Blomkamp realised he had underestimated Dr Klou. After his armour had survived being savaged by the two lionesses the mercenary had assumed there was nothing Klou could do to hurt him, but Klou’s talons had torn through Blomkamp’s armour like wet cardboard. Looking down, Blomkamp saw blood leaking from the stomach of his suit. Blomkamp started to lift his gun to fight back but Klou stood and shoved himself deeper, burying his arm up to the elbow in Blomkamp’s midsection.
“Bastard.” Blomkamp choked.
Klou withdrew with a horrible sucking sound, his face blank. His arm was bloody and he was holding a flapping chunk of meat in his clawed hand. Klou dropped the chunk with a splat and Blomkamp followed it to the ground, collapsing heavily with a crater in his midsection. A fan of red sprayed off Klou’s hand. He retrieved Blomkamp’s weapon and checked it was loaded. Klou was a man of science but he’d had a small degree of weapon training and knew how to use a gun.
“Danke.” Klou said.
Back with the other mercenaries, Layla looked impatient. The others had reloaded and re-equipped themselves and were ready to get moving. Blomkamp failed to reappear with Klou.
“Where the hell is Blomkamp?” Layla asked.
“Hang on, I’ll find out.” Tommy turned to his drones, “Search pattern, find Blomkamp.”
The tiny flying cameras shot off in the direction the mercenary had disappeared. Tommy monitored what they were seeing through his high-tech glasses. It wasn’t long before they found Blomkamp’s crumpled body lying in a pool of his own blood, with no weapon and Klou nowhere in sight. Tommy turned to Layla, looking sick. The drones provided him brutal closeups of the wound.
“He’s dead, Klou must have gotten the best of him.” Tommy said, “There’s a hole in his stomach the size of a basketball hoop.”
“Shit! I shouldn’t have let him go off alone!” Layla said, “I didn’t think Klou would be that dangerous but even so-, there’s no telling what can happen in here.”
“We’ll split up, send a team after him this time.” Ridley said.
“No, we don’t have time!” Layla said, “We’ll find Klou sooner or later, but right now we can’t spare the men. We need to keep moving toward the control centre so we can shut this whole thing down.”
Ten of them, contestants and mercenaries, started heading in the direction they had been originally going before running into Dozer, toward the centre of the arena. It took them away from Blomkamp but they kept their eyes open for Klou in case the mad doctor was lurking in any of the ruined buildings surrounding them. Klou might have taken Blomkamp out by surprise but he’d be crazy to attack the whole group. The decision to simply let him go didn’t sit well with all the mercs. Some wanted revenge, but they were obviously getting paid a great deal of money to do the job and listen to Layla’s orders. Apart from Klou there were still other contestants, like the sniper Tommy had mentioned, to worry about.
“By my count there are six teams left in the game, that’s if they’re counting you three and Klou even though we deactivated your bracelets.” Layla said, “Last year, they introduced the Ringer teams when we were down to five pairs. That’s three more pairs of psychopaths they plan on dropping into the arena, fresh and ready with better equipment and weapons. According to our intelligence they plan on doing the same thing this year and trust me, the six they’ve got lined up are real bad hombres. So if we don’t at least have eyes on City Center before one more team gets themselves killed, or forces us to kill them, there’ll be even more chaos to deal with.”
Digger looked at his screen to make sure it was working. As Layla had said, six pairs were listed including he and Homer, Echo and Klou.
Boche / Uzi Kahneman
Bolt / DFN Jefferson
Dr Klou / Echo Three
Dozer / Taka
Homo Superior No. 11 / Digger Dundee
Juan Sanzeros / Ludd
Kali Badami / Tanai Den’atsu
L.L. Bitters / Rick O’Shae
Lyncher Lee / Frankie LaPalma
Macbeth Madaki / Junior Du Preez
Marcus Halligan / Luthor Crispee
Quickdraw Quilton / El Carnicero
Sunni Skyez / Alucard
Talons / Dr Martina Hart
Wilhelm Schrei / Mahmet Adani
A flash of motion cut through the next intersection. A sound like sneaker soles slapping on pavement reached their ears. Digger and the mercenaries whipped their guns into place. Their target looked human but moved too fast.
“What the bloody hell was that?” Digger said.
“Eyes up!” Layla said.
Approaching a large intersection they saw the figure, clad in a bright yellow jacket, racing across the far side of the street. They could see it was man-shaped but moving at hyperactive speed. Features were impossible to make out and their limbs moved in literal blurs, like fan blades. Ellis fired and bullets chewed up the wall behind the speedster. Layla yelled at the other mercenary to hold his fire and the blur disappeared behind another building.
“Hey! Hey, we’re not here to hurt you! My name is Layla Jackson, I was a contestant on last season of Slayerz! We’re here to shut this whole thing down!” Layla shouted, “We can deactivate your kill switch for you, you and your partner!”
There was a pregnant few seconds as mercenaries and contestants waited. Given how fast he had been moving, there was no telling which direction the speedster might come at them from if he wanted to attack. Eventually, however, Bolt circled back around the building at normal speed, hands raised.
“Don’t shoot don’t shoot!” Bolt said, “I come in peace!”
“He’s another freak, just like the last one.” Digger said, “Another science experiment, got superhuman speed and reaction times. Better off shooting him and letting Allah sort him out.”
Bolt’s scraggly hair and beard looked windswept. He kept his stringy arms raised with his yellow jacket open down the front, eyeing Digger and the mercenaries. DFN, his partner, was nowhere to be seen. Given the sleeve on Bolt’s wrist was active though the sniper couldn’t have been too far away. They wouldn’t want to test the proximity again.
“Heard you trying to talk down the big guy before he got uncooperative that isn’t us we’re happy to turn ourselves in to you guys it’s only just me because I’m a little quicker on my feet in case you were feeling trigger happy but you got no trouble here People for the Ethical Treatment of People right? Do some fine work protesting experiments like what they did to me not that I’m complaining too much.” Bolt said, “I’ll go get her my partner and you can switch off our sleeves before they decide to take us out remotely yeah?”
“Lower your guns.” Layla said, “Alright, go and get your partner.”
Hands snapping back to his sides, Bolt reversed backward and darted toward one nearby building, an abandoned electronics store. Several mercenaries jumped at Bolt’s sudden acceleration. Bolt returned a minute later with DFN Jefferson, one arm around her shoulders and struggling to help keep her upright. DFN didn’t look as sure about cooperating as Bolt had been. Her mouth was set in a thin line, her artificial right eye gleaming. She was using her long and lightweight rifle as a staff. Battered and bruised, DFN’s right leg was locked up in a solid, plastic brace.
“Bolt said you took out the Russian. We had a run-in with them earlier-, well, we would have been fine if someone had just listened to me.” DFN said, “Had to find a medical drop, been keeping away from them and from the lions ever since.”
DFN jerked her head down at the brace on her right leg for emphasis. Miller, the medic, hurried to deactivate both DFN and Bolt’s kill switches. The sleeves stayed on but the pulse monitors and proximity alerts would no longer link them. Layla looked irritated as she studied DFN’s leg brace. Even with it on, the sniper could barely hold her own weight upright. They needed to move fast but she would clearly slow the whole unit down.
“Okay, so you, you’re the one with the hyped metabolism who robbed banks, and you’
re the sniper, remind me what you’re in for, again?” Layla said.
“The military doesn’t like when they spend a lot of money teaching you all these skills, recon, discipline, shooting, and then you take them freelance.” DFN said, “Don’t know why Russia needs both a president and a prime minister anyway.”
“We’ve got to get to the City Center section.” Layla said, “Do you know the closest tunnel from here?”
“According to the maps, closest open one isn’t far.” DFN said, “But we weren’t about to head there and fuck around with Boche and Uzi Kahneman.”
xXx
In the control centre, Zachariah Hawthorne buried his face in his hands. Thrown up on the main screen, the mercenaries were freeing another two contestants from the contest. Apart from triggering the switches or sending out another wave of security there seemed to be little that they could do.
“Why not remotely trigger the kill switches before the trespassers can get to them?” One of the techs said, “Sure, it’d kill the contestants but it’d stop them from doing it again, and we might even take a few out with the explosion!”
“Because, you idiot, if our audience wanted to watch us just push a button and fucking execute people they’d be watching Court TV instead of Slayerz!” Zachariah said, “As long as they’re in my fucking arena they are under our control. They are under my. Fucking. Control! Which means they can still provide us with a spectacular, bloody, ratings bonanza of a death as long as we play it right!”
“What if we release the Ringers early? Or the civilian Slayers?” A contestant producer said.
“No! They’re not going to kill my big reveals!” Zachariah said, “The Ringers don’t go out util we’re down to five teams, and the Slayers aren’t going to be revealed until the Ringers are dead or they’re the only ones left.”
“Some good news then, sir.” Another tech said, “As you wanted, the final mech in Freeway Interchange is herding Kali Badami and Tanai Den’atsu directly toward Macbeth and Junior Du Preez.”
“Finally!” Zachariah said, “Throw it up on the main screen!”
xXx
“I think we lost it.” Kali said.
Although the walking tank was fast, Kali and Tanai had managed to sprint down the freeway and stay ahead of it. They threaded through ranks of rusty vehicles. Every once in a while the fully armed mech blew something up far behind them, clearing cars or trucks out of its way or sensing movement and firing with its thundering miniguns. Gears in its legs and body whined as it gave chase. Kali and Tanai left the road and started to cross open ground toward one of the freeway offramps.
“My stars! Why, don’t they make them pretty where you come from!” A Southerner voice with a mechanical buzz under it said.
“What the hell was that?” Kali said.
The blonde sexbot wearing a shredded American flag bikini emerged from behind one of the pylons supporting the freeway ramp. Half the bot’s face was sheared off. Worn out and battle-scarred, plenty of metal endoskeleton showed under its exposed flesh and made its true nature obvious. Kali fixed her pair of handguns on the sexbot.
“Not the kind of robots I was expecting.” Kali said.
“How about we make this a foursome?” Another buzzing voice said, “We accept all major credit cards.”
A second sexbot, the tall, Amazonian female with the missing arm, strolled from behind a rusted truck at the base of the ramp. Kali extended her guns at both of them.
“It’s an ambush!” Kali said.
“Move in, swarm them!” A third voice yelled.
The former warlord, Macbeth Madaki, crouched behind the freeway ramp. Du Preez was behind him, holding his lightning gun. At Madaki’s command the rest of the sexbots appeared from hiding and started toward Kali and Tanai. Seven fembots and two male sexbots. Stiff and jerky, they were much faster across open ground than they had been in the club.
Kali fired into the chests of two closest sexbots. Another jogged toward her, able to find its way in spite of being headless. Her bullets seemed to have little effect on the bots. Madaki and Du Preez hung back, waiting for the sexbots to pin the others down.
Gripping his club in both hands, Tanai waded in. He channelled electricity so it crackled the length of the weapon. One of the male sexbots was coming at him with hands firing forward like blades. The sexbot had a lean, muscled chest and was wearing nothing but chaps and underwear. Tanai heaved the staff into its head and it exploded, sparking with electricity. The sexbot continued to come at him, swiping around in a wide circle.
Kali unloaded one of her pistols into the tall, one-armed sexbot. Suddenly it jerked around, sparking, and fell to the ground. The headless one went to tackle Kali. Whirling away, Kali pulled back and then punched as hard as she could with one of her larger mechanical fists, jamming it into the decapitated sexbot’s chest. She withdrew moments later, holding a sparking cylinder, and the sexbot went stiff before tumbling to the ground.
“Their CPUs are in their chests, behind the ribs where the heart would be!” Kali said.
Still channeling electricity into his club, Tanai cleaved it into the male sexbot’s bare chest. Burning, the sexbot’s torso split open and its CPU imploded. Other bots were closing in. A Japanese-looking sexbot with blue hair lunged and knocked Tanai’s staff out of his hands then tackled him, pinning his arms to his sides.
Madaki and Du Preez emerged from hiding, weapons raised. The remaining half a dozen sexbots swarmed Kali and Tanai. Three of them tangled Kali’s cyborg limbs, ripping her weapons free. Kali fought back and one sexbot twisted and twisted one of her larger mechanical arms until it broke off at the base. Kali cried out. The sexbots stretched her out as if crucified.
“Let me go! No!” Kali said.
Du Preez leveled his Zeus I lightning gun at the other contestants and the fork on the end of its barrel crackled with potential energy. Madaki stopped him before he could fire.
“No, you’ll take out all our little soldiers with that thing.” Madaki said.
Tanai was pinned as well by sexbots. The one with both hands removed by Madaki’s machete wrapped its stumpy arms around his neck and others got him by the wrists. Tattoos glowing, Tanai sent arcs of electricity spraying from both hands but the fembots ignored him. Madaki closed in with his shotgun.
“No, please don’t! Please don’t do this!” Kali yelled.
Madaki fired as the bots held Kali pinned. The blast took off half of the woman’s head, showering faces of surrounding sexbots with brains and gore. Kali’s body jerked violently against the hands holding her until realising she was dead and going limp. Blood gushed down the side of her neck and chest. The bots let the corpse drop heavily to the ground as her kill switch started to sing.
“Quick, get the other one! Before the kill switch blows him up!” Du Preez said.
Madaki kept his distance, staying clear of an explosion from Tanai’s sleeve as he expelled the shotgun’s used shell. Kill switch flatlining, drugs flooded Tanai’s system. Silently grimacing, the Yakuza felt chems burning through his system and the tattoos on his arms and across the rest of his body glowed brighter and brighter. Madaki’s hesitation gave him the time he needed.
Tanai twisted and managed to grab one of the sexbots holding him by the face. Electricity coursed through his palm into the sexbot’s head. The blue-haired bot’s eyes exploded in their sockets, spraying Tanai with grains of plastic and circuitry. It staggered back, systems fried. With fresh strength and adrenaline, Tanai managed to overpower the other two sexbots holding him. He wheeled around and used one of them as a shield as Madaki fired, the shot chewing apart the bot’s back.
“Get him, all of you!” Madaki yelled.
The three sexbots that had been holding Kali started toward her partner. If they could pile on and hold him until the kill switch’s drugs ran their course then Madaki and Du Preez would be safe, even if the explosion took out their little army. Tanai grabbed another sexbot by both sides of its head and shocke
d it until the skull came apart in his hands.
“Eat this!” Du Preez yelled.
“No, don’t!” Madaki said.
The other three sexbots surrounded and tackled Tanai. Superpowered or not, the man found himself wrestling four bots instead of just one. At that moment, however, Du Preez opened fire as the sexbots tried to shove Tanai to the ground and pile on top of him. The lightning encompassed all five of them, becoming an incandescent ball of energy. Two sexbots burned and exploded. The others overloaded and went stiff, dying on their feet. Tanai should have been roasted. Shielded by the plastic and metal bodies of the sexbots though, the lightning channelled itself into his neon tattoos and he swelled with power.
“What the fok?” Du Preez said.
Tanai’s tattoos were glowing so hot across his arms, his chest and his back that his clothing was smoking. His eyes blazed with blue-white energy. Tanai threw his hands forward. Supercharged streams of electricity similar to the ones from Du Preez’s own lightning gun came shooting out of his hands. They picked up the South African merc and hurled him backward, his flesh and clothing charring and fusing together as he screamed. By the time he dropped to the ground his face and exposed arms were blackened and his body armour had melted to his clothing.
“Damn freaks!” Madaki said.
The sleeve on Madaki’s arm started to scream, and needles entered his flesh. He advanced on Tanai, firing his shotgun. After the powerful lightning blast, Tanai’s ability seemed spent. Adrenaline still thundering through his system though, he ran directly at Madaki, ignoring a couple of shotgun blasts as they clipped him or hammered his body armour. The Yakuza was covered in burns and on the brink of death as it was.
“Takeshidō wa shi no mae ni jitsugen suru.” Tanai said.
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