I, Cassandra

02 | RYAN MADDOX

The table kicker pulls the tablet back and reappears in front of me. This time he's not a blur, but a hardened, shaven-headed vet. Scars criss-cross his face, his nose sits slightly to the right, kinked at the bridge, his eyes are steely and cold, and his jaw is grizzled with grey stubble.

'Because you are the only one who knows for sure where the target is,' he answers as he drags a trolley over to him. 'Or at least where they were six months ago, before you decided to play the hero and check out. They must want you bad; top brass had to get an executive order signed to fund a separate off-the-record R&D division to develop the tech to rebuild you, so you better show some gratitude to Command when you get called in, since there's no one else here like you. No one. Lucky fucker. Although—' The glint of a steel tray catches the corner of my eye. He reaches down and collects a syringe, needle, and bottle of clear liquid. His deft movements as he attaches the needle, pulls its stopper off with his teeth and fills the syringe belie his muscular bulk; his khaki shirt sleeves rolled back to reveal a faded tattoo of a mermaid, her tail coiled around his forearm, her breasts grotesquely large. It's always the details which give a person away.

Maybe that was what it was about her that made her stand out from the rest, from the masses of miserable humanity. The details, the way she looked at me like she knew me the first time I saw her, her eyes keen, sharp, not dulled by the opiates everyone else ate like candy. The steadiness of her hand as she poured my drink, wearing a blue wig and a black latex one-piece swimsuit, none of it looking right on her. The way she tilted her head when I asked what a girl like her was doing in a place like that; how she smiled the time I smuggled proper cat food past the barrier for her cat, Miro, tears glinting in her blue-green eyes.

'—never mind,' my captor continues as he rams the needle, rough, into the vein in my arm. He flashes me a toothy grin as I grit my teeth and coldness slides into me. 'More fun for you to figure out the rest on your own. By the way, you passed diagnostics with flying colours. Congratulations. Welcome to the Bunker, or as we who are stuck here like to call it—Hell.'

He pulls out the needle. I feel my blood trickling out, warm and sticky. He rolls away and tells the droid to fuck off. A clack of keyboard presses, quick, angry, impatient, his eagerness to be rid of me, palpable. A door slides open with a soft whoosh, and the droid leaves, its high heels clicking against a metallic floor. In the distance, the growl of heavy metal, faint, echoes along the empty corridor. It's an old one, but still good. Korn's Twisted Transistor. I close my eyes, remembering the last time I'd heard it, playing through the club's walls while I made love to her before I left for my last mission, both of us half-drunk in the club's grotty, black-tiled shower. Darkness beckons. I follow, thinking of her, naked and wet in my arms, clinging to me as I take her, hard, my name, breathless, on her lips, and me, swearing to come back for her, no matter what it would take.

I wake spread-eagled on a king-size bed in a spacious bedroom, the furnishings elegant and expensive looking. The headboard is one massive padded slab of brown suede. Freed of my restraints, I haul myself up against the headboard, and cast my eye around the space, wary, wondering if I am under the influence of a psychotropic enhancer and I am actually in a concrete cell, sitting on a metal bunk imagining all this luxury. I run my hand over the duvet cover, its white cotton as smooth as silk. To my right a floor to ceiling window, its silken drapes pulled back, their deep chocolate coloured lengths pooling on the hardwood floor. The pristine glass gives out to a view of snowy mountains bathed pink in the sunrise. I go to it, astonished. Ten years ago we were told there was no snow left anywhere. I press my hands against the window's glass, its surface a little cold. A sudden longing rushes through me, to find her, and bring her here, to let her see this, too. She would love it.

'Breathtaking, isn't it?'

I turn.

My salute is crisp, instantaneous. 'Major Akron,' I say, my voice heavy with its Slavic accent. Ukrainian. I'm sure of it.

'It's good to see you again Maddox,' he smiles, close-lipped. I notice his pleasure at seeing me doesn't reach his grey eyes. He nods at me. 'At ease.'

I clasp my hands behind my back and wait. Akron moves around the room, eyeing my accommodation. He's dressed in fatigues, the sleeves rolled back, his boots polished to a high shine, his weapons clipped to his belt. He wears no mark of his station, he says it's for security purposes, but he was never one for ceremony, a 'boots on the ground' leader, as dirty as the rest of us. He only had a couple of years more military experience than me, but his ruthlessness was deeper than mine, and Command liked that in their men, so he progressed until there was nowhere left for him to go. Well, that, and we kept losing men faster than we could train them. He only stepped into the boots a UFF sniper had vacated. If I hadn't died, I would have been next for promotion. I always hoped never to last that long.

'Sorry about this,' Akron gestures at me, vague, 'it was the best we could do in a pinch.'

I lift an eyebrow and glance behind me at the view, the mountains' slopes turning golden in the warmth of the rising sun. 'If this is what you can do in a pinch, sir, I'd like to see what you can muster with some time.'

He scoffs and tilts his head at a side table bearing an assortment of single malts. 'Keep up Maddox.'

I eye the amber-filled bottles, most of them still unopened. How had I not seen those first?

I move past him to look over the selection. I pick one up. 'Oban, aged thirty-two years,' I read. I turn to find him watching me, expressionless. 'How the hell? Never mind.' I hold the bottle up, a ripple of pleasure shimmying through me in anticipation. 'One finger or two?'

'I'll take one, but I imagine you are going to need two, at least.' Akron says, dry.