by Isaac Nasri
“Latin America?”
The engagement gets interrupted by a commotion. Eva turns her head to a JOA operative brandishing his weapon at one of the residents with a pendant, and he staggers. A mother among the group grabs hold of her son and steps back to the contractor’s approach. Prowlers growl at the humans. The group hollers at their armed Virtual attackers in Spanish.
Well, here they are.
“God will come for you!” the short man with the pendant swears, pointing a finger at her. She hears Hai grunt. Eva crosses her arms, rolling her eyes at the recrimination. “¡Monstruo!”
“Think you can stop me with nothing?” Eva declares proudly. She raises her head. “We’ve carried your community’s burdens long enough!”
Execute.
The covert command signals to the first Prowler on standby, and the jaguar wags its tail. The short man drops his mouth when the drone lunges at his belly. The members scram but are caught swiftly by the PMCs gunfire. Plasma bolts past the mother’s throat. Her attention is diverted by a looming atlas in her view. Crimson flares radiate at the blackened regions across the continents and islands. Eva strokes her pierced earlobe, amused by what she’s seeing.
The rest’s self-explanatory,” Hai says. He nods. “Eight hundred million more lives till we succeed.”
She sighs. “I don’t care to control this world.”
Hai looks at his superior temporarily and smiles gently. Eva rests a hand on his shoulder, with a few minutes passing, and the gang of hosts leaves a half-naked corpse bleeding in his mutilation. She catches many of her agents, heavily equipped, gathering gradually from the other sides of the intersection. Voices break about.
They must be ready.
Just when Eva ponders about Felix’s whereabouts, she and Hai grimace to a screech. Eva lets her hand off Hai, looking upward to Felix gliding downward. He croaks, once landing on the owner’s arm.
“There you are,” she says, nearing the falcon. It’s been a few hours since she last saw him. The sight of him alleviated her worries.
KAK-KAK-KAK-KAK.
Eva grimaces.
“Seems he has news to share,” Hai translates.
“Like what?”
Hai scratches his dark, unkempt hair. “Seems like your enemy Salazar survived.” He catches Eva’s expression crack, but Hai continues, “She’s weak enough. Our drone’s caught her driving to her family’s place around the Rock Creek area.”
Eva glosses at the bandages still intact on her forearm, and she strokes her finger at the fabric. A moment of clarity rushes in. She found it challenging to be unsettled, much less disappointed. Soriana had little time to last with the damage inflicted.
She looks up to the number of agents burgeoning in the streets, following with the throng of hosts alongside them. The footsteps of bloodied goliaths thump on the concrete. Hai signals her, and Eva nods. The two race to their individual motor vehicles until a soldier calls her name.
“Moreci!” an almond-bearded agent alarms. “That’s all of them.”
He steps two feet away from the eight hosts until he points to a towering host to his left. Blood smears their shredded shirts, and their skins glaze chillingly. Their hollow eyes lock in place as they stood. Eva’s gaze sparks. Her subordinate continues, “He’s been collecting a number of useful hosts on his end, Moreci. Thankfully I was lucky to find him.”
Eva pulls aside a hair streak of hers, rising and gazing closely at the fairly built Virtual. He stood feet above her and an inch over Hai. The host looked somewhere in his early thirties judging by his face, in contrary to Eva who was in the middle of that range. The moist lingers on his almond skin, but his striking features stood out among the other cyborgs, piquing her curiosity. The host’s hazel eyes sweep over the damaged landscape like a beast roaming the woods for its intruders. Scars lacerate on his tightly pallid shirt and dark pants, giving visibility to his blood tainted bionic leg and arm. A white fire mark emblazons on the rear of his right cybernetic palm. Her interface rings. Eva reminiscences about her presence with Soriana in the air base and the former laying eyes on an ex-FBI agent with former dreads locked in a ponytail. Then the two identities synergize into one mirror.
“I owe him,” she hears Soriana’s voice say. “He’s been a notable resident of mine studying abroad in Cancun, and we happened to just see each other at the bridge after a decade pass.”
So this is the Troy she spoke highly of, Eva ponders. As those words repeated like a bass into her mind, the Virtual scans her infected agent once more. A pistol plants in his possession.
Hello.
Eva’s greeting travels like a channel wave, and she touches his shoulder. Troy cocks his head gingerly until his gaze falls on her. His chest heaves, but not one flinch. Despite the little knowledge she has of this host, Eva cannot renounce that he’s been prey to the regulator’s perfidy. It was a shame it had to be like this. Like every one of her hosts, he will be liberated.
Glancing at the bearded subordinate another time, Eva motions back to her hover-bike and an astonishing revelation comes to mind. Soriana was a shell ready to diminish. But as broken as Soriana maybe, did Eva want her to keep agonizing in this misery? After all, she may enjoy a chance of company before it ends.
“Network’s ready,” Hai informs into Eva’s NI. He activates his vehicle, and it gyrates. “All allies worldwide.”
Setting her feet in place, Eva interfaces with the vehicle’s ignition and the engine growls gracefully. The hover-bike ascends from the ground, followed by a blue storm whipping on the surface, and she advances.
Felix glides from Hai’s reach and ascends with a valorous screech. Meanwhile, Eva can hear the myriad of steps storming behind her as she races. Her neural interface clicks simultaneously.
“Virtuals and Martials standing in this nation and beyond,” she declares into the network. Eva’s hands curl on the vehicle’s throttle bar, and her hair whips to the swift motion. Her voice booms like an incensed spirit declaring war from above.
“Today’s a special moment in our lives. For too long, we’ve been pawns to our regulator’s destructive purposes. We’re the forsaken majority. Abandoned by those—those who we all thought had our best interests.”
Eva rushes past olive-skinned humans huddling among themselves and adjoined to doors of what seemed to be a destroyed high school. A teen, somewhere around eighteen, crawls away in fear from the line of cyborgs standing like static trees with guns hooked at hand. She struggles to take her small eyes off the threat that stood. The minute the child cries in her Spanish dialect collides with the moment of Eva signaling to her allies. Without a glance, the cyborgs aim their fletcher guns, firing darts that plant preciously at the wailing victim’s skins. The needles ignite, preceding the combustions and organs erupting. Eva’s nose tickles to the fire powder.
A shadow looms above the sky, welcoming the metropolitan area with a thunderous ball plummeting onto a capacious mall several feet behind the abandoned institution. Ash engulfs the crumbling building. Civilians careen many feet from the apartment balconies to her left. A host, standing above the edifice’s upper floor, dangles a resident by the throat before she lets loose. A detonation shreds the human in seconds before his bones can hit the pavement.
“Humans had centuries—decades to make a difference,” Eva continues. Her heart starts to race as she trails the dismantled 16th Street, leaving Columbia Heights. “Chances to STABILIZE the world! But they gratify themselves in power. Tear each other down!”
On a bridge, Felix draws his talons on a human pedestrian, flailing and fleeing until his pants sag, forcing him to trip in the middle of the street and yelp. The man pulls away from his red hoodie and scrams helplessly under his sagging pants. Eva’s vision reddens to this nauseating presence.
“Now they hide behind virtue signals, false icons, and doctrines to control us.” Eva positions the pores on her cybernetic hand. Her expression sours. “Indoctrinate their masses against us.”
“STOP!” the young man pleas. He raises his hands up. “I just want to go—”
He howls to a slash passing through the rear of his hairy thigh. The hooded human staggers and gets met by a star slicing a chunk of his tongue. Hai gestures and snatches the shuriken between his fingers.
Scorching the body underneath her bike’s jet, Eva announces, “No. NO. Now they’re hearing us! The truth’s out! The power’s in your hands! Rise and destroy the last of their societies. KILL IT. Undo the world that’s been tainted by their rigged cultures. Political agendas!! Perverted affairs! Anything in their hands!”
Her speed rises on the vertical street, and feet behind her follow in unison. Jets storm above the stampede. Their shadows over watch Eva and the army like eagles checking their territory. The cyborg grimaces to a woman’s cry, and she nears the sight of three hosts inside a gated tennis court yanking at the limbs of a naked woman.
“Solace’s all I demand.”
With one turn of her head, Eva witnesses flesh spill in the court as the cyborgs peel the victim apart. Roof tiles tumble from the gamut of dilapidated houses. Mutilated bodies swing on top of the light poles. Several minutes pass, and she inhales the barren air. She could smell the nascent spark of the Violet Gardens forming. The intoxicating aroma rushes in. Eva was like a sailor carrying the living and the dead behind her shoulders to escape the sinking realm. Soon this big score will end, and every one of these fallen cyborgs and Martials claimed will get a taste of fresh air in this new world.
Her relishing cuts when Hai alerts, “Multiple targets. Felix senses her down left below the bridge!”
Soon as he says this, Felix croaks loudly. Murmurs linger. Eva’s mask conceals her upon spotting notifications on her vision. She hits the brakes on her hover-bike, surrounded by a throng of scouts gathering in the middle of the bridge’s intersection. Their eyes draw on the army, and they kneel timidly. The street rumbles. One of the human officers rushes in front of the unarmed survivors, threatening the ninja with her stinger. Lumps contaminate her brownish skin. Soon second thoughts rush in, and she looks at both sides of the Virtual force, gulping.
Eva exploits the chance with the quick draw of her Neo-Oni. Hell unleashes as she aims the blade at the wandering people’s direction. Figures race past her in vast numbers and she doesn’t move an inch. The human’s attempts to flee are thwarted by the speed of her cyborgs charging their way. The brazen officer falls prey at the hands of a Gorillax, and she glimpses at Eva weakly one last time before her eyes pop to the goliath’s squeeze.
How pathetic.
“Send over the location spot to him!” Eva notifies Hai. A heavy shadow zooms pass her right.
Hai’s eye ticks upon making contact with Troy until he nods. As the rampage ensues, the infected cyborg flexes his fingers, transitioning his view on the left side of the intersection’s slope leading to Military Road. Eva smiles as Troy trudges down the road with ease, taking no mind to the fellow hosts and PMCs invading the upper and lower bridge area. Fire accumulates, overshadowing the last of his presence.
“Ahīdi!” a man wails in the background. “Ahidi!”
The screams and gun clicks dance in Eva’s eyes like a clan of butterflies gliding above the grassy plains. Humans overestimated themselves that it seemed jovial. Still intact on her hover-bike, she can lavish the turmoil without laying a finger, knowing full well that nothing can be done to reverse what’s done.
Chapter 32
One of the seven refugees rushes with a bar at hand, planting it over the senior house’s entrance. Dense layers protect the windows, blocking whatever sunlight giving illumination inside the lounge. On the ground, Soriana rests her back against the wall, panting to the sweat snaking on her skin. The water jiggles, and it warms inside the plastic bottle as she maintains a hold. She was only eight minutes away from her family’s place at 32nd Street, but the Mustang she stole didn’t make it far with the life left, forcing her to walk till the strain reached its peak. This place was her sanctuary, for now.
“It’s locked properly enough?” a lady refugee asks. Her long soft hair, as silver as the charcoal scales on a dragon’s body, rests still on the back of her white blouse.
The refugee shifts the door before gesturing to her with thumbs up. Displaced residents rest their rear on the carpet, rocking themselves and heaving. The same couldn’t be said for the journalist intact on his wheelchair, motioning the camera in his direction. His legs shake as he mutters indistinctly. Soriana’s gaze trails at the dust rushing its way from the inactive fireplace, settling in mid-air like snowflakes. Her phone attaches to the plug below the shelf, and Soriana’s heart thumps. Reaching for it, she lowers the volume as she begins to replay the audio she sent Moses four minutes during her arrival here.
To Gran Moises:
“Si me pilla todavía por ahí, ahora estoy en el lugar de Atención domiciliaria. No en mi mejor momento para alcanzar.”
The failed attempts in connecting a line delivered a twist in her gut, and this option alone was all she had to bring a signal to her family. It was a god sent to Soriana that the audio reached. The same applied to her previous message to Wayne, albeit the absence of her secondary dialect. The basement’s hideout at home never stood violated when chaos stepped foot, but her hopes can only last this long as she lingers here in this state. Nowhere and no one in the neighborhood is safe from the mutiny.
“Keep taking these,” the gray haired refugee advises the attenuated operative. She beckons a hand to her lips.
The woman’s geniality soothes the operative like a humid gust in a field. Soriana glimpses at the two palliatives offered on the ground. She takes and plucks one in her mouth before imbibing the water, swallowing the pill. Her veins throb, and she whistles to the pain surging from the gash visible on her abdomen. Upon gulping, her throat cools to an alleviating sensation streaming in her blood. She knew none of these refugee’s names, but Soriana couldn’t be any more comfortable in their haven. Despite her failures, she didn’t seem so thoroughly hopeless in the midst of this turmoil.
“Live here in Northwest,” the journalist says nervously. His fair skin flushes as he steadies the camera. “Day two of cyber-attack. I’ll be ok—”
“Enough,” the lady interrupts politely. She waves her hand dismissively. “We have an agent struggling here. There’s been enough people dead in this city.”
Soriana’s lips twist to a dull smile. Swallowing, she says, “Thanks to all of you.”
Some of the refugees gloss at her, responding with a grunt. The lady turns her head, returning the appreciation with a reassuring nod. The sullenness inside shatters as a wave of roars bellow like a thunderstorm. Frowning, Soriana chokes as the water enters the wrong pipe, and she looks in both directions to her surroundings.
That noise isn’t normal.
Refugees exchange glances among themselves, uncertain of what to make of this anomaly until the roar picks bass. Soriana and the others rise at once, with the exception of the journalist, who conceals the camera right away. Soriana staggers back until she presses her hand against the fire chamber. Her head spins at a clockwise angle, and she struggles to conceal her mounting apprehension. She wasn’t in any way ready for this. Not by a mark.
The commotion diminishes. Nevertheless, the silence still held the eight humans on their toes. Soriana holds her glance at the ceiling as if wishing for something arcane to rein and sweep the madness plaguing the town. The surface cracks, dropping forth a tiny brick that’s followed by a jam at the door.
She shoots her eyes at the entrance. Her ears ring. Soriana spots a refugee stalk carefully to the locked door. He shares glances with the other humans before nearing his hands on the bar. All efforts for inspection get terminated by the second impact that hurls the man backward.
A tide of fire whips, and she recoils. Soriana’s eyes mount to the refugee howling to a scorching hand bending his forearm until a crimson laser bolts into his mouth. The jarrin
g sound gnaws her eardrums, and she swears.
Terror sweeps in as the Virtual trudges over the corpse. Soriana calls out her name upon seeing the lady rush and shield her own body with a chair. In one second, the cyborg claims her life with plasma that arrows past her breast. Her body hits the ground. The journalist pushes his wheelchair back, hoping to scurry, but he’s no exception as his wheelchair spins to a plasma fire. A hole sizzles at the upper portion of his pink shirt, and blood trickles from the journalist’s nostrils.
Twisting her tongue, Soriana jerks back. Grunts and flashes overwhelm the space. Her blood pressure heightens to the bodies dropping simultaneously as they fail to flee. A refugee’s corpse can be heard stumbling against the shelf, and glass breaks. The cacophony of the gunfire rises, forcing her to look down at a shrieking man slumped on the ground. He crawls toward her, arching a hand out as his calf drenches in blood. That is, until he gulps to a direct energy beam zapping into his scalp and the crimson blade protrudes to his temple.
The cyborg’s presence becomes more visible as he withdraws the pistol’s muzzle. Steam hisses from the cooling weapon at hand. Soriana sets a hand to her mouth, examining her gaze upward at the elevated killer standing. Ice consolidates her heart as she locks eyes with a face all too unexpected. Scratches lacerate his salient black pants. Fireflies dance from the surface of his bionic limb and arm. His natural hair, a simple short cut, fizzles. Deep within the void seething in his hazel eyes and bruises on his almond skin, this was someone all too familiar to be undeniable. A semi-Virtual she wouldn’t ever imagine executing. This could not be fathomable.
I don’t want to believe this! I can’t believe what they…
“TROY!” Soriana cries out. Her voice breaks as she steps back. Trepidation overruns her awareness. Numb, the infected Virtual looms, and the human’s eyes water. “TROY!! NO!!”