by Gary Dejean
“Asshole!” Chloe bursts as well. She tries to hit the Major on the head with the shoulder guard of her useless rifle, but the noxious man grabs it tight and, assisted by his exosuit, sends it back in Chloe’s face. Her prosthetic eye in pieces, the young woman falls on her behind, concussed.
The Major holsters his revolver and turns on the rifle. “User Online,” greets the synthetic voice of the weapon. Standing over Chloe, he looks down on her, expressing a contempt which she gladly returns. Turning menacingly to David, who steps back, in shock, the Major walks to the main console and pushes a series of keys. The ship exits stealth mode, bringing white light back to the interior.
“Commander Override, Security Lockdown,” the rudimentary AI comments.
The Major takes another look at Chloe, nose bleeding, and David, shaking. “Don’t mess with my stuff,” he orders, a little nonchalantly, before jumping out after Jake. As soon as he’s out, the lateral door closes on David who's trying to follow, and the ship ascends into the air where it hovers in place.
Light on the helipad shines brightly. In the middle of it, Jake lies, getting back on his feet despite his damaged leg. Speaking through the radio transmitter embedded in his wrist, the Major is calling reinforcements. “Send aerial units to my GPS,” he orders. “I’ve got the target pinned down.”
Ten meters above them, locked hermetically, the dropship levitates out of reach. Jake looks around the helipad, where cast shadows eat up the rest of the rooftop. As the Major steps forth and aims the rifle at his legs, the boy jolts, immediately disappearing behind ventilation equipment. The noise of gunfire reverberates up to the transport. Down at the bottom of the tower, revelers are counting down from ten the last few seconds separating them from a new year.
“You thought I’d just let you walk,” the Major shouts at the fleeing child. “After what you did to my squad?”
The first fireworks whistle as they climb past the building, exploding above the rooftop and turning night into day for a second at a time. The Major goes after Jake, calmly walking down the flight of stairs leading to the darkened rooftop.
Inside the transport, Chloe and David are getting their bearings. Still sitting on the floor, humiliated, Chloe is picking up pieces of her ruined eye. David, breaking down, is banging against the door. “Let me out! Let me out!” he screams, panic having overtaken the desperate father.
Seeing him freak out quite legitimately, Chloe pulls herself together. She jumps on her feet and starts examining the console, knowing that the central interface may be their only way out. All the while, David keeps shouting and banging.
“David! Please!” she begs. “It’s not helping.”
“My son’s out there getting shot at!” the father replies, choking on tears of panic. “What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know!” she whines. “Just be quiet about it.”
“This is all your fault!” he concludes, resuming his useless attempts at forcing a pneumatic lock open.
Chloe doesn’t react to that spiteful comment, admitting to herself that her plan has gone south. The computer rejects all of her commands with the same message: “Request denied. Security lockdown in effect.” She sighs and looks around, her gaze stopping on the telepresence headset hanging from the ceiling.
Searching for Jake among ventilation equipment, the Major circles the helipad at a careful pace. The nearby flashes of the fireworks cast strong fleeting lights over the rooftop, letting him spot the boy's shadow moving from cover to cover.
The mercenary’s taking aim when a bright rocket explodes before him, his eyes forced almost shut for an instant. Through the blinding light he does see Jake swoop in from the side, having misjudged his location. Compressed in his compact form, the small boy thrusts right to the Major’s chest, extending into a bipedal posture and spreading the man’s arms with his own.
He lands a palm in the face of the veteran, hoping only to distract long enough to unclip the magazine from his rifle. What little blood he has left running through his brains via his life support system, Jake feels it pumping strong. Every fragment of a second extended by stress and heightened by the Little Blackjack’s combat protocols, he spends fearing for his life and altogether thrilled. Dropping the rifle’s clip, he kicks it off the roof with a twist of the heel, impressing himself in the process.
Immediately he regrets his own cockiness, the arms of the Major closing down on him as he tries to pin the boy down. Jake retreats through his legs, crawling like a reptile when the Japanese grabs his foot. The strain tears off more circuits on Jake’s already damaged leg. Yelling in a panic, he can see over his shoulder the man aiming his rifle one-handed at the spot in his thigh he already shot before.
The piercing bullet blows through the main axis of his thigh, biting through titanium as if it were paper. The Japanese pulls the leg up, tearing off more wires and freeing Jake who, even more lizard-like than before, retreats to the shadows while his leg keeps twisting in the Major’s hand. Tossing his empty rifle down, the man pulls out his revolver and resumes his chase, undisturbed.
David is now trying to pry a door of the ship open using whatever equipment he finds lying in the racks, with very little success. Chloe pulls the Major’s headset down, looking for a wire she can disconnect, but the military design is too tightly arranged. Losing patience, she pulls on the cord once more, bringing the device low enough for her to smash it with her knee until it breaks open.
Once she isolates the cable feeding visuals to the headset, she unscrews her broken optics and prepares to connect the remote control system to her eye socket. David is catching his breath when he sees her do this. “What the hell are you doing?” he asks, panting.
“Trying something,” she replies, encouraging. “If I catch fire, unplug me, OK?”
“What?” he exclaims, taken aback.
Chloe blinks with her only eye before she slips the plug inside the port lodged at the bottom of her eye socket. “That was a wink,” she explains with a humorous smile. “I’ve got some sort of access, here, but the menus are all weird.”
David suddenly feels hope, his breath returning instantly. “Can you open the doors?” he asks in a hurry.
“Err… I don’t know,” she admits, confused by the complexity of the military interface. “Holy shit!” she bursts finally, “I’ve got the ship’s external cameras!”
She displays on the main screen the feed from the belly cameras. Ten meters below them, Jake is fleeing for his life, the Japanese unloading high caliber rounds through every cover.
“My God!” the young woman whispers, in awe at the violence deployed against the child. She presses the record button on her temple, storing the visual feed inside the memory of her prosthetic.
Now that the shrieks of fireworks and those of shots fired at his son have become distinct, David trembles from head to toe. He rushes back to the large door, pushing and pulling frantically, to absolutely no effect.
The Major is keeping careful track of Jake, marking every refuge that the boy finds with a foot-wide bullet hole. Keeping low on his three remaining limbs, the boy crawls like a silverfish, his mercurial movements and his small size alone keeping him safe.
“Nice effort,” Hanzo shouts, confident despite the fact that Jake keeps disappearing. He has nowhere to go, after all. “The Secret Service are coming now, boy. Those guys don’t mess around. I suggest you give up, NOW.”
Pulling rounds from his belt, he reloads his revolver. He's only put one inside the cylinder when Jake bursts out from a nearby cover, striking him in the face with the tip of his fingers. Stunned, but focused, the Major closes the cylinder of his revolver, chambering the bullet, while Jake unleashes a flurry of jabs to his legs. He pulls the screwdrivers out of the top of his fingers, using them as claws, to strike behind knees, under the armpits, in the face, anywhere that seems vulnerable on the otherwise thick-skinned enforcer.
A close-quarters combat expert, the Major blocks most of Jake’
s attacks, keeping his revolver away from the child who repeatedly tries to snatch it out of his hand. When the timing of Jake’s strikes finally allows it, Hanzo points the muzzle of his revolver to the boy’s chest and pulls the trigger. Thrown backward by the mere strength of the blow, Jake rolls on his back and disappears once more in the shadows, the main armor plate of his chest fractured in the middle.
“I’ve had enough of this,” Hanzo roars, over the noise of fireworks and that of cheering voices rising along the tower. “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me!”
Deep inside the menus of the overseeing interface, Chloe’s attention finally sets on something she can understand. “I’ve got it!” she cries. “Ship’s controls!”
David is still trying to pry the door open when it suddenly pulls up, a deadly drop separating him from the fight below. At their altitude, the wind is blowing strong and he steps back instinctively. “Whoa,” he exclaims, the cold midnight air freezing his blood and cooling his mind down.
“I think I can move that thing too,” Chloe adds, keeping her left eye closed to limit the blurriness of the interface’s signal. “Hang on.”
David inspects the fast-rope mechanism for just a moment and pulls a lever, extending the unloading arm out of the ship’s side.
“What are you doing?!” she exclaims, opening her eye to find the father pulling the wire down and tying a knot around his chest.
“There’s no time,” David yells, “he’s gonna kill him!”
“David, no!” the young woman cries as, without any second thought, the dedicated father turns around and jumps out of the ship. The cable unwinds at a frightening speed just in front of Chloe. Thinking fast, she pulls the emergency brake on the side of the winch to slow down his fall.
David hits the ground hard, freeing himself from the wire and quickly getting back on his feet. He's hurt his leg, and starts limping toward the Major as quickly as he can, tunnel vision channeling his fatherly instincts and rightful indignation all at once. “Get away from my son,” he bawls, “you filthy fucking lying piece of shit!”
The Major doesn't even turn to him, having cornered Jake at two edges of the rooftop. “Back off!” he shouts, raising a disdainful finger at the father. “You’ll get your turn.”
At the same time, overhead, Chloe has seized control of the dropship, awkwardly bringing it down against the edge of the building. Spying over the corner of his last remaining cover, Jake is tracking the Major’s approach with the cameras in his fingertips. The man has finished reloading his pistol and now stands, a few meters away, waiting for the boy to make his final move.
Now that Chloe has stopped the ship around the corner, the Major knows for sure where the boy is hiding. Behind him, David is closing the gap, his fists clenched and ready for a fight. Jake considers Chloe, who’s extending a hand in his direction, beckoning him to jump; he considers his father, who minutes ago he meant to leave behind. He considers the Major, who will shoot him either direction he leaps to. Staring Chloe in the eye, Jake pulls a wire from his wrist and slides out of cover.
The sparkling explosions of the fireworks multiply, bathing the rooftop in daylight, their concussive waves blending with those of the Major’s revolver as he unloads, as fast as he can, the magnum rounds of his weapon. Swirling on three limbs, his erratic movements made unpredictable, Jake feels the murderous projectiles miss him by a hair. Three, four, five; the deafening roar of the revolver throws David to his knees; Chloe who screams her heart out can’t even hear her own voice.
Once in striking distance, Jake pounces, aiming high, at the man’s head left exposed by his combat suit. Having miraculously avoided every shot, he faces the Major, now close enough to deliver a desperate fatal blow. Hanzo extends his arm and stops him in his track, grabbing the boy by the neck and shooting his last round, point blank, at his already damaged chest.
In a mess of wires and titanium plates, the entire lower half of the Little Blackjack comes off. Jake’s punch lands weakly on the Major’s shoulder. All around them, the fireworks are coming to an end.
David’s cry fills the silence in the moments to follow. From half a kilometer below, they can hear the voices of unaware citizens, basking in the celebration of time gloriously fleeting. Through the cameras of the ship, Chloe has recorded everything. She zooms in on the Major, still holding Jake high like a gruesome trophy. The boy’s hand slides off his shoulder, both his arms left hanging, lifeless, under him. Out of his wrist, an extensible wire connects to the back of the Major’s neck.
When he sees the cord, Hanzo’s smirk vanishes. He’s about to pull it out before Jake overrides his suit, trapping the veteran and freezing him in place.
“What’s it gonna take?” Jake asks, his voice distorted by failing systems. “What’s it gonna take, for you to leave us alone?”
“Easy, boy,” the Major replies, fully aware that the tables have turned.
Behind them, David is getting back on his feet, as always, lost to what’s happening. Suddenly, he sees the Major’s arms twist backwards, his legs bending at the wrong angle, fractured bones springing through his flesh. Within a second, the man crumbles down, his strong attitude erased and replaced by the screams of an imploring victim. Above his body reduced to a crawl, Jake rises, grabbing the man’s throat between his hands and squeezing slowly.
“You wanna die?” the boy barks. “Is that it?”
“Jake, stop!” David cries. Having sprung back on his feet, he rushes to the scene, grabbing his son with both arms and pulling him away from the bleeding mercenary.
Chloe halts the ship in place. Pulling the cord out of her eye, she rushes to her friends, hugging each other with all their remaining might. Lying a few feet away in a pool of his own blood, the Major sees her help them up. The young woman makes sure they board the ship safely, before she squats in front of the Japanese. High on adrenaline and pain, Hanzo is doing his best to express his resentment, face down on the dusty concrete rooftop.
“I wish I could take a snapshot,” Chloe taunts, exhaustion leaving her tender.
The Major fights through the pain to express pure disdain in a silent reply.
“You know,” she adds, standing up, “you’re lucky.”
She walks back to the ship which Jake has taken control of. The large door closes on her and soon enough, they take off and vanish, a drop of ink in the night sky.
Epilogue
It’s barely dawn on January first when agents from the National Intelligence Coordinating Agency invade Malcolm and Bill’s garage. Having extracted the visual feed from Agent Dimaguiba’s implants, they’ve easily located the messy chop shop. When they raid the place, left deserted by the two expatriates, all they find to carry away are old computers patched up from the dumpsters.
By that time, halfway through the country, Bill and Malcolm unload their vehicles from a ferry and ride farther south, the rasta’s subwoofers blasting music loud enough for the biker to enjoy. They’re headed for Indonesia, paying cash along the way and hiding their faces as people take selfies; but their hearts aren’t heavy, they’re galvanized by having “finally stuck it to the Man, you know… for once.”
Before two days have passed, Major Hanzo has heard a dozen doctors confirm that he would never walk again on his own. He’s still fuming from his encounter with the little boy when he agrees to cybernetic implants. With all the budget of the H+ corporation at their disposal, the scientists outfit him with state-of-the-art osseointegration techniques, lading his bones with metal and filling his muscles with young blood to accelerate rejuvenation.
As he falls asleep on the table that day, the Japanese remembers Chloe’s farewell. Perhaps due to the anesthetics kicking in, he finds himself appreciating her meaning.
By the end of the month, the task force is ready to go back to work. The Major’s departure has shuffled the cards, and their relative success at stopping Morgan Zhu has guaranteed that their services will remain required.
Promoted to
the head of the Manila unit, Patti is getting ready to break in new recruits. The rest of the team has been dispatched to Davao and Cebu, Yuwono alone left by her side, now her second in command. Two dozen young men and women, the best and brightest from various law enforcement agencies, stand at attention.
Angelo has just finished packing up his bag, his two-weeks notice coinciding with the arrival of the new recruits. Before closing the door, he looks at his barracks once more, thinking back to a time when he found them appealing.
He leaves the compound as quietly as he can, walking across the courtyard during Patti’s introductory speech. The young recruits are riveted. When he goes through the door leading to the precinct, Angelo looks back at his now former colleagues. Having himself grappled with the situation, and made the opposite decision, Yuwono salutes him with a nod. Patti, on the other hand, doesn’t even seem to realize his presence; she’s launched in a tirade that will make or break her students.
The Latino walks away with more regrets than he can count.
As far as the eye can see, scrap metal, discarded circuitry and plastic melting in the tropical sunlight pile high. With the color of rust, dusk radiates over the heaps of electronic garbage, scavengers hurrying to fill up their baskets before night turns their expeditions deadly.
David ventures deeper into the flea market bordering the scrapyard, where hundreds of shabby booths are selling salvaged equipment. Among the faces of West-Africans, his dark complexion lets him walk around unnoticed, a prosthetic leg thrown over his shoulder. He stops in an area of the bazaar he’s become accustomed to, a small district where dusty prosthetics hang in disparate rows. Calling the shop-owners by their names, he asks around for a small piece needed to fix the knee joint.
He’s been fooled enough times to reach a decent deal, and fixes the leg himself before paying. As he walks away from the market and back into town, he passes by a group of children kicking a plastic football around an empty lot. Of ages ranging six to twelve, a good half of the kids are wearing prostheses found in the scrapyard. They’ve all grown up scavenging, sometimes losing a finger or foot among the sharp debris, and having to go back the next day. Now that their work shift is over, they’re enjoying their time off.