep tabs on everything going on inside it. Across from me, Blondie was doing the same, and The Albino was proving a quick learner. I saw him glance around the team, and then follow where Blondie and I were looking. If we could get him out of this, he might turn out okay.
The slow burn of my handcuffs heating up came as a bit of a surprise, and I ducked my head to hide my surprise, also to hide the look of pain, I was pretty sure I couldn’t conceal.
“Sh!” Blondie’s short, sharp hiss of reprimand, made me glance over at her.
She was glaring at The Albino, whose eyes were as wide as saucers. He looked across at me, as though for confirmation, and I pressed my lips together and shook my head. Beside him, The Mouse’s eyes suddenly flew open, and he sucked air in a gasp of shock.
The sudden tension and short exchange between us did not go unnoticed. Two of the dust runners came down and walked between us, staring at us intently. I looked up at the nearest one, and managed a respectable glare. He smiled in a way that sent chills down my spine, and then he stooped towards me.
“Don’t worry, officer,” he murmured. “When we’re done with the pixies, we’ll start on you—the distillery works on people just as good as pixies.”
I felt the fear cross my face, and he straightened up, laughing.
“Come on,” he said, nudging his companion, and they sauntered away, the leader of the pair turning to make a pistol movement with his hand as he left. He mimed shooting each and every one of us, before turning the corner of an enormous crate.
I was trying to think of something comforting to say, when the burning sensation resumed, to be followed shortly after by a faint tugging. I felt the handcuffs shift, loosen, and finally give. Before I could bring them out in front of me, I felt two small palms press down on my wrists, as though someone was trying to tell me to stay still.
I leant back against the bollard and tilted my head up to scan the catwalks. As I did so, the familiar shape of the squad MP5 was placed in my palms. Again, small hands rested on my wrists, as though signalling me to wait.
I looked across at Mouse, Albino and Blondie, and noticed they were sitting very still, with their heads bowed forward. Every now and then, one of them would sneak a glance up at me, and I risked the idea that they, too, had been freed and armed. A sidewards glance at Dylan, earned me a slight smile and a wink. Him, too, then.
I waited, watching as the row of cauldrons was filled, imagining I could hear faint cries, right up until they fired up the burners. And that was when I caught the slightest hint of an all-too-familiar smell.
“Shit!” I muttered, struggling not to shout a warning. “Shitshitshitshitshit!”
I looked up, and saw The Mouse, The Albino, and Blondie looking at me with mild alarm. I glanced sidewards and Tall-Dark was doing the same.
“Shit.”
“What is it?” Dylan’s voice was little more than a murmur, but I caught it.
“That smell.” I must have spoken louder than I thought, because Blondie raised her head and took a sniff, with The Albino mirroring her every move. Watching him, I saw Dylan’s nostrils flare.
“Yeah?”
“That’s what I smelt before the night club blew.” This time, I didn’t keep my voice down at all, and my words carried to one of the dust runners standing near another pile of pixie crates. He turned towards me.
“What did you say?” he demanded.
“I said, that I smelt that smell just before the night club stage I was standing on blew up,” I repeated, raising my voice, so that it carried.
Help was nearby, I remembered, and it probably needed to be warned just as much as anyone else.
I watched as the dust runner raised his head, and sniffed. He frowned and then sniffed again, and, this time, his eyes widened in alarm.
“Clostrel!” he screamed. “Everybody out! Grab a crate and go! Go! Go!”
Clostrel—an elven explosive ignited by heat.
“Hey!” I exclaimed, as the warehouse erupted into a hive of activity. “Hey! What about us!”
“Too bad!” the dust runner yelled, as he headed for the door, a crate of pixies under each arm.
I waited until the immediate area was clear, and the dust runners were too busy making for the exits to take any notice of the rest of us.
“Go!” I said, bringing my hands out from behind my back, and settling the MP5 in front of me.
“Go!” said a small voice in my ear. “Get out of here!”
“Go! Go! Go!” came another voice, one that didn’t belong to the dust runners, or me, or the pixie standing on my shoulder with his hands entwined in my hair.
“Grab a crate!” I ordered. “Grab two, if you can!”
I wanted to save more, but I wasn’t sure if we’d get out of the building as it was. I figured the dust runners wouldn’t be looking too closely at anyone carrying a crate, not when what was in the crates was so important to their business. I was banking on it, to get us out of the building and to the perimeter without being stopped.
It should have worked. It would have worked, if The Albino hadn’t stopped beside me as we grabbed pixie crates.
“Blake’s an elf,” he said, keeping his voice low. “And he hates these guys.”
And he grabbed two crates and about faced, heading for the door.
An elf! Shit! Why hadn’t I picked that, before? It explained why he was using the intel we found to do damage instead of help make an arrest. I followed The Albino’s example and lifted from two crates down. Dayum but these little guys were heavy… and then it struck me that I could save a lot more of them if I just opened the crates.
Lowering my load to the ground, I pulled off the lid.
“Go!” I shouted. “Get out of here. The place is going to blow!”
I didn’t stop, I unstacked crates and lifted lids as fast as I could. When I looked up and saw the rest of the team doing the same, I almost cried.
“Get out of here!” I screamed. “Get clear! You don’t have to die here!”
“Right with you, boss!” Blondie quipped back, and Dylan just laughed.
The Mouse didn’t say anything, just worked as fast as he could to get the pixies free.
“You’re all crazy! You know that, right?” But the truth was I was glad they were there, glad we could get more pixies out than we could if we ran. I didn’t remember how long it had taken from the first whiff of clostrel, to the big bang on stage, and I wasn’t thinking about it. All I wanted to do was make every second count—and that’s when I realised the pixies weren’t leaving.
They weren’t leaving, but they were hauling lids off crates, just as fast as we were. Sure, it took four of them to lift a lid, but they did it fast. Soon, the team and I were just unstacking the crates, working in an ever-growing swarm of pixies to clear the warehouse before the clostrel went up.
It wasn’t until we’d cleared most of one stack that I realised we were still there, that there’d been no earth-shattering kaboom, no wall of wind and sound… and that there was no longer the smell of clostrel growing in the air. All we could see was the cloud of pixies surrounding us. All we could hear was the deafening buzz of their wings, the high-pitched shouts of encouragement that passed between them as they worked… and the crack of semi-automatic fire from outside.
Somewhere in all that, I thought of the burners, and headed over to where I thought I remembered seeing the control panel. Failing that, I was going to find the power leads and pull them out of the wall. The burners couldn’t run without the power, and the clostrel wouldn’t explode without the heat of the distillery at full flood. If I could stop it from reaching full flood… If it wasn’t already too late.
But the smell of clostrel was already fading. Someone else had reached the controls and power leads before me. No one was going to use this distillery without some serious repairs. I thought of Red. Surely he hadn’t left the success of his operation to chance?
Ignoring the sound of small arms fire outside, ignoring the buzz of a myriad of wings, and a thousand chattering voices—even ignoring Dylan and The Albino’s shouts, I couldn’t find him. Finally, I resorted to calling.
“Blakeney!” I shouted, turning on the spot, and trying to see past the whirling pixie swarm.
He did not answer, at least, not straight away.
By the time Dylan’s back-up had finally worked their way through the dust runners, and made it inside, I still had not found him, but we made the arrests, and shut down the operations, and then we repatriated the pixies.
I found Blakeney’s response on my desk when I got back to the office.
Hey Babe. You saved them and, so, I saved you. Thank you for the two years past. It was most instructive. I will not be returning. I have other work to do.
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Memory's Return is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/bxgP8q.
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I don’t remember how I got in the alley, at least, not when I first wake up—and I don’t remember the names of these friendly faces making sure I’m okay, but it’s coming back. I just wish it would come back faster, because one of these faces is all kinds of wrong underneath the friendly veneer, with an agenda all their own, and they don’t mind putting my team in danger. If I don’t remember the whos and whats and whys real soon, one, or all, of us is going to end up dead, and who’s going to save the pixies then?Memory's Return
Hands caressed me in the dark, strong hands, narrow fingered and callous palmed, but gentle.“She’ll live.”
And I realised the hands had not been caressing me, so much as checking for injuries, and it was dark because my eyes were closed. A finger lifted one of my eyelids, and I caught sight of a blurry face.
“You back?” the same voice asked, and my eye was allowed to close, again.
“Sure,” I said, and my voice sounded like I’d been breathing night club smoke and singing at the top of my lungs all night.
Actually, that sounded right, and also kinda wrong. I didn’t go to nightclubs. Never… ever… oh wait a minute. I sat up, and wrapped my arms around my knees, forcing my eyes to open as I did so. Smokey smell, minor injuries, smoke-scalded throat, and bruised. I rested my chin on my knees, and watched as my friends and colleagues shuffled around into view.
“We didn’t stop them, did we?” I asked, and, even to me, my voice sounded bleak.
I didn’t care. My voice matched my mood, crashing depression, an inexorable sense of loss. I wish I could explain why… or maybe not. Maybe that last feeling was something I needed to explore on my own. Yeah, definitely maybe.
I stared at the half circle of solemn faces in front of me, and tried to put names to them. The dark one right in front of me, the one belonging to the guy holding me by both shoulders, that face was one I really should remember. I stared at him, feeling my eyebrows coming together in a frown as I tried to place him.
His dark eyes stared back into mine. They were brown, a brown so dark it was almost black. I loved those eyes… and that brought back another association: those hands—narrow fingered, callous palmed, and gentle, so very, very gentle. I reached out and touched my fingertips to his cheek.
“I love you,” I said, and his eyes widened in utter, terrible surprise.
His reaction made me wonder, as I watched the expressions crossing his face, I identified fear, wonder, sheer delight, and unspoken horror. It made me want to laugh and cry and apologise all at once—and, judging from the reactions of those around us, we weren’t alone.
I took my hand away from his cheek, and wrapped it back around my knees. I kept staring, frowning harder as I tried to rediscover his name—and maybe something more, like what he was when he wasn’t rescuing damsels in distress, or confusing the hell out of me.
“Hey, Oni, you okay?”
I saw his mouth move, heard the words come out, and the world shuddered.
I saw him see the shudder cross my face, and then watched as he glanced back over his shoulder. Not only that, but the blonde to his left, and the red-head beside the blonde, also looked over their shoulders. To the right of him, the mousy guy and the albino one also looked back.
Oh shit. It wasn’t just me.
And all of a sudden, they scattered. Dark Eyes and the red-head reached back and grabbed me, yanking me in two different directions, before deciding to follow the mousy guy into the shadow of a doorstop. I saw the blonde and the albino one make another doorstop on the other side of the street I’d been lying in, and then the wind hit.
The wind, like a solid wall, sweeping the street clean, hurling rubbish before it. I saw a dumpster fly past, and a motorcycle, watched as a car slid past, metal screaming against the bitumen. I saw humans… bits of humans follow, and then the sound came.
It didn’t howl, or roar; it was just loud, pure unadulterated loud. It defied description. I knew what this was, but I couldn’t name it. Couldn’t name it, like I couldn’t name the beautiful man holding me safe, or his red-headed companion.
None of us moved, when it stopped. We sat, braced in the doorway, trying to remember how to breathe.
“What the hell did you do?” the beautiful man asked.
“Yeah, babe,” the red-head repeated. “Just what did you do?”
Babe? I looked across at him, and then stood, took a couple steps into the scoured street, where I let my legs fold beneath me. When I had wrapped my arms around my knees once more, I went back to staring. This time I was staring at him.
Babe. It felt uncomfortable, and kinda right, all at once. So, who was he?
This time both men were looking at me strangely, as they crouched in front of me.
“You remember the mission?” the dark one asked.
And I nodded. Of course, I remembered the mission: infiltrate the nightclub, find out where they were holding the pixies, plant the tracer, and get back out. Maybe get a map of the place while I was at it. I certainly hadn’t been told to dance my way as close to the stage as I could because I was under close surveillance by two of the goons, get dragged into a bit of impromptu karaoke with the leader of the band we were pretty sure was into the dust distribution trade, orto get blown up and almost burned alive when something went wrong in the dust distillery in the basement.
Basement. I giggled. We were in Australia, and I’d found a basement… in Canberra… in a suburban night club. Basement… That was important, but I couldn’t remember why.
“Why can’t I remember?” I whispered.
“I thought you said you did?” deep, dark and sexy said.
“The mission. I remember the mission, but I don’t know why the basement is important.”
“What basement?” Red was onto that like a fly on shit.
Ah, that’swhy it was important. My team hadn’t known about the basement.
My team. I looked again at the faces gathering around me.
“Team,” I said, looking at each one, and they suddenly grew tense.
“Oni?’ Tall-Dark again. “You okay?”
“What can’t you remember?” Red, demanding, to the point.
Trust Red to get to the point. Always Red.
“We need to get back,” I said, pushing to my feet.
“Oh no, you don’t.” Red again, obstreperous as usual, giving me a shove that set me back on my butt. “We’re not going anywhere, until you spill.”
I tried for innocent.
“Spill what?”
“What can’t you remember?”
I looked at them again, each of them, one at a time. I tried really hard to put names to those faces, to remember anything at all about the people I’d spent the last two years working with. Two years? Yes! I felt a grin stretch my face.
“What?” Red sounded exasperated.
“We’ve been working together for two years,” I said, and then my gaze fell on the albino. “Except for him. He’s only been with us for two months.”
Ha! Another new fact. Except that Red didn’t seem too impressed.
“You can’t remember us, can you?” he asked, and I shook my head. “Not a single thing?”
I shook my head again.
“Then how do you know we’re the right people?”
Oh no, he wasn’t getting it that easy.
“Look!” I said, and I managed to sound even crankier than I felt. “I remember we’re on the same team, we’ve been working together for two years, and spent the last six months on this case. I remember we were pretty close to breaking it, and the only way was for me to go into the night club.”
I stopped. Other things were clicking into place in my head.
“And things have been going wrong with the investigation for around two months.”
The Albino looked horrified, like he expected me to start pointing the finger at him, but I didn’t, even if Tall-Dark, Red, Blondie and The Mouse all turned their heads to give him a good hard look.
“And then I went dancing, alone… because you”—and here I turned, and pointed at Tall-Dark—“absolutely refused to let The Mouse, here, go dancing with me.”
“He’s not the type,” Tall-Dark protested, but he didn’t know I could see right through him.
“Like you know,” The Mouse muttered, and Blondie giggled.
I ignored them and got on with it.
“Anyway, I went dancing. My cover was suspect, because I had to dance with some of the club stooges we’ve been following, and then Kyrios looked out from the stage and called me up to do a duet duelling thing, and that went just fine, apart from the strange smell that started seeping up from under the stage, which was right before things went boom.”
“You were on the stage?” Tall-Dark had gone a funny shade of grey.
I glanced around at the others and they weren’t looking too crash hot, either.
“What?” I asked, and Blondie started to fidget.
I zone in on her.
“What?” and it wasn’t really a question, more a demand, and a shout, and I’m not known for either.
“It’s just that there’s nothing left of the stage,” Mouse replied —and then he glanced back at the direction the wind and noise had come from. “Nothing much left of the club, now, either.”
“That was the club?” I asked, and we all knew I was talking about the wall of wind and sound.
“Crap!” I said, remembering. “We’d better look for survivors.”
Which took us pretty much to midday, and then the paperwork had us all working back. My memory returned, in bits and pieces, and it wasn’t pretty, or real forgiving. There’s a reason I can’t be in love with Tall-Dark—his name is Dylan, by the way. I can’t be in love with him because I’m his boss, which is why we’ve been having a quiet affair, all on our lonesome, on the side.
And by affair, I don’t mean either of us are married; I just mean it’s quiet and on the sly, and not meant to be public knowledge with the rest of the team. Well, I really blew that one, didn’t I? At least, I know what the looks on their faces meant. Realising it, I called a temporary halt to my typing and headed for the staff coffee room. It took him a minute, and then Dylan followed me. I knewthe move was noted by the rest of the team, but I didn’t care.
“Well, I guess that secret’s out,” he said, coming to stand beside me, as we spooned instant and sugar into our cups.
“Eyup,” I said, and leant up to kiss his cheek.
I watched as he smiled, and then he said, “I guess that means I can do this, now, hey?”
He turned to face me and kissed me full on the lips. I didn’t need any encouragement to kiss him right back, either. There was a school-kid round of ‘oooh’ from the doorway, and we broke apart, laughing—talk about caught in the act. When they had our full attention, Blondie sashayed into the room, the rest of the team on her heels.
Blondie’s real name is Diana, just so you know, and she was really kinda sweet—unless you went around keeping secrets from her, like Tall-Dark-Dylan and I. She was waggling her cup by the handle, as she approached, so we cleared a space for her to get to the coffee, and lined up at the urn, while she made her brew, then we fled ahead of her for milk, or, at least, I did.
I like mine light and creamy. Tall-Dark likes his black. We took our cups back out to the office, and set back to work. I remembered to put in a recommendation for Tall-Dark to join another team, or to head up another one. There was a vacancy or two in the squad, and he could fill any one of them easy. I emailed that request, right after my report on the night-club explosion. Officially, I’ve been on duty since midnight. There was one more report to type, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
I got started on that one, making sure to lock it down access-wise. No way, did I want this beastie free and easy out on the range. It’s not for public consumption. The team is down enough as it is, but they seem to have forgotten my mention of things going wrong in the last coupla months. Just as I started into it, Blondie gave a whoop.
“Gotcha!” she cried, banging on the keyboard, and then charging over to the printer just as it fired up.
“Got what?” Red wanted to know, and I felt a frisson of unease.
You see, I’d remembered why ‘Babe’ sounded so right coming out of his mouth, and that was because we’d been dating a while back, way before Tall-Dark and I developed a thing, and not the cause of it. Tall-Dark and I had been sneaking around together for a few months before we started to have suspicions about things going wrong.
We both figured The Albino was just a convenient excuse. He was new, and he was being set up. The thing was, neither Tall-Dark nor I could figure out why.
Well, since having the night-club stage blown away beneath me, I was beginning to have a fair idea. It wasn’t exactly that things were going wrong because we had a plant from some dust syndicate. Quite the opposite, in fact, since the person who was busy seeing us screw up, was doing it because he wanted the syndicate to go down, in a worse way than the law would allow, and he didn’t want to get caught doing it, or to let his job get in the way.
Tall-Dark and I hadn’t been able to narrow the mishaps down to a particular information set, but we had been able to narrow it down to a person who’d had access to all the information sets—someone who stuck his nose into everything everyone on the team was doing.
It would have been easy to blame it on The Albino, who was learning the ropes, and who didtalk to every member the team, but he hadn’t had access to everything. Tall-Dark and I had made damn sure of that. We’d had the team members fill out training sheets for their performance reports, and we’d had The Albino fill one out, too. By cross-referencing the two sets, we’d narrowed out vengeful traitor down to one of two people—Blondie or Red.
They were both at the printer, Blondie excitedly sharing her latest puzzle piece with Red, who was doing his usual thing of connecting the dots. I was pretty surprised when The Mouse packed up his desk, signed out of his computer, and headed for the door.
“What?” he asked, when we all turned and looked at him… and then he yawned. “I’ve been on duty since eleven, and I’m going home to bed.”
He’d been in the surveillance car, while I’d been singing my throat raw. I’d forgotten to debrief him, but I figured I could do that tomorrow. The poor guy looked beat.
“You want me to drive you?” Tall-Dark was already acting like a team leader.
Actually, he’d been doing that for a while, now, so it didn’t matter that we’d been sprung—I’d have had to let him go, soon, anyway. The Mouse brushed away his offer, though.
“I’m catching the bus,” he said. “Always do. I’ll be fine.”
He caught the bus? And I’d thought he drove to work every day. It struck me, then, that I really didn’t know a lot about The Mouse, but he was gone, before I could think of an excuse to walk him to the stop. I shrugged, and went back to the report, thinking that, suddenly, things didn’t seem quite as straight forward as they had before. After all, The Mouse had been in easy earshot of the copier conversation.
Blondie went back to her desk, copy paper clasped tightly in one hand. She brought up her screen again, and began typing furiously, stopping occasionally to make notes on the papers she’d just printed. I worked on the report, aware that Tall-Dark was keeping a close eye on me. He had just started checking his watch in the most obvious way possible, when Blondie bounced out of her chair, and came over to my desk.
I shut down the screen and turned to see what she’d found.
“I’ve got a warehouse,” she said, and she was beaming.
A warehouse was exactly what we needed, and she knew it.
“Where?”
“Up by Old Palmerville, where the CSIRO used to be.”
“What are our chances of getting to this one without it blowing up?” I asked, seeing my chances at sleep vanishing at a rapid rate of knots. No wonder The Mouse had hit the door so fast. I guess he’d known what was coming.
“Well, we need to get someone out there to check it out,” Blondie began. She glanced over at The Albino. “It’d be the perfect job for Deloit, there, to cut his teeth on.”
“Not on his own.” Red was quick to protest, and I wondered when he’d ever started to care about someone apart from himself. He must have caught my thought, because he continued, with, “Someone should go with him, in case things go pear-shaped.”
“Thanks for volunteering,” I said, and Red’s jaw dropped, almost like he hadn’t seen it coming. Hell, the man had surely worked with me long enough to know exactly how I’d react, right? I kept going before he could protest. “I’m out of hours. I’ll catch four in the bunk room, and then come relieve you.”
I avoided Dylan’s eyes, when I said this. We both knew sending the Albino out with Red was like giving the hen to the fox. I looked over at Blondie, who looked like she was going to have a melt-down; it was her clue, after all.
“I want you to see what you can find out about the place. Plans, if they still exist. Any recent security. Traffic cams”—not that we were likely to have any luck with that one—“Check for an increase in activity at the Gold Creek Maccas. It might give us a clue. And at the pub. I’m pretty sure there’s one of those nearby. Any new road works, walking tracks. See what comes up from the traffic copter overflights, yeah?”
Blondie settled back down to her computer. She was the best person for this job, and she knew it. I was glad she’d figured out I wasn’t keeping her out of the loop. She was gonna be mighty pissed when she found out, just how bad Dylan and I hadkept her in the dark.
I shut down my terminal, and pushed back my chair, taking the time to glare at Red as I stood.
“Why are you still here?” I asked. “Get the details from Blondie, and get your tails out to the site. If we’re gonna hit it tonight, I want some intel. You think you and the kid can handle it?”
Given he’d been the one to tell me the Albino shouldn’t do it on his own, I was pretty sure he wouldn’t protest. The pair of them was heading for Dianne’s desk, as I headed for the staff showers and the bunk room. Good thing, I kept a spare set of clothes here.
Actually, I kept several; this place was my now my home away from home. Nature of the job; I was glad I’d found a guy who could understand that. And speaking of which…
Dylan had followed me out of the staff room. He was leaning against the wall next to my bunk, when I got back from the showers.
“You know what you’re doing, right?” he asked, and I glanced past him, making sure the hall was clear, as I walked into the room.
“Sure do,” I said, sitting on the bunk. “You get any sleep last night?”
“Right up until Shay said you’d gone into the nightclub alone… through the back door…”
Shay. The Mouse. Right. He’d seemed pretty sure something was going to happen, and he hadn’t been able to get a hold of Blakeney.”
Shay—The Mouse. Blakeney—Red. I made the translations in my head, not wanting to tell Dylan I had a whole new way of thinking about the team, since I’d temporarily forgotten their names.
“So, you’re out of time, too, huh?”
Dylan shrugged.
“The whole team is,” he said. “None of us should be going out tonight.”
“But we’ll miss the bust!” I protested.
“We could hand it over to another team.”
“We don’t haveanother team!”
“Yeah. So… Are you really?”
“Am I really what?”
“Planning on going to sleep.”
I’d been wondering when he’d pick up on the fact I was wearing night cam and still in my boots.
“After the warehouse.”
“You think the kid will be okay?”
“Nope, but I need Dianne’s data, and we need to cut her in.”
“Agreed.”
We headed back to the office, but Blondie wasn’t at her desk. She’d left a note on mine.
Had to go. Shay says he thinks the kid’s in trouble, and we need to talk to Red.
Had to go. I had that sinking feeling we all get just as our world goes to pieces. I handed the note to Tall-Dark, and headed for the door. Halfway there, I realised I’d left behind my gear. Maybe I was too tired to be doing this.
I turned back to get my stuff, just in time to catch the vest, Dylan tossed at me. The keys to our car were dangling from his teeth, and he was carrying the rest of what I’d left behind. He was also talking to someone over a head comms—probably the team. I caught the head set he tossed me, after I’d shrugged on the vest. Yeah. He was going to make a great team leader. And I was kinda miffed about losing him.
We made it, in double-quick time, to where Shay had parked his car—caught a bus, my ass! Dylan knew a back way onto the old CSIRO grounds, and we were hoping it was something Blondie hadn’t had time to tell the team about. Our luck wasn’t holding that well.
Dylan pulled up under a stand of pines, sans headlights, and we got out, night goggles in place. He still hadn’t been able to raise Blondie, or The Mouse, or any of the rest of the team, but he said he had back-up on the way.
Back-up, hey? I liked the sound of that.
I liked it even more, about ten seconds later, as a half dozen black-suited figures stepped out from the pine shadows.
“Not a muscle,” one ordered, her voice as close to a growl as I’ve heard coming from a human throat.
I slowly raised my hands. I had two guns pointed at my chest, could see the third one in the speaker’s grip. Behind me, from the other side of the car, I could hear more of them closing in on Dylan. Well, damn! This was one short-lived raid.
“P.O.S.?” we were asked, after a fifteen minute hike into the warehouse.
Don’t ask me which way we’d come; the dust runners had blindfolded us, just as soon as they’d disarmed us. And none of us were happy.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Small team for an op like this.”
I glared at Blondie, Mouse, and the Albino. The Albino looked mortified, and a little bit defiant, but neither the Mouse nor Blondie would meet my eye. They knew they were in it—but deep.
“Some of us went off half-cocked.”
What I really wanted to know was where Red had ended up… and if Tall-Dark’s back-up was going to arrive anytime soon. I didn’t dare ask him, and he was giving nothing away. Our captors turned away, going right back to work. The fact they’d stuck us in the warehouse proper, where we could see the still, the pixies, and the cauldrons they were going to cook the little creatures down in, was not a good sign. If Red or Dylan’s help didn’t arrive soon, we were all dead.
I experimented with the handcuffs around my wrists, but all I succeeded in doing was making them rattle against the bollard and chain they’d been attached to. That earned me a swift look, a double check of the cuffs, and a slap upside the head.
“Don’t.”
That instruction told me all I needed to know. It was delivered without rancour or rage. There was nothing personal in the cuff check, or the slap. What we saw, or didn’t, didn’t matter. Our fates were already set; we were dead.
I glanced over at Dylan, but he gave no sign he’d seen, or understood the meaning of it. I looked across at Blondie, who was cuffed to a row of bollards opposite. She was frowning, and I knew she was onto the implications. The Albino, cuffed next to her was looking worried. He knew it was bad, just not exactly how bad, so of course he was thinking the worst.
Poor kid. I wished I could reassure him, but the worst was about the size of it. Mouse was sitting, propped up against the bollard beside The Albino, his legs stretched out in front of him, his head tilted slightly back, eyes closed. If I hadn’t known him better, I’da thought he was catching a few zees, but that wasn’t like him.
He was either unconscious, aping sleep, or dead. I stared at The Mouse a little harder, holding my breath, until I saw his chest rise and fall. Even then, I watched it do that another two or three times, before I relaxed. He was waiting, conserving his energy for whatever chance he had. I decided to keep an eye on what was going on. The least I could do was see the danger coming.
I watched as dust runners tatted up like bikers, hefted boxes and carried them over to where these great, metal cauldrons were all lined up in a row. And then I watched as each one of them gave the box he was carrying a series of hard shakes designed to disorient or concuss any pixie inside. These guys knew what they were doing all right.
The bikers worked in teams. When the boxes they were holding had been well-shaken, one of them lifted the lid to the cauldron, and the one right behind him upended the box over the top. I caught glimpses of glittering wings and tiny bodies tumbling into each pot. The biker holding the lid kept a close eye on the contents of the pot, standing ready to slam the lid down, the minute any of their victims showed signs of escaping.
None of them did, and I watched box, after box, after box, carried, shaken, and tipped, before being tossed into a growing pile at the end of the warehouse. It made me feel sick. I took a good look around, taking note of how many workers, how many boxes, and the size of this particular still. It was one of the most professional operations I’d ever seen—and one of the largest.
When I’d had a good look at it all, I sighed and tilted my head back, and that was when I realised there were narrow windows set high in the walls, and a catwalk that ran around the entire building. There were more dust runners on the catwalk, patrolling. I watched them look out over the warehouse floor, and then out the windows.
Well, thatwas going to make things awkward for anyone approaching the outside.
Once I’d made one inspection of the building, I set about trying to keep tabs on everything going on inside it. Across from me, Blondie was doing the same, and The Albino was proving a quick learner. I saw him glance around the team, and then follow where Blondie and I were looking. If we could get him out of this, he might turn out okay.
The slow burn of my handcuffs heating up came as a bit of a surprise, and I ducked my head to hide my surprise, also to hide the look of pain, I was pretty sure I couldn’t conceal.
“Sh!” Blondie’s short, sharp hiss of reprimand, made me glance over at her.
She was glaring at The Albino, whose eyes were as wide as saucers. He looked across at me, as though for confirmation, and I pressed my lips together and shook my head. Beside him, The Mouse’s eyes suddenly flew open, and he sucked air in a gasp of shock.
The sudden tension and short exchange between us did not go unnoticed. Two of the dust runners came down and walked between us, staring at us intently. I looked up at the nearest one, and managed a respectable glare. He smiled in a way that sent chills down my spine, and then he stooped towards me.
“Don’t worry, officer,” he murmured. “When we’re done with the pixies, we’ll start on you—the distillery works on people just as good as pixies.”
I felt the fear cross my face, and he straightened up, laughing.
“Come on,” he said, nudging his companion, and they sauntered away, the leader of the pair turning to make a pistol movement with his hand as he left. He mimed shooting each and every one of us, before turning the corner of an enormous crate.
I was trying to think of something comforting to say, when the burning sensation resumed, to be followed shortly after by a faint tugging. I felt the handcuffs shift, loosen, and finally give. Before I could bring them out in front of me, I felt two small palms press down on my wrists, as though someone was trying to tell me to stay still.
I leant back against the bollard and tilted my head up to scan the catwalks. As I did so, the familiar shape of the squad MP5 was placed in my palms. Again, small hands rested on my wrists, as though signalling me to wait.
I looked across at Mouse, Albino and Blondie, and noticed they were sitting very still, with their heads bowed forward. Every now and then, one of them would sneak a glance up at me, and I risked the idea that they, too, had been freed and armed. A sidewards glance at Dylan, earned me a slight smile and a wink. Him, too, then.
I waited, watching as the row of cauldrons was filled, imagining I could hear faint cries, right up until they fired up the burners. And that was when I caught the slightest hint of an all-too-familiar smell.
“Shit!” I muttered, struggling not to shout a warning. “Shitshitshitshitshit!”
I looked up, and saw The Mouse, The Albino, and Blondie looking at me with mild alarm. I glanced sidewards and Tall-Dark was doing the same.
“Shit.”
“What is it?” Dylan’s voice was little more than a murmur, but I caught it.
“That smell.” I must have spoken louder than I thought, because Blondie raised her head and took a sniff, with The Albino mirroring her every move. Watching him, I saw Dylan’s nostrils flare.
“Yeah?”
“That’s what I smelt before the night club blew.” This time, I didn’t keep my voice down at all, and my words carried to one of the dust runners standing near another pile of pixie crates. He turned towards me.
“What did you say?” he demanded.
“I said, that I smelt that smell just before the night club stage I was standing on blew up,” I repeated, raising my voice, so that it carried.
Help was nearby, I remembered, and it probably needed to be warned just as much as anyone else.
I watched as the dust runner raised his head, and sniffed. He frowned and then sniffed again, and, this time, his eyes widened in alarm.
“Clostrel!” he screamed. “Everybody out! Grab a crate and go! Go! Go!”
Clostrel—an elven explosive ignited by heat.
“Hey!” I exclaimed, as the warehouse erupted into a hive of activity. “Hey! What about us!”
“Too bad!” the dust runner yelled, as he headed for the door, a crate of pixies under each arm.
I waited until the immediate area was clear, and the dust runners were too busy making for the exits to take any notice of the rest of us.
“Go!” I said, bringing my hands out from behind my back, and settling the MP5 in front of me.
“Go!” said a small voice in my ear. “Get out of here!”
“Go! Go! Go!” came another voice, one that didn’t belong to the dust runners, or me, or the pixie standing on my shoulder with his hands entwined in my hair.
“Grab a crate!” I ordered. “Grab two, if you can!”
I wanted to save more, but I wasn’t sure if we’d get out of the building as it was. I figured the dust runners wouldn’t be looking too closely at anyone carrying a crate, not when what was in the crates was so important to their business. I was banking on it, to get us out of the building and to the perimeter without being stopped.
It should have worked. It would have worked, if The Albino hadn’t stopped beside me as we grabbed pixie crates.
“Blake’s an elf,” he said, keeping his voice low. “And he hates these guys.”
And he grabbed two crates and about faced, heading for the door.
An elf! Shit! Why hadn’t I picked that, before? It explained why he was using the intel we found to do damage instead of help make an arrest. I followed The Albino’s example and lifted from two crates down. Dayum but these little guys were heavy… and then it struck me that I could save a lot more of them if I just opened the crates.
Lowering my load to the ground, I pulled off the lid.
“Go!” I shouted. “Get out of here. The place is going to blow!”
I didn’t stop, I unstacked crates and lifted lids as fast as I could. When I looked up and saw the rest of the team doing the same, I almost cried.
“Get out of here!” I screamed. “Get clear! You don’t have to die here!”
“Right with you, boss!” Blondie quipped back, and Dylan just laughed.
The Mouse didn’t say anything, just worked as fast as he could to get the pixies free.
“You’re all crazy! You know that, right?” But the truth was I was glad they were there, glad we could get more pixies out than we could if we ran. I didn’t remember how long it had taken from the first whiff of clostrel, to the big bang on stage, and I wasn’t thinking about it. All I wanted to do was make every second count—and that’s when I realised the pixies weren’t leaving.
They weren’t leaving, but they were hauling lids off crates, just as fast as we were. Sure, it took four of them to lift a lid, but they did it fast. Soon, the team and I were just unstacking the crates, working in an ever-growing swarm of pixies to clear the warehouse before the clostrel went up.
It wasn’t until we’d cleared most of one stack that I realised we were still there, that there’d been no earth-shattering kaboom, no wall of wind and sound… and that there was no longer the smell of clostrel growing in the air. All we could see was the cloud of pixies surrounding us. All we could hear was the deafening buzz of their wings, the high-pitched shouts of encouragement that passed between them as they worked… and the crack of semi-automatic fire from outside.
Somewhere in all that, I thought of the burners, and headed over to where I thought I remembered seeing the control panel. Failing that, I was going to find the power leads and pull them out of the wall. The burners couldn’t run without the power, and the clostrel wouldn’t explode without the heat of the distillery at full flood. If I could stop it from reaching full flood… If it wasn’t already too late.
But the smell of clostrel was already fading. Someone else had reached the controls and power leads before me. No one was going to use this distillery without some serious repairs. I thought of Red. Surely he hadn’t left the success of his operation to chance?
Ignoring the sound of small arms fire outside, ignoring the buzz of a myriad of wings, and a thousand chattering voices—even ignoring Dylan and The Albino’s shouts, I couldn’t find him. Finally, I resorted to calling.
“Blakeney!” I shouted, turning on the spot, and trying to see past the whirling pixie swarm.
He did not answer, at least, not straight away.
By the time Dylan’s back-up had finally worked their way through the dust runners, and made it inside, I still had not found him, but we made the arrests, and shut down the operations, and then we repatriated the pixies.
I found Blakeney’s response on my desk when I got back to the office.
Hey Babe. You saved them and, so, I saved you. Thank you for the two years past. It was most instructive. I will not be returning. I have other work to do.
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Memory's Return is available as a stand-alone short story at the following links: books2read.com/u/bxgP8q.
You can also find Kristine Kathryn Rusch's latest free short story over on her blog: kriswrites.com. Why don't you go and check it out?
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