《Faithless》


 I: Infiltration, Part 1

    Lan sighed as she entered the shadows once more, hiding behind the cover provided by a large crate. She relaxed, shifting her cloak so that it fell down her back and revealed the tools she had brought with her. Ever so carefully she detached two sections of a slender iron contraption from her belt, checking for perhaps the fifth time that night that the pieces slotted and twisted together correctly. The tank squealed a bit as it was secured by small metal clamps, and Lan grimaced, shooting a quick glance around the side of the crate. Neither guard seemed to have noticed, being at the other end of the reasonably spacious storage room, but still she decided to leave her weapon intact this time, to simply carry it with her as she moved towards her target.


    She dared not test it just yet, however; any sort of malfunction and her position would be made apparent, and as quick as Lan was on her feet, she would not be smooth enough to invent a realistic lie for why she was skulking around the darker parts of the factory well after closing hours. Glancing at the ceiling window from which moonlight cast its eerie glow, she remembered to check her timing. The watch strapped to her wrist revealed she was running very close to the line. The Luminary¡¯s speech began in about ten minutes, give or take a bit, so she resolved to keep moving.


    The shadows cast a maze on the floor, stacked boxes and high shelving units letting only the merest slivers of silver moonlight through to illuminate Lan¡¯s unsavoury quest. The centre of the warehouse she was in was underneath a skylight, and therefore was bathed in the subtle lustre of the night¡¯s sky, providing a surprising amount of clarity. Around the edges however the shadows and night itself melted together, even those slivers that managed to seep through the gaps in the storage shelves finding no purchase. This suited Lan, as she kept to the darkness tonight as with all other nights, finding herself at home among the unseen and the silent.


    A quick step and a flutter of rough black cloth, and she was in her next hiding spot, behind a pillar closer to centre of the room. Two guards would seem excessive on a normal night, but at the beginning of next week the factory would begin full scale operation, meaning that tonight was its opening ceremony and celebration. Peering around the pillar, Lan squinted into the dark at the two before her, one sitting in a chair and the other leaning against heavy industrial racking, upon which were placed more boxes of materials and equipment. The darkness beyond them made Lan¡¯s mind play tricks on her, tugging her eyes towards the tattered threads of gloom that wound their way around the floor, making hands and jaws out of nails and planks like a devilish puppet show.This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.


    As far as Lan knew (and she had done her research, so that meant pretty damn far), the Luminary named Harold Grent had only one underling blessed with Faith power: A man named Errol Archer, who was rumoured to have the senses and reflexes of a hawk. Lan took rumours far more seriously than most, so as she peered at the two figures before her, she was relieved to find them engaged in quiet, relaxed conversation, whispers that were lost to the hungry space in the big room and the faint clamour of the city beyond the walls. If one of them truly was Archer, he would have heard the squeak of her contraption as she had fitted it together earlier. Neither of them seemed to have noticed, filling Lan with hope. Could she truly pull this off? If all went to plan, she could be done in the reception area in under a minute, escaping into the darkness and winding pipe-laden paths of the industrial area, free to reap the benefits from her escapade.


    It would not be easy to kill a Luminary, but Lan had prepared for that, first choosing a powerful weapon, and then selecting a target that couldn¡¯t fight back. Harold Grent was an industry mogul in the lumber trade, and through that had affiliated himself closely with wood and nature. If he tried to use his powers, the fire from Lan¡¯s compact flamethrower would only have more fuel to burn. She glanced down at the slim metal machine in her hand, a bit bigger than a regular flintlock pistol due to the gas tank clinging to its cold, iron skeleton. It would be good for several seconds of visually impressive and sustained fire, but after that it was useless. She would have to use enough to kill Grent, yet keep gas to ward off any attempts at following her as she escaped. Again, she trod a fine line, all the finer still as the minutes ticked by.

 I: Infiltration, Part 2

    Slowly, Lan slipped back into the shadows, moving behind racking and out towards the door on the opposite side of the room. Having surveyed the area beforehand, from the outside, she knew that the reception area was the building beyond this storage room. Breaking a window¡¯s lock ahead of time had been fairly simple to do seeing as the window in question was out of sight, round the back. In fact, this was the only route she could have taken into the heart of the industrial complex without going from the front. Lan supposed that explained the two guards in the storage room.


    Reaching the other end of the room, Lan turned round and, climbing gingerly onto a box into front of her, began to ascend the racking, rising up shelf and box alike, very careful as to what she put her weight on before continuing. The broken shards of the pale light grazed her as she climbed, her wiry frame suited for the job in size and in strength. She reached the top without making so much as a peep, and crouched, ignoring the drop before her. The two in the centre of the room were still conversing as they had been before, so Lan shuffled round to face the long raised grated walkway before her that circled the top of the room as a viewing platform.


    She wasted no time, positioning herself on the edge of the racking top and pushing off, her body shooting through the gap between the platform and its handrail and executing a neat roll, coming to a stop against the wall. Breathing a quiet sigh of relief and exertion, Lan glanced at her watch again. The speech would start any minute now. She was running out of the time. Standing up to fiddle with the lock to the window looking out towards the central area of the plant, she detached the latch, pushing it ajar and lifting herself through and out of the storage room.


    Where the storage room was two stories high on account of the racking, the walkway to the next building was only on the ground floor, its roof at such a height that Lan could still turn around to close the window she had just come through so long as she stood on her tip-toes. The faintest hint of a booming sound, and Lan hastily pushed the window to, in time for the sweeping song of the klaxon bells, their pulsing call to attention pure and inviting. Scheduling the start of his speech with the klaxon song was foolhardy, almost a challenge to the authority of the city. It was as if Grent was saying that his ceremony was more important than the night showing, more important than all the city¡¯s happenings and other Luminaries.


    A bold move, and one that gave away much of his character. For this reason Lan was confident he had not hired any real security for this event, beyond basic Faith-less grunts. The man was arrogant, an upstart in the world of the new gods, and Lan was going to play that to her advantage.The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    She crossed the roof of the walkway in a short space of time, and clambered up onto the roof of the next building, using a vent as a foot and hand hold. Crawling on the slanted roof, glass entwined with curled metal in a fanciful display, she could finally see into the reception, and down on Harold Grent¡¯s figure as he waxed lyrical at his guests. As the sound of the klaxon bells died down, she became able to hear his muffled tones. From what she could tell, it was an enthusiastic and gripping piece of rhetoric, whatever he was saying, as the audience¡¯s eyes were all on him, and not a single mouth moved whilst Grent¡¯s own flapped excitedly.


    Lan smiled, running through her plan in her head. First, down the side of the building and into the walkway, then into the building itself and up onto the mezzanine that stretched the whole way around the room as a looking platform. She would then leap down onto the raised stage and burn Grent to a crisp with her flamethrower hidden in the darkness of her cloak. She would use theatrics of course, raise her other hand in a forceful motion and turn so the audience could only see her arm, outstretched from folds of cloth enshrouding her body, and a jet of flame that would almost certainly kill the Luminary if not simply leave him permanently scarred. Her escape route would be the same door, using the flamethrower to usher the guards out of her path.


    Doubtless Archer would be present in the room, watching over the crowd from above, but Lan had prepared for this as well. He would aim for her hand, thinking that the source of the fire, which is why her arm was fitted with a metal mesh, designed to protect her arm from the bullet¡¯s impact. She knew he would aim for her arm rather than her body, in order to stop her attack and preserve her for interrogation. Such was the Luminary culture; with the advent of power came a surge in competition, often of the dark and deadly kind. She could not let herself get caught, no matter what. That would almost certainly seal her fate in some basement somewhere, tied to a chair and beaten to death in search of answers she didn¡¯t have. At least this way, while her arm might suffer damage, she would be able to escape alive with her intangible prize, ready to begin her master plan.


    Lan let herself down onto the walkway roof, and then again down to the ground, landing a few feet away from a door in the side of the walkway. Locked, of course, but Lan saw to that in under thirty seconds. The speech would not last much longer, so as she stepped inside, she readied herself for the murder.


    A creak came from behind her and her heart jumped into her throat, instinctively breaking into a silent run that took her to the door that led to the reception and through it, opening it swiftly and moving to close it as she turned around to see what the noise was. The door that lead into the storage room at the other end of the walkway was opening, and the only things she could make out around the shape of the doorframe as she closed her door, was an eye and the barrel of a pistol.

 I: Infiltration, Part 3

    The crack of a gunshot mixed with the tinny echo of metal on metal impact shook Lan¡¯s composure, and she stepped back, raising her hand to her face and examining her fingers. Blood. The man must have taken aim and fired in the space of half a heartbeat, shooting across fifty feet of hallway at the barest sliver of flesh in the darkness of night. Any slower closing the door, and the bullet would not have been deflected off its edge before it moved on to hit her, and she would now bear a wound far more grievous than a gash across her cheek. It was a shot no man could have ever made, even with all the luck in the world on his side, and then some.


    Errol Archer. What¡¯s more, he wasn¡¯t trying to disarm her. He was aiming to kill. Grent must¡¯ve not got the memo ¨C he didn¡¯t care about taking her alive.


    Lan panicked, turning and running up the stairs, registering the murmurs of the crowd and the now ever so slightly wavering edge to Grent¡¯s voice, as presumably the muffled sound of the gunshot had reached the reception room. Archer must have been one of the two in the storage room all along, which meant he would have been aware of her as well. Lan felt a flush of childlike embarrassment and anger ¨C he must have been waiting to see what she would do all along, only stepping in when she got too close to Grent. The fact that that was the only covert route into the factory was exactly why Archer was placed there. Lan cursed herself, reaching the top of the stairs and looking down them, ignoring the few guards placed around the raised platform that now noticed her. She knew Archer had to run along the hallway, reload his pistol, and open the door. This should give her enough time to commit the crime, she reasoned, although the escape route would have to change. She stepped towards the railing, about to leap up and over onto the stage below, right before the door downstairs burst open.


    Time slowed down as Lan whirled round, a part of her seeing the shapes of men moving towards her out of the corner of her eye, but most of her attention on the figure of Archer at the bottom of the stairs. He was looking intently ahead, pistol in hand, about to reload. Lan¡¯s heart sunk as she realised that the time it would take him to reload would be essentially negligible; she suspected that particular skill had not been birthed of Faith, but rather came from years of experience. First checking the status of the door that Lan had not noticed, which presumably lead through to the main reception room, he would surely turn and see her in moments. The flames of her weapon would not reach him from this distance, and the light from the fire would trigger his reflexes anyway. She would be dead in under a second. No time to change weapon, no way she could take a single step without being shot down. Very quickly the plan had changed from pulling off a crime, to somehow managing to get out alive. Surrounded on all sides, Lan chose the only option left to her, and hurled the contraption down the stairs towards Archer as some pitiful form of distraction, for seconds that would likely not even matter given the steely grip that had just closed around her other arm.Stolen novel; please report.


    Before the compact flamethrower was even a quarter of the way through its flight, Archer¡¯s head snapped to the side, his eyes wide with primal instinct. His hands seemed to blur, and he raised his pistol and fired in one smooth motion just as it cleared the halfway mark.


    It felt like a star had been born for the slightest moment, the flash so powerful that the throbbing afterimage of Archer¡¯s horrified expression remained clear in Lan¡¯s vision as she opened her eyes, dazed and suddenly on the floor of the mezzanine. The guards around her groaned, equally stunned but thankfully with nowhere near as much adrenaline coursing through their bodies. Lan knew she was in a bad way as well though, limbs shaky as she moved to her hands and knees to survey the damage.


    The whole room had darkened enormously, though Lan could make out the shrapnel of the flamethrower¡¯s silvery carcass strewn about the stairwell amidst panelling and other debris. Had the explosion taken out the building¡¯s electrics? Lan could only guess. No sign of Archer, although on closer inspection it seemed as though the whole section of the floor had caved in, and down, on the area around the bottom of the stairs. He had reacted automatically, inhuman reflexes working against him as he shot at the movement before registering what it was ¨C a tank full of explosion. The fact that there was no sign of movement and that Lan¡¯s brains were still firmly situated in her skull gave her reason to suspect, with a rather large amount of relief, that Archer had been crushed by the falling pieces of building, and now lay dead or dying underneath the wreckage of his own making.

 I: Infiltration, Part 4

    However, this small victory presented a larger problem. Her weapon was gone, and her escape route was cut off. Lan checked her belt, and found her dagger there, dull in the low light. This was only a back-up, a tool she did not want to have to use¡­ and yet, she had come here with a mission. Was there any point without the flamethrower, though? The men beside her stirred, and Lan stood sharply, wobbling only slightly as she overlooked the lower floor. The sound overtook the ringing in her ears then, feverish cries of confusion and fear, with Grent trying to calm them all, his voice barely recognisable among the rabble. The lights around his stage still worked ¨C they must have been connected to a different circuit. The sight of him fuelled something within her, and she gripped the wooden railing tight, her decision made. No matter whether her weapon was shot. No matter whether she was up against a Luminary. No matter whether her escape had been cut off. She would not back down now, all her careful plans be damned. She could always make more, after all.


    With that, she leapt up onto the barrier, dagger in hand, and then over, soaring through the air in a small leap that found her quickly hurtling down towards Grent through the shadows of the upper room, like a black bolt from heaven. A shout, and Grent looked up, expression changing to blind panic even as Lan landed on him, dagger sinking into his chest, biting right through his lung and grazing his heart.


    Immediately the Luminary went into a frenzy. The wood around them curled and distorted, tearing itself free of its bindings and writhing as one like an animal in agony. Lan grunted, her grip on the dagger and as a result Grent shaky, and looked at his face. She noticed his features, even as twigs and vines clawed their way out of his skin and wrapped themselves around her: Thinner than she had expected, eyes wide and skin stretched taut on his bones with fear. Fear of her, she suddenly understood, a realisation that almost made her lose her grip once again, as everything around the two of them seemed to wave and buck violently. Pushing the dagger further in seemed almost impossible ¨C the momentum of her fall had taken her far into his chest, but his skin was bark and his flesh the dark wood of ancient trees. Where his blood should have flowed out and spilled across the thrashing wood beneath them, sap oozed slowly, gumming the blade and sticking to her hands. Yet she tried, a roar coming from her throat involuntarily as she drove the blade down with all the force she could muster, millimetre by painful millimetre through his oaken body until finally, with one last spasm, Grent shuddered his last. The death grip of the plants that had taken hold of Lan slackened, falling off her, withered even before they hit the warped decking of the stage.This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.


    Lan breathed, hard. She sat up, leaving the knife where it was, and slowly stood up, body aching from the struggle. She could feel the eyes on her, but in the moment she truly felt indestructible. A shout brought her to her senses, and her head whipped round to find three guards behind her. She waited for them to come forward, to try to take hold of her, but they hesitated, staying out of arm¡¯s reach, a semi-circle around her with the stage¡¯s lights highlighting them all. Lan backed away, towards the edge of the stage, and glanced behind her at the fleeing crowd. She made a split second decision and leapt off, hitting the ground running. People screamed as they tried to cram themselves into the doorway, but as Lan drew closer they parted, terrified to get near her. She felt like a monster, but she could not tell whether the apparent repulsion caused by her presence was because of the murder, or because they thought she had Faith. Either way, the job was done, she reasoned, darting among the uptight industry busybodies that had made up the guest-list even as they scrambled to get away from her.


    Shots called out like sharp barks in the night¡¯s expanse, the whiz and clang of bullets hither and thither around her as she cleared the crowd. The guard had apparently gathered their wits about them. The plans she had made seemed foolish now, relying on such a strict set of circumstances in order to be successful. Her mind was full of fog, and she could not settle on a destination, even as a bullet clipped her side and blood splattered across the ground in front of her. She stumbled, gasping, slowed as she tried to steady herself.


    A fair way down the path from Grent¡¯s factory already, she could hear big clomping steps behind her as they closed in on her. With the lights from the factory¡¯s front behind her the shadows stretched out beyond and down the road towards the inner city, no safe respite in sight. The buildings lining the road to her left leading to a complex network of passageways between then that would surely lead to her capture as well, despite the opportunity to get lost within them. Yet this was her only option, the best choice out of many where certain demise was the outcome, so she took to the side, only realised how close the guards were when a baton caught her across the side of the face and sent her spinning to the ground.


    A heavy boot pressed down upon her back, eliciting a pulse of pain from the wound in her side. Lan twisted on the ground, breaking free of him and losing her cloak in the process, scrambling forward desperately as the man¡¯s colleagues caught up to him. They reached for her, weapons bearing down and cries of anger booming at her as she reached out a hand, the tips of her fingers passing into the dark in her blind attempt to escape.


    Then a sensation of overwhelming void, like the absence of sound after a thunderclap, and her world turned black.