by Cary Caffrey
Her only answer came in the form of the yellow lights that flashed above her head and the alarm klaxons that sounded, ringing through the corridor.
SEARCH STRING FORBIDDEN. QUERY FORBIDDEN. SEARCH REQUEST FORWARDED TO SECURITY CENTRAL. PLEASE REMAIN WHERE YOU ARE. DEPARTURE FROM SECURITY STATION FORBIDDEN. ASSISTANCE IS ON ITS WAY.
Remain where I…? Blast that!
With the alarms blaring about her, the security door began to swing quickly shut. Sigrid slipped through before it could close. The corridor beyond ended at a stairwell leading up. She ran up the steps, leaping four and five at a time. She reached the outer door, crashing through it with enough force to tear the steel door from its hinges.
Staggering through the opening, she found herself in a small clearing surrounded by tall stands of snow-covered pines. A single light sat atop a tall metal post, casting a pale yellow glow around her. Snow fell heavily around her in thick white flakes that fell on her hair and arms and shoulders.
The building behind her was much smaller than she expected, not much more than a plasteel shack, and already half buried in the snow. It looked as though someone had simply dropped it here, deep within these woods, and forgotten about it. Of course, that was by design. The shack was only camouflage for the bulk of the much larger research facility underground.
Someone had gone to tremendous trouble to hide it—and her. More troubling was the realization that they had gone to greater lengths to lie to her.
That contract was a fake. It had to be. Her mistress would never betray her like this. Hitomi would never leave her to die here. She wouldn't.
Standing there with her bare feet planted deep in the snow, it wasn't the winter chill that gripped her spine. Her life contract wasn't the only thing she'd spied on that security monitor. Before the alarms, before the monitor switched itself off, Sigrid had seen one very important thing. Today's date: June 18, 2354.
2354…
Shaking uncontrollably, trembling, Sigrid fell to her knees. Balling her hands into fists, she screamed. She didn't care who heard. Let them hear. Let them all hear! And let them come. She'd kill them all.
2354! Six full years after Bellatrix. Six years…
And she didn't remember any of it. They hadn't just stolen her memories—they'd stolen her life!
With her face held in her hands, Sigrid wept, but only for a moment. Her tears were an indulgence she could ill afford. She was in danger here. She sensed them coming for her even now.
Doubled over on her hands and knees, she fought to control her breathing. She had to regain her focus. If she didn't, she would never escape this place alive. It was only her training that saved her then, reminding her of her duty to herself and spurring her into action. There would be time for tears later. Now, she had to act. She had to survive.
Doing the only thing she could, Sigrid rose from her knees and ran.
CHAPTER THREE
Escape
A road led out and away from the shack, winding its way through the trees. It looked freshly plowed and well traveled. Too well traveled. Sigrid ignored it, throwing herself headlong into the snow-covered woods. Brambles and branches lashed at her bare legs and arms. For each branch she pushed out of her way, three more snapped back at her face and chest.
Sigrid had been trained since childhood for moments exactly like this. She was made to survive. But all her training, all the shouted words of her instructors, abandoned her. She couldn't focus on anything, she couldn't concentrate, and it was going to get her killed.
Six years.
It was all she could think about. She couldn't get it out of her head. Where were her friends? And where was Suko?
Too many questions swirled in her mind. Her breathing came in short gulps and her world threatened to tilt hard over. She didn't even see the gully until she tripped and fell into it, rolling down the embankment. But it was enough to shake away the fog. That, and the sound of alarms blaring behind her.
Scores of men were emerging from the facility's entrance behind her. Soldiers. A hunting party. Then she heard something else: barking.
Dogs. They have bloody dogs.
Glancing back, she saw the search beams and heard their shouts. From somewhere behind her, hidden amongst the trees, an air vehicle was sent aloft. Sigrid glanced skyward. Thunderhawks. She counted three of the heavy gunships rising above the canopy of pines. Two of them rumbled toward her and then past, close enough for her to feel the heat of their thruster wash blast over her.
She hadn't even remembered cloaking. It was perhaps the only thing that saved her.
The third Thunderhawk stayed back. It hovered above the soldiers, moving with them. Belly-mounted floodlights illuminated the woods, lighting their way. They'd be scanning for her. She could only hide so long. She had to move; she had to stay ahead.
Alone and armed only with the stolen knife, Sigrid ran.
It was a brutal pace. The ice was cold against her feet and the bare flesh of her legs, yet Sigrid felt no sense of chill; she never would, not at these near-freezing temperatures. She was designed to withstand far greater cold than this. Still, the deep snow made every step a plodding chore. Twice she sank up to her chest, and she was forced to scramble on her hands and knees. The only saving grace was knowing the soldiers behind her were having just as much trouble.
The woods ended abruptly. Stumbling to her knees, she broke through the brush into the clearing on the other side. There was a lake ahead of her, frozen and gleaming, with more woods on the far shore. Beyond that… She heard it: the sound of vehicles moving. Scanning ahead, she saw the strings of bright lights moving in the distance. It was a road, maybe a highway. At least it sounded like a highway. If she could get there, she might be able to flag someone down, maybe get help.
If she could get there. That road was still six-point-two-seven kilometers distant and across that frozen lake. That would mean running nearly a kilometer out in the open. Sigrid glanced back over her shoulder; they were sure to see her.
But there was nothing for it. She had to risk it.
Running as fast as she could, she sprinted for the lake—not nearly as frozen as she thought. The ice flexed beneath her feet, dipping with each of her long strides. Every step threatened to shatter the ice and send her plummeting into the cold depths below. Not once did she look back. When she reached the far bank, she dived headlong into the cover of the brush. Her foot caught on a root and sent her sprawling. She landed hard, face first, knocking her chin on a rock, hard enough to leave her dazed. Rising to her hands and knees, she did her best to shake it off, but the ringing in her ears was being drowned out by something louder.
Engines. Thrusters.
That Thunderhawk had seen her. It was moving her way.
Scrambling to her feet, Sigrid plowed onward. Three more kilometers—that was all she needed. Get to the road. Move!
She'd barely covered half the distance when another road intersected her path. Not much of a road, just a path bulldozed through the trees. A single truck sat idling. Soldiers stood huddled together in the cold with their rifles slung over their shoulders. Sigrid saw their uniforms, the same ones worn by the guards at the facility: Cheung-Yoshida Multi-Planetary. They should have been patrolling for her. Instead they were busy warming their hands over a fire burning in what looked like a spent fuel bin.
Don't they know who I am?
Sigrid shrouded and became invisible once more.
The snow was falling heavily now. Thick flakes were landing on her arms and legs and catching in her hair. She might be all but invisible, but the snow that fell on her certainly wasn't. Even her breath was betraying her. It misted in front of her face, and there was no hiding the deep tracks she made with each step in the waist-high snow.
Sigrid halted her steps. Too late. One of the uniformed soldiers turned towards her. She froze and held her breath, but the soldier kept walking toward her. He paused not more than a meter from her. His eyes followed the path of her tr
acks, then slowly moved up the snowy curves of her silhouette. Dammit if he wasn't looking right at her. It was obvious he saw her—he must! But it was equally obvious his limited brain couldn't compute what it was he was looking at: this icy, translucent figure of a woman.
Four trembling fingers reached out to touch her. They never made it.
Sigrid grabbed those fingers, pulling his arm around and twisting as hard as she could. He cried out in alarm, drawing the attention of the others, but it was too late for him. She drove him to the ground hard, kneeling on his back, though not before she relieved him of his rifle. She kicked it up with her foot, flipping it over in midair to catch it one-handed.
Unable to hold the cloak any longer, she appeared before the group of startled soldiers—which actually served to confuse them all the more. They froze in their tracks, not sure what they were seeing—this pale, naked girl waist-deep in the snow, the hulking auto-rifle tucked in her arms.
That moment was all she needed. Her finger grazed the trigger. Four rounds barked out in less than a heartbeat. Four shots fired. Four soldiers dropped in quick succession. Four more deaths.
But she was hardly out of the woods. Hurtling toward her at treetop level, the Thunderhawk screamed into view, its four thrusters rattling the ground and blowing up pillars of ice in its wake. Fast and maneuverable, the Thunderhawk brimmed with weapons—forward-firing missiles sat in side-mounted pods, while a hulking chain gun extended from its blunt nose—and it was coming her way.
The truck sat waiting.
She ran for it, climbing the steps and hauling herself into the driver's seat. Jamming her foot to the floor, the fuel cells fed power to the drive engines instantly and the truck shot forward. It was a heavy, lumbering machine, and its tall studded tires chewed up the terrain as it fought for traction.
The narrow road slashed through the trees as it wound its way toward the lights of the main road ahead. Sigrid skidded wildly around one bend, glancing off a tree trunk before bouncing over a cluster of rocks. Somehow she kept the machine on the path, if just barely. But she daren't slow. Her foot was heavy on the throttle, threatening to push the pedal all the way through the flooring. The road straightened ahead, and the trees thinned, making the going easier, but she was also losing her cover. There was a bridge ahead, a narrow causeway built over a frozen riverbed, and the highway was less than a kilometer beyond that. She was going to make it.
Pushing the truck to its maximum speed, a spine-jarring 144 kph, the truck bounced as she hit the bridge, and the front wheels lifted from the road before crashing back down. The truck skidded wildly, glancing off both barriers. Sigrid cursed as she gripped the wheel, fighting for control on the ice-covered causeway.
Her pursuers were not about to let her go either. The Thunderhawk swept by overhead, not more than a meter above her. It reached the far end of the bridge, where it performed a high pirouette and swung sharply about to face her. Sigrid saw the missile pods swing out into firing position.
Her PCM dutifully alerted her to this new danger as it flashed its warnings in large, bold letters before her eyes.
"I know!"
Sigrid stood on the brakes with both feet. The spiked tires dug in hard and the truck came to a skidding, juddering halt. The Thunderhawk stopped as well. It sat there, hovering above the end of the causeway as if staring her down. A fireteam of four soldiers leapt from the gunship. They moved quickly, taking up positions along the far end of the bridge.
For a moment, Sigrid sat there, waiting, watching and clutching the wheel as her breath fogged up the windscreen.
None of them fired. What were they waiting for? They had her. All they had to do was take the kill shot.
No, of course they wouldn't kill her. Killing her wouldn't serve their purpose. They wanted her alive. They wanted her back.
They'd captured her on Bellatrix. That wasn't going to happen again.
With her foot to the floor, Sigrid gunned the engine, full throttle, and charged straight into their midst. Men and women scattered to the sides. She heard the chatter of small-arms fire. The windshield shattered, spraying her with bits of broken glass. A second salvo ripped through the door panel, tearing apart the seat cushion at her back. Her skin burned, grazed by hot lead. Sigrid plowed forward.
The Thunderhawk roared into the air ahead of her. Four missiles dropped from its side pods, arcing toward her. Sigrid braced, but the projectiles weren't meant for her, they were aimed at the road instead. The four rockets hit as one, blasting a wide gap in the causeway. The span heaved and collapsed, sending chunks of permacrete, rocks and ice skyward.
Unable to stop, the truck plowed into the gap. Its nose dipped sharply down while its back wheels bucked high into the air. For a moment she found herself floating weightless, but then the truck's nose smashed headlong into the far side of the gap. She barely had time to raise her arms before she was hurled through the shattered remains of the windscreen. She landed hard some twenty meters down the road, skidding, rolling violently across the graveled surface, only stopping when she tumbled into the guardrail.
The taste of blood was strong in her mouth. Her ears rang with a heavy low hum. Rising on unsteady legs, she did her best to shake it off.
Three of the soldiers hurried toward her, moving to flank her. And still they didn't fire. One of them held a weapon, something heavy and ugly. It was a riot gun, a weapon Sigrid knew all too well. It had taken five of them to take her down on Bellatrix.
One, she could deal with.
The soldier stepped forward and fired. It was a decent shot, not poorly aimed. But the riot guns were bulky, slow to aim and slow to fire. While perfect for dealing with unruly mobs, they were never designed for a single fast-moving target, especially one as fast as she.
Sigrid heard the ka-chunk as the electrified netting shot forward, spreading out to its full width of eight meters. Explosive pitons drove the edges of the netting into the ground, drawing the webbing tight at the very spot she'd been standing. But Sigrid was long gone. She didn't bother to shroud this time. She didn't need to. Her first two steps took her out of the path of the stun netting; her fourth and fifth had her at full stride, running, not away, but rather straight into their startled midst. She could sense the women and men around her, felt their adrenaline, their bloodlust. And when that bloodlust turned to fear and panic, she sensed that as well.
She reached the female soldier first. The woman's finger hovered over her trigger. She could have killed Sigrid, and they both knew it. But her orders were to take Sigrid alive, not kill her. In that single moment she hesitated. That was all the time Sigrid needed.
Sigrid stepped in next to her and snapped her neck. The woman collapsed in her arms. Her death worked like a trigger, snapping the other soldiers awake. Any thought of capturing her was gone. It was kill or be killed.
Sigrid held fast to the dead woman in her arms, using her body as a shield. Round after round barked out at her, tearing into the still-warm flesh of the body held against her. She grabbed two grenades from the woman's belt and hurled them toward the men. The flare from the flashbangs lit up the sky and filled the causeway with black smoke and blinding gas. The concussion from the twin blasts staggered one soldier unlucky enough to be standing too close by. Sigrid hurled the dead body of the woman at him, bowling him over and sending both of them over the barrier to tumble down the embankment.
More shots blasted at her. Glowing tracers whipped by her head. But it was blind fire. Panicked. Sigrid switched her optics to thermal imaging.
The dead woman's rifle lay on the ground only a meter away. Sigrid tucked, rolled, and came to her feet, rifle in hand, as more ordnance screamed her way. She wasn't bulletproof. Far from it. Her speed and her strength were the result of carefully selective genetic reengineering. Bionics helped her to see and hear at near superhuman levels. Years of merciless training taught her how to fight. But it was her control module and its libraries of tactical databases culled from centuries of war
fare that gave her her true edge.
Outsiders thought the control module controlled her actions, but that was a mistake. It was her PCM's job to present her with the sensory and tactical data she needed—and only that data. Anything else was filtered out and discarded as background noise. This allowed Sigrid to focus on the task at hand. Her PCM guided her and prompted her. It presented her with hundreds of tactical scenarios and options in real time. It even alerted her to threats as needed, but the decisions to act were always hers.
The result gave her an unparalleled combat awareness. Sigrid was aware of each and every shell fired her way—even before the shells left their chambers. Every piece of ordnance was targeted and tracked, its trajectory fed to her. Sigrid knew when to move, where to turn—and when to duck.
The influx of data was incessant, relentless. And right now it was keeping her alive. But it could only carry her so far. It was time to end this.
Sigrid emerged from the smoke. The soldier with the riot gun wrestled with his weapon, struggling to reload another charge. He looked up, panicked. He wasn't going to make it and he knew it.
She blasted him first, then spun around as the last man in the fireteam all but barged into her through the smoke. She saw his eyes flare as her bullets ripped through him, fired from less than a meter away.
Only the Thunderhawk remained. Sigrid turned to face it.
The gunship swept skyward, arcing swiftly around. It dropped its nose, floated for a second, then came diving down hard and straight toward her. Her communications module picked up and decoded the transmission: it was a kill order, end game. The chain gun swiveled forward as the eight Gatling cannons began to whir, spooling up.
But it was Sigrid who fired first. The heavy plated glass of the Thunderhawk shattered as her bullets ripped into the flight deck. Something exploded in the aft of the gunship, one of the fuel cells rupturing and igniting. The craft bucked hard over, rolling 180 degrees before plunging toward the earth and straight toward her.
