Future Rebuilt: A Post-Apocalyptic Harem (Future Reborn Book 2)

by Daniel Pierce

  “And they say getting shot doesn’t hurt. Bullshit,” I growled, clutching my leg and listening for the coming soldiers. I guessed that Rowan had made up the gap in his approach—or a scout caught me with a lucky shot. Either was bad, since I had no way of letting my team know I was down.

  “Cocky fuck. Fighting alone is never a good idea out here,” Lyss said. She stood peering down at me, a rifle resting on her hip. Her pose reminded me of a hunter preening over their kill, and a surge of anger flared within me despite my vision blurring as my ‘bots worked their magic. Whether they could work in time before she shot me again was yet to be seen, and I was laying on my shotgun. I did the only logical thing by throwing a blade at her in a whistling arc. It missed, but her shot went wide as she dived to avoid the glittering blade.

  “You’re alone, too,” I said, rising to balance on my good knee, gun in hand and bad thoughts racing through my mind. I fired at her as she rose, the buckshot turning her right arm into a spurting mess. Lyss blanched with shock, staggering down the rise toward me as her good arm pinwheeled in a futile attempt at balance. If she had ‘bots in her blood, they were far weaker than mine. The injury might be fatal, but I was going to make sure she didn’t live to fight another day.

  I greeted her with my other blade, straight into her chin and through the top of her skull. “I know you can’t hear me, but I hope it hurts.” Her body dropped when I pulled the blade, slick with gore and bits of gritty bone.

  Behind me, I knew the scorpions were finishing their work as the volleys of rifle fire fell away to occasional shots, and then a grim silence. If Lyss had been a scout, then Rowan was close. I lifted my eyes to the sky in hopes of spotting a drone.

  The Condor was overhead, turning into the sun in a lazy arc. When I waved, the wings waggled after a long heartbeat. “I owe you a drink, Andi,” I mouthed, and the wings dipped again. Help was on the way.

  So was Rowan.

  I heard the first wave of soldiers before I saw them, sliding to the ground behind shrubs that held onto the rocky soil for dear life. I saw three, then ten, and then two dozen fighters, their armor a ragged collection of stolen pieces and shoddy leather. Their weapons were real enough, and they advanced in good order.

  But they hadn’t seen me.

  I knew they were too close for Andi to risk spraying them down with the drone’s gun, which meant I had to evade, shoot, and make some space between us. Wounded, I was no match for that number of soldiers, no matter what my ‘bots were telling me with their subtle presence.

  The Condor swept low, drawing fire from a brace of soldiers who were quicker than the others. They missed, but it drew their attention long enough to let me scuttle back into the gulley, where I could circle around to attack the smallest group I had seen. There were three men and a tall woman to my right, their eyes up and tracking the drone as it began another pass.

  Pushing myself up, I held in a hiss of pain as the nature of my wound became clearer. I could walk, but my skin was dotted with cold sweat and the thought of running was out of the question. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try. Gun in one hand and blade in the other, I lurched into motion, closing the twenty meters in decent time.

  The woman saw me first, her hand rising in a smooth motion as she aimed a pistol in my general direction. I took her arm off at the elbow with a slash downward, then shot the man to her right square between the shoulder blades. His lungs exploded outward in a haze of red, then his legs folded like a chair as his lifeless body hit the dirt. The other two soldiers opted for close order weapons, pulling pairs of wicked machetes that were shiny with use.

  “Good. I want you fuckers close,” I rasped. My left arm flickered out, blade extended to punch into the chest of the left soldier, whose mouth went into a circle of surprise as the steel entered his heart. The second was faster, dancing forward in a slick move that brought his knife up under my arm for a strike into my exposed ribs.

  I felt the chill of his blade scraping over my skin, whirled away with all the speed my ‘bots could give me, and brought a spinning backfist into the base of his skull. He turned off like a switch, eyes rolling in a spastic beat. I saved my ammo and used the blade, driving it into his neck and twisting the point. He would not rise to fight again.

  My lungs heaved like a bellows as I focused on the horizon, a moving line of trees and dunes that would not stay still. I went back to my good knee as the war in my blood ratcheted up to the next level. The blood in my pants was hot, meaning any fighting was opening the wound again.

  I needed time, and I didn’t have it. I needed space, and I couldn’t get it.

  Then shadows appeared on the ground in front of me, and I heard a familiar voice.

  “Before we kill you, we need to have a talk,” Rowan said.

  24

  I shot at him before he could finish speaking, but he was no ordinary human. His blood coursed with ‘bots, too, even if they were weaker than mine. Rowan dropped out of sight, but his soldiers didn’t. Tergis and Wyant both caught faces full of buckshot before they could fire at me, but Barvi—a mean bastard if ever I saw one—managed to put a round into the sand, spraying grit into my eyes and forcing me back in a defensive crouch. That would do nothing to prevent Rowan from shooting me, but I was convinced his ego would get in the way. He had soldiers around, I was wounded, and he too felt the pressure of his ‘bots urging him forward in battle.

  I chose my words carefully.

  “Rowan, you can walk away from this, but your people can’t. I won’t allow it,” I called out.

  The silence was fat, broken only by the hum of a Condor as it turned overhead, high but still well in range to use guns if things were permanently broken. Barvi stood, his weathered face twisted in a sneer. Next to him Stoker rose, a mirror image but blonde where Barvi was dark. Their faces were lined with scars and the map of a hard life lived in service to violence.

  Rowan stood last, his face an utter blank. “You won’t allow it?” He wasn’t the friendly guy from our time together. His arrogance was written all over his face. He was a warlord. Or at least, that’s what he wanted.

  “I can’t. There’s too much of the future at stake, and we can’t piss it away for you to build your little kingdom,” I told him.

  “Unlike you, who will be so much more reasonable as a king?” Rowan asked. He had a point. He was wrong, but he couldn’t know that. We weren’t built the same. What seemed obvious to him was the last thing I wanted. I would never be a king. I only wanted to turn the desert into something better, and I didn’t need a crown to do it.

  “I don’t expect you to understand. We’re too different,” I said.

  He nodded in agreement, then made a small gesture to Barvi, who lifted his gun toward me. He looked to Rowan for confirmation, and then turned to face me, the decision made.

  Barvi’s head exploded in a shower of brain and blood, the rolling report of Mira’s shot coming a second later. Stoker was next, but the round took him through the throat, sending a hand’s length of his spine flying backward in a cloud of bone and gristle. To his credit, Rowan didn’t even flinch, but his lips pulled to the side in a grim twist. There was nothing of the affable man I had met over dinner left. This was a killer who was used to violence.

  “I think my partners are going to continue picking their shots, and there isn’t shit you can do about it. Mira was born to shoot, and no matter how good your desert rats are, she’s better. That just leaves us to conclude our business,” I said over the distinct crack of her rifle. To the left, another soldier screamed, his voice trailing off in a gurgle.

  Rowan nodded, drawing his sidearm in a flash of motion too quick for the human eye to follow. Thankfully, my eyes weren’t entirely human. Not anymore. I didn’t dive. I moved back and right far enough to let the round whisper by, thumping harmlessly into the sand. I threw a blade end over end at Rowan, then followed with a charge up the low embankment that brought me before him like an avenging angel. He was a liar
, a tyrant, and a thief. He was also filled with ‘bots, even if they were weaker, but that only meant he could see my first punch coming.

  It didn’t mean he could stop it.

  I landed a whistling right under his arm, collapsing his ribs as he lashed out with a strike of his own. I preferred to take him alive, despite the fact that he deserved to die. It was something he said when we first met, and I took the chance to ask him as I wrenched his gun away and ground it into the sand.

  “Where are the others?” I blocked a vicious left, hard enough that he shook his arm out, stunned by the force of my elbow.

  “Others? They’re around you, idiot.” He pulled a long knife, and then another. He would try to slice me where his gun had failed, but I began to weave like a snake as his blades cut the air around me. His friendly face of our first meeting was gone, changed into a sneer of rage and frustration.

  “The other facilities. You said you found a chain. I need to know where,” I replied. I caught his left wrist, turned it, and flicked the knife away in a spinning flash. He didn’t hesitate, but finished his strike as a punch, catching me in the collarbone with enough force that my knees buckled. His ‘bots might not be as advanced as mine, but he was inhumanly strong.

  “Don’t worry about it,” he said in a dismissive tone, then kicked me as I went to block his other knife. It was a feint, and he reversed the blade toward my ribs in a blur. I twisted, struck down at his knee with my own leg, and lifted him from the sand with my free hand. I landed on him with a thud, and we began sliding down the incline as I did my best to drown him in sand.

  It didn’t work. His knee found my balls, and stars exploded across my vision like a constellation of pain. There was no reason for him to beat me like—

  “Turns out that a fresh shot of ‘bots is like turbo for my body,” he rasped in my ear, punctuating each word with an elbow to the side of my head. If there were stars before, now I saw a galaxy. Blood spooled from my nose and mouth, and I was aware of rifle shots cracking overhead, followed by a scream that sounded like a woman. “Been taking them every eight hours on the way here. Figured I would either survive to kill you, or die in the process.” He gained an advantage, flipped me over, and began raining blows on me as I fought to block them. I was fucked and I knew it, but I was also a different man than the Jack Bowman who had found touching his own toes a challenge. I was better. More flexible.

  I kicked up and over his shoulder, looping a boot around his head and jerking him backward hard enough that his spine popped. We rolled apart, staggering to our feet as the rifles still hammered away, shouts and cries now fading into the background as I focused on Rowan and only Rowan for what would be the most important fight of my life.

  A knife appeared in his hand again, and he crouched in the stance of someone who has his prey cornered but knows it can still bite back. Without taking my eyes from him, I loosened my belt and pulled it from the loops until it dangled in my left hand like a whip.

  “No offense, but you’re not my type. Now Chloe and Silk and even the tomboy—what’s her name? Whatever. They’ll do. I’ll have them ass up in my tent every night until I carve this land into a place worth ruling.” Rowan’s smile was mostly leer, and he waited to see if my temper would lose the fight for me.

  It was close.

  “Her name is Mira, and if you thinks she’s a tomboy, you weren’t paying attention.” I swung the belt a few times, taking its measure. It was more than a meter long, and the buckle was heavy enough to give it some speed. The gap between us was two meters, but Rowan was slightly higher, giving him another advantage. I spat to clear my mouth of blood and sand, then began to rotate so his eyes were in the rising sun. He knew what I was doing and countered my move by staying put, perfectly balanced and content to wait for my attack.

  His hand was steady, the knife in it barely moving as the six-inch blade pointed directly at my center mass. If I attacked, he would lash out, and it would be over. If I held firm, he could circle me in hopes of his people taking out my team, and we would die of old age facing each other in the ridiculous standoff.

  Up until that moment, my thoughts had been fully human—those of a man from my time, who knew nothing of life with ‘bots, and certainly not an advanced form of machines singing in my blood. I went inward for a second, listened to their call, and made my decision.

  I jumped forward, and Rowan’s blade met my right arm as he buried the knife deep in the flesh of my forearm. Pushing ahead, I turned the knife away, tearing my own arm open in a spray of blood that colored the morning light scarlet, Rowan’s grunt of triumph fading as the belt wrapped around his neck, the circle closing as the buckle smacked into my open palm.

  I pulled.

  He lifted from the ground, eyes bulging in horror as I twisted, freeing his knife from my ruined arm as I began to spin. I made three rotations so fast he didn’t even have time to lift his hands, the oxygen fading from his brain under the force of the belt, and my muscles, and the inertia of his own body stretching vertebra until one of them snapped with a sullen pop.

  His body went limp, eyes staring into a place where no living man could see.

  “So much for our interrogation,” I said, letting the corpse hit the sand.

  Behind me, Mira called out, her voice ragged with emotion. I turned, tried to lift my other arm, and let it hang, the long cut bleeding freely onto the ground, but slowing even as I stared at the white edges and exposed tendons. I was no longer truly human, and wounds could be given if it meant winning the fight. Rowan had forgotten that aspect of the ‘bots, or maybe he had never known. It didn’t matter. He was dead, and my arm might work again, or it might not.

  “Jack.” I looked up at the insistent call. This time, it was Silk. “Can you walk?”

  I nodded weakly and began making my way to her. “What is it?”

  In answer, she stepped aside, revealing Chloe, whose head was in Mira’s lap. A bullet wound in her chest was sucking air, the rasping keen both high and wet, a noise so inhuman it set my teeth on edge. Chloe looked up at me, her face white and gleaming with sweat.

  “Got him, but he got me. All dead. All of them,” she said.

  I knelt by her to say something kind, or even profound, but she was dead. In that instant, her body became a hollow thing, another casualty of people killing people in a landscape where they should have joined together to fight the monsters. Rowan was a monster, but with a smile, and now Chloe was dead. Many others were dead, and it was all an utter fucking waste.

  “Are they are— did you get his squad?” I asked, staring at Chloe’s face.

  “All of them. The scorpions did the rest, then tried to go back into their hole,” Silk said.

  “Tried?” I asked, slumping to the ground.

  “Rats. They heard their friend, I think, and—there are a lot of dead animals over there. I don’t know how many survived, but our job is a lot easier,” Silk said. She knelt and closed Chloe’s eyes. “She was a kid.”

  “Everybody out here is a kid. We don’t know what the fuck we’re doing,” I spat, then began tearing a bandage from my shirt, wrapping my arm in the filthy cloth.

  “Not all of us,” Silk said. She pulled an actual bandage from her pack and began to roll my arm in the clean cloth. Without looking up, she cut her eyes to Chloe’s body. “Where will we bury her?”

  “On this ridge, I think. It’s her place now. Our place, too,” I said, and a thought occurred to me through my growing pain. The wound and ‘bots working hard were taking their toll. “Andi?”

  Silk smiled. “Busy. Turns out she’s a natural at killing giant rats. Doesn’t like them at all.”

  I almost smiled despite the pain, and the loss, and all of it. “Good.” Then the ground rushed up to meet me, and I knew nothing at all.

  Epilogue

  “Eden Chain? You’re sure that’s what you recall?” Andi asked.

  I spoke slowly, sifting my memory to make sure I was getting it right. “Yes. H
e was smug about it, too.”

  In the six days since our battle, we had transferred reactors to the Oasis and begun the long process of finding out what exactly we had at our disposal. Andi was a natural at organization, which helped since my wound was healing slow enough that I was one-handed for at least another week. Derin was beside himself at the technology; peppering Andi with questions at such a rate that she threatened to drug him if he didn’t let her catch her breath once in a while. All in all, the Oasis had gone from a hopeful outpost to a military power, and we hadn’t even revealed the existence of the Vampires or armories to anyone outside our small circle. That would come in time. For now, we were busy making certain that our people were safe, the facility was stable, and the Oasis had a plan.

  “Can you search for it in your system?” Silk asked. She was staring at Andi’s tablet, her head cocked to one side in thought.

  “I can. Have you heard of this thing? The Eden Chain?” Andi asked.

  “I don’t know, but I have a bag full of drives that we haven’t finished searching. It might be there,” Silk said.

  “We can search at our leisure, then, after I’m done scouring this system. I have full access, but the military is famous for keeping us apart in silos. It was always their way,” Andi said, a sour look on her face. Then she brightened, a smile breaking across her features like the sun through clouds. “Unless you have the master key. Which I do.” She turned the tablet around to show us her discovery.

  A series of dots ran up and away from the Oasis, ending at the edge of the river valley far to the east. “Look like a chain to you?” Andi asked.

  “I’ll say.” I counted, then whistled in appreciation. “Thirteen more? I wonder if there are more people sleeping away the years.”