Zero Factor: A Cybershock Story

by Stacy Gail

  “Wait!”

  Both men turned as Via Brede launched herself out of the transport’s cab. Pushing her stunned male companions out of the way, she ran full-tilt toward Locke and the colonel, her eyes wide with unvarnished terror. Unsure if her intention was to attack, Locke gripped his pulse rifle as she leapt toward him, her arms wrapping around his neck while her unpainted, bow-shaped mouth slammed into his with a single-minded vengeance.

  Chapter Three

  Via knew her life was over. If she were honest with herself, part of her had known it the moment she had left the safety of the agridome. People like her could never put themselves in a position where they would be within spitting distance of the militia, much less work hand in hand with them. To do so was akin to bathing in jet fuel, then playing with a lighter.

  And yet she had gone. Like a lamb to slaughter, she had gone.

  It was okay, though. As long as she could save the others, she could be at peace with what had to be done now. Not that she was some kind of freaky saint or anything. It was just that as she’d sat in the transport drowning in images of what was to come, she had reached a very basic conclusion—she would rather die than live with the knowledge that she could have done something, but didn’t.

  So she wasn’t a saint, and she sure as hell wasn’t even nodding acquaintances with that thing called bravery. If anything, she was too much of a coward to live with the guilt of surviving while everyone else got blown into unrecognizable bits.

  “Via? What the hell—?”

  She heard Weddo’s shocked voice, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was focusing on what she knew, what she saw, and pushing it with all her might into Locke. She wasn’t sure if she was doing it right. Hell, she didn’t even know if she was doing anything more than simply kissing a stranger and making a ginormous ass of herself. She had only done this sort of thing once before when she was fifteen, and it had been a total accident back then.

  By degrees, the frenzied panic boiling through her blood eased like a tight fist unfurling, and new, thoroughly unexpected sensations began to seep in through the smothering veil of fear. For just a heartbeat the universe seemed to pause, a collective holding of breath while even the sound of the bustling city’s daily life came to a gentle stop. For Via, there was only this fragile moment as her mouth molded to his, and a shocking thrill of pleasure bloomed like fireworks in her brain when his lips softened and returned the pressure with interest. Her booted feet barely touched the ground as she kept her arms wrapped tightly around his strong neck, and delight mingled with relief when his free arm curled about her waist to bring her fully against the rock-solid length of his battle-hardened warrior’s body. His breath was warm, his taste tantalizing. The seductive nuzzling of his silk-over-steel lips against hers invited her untutored mouth to explore deeper, and she saw no reason why she should resist when she knew they were living on borrowed time.

  A tremulous note of discord whispered from her psyche into his, a never-ending ricochet rippling noiselessly between them. The pleasure bounced back and forth as well, doubling and trebling as it went, but threaded through it was what the vision had shown her. But that was okay too. If this was to be her last moment of life, she was determined to pour every ounce of joy, vitality and pleasure she could into this kiss. If anything, she was happy for this final opportunity to go out with a bang.

  “Lieutenant Locke, attention!”

  It was the strangest thing, was all Via could think while her pulse pounded in her ears and in the lips that had become the most sensitive part of her body. It was as though she and this man—a militia man, for God’s sake—had discovered that with a kiss, they could create a magical little sphere where only they existed, and nothing of the gritty, desperate, dangerous place that was their world could encroach on their private slice of perfection. Then her lips drifted like a dream away from his, and the restless throb of the ever-bustling city once again filled her ears. But nothing felt the same. She wasn’t the same. As mad as it sounded, she felt changed from the inside out.

  Were kisses supposed to change the world?

  Via opened eyes she couldn’t remember closing, and gazed up in dazed confusion at the man she held with all the passionate fervor of a long-time lover. Where was the explosion? Had she interrupted the sequence of events? Was everyone safe?

  Everyone except her, of course. Her safe life was officially over now that she had revealed to a gun-toting jarhead member of the militia that she was a psionic.

  Dayum.

  “What the hell are you hick farmers feeding your oversexed women?” Colonel Fynn raged at Weddo, who was staring at Via in horrified disbelief. Her eyes shimmering with the chaos churning her insides, she could only shake her head. There was no time to explain her behavior. There was no time for anything, except…

  Maybe there could be one last way out.

  When she looked back to Locke, his flat, not-really-human optics were still trained on her as if he didn’t know how to look away. “Kill me,” she whispered in a rush, and watched his cyberoptics widen in surprise. It was probably the stress that made her think there might have been an impossible flash of emotion there. “If you have even one ounce of compassion left in that meched-out body of yours, please kill me. You’ll be doing me a favor.”

  Slowly he shook his head while Fynn yelled at Weddo, “You’re a—”

  “Please.” She grabbed the muzzle of his pulse rifle and angled it under her chin with the surreal calm of one who had no other choice. “Do it.”

  A muscle jumped in his jaw. “You’re crazy.”

  “No one will blame you. I attacked you.”

  “Attacked?” His head continued to shake. “That’s not what I’d call it.”

  “Locke, you come to attention, you worthless bastard!” Fynn was all but frothing at the mouth while the rest of his troops closed in on the uncharacteristic knot of chaos in their midst, wary and confused. “What do you think you’re doing, soldier, falling for a classic diversionary tactic while the enemy closes in?”

  “The no-goods are dispersing, Colonel.” Locke’s voice was oddly remote, as though he was only half-aware of the words coming out of his mouth. And all the while he stared at Via as if the next beat of his heart depended on it. “Look around. Even an untrained eye can see there is no enemy out there.”

  Fynn turned an alarming shade of puce, making Via wonder if anyone had ever mustered up the cojones to contradict him. “The moment any soldier thinks that, they become worse than a liability. They become as bad as the enemy itself.” In sheer contempt, Fynn threw the cigar he still held at Locke’s feet. “Lifers, fall back double-time.”

  “Bomb!” Locke suddenly shouted and waved at Weddo and the others. “Get in the transport, now!”

  “Wait, I stopped—” Via’s protest was cut off as Locke’s free arm clamped around her waist like a vise, and she let out a strangled gasp when it felt like the lower half of her rib cage was crushed. Then, without warning, he leapt an easy fifteen feet off the raised loading dock in a mind-boggling show of inhuman strength, landing on the ground beside the dock so hard Via’s teeth clicked together.

  “Get down!” Locke’s roar was superfluous, for his massive warrior’s body crouched over hers like a smothering blanket until she was forced into a fetal position, her head pushed down so far her chin gouged into her chest.

  “But I stopped it—”

  Via’s strangled protest was interrupted once more by an explosion above them. A sickening, hellish wave of heat billowed out over their heads. The concussive force made her eardrums quake like aspen leaves as the air pressure heaved out, then sucked back into the loading dock, as if a mythical giant were pulling in a massive gulp of air and holding it. Then the world went strangely still, while her stunned brain rattled around in her cranium like a tiny marble caught in a washer’s spin cycle.

  What the hell…?

  “I…I don’t understand.” Her words sounded muffled, and in a dazed
sort of way she realized her ears were ringing fit to beat the band. “I thought I stopped it.”

  A dangerous sound escaped Locke, a feral growl she didn’t know a human could make. “You delayed it, and for that I owe you. But it’s obvious there was no stopping him.”

  “Him?” Not sure she heard right, Via put a hand to her partially deaf ear. “Who? Oh my God—Weddo!” As her brain finally settled back into place, panic hit her like a punch to the gut, and she clambered to her feet.

  “Get down, you idiot!”

  Via barely heard him as her stomach threatened to empty itself at the thought of seeing what was left of her coworkers. A fractured cry of relief escaped her when she saw them huddled in the transport, their expressions blank with shock as they looked out at the dissipating smoke and the crater where she and Locke had been standing only seconds before.

  Alive, she thought as tears of relief stung her eyes. They were all alive, all whole. Who gave a crap about anything else?

  “It’s an insurgency!” From deep in the loading dock, the frenzied yell of Colonel Fynn belted out like a gun report. “We are under attack, Lifers. Fire at—”

  “Belay that order,” Locke all but bellowed and shoved Via aside as if she were nothing more than an irritating piece of furniture that was in the way. “Our enemy is not out there in the streets. That bomb was C-10—the latest in Flash-Fire technology. You all must have felt it implode in on itself. C-10 is above-classified. No one even knows it exists outside the militia, much less has access to it. Our enemy is here.” To Via’s amazement, Locke pointed the Widow-Maker at his commander, while his brethren looked on in shock. “Colonel Francis Fynn, I am taking you into custody—”

  “If this is a joke, it isn’t funny, Locke,” a militia member said from his place beside their commander, and his own pulse rifle came up to level at Locke. “Colonel Fynn would never attack any of us. Shyte, he created the men we are today, have you forgotten? Stand down now, before this gets any more out of hand than it already has.”

  “Not just stand down,” Fynn breathed, and there was that same avid light in his otherwise dead eyes Via had seen in her vision. “Surrender yourself now, Lieutenant. You will be the one placed in my custody, for attempted mutiny, subversion and acts of high treason.”

  Another growl escaped Locke, and his fingers tightened on his weapon. “Treason? What are you talking about?”

  “You seem to have forgotten that I am the authority here in this region. To accuse me of wrongdoing is to accuse the entire Urban Militia in New Vegas. That’s where the treason lies, and that’s why you’re going to swing. Surrender now, or—”

  Via never got a chance to hear what the other option might be. Without warning, Locke released a short burst of suppression gunfire, then grabbed her once more and leapt toward the humming strike-bike at the gate. Via’s mouth was still hanging open when they zoomed away, and within seconds the comfort of the agridome’s rattletrap transport faded in the distance like a dream.

  He’d thought the day couldn’t get any worse. How frigging shortsighted of him. The agony of inexplicable betrayal gnawed away at Locke’s insides until he wanted to double over. But he wouldn’t focus on it now; he didn’t have time. What he had to do was keep his sights trained on finding a way out of whatever mess this was.

  It sure as hell didn’t help that he suspected his traveling companion would bail off the back of the bike given half a chance.

  Jamming the chaos that raged inside him down into the darkest part of his soul, Locke let his training take over as he swept the area for movement larger than a tumbleweed. Other than a couple of scrawny, down-on-their-luck rats that showed on his infrared filter, all was as quiet as a grave.

  That was only to be expected. This was Sector 1, known as Downtown Las Vegas in the era before the Decade of Quakes, and a favorite target of the zealots in the wave of senseless attacks that followed. Skeletal remains of once-lively buildings sat silent in the falling dusk, their countless broken-out windows gaping like mouths mourning for a time gone by.

  Passing a turtled-over vehicle that was now nothing more than a lump of rusted metal, Locke turned down a narrower street, listening to the wind whistle to itself through the manmade canyons of broken glass and crumbling concrete. A jagged canopy stretched over this narrow slice of street and was now home to a massive colony of bats that were beginning to stir to greet the approaching night.

  But other than that, no sign of life popped onto the grid.

  It didn’t surprise him. If a person had a keen interest in living a long life, the last place they would set up housekeeping was Sector 1. There was no food, no water, barely a satellite signal, and radioactive hotspots. But this was exactly what Locke wanted now. Since this dead limb of Vegas didn’t possess too many prying eyes, it made for an excellent short-term hiding place.

  The raven-haired woman behind him inched farther back, and without glancing her way he reached around and tugged her flush against him, the warmth of her inner thighs fitting against him like a tailor-made glove. He didn’t have time for this. A sense of urgency built inside him like a pressure cooker even as she tried to wriggle back yet again. Despite his precautions to cover his tracks, there was still a good chance of being pinpointed, and taking care of that problem was number one on his list of priorities, not babysitting a skittish civilian. He needed to go off-grid so he could get his legs back under him and form a plan of action. After disabling the satellite locater on the ultra-fast hover bike and the palm-print ident pads on the bike’s handles, he was halfway there.

  But to go completely dark, he needed help.

  Zipping past the canopy of waking bats and trying not to gag at the stench of guano, Locke maneuvered toward a low, two-story building with a sign that read Main Street Station. A massive hole directly beneath the sign yawned out onto the weed-cracked walkway out front, and with quick efficiency he drove right into the building, then checked his internal chronometer.

  He figured he had about twenty minutes to get things done.

  “I’ve gone off-line, so on the upside they won’t be able to track me that way, but on the downside I’m now without any resource to keep track of militia movements,” he told his reluctant traveling companion as he powered down the strike-bike and dismounted. “We’ll just have to do it the old-fashioned way and keep one step ahead. In the meantime, I need your help in a little field surgery.”

  Via Brede didn’t move off the bike. Contrary to her earlier movements, she now seemed to have taken permanent root to the seat. “You took me,” she said in a small voice. “I can’t believe…you just took me. Why?”

  “Isn’t this better than having me blow your head off?” Since she seemed to have low motivation when it came to moving, Locke grabbed her by her khaki-covered arm and gave her a tug. She flinched violently at the touch, but he ignored her, pulling her toward the opening in the wall where the light was better. “You should be thanking me. If I had left you back there, your little secret would have been discovered by Colonel Fynn.”

  She flinched again. “You don’t know that—”

  “Yeah, I do. You suck at keeping secrets, and he excels at digging them out. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out who would have won that little battle of wills.”

  “Let go,” she muttered, twisting her arm in a futile effort to break his grip. “I don’t like being touched.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Let me get this straight,” she went on, changing tactics while still trying to gain her freedom. “You’re saying you decided to take me into the dead center of the wastelands to save me, a complete stranger? Why? Did you do it out of the goodness of your mechanical heart?”

  “My heart’s as organic as yours, smartass, and I brought you along so you can help me figure out what the hell is going on while I try to clear my name.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? I grow lettuce and raise fish. Mystery solving is not my forte.”

  “You�
�re a psionic.”

  Her face closed up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Lady,” he gritted out, going almost nose to nose with her as his very last thread of patience began to fray, “you don’t seem to understand the situation, so let me call up a high-res graphic for you. Colonel Francis Fynn, the commander for all the Urban Militias in the Las Vegas Territory, wants me dead, and I don’t know why. You are an unregistered psionic who was stupid enough to thwart him. If you want to keep off his radar and go back to raising lettuce, you will help me do the one thing I thought I’d never have to do—bring Colonel Fynn down.”

  Chapter Four

  “I don’t know if I can do this.”

  “You have no choice.”

  Via gave the Bowie field knife in her gloved hand a dubious look, and once again wondered how things had gone so wrong, so fast. “Aren’t you afraid I’ll just cut your throat and leave you for dead?”

  “I think I can handle any dangerous moves a bubble-farmer might make, even if you do walk like a ninja,” Locke drawled, and bowed his head so his nape was fully exposed to her. “It’s just like I told you. I have a dog-tag microchip right below the hairline that tracks my position and physical condition. If we want to stay ahead of the colonel, it needs to come out. I can’t get to it. You can.”

  She bit her lip, looking for any way out. “I could accidentally hurt you—”

  “And they will kill me on purpose. You’re wasting time,” he snapped when she still hesitated. “They’ll be here any minute, and this time we won’t be so lucky in escaping. Just feel for the tiny bump under the skin, cut it out, then cauterize the wound with the surgical laser in the knife’s hilt. Once it’s out, we can get the hell out of here.”

  Feel for the bump, Via thought while she stared at the strong nape of his neck, which was adorned by a rugged gold chain holding a medallion. How easy he made it sound. Just take off her gloves, put her skin against his and feel for the horrible little thing that was leading certain annihilation straight to them even as she dithered like a deadhead about going skin to skin. Sure. No probs.