Freedom's End

by Christian Kallias

  “A little overkill, isn’t it?”

  While I can’t disagree with TAINHA, I am surprised at how vocal she is in this situation. Surprised, yet not bothered in the least. In fact, I like it. Feels more like a team effort this way.

  “Can never be too sure with the people we fight. Last thing I need is the mech’s secondary systems to kick in and allow it to self-destruct in my face as a goodbye present.”

  “That would be unfortunate indeed.”

  My HUD flashes red once. I know what that means. I only have three seconds left in the real world before the bullet-time augment turns off and time resumes to unfold in its boring, excruciatingly slow pace. But, then again, one only feels this way once they’ve experienced time-altering augments. As incredible as the rush is when it kicks in, there is an almost equal fallout when exiting it. I am most vulnerable when that happens for a few seconds until my nervous system and brain adapt to the shift back to real time perception. These are often tricky times to deal with. I must make sure I find cover when that happens.

  But three seconds right now feels like a long time in the future. So I turn around and jump through the mirror holo-field. I can only imagine how it would feel from my target’s point of view to see me emerge out of thin air. The thought makes me smile. I grab my holo-blade again but this time activate the lasso mode. Even more dangerous to use than the blade itself, one tiny imperfection in my movement and I could slice myself into bits of flesh and silicon. TAINHA’s systems make sure that never happens though; I can already feel her ready to assist me with my next move.

  I lash at the second mech with diabolical precision. By the time it realizes I’m coming, it’s already been turned into pieces. The multiple parts explode into a raging inferno, but I have more than enough time to bring my shield up to deflect fire and molten metal parts. I can see its power level draining; it will contain this explosion, but then it will be all but useless for the rest of the fight. My neural HUD flashes red. Somehow TAINHA feels the need to add a vocal warning.

  “Watch out, Cole; behind you, five o’clock.”

  When I turn around, the laser blast from one of the ground units is right in front of my face. I barely have time to dodge it before it grazes my cheek, burning my flesh.

  “A little too close for comfort, wasn’t it?” I ask TAINHA.

  “You’re still alive, aren’t you?”

  I can’t argue with that logic. Without her intervention, the blast would have burned a hole through my brain.

  I engage the foot soldier by grabbing one of my blasters and blow his head clean off with a single, super-charged shot. I then check the time I have left in bullet-time. Not much. Barely half a second. Enough to gather sufficient strategic data to dispatch the remaining foot soldiers once time resumes at a normal pace. I also find a place to lie low for the transition back to real time. On my way there, I jump into the air to avoid blaster fire coming from all directions and throw a sonic grenade at three soldiers who made the fatal mistake of being tightly packed together. I land rolling and take cover. The grenade explodes a fraction of a second later.

  The return to normal time is painful as always. I’m briefly disoriented and my brain struggles in the midst of all the chaos. Sparks dropping in front of my field of view are blurry and laser blaster noise has a very unpleasant echo, making it difficult for me to rely on my senses to get a good feeling of what’s going on around me. I close my eyes and activate the mute mode. I need to rely solely on TAINHA’s data in the next few seconds. That is also a very strange feeling, but it’s not the first time I’ve used it, so I soldier through.

  I have locked on to the nearest couple of targets out of the remaining four still standing. They’re the ones posing the biggest threat. The image my brain receives while my eyes are closed is a CG reconstruction of the floor I’m on. It provides me with everything my sight would, but it is digitally generated. It’s a pretty close match to the details my own eyes would show me, but my brain knows it’s simulated, hence the weird feeling I get when I work this way, like when I’m training in virtual reality.

  I leap from cover with a roll right in front of my nearest attacker. He didn’t expect the move, and by the time he lowers his blaster I have activated my nano-blade and sliced him in half, starting with his crotch and slashing upward. I see the second target aiming at me. I can’t rely on my shields anymore, so I improvise. I turn off the blade and reattach it to my magnetic belt. I grab one of the falling halves of my last kill, his eye still frozen in terror. It can’t cover me fully, but I make sure my head and torso are protected. I see through him thanks to TAINHA’s data. The first shot was aimed at my head. The half-torso of the dead soldier takes the blast but before I can spin to align my own retaliatory shot, a second blaster shot lands and burns through my shoulder, and I drop my blaster to the ground.

  “I think it’s time for backup,” says TAINHA with evident worry behind her words.

  I want to say no with every fiber of my being. The stealth drone flying outside, currently invisible to human eyes, is my last ace in the hole. I wanted to keep it in reserve for when I face Ahmed Al’Hasi. But if I use it now, it will no longer be concealed. Sensing my hesitation, TAINHA insists.

  “Cole, please let me take over; the farthest soldier is loading an RPG. Without your shield, you’re a sitting duck.”

  I swear in my head. With a slight mental push, I give her my okay and duck back into cover. I reopen my eyes and un-mute my hearing. I’m back to my senses now, still a little woozy, but now that the drone will enter the fold, I probably can just sit tight and relax.

  Less than a second later, I can hear the drone’s plasma fire cut through the two hundred and seventieth floor with deadly precision. I activate PIP (picture-in-picture) of my drone’s targeting camera to witness what it is shooting. Before the soldier can bring his RPG to bear, he is cut in half by a plasma shot. Blood sprays everywhere around him. He probably didn’t even understand what happened to him. One second he is alive and kicking, the next he is cut in two, both parts of what’s left of his body falling toward their final resting place. The last remaining soldiers get similar treatment, a ball of plasma burning a basketball-sized hole in one of them while the last one explodes when three successive blasts hit him full frontal.

  That’s when blaster fire starts raining from the roof of the skyscraper and what I wanted to avoid happens: the enemy on the roof has started firing on the drone. TAINHA does everything she can to steer the drone through the barrage of fire ripping holes in its armor. She engages afterburners and the droid soars upward. A second later I hear it explode as the ground beneath my feet shakes. Right after that, I hear multiple screams. I turn my attention to the now broken windows in time to see four bodies, free falling, two of them engulfed in flames. I shed no tears for this scum even though they’re probably brainwashed fanatics following orders. Nevertheless, they have chosen the wrong side. They have a handful of seconds left to pray to whatever deity they believe in.

  Their god can’t help them now. They’ll realize that the moment their bodies splash into the concrete some thousands of feet below. Like bugs on a windshield.

  I get back to my feet and dust myself off. My power levels are pretty low, and my neural HUD illuminates with a faint orange tint. With these power levels, I will lose the use of my augments in a few minutes. I need to race to the roof before Ahmed escapes once more. Now that I’ve diffused his tactical nuke in the basement of this government skyscraper in the middle of New Geneva, he will not stay around much longer. The tracker I managed to shoot onto him earlier is still showing me his current location.

  He is on the roof approaching his ship. I wonder why he hasn’t left yet. I calculate the time it would take me to climb the stairs and reach him. Even in super-speed mode, it would take thirty-five seconds.

  Too slow!

  I reconfigure my repulsor’s augments from incinerate mode to propelling thrusters. I jump outside the window and activat
e them.

  “You’re insane!” shouts TAINHA.

  “What else is new?” I answer calmly as I soar up through the air, determined to end the life of my nemesis once and for all.

  Two

  I land on the World Security Center’s roof, or what’s left of it after the drone has crashed into it. I am forced to dash to the side to dodge the barrage of fire from the few foot soldiers still covering Ahmed. He is walking at a steady pace toward a heavily armored transport ship.

  I hear a familiar sound. An F-235 approaches at Mach-4 and launches two air-to-ground missiles toward my position.

  I don’t need backup!

  “Evidently the Security Council of World United would disagree,” says TAINHA, clearly hearing my thoughts.

  “Fools!” I shout as I run toward cover.

  I mentally hack into the building’s CCTV feeds and keep track of Ahmed’s reaction while I jump into cover for a brief moment. I don’t linger there though. The missiles are still a good couple of seconds away. Plenty of time to thin the herd. I rise from cover and shoot two supercharged shots at his guards with my repulsors. One shot burns a hole in the middle of his face and the second takes a large chunk of the soldier’s throat on its path. He drops his weapon to cover the gushing wound, and that’s when I see it. He’s wearing a belt full of magnetically-attached grenades. This could make my job a lot easier.

  “Haven’t you forgotten something?” says TAINHA.

  The missiles are about to hit. I either let them finish the job while I’m behind cover, ready to jump the feck out of here if needed, or I take that shot. Time to make a choice. I go for the shot; my gut feeling tells me two air-to-ground missiles won’t stop someone like Ahmed. He has faced a lot worse and survived, dozens of times over. I’ve thrown a lot more at him in the past and like a relentless cockroach, he keeps surviving. But I can feel it in my bones; he dies today!

  I fire at one of the grenades. My first shot is imprecise and lands on the guard’s body armor a couple of inches away from the belt. But the second one is right on target. When he explodes, the entire sky is filled with flames. The missiles have detonated at the exact same time I blow the bastard to kingdom come where he won’t find lined up virgins awaiting him to screw his brains out. I can guarantee that!

  It’s the Earth year 2175, and these fanatics are still as disillusioned as they were when they started their campaign of terror at the dawn of the twenty-first century. You’d think they’d learn. You’d think they’d understand that we won’t let them terrorize us with their fear tactics. I sure won’t.

  The first thing I notice is that there is not enough heat from the explosion of the missiles. The fact that I can see the flames and not feel them is a dead giveaway. They’ve been stopped by a shield. As I was almost certain they would be. I see Ahmed with his arms stretched in front of him. He’s extended his personal shielding to cover not only himself but also most of the roof, making sure his escape vehicle is also protected. I am in awe with the level of technology this scum has managed to equip his body with. This is not going to be an easy fight.

  “You’re right about that; you need to reload or let him leave,” says TAINHA.

  “Let him leave? Be serious, will you?”

  “Cole, your power levels are at nineteen percent. In expanding his shields the way he did, Ahmed consumed twenty-three percent of his own power reserves, but that’s still an unfair fight and you know it.”

  As much as I hate to admit it, she has a point. I look around and find a power conduit panel.

  “You’re not seriously considering what I think you’re about to do?” she says with a trembling voice. “You could fry yourself and most of my systems with it.”

  “Desperate measures,” I say as I use my super-strength augment to rip the panel and plunge my hands through the 50,000-volt conduits.

  “Please, Cole, don—” but her voice cuts off the moment I make contact.

  To say this was the scariest and most painful experience I have ever felt would be an understatement. For a millisecond, I think she might have been right. I lose access to some of my systems on the spot. I can plug into 10,000-volt power streams easily, but 50,000 is a margin well over what my recharging circuitry is built to endure. I don’t give a rat’s ass. I can’t afford to have Ahmed escape me one more time, not again.

  Automatic security features kick in, and I get ejected from the conduit and crash onto the floor. When I open my eyes, I see smoke rising from my body. I hear her, but she’s garbled.

  “In the name . . . bzzz . . . were you think—bzzz . . . crazy feck!” This is followed by some strong static that quickly dies back into silence.

  She sounded pissed, and I can understand that. But I have a terrorist to kill. I need to cut the head of the snake, the head of one of the last Jihadist groups in existence—Allah’s Angels Freedom Army.

  Angels, my ass!

  My power level gauge is at one hundred percent, but I get dozens of overload error messages that I conveniently choose to ignore. When I rise back to my feet, I can see lightning bolts still sizzling upon what’s left of my armor and torn, black bodysuit.

  The commotion has attracted unwanted attention, but that was unavoidable. I hear Ahmed shout something in Arabic. As always TAINHA translates all of this on the fly for me: “Kill the infidel!”

  Not in a million years, I think to myself.

  TAINHA is silent now. I think I must have fried her communication circuits. I can’t run diagnostics at the moment, not with three soldiers running toward me, unleashing blaster fire with less than accurate precision. But then I realize something. Even though I’m not in bullet-time anymore, I must have activated a bunch of nanites with the electric shock, because I can see the blaster fire approaching, and I dodge the shot, jumping and whirling in the air like an Olympic athlete. When I land from my acrobatic dodge, I activate super speed. I punch through the air like a supersonic bullet and soon I’m upon my first foe. I grab his blaster rifle and turn the muzzle toward his head. Before he understands what the hell just happened, the sky is filled with blood, bones, and brain matter. I lose no time and run toward the other two soldiers, activate my repulsors still in thruster mode, and fly over them. I backflip in the air on my way down, increasing my velocity even more. When I feel I’m near them, I slash both my arms to my sides, activating my extending blade implants in my forearms and cut both their heads clean off.

  When I land with one knee on the ground, I can hear their bodies and heads smash against the ground. One of the heads rolls in front of me, a look of utter terror on the bloodied face.

  I rise up and kick the head toward Ahmed like a soccer ball; thanks to my super strength it flies there quickly. He deflects it with one of his arms.

  “Ahmed!” I scream. “You’re next.”

  He laughs out loud as the remaining two guards flee the scene. They clearly don’t feel like trying to measure up with me. He shoots them in the back with his own repulsor weapon. They are incinerated on the spot as he mutters something in Arabic that I don’t quite catch with all the commotion. As the F-235 soars nearby and breaks left for another pass, the turrets on Ahmed’s heavy transport springs to life, acquires the jet fighter, and quickly dispatches it with powerful volleys of plasma fire, cutting through its wing and sending it crashing and exploding into another skyscraper nearby. The explosion incinerates at least four floors. Casualties will be high, but these council feckers shouldn’t have tried to take things into their own hands. They either trust in my abilities to complete my mission or face the consequences of their dumb-ass, chicken-shit posture.

  I brush the thought away. I still have someone to kill.

  I rush toward Ahmed who’s already in a defensive posture. I grab my nano-blade and try to activate it, but nothing happens. I fried the damn thing a minute earlier with my reckless flash recharge. I arrive upon him in the middle of a slashing move without my blade being deployed. Ahmed is taken by surprise but was already
ducking to dodge my attack. As he quickly realizes what has happened, and before I can regain my balance, he grabs my arm and smashes me into the ground. Chunks of concrete are dislodged and fly in the air as I feel a tremendous amount of pain travel up and down my spine.

  As he stamps his foot toward my face in an attempt to crush me right there, I spin on the ground just in the nick of time, use both my hands in super speed and super strength and catapult myself upward toward him, both feet aimed at his face. He is unprepared for that move, and I hit him squarely in the jaw, throwing him back a good ten meters. Somehow he manages to stay upright. A trickle of blood drips from the corner of his mouth, but he still has the nerve to smile back at me.

  He wipes the blood with the palm of his hand while I grab a piece of dislodged concrete from the ground and throw it full force at his face. He then uppercuts the projectile and turns it into dust, but he doesn’t realize I’m already upon him by the time the dust cloud clears away. I throw a powerful jab at his lower left ribcage, and his armor takes the brunt of the attack, but I know from his facial expression that this blow, enhanced with my super-strength augment pushed to its maximum, has hurt him nonetheless. In fact, I hear the satisfying sound of his ribs breaking.

  I push my advantage; I grab him by his hair and introduce his head to my knee, making sure the blow is as powerful as it can be. Seeing a couple of broken teeth and blood fly through the air as a result is extremely satisfying. I don’t know if it’s because he almost incinerated hundreds of thousands of innocent lives today with the nuke I managed to diffuse, or if it’s something else, something deeper within myself that I don’t want to acknowledge. But one thing is for sure: I feel a thirst for this man’s blood. Not only do I want to kill him, but I also take pleasure with every blow I land.