by William Cray
Duran began to feel the gentle intrusion on his mind, but he didn’t fight it. She took her free hand and placed it behind Duran's head, pulling him closer to her long neck until he leaned down into her, his lips grazing her skin. He began to feel the course of energy flowing through him as she pulled him tight. The tingling stirred stronger emotions as the image of Celeste's naked body wrapped against him, returned. The ecstasy of the image drew him closer to her, intoxicated by her presence. Duran began moving his hands across Celeste's body, resting one hand just under her subtle breasts feeling the curve and softness beneath. He allowed Celeste further into his mind, lowering the tentative guard he had erected as he moved closer to him. He felt enveloped by her, drawn in. She spun around to face him placing one hand over his shoulder and the other tracing down the back of his head, crystal eyes locked into his. Her long electric fingers stopped abruptly at the base of his skull. He felt her fingers tracing the cold metallic data bus just below his skin.
She stepped back and looked at him for a moment in stunned surprise. “You're a machine.” She said.
Duran stopped, frozen, looking down at her. He felt the gentle intensity of the probe increasing into a popping ferocity, disorienting him. The strobe turned into a violent crescendo that caused Duran to pull away. The club began to spin around him, his knees weakened. The world seemed to close in on him. He felt layers pealing away in sheets of lost awareness. Everything around him blurred like looking through a heat wave. Visions popped into his head. The fury of combat high on the edge of Olympus Mons. The suffocating fear of fighting in holes so deep in the rock that men screamed alone in the dark. As each thought and experience left him, he heard the cry of the dream. All of it crashed into him at once.
Within moments he would be gone. In a long last long gasp he stared into the depths of Celeste’s eyes. She looked up at him, that supreme confidence replaced by the eyes of the black panther. She had stripped away his defenses and left him open.
As if slapped into his broken hand, the Mag-gun emerged with a vicious whip. He dropped back one step, ripping himself from her magnetic embrace, pointing the large angry barrel at Celeste's forehead.
She froze as he snapped kinetic death up to her face. She gazed into his eyes…smiling.
“He's here.”
17
Inside the Zone
The blinding strobe light struck, driving Duran down to one knee. The hammer blows increased as he struggled to maintain his balance. Celeste drifted away from him in the strobe, leaving him alone in the small circle of unconcerned dancers, oblivious to the battle taking place around them. Each burst of power blinded him with vertigo. Duran leveled the gun in an unsteady grip as Celeste slipped away in the swirling sea of gyrating of bodies. He felt the weight of the Mag-gun slipping away, dropping to the floor as his strength left him. Images began to appear in disjointed succession, Tora, the Vendetta, the Intruder moon all rushed his mind, blurring past and present. He felt his consciousness slipping away. He tried to re-erect the barriers but the irresistible pulse stripped away his motor skills. I am losing.
Absent from his body, he went to the floor, and snatched up the Mag-gun. Duran’s hand tightened on the hilt as weapon symbology flowed across his eyes. As if a stranger were guiding it, he raised the gun. Through the fog he felt the cold barrel pressing into his temple. Duran felt his hand wrap around the friction grip. He tightened his finger on the trigger. A scream pierced the music and the circle around him widened. Duran waited to die by his own hand.
With a snap, the weapon recoiled in his left hand. But he did not die. The blinding lights of the Intruder invasion faded in the confusion. With a rush of relief and exhaustion, Duran lowered the gun as strength ebbed back into his body.
He looked up. Celeste was gone. The pulsating crowd looked up at him with confused and glassy eyes. They watched in fascination, reveling in the possibilities of what might happen next. Others stood, mouth agape, in fear.
A course of power surged into him as his body dumped hexadrine, painkillers and endorphins into his bloodstream like a supercharger. Gathering his legs under him he stood straight up, shifting the gun from his broken club hand to the murderous proficiency of his right. The aiming reticule appeared on his eye filament in a green fury.
Direct fire mode, twelve rounds, Kinetic Energy-Phosphorus, single charge, ready to fire.
Duran used the manual thumb selector on the gun and changed firing modes to “indirect – slave”, the reticule now tied to his line of sight, the magnetic gimble under the projector directing the bullet with his eyes.
The intensity of the probe was gone, but the mental energy continued to swirl around him. Songs of death being pointed at him by a ghost. It was powerful, the strongest he had yet felt. It was like before but he couldn’t place it. There were three voices in the void, each masking and evolving away from him. One voice ruled the others.
Duran quickly scanned the room trying to isolate the one voice. The club patrons ducked beneath the slew of the gun in Duran’s hand as he tracked, the reticule following the path of his eyes and updating its firing solution.
He focused his mind, seeking the direction of the energy bashing his mind. He swiveled towards the strobe, the firing reticule following his eye, finger tensing on the manual trigger. He turned towards the greatest power he could sense. As he traversed to the beacon, he caught sight of Celeste through the fast retreating dancers. She moved away from him, her back turned and slipping into the chaos of the crowd in slow deliberate motion. The reticule settled on the back of her head, raising the weapon to clear the gun line. With a flick of his club hand he pushed a patron to the floor blocking his line of sight. The sway of her movements came under the gun. He clenched his teeth and his finger tensed on the trigger. With a flick of hair, her head turned towards him. One crystal eye through the crowd met his. The gun settled on her, the reticule aimed one centimeter in from her eye.
In a flash, his mind cleared. He could sense the focus of the one overwhelming voice in his head. An image flashed in his head. His target was in range. I could end it now. Using the Intruder’s attack as a homing signal, he whipped the gun to the balcony.
The same face from the Rachenko apartment stared back at him. The party lights and glowglitter obscured a clear view, but it was him. Duran’s finger tensed, but he didn’t pull the trigger. The Intruder was taking measure of him. Testing him, dissecting him from a distance with a hundred human shields between them. The Intruder had a ridge, two or three centimeters in width that ran from his brow to over the back of his head, like a metal band running beneath his skin. His eyes were dark pits in the distance.
Duran could feel it. The Intruder was right in front of him, looking back, a wicked grin smeared on his face. Duran locked the target and tensed to release death, but another image flashed into his mind.
A torn and sliced Celeste, struggling to staunch the blood from her open throat, lying on the dance floor just a few feet away. Duran turned to look in the direction he had last seen her, pushing his way into a crowd of men just off the dance floor, desperate to find her. He looked up again towards the Intruder as he struggled through the press of bodies. The creature continued to stare down at him as he moved along the balcony towards a set of stairs along the south side of the building, to floor level.
Shit! what am I doing, Duran thought. He turned back on the retreating Intruder, gun raised. His finger tensed on the trigger to lock the target. A second pull of the trigger would send the hypersonic round into him.
Before he could fire, hands reached out to grab Duran, snatching at him. With unified force he was pulled to the ground as he struggled against them. There were too many hands on him, too many to throw off. He dropped hard on the floor, pushing the gunpoint up to the ceiling. With one free, numb and broken hand, he grabbed the throat of the nearest attacker. Duran began to crush the attackers air passage as an assault on his gun hand twisted the Talon free.
The gang o
f blank faced men and women ripped at him, trying to tear him apart. They tried to lock hands on his throat and hair, pulling like beasts, women scratching at his eyes, prying the gun out of his hand.
Duran unleashed a furious roar as he struggled against them, squeezing the trachea of the pockmarked thug that got his neck too close. Duran felt the flesh tear under the strain of his grip, feeling the final crunch as the thugs wind pipe was crushed. Duran expected him man to fall away, but instead his expression remained fixed as he continued to wrestle with Duran's left arm, air wheezing from his lungs. The attacker finally surrendered to asphyxiation, fighting out the last of the oxygen in his brain. Dropping him next to Duran, blue faced and unconscious, dying.
The world exploded and his vision blurred as a black leather boot smashed into his ribs. The shock of a heavy boot blow crashing into him forced the air out of his lungs. Duran started to lose consciousness as more blows arrived. He rolled his bloodied head to the side against the kicks slamming into his torso. Through half open eyes he saw own Mag-gun pointed down at him from a blank faced man wearing a clear jacket over a black t-shirt. The dominated man pointed the gun at him, pushing it towards his head. Duran watched as the man’s grip on the trigger tensed, a sick smile of victory across his mad face.
The man pulled the trigger. “Locked.” The gun was dead in his hands. No recoil. Duran kept his eyes on him as hammer blows continued to rain down. Duran guided the firing reticule onto his chest as he struggled with the gun.
The mad man hesitated when the gun didn’t fire, but he didn’t wait long. He re-centered the big chrome and black Mag-gun on Duran's head the second time.
ENABLE
His finger jerked back harder on the trigger as if that would fix it. Duran winced, flinching and pulling his head away a fraction of a centimeter, saving his life. The gun roared.
The bullet was ejected out of the gun by the super conducting magnetic coils at hypersonic speeds. The 10mm bullet cracked the air as it was propelled out of the barrel. The bullet, guided by Duran’s fire control system, turned hard and started to tumble as it swung around Duran and slammed into the attackers chest. The bullet easily penetrated the attackers torso and tumbled through it, ripping out a hole in his lower back as the round tumbled through his body. The warhead went off as it exited the man’s ruined backside. The round exploded behind him, throwing white-hot phosphorus splinters into the bodies of two others close by. The attacker tumbled to the ground from the catastrophic damage, Duran’s Talon falling to the floor about a foot his bruised chest.
The grip on Duran's left leg slackened as two men grasping and ripping at it recoiled from the flaming phosphorous. His arms were still restrained, but the hold on his left leg was loosening. Between fading gasps of air through crushed ribs, Duran relaxed his left leg, giving the two injured men the impression they were winning the struggle to press Duran to the ground. They relaxed for just an instant, but it was enough.
Duran sharply pulled his leg straight back to his chest, ripping free from the two men's relaxing grip, cocking the leg like the hammer of a gun. With all his enhanced strength, he released it like a piston, pummeling the closest man in the face with the heel of his boot. The man's face showered blood as he flew backwards into the crowd of shocked onlookers. The next blow fell on one of the men holding his right leg, crashing his boot’s reinforced toe into the man's jaw, which Duran felt shatter at the vicious kick. The grasping man laxed at the blow, his jaw broken, then he recovered and started to attack again. Duran re-cocked his leg and sent the boot toe into the man's temple.
It was enough. His right leg was free. Duran pulled both legs underneath him, gaining new leverage as more mindless fanatics filled in to punch and tear at him. He quickly shifted his weight and kicked their legs out from under them.
They fell to the ground with a thud but their hold on his arm was still firm, dragging him down. With the fight down to his level, Duran twisted free by rolling his shoulder and contracting his biceps. Two legs and one arm with a broken hand were free.
Duran turned his attention to the bruiser punishing his ribs with blows from an improvised light stand. He slapped away a woman still tearing the skin off his neck then thrust his open palmed hand into the man's solar plexus, knocking him back to the floor. His broken hand screamed at him as he used it as a cudgel to beat people off of him.
Duran shrugged off one more attacker, and then leapt to his feet. Before he could strike, another attacker jumped him from behind, grabbing him around the neck. Duran struggled with him as one of the guards raised a small machine pistol.
Leaning forward, Duran lifted the shorter man hanging on his back up off the floor. He pivoted to put the man hanging on his back towards the approaching gunman, shielding him. As he turned, the body hanging onto his back reverberated as it was struck. Blood splattered as the machine pistol poured fleches rounds into his meat shield.
Duran dropped to the floor, rolling his dead meatshield off of him, then skirted over the pile of shattered and broken assailants towards his Talon still lying in the grasp of the dead man who tried to use the gun against him. Bullets skipped off the floor as Duran scooped up the Talon and ducked behind a support column. This fight is about to become very one-sided.
Duran checked around the corner, locating the approaching gunman. The reticule took an extra second to lock through the suspended glow glitter and still flashing lights. When the reticule was stationary on the man's chest Duran pulled the trigger, locking the target. Duran ducked behind the support beam as rounds smashed into it, then he wheeled the big gun around.
The gun barked and the man's chest exploded as he fell to the floor.
Three of Duran's previous assailants, all broken and mauled in some way closed on him again, ignoring certain death. Three gouts of hypersonic violence and they crumpled with phosphorescent holes where their lungs and brains should have been.
Duran turned to search the balcony, which was now full of people streaming away from the roaring fight below. Most of the ground floor was emptying out as people fled. Writhing and dead forms lay on the dance floor, party lights illuminating the blood as the music pulsed on in oblivion.
Duran focused his mind, zeroing in on the mental energy he could feel all around him. There was movement ambling towards him out of a dark corner from his right. The man’s unsteady steps were lurching and uncoordinated as he came on. Duran turned on him, swinging the gun around, spotting the attacker through the chaos. Duran released the magazine out of his gun.
The middle age, balding man came on, accelerating as much as he stumbled forward. Purple bags under lifeless eyes and oily sweat stained the man’s dark skin with the imprint of the Intruder radiating on him, in rigid control. His redcoat was opened at the chest. A narrow line of blood and ripped flesh ran down the center of his torso, from just under the ribcage to the pelvis. Blood ran from the open wound and coursed down his trousers, across his bruised and swollen stomach. In one hand was the plastic ripcord, black blood and flesh caught in the cords clipped teeth which he had just yanked from his fleshy interior, tearing open the chemical bags seated in his guts, where his intestines and stomach should be. The chemicals in the two separate bags merged with their liners ripped out. The human bomb was trying to close the distance before he detonated.
Duran had the second magazine clapped into place before the phosphorous magazine hit the floor. The Talon welcomed the new magazine, locking the receiver back and adjusting the magnetic pulse, signaling to Duran’s processor that all was ready.
Locked
100 KE-Fleches.
RDY
There wasn’t time or space to decide which side of the man to riddle with steel. Once the two chemicals in the fluid bags in his chest were ruptured they would come into contact, starting a chain reaction that would consume the building.
Duran put the reticule on the left side of the man’s lower torso and let the gun roar, spitting wicked duranium nails into him and rippin
g one side of his chest to bloody meat. The chemical bag just below the skin exploded in a quicksilver spray, showering the area with its volatile contents, but emptying the bag before critical mass was reached.
Holes tore through the man in shredding gashes and he convulsed violently. People behind him screamed in agony as the duranium darts passed straight through the bomber and into the crowd behind his contorted form. They went down like wheat chopped by a scythe.
They had just come to this place on the wrong night to get their freak on, but the Talon roared anyway, shredding them. Duran angled the gun line down to try to avoid any more ancillary carnage.
The target ceased to move forward, going down hard as fluids fused and spit in torrents from the bombers guts. The fluids ran together in pools of quicksilver, flaring into sparks and flashing ignitions. The man's torso jumped from the muted explosion, showering blood and flesh in a fountain of gore before erupting into a fire. The flames consumed his body. The remaining chemicals came into contact with each other and combusted into gouts of blue flame. Duran put his arm up, to keep the heat off his face.
Critical mass had been avoided. Gutting the man had spared the partygoers an apocalyptic fuel air explosion that would have killed anyone still in the building.
Duran stepped back from the flames. He could feel nothing. The Intruder had slipped out.
He looked around through the flames at the carnage. He glanced over at the remains of the people along his gun line as he had shredded the bodybomber. The back spray of the corrosive chemical mixture had eaten parts of their flesh and caused terrible chemical burns on their exposed arms and legs. He checked each of them for signs of life, but he knew the answer. There was nothing he could have done to save them. They were gone. What happened to them was inevitable. They were dead either way if the bomb had detonated. They had just come out to have a good time.
