by Jude Hardin
And of course scores of people riding around in cars and strolling on the sidewalks meant scores of digital photographs and 911 calls.
Oberwand’s soldiers didn’t seem concerned about the publicity, but Mike was.
At least he’d worn a disguise. He hoped it would help, because he had a feeling that his picture was going to be plastered all over the Internet in a matter of minutes.
The gunman kept shooting. Mike could see the projectiles coming, but there were too many of them. The onslaught was overwhelming. It was like trying to dodge raindrops. He ducked and rolled to the ground, felt a 9mm bolus of hot lead chew into his left upper arm.
The car sped away, veered left, fishtailed into a U-turn at the next intersection.
Oberwand’s men were on their way back to finish Mike off.
He was wounded, bleeding. He couldn’t move his arm. He didn’t have the strength to get up and run. This was it, he thought. This was where it ended.
Then something remarkable happened. The MK-2 switched into some kind of automatic override mode.
Mike’s conscious mind started to shut down as the computer took over. He was no longer in control of his actions. He was more of a machine now than a man, and he couldn’t have stopped what was happening even if he’d wanted to.
And of course he didn’t want to. He wanted to live.
He was compelled to live.
Programmed to live.
My primary directive is to defend the constitution of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic, to the best of my ability. My secondary directive is to survive, at all costs, while attempting to maintain my first directive.
Mike let go and allowed Dr. Aggerson’s incredible invention to do its thing. In an instant, the bleeding slowed and the pain stopped. Almost as if he’d never been shot in the first place. The bullet was still there, but the nerve endings surrounding it had been sealed off, the impulses rerouted. Mike could make a fist with his left hand now. He could move his arm.
He rose to a standing position, pulled his pistol out, darted across the street and hid behind a shelter at a bus stop. The enemy car had turned around at the intersection, and as it cruised by, Mike started following it on foot.
35mph.
36.
37.
Somehow, Mike was able to keep up. He sprinted forward and jumped on the trunk and put his foot through the rear window, all in one smooth and graceful motion, like some kind of violent, supercharged ballet dancer.
Mike shot the man in the back seat before he had a chance to react. Twice. In the head. His skull exploded in a fountain of blood and bone and brain tissue.
Mike climbed in and pressed the barrel of the Ruger against the back of the driver’s neck.
“Take me to Oberwand,” he said.
“I can’t do that.”
“Then you’re going to die.”
“I’m going to die either way. Let me go, and I’ll tell you where he is.”
“Pull in there,” Mike said, motioning toward a strip mall. “Drive around back.”
But the driver didn’t do as instructed. Instead, he floored the accelerator and the car shot forward through the next red light, narrowly avoiding being t-boned by a truck hauling pumpkins. From there, the driver sped toward a concrete embankment, a thick pillar supporting one side of a train trestle. Apparently the man was okay with dying today as long as Mike died along with him.
Mike didn’t want to kill this guy. He needed him. If the driver died, Mike’s chance of finding Oberwand died with him.
The driver started laughing maniacally. “What’s that little bean in your head telling you to do now?” he said. “How’s it going to save you this time?”
“It’s telling me to survive. And I will. And if you stop the car now, you can survive too. Tell me where to find Oberwand, and I’ll let you go.”
“You really expect me to believe that?”
The car was going almost a hundred miles an hour, and the concrete pillar was less than a hundred feet away.
Impact in 5…4…
Mike hurled himself through the shattered rear window and crouched down on the trunk. A split second before the car plowed into the concrete, he jumped upward and to the left, hooking his arms around the steel I-beam running from one end of the trestle to the other. He dangled there and watched the crash in slow motion, the front of the car crinkling around the pillar like a wad of aluminum foil. Pushed backward by the impact, the engine tore through the firewall and ended up in the driver’s lap.
Broken glass and splintered plastic and spilled fuel everywhere. Somehow, the dead gunman in the back seat had been thrown from the car. Or at least half of him had. Mike didn’t see his legs anywhere.
Mike hung there like a trapeze artist for a few seconds, and then dropped to the pavement. He walked to the car and peered into the distorted hole where the driver’s side window used to be.
Remarkably, the man in the car was still alive. Mike pressed the barrel of his pistol against the man’s forehead.
“Where’s Oberwand?”
“Shoot me. Please, shoot me.”
The man was writhing in agony. The engine block had crushed the entire lower part of his body. Wisps of greasy black smoke rose from the wires and hoses and twisted chunks of metal extending from where his pelvis used to be.
“This didn’t have to happen,” Mike said. “I would have let you go.”
“Are you going to just stand there and watch me suffer? Kill me!”
“Where’s Oberwand? Tell me, and I’ll honor your request.”
“There’s an underground complex on the other side of the—”
The man stopped talking in mid sentence, his eyes gazing into the distance, staring at nothing, his lips frozen in a ghastly snarl.
He was gone.
A few more seconds, and Mike would have had an answer.
But there was no point in thinking about that now. Mike needed to leave the area before the police arrived.
At some point, the MK-2 had reverted to its normal settings, and the hole in Mike’s left arm had started bleeding again. Apparently, SuperSEAL mode wasn’t sustainable for extended periods of time. Mike’s fingers were numb, and that whole side of his body felt as though someone had taken a sledgehammer to it. He needed a doctor.
He took some side streets back to the motel, running as fast as he could, trying to block out the pain, fighting the ever-increasing weakness brought on by the blood loss.
When he got back to the room, he tore some strips of cloth from a t-shirt and fashioned a bandage and a sling for his arm. He was able to slow the bleeding to a trickle, but he knew that wasn’t going be good enough. A leaky barrel eventually goes dry, no matter how slow the drip.
The emergency room was out of the question. He needed to find a surgeon who specialized in treating criminals.
“Meow.”
Slick looked worried. Or maybe he was just hungry. Mike gave him some food and water, then took him outside for a few minutes. He seemed content after that. He curled up on the bed and closed his eyes.
Mike washed up at the sink, freshened his disguise, walked outside and hailed a taxi.
“Where to?” the driver said.
“I need a doctor.”
“You want to go to the hospital?”
“I’ve been shot. I need someone to take the bullet out of my arm and stitch me up, someone who deals in cash and knows how to keep quiet.”
“Ah, that kind of doctor. I know someone, but the price is not cheap.”
“I have two hundred dollars,” Mike said.
“That’s not enough.”
“Take me to him. I’ll work something out.”
“It’s not a him,” the driver said. “It’s a her.”
“Take me there.”
Ten minutes later, the driver pulled to the curb in front of a building with boarded-up windows and a sign in front that said Thornton’s Drugs. Curled shingles,
peeling paint, graffiti everywhere.
“Walk around to the back door and tap on the window twice with the edge of a coin,” the driver said. “If nobody comes, it means the doctor is out.”
“Can you wait here for me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You don’t have enough money.”
“How much do I owe you for the ride here?”
“Don’t worry about it. Good luck with your arm.”
“Thanks.”
Mike climbed out of the cab, walked around to the rear of the decaying pharmacy, pulled a quarter out his pocket and tapped on the window. A few seconds later, a woman with brown skin and long black hair came and opened the door.
“What do you want?” she said.
“Are you the doctor?”
“What do you want?”
“I have a gunshot wound. Left arm. I need someone to take the bullet out and stitch up the hole.”
“Five hundred dollars.”
“I only have two,” Mike said.
“The emergency room would cost you a thousand. And they ask a lot of questions.”
“I’m telling you the truth. I only have two hundred dollars.”
“Then find someone else. There’s a veterinarian’s office two blocks east of here. Maybe they can help you.”
Mike pulled his pistol out, aimed it at the doctor’s face.
“Or maybe you can,” he said.
The doctor shook her head. “Violence is never the answer, my friend. It’s what got you here in the first place.”
“You wouldn’t believe what got me here in the first place. Let’s talk inside, okay?”
She shrugged, turned and walked away. Mike stepped over the threshold, closed the door behind him, followed her down a long, dimly-lit hallway. She pulled out a set of keys and opened a door and led Mike down another hallway to an examination room. The space was clean and modern and smelled faintly of rubbing alcohol.
“I’ll need the money up front,” she said.
Mike handed her two hundred dollars. “I’ll pay you the rest when I have it,” he said.
“No. I don’t want you coming back here. Give me everything in your pocket, and we’ll call it a day.”
Mike gave her the last of his money. Seven dollars and thirty-seven cents. Now he was penniless.
He leaned on the countertop. “I’m feeling a little dizzy,” he said. “I’ve lost quite a bit of blood.”
“Go ahead and lie down.”
Mike climbed onto the padded examination table. He kept the pistol in his right hand while the doctor worked on his left arm. She removed the sling and the makeshift bandage, poured saline over the wound and dabbed it dry with sterile gauze.
“You’re going to feel a little stick,” she said. “This is to numb the area while I dig for the bullet.”
Mike felt the needle pierce the raw flesh where the slug had entered his left deltoid muscle. The effect was immediate, and he knew right away that the doctor had lied to him, that the injection had contained more than just a numbing agent.
A hot wave of nausea washed over him as the world went black.
Then he didn’t feel anything.
Homeless
When Mike opened his eyes, the doctor had her fingers on his wrist, checking his pulse. There was a cuff wrapped around his right upper arm.
“Your blood pressure was low,” she said. “I gave you a liter of normal saline intravenously. It’s better now.”
“That’s why I passed out? Because my blood pressure was low?”
“Yes.”
She was lying, but Mike didn’t press the issue.
“Where’s my gun?” he said.
“It’s no longer yours. I took it for payment.”
“I want it back. I need it.”
“You probably think I’m going to sell the pistol, but I’m not. It will be destroyed, melted down. It will never harm another human being.”
“You can’t get rid of all the guns in the world,” Mike said.
“But I can get rid of that one.”
Mike tried to sit up. He was still a little lightheaded.
“Did you get the bullet out?” he said.
“Yes. There’s a pressure bandage on the wound. I don’t think it will bleed anymore.”
“There’s something else I wanted to talk to you about,” Mike said. “There’s a small metallic cylinder lodged in my brain. I want it taken out.”
“You want me to operate on your brain? Here? Are you crazy?”
“I just want to know if it’s possible. Supposedly, this thing is invisible to x-rays and CT scans. MRIs, everything.”
“What kind of cylinder?” she said. “What are we talking about?”
“I can’t tell you that. It’s classified.”
“Classified?”
“Yes.”
The doctor walked to the sink and washed her hands.
“Without imaging, nobody’s going to touch it,” she said. “You can’t go digging around blindly in someone’s brain.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Mike said, his heart sinking.
A black hole of hopelessness engulfed him. So this was the way it was going to be. Forever. Wanted by the police, the CIA, and a man named Oberwand. A fugitive with superhuman abilities. On the run, nowhere to turn, no means of support. No friends.
Only he did have a friend.
Nika.
Maybe—
“When you feel steady enough, you can go,” the doctor said. “I think you know the way out.”
“Thanks for everything.”
“Today, the code was two taps with a coin. Tomorrow, it will be something else. As far as I’m concerned, you don’t exist. I expect the courtesy to be reciprocal.”
“Understood,” Mike said.
The doctor opened the door and disappeared into the shadows. Mike sat there on the examination table for a few more minutes, then got up and found his way out of the building.
He was still a little shaky, a little woozy. It took him an hour to walk back to the motel. He drank some water and ate a package of peanut butter crackers and went to bed.
Saturday morning, he coaxed Slick into the backpack, walked down to the desk and turned his keys in.
“I hope everything was satisfactory,” the clerk said.
“Yeah. It was great.”
“Come and see us again.”
Not likely, Mike thought.
“Which way to the river?” he said.
She pointed a finger at the plate glass window at the front of the office. “Go west up here at the light. Then just follow Delaware Street all the way to Crump Park. Can’t miss it.”
“Thanks.”
Mike exited the motel, kept walking until he got to the park. He sat on a bench and stared out at the Mississippi river. He knew that the cold weather would be coming soon. He would have to find a place to stay, or he would die.
He opened the backpack, and Slick climbed out and sat on the bench beside him.
“Go on,” Mike said. “You’re free. Go find yourself a good home.”
The cat didn’t move.
The wind blew a torn piece of newspaper to Mike’s feet. He reached down and picked it up. His arm hurt. In fact, there was no part of his body that didn’t. He was sore all over. And hungry. He knew a lot of things, but he hadn’t figured out how he was going to get enough to eat. He would have to work on that, give it more thought.
Soon.
Very soon.
He held the strip of newspaper in his hand for a couple of minutes, and then he unfolded it and looked at it. There was an expired coupon for cake frosting on one side, and part of an Associated Press article on the other:
INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENT LEAVES FIVE DEAD
Portions of this article were attained from sources who wish to remain anonymous.
Early Thursday morning a massive explosion destroyed nearly two-thirds of a government research facility located
thirty miles east of Memphis, Tennessee. Seconds before the blast,
And that was it. That was where it cut off.
But Mike didn’t need to read the rest of the article to find out what had happened seconds before the blast.
He already knew.
And at that moment, he knew what he had to do.
He didn’t know where Nika was, or even if she was still alive. But he knew that he had to find her.
She was his only friend in the world, and he would never stop searching for her.
Ever.
He loved her.
There’s an underground complex on the other side of the—
On the other side of what? The river?
Maybe.
Mike rose from the bench and started walking toward the I-55 Bridge to Arkansas.
And Slick the cat followed.
II
THE SEARCH FOR NIKA
1
Screams and moans and pleas for help had been coming from the next room for what seemed like hours. Trapped behind a solid steel door in a ten-by-ten space, the harsh fluorescent light glaring down on her naked body like some sort of malevolent eye, Nika Dunning curled up on her bare cot and trembled. She knew that someone would come to her eventually, someone trained in the art of inflicting pain. She could only hope that the end would come quickly.
After all, what information did she have to offer the CIA, or Oberwand, or whoever it was that nabbed her? She knew very little about the human test subject for the MK-2 brain-computer interface—the man calling himself Mike now. She didn’t know his real name, or where he’d come from. She didn’t know where he was, or where he might go. All she knew was that he was still alive. If not, her captors would have killed her already. They would have had no further use for her.
Nika knew that Mike was still alive, and she knew that she loved him.
Yes, she knew that. She’d known it from the start, from the time he walked through CereCirc’s front door. Before the operation, before the murders, before the harrowing ordeal that followed, before the kiss goodbye. There was something about him that immediately drew her in, gave her palpitations, made her weak in the knees.