Out of Options (2092 words)
Author: Anorrack
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Polished shoe meets polished tile with a click, click, click, as Jackal walks down the empty hallway to the vault. His breath reverberates within his feral-grinning mask, his skin hot and damp with sweat and spit. The plants that lined the hallway were as rubber as his fake face.
Jackal isn't carrying a rifle like Iceman or Crow, just a pistol and a thermite drill. He's built for speed, wiry. Athletic and lithe. The clicking comes to a stop as he hides behind a pillar next to a painting of a ice-bound galleon, listening to the whining of the cameras up ahead. He tries to ignore the shouting coming from the lobby. They were supposed to have the security system down already, goddamn it.
He glances around the pillar, seeing two cameras on each wall, panning in unison. No way he can get through there undetected, goddamn it again.
Just remember what they said. Step on the gray tiles. He looks down to the dotted line of gray on the otherwise polished white floor. Left, right, left right. He tiptoes on the tile, threading through the near imperceptible blindspots. He relaxes as the dreaded alarm never sounds off.
Just like that, he is at the vault. It shouldn't have this much cash, this is just a regional bank, for Grandma's checking account. The only reason there is this much money here is because of a rounding error, introduced by some helpful software. All it takes is moderate application of the thermite to crack open the vault.
His radio crackles to life with the voice of the boss. "Jackal, report, how much do you see?"
Jackal grins. "Everything you said, boss. Ten million plus, all accounted for."
The synthesized voice chuckles. "Didn't I promise you? All you have to do is bag it, and your job—"
"Let me stop you there."
The line reading stuttered to a halt as everyone at the table looked at Perlman, soon to be called Jackal. He was the new kid, going on his first of this kind of operation. He was confused, aggressive.
Iceman cocked his head and grinned, ivory whites deep-set in a dark face. "Got a problem with the plan so far, Perlman?"
Perlman scoffed, looking around the table with disbelief. He leaned forward and stabbed the papers with his index. "This? A plan? Listen, I've been around the block a few times. I've run with some eccentric types before. But this-" he stabbed the papers again. "Is not a plan. This is crime fan-fiction. I feel like we're doing a line reading of Heat, here." He looked around wildly, met with a mix of amusement and annoyance. "Am I wrong?"
Grease leaned forward. A small man, but seemed to take up the space of someone twice his size. "This is just how we do things around here. It's safe. Guaranteed. All you have to do is memorize your lines, go through the motions, and you're golden."
Jackal stuttered, his face going bright red. "Why are there so many mistakes? The cameras, the screaming woman on page four — what's even the point in planning for that? Are you just going for dramatic effect?"
Crow pushed his glasses up his beak-like nose and threaded his long fingers together. "It's how it works. You plan for things to go wrong, so when they do, you expect them, part of the plan. If the script was perfect, the deviations would be — how you say — more severe. Chaotic. This keeps the narrative in our favor."
Jackal's gaze flicked to each of them in turn, unconvinced. He had the skills for this sort of thing, if he wasn't stupid about it. He already had a decent rapsheet, and he wanted to make something out of it. And they wanted to make something out of him, if they could. "I don't know if I can take this seriously, guys."
Iceman and Crow looked at each other, Grease and Iceman did the same. A silent agreement was reached. Crow reached forward and slowly, subtly, turned the head chair around.
"You will, Perlman." The rough, synthesized voice crackled out of the chair like lightning. Jackal's eyes widened and he leaned away, taken aback.
"What the fuck?"
King loved the dramatic entrance. Part of his writer's soul, I suppose, what was left of it, anyhow. Sitting in the chair was a dissected Saker android, one of the early models, still made of metal and silicon. It was dressed nicely, with a suit jacket and leather gloves, kept with the fingers laced and arched, elbows dug into the arms of the chair. Thick wires and cabling extruded from his torso and ran into a back room, where his real body was. The android was just so he could meet with guests, keep up appearances.
"You can call me King. And this is my crew." The metal-rimmed eyes whirred as they focused on Jackal. "I wrote that 'crime fan-fiction' you have in front of you, and would enjoy some positive criticism."
Jackal's eyes widen and his cheeks puffed out, I thought he was going to run, if I'm honest. But he didn't, he kept his cool, even if he ground his teeth into dust. "Well, sir, I'm a little confused about the format of the plan, and I'm not really seeing any specifics. No blueprints, security system layout—"
"Let me stop you right there, Perlman. Blueprints are for people that lack our methods, that don't have our… precision. This isn't a plan at all. This is a script. A plot with twists and turns, a three-act structure, a story with heroes and villains. And at the end of this story, is money. Money for me, my crew, and for you. All you have to do is memorize your lines, and above all else, stick to the script." He gazed over his arched fingers. "Do you think you can do that?"
Jackal swallowed. He licked his lips and nodded.
King couldn't find a smile, but his modulator pitched his voice up in its stead. "Wonderful. Iceman, skip to page seventeen, from the top."
"Gotcha. The lobby is filling with choking smoke, the animal masks quickly swapped for respirators, as Grease fires into the maintenance tunnels with reckless abandon —
— the pinging of bullets forcing the cops back, buying the crew time to escape.
"Let's go, let's go!" Iceman roared as he held the car door open.
Crow and Grease piled into the car, loose bills leaking from half-closed zippers. The car was beat to hell, with the left windows all blown in and the hood crumbled into origami.
It's silent for a single moment as the distant alarms shut off, and the lights to the parking garage powered down. Then SWAT arrived, and the real gunfire started.
Grease was frantic in the back-seats. "C'mon, c'mon, let's blow this joint."
Crow was driving. "We can't, not until Jackal gets here." He was calm, reciting his lines word-for-word. Perfectly executed.
A bullet whines through the car, breaking off the rearview mirror and showering the three with glass. Crow's hand drifted towards the gear-shift.
Out of the tear gas, Jackal slammed against the car door, scrabbling for the handle as bullets pinged around him. "Open the goddamn door, assholes."
"He's off-script," Grease mumbled.
"It's close enough," Iceman shot back.
Grease thumbed the handle and cracked open the door for Jackal, who wrenched it wide. The hostage in his arms whimpered in fear as the barrel of his pistol dug into her neck while he wrestled the two of them in.
"What are you doing, Jackal? Dump the hostage, we don't need her anymore."
Grease could see Jackal snarl underneath his gas mask, his eyes narrowing and skin crinkling as he chafed against the script. A few more bullets panged off of the car's running board; Jackal opened the door again, and forced the hostage out. But as he did so, a grasping hand snagged his gas mask, and pulled it off. The hostage stumbled to the ground. Her tear-filled doe-eyes looked up. Met Jackal's glare. She saw his face.
Jackal ground his teeth. Bit his tongue. His heart roared in his ears as Crow slammed on the accelerator. But before the tires found traction, Jackal raised his pistol to bear, and centered the hostage in the crosshairs.
BANG
"Jackal, what the fuck was that?!"
"What did he do?"
"He went off-script the fucking bastard!"
"He what —"
"He shot the FUCKING HOSTAGE."
"Jackal you fuck-head — "
"She saw my FUCKING face!"
"Everyone calm down, you just —"
The car screeched out of the parking garage, tires begging for purchase on the rain-slick asphalt as the car took a hard right onto the side road.
"She was supposed to, moron! she was a fucking plot device for the next heist —"
"You selfish asshole!"
"Hey I followed the script —"
"Do you know what you did?! You flat-lined the narrative! Now who the fuck knows what will happen next?"
One of the black SWAT vans was not, in fact, SWAT. The van was filled with electronics, warbling and oscillating in tones not entirely familiar to most behind the Veil. The woman sitting at the computers looked at her partner, and nodded.
"Their plot armor is gone, take the shot."
Her partner grinned and hefted his weapon, the digital sights notifying him of the wind-speed, distance, and target's relative velocity to them on the roof of the parking garage. He squeezed the trigger.
The intensity of the neutron cannon meant that King's crew probably didn't feel a thing as their organs liquefied, their very molecules dissociating within the base particle stream. The car rolled gently to a stop, empty but for wrinkled clothing and bags of cash.
Unbeknownst to the attackers, hidden underneath the car—
While the attackers were distracted with celebrating their hit on King's gang, a plot had been set in motion—
No No No.
Nothing worked, it didn't fit together properly. King gnashed mechanical teeth as if he was trying to eat his writer's block. Hell in a hand-basket, that's where he was. Worst possible scenario, all possible narrative threads severed, he had no B plot to swivel to for this one.
The entire crew, wiped out from one colossal error, the narrative backlash shaking their atoms to dust.
Shouldn't have hired the damn kid.
He was flying blind now, with no story beats to follow and no protagonists to hinge the narrative on, but his writer's sense told him that they were coming for him next. Whoever "they" were. Multiple parties, he felt. Conflicts of interest, could use that.
Question is of picking the proper poison.
Time for a pivot. Drastic means, drastic measures. If he didn't have a main character, he would provide one. The Saker android shuddered, metal claws digging through leather gloves into the arms of the chair. The android probed the umbilical cords connecting it to King, delicately detaching them, one by one. King checked the camera feeds, noting the players on the field, opening another text file.
The UIU team storms up the staircase, tactical boots grinding dirt into the woodgrain.
Not going back to Paramax.
The Sidebinders climb up the fire-escape, phasers tucked into jeans of paper and ink.
Not giving those bastards the pleasure.
And finally, late to the party, a black van skids to a stop in the alley, the MTF inside prepped and ready.
Bingo.
The Saker android absorbed the prose as fast as it flew across its HUD as the robot staggered into his room, picking him up and carrying his case towards the window. One reader was as good as any.
A shadow blocks the light streaming through the curtain. The silhouette of a gun, displaced through fiction and time.
The Saker set its mechanical jaw and opened the window.
The phaser, cocked and ready swings through the air to point at the Saker's metal skull.
The rival gang member grinned and pulled the trigger—
— but not before the Saker droid chucks the case through the window, whistling past the gangster —
— and clattered to the asphalt below, right in front of the Foundation van. Not the worse for wear.
The Saker lets out a low-pitched hum as plasma meets circuit board, chrome dome turning convex as its soldering sublimates into shrapnel. It played its small role wonderfully, and can finally rest.
King crossed virtual fingers and hoped he picked the lesser of three evils as the Foundation agent stepped out of the vehicle.
He hated being out of options.