by M. R. Forbes
“Predictable,” Cyrus said, grabbing her from behind and putting a microspear to her back. “It seems the adage is true. If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”
He sank the spear into her.
Cyrus lowered Camila’s body to the floor. Then he wiped the spear off on her clothes, returning it to his belt. He stared down at her for a moment, a flash of guilt washing through the small part of his mind that could still feel. It wasn’t her fault Shurrath had underestimated Isaac. Ike might have been an MP, but he could have just as easily gone into the Ranger program with his skills and intelligence. It was his family that had kept him grounded.
Cyrus knew how family could be. How they could hold you back. How you could know they were holding you back and still leave you happy about it.
It didn’t matter. Shurrath’s will was iron. And after two hundred years, Shurrath’s will was his will. Shurrath’s goals were his goals. They were one and the same, Shurrath and him. Like brothers. Like twins.
Family could hold you back.
But they could also set you free.
Chapter 28
“It is ready,” Max said. “Hahaha. Haha.”
Hayden lifted his head and opened his eyes, looking up at the Intellect from his position on the floor. He wasn’t sure how long he had been sitting there, dozing against the opposite wall of the vault, much less how long he’d been waiting for Max to turn the Skin into something he could use. A day? Two?
And now Max was done.
“That’s it?” Hayden asked, his eyes landing on the Skin. It was hanging off the edge of the workbench. If he didn’t know better, he would have said it was a Centurion Marine bodysuit—a light black, nearly skin-tight body armor—typically worn for missions where agility and stealth were more valuable than protection.
“It will stretch,” Max replied.
Hayden stood up. He didn’t understand the statement until he realized it was much smaller than him. He wasn’t the paunchy, slightly overweight and out of shape Sheriff of Metro he had been a year ago, but it would still have to stretch a lot.
“Take off your clothes,” Max said.
“Everything?” Hayden asked.
“Affirmation.”
Hayden began by removing his bandoliers, his belt and holsters, and then his shirt and pants. He unclasped the combat armor beneath, getting himself out of it and down to his underwear. Then he took that off too.
Max ran his finger down the front of the suit. It parted at his touch, opening enough to allow Hayden to get into it. The Intellect held out the Skin.
“Put your legs in first, and then pull it up over your arms. Cross the front over itself and press down on it to complete the seal.”
Hayden did as Max told him, putting his legs into the Skin first. The inner material was soft and sleek, and it stretched and molded itself around his body, literally leaving him feeling as though he were wearing a second skin.
“I can put the combat armor over this,” he said.
“If you don’t want to use the projection cells,” Max replied. “But then, that is the reason you require the Skin, is it not?”
“It is,” Hayden answered. “So I have to walk around naked?”
“You aren’t naked. You’re wearing a Skin.”
Hayden finished pulling it over his arms, stretching it in the center until he could press it down. The material adhered to itself, sealing the system.
“I assume I can’t use my claws through this?” Hayden said.
“Affirmation. It’s preferential for you to refrain from damaging the Skin. There is extra material on the back of your neck, grab it and pull it up and over your head, and then down to the collarbone.”
“Over my head?”
“Affirmation.”
“Won’t I suffocate?”
“There are easier ways for me to kill you. Hahaha. Haha.”
Hayden did as Max said, grabbing the extra material and stretching it over his scalp. As expected, he couldn’t see through the material, and he nearly let go and gave up as a result.
“Keep going,” Max said, sensing his hesitation.
He brought the Skin past his neck, pressed it to his collar. Immediately, it tightened up against his chin and neck, nearly causing him to panic. He grabbed at the Skin, searching for the seam and struggling to find it.
He stopped squirming when the darkness faded, offering him a clear view of the world beyond the Skin. Confused, he put his fingers to his face, running them along the outer shell of the Axon material.
“The Skin has many properties, but I only had time to convert basic controls for human interaction. The most important is the ability to use the projection cells. To do that, you will need to scan another entity. It is important to understand the system will not alter your size. Instead, it will interpolate the differences and scale the scan to your current vertical dimension.”
“So no matter who I scan, it will be the same height as I am?”
“Affirmation.”
“How do I scan?”
“Look at something, and then blink your left eye twice. Only your left eye.”
Hayden looked at Max, blinking twice. A red beam extended from the Skin, quickly sweeping over the Intellect.
“What an Intellect does intuitively, you will need to do manually,” Max said. “Blink your right eye twice to activate the projection. When you want to change the projection, blink your right eye three times. It will cycle through existing scans. Blink your right eye four times to turn it off completely.”
“Easy enough,” Hayden said.
He blinked his right eye twice. He didn’t feel anything, but when he looked down at his arm he could see it matched the color and shape of Max’s human shell, though it was visibly smaller. He blinked twice more. The projection changed again.
“Amazing,” Max said.
Hayden couldn’t see himself clearly, but from looking down it appeared he was wearing a dress more suitable for a much different time period. The ruffled sleeves went all the way to his wrists, while the equally ruffled skirt spread out in a hoop around him.
He tried to pass his hand through the dress, knowing it was projecting almost twenty centimeters from his body. His hand met resistance, the projection reacting as though he was really touching the material.
“You said—”
“I said vertically,” Max said. “The cells can project outward up to one meter around. A passive tension field activates to mimic the resistance. The technology is designed to be as convincing as possible, which would be difficult if it couldn’t pass a simple test. You are a very pretty girl, Sheriff. Hahaha. Haha.”
Hayden blinked again, revealing another scan of a man dressed in a suit that fit the same period as the dress. He wondered how many scans the original Intellect had taken, and across what length of time. Max had said both the Axon and the Relyeh had been on Earth long before the trife arrived. He could hardly wrap his head around that idea, but the scans seemed to prove the statement was true.
“There is one more thing. You will like it.”
“What is it?”
“Blink your left eye four times to activate the shields.”
“Shields?” Hayden said. He blinked four times. The entire Skin began to crackle with blue energy.
Max stepped forward without warning, throwing a quick jab that hit Hayden in the face.
He didn’t feel a thing. A flash of blue in front of him collected the force of the attack, leaving him unharmed. At the same time, a line on his HUD sank slightly, reflecting the power drain.
“The tension field also doubles as a force field when provided enough power. The system absorbs the kinetic energy of the attack, but it still uses more than it can collect,” Max said. “Do not waste it.”
“You’re the one who punched me. Will it stop bullets? Plasma?”
“It will stop anything as long as it has power.”
Hayden blinked again, turning the shields
off. “I’m impressed.”
“You should be. Hahaha. Haha.”
“How do I take it off my head?”
“Pull from the face. It will release.”
Hayden grabbed the material and pulled. It separated from where he had connected it, and he lowered the cowl back to the base of his neck.
“Nice work, Max,” he said. It didn’t exonerate the Axon AI from murdering Rain, but it was something.
“Appreciation.”
Hayden bent down and started collecting his discarded clothes. The Skin didn’t have anywhere to keep guns, but he assumed he could wear it with his holster and ammo belts on top, and Max didn’t try to stop him when he began putting them on.
His head shifted slightly, looking back at the portal in the rear of the room as his hand found the key rod. Had the Centurions discovered their exit was cut off? He gripped the rod a little more tightly. This was war, and as Sheriff it was his responsibility to keep his people safe.
“We’re done here,” he said. “Let’s go.”
Chapter 29
The motorcycle’s fuel gauge was sitting on empty as Grace passed through the long-abandoned booths that had once served as the border between the United States and Mexico—two countries that had both vanished over two centuries ago.
Dirty and rusted, dust-covered and stuffed with the husks of long abandoned cars, it was a reminder of the worst part of better days. In the age of the trife, the Hunger and the Axon, the whole concept of borders, barriers and conflict between humans seemed so pointless. A waste of a precious and limited resource.
A resource still being abused. There was strength in unity, but it was hard to find, both on the ground between the different settlements beyond the borders of the United Western Territories and off-world in the form of Proxima Centauri. Would they ever find common ground before it was too late?
Grace wanted to believe they could. She wanted to believe Sheriff Duke’s ideals would spread across the planet. She wanted to think she could make a difference.
Right now, that belief was hard to maintain.
She had stopped at the warehouse north of Dego, where she and Cain slaughtered deputies and farmers alike. She didn’t want to stop there, but the bike had run low on fuel and she knew they had a refill. There was a team on site, another squad of UWT deputies and volunteers working to restore the farms and keep the supply lines moving. She had shown them Natalia’s badge and talked them into giving her fuel. She had gone on her way as though nothing was amiss.
As though she wasn’t the one who had killed all those people.
The experience had gnawed at her, only growing more intense when she crossed the interstate that bypassed Dego. The city was gone. Dead.
And she had helped kill it.
The anger stayed with her as she continued south to her present position, more desperate than ever to find her way to her father.
She had initially entered Dego because she had gotten wind that Shurrath’s recruiter, Dodge, was headed to Tijuana to meet with Cyrus, and had likely stopped there for a day or two in advance of the meet. She had planned to trail Dodge to the meeting and confront her father afterward in private. Of course, Cain had ruined that plan, tracking her west at a faster pace than she believed the big man could cover.
She had miscalculated his tenaciousness, and she had paid for it with her life.
Almost.
She was free again. No doubt Shurrath hadn’t expected her to survive the wound he had delivered through Rain’s hands. While she had underestimated Cain, he had underestimated both her will to live and Sheriff Duke’s abilities to heal her. And then he had chosen to ignore her while he leveled the city of Haven.
She would make him pay for that.
For Dego.
For everything.
Without killing him.
She was still working on exactly how she would make that happen, but she already knew that for a Relyeh ancient like Shurrath, captivity would be a fate worse than death.
The motorcycle started to sputter as she made her way past the border crossing and along the highway, still picking her way through the vehicles that had been left behind as people from Mexico tried to flee the trife by heading to the United States, and people from the United States had tried to run to Mexico. There had been nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide.
There were skeletal remains in some of the cars—victims of the virus. There were probably more remains all over the area from people who had gotten out of their cars and tried to run with no real destination in sight.
When the trife had come, it didn’t matter who was American or who was Mexican. People died the same wherever they happened to be.
Grace made it another quarter of a mile before the bike gave out completely, the engine stalling and bringing her to a stop. She dropped the kickstand and dismounted, grabbing her gear and loading it onto her back. She was traveling heavier than she had in the past, and she thought about lightening her load by discarding some of the extra guns and ammo and deciding against it. The equipment was valuable barter if nothing else.
She started walking, eyes narrowed, attention focused on the road ahead. Anger still burned in her as intensely as it had on the day she awoke from stasis to find centuries had passed, her father and Shurrath long gone. Back then, the anger was for what she had personally lost.
When she had gone out of the Dugway facility and into the end of the world, she had been disaffected by what she discovered. She had already known what to expect. The writing had been on the wall before Doctor Valentine ever sent her father through the portal. They wouldn’t have been racing to build starships to get the hell off the planet if they had believed it could be saved.
Now the anger was for what the masses had lost and for what the survivors might still lose who had survived the hell Earth had become. It motivated her, driving her forward, one step after another, down from the highway and into the remains of the city.
And when the masked robbers appeared around her, it drove her to unflinching violence.
Chapter 30
They came out from behind piles of rubble and the shadowed doorways of a pair of collapsed buildings. Eight in all, they were dirty and disheveled, their faces obscured by rags wrapped around everything but their eyes. Three of them carried visible firearms, an old AK-47 and a pair of single-shot hunting rifles. The others had makeshift weapons in their hands. A metal bat with nails hammered through it, a heavy steel pipe, a large wrench, a long rusted hunting knife.
Maybe with a different traveler, they would have been intimidating or frightening.
Maybe they could have shaken a different traveler down for whatever items of value they were carrying.
But Grace wasn’t a traveler.
She was a Ronin.
And she was already in a bad mood.
She stopped walking as they emerged around her, quickly closing ranks to leave her in the middle of a wide circle. The dirtbag with the AK took a couple of extra steps forward.
“Drop the pack,” he said. “It’s ours now.”
Grace turned to face him. “What if I don’t?”
“You’re a pretty girl,” he replied, leveling the rifle at her. “I wouldn’t want to see you get hurt.”
She smiled. “You should be more concerned about yourself and your crew.”
The rest of the dirtbags laughed.
“I’m not going to tell you again,” the man said. “Drop the pack and walk away, and you won’t get hurt. Refuse, and the boys among us will have some fun with you before we go. You get my meaning, puta?”
“Loud and clear,” Grace replied, slipping the pack off her shoulders. “Semper Fidelis.”
“Semper what?” the man said.
Grace’s hand found the sidearm at her hip, pulling it from its holster and firing in one easy movement. “Fidelis,” she said as the round hit the dirtbag in between the eyes. He stiffened straight, freezing there for a moment before collapsing. “It’s the motto
of the United States Marine Corps,” she explained, swinging the weapon toward the next scum with a gun.
He tried to aim and fire. Too late. Three rounds hit him square in the chest, knocking him down.
“My father was a Marine,” she said, holstering the weapon and pulling a pair of microspears from her belt as the rest of the dirtbags moved in. “He taught me how to fight.”
The guy with the bat took a hefty swing, catching only air as she ducked beneath it and stepped forward, driving the micro spear up and into his stomach. It extended into him, slicing open his organs before she yanked it back out and rolled over his back, catching the arm of the woman with the knife and twisting. She broke the woman’s arm before slashing the spear across her neck. Throwing the dead woman aside, she jumped back to avoid the wrench. She tossed a spear into the man’s chest. He screamed and fell dead.
She took a blow from the pipe across her back, letting that man put her down to the ground. He tried to pounce but she rolled away. The pipe hit the asphalt, leaving the dirtbag completely open. She came up, stabbing another microspear into his ear and pulling it out as he collapsed, dead before he hit the ground.
A gunshot sounded too close, the bullet scraping past her. She found the shooter two meters away, trying to track her movement. A quick flick of her wrist sent a microspear across the distance and into his throat, killing him too.
Another bat nearly hit her in the head, but she threw herself sideways in time to avoid it, landing on her back with her sidearm in hand. She fired into the guy as he moved over her, rolling aside as his body toppled forward, almost on top of her. She bounced to her feet, turning to face the remaining attacker—a woman.
“Wait,” the woman said, dropping her knife. “Please.”
“Do you live here?” Grace asked.
“What?” the woman replied.
“Tijuana. Do you live here? Or are you a roving band of idiots?”
The woman reached up, pulling off the makeshift headscarf and revealing herself as much older than Grace expected. Fifty at least, judging by the graying hair and wrinkles.
