By the time Tammy and Avi reach the 76th floor, she’s ruffled his hair so much that it’s nowhere close to looking slicked back anymore. Tammy stopped trying to fix it 40 floors ago.
“850 flights of stairs?” Tammy asks as Avi opens the door to the hallway.
“Easy, no problem. Wouldn’t even break a sweat.”
“Okay, but surely 860 flights, right?” His voice is only slightly winded, while her’s is as steady as can be.
She shakes her head, “the muscles wouldn’t even be sore. I could even carry you over my shoulder!”
Tammy reaches room six, key in hand. “870 flights. Come on, right? Way too much!” Facing the door, he reaches a hand over his shoulder, palm up. The hotel wouldn’t bother installing security cameras this high up, the victim of any crime would just be a human.
Avi reaches into her pocket to grab the pistol and sets it on Tammy’s hand. “I could do 870 before breakfast! What do you mean?”
He unlocks the door. Pistol up, finger on the trigger. “Sure, but how about this?” He moves in, checking his corners. He doesn’t expect anyone to be inside, but it’s better to be careful. “Going up 900 flights of stairs in one sitting. No breaks.”
Avi follows inside, “pfft, just 900? Why not give me a challenge! I could do it.” The hotel room consists of a small hallway to the bedroom, and a door to the bathroom on the right. In the middle of the room is a large bed that faces a massive, pane glass window that stretches across the entire wall, giving a beautiful vista of the nighttime city. To the left of the bed is wooden dresser with a large mirror, and to the right is nothing but empty space before the wall. Every surface is covered in a thin layer of dust, the only time rooms this high up are cleaned is after they’re used, and they’re only used when there’s a business or political convention in the city and every hotel is booked. She stands before the dresser, sets her large black case on top, then takes off her long coat and throws it onto the bed, leaving only her white button up, long sleeve dress shirt, and her black vest with a red tie. Then she moves to the windows.
Tammy heads over to the black case and pops the top, revealing dozens of parts necessary to put together a large sniper rifle. The bolt, scope, barrel, five magazines with eight bullets each, the padded stock, bipod, and a foot-long suppressor. Every piece either screws or slots together like a puzzle. He starts with the receiver and puts the barrel in. “So, Avi, how about this one? One. Thousand. Flights of stairs. Could you do it?”
“Hmm.” Avi stands by the window with her left hand on her hip, and her right hand tapping her bottom lip as her tail sways behind her. “Nah, that’s too much. I’d get bored.” The window gives way to the city. The warm glows of orange and soft yellows illuminate everything from the streets below, to the sides of skyscrapers, to the scattered clouds above. Not a single star is shining, and even the moon seems dim in comparison.
On the other side of the busy street stands two skyscrapers; office buildings that ruin the view from the hotel room. Avi can see their target between those two buildings—the capital of this city and the surrounding region—about two kilometers away. A massive ziggurat cast in an obsidian black, with pure white floodlights illuminating the angled surfaces from below, and gauche banners depicting the personal heraldry of the gurant lord in charge. Standing proudly above the ziggurat is a tall flagpole, with a multi-story, red flag waving in the breeze.
Past the ziggurat is a large port that hooks around a large bay, and on the other side of the bay, about 30 kilometers over the water, is a military base that glows bright white on the horizon. That military base was built somewhat recently to protect this city—a vital logistics hub—against an uprising of swampmen that have been rebelling against the empire for almost a decade.
Tammy flips the rifle upside down to slot the mag well into place behind the trigger, “really? That’s your limit? You could do 900, but you’d get bored with a thousand?”
Avi looks between the ziggurat and the bed, getting the angles correct in her mind. “Probably. If there was a stairwell that really had that many flights, I’d start counting each flight as I go up. Once I got to 900 and still didn’t reach the top, I’d roll my eyes and head back down.” With the correct angle, Avi brings her tail to a spot about two feet up. In a circle about six inches in diameter, Avi discharges a super glue-esq adhesive onto the glass. The serum doesn’t drip and quickly hardens when exposed to air.
Tammy lifts the rifle by the barrel and screws in the tall bipod, then twists the long suppressor until it clicks. “Only 900? You wouldn’t bother making it an even thousand for completion’s sake?”
“Nah, that wouldn’t bother me.” Avi crouches down by the glue circle, loosens her red tie, wraps her hand with her fabric, then launches her fist through the circle. The glass shatters, and her tie prevents the shards from cutting her. The adhesive is so strong, and her punch so quick, that it’s like yanking a tablecloth so fast that the silverware on top doesn’t fall. No crack escapes the adhesive circle.
When Avi pulls her fist out, cold, moist air rushes into the hotel room. Dust is kicked up, the temperature quickly drops, and bedsheets flutter in the wind.
“But what if!” Tammy grabs the finished rifle and backs up, a slight strain in his voice. The sniper is a bone-tail design and meant to be wielded by them. 7 feet long, 60 pounds, sturdy enough for a bone-tail to swing it like a club. Tammy can lift it with no problem, but the weight distribution is awkward. Avi walks over and he hands the gun off, letting her jump onto the bed’s right side and get settled. “What if it’s an infinite staircase, with an endless number of flights. If you reach 500 flights, we’ll hold hands. If you reach 1,000, we’ll hug. And so on and so forth, in increments of 500. How far could you go in a single sitting?”
Avi lays on her stomach, the rifle stock pressed against her right shoulder. Her legs are too long, making her feet hit the backboard, so she bends her knees and softly kicks her feet forward and back as she adjusts the scope. “What number would earn the highest reward?”
Tammy rubs his smooth chin. “50,000 flights and-“
“I would go 50,000 flights.” She slots the suppressor into the six-inch diameter hole, a perfect angle towards the ziggurat.
“You didn’t even hear the prize.” Tammy walks to the foot of the bed and adjusts the bipod’s height for her.
“What’s the prize?” She rubs her feet together to peel off her shoes, then flicks them to the side.
“…I would wake you up in the morning with a kiss. On the cheek.”
Her face is blank, but her tail perks up, the black cord inside the bone segments rigid. She can’t get too annoying; she needs to play it cool. “Like, forever? Or just once?”
Tammy rolls his head left and right. “Forever. Unless if you make me mad the previous night, then I’d skip that morning.”
Avi looks up for a moment, the gears in her head turning, and locks eyes with Tammy as he stands from adjusting the bipod. “What floor are we on?”
“76.”
“What’s 76 divided by 50,000?”
“Some really small decimal point. A lot less than one.” Tammy walks to the sniper case to pull out a set of binoculars, a special bullet, and two curved earplugs.
Avi rolls her ruby eyes, “what’s 50,000 divide by 76?”
Tammy crawls onto bed, on his stomach, his right shoulder and thigh pressed against her. His legs are also a little too long, so he bends his knees as well, and kicks off his shoes. Avi keeps swinging her feet over to rub against his socks. “Six hundred and fifty… Eight? Nine? Something like that. Round up to 660.”
She looks through the scope, trying to downplay her excitement, but her tail betrays her inner excitement by rattling wildly. “I would, right now, abandon this mission and climb up and down the height of this building 660 times in a row without stopping to eat or drink or sleep or anything.” She frowns internally as her tone sounded a bit too desperate.
“Well… don’t. I worked hard on planning this operation.”
She wants to continue this train of thought and maybe get him to commit to the idea, but she can’t. The conversation flows to another topic. She slips her tail over and pats his back with the flat side, “congrats, by the way! I knew you could do it.”
He smiles warmly, “thanks.”
“Also, whaaaat exactly are we doing here?”
“…” His smile fades and he turns to her. “Really?”
“Yep,” she turns her head to meet his gaze, their faces mere inches apart. “I would, in fact, like to know what we’re doing. I know it has to do with the pyramid, but I don’t know the specifics.”
“Well, first of all, that’s a ziggurat.”
“The difference being?”
Tammy takes the binoculars and looks out. “A pyramid is a three-dimensional triangle with a point at the top. A ziggurat is a stepped platform structure, with each tier smaller than the one beneath it.” The ziggurat they’re watching is 30 stories tall and encompasses 36 square blocks. City regulations demand that no structure within a one-kilometer radius from the ziggurat can be over four stories tall, giving the ziggurat this ominous, monolith look, like it’s a scar upon the city. “Target is 1.6 kilometers out.”
“That sounds a lot like a pyramid.” She reaches up to adjust her scope, “1.6 kilometers.”
“It’s not. But anyway, fuck off, you’re not tricking me again. I was standing there, giving the briefing, and I was watching you. Your eyes were open the whole time.”
“Aww, you were watching me?”
“Yes, so I know for a fact that you were listening.” He points forward, “the flag up top.” The flag is solid red, but in the center, in the shape of a triangle, are three solid black stars arranged in a triangle, six points on each. “Aim for the bottom point of the top star.”
Avi adjusts her aim. “Nope,” she smiles softly, waving her tail. “I practiced sleeping with my eyes open so grandpa wouldn’t beat me.”
Tammy rolls his eyes, then grabs his two orange ear plugs. “How about you practice staying awake,” he mumbles. “You want any?”
“But if I pay attention to the briefing, I’ll miss out on you giving me a one-on-one lesson! And no thanks. I’m a, ah, proper bone-tail. I don’t need something like that.”
He puts the earplugs in, “good, since I didn’t bring you a pair.” That’s a lie. He wanted to be prepared even though he knew there was no chance of her accepting.
“Aww…”
He looks through his binoculars again. “I still think that’s bullshit by the way. You were listening.”
Avi pulls the trigger. The recoil of such a heavy sniper rifle smashes against her well-developed shoulder. The bed frame creaks; the concussive force knocks away raindrops still clinging to the outside of the window. Her ears ring from the blast, even if the suppressor cuts a lot of noise. “I can’t believe you’re calling me a liar.” She reaches up with her right hand and pulls back the bolt, ejecting a hot, steaming bullet case which lands on the floor to her right. When she pushes the bolt forward, it sends a new bullet into the chamber.
Tammy’s voice remains perfectly steady. “Looking for the hole… There. It’s about five feet down, and a foot and a half to the left.”
“Adjusting,” Avi twists a dial on the top of the scope, raising the sights a little.
Tammy’s voice suddenly peaks, “yes, I’m calling you a liar! No way you didn’t listen, you know exactly-“ Avi shoots again, and Tammy waits for the echo to die down. “-how excited I was to plan an operation!” His voice turns steady again as he looks for the bullet hole, “a tad higher.”
Avi twists the dial another click. “Oh. Is that what you were acting so smug about these past few days? I kept asking questions, but you were rudely brushing me off.”
“Weeks, actually. And I didn’t brush you off.”
Avi pulls the trigger again, then adjusts her voice to perfectly mimic Tammy’s. “Hurrdurr, I’m Tammy, a big-shot psychic prodigy-“
Tammy frowns, “my voice isn’t nearly that sexy.”
She adds a nasally flare to his voice, “-sorry babe-“
“Babe?”
“-I can’t come to the hammock; I’m too busy planning an op for the kill team. What? Eat lunch? Sorry toots-“
“I have never once called you ‘toots’.”
“Breakfast is old school, I gots ‘ta plan some suuuuuper important operation and it’s occupying aaaaall my time!”
He looks over at her and cocks her head. “You just switched from lunch to breakfast.”
“Hey, sugar tits-“
“What the fuck?”
“-your husband’s a pretty big deal! I’m operating the kill team! Look at these charts! Actually, don’t look at them, you’re too stupid to help me plan.” Avi pulls the trigger.
Tammy looks through the binoculars, and there’s a small tear just below the bottom point of the top star. “Dead on.” He lowers his binoculars to look at Avi, “and, well, I wouldn’t have put it so bluntly.”
Avi clears her throat and returns her voice to normal. “But you did put it non-bluntly. Don’t blame me for not knowing when you didn’t tell me anything.”
“But…” He narrows his brow, “since we’re going to pretend like those were accurate conversations, that means I did tell you, multiple times, that I was planning an operation. I just never gave you any specifics because I was still planning it. So, you knew how excited I was, yet fell asleep during my briefing anyway. You were just being spiteful.”
“Well, who can say?”
“You can-“
“Anyway! So what am I doing?”
Tammy sighs and shakes his head. He still thinks Avi was listening, but there’s no point arguing. “The kill team is split into three squads. We’re squad cervical. Our job is to stay in this building and shoot at any evac helicopters that try to land on the roof.”
“Makes sense. What about lumbar and coccyx?” She works hard to suppress a smile, knowing that Tammy won’t realize she just gave away that she was, in fact, listening to her husband give the presentation he worked so hard on.
“Squads Lumbar has the role of-“ just as he says it, the city outside goes dark. One block at a time, out, out, out, the city is left in pure darkness, save for the headlights from cars on the roads.
Avi raises an eyebrow. “They set the power grid to explode?”
“Yep!” Tammy’s voice breaks into a rare giggle.
Seeing him so happy sends a deep warmth through her chest. “And I guess before the ziggurat’s backup generator turns on, Squad… whatever the other word was, will set off-“
A bright light flashes from the ground floor of the ziggurat, flames rising above the nearby streets, with a visible shockwave traveling for at least 100 meters in all directions before dissipating. There’s about five seconds before the sound of the explosion hits them. In that time, Tammy clenches his jaw, narrows his brow, and moves his hands over to cover his wife’s ears. He’s wearing earplugs and knows she’s far too stubborn to protect herself.
The deep PHUUM hits hard, rumbling the entire hotel like an earthquake. The epicenter is turned to molten slag, creating a deep, burning crater where it went off. Any poor fool manning the guard outpost of the ziggurat was vaporized instantly. It’s an effective statement of intent, signaling the start of the operation.
Avi glances to Tammy and continues. “-set off some sort of bomb to signal the attack.”
Tammy’s face is twisted in pure bliss, “exactly!” Hands still on her ears, Tammy pulls her over to kiss her forehead, then pushes her head back over to the rifle.
“Heeheeehee,” she giggles messily.
“Squad Coccyx-“
Avi’s smile fades, her eyes round, and her tail perks, “I’m sorry?”
“Fuck you, it’s clever, I came up with the names myself. The three squads are named after bones in the spine. We’re cervical, which is near the head, and we’re sniping anybody who tries to escape via the roof, like a decapitation strike. The lumbar holds up the back, like backbone, like how the power grid is the backbone of the city and its defenses, hence why Squad Lumbar is taking out the ‘lumbar’ of the city for this operation. The coccyx is the tailbone, which your tail grows out of, which has a sharp needle on the end, which is like a surgical tool, which is why Squad Coccyx is going into the ziggurat with surgical precision and killing all the high ranking generals and officers that are currently having a staff meeting to conduct the logistics for the ongoing war against our clients. It makes total sense.” The Barabba Tribe’s clients, the swampmen uprising, sent the time and location of this meeting a month and a half ago. Tammy, between other Kill Team operations, spent almost all of his free time planning every aspect of this mission down to the tiniest detail, with over 200 contingency plans written in a large booklet given to each member.
Tammy stares at her with his big blue eyes, scowling.
Avi stares back, and gives him a soft, reassuring smile. She brings her tail around and gently pats his shoulder. “That’s very intelligent, Tammy. You’re a super-duper smart fellow.”
He rolls his eyes and goes back to his binoculars, “whatever.”
“Listen, I wasn’t even questioning the naming scheme, you dope! You can’t just throw words around like ‘coccyx’ and assume I have any idea what the heck you’re talking about. I 100% thought you were making a dirty joke.”
“No, it’s a spine thing. You should have realized that because of lumbar and cervical.” The ziggurat lights up as the backup generator kicks on. Bright spotlights flash brilliantly into the sky, switching rapidly between red and blue, illuminating the clouds above in a warning signal. “Anyway,” he taps her shoulder with the back of his hand, “roof.
Avi quickly looks through the scope and shifts her gaze to the rooftop. “You also assumed I knew what cervical means. Lumbar? Sure, that’s like a back thing. But cervical? That sounds like cervix. And coccyx… you know.”
Tammy frowns. He reaches back to her discarded coat, grabs the pistol, then presses the suppressor against her temple. “Gun to your head, one chance: tell me exactly what and where the cervix is.”
Avi pauses. Then she purses her lips. She rocks her head side to side. “Uh… It’s… O-oh! Look! People on the roof! Focus on that, please.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Tammy tosses the pistol onto the dresser and grabs his binoculars, looking across the city. “As if you’d know basic anatomy,” he grumbles.