by Mat Nastos
“Saddle up, boys. It’s time to head out,” ordered Roddick, his movement breaking the tension between Grail and Fountain. He scooped up the pile of documents left ignored on the table by his superior and half bowed to Ms. Roslan. “Mind if we keep hold of these, ma’am?”
“Of course. Whatever you need,” smiled Roslan. Glad to have at least one of the Templars on their side. It was nice to see that one of the men in the room wasn’t being ruled by their testosterone.
“Where are you going now, Grail?” asked Fountain as the Templars exited the room and filed out into the hallway.
Turning back to fountain, Grail’s cold voice responded, “This one will introduce himself to Mr. Weir, of course. It is what gentlemen do.”
With that Grail and his Templars vanished, leaving a baffled Michael Fountain in their wake.
CHAPTER 11
Three days had passed since his meeting with Amy Jensen at the downtown bar. Three days had passed without a word. Three days had passed since any thing at all had happened, outside of the motel’s fifty-something Hungarian cleaning woman offering to play a round of ‘tuck the Twinkie’ with Mal—an offer he had politely declined.
Three days.
Seventy-two hours.
Four-thousand three-hundred and twenty minutes.
Two-hundred and fifty-nine thousand two-hundred seconds.
Mal knew this because the computerized nag in his head kept him apprised of each and every tic of the digital clock that passed. He was slowly being driven mad by both the wait and by the incessant rambling of the thing situated at the base of his skull.
“I have to get out of here!” Mal shouted to no one in particular as he hurled himself from the unmoving position he’d held on the lumpy motel room bed for most of those two-hundred and fifty-nine thousand two-hundred seconds. Grabbing his threadbare jacket and tossing it over his shoulder, Mal nearly broke through his door head-first as he raced to escape the tiny prison he’d forced himself to hide in.
“God invented cell phones so we didn’t have to wait in crappy hotels,” murmured Mal as he walked through the tiny lobby of the Friendly Garden Inn, nodding unconsciously to the half-sleeping teenager sitting behind the bulletproof glass surrounding the check-in desk.
He knew where he had to go before his feet hit the warm afternoon pavement of the street outside, and his internal systems were plotting a route to his target as soon as the decision had been made.
“Warrior needs food badly,” Mal smiled inwardly as thoughts of his destination brightened his mood considerably.
In spite of everything going on and everything that had happened to him since his arrival in the city the day before—or maybe because of it—Mal found himself unable to resist a visit to the Mecca of taste and deliciousness that could only be found on the Upper East side, on Broadway between 91th and 92nd.
While other, more hipster tourists to the Big Apple might be more interested in fancy, upscale restaurants like Le Bernardin or Ai Fiori, with their expensive meals and over-priced drinks, there was only one place that got Mal’s taste buds going: a tiny, hole-in-the-wall dive that served the best gyros in the known universe.
He had to visit Twin Donut.
Malcolm Weir had been to New York City only four times in his life. The first three were rather unremarkable visits—trips made for school or for girls. The last, however, had been one of those life-altering events a person can only dream of having. It revealed something to Mal that would change him forever.
It all began two years earlier on a trip to the East Coast with his former fiancée, Kristin Meyer, to meet her parents in her hometown of Dover, New Jersey. The vacation had been interesting enough, if by ‘interesting’ you meant ‘uncomfortable’ with flashes of ‘intense boredom.’ Kristin’s parents weren’t happy with any aspect of their relationship or with Mal himself. Dyed-in-the-wool hippies, the Meyers hated the fact their darling little girl was involved with—engaged to for the love of God!—an active military man nearly ten years her senior, and the pair seemed to be taking turns drilling that fact into the heads of both Mal and his beloved.
The only saving grace of the trip came four days into the vacation when Kristin’s younger brother, Lawrence, a nineteen year-old student attending art school in downtown Manhattan, offered to take Mal into the city for some fun while his mom continued to work his sister over in the kitchen.
A laid back Texas-born guy who barely drank and never smoked, Mal wasn’t sure what sort of activities a hyperactive art student from New York City who had twice been caught with copious amounts of pot in his possession—once with a handful of tiny blue pills they were terrified to have identified—would classify as ‘fun,’ but whatever it turned out to be couldn’t be any worse than another afternoon with Mr. and Mrs. Meyer. Taking a ball-peen hammer to his testicles would have been more enjoyable than that.
An hour-and-a-half later, the unlikely pair were sitting in a dingy red vinyl booth at the back of what could only be described as a dump located a block away from Lawrence’s dorm, eating strips of fried lamb meat, tomatoes, onions and lettuce, covered in a cool cucumber sauce, and stacked into an enormous mouth-watering pile on a fresh pita. The sandwich, along with two more devoured in quick succession, was one of the most pleasurable experiences Mal had ever enjoyed.
Two years and two bus transfers later, Mal found himself back in the holy land of fine Greek dining, ordering a pair of the piping hot delicacies from the very same cook who had served him once before. Giorgio Katsaros, a short, friendly man with a hairline most accurately described as ‘non-existent,’ had owned and operated the upper west side establishment since his father-in-law had passed it on to him nearly a decade before. Business had been slow that day, with the only customers for hours being the newly arrived Mal and a quiet man dressed in an expensive black suit who had been sitting silently in the front of the restaurant, sipping on the same cup of black coffee for hours.
Having eyes only for his food, his forty-eight ounce cola, and on the sole table in the center of the diner (the booths lining the walls were all much too small for Mal’s large frame), Mal paid no attention to the restaurant’s only other patron. Plopping himself down on worn red vinyl padding, heedless of the pained groan the stool’s wobbly legs let out when his weight pressed down upon them, the hungry cyborg set himself to eating with all the intensity he could muster.
“May I join you?”
The voice startled Mal. He’d been so focused on the meal in front of him that he’d failed to notice the dapper man walk across the diner’s unswept floor to stand just behind the chair opposite the cyborg’s seat at the tiny table. Looking up slowly, Mal looked the man over carefully, taking in the details of his nearly black, tailored suit, overcoat and hard wood cane with a silver cross at its crown.
“Do I know you?” asked Mal, tilting his head to the side, dropping his food and wiping the grease from its yogurt sauce onto the thin paper napkins littering his table.
“Not yet, Mr. Weir, but I know you,” responded the man in a rich, cultured English accent.
The juicy remains of a half-eaten gyro stared back at Mal, taunting him with deliciousness. Why wouldn’t the universe let him eat his lunch in peace, just this once?
Plucking one last chunk of grilled meat from the middle of his meal, Mal popped the morsel in his mouth as he made ready to leave. In his experience, when a fancy-talking man approaches you out of the blue in a crappy diner, one of two things is going to happen: he’s either going to ask you out or there’s going to be a fight…and Mal wasn’t in the mood for either option.
“You’ve got the wrong guy,” said Mal through bits of tzatziki sauce covered lamb, bracing his thick arms on each side of the table to help him stand.
The stranger had other ideas.
“Sit down, Mr. Weir,” ordered the man, gripping Mal’s forearm tight enough for the pressure to register through his cybernetics. “We have much to discuss you and I.”
; “Who are you? Are you another Prime Unit?” asked Mal as he dropped back down into his seat, yanking his arm free of the strange man’s iron grip. With a silent signal, Mal’s internal computer began scanning his lunch ‘guest’ from head to toe. If he was another one of Gordon Kiesling’s Frankenstein creations then Mal would find out.
The smile the man met Mal’s evaluating gaze with didn’t reach the cold gray of his eyes. “To answer your first question, no, Mr. Weir, I am not a product of your government’s misguided experiments. I am not one of their abominations. As I am sure your senses are telling you right now.”
Mal’s computerized ‘Jiminy Cricket’ confirmed the man’s statements: whoever he was, he was human as far as Mal’s scanners could tell. No trace of cybernetic enhancements and none of the telltale signs of a Project Hardwired creation. The only thing out of the ordinary he found was an increased amount of blood flow and activity in the man’s brain. Whoever, whatever he was, the stranger seemed to be utilizing more than ninety-five percent of his brain capacity.
“As for your second question, you may call me Mr. Kalita in this guise.” The man chuckled to himself as if amused by some personal joke in the statement.
Sitting back and taking the Styrofoam cup filled with cola from the place setting in front of him, Mal reached out with his senses, allowing his computer to map out the best exits from the tiny eatery and to start tracking the heart rates and positions of everyone within one hundred feet of his position. He’d know at an instant if any of the cafe’s other patrons, or any of the pedestrians walking by outside, were anything out of the ordinary. A crowded Manhattan street was an easy place for government agents to hide in plain sight and the super-soldier didn’t want to face any more surprises than he absolutely had to.
“And what do you want with me, Mr. Kalita?”
“Right to the point. I like that about you, Mr. Weir. From your file I knew you were going to be a delight to deal with. There are few things I enjoy more than directness. Few things more than honesty,” replied Kalita. He paused to take an exploratory sip of the coffee he’d brought with him from the shabby counter behind him. A foul look spread across the man’s haughty face, starting at his high arched eyebrows before moving to the corners of his mouth. For a moment, Mal thought the stranger was going to either spit or vomit. He did neither. “And there are few things I despise more than bad coffee.”
Mal leaned forward onto his elbows, closing the distance between the two men, and pointed at Kalita. “You didn’t answer my question. Are you stalling, Mr. Kalita? Is this where a dozen armed men break through the glass and we start hitting each other?”
Kalita fired off a look of horror so exaggerated it almost made Mal laugh out loud.
“I hope not, sir. In difference to the honorable service you have performed for your country over the past decade and a half, I have come to you alone and as a gentleman—to give you the opportunity to return home peaceably and without malice or repercussion for your past…indiscretions.”
“Past ‘indiscretions?’ I’m not sure what you mean,” Mal replied with a sideways glace. As far as he could sense, the man was alone and telling the truth. None of the pedestrians outside were milling around and the stranger seemed to be carrying no weapons beyond the titanium-alloy blade hidden in the shaft of his cane. There was always the chance of a hidden sniper outside, but based upon where Mal was seated, they wouldn’t have a clear shot unless he moved out onto the street.
Glowering a bit, Kalita tsk’ed at Mal’s feigned ignorance. “Come now, Mr. Weir. Do not play games with me. You have obligations to your government, a debt still owed to them for the gifts they have given you. We both know this to be fact. An honorable man would want a chance to make things right.”
“And is that what you are, Mr. Kalita? An honorable man?” Mal could feel the irritation and anger building within his chest. He could feel the rage growing and, for once, the cyborg didn’t feel like meditating it away. The nanites in his arms began bulking it up, stretching out the fabric in the long sleeves of his gray colored sweatshirt, elongating his forearm to the point where his wrists extended six inches beyond its cuffs.
From his vantage point across the small Formica topped table Kalita noticed the change. The Englishman’s face darkened at the sight and his long fingers tightened around the ebony handle of his walking stick as he brought it up to his chest in an aggressive position.
“No, Mr. Weir. I am not an honorable man. I am but a pawn, as you are, in the games of greater, more powerful men. I have committed terrible atrocities in their service, as have you.” Kalita paused to stare directly into Mal’s eyes with an intensity the cyborg had only ever seen from men who had spent too much time in combat. Mal knew things were going to end in blood. “And I will commit more before my mission is finished in this world. But I had hoped to avoid that with you, Mr. Weir. Had prayed you would accompany me back to our masters in a quieter manner.”
The steel stool Kalita sat on screeched wildly as he pushed back from the table. Mal tensed, unsure of what the stranger was going to do next, eying the man as he drained the last dregs of his diner coffee with a mighty gulp and a grimace, and rose to his feet.
“You have disappointed me terribly, Mr. Weir…and I am afraid you will regret it.”
Following suit, Mal stood and gathered the grease-covered remains of his meal before tossing it into the trash receptacle near the front of the shop.
The two men stared at one another, each sizing the other man up for ten long seconds, the complete quiet of the challenge broken only by the street’s sounds filtering in from the busy New York City life outside and the sizzling of lamb meat forgotten on the griddle as Twin Donut’s fry cook watched the unusual goings-on in his store. The rotund immigrant had seen an amazing number of unusual things in the fifteen years he’d worked in Manhattan, but a high noon stand-off was a first for Giorgio Katsaros.
Breaking the pregnant silence, Mal asked with a laugh hiding in his voice,“We’re going to fight now, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” sighed Kalita in a truly pained tone. “I am afraid we are.”
Mal’s carefully prepared counter-quip was interrupted by a move whose speed and ferocity took him completely by surprise, nearly taking his life at the same time. In one fluid motion, Kalita had removed the outer covering of his cane-sword and slashed it out at Mal. Only the cyborg’s superhuman reflexes kept his throat from being torn open by the point of the man’s blade. As it was, a thin trail of blood made its way down along his neck to begin pooling just inside the top of his shirt.
The man’s initial attack revealed a lot more to Mal than just his speed and combat-prowess. Aiming for the cyborg’s unprotected throat meant Kalita knew about the healing facilities Mal possessed thanks to the nanotech running through his blood. With enough time the super-soldier could heal from just about any wound, including those that would normally be fatal to a regular human. In the past month Mal had recovered from nearly every type of injury imaginable: gunshots, broken bones, third-degree burns, and near disembowelment. The only thing that could take him down permanently would be a wound that caused him to bleed out faster than the microscopic machines in his system could heal—like a sword stroke across his jugular vein.
Whoever the man was, he really had read Mal’s files and knew about his weaknesses. That meant Kalita was working for the men who had ruined his life. It also meant Mal would have no regrets in taking Kalita down the hard way. Unfortunately for the cybernetic warrior, the man known as Kalita had similar ideas.
The momentum from his vicious horizontal slash spun Kalita into a powerful roundhouse kick that sent Mal crashing into the booth behind him, splitting its rickety table in two with the force of his impact. Shards of wood pierced the fleshy portions of his lower back, just missing his kidneys.
Kalita’s attack didn’t end there as he launched himself across the room, sword held high in an overhead manner meant to cleave Mal’s body from clavicle to
pelvis. The cyborg’s superhuman reflexes were the only thing that saved him with an ‘X’ block over his head that caught the thin blade of Kalita’s sword between the unbreakable super-alloy metal of his robotic arms.
A flick of the wrist activated the second prong of the Englishman’s attack, with unexpected results.
Energy flooded through the length of the rapier’s blade and into the living metal of Mal’s cybernetics, causing every hair on his body to stand on end.
“High intensity electroshock current. Final voltage estimated at ten to the eighth power,” came the voice of Mal’s computerized passenger. “Effect neutralized.”
Astonishment played across Kalita’s face. He hadn’t expected the high-powered electroshock of his weapon to fail so completely against Mal’s defenses.
“Serves the bastard right,” thought Mal, smiling to himself as he backhanded his startled attacker, sending him sliding across the black and white tiled floor of the diner. “That’s what he gets for trying to use the same trick on me twice.”
“You surprise me once more, Mr. Weir. I commend you,” said Kalita, climbing to his feet much more slowly than before. “I will not make the mistake of underestimating you a second time.”
Mal wasn’t sure if the man was hurt or being overly cautious. Either way, the cyborg wasn’t about to let the man gain the upper hand with his fancy moves.
“How about you make it easier on both of us and just give up before things get rough?”
Rushing the smaller man, shoulder first, Mal moved to football tackle Kalita and knock him off his feet. His karate teacher back at boot, the tough-as-nails Sensei Jessica Dickinson, had taught him the mantra ‘remove a man’s base and you limit his ability to fight.’
“Oh, no, Mr. Weir…we’re only just getting started,” said Kalita, grasping a fallen bar stool from the debris-covered ground at his feet. He swung the adhoc club in a tight arc that intercepted Mal’s trajectory with enough force behind it to remove his head from his broad shoulders.
