Bloodshot--The Official Movie Novelization

by Gavin G. Smith

  Then he wondered why he was bothering. It was like explaining The Times crossword puzzle to a particularly dull toddler. It was nice when you stopped.

  She tried to move past him but his arm lashed out, hard enough to hurt the adjoining socket at his shoulder. The prosthetic had grabbed her by the body armor and with a cry of exertion he flung her across the room, sending her crashing through tens of thousands of dollars of sophisticated cameras and imaging equipment. She was staggering back to her feet as he advanced on her, pushing up his sleeve for access to the touchscreen control panel on his arm. He brought up the control sequence to her breathing implant and tapped the command to shut it down. Nothing happened. The vents on her implant did not close. Something else that belonged to him, that should have been under his control, failed to behave as it should. He felt like screaming in raw frustration.

  “Like I would let you do that again,” she told him.

  It didn’t make sense – KT didn’t have anything like the skill involved to shut down the command override protocols that he had built into her implant. It didn’t matter now, however, he would drag the answer out of her suffering flesh later. Harting snatched at her with his prosthetic arm again but she dodged out of the way, dropped one of her halothane vapour grenades, grabbed her gear bag on her way out the door and was gone.

  Harting was already starting to feel faint from the halothane vapour. He covered his face with his shirt and, coughing, fled the imaging laboratory.

  CHAPTER 45

  Tibbs could see everything. He was receiving a direct feed from all the security cams in the RST facility. The software that drove his ocular implants took the information overload and translated it into useful information that the human brain could understand.

  Tibbs was watching Bloodshot through one of the CCTV cameras as he emerged from a stairwell, pulling on a stolen top.

  “Seventy-second,” Tibbs said over his tac radio. “Lobby.”

  “On my way,” Dalton replied.

  Tibbs smiled. Dalton had been acting strangely since Bloodshot had dumped him off the roof. Not surprising really. The ex-SEAL had lost his legs once only to have them taken away again. Tibbs could see how that would piss you off. Now, however, Dalton was off the leash and getting to play with all the really cool toys, and a certain marine was about to get his ass handed to him.

  * * *

  Bloodshot made his way cautiously across the corporate minimalist office space toward the bank of elevators. He heard the clicking and whirring first, the sound of powerful servos and hydraulics. Then he saw Dalton as the ex-SEAL rounded the corner at the far end of the lobby. Bloodshot took an involuntary step back. The ex-SEAL was wearing a full exoskeleton. It looked as though he had wrapped himself in a combat robot from a science-fiction film. Bloodshot did not know much about such tech but he appreciated that the exoskeleton would radically improve Dalton’s strength as well as provide the protection equivalent to a light armored combat vehicle. In short, this was not good.

  It got worse.

  Two extra sets of arms unfolded from the back of Dalton’s exoskeleton, stretching out toward the plain white walls. More than ever he looked like a robotic alien insect. Brutish metal fingers gouged grooves in the plaster drywall as the exoskeleton moved toward Bloodshot.

  Dalton dragged one of the exoskeleton’s arms free of its demolition derby, holding it in front of his face as a clenched fist. Compressed gas shot an eighteen-inch steel bolt out of the exoskeleton’s clenched metal fist.

  * * *

  Axe turned to Garrison and squeezed the trigger of the bolt pistol. A six-inch stainless-steel bolt shot out of it.

  * * *

  The steel bolt looked like an extended middle finger.

  Dalton retracted the bolt and then put the metal fist to his own head.

  Bloodshot found himself wishing that Dalton would trigger it, save him some trouble.

  * * *

  When he pushed the gun against Gina’s temple, Garrison started to understand what true desperation really was.

  “Can she handle all six inches?” Axe asked, looking down at her, clearly excited at the prospect.

  * * *

  The thing was, Bloodshot now knew that none of it was real, that it had never happened. It didn’t matter. He had still seen the woman he loved die time and time again. It had been very real to him. Now Dalton seemed to be demonstrating that he knew something about this as well.

  * * *

  Baris put the pistol to her head. Six inches of stainless steel shot through her skull with a sickening crunch and quickly retracted with a snap. And just like that his strong, vibrant, smart, beautiful wife ceased to exist. It took a moment, a moment that stretched into forever as time slowed, forcing Garrison to absorb Gina’s death in excruciating detail. She hit the floor like so much dead meat, another slaughtered carcass.

  Garrison’s world became rage as he tore at the restraints, fighting to break free. He would kill Baris with his bare hands, his teeth, taste the other man’s blood.

  * * *

  Dalton was smiling.

  Bloodshot found himself feeling oddly calm.

  “Yeah, that was my idea,” Dalton told him.

  Bloodshot almost smiled himself. These people didn’t seem to understand the true meaning of motivation. He charged the exoskeleton.

  Bloodshot slid under the first robotic arm. He was up on his feet again, leaping to punch Dalton in the face with a pile-driving fist when the second robot arm caught him with a powerful cross. It felt like he’d been hit with a wrecking ball. It would have killed any normal man. It bounced him off the ceiling. The exoskeleton grabbed him out of the air and slammed him into the ground. Bloodshot rolled to one side as a metal fist cracked the floor where he’d been lying a millisecond before. He heard the pneumatic whoosh as the steel bolt powdered concrete.

  Bloodshot was back on his feet. He gritted his teeth as he broke his own arm parrying a swing from another of the exoskeleton’s robotic arms. The nanites glowed red under his skin as they rapidly repaired the damage. He kicked out hard enough to bend high-tensile steel, sending Dalton and the exoskeleton staggering backward. Ducking under more attempted blows from the exo-arms, Bloodshot rushed forward, reinforced fists swinging again and again, buckling armored metal with every punch. His world was a focused cold white rage. All he could see was a man he wanted to kill. For every blow he landed, however, he took two more, purely because he was outnumbered three to one in the limbs stakes.

  Dalton wrapped his exo-arms around Bloodshot, trying to crush him. Bloodshot cried out, his flesh burning hot as nanites rushed to build muscle mass and he broke free. Then, head down, Bloodshot rushed Dalton like a linebacker blitzing an offensive line. He hit Dalton low in the stomach, lifting the exoskeleton off its feet. Metal arms flailed, gouging rents in the ceiling, the floor and the walls. Bloodshot carried the exoskeleton across the lobby. The two combatants hit one of the elevator doors like a freight train. Metal shrieked, bulged and then tore as they burst through and tumbled into the void.

  Bloodshot felt a brief vertiginous moment as they plummeted down the external glass elevator shaft. Kuala Lumpur spun around him as Bloodshot grabbed for purchase, seemingly imminent death not stopping him from landing blows on Dalton and the exoskeleton. He was a wasp stinging a much larger and more powerful praying mantis as they hit the top of one of the three elevator cars. They were some eight hundred feet above street level. Bloodshot clung onto the exoskeleton with one hand, punching again and again. The nanites strengthened the bones in his hands, reinforcing the knuckles until they were like titanium, denting the exoskeleton’s armor with every impact.

  Then something landed behind him and Bloodshot felt a kick to the kidneys knocking him off Dalton. He continued rolling, avoiding a knife slash. Back on his feet he blocked another knife slash, locking up Tibbs’s hand. The ex-Delta sniper just dropped the anti-nanite knife into his other hand. Bloodshot threw himself back out of the way
of a new attack. Tibbs was good but his blood wasn’t filled with nanites. He didn’t have Bloodshot’s speed. Bloodshot parried another stab, back-fisted Tibbs, staggering him, then kicked him in the stomach and the face in quick succession. Tibbs stumbled back to where Dalton wasn’t so much standing up as unfolding the mess of limbs he’d landed in. Dalton was grinning. Tibbs was catching his breath. Bloodshot wiped the smile off Dalton’s face by charging them. He hit them both hard and carried them over the edge of the elevator car.

  There was more than a little pleasure for Bloodshot hearing the cries of shock from Dalton and Tibbs as the three of them plummeted down the triple elevator shaft in a mass of flailing limbs. Bloodshot knew he had the advantage here. They had taken everything he had to live for. As a result he didn’t care if he lived or died. The street rushed up to meet them but the rising second elevator car broke their fall first. Bloodshot’s bones barely had time to break, his skin barely had time to bruise before the nanites had repaired the damage. He was on his feet, ready, looking for more trouble as the battered Tibbs and Dalton staggered upright.

  “Don’t cross that line,” he told them. Past Dalton and Tibbs, through the thick glass of the triple elevator shaft, the whole futuristic cityscape stretched out below him. This high up Bloodshot felt like he was standing in the bright cerulean sky.

  Dalton stilled himself. He watched Bloodshot as he folded in his extra limbs. Then he paced to one side. Bloodshot mirrored him. They were two apex predators sizing each other up for the challenge. Every movement was precise, deliberate, as they looked for the weakness in the other.

  “We’re just recalling property that doesn’t belong to you,” Dalton told him. He looked like he wanted to remove the nanite-infused blood personally, with his teeth. “You can keep what’s left, no one wants that anyway. No one.”

  That hit home. Bloodshot felt it because Dalton was right. No one did want him. He had never had a family of his own. And Gina...

  You need to focus, he told himself. All that mattered was dealing with these two assholes.

  “You don’t want what I have,” Bloodshot told him.

  “Oh, I do, we’re taking it,” Dalton said. He was too stupid to understand what Bloodshot was telling him, but then all he was, was Harting’s dog. To serve was a good thing, a worthy thing, an honorable thing. To be servile, not so much.

  “Last chance to walk away,” Bloodshot offered, though he knew it was a waste of time. These guys had drunk the Kool Aid a long time before he’d turned up.

  “Good one,” Dalton spat, misunderstanding the offer of mercy as the opportunity for macho repartee. “Tibbs. Fix bayonets.”

  Tibbs was already spinning one of his high-tech knives around his fingers.

  “Don’t,” Bloodshot warned the sniper. He really did not want to get hit by one of those knifes again.

  Tibbs hurled the knife at him. It spun end over end. Bloodshot only just managed to duck under it. The knife hit the concrete of the tower behind him, but the blade had just been a distraction. With a power-assisted leap Dalton bounded across the top of the elevator and landed on him. Bloodshot managed to get his legs between Dalton and himself, the exoskeleton’s chest landing on the soles of Bloodshot’s feet. This made little difference as six limbs swung in to punch him, hard. Bloodshot’s vision filled with light, he felt sick, black unconsciousness swam up to claim him. The awareness provided by the nanites that coursed through his body meant he felt every jackhammer blow of the hydraulic arms as they burst his internal organs. He managed to remain conscious, just. Nanites flooded to his legs, rapidly building muscle mass. Bloodshot heard the sound of the eighteen-inch spikes extending from metal fists. With a scream of rage, Bloodshot kicked up. Dalton flew off the top of the elevator and out into the open shaft. As part of the same motion Bloodshot kipped back up onto his feet and took a swing at Tibbs, but the sniper swayed out of the way and then slashed out at Bloodshot, forcing him into Dalton’s metal foot as the ex-SEAL swung round one of the elevator shaft’s supports, like a spider monkey, and back onto the roof of the elevator car. Tibbs ducked out of the way as power-assisted metal smashed into Bloodshot, ramming him into the tower’s wall on the far side of the shaft. He slid down the reinforced concrete and fell into the elevator shaft.

  CHAPTER 46

  KT strode into the ops center, a grenade in each hand, both of which were emitting a constant cloud of red gas. Eric and the other surprised techs swung around in their seats to look up at her as she walked down between the aisles, the ops center rapidly filling with clouds of the gas. Eric and the other techs fled, coughing, eyes burning, trying to cover their mouths.

  KT kicked open the door to the refrigerated server room. She strode between the humming stacks, gas billowing out from the grenades in each hand until she herself was engulfed in the red haze.

  KT emerged from the haze and back into the ops center. She took out a lighter and flicked it open, sparking the small flame into life before throwing it into the server room. The lighter ignited the gas. The flames flowed through the stacks row by row, turning the server room into an instant raging inferno, before surging for the ops center and KT. Two-inch-thick reinforced-glass safety doors slammed shut a moment before the flames reached KT, sealing the fire inside. The stacks looked like a city amid a sea of flames, a postmodern technological hellscape. KT watched it burn. It was beautiful. It was Harting’s kingdom on fire.

  * * *

  Dalton looked over the edge of the roof of the elevator. He frowned; he had wanted to watch Bloodshot fall. Watch him bounce around in the elevator shaft before hitting the base more than eight hundred feet below, where the training gym was. Then the nanites could try and rebuild the man from the inevitable red paste such an impact would turn him into. The only problem was that Bloodshot was nowhere to be seen.

  The third elevator was ascending toward them. Dalton checked the roof of that elevator but found nothing. Tibbs came to stand beside him. He assumed the sniper was checking the various CCTV feeds. If Tibbs found anything, Dalton knew the sniper would let him know.

  Dalton glanced up at the third elevator car as it passed. Bloodshot was hanging from the bottom of it. He almost growled. Why wouldn’t this asshole just die!?

  He leapt for the steel girders that supported the glass elevator shaft, clambering up them after Bloodshot’s elevator. He moved quickly using all eight of his available limbs, moving like a spider after a particularly irritating fly.

  * * *

  Bloodshot glanced down as Dalton managed to close the distance with the elevator he was riding the hard way. He tried not to think too much about the drop. He assumed that there was some limit to the nanites’ ability to heal him. He knew this was going to be all about timing.

  He waited until Dalton was close, reaching for him with powerful mechanical arms, and Bloodshot swung and let go of the elevator. In that moment he understood fear. There was nothing below him but a very long drop. Nanite-infused killing machine or not, it still felt as though his stomach was trying to climb out of his throat. He almost missed, landing on Dalton’s back, hanging on with one hand, scrabbling for purchase, finding it and quickly scrambling up the exoskeleton as Dalton’s spare arms flailed around trying to grab him. Bloodshot grabbed both of Dalton’s real arms and braced his knees against the back of the exoskeleton. Screaming out with the effort. Every muscle bulging, veins standing out on his arms, his face, the nanites building more muscle mass, causing him to swell, threatening to split his skin, as he tried to wrench Dalton’s arms back. Hydraulics and powerful servos warred with nanite-augmented flesh and muscle. Slowly, however, it worked, Bloodshot pulling Dalton’s limbs back, threatening to dislocate them, though he wanted to snap them like twigs, tear them out of their sockets and club Dalton to death with them. He wasn’t quite sure what his endgame was here, he just wanted, needed to take Dalton down. The ex-SEAL was screaming, trying to bring his own formidable strength to bear, amplified by the exoskeleton, but Bloods
hot had positional advantage. The four insect arms and Dalton’s legs bent, and then with a scream the ex-SEAL threw himself backward as hard as he could over the void, above the elevator that Tibbs still stood on, looking up at the battle.

  The weight and momentum of the exoskeleton mashed Bloodshot against the glass of the elevator shaft, knocking the wind out of him. Dalton’s exo-arms grabbed him and threw him down toward the roof of the elevator, toward Tibbs. Then Dalton pushed himself off the glass and pounced after Bloodshot.

  Tibbs was already moving as Bloodshot hit the top of the elevator hard enough to feel like he’d fused with it. This was despite the nanites trying to bolster the impact areas. It didn’t matter. He was getting up. He hadn’t finished. He had managed to push himself up into a crouch when Dalton landed on him, slamming into him hard enough to shake the car, extra arms trying to pin him down.

  Bloodshot was trying to push back but the weight of the exoskeleton alone, its metal knee in his spine, was enough to keep him where he was. He felt the blades enter his flesh, two of them delivered by Tibbs. He could feel the nanites dying, muscles atrophying, flesh withering. No! He couldn’t go out like this. He had to kill Dalton at least. Bloodshot managed to get purchase with one boot on the roof of the elevator, his remaining nanites bolstering his leg muscles. With another scream of supreme effort, he kicked backward, knocking Dalton back, his flailing limbs catching Tibbs, sending all three of them flying off the roof of the elevator.