“We’re moving on, Doctor,” Hudson retorted. “With everything. I’ve also sent second-generation Security Soldiers.”
“But he—oh. Okay, cool. Then I guess it’s back to work then. Like, onwards and upwards!”
The elevator chimed again and the doors slid open. Dr. Chelsea and Maxwell Hudson stepped out of the elevator, arriving in the expansive and opulent penthouse at the peak of the Tower.
The strident sound of shifting metal finally reached Nia Black, and she regained consciousness.
She lifted her head from the warm asphalt she’d been laying on—for how long, she had no clue—and looked up.
There was a gun barrel pointing at her head…the barrel of a familiar Beretta.
“Get up, Nia,” said Vincent Marks. “It’s time to go.”
Thirty-Six
Nia dragged herself up from the ground until she sat cross-legged. It was still morning, or probably early afternoon. She couldn’t tell for sure. She was still in the lot surrounding the Hudson Tower, where she’d confronted Marc Benson—who turned out to be her father Alexander Black—a short time earlier.
Nia looked around and saw six of Hudson’s Security Soldiers standing behind her one-time beau.
“Hey, Vince…” Nia mumbled.
“You look like you took one hell of a beating,” he went on. “I didn’t think anything could take you down like that.”
Nia climbed to her feet. Vincent backpedaled, keeping his aim on her.
“This time I’ve got you, Nia. I mean it. We’re going to pay a visit to Mr. Hudson. You resist and they will shoot. I won’t have to.”
Nia sighed, sweeping dirt from her cheeks and flicking debris from her hair.
“Fine. Take me away.”
“Huh? What…you’re not going to…”
“What, fight? For what? I ain’t got nothing to get away for no more,” Nia moaned. “I don’t have anyone to go back to. I don’t have any contacts to fence shit to. I don’t even have a father. I’ll probably be better off as a guinea pig.”
Vincent looked confused.
“But can I ask you something, Vincent?” Nia continued. “Do you even know why Hudson wants me so bad?”
“It doesn’t matter to me, Nia,” Vincent retorted. “When we were dating, I had no idea you were the woman who was hassling Corp Hudson’s holdings so much in the beginning. But you knew I was the head of Hudson’s executive security detail. You were playing me from the start. How could you not expect it to come to this?”
“Don’t change the subject, Vincent. I know you still care about me, at least enough to wonder why I’m so important to your boss. You ever ask yourself why he was willing to put you and your co-workers on the line just to get at me? Little ol’ me?”
Vincent rolled his eyes. “Enlighten me.”
“Executive Security Chief Vincent James Marks,” said one of the Security Soldiers. “Please Detain Target Omega Nia Shauntee Black immediately.”
“Hey!” Vincent growled. “I’m the head of security! You don’t tell me what to do!”
“We are under orders from the Chairman to bring in Target Omega Nia Shauntee Black,” the Soldier said. “Dissent suspected. Please comply.”
“And we will!” Vincent snapped. “We will when I’m ready!”
“‘Dissent suspected’?” Nia spoke up. “Look at them, Vincent. Listen to them. They look like men, but they’re not. They’re machines. They’re made to follow Hudson’s orders without offering a word of resistance. Ain’t you noticed that while your numbers are going down, the number of those Security Soldiers is going up?”
“What’s your point?”
“Hudson’s plan this whole time is to make an army out of these things. He wants to figure out how the powers in my body work so he can make a whole army of soldiers who can do what I can do.”
“How do you figure—”
“I figured it out when I was on that island of Chelsea’s. Billy Casey told me Chelsea was going to do all kinds of experiments to figure out ‘what makes me tick’. Jesús told me he needed to use me to help him get on the island because regular guys like you weren’t allowed.”
“So that was his game,” Vincent mumbled.
“You ain’t listening, Vincent!” Nia squealed. “Goons like these Security Soldiers were all over the island. Meanwhile he’s sending guys like you, Jesús and Billy after me, not giving a damn about whether you win or lose. Don’t you fucking get it?”
Vincent started breathing hard.
“Look around you, Vincent.”
Vincent stared into Nia’s eyes, and then slowly turned around.
All six Security Soldiers had their rifles trained on Vincent Marks.
“Executive order from Chairman Maxwell Adrian Hudson. Terminate Target Omega Nia Shauntee Black and former Executive Security Chief Vincent James Marks.”
Vincent’s heart pounded in his chest.
Then everything happened at once.
Vincent swung around, raising his Beretta, then he felt a weight on his head, forcing him to the ground. He looked up and saw Nia. She’d sprang into the air, vaulting over Vincent and pushing him down at the same time. He crashed down, catching himself with his arms an instant before his chin could collide with the asphalt.
The Security Soldiers opened fire, but their shots passed over Vincent’s head and under Nia’s legs.
Her legs went wild after that, swinging into the Security Soldiers’ heads like baseball bats, putting cracks in their helmets, sending them tumbling all over the ground. Nia took down three of them with two kicks and sent the others falling with two more sweeps. She rolled on the ground, snatched two dropped rifles up, shot to her feet and screamed “Move!”
Vincent did as he was told, bounding out of the way as Nia squeezed the triggers, riddling the Security Soldiers’ armor with automatic gunfire.
The gunshots glanced off their armor, sparks flailing all around them. They were bulletproof.
Nia grimaced and turned the rifles around, swinging them like batons into the skulls of their enemies. The rifles shattered on impact, along with their helmets.
Vincent gasped when he looked at the unmasked Security Soldiers.
None of them had hair. Their faces were blank, lifeless. Computer chips were imbedded in the backs of their heads right through the skin.
Nia bolted away from them as their armor crumbled. She darted across the parking lot and scraped her Baby Eagles from the ground.
Then gunshots crackled and the soldiers’ heads shattered like coconuts one by one.
Vincent took deep breaths as he turned to Nia. “What the…what the hell…”
“I tried to tell you,” Nia sighed. “I tried to tell you from the beginning. Hudson ain’t somebody you need to be devoting yourself to. You’re too good a man for that.”
“Hudson told me these guys were volunteers. They led normal lives. They just did this during their eight hours…these people are…”
“They ain’t even alive,” Nia shook her head. “I can’t explain it. All I know is this shit ain’t cool. Hudson’s looking to get rid of everybody who he doesn’t trust—everybody who might disagree with him. Who else is on your security team?”
Vincent shook his head. “There was Jason, Cherie and Don…but they decided to join the weaponization program…they mean to become like Gunner and Armstrong. And Billy; Hudson had him terminated. Good riddance too…”
“Then that’s it. You’re the last one, Vincent; the last one Hudson needs to kill before his whole security team ain’t nothing but these drones. You’re the last one with a brain of your own. Hudson’s trying to lay your ass off—the hard way.”
Vincent’s face turned furious. “I can’t believe this. All this time, I trusted him. I believed in him. I thought Hudson was trying to bring peace to the streets. I thought he wanted to take out superhuman criminals…like you…but he’s not. He’s trying to corner the market on them!”
Nia nodded. “U
h-huh. And there’s more. My father’s on his way up to Hudson.”
“What?! Your father…you mean Target Alpha?”
“You know about him?”
“Hudson’s been looking for Alexander Black for years. No one else was ever compatible with Hercules. Eventually Hudson gave up on the formula, but he didn’t give up searching for the man who made it work. We’d been tracking him for a while, then he disappeared a couple of years ago…right around the time you started making waves.”
“He came back here when he heard about me,” Nia explained. “He wanted me to take his side. He wanted to understand Hercules himself, so he used Jesús to get to me, so he could get to Hudson’s secret files or something. When that didn’t work, he decided to go after Chelsea. He used me to draw her out, and if it wasn’t for Billy, my dad would have had her, and I would be dead.”
“Dr. Romedrux doesn’t deserve this,” Vincent shook his head. “She’s just doing her job. No way she’s a part of this.”
“What, you like that crazy bitch or something?”
Vincent looked flustered. “No, it’s not like that! She just seems so innocent. Like she was brought into this bad situation and tainted by him…”
“Whatever,” Nia said, looking up at the Hudson Tower. Its peak was so high it was hard to see in the haze of clouds up above.
“All I know is she’s my dad’s target. You want to save her, fine, whatever. I need to get at my father.”
“If he’s going up there, Hudson knows he’s coming. Hudson’s probably got a plan to deal with him. Wait…that explains it!” Vincent gasped.
“What?”
“Hudson insisted upon sending Security Soldiers with me, even though I’d planned to use my own men to get you. Now I get it.”
“Come on, Vincent!” Nia squealed. “Spit it out!”
“Hudson’s not after you anymore. He’s got Target Alpha. Hudson just wanted to cut us both down and be done with it. Hudson’s got your father, so you’re of no more use to him.”
Nia started pacing around the lot, looking at the ground.
“‘No more use’, huh?” Nia muttered low, as if talking to herself. “After all that shit they put me through, now I’m ‘of no more use’?”
“Nia?”
She started breathing hard. “My father said the same thing to me earlier. He made Jesús put a gun to my head and told him with a straight face to kill me because he had no more use for me. My fucking father said that to me while I was sitting on the ground with a damn hole in my stomach from Billy’s knife, my blood spilling all on the ground.”
Vincent’s face lit up. “And that pisses you off, doesn’t it?”
“You damn right it does. I ain’t even get no money for this shit. To hell with that. We’re going in.”
“You sure? You sure you don’t just want to escape?”
Nia shook her head. “Like I told you, I don’t have anywhere to escape to. It was all good when y’all was just trying to capture me. I could always get away. I could always come back and mess his stuff up a little more. But it’s different now. I’m worthless to him, which means I’m a target. I let my guard down for one second, and I’m dead. I’m sick and tired of having to watch my back every waking moment of my life.”
Nia reloaded her Baby Eagles and looked toward the Hudson Tower.
“I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let Hudson do me like he did my mom all those years ago. I’m sick of him destroying lives.”
Nia looked Vincent in the eyes.
“You know what I really hate about your boss? It’s not even about mom anymore. That’s just what got me started. I can’t even really blame Hudson for that, not entirely. It only happened because my father crossed Hudson, and then he abandoned my mom, left a damn bulls-eye on her back. My father’s the one who didn’t protect her.”
“So then, what?” Vincent wondered.
“The thing that really pisses me off about Hudson is how he just don’t give a damn about life at all. He thinks living people are his toys just because he’s a rich man. He takes these people and turns them into robots. He goes putting chemicals and drugs into people’s bodies so they can become weapons just so he can get his kicks watching us shoot at each other. My biggest fear was that you were next, Vincent. I was always afraid the day would come when you would have some mutation in your body or guns on your arms or some shit, and we would have to fight for real. I’m glad it didn’t happen.”
“Yeah,” Vincent nodded. “Me too. So does this mean we’re partners now?”
“Don’t get it twisted,” Nia smiled small. “I’ll help you out this time for old time’s sake. The next time, it’s going to cost you.”
“That’s the Nia I remember,” Vincent said with a smile. “All right, let’s do this.”
Suddenly an ominous beeping filled the air. Nia and Vincent glanced at the bodies of the Security Soldiers, their eyes immediately drawn to a flashing red light on one of their gauntlets.
“Oh no…” Vincent mumbled. “This is bad.”
“What?” Nia grunted. “Can you just say what’s on your mind?”
“That’s the distress beacon,” Vincent explained. “I didn’t think it was active yet. It alerts other Security Soldier units and calls them to their location in the event a unit is defeated.”
“Oh yeah? Well, I’m fired up now. Let’s have it then! How many units we talking about?”
“Based on the light pattern…” Vincent looked longingly at Nia. “All of them.”
Nia gasped. “A-all of them?! And how many would that be?”
“I think R&D has completed about six dozen units.”
Nia looked dumbfounded, then raised her fingers.
“Um…a dozen is twelve…multiply by six…carry the…”
“Seventy-two units,” Vincent sighed. “Four hundred thirty-two Security Soldiers, total.”
Nia flinched. “Four hundred what?! We barely took out six of them just now! You tryin’ to tell me we’re gonna have to fight four-hundred-something more mindless dorks with bulletproof armor on? Ain’t no way we can deal with all that!”
“There’s only one thing we can do,” Vincent said as he checked his Beretta. “We stop them at the source. Come on, let’s go.”
Without another word, Nia Black and Vincent Marks ran toward the Hudson Tower.
Thirty-Seven
Alexander Black hurdled the stairwells, avoiding the elevators. He was speeding like a man running a marathon.
He dashed past the entertainment multiplexes that littered the lowest levels of the Hudson Tower, bolted past bellhops and ushers who maintained the luxurious upper class housing that made up the middle levels, leaping through gaps in the crowds with precision. He didn’t knock a single person down.
He darted past professionally-dressed employees who milled about the upper levels, sending manila folders and papers flying in his wake like leaves rustling in the wind.
He skidded to a halt before a pair of heavy doors that read ‘Authorized Personnel Only’ in large block lettering.
He shoved his fingers between the doors, penetrating them like railroad spikes. He spread his arms apart, tearing the doors apart like they were tinfoil. He stepped into the yawning corridor ahead.
A droplet of sweat trickled down his temple.
Alexander took a deep breath, as he felt the tension in his massive muscles subsiding. With a full day’s worth of action already behind him, as powerful as he was, Alexander Black started to feel the burn. Ascending the heights of a skyscraper from ground level while avoiding the elevators didn’t help matters.
He finally reached the highest level accessible by stairwell, and found himself in a corridor lined with paintings of distinguished gentlemen and awe-inspiring landscapes on either side.
Stopping to consider why he did not meet any opposition, Alexander chuckled when five gold-and-black armored men appeared at the far end of the hall.
“Target Alpha. Please surrender and ac
company us,” said one of the Soldiers.
“So, you’re the famous Corp Hudson Security Soldiers,” said Alexander. “So glad I finally get to meet you flunkies face-to-face. Don’t nothing beat selling your soul to a tyrant, huh? Oh well, here we go.”
They each raised their gauntlets, electrified batons jutting out from inside their armor. But the Soldiers never even had the chance to assume fighting stances. In the blink of an eye, Target Alpha was already upon them.
One Soldier’s head ended up caught in Alexander’s flexed arm like a walnut in a nutcracker, garroted unnaturally to the left until the bones snapped and the muscles tore, blood squirting through his twisted flesh like a soaked washcloth.
Alexander’s fist exploded into the next Soldier’s chest, clear through his armor, vertebrae segments ripping through his back.
A swift kick struck another Soldier so hard his ribs pierced the back of his torso, skewering his innards and ripping through the armor like spikes.
The fight ended as gruesomely for the last two, their bodies torn apart like chicken wings.
Alexander stood in the center of the pile of mutilated men, their bodies rent and torn, their blood coating his hands like latex gloves. He flicked his fingers in the air and wiped his hands on his pants.
Walking a little further down the corridor, he found a smaller elevator. The door was open, there were video monitors on a wall and a single button on a panel.
Alexander shrugged, stepped into the elevator and pressed the button. He heard a chime, the door gently closed and the elevator ascended. Alexander had no idea how fast the elevator moved or how far it went up, but the ride felt brief.
The elevator opened again, and Alexander found himself facing another long corridor with a set of double doors that were reflecting him and the entire hall, most likely a one-way window, he figured. He walked forward, and subtle classical music started to fill the air. Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.
The mirror doors creaked open and filled the hall with light. Alexander shielded his eyes, startled by the sudden illumination, and then when his vision focused, he smiled.
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