Dragonfly

Excerpt

Chapter One: Retrieval

“I’m not short,” Ghost reiterated firmly, his volume so low it would not be audible to the human ear even if the person were merely a metre away. Neither his voice nor his face expressed any discernible emotion, never really had. His movements had not paused when he’d spoken; he continued crawling through the ventilation shaft as silently as before.

“You stand five feet and five inches tall,” said the deep, gruff voice in Ghost’s earpiece. The tiny yet clear voice came from the tiny plastic chip embedded into his inner tragus, the half-moon of cartilage protruding just over the opening of the ear canal.

“Assumptions can be horribly deceiving,” Ghost retorted just as softly as he’d initially spoken and corrected, “I’m not short, I’m compact.” Gale laughed, and Ghost ignored him in favour of paying attention to his status on his vision-screen.

The device, spectacles with a single wrap-around lens, protected his eyes, wirelessly connected with his embedded communication devices and acted as a transmitter for his communication devices. Most useful of all, it also acted as an information screen overlying his vision with indications and calculations.

In the bottom right hand corner, a digital clock displayed the time right down to double digit fractions of seconds. Above the clock, an icon indicator which alerted him to nearby audio-spy equipment began to flash. Simultaneously, a soft whine sounded from his ear piece, a specific pitch that warned him he was approaching within range of a listening device. Certain that the tone was also received at the other end of his communication link, he made no other sound and focused on schooling his breath to a quieter level.

He did not need to take much more care to be quiet as he had already been doing so, aside from the spoken exchange. The tiny whine faded the closer he came to the listening device, the little machine in his ear adjusting its pitch of warning in accordance so as not to raise alert.

The instant it went entirely silent, Ghost reduced his breathing even further.

In the stillness of the shaft, he could not hear even the noise of his own movement. There was none, not even from his clothing, shoes or gloves which all had been made from a unique fabric specifically engineered for silent traction against the aluminium-alloy material of the ventilation shaft interior. It was almost as though he did not exist; was not there.

A phantom.

Sliding along, he waited for the whine to resume, the sound that would tell him he was moving further away from the device, but it did not come within the customary distance. Not the least bit worried his communication to Command had been temporarily silenced, he continued. His mission operation had been fully provided for, including how to locate his Mark.

The Target had nano-mites in his system, tiny organic machines which served all sorts of clever purposes. Nano-mites which had been discreetly introduced by another operative, programmed to ‘resonate’ to the mites in Ghost’s own body which had been freshly injected only two hours and forty seven minutes ago at operation launch.

The mites flowed through his blood stream, through the adaptor installed at the base of his skull, and the signal was picked up by the digital portion of his brain. The mites had made him physically aware of his Mark, ‘resonating’ a signal from the target he could sense was precisely twenty-six yards away from his current position, also on the thirty-second floor of this building.

The air was thick with nano-mites as well—the little machines had been pumped into the building air filtration system. All occupants of the building had breathed them in and were also locked into Ghost’s system, resonating on his inner grid and providing him with certain knowledge of all the building occupants’ locations. The only danger of detection was posed by the security system, but so far… so good.

As always, of course; with his flawless record attained and maintained by hard work and constant training, this was quite a standard task. Best of all, he worked on the good side of the law, snatched up after military school graduation by RIG—acronym for the inconspicuously named Rescue & Investigations Global. His employers could claim to serve even her Majesty the Queen, running little ‘errands’ for them similar to this one.

Not that he could brag about any of this, had he even the inclination. A job well done by a RIG operative meant no one outside those who were supposed to know ever even knew they had done it… even if the results were globally broadcasted. Happily, he never really found any issue with that, and that mentality, aside from his formidable skills, made him very valuable to RIG.

The whine sounded softly in his ear, cutting of further musing.

“Check?” he whispered, when the whine clicked off.

“Clear,” Gale told him, assuring that the device in Ghost’s ear and the receiver chips embedded at each corner of his lips were all functioning perfectly; all communication systems still go. All tracking mites still go, and he double checked his target’s location; eighteen yards.

“Far radius,” he commented of the most recent obstacle.

“No info,” Gale replied, sounding a little annoyed. Had it not been for Ghost’s enhanced hearing, he would never have detected the slight change of tone which indicated the emotion.

The nano-resonance seemed louder when he arrived at a four-way intersection of the shaft. Tapping through a series of buttons on the temple of his vision-screen, he pulled up and reviewed the building’s three-dimensional plans. Making a decision, he took the left branch of the intersection, moving toward the shaft opening directly in the room his target occupied, closing in.

“Twenty one-fifty,” he reported the countdown time as customary. Now ten yards from his goal, he prodded, “Operation commission?” Just to double check the order status.

“Confirmed,” Gale replied. “Proceed with vocal silence at twenty-two hundred.”

“Confirm communication black out?” he asked.

“Negative. Maintain contact.”

“Copy that.” He arrived at the ventilation shaft window, the opening blocked by a slatted screen. Pressing a finger gently at the middle of the screw-on screen, he tested its give and calculated the amount of force necessary to dislodge it. It was an old habit, the data not useful, but a piece of information he filed away anyway. His mission tonight was not a barge-in and take-down op; he would be making a silent entry and making as silent an exit.

Moving quickly, he injected a soft glue to the corners where the screen met the rim of the shaft opening. Next, he cement-glued the exposed ends of the screws as close to the screen as possible, then melted off the rest of it with another of his ‘toys’. The screws, installed from outside the shaft, now would not fall and leave suspicious clues when he left, and the screen was now free to be moved, held in place only by the soft hi-tech adhesive. The preparation process had taken but four minutes.

Show time.

Peering through the screen slats, his eyes snapped to where the resonance was loudest, where a figure was seated behind an expansive desk to his right. The Target’s face was not visible from his perspective, and he could see only a smooth and obviously expensively-tailored three piece suit from the shoulders down. Ghost observed, registering the young, slender man as likely six feet tall, probably weighing in the area of two hundred pounds and left handed.

Internally he took stock of where everyone was in the building, then quickly triple-checked the special multi-purpose dart launcher at his wrist. Not taking his eyes off his target, aware of the vision-screen digital clock only in his peripheral vision, he muttered,

“Twenty-two hundred mark.”

Gale responded, “Confirmed, proceed.”

Coiling, Ghost braced his feet and tensed up to pounce. At twenty-two hundred, he sprung soundlessly, exploding out of the shaft four metres from the floor. In midair, he grabbed the slatted screen with is left hand before it could drop, the right shooting a dart from his wrist launcher. Struck in the neck, the Mark slumped back immediately in his seat as Ghost landed quietly then pounced for the light switch.

In the darkness, assured that the sedative-laden dart had already taken effect, Ghost belted the ventilation shaft screen to a strap at his lower back. He would need it to cover his exit. He walked toward his target without haste and as he moved, he re-armed the launcher at his wrist to a specific poison engineered to induce violent cardiac arrest.

Tonight, he was to play the Grim Reaper.