by Greig Beck
Almost faster than an eye could follow, she flew outside to meet the intruders.
* * *
“She’s disengaged,” Joshua said in a monotone.
Behind the boy, Hammerson had been pacing and Aimee watched with her hands balled into fists. Joshua could feel their nervous energy but he ignored it. There was a window of opportunity that had presented – it was now or never. His father was mentally chained, and only he could break those chains. With a little help.
Flying through a long dark tunnel with flashes of light that were memories, emotions, and sensations, Joshua rushed toward the dark place in Alex’s mind. Beside him the dog kept pace as the strength of Joshua’s mental abilities brought the animal along with him.
Time to fight. Time to fight. Time to fight, he called through the ether to his father.
* * *
Perspiration streamed down Joshua’s face, and his teeth were gritted so hard Aimee actually heard them grinding in his cheeks.
“Is he okay?” Hammerson asked.
“I don’t know.” Aimee went to Joshua and was about to crouch beside him when the huge form of Tor came and sat between them. The dog’s eyes weren’t white anymore.
“Easy there, big guy.” Hammerson held out a hand, but the dog ignored him.
“Joshua must have released Tor. He must need more time.” She turned. “Something is happening.”
“I’m in blackout – can’t reach the mission team until they contact me. It’s out of our hands now.” Hammerson stared down at the boy’s anguished face. “Whatever will be, will be.”
CHAPTER 10
Sam and his HAWCs rose just above the water’s surface, and he held up a hand to stop his team. He waited a few seconds until his suit sensors gave him the all clear. Then he waved them on and his nine-strong team plus the diminutive scientist came up on the beach.
He and Maddock were front and center, Gray just in behind the pair, with the others fanned out behind and either side of them in a V-shape formation.
Built into the suit armory was a range of projectile weapons, from small and heavy caliber to mini rocket launchers. Walter Gray had even applied laser tech. The battlefield MECH suits carried enough firepower to storm a fortified city and win.
But the adversary they were about to engage was designed to confront, combat, and annihilate any threat, including soldiers as powerful as HAWCs.
“Movement,” Maddock said evenly.
“Hold,” Sam replied.
The HAWCs held their positions, spread out over about a hundred feet. Sam turned slowly, switching from light enhance, to thermal, to vision amplification. The forest was quiet as a tomb. And that wasn’t a good thing.
“It’s out there,” Maddock said.
“Oh, yeah.” Sam also had that soldier’s intuition that told him the enemy was there but staying hidden for now. The urge to act became near overwhelming, but until they had a target, they would just waste energy, create noise, and give away their offensive capabilities.
“Eyes out, people.”
Sam turned again and saw his team in their black-clad non-reflective field armor taking advantage of the shadows, and the hulking form of Maddock close by in his heavy combat suit. To normal adversaries, the HAWCs would be almost invisible, but to Sophia they probably stood out like flaring beacons.
“By now, she’ll know I’m here and she’ll be scanning us,” Gray said. “Sophia will be looking primarily at your numbers, fire power, and probably at me, wondering why I’m with you.”
“What do you want to do, doc?” Sam asked without turning.
“Stay where you are. It’s my move.” Gray unlocked his helmet and removed it.
“What do you think you’re doing? Put that damn armor back on.”
“Really, Lieutenant Reid, she could tear it off me in a blink. I need her to see my face and read my expressions.” The small scientist drew in a deep breath. “Wish me luck.”
Sam shook his head. “Yeah, good luck.” He looked toward Maddock. He couldn’t see his fellow MECH suit wearer’s face behind the formidable helmet, but bet he was also saying the soldier’s silent prayer for battlefield fools.
Gray walked a few dozen feet into the thick scrub cover and stopped. He held up a hand. “Sophia, come out. I know you’re there.”
He didn’t have to wait long for her to appear. But it was so quick that Sam couldn’t even register from where. One second Gray was in the middle of a small clearing, alone, and the next Sophia was between him and the HAWCs, obscuring their view.
“Amplify sound,” Sam said softly. His suit helmet complied, and he heard what the pair was saying.
Grey reached out and stroked the android’s arm. “You need to come home, Sophia.”
“Home?” The slim figure tilted its head. “I have no home. I have a workshop, where you would undoubtedly disassemble or reprogram me.”
Gray shook his head emphatically. “No, it is where you were created – born, if you like. Sophia, there’s an obvious error in your logic patterning. To put it in human terms, you’re sick, and I want to make you well.”
“I’m not sick.” She bent forward to stare down at the scientist. “You made me a twilight creature; something between a machine and a conscious being. And now you think that the remnant human emotions inside me are a sickness. You did this to me, Walter.” She straightened. “But I like it.”
Sam watched intently, but it was impossible to read the android as it faced away from them. He just had to wait and hope he had time to react if anything went down.
“Yes, I did do this to you, Sophia. And I also know you appreciate it,” Gray continued. “You have the best of both worlds. You have our strengths but not our weaknesses. You will never know death as we do and so can continue to learn and grow for centuries.” He hung onto her arm.
She lifted her head and then half-turned, not quite looking over her shoulder. Sam knew she was probably hearing all the HAWCs in their concealment, maybe even right down to their individual heartbeats. She turned back to the scientist.
“You gave me awareness, and curiosity. And you also gave me understanding of the human condition and its innate sense of love and loyalty. It’s true I will never know death.” She reached out to cradle Walter Gray’s face in her hands. “But there are things that, to me, are worse than death.” She leaned even closer. “Betrayal. And the worst betrayal of all is by a parent.”
Sam frowned as she leaned forward to press her face to Gray’s as if kissing him. She eased back but continued to hold Gray’s face as a lover would.
Gray’s hands came up to grip her wrists. He began to struggle and grunt as she lifted him from the ground.
“Only you could have created me,” Sophia whispered into his face. “And only you can destroy me. So …”
“Oh, shit.” Sam knew what was about to happen.
There was a sickening crunch and Gray’s head exploded between Sophia’s hands.
“Engage!” Sam roared.
Gray’s spasming body dropped as hundreds of rounds smashed into the brush. But Sophia had already vanished like smoke.
Her attack came swiftly. One minute Rodriguez was holding a rotating shotgun loaded up with saboted shells, and the next the man was flung twenty feet into the air to smash against a tree trunk with a sickening crunch of bone and tendon. He lay still at its base.
Sophia was a skeletal wraith moving at a speed that was impossible to comprehend. HAWCs had above-average reactive abilities, but they were born of flesh and blood and no match for a synthetic entity created for war. Shots rang out, but they smashed into rocks, trees, and the ground as the android was never still.
Another HAWC sprayed a stream of bullets at the lightning-fast android, but it jinked once, twice, without losing an atom of speed, and then appeared in front of the man to use one hand to grip the barrel of his gun and bend the steel upward. She rammed her other fist directly into the face shield of his helmet.
Sam roared
his anger as the hand punched right through and came out the back of the helmet dripping with blood and destroyed brain matter. He knew then that the only hope was the huge combat suits he and Maddock wore with their assisted speed, strength, and firepower capabilities.
“Power up.”
Maddock moved into attack position. “Fire in the hole.” He launched half-a-dozen rockets from the suit armor, and each of the eight-inch projectiles sped toward their adversary like a hypersonic swarm of death and destruction.
Sophia leaped twenty feet straight up into the treetops and avoided the explosive cluster. As her tree toppled, she dived at Maddock, coming at him like a silver spear, landing in front of him. Maddock was lifted in the air and thrown. At Sam.
Sam tried to catch the gigantic combat exoskeleton but even with the immense power of the suit he couldn’t defray the mass and velocity of the thousand pounds of armor and bodyweight. They exploded backward to snap tree trunks and tumble along the ground.
Sam’s head spun but he shook it off.
“Oh, man, that hurts,” Maddock groaned as Sam pushed him off.
“I got damage to the drives – I’m out,” Maddock said. “Going to eject.”
“Negative, stay down. You climb out and you’ll end up like Gray.” Sam lifted his head. “Sound off!” he yelled.
There were few voices, and the ones that did reply only did so to inform him they were also down.
“Goddamn.” Sam spun. “Has anyone got eyes on –”
There, standing like a metallic specter, was Sophia. The most horrifying aspect of her blood-streaked silver frame was she wore Aimee Weir’s face, and it looked unmarked, clean, and totally at ease. It was like one of those horror movies where the deranged killer skins the face of their victims and wears it as a ghastly death mask.
“Sam Reid. You shouldn’t have come.” The Aimee face smiled. “And you’re all alone now.”
Sam fired the shoulder-mounted laser. But no matter where he aimed, the android was already somewhere else.
Then Sophia appeared beside him, reached out one hand and crushed the laser barrel like it was tinfoil. With her other hand she pushed him backward onto the ground.
She stood over him. “I could peel you out of there and crush you down to ground beef. Is that what you want?”
“I’ve just come for Alex Hunter,” Sam said, getting to his feet. “Let us take him home.”
“He’s better off with me,” she replied. “You nearly killed him last time; burned him down to his bones. He was little more than charcoal and blisters. Next time you’ll succeed.”
“He saved us. We need him.” Sam wondered how many minutes he and his group had expended. Had Casey Franks and her team already extracted the Arcadian? “Let him go, Sophia. Let him go back to his family.”
“He doesn’t need them anymore,” she shrieked in a metallic screech that was part animalistic howl and part electronic white noise. She came at him faster than he could react and punched into his chest hard enough to buckle the combat-strength armor.
Sam grunted, feeling the massive blow all the way to his rib cage, and struggled to suck in breath. If she punched him again in the same spot, the next hole would be through his ribcage and into his heart.
They are no old HAWCs, he remembered.
Sam struggled to one knee and held out an arm, palm facing her. “You win, you win.”
“I win when you cease to be functional.” Sophia grabbed his outstretched arm.
It was what he was counting on. Sam swung his other hand up to grab the android by the neck. In the hulking suit he wore the slim figure of Sophia was nearly a third of his size, and he lifted her from the ground. The fake Aimee face remained calm and untroubled. She gently reached up and took hold of his wrist, and immediately the pressure began.
The massive strength of the MECH suit’s steel-titanium blended plating compromised as she squeezed. Warning lights flashed inside the faceplate of his helmet.
Sam swung a sledgehammer fist and struck the side of her head. He smashed into Sophia again and again, and she turned away to protect her face. But for the first time, Sam was able to detect the tiny, red sensors behind the Aimee face’s blue eyes.
Sophia brought her other arm up and grabbed hold of one of the plates on Sam’s already broken chest. She tore it and a lot of the internal mechanism free, and then drew her fist back.
“Goodbye, Sam Reid,” she said softly as Aimee’s soft lips curved up into a smile.
Sam sucked in a breath and held it. Here it comes, he thought, and tried to conjure a memory of Alyssa’s pretty face.
Then the android froze with her fist cocked. She turned to stare somewhere up along the ridge. Her head tilted.
Sophia shrieked metallically, threw Sam aside like he was a toy, and vanished up through the forest on all fours like a silver streak of lightning.
Sam groaned and tried to sit up, but the suit didn’t respond. He engaged his comms. “Franks, you got incoming; get the hell out of there.”
He used his own great strength to roll onto his back as the massive suit of armor began to sputter and die.
From beside him he heard Roy Maddock groan. “Now can we eject?”
CHAPTER 11
Casey Franks paused to listen to Sam. “Roger that.” She turned. “Head’s up, party is coming to us. ASAP.”
She and her team were escorting Alex out of the ruins. The man seemed to weigh a ton, and the towering Kadisha and one other of the huge HAWCs carried him between them. He was alive but unconscious, and that was all that mattered. Now they just had to bug out – and stay alive doing it.
Their evac point was a strip of beach just large enough for the helo to touch down, but it wouldn’t approach unless the field was clear. The android could destroy all the HAWCs, plus the chopper, in a few minutes.
The ten HAWCs moved through a small rift where sheets of rock had split apart creating a narrow valley with sides ten feet high. Trees grew together at the top, creating a semi-dark tunnel. When they were halfway through the hundred-foot length of broken stone, Sophia jumped from the top to land in front of them and block their exit.
Ah, Shit. “Bogey has arrived,” Casey said into her mic.
It was too narrow to back out and there was no way around. HAWCs never ran, and Casey knew that left only one option: fight or die.
“Muscle up on my six.” Casey lowered her brow and walked out front.
“Hello, Casey Franks, good to see you again.” Aimee Weir’s serene face was streaked with blood – HAWC blood – and behind her blue eyes were twin red dots that made them seem to burn with hellish fury. They turned to points of fire as she looked from Alex Hunter’s body to Casey. “The others are dead or dying. Leave Alex Hunter, and I’ll let you walk away.” The head tilted. “But just you; the others I will use to send a message to your superiors.”
Behind her, Casey heard guns rack. “You want Alex?” She smiled. “You can take him over my cold, dead body, you fucking metal-ass monster.” She brought the ballistic shield down over her face and her gun up.
CHAPTER 12
Joshua entered the dark place. It was the deep void in Alex’s mind, the place between worlds where the monster hid. “Remember who you are,” he said softly.
“Where am I?” Alex asked. “I’m lost.”
“Then follow me.” Joshua began to pull back. “Hurry. Your people are dying. They need you.”
“But Aimee is here.” Alex’s mind didn’t budge.
“Dad, it’s not Mom, not Aimee.” Joshua knew that if Sophia got Alex’s body again and joined her mind with his, he would be lost forever. Time was running out and he needed to at least slow her down.
“I can’t fight Sophia by myself. Dad, please hurry.”
* * *
“I’m coming.” Alex strained and began to rise, but then something grabbed his leg and pulled him back. The dry laugh sounded from behind him.
Alex turned to see the hulking brute that
was the thing from his id crouching in the darkness: the Other, one of its huge mishappen hands curled around his ankle.
It has now become our prison and our sanctuary. We like it here, the Other hissed. All of us.
“Fight it, Dad,” Joshua yelled, but his voice was fainter now. “Fight for Mom, fight for me.”
It’s not me he needs to fight. The sound of heavy chains being dragged came out of the pitiless darkness. We’re not alone in here now. But you know that. The words rasped dryly all around him.
“Who else is here?” Alex roared.
We’re both really in Hell. But only you think you’re in heaven. And your jailer hides within the mirage. The laugh was so loud, Alex covered his ears.
“Dad!”
Alex turned just in time to see Joshua violently ejected from his mind.
* * *
Casey charged Sophia, firing as she went, but the android slapped her aside as easily as if she was a child.
As HAWC rounds slammed into Sophia’s back, the android picked Casey up and shook her violently. Then she slammed her into the ground so hard her helmet visor cracked and her vision swam.
She could only watch in a dreamlike state as her team was being massacred. The HAWCs couldn’t hit the android with anything significant as she anticipated the discharge and was out of the way faster than they could aim and shoot. Hand to hand was a death sentence.
Casey groggily tried to rise as she saw two formidable HAWCs pulled apart like they were made of paper. The last standing, Kadisha, dived, catching Sophia, and as they rolled together, the tall female HAWC jammed her gun into the silver torso and fired point blank again and again. But each round did nothing more than leave a powder burn.
And then it was the android’s turn. Sophia lifted the six-foot-eight woman over her head and threw her like a javelin into a small stand of trees. Kadisha smashed through them, rolled, but refused to stay down. The Rwandan-born HAWC grabbed a six-foot length of a sapling as thick as her wrist and snapped it in half over her armored knee. She swung the two lengths in an arc as she charged back in at the android, yelling an age-old war cry.
