They were men and women, wielding all kinds of weapons, bearing all kinds of disfigurements: a muscular, hairy man with giant metal gauntlets and claws where his hands should have been; another man, bald and shirtless, with red skin that looked rough like sandpaper, his fingernails like swords; a woman with giant boots that looked like the legs of a walking robot.
“Underground mechanics and disgraced scientists are copying Hudson’s technology to make more and more criminals like Armstrong and Gunner: living weapons. Hudson may have started this, but his death didn’t end it. The world can’t have people like this roaming free. Local law enforcement is stretched to the limit. There aren’t enough people out there who are strong enough to take the fight to them…people like you.”
Nia shook her head. “Nah-uh. You’re asking me to be some kind of super hero? I don’t do the charity thing, Vincent. Didn’t I just say I gotta eat?”
“Did you read it, Nia? Look again.”
Nia did so, and saw numbers in bold type at the bottom of each page. They were dollar amounts.
Bounties.
“Like I said, the police are at their limit…they’ll do whatever they can to get some help. We can be that help. I handle the administrative part, you do the dirty work with my support, we split the cash,” Vincent explained. “Come on, what do you say?”
The conversation reminded Nia of what her father said to her outside of the Hudson Tower. She remembered his story about forming his own mercenary group.
“They’re gonna need to be more than human to take down the kinds of targets I’m looking at.”
Nia immediately snatched the guns and keys from the drawer and ran toward the door.
“Nia? Nia! Where are you going?”
“I need some air, Vince,” Nia mumbled back. “Give me some time and space, okay? I got your number. I’ll call you.”
“Nia, wait!” Vincent yelled, starting to follow her. Then he stopped in his tracks, spun around and turned his stove off. As soon as he turned back toward his apartment door, he heard the sound of a motorcycle engine growling to life, and knew there was no point chasing her.
“Damn,” he said to himself. “I forgot how fast she can be.”
Forty-One
Chelsea Romedrux sat in her private office, nestled in the highest level of the laboratory facility on Corp Hudson’s private manmade island. She was leaning on her computer desk, head in her palm, mindlessly browsing the web, rubbing her pantyhose-clad feet together. Her eyes were red from being rubbed too much, her hair was unkempt, she wore no makeup…it was as if she’d lost interest in life itself.
She hadn’t spoken to anyone for days, not since she learned of Maxwell Hudson’s fate. The corporation’s board of directors kept her on duty but gave her space so she could recover from the stress of the experience.
But Dr. Chelsea wasn’t just stressed. She was furious.
Her father died for nothing. The man who gave her everything was thrown from his own penthouse. And the woman who caused it all was still alive, roaming free.
For all her knowledge and power, all her funding and access, Chelsea Romedrux never felt so lost, so defeated. Was there nothing she could do against Nia Black?
A tone snapped Chelsea out of her stupor. She straightened her recently-replaced glasses and looked at her intercom, where an LED was beeping.
She ignored it. Chelsea wasn’t interested in taking any calls.
Then her smartphone vibrated.
With that, Chelsea groaned. She snatched it from her pocket and glanced at the glowing touch screen. A text message read:
“HEX Project has entered the second phase. Please review.”
Like a dim light slowly cranked to full luminance, Chelsea’s face brightened up. She leaped out of her seat and literally ran out of her office, leaving her high-heeled shoes behind on the floor.
Chelsea made her way to a large chamber deep in the lower levels of the facility, a synthetic cavity dug under the surface for housing projects too dangerous and grandiose to experiment upon within her small laboratory in the halls of the Hudson Tower. She walked inside, wrapping her long golden hair into a ponytail as she entered the room.
In the center of the chamber were three capsules, each large enough to house a fully-grown human being. The capsules were connected to all manner of life support mechanisms, computer terminals and generators. Each capsule was labeled with a different name; “Alpha”, “Beta”, and “Gamma”.
Chelsea glared at the chambers as her subordinates darted back and forth across the room, accessing terminals and recording data and doing numerous other things. One of the aides stopped in his tracks and approached.
“Dr. Romedrux,” said the young researcher, “You never gave us your feedback about the progress of the Hudson Exceptional X-terminator project. When we lost contact with Mr. Hudson and we didn’t hear from you, we figured we would just go ahead and begin the second phase. We’ve attached the prosthetics and we’re currently monitoring their vital signs, making sure there aren’t any bio-electric compatibility issues. Everything seems fine so far.”
Chelsea placed a hand on one of the chambers, looking through its tempered glass shield, analyzing the figure within. Laying in silence inside the capsule was Jason Priest, one of the three remaining members of Hudson’s executive security. He realized that the normal humans in Hudson’s employ were on the verge of becoming obsolete, long before Vincent Marks or even Billy Casey knew it, and he must have convinced Cherie Wilson and Don Thompson to take action along with him.
They chose to live as Corp Hudson’s newest weapons.
Jason’s arms were covered by heavy armor and circuitry, wiring feeding directly into his spinal cord and brain stem. Cherie had similar additions on her legs. Don, in turn, had armor on his torso, with wiring and circuitry feeding from his trunk into his limbs.
We supplied them with the modified formula you devised, Doctor,” the researcher went on. “It’s the same base formula that was used to give the previous projects increased density and strength, but we’ve managed to greatly reduce the possibility of erratic aggression. We implanted microchips in the brain that will stimulate higher functions of the prefrontal cortex, just as you ordered. That will help them stay clear-headed, and focus on their mission. They’ll be a perfect team, but they’ll also maintain independent thought. No one will be able to take advantage of them like robots, like those flawed first generation Security Soldiers.”
“Don’t you dare insult Mr. Hudson’s dream,” Chelsea grunted. “The Security Soldiers were brilliant. He needed more time to perfect them, time that…that woman took away from him. Mr. Hudson’s dream of a peaceful world, protected by the perfect army, will be realized through me.”
Chelsea paced around the capsules again, looking upon the three figures with glee.
“But, like, while we’re waiting to get that project up and running again, these three will do. Totally.”
Forty-Two
Nia knelt down in the wreckage of an old warehouse, standing in the center of a pile of scorched wood and crumbled cinderblock as the sun began to set. The grass surrounding the area was browned, the dirt and roots blackened and dried. There was no sign of the building’s former glory, no evidence that anything worthwhile ever stood there. Yet to Nia, it felt like homecoming.
“You told me to stop being so selfish, Kim…” she whispered, laying carnations on the ground in the center of the pile. “You told me that doing dirt would just lead to more dirt being done to me. I would have been all right with that, if it wasn’t for what happened to you. I never meant for this to happen to anybody I cared about. You ain’t deserve this…I’m so sorry.”
She stood there for what seemed like hours, the dress Vincent Marks bought her fluttering in the soft breeze. Nia touched the sparkling necklace around her neck as a tear rolled down her cheek.
“My dad told me to find my sister. You know, Shauntia? She ran off before you could get her along with m
e, remember? I wonder how things would have turned out if we were both here at the same time. Would I be the same person? Was I wrong for letting Tia go?”
Then Nia shook her head.
“Enough of that, right Kim? Let go of the past. That’s probably what you would say. I’m gonna do that. I’m going to do something new. I don’t know what yet. But there’s something I need to do first, because I need closure.”
Nia turned and started walking toward her bike, parked just off the edge of the street.
“I know you wouldn’t approve of this, Kim. But he’s the one who caused this. He’s got to get dealt with.”
Nia took off on her bike and zoomed across the city, speeding uptown. She made a beeline for the one place she knew her final target would be.
She sped toward the Jazz Hall.
She parked her bike in the alley across the street from her destination, grasped a handgun and charged toward the building, her grip on her pistol as strong as her resolve to get revenge for herself and for her mentor.
The truth was clear: Bobby Styles was the one who told Billy Casey about Kim’s hideout. After all, he was the only other person who knew about it. Nia didn’t care why Bobby did it. She’d come to accept that the way Bobby treated her in her apartment was her just desserts. But pointing an enemy of hers in her mentor’s direction—a move that cost Kim his life—Nia viewed that as a baseless, personal attack. And no one attacked Nia Black without retribution.
She drew her semi-automatic pistol and stepped closer to the nightclub. Faint jazz music seeped into her ears; with every step, the music grew louder, and chipped away at Nia’s hardened disposition. Soon, the languorous and tranquil tunes of the expert saxophone player began to soften Nia’s heart as she peeked inside the doorway of the Jazz Hall like a curious feline. She held her gun behind her back as she analyzed the club interior.
Everything was smooth and peaceful, the way an upscale jazz club should always have been. No danger of gunfire or police raids, no secret gangster meetings, no espionage; only nicely dressed patrons from all walks of life chilling out under dim lights to enjoy fine dining, good drink and smooth jazz in a laid-back atmosphere. It was as if all the darker element that used to frequent the Jazz Hall vanished along with Alexander…and with Nia.
It was as packed as it had ever been. In the wake of “Marc Benson’s” vacancy, Bobby Styles seemed to be able to perform as a club manager and as the main entertainment at the same time quite well. They hired a new bartender. Silk was there talking with some lively friends. The club was the same, and yet it seemed so much more pleasant…more alive.
Nia looked toward the table nearest to the stage and caught a sight that shocked her.
Charlene was there, in the seat most often reserved for Nia, wearing a sleek red dress and high heels, staring at her man as he smiled back at her. It was the first time Nia ever saw Charlene in the club. What Nia couldn’t take her eyes off though, was the diamond ring that sat on the third finger of her left hand, sparkling like a prism under the dim ceiling lamps and candles that made the Jazz Hall glow from inside with an iridescent golden orange.
Nia sighed.
Bobby Styles and Charlene Wright had moved on with their lives. It was time to let them live, to let them be. They looked like they had a bright future ahead of them.
It was time for Nia Black to create the same thing for herself.
She drove away from the nightclub, keeping her vehicle under the speed limit. She looked to her side and watched the steel towers of the city pass by in the distance, her eyes focused on the soaring tower that seemed to drift more slowly than the other buildings, as if to ensure everyone saw it, protruding above the city’s skyline with its arrogant H-shaped roof marring the sky like a bad tattoo.
Corp Hudson was more than just its fallen gigantic chairman. Maxwell Hudson was the most powerful man in the city—but he was just the head of the corporation. His empty seat would be filled. Those under him would move up, taking control of the Corp’s vast resources, following the same ideals and the same objectives as their late boss.
Nia knew the fight wasn’t over. The fight would never be over. And she knew that even if she tried to avoid it, she would end up being dragged back into it. Hudson’s supporters and loyalists were numerous. And if Vincent was to be believed, there were new threats rising up by the day.
But for the first time, the hunger for petty revenge or desire to simply piss off Hudson’s emissaries wasn’t what fueled her will to fight back. Her selfishness created more problems than it solved, and she was tired of seeing others suffer.
The downfall of Maxwell Hudson was only the beginning, and Nia wanted to end it. No one else would suffer the way she and her family did. No one else would lose their humanity to Hudson’s—or anyone’s—ruthless experimentation. She felt she had a responsibility to everyone who came to harm because of her.
And, she realized, she really had nothing better to do.
Nia gently steered her bike between a pair of parked cars and cut her engine. She pulled her goggles away from her eyes, unclipped her cell phone from the waistband of her dress, and dialed a number.
It only rang once.
“Nia?”
“Damn, Vince, were you waiting by the phone?” Nia laughed. “Are you busy? I was thinking I would stop by and we could talk some more about this whole bounty hunting thing.”
Forty-Three
Night fell. Under chilly and rapid winds in the autumn night, four men crouched on a rooftop some distance from a hotel with golden lights sparkling against the shadow-laced cumulus clouds. They all wore navy blue combat armor with ski masks, their eyelets masked by night vision goggles.
“Target located. The information was right on the money.”
“Acknowledged. The treasure is our primary objective.”
“So why the heavy artillery then?”
Each carried an MAC-11 submachine gun with a silencer attached, in addition to a secondary sidearm, a knife and first aid kits.
“Intel says we’re dealing with a hard target. We’re authorized to engage if necessary. Only if necessary. He doesn’t want any harm to come to the treasure.”
“Let’s see what’s going on in there.”
One of the men pulled out a pair of binoculars and analyzed a room of the hotel directly across from their position. He pressed keys on top of his binoculars, and his view zoomed and focused until he was able to see the interior of the posh hotel room in crisp detail.
His eyes went wide.
“What? What is it?”
“She’s there.”
In the electronic green screen of his binoculars, he saw the heat signature of a slender, fit woman with long black hair sliding a cloth robe from her shoulders. Dropping the robe to the floor, she stepped across the room in the nude and opened a door, fluorescent light and steam emanating from the other room.
“She’s drawing a bath, apparently.”
“Any sign of the treasure?”
“Negative. We can’t see the entire room from this vantage point. It’s likely she has it in the bathroom.”
“The bathroom? What the heck…?”
“Our info said she considers it extremely valuable. No surprise she wouldn’t let it out of her sight even for a moment.”
“So we’re going to engage?”
“Affirmative.”
The four men moved across the rooftops like inky blobs against the gray-blue sky, rappelling across the expanse until they reached the balcony just outside the hotel room.
They used power screwdrivers to breach the sealed window between the balcony and the hotel room, and stepped gently across the soft carpet. They tiptoed past the plush bed and dresser, approaching the far end of the room where the bathroom awaited them just adjacent to the room’s front door.
The men took positions outside of the door. Two stood on either side of the door, a third retreated behind the bed and knelt; the last one stood directly in front of the
door. They nodded to each other, waiting patiently as they listened to the sounds of a body slowly breaking the surface of hot water that filled the tub behind the door.
All fell silent.
The men traded nods again, and the front man raised his leg and kicked through the bathroom door!
He threw himself in with both hands on his MAC-11 and opened fire, three rounds at a time tearing through the bathroom tiles and the tub, the mirror, the sink and the shower curtain, decimating everything in the room.
Then the man let go of the trigger and raised his gun high. Smoke wafted away from the suppressor as he looked around.
There was no sign of anyone. Only broken tile and ruined caulk, cracked porcelain and shattered glass, and water gushing from the holes in the tub and creating a small lake on the floor.
“What the—?” the man mumbled.
The other two flanking the door stood up and looked inside the bathroom as well.
“That’s impossible…we saw her come in. Heard her get in the tub…”
Then a droplet of water hit the shooter’s goggles. It took him a moment to realize it came from above.
He craned his head toward the ceiling, and that was when he saw her; a drop-dead gorgeous woman with caramel brown skin, glistening wet and naked, her long pitch black hair—with one blood red highlight in front—cascading across her face like a hood. She wore a golden necklace with an opal charm around her neck. She was holding herself aloft with her fingertips atop the door frame and her feet on the fluorescent light at the center of the ceiling. And she was holding a katana sheathed in a red and gold scabbard in her thumbs.
Her face showed no emotion as she let go of her supports and took the sword in both hands, unsheathing it as she descended from the high ceiling.
She landed kneeling in front of the shooter, and with an almost inaudible whistling sound, the blade came to gentle rest on the floor between the man’s legs, her hair fluttering down and cascading across her back like a cloak.
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