Flesh Blood Steel

by David Jones

  FLESH BLOOD STEEL

  Cybrid Cycle, Volume 1

  David Alan Jones

  Published by David Alan Jones, 2019.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  FLESH BLOOD STEEL

  First edition. February 1, 2019.

  Copyright © 2019 David Alan Jones.

  Written by David Alan Jones.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 | Clear

  Chapter 2 | Reboot

  Chapter 3 | Save

  Chapter 4 | Recover

  Chapter 5 | Link

  Chapter 6 | Scan

  Chapter 7 | Choose

  Chapter 8 | Buried

  Chapter 9 | Escape

  Chapter 10 | Confirmation

  Chapter 11 | Error

  Chapter 12 | Review

  Chapter 13 | Revelation

  Chapter 14 | Escape

  Chapter 15 | Entrance

  Chapter 16 | Past Progression

  Chapter 17 | Transport

  Chapter 18 | Diverge

  Chapter 19 | Race

  Chapter 20 | Watch

  Chapter 21 | Infiltrate

  Chapter 22 | Harris

  Chapter 23 | Signal

  Epilogue

  To Grace,

  Thanks for reading quickly, dear.

  Chapter 1

  Clear

  Jake Harris rose early on his mom’s birthday, long before school, even before the sun came up, just so he could make her favorite breakfast: two eggs over easy, fried hash browns, and two pieces of toast with extra butter. He really slathered it on.

  Hiro Protagonist, their retriever-shepherd mix, clicked down the stairs to whine at Jake’s side.

  “You want sausage, but you know you don’t smell any,” Jake said as he delicately flipped an egg. It was crucial he keep the yolks intact. Mom was always so disappointed when she couldn’t break them on her toast.

  Hiro wagged his tail and pressed his head against Jake’s thigh.

  “So you think sounding pitiful and giving me those sad eyes will get you some sausage, is that it?”

  Hiro lowered his nose, eyes turned up, and wagged his tail. Come on, boss, please?

  It wasn’t good for Hiro’s heart, but Jake figured why not give the old guy a treat? Twelve years was practically an octogenarian for a dog. So what if he got some plaque buildup in his arteries? He might as well get a little pleasure out of life.

  Jake pulled a package of precooked sausage from the freezer and dumped its contents into a warming pan to thaw. “Don’t touch,” he told Hiro. “It’s got to cook.”

  Hiro sat obediently on his haunches to watch the skillet, tail twitching merrily.

  Jake carried his mom’s breakfast up the stairs on a tray with a single rose in a fluted vase and a birthday card next it.

  “Mom, birthday breakfast. Wake up,” Jake said, knocking on her door with his foot.

  His mom mumbled something Jake couldn’t make out.

  “Come on, your runny eggs are getting cold. They’re already the consistency of snot. They might as well be warm.”

  “Okay, okay. Come in,” his mom said.

  Jake pushed open the door. “Can I flip on the light?”

  His mom groaned, but said, “Go ahead.” She was sitting up in bed, a darker shadow among dark shadows.

  Jake toggled the switch and the four bulbs in his mom’s bedroom fan snapped on.

  “Ow,” she said, covering her eyes, “I swear you do this thing earlier every year. What is it, three AM?”

  “5:20,” Jake said. “And I’m actually five whole minutes later than last year, because I remembered you complaining.”

  “Oh, five minutes? Well that makes all the difference in the world.”

  Jake’s mom looked worn out, and it wasn’t just the early hour showing on her face. She had taken a second job over the summer: a shift serving tables at Red Lobster. She said she did it to make extra spending money, but Jake knew that was a lie. She was saving up for his college. He had seen the deposit slips on her desk in the living room—a tax-sheltered vehicle for college savings.

  He got the tray down in front of her, but put a finger on the card when his mom reached for it.

  “What?” she asked.

  Jake had gone round and round in his head about this scenario. He had worked out how to approach it several different ways. There was the flippant, hey-we’re-doing-this speech. The please-oh-please let me do this speech. And finally the what’s-the-big deal speech. Each had its merits. But in the end, considering that he was now sixteen, and unchallenged as the single man of the family, he had opted for the last approach.

  Failing that, he would beg.

  Jake opened the card and handed his mom the first of three gift certificates inside. It was a one-hour massage followed by a complete mani-pedi at Deidre’s, the best spa in town. Of course Lucas Falls, South Carolina wasn’t exactly a sprawling metropolis, which meant Deidre’s was also the only spa in town. But a couple of girls at school had assured him it was fabulous.

  “Sweetie,” his mom said, “this is expensive. You don’t need to be spending your money on me like this.”

  “On the woman who gave birth to me, fed me, made sure I didn’t play in the street too often? And on her birthday? I’m thinking I should have spent more. Oh, wait, I did.”

  Jake handed her the second gift certificate.

  “Giovani’s Ice Cream?” She beamed at Jake.

  “I’m getting a wedding cake shake. You get whatever you like. Sky’s the limit . . . up to five dollars.”

  “I might just have to add a few bucks to that, get the Homewrecker Sundae.”

  “If you’re going in, go big, right?”

  She grinned. A very good sign.

  Jake whipped out the last certificate. This one cost the least, but meant the most.

  He had drawn it by hand: a detailed landscape in charcoal featuring a forest path overlooking a placid lake. Though he hadn’t colored it, he had managed to depict the early drifts of fallen leaves strewn about the path. The caption above it read: One Leisure Hike with Only Son.

  The scene Jake had captured was anything but arbitrary. For the first seven years of his life, his dad had taken them both to that spot on Mom’s birthday. He had proposed to her under the tree nearest the lake, making it their place.

  “It’s gorgeous,” his mom said. “You made me cry, you brat.” She swatted him with the edge of her comforter.

  “Mission accomplished. Now, I’m going to get a shower and dress. You call work and we can be at Diedre’s right when they open at eight.”

  He thought he did a pretty good job at keeping his face nonchalant. He turned for the door—not too fast, not too slow—and had just put his hand on the knob when his mom said, “You know you’re not playing hooky today, right? And neither am I. These eggs are scrumptious, by the way.”

  “Sure we are. It’s one day—your birthday. You shouldn’t squander it slaving away at the stupid call center. And I happen to know that you haven’t taken one personal day since October.”

  “You keeping tabs on me, hotshot?”

  “That’s my job.”

  “No, that’s my job on you. And, oh by the way, it isn’t your birthday.”

  “So?”

  “So how do you work out that you get the day off too?”

  “All part of the tour guide’s job,” Jake said, grinning. “It’s just the sort of sacrifice I’m willing to make for my beloved mother.”

  “And I need a tour guide at the spa, why?”

  “Tour guide, sounding board, c
all me what you like, but without me there, how are you going to gauge the experience? Let’s face it Mom, you’re not always the most discerning of customers when it comes to luxury services. Remember that time you got your hair done at Wal-Mart and the lady left a skunk stripe down the center of your head?”

  “It wasn’t that bad. And how can I forget when my sounding board keeps reminding me?”

  “Who told you that you had to complain and get it fixed?”

  His mom took a bite of eggs, toast, and hash brown, her eyes narrowed to slits, though there was definitely mirth there.

  He was winning her over.

  “So, you think I don’t know how to have a good time?” she asked.

  “No. I don’t think you know a good time when you see it. It’s not a moral failing. Maybe it’s just part of being a mom—you get some kind of lame hormone when you’re pregnant. Or maybe your cool hormones pass to the kid, so that’s why you need me.”

  Jake’s mom cocked her head. “Is that a school bus I hear?”

  “If you take me, we can do everything today—one big holiday just for you. I figure massage first, the nails, and then ice cream. Then we can walk it all off at the lake.”

  “You’re really serious?”

  “I’ll call work for you—I’ll lay it on real thick like you’ve got mono or something.”

  “You will not!” she said, but she was smiling.

  Jake lowered his chin, raised his eyes, pulling a Hiro Protaganist on her.

  She sighed. “Bring me my phone.”

  JAKE DROVE HIS MOM’S Civic through the early morning mists. She had plugged her phone into the stereo, and they were rocking out to AC/DC.

  He had his window open two finger widths. Cool morning air tousled his hair. It felt like a cold laser beam spearing his temple.

  Mom had her window open all the way. Her bare arm, pebbled with gooseflesh, waved up and down in the air currents. Her favorite white sunglasses had flattened out a spot in her otherwise bushy hair. She smiled, looking healthier and more uninhibited than Jake had seen her in a long while.

  “We should stop by the book store on the way out to the lake,” she said.

  “Okay. There’s a new Robert J. Sawyer out. I’ve been meaning to get it.”

  They reached the intersection of Wilcher and Oliver, three and a half miles from their house. Jake pulled to a stop. Fog surrounded them like a gauzy, white cocoon. The sun, an indistinct, ineffectual ball hanging overhead, did little to penetrate the stuff.

  No other cars sat at the four-way stop. Somewhere, far off in the fog, came the sound of an engine chugging their way. Jake couldn’t tell its direction.

  His mom lowered the stereo’s volume. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something.”

  “If this is the talk then save it. We had that four years ago.”

  “This isn’t the talk, but it is a talk.” She drew her lips back from her teeth like someone about to rip off a band aid. “I’ve been thinking lately that I might start dating again.”

  “Oh.” Jake stared out the front window at the swirls of fog.

  “Actually, it’s someone you know.” His mom sounded so desperate, so earnest. “You remember your dad’s old partner, Peter Rudd? He called up the other day just to reminisce a bit and, well, he ended up asking me to dinner. It might not be anything. Maybe he just wants to chat about your dad. But it got me thinking, you know? I’d like to see what’s out there for me.”

  Jake accelerated a little faster than he meant to. The Civic’s front tires chirped before catching purchase, and the car darted forward.

  “How do you feel about that?” She watched him, her eyes darting back and forth across his face.

  Jake looked at his mother, fully prepared to lie—to tell her it was totally cool and about time. He doubted he would ever want a step-father, but they could burn that hurdle when they came to it.

  He never got the chance. His gaze lit upon a truck with the word MACK emblazoned on its chromed grill barreling toward them out of the murk. Jake had time enough to think how small—silly even—its headlights looked in its oversized face before it slammed into the Civic.

  Chapter 2

  Reboot

  Jake awoke coughing. Smoke clogged his lungs and wrenched tears from his eyes. He could hear the crackling snap-hiss of flames somewhere nearby, but he couldn’t see them.

  Twisted unnaturally and tilted so that it lay mostly on the driver’s side, the car had folded in on Jake like a crushed banana leaf. His legs were pinned beneath its dashboard. They felt okay—he could wiggle them without pain—but they were stuck fast.

  Jake too had gotten twisted up. His head hung out the driver’s side window. He tried to lift it, but couldn’t move. A bolt of fear sizzled through his guts. Was he paralyzed?

  “Mom?” His voice sounded raw from the smoke.

  No answer.

  The front windscreen bore a spiderweb of cracks, but it hadn’t shattered. With his head stuck at this odd angle, Jake could just make out several figures moving around outside in a haze of wafting smoke. They appeared in no hurry to aid him. Maybe they had rescued his mom, but left him because his legs were trapped.

  Maybe not.

  “Help!” He tried to scream the word, but it came out weak, impotent.

  The truck had smashed into the passenger’s side, his mom’s side, but Jake couldn’t raise his head high enough check her seat. But he could smell burning hair, which was bad. Worse, he could smell something else, something far sweeter than hair. It reminded him of frying bacon.

  Jake shoved that thought away, though he couldn’t so easily erase the panic rising in his chest. He had to get up and get free if he had any hope of helping his mother.

  He reached above his head in an effort to pull himself out of the driver’s seat, but froze when his arm came into view. He wore a green jacket he had never seen before, but that hardly registered through the alarm bells suddenly going off in his head. Flames had eaten through the sleeve’s synthetic fibers in several spots, leaving behind melted lumps. But they had also eaten through Jake’s arm. The blackened flesh looked like burnt paper. He could see bones gleaming in the charred mess. He stared at them, unable to think.

  A trickle of something like blood, boiled blood perhaps, seeped from the wound. It was purple and viscous. It coated the bones and some type of connective tissue that ran between them. But now that he was looking at them, and this might have been the shock talking, Jake wondered if these were bones after all. They were steel blue, obviously made of some sort of metal. Titanium maybe? Had something from the truck’s grill embedded itself in Jake’s arm during the collision?

  Stranger still, Jake felt no pain. None. If he couldn’t see it, he would think his arm whole and healthy. His hand, which was mercifully undamaged, was likewise unaffected by the injury. Jake waggled his fingers. They moved like normal, but the action caused a clicking noise in his wrist that made his skin crawl.

  “Oh, God,” Jake said. “I’m in shock.” His entire body trembled, whether from fear or injury, he couldn’t say.

  “That’s right,” said a female voice somewhere outside his field of view.

  Jake jumped. “Who’s there?”

  “My name’s Anya, remember? I’m trying to help, but you’ve got to stay still, okay?”

  “Remember what?” Jake screwed his eyes as far to one side as he could manage, but saw only a snippet of blue sky and blowing smoke.

  “You’re a little confused right now, that’s all. It’s fine if you don’t remember us talking. Just stay still.”

  “The car’s on fire. My mom’s in here. You’ve got to get her out, okay? Anya? Get her out first, alright?”

  “That is seriously creepy,” said a male voice.

  “Who’s that? Who’s with you?” Someone touched the top of Jake’s head and he jerked a second time. It felt like they were brushing his hair. It wasn’t painful, just weird, and out of place. Why would someone brush h
is hair when his arm was burned through?

  The girl, Anya, made a shushing noise. “Just a friend. He’s here to help too.”

  “What are you doing to my head?” Jake asked.

  “You’re stuck. I’m trying to get you free. Relax. I’m almost done.”

  “My mom. Can you check on her, please? Or have your friend do it.”

  “What’s your name,” Anya asked.

  “Jake.”

  “It’s not Harris?”

  “That’s my last name. Do I know you?”

  No answer. Whatever or whoever had been touching Jake’s head stopped. Strange as it had felt, its absence was worse.

  “You didn’t leave us did you?” Panic filled Jake’s voice. “You’re still there, right? Please, we need help.”

  “We’re still here,” Anya said. “We’re going to right the car. It’s our best chance of getting you out. Things are going to shake a bit, but it shouldn’t hurt you. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Anya muttered something he couldn’t make out then counted to three. Several people grunted in unison, and the car tilted then slammed down hard. Anya was right, it didn’t hurt at all.

  “Okay, my friend Kristine is going to pry the car apart so we can get you out,” Anya said. “We’re going to make some noise. Just ignore it.”

  Metal scraped across metal in a long, gut-tightening whine that made Jake wince. After that came a series of staccato popping sounds followed by the distinctive crash and tinkle of a window breaking. Tiny shards rained down on Jake’s head.

  A woman cursed then said, “His legs are pinned. Give me a sec.”

  She wormed past him, pressing half her body into the car through the shattered window, her back to him. In the space of three seconds she had a spade-headed claw wedged between Jake’s seat and the dash next to his legs. She thumbed a trigger on the device. It coughed four times, enlarging the gap until Jake’s legs came free. Then she slid out of the car.

  Jake had expected to feel pins and needles as the blood rushed back into his legs. Instead, he felt exactly zero from either of them. He kicked them about, wiggled his toes or at least thought he wiggled them since he couldn’t see them, and they moved just fine. But he could have sawed one off for all the sensation he got back.