Specter Protocol

by Eddie R. Hicks

  Estrella ran from the army of clones, evading pyrokinetic flames and electrokinetic lightning bolts. Aiming backward, she returned fire. Two bodies hit the floor. Ahead was an empty pod, so she gave it a quick optical scan. It contained lots of computer components. A speedy browse through her skills menu, and she selected Summon Spiderbot. Her NC gauntlet blasted the pod with three swarms of nanites.

  Seconds later, the pod deconstructed itself, broke apart in a jumble of parts. Out from the parts emerged a spiderbot. She snapped her gauntlet fingers and sent it back to the clones with its laser acquiring and blasting away red glowing holes through the naked clones. The bot didn’t last long when a pyrokinetic fireball melted it. But that was okay, Estrella injected herself with her last remaining nanotube.

  Nanite swarm(s) remaining: 3.5

  The next pods Estrella ran past got hit with spiderbot constructing nanites. In her wake was a new spiderbot, using its laser to burn holes through the naked men, or slice them in half, flooding the floor with blood gushing up from their smoking and exposed intestines. She took a big risk and dropped Defense Matrix’s protection. It wasn’t going to protect her from warlock powers. But the new nanites that became available as a result let her summon one last spiderbot. Now she had two spiderbots blasting lasers.

  “Puta!” Hawk shouted at her from above. He’d made it to the second level. “No puedes ganarlos a todos—”

  “Cállate!”

  She looked up at the scaffolding, her optical scanners were unable to relay information to her combat HUD. Her HUD did, however, locate a ladder. She had Geoffrey highlight it with a navi-point, and she ran to it, looking back to the clone army, what was left of them, and it wasn’t much. Her spiderbots were growing bored.

  She climbed to the scaffolding, pointed her weapon forward, and trekked across the upper level as her emerald eyes scanned the crates and computer consoles. She saw nothing. Her ears picked up the growl of a wolf seconds later. And then she heard yelping and flesh tear. It was Malcolm. How he ascended the ladder as a wolf was a question to be asked later.

  She followed the sounds, running past the crates and computers. A wolf had its teeth sunk into Hawk’s hand, biting down, and pulling bits of flesh off it. Hawk was screaming and had long dropped his gun. Estrella took aim, smiled, and rapidly pulled the trigger. Hawk shook with each tungsten bullet that hit and ripped holes into his chest and exited his back. Shots to his arms tore it right off and sent the limbs spiraling to the floor. Blood was everywhere.

  Hawk fell over dead. Malcolm released his severed hand from his wolf jaw. And when that happened Estrella heard three bodies hit the concrete ground. Looking down, she saw the remaining clones that hadn’t encountered the spiderbots. Their carcasses were devoid of any sign of trauma. She zoomed her view of them. The clone’s eyes were open, their naked chests moved up and down taking in air. They’d dropped all at once, like some circus act.

  She grimaced. “That’s not the first time that’s happened.”

  She examined the fallen clones. Optical scans displayed their vital signs across her HUD. They were breathing, had a pulse, with eyes open and staring into nothing. Just like the gangster, she saw fall at Lady M’s mansion, and the one Ray described when he and Theo killed Hawk the first time. The clones were vegetables, just as all clones should be when produced. It was the sole reason Regal Genetics canceled the project; the clones did nothing because they had no mind.

  Geoffrey was he… mind controlling them all?

  Mind control would explain how the Skulls overcame the cloning limitations. However, as Ellsworth mentioned, you cannot use mind control on a target that has no mind to start with. Furthermore, Hawk was not an S ranked IW. Not even Piper could control this many clones for a prolonged period.

  Which brings us back to the question, why do they go braindead when Hawk’s clones die?

  That console over there may hold your answers. A navi-point flashed into existence on her HUD. It led her to an idle computer terminal. She placed her right palm on the terminal, the one wearing the NC gauntlet.

  Geoffrey, nano hack this.

  And he did. With a single spray of nanites, he entered the computer, rewiring it, and transmitting its data to her. A rain of numbers and letters covered her vision, diagrams, pictures all related to the operation of the pods, probably some logs too.

  The rear pods contain the original members of the Skulls gang. Geoffrey revealed. The pods scan their genetic structure, then transfers it to this console, where organic 3D printers recreate their cloned copies in the forward pods.

  Estrella looked to the pods with sleeping Bald Skull members within the liquid. So those are the actual gang members resting?

  That is correct—

  She drew her pistol and opened fire. The bullets went through the pods, leaving behind ring-shaped red glowing holes, the liquid, now murky red, came gushing out with traces of flesh. The bodies inside remained idle. An Asagiri40 and its ability to shoot through solid objects was money well spent. So, she reloaded and fired again, and again. Her cyborg reflexes made her hand holding the weapon snap and lock onto the next pod, while her fingers, with black painted nails, snapped back the trigger in a rapid blur. By the time she emptied the clip, none of the pods held anything living.

  Correction, Geoffrey stated. Those were the members. Below the console was a drawer, it sprang open. That is how they do it, to answer your question.

  She searched the drawer and pulled out small metallic shards. Bringing them to her face, she ran optical scans on them. The data populating her vision had nothing unusual to read, just numbers and a list of metals used to make it.

  The fuck is this?

  According to this computer, it’s an avatar transceiver.

  Which is…?

  Unknown, however, if you perform a Scan Copy of it. I will be able to better analyze its structure based on the pattern.

  She placed it in her right hand wearing the gauntlet and clenched it. Her nanites did the rest when she selected Scan Copy from her drop-down nanite abilities menu.

  Avatar… Estrella winced, looking at the device when Scan Copy completed, loading a new pattern in her storage. This proves it. The Skulls were part of it.

  And more.

  A small video window opened in the middle of her view, replaying surveillance logs from the cameras above. With the terminal still nano hacked, Estrella grabbed her network cable jacked in, browsed, and found the video files. She downloaded them all. She wanted to rage at the stuff she saw.

  Bald Skulls members frequently entered the old warehouse with unmoving telepaths in their arms. One of them was Portia. Once tossed on the cold and dirty floor, they made a call. Later the backdoor opened, and men in suits, as Malcolm claimed, arrived. The suited men were guided to the sedated telepaths and taken away. Patterson was one of those suits. No sign of Ashford in the videos, of course not, he was too busy pulling strings to make the operation happen.

  Lady M will want to see this.

  In the next video, she saw the delivery door lift open. A truck was backing in. Once it was idle, members of the gang pushed the pods and its connecting computer equipment into the trailer. Several of the pods held cloned Bald Skulls members.

  Freeze image.

  Geoffrey paused the video. Zoom in on the interior of that trailer.

  It zoomed. Cross-reference it to the one we saw at the Port of Los Angeles.

  Done.

  Is it a match?

  There is a 98.777 percent chance it is the same trailer.

  Lucky seven, I’ll take it. Estrella jacked out. The Skulls got to Tokyo from here; those pods had their sleeping clones in it.

  What they were doing in Tokyo was a good question. She looked at the shard still clenched in her gauntleted hand.

  Most likely seeking unregistered telepaths there. Geoffrey concluded. Perhaps Yoshida is looking to acquire them from outside of the Alliance now that we exposed the project.

  “Estre
lla.” It was Piper’s voice on the comm channel. “Where the fuck are you my lovely?”

  She grinned. “Where are you?”

  Estrella and Malcolm found Piper back in the private room, standing above Hawk’s clone, the same one that got his head caved in by Malcolm.

  “Where did everyone go?” Piper asked.

  “Uh, we kinda finished this part of the mission,” Estrella said.

  “What? No way,” Piper pointed, her finger still waving about. The drugs hadn’t finished fucking her body up. “We were there, dancing and… then.”

  “We’re beyond that.” Estella gave Malcolm a pat. “Got him rescued too.”

  “…. what?” Piper went to kick the dead clone. She missed and fell on her ass. “Fuck. I missed it?”

  “You were there…”

  “Fuck!”

  Piper stood again and kicked. This time she hit his head, or what remained of it, and it broke apart. Malcolm’s face was lost in shock. Piper’s single kick did more damage than his multiple stomps. Estrella wasn’t surprised, Piper’s feet were enhanced with cyberware.

  She was however surprised at the metallic wire to the body’s brain gushing more blood into the floor. Estrella scanned it and winced at its 3D image that spun around on her HUD.

  That is the same implant we found. Avatar transceiver thingy. “Wait here,” she said to the others.

  She was in the backrooms again, dashing past the shot-up pods with limp Skull members in it, still gushing out the pod’s contents that her heels splashed though. Stepping over the vegetated clones, and climbing up above, she spotted the shot to death body of Hawk. She held his body steady with one hand, then punched his face open with the other. She didn’t stop until the skull shattered, and her fist could feel his brains, a mist of red darkened and soaked her synthetic left hand. Using both hands, she slid them in the cavernous hole she put in his head, then pulled. His head and skull cracked apart and exposed the single implant inside.

  Estrella held the implant to her face and scanned it. Another avatar transceiver.

  It’s a fucking neural link.

  Forty-Four

  Miyuki

  Miyuki awoke with her eyes facing the trailer’s ceiling. Her body was numb with pins and needles and another strange feeling she couldn’t quite explain. Miyuki lay where she’d fallen, in front of the prototype TEK suit. Laughter roared when she sat up. The Specters watched her with amusement. Beside was her cigarette, it was a cold bud on the floor with a long line of gray ash connected to it.

  She was out longer than her mind wanted her to believe. “What the fuck.”

  “Called it,” Saito said and held his palm out to Brown. Brown pulled a single twenty Federation yuan bill from his pocket and put it in Saito’s hand. He sighed.

  Arakawa spoke up. “I should have made a bet too.”

  Miyuki rubbed her head and stood. “Bet for what?”

  “Brown thought you’d awake in an hour,” Saito said. “I guessed it’d be the next morning. I was right.”

  She grimaced at the three men then glanced at the line of gray ash from the cigarette she never finished. “Morning?”

  Miyuki entered the truck’s living cabin. Daylight sunshine brightened her pale face. It forced her world to spin. She was on the floor again, hands wrapped in cybernetics holding her body still. Lingering effects she figured when she attempted communicating with the telepathic force in the prototype TEK suit. She made plans not to do that again or be near the prototype.

  “What was that thing…” she murmured to no one in particular.

  “Miyuki-chan,” Yanmei spoke in Japanese. “Sleep well, I hope?”

  “Not really,” she replied, in the same language. “I passed out. The prototype made me do it.”

  “How so?”

  She pushed herself up. On two feet now, then she sat with Yanmei in the lounge. “I felt, something strange about it. I tried to telepathically scan it. Then I woke up on the floor, just now.”

  “Hmm.”

  Yanmei glanced at the entrance to the trailer. Her hands glowed with white light as she stepped toward it.

  Miyuki reached for her arm. “No, wait!”

  She missed.

  Yanmei opened the door and entered the trailer. Miyuki trotted behind, pleading to her to stop. Yanmei didn’t.

  She stood ahead of the prototype, ruby eyes peering up at it. Yanmei touched it with her hands glowing brighter than before. She faced back at Miyuki, wincing. “Are you trying to be funny?”

  Miyuki shook her head. “No, it affected me.”

  “Have any of you attempted to probe this with your powers?” Yanmei asked the Specter team in English.

  Brown shrugged, removed the cigarette from his lips to speak. “Briefly, why?”

  “Did it affect you?” Yanmei asked him.

  A shake of his head. “Nope.”

  Yanmei’s arms crossed, her ruby iris eyes glowing in the low light narrowed. “Did you sense anything strange about it?”

  “It’s not a normal suit of TEK armor,” Brown said. “That’s it.”

  Yanmei turned to Miyuki again, her right eyebrow lifted. “Really?”

  “I’m serious—”

  Everyone’s body jerked forward.

  The truck came to a braking stop. Yanmei’s face contorted, she pushed past Miyuki and marched to Serge at the wheel. Miyuki followed behind as whispers of the Specter team exchanged worrying words.

  Yanmei stood behind Serge’s chair when Miyuki caught up with her, both hands holding the chair’s back. “Serge, why did we stop?”

  “Checkpoint,” Serge said, pointing at it. “Didn’t see this one comin’ they must have set it up a minute ago.”

  He pointed at the windshield. Ahead was a checkpoint roadblock. Droves of cars, vans, and trucks lined up before armed soldiers wearing TEK suits. The soldiers approached each vehicle and stuck their helmeted head into the rolled down windows to speak with the passengers.

  The windshield reflected Yanmei’s gritting teeth and eye glow. “Shit!” Moving back to the trailer. “Everyone, ghostwalk now.”

  Arakawa, Brown, and Saito’s hands glowed white. And they were gone. Miyuki would do the same if her body wasn’t struggling to absorb MEP. She tried explaining it to Yanmei but got ignored. Back in the front, facing Serge, Yanmei yelled. “Lead them away from us!”

  Serge laughed. “Uh, yeah no problem!”

  The TEK suited soldiers waved the vehicles ahead through. Nothing of interest for them. It was their turn for inspection next, and if it wasn’t for the traffic behind or the fact they were still on the highway, then Serge probably would have pulled away and went to find another route to Anchorage. They had no choice but to move forward at the request of the TEK suited soldier gesturing with one armored hand, the other clenching a plasma rifle. She wasn’t surprised to see Yoshida’s logo on their armor.

  Yanmei was ghostwalking at that point. Miyuki still couldn’t and hid in the cabin, watching from behind as Serge lowered the driver’s side window. He peered at the two soldiers.

  “Howdy,” Serge said, his accent changed to one found in the Alliance. “What can I do for you today, sir?”

  “There have been some troublemakers running up and down lately,” the soldier replied, his voice transmitting from speakers on his helmet. “Just conducting a quick search. If you aren’t bad, then you got nothing to worry about.”

  “Uh, yeah,” Serge drawled, his accent still holding. “Y’all searched me further up like an hour or two ago.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, so since I went through one. Can you let me go? I gotta get this haul over to Anchorage. Already behind schedule!”

  There was a pause, the soldier checking his records she figured. “According to this,” the soldier replied. “You haven’t been checked off by anyone.”

  “I’m tellin’ you man, y’all already did it.”

  “I’m sorry sir, I have my orders.” The soldier’s voi
ce grew assertive and direct. “Now if you will please step out and open the trailer, and we’ll be able to get this underway.”

  “Miyuki,” Yanmei whispered. “We may need to fight him. Get ready.”

  Miyuki checked her hands, they weren’t glowing. She reviewed her HUD. The MEP gauge had only now risen. 14 percent, she was in the cooldown phase.

  Serge pressed on. “Check again, maybe—”

  “Get out now!”

  “Stand down.” It was a woman’s voice. “I’ll handle this. You two deal with the other vehicles.” Heavy machine footsteps. They grew softer as the seconds passed, blending in with the noise of the traffic. The woman continued. “You Specters can cease your ghostwalk.”

  Heartbeats increased. Cold sweat dampened Miyuki’s body, her MEP gauge was at 23 percent. She remained hiding in the back, hoping Yanmei took control.

  The woman’s voice called again. Serge looked surprised. “I know you’re in there, and I have a peaceful solution to all our problems.”

  “What in tarnation you talkin’ about, girl?” Serge asked.

  “And you, sir,” the woman spat. “Drop that fake accent. You’re fucking terrible at it.”

  Serge reached for his handgun, keeping his eyes on the woman standing outside the driver’s side window—

  “Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t.” His hand stopped an inch away from the firearm.

  And the door opened on its own. The woman climbed aboard crawling over Serge’s lap. She faced the rear lounge, pulled back the hood of her fur coat, and brushed a lock of her white platinum hair behind her left shoulder. Her hands glowed white. She was a telepath.

  “I come in peace,” she said, and with a finger snap, the door shut on its own. Outside, beyond the windshield, Miyuki saw the vehicles ahead pull over to the side, parting a small path for the truck. Even the soldiers at the checkpoint stepped off and stared off into space. “You’re free to go.”

  Serge shrugged, took the wheel, and drove forward. The soldiers fired no shots. The vehicles seen via the dashboard’s rear camera screen were idle. Nothing moved except their truck. The woman was adept at mind control too.