by Mat Nastos
Slicing forward, the spear tip instead met the palm of Flux, who had thrown it forward to block the blitz. The point skewered the out-thrust hand, bisecting the forearm beneath it, and lodged itself deep with the cyborg’s elbow joint. Grail’s technologically-heightened strength strained to regain control of his primary weapon, but the pain and insanity of Flux proved too great.
Bellowing in agony, Flux lashed out with his arm, striking Grail with the butt of the spear and knocking him back into a controlled roll.
Utilizing the force of the blow to somersault into a defensive crouch, Grail’s right arm jerked back. His hand spasmed on a control lever mounted into the over-sized modular attachment on the palm of his gauntlet and released his favorite weapon: a gleaming three-foot long blade of emerald plasma focused into shape by a magnetic field housed in his armor.
The emerald armor-clad figure lunged forward, shoving the humming energy blade deep into the chest of Flux, three inches below the hollow of the thrashing cyborg’s throat. Based on the specifications files Grail had been given by his current employers, he knew it was the creature’s Achilles heel…the only weakness in his design: the miniature power conduit controlling Flux’s generators. It was small enough that the engineers who developed the cyborg had failed to properly reinforce or protect it.
The arrogance of Designate Flux’s creators was his downfall. Such was the undoing of any who presumed to play God.
Beneath the solid faceplate of his helm, Grail smiled sadly. Ending the life of a man who had served his country with honor as Corporal Brady once had was never a pleasant thing. It was something that had to be done, but was not something the mercenary took pleasure in performing. He twisted the blade in the center of the half-man’s torso, splitting the reactor core in two and severing Flux’s spinal column.
Cut off from the source of the power sustaining his systems, Flux dropped to his knees, looking up into the mirrored eye slits of the man who had finally killed him. The blue sapphire lighting that had danced playfully between the electrodes mounted through the skin of Flux and into his skeleton, and his life, slowly faded, blinking out of existence.
Grail reached out and caught the dying cyborg’s body before it crashed to the Earth, cradling it against his own. The final breaths of the cyborg assassin who had once been Chris Brady shuddered and wheezed out of blood-encrusted lips. Staring down as the last seconds of life played out in Brady’s eyes, Grail reached up and removed the dust and blood-covered visor from his head, revealing a soft, saddened face to the man in his arms.
“It is OK, sweet warrior. You may rest now that your service is at an end,” came the soothing voice of the Englishman, his words now free from the electronic filters housed in his helmet.
Once the sensors embedded throughout Grail’s armor gave confirmation of Flux’s death, the man signaled to the men in his ship to land. Their grim work was done and it was time to return to their mobile base of operations, a floating fortress known as the ‘Keep,’ located just off the coast of Florida.
“Load the fallen warrior onto the WarHorse. We shall return him to his masters,” ordered Grail, directing his men to move the corpse of Flux onto their aircraft.
An ‘ahem’ caught Grail’s attention as the members of the Templars eased the body of Designate Flux onto a gurney and wheeled him up the ramp into the belly of the futuristic VTOL plane. Roddick moved into view and waited for his leader’s response. His body language, played out over the man’s six-foot-seven inch frame, virtually screamed out with tension and irritation. With a quick tilt of his head, Grail gave the man permission to speak.
“Yes, Mr. Roddick?”
“Word just came in from the Keep: the head of Project Hardwired wants to meet with you, sir. Some DC suit named Fountain,” said Roddick, his annoyance registering clearly in his voice. “In person this time.”
He hated to be the one to inform his commander of such a direct, and disrespectful, summons. The soldier was never quite sure how the man would react. Grail had grown more temperamental and less stable as their years together had passed. The Englishman nodded, clasping his second-in-command firmly on the shoulder and directing him towards their ride home.
“We shall meet this Congressman Fountain,” responded Grail, moving into the heart of the WarHorse. “This one prays their next monster is more worthy than the last. We long for a true test of our mettle.”
Tim Roddick shrugged and followed his boss onto the ship. Worthy or not, it didn’t matter to the big man. As long as the government’s checks cleared he would be happy. The WarHorse lifted off from the tortured terrain of Sedona with conflicting dreams of larger dragons and bigger boats filling the heads of its occupants.
CHAPTER 9
Mal was pretty sure he was being followed.
Well, mostly pretty sure.
That feeling of being watched hit him as he was wandering the brightly lit evening streets of Manhattan’s Soho district. The renegade cyborg had promised himself over and over again that he was going to stay out of trouble no matter what…and since his last couple of trips through the subways had been more eventful than he would have liked, that meant avoiding the train system that ran under the entire island. It also meant Mal was more exposed to scrutiny by the sorts of eyes best eschewed.
The feeling persisted over the course of what had begun as a leisurely stroll towards Little Italy, building more and more in Mal’s mind with every block he traversed. By the time he walked into a tightly packed street festival in the ethnic neighborhood the sensation had Mal checking over his shoulder every few seconds, looking for any sign of someone following him.
Reaching out with his computerized senses didn’t help the matter. As far as Mal’s internal computers were concerned, everyone on the street was a potential enemy. Red flags were raised and alarms blared inside his mind anytime another pedestrian so much as glanced Mal’s way more than once or if a tourist’s path just happened to coincide with the direction he was heading. In a place like New York City, those sorts of events were not just commonplace, they occurred a near infinite number of times over the course of a ten minute stroll.
He scanned and rescanned every face in the crowd, checking each against the few Project Hardwired files he still had access to after the Abraxas Array failure removed must of the cyborg’s external connections. None were known agents of the group still hunting Mal, but that didn’t mean they weren’t out there. Weren’t still watching and waiting for their opening.
“Yeah,” thought Mal. “Zuz is going to be so happy that I’ve finally gone over to the dark side. Maybe he’ll let me write for his blog now.”
After an hour of jumping at shadows, Mal nearly eviscerated a tall man with a pronounced chin and tweed jacket when their paths intersected just outside of a packed laundromat filled with patrons. The man had been swinging a full duffel bag filled with dirty laundry off of his shoulder as he made for the establishment’s doorway when the klaxon went off in Mal’s head, filling his mind with a caterwauling and sending him into action. Without thinking, Mal’s hands transformed from their at-ease mode resembling those of a normal man, into fiendish hooked claws a foot in length. In the blink eye Mal had torn through the swaying tote with one hand, spraying soiled undergarments out across a ten foot diameter of pavement. The cyborg’s other hand clutched the poor man around the neck and began choking the life out of him.
“Who are you?! Why are you following me?” hissed Mal, yanking the gangly man off his feet and pulling him close enough for their noses to touch. The pure fear bleeding out of the man’s pores and through his eyes was enough to snap Mal back to rational thought. “Oh, no…”
Even with the recognition of his victim’s innocence, it took Mal a moment to triumph in the battle of wills with the Cestus programming and force his bionics to stand down from their aggressive profile. The struggle shook him visibly and, for a moment, it looked like it was one he wouldn’t win. Titanium-alloy talons were already piercing soft m
ortal flesh when Mal finally achieved victory over his own rebellious appendages.
Mal dropped the man, unconscious from the stress of his ordeal, staying only long enough for his senses to confirm life before bolting from the scene at top speed.
*****
For the third time since arriving in Manhattan, Mal’s actions drew a crowd around him. It was the second time for attacking an average citizen and it did not bode well for him.
The attack on the head of the physics department at NYU not only drew the attention of the large gathering of customers from inside the Fast-N-Dry Laundromat, but also of an unique twosome who rode in on the backs of freshly purchased skateboards, and brand new wardrobes made up of completely nondescript fashion about ten years out of date. They maneuvered their way between the mass of gawkers surrounding the comatose form of the professor.
“Call it in, Kappa-Two,” said the taller of the two men after confirming the assault victim’s pulse was still strong and that he was in no immediate danger.
“Yes, sir,” responded his partner whose height might have been classified as five foot seven only if the man had been standing on his tip-toes. The odd couple pulled away from the crowd of onlookers standing over the unconscious college professor sprawled across the filthy sidewalk, the fire of purpose burning in their eyes as they dropped their four-wheeled fiberglass decks onto the ground and took off after the man’s attacker. Sliding a palm-sized telephone from somewhere within the flapping blue windbreaker he wore, the man said, “Kappa Unit to Sky-High, we’re in pursuit of target. Heading north-north-west on Hester Street towards Centre. Over.”
“Affirmative, Kappa-Two. Maintain safe distance and keep us apprised. Out,” crackled the voice over the tiny electronic communication device before it vanished back into the folds from whence it had come.
Weaving in and out of the crowded maze of Manhattan night life, the two did their best to keep pace with the hurried speed of the retreating Malcolm Weir. The surveillance unit had been sent in disguised as a pair of skateboarders, which allowed them to make better time on the jam-packed streets of Manhattan than agents on either foot or in automobiles could have.
Leaping a curb and dodging around a half-block long row of cars idling at a red light, the shorter man huffed as he pumped one leg up and down off the black asphalt to power his conveyance. He was excited to have been chosen for field duty—his first such assignment in more than five years in service—especially so because of the high-profile nature of their target. Designate Cestus had been the talk of the entire agency for the past month. He’d taken down one of the most respected black-ops projects around and single-handedly killed three of Project Hardwired’s other super-soldiers. The agents who helped bring him in would be on the fast-track for promotions for sure.
Billy Mitchell was positive his unit, Kappa-Squad, was going to be the ones to do it. Of course, with a bump in rank and pay, Mitchell would need a new call-sign. ‘Kappa-Two’ just wasn’t going to do it for the man who helped neutralize Malcolm Weir. Nope. Not going to do at all.
“What do you think about ‘High-Hat,’ Kappa-One?” asked Mitchell as he caught up to his partner a block behind Weir. They were able to track him via the microscopic transmitter one of the other teams had planted on the cyborg earlier in the day, but only as long as their quarry was within about a quarter mile radius from their position. Any further away and the high levels of broadcast interference from the city itself would cancel the signal out. “Because I’m a drummer and all.”
“Excuse me, Two?” asked Kappa-One. The agent, a literal-thinking man named Tom Hutchison originally hailing from the Chicago suburb of Calumet Heights, was baffled by the question. Having spent most of his past 8 years embroiled in the sort of assignments that kept him out of the agency’s headquarters, he hadn’t served with Kappa-Two before and wasn’t used to the inane banter some of the younger operatives enjoyed engaging one another in.
“I asked what you thought of the call-sign ‘High-Hat’ for me…you know, once we’ve bagged Weir,” repeated Mitchell as he struggled to keep up with his partner’s more aggressive velocity.
Hutchison shook his head and swore this was going to be the last time he let HQ saddle him with a rookie.
“Two problems with your call-sign, Two,” lectured the elder agents as they continued tailing the oblivious Mal through the ever darkening streets of New York. “First, we’re not here to ‘bag’ the target. This is an observe and report Op only.”
A tight turn of the corner brought the government agents up short, allowing them to catch sight of Malcolm Weir leaping up the cracked flagstone stairs that lead to the front entrance of a rundown hostel bearing the name of the ‘Friendly Garden Inn’ in bright neon letters. Hutchison’s fist smacking into Mitchell’s chest halted the junior agent from following their objective inside.
“Observe and report,” repeated Hutchison as he radioed their location up to the command and control team flying overhead.
Once they had received confirmation from Sky-High and orders to continue their watch, Mitchell finally asked, nearly jumping up and down with impatience. “And?!”
“And what?” responded Hutchison as he neared the end of his own patience.
“You said there were two problems with my call-sign…but you only told me one. What was the other? Don’t leave a brother hanging.”
Removing a half-eaten stick of beef jerky from the inside pocket of his own jacket, Tom Hutchison chewed for a long moment, considering the question. Finally, he turned to his shorter companion with a glare and stated flatly, “The second, and most important, problem is: you don’t get to pick your call-sign, Two. It’s given to you by a senior agent—generally your partner. And if you don’t shut up and stake out this dump’s rear entrance, your new name is going to be ‘Tom Just Kicked My Ass.’ Understood?”
Grumbling to himself, Mitchell rolled across the fast-emptying street and headed for the back of the rundown motel. ‘Observe and report’ operation or not, he promised himself he’d get in on taking down the rogue cyborg. Whatever it took, Billy Mitchell would make a new name for himself.
Whatever it took.
*****
Upstairs and unaware of the reality of his pursuers Mal snatched up the landline telephone bolted down to his shabby room’s nightstand. Completely ignoring the tiny voice in his head that grew more and more to sound like his distant friend, the beleaguered ex-Ranger punched in a familiar number with a Californian area code and waited for David Zuzelo to pick up the phone.
“Paper Street Soap Company, Tyler speaking. How may I help you?” answered a cautious voice from the opposite side of the country.
“Tyler? Really, Z?” Mal laughed at his friend’s choice of cover identities. “I always saw you as more of Bob or maybe Marla.”
Once recognition set in with Zuz so too did the explosive irritation. “Calling me from an unsecured hard-line, Mal? Are you insane?!”
The cyborg could almost hear the sound of Zuz wetting himself at the thought.
“Don’t worry, Z. I’ve run the hotel’s line through my cybernetics,” Mal reassured his panicking friend. “My systems are encrypting the signal and making sure no one can trace the call out to either one of us.”
A pregnant silence followed that was long enough to cause Mal to worry the connection had been lost.
“Really?” came Zuz’s voice with more confidence than before. “You’ve figured out how to do that?”
“Of course, Z,” lied the cyborg. “We’re golden.”
“Well, okay…fine then,” Zuz’s voice was calm and accepting up until he remembered the insult levied upon him at the outset of their conversation. “And I am so Tyler! I’m the brains behind the operation—the man behind the man. The genius that no one sees.”
“Yes, yes,” chuckled Mal. “You are the terror that flaps in the night.”
Zuz groaned in feigned pain. “Stop. You know I’m allergic to mixed metaphors, Mal.” Afte
r an uncomfortable silence, uncommon for the pair who had known one another for more than a decade and a half, Zuz asked, “So what’s the word, Mal? Why did you call?”
“No news on McGuinness yet. Amy Jensen is meeting with him in the next few days and will be trying to lock things down for us…but she seemed positive she could set up a face-to-face with the Senator…” Mal’s voice trailed off. He had more to say—more he wanted to talk to his only friend about—but his testosterone and years in the military left the cyborg unequipped with the emotional tools necessary to do so.
Mal wanted to talk, he just didn’t know how. Luckily for him, David Zuzelo had grown up with four sisters and single mother. The small man from Needham, Massachusetts was sensitive to such things.
“That’s all well and good, but that’s not what I meant? We both know full well Amy emailed me with an update on the situation as soon as you two were done,” admonished Zuz, zeroing in on a twinge he detected in Mal’s voice. “That’s not why you called, Mal. What’s wrong?”
Mal was amazed at the level of empathy Zuz had. Even from three thousand miles away the man could tell something was up with his long-time friend.
“I lost control again, Z, just like when I attacked Project Hardwired last month” confessed Mal, worry filling his voice.
“What happened?”
“A security guard surprised me and the Cestus protocol took over…I couldn’t resist it. I just about cut the poor guy in half without even thinking about it,” Mal admitted. “It almost happened when the ninjas jumped me in the subway and then again in Little Italy. I think I’m losing it, Z.”
