by Mat Nastos
Fueled by anguish and fury and wildly pumping adrenalin, Weir reared back with a fist of unyielding metal and struck out against the only thing he could: Doctor Rebecca Clark. For ten long seconds, hands that were now cruel weapons of unbreakable titanium and unknowable technology rose and fell, each blow met with increasingly wet sounds, and less and less resistance.
With a final blow that cracked the floor beneath his feet, Mal stopped his assault, breathing heavily from the exertion, rivulets of sweat stinging each of the multitude of tiny wounds left behind by the IVs and monitor wires being wrenched from his skin. For a long moment he stared down at the crimson and black mess before him, unable to comprehend what was once the head and torso of the middle-aged doctor, but was now an unrecognizable mess of shredded flesh, broken bone and spent life.
Realization dawned on Mal as his senses now told him there were only three heartbeats registering in immediate proximity to him. Holding up his hands, Mal stared at them, dumbstruck. His fingers, now covered in dripping red gore, had elongated into terrifying looking claws, and the armor along his arms was now covered in one and two inch spikes.
All the better to kill you with, he thought grimly, rising to his feet unsteadily. Mal couldn’t believe what had just happened. He’d never killed anyone before. Not once during his time as a ranger and never ever in cold blood.
“What have I done?” he whispered to the bloodstained weapons that had taken the place of his own hands.
Mal was a killer now. A murderer. He needed to find someone in charge to get things sorted out and turned over to the authorities, decided the soldier.
Before he could move toward the door, Mal’s new senses screamed at him. Six heavily armed hostiles were swiftly approaching his location. Something from the base of his skull commanded him to flee the area or prepare for aggression, but Mal ignored the voice and stood still, his nude, muscular frame still half-coated in blood that was rapidly drying under the room’s ever-present air-conditioning.
Mal turned to face the only entrance to the room as he waited to turn himself in, his head tilting up as he heard a group of people stop just outside.
“Rogue unit, Designate Cestus, located,” said the muffled voice of either a military or law-enforcement officer.
That’s really starting to get on my nerves, thought Mal at the newcomer’s words.
The electric buzzing in Mal’s metallic arms spiked in intensity, warning him once more of his imminent danger. “Target locked.”
“Fire!”
Even as his mind was still registering what was happening, Malcolm Weir’s body took over on instinct and reflex alone, diving wildly to his right as the door and wall in front of him disappeared in a torrent of gunfire. Whatever they had done to him, whoever “they” were, they had given the ranger a speed that defied imagination.
Faster than a speeding bullet, was what crossed Mal’s mind. Unfortunately, that illusion was quickly dispelled as a second hail of gunfire tore into him, his new body armor absorbing all but a single shot, which lodged itself in the thick muscles of his upper thigh, and spun him across the now debris-laden floor.
Mal grunted with the impact as his mind analyzed his situation. Wounded, nude and trapped in a room with only two available exits, Mal was already leaping over the surgical table he had been strapped to even as his newfound senses worked through the problem.
Mal ducked down low behind the hydraulic and metal table in hopes it would shield him from more gunfire, grabbing the starched white sheet still draped across it to cover himself. Hazarding a look back towards the door, Mal tried to figure a way out while tearing a strip of cloth off to use as a tourniquet for the bullet wound in his leg.
Reaching down to try and remove the bullet with his fingers, Mal was surprised to see the projectile push itself free when his hand approached, as if by magic. The words “initiating repairs” sounded silently in his head. Mouth open in stunned amazement, Mal watched as the hole in his leg stopped bleeding and began to slowly knit itself closed. Further inspection revealed the array of nicks from the numerous intravenous needles had nearly vanished fully from sight, leaving behind only the smallest of red welts.
Another chorus of semiautomatic gunshots interrupted any astonishment the man was feeling over his rapidly healing wound. Mal was stunned that he could identify the weapons and number of said devices that were shooting at him: five Heckler & Koch MP5/40 submachine guns, fired in overlapping bursts of three rounds each.
Being able to identify the guns shooting at you was a neat carnival trick, but it wasn’t going to help get him out of danger, Mal told himself harshly. Any second, his attackers were going to resolve it was time to charge into the room and, when that happened, no amount of gun identification was going to save his sorry butt.
If these people had done whatever it was they did to him, Mal was sure they would know how to neutralize him as well.
The sight of a tall, muscular, dark-haired man half-wrapped in a sheet drew Malcolm’s attention. At first, he didn’t realize he was gazing at himself in the wall of glass separating him from eight heartbeats—his hair was cut down almost to the scalp and his icy blue eyes were sunken. His entire face was almost unrecognizable, even to himself.
That’s when it hit him: “two available exits.”
Mal was charging head first for the mirrored wall at the back of the room when hell came through the door behind him.
CHAPTER 2
The operating room’s only door was blown inward from the force of a thunderous impact as Malcolm Weir raced across the cold tiled floor at breakneck speed, heading for what he hoped to be escape.
Senses obviously operating on overdrive told the man the half-dozen hostiles had entered the room and were taking up position behind him. The rapidly increasing heart rates of the two people in front of him on the opposite side of the mirrored wall further informed him those hostiles were about to fire.
Well, to be fair, the sight of a six foot two US Army Ranger with wicked-looking, blood soaked metal arms hauling naked ass towards them at a pace that would make most Olympic sprinters envious was probably enough to get anyone’s heart racing.
The military-esque unit, which Mal could now see reflected in the ten by ten foot mirror in front of him, emerged from the dust cloud caused by their sudden entrance and had formed into two lines, with three black-clad, helmeted members dropping to one knee in front of the remaining three. All were dressed in a variation of law enforcement style tactical gear: visored helmets bearing the letters “GMR” emblazoned on the sides, each followed by a number, long sleeved shirts with some sort of government insignia on their shoulders, covered by Kevlar vests loaded to bear with nylon gun harnesses. Every man wore a pair of pistols on their shoulders, Beretta M9s by the look of them, and some sort of large machine pistols Mal couldn’t identify strapped to their right hips.
In addition to the HK-MP5/40s that five of them carried and were currently pointing at Mal in a threatening manner, they were a formidable group for sure. The sixth man, whom Mal assumed was their leader, and only one without a helmet, held an AA-12 automatic shotgun that, in the tight confines of the surgical theater, worried him more than the other weapons, and the grenade launcher mounted to it didn’t help matters.
If Mal hadn’t been running for his life, he might have noticed the inhuman way five of the members of the GMR-team moved in conjunction with one another, the metallic cables which replaced the thick neck muscles of their fair-haired leader or his chrome right eye. Of course, with escape and self-preservation at the forefront of his mind, it was excusable for him to miss such details.
Mal felt the dull impact of at least six shots against the thick armor that now made up most of his wide back as stream of bullets, laced with tracer fire, punched holes in the ultra-polished surface of the one-way observation wall a split second before his powerful legs catapulted his body through it. The eerily heightened senses he now possessed notified the soldier that one set
of heartbeats in the darkened room he landed in had been silenced by the gunfire.
Shit, thought Mal as he planted one titanium-steel hand onto a desk and vaulted behind a bank of electronic equipment, they’re killing their own people!
Only half acknowledging the body of a poor lab technician slumped over a computer terminal and missing the rear half of his skull, Mal headed for the door on the opposite side of the room, drawn by the bright light pouring in from the outer hallway. Bullets continued to pepper the room in increasingly uncontrolled bursts of fire.
Somehow, through the staccato drumbeat of the semi-automatic weapons’ fire, Mal’s ears picked up the sound of a woman whimpering just to the right of the door, hidden under a desk. His eyes found the young blond woman without much effort, curled up into a fetal position. She was dressed in a dark blue blouse, borderline inappropriately short black skirt and a standard-issue white lab coat. Most of her face and chest were covered in the steaming gore from her co-worker’s death, and she was missing a black high-heeled Oxford that, amusingly enough, the silent voice in Mal’s head had already located under an over-turned faux-leather office chair four feet to his left.
Normally Mal would have left the attractive woman behind—she had, after all, been part of whatever group had brought him here and did whatever it was they had done to him—but the soft pop and whoosh of a grenade being fired from the other side of the fractured and fragmented wall caused his Ranger training to kick in and the world seemed to slam into slow motion.
Perception kicking into high gear, Mal could see the motion trails and air disruption of hot projectiles flying through the air around him, easily dodgeable. A quick look over his left shoulder showed the fast approaching grenade round, spinning fiercely even in the hour it seemed to take for a second to tick off the clock.
A clawed hand grasped the cowering woman’s shoulder and yanked her to her feet, forcibly dragging her along behind the soldier who was now moving at nearly an imperceptible speed. The living metal of Mal’s shoulder caused the wooden and glass door to vaporize under its weight, slowing his momentum not one iota and allowing him to bounce out of the workroom’s doorway even as the grenade exploded.
Flames licked out into the hall, followed by oily gray smoke and the smell of scorched plastic, quickly filling the corridor from floor to ceiling.
His powerful body shielding the woman from explosion and raining debris, Mal used one hand to turn her face toward his, leaving a grisly, clawlike handprint across her cheek, and demanded, “Who are you people? Where the hell am I?”
“Don’t kill me!” was all she responded; mascara and tears ran down her now soot covered face. All that followed was incoherent blubbering.
The grating sound of stone being ground to dust spat from Mal’s mouth as teeth ground themselves against each other in anger and frustration. He didn’t have time for this. Those “GMR” guys were going to realize he survived the room’s obliteration and come for him, guns blazing any second. Mal hauled the woman to her feet with an ease that surprised him: the arms, whatever they were, increased his strength dramatically. As long as his feet were planted, the super-soldier guessed he could probably lift a few thousand pounds without much trouble.
A quick once-over of the woman, whose nametag Mal saw was “Grace Talborg,” helped him decide “good cop” was probably the best interrogation technique to use. She was fragile and looked like she’d shatter if he breathed too hard on her.
“Look, Ms. Talborg,” voice shifting into comfort-mode as years of polite Southern upbringing took over, Mal held his hands up, palms out, to show he meant her no harm, “I don’t know what’s going on here, or where I am or why I’m here…please. Help me.”
Her response left much to be desired, at least from Mal’s point of view.
A gun pulled with amazing speed out from under her coat and a trio of bullets fired with amazing rapidity into his chest caused Mal to rethink his manners. The pistol was a tiny .22 caliber job and Grace wasn’t the most skilled of marksmen, but only his hyper-enhanced reflexes and speed allowed Mal to avoid taking a slug to his vital organs: two bullets flattened themselves against his chest armor, harmlessly, while the third pinged off the forearm he threw up to shield his face and ricocheted up to leave a nasty gash across his right cheek, burrowing a burned and bloody line into his face.
Grace moved to fire her weapon again but Mal was quicker and caught her hand in his increasingly savage looking one. All she could manage was a sharp intake of breath as a quick flex of the soldier’s gleaming chrome muscles crushed the gun in her hand, and the fingers around it.
“My, God,” croaked Grace as the pain from her pulverized hand slowly began to register in her brain. Mal didn’t give her time to scream as he did the chivalrous thing and head butted the woman into unconsciousness.
Smoke from the fire continued to billow into the passageway and gave everything a red hue. Mal’s sensitive hearing picked up the sound of sprinklers going off in the room next to where he stood. The sound of heavy booted feet stomping through water allowed him to identify where the armed group of men were—they hadn’t charged in right after the grenade went off, which was the only thing that had saved him from taking a barrage of bullets from behind as he dealt with Grace.
Eyes narrowing in an effort to block stinging smoke, Mal squinted to try and find an escape route before he was discovered. Down the hall and away from the rooms he had just vacated were a series of doors and a T-junction at the end, perhaps a hundred feet or more away. Bright light, a clear blue sky and glimpses of buildings showed through a nearly floor-to-ceiling window in the opposite direction. One way led deeper into the unknown, the other to a freedom, but he’d have to make his way past two rooms filled with men who were armed to the teeth and ready to kill him.
Shouts from within the fire-engulfed room announcing his discovery spurred Mal’s legs into action. He headed for the window and hoped there were no nasty surprises waiting for him from within the surgical suite’s shattered doorway.
“Target locked!” shouted a voice from somewhere within the rooms and a nearly perfect horizontal line of armor piercing bullets tore through the wall right behind him.
Mal spit out a curse and sent his legs pumping.
Moving at full speed after only a few steps, Mal was able to outrun the rain of death from behind. Unfortunately, as he approached the well-lit doorway of the operating room, a pair of the GMRs emerged, wielding stun-batons loaded with enough electrical juice to take down an elephant.
Mal was about to stop and reverse direction when the inner voice chimed out, “Melee mode engaged.”
The ever-present feeling of buzzing electricity grew to an uncomfortable pitch that ran from the fingertips of both hands in to his spine, causing Mal to almost lose his footing as he leaned his head down to rush the men. From the corner of his eyes, Mal watched as one arm molded itself into a nearly three foot long blade of glimmering steel, thrusting out from where his forearm had been. The other arm seemed to bulk up, metal plates flanging and flaring out, and his fingers elongated into five claws that would have made Wolverine shit himself with envy.
The GMRs were fast and raised their electrified clubs into position to strike him as the distance closed, but Mal was infinitely faster. The man on Mal’s left was split in half, from groin to collarbone, dead before he realized it, and flopped to the nylon gray carpet. Seemingly of its own accord, Mal’s bladed right hand shattered the second man’s club in its grip, completely unaffected by the charge it held, and ripped through his chest, the Kevlar vest offering no more protection than a cloth t-shirt.
The fight was over in less than a second and two of Mal’s unknown opponents lay at his feet, dead and nearly unrecognizable as having once been men. Barely breathing heavy, Mal stared at the implements of death his hands had become and shook with quiet emotion, ignoring the silent voice that spoke once more from somewhere deep inside his mind.
“Four hostile units a
pproaching at six o’clock. Unit Designate Gauss considered preliminary threat,” it droned.
“What am I?” muttered Mal on the verge of collapse.
“You’re dead is what you are, Cestus,” came the response from the doorway to Mal’s left. A spinning hook kick from a steel-toed combat boot took Mal by surprise as it landed in the center of his back and drove him face-first through the opposite wall and into a darkened medical room.
All Mal could think as his head slammed into an examining table was that there was no way a normal man could have done that to him. It was impossible.
Whoever he was fighting, they were no more normal than he was.
“Gomer Units Theta-Nine, Theta-Ten and Theta-Fourteen, stand down, this asshole is mine.”
Wiping blood from out of his eyes, Mal looked up to see the man his voice called “Gauss” stride out of the haze-filled hall, silhouetted by the flickering fluorescent lights in the ceiling behind him. Mal was shocked to see Gauss tear his shirt and Kevlar vest off with a quick motion, revealing a pair of slick, chrome metal arms underneath. Four two-finger thick bands of glowing material, spaced off every few inches, encased each arm.
Unseen, the three remaining Gomers sounded off in unison, “Standing down, sir.”
The stereo effect creeped Mal out, although it was quickly forgotten as cold metal fingers grasped his neck from behind and jerked him to his feet.
“I’ve been waiting to take you down since they brought you in, Cestus.”
A mouthful of spit and bile and blood accompanied a series of crushing blows to Mal’s chest. He was sure he felt at least three ribs crack during the attack. Metal arms or no, Mal wasn’t sure how much punishment he’d be able to take.
Gauss held Mal two inches off of the ground with an unyielding grip. “Let’s see how much your “badass Ranger training” helps you after I’ve ripped your spine out.” The man’s mouth literally frothed with his anger and spittle showered Mal’s face.