A Memory in the Black (The New Aeneid Cycle) (31 page)

"Started out good enough.
Training. Couple of implants after a bit. Didn't get any real gear until some dumbass misfired a mortar and blew my arm off." He moved his left arm about to show the kid the arm they'd been forced to give him. "Hurt like hell, but it was worth it. They should've did it sooner; they didn't think I was good enough for that. Didn't think I was good enough after, either."

"What do you mean?"

They took thirty months of his life, being their slave. He got their training, knew what he was doing. But they didn't think so. Court martial. Discharge. He'd had it with their rules anyway. What did he care? Assholes. "None of your damn business."

Silas! Get to Silas.

"I left the Army, came back here, found Silas again. He started off in bodyguard jobs. I tried doing the same. Security, like you tried. He'd moved on. Black market cyberware. Stealing it, moving it. Other jobs, too, nothing legal. He wanted me to help. I didn't. Not much. Not at first."

"Why not?"

Because you were too dumb to see the opportunity in front of you!

Diomedes was scowling.
"Because I didn't. But I still did a couple of jobs for him, when he needed me. When there was no one else. I wanted to do things straight." He snorted, even as he thought of Janette. "As legal as I could. Maybe the Army brainwashed me into all that. All their damn rules."

Michael shrugged. "Maybe you just wanted to do the right thing?"

"Maybe there was other shit going on you don't know about, huh?" He forced Janette's face out of his mind. She was long gone.

But you felt that way even before her, didn't you?
She just brought it out.

She. Is
. Gone! Silas needed you. You didn't abandon him!

Was that why you did it?
For Silas? Did he need you, or did you need him?

"Other shit like what?" Michael asked.

"Shut up!" he hissed to them all. For once they all did. He went on. "It wasn't working. For me. Tried doing it straight, legal stuff. Jobs with a company hiring me out. Didn't pay enough. I had debts and—"
Her. And she was rich enough for both of you.

She left.

But you drove her away.

He
'd stuck with Silas! Diomedes scowled. "So I worked with Silas more, making our own jobs. Some stuff he couldn't have done without me. Someone at his back. He needed me, said so himself. And I didn't let him down." He stared at the kid, waiting. They watched each other in the dim light for a while.

"How'd he die?" Michael finally asked.

Diomedes remembered.

Diomedes sits in the passenger's seat of the van where it's parked in the shadows beneath a billboard. A raucous beer ad stares down on them as he argues with Silas. "You don't need him for this, you've got me. We can do it ourselves."

Silas grins at him. His
eyes glint in the shadows under a silhouette of what's normally his sandy blonde hair. "Trying to get a bigger cut, kid?"

Diomedes frowns.
"I'm no kid. I've proved that."

"Sorry. L
ittle brother." Again, the teasing grin.

"It's not the money. I don't like this guy. We don't need him."

Silas looks away out the window and takes a long drag on his cigarette. "I need you both. I worked with Rafe before. You know that. He does what he's told."

"So you trust him more than me," Diomedes says,
his arms crossed.

With a flick, the cigarette goes out the window.
"Damn it, Dio, I said it's a three-man job and I meant it. One sniper, two men on the ground. Now I figure you'd not trust him enough to want him up there with the rifle, so I guess he's with me, and I guess you'll like it."

"It's not that I don't trust him, I
—"

Before he can finish, Silas fixes him with a look that says the argument is over.

A motorcycle pulls up outside before Diomedes can think of what more to say. "Time to do this," Silas orders.

They both exit the van.
Rafe climbs off his bike, and Diomedes gives the man a warning glare that he laughs off with a wave. "This thing still a go?"

"Nah, we just like sitting a
round in the dark," Silas says. He snaps his fingers and points up to the billboard with a stern look at Diomedes. "Get up there. Time's short."

"Better be a good shot, kid," Rafe calls after him.

"Better than you, jackass." He wants to stop, to just knock the man's teeth out and tell him he's not needed, but he does what his brother tells him. After climbing onto the van to reach the billboard's hanging ladder, he pulls himself up as the other two approach their positions. He goes over the plan in his mind.

It's his job to stop the car
. Shoot the tires, no more. From there, Silas and Rafe do the rest while he covers them. Silas doesn't want bloodshed if he can help it; by his way of thinking there'll be two men in the car. Take them by surprise when they go to change the flat, and they'll be able to scare them into giving up the access cards.

Diomedes clips the power to the billboard's lights, then sets up in the shadows.
They wouldn't need Rafe at all if they could just take out the men from here. What would it be like to kill a man? Could he really do it? This isn't combat or self-defense. Maybe Silas is right. Besides, bodies will make things harder anyway. But if they could, they wouldn't need Rafe.

He watches Rafe follow his brother into their hiding spot.
Damn three-man jobs. Lying down along the narrow platform, he sights a few blocks up the road and waits. The garage door that leads to the parking area under the storage complex sits closed, for the moment. Along the wall beside it, also facing the street a little closer to his position, is the main door with its keycard locks. It's hardly a high-security place, but there's a score inside that Silas wants. Once they have the cards, it'll be theirs. Get in, grab it from the locker, get out fast.

But first the locker's owners have to show.

He isn't waiting long when the complex's garage door rolls open in his crosshairs and releases the yellow sport coupe onto the street. Diomedes tracks the car as it turns—just as Silas has said it would—down the street toward his position. He waits until it's a block away and fires. The tire bursts and sends the car into a fishtailing skid before the driver regains control and brings it to a stop. Pride paints a smile on his face as Diomedes waits for Silas to play his part.

He watches through the scope. T
he men in the car argue on what to do and find in the process that they can't get a signal on their phones. The jammer Silas has placed is working. They look about, perhaps trying to decide if it's coincidence or not, and Diomedes whispers for them to get out of the car. Silas will move on them soon if they don't, but it will be easier if they're outside. Vulnerable.

And then they're out, opening the trunk and still looking about warily.
They pull an ordinary car jack from the trunk—not a weapon, he notes—and as they're working to set it up, Silas makes his move. Diomedes can't hear what they're saying; his brother keeps things quiet as he and Rafe rush in to surprise the men at gunpoint. They fold quickly, hands above their heads, and Diomedes spares a moment to scan the area for anyone who might try to help. It's late. Too late. The streets are deserted.

His brother hasn't made so much as a wave in his direction.
The men are still cooperating, handing over the access cards and then lying on the ground now as Rafe stands beside Silas. His mood sinks. Silas might not need him at all anymore.

What the hell?
Does he want things to go badly just so he can be of more use? He tells himself not to be stupid. His part of the job is done, for tonight. And Silas will still need help to load the van quickly.

With the cards in hand, Silas pulls a stun rod and thrusts it against the first man's back.
A yell of protest from the second man has Diomedes snapping back to attention before Silas turns the rod on him as well. It's over quickly, and his brother gives the all-clear wave. It's time for him to come down and bring the van up to the complex. There, they still need him.

Reassured
, Diomedes begins to break down the rifle as his brother and Rafe load the unconscious bodies into the car.

The rifle is packed in pieces
. Diomedes heads back down the ladder, losing sight of the other two as they rush to the entrance of the complex. He jumps down, opens the door, and then climbs into the driver's seat where he tosses the disassembled rifle into the back.

Adrena
line is pumping again as the van's engine jumps to life. He puts it in gear. It's then that he hears the gunshots.

Shit!

He fires the van into the road, looking for the source, checking the men in the car. They're still out, still stunned. He looks down to his brother just in time to see—

NO!

Rafe stands over Silas's bloodied body, gun in hand. He swipes an access card across the reader.

Diomedes
stares, trying to process the sight of his brother so clearly shot. Shock battles the grief and anger inside him. He can't move, can't barely think. Silas, dead! It screams in his mind. When the killer escapes through the storage complex's door, Diomedes snaps.

A howl of anguish tears its way
through the shock. He crushes the gas pedal to the floor and wrenches the van down the road with one thought overriding everything: kill Rafe!

Justice!
Vengeance! It's not until he rams the van into the door that he wonders if the angle of impact will even allow enough force to break through. The wrenching scream of metal gives way to a smashing crunch as the van tears laterally across the door and slams into the wall beside it. Safety glass shatters and airbags balloon around him.

Adrenaline powers through the shock in seconds
, and Diomedes kicks open the van's crumpled door. He has a moment to see that the impact smashed open the complex door before realizing the wind is knocked out of him. He stops and draws his auto-pistol. Security alarms blare around him as he struggles to refill his lungs in gasping breaths.

The score they came for is fucked.
Silas lays a few feet beside the door, dead where Rafe left him. Blood pools around him from a gaping hole in the side of his head, and Diomedes fights the urge to vomit at the sight. To hell with the score! He'll get Rafe and get out before the guards can come.

"How did he die?" Michael repeated.

Diomedes stared across the compartment.
"Shot in the back. By someone he worked with. I was there, I saw it. Saw him, dead. Silas trusted both of us, that was his screw-up. He should've just trusted me. Family! Family doesn't change." He fixed his glare on the kid, who didn't look away.

"I don't know what to
—"

"I thought
you were family," he hissed. "So that's what it all
means
, kid. You think I treated you bad? I had to rely on myself to get through my training. Army doesn't coddle you or give you any slack. I pulled myself up to get where I was a help to Silas, and once I got there, I stuck with him when he needed me! I didn't betray him. Didn't shoot him in the back. You fucking
get
it, kid?"

That'll shu
t him up! Make him see—

"I didn't
shoot
you, Diomedes. You think I'm this other guy again, shooting your brother in the back? Is that it?"

Maybe.

"You're not him. And you ain't a shrink, either."

Maybe you're right.
Maybe he's you. You always could see some of yourself in him, couldn't you? Of how you used to be? Didn't like seeing yourself pull a gun on yourself, did you?

That's bullshit.
It's not who he is, it's what he did! What he'd do again!

Well you are planning to kill him.

"So what happened to the guy who did it?" Michael asked.

"Paid him back, then and there," Diomedes found himself saying.
Nearly died, doing it, too. If Rafe's gun hadn't jammed when he ambushed you inside, you would have been the dead one when the guards showed up.

He never did learn just why Rafe did it.
He could still remember the traitor's face, dead on his back, looking so damn shocked. Shocked and vacant. Like everything he was had just slipped out. His brother's body. Rafe's stare. Both images never faded. "You remember the first person you ever killed, kid?"

"So far I haven't had to kill anyone."

Diomedes chuckled once, bitterly. "That a fact."

"I'm not looking forward to it, if I ever have to.
You remember when you shot the ganger that was about to kill me? Even that was a bit of a shock, though I know it was him or me. You did what you had to do then."

Diomedes just stared as Michael's expression hardened.

"But when you shot Gideon, you didn't have to do that. That was in the back. That was over money. You did exactly what that guy did to Silas."