Shades

by Eric Dallaire

  Rose reacted next, grabbing Vanessa and pulling her away from the fray. Gabriel returned fire at me and his bullet tore into my shoulder and exited through the muscle, sending a jolt of pain through my body. The ShadeOS interface appeared over my right eye, activating itself to repair the wound.

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  I surmised that the serum exhausted its energy levels when it needed to do major repairs. Self-healing, up to a point, but then I wondered what happened when the serum ever hit zero. Would I turn into a true shade?

  “Spenner, eliminate them!” ordered Gabriel as he took cover behind the table. Already operating under that assumptive order, Spenner tapped his wrist-com and the air flared with a crimson ball of gaseous red light. The red shape took on a fog-like substance and blew into the mouths and noses of the silent guardians. Each of the shades trembled and let out a primal growl of pain. All of their leg and arm muscles bulged and the veins running along their neck and chest glowed with a brighter red and green bioluminescence. I realized with a growing sense of worry that Spenner turned them feral with one of his corruption viruses. We needed to neutralize him fast before he created more of them. Then a verdant light flashed and the wisp reformed next to Spenner.

  “I have the wisp,” Sasha whispered. She manifested right behind the green-skinned AI, and attacked it. The two once again locked hands and resumed their multi-level battle of dynamic code supremacy.

  Rose joined the fray wielding twin stun-rods. I imagined she snatched those weapons from the twitching hands of a security guard who would be calling in sick for the next two weeks. She leapt over the table and struck down the first shade with a powerful combination of strikes to its head. As she followed through with the momentum of the attack, she spun to face Spenner. He smiled, bowed to Rose, and brandished his own customized weapon. It resembled a cruel medieval mace, with a red-sparking energy ball at the top. Undaunted, Rose swung her batons and Spenner blocked them both without much effort.

  Then my view of their fight disappeared when three more shades charged at me with gnashing teeth and swinging fists. Crushing pain wracked my body when they battered me to the ground. The impact knocked my gun out of my hand and the air from my lungs. Consumed by a bloodlust, the frenzied creatures tore into me with sharp fangs and nails. Anger and desperation released raw adrenaline throughout my body, pushing me to retaliate with a flurry of blows. My fist smashed into the jaw of Mr. Grand before he could gnaw my right arm. With a hard kick, I snapped the second creature's leg. I knocked the third one back with a jab from my left fist and punched Mr. Grand again, shattering more bones. The damage slowed but did not stop any of them, though the punishment they inflicted on me started to take a measurable toll.

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  Then gunshots exploded next to me. Looking up through watery eyes, I saw the silhouette of an avenging angel. Vanessa held the pistol I dropped and emptied its full cartridge into the second shade's head. It whimpered once and crumpled next to me. Counting the shade Rose defeated earlier, I counted two down, four to go.

  A quick somersault brought me to my feet in time to stop the third shade from striking Vanessa. Not particular about its prey, the thing switched its attention to me, burying its claws into my shoulders. It leaned in, opening its mouth to rip my neck with its jagged teeth. Fighting back, the serum expended more energy to augment my muscles. Endorphins coursed through my system, diminishing the searing pain in my shoulder. With a boost to my strength, I grabbed the creature's neck and squeezed. The first snapping noise sounded when it fractured my collarbone, followed by another crack when I broke its neck. After it slumped to the ground, I turned to face the next one. Mr. Grand rushed toward me, his grotesque jaw clinging to his busted mouth by dangling tendons. Embracing the fury stoked by the serum, I charged Mr. Grand and grappled with him. Vanessa looked on horrified by the ferocity of the melee, or maybe at the abandonment of my humanity. Then another shade ran at me with arms outstretched, and I grabbed that one with my free arm. Using Mr. Grand as a crude cudgel, I slammed his head into the skull of the other. This burst of power came with a cost to my energy reserves.

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  Across the table, Spenner's wild swings pushed Barnaby and Rose back. With Vanessa out of immediate danger, I jumped across the table to take on Spenner. The shade of Guy Charon spotted me and twirled to punch me. The blow cracked two ribs and caused a stomach bleed, forcing the ShadeOS to complain again about my dwindling power supply. The ex-CEO of Goliath Corporation raised both bony arms to finish me off. Another surge of adrenaline-fueled desperation stirred, granting me the power to kick the creature twice. The elder Charon fell to his knees. With one fluid motion, I grabbed his head, twisted hard, and ended his afterdeath service.

  “No!” screamed Gabriel. “Father!”

  Spenner spun hard with his mace, missing Rose on purpose but blindsiding me, his true target. The stunning end of his glowing mace smashed into my right temple and zapped me with enough lethal current to fry an elephant. This time, the ShadeOS alert appeared too large to ignore.

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  Double vision clouded my perception. A figure moved under the table near me. After blinking, my sight cleared enough to see Gabriel Charon lying near me and aiming his pistol at my head. Before he fired, Vanessa's red stiletto heel impaled his hand. She interrupted his pained shrieks with the butt end of her empty pistol. After knocking Gabriel out, she picked up his grav-gun. While she fired cover shots against the remaining shades, Barnaby, Rose, and Sasha all struggled against Spenner and his wisp.

  “Get up, Jonah!” barked Barnaby. “We need you!”

  Spenner's mace swung down and shattered one of Rose's stun sticks, creating a brief sparking electric storm from the weapon's broken shaft. He finished the attack by spinning and kicking Barnaby to the ground near me.

  “If you can…hold him…I can take him out…” Barnaby gasped, rolling over to catch his breath. With a noticeable energy cost, my serum’s healing factor kicked into overdrive to stabilize my wounds.

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  When the fog around my eyes cleared, I jumped to my feet, ran behind Spenner, and wrapped my arms around him. He elbowed me in the ribs and stomped on my foot. This attack smashed more of my bones, but I squeezed harder. A shade punched me in the back, crushing two vertebrae, but Rose bludgeoned the creature to distract its attention. Despite the searing agony along my spine, I held on tighter, eliciting a pained howl from Spenner.

  “Colonel Colin Spenner, I hereby sentence you with high treason and war crimes,” Barnaby rasped, cracking a blood-stained smile. While he limped forward, he traced a complex echelon across his wrist-com, causing its green color to shimmer bright. Realizing the danger, Spenner squirmed and flexed with strength that could break thick rope, but my anger and the serum’s power made my arms like iron bonds.

  “No…you…can't--” Spenner wheezed.

  Barnaby's echelon program tapped into the nearby v-cast generator, summoning the virtual form of his emerald drake. Upon manifesting, it solidified and slithered around his arm and shoulder. Its green and crimson scales scintillated in the dim light. Then I realized the IRS designed it for one single purpose. It was a cleaner program, meant to devour the remnants of the Crimson Gate. Unmoved by Spenner's pleas, Barnaby unleashed his judgment.

  “Your access is revoked.”

  The dragon leaped from Barnaby's shoulder and flew to its target. It landed on my arm, its talons gripping into my flesh for balance. Spenner struggled to break my grasp, frightened about what the dragon represented. With a ferocious roar, the dr
ake extended its neck and opened its fanged jaw to swallow Spenner's right hand. I heard a sickening crunching noise followed by an ear-splitting scream of pain and rage. The drake’s surgical strike amputated Spenner's tattooed hand, severing his bio-circuited connection to the Crimson Gate. I hoped this closed the last known access point to that trove of banned technology forever. The effort proved exhausting for Barnaby, who collapsed to his knees.

  Cut off from its source code in Spenner's wrist-com, the wisp began to dissipate. With its dying action, it disengaged from Sasha and rushed to strike me. Its green claws scratched my face. At the same moment, Spenner struck me with his left hand, and broke my nose. The pain took me off guard, and he twisted loose. Free from my grasp, he sprinted toward the edge of the second floor, and jumped down toward the exit. The wisp tried to follow him but its form disintegrated with each footfall, leaving only glowing floating green ash behind its master. The ShadeOS activated again as it attempted to heal damage from the encounter.

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  Gabriel stirred, rubbing his head and rising with his hands up. Watching his once-trusted mercenary run away, he looked frightened.

  “Tomoe!” he screamed. “Help me!”

  In an instant, the empty space next to him shimmered with orange light. Tomoe Gozen manifested a translucent body, wearing her samurai armor and mask.

  “You have become pitiful, Gabriel, and no longer an asset to me,” Tomoe chided.

  “But…our arrangement…you must aid me!”

  “True, but our arrangement does not specify the type of aid. I will fulfill that obligation one last time. Goodbye, Mr. Charon.” With that, Tomoe's hologram shimmered. Proto-matter particles released from the v-cast generator swarmed where she once stood and created a new pattern. When the lightshow dissipated, an eight-foot-tall, imposing knight resplendent in black armor manifested before us.

  “Heinrich, you're a naughty boy for violating your parole,” Barnaby said with a tsk-tsk.

  The Hochmeister growled and hefted his massive staff, preparing to unleash a mighty lightning echelon spell. As sparks gathered around his weapon, Vanessa, Rose, and Sasha all unloaded a coordinated assault against him. Vanessa fired two shots at his helmet while Sasha and Rose pummeled him with kicks and punches. The quick damage proved too much for his pattern to sustain at once, and he exploded into a glittering cloud of proto-matter ash. The swift, almost comical demise brought a grin to my face. Gabriel had a much different reaction after seeing his last ally betray him. Like a blubbering child, he started to grovel.

  “Please…please don’t kill me!” he pleaded. “Sp-Spenner did all of this! He threatened my family, he said I had to go along with everything he said…” Plausible story, maybe, but my instincts told me Gabriel or Tomoe masterminded everything. Vanessa handed me the grav-gun, giving me the gavel to pass judgment. I fought the urge to put a bullet through his brain.

  “You don't get off so easy,” I answered. Barnaby and Rose approached, leveling weapons on Gabriel.

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  My initial reaction was anger at the ShadeOS directive. That feeling disappeared when I realized the deed needed to be done. He would keep coming back for us until he completed his job. After all, his military training, his programming, compelled him.

  “I've called the lunar police, they should be here soon,” Barnaby said, clutching his injured side. “Jonah, this is your chance…get him before he slips away.”

  “Keep watch over her,” I asked Rose. She nodded. Then I looked at Vanessa and held her hand. “I have to get him. I'm sorry, love, one more job to do.”

  “Go, I'll take care of Barnaby,” she said touching my face with a brief caress. Then Vanessa picked up Spenner's mace. She moved next to Rose. They both held their weapons ready, standing guard over Barnaby. They looked like a deadly pair. Feeling confident they were safe, I bolted and jumped off the balcony, hitting the ground running without a stumble. After rushing through a crowd of people heading for the tunnel exit, Spenner's trail proved easy to find. I just followed the path of fallen patrons he had knocked down while escaping. With the serum still pushing my body to superhuman limits, I sprinted faster than ever before, gaining ground on him with each bounding step.

  As I emerged from Club Purgatory, my eyes tried to adjust to the intense burst of light from the bustling uptown streets. At this hour, Nova Park Avenue flooded with gleaming allure. A long row of glowing signs, some virtual projections and other massive digital screens, all flashed enticements for their high-end restaurants, bars, and shopping plazas. The visual noise filled my eyes with dancing colored spots. I shook my head and wiped my eyes. A commotion at the far end of the promenade caught my attention. A group of incensed limousine drivers banded together to prevent Spenner from hijacking one of their hover vehicles. Lucky for them, he decided to give up on the car and spare their lives to run further away. I continued the chase as my quarry ran north. After a hundred yards, he turned right into a descending staircase.

  Speeding up, I closed the gap between us, and followed him down into a public transport terminal. A crowd of travelers started to scream as he threw people aside. When I reached the platform, Spenner pried a closing canopy open, and ejected a crying woman from her pod. Then he entered the vehicle, and the door shut behind him. Seeing my gun, a young woman opened her pod's canopy and waved for me to take her spot.

  “You're a police officer, right?” she asked while exiting. “He's a maniac, go after him please!”

  When I jumped into her pod and revved up the pod's magnetic cushion, a crowd of travelers applauded my pursuit. With a quick jerk, the transport snapped onto the invisible magnetic rail, and my pod sped out of the station. Through my window, I saw a glimpse of commuters helping injured strangers caught in Spenner's violent wake.

  CHAPTER 21

  Atonement in D Major

  “If an injury has to be done to a man it should be so severe

  that his vengeance need not be feared.”

  - Excerpt from “The Prince”, Niccolò Machiavelli

  Unknown to all visitors and most moon residents, the Lunar Travel Authority concealed manual controls in each pod. Protected by a simple security layer, the controls appeared only for emergencies. After hacking into the system, two black, oval-shaped pads materialized before me. They stuck tight to my palms, granting visceral muscle control over the craft. A series of erratic, rapid twists from Spenner’s vehicle told me that he assumed manual control as well. He shot forward like a bullet leaving a pistol’s barrel, streaking by commuters locked into the slower moving lanes. My hands pushed forward, matching his speed and trajectory, sliding up alongside the slope of the tube-tunnel to avoid collisions. We blazed through the chute roads, spinning circular and ribbon-shaped paths around the traffic rush of slower pods. As we approached a two-way split, Spenner feinted toward the western tube. With a fraction of a second before the turn, he barrel-rolled upside down, twirling the pod, and landing inside the eastern tube.

  “Holy--” I gasped, thrusting my hands and entire body to the right. I flipped the craft and drove inverted to stay on his tail. All air escaped from my lungs in that slow moment while my pod spun in the air. Physics and fortune granted their mercy, guiding me to a hard landing on the magnetic rail.

  We raced across the Mare Frigoris at speeds three times the regulated limit. Spenner nudged a hapless passenger's pod ahead of him, sending it careening back to me in a dangerous tailspin. Surprised, I roared a scream as if the force of my voice might push the oncoming danger out of my way. A quarter-second before impact, my hands swept right and I flipped my craft to spin a full revolution around the pipe. With my left hand, I held my course and with the right hand accessed my wrist-com. I shifted my attention back and forth from driving and hacking the trafficnet. I sent an order to app
ly an emergency brake to the innocent woman spinning out of control. Her craft locked up and skidded to a stop. Inertia caused her head to hit the glass, but she lived. Undeterred, Spenner bumped more pods to slow me down, creating a minefield of spinning hazards. At my speed, it would be hard to avoid an accident.

  “Save the others,” I gasped. My hand pointed to a pair of pods about to smash into each other. Before I finished speaking, Sasha responded. She leapt into the guidance system of the nearest pod then leaping to the next, hacking at dizzying speeds, and steering innocents to a safer route. As we barreled past the chute transfer station at Enkidu Prime, Sasha’s blue form flickered when she auto-connected to the local v-cast generator. My heart swelled with the love of a proud father, watching her jump to the imperiled pods, an angel stemming the loss of precious life. While she minimized casualties, I focused on the chase, coaxing more speed from my pod.

  “This won't end well,” rasped Spenner's voice through tiny speakers behind my head. I acknowledged Spenner's hacking of the communication system as an impressive feat, since he lost his primary hand and still managed to pilot his craft with expert precision. “There will just be pain, Jonah.”

  “On that point, we can agree,” I shot back. My pod rocketed forward, and slipped along into an inverted position over Spenner's vehicle. Upside down, I looked down and saw him through his glass canopy. A red-soaked tourniquet made from his torn shirt prevented his gory stump from bleeding out. His intact left hand made swift gestures to reposition his craft away from me. However, I countered each move with a precise adjustment. “I’m prepared, are you?”

  We raced parallel across a glassy expanse of gleaming black basalt, switching positions within our cylindrical tunnel. From a distant observer's view, we looked like two spinning magnets shot through a long glass tube, our like but opposing natures bringing us close and repelling us away.