13

" He left us! That son of a bitch left us man! " Koto screamed back at Cliff as the pair tore down the street. The sec troops weren't in pursuit yet but it would only be a matter of seconds before they realized that the pair had escaped. A pair of car headlights lit their backs. The car was gaining speed as it raced towards them. Cliff stopped and turned back, leveling 'Carla' towards the vehicle. The car, the 'Range Rover', stopped with a screech.

?"Vlad! I knew you'd never leave us!" Koto cheered. He jumped into the front seat. Cliff tossed 'Carla' in back and piled in after her. The Range Rover fled down the street as cliff pulled the door shut.

"Christ! Did you guys see that? KE Firewatch!" Koto hollered "They're supposed to be the best corporate security people around and we just dogged 'em!"

Vlad cut in flatly: "They were rushed and we were lucky." From the driver's seat, he could hear the 'shrriiip!' of Cliff ripping a swath of cloth away from his 'Big Rhino' tee shirt.

Cliff grunted and said: " Not so lucky Vlad. We lost Shimmer. If you hadn't shown up with our ride when you did we all might've gone down."

The realization hit him like a shot of synthvodka. He hadn't taken the time to watch who piled into the Van. He had just assumed that there were three of them. The way that Koto seemed so excited, you would have assumed that everyone made it out alive. He hadn't paid attention. Running alone was the way he was used to doing things.

" So what do we do now?" Koto asked. His original happiness was beginning to fade with his adrenaline. He slumped against the passenger seat, head cocked to the side to watch Vlad.

" We go our separate ways and forget we ever met each other. " Cliff said. " KE has the girl, so maybe now they'll back off. Consider it a hose up and go on with our lives."

" Negative." Vlad stated. " The girl's dead. I saw the corpse when I was trying to get out. KE doesn't have dick. Only thing they can salvage out of the frag-up is us."

"Frag!" Cliff screamed. He shoved his fist into the side of the Van. Vlad was right. It wasn't everyday that a handful of shadow operatives waltzed into a high security boarding school and snatched the kid of the security companies Vice President. With the girl dead, they needed a scapegoat, and with something this high profile, KE was bound to keep coming until the job was done. They had no choice. This would no doubt be all over the news by now. Having the kidnappers running loose was bad for business. If they couldn't protect their own VP's kid, how could they be expected to protect the multi-trillion dollar business that they were often contracted to protect? At once, Cliff wished that Cutter was still with them. What kind of drek had he gotten them into anyway?

" Now we ditch my range rover and boost another ride. " Said Cliff. " We're gonna haveta find another hidey-hole to lay low in for a while until we figure out some way to get our hoops off the frying pan."

Vlad nodded in response. He pulled over in an alley a few blocks later. The three of them stripped the car down, taking every precaution not to leave any evidence behind. When they had all that they could carry, Cliff emptied out the contents of his bottle of 'Texas Abe' Synthliquor into the backseat. He dropped a match in after it and watched the four-wheeler go up in flames. Forty minutes later, the three were on the other side of Tacoma, proud owners of a freshly lifted Eurocar four door family sedan.

"So, now instead of being screwed in a marked car, we're screwed in a stolen one. Man, we gotta get off of the streets." Koto reminded the others.

"Where are we gonna go. Dere ain't nowhere I know dat we can stay too long." Cliff was driving the car. He glanced back in the rear view, watching Koto as he spoke.

" I have a friend that can help us out. Pull over there and I'll call him." Vlad lied, calmly directing Cliff towards the corner payphone. He leapt out before the car came to a complete stop. Koto stepped out of the back after him.

" You can watch my back from the car. If we're all standing around out here it will draw too much attention." It wasn't a lie, but it wasn't the real reason either.

" Whatever, I'll wait in the car." Vlad breathed a short sigh of relief at Koto's response. Then he ducked into the phone booth and placed a call to his boss.

"Good. Then we're still within acceptable parameters for the operation. It's time for you to come home Vlad. You've done well. Expect a bonus when you return. Bring your team to the Redmond barrens. 1206 Stanton drive. We have a safe house. Arrangements will be set for them to be taken there."

" But ma'am, Koto and Cliff won't surrender." Vlad pleaded with her. This wasn't how he'd expected it to go. At worse he expected her to have him stash them somewhere and then let them go after all the commotion had died down. But then that didn't make much sense either. Nothing did.

" I understand." Finally, he did understand. He clicked off the phone with a quivering hand, barely able to contain the guilt and regret. He walked back to the car silently and slumped into the passenger seat. It had been a setup from the beginning. He'd been played like a game of cribbage. Ms. Johnson had said that their own people would be bringing Koto and Cliff in and that didn't make any sense. The organization ran a security corporation called Centurion security. If Centurion security was the company that brought the killers to justice, it would stir up a media frenzy. It was one thing that KE couldn't protect the daughter of its own Vice President in the first place but to have to watch as another security Corp brought the killers to justice? That was financial suicide.

So that was it then. It was all about getting press coverage and business for Centurion Security. It was all about making Knight Errant look bad. Vlad knew that if he had hired KE security to protect something he owned, an incident like that would certainly make him reconsider. But from what little that he knew of Centurion security, they weren't large enough to handle all of the business that KE would lose from something like this. That couldn't have been the motivation for sending him in to frag everything up. There had to be another angle, something he had missed.

"We should go to the barrens. Cops don't go there too often y'know. I even know some people down there that can help if I call them." Koto answered for him.

The Barrens…Ms. Johnson had instructed him to meet in the barrens. Why the barrens? The press would never go down there. Centurion would be wasting their time making a big time collar in the barrens. With all the crime and random violence in the area it would be impossible for them to ensure their own safety while covering the story. It just didn't make any sense. Or did it?

"Vlad?" Cliff asked again, but Vlad failed to respond. He was close to the answer he was looking for. He was almost where he needed to be in order to figure it all out.

"What are you talking about? If we're not in this for the cash then what the frag could we be in this business for?" Koto responded. He sounded nervous suddenly.

"Favors. They did it for favors." Vlad answered distractedly. He wasn’t answering them. He'd found the piece of the puzzle that put it all together.

KE couldn't afford to lose face over an incident like this. They would have to cut a deal with Centurion security to get the prisoners before Centurion informed the press that they had captured them. Pawns in a larger chess match. Everybody wins. Ms. Johnson wins, the organization commends her for a job well done. Centurion security wins, Knight Errant owes them a favor and perhaps tosses a few choice contracts their way. Vlad wins, he gets a bonus from the organization and maybe Ms. Johnson eases up on him for a few days.

Drek, what did they matter anyway? Two days ago he didn't even know that either of them existed. Yet he was willing to throw away everything that he had -even his life- for a chance at saving Cliff?

?" You make a pretty good friend Vlad, even if you do say random drek sometimes." Cliff said suddenly and Vlad felt the all too familiar twinge of fear in his heart at the sound of those words. No, maybe Cliff hadn't said it. Friend? Cliff wouldn't have said that. Drek, he was a troll. Trolls can't feel emotions like the rest of us can. Cliff definitely must have made a mistake. Maybe Cliff hadn't decided to feel. Then he wouldn't be obliged to feel back. He could whisk them off to their ambush, and leave them there to die. "Don't you mean partner?"

?" Yeah, dere was dis fallback hideout place Cutter told me about before…" Cliff paused. " Can't tell you if it'll be safe though."

Cliff smiled and shrugged. "We all got our secrets. People always wanna assume that we large types are stupid? Let 'em. It just makes life a lot easier for me. Deys don't expect so much, I don't have to do so much. All I gotta do is ta play dumb and I get left alone. " He tapped his temple emphatically with a meaty finger. " I know what I got up here chummer. As long as I know what I can do, I don't give a frag what anyone else thinks. Dat’s da way ta be."

Vlad studied the troll for a long time. So long that Cliff's grin began to wither under Vlad's stare. With a serious face Vlad said: "You don't deserve to die Cliff. Not over this drek."

Vlad willed a smile to his face and looked away from the Troll. He liked Cliff. That complicated things. Watching Cutter and Shimmer go down after he'd worked a job with them was tough enough, but selling out Cliff? Cliff was the only person who'd ever come close to understanding him. He was the only person who'd ever called Vlad a friend without wanting something in return. It had been a long time since he could call anyone a friend. He wasn't sure if he was ready to give that up so soon. And for what? For Ms. Johnson? The Organization? He sighed loudly.

" Yeah well, you can let me off the rocket ship to hell right now guys. It was nice but…" Koto started to climb out of the car.

" We need you Koto. You're as much a part of this as we are." Vlad said. He couldn't let Koto leave. He couldn't go back to Ms. Johnson empty-handed.

Cliff got out of the car too. " Wait up chum." He said to Koto. "Partners don't leave each other behind. No matter how much you think we're screwed ourselves on dis one, our only chance at makin it right is if we try to go it together. United we stand, divided we fall, you scan?"

Cliff continued. " I ain't connected all over the sprawl but I know a coupla people dat may be able to help us out. Da way I see it, If we can put toge'der my contacts, yours and Koto's we might be able to figure a way out of dis drek. Somewhere, somebody knows what ta do. As long as we stick together we're gonna come up with somethin."

Koto cursed under his breath. " Ok I'll stay. Drek I don't have anywhere to go anyway. But if you haven't noticed, even when we're together they're taking us out one by one. Cutter's dead. Shimmer's dead. Jesus we're fragged and we don't even know it. We just haven't slowed down long enough to figure out that someone is taking us on a ride." Koto bent his head back and guzzled what was left in the plastic beer bottle he'd found beneath the seats.

Vlad snorted and nodded his head. His mind was somewhere else. Things were going to get a lot rougher before it was all over. He was taking a big chance going against the organization's wishes. Nobody ever did and lived. If he fraged it up, heads were going to roll. Shadows were going to fall. But he had to do it. If there was anyway to save Cliff he had to try. After all, he was a friend. Some people will do anything for their friends. Puffing away the last of Cutter's cigarettes, Vlad remembered the way his grandfather had taught him about choices so long ago.

"People call it what they're gonna call it. To them it might be wrong but to you it's always right. You live your life, doing the things you have to do in order to get by. You can moralize it by saying that it gets food on the table, or you can kill yourself a little bit more each day with your own guilt. But in the end, it doesn't really matter which team the players lined up for. In the end, black becomes white. Day becomes night. The good guys turn out to be bad, and all the shadows fall."