Angel Descended (The Awakened Book 6)

by Matthew S. Cox

  James never looked at me like that.

  The door opened.

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t expecting visi—” Penny Dhara froze, mouth open. “Anna?”

  She’d gained a little weight since they’d last met, but was still a far cry from heavy. Anna had always seen her on the verge of starvation. At or perhaps a smidge past optimal weight, she looked like another person entirely. She seemed… alive.

  Anna cried despite her smile. “Penny… you look great.”

  “Come in!” Penny all but dragged her in the door.

  Her apartment was done up more or less like an ancient English grandmum lived there, save for a few touches of Indian art. The scent of clove and incense hung in the air. A desk against the far wall glowed with a half-dozen holo-panels open to various documents. Small bits of kitch dwelled in the various spaces of an open shelving grid between the kitchen area and the living room.

  “Wow.” Anna took it in. “You’re doing well.”

  “Aye. Busy as anything. Administrative work for the University.” She lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I cannae believe what they’re payin’ me too. Feels like I’m gettin’ away wit something, but… I am workin’ my ass off.”

  Anna couldn’t resist any longer and grabbed her friend in a crushing hug. “I’m sorry I was away for so long. Things’ve gotten complicated.”

  “I’m glad to see you’re okay. The way you ran off… I thought you’d gotten yourself into a mess. Sit.” Penny waved at a table. “I’ll put up some tea. I had the strangest idea you’d gotten cheesed off and never wanted to see me again.”

  “Pen! How could you ever think that?”

  The woman shrugged on her way into the kitchen.

  Anna wandered in a spinning gait toward the table, happy and jealous of her friend for having so ‘normal’ a life. This flat was a world apart from their lodgings at Coventry Tower. She lowered herself into a chair as if unworthy of touching it. Aaron joined her. She studied the marks her boots had left in the plush beige carpeting until her friend returned with a kettle, three cups, and a plate of Tim Tams.

  “Seems the job suits you then?” asked Anna.

  Penny poured them each a cup. Aaron took one of the chocolate-covered treats, bit off both ends, and proceeded to suck his tea through the chocolate crème inside it. Anna’s nerves kept her from chuckling at him.

  “Aye. ‘Tis easy work, but honest. Spawny doesn’t know what to do wif himself these days. I still can’t believe you’re back. Takin’ an awful risk, aren’t ya?”

  Anna ran her hands over her knees, expecting to wear holes in her dark leggings. “I’m not back. I had to ask you something. Do you ‘ave things in your memory that don’t seem right? Like going from as good as my sister to being shitless of having me around?”

  Penny smiled. “Oh, he’s not doing much. Still hasn’t found work.” She leaned close, lowering her voice. “Not that he’s trying.”

  “Pen. That’s not what I asked.”

  “Oh, these are brilliant.” Aaron grabbed another Tim-Tam. “It’s been years.”

  “I mean, it’s not like he’s really got to work. I make enough for us to live. Quite nice, actually.”

  “Penny!” Anna yelled, reaching over the table to grab her friend by the wrist. “Listen to me.”

  The woman blinked. “Well, you don’t ‘ave to shout. I’m right ‘ere.”

  “Miss Dhara, if I might have the pleasure of your attention for a moment.” Aaron set his cup down and folded his arms on the table.

  Anna clutched her hands into fists, gripping her coat as Penny’s placid smile faded to an expression of worry. The woman who had been the reason she survived to adulthood looked like a complete stranger.

  Aaron’s face reddened; after a moment, he let off a constipated sigh. “It’s bloody strong this time.”

  “Oi, Pen, I’m back,” Spawny yelled from the small corridor between the living room and the outer door.

  Boots clunked, cloth ruffled, and a closet door slid closed. He appeared a few seconds later, still in a shredded mesh top, slashed up black military fatigue pants, and the same boots he’d always worn. Five years hadn’t made much of a difference; he still looked like a holovid star about to die from a chem overdose.

  “Gah!” Spawny stared at Anna. “Shit! We’re fucked! Pen, get the hell out of ‘ere.”

  Spawny’s mad scramble for the door became a midair flailing fit when Aaron levitated him in place. He screamed as if natives prepared to hurl him into a volcano as a sacrifice to Pele. Penny glanced back and forth between Aaron and Anna, looking clueless. A few seconds later, she broke out in a cold sweat.

  “Pix?” Penny covered her face with her hands. “Why am I feeling so afraid of you right now? I don’t like it.”

  “Tell ‘er to get the feck out of here!” Spawny howled.

  “Keep your hair on, mate,” said Aaron. “You’ve been conditioned to mess your trousers at the sight of her.”

  “Wot?” Spawny froze in midair, approximating a surrealist sculpture of a human dancing.

  Aaron moved Spawny to a sofa on the far end of the room. “Mental programming. Someone’s put a trigger in your mind what makes irrational fear come out of nowhere at the sight of Anna.”

  “You speakin’ feckin’ English or wot, mate?”

  Aaron pinched the bridge of his nose and grumbled. “Someone bloody mind-zapped you to act like a feckin’ schoolgirl in a horror vid at the sight of her.”

  “Oh.” He sniffed and adjusted his mesh shirt. “I’m not an idiot.”

  The scrawny man clutched the end of the sofa arm, trembling. Bloodshot eyes surrounded by overdone dark makeup locked onto her, as though he would bolt for the door if she so much as twitched.

  “Bezzy mates,” Anna muttered at the carpeting.

  Spawny’s mouth hung open. For a few seconds, a low noise gurgled out of his throat before it built into a voice. “Aye. I said that, didn’t I?” He grimaced and bit his knuckle, but continued trembling.

  Anna glanced up expecting to find an ‘I-told-you-so’ smug grin on Aaron’s face. Instead, his eyes held regret and concern. Her lip quivered. The corners of her eyes grew warm. Anna steeled her jaw, intent on not breaking down in front of everyone.

  “I’m not sure if I can fix this.” He scratched his head. “I don’t exactly know my onions when it comes to telepathy.”

  She reached into her purse with shaking hands, fumbling for her NetMini.

  Aaron cocked an eyebrow.

  Anna clutched the device as if her life depended on it. “I need to call someone.”

  25

  How to Flatline a Dragon

  Mamoru

  A mound of small concrete chunks had proven to be a more comfortable bed than Mamoru had anticipated. Rapid gunfire interrupted his rest, accompanied by an incoherent roar muted by the walls. A feline return to consciousness held no trace of grogginess. Only his eyes moved as he scanned the room. Pale bands of light leaked in from fist-sized holes in the front wall, illuminating dust. The stink of mildew permeated everything about the place. Voices, male and female, screamed taunts and threats between bursts of automatic weapons fire. A roar answered, followed by the straining sound of warping metal.

  The brazen shouting gave way to screams of terror.

  Mamoru brushed dirt from his coat with casual swipes of his hand and stood. Outside, a tremendous crash rocked the street before the building shuddered, knocking a cloud of dust from the walls and ceiling.

  “Noah! I’m stuck!” A female voice degenerated into shrieks of pain.

  “Die fucker!” shouted a man, an instant before a long barrage of gunfire drowned him out.

  Cracks and gaps in the front wall lit up with a flickering azure glow. Dull clanks, fleshy thuds, and the sharp snaps of bullets striking concrete rang out. A few puffs of powder burst from the wall. Ricochets hit the floor behind him.

  A deep male voice chuckled outside.

 
Mamoru strode among the hail of fragments and stray bullets without flinching, even as something whistled by, inches from his ear. Plaster crunched under his boots down the length of a short hallway with a destroyed bathroom off to the right. A rotting corpse, too far gone to recognize any trace of the person it had been, sat on the toilet and leaned against the wall.

  “Suck this!” shouted a different male voice.

  The boom of an assault rifle went off outside.

  Intent on ignoring the local conflict, Mamoru emerged from the opening where a front door had once been. Fifteen or so meters to the right, a punk with fluorescent orange hair stood in the middle of the road, mouth frozen open in a war cry no one could hear over his erupting rifle.

  The crushed remnants of a land car lay upside down against the wall. A girl with snow-white hair and a glowing red NanoLED tattoo of a ‘spray-painted’ raccoon mask on her face slumped against it, screaming and sobbing. Her left arm looked pinned, and crushed, between it and the building.

  Mamoru regarded a second street punk with a raised eyebrow. Six thumb-wide ponytails hung down to his waist from his otherwise shaved head. Tiny silver cones studded his eyebrows as well as the curves of his ears and ran in two rows down the length of his nose. He rattled a small submachine gun, attempting to remove a stuck magazine.

  On the left, a nine-foot tall behemoth foamed at the mouth. Dark blue plastisteel, a banded metal torso, showed beneath his shredded clothes. His arms and most of his face gleamed metal. The punk with the rifle kept firing, though the bullets seemed only to damage the monster’s coat and baggy sky-blue pants. The aug’s eyes, lens tubes with red light inside, rotated clockwise and extended a half inch forward at the same instant a flap opened on his left shoulder. Mamoru continued walking, disregarding the scene.

  A tiny rocket leapt from the mechanical shoulder, passing close enough to Mamoru’s face for the exhaust to singe his cheek. It plunged into the chest of the punk with the rifle, sticking like a fiery crossbow bolt. The teen stopped shooting and gawked at it as the propellant burned out and trailed dense white smoke.

  Blood seeped out of his mouth with a nervous laugh. “Holy shi—”

  Boom.

  Bits of flesh flew in all directions; everything from the base of the ribcage up ceased to exist. The rest of him remained upright for a second before falling over backward. Mamoru reached up and touched his middle finger to a chunk of gore sliding down his cheek. He appraised it for a second and flicked it away.

  The girl wailed and grunted, slapping her free hand on the car.

  Mamoru took a step forward. I will need a new coat.

  “Die,” growled the huge aug.

  A second shot leapt from the implanted launcher, headed at the next closest target—Mamoru.

  White flames rippled down his arms as psionic energy flooded his body, accelerating his reflexes to the point time dragged to an almost-standstill. Mamoru twisted and leaned under the crawling cigar-sized rocket. He continued the spin, grasping the projectile and guiding it around in a curve. When he relaxed his ability and time returned to normal, an orange streak flew from his hand to the behemoth’s chest, where it detonated on impact.

  The blast knocked the aug back a step and left a two-inch sparking hole on his right pectoral, surrounded by a wider char mark. Mamoru stood within the loop of a thin smoke trail resembling a lasso, staring at the man, waiting.

  Screaming behind him subsided to soft whimpering.

  “What the fuck was that?” muttered the punk with the jammed submachine gun.

  “Pain,” roared the aug. He glanced down as though he’d spilled mustard on himself, picking at the sparking hole. “Make hurt. Smash!”

  Mamoru sank into a combat stance as the psychotic cyber-junkie rushed at him. Eighteen-inch blades sprang out from the closed fists of his metal arms. Grunts and inhuman moans accompanied his first swing, an overextended right arm aimed for Mamoru’s neck.

  Time crawled again as Mamoru accelerated, boosting speed and strength beyond even what the cyborg could attain. Once more, Caiden appeared in his mind. The elevator doors had surprised him as much as the boy. Had his powers grown, or he had been holding back?

  Mamoru would not hold back anymore.

  He grasped his vibro-katana, yanking it from its sheath and severing the aug’s right forearm with the motion of the draw. A sparking metal hand, and the blade it clutched fell. The crazed man twisted to bring his left arm around in a low arc, slashing for legs. Mamoru’s upswing cut the mechanical limb with ease. Squealing metal roared from the war between hypersonic blade and armor-grade plastisteel. Sparks shimmered as metal separated in slow motion, the edges heated to glowing by the passing vibro-katana. The aug’s forearm sailed into the air, vanishing into the fifth story window of an abandoned building across the street.

  Before his opponent could react, Mamoru whirled into a spinning, horizontal slash that severed the cyber-freak’s body at the waist. The instant his blade cleared the far side of the target, he released his right hand’s grip, leaving the weapon in his left. The white flames rippling across his shoulders intensified; he focused as much energy as he could into pure strength. Time leapt back to normal as he completed the spin and drove his fist into the aug’s chest.

  The metal torso blurred into a silvery, bloody smear. Two blocks distant, a muted crash blew dust out of the windows of a building. Hips and legs remained, a perfect cut left the top as smooth as ruby glass.

  “Whoa…” said the remaining male punk. “That was ruinous, man.”

  Mamoru sneered at the legs and put his sword away. The glow along his arms faded. “Where can I find a deck?”

  “Uhh…” The boy stopped fighting with his weapon and shrugged. “Notta fuckin’ clue, man.”

  “Hey,” said the girl, in a weak rasp. “Somebody help.”

  “Mmm.” Mamoru walked straight away from where he’d slept, the punks on his right, the still-standing legs on his left. A tiny whisper at the back of his mind tried to make him care about an injured girl, but the darkness devoured it.

  “Dude, you can’t fuckin’ leave Ferret like that? You launched that crazy motherfucker… holy shit.”

  Mamoru kept walking. “I must find a deck.”

  “Noah,” whined Ferret. “It’s gettin’ fuckin’ cold. I… I don’t wanna metal arm.”

  “Wait,” Noah called after Mamoru. “I can help. Sorta.”

  Mamoru stopped, but didn’t turn around. “I am listening.”

  “I dunno about sellin’ you a deck, but I can take you to a guy that’s got a shitload of ‘em.”

  “I assume you will ask me to help your friend in exchange.”

  “Uhh, yeah man, seein’ as how you not doin’ it to be like… the right thing to do and shit.”

  “I will assist your friend once we speak to this person.” Mamoru faced him.

  “No way, man. She’s gonna die before that. Her whole damn arm is salsa-fied. We gotta get her outta there first.”

  A low growl rumbled deep in Mamoru’s throat as he frowned.

  “You think I’d fuck with someone who did that.” He gestured at the remains of the aug.

  Distrust or not, time and options were limited. “Do not betray me.”

  Mamoru approached and rested his hand on the end of the car. Ferret looked into his eyes for only an instant before she cowered and jerked at her trapped limb. He stared at the bloodstain seeping into the fabric of her sleeve and shoulder. The raccoon mask across her pale face glowed the color of maraschino cherries.

  What does she see in my eyes? What am I?

  Wisps of energy burned down the lengths of his arms, bringing strength. Mamoru pulled the car away from the wall with little effort. Ferret fell on her side and dragged herself away as fast as she could crawl. Her left arm dangled limp and useless.

  The Akuryō frowned at her.

  Weak.

  She whimpered, kicking at the ground to push herself along.

  Pathet
ic.

  Ferret risked a glance back at him when she had crawled a few meters away, but raised her good arm over her face in a defensive cringe. Her tears caught the glow from the cybertattoo around her eyes.

  Mamoru frowned at himself. Still a child. He forced his way out from under the Akuryō.

  “Give me a credstick.” Mamoru extended a hand toward the punk.

  Noah edged closer, offering him a small black device as well as his gun. “Take it… take them both.”

  “I am not a thief.”

  He held the credstick in a closed fist, opening his mind to the electronics inside. Soon, his vision changed to the virtual world created by the tiny one-node network inside the device. White samurai armor hovered in a small space behind a painted yellow line near a huge, round door. A guardian construct made to resemble a man wearing a banker’s suit sat behind a desk at the edge of a vault. It looked up at him, ready to destroy the credstick if it sensed a hacker’s tampering. Mamoru’s will brought program code into being, changing zeroes to ones. The vault space behind the guardian filled with glowing coins, the cyberspace equivocation to money. Unable to process psionic influence, the guardian remained wary, but did nothing.

  Mamoru opened his eyes, once more in the black zone. A faint trace of charred meat crossed his nostrils, no doubt the effect of his vibro-katana on the aug. He tossed the credstick back to the boy. The balance of two million and change credits nearly made him faint.

  “Bring her to a hospital. I will fill it to ten million if you can bring me to a deck.” Mamoru sat on the wrecked car. “I shall wait here for you.”

  “Yeah man… Don’t go anywhere.” He held up the credstick as if it were a holy relic, stuffed it in his pocket, and helped Ferret to her feet. “Soon.”

  Mamoru closed his eyes and tried to meditate as the teens ran off. Peace eluded him while the weight of his obligation burned deep within.