Future Reborn Box Set

by Daniel Pierce

  Mira grunted, adjusting the strap on the gun she carried. “Sumbitch is heavy. Yeah, right between where we first entered. I’ll have to go slow because I don’t have your night vision, so please keep it reasonable.”

  “I will. I need to hear as well. Don’t want roaming predators getting a fix on us because I’m crashing through the brush like a hog,” I told her, picking my steps with care as we moved toward the first dim rise. Even in the near dark, I could see the outline of a new feature, two meters high and clearly defined. “I can see the mount. On me, okay? I’ll choose stable footfalls for you.”

  We stalked through the night, moving around brush rather than through it, and in minutes, we ascended to the mount. It was identical to the other, which was a relief, so I put two guns on the ground and jumped. Looking down after my leap, I could see Mira looking up in the night air. “Weapon up while I do this.”

  She said nothing but swung the barrel of her gun around in a slow arc, listening hard. There were animal and insect noises, but nothing that caused me alarm. It took less than a minute to connect and activate the gun, the process rewarding me with a cool blue glow of an activated outpost.

  “Coming down,” I said, doing just that with a soft jump. Hefting the remaining guns, I waited for Mira to point the way.

  “East,” she said with confidence. She was good with maps and direction, among other things. Her survival in The Empty was no accident. This was a woman built for her world.

  “How far?” I asked.

  “Three hundred meters. The narrow gulley, north side,” she clarified.

  “Okay. Follow me,” I said, making off with measured steps.

  The night closed in around us as the last rays of light were banged flat by the dark. Ahead, I heard the trills of unseen things, their small voices adding to the chorus of life that was so different from most of The Empty. The facility was an oasis of its own, a fact that made it easy to envision our next settlement here.

  If we could survive the next few days.

  “Here,” I told Mira when we reached the platform. Like the others, it was clear of debris and well placed, giving a clear view of the access from a gulley that would attract Rowan’s people. The gulley floor was low, covered in scrub, and gave an air of undue safety for anyone not aware of the defense net. I was counting on at least some of Rowan’s people taking the easy way in, rather than scaling the rugged turf and rocks around the bulk of the facility.

  Repeating the process, I was up and down in less than a minute, the gun humming to life in the night. Without a sound, I waited for Mira to tag the next location, but she stood still, listening.

  “What is it?” I whispered in her ear.

  “Hear that?” she said, her voice low and calm. Even in the dark, I could see her head tilt to the left, listening hard in the direction we’d come from.

  I heard nothing. Not even the insects.

  “Gun,” I said, but she already had hers up, her burden put down on the gritty soil.

  Together, we scanned the night as time dragged into something like torture, the seconds draining away in tense anticipation.

  “There,” I whispered, and she heard it. Her head turned toward the noise, which was so soft as to be nothing at all. My natural cynicism and ‘bots told me that wasn’t the case, as I heard the sound repeat, even more slowly.

  If my hearing produced the first evidence, my nose confirmed it. On the light breeze, I began to smell something that didn’t belong.

  I smelled death, and judging by Mira’s rigid posture, she did too.

  Without a word, I lifted her up onto the gun platform, jumping to follow a second later. Whatever was coming, we would fight from the high ground. Weapons drawn, we waited, the breeze growing fat with a stench that was neither animal nor vegetable, but something horribly unknown.

  When I tapped Mira on the shoulder and shrugged by the light of the gun, she only frowned, mouthing the words I don’t know either. It was something new, and my life policy as a Marine was based on the idea that surprises are only for birthdays and Christmas. They are most certainly not welcome while crouched on a shooting platform 2000 years in the future, hoping a monster doesn’t come howling out of the dark with murder on its mind.

  The brush moved less than ten meters away, and I was presented with two options. Put a round in whatever was moving and try not to alert the horde of scorpions and rats that might be hunting all around us.

  Or I could use the knife.

  “Option B,” I said, sliding a blade from my scabbard with deliberate slowness.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” Mira asked.

  “Gotta keep this one quiet. Can’t let the rats know,” I said.

  “Yes, but—fuck, you’re right,” she sighed. “I’ll cover. Do what you have to.”

  “Fire over my head. Don’t need another hole,” I said.

  “No shit. You’ve got enough women in your life,” Mira said, and I swore there was a laugh hidden somewhere in her words.

  “Hey, I—never mind. We can discuss it if I’m not being eaten,” I told her.

  “I was just about to say the same thing,” she said, her teeth a white crescent in the blue light.

  “Wiseass,” I said, jumping down and drawing my second blade. If one was good, two were a party, and I had no idea who my guest was.

  My answer came in the next instant. In that flash, I had an answer as to why the rats and scorpions were in an uneasy truce.

  They weren’t in charge. They were being hunted as well.

  The lizard was four meters long, low slung jaws bared over a mouth that stank of carrion and things best forgotten. It burst forth in an explosion of motion that was almost too fast to follow, but my ‘bots kept me in the game as I rolled hard right, flicking both blades out to score two light hits on the monster’s broad snout.

  I was rewarded with a deep squeal of reptilian anger, the following hiss clouding the air with something even worse than the monster’s breath.

  “Mira, cover your mouth and nose. Poison in the air,” I shouted, giving up any hint of stealth for the sake of warning her. Whatever the virus had done to lizards, this was a new and terrible version. Sleek, dark, and streaked with yellow scales, the creature turned nearly double to snap at my legs with its coffin jaws, the teeth a forest of ivory decorated with shreds of earlier meals. In my augmented sight, the creature seemed to pulse with malignant life, its midsection heaving as it drove itself forward on thick legs.

  In my night vision, the monster’s eyes were glittering ovals, both fixed and moving with me as the head stayed low, tongue flicking out to catch the steady stream of blood from where my blades landed. I did some dirty math in my head, deciding that the creature massed a ton or more. I might tire in this fight, but the lizard would gas faster because nothing escapes gravity.

  Not even a futuristic dragon.

  We circled each other for a quarter turn, both deciding what the next move would be in our fatal discussion. I dodged left as the jaws closed, a sure indication that it was about to charge. Swinging hard as I passed, the creature surprised me, ducking its head almost flat in a move that was nimble well beyond my expectations. My blade caught in the bony ridges above its neck, shearing through the knobs with an orange spark and jerking my arm back from the hard resistance.

  Again, the jaws opened and closed in a snap, missing me by inches as I followed the counter turn to land between the left legs, snugged up against the monster’s heaving side. It was oddly warm, cooking with effort in the cooling night air as we fought, but before I could reverse my blades and drive them home, the jaws came whirling around again with snake-like elegance. I opted for a hard punch in the softest part of the side, just below the bellowing ribs.

  My reward was a crunching blow to the shoulder from the creature’s thick skull, slamming me into the air like a ragdoll.

  Fast. Getting faster, too, I thought. The bastard had been sandbagging me, easing into the fight after its first ru
sh didn’t take me down. The plan meant this wasn’t some mindless lizard with a growling gut. It was an alpha predator used to hunting things nearly as dangerous as me, and I adjusted my tactics on the fly. If it was smart, I would fight smarter.

  I would also be more brutal.

  I had to end the stomping, crashing fight because the noise levels were growing beyond anything that could remotely be called stealthy. Taking to my feet, I turned to meet the lizard, its body held low as it charged again, head coursing back and forth slightly as the tongue and chin gathered data on where I was and what I was doing. It was more than a sight hunter, and less than a shark, falling somewhere the two styles of killer.

  With a ton of angry lizard surging forward, I dodged again, this time to the right, but turning my shoulder inward as one blade went high and the other forward like a question tongue of metal. The direct blade hit first, piercing the thick hide and opening a wound longer than my forearm that ran from the creature’s ear covering to the bulging shoulder muscle. In my ‘bots starlight sight, the blood looked like green lava, spattering wild as the lizard shied away, bringing its tail around to club me in a defensive move that was too fast for the normal eye to see. The tail whistled past my head as I rolled, slashing backward at the massive foot with my right hand. I was rewarded with a pair of talons—toes attached—flying into the night sky, blood spitting from the wounded leg as the lizard rounded again, clearly not done with the fight.

  The jaws stayed closed as it barreled into me, knocking me straight back in a classic bull rush. I skidded, raised my blades, and drove them up like steel pistons into the lizard’s cavernous mouth as it began to lower toward my head for the killing blow. There was a wheezing squeal as the monster closed its jaws on my forearms just hard enough to punch teeth into my skin, my hands slimy with wretched saliva and buried in the throat well past my elbows.

  The jaws twitched once as my blade tips found the brain, driving the teeth deeper into my arms, and it died, the light in its eyes fading as it went from alpha predator to world’s largest collection of shoe leather in a dying moment.

  “Mira,” I gasped, my arms held tight in the thing’s mouth. “Little help here.”

  She was already prying at the jaws, having jumped down to sink her own knife into the crown of the skull, making sure of the kill. “Fucking stinks. What is that?”

  “Saliva. Rot in the teeth. It’s—ah, thanks,” I said as she levered the jaws open enough for me to extract the teeth from my arms. I hissed in pain, not only at the sensation of animal teeth in my body, but at the stinging wounds left behind. “I wondered how good my ‘bots are at fighting infection. I’m about to find out.”

  Mira began swabbing my wounds with bandages from her pack. “If these run hot, we might have to score them.”

  “We’ll see. There’s a medical suite in the facility, but in the meantime we’ve gotta move. Help me up,” I said.

  “What about this thing?” Mira asked, thumping a boot into the corpse. “Be a shame to waste all that hide.”

  “Maybe later. We’re on the clock and no time for trophies. Help me sling the guns,” I said. She looked at me with concern, but shrugged and complied, lifting the heavy weapons across my back where they dangled, clanking together softly as I adjusted them. “Not bad.”

  “Can you even walk, Jack?”

  “I can. Let my ‘bots go to work, and let’s see what happens. What’s the next site?” I asked.

  “Long walk, but smooth. Up and around, where the sand slides down onto another small ravine. The last two sites are only fifty meters apart, guarding a ridge and a depression. That way,” Mira pointed into the night, waiting for me to lead.

  I took a step, and then another, establishing my legs and finding that the bites were painful but not bad enough to make me stop. In seconds, the blood flow vanished, replaced by a deep ache and tightening of my skin around the wounds. My ‘bots were busy.

  It was an easy ten-minute walk turned into a hard twenty by the darkness and my slow pace, but soon enough, the platform loomed over us in a patch of disturbed earth. “They really put these in the right places,” I said, lowering the guns with a sigh of relief. My body was heating up as things happened around the rows of puncture wounds, now closing but weeping clear fluid that dripped to the ground in a steady patter. I felt a burning thirst and pulled hard at my waterskin, nearly emptying the entire bag in four long swallows.

  “Easy, Jack.” Mira put a hesitant hand to my forehead, wavering as it searched for the right place to land. Unlike me, she was operating by starlight, and despite her excellent vision, the night stole her confidence.

  “I’m okay. Seriously. You’re going to have to hand the gun up to me, though,” I said, looking up at the darkened platform.

  “Okay. Climb, don’t jump,” she said.

  “Wasn’t dreaming of it.” I pulled myself up onto the platform, arms shrieking in pain as the bite wounds opened back up, spattering my face with blood. “Fuck, but that stings,” I hissed through gritted teeth. A shaky minute later, I was on the platform, gassed but whole, if lighter by an ounce or two of blood.

  “Coming up,” Mira said, lifting the gun case toward me. I took it in my leaden arms, leaning back as a counterbalance, then slid the unit over the platform lip with a muffled curse.

  “Got it.” I fumbled at the fittings, my fingers betraying me as every nerve in my arms howled in protest. Whatever my ‘bots were doing, they were taking their sweet fucking time about it. Despite the lizard’s teeth being sharp, the wounds hurt like hell. Not just because of the cuts, but the pressure wounds, too. I took a long breath to clear my vision, clicking the cable port together as the gun’s blue light snapped to life with a welcome glow.

  “Can you get down?” Mira asked, her face a pale oval in my vision.

  “Slowly, but yeah. I can,” I replied, sliding over the side like a sack of meat. When my boots touched earth, I faltered, caught only by Mira’s strong grip as she steadied me, then urged me to sit. I sat.

  “Venom?” she asked in to the night.

  “I don’t think so. The teeth and mouth were a shitshow of bacteria, like a Komodo dragon. Same kind of creature, might be the same effects. We’ll see if the ‘bots work or not in the next few minutes,” I said.

  “Komodo dragon? From your time?” she asked.

  “They were meaner than hell but lived around the world. Island creature that hunted deer and used their cesspool mouths as a weapon. Not really common, but the virus must have created their analog here in The Empty. That thing fills a need, even if I can’t see what the purpose is right now,” I said. Thinking of the scorps and rats, I grinned. “Scratch that. This thing was doing a job no one else wanted. Pest control. I’m sure the ecology is still working out the kinks when it comes to what variant of animals are going to thrive.”

  “And which ones will be dinner,” Mira concluded.

  “Right. Any chance you’ll sit still, or are you going to insist on moving forward despite leaking out of a few dozen holes?” she asked.

  “Believe it or not, I think they’re closing. Not fast, but the sting in my arms is different. Feels like I’m being stitched by a slow, patient needle that doesn’t give a fuck about my pain tolerance,” I told her.

  “You know, that kind of thing makes me want to avoid ever having ‘bots in my body, no matter how tough they make me,” Mira said with a casual wave.

  I twitched, then sat up. Turning to stare at her in the darkness, I could feel my breath catch and it wasn’t from the pain. Slowly, I asked her the first question that would set our world on a different path. “Have you thought about being injected with nanobots?”

  “Sure, ever since you lopped Hardhead’s top off. You don’t know it, but you move like—well, it’s not entirely human. I’ve watched you in these fights, and thought about what would have happened if I’d had ‘bots in my blood. You know, before—” She hesitated, then a silence fell between us.

  “Befo
re Bel died?” I asked.

  It was a long moment before she spoke, and her eyes were bright, even in the darkness. “I could have saved her. She could have saved herself.”

  I reached up and pulled her down to sit next to me, shoulder to shoulder as we looked out over the dark, windswept Empty. “I didn’t even know how my ‘bots worked then. Hell, I still don’t know, but that’s where Andi fits in the picture. Do you see?”

  “I think? I mean, I know all of this place is—is what she was meant to do, but how can she help us survive, when all we do is find more things like that lizard? More teeth, more claws. Every day. Something else that wants to drag us under the sand. Like Bel,” she said. Her voice was flat; hopeless.

  “Nanobots won’t bring Bel out of the beyond, Mira. I’d give anything for that, you have to believe me. If Andi thinks you can survive with ‘bots, then you’ll have them. Everyone in the Free Oasis will have them if there’s a source. I won’t let the people I care about go down in this shithole. I failed your sister because I was too new to this. I won’t fail you. I won’t fail Silk, or Derin, or Scoot, or even Andi. I won’t because I can’t, not if I want to fulfill my purpose. I was Jack Bowman before I went in that tube, but I came out of it with the tools to do something about this world. I’ll do exactly that. Do you believe me?”

  Her answer was a soft lean into my shoulder. Her hair smelled like the desert, and I could feel her smile, even if there were tears spangled on her cheeks. “I believe you,” she said.

  “We get through the next days, and then we build a plan that includes finding and using every scrap of technology that’s still working. And then, with Andi’s help, we do the one thing that will secure our future,” I told her.

  “Which is?” she asked, looking directly at me, even though the night was deep and my face a mere blur.

  “We don’t scavenge. We rebuild. All of it. The means, the places, and then we push on with science and work and sweat, and when the Free Oasis is stable, we build another city,” I said.