Alicia Michaels
Clean Teen Publishing
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Titanium
Copyright © 2012 by: Alicia Michaels
Cover Design by: Marya Heiman
Typography by: Courtney Nuckels
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address:
Crimson Tree Publishing
PO Box 561326
The Colony, TX 75056
www.CrimsonTreePublishing.com
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Alicia Michaels
Dax Janner and Yasmine Zambrano
Resistance Hideout in Memphis, Tennessee
August 17, 4010
10:00 p.m.
Every muscle in my body is tense as I step out from my hiding place to confront the dozen Military Police Officers guarding the entrance to the Memphis installment of Restoration Resistance. Everything that follows this moment depends completely on me and the frightened girl beside me. She doesn’t have to tell me that she’s afraid, I can feel it. I can see it in the set of her wide, almond-shaped eyes as she joins me in the middle of the road. Looking at her, I can remember my first mission as a part of the Resistance and I know her fear, recognize it as my own. Today, we are facing the very people who want us dead, who fear us because we are different.
I haven’t known my partner on this mission—Yasmine Zambrano—for very long, but everything I know about her tells me she’s one tough chick. I’m looking forward to seeing what she’s capable of. She stands beside me cool and collected, the sharp angles of her face accentuated by the tight knot at the back of her head. Her eyes narrow as our enemy approaches and I feel her hatred for them. It matches mine.
“Identify yourselves,” barks one of the M.P.s, stepping toward me with his weapon set to stun.
If I weren’t focused on my mission, I might have laughed at this guy. Identify yourselves? Yeah, I’m so intimidated, Officer Asswipe.
Don’t even get me started on the fact that it’s 10:00 pm, dark as hell outside, and these jackasses and their expensive armor are lit up like Christmas trees. All they can make out about me is my long, bulky shape, but once they pull out the scanners they’re going to know what I really am. Then it’ll be time to run.
“Get ready,” I whisper to Yasmine as Officer Asswipe and two of his cronies start walking toward us. They leave behind about ten others, but I’m banking on our discovery drawing them away from the hideout’s entrance. Even if one or two stay behind, I know that Blythe and Jenica can handle it.
“You are in a restricted area,” the officer warns as he draws near, his weapon still pointed toward the ground, his finger ready on the trigger. His two friends are a few steps behind him, their weapons also drawn and ready. One of them holds a scanner. I brace my legs apart and bend my knees, ready to run.
The officers get closer and the glow from their solar powered armor—now fueled by a full day’s worth of sun—casts enough light for them to see us clearly. I know what they see as they stop in front of me and raise their weapons: six feet, five inches of muscle and brawn stretched beneath dark brown skin, a buzz-cut head, and light brown eyes. What lies beneath will be revealed by the scanners. That’s when the fun will begin.
Their equipment starts going off like crazy, clueing them in to my bionic prosthetic legs and titanium ribs. The scanner of the second officer reacts to Yasmine’s Kevlar skin as they close in on us, weapons raised.
“Hands up, both of you!” barks Officer Asswipe, his gun trained directly on my middle. Yasmine is unflinching at my side as we both comply silently.
The third guy speaks into a comm. device clutched in his free hand. “Sergeant, we’ve got two Bios here, one male and one female.”
A voice crackles from over the speaker. “Aside from their Bionic additions, are they armed?”
Officer Asswipe and M.P. number two both step forward to pat us down. My gut clenches in disgust as Yasmine’s officer allows his hands to linger a few seconds longer than necessary on her hips. To her credit, she continues staring straight ahead. She doesn’t even bat an eyelash.
“No weapons,” Officer Three confirms after getting clearance from One and Two.
“Take them out.”
The third officer wrinkles his brow and exchanges a glance with Asswipe. He glances as at the comm. device as if confused. “Sir?”
The voice retorts “Those Bios are probably from the hideout. They’d be dead within the next hour anyway. President Drummond has given orders to gas it.”
I hear Yasmine’s sharp intake of breath and it echoes my own fears. Thank God we got here in time with a plan in place. If we had only run a rescue mission to Stonehead prison, where some of the Memphis hideout Bios had been captured and imprisoned, those left behind would have been killed. I have seen the damage their poisonous gas can do firsthand. I’m talking seizures, drooling and crapping your pants. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
“Roger,” says Officer Three as he stuffs the comm. device back into the clip on his belt.
“On your knees,” says Officer Two as he exchanges the laser weapon at his hip for one of the ancient models that relies on bullets. They love to execute our kind with bullets because they like to see our blood spilled. The others follow suit.
“No,” I respond, lowering my hands back to my sides. They curl into fists that I can’t wait to use on the M.P.s. Yasmine does the same.
“Who the fuck do you think you are, you Bio trash?” Officer Asswipe hisses from behind his helmet. The word ‘bio’ rolls off his tongue like an epithet. “Get on your knees now, both of you.”
“No,” we both respond in unison.
This is what I hate about the M.P.s. They don’t just kill us. They strip us of everything, including our dignity. Taking our freedom and our lives just isn’t enough for them.
“Doesn’t matter,” Officer Two says, stepping forward and pressing his gun to Yasmine’s head. My gut clenches with irrational fear. If anything, the fact that they’ve switched to bullets at this point is good. No bullet can pierce her Kevlar skin. “They’re dead anyway.”
He flips up the visor of his helmet and stares down at Yasmine. “Shame, too. This one’s kind of pretty. I wouldn’t have minded a go with her if we had time.”
“Fuck you, you fascist sack of shit!” She growls defiantly, thought her voice trembles slightly.
My eyebrows shoot up and I feel myself reaching a whole new level of respect for the little spitfire hurling insults while staring down the barrel of a gun. In response, he pulls the trigger. The sound is explosive. Yasmine rears back but maintains her footing as the bullet bounces off her head, falling to the forest floor in a steaming lump of dented metal. Shocked gasps ripple through all three of them as she glances up and smiles.
“My turn,” she rasps before sticking Officer Two with a right cross. His open face shield ensures that her punch lands right on his nose and as blood gushes in a crimson spray, she twists his arm behind him so quickly he doesn’t have time to react. He bends unwillingly at the waist, screaming in pain as she brings her elbow down on his straight arm. The strength of her skin—as hard as diamonds—shatters his armor as we
ll as a few bones.
Realizing that they’ve underestimated us, the other two officers jump into action. Officer Asswipe doesn’t see it coming when I knock the gun from his hand. He takes a swing at me and I let him land it, taking the left hook to the jaw so that he’d get cocky. I see his smirk just seconds before his fist connects with my ribs in a right hook. The sound of his finger bones colliding with my titanium ribs is like music to my ears, which are topped off by his cries of pain as I give him a swift and painful kick to the middle with one of my titanium legs. My skeletal system is all metal from my ribs to my toes. It makes bar bets over how may punches I can take to the gut real interesting.
Officer Asswipe goes flying away from me and lands at the foot of a tree a few feet away, and I turn just in time to find Yasmine trading blows with Officer Three. I catch him by surprise and knock him out cold before he sees me coming. I can hear the crackle of the dead officer’s comm. device as, about a hundred yards away, the others officers check on their fallen comrades. They’ll be on us in a matter of seconds, which is exactly what we wanted.
“You okay?” I ask as Yasmine bends to retrieve the unconscious M.P.’s weapon.
“Peachy. You think he’ll mind if I use this?”
I shrug, kicking at the officer with the toe of my combat boot. “I think he’s okay with it. Didn’t know you could fight.”
She shrugs as she checks the gun’s setting. I follow suit by taking an identical gun from one of the others. “Dad was a martial arts instructor. It’d be dumb for me to not know how to fight.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Good, but those guys don’t look like they share your opinion.”
I glanced up just in time to see eight M.P.’s rising up off the ground on their sleek hover bikes. They speed toward us, weapons trained and ready. I glance at Yasmine and arch one eyebrow.
“Think you can keep up?”
She snorts. “You just better hope one of those mechanical legs of yours doesn’t blow a gasket.”
“I’ll go left, you go right. Try to swivel in and out of the trees and make them crash. The fewer we have to take out ourselves with deadly force, the better.”
That’s a lesson drummed into me by the Professor. Most days I feel mad enough to kill every M.P. within a hundred mile radius, but he’s the leader of our Resistance and is all about working toward peace. He doesn’t want us getting our hands dirty unless we have to. But if it comes down between me and one of those hateful men in gleaming silver armor, the Professor’s just going to have to get over it because I’m going for the kill.
As soon as they are close enough to see us, we take off, Yasmine peeling off and going to the right like I’d instructed her. Behind us, the speeding hover bikes give chase, and I hear the hum of the Neville I hovercraft speeding toward the hideout entrance. I know that the two guards left behind will be nothing for Jenica, Blythe, and the other members of Alpha team to handle. I hope we can divert the others long enough for them to load the trapped refugees into the hovercraft.
I pump my legs as fast as I can, the pistons installed at my joints making me faster than the bikes. I’m hoping to put as much distance between us and the hideout as possible. I hear Jenica’s voice over the comm. device on my hip.
“Alpha team moving in. Janner, report!”
“Kinda tied up right now,” I mumble as I run, darting in and out of the trees faster than any human ought to be able to. Through the comm. device I hear the sounds of the M.P.s weapons firing, followed by a struggle. Behind me there’s an explosion, and I glance over my shoulder to see an orange ball of fire and raining debris—all that’s left of one of the hover bikes.
“Halt! Stop where you are and put your hands up, or we’ll be forced to shoot!”
The mechanical voice of the M.P. closest to me, crackling mechanically through his helmet, doesn’t stop me. I know they’ll kill me anyway, and worse, they’ll turn right back around and kill Jenica and Blythe, who right now are rescuing those left underground in the hideout. Instead, I veer to the right, hard, forcing the three bikes left to scramble to follow me while avoiding the trees.
I hear the whine of a weapon, the preliminary heating that occurs just before their stun guns fire. Once the core temperature of the weapon reaches near volcanic proportions, the weapon’s red-tinted rays can stun or kill, depending on its wielder’s intent. I hit the dirt right as a red beam shoots over my head, tucking and rolling just in time to avoid being hit. In my crouched position, I wait for the shooter to get closer.
Just as he zooms over my head, turning his bike at an angle to take another shot, I uncoil my legs and shoot straight up, my legs propelling me several feet above the ground. I catch hold of the foothold and hang on for dear life as the driver swivels and swerves in an attempt to shake me off.
“Shoot him! Shoot him!” he yells to his buddies. Just as I grab onto the side of his bike with both hands and pull, my biceps straining painfully, he turns it so the other two have a clear shot at me. I struggle to climb aboard the bike, and once my foot hits the footrest, I’m good. I am able to swing my other leg over the side of the bike until I’m straddling the seat, right behind my pursuer—who by now is freaking out. He turns and points his gun at me but I capture his wrist, twisting it painfully behind his back. I use his pain and dismay to catch him off balance and throw him from the seat. Scooting forward, I lower my head over the handlebars just as another red beam shoots over my shoulder.
I rev the engine and send the bike hurtling through the trees, feeling a bit more confident now that I’ve got a bike and a weapon on me. We don’t have many at Resistance headquarters, and most of us have learned how to fight hand to hand. I could turn and pick them both off, but that would leave me blind to the trees surrounding me and I’m in no hurry to relinquish my bike anytime soon. If I can get it back to the hovercraft in one piece, maybe I can talk Jenica into letting me bring it aboard and take it home.
Glancing over my shoulder I see that the two remaining officers are closing in, one right behind the other. In a risky move, I purposely slow my bike, letting my back bumper kiss the front of his. I stand on the seat of my bike facing him and leap into a front somersault, narrowly avoiding being hit by another red beam and landing on the nose of his bike. He raises his gun to shoot again, but not before I grasp him by the front of his helmet, twisting and throwing him from the seat before shooting him with my gun—which is set to stun. He will be out for hours. After I slide into the driver’s seat, another shot from my stun gun takes care of my final attacker and sends both him and his bike crashing into a nearby tree. He falls limp on the forest floor as his bike slams into the tree, going up in a ball of orange and red flame just like the first one.
Finally alone and able to take a few breaths, I snatch the comm. device from my belt and call Jenica.
“Alpha team, this is Janner reporting.”
A few seconds and Jenica was on the line. “This is Swan. We’ve infiltrated the hideout and located the refugees. All Military Police personnel guarding the entrance have been subdued. What is your status, Janner?”
“Four M.P.s on my trail, all stunned and one possibly dead but I’m not sure. Going in search of Zambrano now. She had four on her tail and went in the opposite direction. Once I locate her we will return to the craft within a few minutes. I’ve got a hover bike.”
“Roger that, Janner. There are way more of them here than our intel reported. It will take a while to get them all loaded up and we sure could use you two to help watch our backs. Get here as fast as you can.”
“Roger,” I reply, switching channels on the comm. device so that I can find Yasmine. “Zambrano, this is Janner. Are you there?”
Silence.
I frown, lifting the device to my lips and trying again. “Zambrano, please report, this is Janner. Need to know your location.”
Even more silence.
“Shit.”
By the time the curse has fallen from my mouth
I’m back on the bike, turning west in the direction I remember Yasmine taking. I swerve in and out of the trees, keeping my eyes peeled for Yasmine. Times like this I wish Blythe were with me. Her bionic eye can pick up heat signatures and save me a lot of time. And right now, time is of the essence because if I can’t get to Yasmine in time … well, it’s just not something I want to have to think about.
When I find Yasmine, for a moment I believe that she is dead.
“Oh, God! No!” The words spill out in a rush, my throat constricting with emotion. I stop the bike, park it and jump down, landing amidst a pile of bike debris. I step over two M.P.s to get to Yasmine. She lays sprawled out like a rag doll, covered in dirt and leaves. I kneel down at her side and gently slide a hand under her head, lifting it as I place my free hand around her slender wrist, searching for a pulse with my fingertips. When I feel her blood rushing through her veins beneath my fingers, I breathe a sigh of relief. She’s been stunned, but she’ll be okay.
I only see two of the M.P.s, but I have to assume she’s taken care of the other two as there are no signs of them anywhere and Yasmine’s still alive. If the other two had been around when Yasmine was down, they’d have killed her for sure.
I hoist her over my shoulder and climb back onto the bike, settling her weight across my lap as I rev the bike again and turn back in the direction of the hideout and waiting hovercraft. I remain on edge, just in case they’ve sent reinforcements. Luckily, we make it back to the hideout without incident, though Yasmine is still unconscious. As I park the bike and hop off carefully with Yasmine slung over my shoulder, Blythe emerges from the hideout’s tunnel opening, leading a group of children hurriedly toward the lowered ladder of the hovercraft.
One of our team members, Sayer Strom, is at the foot of the ladder standing guard. He helps the children up the ladder to another waiting team member who will get them all organized and seated in the craft. Blythe, seeing that Sayer has everything under control, trots over to me with concern knitting her brow.
Titanium (Bionics) Page 1