The Justiceers - Part One: Chapter Seven
the next chapter from my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
By Daphne Garrido
Part One - Darkest Nights
1.7
“Suck a fucking dick!” Miriam shouted over the countertop.
“This is ridiculous and you know it.”
She wouldn’t lash out this way without Arthur beside her, so bolstering her confidence, the man always managed to bring the very most out of Miriam. He’d been smirking, glad somebody was saying it, because it was true.
These people were entirely unready for life without a structure in which they’d apparently become dependent unknowingly. Everyone looked lost, and they didn’t seem to know why. That intelligence had clearly taken up space within the citizens of Oliath, somehow controlling or steering their comings and goings, these agents found themselves directionless.
They were all so confused.
Even Miriam felt a strange emptiness inside where there had been some unknowable presence before, it seemed a noticeable internal improvement, more space for herself and spirit. However, whatever purpose that force which had come to be inside her held, source told clearly, it had been ‘that fucking cube.’
Arthur’s gut steered them right back to OGA headquarters.
“They’re fucking clueless.” He’d said just loud enough for Miriam to hear.
She groaned again, trying to get the attention of somebody over the shoulder of this moron. If they could only get buzzed through, they’d be able to get to Olivia.
Miriam glanced at Arthur with her jaw hanging, nostrils flared, exasperated.
“I told you, dude. This place is the worst.”.
Arthur chirped back, “ And I told you we should have landed on the roof.”
Just then the doorway from the back hall had swung open, some plainclothes agent was zombie-walking his way towards the front entrance. Nobody seemed to notice as Miriam snagged the door.
She’d held it open for Arthur and The Beast with a smirk.
“After you.” she teased as he’d passed.
Octavia was literally sweating as they’d come into her office.
Arthur and Miriam still managed to drawn a smile from the woman, unable to help from feeling quite warm in the presence of their energy, before spiraling into some overt sense of guilt they’d both seen clearly.
They’d come to find she was buckling under political pressures. Arthur’s gut felt a rock just looking at her face, Miriam’s heart beginning to race.
“I’m really sorry,” Octavia uttered through a hardening frown.
Agents flooded into the room behind them, weapons armed, surrounding Arthur and Miriam as they’d immediately reflected on sights they had of these people in the hallway, regretting deeply those pings of gut and source which hadn’t been heard until this moment of retrospect.
“I hope you know you’re all fucked.” Arthur asserted, showing his palms.
The Beast grumbled in quiet beneath him, its software having been so easy to patch after he’d seen the problem in action. Miriam found herself worried about what was to come. Not particularly for herself or Arthur, mostly their clothes and Octavia’s state of mind.
She’d realized her mind took her to darker places than Arthur’s.
Admittedly, Miriam was still in a most elevated place from their recent time slaughtering Cryptoids so ruthlessly, a part of her spirit ever spinning in that dance of fire and fury. She needed a bath or something to chill out.
Arthur let the Agents tie their hands, and they’d been escorted into the hallway. Octavia hadn’t been able to look as they were led from her office. Where they were being taken, they’d never find out. Miriam had been trying not to be obvious in her anticipations, Arthur clearly waiting for the right second.
When it finally came, Miriam realized why he’d let things go so far. These ‘dumb fucks’ let their guards down, every last one of them, they couldn’t even do this right. Six agents total; one to each side of Miriam up front, another two sandwiching Arthur and The Beast, and a final pair bringing up the rear.
Miriam’s source was telling a tale — those two in the back were for her.
‘Stop,’ source commanded, abiding, her two escorts stepped ahead of her. The brawny bald man to her left seized so suddenly, a choking chortle escaping him.
His shiny head rocketed through Miriam’s field of vision — a scream only just forming in the air — to collide at absurd speed with the forehead of that much scrawnier person to their right, looking just in time to see the man’s reflective scalp implode their face.
The crunch was sickening.
Miriam wasted no time processing, spinning to witness the two agents beside Arthur had suffered similarly head-splitting fates, thrust individually into what she’d see as distinctively head-sized holes in the walls above their unconscious bodies.
Source had been right about the two in the back. They were raising their weapons, Arthur would not be able to see them to vector their location.
Miriam’s body was ran, hands still bound, watching as The Beast began to spin, knowing inside herself the agents would get their shots off too soon. By the time Arthur was halfway around, Miriam was only steps away. Her heart could feel something coming she’d not want to happen.
Never an elite athlete, she’d been grateful for source’s ability to take-over in full, launching herself up, rooting a foot onto The Beast’s nearest armrest, and leaping over Arthur’s head, her body turning horizontal in the air, tied arms tucked tightly to her chest.
Their shots were not aimed to stun.
Two plasma projectiles tore through Miriam. One burning right through the flesh at the side of her abdomen, the other taking her left hand at the wrist; melting straight through, burning into her chest and lungs.
The screams from her body were unlike any pain she’d ever felt.
Miriam crashed to the white-tile flooring in a heap of pain and shock, her blood splattering widely upon impact, such tingling sensations flooding through as source took her to some safe place beyond.
She’d heard their screams, if unable to register the meaning behind them.
A part of her was still somewhat present as she’d seen the innards those agents who shot her down splayed across the hallway. She’d been lifted by The Beast’s effectors and placed upon Arthur’s lap.
Things went dark then for Miriam Halafax.
Flutters of consciousness had come and gone as they’d made their way from the building. Something else was happening now, Miriam’s heart could feel it, even so deeply fallen from reality. There was so much shouting, and it didn’t seem centered around Arthur and her at all.
Commotion was everywhere, more than before. Huge detonations echoing in the distance, from the city. The building was shaking.
Miriam cried out as The Beast’s technologies worked within her. It was closing her wounds, and some sense of spirit was beginning to find hope she might survive, greeted by relief from those awful sensations of blood draining so quickly.
Before long she’d notice the sensations of cold upon her skin, a peace of darkness surrounding her, the chaos of people so far away. Her eyes had come open then, feeling more herself for a moment.
Arthur was magnificent.
Curled into the strength of his arms, she’d never felt such protective forces surrounding her, or such love coming her way through another’s touch.
Staring up at Arthur’s determined face, his tightest grip keeping her from falling into a precipice great rest, an explosion bloomed from the top of the OGA tower, a result of some fallen shell from what Arthur would discover as a salvo of artillery fire now pounding Oliath to dust.
As they boarded the M9, bits of falling glass had rained about the craft. Miriam was feeling woozy as she’d been laid down.
“Hey Arthur,” she’d managed to call-out as he programed the speedship’s route home, its thrusters beginning to lift them from that cursed city. He’d come to her then with a softness she’d rarely see in him, and Arthur took her remaining hand in his.
“Hey,” he’d said so gently. “What can I do to help?”
“Source says I’m going to be okay,” she’d lied. They hadn’t said a thing, and Arthur knew it. Still, Miriam let a devilish little grin form onto her face as they’d pierced the sky.
“I told you we shouldn’t park on the roof.”
