“Former military. Former law enforcement. What is it worth?” There was that note of challenge again. Not an angry challenge. But definite curiosity. I’d heard it before, in dozens of gyms. It was the probing challenge of someone who wanted to test not only your abilities but their own.
I smiled. “So you’re a fighter then?”
“I’ve had some training.” He paused, smiled back at me. “Over the years.”
That was a loaded statement. He’d probably been training longer than I’d been alive, and without any noticeable deterioration in physical strength or fitness. I was still tense, angry even, from watching the endless stream of stupid on the screens. I could sense a similar tension in Al’awwal, though I couldn’t be sure of the source. Probably something to do with a couple of nascent revolutionaries showing up on his doorstep and immediately putting his life in jeopardy.
I looked down at my clothes—jeans, T-shirt, tennis shoes. I’d left the jacket in the study. It wasn’t the ideal workout attire, but it would do. “You have gloves? Head protection?” I asked. I was more than up for a little friendly competition, but it wasn’t the time to get my teeth knocked in or break a finger.
“I do.”
“Well, then…”
* * * *
The gym was large, maybe eight hundred square feet and laid out with equipment along the walls. That left an empty space in the center a little more than fifteen feet on a side. There were no mats, just wood floors, and no ring markers. I’d trained in gyms with far less space, though.
Al’awwal faced me across our makeshift ring, standing maybe ten feet away. We’d both donned soft headgear and open-fingered, but heavily padded, combat sparring gloves—he’d had an entire shelf of sparring gear, suitable for all styles of training, and ranging in age from decades old (but well-cared for) to brand-new. I had a brief flash of a memory to my last sparring session—with Tommy Thompson, the big NLPD rookie under the hateful eyes of Francoise Fortier. Well, this would at least be a friendlier match than that one had started as. But although Al’Awwal was much smaller than Thompson, I had the sneaking suspicion I was in for a harder fight.
“Are you ready, Campbell?” Al’Awwal asked.
“Ready,” I replied.
“On the whistle, then.” He hit a button on a remote, then tossed the remote aside. I felt a little surge of adrenaline in the few seconds of “ready time” that every round clock I’d ever used seemed to have. I had time to draw a steadying breath and let it out in a relaxing sigh, trying to will the tension in my shoulders to ease. Then the whistle sounded and Al’awwal flowed forward.
He moved like a cat, with a fluidity and grace that spoke of long training and made me feel slow and awkward in comparison. He was built like a cat, too. Lean and lithe, with the kind of long muscle fibers that spoke of flexibility and endurance. And speed. I saw just how much speed as a roundhouse flicked out, almost faster than my eye could follow.
I’d trained with some of the best, most experienced fighters out there, people with decades of experience. I’d also trained with some of the most challenging and physically fit people out there. I’d rarely—if ever—come across someone who could pack decades of training and professional-athlete fitness into the same package. Those numbers just didn’t work out for a run-of-the-mill human being. Al’awwal wasn’t that, though. He obviously had decades of experience and the fitness levels of an Olympian. That kick came with the full package—speed, power, and an amazing degree of technical execution.
I was outclassed, but I wasn’t new to the game, either. No way in hell I was fast enough to actively “block” anything Al’awwal was going to throw at me. On the other hand, he might be bursting with the very best genetics and immune systems and God alone knew what else, but I still had forty or fifty pounds on the guy. As more than one instructor had told me, size wasn’t the only thing that mattered, but damned if it didn’t help. As that kick came in, I tucked my left arm tight against my side, curling down enough so my left elbow dropped below my bottom rib. I also started turning away from the kick, trying to ride the power as it landed and absorb some of the blow.
It worked—sort of. There wasn’t enough force in the kick to snap bones, but I felt the scream of protest from my injured ribs. I had no doubt Al’awwal could have thrown a kick with that force, and it was a relief to realize that I was in for a friendly match. I had hoped as much, but until the first blows started flying, you never really knew. I’d basically presented Al’awwal with a more resistant target—my arm—and by tucking that target into my body, I’d made it so that the force of the kick had to be spread over a lot more mass. Same principle as tucking a rifle tight into your shoulder when you got down to it. It still hurt, and at full force, it might have more than hurt, but as it was, I was able to absorb the force.
Of the first kick.
Almost as soon as that first kick landed, Al’awwal’s leg re-chambered and lashed out again, having never returned to the ground. This time the kick came high, aiming for my head. I was half-turned with my guard down protecting my ribs and my weight too far forward to fade back and out of the way. So I did the only thing I could. I dove forward. It was a high-risk move. I didn’t like leaving my feet. I didn’t like exposing my back to a skilled opponent. But I also didn’t like eating a kick to the head, so my options were limited. I hit the hardwood floor, tucked, and rolled, coming back to my feet in a not-quite-smooth motion and spinning around as fast as I could, hands coming back up.
It wasn’t quite fast enough.
Al’awwal’s jab slipped past my raising guard and smashed into my nose. The blow landed squarely, and I felt the sudden rush of tears as the strike blurred my vision and made my eyes water and my nose run. I blocked out the pain, though, because a hard cross was coming right behind it. My left had swept in a short circle, left forearm catching the cross and pushing it toward my right shoulder. The synthetic moved with the motion, letting it turn his body slightly and set up the tight left hook that followed in its wake.
I flared out my right arm, elbow down, palm of the hand jamming toward Al’awwal’s right bicep. I took the heat from the hook, but I didn’t try to stop it. Instead, I shot my left arm out, up and across my body, driving beneath the synthetic’s left armpit and forcing the hooking arm up and away from me as I rolled my right elbow. At the same time, I turned in my stance, driving both my arms back across my body in the other direction, moving from right to left. The combined forces of my shifting weight, my moving arms, and Al’awwal’s own momentum sent him staggering away from me. I didn’t follow up, though—I needed a half-second to clear my head and make a quick swipe under my nose to check and see if I was bleeding.
“Wing Tsun?” he asked, a smile playing across his features as he identified one of the components of my cobbled-together style.
“Among others,” I replied, trying to keep my breathing even despite the crying pressure in my lungs. I’d been holding my breath. Amateur move. But something a lot of people did when they found themselves being pushed hard. I opened my mouth to speak, but Al’awwal was moving forward. He didn’t waste any time with artistic posing or wide grandiose movements, none of the signature, flashy moves that were more associated with the “art” than the “martial.” He came at me with the confidence of someone who had studied—and mastered—multiple styles but had transcended them and created something uniquely his own. I recognized it—not the style, but the approach to not having a singular style—because it was exactly how I fought.
Only, Al’awwal had been doing it for decades longer than me.
He came in hard with a jab-jab-cross combo followed immediately by another roundhouse. I parried, slipped, and dodged for all I was worth, but I had to concentrate all of my efforts on the defensive. The axiom went “you’re most vulnerable when you’re attacking” because you had to lower your guard to throw a punch at the other guy. But that didn
’t matter one damn bit if you couldn’t find enough space to counterattack. I had no breathing room, and it was all I could do to stop most of his strikes from landing.
Most, but not all.
That brought a little trill of…not fear, exactly. I could tell that my opponent was in control. He was coming at me hard, but without anger, without malice, without intent to do real harm. I’d sparred with guys out to hurt, and as far as I was concerned those assholes belonged in a jailhouse, not in the ring. This was not that. So it wasn’t fear that I was feeling, so much as a sense of impending pressure and the weight of inevitability.
I caught another stiff jab, this one at least not landing square on my nose. And I checked a kick a little too late, resulting in a clacking of shins that brought tears to my eyes—without seeming to bother Al’awwal much at all. My strength was starting to flag, my endurance to go when I was literally saved by the bell. The timer sounded its siren song, and I’d never been so glad to hear a whistle in my life. To his credit, Al’awwal stopped his assault at once, lowering his hands and backing away. There was a faint—very faint—sheen of sweat on his face, but his breathing wasn’t even the tiniest bit irregular.
Meanwhile, I was dripping sweat, and it was pooling uncomfortably at my knees and other places. Jeans weren’t designed for this shit. My own breathing was far beyond irregular and well into the realm of ragged. “Jesus,” I gasped. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve had to work that hard just to avoid getting hit?”
“You did well,” Al’awwal replied, and I felt like a beginner stepping onto the mats for the first time. “I had a more difficult time landing shots on you than I do on most of my training partners.”
That stung my pride, more than I wanted to admit. I had size and reach—okay, not much in the reach department, but definitely size—on Al’awwal, and I was an experienced fighter to boot. I’d been doing this shit for the better part of two decades. In a one-on-one fight, I was used to a certain degree of…competence. Not being “harder to hit than most.” But what did two decades of experience matter when the other guy had, what, six, seven more and a level of genetic superiority that made me feel like a child going up against an adult?
“How can you fight at all?” I gasped, still trying to catch my breath. “Or greet us with a firearm?” I thought I knew the answer, but confirmation never hurt, and I admit, I was feeling just a bit inferior at that moment.
He shrugged and gave me a slight smile. “I was the first synthetic, Campbell. My father wanted a son, not a slave. The conditioning synthetics are subjected to not only didn’t exist yet, but when it was instituted, it horrified my father to no end.”
The intense conditioning that synthetics underwent to prevent the possibility of violence against humans was terrible, a disgraceful act that, in and of itself, was every bit as bad as their enslavement. But after two minutes of throwing hands with Al’awwal, I understood why the researchers at Walton Biogenics had felt it necessary. No matter how much training Al’awwal had, two minutes of hard sparring—and it had been hard sparring, even if the hard work for him had all been on the offense—should at least have left him a little bit winded. But apart from the barest hint of sweat, he looked fresh as a daisy.
Combine latent genetic superiority with the theoretical ability to live several times longer than a normal human and all the possible knowledge that came with that long life, and what did you get? A—hopefully—benevolent master.
The whole thing was so twisting with ironies that it boggled the mind. Al’awwal was living proof of what a synthetic could be if not bounded by the limits of their conditioning, and that proof was more than a little terrifying for a normal person.
And yet, a synthetic who was bounded by their conditioning had even more to fear from humans. Still, most of the processes applied to synthetics that granted them that superiority could also be applied to humans, if it weren’t for Walton Biogenics’ stranglehold on the relevant medical technologies.
Still, after two minutes in the ring with Al’awwal, a shameful part of me wondered, if only briefly, if I wasn’t helping not only to overthrow the enslavement of synthetics but also to usher in a new era where it was humans who would be seen as the inferior—and therefore eminently enslaveable—race.
“Are you okay, Campbell?” Al’awwal asked as he tossed me a towel.
I caught the towel and realized I had been standing there, staring blankly, for nearly a full minute as the possible repercussions tumbled through my mind. “Yeah,” I said, swiping at the sweat that ran freely down my face. “Yeah, fine. Just…sorting some things out in my head.”
“In that case, are you ready for round two?”
No. I definitely was not ready for round two. But as I’d been taught in the Army—steel sharpens steel. Al’awwal was better than me, no doubt. Some was genetics. But some was training. Another one of those universal maxims was that you learned more from a loss than a victory. It looked like I had a lot to learn from the synthetic, and who knew when I’d get another chance?
“Yeah,” I said, tossing the towel onto a nearby bench. “I guess I am. Let’s do this.”
Chapter 18
A searing, twisting pain that started somewhere along my outer hips and wrapped in and around to the backs of my knees woke me up. I’d been expecting the cramps after Al’awwal had driven me around his gym for the better part of an hour. I’d tried to fortify my system with a healthy dose of grunt candy, but when I’d closed my eyes last night, I’d known it was coming. There wasn’t anything to be done about it, either, other than grip the sheets in my fists and grit my teeth until it passed. That didn’t take long, though the cramps left a bone-deep soreness in their wake.
I groaned as I pushed myself out of bed, somewhat disoriented by the fact that I was in an actual bed and not perched precariously on a camping cot. Al’awwal had found a room for me to crash in, though the place had smelled slightly of dust and obviously hadn’t been used in God alone know how long. But it had a bathroom, a bed, and all the trimmings, so I wasn’t complaining. A hot shower had taken away a little of the sting of yesterday’s beating, and as soon as I managed to stand up, I was planning on indulging in another. Like beds, hot showers had been in short supply over the past month.
I’d checked in with Silas before crashing for the evening, but he’d barely looked up from his screens, just waving one hand vaguely in my direction in a gesture of clear dismissal. I doubted the big synthetic had even gone to sleep. I knew that if I checked, he’d still be bent over those screens, alabaster face lit by the bluish glow emanating from them. As much as I wanted to badger him and see if we’d made any progress, the demands of my body overrode the demands of the rebellion. I needed another shower, some more grunt candy, and, God and Al’awwal willing, some hot food and strong coffee in order to even start feeling human again. Couldn’t be a heartbreaker and life-taker if I couldn’t even manage to stand up straight.
Shower first. I limped in the direction of the bathroom, silently cursing my own stubbornness. Al’awwal had been more than willing to stop after pounding on me for about twenty minutes, but I had insisted we keep going. I had a feeling it was going to be a day for regretting things.
I was on my third cup of coffee—and had put away as many eggs, some toast, and a solid half-pound of turkey bacon from Al’awwal’s well-stocked larder—when I finally made my way to the room where Silas yet worked. At first glance, it appeared he hadn’t moved a muscle since the last time I’d checked in on him. His massive shoulders were hunched, almost defensively, over the screens collected before him, his fingers doing their dance across the haptic surfaces. A plate, its contents reduced to crumbs and smears of an unidentifiable nature, sat next to him, and I wondered if, like me, he’d simply helped himself to the bounty of our host, or if Al’awwal had, at some point after repeatedly kicking my ass, actually cooked for Silas as well. Well, he didn’t
seem to be up yet, so maybe I’d at least been enough of a challenge to tire him out. God knew I’d still be sleeping if it weren’t for the leg cramps.
“Any luck?” I asked Silas as I slipped into a chair. He’d set up in what, in any other house, I’d have called a dining room. Except I’d already seen a much larger room with a table that could have easily sat a dozen people on a side, so this room probably had some other name. Or was intended for the “help.” Whatever the case, it had a cozy wood table that could have been a couple centuries old and four well-worn chairs. Like most of the other areas that Al’awwal had personally shown us, this room actually felt used, though it lacked the lived-in feel of the small kitchen, the study, and the gym.
“Some, Detective,” Silas said. “Perhaps more than some. La Sorte and a few of the others at the safe house have been working on this as well. Between us, we have managed to identify several possible avenues of approach. One general carrier that Walton Biogenics routinely uses for deliveries and a number of smaller suppliers that handle their own deliveries. As expected, the security on the shipments is fairly robust, but nothing we will be unable to break, given time.”
“How much time, Silas? As much as I could use another day of rest in a fucking mansion, the clock’s ticking on this.”
The look Silas gave me, part exasperation, part amusement, spoke volumes. But all he said was, “I am aware, Detective.” Then his screens beeped, and his smile changed, taking on a more feral look. “And to answer your question, now.”
“What?”
He turned back to the screens, fingers flying. “We’ve managed to crack the security on one of the lab’s suppliers. Not a major carrier—a simple glass firm. They manufacture precision lab equipment locally, but they are a small enough operation that they handle their own deliveries. And it looks like they spend more money on making their glassware than they do on information security.”
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