by Dave Austin
Maggie leaned against Kendra's shoulder and closed her eyes. I knew how hard it was for her to be in that position. In one month, she went from "maybe my father is involved in a conspiracy, maybe he's being forced to, he really is one of the leaders."
We thought we were already safe when her cell phone rang. She didn't even know where she had put it. She touched her body along the dress until she realized that it had fallen to one of the seats during the confusion.
"It's my father..." She said, her hand trembling as she held the mobile, looking at me with her big green eyes watering, "It's not over yet, is it?
"Your father? Does he know it was us?" Kendra asked her, rubbing her legs now that the adrenaline was no longer acting up.
"There's only one way to find out. Pick up. Put it on speaker." I told her.
She answered and calmly brought her cell phone to her ear, dropping a low, "Yes..." She pressed a button and her father's voice rose inside the car as if he was materializing there.
"Where are you?" He asked.
Another voice was babbling behind him, but it wasn't loud enough for us to hear what he was saying.
"The party... The party was as boring as ever. I'm sorry I left without warning." She said, impressively natural. It wasn't really the first time she'd done it.
"Maggie, what have you gotten yourself into? Do you really think I wouldn't have cameras in my own office? That I don't know it was you and your friends in the tunnels? Damn it. Get back here before things get worse. And forget about being a Hunter." He told her, but it sounded more like he was ordering her, and he wasn't used to getting a "no".
"Father..."
"None of that... Get over here! Now! I hope this was just a youthful mistake. I can protect you, but there's nothing I can do for your friends."
"DAD! Shut the hell up. They're not just my friends. They're my team. And we were there to find out exactly what you were involved in. You know what the worst is? I told them that maybe you were being forced but no, you're doing everything for your own enjoyment and ego. I miss the person you were before what happened to my mother," she said and on the other side only silence, "We destroyed the robot. It may take a while, it may even cost us until we get there, but we'll get you and I'll bring you to justice. You were my hero and now you're just another criminal." She said, tears flowing down her face and Kendra rubbing her hands.
"Daughter... You don't get it, do you? Everything I'm doing is for you, for us... Not everyone was born to survive, and if you knew what was coming... If you knew, you'd understand. I'm just on the winning side, and if I can make money off it, why not? You're still in time to come back. But if you don't, I can't protect you. They're going to destroy you like they're going to destroy everyone who gets in their way. Believe me when I tell you this doesn't end with me. And you didn't destroy any robot. You didn't really think running him over was enough, did you?"
"Bye, Dad."
"Maggie...run." were his last words before she turned off her cell phone.
We got knocked off the road. The car swung with us inside, rolling forward, backward, upwards and, luckily, none of us were crushed by the doorless part of the car. Everything got cloudy, I didn't know where they were, my head stung and part of it was warm. I touched it and my fingers got bloody. Everything seemed so white in front of me that I fell on the slope of one of the hills and didn't move anymore. I closed my eyes and ignored all the screams I heard. They seemed so distant. The heat shrouded my body.
Chapter XXIII
Damn... I had to open my eyes. I couldn't just lay there, like everyone else, giving up just because my body told me to be still. I squirmed until I heard my bones crack and I opened my eyes. The bodies around me took shape, as well as the objects, the car burning before me and Elisa and Kendra a few meters from me on the hill. Maggie still in the car, passed out, her body with a layer of dirt over it.
Although I was in pain every step of the way, I dragged her out of the smashed car. I had reddened my hands which were bruised by the effort I had just made, as well as being stained with dry blood. I laid Maggie down on the hillside and fell beside her.
"Are... are you all right?" I asked them, my voice dissipating in the vacuum.
"My leg...my leg...is broken" Kendra said, her body in shock, and unable to keep up with her panting breath.
"Shit. What the hell was that?" Elisa asked, standing up, her black pants torn everywhere, the blood slipping through the holes, "My head feels like it's about to burst."
"Take care of Kendra. I'll see if I can wake Maggie up." I told her, still not knowing what happened.
"Do you hear that?" Elisa asked me as she confirmed that Kendra's leg was broken, "A sound coming from there." and looked behind the flames that were ravaging the car.
"I don't hear anything. My ears are still ringing."
I slapped Maggie's cheeks waiting for her to wake up, for her green eyes to become a beacon of our hope one last time.
It wasn't enough to wake her up. I kissed her and started mouth-to-mouth breathing. I had taken a first aid class at the academy but, truth be told, it was never one that I paid much attention to. But there I was, my lips detaching from her cold ones, my hands pressing down on her chest, longing for a response.
"James, James!" Elisa started screaming, "He's coming." She said.
She was looking behind the car one more time. This time I heard him and saw him as clear as the moon behind him. The robot was walking towards us, his shadow being heightened by fire, the metallic noise overlapping the flames and sparks that leaped to the ground. He tossed the car aside with one hand. The fire grazed the ground and at first dropped to a low volume, but within a few seconds the vehicle exploded, flipped over and exploded again until the seats were no more than two pieces of ash being exposed to oxygen. The metal melted in front of us, bending like it was mere plasticine that we could mold to our liking. I grabbed my pockets looking for my damn gun, but I didn't have it on me. I looked around and nothing. Oh, crap.
I was hoping I hadn't left it in the car. If that were the case, we wouldn't have much of a chance.
Elisa restrained his feet again. She tried to buy us a few seconds but this time he just raised his leg and shattered the ice. As he walked up a crane-like sound tinkered our ears. There was something about it that had been affected by the car's impact, a mechanism that had been broken or a program that had lost track of the original goal. It wasn't perfect, not like it was supposed to be. The closer he got, the longer it took him to lift and lower his leg, and every step he took required a few more seconds of effort.
"Maggie, wake up, come on." I said, and I took advantage of the extra seconds to wake her up.
Her eyes opened in fear and closed again. Breath and pulse became more vivid. They weren't just a sign of survival anymore. She opened them again, the iris filled with red veins and the color moving around as she opened her mouth, but nothing came out until her voice regained steam.
"What..." She started saying it but had to stop.
"You can do it. Take a deep breath."
"What happened?" She asked me, the voice weak, her eyes still sailing through the sky's dark cloak.
"The damn robot. We don't have much time, does the glove still work? I need a distraction to look for my gun. I know you're not in the best condition, but..."
I hadn't finished when she leaned over, putting all the weight on her opposite hand, and conjured up a growing flame that hovered over her hand, "I told my father. I'm going to get him. Whatever it takes. And I won't let them touch any of you."
As soon as the last word dissipated into the air, she threw the fireball, covered with heat around it, like a mini sun, against the robot's chest. He no longer had clothes, only bits of burnt fabric on his shoulder and pants only one spark away from burning to ashes.
I looked for my gun around me but found no sign of it. Under the light of a nearby dimmed streetlamp, I groped anything that shone in that sea of darkness. I ripped gr
ass, picked up a can of juice and almost tripped over one of the roadblocks. An object glowed in the lengthy pit that separated the metal from the slope. I tried to run to it, but my feet weighed more than usual. I dragged them there, lowering myself despite the pain in my whole body, and picked up my gun. I grabbed the leftover bullets I found in my pockets and went back to Maggie's side.
The robot was no longer clothed. He had no gender. In the place where there should be something there was only stretched skin without any mark or protuberance.
Two of the eight bullets slipped through my fingers and fell down the ravine. I didn't even hear them fall. The sound of the flames merging the metal with the asphalt had swallowed up the whole moment.
"What do we do?" Maggie asked.
"We fight. We don't have a choice, do we?" I said, fueling our last spark of hope, "He's no longer at 100%. We have to keep putting pressure on it. He'll fall."
Elisa's ice trapped him for seconds and cooled his controls as Maggie's fire incinerated them as we hoped that his guard weakened enough for the fusible to turn into lava.
I shot him and the bullet hit his carotid artery. There was no blood, no guts, no human semblance. Our bodies sweat like a day at the beach and a tingling anthill went up my leg. They were on their knees, their hands had already descended, red as their overloaded gloves and the ice melted with fire in an explosion of colors in which his body was the canvas. Another bullet. It pierced him through his right eye and came out through the back. The eyeball jumped to the ground and he stepped on it like it was nothing. All that was left was an empty hole containing a blinking blue light. On the floor there was a faint white mixture.
Kendra was still yelling. Although Elisa had improvised a bandage so that she could adjust her leg. Her right leg swelled and incarnated as well.
"Just a little more." I said to her, and I reshot him, this time hitting the middle of the chest.
The robot rested for seconds and the blinking eye ceased and reconnected. We were so close and so far away at the same time. He stepped on the roadblock and wrecked it. He walked near Elisa and closed his fingers around her neck. He squeezed them until her face turned white, life and color being removed from her body, while her eyes rolled over. In a final breath of life, she touched his chest and froze his whole body, but even that didn't stop him. Even though there was a layer of ice from the neck to the knees holding it, the fingers did not move away, nor did they lose the reddish color on the tip from so much pressure on her skin.
"Hey!" my vocal cords trembling until my voice was just another noise in the middle of the night's outbreak.
I got up, ignoring all the pain, my feet burning with suffering, almost as if they had restraints around them and they scraped on the skin at every step. It was all over the place. There were no plans in my head. There was no guarantee that something would work, but something had to do. I jumped on his back, wrapping my legs around his hips, one hand around his neck and the other with the gun pointed at his head.
"Shoot!" Maggie screamed, crawling across the grass and stretching her hand to reach Kendra's hand.
One gunshot. Two. Three. The rest of the bullets I had left. I fired from above to below, diagonally, horizontally. And I kept pulling the trigger even after I heard the gun click for not having bullets inside.
The robot's fingers slipped from Elisa's neck, one by one, until his hand hovered in the air, lifeless, just like the rest of his body. He leaned his neck and lowered his head. He remained like that; eyes, or what was left of them, on the ground and the body immune to the cold but standing as if it belonged to the landscape and there it would stand as a monument.
I got off of him and did mouth-to-mouth breathing on Elisa, who didn't take long to wake up.
"Am I alive? Did we make it?" Elisa asked, sticking her nails in the grass and pulling them close to her.
She tried to free herself, but she didn't have the strength.
"I guess so?" I answered her, still unsure.
I hit the robot's head and it didn't move. I shoved him and he settled on the floor.
We had made it! We were wounded, barely strong enough to walk, but alive. Ashen and Gordon were waiting for us and had no idea what was going on. We'd have a long talk about what happened as soon as we got to the base. Ashen would have to warn the bosses and other groups of what was coming.
"We're not far from the base. Can you two walks?" I asked Maggie and Elisa.
While they were answering me yes and struggling to get up, I bowed down beside Kendra and told her to wrap her hands around my neck so I could carry her until we called for help. I didn't think an ambulance was the best. Not after all the spectacle we'd given there.
Chapter XIV
We had to walk to the detour that was already so familiar to us and that led us to the house. But this time, something wasn't right. It reeked of smoke and rotten wood and the house shone in a warm fire that blasted it from the inside.
"It's on fire!" Maggie said, "What about Gordon and Ashen?"
"Hold her. I'll see what's going on. Don't go anywhere."
I raced to the end of the trail and stopped. The house had already been almost consumed and what was left crumbled before me. She seemed to have waited to be seen one last time before saying goodbye. I shouted Ashen and Gordon's name but got no answer. I got as close as I could to the house, looking for them in the wreckage away from the flames, or, at least, clothes disintegrating. I needed to know if they got away in time.
I was going around the house when I saw a bright beam among dozens of wrecks of rough burnt wood beams. As soon as I got closer, I realized what it was; the silver watch that Ashen used to have on his wrist and that, most of the time, he tried to hide. He had bloody eyebrows, a layer of ash on his face and superficial cuts on his cheeks. He had fainted and one of the beams was standing on his ribs. I dragged him from there with the spark of strength that I had and ended up sitting next to him, still with his eyes closed, watching the house disappear, ingested by the flames, accompanied only by a ringing sound that came from the orchard and by the fireflies that warmed up near the fire.
The wildfire also burned the hopes we had before we got there. No sign of Gordon and Ashen seemed to be hanging by a thread. I hadn't been trained for a situation like that. I knew I had to change my mindset, that I had to adapt, but when does the problem become easier in the blink of an eye?
"Is he alive?" Elisa asked, emerging in the middle of the night, only her silhouette popping out.
"His pulse is weak, but he's alive. I don't know about Gordon." I answered, the flames still burning and tearing down the remaining wood, "I'm glad you were with us."
"So, do I. I couldn't handle it if something happened to you and I wasn't there. But, hell, I've been trying to call one of my acquaintances who was at the council raid and so far, nothing. He's not picking up or answering messages."
"Maybe he's still there?" I asked her. Ashen's fingers slowly moved, one of them circling on the floor. I brought my ear close to his nose. Breathing remained solemn but more noticeable than before.
"It should have been over an hour ago. I'm worried." Elisa answered me as I pressed Ashen's chest, trying to expel the smoke from inside him.
She just stood there watching me, the blurred makeup all over her face. Her eyes hid behind the black that surrounded them and her cheeks glistened under the fire.
It took a while but Ashen coughed up, a hoarseness in his voice due to his lungs that were probably filled with smoke, and then he spat on the floor.
"Calm down, calm down. It's okay. It's OK. You're safe." I told him when I saw him trying to get up, trying to close his fist even though he couldn't do it.
"They took... They took Gordon." He told me, almost without the strength to speak, "A human robot. I couldn't do anything."
"Don't speak Ashen. Rest. We have time for this later."
I didn't tell him we had dealt with one too. I could do it when he got better enough to call for h
elp. I didn't want to be the one to do it, to tell someone on his cell phone that we needed help. A gasp coming from the trail that led us there sharpened our senses. We thought somehow the robot had come back to finish us off, to get his revenge. Elisa raised her arm at a 45-degree angle, as high as she could, and pointed to where the sound came from.
"It's us. Help me." Maggie said, after carrying Kendra over there through the muddy ground.
I hadn't noticed on the way there, but their clothes were torn, stained with grass and dirt. Even Kendra's white clothes seemed to have been attacked by a bear.
I got up and hurried to them, helping Maggie carry Kendra and placing her on the ground next to Ashen.
"Lipa called." Maggie said, "Elisa, the attack on the council..."
"What happened? Just tell me. Say it now. Don't just stand there." Elisa answered her, raising her voice and punching the ground.
"I'm sorry... She wanted to know if we were still alive. I don't think anybody survived to tell a story."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Lipa said it was a decoy. The whole council and whoever were attacking them were wiped out. There's no one left. I'm sorry."
"Shit. Damn it. I had friends there. It had to be what the albino was talking to your father about. I knew he had crazy ideas and wanted more than he had, but I never thought he would dare to do it. No one's ever tried to do it out of fear of the consequences. Just because they killed their leader doesn't mean that all the assassins who were under someone's orders will join the ones who survived. Loyalty is valued. Other leaders will emerge but will not have the same strength and support. It'll be anarchy until new bosses are established, and that takes years. The albino will be able to control the entire black market until then."
"Is that what he wants? Only Lenetius weapons on the market?" I asked. We were brainstorming, exchanging ideas and possibilities. But, the truth was probably uglier than that.