Weir Codex 1: The Cestus Concern

by Mat Nastos

  With a headache of biblical proportions building just behind his brow, Kiesling clenched his eyes and waved for the tech to continue. “Go on.”

  “The server logs show a massive download of information occurred right before the system died. Zettabytes of data were copied. Everything was taken.”

  “Taken by whom?” quizzed the increasingly worried Kiesling.

  “Designate Cestus.”

  “That’s impossible,” interrupted Melissa to the man’s left, causing both Kiesling and Anderson to jump. “Cestus may have had the most advanced wetware we’ve ever integrated into a biological unit, but that amount of information is magnitudes beyond what he is capable of storing.”

  Everyone stared at the woman in amazement. A tiny grin tugged at Kiesling’s lips. It might be time to give Melissa a raise.

  “Well,” started Anderson, insecurity oozing from every pore of his body. “Normally, you’d be correct, Ms. Roslan: the base system Cestus had been operating with would have been unable to process, let alone store that amount of data. It would have fried every synapse in his brain and shut him down; maybe even killing him in the process.”

  Melissa looked down on the man, smirking.

  “However,” he continued, “With his upgrade last month, we gave him tens of millions of tiny computers to add to his network…”

  “Oh, my God,” realization hit the executive assistant’s face before anyone else realized what Anderson was saying,” The nano-drones…”

  “Exactly,” returned Anderson, shifting his attention from his boss to the only other person in the room who seemed to understand what he was saying. “All of those microscopic drones are tiny computers, all slaved to the one in the head of Designate Cestus. It’s possible they’re operating as a cloud-processing network—each nano-drone carrying and managing a small piece of the information and taking some of the lode off of his core-system. He may not even realize what he’s got—the download may have fried his governing AI…”

  “Which is what caused him to go rogue,” finished Ms. Roslan.

  “Precisely! With his AI gone, the original personality construct resumed control.”

  “Wait a minute,” Kiesling jumped in as he finally processed the information. “You mean our entire project is stuck in Malcolm Weir’s brain and I’ve got Gauss down there trying to kill him?”

  Every head in the room snapped back to the events playing out in monochromatic gray on a tiny Sony brand monitor. Kiesling pushed Anderson out of the way as he started screaming into the tiny white communications unit security chief Doherty had given him, “Stand down! Stand down! Gauss, abort!”

  Kiesling was too late as an irresistible force slammed into an immovable object, and the explosive result shattered windows in the top twenty floors of the US Bank Building, throwing the heads of Project: Hardwired to the floor.

  He had recovered just enough to see a very naked and very unconscious Malcolm Weir falling past his office window, surrounded by a rain of broken glass and wreckage.

  With his once promising future political career flashing before his eyes, Gordon Kiesling rushed for the most powerful weapon at his disposal, the telephone, and began the most important case of damage control in his life.

  “Get me the Secretary of Defense…”

  CHAPTER 4

  Falling to his death from the seventy-second floor of the tenth tallest building in the United States resulted in a not-so-surprising epiphany about himself: Malcolm Weir hated heights.

  The only thing Mal hated even more than heights at that particular moment was the fact the new computer he found himself implanted with was informing him that he was currently traveling at nearly 80 miles per hour after approximately five seconds of falling; that he had already fallen about one hundred and fifty feet, give or take; and, finally, that he would reach terminal velocity right as his body impacted, leaving what he could only assume would be a rather messy smear on the immaculately kept gray stone tiled courtyard just outside the US Bank Tower’s main entrance.

  Being nude was, of course, just icing on the cake.

  Recognizing no amount of cybernetic enhancements were going to allow him to survive a seventy-two story fall, being too far away from the structure of the building to even attempt to grab on to the ledge, and realizing none of the magical flagpoles Daredevil or Batman used in the comic books were going to materialize and save him, Mal angled his body towards the ground and used it like an airfoil in an attempt to make it into one of the windows. While the action would increase his airspeed and decrease his time to ground impact, and a collision with the side of the building in excess of 100 miles per hour would probably kill him just as quickly, the battered and bruised Army Ranger saw no other options.

  Hurricane winds tore at his flesh and made his eyes tear up. The wind-induced blindness threw off his aim, caused Mal to miss a 30th floor bank of windows and slam with sense-shattering force into the concrete and steel outer wall instead.

  Mal was sent spinning uncontrollably out into the abyss between buildings, but was able to stay calm enough to correct his course and try again.

  As the man approached the building’s side once again, his mind fired off a prayer and reached out with the segmented chrome weapons that now replaced his arms.

  The ground rose up quickly to meet him and Mal knew this was his last chance and his only hope of survival.

  “No!!” screamed Mal as his right hand missed a lip by mere inches. He instinctively reached out with his left out in a reflexive attempt to grab on, knowing full well he was still too far away.

  A fire in his shoulder and chest caught the man by surprise. The electrical hum that had been present in his new limbs increased to painful proportions and Mal’s eyes went wide at what he saw happening.

  Within the blink of an eye, his left arm shot out, elongating to nearly 6 feet in length and caught the ledge, which had been rushing out of sight an instant before, titanium-steel fingers digging deep into the hard shell of the US Bank Tower.

  Mal was never so relieved to have his nose broken from the momentum of being thrown into the side of a building. His relief, however, was short lived as the lip his claws held onto disintegrated under his weight, sending him falling once more toward the pavement hundreds of feet below.

  This time, Mal was close enough to jam both arms into the pale gray skin of the building to slow his fall. Ten gouges ripped through stone and steel and glass as Mal’s descent continued, destroying the once pristine face of the skyscraper.

  Mal kept his head down to keep his face safe from deadly debris as he fell and forced back the pain of having his shoulders nearly ripped off in the process of saving himself. Silently, Mal thanked whoever made his new arms even as he cursed them for what they had done to him.

  Twenty feet above the ground, the regular construction of the building halted for the vaulted ceilings of the first floor and Mal found himself in a short free fall once more.

  Mal landed harshly, skidding to a halt just outside of the giant glass entrance of the building. The rough stone of the pavement shredded the skin on his left leg and re-aggravated the semi-healed bullet wound in his thigh as he vaulted to one side to dodge the dagger sharp shards of glass and brick the blades of his fingers had torn free during his escape.

  A businessman in a four thousand dollar charcoal-colored H. Huntsman Super 100 wool suit and fifteen hundred dollar John Lobb shoes, shocked by the sight of an incredibly muscled, naked man with metal arms dropping out of the sky, barely noticed the four foot tall brass and aluminum “3” crashing into the ground mere inches from his body as he about-faced and hurried back inside through the nearest set of revolving doors.

  Mal inhaled deeply and let it out slowly to try and calm the jack-hammering of his heart. Easing slowly to his feet, the battered, bruised and bloodied man took inventory of his wounds: three broken or cracked ribs, broken nose, a bullet hole in his upper thigh, skin scraped almost entirely off of his left side, glass
embedded in places he didn’t want to think about and a bruised tail-bone from dropping onto his butt after a nine hundred and sixty plus foot fall.

  Oh, that and he seemed to be missing two arms, his pectoral muscles, most of his back and all of his clothing.

  All things considered, he was lucky to be alive at all.

  Bare feet slapped pavement warmed by the hot summer sun of Southern California. Mal headed for the large, briskly moving street out in front of the tower. He was completely unsure of where to go or even how to get there in the middle of downtown Los Angeles without any clothing. Before he discovered an answer to either of those questions, a third problem arose when a shrill alarm sounded from somewhere in the depths of the US Bank Tower.

  Damn it, thought Mal to himself as he continued towards the street in hopes of a solution to his dilemma would fall out of the sky the same way he had. He figured it would take them—whoever ‘them’ was—a few minutes to get any sort of response team together and down to street level.

  At least no one has noticed me, was Mal’s thought as he looked around and noticed a crowd gathering on the street nearby.

  “Surveillance devices detected,” announced the computer voice from within. “Executing countermeasures.”

  Frustration consumed Mal as he bolted towards a mixed trio of a large, balding man with sweat stains on the armpits of his long-sleeved blue dress shirt, an elderly Korean woman with a small push cart full of grocery bags, and a tall man dressed in denim jeans and a stark white wife-beater, half astride a still-idling black-and-green Kawasaki Z1000 motorcycle. A black, full-face helmet and leather jacket sat on the seat in front of the man.

  They were all staring at him through the cameras in their cell phones.

  “That’s just superb,” spat Mal as he neared the group and gave them some excellent footage of ‘Little Mal’ flapping in the breeze. “I hope those bastards on YouTube aren’t mean!”

  All three onlookers dropped their phones as the tiny devices shot sparks almost simultaneously. The silent electronic voice informed Mal that all mobile devices within 30 yards had been disabled, but that there were a series of traffic and other cameras observing him. It instructed that he vacate the immediate area before local authorities or Project: Hardwired units arrived.

  The fat man and old woman dove out of Mal’s path as he aimed for the biker, head down and eyes glaring, “I’m taking your bike, your jacket and your pants!”

  “Dude I-“ was all the red-goateed man got out before he was laid flat by a steel-fisted right cross. Mal caught the man before he hit the ground and quickly stripped off his old tan work boots and jeans.

  Probably not the most sanitary of shopping methods, but beggars can’t be choosers, thought Mal as he dressed at near light speed. His metallic arms, filled with strange plates, spikes and weird angles, fought the jacket, but finally went in with one last shove that popped a few seams. The crowd around the building was growing and he’d need to hurry before…

  “Multiple hostiles approaching.”

  Looking up to see a gang of men dressed in tactical gear similar to what he had encountered upstairs, Mal groaned and asked his “other” self for the number of hostiles incoming.

  “Ten standard humans bearing large caliber weapons.”

  “Not too bad,” he responded aloud. “It could be worse.”

  “One shoulder-mounted rocket-launcher.”

  Mal was really starting to hate the voice in his head.

  The motorcycle’s engine revved, buzzing like the world’s largest hornets’ nest, the sound echoing madly between the towering high rise buildings filling the tight area of downtown Los Angeles. Mal let go of the brake and caused the super bike to pop up into a wheelie, barely getting out of the way as automatic gunfire ripped into the asphalt where it had been parked.

  Fifth Street was a one-way street, heading northwest. With a red light formed pocket empty of traffic, Mal assumed he’d be able to go full throttle and get far enough away from the gunmen to avoid taking a bullet up his tailpipe.

  The scream of sirens and six black and white police vehicles blocking off the road’s intersection with South Flower Street, their harsh red and blue lights bouncing off of every reflective surface in sight.

  Mal knew, between his military training and the living metal of his arms, he could fight his way past the cops, but the thought of harming or even killing police officers out doing their jobs caused Mal’s stomach to fill with knots.

  No way, he thought to himself as a sneer ripped across his bloodied face. Maybe they’ll listen to my side of the story?

  The sound of an authoritative voice crackling over a car-mounted loudspeaker gave him hope.

  “You, on the bike, pull over and place your hands where we can see them!”

  His hopes were shattered as a well-placed shot from behind tore through his coat and punched through the window of the cop car directly in front of Mal, killing the officer with a high-powered bullet to the forehead.

  From the oncoming cops’ perspective, it appeared as though Mal had fired the round.

  “Those bastards!” Mal snapped again as the blood in his veins pumped so loud he swore he could hear it. He leaned the bike over, planted a steel-toed boot onto the ground and slammed the front brake as hard as he could, which sent the vehicle’s back wheel into a spin. Only his enhanced strength and reflexes kept the motorcycle from crashing and allowed Mal to change directions at just under 50 miles per hour to go rocketing back towards the men who turned his life upside down.

  They’re dead, was all that went through his mind as the bike leapt the curb onto the sidewalk, heading straight for the loosely grouped team of men.

  Bullets hammered into the front of the bike, obliterating its front end, but Mal didn’t notice. Head down, arms extended forward, Mal paid even less attention to the few bullets that impacted him—tearing his new coat to shreds and glancing off his armored body.

  If the sight of one of the mercenaries kneeling down and bracing a small self-propelled rocket launcher on his shoulder worried him, it didn’t show in the rider’s eyes so intent was his purpose.

  At approximately fifty feet away, the thug squeezed hard on the weapon’s trigger and let loose the weapon directly into Mal’s mad rush on the quickly disintegrating product of Japanese motorcycle engineering.

  A split second before the tiny white and red missile blasted into the steel, aluminum and plastic form of the Kawasaki, Mal launched himself into the air with a thrust from his inhumanly strong arms and legs. Mal’s momentum, aided by the concussive force of the bike exploding into a ball of yellow flame, carried the man the final few yards into the midst of the men who were the focus of his own burning rage.

  The Project: Hardwired security force was made up of some of the top soldiers recruited from all across the United State military and all of its branches, and, in some cases, outsourced from other countries. The force was a team of men who lived, ate and breathed combat. Killing was their stock and trade and, between them, the group of ten men standing toe-to-toe with Malcolm Weir had decades of experience. They were killers in every sense of the word.

  They didn’t stand a chance, caught in the razor-edged whirlwind of Mal’s fury and rage and hatred. The carnage lasted less time than it took for a man to fall from a seventy-two-story building.

  Mal gave himself completely over to his reflexes and his pain and anger clouded instincts, barely noticing as bladed ridges grew along the living metal of his arms, spikes covered his back, and men fell before his unquenchable desire for blood.

  Arms were sliced from shoulders; legs hacked from torsos; heads chopped from necks, and none of it mattered to Mal, engulfed by the urge to have his tormentors dead. Their screams failed to reach his ears as one and all lost lives at his cruel touch.

  When all was said and done, ten men lay dead, although from what was left of the men the LAPD’s coroners would have trouble confirming that count, so mangled were the bodies.r />
  Not a single intact corpse remained and the pieces of once-living men were spread out at the feet of a shaking and weeping Malcolm Weir, arms glistening moistly with the product of his unstoppable attack. Blood soaked the air in a fine cloud of mist, covering the entire area and leaving a hot dampness across Mal’s body, soaking his clothes through to sweat-drenched skin.

  So disturbing was the scene that Mal, once the red heat of the berserker fury had dissipated from his eyes, vomited at the sight of what he had done. With the sounds of police sirens quickly approaching from the street and another group of heavily armed government against running towards him from the entrance to the US Bank Tower building, Mal dropped to his knees, hands hung limply to his sides as his fantastic, seemingly inexhaustible stamina finally evaporated, leaving him a spent husk.

  “Take him down!” commanded one of the approaching soldiers from behind the mirrored visor of his helmet.

  Every remaining flesh-and-blood muscle in his body locked up in a painful, twitching cramp as a swarm of what seemed like a hundred taser darts peppered Mal’s body. Although Mal’s living metal arms seemed to absorb the majority of the incapacitating charge, enough juice remained to render him nearly paralyzed and cause his body to face-plant into the hard stone tiles of the blood-soaked courtyard, further shattering his nose with a sickening crunch.

  “Yarges, Silva: get the adamantine cuffs up and lock those arms down,” ordered the officer who called for the taser attack. “Teran, Volante: put a restraining bolt on his rear power core, ASAP. I don’t want any surprises while we talk to the local cops.”

  A hard-soled boot slammed down on the back of Mal’s neck, grinding his broken nose once more into the rough ground. The pressure of the restraints kept Mal from struggling as two pairs of hands clamped cold, smooth casings of metal over his hands, covering from fingertip to just over his elbow. He was trapped and his movement limited, with his arms drawn tightly behind his back and unable to bend or rotate except at the shoulder.