“There’s a storm coming,” she said, ignoring my question. “I don’t know who or what you are, but you’re in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“I’ve been through a few storms in my day,” I told her. “As far as being in the wrong place at the wrong time, story of my life.”
“I can see everything you’re seeing through your eyes,” X said in my head. “Her weapons are detachable, be careful.”
I wasn’t sure how X knew that just by looking at them, but I wasn’t going to argue.
Sensing I was buying time for some kind of advantage in the fight, the woman dressed in black lunged at me with her blades on her left arm and her shield on her right.
She was quick, but so was I. I ducked the swipe from her blades. They whistled past my head as hardened steel came within inches of my hair. She struck out with her shield, positioning it sideways to decapitate me like she had Mark. I leaned back to avoid the blow then lunged in close to take the fight to her.
I landed a left hook to her face, followed by a right uppercut. Whoever this chick was, she was one tough cookie. I felt her absorb the blows with not so much as a grunt before pivoting to grab me by my waist and toss me over her hip.
I landed in a roll in time to see her shield in a direct line for my head. Already on my knees, I leaned back to allow the steel disc to sail over my face. It clanked against the ground behind me, ricocheting into the master panel in charge of controlling Echo’s cell. A shower of sparks followed.
“Let me out!” Echo screamed as the noise dampeners to his cell failed. “Let me out! I can help! No matter what’s happened in the past, we’re still united against the Order or have you forgotten all of that too?”
The woman in black looked over at Echo and then back at me. She cocked her head to the side as if seeing me for the first time.
“Ahhh, that makes sense. The puppy that was lost has been found again,” she crooned. “And you don’t remember a thing?”
I slowly rose to my feet. Maybe I was crazy, but for the first time, I was actually thinking of letting Echo out. I could match my assailant for speed, but she tossed me over her hip like I threw old shirts into the hamper.
There was a clear differential in strength.
“What is it that you want?” I asked again, buying as much time as I could. “Why are you here?”
“I was here for him.” The woman motioned to Echo with her chin. “But now that I know two of you are here, I guess I’m here for you as well.”
“Listen, lady,” I said, taking a small step forward with my hands out in front of me. I positioned my right foot just under Mark’s rifle. “I don’t know who you are, what this Order is, or why you want Echo dead, but I don’t blame you. I don’t like him either and I just met him.”
“Wait, what?” Echo screamed from his cell in pure mania. “Daniel, she’s our enemy. She’s our sworn enemy.”
“Maybe yours,” I said to Echo without taking my eyes off the faceless woman. “I had no quarrel with you.”
“‘Had’.” The woman repeated the word.
“That’s right,” I said. “You killed these Phoenix guards who were just doing their job. It doesn’t seem right to let you walk out of here now.”
“Like you could stop me,” the woman said in a voice that told me she was smiling under that black mask. “But that’s sweet in a heroic kind of way. Too bad I have to kill you now. You seem like a nice guy.”
“You don’t know me that well,” I said.
We moved at once. She lunged at me with the two-bladed weapon coming out of the top of her left forearm.
At that same time, I kicked up violently with my right knee. The rifle that had been just on top of my foot lifted into the air with the motion. I grabbed it and lit into the approaching woman a moment faster than she could cut the weapon in two.
Two rounds hit her in the arm and chest before she sliced the blaster in half. She cracked me across the jaw with her left fist then slammed her right fist toward me.
The twin blades of her weapon came for my gut. I twisted out of the way but not before she took a slice out of me that made me gasp in pain. Cold steel sliced through my side.
I grunted, ignoring the pain and looking past the agony to the opening she had given me by overextending her reach. I slammed my own fist into her stomach as hard as I could.
Finally, I was rewarded with a reaction that actually sounded like I did some kind of damage to her. In the second it took her to recover, I ripped off the black mask hiding her face.
A curtain of jet black hair fell over her eyes. The only way I could describe her was violently beautiful.
She recovered, slashing at my head before twirling to the side and ripping her shield out of the control panel that held Echo in place.
To both of our surprise, the panel exploded in another shower of sparks. The blue force field holding Echo inside disappeared.
The three of us circled one another as Echo exited his prison, his half skull, half regular face grinning. Height and width wise, he was larger than either of us. We made quite a trio, the dark-haired beauty, the grinning half skull face, and me.
“Do I have to worry about you right now?” Echo asked me without taking his eyes off the woman. “Can we put our differences aside for a moment?”
I almost said yes. I almost agreed to let the man who murdered the woman I loved have a free pass. I wish I could remember more and actually feel the hate for him I knew I should, but I didn’t. I just had to react as I knew I would if I did remember.
“I can’t do that,” I told him. “Not after what you confessed to. Not after what you did to her.”
Echo sneered, looking at me now. He took a step farther back to try and take me and the dark-haired woman in at once.
“My, my,” the woman said, clicking her teeth. “I came at an interesting time in Immortal Corp politics.”
“Daniel,” X said in my head. “If you can keep them talking a few more minutes, I have word that an entire platoon of Phoenix soldiers are on their way here. I’ve kept the chatter quiet so you can concentrate.”
“Thanks,” I said, making the mistake of saying it out loud. “Sorry, I do that. Talk to myself sometimes. I’m not right in the head.”
Echo and the dark-haired woman looked at me as though they didn’t believe me in the slightest.
The woman made the first move before I could try and make another excuse. The next few seconds were a definition of pain and reflexes. I dodged blows from both Echo and the dark-haired woman as I traded strikes with them and they did the same with one another.
It was every man and woman for themselves. I had a cut open over my forehead by an elbow from Echo and my lips split as I was bashed with the woman’s shield.
Within that short time, Echo was limping and dark liquid poured from the woman’s nose. It wasn’t blood, but something else, like that dark hue of motor oil that still sprinkled from her side.
We probably would have kept at it if it weren’t for the shouting coming from the hall. The Phoenix reinforcements had arrived.
Without hesitation, the woman reached into her cloak, slamming a trio of small glass balls on the ground. With a hiss, the room was covered in white gas that brought tears to my eyes. The gas entered my throat, filling my lungs with its stinging acrid taste.
I tried in vain to stem the gas entering my mouth and nose. I buried my face in the crook of my elbow, retreating to the back of the room where the gas was less likely to choke me.
I could hear more shouting as the Phoenix guards entered the room. The gas was so thick and the lights still too dull to see much.
“Here, I’ve got one here.” One of the guards coughed, approaching me through the gas with a handkerchief over his face. “No, no, it’s one of ours, not the prisoner.”
“There, there’s a woman too with dark hair. She was just here,” I said, coughing even more. A new wave of tears swam past my eyes. “They were both just here.”
“Thanks.” I coughed into the handkerchief. “You have Echo and a Cyber Hunter running free through your facility. Here, look!”
I crouched down, looking at the ground and the trail of oil splatter that led into the corridor.
Commander Shaw turned to bark orders to his men.
I was already out the door.
“Who would you like to find first?” X asked out loud. “I can recommend levels to search based on the idea that Echo is trying to escape and the Cyber Hunter is going after him.”
“Not yet,” I told X. “Weapons first.”
Chapter Three
My mind raced with ideas as I entered the small quarters provided for me back at the Vault. The lights in the Vault clicked on at the same time. Apparently, someone had managed to fix whatever damage the Cyber Hunter had done to them. I concentrated on turning my enhanced vision off. Like magic, I could see normally again.
Still have to get used to being able to see in the dark by just willing myself to, I thought to myself.
The room was small with nothing more than a bed, a dresser and an adjacent washroom.
I opened the top dresser drawer, taking my MK II in my hand like I was shaking the palm of an old friend. I placed the piece of steel at the small of my back.
“Should never have left you,” I said out loud.
“Do I need to give you two a moment?” X asked. “I can turn off if you’d like.”
Despite almost being killed by a Cyber Hunter, having lost our prisoner and everything else, I actually grinned.
“No, you’re good, X,” I said. “Any word on our escapees?”
“None, I’ve been monitoring the channel and—” X hesitated for a moment. “There’s something going on at the hangar bay level.”
X allowed the channel to play in my ear.
“We have contact in the hangar bay by the dropships!” a female voice I didn’t recognize yelled out. “No sign of the Cyber Hunter, but we have the prisoner named Echo in our sights.”
That was enough for me. I was off at a sprint.
“X, I need the fastest way to the hangar bay,” I said.
“On it,” X answered. A moment later, a broken yellow line appeared in front of me. I knew it was only X layering an augmented path for me to follow. I would have stopped to think how extraordinary this was a few days ago, but now it seemed things like seeing in the dark, Cyber Hunters, and voices in my head were the new normal.
I sprinted through the level, ignoring the lift and going straight for a set of stairs.
“The lift won’t be faster?” I asked, breathing hard.
“The hangar bay is only five stories above us,” X answered. “With the lifts in heavy use at the moment and the fact you can run faster than any normal human, the quickest route is the stairs.”
It seemed we weren’t the only ones that thought this. Phoenix guards jammed the stairwell running to the same floor.
“Hey, excuse me, coming through!” I shouted as I took the steps two at a time.
I’m not sure if they recognized me or it was the pure look of determination in my eyes, but they let me pass as I sprinted up the steps. Whatever Immortal Corp had done to me made me not only faster but gave me the ability to run without a normal level of fatigue setting in.
In seconds, I was up the five flights of stairs and bursting through the door to the hangar bay. Like most hangar bays, the room was gigantic. Dropships sat on the wide open floor with two massive hangar bay doors that opened out onto the side of the mountain.
Racks of gear and equipment lined the walls with high overhanging lights. There were more details to take in, but at the moment, I only had eyes for the scene playing out in front of me. There were four dropships in the hangar. They sat in a row with their rears towards us and cargo bay doors closed.
Echo held a grenade in his right hand, poised to detonate if he released the depressor. A group of Phoenix guards surrounded him as he yelled obscenities at them.
“Who wants to die!?” Echo was yelling. “Open the dropship now or we’re all going up in flames together, except I’ll come back. You won’t.”
“Get back!” I yelled as I reached for my MK II. I aimed the weapon at Echo, choosing an explosive magazine to jam into the butt of my weapon. “If any of you know who I am, trust me, and tell the other soldiers to get back.”
The Phoenix guards looked to one another for consensus. The ones who had heard of me or seen me before nodded to the others. They all took a few steps back from Echo. Not one of them lowered their weapon.
“There he is.” Echo looked at me with a smile. “Ready to go back home, Danny? We can both get on this—”
I probably shouldn’t have. The Phoenix guards were far enough away and they all wore armor, but still, something could have gone wrong. I fired an explosive round at the grenade Echo held in his hand.
Both explosive devices detonated, flinging Echo into the side of the dropship so violently, when he struck the piece of equipment, I could hear bones snap. The Phoenix guards around him were blown back but seemed to have been able to avoid injury.
All I felt on my end was a wave of heat as the explosion took place too far away from me to do any real harm. I walked over the hangar floor unfazed. Echo lay on his stomach in a pool of his own blood. He didn’t move, but I knew he wasn’t dead. His clothes were charred, entire sections of his skin and flesh gone, but I knew what he was now.
“Daniel, Daniel, are you okay?” Monica asked, coming to a stop beside me. She wore a heavy chest plate and carried a rifle that she pointed down on Echo’s still body.
“I’m fine,” I said, motioning to Echo with my chin. “He’s not.”
Some captain or lieutenant, I wasn’t really sure, got over his shock and started taking command of the situation. Echo was bound hand and foot and taken to a secure room.
Monica and I walked with Commander Shaw, who arrived a few minutes later to see that Echo was properly secured.
“We haven’t been able to find the Cyber Hunter, but the entire Vault is on high alert.” Commander Shaw rubbed his red eyes. “If I had to put money on it, he’s gone. The Cyber Hunter would be insane to stay here while we search the Vault for him.”
“She.” I corrected the commander, remembering the dark-haired woman who bled oil.
“What’s that?” Commander Shaw asked, turning to me as we made our way to the lift and took it up a few stories.
“You keep referring to the Cyber Hunter as a ‘he.’ It was a woman,” I said, shaking my head trying to describe her. “She wasn’t entirely human either.”
“I thought they were a myth,” Monica said, narrowing her eyes as if that would help bring order to a situation in utter chaos. “I thought they were stories like a secret order in books. It can’t be Cyber Hunters and the Order. They don’t exist.”
“Well, whoever that woman was took a chunk out of me,” I said, looking down at the shirt that was torn on the side. My body had already healed, but the bloodstains were there. “She felt pretty real.”
“I should level with you and tell you what—”
We both looked over at the commander as the doors to the lift opened and a pair of Phoenix guards stood at attention. The commander closed his mouth. He nodded to the guards and continued down the level.
Whatever the commander was about to say was for our ears only. We followed him this time in silence. He directed us to a closed door on the right side of the hall.
Farther down, four heavily armored Phoenix guards stood at attention at another closed door.
We walked into the room, following Commander Shaw. As soon as we entered, I realized what it was. We stood in a small viewing room. In front of us was a one-way see-through wall.
In the room opposite us, Echo sat chained to a table. He was hunched over, still a mess of skin and
flesh, but the bleeding had stopped. He might even be conscious now and only playing opossum. I wouldn’t put that past him.
The small room we were in didn’t offer much in the way of furniture. There were a few uncomfortable-looking chairs and a table pressed against one of the walls.
“All he sees on his end is another wall,” Commander Shaw informed us. “The room is soundproof as well unless we decide otherwise.”
“You were going to tell us something,” I reminded the commander. Or maybe I didn’t remind him and he decided not to tell us. Either way, I wasn’t going to let it go now.
Commander Shaw eyed me and Monica for a long minute. I could practically see the gears turning behind his eyes as he decided exactly what to tell us and how much to let us know.
“Okay, okay,” Commander Shaw said, pulling at his long grey beard. “You might want to sit down for this.”
Monica and I took seats in the chairs. They were in fact as uncomfortable as they looked.
“Monica and her father have been working with Phoenix long enough that we have had the opportunity to build trust.” Commander Shaw eyed me with a heavy sigh. “We haven’t had that time, Daniel, but you don’t get to where I am without learning how to read people. My gut tells me that I can trust you. That’s why you were allowed to keep your weapon, that’s why you have free rein in the Vault. So tell me. Am I right? Can I trust you?”
It almost seemed silly. Here he was looking at me asking if he could trust me when he already had. I think he knew the answer. He just wanted to hear it from me.
“Yes,” I said. “You can trust me.”
He held my gaze a moment longer then nodded.
“Good,” the commander said. “What I’m about to tell you now is for your ears only. It’s information we have on the fall of Earth, the corporations, and the Order.”
Monica’s eyes doubled in size. I had to admit in a different life, Commander Shaw could have been a master storyteller. I’d consider myself a pretty hardened individual, but Commander Shaw had me at the edge of my seat.
Absolution: A Near Future Thriller (Forsaken Mercenary Book 2) Page 2