They both fell backward into a bloody heap. I made certain they were all dead save the one I left lying incapacitated beneath their dead ally. He was breathing heavily, unable to push the weight of their friend, and all the gear they carried. I knelt down so he could see my face.
“You had orders to capture and sell these poor people? What were they going to do, work the shafts on Mars?” I whispered.
The slaver looked up at me with his one good eye and winced.
“Not Mars, they were to all be shipped to Northern Canada, into the arctic region,” he replied with a heavy Martian accent.
It struck me as odd that he’d give up that kind of intel without more arm twisting. He knew I wasn’t letting him out of there alive. What he was telling me was just crazy enough to be the truth.
I made sure the slaver would never harm anyone again. Then, I began dragging the half dozen or so captives outside and releasing them. It would have been faster to release them inside, but they probably wouldn’t have liked how I redecorated the room.
They said nothing to me as I cut their bonds. I was bloody, though, and must have looked like hell after what I did to the heartless bastards who were intent on selling them. Humans are a remorseless race from all observation. What they did to my people seems like a lesser sin than what they are inclined to do to each other.
Glad to be free of that situation, I rubbed my forehead where I’d taken the stroke from the rifle. Taking a moment to catch my breath, I sat on the curb between a wrecked vehicle and a pallet of moldering cardboard. I started thinking about the whole situation, always a mistake in my case. I’m a lot better at doing things than I ever was contemplating the big picture.
Even the rival tribe that fought with my own would respect us on the field and fight honorably, soldier to soldier. No women or kids, and we always gave each other mercy when we asked for it. Maybe this impending cataclysm was simply justice for what humanity had wrought upon the world? Maybe Silverstein thought the same before he lost his memory?
I would come to know these things in time.
Looking at the destruction and sorrow arrayed around me, it was clear that much of humanity was already bankrupt in the most important respects. Apparent as it was, it wasn’t up to me to judge anyone. It wasn’t like I sought the high road to solve my problems either.
I finished feeling sorry for myself, stood up, and began making my way back to Taylor’s apartment building. The path I’d chosen allowed me to avoid the patrols and the trouble that came with them. Along the way, there were many signs that the mercs had been leaning on downtown, hard.
At last, I reached Taylor’s building, which seemed relatively untouched by the chaos stretching back toward midtown. There didn’t appear to be anyone around the apartment building, but I could smell them. I could smell their synthetic poly-Kevlar woven body armor, the fishy smelling gun oil on their weapons, and the fear coming off their bodies.
It should have occurred to me that the mercenaries back at the machine shop might have had radios on them. There were piles of trash and other debris around the apartment complex, plenty of places they could be hiding. Wherever they were, they were close.
There were two ways I could have played it, and all my plans went right out the window when I saw Dr. Helmet making his way toward the apartment complex. I couldn’t let him get killed, so I broke cover and sprinted out toward him. He turned, somewhat surprised as I came out of the darkness, motioning for him to follow.
“Helmet, quickly, we’ve got to get out of here,” I whispered.
Helmet nodded and ran toward me, looking around nervously. I didn’t even see it coming, no warning or provocation. Helmet closed the distance and kicked me hard, harder than any human had right to. The blow dislodged two of my ribs and sent me flying over into the side of a wrecked vehicle.
Helmet walked calmly over beside where I lay. I coughed up blood as I tried to right myself. All I could manage to do was sit up and try like hell to breathe.
“Sorry about that Ezra, but I’m curious, why did you come back here?” Dr. Helmet asked, as Martian mercenaries gathered around him.
“Taylor-- she forgot-- her pink shoes, grabbed--purple by mistake,” I said, gasping for air.
“You sure? What about these?” Helmet said, holding up the small box that contained the catalyst.
“Helmet, why? Why are you doing this?”
“Helmet? Oh, he’s been dead for almost a year. My name is Madmar, Dr. Maurice Madmar.”
Things all snapped into place. I couldn’t understand at the time why I’d been so unwilling to trust Helmet, some part of me could sense that he was lying. Deep down in my guts, I knew he was a fraud.
I snapped up to my feet, leaping just high enough to avoid the machine gun fire, to the top of the wrecked vehicle behind me. My entire body ached. Running on adrenaline alone, I knew I wasn’t good for too much more of this type of action. A stray bullet bounced off the ground, up through the vehicle, and pierced my right foot.
Dropping to all fours, my body screamed for oxygen as I leapt at Madmar. I took half his face off as I pulled him to the ground. I didn’t even care if I died anymore. I had to put a stop to him. The mercs rushed in to stop me as I raked my claws back and forth across his face and throat.
Then the smell hit me. That sickening machine smell that Matthias exposed me to. This thing I’d just killed wasn’t really Madmar or Helmet, but a synthetic stand in. I grabbed the box out of his hand as the mercs got to me and opened it.
Empty.
They started kicking and hitting me mercilessly. I pulled my arms and legs up, curling into a ball, trying feebly to protect myself from the blows. I could hear them shouting at me, calling me a freak and worse.
I thought I was going to die.
Machine gun fire broke out, but not the same type as the weapons the mercenaries carried. Bullets streaked over me, tearing into the mercenaries. They turned to return fire as a rocket propelled grenade hit their transport.
I could hear them calling out on their radios as they returned fire. There was little I could do but lay there in the dirt and play dead. The exchange lasted less than two minutes, with the mercenaries running away in the face of what I could hear was greater firepower.
Booted feet walked past me in the gravel as nearly two dozen individuals stepped over and around me.
“Who’s this little guy?”
“Ezra, I think that’s his name,” Officer Collins said turning me over.
Collins and a handful of men stood there gazing down at me. I could also see Taylor’s boss from the Strip and Waffle and the man who managed her apartment building. They were heavily armed, and the uniformed Officer Collins usually wore was lacking the badge it displayed last time I saw him.
It all felt and smelled wrong. Even the hardest mercenary stinks of fear in a fire fight, but none of them gave off a single pheromone’s worth. I thought, in that moment, it was just because I was hurt so bad, my own adrenaline reaction masking what my senses would normally detect. I tried to speak, but a terrible pain wracked my body with even the slightest movements. Collins gathered me up in his arms and carried me back to where they’d parked a couple of transports. Most of the people walking back looked like regular people, folks who took up weapons to protect their home.
Collins laid me down just inside the larger of the two transports where a woman began trying to patch me up. She was dressed in a clean white coat, had manicured nails, smelled of some kind of perfume, and her hair was nicely done up. She was an uptown dweller from the look and smell of her. I could smell her just fine, but not the others.
Collins sat down next to me, his legs dangling down the boarding ramp into the transport. He motioned to the others, and they dashed off in response, to secure the perimeter or some nonsense. I breathed a little easi
er now, but my adrenaline was still going.
“They came down here about twenty four hours ago looking for Taylor and Silverstein, but mostly for Taylor,” Collins said, lighting a hand-rolled cigarette.
I turned and looked at him, to let him know I could hear him.
“Joe over at the Strip and Waffle started handing out guns, Russ opened up a couple of lids so we could use the tunnels, and I started organizing willing individuals to resist them. No way were we going to let downtown get steamrolled by these out-of-towners without a fight,” Collins said.
I nodded.
“Is Taylor safe?” Collins asked.
I nodded again.
“In the first couple of hours, it was like a turf war, and we took our wounded to Helmet. We showed back up to find our wounded euthanized, and the doctor was gone. I’m the one that took Silverstein to Dr. Helmet when I first found him,” Collins lamented.
The nurse finished patching me up, giving me a shot of stimulants. My already powerful metabolism was working overtime to repair my broken body. I sat up slowly, popping my jaw back into place, and looked over at Collins.
“You took Silverstein to Helmet?” I whispered.
“Yeah.”
“If that’s true, why should I trust you now?”
“I just saved your ass.”
“Yep, pretty convenient you being here. I have always been lucky, though,” I said looking at Collins.
Collins nodded, turning toward me a moment too late. I hit him as hard as I could, sending him head over heels out of the transport. The blow should have killed him, but he was already trying to regain his footing. I grabbed the nurse and tossed her out the back on top of him.
“Lucky, I’m not a fool,” I growled angrily.
Before they could right themselves, I mashed the ramp control button, closing the transport. They banged on the outside of the ramp, angrily hurling insults and worse. I leaned heavily against the interior wall, exhausted, and checked my bandages while I had the chance.
I pulled a tracking device the “nurse” had planted on me and crushed it. The device was Martian technology, bulky and crude compared to what one could find on Earth. The whole set up had been almost perfect. Might have actually fallen for it if they’d found someone from downtown to play the part of the nurse.
If they’d wired me up, there was no reason Madmar didn’t slip one inside Silverstein while he was patching him up. Or was there? That is, unless he was worried about Matthias finding it when they eventually met. It meant that my own home underground, the water tower Matthias converted into a hideout, all possibly compromised. To my core, I’m a warrior. I’ve never been one for thinking, but I resolved to give it my best shot after I’d made sure it would be a little harder to follow me.
I leapt into the cockpit and grabbed the controls. I’d watched Silverstein do this enough to know I didn’t have a prayer of getting this VTOL transport off the ground. Fortunately, that was not my intent.
The larger transport lurched violently forward into the smaller one, wrecking it. The impact was enough to break the thick, laminated glass windshields in the transport I’d hijacked. More angry screams came from outside as machine gun fire bounced off the armored exterior.
I kicked the corner window out and slid to the ground quietly as the transport’s engines continued to strain, pushing it further into the ground. I could hear the pop of artillery fire behind me lighting up the transport. The concussion from the explosion carried me to the ground beneath the remains of the VTOLs.
They searched for me in vain, sifting through the wreckage, trying to confirm the kill. I inched away from them, a mound of debris at a time until I was clear. From a distance I could see they were extremely angry about not being able to dupe or kill me.
Their plan was falling apart.
That’s when it hit me. Madmar hadn’t bugged Silverstein, that’s why he’d set up this elaborate ruse. Why would they tear up downtown if they already knew where Silverstein was? He must have known I wouldn’t give up their location to him, no matter how much he tortured me.
Madmar gambled that I’d give the intel up to a friend. I was a little bit scared of what he’d do now, even as I struggled to figure out what his true motivations were. My mobile had been smashed, which meant I had to get back to the Canary to warn Silverstein and Taylor.
That was a long walk, as beat up as I was.
I watched from the rooftop as Collins and his crew wandered about below looking for me and a new set of wheels. Russ had been far enough down in the tunnels to possibly figure out where my home was. I was torn between getting to a communications device and killing someone that might lead evil men back to my home.
In the end, I decided to split the difference and take a terrible risk.
I spent the next hour stalking Russ while allowing my body to heal. I could feel my bones and muscles knitting back together, bruises vanishing, and lacerations closing. I was so tired.
Near an old bodega at the edge of the crumbling tourist district, Russ wandered into an alley to smoke. I dropped silently from the rooftop to the alley floor beside him. He fumbled for his weapon, the cigarette tumbling out of his mouth. I punched him in the solar plexus as hard as I could.
He doubled over gasping for air as I clawed the strap running from his rifle over his shoulder. I put the rifle down on the top of a rusted dumpster quietly as I squatted next to him. He fell to one side, clutching his stomach and continued gasping for air.
“Why, Russ? What did Taylor ever do to you, that made it seem alright to do this to her?” I questioned.
Russ struggled for air for a moment before he could reply.
“I’m not really here. I’m hanging suspended in a tube of liquid somewhere, wired up to control a plastic version of myself. Madmar said I could have my real body back if I did what I was told.”
“What about Officer Collins and the others?”
“Not sure. They might be in the same mess I’m in. We all got rounded up in the last week or so I think, told that we’d have to...”
Russ started to scream, but I muffled him with my hand, pushing the tip of one of my claws into his eyelid. He immediately stopped screaming, but I could see he was in terrible agony.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I can feel what he’s doing to my body. Punishing me for talking to you,” Russ said.
“Why is he doing this? Where is your body?” I asked, turning Russ’s face toward my own.
Russ struggled to talk, the faint smell of burning bio-electric components wafting out of his mouth. I watched silently, completely helpless, as he suffered. Servos and other mechanical parts deep inside Russ’s false body seized as the real Russ died a painful death somewhere miles and miles away.
I turned what was left of him over and searched for a mobile. He had two. One was brand new, only two numbers in the contact list. The other was old and beat to hell, a couple dozen numbers stored inside. I opted for the old beat to hell one, less likely it was one Madmar had issued to his cronies.
I clicked it open and dialed Taylor’s mobile. Barely half a ring later, I could hear her voice on the other end. I looked down at the display of the mobile and watched the screen go blank for a moment as Taylor unconsciously took control of the device.
“Ezra! Are you okay? Why are you calling me from Russ’s mobile?” Taylor asked.
“Where are you?”
“We’re still at the water tank laboratory place with Matthias. Where’s Russ, is he there with you?”
I didn’t know what to say.
“What’s wrong Ezra?” She asked.
I struggled to pull the events of the last few hours together. How could I tell her that Madmar had kidnapped everyone she and Silverstein knew and forced them to remotely control
synthetic copies of themselves while their real bodies were held hostage? How could I tell her Russ was dead and Madmar was abducting people and taking them to the Canadian tundra?
“Things are really messed up here. I need to get back so I can explain what’s happened,” I said.
“You sound different. Are you hurt?”
“Yeah, but I heal quick. I’ve got nothing but bad news, and I wasn’t able to lay hands on the catalyst either.”
Taylor went silent on the other end for a moment.
“I don’t understand, Ezra. It wasn’t where Silverstein and I left it?”
“Taylor, down here nothing is where you guys left it,” I replied.
“What about my stuff? How much were you able to grab off the list I gave you?” she joked.
It was more than I could bear. I wept bitterly on the mobile while Taylor listened. It felt like I’d let everyone down and nothing I did thereafter would matter. Then, I heard Silverstein’s voice come across the mobile.
“Ezra, tell me what’s going on down there,” Silverstein said.
I told him everything, including the bit about Madmar and his synthetic body double shell game. I told him about Russ and about how the catalyst and a bunch of people were probably hidden out in the arctic.
“I’m sorry about the catalyst,” I said.
“Forget the catalyst. You got us something more important,” Silverstein replied.
“Information,” I said.
“Exactly. Hard to say exactly what Madmar’s game is, but we know three times what we did a few hours ago. Thank you, Ezra,” Silverstein said.
A game. That is exactly what this seemed to be. I wondered if the catalyst was just more poison, meant to control Taylor and others like her, assuming there were any others. I hoped we weren’t making a mistake giving up on recovering it, but I was more than ready to quit stumbling into Madmar’s traps and minions.
Uroboros Saga Book 1 Page 17
