Fitz looked away and voiced the fear lodged in the back of her mind like a piece of gravel in a boot. “But wouldn’t he just shut his computer down? Pull his spike and end it?”
“Not necessarily. Both men who survived to have the Secondary program removed began to exhibit non-typical behavior…outbursts of anger, defiance, and risk-taking. Traits that had not been part of either of their original personalities. Eventually one flew his aircar into the side of a mountain, and the other resigned his commission and disappeared. I’ve attempted to track him down, but haven’t had much luck…” He placed both hands over his mouth to hide a huge yawn.
“Lieutenant, go home. I think I have the gist of this. We’ll discuss it further tomorrow. Bartonelli, see that he goes to bed,” Fitz said, then added, “and gets some sleep.”
After she disconnected, she scooped up the now snoring cat and carried him through the house to the bedroom. A crystalline vase held the bouquet of Blue Nova roses Wolf had brought her when he returned from the Alliance. Beginning to wilt, their fallen petals lay scattered across the tabletop. She picked one up and rubbed its velvet between her fingers, painfully reminded that there hadn’t been time to enjoy them together.
She’d fought too long and hard to free Wolf; she couldn’t lose faith now. The stakes were higher now, with this new life they’d created together. She couldn’t allow herself to believe it might be too late, that the man she loved could be damaged beyond repair.
The specter of an immortal madman sent a shiver down her back.
__________
Cypher centered the crosshairs of the sniper rifle’s scope between the gray eyes of the small woman in black standing on the balcony. He held his finger against the guard, careful to avoid the firing stud until ready. This weapon had a notoriously light trigger.
The image wavered. He lifted his cheek from the stock and wiped moisture from his eyes. He didn’t want to kill Gray Eyes; he wanted, instead, to hold her, brush her skin, to make love to her…but she didn’t want him. She belonged to The Other, and she would have her man back even if she had to condemn him to some empty cyber-hell like a piece of digital garbage. Wasn’t her life worth his freedom? Just pull the trigger and end her, then it would be over. Tritico would release him.
You’re a bloody fool if you believe that.
The Other. He’d been silent so long, Cypher had begun to hope he’d left, but that would never happen, would it? Their minds were bound together, their body one. He could escape Tritico, but would never be free of The Other. He would always be there, in his mind, whispering, criticizing, condemning him until nothing remained for them but madness.
“It’s my only chance to be free of his control.”
You don’t understand, do you? He’ll never take his boot off your throat, because this is about me, not you. I’m the one he sees squirming beneath his thumb; you’re only a tool. Killing Fitz is meant to hurt me, not gain anything for you. He’ll always find one more reason to keep you crawling back as long as he sees that I’m suffering.
Cypher centered himself, erected mental walls around his thoughts and doubts, sealed them up along with The Other’s words, and flung them into the darkness at the back of his mind. He leaned against the rifle’s stock again, peering through the sight, but a drift of clouds hung between them, obscuring the woman’s form. Even the universe conspired against him. He raised his head and scrubbed his hand across his face. When he looked back, she stood there. No longer trusting his shaking hands for the precision of a head shot, he shifted his aim lower. A spread of needles in the chest would work as well.
A tsunami of rage and fear rose in his mind, rolled over him, and snatched him back into its darkness.
__________
Wolf flung the rifle away, skittering backward until he landed on his butt. He rolled onto his side, curling into a shaking ball. He’d almost allowed Cypher to kill Fitz. This madness had to stop; he had to end it now. His plan had been to use Cypher to get to Tritico, but after the fight in the shuttle bay and the extensive healing to his injuries after crashing the construction pod, all his energy resources had been depleted. He was the biological entity, too dependent on the state of his body’s reserves, while Cypher was only a program running inside a computer. The interloper could feel the exhaustion, the hunger, and the cold shakes of plummeting blood sugar, but it didn’t affect his silicone-based mind the way it did Wolf’s flesh and blood one. He’d pushed himself too hard trying to save them both, and paid for it with a mini-coma, a mental shut down he’d awoken from with barely enough time to prevent Fitz’s murder.
His awareness of his surroundings had been somewhat limited under Cypher’s control, but now he could see the other’s memories. Most were faint and indistinct, like the recollection of a book he’d read long ago and almost forgotten, but some stood out in crystal clarity. Like the terror of the monsters in the warehouse, and the night at Star Henge with its killing and killing…
His mind shied away from that thought like a skittish animal. Better not to look too closely at it; there would be time to extract the price for those actions later, but not now.
Wolf struggled to his knees and glanced around, recognizing the top of one of the rocky islands that jutted out of the Hapkean Sea facing their home. He and Fitz had climbed to this clearing many times, to enjoy either the view or intimate moments under the stars. He could navigate the path down the back side in the dark and be home in minutes, home to the woman he loved.
He crawled to the edge of the cliff. The balcony was empty. Good girl. Stay inside. I’ll be there shortly. Back to Fitz, if only for a short time.
Then a visit to Tritico. Wolf had been to that warehouse three times; always in Cypher’s perspective, but he could locate it, could lead a contingent of Special Forces troops there. Or better still, perhaps Donkenny and his people were still on the planet. A back-up of Gold Dragon mercenaries would feel like old times.
Tritico had bugs here, on the homeworld. In all the years of the War, the enemy had never got closer to Scyr than a hundred light years, but now they’d been invited in by one of our own. Anger flashed through him, but he quelled it.
The madness ends here; the spike comes out now.
He reached behind his head.
“I knew you’d never be able to do it, boy.”
Two heavily-armed men stepped into the clearing. Wolf remembered the pair from Cypher’s last visit to the warehouse, but the florid-faced redhead he recognized as one of their attackers at the coronation. Ian Chorickus. One of Tritico’s bodyguards, part-time enforcer and full-time asshole. And an augie. The second man had the short build and massive shoulders of a heavy-worlder. Though he couldn’t identify him, Wolf had no doubt that he, too, was augmented.
Chorickus held one of the modified needlers, loosely pointed in his direction. That Wolf knew from Cypher’s memories. The augie had come armed to hunt Lazzinairs. He knew about them. Wolf glanced toward the sniper rifle, abandoned in the scree, but dismissed it. In close combat, a rifle was little more than a high tech club, and he’d be dead before he could reach it. He did a quick inventory of his body. Cypher was stupid—there was no hide-out pistol on his leg, no knife in his boot. Sloppy; a way to get seriously dead fast.
“Don’t bother getting up; I always planned on shooting you while you were on your knees anyway,” Chorickus said. “I don’t understand what’s so important about that little bitch. If you wanted her that bad, why not just fuck her and then kill her.”
Wolf surged upright, all his combat systems going hot. “You shut the bloody hell up.”
The augie’s eyes widened. “That accent. You’re not that little coward; you’re Youngblood. How the hell did you do that? No matter. I came here to get rid of a piece of trash and end up putting down the head of the whole fricking fleet.” He jerked up the needler and fired.
Hyperawareness enabled Wolf to launch into motion the instant the muzzle started to move. He jinked to the left. Darts whin
ed past him, shattering against the rocks. He charged down on Chorickus’ right, going for the gun hand, but the augie had starting to move as soon as he’d seen Wolf’s form blur. They collided at ramming speed.
Both hands around the augie’s wrist, Wolf fought for control of the weapon, but with their strength, speed, and mass so closely matched, neither had the advantage. The heavy-worlder circled them, searching for an opening, but Wolf managed to block him, keeping his opponent between them. The needler spat darts as Chorickus fought to force it down, hoping to clip the side of his face. A single scratch would kill him.
Chorickus seized Wolf’s jaw, pushing his head closer to the muzzle. Their struggles carried them across the clearing. Pressing in closer, Wolf jammed his knee up between the other’s legs. The gasp of pain gave him a chance to drive the augie back against the rocks, smashing the gun hand against the stone until the pistol flew from his fingers.
An arm clamped around Wolf’s throat, cutting off his air. The massive augie dragged him back, giving Chorickus room to drive a fist into his stomach. Wolf elbowed back, hammering into his captor’s ribs. The man shrugged off the blows. Chorickus slugged him again. The world starting collapsing in on Wolf. He needed to breathe. Flailing behind him, his hand brushed the augies’ sidearm. He pulled it from the holster, pushed it against the man’s flank and fired. The weight on his back dropped away.
Chorickus reached for the weapon holstered under his arm, but Wolf was quicker. A single shot put the augie down.
Adrenaline flowed out of Wolf, leaving him cold and shaking. His body needed refueling to continue. During his time in the tank, the techs must have loaded his new pharmacopeia’s reservoirs with Ski’s elixir. He hunted through the menu rolling down his inhead, located it. Before he could thought-click on it, two shots burned into his back, the pain staggering him.
Chorickus rose, his pistol targeting Wolf. He rolled his shoulders. “Sure the hell hurts, doesn’t it? But it’s a hell of a lot better than dying.”
Shock must have shown on Wolf’s face.
The red-haired augie laughed. “Surprise. You didn’t think you could keep your little secret much longer, did you? A couple of bolts in the back won’t kill you, of course, just slow you down long enough for me to cut off your head. Don’t think you’ll be growing a new one, but just to be safe, a thermite grenade will make sure there’s nothing left to regenerate.” Chorickus pulled a wide-bladed Special Forces knife, its edge wickedly serrated. “Taking your head with good old steel works as well for me.”
The second augie struggled up, blood coating his side. He pulled a knife and hurled it, the black blade slicing through the air. Wolf shifted his perception into overdrive, the world accelerating into a jittering slow motion ballet. He stepped aside, and the knife swam by like a black fish. He set his teeth and reached for the hilt. As his fingers closed around it, a shudder went through him, but the handle was only leather-wrapped metal. He spun, letting his combat systems control the aim and timing of release as he sent it hurtling back. An inhuman scream told him his aim had been precise.
Wolf staggered as Chorickus crashed into him, propelling him toward the edge of the cliff. The serrated blade grated between his ribs, driving pain deep inside him. A rock tripped him, sending him backward and pulling the augie with him. They fell, striking ledges, bouncing, sliding. Wolf clutched at a stunted tree, tearing his hands against stone. A white hot burst of pain ripped through him as he crashed down on an outcropping. He rebounded, then there was nothing but air beneath him until he hit the icy water and its green darkness closed over him.
___________
Cypher crawled up onto the icy shore, coughing seawater out of his lungs and spewing it from his stomach, salt and bile burning his throat. He gulped down a rattling breath, but it started him retching again. Finally, empty and exhausted, he leaned back on his knees, but a deep and grinding pain immobilized him. The hilt of a knife protruded from his side. He jerked it free and hurled it away, whimpering as he felt each of the blade’s serrations grate against a rib. He collapsed on the wet sand. In his short existence there had been only pain, anger, and fear. He nestled his cheek against the cold earth and welcomed death.
When he opened his eyes again, twilight had fallen, and with it the temperature. A thick bank of clouds pressed low overhead, and snow rode in the wind. He blinked flakes from his eyelashes as he crawled to the base of the cliff and huddled there, knees pulled to his chest. In these wet clothes, hypothermia would kill him if he didn’t find shelter. He stopped.
No, I should have bled to death long before I could freeze.
Cypher studied his hands. They were dirty, caked with dried blood, but otherwise unmarked. If he’d tumbled down that rocky face, they should have been torn and bruised. He pulled open his jacket, his shirt, and found no scrapes or contusions, only a faint scar over his ribs that flattened and faded as he watched. His world narrowed down to that strip of pale flesh.
Impossible. I hit my head in the fall and I’m hallucinating, that’s all.
And I can prove it.
The knife lay nearby, blade still dark with his blood. He clawed it to him, hesitating for several seconds to work up the courage, and drew a shallow groove across his palm. Blood welled, then stopped. He wiped his hand against his shirt and watched the edges of his flesh move together, zipping closed. A voice whispered inside him—not The Other, but a wordless singing that seemed to arise from within his cells, cells that he could feel moving beneath the skin.
What am I?
Was this ability why he’d been cast as the battlefield for this political war? Only some unstoppable super assassin? Was he even human any longer? He pushed up his sleeve and dragged the knife’s tip down his arm, following the blue vein. The bleeding stopped almost as quickly as before, but this time the singer inside his cells sounded angry, discordant. He gripped the knife tighter. What would happen if he drove it into his heart?
Stop it.
The Other’s voice lacked its usual snap, sounding weak and distant. Get up. Move. Chorickus should have survived the fall, too. Get to the house. To Fitz.
Lights shone from the windows of the structure on the cliff’s edge, and reflected in the cold water. At first he crawled, then struggled to his feet. The tide was out, leaving only a narrow inlet to wade through, but he stumbled, breath knocked out of him by the water’s icy embrace. By the time he reached the wide stone stairs leading up, he shivered uncontrollably. He crawled the last few steps and collapsed against the balustrade. Once again, he lost his struggle with consciousness.
He awoke to an alarm inside in head, an insistent red light blinking in the corner of his vision. The storm had intensified, wind moaning as it whipped snow across the night sky. In the lee of the stair’s railing, he was out of the worst of it, but that didn’t protect him from the plummeting temperature.
It would be an easy way to end this insane existence, slip away into sleep, but could he freeze to death or would he only lie here like a block of ice until the spring thaw? Was he denied even that escape?
The damn blinking light would not allow him to drift away in peace. He thought-clicked to delete it, but the pharmacopeia challenged him.
Inject Ski/Elixir-1 or abort operation?
Elixir? Youngblood must have programmed this during the fight and didn’t get a chance to inject it before they went over the edge. Was this drug tied into this body’s ability to regenerate itself? Only one way to find out.
Fire surged through his veins, a liquid energy that arched his back into a painful bow and felt like he’d grabbed a high voltage wire. His heart hammered, his breath coming in labored pants. By the time the pharmacopeia stopped dosing him, his body hummed. He was sweating and shaking, but felt ready to run a marathon. With his new-found energy, he pushed to his feet, the wind buffeting him as he followed the path toward the house. On the patio, he found a set of armorglass doors opening onto a darkened room.
He reached for the loc
k. His access code had always been there, hidden inside his subconscious where he had no memory of it. The numbers came when he needed them, as if he remembered them with his body and not his mind. He stilled his breathing and tapped the keypad, hoping Gray Eyes hadn’t purged his code from the house computer’s memory.
Relief washed across him as the entrance opened and he stepped into welcome warmth. A large desk with computers and comm equipment idling beneath its glassite surface dominated the room. Holos of warships shared the dark-paneled walls with ancient 2-D paintings, and a sonic sculpture occupied a marble pedestal in one corner, murmuring a familiar melody.
Cypher closed the door and leaned against the armorglass, the shivers fading as his breathing returned to normal. If Red was still out there, there had been plenty of time to finish him off, so why hadn’t he? The augie could have been hurt as bad as him and gone crawling back to Tritico to lick his wounds.
Don’t count on it. The words whispered through his mind. Lock the door.
Cypher reengaged the security system, then peeled off his soggy jacket and dropped it on the floor, intent on the processor on the back wall. One glance at the menu set his stomach to rumbling. First, he ordered a cup of spiced chai and gulped it down, not caring that it burned his tongue. He stuffed a sandwich in his mouth as he explored the rest of the office.
Any doubt that this was Youngblood’s personal space was dispelled when he opened an ornate cabinet. Inside were handguns and rifles, displayed alongside neatly pigeon-holed boxes of cartridges, power cells and grenades. Edged weapons, new and lethally bright, hung beside ancient rust-pitted blades.
A pistol lay tucked into a niche, the straps of its shoulder rig wrapped around it as if the owner had removed it only seconds ago. An Acton Mk IV. Cypher smiled as he drew it from its holster, the weapon fitting into his hand as if it had been made for him. No, not him, but for this hand. He stroked the biometric safety and the pistol whined as it powered up.
Cypher (The Dragon's Bidding Book 2) Page 23