by Mat Nastos
The move by the thin man was a feint, a distraction meant to hide the focus of his true attack. Even as Mal easily blocked the chair, Kalita launched into a short forward hop, followed by a low to high lunge that allowed his sword to strike fast and true, plunging deep into the cyborg’s unprotected flank.
Sensei Jessica had obviously never fought Mr. Kalita.
“Arrrrrgh!!” The cyborg screamed as the mysterious man’s thin blade slid in between the third and fourth ribs on his left side at an angle piercing both his liver and clipping his lung. Even worse than the pain Mal felt from the attack was the silver fog billowing along the edges of his vision—a sure sign that the cyborg was losing control of himself once more.
Sure sign that the Cestus personality construct was about to reassert itself.
Gripping the sword-cane’s blade with his left hand, just past where it entered into his flesh, the super-soldier struck down with the heel of his right palm in an open-handed smash. The blade snapped in two, with nearly half of its length still embedded in Mal’s body.
Pushing the splinter of steel out through the flesh part of his abdomen ripped a grunt, along with a pint of blood, from the cyborg. The wound wasn’t fatal or even enough to wear out his preternatural healing factor, but it still hurt enough to make Mal’s eyes water.
On the plus side, it was less painful than a gunshot wound. On the negative side, it left Mal open to a tooth-rattling elbow strike to the back of his unguarded skull. The blow was powerful enough to cause stars to fill Mal’s eyes. Even more telling was the way his computer systems blanked.
Kalita seemed to have intimately knowledge of Project Hardwired’s design of Designate Cestus. There was no doubt he was sent by whoever had replaced Director Kiesling…and whoever that was deadly serious in their desire to regain control of their mutinous servant.
An inverse punch to his wounded liver forced Mal to spit another cupful of blood, and a second elbow smash practically pulverized his spine, sending numbness through the lower half of his body.
Mal was in trouble and he knew it. He had to get some distance away from his assailant. Had to get some time and space to recoup his senses. To develop a plan of attack.
Through blood and pain Mal reached out with what little of his computer awareness that was still operating, using it to locate the front of the diner. Mal’s legs pushed out beneath him with all of the strength he could muster in a blind leap.
Tumbling through the air in a twisted mass, Mal prayed the Twin Donuts management had been as cheap with their selection of their windows as they had with everything else in the diner.
If not, things were going to go from bad to worse.
The wild jump took Mal crashing through the ten by ten foot plate glass that made up the front wall of the restaurant. The cyborg landed arms first and, as his momentum took him into a forward roll, Mal grab two shards of the high strength glass, one in each hand. Allowing the maneuver to bring him back up to his knees, he threw his arms out behind him, releasing the foot-long makeshift spears and sending them hurling back towards his foe.
Mal collapsed onto all fours, a cry of pain from somewhere behind him doing a little to ease his own agony. The injured cyborg forced himself to struggle back to his feet. He had to get ready for whatever attack Kalita was sure to launch on him. Injured or not, the man was dangerous.
Reaching out, Mal’s sensors scanned the area, trying to get a read on Kalita’s location, but they returned with only one heartbeat in his immediate area: the irregular pulse of Giorgio Katsaros and his recognizable atrial flutter.
The mystery man, Kalita, was gone.
A quick search of the building revealed a trail of dark blood leading out the back door of the Twin Donut and into the alley behind it. Mal glowered in disappointment. Kalita must have had an escape vehicle of some sort waiting for him. At least their little fracas would teach the man that messing with a pissed off ex-Ranger during his lunch break wasn’t the wisest of moves.
“Why did he run? He nearly had me on the ropes.” wondered Mal, completely baffled by Kalita’s disappearance. “He wasn’t here to beat me…he was here to test me.”
Police sirens, a sound Mal had become more and more familiar with since he had reawakened a month earlier, faded into earshot. With the police en route…again…it meant the time had come for a hasty retreat.
The cyborg sighed through bruised lips. He was tired, beat-down…exhausted in site of the nanobots running rampant through his bloodstream. Sure, they would heal all of his wounds eventually, but he was still sore and tired as hell in the meantime. Mal’s best bet was going to be to return to his rented room, flop down on its crusty mattress, and get some rest.
“Well,” thought Mal as he dusted himself off and headed down the tiny alley between the buildings, “that and try not to get into any more fights before Amy called.” He was confident the woman, an upstanding member of the State of New York’s legal community, wouldn’t be pleased if she knew about the little fracas the ex-Ranger had just been involved in.
Lawyers tended to frown on things like destruction of public property and attempted murder…even if it was in self-defense.
As if on cue, a buzzing in the back of his head announced to Mal a call was incoming. The head’s up display that slid across his vision revealed a ten-digit number he immediately recognized.
It was the call he had been waiting for these past three days.
Foregoing all pretenses at needing to make use of the cellphone in his pocket, Mal connected with the transmission remotely through his cybernetic systems. Why waste the effort when the sight of a roughed up crazy man talking to himself was a common occurrence on the mean streets of Manhattan?
“Amy, babe! What the heck took you so long?”
An exasperated voice echoed in his ears, “I’m watching the news…did you just blow up a diner on the West Side, Malcolm?”
Turning a corner and dropping his speed to a more leisurely, less conspicuous pace, Mal laughed, “I refuse to answer on the grounds that I may incriminate myself, counselor. Did you just call to nag or do you have something for me, Ms. Jensen?”
“McGuinness has agreed to meet with you…tomorrow at 2pm outside the main branch of the New York Public Library,” Amy paused to try and place emphasis on a piece of instruction she felt necessary to add. “Please, Malcolm, I love that building…try not to blow it up.”
“No promises,” chuckled Mal, closing the connection between them.
Heading back downtown for the relative peace and quiet of his motel room, Mal swore, “God damn it! I didn’t get to finish my gyro!”
CHAPTER 12
Somewhere in the San Bernadino Mountains of California.
It took Carl Anderson less than twenty-four hours to track down and locate the civilian who had aided Designate Cestus in his escape from—and eventual destruction of—Project Hardwired. What an entire floor of men and women had spent thousands of man hours, and millions of taxpayer dollars, to fail at, Carl had done on his own. On his three year old laptop with an ‘E’ key that hadn’t worked right since a mishap involving Mountain Dew a few months earlier.
David Anthony Zuzelo, formerly of the City of Industry, had relocated to a tiny cabin deep within the heart of the Skyforest community just outside the border of the tourist-powered village of Lake Arrowhead in the mountains of Southern California. The cabin had been purchased five years earlier under the name of ‘Jerry Fletcher.’ As a fan of both Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts, Carl appreciated the reference to one of his favorite, least appreciated, of the Australian actor’s films.
It took another three hours for Carl to get his car from the Motel 6 he’d been staying at in one of the seedier parts of North Hollywood up to the cabin, and fifteen more minutes to work up the nerve to finally get out of the vehicle and approach its front door.
Carl had never been good at confrontation…especially when it was with a man he’d been part of a plot to kill a month earlier.
“Here goes nothing,” mumbled Carl as he slammed his car door shut and started the hike that led him a short distance down the timber-lined single-lane road he’d driven in on and onto the entrance to David Zuzelo’s hideaway cabin.
At the end of the long packed-dirt driveway sat the cabin—a log number that looked as if it had been built by hand a hundred years earlier—surrounded by rows of trees on either side that would rendered it nearly invisible from the roadway above. The only way anyone would ever notice Zuzelo’s cabin was if they had been hunting for it specifically.
Even if you did happen open the hidden domicile, at first glance there was nothing unusual about it. At least, not to the untrained eye. To a tech-geek like Carl Anderson, however, the cabin was anything but normal.
Seven tiny satellite dishes were mounted to the tops of a series of artificial pine trees spread out across the home’s three acre lot. Used individually, they would ensure uninterrupted communication service for television or the Internet. The real power of the dishes, though, would be the ability to utilize them as a linked antenna array for everything from astronomy to high powered transmission or reception. Carl wouldn’t be surprised if Zuzelo had been using the dish network to transmit data directly to Malcolm Weir’s computer systems. The little computer engineer was impressed because the set up was very similar, on a much smaller scale, to the way the Abraxas Array had been designed.
Cameras were hidden throughout the entire landscape, camouflaged as rocks, in bushes, and even in the trees. The only way Carl was able to tell they were present was with the use of a small electro-magnetic frequency detector he had carried with him from the car. He’d bet the fugitive had wireless cameras spread for miles in every direction and that no one could approach the man’s home without alarms going off inside.
Carl also noticed thin wires stretching out through the brush in what seemed to be random patterns. Low to the ground, the wires were of the sort farmers electrified to keep livestock penned in without the need for fences. Anyone unlucky enough to be trespassing unawares through Zuzelo’s land was sure to be in for a rude awakening. And you could be sure cameras and electrified pitfalls weren’t the only surprises Malcolm Weir’s accomplice had in place. The whole place was probably booby trapped.
Pressing forward along the well-beaten dirt path wide enough for two cars to pass abreast on, Carl was glad he had decided to stick to the most upfront route possible. If he let Zuzelo know he wasn’t trying to hide anything, then maybe the man would be more agreeable to opening a dialog.
Under the watchful electronic eye of a trio of security cameras that tracked his every step, Carl marched up to the hand-hewn wooden door of David Zuzelo’s hideaway. The little computer tech banged out the first five beats of ‘Shave and a hair cut,’ hoping the unblinking cameras wouldn’t be able to pick up his apprehension. When no response came—not even the customary ‘two bits,’ he knocked again.
And again.
And again.
For nearly three minutes Carl rapped on the rough log facade with no indication of life within the cabin. He was nearly ready to give up and head back to his car when the lacy curtain hanging in the window just to the left of the entrance fluttered open as a shadow moved past it. The sound of a shuffling footfall on the opposite side of the door, accompanied by the rasps of an ungodly number of locks, deadbolts and chains being unfastened, finally rewarded Carl’s patience.
“Excellent,” thought Carl to himself.
“Who the hell are you?” The voice, one which the former government computer technician assumed belonged to his quarry, nearly squeaked as the heavy wooden door cracked open just wide enough for a head completely shorn of hair, a pair of wire-rimmed glasses, and a salt-and-pepper goatee to pop into view. “And what do you want?”
Grinning from ear to ear, Carl gave a half wave at the bald man who peered at him through the sliver of space revealed by the opened door.
“My name is Carl Anderson and I’m here about Designate Cestus…” Carl paused as the face scrunched up in what appeared to be equal parts fear, anger, and an unreleased fart. “I’m here about your friend, Mr. Zuzelo…about Malcolm Weir.”
The eyes behind the door narrowed for a moment and then surprised Carl by slamming the door with a crack loud enough to echo down the mountainside. For several long seconds, Carl stared at the closed door, unsure of what he should do next—should he knock again or drive off and try something else? He was about to return to his car when the sound of bolts, chains, and locks being released inside the log cabin rang out.
Carl’s smile returned as the thick door swung open with a great creak, revealing the form of David Zuzelo standing behind it. The man was dressed in a comfortable looking long sleeve plaid shirt, faded jeans, and tan work boots—the stereotypical uniform of a man who was looking to lose himself in a wilderness community. Zuzelo pulled his right hand out from behind his back, a weird half-smile of his own playing across the man’s half-shaved face.
“Nice to finally meet you, Mr. Zuzelo.” The former government employee started to reach his hand out to complete his introduction to the man when he noticed a tiny black device cradled in Zuzelo’s palm. A tiny black device with a pair of silver points extending out from it like the fangs of an angry spider.
“Awwww, shit—” was all he could manage before the man shoved the taser into Carl’s chest and pulled its trigger.
*****
When consciousness returned to Carl Anderson his first thought was “Why can’t I move?” His second, “Where are my pants,” came less than a heartbeat later when the cool cross-breeze sent by an oscillating fan blew up his bare legs and into the unmentionable area between them.
Eyes crusted together fluttered open to take in the scene laid out before them. Staring down, Carl noticed he was tied to an antique wooden chair of dark wood with red leather covering its seat and back. He grimaced a little as he moved his body to one side, allowing his sweat-covered nude butt-cheek to peel off of the sticky surface. The sound of flesh slapping against moist animal hide was most unappetizing. A bright light shone directly into the trapped man’s face, obscuring what he could see of the room he was being held in. All Carl could surmise from the log plank floors beneath his feet was that he must be somewhere inside Zuzelo’s cabin.
“Good evening, Mr. Anderson,” came the stilted, poorly disguised voice of his captor in the worst approximation of Hugh Weaving that Carl had ever heard.
In Carl’s head he responded with a witty retort, mocking the man holding him hostage and his manhood. The reality of the comeback sounded like a man gargling with two pounds of cotton stuffed into his cheeks. Dried drool and a mouth gummy from too much time spent beneath the blistering bulbs of a hot lamp turned Carl’s words to mush.
“Pardon me?” asked Zuz, leaning far enough into the ring of bright white light for Carl to finally make him out as more than a blur.
The dry, pasty gibbering continued to spew from Carl. By the time he gave up trying to speak to his inquisitor, the captive found his lips plastered to the tops of his teeth and his tongue cemented in place behind them, cracking painfully with each movement.
“Ah, frak.” Zuz’s realization of his hostage’s predicament caused him to break character in very real concern, which helped to ease Carl’s worry a few notches. The glabrous man spun in his chair and rooted around for a moment, blocked from Carl’s view by the searing white work lights still burning brightly between them. An instant later Zuz spun back into view. “Here you go,” Zuz said, revealing a sports bottle filled to the brim with cool water.
A zombie-like groan escaped from Carl as Zuz tipped the bottle up, pouring its contents into the little prisoner’s bone-dry maw.
The tiny bit of water released Carl’s tongue from where it was stuck to the roof of his mouth, granting him enough lingual mobility to finally squeak out, “Why on Earth am I naked?”
“I had to make sure you weren’t wired or carrying any weapons,
” answered Zuz matter-of-factly.
Raising his eyebrows in irritation, Carl fired back, “You were afraid I had a gun strapped to my anus?”
Zuz sat back and pondered the little computer engineer’s words. “Better to be safe than sorry, right?”
“May I have my pants back now?”
Standing up, Zuz switched off the high-powered lamp trained on Carl, allowing the man to finally take in exactly where he was being held. The room itself was small, perhaps ten by ten—a bedroom or workshop space of some sort. Its walls were made of the same roughly shaped logs as the outside of the cabin he’d tracked Malcolm Weir’s accomplice to, confirming Carl had been brought inside during his bout with unconsciousness and not taken to another location. A tiny, IKEA style desk was covered in a hodgepodge of half-formed electronic devices and rested against the opposite wall. The area beneath the workbench was cluttered with a pile of unfolded clothing that bore an uncanny resemblance to those Carl had been wearing earlier. The SuperFriends gym bag loaded with Project Hardwired documents rested next to them, presumably taken from his car while Carl was blacked out. Seated just to the side of the desk, in a cheap office chair with his legs crossed tightly, David Zuzelo blocked the room’s sole exit.
“That all depends on how you answer my questions, my friend,” said Zuz from behind steepled fingers. “Who are you?”
“You’ve got my wallet on your desk over there, along with my clothes. I’m pretty sure you know who I am,” responded Carl in a snippy tone. The water helped improve his outlook a bit, but he still had sweat streaming down his back and forming a pool rather uncomfortably in the crack of his backside. He was finished playing it nice. If Zuzelo and Weir were going to kill him, at least he’d try to die with some dignity still intact. Glancing down at his nude front, Carl wished his dignity hadn’t turtled itself back up inside of his body.
“Answer the question!” snapped Zuz.
Sighing, Carl answered slowly, “Carl Anderson. Former computer technician second class for Project Hardwired on the team monitoring the Prime units. Recently of Sherman Oaks.”