Chapter 02 Audiobook
Prometheus brushed the rappelling line out of the way as he kicked off of the windowsill and launched himself across Rue du Miroir, crossing the narrow alley with ease. Catching hold of the bannister of the window directly across, he found himself staring into his own blank mask through the eyes of his insectoid drone. Just beyond, the shades on the window shifted slightly, and a shard of light lanced out, revealing a chamber recital in progress on the other side of the glass. Shuffling onto the quoin to his right before he could be spotted, he climbed the chamfers in the ashlar like a ladder to the roof and pulled himself easily over the rain gutter. Crouching at the base of the roof’s slant, he recalled his Zygopter which landed lightly on his open palm. With a tap and twist of its head, the camera feed died; all limbs retracted and body segments clicked together into a smooth, nearly unbroken surface. The drone took the form of a polished obsidian stylus which he sheathed in the gauntlet on his left wrist.
Knowing time was short, he immediately began climbing the steep solar tiled surface. As he reached the crest, he nearly knocked heads with one of the goons whom he had seen leaving the van a few minutes prior. His sudden appearance shocked the man, giving Prometheus time to punch him in the face. While his opposite was still off balance, he scaled the crest. From his vantage, he could clearly see his two opponents and decided to even the playing field by removing one from the equation early. As he vaulted the ridge, he caught the already injured man with a kick to the side of his face, sending him sprawling and rolling over the edge. Sliding down the slope of the roof, he landed on the rain gutter facing his remaining target. The thin steel curve flexed under his weight, but held.
A flash of dark metal in the moonlight caught his eye and alerted him that his enemy already had a gun in his right hand and was trying to rotate and shoot without falling off the edge. Lashing out with his left hand, Prometheus grabbed the back of his head and pushed it forward into the roof. The sneak tried to brace himself and wound up loosing a round into the night sky as both of his hands hit the solar tiled surface. The shot was startlingly loud, meaning this fool was carrying a propellant-based gun, not an electrolytic capacitor weapon like any sensible person would have. He likely had never intended to use it inside the city limits given how much noise it made.
“Coups de feu! Ils sont sur le toit!”1 came a voice in the distance, alerting them to the fact that the authorities were already closing in.
The gunman tried to recover and take aim, but Prometheus gave him no pause. Grabbing the collar of his bulletproof vest as leverage, Prometheus yanked the man toward him, rotating around his left foot and planting his right elbow into the base of his opponent’s skull. A second round disappeared into the night as the man’s mask met the tiles. The gunman shifted, driving his elbow harmlessly into Prometheus’ chest as he tried to create a gap under his abdomen for his right hand to snake through. While not likely to penetrate his armour, a shot from this range could still potentially damage it and would at least be incredibly painful so, rather than let him align his weapon, Prometheus rotated in time with his opponent, keeping a firm grip on his collar and swinging him up and out. A bullet ricocheted off the solar tiles as the man flailed his arms in an effort to regain balance, his frantic movements only adding to his outbound velocity.
Feeling their momentums reversing in a manner which could easily ensure mutual destruction, but not wanting to let his last chance at answers throw itself off the roof, Prometheus maintained his hold on the man’s vest and leaned back, pulling him down on top of himself as they fell. Dodging the man’s attempt at headbutting him lost Prometheus precious seconds in which his opponent was able to bring his gun back into play. Shoving forward with the hand still gripping the man’s collar and ducking left, he managed to avoid getting shot in the head, but by less of a margin than he would have liked. Up close, he could see the R-bellied eagle mark on the slide, betraying its origin. Not wanting to give him a second chance, Prometheus slid his hand down the man’s arm, grabbed his wrist, and slammed it down on the roof beneath. A shot ricocheted off the roof a few metres away, but the man held on.
“Friendly! Friendly!” came a frantic shout to their right.
In his periphery, Prometheus saw the first sneak clawing his way back up the gutter from which he had obviously been hanging as they wrestled. He had little time to contemplate this as he felt the man in his grasp jerk, elbowing him in the gut again before trying to yank his gun hand free. Tightening his grip, Prometheus slammed his hand against the roof once more. This time, the ping of a ricochet was replaced with a sickening wet sound followed some seconds later by a dull thump from far below.
“Shit, I shot Dice!” the second sneak muttered, not sounding all that broken up about it.
One more smack while he was distracted dislodged the gun from his opponent’s hand and sent it clattering after his fallen friend.
An elbow caught his ribs as the man twisted to the left, wrenching free of his grip. Hearing the gutter groan in protest as his opponent ran for the south corner, Prometheus sprang onto the angled roof and gave chase. Exploiting his height advantage, he tackled the man just as they reached the corner, slamming him sidelong into the dormer. They fell heavily against the tiles and began to slide back toward the courtyard. While his opponent was disoriented, Prometheus turned him onto his back, straddled his upper torso, and landed a heavy strike across his face, which he immediately chased with a hammer fisted blow to the opposite side that knocked his night vision goggles loose. Discombobulated by both the blows and his obscured vision, the man swung at him feebly. Grabbing the goggles from his opponent’s face, Prometheus ripped them off and cast them away. Pinching his left hand on the sides of the man’s throat, he squeezed, swatting away the hand that groped for his face.
“Behave yourself, Señor,” Prometheus growled low, maintaining his Spanish accent from before.
The man’s hands went to his neck, but he could get no purchase against Prometheus’ armoured fingers. After a few seconds, his eyes started to lose focus, so Prometheus slacked his grip and pulled off the gunman’s balaclava before slapping him awake again. He was young, blond, and reasonably handsome, with features angular enough to look masculine but soft enough that his face alone would not scare women and children.
“Who sent you?” he demanded.
“Ya mutha,” the guy spat, twisting his face into a hideous snarl and writhing as the fingers at his throat tightened once more. He tried feebly to break Prometheus’ grip, swinging at his face, punching his arm, anything he could reach, but his arms were too short and strength too sapped by asphyxiation to land a meaningful hit. Most of his swings at Prometheus’ face were swatted away before they came anywhere near their target and his attempts to break Prometheus’ hold bounced harmlessly off his armoured limb.
“You are not so smart,” Prometheus remarked, lifting one finger to give him a moment of fresh oxygenated blood. “You should try to be smarter. It would be smart for you to tell me what I want to know.”
“Yeah, I know man,” the writhing man grunted through gritted teeth, unable to open his jaws. “I won’t tell him shit.”
“You are even more stupid than I thought,” Prometheus squeezed until the man’s face purpled and veins bulged at his temples. His feet kicked helplessly, unable to gain purchase on the slick wet tiles, slowing as his consciousness faded. “You will tell me what I want to know, or we will both continue having a bad night.”
“It’s Prome…” with his name still on the man’s lips, Prometheus put a fist into the lower half of his face, temporarily silencing him while he chewed his own teeth.
A pair of bullets whizzed overhead from the direction of L’Hôtel Gutenberg, prompting Prometheus to duck his head down.
A dull impact hit his torso at the same time the man shifted his weight, tipping Prometheus off of him enough to put a foot on his chest. With a hard kick, he shoved Prometheus back. Rotating as the kick landed, Prometheus let himself roll away on the roof rather than risk falling four floors and fracturing his femurs.
Having successfully disengaged, the sneak scrambled backward. Struggling to flee, he tottered past the front of the dormer into which he had been slammed earlier. Once past the window, he drew another Ruger and turned to shoot, the way he leaned against the dormer appearing to be just as much for support as cover. Even so, between the loss of his night vision goggles and his disorientation, he was quite unable to aim and compensated for accuracy with volume, emptying his clip in the general direction from which he had come, tearing up the roof of the ancient enlightenment building. Solar tiles were much more robust than the original terra cotta, but they were not designed to stop small arms fire and shattered in a hail of silicon fragments.
Prometheus had not waited around idly. Even before the man turned to draw, he had taken cover on the opposite side of the dormer and drew one of the small blades sheathed on his arm. When he heard the click of his opponent running empty, he vaulted the crest and caught the gunman from behind, whipping the blade at his head while still in the air. In the darkness, the gunman failed to spot the projectile until it was centimetres from his face. While dodging prevented him from catching the blade point directly, he was too slow to avoid a gouge across his cheek and fumbled his mag. Before his opponent could regain his balance, Prometheus slid down the slant, kicking the knees out from under him.
Grappling his way on top of the man, Prometheus grabbed the back of his head and pressed his face into the cold wet tiles with his left hand while hammering his shoulder with punches until he lost his grip of the pistol.
“Who sent you?” he growled as the man squirmed.
“Fuck you,” the sneak spat.
Grunting, he pulled his knees and left arm up for leverage and twisted under Prometheus, bucking him off enough to start crawling away. No sooner had his blond crown crested the roof than its top half bloomed a higanbana. The impact threw him sideways which led to his rolling limply down the slope and coming to a stop in the rain gutter. Someone was going to have a miserable morning cleaning all this mess up.
Sighing heavily, Prometheus watched the macabre scene from his safe vantage below. Clearly he would be getting nothing useful from this one either. Glancing in the direction of the mosquito-like whine that had shadowed him since he first scaled Salle Mozart, he was satisfied to see the tiny quadcopter turn about and fly away to the southeast.
A flash in the distance was followed a couple seconds later by a low rumble. Thousands of tiny silver bullets pelted Prometheus from above, providing him a welcome rinse as he slunk over the rooves in search of a safe return to ground level, taking intentionally circuitous routes until he was confident no one else was trailing him.
- Shots fired! They’re on the roof! ↩︎