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Revelations of Destiny	By : Kellendros Category: Kim Possible > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 63461 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Kim Possible, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 65
- 66
- 67
“I just don’t know what to do. I love him, I really, really do… but I never thought this could happen; that I could be ‘the other woman.’ I didn’t want it to happen, it just did… and now I don’t think I can let it go. I think about him all the time. I don’t just want him; I want him to be part of my life. I want him to be by my side. I want him to be a father to my son. I want us to be together.”

Corscan gave a soft sigh and faintly sad, gentle smile to the slender, dark-haired woman sitting across from her, nodding sympathetically.

“Well darlin’, it seems to me that you need to decide what’s more important to ya’; the self-image you want to uphold, or the reality you’re dealin’ with. An’ even more importantly, you need to find out for sure what he wants, because darlin’, it takes two to tango, an’ if he feels the same way you do, well… is it really fair for him to spend the rest of his life with someone else just because he didn’t meet you first? I’m not sayin’ it’s right darlin’, but life is rarely fair. Figure out what’s important, what you can live with, an’ if it’s this, then that’s what you have to do.”

The woman spent a quiet minute or so considering what Corscan said, and then nodded her head slowly.

“I guess you’re right. That’s all there is to it.” Raising her head, she looked at Corscan with grateful green eyes. “Thank you Corscan. I don’t… quite know why I told you about all of this, but you’ve really helped me. I’m sure it’s not the usual sort of thing you have to deal with during a contact…”

Corscan smiled, waving dismissively as she stood up. “Oh you’d be surprised Angie, you’d be surprised.” Corscan’s smile twisted to a wry smirk. “After all, if we don’t look out for one another, who will?”

“Well, even so, I really do appreciate it.” Angie stood up as well, nodding in affirmative emphasis of her statement. “If there’s ever anything I can do for you, just let me know.”

“You just keep doin’ the work you’re doing darlin’, an’ we’ll make sure you’re able to do it. That’s all I could ask…”

This time it was Corscan’s tone that was dismissive, though affably so, and Angie clearly recognized the meeting was at an end as the big woman headed for the staff entrance of the private back room. Nodding once more, this time to herself, the dark-haired beauty walked over to the other exit and opened the door, stepping out into the upper level of the crowded nightclub they were in. There was an abrupt commotion as an insistent, offensively demanding voice interrogated her mere moments after she left the room.

“Miss Jolie! Miss Jolie! Is it true that you’re the cause of the recent problems between Brad and Jennifer? Are you the reason their marriage is in such bad shape right now? Are you the other woman?”

Far behind the suddenly set upon star, Corscan shook her head as her keen hearing picked up the start of the barrage while she walked up the narrow corridor she was in, before the door finally shut behind her and cut off anything further. Someone was sure to be fired over a paparazzi vulture managing to get so far into such a high-profile club as this one was.

A few moments later, while entering the primary back hallway and heading for the roof, she passed a serving girl and, not for the first time and certainly not the last, cursed the Wachowski brothers for ever making The Matrix. A few years ago no one would have looked twice at someone dressed head-to-toe in black—accompanying trench coat and formfitting molded sunglasses or not. Now, especially with the sequels still somewhat fresh in people’s minds, the look drew undue notice.

Even so, it gave her little trouble, as she’d long since learned the greatest secret to hiding in plain sight was to project an unwavering air of confidence and nonchalance; act as if you belonged where you were, and invariably, all but the most well-trained individuals would accept that you did—or the most paranoid, as the case might be.

Corscan dismissed the idle thoughts as she ascended the stairs to the roof, gathering her focus and settling into the proper frame of mind for what was to come.

After only a brief pause to disable the alarms and locks on the heavy metal door at the top of the stairs, she stepped out into the warm, humid night air. Shutting the door behind her a moment later, she secured it once more before turning and walking over to the broad, waist-high wall that ran around the edge of the rooftop, taking off her trench coat as she went.

Arriving at the wall, Corscan laid her coat down on top of it and paused, reaching up with both hands to press on the frames of her sunglasses in a very precise manner. A moment later she felt the arms extend and come together behind her head, linking up and tightening so that the whole unit was snug against her skull. A few seconds after that the lenses came on-line, transforming night into day with their enhanced night-sight capability. Looking up, Corscan blinked a few times, letting her eyes adjust to the change—her own night vision may have been more versatile than the glasses’, but it didn’t come with the various heads up displays that were now crisply superimposed over what she was seeing.

Once her eyesight adapted, Corscan trigged the earwig control, unconsciously shivering at the feel of the communications bud squirming its way into her ear canal as a slender arm extended down from the left side of the frame—she’d never get used to the feel of that. As soon as she felt the small oval softly expand and adhere into place, she activated the communications link.

“Tygress to Control, over.”

“This is Control; reading you loud and clear Tygress. Tracking telemetry coming online now. Syncing up with satellite feeds in sixty seconds, over.” The earwig modulated the volume and pitch of Hui’s cartoonish voice so perfectly it almost seemed as if it were projected directly into Corscan’s mind.

“Understood. Status of phase one target? Over.” Corscan responded, turning to the broad wall and using it as a workspace while spreading out her trench coat and pulling on a variety of quick-release threads sewn into it, breaking open several previously concealed, self-contained compartments.

“Phase one target is currently on the move and proceeding thirty seconds behind projected schedule, but still within operational parameters, over.”

Corscan nodded to herself as she studied the detailed map that appeared in the lower left-hand corner of her vision, a single small targeting reticule slowly moving through the sharp blue-white lines of the cityscape and displaying various tracking telemetry off of it. While most of her attention was focused on the display, she began assembling a soft-armor protective vest from parts of her coat, the rote process coming with unconscious ease thanks to years of practice. By the time she was done, a second reticule indicating her own location several blocks away from the first suddenly appeared on the map, and she gave another nod as various tactical data streams, route projections, and intercept coordinates were displayed a moment later.

“Synchronous tracking telemetry on-line, over.” Hui confirmed a few seconds later.

“Synced telemetry confirmed Control. ETA for phase one target at optimal intercept point? Over.” Corscan asked while putting on the assembled vest.

“Current traffic flow estimates and target speed indicate you have less than ten minutes Tygress, over.”

“Understood Control, over.”

Corscan silently focused on assembling the rest of her equipment with experienced efficiency, putting together a weapons harness and then donning it before divesting the coat of her armaments and gear, securing each weapon and device to its respective location as quickly as she could. Then she picked up a pair of heavy, flexible, fingerless gauntlets and pulled them on, buckling a series of straps in order to snugly secure the rubbery, layered material to her thick forearms nearly all the way up to her elbows. After checking to make sure the magnetic induction pads built into the palms of her gauntlets were functioning properly, Corscan retrieved the final piece of equipment from her coat, a device that resembled a tonfa with a molded, form-fitting handle and a shaft that seemed to be one long, hollow hinge.

Setting the odd tonfa aside, Corscan gathered the remnants of her coat and rolled them up tightly before deftly winding the belt around the mass of fabric. Then she dropped the bundle on the rooftop and poured a small vial of murky liquid across the top of it. Even as she dropped the vial and turned to pick up the tonfa again, the long, dark line of wet material began to writhe and undulate, thin streamers of acrid grey mist rising from the rapidly disintegrating cloth, while at her feet, the vial suffered the same fate, quickly melting into a small lump of formless goo.

“Tygress to Control, beginning phase one operation now. Initiating radio silence and proceeding to optimal intercept point, over and out.”

“Understood Tygress; good hunting. Over and out.”

Corscan was already on the move, hopping up on top of the wall next to her and breaking into a dead run along its length, the soles of her heavy polymer composite combat boots clinging to the concrete surface with excellent traction, just as they were designed to do. While she rushed headlong towards a four-story drop, the display on her glasses flashed wire-frame overlays across any piece of terrain she focused on, more clearly delineating depth and outlines for her. Reaching the corner, Corscan leapt out into the night without hesitation, her powerful legs carrying her across the intervening distance to the next rooftop with ease.

Hitting the rough gravel running, Corscan vaulted up on top of a series of ventilation works, traveled along them for thirty feet or so, then jumped to the top of a medium-sized maintenance structure, hooking to the right and speeding up so that when she reached the edge of it she could hurl herself nearly twenty feet up and fifty feet out into space, where she grabbed onto a thick pipe projecting from a water tower and used it to flip herself forward another thirty feet or so, landing on a heavy cable anchoring a large sign to the rooftop below and dashing down the swaying, bouncing, half-inch path with the surefooted confidence of a spider in its own web.

Reaching the bottom, Corscan twisted to the left and sprinted for the far end of the area, where a ten-foot brick wall stood. Reaching the barrier a few seconds later, she ran up the side of the wall nearly six feet and grabbed onto the edge, hauling herself up into a squatting crouch and pausing for a brief moment to survey the paths stretching out before her. Then she was off once more, running over to the far edge of the rooftop and following along the sixty-foot drop until she reached a T-junction with an alley across the way.

Once more without pause, Corscan threw herself off the rooftop, this time dropping almost ten feet before she snagged a cable running between the buildings to either side of her, holding it just long enough to flip over to a nearby fire escape, landing heavily, but securely. From there she pulled herself up onto the railing and ran along it to jump diagonally to another fire escape on the opposite side of the alley, farther up the way. Continuing to jump back and forth from fire escape to fire escape, Corscan reached the end of the passage in less than a minute’s time, whereupon she leapt across the T-junction there to grab onto a heavy pipe running up the side of the third building, rapidly climbing the twenty feet or so to the rooftop above.

In this headlong, scaling, leaping, acrobatic fashion, Corscan traversed another five blocks in under five minutes, to come to a stop on the corner of an eight-story building facing a wide thoroughfare, directly across from the broad mouth of a back alley street.

As she paused, Corscan pulled out the tonfa and flipped up a stubby secondary handle from the top of it, then, taking a handle in each hand, she slowly pulled the smaller one away from the larger with a heavy grunt of exertion. As her powerful arms bulged and rippled with effort, the hinge comprising the hollow shaft slowly opened up, revealing that it was instead a long, spring-loaded, toothed clamp with a pair of heavy cutting blades on the inside of it, right before the far end. With a sharp snap, the jaws of the clamp finally locked into place, and Corscan relaxed her arms with a soft sigh.

Removing the secondary handle from the now primed device, Corscan idly tossed it over her shoulder while looking up the thoroughfare for her target. A few moments later she spotted the modest stretch limo several hundred yards away, her glasses immediately highlighting the black vehicle with a red wire-frame overlay even as she triggered the zoom function in order to study it more closely. As far as she could tell, it was exactly as expected; lightly armored, bulletproof glass, one man in front, driving, and a sunroof. The only thing that remained ambiguous was the number of passengers in back, but she knew from previous intel that barring extraordinary circumstances, there were two bodyguards along with the target.

Reverting to a normal, unmagnified view, Corscan deactivated the map, telemetry display, and wire-frame assist functions of her glasses, preferring to handle the timing on what she was about to do entirely on her own.

Hopping up on the ledge, the big woman glanced at the nearly nonexistent traffic coming from both directions before settling her focus solely on the approaching limo. Tucking the spring-loaded clamp against her left arm, Corscan unconsciously tightened and relaxed her grip on the molded handle, her body tensing imperceptibly as the elongated vehicle drew closer, slowing down and not even bothering to signal as it started to turn onto the back alley street across the way—a decidedly strange direction for such a high-class vehicle to take, given it led to a mostly abandoned heavy industrial district by the river and nowhere else.

As soon as the limo made the turn, Corscan leapt off the building, sailing out into space while dropping almost lazily, her target speeding up even as time seemed to slow for the plummeting woman. Fifty feet above the still warm and most definitely still hard asphalt below, Corscan’s left arm made contact with a thick steel support cable running across the street, just as planned, the heavy snap-clamp along her forearm springing shut with crushing force while the cutting blades severed the cable, releasing its tension with a sudden, sharp, metallic whiplash sound. A moment later Corscan felt her considerable weight pulling on her arm as she began swinging forward instead of dropping down.

With the wind from her passage rushing and whistling around her, Corscan swung down in a perfect pendulum arc, her feet clearing the pavement by less than a foot before she started rising once more, entering the mouth of the alley across the street only a second later. A few moments afterward, around halfway to the apex of her swing, Corscan released her grip and sailed forward while flipping over once in midair, so that she was facing down towards the limousine she was about to drop on top of.

In the split second she fell, Corscan activated the magnetic induction pads in her gauntlets, just in time to help her hang onto the car as she slammed into the rooftop hard enough to knock the air out of her, the vehicle swerving back and forth beneath her as the driver was shocked by the sudden, thunderous impact from above.

Ignoring the wave of complaints coming from all down the front of her body, Corscan pulled herself up into a half crouch and released the rooftop with her right hand, switching her gauntlet’s energy supply over to the force generators in the knuckles as she did. Cocking her arm all the way back to her shoulder, she made a tight fist before taking as long a moment to center herself as she could afford. An instant later, she released a deep, focusing kiai and punched down into the roof with all her might, burning out the force generators with a sharp, blue-white energy pulse and driving her arm through the reinforced metal in an equally sharp burst of pain as she felt a few bones snap and one jagged, razor-sharp piece of metal slash through the material of her gauntlet and carve a long, deep slice into her forearm and up the side of her bicep.

Grinding her teeth together, Corscan suppressed the pain and grabbed the driver by his throat—fortunately the damage to her arm wasn’t enough to incapacitate it, only hamper her slightly. Unfortunately, dealing with someone so well trained meant that despite the sudden surprise of what was happening, including Corscan’s iron-hard fingers now wrapped around his thick neck, the driver was able to react in a fairly controlled manner, which in this case, consisted of him drawing his weapon and blindly firing several rounds up through the roof to whiz past her head—and a few rounds not so blindly into her forearm—before Corscan was finally able to tear out his larynx and part of his trachea with a wet ripping sound and stomach-churning crunch more felt than heard.

Releasing the hot mass of bloody flesh and cartilage in her hand, Corscan pulled her arm out of the car and held on tight while the limo veered wildly out of control, slamming into the building on the left and grinding along the dull red bricks in a spray of fat orange sparks. Knocked prone by the impact, Corscan focused her mind and blocked out the waves of agony coming from her arm using techniques so ingrained they were almost instinctual, then she reactivated the magnetic induction pads in her gauntlet and forced torn, perforated muscle and broken bone to function as well as they were able, grabbing onto the car with both hands in order to keep from flying off.

Inside, the driver felt his strength draining away along with the blood filling his lungs and streaming out from under hands pressed tight to the ruins of his throat. Soon his vision began to dim and his weakening grasp was knocked away from his throat by the continuing, jarring impacts to the car. From there it was only a matter of a dozen or so slowing, struggling heartbeats until he slumped to the side and down into the darkness of oblivion, his foot finally bouncing off the accelerator so that the limo was starting to slow down when it slammed into a dumpster a few moments later.

Slewing to the side, Corscan held on tight as the slowing limo bulled its way past the dumpster, turning in the direction of the far side of the alley and continuing on to smash into the cinderblock wall there, the final impact far less than it might have been otherwise. While the remaining people in the car recovered from being bounced around like human ping-pong balls, Corscan snapped off her magnetic induction pads and scrambled around on all fours, pulling out an extending bar mechanism and fitting it across the top of the roof as fast as she could. Then she activated the device and allowed herself a few moments to recover while the bar drew itself tight, the clawed ends hooking the tops of the back doors and clamping them shut before the entire contraption chemically bonded itself to the rooftop.

Drawing a deep breath as she drew a small black box from her harness, Corscan attached the device to the center of the sunroof and activated it, illuminating a small, softly glowing red light. Then she took a moment to strip off her gauntlets and use a wipe from that same harness to quickly clean the blood off her hand and arm—despite the muffled shouts and pounding commotion coming from inside the car now, she knew the back section of the limo was too heavily armored to shoot through, and she really needed to make sure her grip would be steady for what was about to come.

As soon as the small red light on the box turned green, Corscan dropped the mesh-weave cloth in her hand and drew two heavy twelve-inch fighting daggers from her harness, feeling the heft of the weapons in her hands as she stood up and moved to loom over the sunroof, slightly to the right-hand side of it. Then she spent a few seconds carefully listening to the voices harshly whispering below her. A moment later she tapped a button on top of the box with her right foot and dropped into a ready stance, arms widespread and knives ready to throw.

The black box immediately began emitting a high-pitched whine that wasn’t so much heard as it was felt as an uncomfortable itch in everyone’s teeth—one far worse for the three men trapped in the back of the car than Corscan, though nowhere near incapacitating, just extremely unpleasant. An instant later, the armored glass of the sunroof disintegrated into a thousand little chunks and rained down into the limo. As soon as it did, Corscan was moving, simultaneously evading the first two shots from the bodyguard on her left while hurling the knife in her right hand down into his chest.

Before the man died, he fired two more times, one bullet burying itself in the side of Corscan’s protective vest, and the second carving out a deep grove in her left shoulder. Even so, she barely noticed the impacts as she braved the hail of gunfire coming from the other bodyguard, ducking low and sliding across the roof on her shins while 9mm rounds buzzed past her like angry hornets, one lodging in her right thigh, another tearing a chunk off her ear on the same side, and several more peppering her vest with hard impacts.

As she came up again, her left arm rose and fell, whipping the second knife through four feet of space and into the gunman’s skull with a loud, solid “thunk,” killing him instantly.

“A-ah-ah!” Corscan chided sharply as she hopped up and over into a crouch in the center of the roof, squatting at the edge of the open sunroof and wagging her finger as the graying man beneath her started reaching for one of his now deceased bodyguards’ weapons. “Touch that gun an’ y’ain’t ever gonna be touchin’ anythin’ again darlin’.”

The man froze, however reluctantly, and then withdrew his hand, sitting back and glaring—or perhaps squinting in the relative darkness—up at Corscan with flinty blue-grey eyes, his blocky, weathered face a scowling mask.

“You’ll never get away with this, whatever it is!” He barked in a strong, harsh voice, his posture pure, iron-hard indignation in a five thousand dollar suit.

“Oh I beg to differ darlin’. I mean really, shaaaame on you General Carrington. Stinger missiles an’ LAW rockets are one thing, but sellin’ weapons grade uranium to a Russian arms dealer?” Corscan shook her head soberly, tsking. “Sorry darlin’, that’s just one step too far. Y’ betrayed your country an’ your honor, all for the sake a’ greed an’ a sense of entitlement… an’ now the devil’s come for her due, General.”

The retired General’s eyes widened in surprise while Corscan spoke, as much from her words as the growing high-pitched whine coming from the handles of the knives buried in the corpses of his men, along with the lines of pulsing blue lights that began running up the sides of those handles faster and faster. Looking up again, he was greeted by Corscan’s cold, implacable visage.

“I’ll see you in hell Carrington; keep the place warm for me while y’wait.”

Corscan kept the sneer from her lips, but she couldn’t quite keep it from her voice. An instant later, she vaulted off the limo, sailing out into the night to land twenty feet away, tucking and rolling as she hit the hard asphalt of the alley floor. Coming to her feet, she turned and looked back to see General Carrington desperately trying to scramble out of the limo, but it was far too late for that.

Before he even pulled himself halfway out of the sunroof, a thin corona of faint blue energy flared out from inside the back of the limo, enveloping most of the car in a hazy, crackling sphere. Snapping arcs of sharp white, bright blue, and deep purple energy began radiating out from the center of the energy field inside the car, and Carrington screamed, but that same field strangely muted his terrified shout. A moment later there was a sharp thundercrack as Carrington and the entire limo were suddenly sucked into a fist-sized ball of purple energy so dark it was almost black. A split-second after that the entire sphere collapsed in on itself and vanished as if it had never been, leaving only an afterimage and a brief, strong wash of air behind.

Corscan straightened and reached up to activate the communications link in her glasses once more. “Tygress to Control; phase one target eliminated. Proceeding to phase two operational area, over.”

“Understood Tygress. Uploading current tactical information and real-time satellite telemetry to you now, over.”

Corscan didn’t bother responding, as it was both redundant and she was too busy gritting her teeth while digging the bullet out of her leg using a long stiletto. As soon as the bloody chunk of metal shot out of the hole in her thigh, bouncing across the pavement and into the shadows, she started trotting up the alleyway while wiping the blade clean on her pants. Once the stiletto was safely stowed in its sheath, she broke into a full run while checking the information download and satellite uplinks on her glasses’ display. After a few moments she nodded to herself and spoke once more.

“Tactical download confirmed, Control. Satellite telemetry coming in at five by four, over.”

“Understood Tygress, attempting to compensate now. Over.”

Corscan stopped running a few moments later and started climbing up the side of a big, blocky, rundown brick building right before the end of the alleyway, using a heavy, rusty pipe that ran all the way up the wall to the roof. It wasn’t until she reached the top that she heard Hui’s voice again.

“Signal clarity at maximum compensation now Tygress, over.”

“Understood Control. Signal is still coming in at Five by Four; guess I’ll just have to make do, over.”

“Understood Tygress. Backup units are moving into position now. Evac is five minutes out and maintaining holding pattern within acceptable parameters for the weather conditions. You’re good to go, over.”

“Resuming radio silence and beginning phase two operation Control, over and out.”

“Understood Tygress; good hunting. Over and out.”

Moving to the edge of the rooftop, Corscan surveyed the riverfront complex that lay before her. It was an old, sprawling group of rundown warehouses and industrial manufacturing buildings, all hemmed in by a pair of twin chain link fences topped with lines of sagging barbed wire, while a series of dilapidated docks hunched out into the water from the riverbank. The untrained eye might have missed the fact that the locks on the rusty chains holding the three gates shut were all well oiled and almost new, or that the longest, central dock had several newer, if weathered, planks, as well as fresh tire bumpers roped to it.

Using her glasses, Corscan zoomed in on the refurbished dock for a moment, taking note of the two shadowy, mid-sized boats tied up to it, along with the four guards sitting or standing in various places on deck, somewhat complacently smoking or talking with one another, their AK-47s set aside save for the lone man smoking at the point of the bow on the right-hand boat.

Nodding to herself, Corscan called up the thermographic satellite feed and began studying the actual buildings in comparison to the real-time, top-down images of the people moving inside them, along with the few guards scattered around outside that she could make out from her viewpoint.

After a few minutes making sure she had the lay of the land, Corscan pulled out a small, matte black metallic cylinder roughly the size of a flashlight, taking careful aim on an aging loading crane where it stood near the docks, looming over the other structures like the rusting skeleton of some long-dead mechanical dinosaur. Exhaling softly, she gently triggered the device, firing an inch-long section of it out into the night, a thin, spiraling cable trailing along behind it as it flew through the air. A few moments later the fat little canister smashed into the crane and burst with a soft, wet splat, the broad circle of viscous black gunk chemically bonding itself to the corroded steel nearly instantly, securing the cable to the metal as if it had been welded there.

Retracting the line until it was nearly taut, Corscan turned and looked for a suitable location to attach her end to, finally settling on wrapping the line around a chimney before breaking the device apart and attaching it to the cable lengthwise, where it was then used to winch the line to quivering tightness before clamping down and securing it firmly. Once the mechanism locked in place, Corscan took out a short, slightly curved double handlebar and hooked it over the line before grabbing on with both hands. Then she ran full out for the edge of the roof, hurdled over the low retaining wall, and slid along the line with only a soft hiss of anti-friction alloy on metal.

As she passed over the rooftop of the building being used by most of the men inside the compound, Corscan released the handle and dropped ten feet or so to the peak of the structure, landing in a deep, nearly silent crouch as the heavy steel girder proved solid enough to take the impact of her substantial weight with only a muffled resonance. A moment later, she was up and running along in a sure-footed crouch, covering ten yards before turning and cautiously sliding down the corrugated steel roof to a broad, dingy bank of grime-covered skylights.

Peering at the muzzy shapes she could make out through the brown-stained glass, Corscan checked the thermographic satellite feed one last time, then shut down all the information displays on her glasses once more, leaving only the night vision function active. After that, she carefully moved into position while drawing four fat, six-inch wide black rings from her weapons harness, taking two in each hand and activating them while crouching low to the rooftop. A moment later she leapt high into the air, crossing her arms tight to her chest and coming down hard on the center of the skylight with stiff legs, shattering the frame and continuing down into the building below in a cascade of broken glass and splintered wood.

As she dropped, Corscan threw her arms wide, releasing the rings in her hands at various targets on upper catwalks throughout the shadowy, cavernous room. By the time she hit the heavy workbench below her, crouching low to absorb the jarring impact with her strong legs, each of the black circles had magnetically latched onto metal railings or grate floors with sharp metallic clanks. A split-second later they all exploded in a staggered series of incendiary blasts, filling the room with sharp white light and roaring sound along with the flaming, flying bodies of shocked guards caught in each blast radius.

With the flash suppressors in her glasses compensating for the sudden glare, Corscan leaned to the side and used her left arm to brace against the tabletop while twisting around and lashing out with her right leg, smashing the crook of her foot into the side of a nearby guard’s neck hard enough to snap the vertebrae cleanly in his surprised state. As the man dropped like a puppet with its strings cut, Corscan smoothly followed the momentum of her kick, half rolling, half flipping off the table to land facing back toward the workbench, where two more guards were just starting to recover from the chaos erupting around them. Before they could, Corscan sent a pair of throwing knives from her harness spinning over the intervening workbench to take each of them in the throat, the long stiletto blades scraping across vertebrae but failing to sever either guard’s spinal column.

Dropping to the floor, Corscan scrambled on all fours to recover the first guard’s AK-47 while she waited for the other two to drop—she knew the strikes were lethal, but she also knew it would take a while before shock and blood loss incapacitated the men if they hadn’t dropped already. Scooping up the assault rifle, she flipped the safety to full auto, cranked back the bolt to make sure a round was chambered, and then scrambled again to put her back against the heavy workbench. A second later she risked rising in a half crouch to empty the weapon at the back end of the room, where three more guards stood.

At the medium range, and with her strength allowing her to fully control the recoil, Corscan was just able to tag all three men with a few slugs each out of the hail of thirty-nine rounds. Of course, she knew it was more from luck than skill—she’d never been particularly good with guns, though she’d at least gotten past the point where the words “broad side of a barn” were used in the same breath as mention of her ability with them.

Releasing the empty assault rifle with her right hand, Corscan spun it around in her left, reversing her grip, and held it like a club while turning and hopping up onto the workbench. Taking a step forward, she swept the weapon down in a backhand blow that smashed the heavy wooden stock into the face of the one dying guard that was still on his feet, sending him to the floor as she jumped down after him—and not a second too soon either, as dozens of angry metal slugs tore through the space she’d just vacated, accompanied by the distinctive percussion clatter of several AK-47s and AK-74s firing around the room, filling the echoing space with thunderous sound even as they filled the air with high velocity death.

Scrambling around, Corscan tossed her empty weapon away, snatched up the two AK-47s near the fallen guards, and took cover behind the far end of the workbench, while whizzing, buzzing slugs chewed the thick wooden tabletop into jagged splinters and blasted chunks out of the concrete floor, as well as perforating the bodies of the two dying men, finishing them off before the knives in their throats could.

God I hate guns…

The vehement thought was at odds with Corscan’s actions as she pulled back the levers of each of her newly appropriated AK-47s in turn, sending a live round flying out of them just like the first one she’d used—a necessary loss since she lacked the luxury of time to carefully pull back the bolts just a little and visually inspect the chambers instead. As soon as she knew the weapons were ready to fire, she took one in each hand and braced herself, setting her footing and tensing to rise. A moment later, during a slight lull in the weapons fire being directed her way, she surged to her feet and sprinted to the left, firing both assault rifles at her attackers as she went.

Corscan was strong enough to fire an AK-47 using just one hand as well as anyone else could with two, but unfortunately, that wasn’t nearly enough to control the recoil the way she had previously. Coupled with her at best tolerable skill level, she knew the odds of actually hitting anyone with the twin full auto barrages were next to none. Conveniently, suppression fire was never about actually hitting targets, only making them think they might be hit, so the erratic hail of slugs did its job just fine despite her lackluster skills, forcing the men scattered throughout the rest of the room to take cover as high velocity metal slammed into everything around them, splintering, perforating, or denting whatever surface was struck by the onslaught.

Reaching more durable cover in the form of a broad, heavy steel girder supporting the roof high above, Corscan spent two more seconds emptying the guns at either side of the room, hoping to drive her opposition further into the center of the area, and then tossed them before spinning around behind the safe haven. A moment later the still reverberating air was split by the sounds of return fire and dozens of rounds hammering into the metal at her back, ringing and clanging across the thick steel like some furious metallic hailstorm.

As the clamorous cacophony continued, albeit at a far more staccato pace as some of the men reloaded, while others took the chance to advance in sporadic, crouching, furtive rushes, and still others shouted out various demands and questions in both Russian and heavily accented English, Corscan retrieved a modest sized device from the dwindling supply of ordinance on her harness.

Taking the narrow black disk in her right hand, she carefully adjusted her grip on the three two-inch spheres projecting equidistantly around its circumference, then took a deep breath and closed her eyes, centering herself. An instant later, she spun out into the open, turning around in a half circle while windmilling her arm up, around, and down again to launch the device in a sweeping sidearm throw, twisting her wrist and snapping her hand as the weapon tumbled off her fingertips in order to impart the maximum amount of spin she could to it.

As the device blurred out into the warehouse, the two spring-loaded covers that formed the central disk burst apart, releasing the three spheres, which flew out to a distance of four feet before coming up short, each tethered by a whisper-thin strand running back to a minuscule central triangle of titanium alloy. The moment the balls were released, internal gyroscopic guidance systems came on-line in each of them, so that the entire monomolecular bola carved through the air with deadly intent, twisting, rising, and falling as it spun towards the targets it detected throughout the room.

Meanwhile, ducking back behind the girder as soon as she made the throw, Corscan hissed as she felt a few AK rounds slice through her protective vest like hot knives through butter; the light, quilted armor-fabric simply wasn’t capable of standing up to such high-powered rounds at this range. Looking down, she catalogued three hits to her side, two to her left leg that she hadn’t noticed, and one to her left arm. Nothing incapacitating to her, given no bones had been struck, but likely lethal to anyone else—or at the very least, potentially lethal barring immediate treatment.

While Corscan took stock of her injuries, the monomolecular bola encountered the first target it had locked on to, the obscenely sharp strands passing through the man’s head, neck, and shoulder as if he weren’t even there. The cuts were so fine and perfect that it actually took a few seconds before blood pressure and the momentum of his movements finally overcame the adhesion of wet flesh on flesh, at which point he seemed to just slide apart in a massive upwelling of dark red blood.

Unfortunately, that visual warning came far too late, as by then, the deadly, nearly invisible weapon had already passed through a dozen or more men before its guidance systems could no longer compensate for its faltering momentum, and it struck a support girder to one side of its latest target, the tiny titanium triangle snagging in the steel so that the tethered weights spun around the beam faster and faster, tightening monowire filaments making dozens of deep cuts in the metal before the balls slammed into the hard surface and the whole thing ground to a sudden stop. Moments later, bisected pieces or even entire limbs sloughed off of the collapsing corpses that once were men, though some of those corpses didn’t quite understand what they were yet, screaming in terrified denial over missing body parts and spraying blood as the scent of that precious fluid filled the air around them, adding its metallic tang to the rising acrid stench of shit and piss released in death.

With the marked reduction in weapons fire being directed her way, Corscan risked a quick glance around her cover, only to curse as she found that not only were there over a half-dozen men left standing on the dimly lit factory floor, but that her primary target was being forcibly dragged away by his much wiser, more levelheaded—or possibly fearful—lieutenants, all while railing at the top of his lungs in Russian, expletives and promises of terrible retribution spilling from frothing lips as he raged against the incomprehensible situation playing out before him. It didn’t exactly help that she saw the guards from outside rushing past him to add the weight of their numbers—and guns—to those already in the room either.

“Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!”

An aggravated grimace accompanied the chain of repetitive, rapid-fire vulgarity, remaining as Corscan set her feet, tensed her powerful legs, and took three quick, deep breaths, psyching herself up. A moment later she tore out from behind the girder in a dead run, arms flashing up and down and back and forth as she threw a barrage of knives at anything that moved, all while erratically leaping over, on top of, or behind the heavy workbenches in an effort to evade the lines of AK slugs chewing up everything around her.

Running out of throwing knives before running out of enemies, Corscan drew her last two weapons, a pair of broad, angled kukri knives, and leapt high into the air, hoping the unexpected change in direction would throw off the aim of her remaining foes. Luckily, it did; by the time the men’s reflexes caught up to what was happening, she was hurtling down amongst them, one knife lashing out to knock the barrel of an AK-74 aside while the other slashed through its wielder’s throat, her strong right leg snapping out in a near simultaneous side kick that crushed another man’s skull like an eggshell.

Spinning and twisting her way through the men like a dervish, Corscan kept in constant motion, her arcing blades slashing across vulnerable muscles, tendons, and arteries alike whenever the opportunity arose, while backfists, elbows, and kicks snapped spines, shattered skulls, and caved in ribcages, her continuous attacks striking high and low and always keeping her latest target between her and as many of the other men as possible. In the end, her avalanching combat momentum, blurring speed, and careful strategy proved successful, allowing her to put down each and every one of the remaining men while avoiding being shot by any of them in turn—though she was able to engineer two of them being shot by their own companions during the course of the whirling, frenetic melee.

Corscan leapt over the corpse of the last man even as it fell, sprinting for the exit and praying she’d be able to get outside before her primary target got away—the last thing she wanted was the added complication of having to cover up a high speed chase through the city streets, especially when she still had a chance to finish this here and now in isolation instead.

Slewing around the corner, she bolted through a side area and out a gaping loading door into the night beyond, arms pumping hard and bloody knives gleaming as they flashed up and down in blurring, red-tinged silvery arcs. It took her glasses a split second to compensate for the change in lighting, and then it took a second more for her to take in the open area before her. Once she did, there was really only one thing she could say as she skidded to a halt…

“Ahhh fuck…”

Corscan’s voice dripped dry resignation and disgust as she saw the trio of Hummers parked in a loose cluster about a hundred yards away from her, and more importantly, standing in front of them in a broad-legged stance, her primary target, the bulky, rectangular canister of a four-shot missile launcher slung over his shoulder, its square, open front facing her with a quartet of pitch-black circular openings and a malevolent, manic smile plastered across the face of its wielder.

“[Russian: Eat this you fucking prick bastard! No one fucks with Yuri Dragov! Yuri Dragov is the one that does the fucking!]”

Fortunately, Yuri only started firing somewhere in the middle of his furiously frothing, rabid rant instead of immediately, the slight delay giving Corscan just enough time to crouch down and get her powerful legs coiled beneath her. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t anywhere for her to go, so as the quartet of missiles started streaking across the grungy dirt-and-gravel lot in rapid succession, bright orange lances of fire trailing thick grey plumes of smoke behind them, all she could do was leap up and out, hoping to put as much distance between her and ground zero as she could.

In less than the span of a few heartbeats, the first of four fiery explosions rocked the night, each consecutive blast feeding the last, the ever-growing, misshapen ball of fire and force ripping open the building in front of it with ease, bursting and shredding the metal walls and roof like paper screens in a hurricane. The rolling, burning blast wave overtook Corscan far before the apex of her jump, enveloping her for a brief, searing moment before she shot out of the billowing flames like a burning missile, the bright yellow crescent of her flight path arcing up and then down to end in a mighty splash as she impacted a huge, deep puddle of murky, muddy water.

“[Russian: Yeah, you see you fucking bastard?]” Yuri’s psychotically jubilant shout came as the rumbling roar of the explosion dissipated, the orange blast collapsing into a thick column of ugly black smoke under-lit by guttering fires all around its base. A second later the empty missile launcher tumbled from his shoulder to hit the hard ground with a hollow metallic clatter. “[That is what you get when you are fool enough to fuck with Yuri Dragov! Think about that while you are rotting in shallow grave!]”

Yuri turned to his lieutenants, arms spread wide and a cruelly savage grin running ear-to-ear.

“[Russian: There, there, do you see? That is how we deal those who try to screw with us! We do not run; we fuck them ten times worse instead—a hundred times! You see? You see?]” At the dutiful nods and deferential agreement from his two men, Yuri dropped his arms, a furious, vicious scowl twisting his austere Slavic features as his mercurial mood shifted in the blink of an eye. “[Now, I want to know everything there is to know about our dearly departed friend! This was no mere ‘drive by’ or street war! This was first-rate professional for certain, and there are only few who could have arranged that! Italians… Yakuza… even CIA…]” Yuri sneered as he spit out the short list, “[whoever it was, there will be blood for blood! This, I promise!]”

As the snarling mob boss swore vengeance, behind him, Corscan stirred, pushing herself up from the muddy water she’d landed in and giving her head a single, sharp shake, her dirty blonde hair singed and sodden against her skull. Getting one leg under her, she reached up and pulled off her broken glasses, letting them tumble into the murky puddle she knelt in. Then she rose to her feet, filthy water streaming down her charred clothing and a single kukri still clutched in her left hand, while guttering yellow flames rose from the back of her protective vest, continuing to burn feebly despite the unlikely odds. A hundred feet away, the faces of Yuri’s lieutenants paled and fell slack at what they were seeing over his shoulders.

Yuri’s brow furrowed, half irritated, half puzzled, and he took a quick glance behind him, only to freeze at the sight he beheld.

“[Russian: No… no, this cannot be! It’s not… not possible…]”

The stunned murmur slipped out from between Yuri’s disbelieving lips, his pale blue eyes widening in shock as Corscan reached up over her shoulder and ripped off the flaming remnants of her vest with ease, contemptuously flinging them aside while locking her wintry gaze with his, flinty grey eyes sharp with the grim promise of death.

As Corscan tossed her kukri over to her right hand and broke into dead run straight for him, Yuri twisted around and stumbled back between his lieutenants, fumbling for the gun in the shoulder-holster beneath his jacket while roaring out; “[Russian: Shoot! Shoot! Kill that motherfucking bastard now!]”

The man to Yuri’s right fell back as well, fear and disbelief otherwise slowing his reactions to the point of complete indecision, but the man on the left raised a Czech-made Skorpion machine pistol with a wild jerk of his arm, preparing to fire. The only thing his quick reflexes bought him was a knife spinning into his left eye socket as Corscan’s arm rose and fell while she ran, the sickening crunch of a broad, razor-sharp, tempered steel blade splintering through bone the final thing he heard in this life—kukri weren’t designed to be thrown, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t be.

By the time Yuri’s other lieutenant recovered his wits, the AK-47 clutched in his hands finally starting to rise, Corscan was on top of him, grabbing the gun with both hands and wrenching it out of his grasp using a single, sharp, twisting motion before brutally straight-arming the weapon across his chest, knocking him back a step. Still moving, she swept the assault rifle back in a pendulum arc and then drove it forward at an upward angle, stepping into the spearing strike and impaling him just beneath the ribcage, the irregular end of the cold, cruel barrel continuing on to pierce his heart with its sights and shaft.

The Russian mobster gasped deeply, reflexively, before grinding, unbearable pain locked down his chest and forced a gurgling exclamation of shock and agony from him. Without a second thought, Corscan heaved his body aside using the AK-47 imbedded in his chest as if she were a farmer pitching hay, then surged towards Yuri, who had finally freed his pearl handled, silver plated, gold embossed Colt Delta Elite from its holster, the extended barrel describing a gleaming arc through the air as he brought the weapon to bear on the implacable nightmare rushing him.

The gun spit white-orange fire and cracked hollow thunder as Yuri’s finger jerked the trigger wildly, causing his first two shots to go wide despite the point-blank range. The third shot tore through the heavy part of Corscan’s right forearm in an explosion of blood and shredded flesh, and the fourth buried itself deep in her shoulder, but neither hit slowed her down as she grabbed Yuri’s wrist and shoved his arm up and out of line with her. A second later she raised her left arm and twisted in his direction, sweeping the bottom of her fist into his elbow while pulling back on his arm, eliciting a ragged howl of pain as the hammering horizontal blow dislocated the joint with a wet, muffled crunch.

Yuri’s fingers spasmed open and the gun fell from his grasp, bouncing off Corscan’s bloody forearm and tumbling to the hard-packed earth below with a heavy, dull thump. An instant later, while he was still paralyzed from shock, Corscan released his wrist, her hand darting up to clamp around his throat with terrible strength despite her injuries. With a long, grunting growl of pained effort, the big woman lifted Yuri off his feet and took two steps forward, brutally slamming him into the hard, unyielding surface of the Hummer behind him.

Breathing heavily, Corscan let the gasping Russian slide down the side of the Hummer until his feet were under him once more, merely holding him at arm’s length against the heavy vehicle now. As she stepped back and stared at him with cold, remorseless eyes, the near side of her face cast in dark shadow from the hellish fires burning in the distance behind her, Yuri grabbed at her arm feebly with his one good hand, clutching fingers slipping and sliding off smooth skin made slick with blood, and forced his lungs to work through sheer, stubborn willpower.

“[Russian: W-who… what are you?]”

Corscan cocked her head slightly at the harshly wheezed query, her predatory instincts savoring the pain and fear in Yuri’s shaky voice; the desperate panic in his eyes; the rank terror of his scent. Somewhere deep in the back of her head, the more playful aspects of her personality prompted her to growl out; “I’m Batman!” but unfortunately, that impulse was drowned out by the sharply focused pain and ire riding in the forefront of her mind—she was filthy, singed, still had several bullet holes in her, along with at least one actual bullet, and in no mood for humor, gallows or otherwise.

“[Russian: Death.]”

The merciless, wintry declaration hung in the air for a moment, and then, in the blink of an eye, Corscan slammed the heel of her left hand into the center of the Russian mafia boss’ chest, the brutal palm strike caving in his ribcage and rupturing his heart like a piece of rotten fruit. Yuri’s eyes went wide, and then he gave a violent convulsion, his body jerking and trembling as his nervous system was overwhelmed by the massive trauma, while blood welled up from lungs perforated by dozens of splintered ribs, filling his mouth and spilling out over his lips in coughing, gurgling gouts to splatter across Corscan’s thick wrist and run down his chin in dark crimson streams.

Corscan held Yuri up while he gurgled and twitched, staring into his watery blue eyes until the light went out of them before finally releasing him. As the corpse crumpled to the ground, bowels and bladder releasing in death, Corscan turned her back on it and strode out into the middle of the open lot, watching the fires burn as she casually took the rest of the wipes from what was left of her harness and started cleaning the blood and grime from her thick, heavily muscled arms.

As she did, five men came out of the shadows to her right, from the direction of the docks, their movements measured and wary—the Russian gangsters who had been guarding the boats. Two of them carried AK-47s, two had chopped-down AKS-74U carbines, and the one in the middle was apparently unarmed, despite the recent mayhem or the flaming spectacle of carnage before him.

Seemingly oblivious to their cautious approach, Corscan continued cleaning off as she watched the slowly dying flames. It wasn’t until the men got within twenty feet of her that she spoke without even turning her head, flat, hard finality in her matter-of-fact tone.

“It’s done.”

The Russians all came to a staggered halt, the one in the middle foremost. While his companions looked around uneasily, he turned his gaze to the remains of Yuri and his lieutenants, squinting slightly in the dimming light. After a long moment he swallowed noticeably and then turned back to face Corscan.

“Da. You are certain none escaped?” There was the faintest trace of nervousness in his thickly accented monotone.

“No one escaped.” There was no emphasis; Corscan simply stated fact. “Yuri Dragov an’ all those loyal to him are now dead. Congratulations Roman, you’re now the new head of the Dragov syndicate—or should I say, the Nevikov syndicate?”

“It will be Nevikov Family,” Roman boldly declared with a jerk of his head. “I will not make same mistakes Yuri did.”

Corscan dropped the now filthy rags she held and shifted to face Roman, her cold, iron-hard voice matching the sharp, austere gaze she met his with.

“See that you don’t. Yuri Dragov crossed lines he shouldn’t have. Cross those same lines an’ you’ll meet the same end, understood?”

Despite the harsh, brutal way of life he’d been exposed to since early childhood, and the callously vicious, sometimes outright sociopathic men he’d dealt with nearly every day of that life, Roman had to resist the urge to take a step back from the eerie woman before him. He still had no idea who the people who had approached him were, even now, weeks later and after countless discreet, expensive inquires, or how they knew things they should not have known—things there was no way they could have known—but it went beyond that. There was something in her voice… something in her eyes… something she simply radiated that chilled him right down to the bone. Her eyes were the eyes of a predator; of a shark; without mercy or compassion. Uncompromising. And for a wild moment in the growing darkness, he even imagined there was a lambent yellow-green glow about the pupils.

“D-da… da! I understand.” Roman finally responded, his self-assurance rapidly returning as he found his voice once more. “As I said, I will not make same mistakes Yuri did.”

“Good. Then we’re done here.”

Roman nodded, but Corscan paid him no mind, heading off into the night in the direction of the river with her long, lazy stride. As she went, she withdrew a slim, matte gold tube from her harness—the last thing it held actually. Flicking off the top with her thumb, she shook the contents into her left hand and then idly tossed the empty container away. A moment later she brought a long, slender panatela cigar to her lips and lit it with a heavy wooden match, an orange streak shooting out into the darkness as she flicked away the flaming bit of wood afterward.

Inhaling deeply before taking a long drag on the rum-soaked Cuban tobacco, Corscan held the wash of rich flavor in her mouth for a long, indulgent moment before releasing it in a steady, sighing stream of fragrant smoke. A few seconds later the cigar returned to her mouth while she unbuckled the remains of her weapons harness and pulled it from around her waist. By the time she reached the edge of the river, she’d twisted open a cover guard on the buckle and pushed a small button beneath it, triggering a powerful micro-transmitter built into the heavy metal clasp. The encrypted signal served a twofold purpose; it was a backup call for her extraction craft, and more importantly, it set off miniature energy discharges in all the advanced equipment she’d used throughout the operation, discharges that acted as a catalyst for a chemical reaction that quickly reduced everything to misshapen lumps of inert goo, burnt slag, and scattered metal parts.

Sighing for a second time, Corscan tossed away the belt before it started melting all over her fingers, then took another drag on her panatela while looking up at the night sky above the river, not scanning for her incoming transit, but rather simply trying to relax while smoking her cigar and stargazing. Things weren’t quite headed for the breaking point yet, but she could tell it was only a matter of time before they were. Tonight’s operation was a perfect example of how things were starting to stretch thin; a few years ago she would have never needed to scramble to deal with such a minor situation, nor would she have tasked the operation personally, but with current resource allocations the way they were, she’d had no choice but to do the job herself. Even with the forthcoming influx of fresh blood the inductions planned for this year’s gathering would bring—the largest swelling of the ranks in recorded history—the projected manpower requirements would only just be covered, while other resources and materiel would actually be taxed as they’d never been taxed before, thanks to that very same manpower increase.

Corscan sighed yet again as her keen hearing picked up the distant sounds of her approaching evac—even though the craft was running in stealth mode—the lusty exhalation not quite morose, but definitely… wistful. She couldn’t let what she’d dedicated nearly her entire life to become a house of cards, no matter the cost. It was looking more and more like she was going to have to bring the experiment to a premature end, whatever that end might turn out to be…
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Revelations of Destiny