Bloodshot--The Official Movie Novelization

by Gavin G. Smith

  “Here to see Nick Baris,” Bloodshot told the pair.

  “Really?” the guard asked. Now he was surprised, amused. “The nature of business?”

  “I’m going to kill him,” Bloodshot told the two guards matter-of-factly.

  Watching, Harting blinked. He hadn’t expected that.

  “Is he...?” the doctor started.

  “Yup,” KT told him.

  Bloodshot moved with transhuman speed. He tore the weapon out of the first guard’s hand. It looked like a mistake. It meant the other guard had the time to raise his weapon, squeeze the trigger, his aim true despite obvious panic. The guard shot his friend but a bullet caught Bloodshot as well and the top of his head came off. He hit the ground.

  Harting immediately turned to a screen that displayed a silhouette of Bloodshot’s body. It highlighted areas of structural damage and the power left in the nanites in those areas. The head of the silhouette was already flaring amber as millions of nanites moved to repair the damage made by the bullet from the guard’s assault rifle. He imagined the inside of Bloodshot’s skull as a writhing mass of nanites, like someone had kicked over an anthill.

  “He’s overtaxing the nanites already,” Harting pointed out. That kind of damage wasn’t easy to fix, his miraculous tech notwithstanding. “At this rate he won’t make the door.”

  “Look,” KT said simply.

  On the monitor three more guards had joined the first and they were dragging Bloodshot and the dead guard through the gate and toward the mansion. They were leaving a bloody smear in their wake. The blood was mostly coming from the dead guard, however.

  “They’re taking him inside.” KT was grinning.

  “He’s smarter than he looks,” Harting conceded.

  “Not a high bar,” Eric muttered at his station.

  “I wouldn’t underestimate him,” KT told the tech.

  * * *

  Baris’s office looked as though it could have fulfilled the purpose of a colonial governor’s office during the height of empire. Which was fitting, as it was from here Baris bought off the local authorities so they would turn a blind eye and he could run his own empire. An empire of illegal mercenary operations, ever-profitable drugs and, of course, black-market technology. It was this last that had entangled him with RST and Harting, getting hold of biotech that was otherwise illegal in most countries. He had been aware of Harting looking for him for some time. It seemed that the good doctor wanted to cover his trail. He assumed it was that fool Axe’s telephone call that had given him away. He knew he should have moved after the Australian was killed but he was growing tired of running. Besides, he had a countermeasure.

  “American?” Baris asked from behind his huge teak desk, talking with two of the Russian mercenaries.

  “Da,” one of the mercenaries told him.

  “Are you sure he’s dead?” Baris asked. The two mercenaries just looked at each other. The American had taken a bullet to the head. He was dead. “Never mind. Get Wigans. Tell him to bring it.”

  The mercenaries nodded before leaving.

  Baris gave little away but it was clear he was worried.

  * * *

  Wigans was pacing up and down in what he thought of as his laboratory. He had built it from scavenged and jury-rigged tech, so most of the tech would be considered obsolete. Wigans still found a use for it, however. Before he had repurposed the large room, it had been an old wine bottling room. Wigans had filled it with a lot of computer gear, a very sophisticated 3D printer of his own design and a DNA “cooker”– another homemade machine designed for bio-hacking. He considered himself a geek Frankenstein, the professor, not the monster.

  Wigans wore a coat and jumper to keep out the mountain cold in the mostly unheated room. He was pacing backward and forward glancing at the CCTV feed on one of his own monitors. He was watching as the guards dragged the two corpses toward the mansion. Wigans did not like what he was seeing. He was so preoccupied he did not even hear one of Baris’s mercenaries enter his domain until the man clicked his fingers. Wigans’s head snapped round to stare at him. His eyes were only a little wild from the homemade Adderall.

  “Baris’s office now,” the mercenary told him.

  Wigans sagged.

  “Bring it,” the mercenary added.

  Wigans stared at the mercenary for a moment or two. Then he grabbed a large pelican case and followed the man out of the bottling room. The case was bulky and Wigans was struggling to lug it as they made their way past the stainless-steel tops of the wine vats. The mercenary did not offer to help carry the case, however. Wigans felt this was a little unfair. The mercenary was a big man, all the members of Baris’s little private army were. Baris, on the other hand, had all but embraced the stereotype of the weedy science nerd. The mercenary ignored Wigans as the tech struggled to keep up. Such was the way of the world, Wigans mused, the “strong” look down on those who’re actually building the future. Even if, in this case, it was a particularly criminal future.

  * * *

  Harting was switching through the CCTV feeds within Baris’s mansion. In wanting to see what the target was up to he had managed to lose his own asset.

  “Where is he?” KT asked, tension in her voice.

  “There.” Harting clicked on the window to enlarge it on the main screen. The mercenaries had taken Bloodshot’s body into a vaulted cellar. Judging by the large tun barrels, the space had once been used to store wine, but now it looked as though it was being used to store supplies for Baris’s mercenary troops.

  Three of the mercenaries stood over Bloodshot’s body. The dead guard lay next to him.

  Suddenly Bloodshot sat up.

  He kicked the legs out from one of them. Then he was on his feet. He punched another, bouncing him off one of the ceiling’s vaulted supports hard enough to crush his spine, killing him. He punched another in the face, caving in his skull. The third mercenary was trying to stand up on a broken leg when Bloodshot pushed him down onto the stone floor with the sole of his boot and then stamped on his neck.

  “God... look at how much this means to him.” Harting couldn’t help but feel a little awe at the power of his own creation as he watched the carnage.

  KT said nothing.

  CHAPTER 27

  Harting couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing. What had happened in Budapest had been impressive, but this! The mercenaries had time to prepare, to dig in, to activate their contingencies for just such an incursion. Even so Bloodshot was beating them at their own game, waging a one-man war against a small army and holding his own. It seemed that each time Bloodshot went out, he was that bit more adept, had that bit more of an understanding of his capabilities and how to make the best use of them tactically. At the back of his mind this worried Harting a little, not least because it suggested some kind of residual memory despite Bloodshot having had his mind wiped. It wasn’t, however, something the doctor wanted to examine too closely at the moment.

  The main screen was showing multiple feeds from the CCTV within Baris’s mansion as Bloodshot stalked down a corridor with a stolen assault rifle. The barrel would shift, fire a short controlled burst, a mercenary would die, then the barrel would shift again in a new direction and fire again, rinse and repeat. Bloodshot twitched the weapon, flicking an empty magazine away, reloading quickly, and then resumed firing. Any returning fire from the mercenaries only served to draw his deadly attention.

  Bloodshot stalked into a marble-floored hall containing an impressive stairway sweeping up to a landing on the second floor. He had just reloaded again when one of mercenaries risked charging him. With no time to bring his weapon to bear, Bloodshot grabbed the man, spinning him round. Bloodshot used the mercenary as a shield to protect him from the withering fire from the landing on the floor above. Bringing the assault rifle up, Bloodshot returned fire as he backed toward a pillar. The mercenary cried out as his body armor took a hit. Bloodshot staggered as rounds hit him as well, burying themselves in his
reinforced flesh as the churning, glowing nanites attempted to repair the damage.

  Bloodshot reached the partial cover of a Corinthian pillar on the other side of the hall and slammed his captive mercenary into the floor hard enough to shatter the man’s skull, leaving a red smear on the marble. Bloodshot emptied the rest of the magazine on full automatic suppressing fire, forcing the mercenaries on the floor above to keep their heads down. He flicked the spent magazine out of the assault rifle and shielded himself behind the pillar while he reloaded.

  Harting was so impressed with Bloodshot’s capabilities that he wasn’t even annoyed when he saw Eric playing on his phone again.

  Something on a previously blank screen drew his notice. He enlarged it. It was the feed from Baris’s laptop webcam. Harting was pleased to see that even the implacable purveyor of illegal tech looked rattled.

  “That’s Baris,” he said to the room.

  On the screen Bloodshot had swung out from behind the pillar, firing up at the mercenaries and sprinting for the stairs, only to get cut down by the sheer volume of fire before he had managed to make it halfway up.

  Smiling, Harting glanced over at KT. She was staring at the screen that monitored Bloodshot’s nanites. Much of the display was red. Alarms were starting to sound. She looked worried and not without reason. To Harting, however, it didn’t matter if Bloodshot burned out now. They had achieved proof of concept some time ago. Mostly Bloodshot had been taking out the trash. Though it would certainly be a bonus if he got Baris first.

  Harting pressed the stud on his microphone.

  “Tibbs, Dalton, prep for exfil,” he told his two loyal dogs.

  On the screen the mercenaries were moving cautiously toward Bloodshot’s bullet-ridden corpse-apparent on the stairs. Bloodshot came back to life again. One eye opened a slit, judging their whereabouts, then he swung the assault rifle up with superhuman speed and dispatched each of them with single shots to the head.

  “It’s remarkable. His drive, his need to get even. There’s no algorithm for that,” Harting said, his voice filled with wonder. It was enough to make him question his faith in systems. This wasn’t science and technology. This was art.

  “Wait... who’s that?” he heard KT ask.

  Harting looked up to see a slender, twitchy-looking man in his thirties. He was dressed so ridiculously that he had to be a tech geek cut from the same mold as Eric was. In fact he could have been Eric’s twin, except the newcomer was black, not Indian. He was also carrying a sizeable pelican case.

  In his periphery Harting had noticed that Eric had lowered his phone and was now very much paying attention. He turned to look at the tech. KT was doing the same. Eric looked concerned, very concerned indeed.

  * * *

  Wigans, clutching the pelican case, was shoved into Baris’s office by his mercenary escort. Baris looked up at the “mad scientist” from behind his huge desk.

  “It’s show time,” he told Wigans, trying to ignore the scientist’s garish checkered clown trousers.

  The scientist looked less than happy.

  “You’re absolutely positive it’s him, right?” Wigans asked. He spoke with a strong British accent and sounded terrified.

  The two mercenaries exchanged a look, as though they weren’t used to hearing their boss’s orders questioned like this.

  “It’s him. Do it. Now,” Baris said in a tone that brooked no argument.

  “What? Now, now?” Wigans stuttered. “I have to charge it. Set the parameters. Do any of your men have a pacemaker? As a safety precaution you should proba—”

  The nearby gunfire made Wigans jump. He was already shaking by the time he heard the screams.

  “Charge it. Now,” Baris told him.

  Wigans laid the box down and hurriedly opened it.

  * * *

  In the ops center both Harting and KT were eyeing Eric, who was pointedly not looking at them. On the central screen Bloodshot continued to stalk the corridors of Baris’s mansion, shedding blood and causing havoc.

  “Who is he?” Harting asked.

  Eric didn’t answer.

  “Eric?” KT prodded more gently.

  “He’s like me. A techie,” Eric told them.

  “He’s an I.T. guy?” Harting asked.

  Eric glared daggers at his boss. “He’s a good man, got skills,” he told them somewhat defensively.

  Harting knew there was more to it than this. He just stared at Eric. He was aware of KT doing the same.

  “Okay, he’s a legend,” Eric admitted, sagging in his seat. “He was the first one to figure out a stable bidirectional neural interface.” Harting couldn’t shake the feeling that there was a degree of fannish adoration for the nameless tech on Eric’s part. “I’m serious. He’s so good I—” It was also clear that Eric didn’t want to finish that sentence. It was equally clear that Eric had done something stupid. Again. The quiet in the ops center was broken by the sound of screaming coming from the monitors. The screaming was subsequently silenced by gunfire.

  “So good you what?” KT asked.

  “I... used some of his open source code for this program,” Eric told them.

  Harting tried to process what he’d just heard. He had done his best to source the best of everything, including suitably morally flexible personnel. And then this idiot...

  “There’s open source code in my billion-dollar prototype!” Harting screamed.

  Eric flinched away from him.

  “He’s really smart, bro,” Eric told him.

  Harting imagined taking hold of the tech by the neck with his prosthetic hand and squeezing.

  “If he’s so smart then what the hell’s he doing with Baris?” Harting muttered. He was wishing he’d hired this so-called genius he was seeing via the feed from Baris’s laptop’s fisheye lens instead of Eric.

  Eric had his head down low over the glow of his workstation, the back of his neck burning red with shame.

  * * *

  Wigans opened the case to reveal a complex-looking electrical device. He punched a few buttons as Baris and the two mercenaries watched. The machine emitted a whining noise. On the device’s remote control a progress bar lit up showing a fifteen percent charge. The scientist pushed the remote toward Baris.

  “Take this. When it hits a hundred percent, poof,” he told Baris, miming an explosion with his hands.

  Baris smiled.

  * * *

  Watching this exchange in the ops center, Harting frowned. He was not happy with the case or the explosion that Eric’s hero seemed to be implying, though he could see no trace of actual explosive in the case.

  “That’s not great,” KT muttered.

  “Eric, what the hell is that thing?” Harting demanded. He suspected he should know but he was still working through the ramifications of having open source code in his billion-dollar weapons platform.

  “I don’t know,” Eric said quietly.

  “Find out!” Harting felt moments away from a rage embolism. Though he was determined to throttle Eric first.

  The tech rolled his chair over to a different terminal. He grabbed a screenshot of the device and zoomed in on it, studying it.

  Harting wasn’t sure what drew his attention to KT but she did not look happy at all. She was breathing hard, clearly worried about Bloodshot. This did little to mollify Harting’s mood.

  The doctor searched the monitor screens for Bloodshot. He found his pet war machine on the CCTV feeds displaying the hallway that led to Baris’s office. All that lay between Bloodshot, his faux revenge on Baris and another successful, if fraught, wetwork operation, were two very nervous-looking Russian mercenaries.

  “C’mon, just a little more,” Harting breathed. He wanted this mess over and done with. Then there would be the debriefing of all debriefings.

  He heard a sharp intake of breath from the work terminal where Eric was studying the picture of the machine the “mad scientist” had brought into Baris’s office.

  �
�Shit. Uh...” Eric started. Slowly, Harting turned his head to glare at his current least favorite techie. “That device might be an EMP.”

  Harting stared at Eric. KT was shaking her head, her face drawn and pale.

  “What!” Harting screamed again.

  “An EMP, electromagnetic pulse, it’ll fry the nanites in...” Eric explained.

  Harting couldn’t quite believe what he was hearing.

  “I know what a goddamn EMP is!” His face was red, drool dripped from an open mouth, all the muscles on his neck and his jaw looked taut enough to snap.

  * * *

  Baris eyed the remote for the EMP. The progress bar read seventy-eight percent.

  “Piece of shit,” he muttered.

  * * *

  On the main screen in the ops center, Harting watched Bloodshot march down the hallway toward Baris’s office. He had a pistol in each hand and he was exchanging gunfire with the guards at the door. He was putting round after round into their body armor. The mercenaries were retaliating and Bloodshot’s churning flesh glowed as the overtaxed nanites tried to heal the punishment he was taking.

  Harting frantically keyed the mic.

  “Abort mission. There’s a—” The link went dead.

  Harting stared at the mic.

  “What happened?” he asked, his voice low, dangerous.

  “I think he muted you,” a very nervous Eric told him.

  Harting wondered if his prosthetic arm had the power to actually crush a human skull.

  “THEN UN-MUTE IT!”

  Eric scrambled back to his original workstation and began hammering away at the keys as though keyboard abuse would somehow yield greater results.

  Harting was aware of KT shaking her head, a look of abject disgust on her face.

  “You did this to him,” she told the doctor. “You put that story in his head and now he won’t stop.”

  “Not now!” he shouted at her.

  Bloodshot hit both the mercenaries with headshots and they slumped to the floor. He tossed the empty pistols away.