by Dima Zales
Mitya did, after all, recently give us a new boost.
“Is this really happening?” I ask myself in desperation. I’d give anything for this to be a pre-cog moment or a dream.
Unfortunately, nothing changes, so this is happening for real.
Someone’s gun glints in the sunlight, and Gogi fires a shot. A rush of adrenaline takes me out of my wishful-thinking stupor. Gogi just shot and killed a guy who was aiming at me. If he hadn’t done that, I’d be toast.
Doubting reality will have to take a backseat for now.
Justin, the crew’s youngest member, tries to be bold, so I have no choice but to put my seventh bullet through his upper arm.
Aiden Williams—Vincent’s younger brother and right-hand man—peeks out from behind the bullet-riddled, bumperless Camry that has served as his shield until now. After all this, and even knowing that these fuckers hurt Muhomor, I can’t believe I’m still uncomfortable with shooting to kill—something my new shrink and I will probably need to work on. Gogi, however, doesn’t share my qualms. He shoots, and through the camera view, I witness Aiden’s brains turn the pavement behind him into a macabre Pollock painting.
Vincent stops clutching his bloody hand and gapes at his fallen brother with shock that seems foreign on his overly angular face. Then I can practically see something inside him snap. He yanks a gun from a leg holster, gripping it with what’s left of his damaged right hand, and screams, “Everyone, charge now or I’ll shoot you myself!”
In that slow-motion, bullet-mode of being, I watch as Vincent Williams and five of his remaining men—Gabriel, Nathan, Connor, Isaac, and José—struggle to their feet.
In a moment, I’ll have six targets and only three bullets left. The HUD has no count for Gogi’s ammo, though if my brain hasn’t failed me, Gogi should have four bullets in his Makarov pistol.
“Go for the ones on the left,” I shout at Gogi and shoot Gabriel in the right upper arm.
Seeing Gabriel lose both his gun and the will to keep attacking us, I focus on his blond neighbor, Isaac, determined to hit his shoulder instead of his arm on the assumption that it’ll be a more painful wound.
Shots ring out, and I feel like Godzilla just bit off my left ear after spewing its fiery breath. I must not be hurt too badly, though, because I’m still standing. With a fresh blast of adrenaline, I hit Isaac’s shoulder, and his fall is my reward.
Gogi fires twice. José gets a bullet in the neck, while Nathan is shot through his nose.
The adrenaline in my veins makes the world around me crawl as I watch both Connor and Williams aim at us in slow motion. I extrapolate their movements and guess that Williams is about to aim for my head while his prematurely graying ally has Gogi’s center chest in sight. As soon as my mind draws this grisly conclusion, my body reacts.
In a move I learned in the dojo, I half fall, half crouch as my finger spasms around the warmed-up metal of the trigger.
The bullet Williams intended for my head whooshes harmlessly an inch above my skull, hurting only my eardrums.
My own bullet hits Connor in the elbow, destroying his chances of shooting again for a long time and, critically, causes the man to drop his gun.
This is when Gogi makes a tactical error.
He shoots the already disarmed Connor in the face. Like the prior couple of instances today, Gogi must figure the injury I inflicted wasn’t damaging enough.
Connor’s face explodes, but Gogi’s momentary distraction was all Williams needed to swiftly aim at Gogi and pull his trigger.
“No!” Screaming both mentally through all the apps and out loud, I aim my empty gun at Williams and pull the trigger.
Unsurprisingly, nothing happens.
Desperate, I throw the gun at Williams’s head—and miss by a wide margin.
Before my gun lands on the ground, I focus on Gogi. He’s hit, but I can’t discern whether the bullet got him in the groin or upper leg. Then, as he falls, grunting, I see him clutch his leg—which I guess is better than the groin.
Williams moves toward us.
I prepare to dive for Gogi’s gun, though I suspect it’s empty.
“Move another muscle, and I’ll shoot you.” Williams’s voice is reminiscent of a dental drill. “I mean it. Freeze.”
The man is halfway to us, and his gun is pointed steadily at my head.
Surprised to be alive, I raise my hands. “I’m unarmed.” A bizarre calm settles over me as I simultaneously scan my environment for any advantage and find few. Almost unconsciously, I mentally order, “Einstein, give me a status report on Zapo.”
“Step away from the Georgian,” Williams orders and waves his gun toward himself.
I drag my feet in his general direction and try my best to put my body between Williams and Gogi, figuring if he’s reluctant to shoot me for some strange reason, perhaps this will stop him from finishing off the bleeding man. Inside the restaurant, I see Ada coming toward me, and I telepathically bark, “Ada, don’t move. If you spook Williams, Gogi and I are as good as dead.”
What I don’t tell her, since I’m trying to save her life, is that we’re as good as dead anyway.
“Brake system unresponsive,” Einstein reports somewhere in the periphery of my attention. “Cooling system reports it’s damaged. Headlight controls unresponsive—”
I dare pay only a tiny sliver of attention to Einstein as I focus on Williams. He’s now close enough that he could pistol-whip me if he so desired.
Stopping, he gives me a simian stare. “If you tell me where Cohen is,” his vocal cords drill out, “your last moments will be blissfully quick.”
Chapter Eleven
I spot the bloody stump that, as a result of my shooting, has replaced Williams’s right middle finger and know he’s lying. He’ll hurt me for that, no matter his promises. I’m about to say something brave, or at least sarcastic, about his proposal, when Williams adds, “I’ll even consider forgetting I saw that girl here, and the Georgian will also get a quick death—even though his name is on the list.”
Adrenaline further spikes my heart rate, but I mentally note the mention of a list as I answer, “I’m Cohen, and I’m right here.” As I talk, it dawns on me that the guy must’ve been hired to track down Gogi and Joe, with an emphasis on Joe, who must be at the top of the list. That’s why Williams is asking me questions.
Williams correctly realizes I’m being a wise-ass, so he presses the barrel of his gun against my upper arm. I can see his muscles twitch, and I’m sure I’m about to get a bullet in my flesh.
In a flash of brain-boosted insight, I see Williams has made a critical mistake. He looked at me or read my bio someplace and figured he’d be safe coming within striking distance, perceiving me as a rich and spoiled venture capitalist dork.
He didn’t count on me being a quick learner due to the boost, nor on the many disarming drills Gogi put me through. He also probably doesn’t know that disarming one’s opponent is a cornerstone of the Systema martial art—or at least Gogi’s flavor of it.
With a hopefully sudden motion, I allow muscle memory to guide me as I grab the gun and twist it the way I rehearsed.
My movements are smooth as silk, and before Williams’s eyes register surprise, his gun clanks onto the pavement—and that’s only because I didn’t have a good angle to apply the move in a way that would allow me to keep the gun.
My opponent yelps in pain; the disarming move applied pressure to his mutilated finger.
I see his eyes follow the trajectory of his gun and take advantage of that distraction by punching the larger man in the middle of the chest, hoping to hit him in the solar plexus.
Gogi would be proud: my strike is textbook perfect. Only my fist feels like I’ve punched concrete. Instead of doubling over in pain like a normal human, Williams doesn’t even blink.
What’s worse, he swings his giant fist at my face.
I block the hit with my right elbow, but unlike the training version of this block, my e
lbow feels like it has split into little shards, and each shard has a pulsing nerve attached to it. I try to score a kick—as I’ve been taught is optimal in this situation—but unlike Gogi during training, Williams sidesteps my kick and lands a fist to my jaw.
Now, it’s not like I haven’t learned how to take a hit. In a way, I should be an expert, since Gogi has hit me by accident a couple of times during training, and Joe has hit me on purpose more times than I can count. But I now realize they’ve been pulling their punches. I didn’t expect that from Joe. Hell, even Anton—Mom’s kidnapper who punched me months ago—was a wimp compared to my current attacker.
The impact of his punch is instant, and it’s only my brain extension that allows me to think at all. The biological parts of my brain, and by extension, my body, shut down and enter knockout mode.
In a moment, I might take a nap right here in the middle of the road, and it takes everything I have to fight for lucidity. Desperate, I put all my focus on the parts of my brain that run on faraway computer servers—the impact-resistant parts.
“Back lights are undamaged,” Einstein says somewhere in my head, and I recall that I instructed him to tell me the status of Zapo 2. “Nitro boost undamaged.”
By the miracle of Brainocytes, I maintain enough control over my body to duck the next punch and take the punch that follows on my left forearm.
As the pain of the block scorches my brain awake, I frantically launch the Batmobile app and try to start Zapo 2 again as a plan forms in my head.
“Stop,” I croak at Williams, but his fist lands in the middle of my stomach. Regrettably, unlike his, my solar plexus works the way it should, and I almost faint from the pain and loss of air.
“Joe,” I try to say. “I’ll tell you where Joe Cohen is.”
My words come out garbled, but Williams pauses, perhaps out of curiosity. I take advantage of the reprieve by dropping to the ground and rolling to the right on the dusty pavement. My destination is the side of the road.
Through the camera views, I see Williams’s face contort, as if he’s debating whether to kick me or ask me more questions. The desire to kick seems to win out, and he raises his foot.
Putting Zapo 2 in reverse, I will the car to start and mentally promise it complete repairs, gold rims, and an oil change every week if it will just please, pretty please start.
To my shock, my desperate plea is answered.
Despite the earlier crash, Zapo’s electric engine activates, and the car is ready for action.
My attacker’s foot is about to connect with the side of my head when I mentally slam the gas and rip the wheel all the way to the right.
My world explodes in white stars, informing me that Williams’s foot has reached my head.
The trick of relying on willpower and the distant server extensions of my brain won’t work much longer.
Still, before consciousness finally abandons me, I see Williams’s body grow larger and larger in Zapo’s back cameras. I also notice he’s turning around to see what’s going on.
I do my best to make myself as small as possible and roll farther to the side of the road. Then, in the last picosecond of consciousness, I activate Zapo’s nitro system to make the car zoom forward.
Chapter Twelve
“You have been unconscious for twenty seconds,” Einstein reports. “The current time is 3:55 p.m.”
Twenty seconds isn’t my usual eight hours of sleep. Something other than catching z’s must be responsible for my mind outage. Fleetingly, I wonder if Joe knocked me out in the dojo again. Until now, our sparring has only resulted in me losing consciousness once, and even then, I was only out for a second.
Sirens blare somewhere in the distance. Is that an ambulance coming for me? If it is, this would be the first time Joe has damaged me this badly.
Ada will never let me hear the end of it.
Then I see all the camera feeds in the AROS interface and register the bullet-riddled cars on the street. With a jolt, I remember everything, particularly the part where I was just fighting for my life.
“Einstein,” I mentally command. “I’m unable to see through Zapo’s cameras.”
“It’s been twenty-two seconds since I was able to ping the car’s computer systems,” Einstein laments. “Based on my assessment, Zapo is totaled.”
If Einstein were human, he would’ve sarcastically added, “Again.”
With monumental effort, I roll over onto my side and survey Zapo’s sad leftovers.
I half expect, half hope to see Williams pinned between Zapo’s back bumper and the remnants of the Ford Mustang I must’ve inadvertently killed half a minute ago. Alas, the giant man isn’t there. Williams’s absence raises a critical question. Where is he? I’m pretty sure I positioned Zapo to hit him before I blacked out, but I guess he rolled off the hood or something along those lines.
Fighting the feeling that I’ve swallowed concrete, I scan for Williams with all the cameras.
Nothing.
As more of my mental acuity returns, I remember to look for Williams’s wounded compatriots, but I can’t find any. They must’ve escaped from the sirens with him.
Speaking of sirens, they’re accompanied by flashing lights, so the authorities are on the scene.
High on relief, I try to get up, but decide it’s too soon to try something so drastic.
From the comfort of the pavement, I use the restaurant’s camera to assess the damage Gogi endured. Luckily, the Georgian fared better than my most optimistic hopes. Someone, probably himself, wrapped a makeshift tourniquet around his leg, and the bleeding has slowed to a trickle.
Unlike Gogi, Muhomor looks bad. He’s marble white and unmoving, and telepathic messages from me don’t seem to get his attention.
“Mike,” Ada says out loud from the restaurant entrance. “Don’t move. You might have a back injury.”
“Go back inside,” I insist telepathically. Seeing that she’s not complying, I demonstratively wiggle my fingers and add, “I just wiggled my toes too, and it was a great success. No back injury. Go inside. Please.”
Her reply is interrupted by the commotion of the emergency vehicles that consist of police and paramedics, though a fire truck is also on the scene.
Despite the migraine the sirens are inducing, I welcome the blaring sound, and when cops and EMT personnel flood the street, I allow myself to relax.
In a blink, Muhomor, Gogi, and I find ourselves on stretchers, each one loaded into a separate ambulance. Ada joins me in mine.
“I’m okay,” I valiantly lie to my paramedic team when they close the ambulance doors behind Ada. “Please focus on my friends.”
“Your friends have at least three responders with them,” the larger paramedic reassures me. His sleep-deprived eyes look too hollow for someone so young. “We can and will focus on you. Can you tell me your name and date of birth, please?”
I carry on a conversation with the EMT guy while also talking telepathically with Ada, who seems overwhelmed in her post-adrenaline slump. Her eyes glisten with tears as she stares at me, and fine tremors wrack her slender frame.
Since my EMTs don’t know how Muhomor and Gogi are faring, or are refusing to tell me, I try using Muhomor’s nifty app to hack into the other ambulances to see if I can learn something—but no luck. The cars don’t have complex enough computers to hack, and the EMT personnel don’t write patient information into their private phones.
“No, I don’t feel any pain,” I lie to the EMT guy for the fifth time. “I don’t want any painkillers.”
“How much pain are you really in?” Ada asks, apparently recovering from her shock. Her eyes are dry again, and her telepathic message is filled with a mixture of worry and annoyance. “You’re paler than I’ve ever seen you—too pale even for a programmer.”
“I feel like someone kicked me in the head,” I mentally reply. “And what do you know? I probably feel that way because I did get kicked in the head.”
“Then why don�
��t you tell them you’re hurting? Why are you always needlessly trying to be a hero?”
“If they give me painkillers, the drugs will likely knock me out. That’s what happened when I crashed the last Zapo,” I explain. “I want to say conscious. I want learn what happened to our friends.”
Sometimes, the brain boost allows me to perceive the world fast enough to catch so-called microexpressions—those brief, involuntary facial ticks that appear in accordance with the emotions the person is experiencing. Ada’s momentary scowl is classic annoyance. The expression is instantly gone, though, and to Ada’s credit, her telepathic message is patient and soothing as she suggests, “How about you at least use Relief? It won’t knock you out. This is probably the exact situation that app was designed for.”
I consider her suggestion, even though she’s talking about an app that’s among the scarier software we’ve developed. In fact, this app, which Mitya dubbed Relief, is at the top of my scary shortlist because it’s designed to dampen pain and, along with BraveChill (the app that helps with fear and anxiety), is ripe for abuse. When I tested these apps, BraveChill reminded me of chasing a Xanax with a beer—something I did once back at MIT and liked too much to ever allow myself to do again. The Relief app is even scarier, since I felt warmth and pleasure from it. Though I’ve never abused that class of drugs, I’m guessing the feeling was akin to what morphine or oxycodone would feel like. Of course, using those apps when I wasn’t frightened or in pain wasn’t a fair test.
Out loud, to emphasize the seriousness of my words to Ada, I say, “In those experiments where rats could stimulate their pleasure centers, rats would press the lever that delivered the artificial pleasure over pressing the lever for eating, drinking, and even sex. They pressed the button to the point where they starved to death.”
The EMT guys exchange confused glances but remain silent, likely ascribing my statement to my head injury.