Flesh Blood Steel

by David Jones

Oliver cursed.

  King grinned.

  And Abasi, who had been standing nearest the elevator doors, flung her pilfered rifle at the gathering only to go sailing after it less than a second later.

  Harris understood her choice of tactics. Though she might have opened up with the Whisper, such a move would have drawn the policemen’s fire. Confined to the elevator, she wouldn’t have been able to avoid the inevitable hail of bullets, and neither would those with her. But by rushing the armed men, she gained a moment’s confusion as their brains tried to compute her logic.

  And a moment was all a cybrid needed.

  She barreled into the closest policeman, relieved him of his rifle, and spun in a tight circle while clutching his vest by a convenient strap. Using him like a bolo, she sent the hapless man stumbling into five officers on the right, bowling them over, and then shot five more on the left, hitting them with surgical precision in their unprotected necks and faces.

  Not to be outdone, King waded into the fight. The big redhead scooped up the first of the officers Abasi had knocked over with one hand and pitched him into the remaining three near the building’s front doors. They all went down in a heap though King hadn’t bothered to watch them fall. Using a submachine gun he had taken from one of the guards upstairs, he set about exterminating whatever guards Abasi hadn’t yet killed.

  It was all over in ten seconds.

  Tia screamed, her bruised eyes wet with tears, her face a rictus of horror and ghastly surprise.

  Harris ran a hand through his hair. Somehow, though he had walked beside death a thousand times, he felt something of the girl’s terror. What his fellow cybrids had done here was murder. He wanted no part of it. And yet, he knew it had been necessary if they wanted to leave this place without further complications.

  Oliver took Tia’s hand. “Don’t look at them. Step where I step.” Together, their faces equally grim though Tia’s looked mortified, they crossed the room.

  Harris followed with Phineas at his side. The thin cybrid made no pretense of hiding his emotions. He too looked sickened by the carnage though he said nothing of it to King and Abasi Together, they all peered out the front windows.

  “I don’t see more police,” Phineas said.

  “I get the feeling these weren’t police.” Harris hooked a thumb at the dead bodies crowding the room. A small voice in his head wondered where the bank employees had all gone. Hopefully, they had fled to safety.

  “We need to move.” Oliver, still holding Tia’s hand, headed for the exit. “The real Swiss police won’t be long.”

  Without his Spearcast, Harris hadn’t known where they were until he saw the stars above and smelled the cloying aroma of the Rhone. Geneva. He hadn’t been here in years, and the last time he had been fighting ISIL soldiers in the streets.

  Though few enough people would brave the streets here at night, a gaggle of passersby had gathered to record what was happening, no doubt drawn by the sound of machine gun fire. Movies often made it seem like buildings could contain that sort of noise, but guns were loud, and they tended to draw attention.

  Several of the bystanders gasped when they saw Abasi and King were armed. The cybrids ignored them.

  “I don’t see Seanan,” Oliver said, scanning the sidewalks and streets.

  “Same,” Harris said.

  “This way.” Oliver pulled Tia through the sparse crowd. The girl went without complaint though she looked bewildered and frightened. She kept darting glances at Abasi as if the female cybrid might attack her at any second.

  Sirens wailed in the distance, burbling ever closer, and making the hairs on Harris’s arms stand up though he couldn’t understand why. He had no fear of police. Generally, wherever he went the local constabulary worked directly for a contracting company. Those invariably had policing agreements with Cymobius, which meant Harris and his fellows had nothing to fear from arrest. At worst, they might spend a day in the lockup, but that was it.

  “Why are we running from the police?” Phineas asked, his face pale in the sparse overhead lights.

  Oliver cast a look at Harris as if questioning how she should answer that, but he had no idea.

  Until he did.

  “We’re not our own people,” he heard himself say without any conscious reason on his part. “Cymobius has been controlling us, manipulating us, turning us into something we’re not. Believe me, we do not want to go back to them.”

  “Jake’s right. We need to regroup and figure out our next move.” Oliver entered a darkened car park and hustled toward a late model sedan surrounded by broken glass that glittered in the moonlight. Both front windows and one rear had been smashed by someone who knew what they doing. If Harris had to guess, he would have said the damage had been accomplished using a hand weapon rather than a gun.

  Oliver crunched her way to the right rear door and pulled it open. Glass covered the interior as well, strewn across the seats and a sandwich wrapper someone had left there.

  “What happened here?” Harris asked.

  They took Anya. The voice sounded so clear in Harris’s head that he found himself turning in a circle to find the speaker. And though a moment before, had he heard the name Anya, he would have associated it solely with a target he had once been assigned to kill, an entire new set of feelings and understanding about her poured into his consciousness. They arrived like data via his cybrid, except he knew somehow these were memories reemerging after some time locked away in his brain.

  “You’re acting strange.” Abasi put a comforting hands on Harris’s shoulder. “Is it your cybrid? I think mine is dredging up old memories. I’m remembering my life before.”

  “Same.” Phineas leaned against the car as if he couldn’t support his own weight.

  “We don’t have time for this,” Harris said. “We need to get Anya back.”

  “You remember her?” Oliver’s eyebrows rose.

  Yes, I remember her. She lied to me, she manipulated me, and then she went and risked her life to help me. Listen, Harris, I don’t care what else you do, you’ve got to find Anya.

  “Yes,” Harris said through clenched teeth, uncertain whether he was answering Oliver or the voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like his own.

  “Anya?” Tia spun to regard Harris. “You mean my sister, Anya?”

  Harris nodded. He could feel his expression, which he thought he had long ago mastered, crease into a pained look he couldn’t control. “I don’t know how, but she’s my friend, and I’m afraid she’s in terrible danger.”

  “If Seanan Reese has her,” Oliver said, “we all are.”

  Epilogue

  Harris sat on a balcony overlooking the Englise Saint Georges Catholic church in Lyon, a cup of hot tea in his hands. The church’s tower fairly glowed in the golden evening sunlight that poured down from a cloudless sky above. Below, passing along cobbled streets, a few locals went about their business, no doubt thankful for the shadows cast by the encroaching buildings. If Harris leaned forward he could just make out the Saone River, which here ran parallel to Lyon’s portion of the Rhone, with its footbridges peopled by young families and couples and lone vagabonds wending their way in the world.

  It almost makes you forget you’re a wanted man. The voice inside Harris’s head had changed slowly over the last day and a half since they had fled Geneva. Whereas in the beginning it had sounded somewhat like Harris’s present voice, it had lately taken on a decidedly youthful timbre. Though he couldn’t be certain, he theorized his younger persona had somehow taken up residence in his cybrid. Harris didn’t know if such a thing was possible, but it was either that or accept the fact that he was going mad.

  You’re insane alright, but not because of me.

  Harris rolled his eyes.

  “Are you talking to yourself again?” Oliver smiled at Harris over her mug, though there was concern in her eyes. This apartment belonged to her, or more precisely it belonged to one of the many aliases she maintained to ai
d her work as a Cymobius agent. She had assured Harris this one was off the books—a vacation spot the company knew nothing about. Nonetheless, they had agreed to stay here only a couple of days.

  “The kid talks too much.” Harris set his tea aside. “I don’t remember being such a blabbermouth as a teenager.”

  I don’t remember ever wanting to shoot people in the head, so maybe we’re even.

  Harris firmed his jaw. That was KILL MACHINE. Not me.

  “Can’t say I liked him much when we first met,” Oliver said. “But I was biased then. I wanted you back. I’ve got to admit though, he did grow on me after a while.” She grinned wider. “You were a good kid.”

  “Yeah, too bad I was so damned holier-than-thou.”

  “I don’t know, maybe we could use some of that.” Oliver’s eyes shifted to the church steeple before them. “I’m not exactly pleased with everything Cymobius made me do.”

  Harris glanced over his shoulder through the balcony’s glass doors. King and Abasi were teaching Tia poker at the coffee table inside.

  Oliver followed his gaze. “You’re worried about them.”

  You should be, they’re psychopaths!

  “They don’t think the way we do.” Harris kept his voice low. “I think maybe having cybrids got to them somehow, or maybe KILL MACHINE became part of their thinking.”

  Oliver shook her head. “No, Jake, that’s who they are. It’s who they were before Cymobius chose them. Some people just don’t care.”

  “Don’t care about what?”

  “About anything.” Oliver looked at the three of them again, then back to Harris. “Those two would have taken the job without the KILL MACHINE protocol. Honestly, that doesn’t make them bad people necessarily.”

  “It makes them psychopaths,” he said, echoing the voice of his younger self.

  She shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe. Sometimes the world needs psychopaths.”

  Harris considered that for a moment then nodded. “Hardcases.”

  “Wall sitters.” Oliver sipped her tea.

  “Problem is, I don’t know if they’re really with us or not. Do they care about what’s been done to us?”

  “Oh, they care.” Oliver’s eyebrows rose with her interest. “Neither of them likes being manipulated any more than you or I. They might have their own motivations for backing us—personally I think they just want revenge on Cymobius and Dissolution both—but I guarantee those two aren’t going anywhere.”

  “You think the other nine are like them?” Even thinking of the cybrids who hadn’t answered Seanan Reese’s beacon put Harris’s hackles up. He would swear he could feel them drawing ever closer, tracking him and the others like hounds.

  “I’m betting it’ll be a mixed bag just like with us. Look at Phineas. He wants nothing more to do with assassination plots and intrigues and all the rest. This morning he told me wants to return to teaching when all this is over. I think he’s only staying with us because he grasps the danger we’re facing.”

  “Might as well face it together.”

  “Exactly.”

  Harris kicked his feet to the floor and turned to face Oliver. He put a hand on her bare knee. “It’s time we decide our next step. I still say we go after Anya. She built the beacon that drew us to Seanan. Who knows what she’ll be able to do given time. And Seanan herself is a genius. Once she’s learned all she needs from Anya, she’ll have no reason to keep her alive.”

  “Maybe, but wouldn’t it make more sense to recruit the other cybrids first?” Oliver asked. “With Anya’s virus blocking KILL MACHINE, they’ll be susceptible to their old memories and emotions just like us. But I doubt people like Rudd and Crocker will miss the changes in their personalities. They’ll want to get KILL MACHINE running again fast, which means we’ve only got a narrow window of opportunity to win the others to our side.”

  I don’t like it, but she’s got a point. Young Jake sounded disappointed in himself.

  “I still say we go after Anya. She’s got skills we lack, and we’re bound to need her to help with our cybrids should problems arise.

  “Are you sure you’re not motivated by the idea of eliminating that voice in your head?”

  “I’ll admit that’s part of it,” Harris said.

  Hey!

  Oliver placed a hand over his. “If we don’t go after the rest of our kind, we may not have cybrids for Anya to work on. There are five of them, and I have a feeling they’re going to be playing for keeps when they come for us. Rudd might just cut his losses.”

  “He wouldn’t do that.”

  Oliver lifted an eyebrow. “Jake, he forcibly enlisted you in the Army without your consent and placed what amounted to an emotional dampener in your head so you could kill for him. Are you laboring under the impression he cares for you? For any of us? We’re commodities to him. That’s all.”

  “My killing machine,” Harris said.

  My killing machine, Jake repeated in his head.

  “What’s that?” Oliver lifted an eyebrow.

  “Just something Rudd said to me once.” Harris met her gaze. “You’re right. We should go after the other cybrids as quickly as possible. The more we have on our side, the fewer they can throw at us when they come.”

  Oliver squeezed his hand. “And once we’re all back together, we’ll hunt Seanan Reese down. She won’t be able to sleep for fear of cybrids.”

  Harris grinned and kissed the back of her hand. “I always did like the way you think.”

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