Flesh Blood Steel

by David Jones

  By the sound of things, Oliver and Cooper had moved into one of the cells. They were out of the team’s firing line. Assuming the team had a smart commander, he would split them, two for Oliver and two for Harris.

  He did.

  Two men rounded the doorway, rifles readied. The first crouched at sight of Harris, allowing his partner to aim over his head.

  The girl, Tia, screamed, which was a nice distraction.

  “Do not move,” shouted the lead man.

  Harris lifted his hands, slowly, and said nothing. Abasi made zero noise behind him, but she was smart, she could read the near-imperceptible signals Harris sent her: BE READY.

  “On your knees. Hands on your head,” said the guy still on his feet.

  Two more men passed the doorway, rifles down, the stocks tucked hard against their shoulders. Harris let them disappear from view. Then he made his move.

  Homo sapiens gained a lot when natural selection drove them to stand upright. Freed upper limbs for one thing, not to mention a raised sight-line, and the ability to lope across their native plains with a gait unmatched by other primates. But they lost some things in that million-year bargain as well. Protection of the internal organs for one thing. Standing upright exposes the soft underbelly, negating the ribs’ primary function. Balance for another. No matter how you crunch it, four feet give better balance than two. Investing all your body’s balance in the hips is a dangerous business. As soon as an enemy your weight or heavier strikes that key area, your two puny balance points become vulnerable.

  The man in the lead started forward, careful to keep his distance from Harris, circling toward the room’s single cot. Before he had taken a full step, however, Harris sprang forward, keeping low.

  Angle was key. Harris positioned himself so that the second man had no clear firing lane—not without hitting his partner. Of course, in order to hit Harris, the guy would have needed cybrid reflexes anyway, which he lacked.

  Harris hooked the back of the lead man’s boot with one hand while driving an elbow into his pelvis just above the groin. Modern tactical gear generally covered the torso and extremities well with body armor, but not the hips. They were left free to allow for movement.

  Harris’s elbow struck bone with wrecking ball force. Something cracked inside and the man screamed. All stability lost, he dropped like a discarded marionette. Harris then dealt him a resounding punch to the face which put an end to both his screaming and his consciousness. He unfastened the strap that attached the guard’s rifle to his tac harness and wrenched it free from the man’s now-limp grasp.

  To his credit, the second man was fast for a non-cybrid. He was already sighting on Harris’s head, arms reflexively squeezing his own rifle tighter against his shoulder, preparing for the inevitable kick.

  Abasi barreled into him before he got the chance to fire. Her momentum drove the guy into the doorjamb. His breath forcefully left his lungs, driven out by Abasi’s shoulder. She arched back, lifting him. He had about a second to register what was coming before she slammed him head first into the floor behind her. Though his helmet likely dulled the impact, the strain on his neck was unavoidable. His head whipped to the side, eliciting from him an involuntary grunt of pain. He tried to spin away, but Abasi was too swift and too skilled to allow that. She scrambled around quick as a kite tail, got her legs positioned for an arm bar, and leaned back.

  The guard screamed. He tapped Abasi’s leg as if this were grappling class and he was submitting. But this was no class. This was battle.

  With a double CRACK-POP, the guy’s shoulder first dislocated, then snapped, ripping a second scream from his lips. Abasi drew back one booted foot and stomped the side of his head the way one might crush a cockroach.

  Lights out.

  While all this was going on, Harris had spun the rifle around to press it under his guard’s chin. He crouched that way for a long moment, finger on the trigger, staring at the semi-conscious man who was beginning to rouse, ready to execute him. But he didn’t.

  Never before had Harris hesitated to kill. He had no doubt this man would have taken his life had their roles been reversed. And yet something held him back, his finger bearing down on the trigger with about three-quarters of the pressure necessary to break its lock.

  The guy opened his eyes. He looked as surprised as Harris felt. “Please,” he said. “Please.”

  Harris punched him in the face hard enough to break the guard’s cheek bone. The guy lay inert. Still breathing, but out cold.

  Harris stood. Abasi, who had divested her guy of all weapons, pointed a .45 at his head.

  “Don’t.” Harris shook a hand at her.

  “Why not?” Abasi tilted her head to one side quizzically.

  “No reason to waste a round. He’s not going anywhere with that shoulder.” Again, Jake had no idea why leaving the guards alive mattered to him. And yet, it seemed imperative he avoid killing at all costs. Accustomed as he had become over the years to taking suggestions from his cybrid, it felt natural to accept the somewhat alien ideas associated with the guards. He knew these thoughts hadn’t originated with the computer in his brain, which should have made them suspect, and yet they felt so natural he could only assume they belonged to him. Perhaps part of an older memory he couldn’t quite dredge up? That would be odd considering his memory had been photographic since he was sixteen, but then again, he had woken up in this building with no idea how he had gotten here, so maybe a few stray thoughts were nothing to worry about. Besides, by the look of things, he had bigger concerns right now.

  Disappointment flashed across her expression, but Abasi nodded and slipped the handgun through her waistband so she could take up the guard’s machine gun.

  Harris turned to the young woman who still stood on the bed. “What’s going on here?”

  She was shaking, her face bewildered. “How should I know? You’re the one who said you’re saving me.”

  “Something’s wrong with my Spearcast,” Abasi said. “A minute ago, I wanted nothing more than to subdue you. It was imperative. But the instant you shut off my cast I forgot why.”

  Harris nodded. “Probably best if we leave them off for now.”

  The sounds of struggle brought his attention back to the hallway. He checked the action on his borrowed rifle, an M&P .300 Whisper—a solid shooter, though Harris preferred SIG over Smith and Wesson. He nodded once at Abasi. “You with me?”

  Abasi nodded back, her own newly acquired Whisper at her shoulder.

  Harris put his back to the door frame, and then darted his head into the hall and back too fast for anyone, even a fellow cybrid, to take a shot at him. In that brief instant he saw that the final two members of the tac team had keyed open another cell door. Two more cybrids, Phineas Knowles and Elmore King had joined the fight. They had Oliver trussed in a set of steel handcuffs while the tac guys covered her with rifles.

  “You’re trapped, Harris,” said a female voice from the opposite end of the hall.

  Harris recalled her face from the brief glimpse he had of her before the tac team attacked. He had never seen her before and yet she felt somehow familiar. The man who had been standing next to her, Moore, he knew well. He was leader of a Dissolution faction, the one Harris was supposed to take out in order to kill—

  Harris froze then twisted to look at the girl on the bed. She was not Anya Nesmith, but the resemblance was too close for coincidence. Memories flooded his mind. He had been on his way into the Bronx when his car signaled an incoming missile. It was too close to evade, too quick even for his enhanced reflexes to stop. An explosion, pain, and then nothing. Nothing until he awoke here, somehow on an errand to save the sister of a girl he had been ordered to kill.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  “Tia. Tia Nesmith.”

  And suddenly Harris’s columns of allies and enemies blurred. Who was who in this fight? He looked to Abasi. She gave him a reassuring nod, though she too looked confused, questioning
.

  “If something’s wrong with the Spearcast then that means Cymobius has been compromised,” Harris said, as much to himself as Abasi.

  Abasi cocked her ear toward the door. The other cybrids and the remaining tac guys were heading their way.

  Harris tapped his chest with three fingers, then pointed at the unconscious man at his feet with two.

  Abasi nodded her understanding.

  Harris unsheathed a knife from his guy’s belt, flung it into the hallway, and leapt after it. He heard Abasi following his lead, and smiled. An unguarded expression could distract a fellow cybrid almost as well as a flash grenade.

  Phineas had just reached the doorway when the knife whistled past his face. Harris saw the other cybrid dart a glance at it, register that it was no threat, and turn back just in time to see Harris roll to a crouch, rifle poised to fire.

  Despite its name, the Whisper was anything but quiet. Harris squeezed off a cacophonous burst that echoed through the hall, and he vaguely wondered who might hear it and what they might do. Not that it mattered all the much to him. He had a job to do, even if he didn’t fully understand the parameters.

  As Harris had planned, Phineas dodged sideways with plenty of time to avoid the spray of bullets which scored the wall next to him. He got a foot anchored on that wall, and launched himself at Harris only to receive a bone crushing kick from Abasi, whom he either hadn’t noticed or hadn’t had time to account for.

  The remaining tac guys scrambled forward, their movements well-coordinated. One squeezed off a round at Harris’s chest, but too late.

  Harris had seen him coming, accounted for his possible firing vantage, and leapt forward, keeping low. The move brought him within arm’s reach of the shooter. Harris sprayed the man’s legs with bullets, several of which reached flesh by the sounds of impact. The guy screamed, and dropped to the floor. Harris fired over him, putting three rounds through the gap where the second man’s Kevlar vest met his shoulder plate.

  Harris had only an instant to consider why he wasn’t killing these men. Both had used weapons against him, putting them squarely in the enemy category, and neither served any purpose he could fathom. In fact, they could cause problems should either of them rouse enough to fire again. And yet he balked at ending their lives.

  He was still considering this question when Cooper kicked him in the face. A shock of pain sizzled through his nose, his teeth, and then quickly dissipated as his cybrid diverted the sensations. Harris reeled back, struck the wall, but managed to keep hold of his rifle.

  Cooper socked Harris in the ribs with two bone breaking uppercuts followed by a devastating hook.

  Only then did Harris realize how weak he felt. It hadn’t registered before when he had simply outwitted Abasi and then fought mere humans, but pitted against a cybrid bigger than him, his deficiencies came to the fore. He tried using the rifle to block the next blow, but Cooper swatted it away contemptuously. It clattered to the floor.

  Harris glanced right, and found Abasi trading blows with Phineas. No help there.

  He spun away from Cooper’s next punch, saw Elmore King move to join the fray, and ducked. King had always been a brawler, the kind of fighter who used knees and elbows at close quarters, but preferred grappling whenever possible. In top shape, Harris was a match for the red-headed bruiser, but not today. He evaded King’s hold and managed to jab the bigger man in the throat, sending him back a step.

  Unfortunately, this opened a gap for Cooper to dive through, taking Harris in the gut with his shoulder. Pain coursed through his midsection and he grunted in surprise. Had one of the tac team guys managed to shoot him and he hadn’t realized it? It wouldn’t be the first time—his cybrid was good at hiding pain up to a certain critical threshold. But no, though recent, this wound felt too old to have happened in the last hour. Anyway, Harris had no time to worry about it. He had two cybrids to deal with—both of whom he had trained.

  He knew their skills, they were deadly dangerous, but that also meant he knew their weaknesses.

  Cooper was a consummate hand-to-hand tactician. He knew how to break an opponent down with blows or with holds. His own defense was nearly flawless, his timing superb. His only blind spot, and Harris had told him this many times, was his reliance on his body alone. He rarely considered or used his environment as a weapon. This made him a poor team fighter—a warrior primed only for single combat.

  Stupid.

  Harris rolled under Cooper’s next punch, feinted an answering blow, but instead took hold of Cooper’s belt and slung him into King.

  The big red-headed cybrid, who had been positioning himself to take Harris’s legs, was caught unawares. He trapped Cooper in two massive arms, probably intending to push the smaller man aside for a chance to drag Harris to the floor, but looked stunned when Harris launched himself into both of them, sweeping King’s legs in the process.

  All three men tumbled over. King fetched up against an open doorway. His head slammed against the jamb, and his eyes went momentarily dim.

  Harris reached behind the big man’s ear, and switched off his Spearcast.

  Cooper, who was sandwiched between Harris and King, tried to spin, but Harris served him a knee to the face for his efforts. Once, twice, three times. Then he switched off Cooper’s Spearcast as well.

  Both men ceased struggling. Harris stood, keeping an eye on them, but glanced down the hall.

  Phineas lay inert at Abasi’s feet. He was conscious, his eyes open and blinking, but he looked every bit as dazed as King and Cooper.

  Behind Abasi the elevator doors were just trundling shut. Harris got a glimpse of the short, blonde woman who had encouraged him to give up only a few moments before. She did not look pleased.

  “We have to go after her,” Oliver said. She had risen to her knees despite the cuffs that bound her at wrists and ankles.

  Harris found a set of keys on one of the downed guards and set about freeing her. “Why? Who is she?”

  “She’s the woman who tainted the Spearcast. She wants the world, and she’s bent on using us to get it.”

  Harris nodded. Enemy column for sure.

  Chapter 23

  Signal

  The hallway, which looked like some sort of detention center to Harris, had no stairs—a clear fire hazard. Oliver punched the elevator button three times, waited, and then pressed it three more even though they could all hear the car rising toward them already.

  “What’s happening here?” Harris took her hand to keep her from pressing the button again. “Why did we just shut off everyone’s Spearcasts? What’s the mission here?”

  Oliver let out a short sigh that was two-thirds relief and one-third resignation. “Jake was right. You took over.”

  Harris cocked his head at her. “What the hell does that even mean? I’m Jake.”

  “And I’m in the dark.” Elmore King popped his knuckles, a nervous habit he had never broken, staring around at his fellow cybrids and Tia. “How’d I get here?”

  “I think we’re all in the same dingy,” Phineas said, looking around at the others with curiously.

  The elevator dinged and its doors slid open. Harris half expected to find another complement of armed guards waiting for them, but thankfully it stood empty.

  “No time to explain.” Oliver motioned everyone inside and then slapped the first floor button. “Suffice it to say for now that we’ve all be manipulated by Dissolution. The woman you saw with the guards is their leader. If possible, we need to catch her. If not, we need to get the hell away from here as fast as possible. We can’t afford complications with the police right now.”

  Jake noticed she hadn’t bothered to mention Cymobius’s role in their current predicament. But maybe she figured they weren’t ready for that level of revelation just yet. Finding out the company that had saved their lives was manipulating them in the worst ways possible might be tough to swallow.

  Harris froze. What was that? Just like before when he had refrai
ned from killing the tac team members, a set of rogue thoughts, alien to him, had just passed through his mind. Somehow, they felt natural to him, and yet foreign at the same time. And they spoke of things he didn’t understand.

  What did Cymobius, his employer of thirteen years, have to do with the need to shut off Spearcasts? They had invented the things. What danger could they pose?

  Harris had known the CEO of the company all of his adult life. In fact, Peter Rudd and Harris’s father had served in the Army together, and even partnered to start Cymobius in the first place, though it had been a tiny startup focused solely on next generation prosthetic limbs in those bygone days. Harris would never fear his father’s company.

  And yet, the woman he loved obviously did. She had told him to shut off the others’ Spearcasts, and she had been right. They had stopped trying to kill or capture Harris when he followed her orders, which meant something being broadcast to their cybrids had made them combative. No way Cymobius would do that, if for no other reason than ordering cybrids to harm one another was a waste of money. This had to be all Dissolution’s fault.

  Not true!

  Harris jerked upright and banged his head against the elevator’s aluminum wall.

  Everyone turned to look at him.

  “You okay?” Oliver put a hand on his shoulder as if to steady him.

  Harris blanked his face of all emotion and gave her a terse nod. “I’ll be fine.”

  “I’ll fill you in on everything later. For now, we’ve got to focus on getting out of here clean.”

  “Got it.”

  The elevator dinged again and the doors opened to reveal a bank entranceway filled with armed men. They wore navy blue body armor marked with the local police insignia and carried submachine guns which they pointed at the elevator.

  “Halt! Stay where you are!” said a man at the back of their formation.