Somos en escrito The Latino Literary Online Magazine
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Illustrations by Tri Nguyen |
Assassin -- Exacting Justice in a Dystopian Future
LOM Book One
By Frank S. Lechuga
Chapter One
SULSA
It took the warrior the entire first hour after midnight to infiltrate the barricade of mobile hovels and encampments encrusted around the base of Shibumi Tower. Taken over by the Raw Bones Street Army, the high-rise building had been a media lord’s executive headquarters. Once upon a time this address had been high end. It had since devolved and been Brown Zoned.
Like a dark reflection under the full moon’s light, the warrior had glided past knots and clusters of men and women who were the Raw Bones’ foot soldiers and regulars. Indifferent to the bad, unfiltered air they were breathing they smoked, guzzled and snorted while their children played and fought with one another.
The real party raged inside the Tower where the Raw Bones’ lieutenants, their friends, lovers and children had taken residence.
Therein was his primary target. An assassin but not just any ordinary killer-for-hire, he was an adept in the stealth arts of the ancient Korean bushido school. A hwarang, he was also a sulsa and he waged war against the gangs—for a price and higher cause only he knew.
After neutralizing the gang’s dogs and sentries, the warrior opened a side door in the Tower with a master key provided by the media lord. Even after going through the air lock he did not deactivate his helmet. Avoiding the packs of reveling gangsters he stashed remote triggered incendiary explosives throughout the building’s bottom floors. Then, he made his way up the stairwells and service elevators using the exertion as a warm-up for what he had come to do.
Three times, the sulsa killed Raw Bones soldiers who spotted him. He hid their corpses in trash and garbage piles dumped into the stairwells during the forty-eight hours they had occupied Shibumi Tower, the stench serving to disguise torn and loosened bowels.
He continued walking up the stairs until he finally reached the top floor where he opened an unlocked a side door to make his way through a hallway leading to a pair of large black-lacquered hardwood doors, each embellished with a large mother of pearl lunar circle. There he stopped and proceeded to calm his breathing. He focused and prepared. On the other side, his target’s bodyguards would be living it up under an anteroom’s black matte ceiling. His main target would be in the master suite past the anteroom.
***
Partially covered by white leather sculpted Kevlar armor, Maisa the leader, matriarch and queen bitch of the Raw Bones Street Army lazed on the lavish king-sized bed-platform, taking a break from the non-stop party that followed her gang’s occupation of Shibumi Tower.
A roving track light mounted above on the black matte ceiling subtly illuminated her gorgeously sumptuous womanhood. Tall and muscular, she possessed a contrived, unique beauty. Brutalized and scarred from street fighting, her face had been expertly repaired and sculpted, everything paid for by the Wellness Office’s generous allotments for facial surgery and hormone treatments. Brown eyes traded for a blazing azure, her original dark brown skin had been tinctured with Dermaplex into a cream tone. A luxuriant helmet of shoulder length blue hair set off her high cheekbones embellished with fine tattooing.
An errant beam of light from the full moon ricocheting into her face, Maisa rolled over the bed platform’s oversized silvery satin pillows. Her eyes swept over the young bodyguard who had just taken over the watch. “Lock,” she said in a silky, commanding voice, “the door behind you.”
The young muscled Bone looked at her stunning body. His feasting eyes settled on her gorgeously raw, half-naked lower torso crowned by a jeweled navel, her long powerful legs covered in thin white leather. Maisa undulated in response to his scrutiny. Her sensuous yet cold face smiled lasciviously; her tongue swept over her promising lower lip.
He hissed out what had to be his fear of the gangster queen, fear brewing with lust. She had been known to kill lovers who failed to satisfy her. Cautiously, he stepped onto the platform and after a second opened Maisa’s already loosened hard-wired bodice and then with one hand fondled her sumptuous nipples, nipples that had nurtured the horde. With the other hand he slowly removed the shoulder holster that held his Colt magnum.
Maisa peeled off her leather leggings and placed the young Bone’s rough hands on her bare legs. His hands slid up her thighs and she ripped off his leather jeans, cooing and laughing.
In her world sex could only be truly enjoyed when a man’s fear, hatred or anger boiled in the juices of his desire.
Feeling his engorged member against her belly she guided him.
Fiercely, with a grunt, he mounted her. Soon his thrusting transformed the bed-platform into a rocking chariot. Maisa coursed with the chariot’s rhythm, moaning with pleasure. Then, easily, she topped her young lover, kissing him, swirling her powerful tongue inside his mouth.
Up above roving track lights moved on to leave Maisa and her lover below in semi-shadow, moving on to illuminate rare statuary, classical Asian silk screens, Ming porcelain, Louis IV furniture, infusing a semblance of life into these objects that had been cherished, loved even worshipped for centuries.
Gliding through an aperture into the adjoining anteroom the mobile track lights illuminated a white marble czar that looked on impassively while the other Raw Bone guards jerked in twisting rhythm to their gangster army’s anthem, oblivious to the priceless art around them, heedless of the sword blade scintillating out of the shadowy background.
Cleaved from the shoulder to the lung, the first Bone fell before the black garbed, helmeted assassin. A woman slipped from the doomed Bone’s embrace, the sword blade kissing her neck, severing a carotid in the same movement. She fell dead before she could exhale her last breath.
With liquid speed the assassin moved, his sword blade arching horizontally, striking another Bone, cutting through that Bone’s neck with ease, decapitating him, his head falling to the marble floor, its eyes staring up at their violator.
Another Bone, a woman, turned her eyes to see what had bounced onto the floor in front of her, jerking away from the lover she had been suckling. She shrieked, her cry lost in an electric guitar’s digitized, amplified whine. Her lover, alerted by the horror on her face drew an ax-like weapon, raising it to strike at the black shadow standing motionless before him. The warriorsidestepped and whirled around, cutting down the ax man at the legs.
The Bone crumbled but before hitting the floor, a reverse slash severing the external jugular vein on the left side of his neck. Despite her terror his companion attempted to bolt to the exit but that same reverse slash caught her throat and she fell dead gagging. Gore spread quickly. A Bone with an upraised machete charged the attacker only to slip and die from a glancing sword blow to the temple, delivered by the sulsaas he leaped half way across the length of the hall to face the two remaining gangsters. The last Bone standing raised his Uzi’s barrel but the killer’s sword moved faster. A lightening thrust to the heart followed by another decapitating sweep stopped the counterattack.
Acquiescing, the last Bone raised his empty hands but the hwarang warrior had closed in, sword in right hand already committed. The downward blade cleaved the last gangster’s skull, splattering blood, gray matter, and pieces of cranium against the polished marble wall’s pristine blackness.
And the Bones’ defense was terminated, their thumping anthem of mayhem continuing to play above the carnage. The sulsa took in one long breath and exhaled smoothly and easily. Maisa’s dreaded bodyguards had not really offered him much resistance.
Avoiding the puddles of blood on the marble floor, he calmly walked to the master suite and with his free hand, slid an electronic key into the lock slot on the black lacquered door. Opening it he silently stepped into the suite. The warrior wiped his sword on a fine Queen Ann’s velour seat. Then he returned the sword to the sheath attached to his back harness. Then he drew his HK VP100 machine pistol. “Maisa,” he said in an easy but loud and firm tone.
Angrily, the gangster queen raised her head to see who had intruded on her pleasure session. She pushed her lover away with one hand, alerting him. The bodyguard-lover rolled off Maisa and reached for his weapon. Silenced 9mm subsonic bullets punctured his forehead before he even touched his Colt magnum. His brains blown out from behind his shattered skull, he fell onto the floor dead.
The sulsa drew a ruby bead on Maisa’s heart with his weapon’s targeting laser. Without taking his eyes away from her, he placed a small vidcam transmitter unit on a gleaming malachite tabletop, next to an eighteenth century famille noire cat.
“Just in case,’ he said calmly, “You’ve jammed the building’s cam system and transmitters.” He edged sideways to the silk room divider next to the malachite-topped table. Without taking his eyes or the laser bead off Maisa, he knocked the divider down to reveal a sleek, metallic console and inserted the master key to activate the system, illuminating switches, buttons, sensory pads and screens.
“Even if you destroyed the building’s internal surveillance system, Maisa, everything will be transmitted instantly. I’ll make it easier for you if you answer some questions.”
“Go to hell!” The gangster queen’s words were a snarl. She propped herself up against the backdrop of plush satin pillows. She put one knee up and extended the other leg, her lower limbs’ musculature gleaming in the dim light. “Go ahead!” she said. “Do it! I’ve got daughters and sons who’ll collect for me. There’s four hundred Bones out there, all my brothers and sisters in war. They’ll make you eat your own guts!”
“The two remaining alive,” the assassin said coldly, “are your cuddle puppies. They never hurt anybody. The rest of your blood, your dog soldiers and would-be avengers, are all outside, dead. Your army will be nothing without you and your generals.”
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Will anyone love you before it’s your turn to step out? |
Without turning his back to the woman, he flicked a switch on the console. The cam attached to the mobile track light transmitted a video hologram of the carnage and horror in the hallway, imaging the slaughter in front of the bed platform. “So,” he said, “it’s still working.” The woman screamed at the sight of her offspring soldiers dead and butchered. She sobbed, her chest heaving. The sulsa did not wait for Maisa to stop sobbing. “Tell me, Maisa. Who killed Charlie Cross and why?”
“I heard,” Maisa said, gasping before she regained her composure, “what everyone else heard. The Iron Movement killed Charlie but you’re not here to learn why a broken down homeboy got taken out.”
“I’m here,” the hwarang said, “to settle accounts for this building’s owner. You killed his son. You’ve killed entire families without cause. You’re a living curse, Maisa. You literally made your bones trying to kill your own mother.”
Maisa shrugged.
“She thought she was holy Mother Earth herself but was nothing but another hoochie . . . should’a settled into old age with some dignity. She didn’t deserve any props from me or any of the Bones.” Maisa paused, her eyes narrowing then opening wide. “I know who you are now. You’re Outer Cohort like us. You and I come from the same place. The same monster made us but you sold out to the Overkind. I thought you were, a rumor . . . a hit man that moves so fast hardly anyone sees him coming . . . takes on whole gangs, a headhunter using a sword.”
The warrior snapped down another switch.
“Now,” he said slowly, “We’re on company time.” A camera eye emerged from the console.
“Why did you kill Robert Shibumi’s son? It wasn’t enough you stole Shibumi’s money from the construction job in Hondo, pretending to be a building contractor in charge of civilians. You had to take over Robert Shibumi’s building and murder his only son. Why?”
Maisa looked at the camera eye. “We kick ass,” she said defiantly, “on all the other raggedy militias in this Brown Sub-Zone and we tax the civilians to the bone. That’s why we’re the Raw Bones Street Army. So now we taxed an Overkind—took his building and murder’s just a word.”
She looked back at the assassin. “Like what you’re doing . . . sure you just call it business, not murder. We didn’t murder Bobby Shibumi. F--k you!”
Slowly dropping his machine pistol’s barrel, the hooded warrior lowered his voice. “I’m asking you again, Maisa. Why did your soldiers kill Bobby, Robert Shibumi’s only son?”
Maisa laughed. “We didn’t murder his goddamn son! He died because he wanted to join us. Hell—Bobby had already lived a full thirty years. Just like anybody, he had to fight his way into the Raw Bones Street Army. Problem was junior didn’t have what it took to get through the initiation. He wimped out, got his ass kicked and died!
“Something else, fancy hit man, you should know why he wanted in with me and the Raw Bones, why he gave us the keys to his daddy’s tower.” Maisa stood up to her knees with supple speed, her hands at her side, her chest heaving defiantly, her breasts’ brown nipples jutting like spearheads. “Junior got from me and the Bones what he never got from his daddy. He got love, baby!
“Tell me, executioner man, do you know anything about love? Does anyone love you? Will anyone love you before it’s your turn to step out?”
Maisa made a desperate lunge for her dead lover’s gun. In that same instant the hwarang sheathed the 9mm he had been holding with his left hand and with his right hand, drew his sword, arching it back. He stepped in and with one horizontal sweep the sword blade effortlessly cut through Maisa’s neck. Her body fell back onto the bed, her head, face up, falling gently onto a large satin pillow, her blood gushing up from her severed neck’s opened arteries.
The decapitating cut had been that swift and refined.
After studying his work for a quick second, the sulsa assassin walked up to the bed platform and calmly wiped the blade on an unsoiled part of the bed. Then he sheathed the weapon, walked back to the console and pressed another button. A hologram materialized the center of the room, the figure of a man wearing eco-armor. He appeared refined, rigid and cold—like one of the jade figurines on the suite’s illuminated display shelves.
“You saw and heard everything, sir,” the hwarang said in a crisp business tone, “here and what’s in the hallway? Are you satisfied with the justice I administered to these thieves, your son’s killers? Are you satisfied that this gang will never be a threat to you and yours again?”
The answer was a whisper uttered at the bottom of an abyss. “Yes,” the media lord said, “I knew my vengeance would be justified. You have secured my family’s safety. The building and my possessions mean nothing. What they did to my son—that means everything.” Then, like a cold wind ascending, his voice rose in pitch. “Now for the rest of the contract. Have you sealed all the exits in the Tower?”
“It is done,” the hwarang said. “The building’s emergency systems have been neutralized, and what’s left of the city fire department will not respond quickly, but as it is noted in the contract, I cannot guarantee a complete extermination of the rabble that followed Maisa.”
“Very well, but those who survive must believe they escaped from hell!”
“Your building will burn. The few survivors will know they escaped an inferno.”
“And the objects in the apartment,” the media lord said. “Everything they have touched, everything they have polluted with their presence must be destroyed and burned. I must never hear that any one of those objects in the master suite have survived this justice I am paying you for! I must never hear that any of those objects are in someone else’s hands or in the marketplace!”
“You speak of the art,” thewarrior said, turning away from the holographic apparition to hone his hooded eyes on the camera behind him, “—you have collected, on display in this suite and in the anteroom. These things have no value in my reality. Everything will be destroyed. You have my word. You know my reputation.”
“The rest of your payment awaits you, as agreed.” With that final whisper the hologram vanished.
The warriorknocked the auto cam off the malachite table and crushed it with his boot. Then he took out the HK and shot out the console camera’s lens. After holstering the machine pistol he took out another device from a hidden pouch. This he put on the malachite table and then pressed a tiny button on its face. A pulsing red glow verified the timers on the incendiary explosives secreted throughout the building were set.
He went to the console and quickly reprogrammed the building’s security computer to open the lobby doors when the fire alarms on the first floor would go off. Innocent children were down there. Brood of the Raw Bones Street Army that they were, and scourge that they would grow up to become—they were innocent now.
“Even a media lord,” the warriorsaid, “cannot tilt the scales of justice against the innocent. And before any media lord, I serve justice first.” A rough vibration accompanied by a shifting roar announced that the extraction chopper had landed on the Tower’s roof, directly above the suite. The warrior turned to the door at the opposite end of the suite, the door leading to the roof above. Then he turned back and deactivated his helmet. Samuel Pointe took in a breath and exhaled out the slaughter’s residue.
“Shibumi,” he said to the emptiness, “I don’t covet your art, your porcelain and jade. I hunger for other things that are far more valuable, not the least of which is retribution for Charlie Cross. I seek the secret of his golden artifact.”
LOM Book One is available from amazon.com.