Evolution

by R S Penney

  It did no good.

  The ziarogati leaped right over the police cars, landing poised on her side of the barricade. In unison, they thrust out their arms to point those bullet-spitting gauntlets at the retreating SWAT team, but several of the creatures faltered as glowing slugs stung them. One got off a shot.

  Michael Evans staggered as high-impact rounds ripped through his armour with a spray of blood. His corpse dropped to the ground moments later.

  Blessedly, some of the cops were ignoring the ziarogati and spraying bullets at the robots instead. White tracers hit the battle drones, briefly shorting out their circuitry. It was their only hope of surviving this skirmish. If they could keep their opponents too off-balance to get off a shot, they might get out of this alive. But the instant that those drones weren't too busy repairing themselves to attack, this was over. And it would be over as her people had to reload. Bleakness take her, it would have been over already if not for the fact that they were using Leyrian weapons.

  Despite the onslaught of gunfire, one of the robots managed to shakily raise a hand to point at the nearest police car. A small missile erupted from the drone's arm cannon, hit the cruiser and consumed it in a mushroom cloud of flame.

  The flaming car was flung off the ground, flipping upside down in midair to descend upon a dozen retreating police officers. They hopped out of the way just in time, but one stumbled and fell onto his side. Bullets took him in the neck seconds later.

  She had to do something!

  Anna turned, running for the townhouses on the south side of the road. Throwing her arm out to the side, she put up a Bending that turned the world into a smear of colour just before bullets converged on her. They curved upward instead, zipping off into the clear blue sky.

  A discarded rifle on the curb.

  Sliding her foot beneath the barrel, Anna kicked it upward and caught the grip in one hand. She ran through the grass toward the townhouses, cognizant of people crying out for help behind her.

  She leaped with a surge of Bent Gravity and shot upward in a wide arc that carried her toward one of the second-floor balconies. Landing hard behind the metal railing, she spun around and immediately threw up a Time Bubble. Her skin was burning, but it didn't matter. It was this or death.

  Outside the sphere of warped space-time that surrounded her, the world appeared to be a blurry, pulsating mess, but she could easily make out the gray blobs that represented the robots and a few tiny specs that were bullets coming for her. At this rate, it would take them several minutes to reach the surface of her bubble. Of course, she would be unable to maintain the Bending that long. Her symbiont was already starting to protest.

  Anna lifted the rifle in both hands, squinting as she took aim. She fired a three-round burst at the first robot and then pivoted to send three more slugs flying toward the second. White tracers appeared beyond the surface of her bubble, moving with painful slowness toward their targets.

  Anna dropped to a crouch.

  She let the bubble vanish and felt bullets fly over her to strike the sliding glass door that led into the townhouse. The pane shattered in a cascade of falling glass, but she was barely even aware of it.

  Anna popped up, firing.

  The battle drones were stumbling backward over the median, moving toward the north side of the road. More charged bullets struck their metal bodies with a quick flash of sparks. Have to keep them off balance.

  She alternated from one robot to the other, firing three-round burst after three-round burst. If she could damage the drones' key systems, it would render them harmless. For a moment, she recalled that one she had destroyed in Wesley Pennfield's parking garage. A few EMP rounds in the right spot, and they would lose the ability to target accurately.

  Her people saw what she was doing and focused their efforts on the ziarogati. One of them had been reduced to a puddle of silver blood and torn flesh. But the victory had come at the cost of five officers who were now down.

  Another one of the ziarogati was fighting Ben, forcing him back to the far side of the street. No time to think about that!

  One of the battle drones stumbled drunkenly but somehow managed to raise its arm cannon to point at her. Panic hit her when she realized that it didn't have to be accurate to kill her with explosives.

  Anna jumped, flipping over the balcony railing. She uncurled to drop like a pin to the grass below, landing hard with a grunt.

  A missile flew through the air above her, struck the balcony railing and exploded on contact. A huge fireball expanded outward, sending chunks of mangled metal flying off in all directions.

  Anna threw herself into the grass, landing on her belly and lacing fingers over the back of her head. Luckily, the concussive force of that explosion was strong enough to propel most of that shrapnel right over her.

  Some of it – tiny pebbles that had been part of the brick wall or small shards of metal – stung the backs of her legs or cut up her exposed arms. Those Bleakness-kissed drones would need a moment to reconfigure after the damage she had inflicted.

  She got up and ran.

  The ziarogat stood in the middle of the road: a tall, shirtless man so pale he was likely to get a sunburn just from a few minutes exposure. His hollow-cheeked face was stuck in a blank expression.

  In the distance behind him, Anna was running toward the townhouses while bullets from the battle drones curved away from her. Ben wasn't sure what she was doing, but when she jumped for one of the balconies, he figured she had a plan.

  The ziarogat came at him.

  It leaped with a high kick that took Ben across the cheek. The impact would have knocked him senseless if not for his helmet. He recovered just in time to see the ziarogat land in front of him.

  The creature spun for a back-kick.

  A plain gray shoe slammed into Ben's chest, driving him backward. Without his armour, that hit would have cracked ribs. As it was, he was left stumbling away toward the north side of the street.

  Ben raised his forearm up in front of his face, triggering the force-field generator on his gauntlet. A wall of buzzing white static appeared in front of him, cutting off the ziarogat as it charged in.

  He sent the force-field speeding forward.

  The ziarogat leaped, flipping over the wall of electrostatic energy. It uncurled to land in front of him, then thrust its arm out to point that gauntlet right at his face. At the last second, Ben tapped a button on his belt.

  Another force-field appeared before him, blocking the high-impact slug that would have punched right through his helmet. Well, that's both generators drained in less than two minutes!

  Ben threw his left arm to the side, a razor-sharp blade of nanobots extending from his gauntlet. He waited half a moment for the force-field to wink out, then charged the ziarogat at full speed.

  Ben slashed at the creature's stomach.

  The ziarogat hopped backwards, evading the blow with smooth, fluid grace. A shoe slammed into Ben's stomach, doubling him up despite the armour's protection. The next thing he saw was a knee coming up to strike his visor.

  Stumbling frantically backward, he raised his arms up in front of his face to shield himself. A desperate idea occurred to him – one that was guaranteed to fail – but he tried it anyway, because what else could he do?

  The ziarogat came at him.

  Thrusting his fist out, Ben triggered the defense mechanisms on his gauntlet and sent a pair of electrodes on thin wires flying toward the creature. The ziarogat stopped in midstep – stunned for half a second – and that was all it took.

  Both electrodes hit the creature square in the forehead, sending a jolt of electricity through his body. The ziarogat trembled from the shock, its limbs twitching, its lifeless eyes bulging in their sockets.

  Ben rushed forward.

  He swung his blade in a horizontal arc that sliced cleanly through the creature's neck. The head tumbled backward, dropping to the ground, and silver blood fountained from the neck before the body collapse
d.

  A gruesome way to kill, but he wanted to be absolutely sure the damn thing was dead. Still, something didn't sit well with him. In the fray of battle, he watched the cops trying desperately to contain the remaining two ziarogati.

  What he had done shouldn't have been possible. These creatures moved with the strength and speed of a Justice Keeper. The ziarogat should have caught the wires or moved seamlessly out of the way. Something was slowing them down!

  There was a puzzle here, and he suspected that surviving meant solving it.

  Raynar had never been so frightened in all his life. Not during any of the practice sessions where Keli tried to violate his mind. Not during any of the times when the staff of that gods-forsaken base had “disciplined” him with stun batons. Not during any of the other engagements in this little guerrilla war.

  It was those bloody robots!

  The ziarogati he could deal with – for all their cybernetic enhancements, they were still human at their core – but the drones? They had no minds for him to manipulate. Not like Ven. Ven's thoughts were alien and unrecognizable to him, but they existed. Not so with the drones.

  He peeked through the window to take stock of the situation once again. The battle drones were divided: two on his left, firing at Jack and his group, two on his right, firing at Anna and hers. The air was so thick with panic and grief and agony that he thought he might suffocate. You have to control yourself, he growled inside his own head. You're the one who begged to come along on this mission.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Raynar felt tears leak from the corners. He shook his head in despair. “Ziarogati don't respond to illusions,” he murmured. “They just follow their programming and ignore the distraction.”

  Of course, he could focus on a single ziarogat and immobilize it so that the cops could riddle it with bullets, but those creatures were slippery. Their minds seemed to resist outside control. Every time he had one pinned down, it began to counter his efforts, relying on some kind of hardwired programming to override his commands. They fought back, and it drained him quickly.

  Raynar had discovered that the best way to help was to apply a light touch to all ziarogati at the same time, one that would slow their reactions by mere fractions of a second, but those few precious moments might mean the difference between getting a protective force-field up in time and dying from a shot to the chest.

  Squeezing his eyes shut, Raynar trembled with fatigue “Hold on,” he whispered in a ragged voice. “Just a little while longer. If anyone can bring those things down, it's-”

  The house rattled with a devastating impact, and he became aware of a deafening roar in his ears only after his heart stopped racing. Yet another explosion, this one off to his right somewhere. The first one had nearly given him a heart attack.

  Those drones were shooting missiles at the townhouses!

  Gods be praised that they had evacuated this area before the battle began. In fact, the people who lived here had left their doors unlocked so that he could use this room as a vantage point.

  Sweat was pouring over his face, matting golden hair to his brow. He wiped it away with the back of one fist. “Just keep focused,” he told himself in a breathy whisper. “Just a little while longer.”

  He focused on the minds he knew – Jack and Ben, Harry and Anna – hoping to get a sense of how they were doing. The Keepers were hard to read; the Nassai instinctively blocked his probes. But he tried just the same. He had to know that his friends were all right, that they were-

  Something was wrong.

  As he strained to sense his friends, he became aware of another mind, a presence so faint it might flicker out at any moment. At first, he couldn't tell who it was, but the sense of her became clear when he focused. Aamani! Aamani was alive! But she was hurt, and there was no one to go to her.

  He got up and turned away from the window.

  A small living room with a coffee table and a couch greeted him, and he could see the stairs that led down to the first level. Raynar ran for them, staying low in case anyone saw him through the window.

  He practically tumbled down the stairs.

  On the first floor, there was a kitchen with white cupboards and beige floor tiles. A window above the sink looked out on the alley behind the townhouses, but there was no back door. He wasn't about to risk going out the front; that was for damn sure. He could not help Aamani if he took a bullet to the head.

  Raynar ran for the sink, bracing hands on the countertop and lifting himself off the floor. There had to be something he could do!

  Baring his teeth with a hiss, he winced and shook his head. “Come on!” he said to himself. “Think! There has to be something!”

  A flat block of wood with a handle was sitting on the counter. He assumed that the people here used it for chopping vegetables, but what little he knew of cooking involved his own people's technology. Still, it would do.

  Raynar picked up the chopping board…

  …And he smashed the window.

  Once, twice, three times! The pane cracked on the fourth strike and then shattered completely on the fifth. He used the chopping board to clear away fragments of glass, and then he hopped up onto the counter.

  Crawling through the window, he wiggled and groaned as a few tiny shards dug into his flesh. “Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” He pushed himself through like a fat worm digging through the dirt and then dropped to the concrete floor of the alley.

  Raynar felt hot tears on his cheek and sweat on his brow. “Let's go,” he whispered, getting to his feet. “You dawdle just a few more minutes, and she's gonna die. You want that? Huh?”

  The red-bricked town houses formed one wall of the alley, and he could already see that smoke was rising from the roof of one a few doors down. That was where he would find Aamani.

  He ran despite the pain in his belly.

  When he reached the first-floor window of this house, he began pounding it with the chopping board. This one seemed even thicker – or maybe he was just getting tired – but it took nearly ten blows to shatter the thing.

  Raynar grabbed the ledge of the windowsill and then pulled himself up, wiggling over more shards of glass. He slithered over the sink, then dropped onto a floor of blue tiles with a grunt.

  This kitchen was very much like the other, but the cupboards had a dark wooden finish, and things were in a slightly different position. No time to admire the décor. He had to get moving.

  When he got up, he saw few red spots on the floor. He was bleeding. The glass had cut up his belly, and every step was an agony.

  Raynar shut his eyes tight, hissing as he tried to push the pain out of his mind. “It'll be all right,” he whispered to himself. “Just get your gods-forsaken ass up the stairs. She needs you!”

  When he got to the third floor, he found a hallway with a burning ceiling and thick clouds of smoke that assaulted him. The heat was ferocious, but the fire hadn't spread to the floor yet.

  At the end of the corridor, the burning outline of a doorway revealed a woman's body trapped beneath a pile of rubble in a room with no ceiling. Sunlight was coming through a hole in the roof.

  Raynar doubled over and ran through the hallway as fast as he could, ignoring the scorch of heat on his back. He stumbled through the open doorway and then dropped to his knees next to the body.

  Clearing away chunks of plaster with his hands, he uncovered her face. A nasty, red gash ran from the top of her forehead to just above her left eyebrow. Her black hair was now gray with dust.

  Aamani's eyes fluttered open.

  She gasped and then started coughing, turning her head to push her cheek into the gray carpet. “The drones,” she mumbled, trying to rise from underneath the rubble. “Not again…Not again.”

  Scrunching up his face with a throaty growl, Raynar shook his head. “No time to worry about that,” he said, grabbing chunks of plaster and tossing them aside. “Come on! We need to get you out of here.”

  She sat up with some effo
rt.

  Raynar had to pull her to her feet with quite a bit of struggle, and it certainly didn't help that standing up brought them closer to the oppressive heat of the flames. What little he knew of medical training suggested that moving her could be fatal – for all he knew, she had serious internal bleeding – but then leaving her here would be fatal as well. At least this way, she had a shot at life.

  Aamani slung her arm around his shoulders, and they shuffled away through the burning corridor.

  As he watched ziarogati leap over the wall of police cars, Jack felt a sudden jolt of fear. The cyborg creatures landed in a crouch, then immediately raised forearms to throw up flickering force-fields. Most of those glowing bullets phased right through the energy barrier, but the creatures were undaunted.

  They charged forward.

  Over two dozen cops in black TAC gear started backing up in a horseshoe pattern, still loosing a storm of bullets. Harry was on the south side of the road, using the N'Jal to shield himself with a force-field of his own.

  Biting his lower lip, Jack scrunched up his face. “So much for the simple plan,” he hissed, shaking his head. “These people are all gonna die.”

  Beyond the barricade of police cars, one of the two battle drones that had come his way lifted its arm to point that cannon at his people. Bullets sprayed from the muzzle in seemingly endless stream.

  Jack drew his pistol.

  Raising the weapon in both hands, he squeezed the trigger and watched as three white tracers sped over the police cars to strike the robot square in its shiny metal chest. The drone stumbled as it tried to recover.

  The other one spun to face him, having reassessed him as a credible threat. A flurry of glowing white ammunition hit the robot like rain pelting the side of a building during a thunder storm. It staggered, unable to take aim.

  Two ziarogati were standing side by side in front of the police cars, both with arms raised to fire bullets at the retreating cops. It was time he put some of these fancy Keeper powers to good use. Summer encouraged him.