by Mat Nastos
Inside the long rectangular room, Amy Jensen sat on the dusty floor of the chapel with her hands tied behind her back. Her eyes went wide at Mal’s dramatic entrance.
“Get out of here, Mal! It’s a trap!” Amy screamed from her restrained spot near the rear of the room, just under the enormous hanging statue of the Crucifixion.
Before Mal could react, the fully armored Grail strode from the shadows, flanked by two members of his team. Each man bore a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher prepped for firing held high on their arm.
“Indeed,” said the electronic voice of Grail through the speakers in his helmet as he signaled for his Templars to open fire.
CHAPTER 22
Mal had known there would be some sort of a trap waiting for him once he entered the chapel. There was no chance at all of him getting in and out with Amy without trouble. He had prepared himself for that fact since Grail had ‘invited’ him to the Cloisters earlier, and being attacked was no surprise to the cyborg at all.
What was a surprise was the manner and intensity of how the trap sprang shut. Mal would never have guessed that Grail would be so bold to use the pair of portable missile launchers in such a confined location—and one surrounded by priceless art and artifacts from the Middle Ages. The cyborg would have thought the anachronistic mercenary would have been more respectful and less destructive.
“Live and learn,” thought Mal as he tried to twist his body out of the way of the first explosion even as the second rocket impacted less than two feet away. Those were the last thoughts he managed before light and pain tore rational thought from him.
The highly explosive projectiles went up in a ball of flame twenty feet wide, tearing through brick and concrete, and shattering the masonry of the fragile building’s floor, ceiling and walls. The chapel’s doorway was vaporized into a fog thick enough with dust and debris that it could be chewed. Amy screamed as the fiery cloud billowed towards her, expecting the same painful death she assumed had taken her failed rescuer. The lawyer was saved at the last second by Grail placing himself between her and the incoming fire blast, absorbing its heat and concussive blast with his armor.
“You are safe, Ms. Jensen,” soothed the unnatural voice of the green knight. Grail lifted the nearly comatose woman from her prone position and handed her off into the arms of the man to his left. “Take her outside and release her. The woman has suffered enough at our hands.”
The stream of curses that trailed behind Amy as she was carried off over the shoulder of Grail’s minion thoroughly ignored both her Catholic upbringing and the location at which she had been held for most of the previous twenty-four hours. If God were indeed listening, then the pretty lawyer wanted to make sure he got as much of a piece of her mind as her captors did.
“He’s dead for sure,” said Tim Roddick, materializing out of the darkness and into the half-light given off by the burning debris left by the twin detonations. He was joined at Grail’s side by ten members of the Templars, all dressed and ready for a battle that was quickly looking like it had ended before it had even started.
“Do not be so sure, Mr. Roddick,” answered the knight, moving into the large rectory room outside of the chapel. His helmet scanned left and right as he utilized the equipment built in to his armor to find any trace remaining of their prey. The radiant heat left behind by the bombs rendered infrared detection completely unreliable, and there were too many men surrounding Grail to allow the enhanced microphone pick-ups in his helm to be of use. His sonar easily punched through the dense fog hanging in the air, but the twists and turns of the ancient stone room, its statues and free-standing pieces of art, gave back too many false signals. If they were going to find Malcolm Weir, they’d have to do so the old fashioned way: with their eyes. It was fitting for Grail. After all, he needed to see the deceased body of Weir before the Templars could collect on their contract. More than that, the knight’s code of honor demanded he salute his foe. The man had gone against unbeatable odds and performed beyond the limits of anyone the group had ever faced before. “Find his body, my men…and be careful.”
“You heard the boss! Weapons live,” commanded Roddick, sending the Templars fanning out in the dim firelight, the bright blue beams of their gun-mounted flashlights bored holes through the darkness and illuminated tiny pieces of the room as they did.
“Where is he,” thought Grail to himself, frustrated as seconds of searching led to minutes. The damage from the AT-4 rockets might have vaporized the human meat of Weir’s body, but his cybernetics were nearly indestructible. There should be something left.
A call from one of the Templars snapped Grail from his thoughts. “Over here!”
Footfalls from ten large men moving across rough-hewn granite floors played a drumbeat through the halls of the Cloisters. Grail pushed his way to the group’s front, taking the lead.
“Oh, my God!” shouted the man. “He’s still alive!”
Breaking through the last layer of soot and smoke, Grail stopped short, stunned by the site before him.
Surrounded by a circle of flickering flames that danced six inches in height off of liquefied stone was a horror given form. Malcolm Weir rose from his knees in the midst of the blistering heat, blackened skinned contrasting against the highly polished chrome of the living metal that made up his arms.
“This one is surprised you are still able to stand after that, Mr. Weir. You have our admiration,” said Grail with amusement as the smoke cleared from the explosion. He was indeed amazed to see the cyborg upright. The blast should have been enough to take an armored vehicle apart and vaporize any normal man.
Red eyes looked up from beneath the haze coming off of burning flesh and hair. An ice cold smile parted charcoaled lips, barely enough of which remained to cover the stark white jaw bone underneath.
“Malcolm Weir is gone, Mr. Kalita,” said the stilted, humorless voice of the Cestus Protocol, now in complete control of Mal’s body. “And I’m afraid he won’t be coming back.”
With skin peeling back and exposing the red muscle beneath, Cestus dove out of the ring of flame and melted stone that had encircled him. Out-stretched arms ending in ten razor-sharp talons sliced into the first wave of Templars, men who had assumed their prey would do anything but attack. So fast was the cyborg’s onslaught that four of Grail’s men fell to the claws of Cestus before the others could react.
The green armored leader of the mercenaries was the first to respond to the assault. Grail flipped up the spear that had been resting at his side, activated an electrified field that ran from butt to point, and hurled it the full force of his technologically-enhanced strength.
Looking up from gutting a pair of Templars, Cestus laughed at the attempt. The enraged warrior caught the spear in flight and impaled the WarHorse’s primary pilot, McGann, piercing his torso and nailing the man’s body to the ancient cracked stone floor of the church. Blood spurted from the wound in a torrent that soaked Cestus from head to toe, giving his burned body a wholly terrifying appearance as it did.
“Everyone out!” screamed the big man, Tim Roddick. The reality of seeing seven of the men he served with killed in a matter of seconds spurred him to action.
As the others filed quickly from the rectory room, Roddick stood firmly between the exit and the berserker-fury of Cestus. The torso-mounted M2HB Browning machine gun slid forward from its resting place at his side. Hands big enough to palm a basketball gripped the side and rear handles of the weapon and began to unleash hell upon the cyborg at a rate of fifteen rounds per second. The belt feeding the chain of ammunition from a pack on Roddick’s back shrieked and hissed in protest as he throttled his fire to full.
At that rate of fire the weapon could reduce a standard-sized automobile to a ruined husk in less than thirty seconds, to say nothing of what it would do to the flesh of a normal man foolish enough to stand in front of it. Arms bulked up to the size of a gorilla and covered in blades, with pain receptors disabled by the nanotech swimmi
ng through his veins, Cestus was anything but a normal man.
Cestus allowed the big Templar to lead him towards a tapestry-covered wall with a stream of gunfire. The cyborg easily stayed ahead of the man’s mere human reflex time. Rather than scramble left or right away from the wall, Cestus jumped forward, planting his left foot high in its center. He used the momentum from the leap, combined with the strength of his leg, to propel himself backwards in a flip. As the trajectory of the maneuver took him over the surprised Roddick’s head, Cestus lashed out surgically with both arms, disemboweling the man as he did.
Dreams of boats and a retirement to the Caribbean faded as the life ebbed out of Tim Roddick through ten gaping wounds in his chest and neck.
Before Roddick’s cooling corpse had time to drop wetly to the ground, Cestus was already moving at full speed. His senses tracked the still warm footprints of Grail and the group of mercenaries who had fled with him. Pursue his targets: it was what Project Hardwired had built Designate Cestus to do. It was where he excelled. Every ounce of him, every bit of wire and of titanium, every one of the millions of nanobots swarming inside his body, all of it, had been created to hunt and to kill.
Eight men fell to the talons of Cestus there in the dim corridors of the Cloisters, most dying before they knew he was upon them. Only two put up any kind of a struggle before they, too, were slain. The final two mercenaries led the cyborg on a long and winding chase. Grail and his companion knew death was on their heels and did all they could to avoid facing him within the tight confines of the museum.
It was in the open area just beyond the front entrance of the primary museum building where Cestus caught up with his next target. Shouldering his way through the large oaken entryway doors, Cestus caught sight of the lone Templar running for the open ramp leading into Grail’s awaiting hovercraft, the WarHorse. The knight was nowhere in sight; the cyborg assumed the mercenary had either fled or was already on board the vehicle waiting to depart once his lackey joined him. A roar tore itself from the former ranger’s throat as he charged the man.
Hearing the sound behind him, the Templar froze in place, turned slowly, and pulled loose an old-fashioned, police style 38 caliber revolver with six shots loaded. Taking careful aim at the rapidly approaching cyborg with death on his mind, the mercenary opened up with the gun, squeezing the trigger hard—whispering a prayer under his breath as he did.
Cestus dodged five shots fired from the mercenary’s revolver with ease, laughing coldly as he did.
“Your comrade couldn’t kill me with a machine gun, what makes you think I can be stopped by a relic like that?” asked Cestus as he side-stepped the sixth, and final, bullet.
“It wasn’t supposed to stop you,” replied the last remaining Templar as he died from a razored claw piercing his heart.
Before Cestus could celebrate his victory, a twenty-four inch blade punched through Cestus’s back and extended, gore covered, through the front of his ribcage. The cyborg was mortally wounded and dropped to the ground, floundering as his body spewed out a geyser of blood.
Static played back and forth across Cestus’s vision. He couldn’t understand what had happened. How had Grail been able to avoid his senses? He was just a man.
Tearing the blade free from the torso of Cestus, Grail offered the cyborg no explanation.
“Those who fight…who live…without honor will always fall to those who embrace it,” said Grail to the nearly motionless body of Cestus lying at his feet in an ever-increasing pool of warm blood. Looking to the sole remaining member of his mercenary team, Grail spoke sadly, “You have been a most worthy prey, monster. This one is almost sad that our hunt is now at an end. It is a pity to see such a masterful killer brought to ground. I envy that you will finally know the peace of death.”
“I’m not finished yet, old boy,” chuckled Mal quietly. His words surprised his opponent enough to cause the man to stumble back a step.
“Gods,” the electronic filters in Grail’s helmet failed to disguise the amazement in his voice.
The sheer amount of abuse the Templars had laid upon Cestus should have been more than enough to overload even the much vaunted abilities of his nanotech-healing powers. The fact the cyborg was still conscious, let alone speaking, was beyond belief.
“Thanks for that…you distracted the programming enough for me to regain control.” Malcolm Weir coughed up a mouthful of blood and struggled to his knees. A living metal hand stretched out towards Grail and slowly shifted form into six-inch long bladed fingers once more. Mal’s forefinger extended and motioned for Grail to ‘come.’ “You ready to go another round?”
“Why do you fight,” asked Grail in a tone split between marvel and pity. “You are beaten…you have no hope of surviving our encounter. No hope of besting me in your state.”
“I knew I was never going to make it out of here alive, Kalita,” stammered Mal. The heads-up displays that had been ever present since he had reawakened flickered out of sight one by one as the cyborg’s systems began to collapse and shut down. He could feel the strain on his cybernetics finally taking its toll. Soon, he wouldn’t even be able to stand on his own. In a few moments his life-support protocols would lose power and, with them, his breathing and brain activity would stop. Mal knew he was dying. “The only thing that makes it all worthwhile is knowing that Amy is safe…and that I’m going to take you with me, you bastard.”
In response, Grail reached up and pulled the helmet from his head, dropping it to the ground beside him with a dull thud. A moment later, his powered torso armor was unsnapped and joined the head-piece in a discarded pile. The knight bent low and retrieved his sword from where it had been flung by the cyborg. After testing its weight and balance in his hand, Grail turned back to Mal with an accepting smile. He knew as well as Mal that this was to be their last dance.
“I, too, grow tired of this game, Mr. Weir,” said the mercenary slowly, moving into a defensive stance. “Let us end it once and for all, my friend.”
Exhausted, energy draining out of his body with every breath he took, Mal climbed to his feet and rubbed his hands together, trying to crack non-existent knuckles in an unconscious habit dating back to his childhood. When Grail finally attacked, swinging his massive blade in an attempt to end their duel with a single stroke, Mal’s response took both men by complete surprise.
CHAPTER 23
Standing less than thirty yards from the site of the battle, Amy Jensen’s jaw dropped and her stomach fell as she watched Grail attack Mal. With his cape resembling a great pair of green wings flapping behind him, the high tech knight lunged forward. His sword was outstretched and both he and the lawyer looking on from nearby expected the cyborg to either block or dodge the blade. It should have been child’s play for Mal, even as injured as he was, to avoid the obvious feint by his opponent. Beyond child’s play. Amy was pretty sure she—someone who had the athletic abilities of a couch—could have gotten out of the way of Grail’s sword.
Instead of leaping to one side, Mal simply stood his ground and gritted his teeth, allowing the blade to take him dead center in the chest. A scream split the area, lasting a full three seconds before Amy realized it was coming from her own mouth. She found herself bolting from her place hiding among the bushes planted alongside of the museum, feet sinking into the wet sod that lined the carefully manicured grounds of the facility. Her steps had covered less than half the distance when the final scene of the drama played out before her.
A living metal arm lashed out like a snake and wrapped Grail’s exposed neck in an unbreakable grip.
Over the steady thunder of the hovercraft’s engines and the whistling wind, Amy heard Mal say through a mouthful of pink, foamy blood, “Gotcha again.”
Mal’s right arm rose up over his head and he smiled as a wicked, three-foot long barb extended itself from his arm, causing Grail’s steel-gray eyes to go wide. The elbow fell, the pointed spike protruding from its base bisected Grail’s body from the left sid
e of his neck and down through his torso. If it hadn’t lodged itself in the knight’s right hip bone, Mal’s attack would have split the man into a pair of gory halves.
Amy looked on as the dying Grail stared down at the ruin his body had become. He spoke once more, words barely a whisper to her ears at the distance she remained. “You have slain me.”
Nodding, Mal released his grasp on the mercenary’s throat, allowing him to drop finally to the ground. “Yeah. We’ve killed each other.”
“And so we go…,” a coughing fit broke out from the knight as he stained to take his last breaths. “…if not to Heaven, then hand to hand to hell…” The man known as Grail passed from the world lying at the feet of the only man to ever defeat him in combat.
No sound beyond that of unforgiving steel sliding through wet meat came from Mal as the cyborg tore the meter-long sword from his chest. Only the quick thuds of Amy’s footfalls as she ran towards her wavering friend and the wails of sirens in the distance filled the air. Hearing her approach, Mal turned to the woman and flashed her a half-smile.
“Oh…hey, Amy,” was all Mal managed before he collapsed into a heap on the ground, Grail’s sword falling from his limp hands with a clink.
“Why, Mal?” cried Amy, dropping to her knees next to the blood-soaked cyborg. She slid her arms under Mal’s head and pulled him onto her lap, staining her clothing in a wash of crimson. “Hang on…I can see an ambulance coming up the road now…just hang on for another minute, Mal!”
Mal’s head fell loosely to one side and his eyes disappeared into the back of his head as his body started to shake and convulse. Gobs of thick black blood gurgled up from his throat and spewed out uncontrollably as his body began to twist and jerk in a vain attempt to draw desperately needed oxygen into ravaged lungs. Amy pulled the twitching man close against her chest, trying to calm his seizures, and pleaded with him to keep breathing.
