[stmercy2020]

Well, as I have mentioned before, moving is kicking my ass.  Actually, the move hasn't been too bad apart from the thirty six hour drive.  No, the real obnoxious thing has been my dogs' sudden incontinence.  Dealing with a small dog with bowel problems is bad enough, but my big dog is around 140 lbs and seems to mystically generate poop out of nothing.  Very frustrating.

At any rate, the next chapter of Tris's story.  Hopefully there are a couple of twists nobody was really expecting.  As always, comments are welcome.

Cold Fury
by: stmercy2020
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ or send a letter to Creative Commons, 171 Second Street, Suite 300, San Francisco, California, 94105, USA.

Chapter One: http://amaz0ns.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,135/topic,5697.0/
Chapter Two: http://amaz0ns.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,135/topic,5705.0/
Chapter Three: http://amaz0ns.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,135/topic,5731.0/
Chapter Four: http://amaz0ns.com/option,com_smf/Itemid,135/topic,5767.0/

Chapter Five
Tris starts a new mission in a really big city and encounters an old enemy.

November, 2000
Gimpo International Airport was not as large as Heathrow, Tris noticed.  In fact, it seemed a bit small for the amount of traffic running through it.  Upwards of eighty thousand people wandered through this airport on a daily basis.  Not terribly impressive when compared to O’Hare or LAX or similar monstrosities, but Gimpo had exactly three terminals- two for international traffic and one for domestic.  The congestion of the city was immediately obvious, as well, as Tris felt herself impersonally jostled by faceless masses all trying to reach various destinations with little regard for who else might be trying to make their way along the crowded walkways.

Looking around, Tris felt immediately self-conscious.  She had been tall in London, but here she seemed to tower over all but a few of the locals.  Additionally, she was considerably thicker than any of the local women she saw, who tended to a more reed-like build with proportionally slender but long arms and legs.  Crowned by her shockingly red hair and her exotic eyes, Tris was the proverbial nail that stuck up waiting to be pounded down.

Craning her neck to spot her contact, Tris felt herself make solid contact with someone rather larger and heavier than herself.  Staggering back and falling, she found herself looking up into the eyes of a man she’d seen only once before, but those circumstances had been rather memorable to her.  He had dark, curly hair and dark eyes, a deep tan to his rugged features.  The last time she’d seen his face was an instant before he plunged out of a fifth story window, utterly destroying any chance she might have had to successfully complete her mission.

He offered her his hand and gave her a warm smile.  “Sorry about that, miss,” he said in slightly accented English.  Tris couldn’t immediately place it, but it wasn’t British and it wasn’t from any part of the Americas she was familiar with.  “I’m afraid I didn’t see you there.”

Tris took his hand and allowed him to help her up.  Her mind was racing, but she managed to keep the shock of recognition off her face.  It was unlikely that he had recognized her, after all- she had been wearing a full facemask and in complete ninja-mode.  Now she was affecting the wide-eyed American tourist look with abandon and, she thought, pulling it off quite well.  “No harm done,” she assured him.

“Perhaps you’ll allow me to buy you a drink?  Coffee or something similarly nonthreatening?”

Tris thought fast.  She was supposed to be meeting her contact, but this man was somehow involved in the intelligence community and, as yet, a complete unknown to her.  She gave him a friendly smile.  “Sure.  I’m supposed to be meeting a friend, but maybe we can go out and grab a drink after?  I’m Margaret,” she offered.

He nodded.  “Pleased to meet you.  I’m Renaldo.”  Matching step, they made their way to the front of the throng and Tris spotted her contact at the edge of the crowd.

“Jun,” she called, waving.  The small Korean woman, barely over five feet tall, turned to see the two westerners bearing down on her and grinned.

“Hello Maggie,” she greeted them, “who’s your friend?”  Tris made introductions, knowing that Jun would start backchecking Renaldo as soon as she got clear of them.  She arranged to have several photos snapped using the Korean woman’s omnipresent cameraphone, and made Jun promise to email her the results if they were any good.

Jun and Tris made apparently meaningless small talk for awhile, until Jun evidently decided enough time had passed and took them all to her car.  She drove them all to a small restaurant in the Konkuk University district and directed them inside.  A man just slightly past middle age directed them to a table, speaking Korean, but using a badly broken English patois when it became clear that Renaldo had no idea what he was saying.  Jun ordered the food, a traditional Korean meal of strips of pork served with a variety of vegetables and garlic, all grilled at the table.  As was custom, a large variety of side dishes, primarily different forms of kimchi, were also provided.

As they ate, Tris signaled the waiter and ordered beer and a particular Korean beverage called soju.  Renaldo raised his eyebrows when Tris spoke to the waiter in quick, fluent Korean.  “My father was stationed here for awhile,” Tris explained, “he taught me Hangul, Cantonese, and Japanese, although I’m told my accent is horrendous.”

Jun smiled.  “It is,” she agreed quietly, and Tris stuck her tongue out at her.

After dinner, Jun led them to her apartment.  Although huge, Seoul’s immensity was largely vertical, Tris noted, as opposed to London’s vast sprawl.  The entire city seemed to be built in dense layers, and the smallest building Tris saw anywhere had at least four stories.  Jun’s apartment was on the third floor of a building with twenty eight floors.  Oddly, only the second floor through the ninth were actually residential, the rest being given over to yet another restaurant, a language school, various business offices, and a three story medical clinic.

Depositing her bags, Tris bid Jun goodbye and promised to be back before the subways stopped running at midnight.  Jun grumped a little, saying that she would like to join them, but she had a great deal of work to do.  Tris and Renaldo left the building and returned to the busy streets of Seoul, looking for a coffee shop that didn’t look too crowded.  After wandering for a bit, they eventually settled on a small corner shop named, amusingly enough, Sweet Buns.

Tris ordered a latte and Renaldo got himself a white caramel machiatto.  Looking at the menu, Renaldo asked Tris to point out something that looked reasonably edible to go with their drinks and Tris suggested some biscotti and a plate of cookies made with bean paste.  The coffee was excellent, the biscotti crunchy and sweet, the cookies somewhat depressingly bland.

“Meh,” Tris grimaced, “they do great coffee, but they’ve never learned to do a decent sweet.”

Renaldo smiled gently.  “They’re not too bad- not my favored cuisine, though, I’ll grant you.

“So, Maggie- I’ve been trying to place your accent, but I don’t seem to have it.  Where are you from?”

“Actually, I’m kind of from all over.  I was born in the American Midwest- Pennsylvania, actually- but my dad was a marine and got shipped out all over the place and Mom and me just went base-hopping right along with him.

“Most recently, I’m from London- I’m spending a year there on exchange.”

Tris went on in this vein for a bit, fabricating a life nearly out of whole cloth.  Renaldo asked good questions and listened well, interrupting only rarely.  Even as she spoke, Tris was examining the man sitting opposite her.

He was tall, she realized, probably close to two meters, but his broad shoulders and overall thickness tended to make him seem more average until he stood up.  Finally, she had placed his accent- some sort of European Hispanic- and it was entirely in keeping with his dark, rugged features.

When he spoke, he spoke expressively with his hands but not, she noticed, his eyes.  He had the same wary predator look to his eyes that Tris had seen in her father before he died, noticing everything and memorizing tactical details as if it were completely second nature to him.

They bantered for a while on subjects of little to no importance, and Renaldo demonstrated that he was well informed regarding political and military situations the world over, but remarkably uninterested for all of that.  Tris kept her political leanings to herself, trying to give the impression of a politically impressionable young teen.

Finally, Tris feigned exhaustion- not difficult given her jet lag- and begged off for the night.  Returning to Jun’s apartment, Tris met the other girl in a back room to hear the news.

*****

“Sergeant Boyd,” said the grey man, “we have a job for you.”

The grey man was of average height, wearing an expensive Gucci two-button suit.  His face was worn, old and lined with the color of old shoe leather.  His eyebrows were thick, bushy things, scrubby grey-and-white caterpillars that nearly joined in the center of his forehead and his hair, also a light grey, was the severe military brush cut that Sgt. Boyd had become used to over his decades with the marines.  He looked formidable and his posture, the tilt of his chin, indicated that he was accustomed to getting his way.

“The last time I talked with one of you people,” Boyd remarked, jaw clenched, “I lost my daughter.”

“We weren’t wrong, though.  It was necessary.”

“I haven’t seen the proof yet.”  Sgt. Boyd sighed.  “All right, come in.  I’ll hear you out.  What’s this about?”

The corner of the grey man’s lip twitched slightly.  “Ironically, it’s about your daughter…”

*****

Tris double checked her gear.  The new armor-weave bodysuit felt stiff and uncomfortable, but it was supposed to be rated to withstand up to .30 caliber armor piercing rounds.  It was still highly experimental- it would probably be another ten years before even the military got ahold of this stuff- but the combination of flexibility and toughness made it the best armor currently available, and, having been shot in the past, Tris was more than happy to put up with a little chafing if it meant living through a hail of bullets at close range.

As impressive and technologically advanced as her armor was, her weapons went the other way- a variety of knives, a pair of short clubs, a very strong and thin garotte.  Tris also carried a pair of Sig-Sauer P226 Navy pistols with extra clips on her belt, a weapon that she was so accurate with that she could regularly achieve five-shot groupings of under an inch at a range of up to fifty meters.

Minutes later, Tris was inside the Yeouido Twin Towers, climbing the stairs to the twenty-second story, her gear hidden by her long, grey duster.  She silently praised the frigid Korean winter that allowed her to wear the coat without attracting undue attention.  It was well after regular business hours, but no one paid her any extra attention as she stepped up to the locked door on the landing.

Fortunately, this door had only a mechanical lock.  It was a good lock, admittedly, but Tris had practiced enough on locks of this sort to have a good sense of them.  Taking off her gloves, she inserted her long picks into the mechanism and worked swiftly and deftly until she felt all the tumblers click into place.

No light came from under the door, so Tris quickly opened it just enough to squeeze through and slipped inside, shutting the heavy door behind her.  She pulled up her hood, waiting while her senses became attuned to the darkness.  There were supposed to be a dozen guards in LG’s part of the building, deployed in two roving groups of four and a third group at the central guard station.  They were all armed- tasers, billy clubs, and M9A1 pistols- and, according to her intel, were all former soldiers with active duty service records.  If she encountered them, they would be motivated, persistent, and well-coordinated.

Jun’s map of the building was accurate, fortunately, as were her observations regarding the standard patrol patterns that the guards would follow.  Tris made it to Mr. Kim’s office with no difficulty.  As she expected, this door was also locked, but she managed to pop it with little difficulty.  Once inside, she shucked her duster and used it to cover the base of the door before flipping on the lights.  Mr. Kim Yong-Sook had left his office preternaturally neat.  No papers were on his desk, his inbox was empty.  There were several pictures showing the man with his family- a pretty wife and a son who appeared to be around nine in the picture.

That was the one thing that Tris was really uncomfortable about with this mission.  As a recent orphan, herself, Tris already sympathized with the distress the boy would feel when his father was taken from him.  She hated the thought that she was going to be the cause of that loss.

Slipping a flash drive from her pocket, she powered up his computer and set the disk in the USB drive.  She checked her watch.  She was still on schedule.

The computer seemed to take forever to boot, although Tris knew it was only a couple of minutes, then the search program on the flash drive whirred to life.  After several minutes, the disk beeped at her and Tris looked at the screen.  Oh hell, she thought, and things were going so well…

The file wasn’t there.  It had been wiped from the machine and no references existed in memory.  This hadn’t been part of the plan.  Tris called Jun.

*****

Renaldo stretched out luxuriously on his king-sized bed in the Grand Hyatt.  It had been a good day, he thought- relaxing.  The girl he’d met was certainly fascinating.  Gorgeous, actually, with her strangely angular face, the strong jaw and the exotic looking eyes and hair.

She was obviously a fitness fanatic, he thought, and her devotion showed in how amazingly defined and powerful her body seemed to be just under her skin.  Her hands were a little rough, actually- callused oddly, now that he thought about it, not the soft woman’s hands that he’d expected.  She had the hard ridges of skin of someone who worked regularly not only with weights, but also with weapons, and her knuckles had that same slightly horny look that people acquired from smashing them through wood and concrete.

He wondered if she had studied martial arts- she hadn’t said so, and that seemed odd.  If not, how did she get those hands, though?  He had her number.  Maybe he’d call her tomorrow and see if he couldn’t arrange for a proper date.

Yes, that would be the best course of action.  He could arrange to go on a date and maybe, just maybe if things worked out, he could see her again even later.  He really wanted to get to know her better.  It had been so long, after all.

A date would be the perfect way to celebrate.  After he finished his job, of course.

*****

It had taken Tris some time to get into Mr. Kim’s supervisor’s office, and even longer to locate the folder that contained the backups of his work, but the flash drive was hard at work, now.  Idly, Tris looked around the office.  It was not as tidy or as organized as Kim’s had been.  Stacks of paper cluttered the desk and a half-eaten sandwich was in the trash can.  An envelope that had obviously been destined for the shredder had ended up next to it, somehow, and was wedged between the basket and the desk.

She picked up the envelope, not really thinking, and took out the plain sheet of business paper folded within.  The message was very short.

“Payment received in the amount of 500,000,000 won.  Kim Yong-Sook termination to proceed on morning of 11/8 at Gyeongbokgung as per instructions.”

Holding the paper in her hand, Tris felt numb.  Oh, this can’t be good, she thought.

She looked through the papers on the desk, hoping to find Mr. Kim’s address or phone number.  It was hopeless- although a phone was listed, when she dialed it, it immediately rolled over to voice mail.  The address listed for Mr. Kim was the lobby of the LG Chem headquarters- he received his mail here.

There was a bootstep directly outside the door.

“Mr. Li?” inquired a man’s voice in Korean, “did you forget something?”

She’d waited too long.  The guards had come around to this section on their patrol and one of them had noticed something amiss.  She cursed silently, dropping her clubs into her hands and moving swiftly to the door.  The door opened to the inside and she waited just until it was half open before leaping at it in a powerfully thrusting side kick.  The guard on the other side of the door staggered back, stunned.  Tris dropped to the floor and rolled to the side of the door just as the door was flung open and another guard thrust his pistol through the aperture.

Tris struck upwards with her billy, shattering the guard’s wrist.  Turning, she saw that another was talking on his walkie and trying to draw his gun at the same time.  The guard she’d hit with the door was also back on his feet, cradling his right arm.  The last guard had maneuvered clear of the melee and had his taser out.

He fired, but Tris leapt over the high-voltage wires and hurled her club like a baton.  He raised his hand to block the rod and the impact shattered his delicate weapon and his hand.

The guard who first opened the door rushed her, trying to overbear her as she landed, but Tris pivoted smoothly and jammed her hip into him, flipping him hard into the door frame.  He went down in a heap and Tris quickly finished him by dropping the side of her boot hard against his face.

With her remaining club, Tris beat a tattoo on the guard nearest her as he tried to backpedal and get a grip on his own billy club.  He didn’t even have time to get the weapon unslung before Tris hammered him with a blindingly fast combination to his gut, sternum, and temple.  He fell, his face already purpling from the force of her blows.

Two men remained.  The one with the taser was injured, but still determined.  With his left hand, he drew his pistol and stepped back, trying to keep Tris in his sights.  Tris followed him closely, stepping to his left, pulling his gun out of alignment with his body.  She ducked and dove, tackling the man and bearing him to the ground with her unexpected weight.  She rolled with him, trying to keep him between her and the other gunman who was even now maneuvering for a clear shot.

Tris mounted her captive from the rear and brought her club up under his chin with bone crushing force.  His jaw snapped instantly and she felt his windpipe caving in.  She released the pressure just as he passed out, barely managing not to kill him.

Levering him off of her, she rolled quickly to her feet.  The man with the walkie had the drop on her, finally, and fired off three quick shots.  She was unbelievably fast, twisting and lunging even as he squeezed the trigger.  The first two shots went wide, the third struck her, but only barely, it’s force absorbed and spread by the armored clothing Tris wore.  It felt as if she had received a solid punch in her obliques, but no worse.  She advanced on the man.

Seeing her coming, not even slowed or breathing particularly hard after having bested three well-trained men in short order, the last man panicked.  He hurled his walkie at her with all the force he could muster.  She didn’t even flinch.  Tris plucked it out of the air like a professional baseball player fielding a pop-fly and flung it back with a powerful, perfectly timed pitch of her own.

The walkie shattered the guards nose, flattening it against his face like so much soft dough.  Before he even had time to fall, Tris was on him, hammering blows into his ribs.  She felt two of them break under her fists and swiftly switched targets, driving the ridge of callus and muscle between her thumb and forefinger into the man’s temple.  Consciousness left him as if she had simply reached out and turned off a switch.

All four men were down in less than a minute, but Tris knew there were more on the way.  She wanted to do this without killing anyone- these men were just doing their jobs, after all, and they hadn’t really done her any harm.

Eight more.  If her memory served her, the next group would almost certainly come through the stairwell.  Sure enough, she could even now hear the heavy boots on the stairs.

They were good and they were cautious.  They entered the hallway guns first, sighting down the barrels.  They weren’t going to take any reckless chances, that much was certain.

Tris threw herself back into Li’s office before the newcomers could draw a bead on her, grabbing and setting off the fire alarm as she went.  As she had hoped, the building used sprinklers, spraying a mist through the air obscuring everything farther than about three meters.  Not pausing, she smacked off the light switch so that the room was shrouded in darkness.  The only light now was the light coming in through the doorway.

Tris hopped on the desk even as the first guard reached the doorway and tried to peer in through the umbral darkness.  Hearing her feet land, he turned and aimed his pistol, but Tris was already airborne once again, this time driving a foot into the center of his form silhouetted in the doorway.  So powerful was her kick that the man was driven down and backwards, landing with a crash on his butt and skidding several feet to collide with the wall behind him before laying still.

Tris followed his body out, becoming a whirlwind of fists and feet, anarchy unleashed in the tightly confined corridor.  The mist in the hallway prevented them from using their weapons effectively at this range for fear of hitting each other.  Tris had no such qualms and engaged two at once, dropping one with a knee to the gut followed by a palm strike to the jaw even as she snagged another man and drew him into her with her right arm.

As the man she’d just kneed slumped, she smashed her free hand into her current partner’s short ribs, disrupting his balance.  Twisting her wrist, she choked him viciously as she dragged him around between her and the last man.  He struggled, but the sudden loss of oxygen and blood to his brain weakened him and he was only moments from passing out when Tris released him with a hard shove into his teammate.

The last guard reacted swiftly and managed to avoid being hit by his falling associate, pivoting with a half step and turning back just in time to intercept Tris’s elbow in the center of his face.  Spinning, she wrapped her arm around his neck in a guillotine choke.  As he struggled weakly to bring his gun to bear at this close range, she lashed out with her foot and smashed his hip, dropping his full weight onto the choke.

Once again, she released the choke just short of killing the man and he struggled to regain his footing, but Tris reared up and brought her arm down in a driving elbow smash to the man’s shoulders, crushing him to the ground.  Straddling him, Tris grabbed his head and pounded it hard into the tile floor once, hard.

Tris drew her own P226 and aimed steadily at the last conscious man.  She had the drop on him and they both knew it.  He closed his eyes, expecting to feel the crushing force of the bullet entering his head or the sudden suffocation brought on by the bullet smashing through his heart.  Tris smashed the grips of the gun against the side of his head putting him down and out without a wasted movement.

The last squad of guards would be here in moments, but Tris was already in the stairwell and climbing.  The top floor of the twin towers was an observation deck, popular with young lovers and wannabe poets and musicians.  As she sprinted up the stairs, she drew back her hood and slipped off her gloves.  At the top of the stairs, she stopped and listened.  The other guards were behind her, but they still had several floors to climb.  She pulled a ripped tank top out of her backpack and slipped it on over her bodysuit, slipped her web belt into the pack.  Slinging the pack over one shoulder, she looked almost like just another teen out for a late-night stroll as she stepped out onto the observation deck.

Even as the guards were spilling out onto the deck, Tris insinuated herself into a group of twenty or so young men and women who were piling onto the elevator and riding it to the ground floor.  Stepping into the lobby, Tris broke off from the crowd and met Jun in her Kia minivan.

“I think,” Tris said, handing the flash drive to the Korean woman, “we have a problem.” 

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