Kira, who told you winning was determined by bullets? Anyone can fire a gun.
She pulled out the tear gas and ripped the top clip off with her teeth. But only I can dodge the bullets. She threw it back as hard as she could and took her opening. “Engaging three to the left,” she whispered. Link centered in the on the left side. The surroundings were all green, but she could see the orange bodies pressed up against the wall.
She left the temporary safety of the rotting desk, dashing toward the guards. She had one shot. That was all.
The first target aimlessly shot in her direction. She lunged to the ground into a front tuck and rolled up inches in front of his face. An elbow to his right cheek and a knee to the gut gave him two fractures and a broken rib. The other two nearby turned to her direction. Bullets rang in her ears. The small lights sparked up like fireworks. She pulled the first target into a wrist lock, dropping his Heckler into her palm and using him as a body shield. Once the two others went through their mags and tried to reload, Kira tossed the corpse to the side and fired two bullets. They fell to the ground, and she exchanged her Heckler for the Koch MR556. “This is what I call a gun,” she smirked.
She pressed her back up against the wall. “Perimeter check, Link.”
“You’re not going to like this,” replied Link. Suddenly, it hit her. Kira shut her eyes and listened carefully.
A thud made her eyes snap open. She rushed out into the open and saw Max kick over the last body. He was disabling the sniper rifle in his hand, pulling out the chambers. He placed the bullets on the ground and used the back of the gun to crack the bullets open, revealing the gun powder. He tossed the gun to the side after smashing in the last bullet and went over to pick up a machine gun.
“What?” he asked sarcastically. “You don’t think I can take care of myself?”
He walked away from the scene. “I’d step back here if I were you.”
Kira quietly obeyed and knew exactly what he was doing. What stunned her was how he came up with the plan to do so. He shot the broken bullets and ignited an explosion.
“Now, where’s that back exit?”
Chapter Fourteen
Kira didn’t like the idea of being at Max’s home instead of hers, but he did have all the lab equipment needed in order to create an antidote.
She was tweaking her suit in the living room when she glanced up and saw Max walking around his studio shirtless. He had more scars than she had ever thought he would. They climbed his back, his arms, and thighs. She seemed to constantly be wrong about him, and being wrong was something Kira hardly experienced. He picked up documents, analyzed procedures, and flipped through the pages of old textbooks. Kira didn’t even know people still had actual book pages. Suddenly, he caught her eye.
She looked back down at her suit.
“You still don’t trust him?” asked Link. She never removed her ear piece unless she was home where Link could always be reached. She programmed him that way so she would never be alone.
“No,” she whispered.
“You should.”
Max walked out of the studio and sat on the armrest of the couch. “What are you doing?”
“Your concern lies only with finding me an E chip and upgrading my program so that I no longer require vials,” she asserted without pulling away her focus from the suit.
Max got closer and decided to take a seat. Unwise. “I always heard about Jen Ones. I was told they were receptive to only one concern: their task at hand. They felt nothing and thought about only their mission. I knew it was true but only to an extent. I never…”
“What are you trying to do?” she shot at him. Her eyes met his, and he knew he couldn’t and shouldn’t press the issue any longer.
“To see if you really don’t feel anything.”
“I don’t.” She stood up and grabbed her suit. “My suit has a tear and only the material back at my place could fix it.”
“Kira,” he began. “I’m sorry.”
She stopped before leaving through the garage door. She felt the emptiness inside her again just as she did every time. “Don’t be, because I am not mad.” She turned to him. “I am not sad. I am not happy. I am nothing.”
Chapter Fifteen
“Was that necessary?” asked Link. “Your suit is fine.” Kira was approaching her front door uptown of Briar. She placed her hand on the padlock and it successfully went through, revealing a second pad. She punched in the six numbers and the heavy door slid open.
She smirked. “It’s Red Scorpion’s suit. It can’t be just fine, but adding a launcher could help.”
When she took a step inside, she froze. Something was wrong. She could sense it. Someone else was there. Like second nature, she whipped out her revolver and cautiously entered the house. She had five shots left, more than enough. Link scanned the room. “Place your helmet on Kira.”
She unclipped it from her pack and did as she was told.
“Uploading home cameras,” said Link.
The material walls slowly came down and Kira saw the silhouette of a man standing in the kitchen.
“Son of a bitch,” she whispered.
“The rest of the area is clear,” confirmed Link.
“Initiate lock down Link.” Kira strut down the hallway as if the sound of her heels soothed her. When she turned to the kitchen with her gun up, the man in a Hugo Boss suit was in the middle of lighting a cigar. Hugo Boss? It was the contractor. She held her gun tighter.
“What the hell are you doing in my kitchen?” she retorted.
He blew a cloud of smoke in front of his face. As the smoke began to dissipate, she could finally see parts of his face she hadn’t the first time they met. His dark eyes had a haunting glare.
“Kira, where’s my head?” he asked, getting straight to the point. A good quality.
“In the process of retrieving it,” she lied. “I didn’t know time was of the essence.”
“Oh but it is. I no longer require your assistance. You’ve done my bidding. We know the location of the Jen Two.”
“What?” she asked. What is he referring to?
He smirked and took another puff. “I know you were programmed for expert intelligence, but I wouldn’t have initiated any means of lockdown if I were you. That was an unintelligent move to say the least.”
She took a side step toward the window. The iron bars were up. Good. “And why is that?”
He pulled out a remote control and tossed the cigar to the ground. “Because there is no escape, not even for a Jen One.”
Her face hardened. “Kira, I don’t know how, but they put up a barrier and hacked the system. I just got around it. There are fifteen more,” piped in Link.
“Inside?” she whispered.
“Use your five shots wisely,” Link advised.
Chapter Sixteen
Fear. She had heard of it, but never felt it. She wondered if it would be a good time to feel such a thing.
“I guess this contract is terminated,” she eyed him coldly and took her shot, aimed at the suited man’s chest. Two shadows from the side cabinets quickly rushed out from hiding and blocked the shot with their own bodies. Three more guards came out of hiding and took the client away to safety. Kira couldn’t let him go.
“Finish her,” he ordered as he left the kitchen. Five men were behind her. She could feel their breaths, their slight movements, and hear their hearts racing. They all had bullet proof armor. Her suit was on the desk at the front door. She needed to get to it and fast, but she was surrounded.
The man was getting away, and she felt the utter need to complete her own task: kill him.
“Lights off Link,” she whispered.
“On it.” The lights went out and she dropped to the floor. Rounds of bullets began flying above her. She crawled to the back of the couch and felt a bullet graze her right arm.
“Tap into their head pieces Link!”
Link programmed his way into their armor. “They have thermal
!”
Damn it! She felt the wound with her fingers. It was barely a scratch.
“Lights on!” she demanded. The lights turned back on, and it momentarily stunned her infrared system just as she had hoped it would. “Disable infrared!” She hopped over the couch and pulled it up over her body, tripping the two guards who followed her. Bullets pierced the couch.
“Lights off!” she yelled. In the blink of an eye, it was pitch black. She ran toward the kitchen, ducking the entire way. She rummaged through one of the drawers on her knees and found a set of knives, all sharpened to the touch.
Just as the goons were about to make their next attack on the kitchen with their helmets disabled, the lights turned on. They stopped in their tracks and removed their helmets entirely. She had fried the system.
She enabled infrared in her helmet and shut the lights down once more. They were finally blind. She pulled her first blade back when she felt someone come up behind her and grab her in a head lock. His grip tightened, and she felt the air ripped out of her. “You’re dead,” he whispered in her ear. She only had seconds left.
“No,” she barely managed. She shoved his back up against the kitchen counter. He gasped and his hold loosened for a second. It was her opening, and she took it. She gripped the hilt of her dagger and dug it into his side. Just before he could scream she turned to him and gripped his throat as hard as she could to paralyze his vocal chords. With her free hand she pulled the blade from his kidney and stabbed him three more times in the gut. His eyes went dead and she released her grasp. The other guards scattered throughout the house.
“Lock down targets,” she mumbled softly.
“Three behind the pantry wall, and fifteen surrounding us outside.”
“Outside? They won’t be able to get in. Ignore them.”
Link took over without her permission and displayed the cameras stationed outside. They were breaking in and, from the looks of it, close to successful.
With no weapons, no armor, and almost an army of fully loaded guards ready to take her out, Kira pressed her back up against the counter and finally decided if she was going to die, she was going to do it her way and no one else’s.
Chapter Seventeen
She had read somewhere that in face of great injustice and terror, a good man reacts, but a great one acts. A long time had passed since she’d believed in something other than herself. Thinking of Max always brought a smile to her face, and she didn’t know why.
“There’s an elevation to your levels of endorphins. Either you are eating chocolate or you are happy.” Link observed.
“I have never experienced this emotion. It’s nice.”
“May I suggest…”
“Don’t push it.” Kira left her safety and made a hasty run to her suit, shoving anyone in her way. The closet door was inches away from the suit. She grabbed her only shot at life and locked the door of the pantry. She slipped it on.
“All programs up and running,” Link confirmed after running a check.
“Finally, it is about time we got some good news around here.” She knew they would be surrounding her. She pulled out a gas bomb and let it go. All she could hear were the coughs and guttural noises of humans whose immune systems were just too damn weak.
Surprisingly, she heard the shot first before it hit her square in the chest. She spun around and dropped to the floor. It happened so fast. Red warning signs were all over her display system. Her suit was pulsating where the bullet had struck. A loud annoying sound that she’d programed went off when the bullet had struck.
“Link shut that off, and scan the perimeter.”
“On it.”
The alarm turned off and a few seconds later, Link piped in.
“30 targets hiding in various locations of the house.”
“Suit capacity?”
“15%”
“I think we’re fucked.”
“Understatement of the year, I’d say.”
“Send all remaining power to the weapons. Give me the guns,” she demanded.
“I wouldn’t advise…” Just then a barrage of gunfire erupted as bullets ricocheted everywhere. Kira was hit in the thigh and spun.
“Do it now!”
Link gave her all the remaining power and released the AK47 with armor piercing bullets and the Uzi with detonators. “You want to play, let’s play!”
“Link go thermal!”
Crouching red images appeared all over her programming system. They were surrounding her. She formed a T with her body and fired. Bullets ripped through stucco and steel to find their targets. She saw red dots disappearing as targets were neutralized. The Uzi sent off detonators, bullets exploding on impact. Bodies were thrown everywhere. She heard a command being given: “Net the bitch!”
Suddenly, from above, a steel net dropped.
“Shit!”
She jumped, but too late. The steel net hit her on the head, shattering the visor of the helmet and freezing up the heads up display. “Link, divert all power to systems...” but there was no response from Link.
She heard the footsteps approaching. “I think we caught ourselves a fish!” the same voice who’d given the command to drop the net happily spoke. She looked up and saw them approaching; ten men heavily armed closed in on her. The man who had spoken seemed to be the leader and one ugly S.O.B. He put away his gun and pulled out a nasty looking blade.
“Oh, I’m gonna hurt you.”
He moved in faster than she expected and lunged with the knife. She twisted but the blade sliced through the net like butter and stopped at the suit. He pushed harder, unable to comprehend why the blade hadn’t reached bone yet.
“Power at 1%,” Link was back.
“Nice of you to join me.”
“You know what happens at zero…”
“Yeah. We die!”
The man hacked at her again, meeting the same resistance. He was sweating, and Kira began to laugh. He threw away his blade and started kicking her to no effect. She just laughed more.
“Get this thing off her now!”
Men rushed in and threw the net off. I’ve been waiting for that. She head-butted the first one and used his dazed body to block the gunfire of the second assailant. She then jumped in the air, kicked one and locked onto the neck of another; as they both fell she tightened her thighs muscles and snapped the second man’s neck in two. She rolled away as bullets zipped by.
“Stand still bitch!” the leader was infuriated.
She broke into a full run to the back of the house, the bullets following her like rabid dogs, before throwing herself through the kitchen door.
The suit went slack. No power. No Link. I’m alone. She looked for the back door but before she could make a move, a small disc-like device slid into the kitchen. She looked at it and knew. “Shit!”
A cloud of white smoke blew out, and Kira fell to the ground, unconscious.
Chapter Eighteen
“Wake up bitch!”
A bucket of cold water hit her smack in the face, and Kira’s eyes snapped open. Everything was a daze. The room was too bright. The light was blinding, and she found herself quickly squinting to get a glimpse of her surroundings. She was in her bedroom, that much she knew.
Realization struck as she felt her wrists tightly bound. Unable to move them, she looked down at her feet, which weren’t touching the floor, and were bare. They had stripped her down to nothing but undergarments. Pain wasn’t something she felt easily, but there was a different pain inside of her: emptiness.
“Finally,” a deep voice rumbled through the room. “The little Red Scorpion is awake.” His tone said enough. What they were about to do to her would not be pretty. He took a step closer and held her face up to his. She could smell the foul stench of old chips and cheese. Barely able to keep her eyes open, she noticed his lazy eye and disgusting crooked smile. “I’m going to rip you apart like the insect you are.” He licked the side of her cheek and bit her ear. “And you’re goi
ng to feel it, every bit of it.”
He laughed as he pushed Kira away from him. She swayed back and forth and felt the room spinning. “Scorpions…aren’t insects.”
Then, out of nowhere, she felt a heel kick to her gut. “What’d you say bitch?” yelled a man to her right. Her eyes widened, and she felt the acid in her stomach rise. Another blow to her back sent her body trembling. She tried pulling down her weight on the rope to see if it would budge, but it was tightly knotted and she had no more energy to fight.
One after another, the blows came left and right. One to her cheek, the other in the gut, three to her neck, a few to her arms, they continued to pour like acid rain, every drop worse than the last.
She was programmed not to feel pain, but she could feel what they were inflicting upon her and there was no program that could delete it.
Kira was in and out of consciousness after so many blows to her body. Her lip was swollen. That was all she knew. She could feel parts of her body that had been broken, but she couldn’t confirm anything without Link. Energy was being depleted in her body and fast. She was starting to feel the pain. The crushing agony of an open nerve to a human was excruciating, while to Kira it felt like a slap to the face. Now, she could feel every blow deepen; it was a type of torture she never thought she’d find herself involved.
“You feel that?” asked one of the goons.
The leader took a step forward. Another handed him a blade. He brought it close to her face. “I always hated your kind,” he lightly dug the tip into her cheek. “Too fast, too strong, too smart.” He cut her cheek slowly and watched the blood trickle down. “You’ll never be human. You don’t even have real blood.”
In the blink of an eye, he stabbed her arm and dug a deep wound. Purple blood poured out like a waterfall. She choked on her own scream and felt lightheaded before she heard a thud. She tried to look around but everything was spinning and every glimpse of an image was blurry. No matter where she looked, she felt as if she was trying to find a fish beneath murky water. A gun shot rang in her ears, and her heart beat quickened. The adrenaline poured through her veins, and she took deep breaths to try and calm down.
After Tomorrow: A CHBB Anthology Page 16
