Digitalis Rex: Chapter 9 - Adapt or Die
When the outcome is unknown, the best way out is always through.
Rey kept her head low under the shadow of her cap to avoid the cameras. From the iron gate at the entrance of the Women’s Mission, the security door was about twenty yards ahead. She could have been from Uber Eats, except for the fire axe and sledgehammer in her hands. The car was parked about fifty yards up on the same side of the street, so that meant about seventy yards of risk when she got the girl outside.
Her problem now was the risk on the inside. He’d given her three hours but she’d already burned two. Who knew what he’d do after that. Better to go in now than wait until later. Rey looked at her watch. 10:12pm. Best not to overthink it. The last thing she needed was a head to head coming out of this mission. And she needed to get this girl to safety. Out of LA. Out of California. To a town where the rule of law still applied.
Residents of places like this were often medicated. Her mother had taught her that, addicted to Xanax and in and out of institutions, normal one minute, then verging on the edge of insanity the next, episodic violence and an explosion of rage, like an unpaired electron inside a probability field, especially when she'd run out of benzo. It was impossible to predict. She'd seen her light drain cleaner and snort the fumes, not for a high, but for chemical obliteration. Rey knew the source of the hair-trigger, but she never figured out how to contain the damage, never figured how to preprogram a safety. The staggering and slurring, disorientated, hands shaking as the body goes into cerebral hypoxia, collapsing on the floor, stiffening, limbs almost snapping. Her mother's eyes would roll back and she'd froth at the mouth, arms and legs flailing wildly, hands clawing at an exit that was not there.
Not her problem anymore, but the girl in room eight. If she'd been medicated, she was going to be a handful, and seventy yards was a long way when somebody was pharmaceutically absent.
Rey figured by the architecture the building was about 100 years old, maybe 80, but this part of Downtown was known to Angelenos by its other name. Skid Row. When she’d pressed the intercom, she’d noticed the door was not going to give, so brute force was not an option, the triple lock keeping out the unclean and unwanted.
Not unless it was rammed.
A lot of work had gone into making the Malibu invisible. So, she’d better think twice before she burnt it for good. The last thing she needed was another excuse for Eduardo to add more hors d'oeuvres to the bill and give that godless fuck Penchek an excuse to come knocking at her door. It had been manufactured at least twice. Once at the factory when it was shiny and new and again in a cut and shut shop somewhere out in the badlands five miles east around the outer limits. Somewhere among the slaughterhouses and warehouses and machine yards. Somewhere behind steel doors where the orange and blue from angle grinders and welding arcs went unnoticed. Two chassis joined together in an unholy union, VINs ground off, horsepower boosted and suspension stiffened but not lowered. No one would give it or anyone driving a second glance, and that was the point, but she could brake late into corners and accelerate out, throw the Malibu around, and with reduced body roll she could outrun the LAPD.
Except for Rey, it was too much car for too little skill. The performance boost would feel like understeer, and if she got heat, she’d never get away. She’d drive into the first corner and never get out, tyres sideways on concrete, the backend driving the wrong way. Point and shoot was the best she could do.
But the wall the door was connected to was another thing. She’d noticed the render was cracked and broken. The NGO had not been keeping up with the maintenance, but in today’s world, not everything was as it seemed. Non-profit is an aphorism. Money goes in, nothing comes out. Charities are used as fronts for tax fraud and money laundering. Corrupt politicians, brown envelopes in car parks, the quiet nods in private clubs. Nothing gets done. Money does not trickle down. It ends at the McMansions. Deep in country, inside their fortress towns, where the billionaires kicked out the millionaires long ago, disciples of Ayn Rand. In Jackson Hole and Telluride where the workers are moved around, upstate, out of state, by the controllers of the deep state, in and then out again when the day’s work is done.
But somebody had to be paid to maintain the McMansions and coiff the hairstyles, maintain the swimming pools and teach the children, but the system doesn't work like that. The GDP might have grown, but when it grew and the standard of living of the masses did not, that is a double crossing by the state, a sign of the corruption that is everywhere and had been normalised so it was ignored. The majority distracted, doom-scrolling their way to oblivion. But for the people who do the hairdressing and the lawn mowing and the pool cleaning and the teaching, for them it's money in and then increasing money out, the assets owned at the McMansion level and above. For them survival is the first thing in their mind when they wake up and the last thing on their minds when they go to bed. And for the unlucky few who fall off the hamster wheel, they end up here in Skid Row, scared, alone, in the anus of the system of the world that does not care, about to shit them out to meet their god, their exit ticket a knife wound or a bullet in the head.
Above the entrance door, on both sides, out of dunking range, or just an asshole with a baseball bat, cameras were mounted about twenty feet from street level projecting out across the entrance and into the middle of the courtyard. 20th Century Fox was just a few miles up the road, but the cameras rolling outside the mission were recording the truth behind the lie. No perfect teeth inside perfect smiles, no hairdressers and makeup artists to make it all seem real. No drumrolls here, no happy ending. No happenstance rendezvous or love at first sight. Just a knife in the guts and an anonymous ending in agony face down in a pool of blood.
She put the fire axe and the sledgehammer on the ground and used her phone to shine a light around the lock, she figured the metal plate went about six inches into the concrete. Rey picked up the fire axe and swung with a three-quarter swing. Not wild, but accurate. Three quarters would get her there. No need for anything out of control.
She needed to preserve her energy for what was on the other side of that door. If they were ex-military, this wouldn't end well. Or worse, ex-police. Corn-fed fucks, who believed what they consumed, trapped inside their social media bubbles, the half-truths wrapped in lies, and who needed a uniform to make themselves whole. They’d be the first in line to sign up when the fascists arrived as their saviour and friend.
But Rey had been inside enough institutions to know that that would be unlucky. Most likely just an ideological amateur. Proficient, not trained. It would still be hard enough. But behind this door, if anyone knew what they were doing, her chances of success were near zero. She would be shot or pepper sprayed or beaten. Maybe all three if they were a true believer.
Rey made short precision strikes at the wall. She chipped away about six inches above and six inches below the lock and then began work on the inside. About ten inches away from the door, smashing the fire axe with a three-quarter swing, in through the render and into the concrete. Just enough to give her some leverage. Enough to be able to pile drive the crowbar end of the fire axe into the wall and snap out the plate that was bolted into the concrete. She figured she had about sixty seconds. Longer than that, even if the staff in the mission were amateurs, she'd have no chance of getting the girl. She'd have to abandon her and leave her to her fate. Odds of success about fifteen percent. Make that ten. A sucker play. But who was going to get the girl out, if not her. No one was listening, as usual.
The outside render fell away in flakes and shards, like a peanut brittle. The concrete rotten from decades of salt corrosion and Los Angeles sunshine. She smashed the fire axe three inches from where she guessed the end of the lock would be flushed into the joining wall. She made an incision. It was soft, almost like breeze block, not hard concrete, not like it should have been.
She bent down and picked up the sledgehammer, angling the crowbar end in the hole she'd made. She hit it, swinging back about eighteen inches, holding the sledgehammer sideways on, using its weight as momentum. The concrete gave a little. She hit the fire axe again. The concrete gave a little bit more. Rey shifted her body, keeping her head away from the cameras. And then with the crowbar end wedged into the wall, she stepped back, twisted her hips, lifted the sledgehammer around and over her shoulder and unwound, powering through the front leg, moving through her core, generating torque, aiming two feet behind the wall as if it was not there, driving the twenty-pound sledgehammer into the fire axe's throat. The lock snapped away. Rey pulled at the door. An eighteen-inch gap. And she was inside.
She ran into reception. There was a woman coming straight for her, about five yards away, but she couldn't register detail because she was moving too fast. And then she launched at her, a brute force attack straight at Rey’s chest, almost horizontal, like a cornerback taking down a wide receiver. Just before impact, Rey instinctively turned sideways, just enough to transfer the oncoming force into outgoing power, like an ankle tap to a sprinter in a hundred yard dash. With the lightest of touches, the woman recoiled off Rey and hit the floor with one leg, arms outstretched and out of control, cartwheeling her head backwards onto the side of a desk. Rey rolled off and around her and rebalanced, then looked behind as she scanned the room, orienting her escape.
The stairwell was about twenty yards in front. Over by the front door, the woman was still on the floor, spasming, blood oozing from a gash over her eyebrow, her body bent into an unnatural shape. No time for her now, she’s probably out cold. Rey turned and ran through a wide dimly lit hallway towards the stairwell. It was too easy. The stairs turned back on themselves on a half landing, then a few more steps and she was on the first floor. She turned right, wrong numbers, then pivoted left, losing a few seconds. Room eight was the first door on the left at the head of the stairs.
She banged on the door and looked around. Something was not right. Apart from the night manager, there was no one around. She banged on the door again, and a woman answered. It was Emily Parker. Emily was better looking than Rey expected. She had bedraggled blonde hair, and she was definitely medicated. Her eyes were unable to focus.
‘Emily, you don't know me, but you've got to trust me,’ Rey said. ‘You've got to get out now.’ Rey reached out and held her by the hand. ‘They're coming for you. Come with me.’ She tightened her grip and pulled Emily forwards towards her and out of the room.
Emily dug her heels firmly into the ground but said nothing.
‘Don't worry about your things. Just come with me,’ Rey said. ‘You'll be safe. You've got to trust me.’
Emily pushed Rey, then took a step back into the safety of her room.
Rey clicked her fingers in Emily's face. One click, two. ‘Emily,’ she said. Rey heard a security guard running down from upstairs. There had to be at least one. Let's hope there isn't another, and let's hope she’s not ex-military. If she is, I'm done.
She had fifteen to twenty seconds, maybe. She gripped Emily's forearms and turned side-on, widening her stance. ‘Let's go, now, come on!’ Rey pushed down on her front leg and pulled hard, thrusting Emily forward, but overcompensated and lost her balance as Emily grabbed hold of Rey and pulled her back.
They recoiled apart, Emily falling backwards into the room. She picked up a flower pressing and gave it to Rey. It was a foxglove. ‘You're pretty. It's pretty, too. Pretty and lethal,’ she said.
Rey put it in her pocket. Emily looked at her and stared. The kind of look you get from the hurt and the confused, from someone who needed attention and love but seldom received it.
‘Emily, now! We've got to go.’ There's no time. ‘Come with me.’
Rey noticed as hurt turned to fear. What light was there had gone. Emily’s body stiffened, any initial trust now turned in on itself building towards blind panic. The exit door into the hallway opened. Rey pulled Emily out of the room, but Emily yanked back, destroying her forward momentum. To her right, about twenty feet away, a woman was standing, breathing hard. Pointing a gun. Her hair was scraped back. The pink sign on her bulletproof vest said Guardian Security.
‘Stop! Step away from the girl. Back slowly away from the door, hands where I can see them!’
Rey heard it in the voice. The guard was breathing hard, probably a combination of the run down the stairwell and anxiety. If she’d not served, if she’d not seen combat, her heart would be crashing into her chest, outside of the normal range, beating up above 120, maybe even 130, affecting her ability to shoot straight.
She had seen it with her father. The corruption, the backhanders, the handshakes and the smiles, the police complicit in his actions. The violence. Late night meetings deep in the Appalachian woods, people disappeared, put in a hole, quicklimed, and never seen again. Behind the stills, out in the barn, overhearing, and she knew when someone was frightened, a gun wouldn't help. She heard her father's voice. ‘That sumbitch couldn't hit a barn door with a banjo.’ Then she’d hear the pleading. And the finality. A bullet in the back of the head. Unmarked cop car driving off into the night.
Emily stepped back into the room and slammed the door. Rey instinctively dived for the stairs. Two tenths of a second later, a chunk of the wall exploded out of the corner of the hallway and the stairwell, debris smashing into her ear. She tumbled, head over heels onto the half landing. Face up, feet down. She could hear the guard. No time to get up. Rey rolled to her left, taking herself out of the immediate line of fire.
She had to be perfect now. It was twenty yards to the front door, then twenty to the gate, and another fifty to the car. She scrambled on her hands and knees down the last flight of stairs, gathering herself like a sprinter exploding from her blocks, but still stumbling, fighting against gravity for balance and control, trying to lift her head to open her hips and extend her knees. The guard sounded like she was gaining on her.
Rey found her feet and ran for the door. The night manager was still out cold, unconscious and covered in blood, but she had no time to check. She ran for her life across reception and shifted sideways through the gap between the door and the wall, the back of her head banging on the door behind her, the auto reflex slamming her face forwards into the corner of the wall. It felt like a punch, smashing her nose and mouth into the rough concrete. For a millisecond, Rey was blinded by a black background, a yellow star superimposed on top. As her vision returned, she tasted metal as the blood from her nose flowed across her lips and into her mouth.
‘Stop. Do not move.’ The guard fired again, the second shot as close as the first, blowing chunks out of the entrance door, sending splinters into Rey’s neck as she picked up the sledgehammer and the fire axe. Now it was a foot race. The guard to the door and Rey to the iron gate. Twenty yards.
Rey had the tools, the sledgehammer would hold her back, so she held it by the head to neutralise the weight, but the guard had to get through the space between the wall and the entrance door, the outcome an even bet.
She didn’t look around. Expecting a shot that did not come, but at the gate, the guard fired again. This time with no warning. The bullet ricocheted into the street off the iron work.
Out on the street, Rey passed the fire axe into her other hand, holding both the sledgehammer and the axe by their handles. She reached into her pocket for the Malibu’s key and pressed the button twice. The backlights on the Malibu flashed and she passed the fire axe back into her other hand, regripped the sledgehammer by its head, and sprinted towards the Malibu. She’d be thirty yards from the car, maybe twenty when the guard hit the street. But no shot came. And no more warnings.
Rey opened the driver side door and flung the sledgehammer in first, then the fire axe. She jammed the key in the ignition, turned the key, rammed the stick into drive and stamped on the gas. The front wheels spun on the asphalt, rubber burning away, the acceleration and camber of the street forcing the driver side door back into the car. Rey reached over and pulled it shut. In the door mirror, the guard was standing in the middle of the street, outside the mission, gun by her side. Holding her ear.
The back end of the Malibu twitched as she accelerated down San Pedro and out into the LA night. She never turned the lights on.
To be continued...
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Exhilarating chapter. This one went too fast leaving me wanting more.