by J. N. Chaney
“Listen very carefully, Doc. I used to be a Reaper. They put me on death row and brought me out just for this mission. On the off-chance I succeed, I might be a free man, or at the very least reinstated. What do you think this does for my motivation?”
“Well, I imagine it would make you very motivated. But that’s not the right answer, is it? This is a trick question,” he said.
“Very good, Doc. I’ve been prepared to die for a long time, but that doesn’t mean I’m suicidal or reckless. What it does mean is that there are certain causes that are important to me, and I’m not afraid to give up the ghost if it means succeeding.”
“I don’t see where you’re going with this.”
“I want to know what you’re doing here and how it involves your daughter. No bullshit. If the only reason the Union wants your kid is to use her as leverage to force your good behavior, I might be able to allow that, even though I don’t like it. If it’s something more sinister, then we’re going to have a problem.”
“We had three successful test subjects in the Lex Project. Three out of several hundred. They’re gone—I had nothing to do with their escape, but the Union doesn’t believe me. They want them back. That’s more than I should have told you, and they’d probably kill me if they find out I said so much.”
“You know where they are,” I said, studying his expression.
He looked away. “What do you want from me?”
“I want to know what type of man you are. Are you trying to protect them? How far are you willing to go?”
He didn’t answer. It looked like the doctor was going to vomit or pass out, maybe both.
Elise returned a few seconds later, hand on her hip and looking annoyed. “What are you two going on about?”
Grady whistled, drawing our attention to his post near the perimeter of the little alcove. “I think it’s time.”
I leaned in close to Hastings. “We’re not done, Doc.”
“No, I imagine we’re not,” he muttered.
I wished I had more time to interrogate him. He didn’t understand how much trouble he was in. What he shared with me was more than enough to earn him a visit from a Reaper, if there were any left.
Would I kill him if Grady gave me the order? Probably not. Sure, he was pretentious and overbearing, not to mention weak, but those were hardly capital crimes. He also had a daughter and I wasn’t in the mood to destroy a family.
Grady and I came together for a quick tactical conference before heading back into the subway passage. I caught him looking at the doctor and suspected he knew a lot more than he was telling me.
The only sensible course of action was to pretend I didn’t know what I knew. We’d have our own showdown before long. I only hoped it didn’t require one of us to die.
10
“NO, YOU CAN’T HELP ME,” I said, cursing that I had ever thought the kid had skills.
“You need a second set of eyes. You’re getting tired. That means you’re going to make a mistake,” Elise said. “It makes more sense for my father to stay close to Grady, and me with you. If something happens, and we get split up, we both have protection.”
“It’s not about you, kid. In fact, a lot of people would rather I leave you behind. You don’t even matter.”
“Are you trying to hurt my feelings? That was just rude,” she said, planting a hand on one hip.
“If you’re not going back, then pay attention. What was in that side passage?”
She crossed her arms and gave me that annoyed look that was so universal to teenagers no matter what system they hailed from. “A pile of junk. Some boxes people are probably living in and a pushcart. Probably not any guns, because they have a big fireman’s axe propped up like the sight of it would scare somebody off.”
That was actually way better than I thought she’d do, but I was not about to tell her that.
“How many people were watching us from that pile of boxes and trash?”
She glanced over her shoulder, doubting herself for the first time during this conversation. “I… didn’t see anyone.”
“Two people. One under the blankets. Another further back in the shadows.”
“There’s no way you saw that,” she said, uncrossing her arms and taking a step forward defiantly.
I pointed to my left eye. “I’ve got Reaper enhancements.”
“Whatever. You’re not a Reaper.” When I didn’t say anything, she straightened. “Wait, are you really?”
I heard engines revving and men shouting. The corridor had long curves that followed the ring of the space station.
“Grady, give me an update,” I hissed.
Grady rushed forward with the doctor in tow. “We’ve got about a dozen RSG tough guys hot on our heels. One gun-car, two troop transports packed to overflowing, and a flatbed with a cage. They’re driving on the tracks; looks like the vehicles were designed that way,” he said. “I dropped back far enough to hear some arguing. They’re not happy to be down here. I think the phrase ‘let’s just kill ‘em and leave before the crazies get us’ might have been said fifty times.”
“The leader told them to take us dead or alive,” Hastings said.
“Yeah, Doc. I was summarizing. They also said they wanted your daughter back in the cage. Or did you forget about that? They said if they go back to Slab without her, they’d all wish the crazies were eating them alive.”
“How could I forget that?” the doctor asked.
I interrupted, not wanting to get drawn into a time-wasting argument. “Let’s tighten up and start looking for a way back to the surface or a side tunnel not full of sleeping crazies.”
“Good call,” Grady said, massaging his leg and looking back toward the sound of the combustion engines without mufflers. “Don’t wait for me. I’ll catch up.”
Half a kilometer later, I realized the passage was blocked, buried in rubble. We were now facing a T-intersection.
“How could there be a collapse without collateral damage?” Elise asked.
I pointed toward one of the skid-steers with magnetic wheels and an oversized shovel. “Nothing collapsed. Someone piled all this crap here for a reason.”
“Which way do we go?”
“I’d like to go to the right, because I think that’s a more direct route but—” I paused, not sure of what I was seeing in infrared and wishing I had confirmation. There was a sound coming from that direction I didn’t like but couldn’t identify.
Elise heard it and backed away.
I held up a hand to quiet everyone. It was light at first, but slowly grew with each passing moment.
Takka takka takka.
Takka takka takka.
Takka takka...
A mass of bodies surged toward us, causing everyone to spring back.
We’d found a major population center for the crazies. I also realized someone had been trying to block that tunnel.
“Grady, we need to double-time our asses out of here!” I barked.
The spec ops officer shoved the doctor ahead of him in the only direction left to us.
Elise and I passed them, racing forward to look for the next goat fornication we were bound to encounter.
“How much farther?” Elyse asked, a note of fear creeping into her voice.
The RSG caravan rounded the corner somewhat laboriously on the tracks, but immediately started firing weapons in both directions. The heavy machine gun roared to life, sending a stream of death into the charging cannibals.
Elise started laughing crazily.
“I’d love to know what’s so funny,” I said, not finding anything remotely humorous.
“It wouldn’t make sense. Hard to explain,” she said, her voice almost rambling, she was talking so quickly. “I was just wondering what else these freaks ate beside each other for there to be so many of them, you know? It’s just so ridiculous that there are so many of them and they’re all so insane.”
“And that’s funny?” I asked.
&
nbsp; “I-I don’t know. I’m a little stressed, alright? Is that what you want to hear?” she exclaimed, her voice rising several decibels and heading for shrill.
“Shh,” I warned. “Stop here. Keep your eyes open the way we’re headed. Grady and your father can’t keep up this pace.”
Men on the lead RSG vehicle opened fire with rifles, pistols, shotguns, and at least one crossbow. The bolt looked like a laser beam flashing past my infrared vision.
If I left my principal and the others behind, escape wouldn’t be difficult. I could run much faster in the lowlight than they could, and I wasn’t worried about breaking my leg when I fell due to the carbon fiber sheeting around my bones.
I wanted to shoot back but didn’t want to give them an easier target. Maybe a crossbow that didn’t have a muzzle flash wasn’t such a bad idea.
“Grady, how is your leg?”
He and the doctor stopped briefly when they reached my position.
“Hurts like a son of a bitch, but I’ll manage. Something’s different about this area. It’s cleaner,” he noted, looking around.
“We’re getting clear of the area controlled by cannibals. Sooner or later, we have to reach the vehicle these tracks were made for,” I said. “Catch up to Elise and keep going no matter what.”
“You don’t have explosives,” Grady said.
“I don’t need much, just that right there from your vest. Taking out these rails will slow them down.”
He handed over two small bundles of plastic explosives from the left side of his kit. I reached into his right leg pocket and pulled out the detonators that needed to be attached to make the breaching charges go off.
I took off, letting the others continue on without me while I set the charges.
Working quickly, I found a seam in the rails and strategically packed the breaching charges underneath it. I wasn’t sure how much it would take to dislodge the tracks or whether it would be enough to prevent the vehicles from continuing, so I put it all in one place and adjusted the fuse.
It was a simple setup designed to operate in almost any environment.
It felt good to run flat out, and soon I’d caught up with the rest of my group.
Then I hit the switch.
The explosion boomed, flashing over fifty meters behind us and throwing shadows on the ceiling.
The RSG trucks plowed onward, grinding their wheels across the support beams for the rails. My demolition work wasn’t going to stop them, but it slowed them down.
Men from the lead vehicle fired in frustration. Grady was struck a second time, right in the middle of his back armor. A round pierced his backpack easily but was stopped by the carbon weave panel underneath.
“You’re just a lucky bastard today,” I said, helping him up and urging him forward.
“I really thought getting kicked around was your job,” he groaned.
“Come on!” I dragged him forward, forcing him to pick up the pace. “Elise, have you ever fired a gun?”
“Hell no!” Grady said through clenched teeth. “You’re not giving the kid my weapons.”
“It can’t be that hard,” Elise said.
I took Grady’s pistol and handed it to the girl, who looked younger than ever with it in her hands. She dropped it, swore like a soldier, and snatched it back up.
“That’s for if Grady and I die. There aren’t enough rounds in it to waste right now.”
Grady pulled away from me, showing Elise how to switch on the safety and where to hide it in her Dreadmax jumpsuit. “Don’t drop it again.”
She rolled her eyes like he’d said something unreasonable.
“Get your father moving. Grady, can you make it, or do you need my help? I’m the only one strong enough for you to lean on and still run.”
“Fuck off. I’m good to go.”
“You look it,” Elise sneered, turning away from us to grab her father’s arm and push him faster.
THE RSG THUGS KEPT COMING, stopping to fire blindly every chance they got. Maybe they thought they could see us, but I had doubts they could hear us. The vehicles were too loud, made even more so by the way they slammed over the support structures to the rails. Muzzle flashes revealed their progress in the gloom.
Grady moved like a champ despite his injuries. Doctor Hastings struggled, rarely looking up, and sweating so much I started to worry about finding drinkable water. Ten days of rest and recuperation wouldn’t hurt the man either.
“Damn, Grady, do you have some good drugs you want to share with the rest of us?” He was tough, but I couldn’t reconcile what I was seeing. It was like the first day of Reaper selection when we all pushed our bodies beyond what humans were meant to endure.
Doctor Hastings answered before my old friend could lie to me. “I think he’s one of the soldiers who received the genetic modifications from one of our sister projects. I was told they were doing field trials.”
“Try not to speculate on shit you know nothing about, Doc,” Grady said, checking his gear and avoiding eye contact. “If that were true, it would be classified.”
I waved a hand for them to shut the hell up. “At this point, I couldn’t care less why you’re keeping up with me, so long as you don’t suddenly quit and get us all killed. Anything that helps us survive is a good thing. Did anyone see the access stairs to the surface?”
“I saw them,” Grady said.
“Of course you did, tough guy,” Elise drawled mockingly. “There were five since we first started getting chased by the trucks, which sound like they’re getting closer if you ask me. Maybe we should go.”
She had to know as well as the rest of us that her father needed a break. He wasn’t just the principal, he was the weakest link. Which was how it usually went with these types of missions. If he wasn’t the weakest link, he wouldn’t need to be rescued.
I stared at the scientist for a second too long, thinking about the differences between my past life and what was happening now. I was actually trying to save this man, not just kidnap or kill him.
“X, help me out,” I muttered.
“According to your recent sensory experience and my record of the Dreadmax schematics, we are approaching the surface and a personnel loading area,” X-37 said.
“A train station,” I remarked.
“Just so,” said X.
Elise stared at me. “Oh my gods, you really are a Reaper. You’re talking to a nerve-ware AI.”
“You have a fan, it seems,” X-37 said dryly. “While I can only gather data through your senses, it seems I am more attuned to them than you are.”
I didn’t wait for X to explain. “Time to go. Right now. Something’s happening.”
Elise clapped her hands. “You’re a freaking Reaper!”
“Don’t worry about it. Move,” I ordered.
She shook her head in denial and awe. Apparently, the half-dozen times I’d told her what I was simply hadn’t been enough. She just needed to see me speak to my nerveware.
Grady gathered her and the doctor and started moving at a fast walk. He adjusted his gear and checked his weapon on the move. I followed but spent most of my attention looking for anything I might have missed.
The RSG trucks seemed to be matching our pace. Their rearguard continued to fire at what sounded like a growing horde of lower-level crazies. Men with tattoos and excessive body piercings sprinted ahead of the first vehicle, entering my view and firing their weapons at the same time.
“You’re too far to hit anything on the move,” I grumbled, dropping to my stomach and holding a prone position as I squeezed the trigger. One, two, three of them pitched backward from my first volley. The others spread out.
“Hal!” Grady shouted.
I rolled to my feet and caught up quickly. There were two of the tight staircases twisting down from the surface between me and the rest of my team who were struggling onward. A group of RSG foot soldiers clambered down the metal steps.
“Keep going!”
“Wa
sn’t planning on stopping!” Grady shouted back, then disappeared into the gloom. His image became ghostlike in infrared. The silhouettes of the doctor and his daughter were brighter—because they were hot from running.
My old friend had not only started healing much faster than possible, he was adapting to the pace like a professional athlete. All of these observations came in a second and I didn’t bother to sort them out. Hastings claimed to have worked on the Lex Project, something the Union tried to keep secret, even from the Reaper Corps—which was stupid because we weren’t easily denied when that kind of topic caught our interest.
The only side passage close enough to reach was full of debris, the obvious detritus of an underground camp.
Jumping off the tracks and sprinting across the uneven area between the tracks and the walls, I slung my rifle and jumped onto the small ladder. Bullets ricocheted all around me, screaming into the darkness after impact.
I ran into the side tunnel, stepping on bedrolls, an improvised stove, and what was probably someone’s face, but I couldn’t be sure.
Hands grabbed at me, turning my clothing and nearly pulling my rifle off the magnetic sling. I extended the blade concealed in my augmented left arm and slashed someone across the throat, then stabbed another who tried to drag me down.
Others jumped onto my back. I fell to my knees and right hand, shoving forward, kicking when I could, and stabbing as often as possible. I impaled one man who was too large to push past and pushed him forward like a snowplow.
“Get the hell off of me! Find someone else to eat!”
My words startled them. I used their hesitation to break free and run into the darkness. Before long, I was outpacing them with my infrared-capable left eye showing me where to step. Even with the Reaper technology, it was almost too dark to continue.
Twenty or thirty meters behind me now, the first RSG entered this narrow tunnel and gunned down the squatters I had disrupted. Their screams barely sounded human, but I wondered if I had offended them with the cannibalism crack.
“What do you think, X?”
“About what, sir?”
“Are the crazies even human?”
