He looked oddly familiar.
Where did they come from? These two hadn’t been anywhere near this area on the last sweep.
But there was no time to waste with discussions or even interrogations. His squad had other, far more important tasks at hand.
“Take them into custody,” he ordered. “I’ll notify command and have them picked up.”
* *
Jess watched as the three samurai robots stepped a little closer to Zac and stopped. He remained unmoving.
Then one of them spoke.
“Step from the vehicle,” the male voice reverberated from a speaker. It sounded human and was spoken in English. “Where we can see you.”
Then there was the jarring moment where Jess realized the machine was not talking to Zac.
It meant her.
Suddenly the movements of the robots appeared human, random and imperfect, and with the very human voice she had the idea that, perhaps, there were men inside. Like a suit of powered armor rather than a robot.
“Where are we?” Zac asked the one in front of him. “And who are you?”
There was a moment of silence. The samurai’s mannerisms suggested they were talking to each other inside the suits. Definitely people in there.
Then: “Step from the vehicle,” the voice repeated, meaning her, ignoring Zac for the moment. Apparently they felt her the bigger threat. Did they think she was hiding something? A weapon? “Hands where we can see them.”
She crouched tighter behind the car door. Debated coming out, as ordered. What is Zac doing?! This was it. Furtively she peeked around the edge. She and Zac were going to be captured.
But that wasn’t in his plans.
Stunning everyone he lunged, directly at the armored giant on his left. It happened so fast none of the others moved. Zac, a man, a regular human man, dove impossibly fast against a machine that was probably as heavy as a car, knocked its rifle aside with one hand and threw his shoulder into it—the impact actually knocking the towering samurai back a step.
“Stand down!” the voice commanded as the other units turned their guns on the attacking human. Jess crouched tighter behind the door, continuing to peer with one eyeball around the edge. Zac was now gripping the armored unit around one leg and … lifting! Bracing himself, he lifted the massive suit of powered armor and flipped it into the air. She felt her mouth fall open. Arcing back, the metal samurai flailed as the operator inside tried to regain control—dropping its rifle as it went. The machine landed on its back with a heavy crack! that sent a cloud of powdered cobblestones poofing into the air.
Jess was stunned. Ten men working together could not have done that. Then …
WHOOM! one of the others fired, engulfing Zac in a brilliant blast of plasma that cooked the air. It was so sudden, so blinding; she screamed and covered her ears, curling all the way behind the door as the heat of the blast singed her skin—even at that range. Spots danced behind her squinted eyes, remnants of the unexpected sun-bright flash.
Zac! she screamed his name in her mind.
Terror gripped her; ache at the terrific loss.
That quick.
It was over, that quick.
Zac!
He was gone.
WHOOM! another concussion rocked the air. She cringed, terrified, but … it wasn’t meant for her. The shot was fired in the other direction. WHOOM! another. What were they firing at?! Then … BOOM! the thunder of one of them being struck. Then a series of metallic impacts. Like punches.
What …?
She uncurled; peeked her head back around the door.
Zac!
He had one of the other suits on its back and was punching it! Fearsome, insane punches that—impossibly—collapsed the armor where they struck, crunching it like an aluminum can. Like the Incredible Hulk or something. BANG! BANG! BANG! Smashing. Whoever was inside was most certainly crushed to death. Zac was nearly naked, clothes singed away, just like when she and Bianca found him in the woods but otherwise unscathed. Washed clean by the fire.
He’s alive!
The armored machine he’d thrown to the street on his first attack was trying to rise. The third and final samurai had its gun on him, unwilling to shoot while he was on top of the other.
But the unit under Zac was now quite clearly gone. In a seeming rage the third unloaded, firing back to back bursts that engulfed Zac in more hot plasma, sending him tumbling and Jess screaming back behind the door. It was a natural reaction, but the rational part of her realized the door was useless cover. If one of those shots hit the car she was done. If one even came close, she was done. The car and, certainly her with it, would go up in flames. The energy of the guns was phenomenal.
How Zac was surviving …
She peeked again. There he was. Alive and rolling to his feet and jumping at his attacker; a flaming streak of fury, skin blazing, impacting the armor like a human fireball and bowling it over. As it fell he delivered another series of brutal punches, destroying that one like the other.
Impossible.
She watched in awe, a little braver now, feeling suddenly like there was no way Zac could lose as he made short work of the enemy. He was proving unstoppable. The one he’d knocked down at the start of the fight had finally managed to rise and was turning to run—getting nowhere as Zac flew to it, instantly, so fast … punched through the armor, gripped it and hurled it over and to the ground. BANG! He mounted and obliterated that one even quicker than the last.
Brutal.
For a long moment the echoes of those final impacts dissipated up and down the street. Jess felt the dryness of her mouth, hanging open in the acrid air. She managed to close it and swallow. The steady sound of the distant battle crept back into her awareness; the only sound disturbing the silence in the aftermath. Slowly she stood, steadying herself behind the car door. Down the street Zac rose. Got to his feet, left the final, destroyed armored unit and started back, kicking off the last bits of a shoe that clung persistently to his foot, probably burned there. It was the last of anything he’d come with. As he walked he checked high and above, to the sides, scrutinizing the surrounding buildings—everywhere, making sure no new attackers lay in wait.
Jess looked around too; nervous, afraid—out of her mind afraid—but as Zac drew close could not stop staring at …
Him.
She swallowed, trying without success to look away. His expression remained intense from the fury of combat, attention elsewhere. Her head buzzed. It was an emotional mash-up of fear, awe and blatant rapture, and she wasn’t sure what was freaking her out more; there were so many things to choose from. The fact that she was there at all? The fact that she had no idea where “there” was or how she got there? The fact that she was in the middle of this unreal setting with … this perfect, amazing boy? Or the fact that he’d just pulverized, with his bare hands, three massive suits of powered armor—armor straight out of a video game—been set afire and, more incredibly, survived, and was walking toward her completely unscathed.
Probably the last.
Yeah, she thought. That was definitely what was freaking her out most.
He reached her, came around the car door and stood close—too close, it suddenly felt—skin giving off heat from the plasma blasts but otherwise appearing completely fine. He looked into her upturned face and she swallowed down the lump in her throat.
“I don’t know why I did that,” he said, glancing back up the street at the ruined armor. Then, surveying the extent of the damage echoed her own disbelief:
“I don’t know how I did that.”
She struggled to gather what composure she could. It wasn’t going well. After everything, after falling, after the shock of whatever the hell was going on, after discovering Zac was like a superhero or something and now here he was standing right beside her, giving off heat in more ways than one, making her heart thunder in her chest, this tall, handsome, dark-haired boy so oblivious to anything else at the moment, so unaware how
she struggled to keep her eyes in the right place and all she could think was—
“Can you drive this thing?” he glanced at the car.
She caught her breath. Whirled to face it; put her mind on the driver controls and deliberately yanked her racing thoughts from everything else. Right then it was all too much.
There was a steering wheel. She stuck in a foot and reached to the floorboard, confirming two pedals. Both were square and metal. One probably made it go, one must make it stop.
To her surprise she found a button, marked in English.
Start.
“Where the hell are we?” the words came on impulse as she slid into the seat. Explosions outside the towering city wall had begun to intensify. She hesitated, pushed the Start button and … was rewarded with the electric whine of a starter. It whirred for a few seconds, spinning what sounded like some sort of turbine until … it caught and shook the car with a sudden twist of torque. After that it settled to a steady thrum. Vapor began drifting from edges of the hood, as if the thing were powered by steam.
Zac went around to the passenger side and got in.
Jess pulled in her other leg and shut the door, searching the dash until she found lights. She turned them on, found three more buttons, one with an arrow pointing forward, one back, one with a Stop, gripped the wheel and pushed the forward arrow. The car began idling ahead.
Unreal.
Zac turned to her. She pushed down on the brake and held them still. Turned to look into his face. His pale blue eyes flickered in the glow of fires outside the car. Handsome. Strong.
Frickin unbelievably strong.
And apparently fireproof.
The reality of what he’d just done was impinging harder each instant. She recalled the way he snapped the inch-thick wood back in the playhouse, like it was nothing. How he’d broken their fall from the sky, the impossibility of that lost somehow behind the shock of their arrival. Zac was way stronger than some simple Captain America experiment. She felt herself staring with unchecked awe, yet couldn’t tear away from his gaze.
More than where they were, more than what had happened to get them there—more than any of that, she was suddenly desperate to find out who he was.
Suddenly he turned sharply to look behind, out the rear window as if hearing something. She craned to see, to hear, but could detect nothing above the din of distant explosions. Her hair stood on end in anticipation of whatever he sensed.
“Go,” he said, urgent. “Hurry.”
“What about the—”
“We need to go.” He was adamant. “Now.”
Without hesitation she switched her foot to the gas and stepped on it, lurching out onto the street with a surge.
Racing them away.
CHAPTER 10: HORUS
Captain Willet signaled his men to a stop. The four-man recon squad pulled up short behind him, invisible in the shadows. Willet surveyed the next block. Three of the Dominion Astake powered armor lay sprawled in the street ahead, crushed. As he studied them more closely, however, he realized their destruction was not the work of heavy cannon fire, or even artillery blasts.
They’d each had the crap beat out of them.
“Move up.” He took point, heading up the sides of the intervening buildings, alert for other threats. He and his team were deep behind enemy lines.
As he drew up on the first suit of powered armor he took a moment to scan it, ensuring it was inert. As expected, his scan told him nothing his eyes hadn’t already; both the human operator inside and the suit itself were destroyed. Whatever took them out did so with simple brute force. One of his own company? Venatres powered armor, Skull Boys, on patrol in the city? If such a patrol existed he wasn’t privy to it. As far as he knew he and his recon team were the only ones in this section of Osaka. Sent there on special mission by Commander Satori. He looked over his shoulder as his men drew up and took position, then turned back to the closest Astake lying in the street. Not entirely sure one of the Skull Boys could do that much damage.
“Plug into this unit,” he instructed, turning his attention to the surrounding area. Aside from the ruined Astake nothing else at the scene was unusual. Everything looked normal. As normal as anything could in the midst of all-out war.
“I’ve got visual feeds,” his man reported. The others covered the area with short rifles. Willet held his own at the ready.
“Review it.” But even as he issued the command a group of Dominion regulars rounded the far corner.
“Cover!” he yelled, rolling behind the downed Astake.
His man unplugged and dove with him, even as Willet sighted one of the enemy soldiers and opened fire.
* *
Jess drove the dark, deserted streets, slower now, having cleared the scene of the crime. She kept turning where the road led, always heading toward the far side of the city. Here and there other cars sat parked to the side, lights shone from a few windows, but mostly the city appeared empty. This part of town was much quieter than the last and, so far, just as deserted.
“How are we going to find that thing?” she glanced over at Zac. They needed to find the device that brought them. In her mind it was the only way home. Whatever incredible, mind-warping thing had happened, it happened when they twisted that thing and, she was convinced, twisting it again would take her back.
But Zac was staring out the windshield, absorbed with other aspects of their predicament. One foot on the edge of the seat, knee up with his elbow on it, other arm out the open window, studying their surroundings as she drove, trying hard, it seemed, to remember. As it turned out the car had a few suitcases in the back, almost as if someone had been planning to evacuate and never made it, and in one of them he found a pair of plain black shorts that fit. Kind of like boxers. Now, sitting there with his knee up, wearing nothing but the dark shorts, gazing pensively out the roadster’s stylish, chrome-trimmed window in an unintentionally affected pose, he looked—with his defined physique and against the backdrop of that dark, black and gray cityscape—like some kind of bizarre Calvin Klein ad.
“I don’t know,” he said. “But for now I can’t shake the idea we have to get out of here.” He pointed ahead to an upcoming street. “Keep going that way.”
She turned them around the corner, down yet another featureless city block. There were no billboards, no advertisements—none of the things she was used to. Yet it was a city in every other way. Buildings, roads. She was driving a car. Albeit one like she’d never seen. It was all so normal, yet at the same time alien beyond belief.
The smoke of battle combined with heavy cloud cover created a haze that blotted out all but a few slivers of the sky, but at times such as now the cover broke, a little, and a few stars shone through. Those slivers looked like a regular night sky.
“People ahead,” Zac got her attention. She followed his gaze, straining to see the end of the street until she saw the small crowd. Nerves flooded to the fore. They were in a stolen car. They’d destroyed and killed three armored soldiers—probably members of this city’s guard. Not to mention all the other things that were horribly wrong with everything that was going on. She began to shake.
“Keep driving,” said Zac. “Don’t react.”
She forced herself to maintain their steady speed.
The first thing she noticed as they passed the group was that, to a person, they wore nothing but black. It was a noir look, like they were trying to be hip, but most of the people were of different ages and several were out of shape. At that Jess realized these were probably their normal clothes and not a fashion statement.
Like uniforms.
She and Zac cruised by, drawing prolonged stares. The crowd was on Zac’s side so he nodded to them out the open window. They just stared at the handsome, shirtless guy, no doubt noting the girl driving. All at once she realized her white school outfit was glaringly out of place among their all-black attire. She became painfully aware of their scrutiny, in fact. Here she was in an obvious
ly unusual white shirt, Zac bare-chested and nodding pleasant Hellos as they passed. Total sore thumbs.
Up ahead was another congregation of people. Beyond them more walked the streets. Jess took a deep, shuddering breath.
Suddenly people were everywhere.
The further on they pressed, the more obvious it became that no one else was driving. There were no other cars moving on the road. Perhaps there was a curfew? If so then they were violating it quite blatantly. As more and more people gave them the evil eye she became increasingly convinced the police would be on the way. On the verge of hyperventilating again she jerked violently in her seat at the sound of Zac’s voice.
“There’s a city gate on the right.” He pointed calmly to a direction sign marked in English.
Forcibly she steadied herself and turned the car down that road.
“This may not be the smartest idea,” he said as a section of the mighty perimeter wall came into view, “but I need time to think. We need to put some distance on us and this place. Find somewhere to lay low.”
Up ahead was a towering metal gate, built into the wall and reaching nearly to the top. Guard shacks stood to either side.
“Pull up short,” Zac directed. “I’ll let us through.”
She glanced at him in disbelief. The way he said it made it sound like he was about to open the gate to the garden or something. Like they were going for a stroll and, perhaps afterward, a spot of tea. I’ll let us through.
She kept staring at him as she brought the car to a halt.
Guards sauntered out from the shacks at either side—not in any particular hurry—carrying what looked to be submachine guns slung casually at their sides. Jess tensed. She noticed two more on battlements at the top. Contrary to what Zac might be thinking they were not going to slip by these guys with a friendly wave. He wasn’t just going to “let them through”.
She looked frantically to the closest guard. They were halfway to the car. Zac got out. She gripped the wheel with mounting fear as he walked around the front and into the headlights. In the bright lights, wearing nothing but the black boxers, Zac managed to look as if he’d just gotten out of bed and gone to answer a knock at the door. The guards raised their guns slightly as it became clear he wasn’t their usual sort of customer.
Star Angel: Awakening (Star Angel Book 1) Page 8
