The group closest to her never realized she wasn’t the helpless girl they expected as her swords began to dance. A Yeoman is a bad ass, a Squire, even more so. But a Knight is a wonder to watch. Especially doing what they are best suited for in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 11
The street was littered with bodies, and the metallic smell of blood filled the air. Fenris slid her blades along the shirt of one of the dead to wipe away the blood. Her arms were coated to the shoulder, and her black armor dripped.
“How the hell did you do that and keep your stupid coat so clean, even though you got shot?”
“It’s a gift,” I said. I looked down at my side, still holding the man up by the scruff of his neck. He was crying.
Tossing him to the side, I looked up toward the skyscraper that housed the Warlord, Mortimer Jankida.
“This didn’t happen without his support,” Fenris said.
“Perhaps it’s time for a lesson,” I said.
“I’ve heard about some of your lessons,” she said. “Our cover is blown. We may as well head back to Stiner.”
“Agreed, but only after I go see Mortimer.”
“I’m guessing a new Chapterhouse is about to be requested?”
“Could be,” I said and reached down to pick up a four-foot-long piece of rebar. “Ah, this is perfect.”
She chuckled and followed me into the Scraper.
“Oh, Morty?” Gaunt’s voice echoed in the open lobby. “Where are you, Morty? I think it’s time we had a bit of chat!”
Some lessons are harder than others in this Fallen World.
# # # # #
The Bastion
Chapter 1
I slipped into the alley and ducked under a small overhang to block the rain that had been falling steadily.
“Good for the garden,” I muttered.
Less worry about Lucy’s garden and more about the task at hand, William Childers chided me. Four ruffians ahead.
“I see ‘em,” I muttered to the OSF Operator.
Obsidian Special Forces had been Childers’ cover when he was loaded into an Agent. The Agent program was long gone, but there were remnants still wandering the city. Remnants like me. Nanite-enhanced men and women, some with psychopathic tendencies. Others who would have been called sociopaths. Then there was me, the schizophrenic. I got the whole enchilada. Now, Childers was all mine, along with all the others inside my noggin.
I paused, remembering the lab where I finally managed to come out of the squirrel cage in my head. All the imprints that had dropped into my head were fighting for control and I, most certainly, would have died without the Agent who kept me alive for the first six months. Then, the doctors who showed up kept me alive for the rest of that time. Their way was much more unpleasant as they tried to figure out how to get the database back out of my head intact.
They’d finally given up and were just experimenting to see what reactions they could get with different stimuli. I remembered them all. The shock treatments were the worst. They were trying to bring personalities to the surface. They succeeded, but the one who came to the front was a monster. His name was Luca Stiglioni, and it took a long time to get him back under control. The fight to regain control brought me, Mathew Kade, to the surface, and I had been the one in charge for the last seventeen years.
In those seventeen years, I had seen the city brought out of that savagery into a better age. It was still a savage place, but it was multitudes better than the city I awoke to. My attention returned to the four guys standing near the door I had been searching for.
“They picked a bad time to park themselves there.”
They may work for the one we came for, Childers said.
“Could be.” I shrugged and stepped out into the rain. Broken glass crunched underfoot as I strode down the narrow alley. Perhaps twenty feet separated the old brick apartment buildings, and the stench of something decomposing was barely discernable. “They’ll regret it if they do.”
“What do we have here?” the one I had pegged as the leader asked. He stepped forward. “What you doing in my street?”
“I need to go in the door you’re blocking. Move aside, and this doesn’t have to get ugly.”
“Boss don’t want nobody to come in there.”
“You work for the guy inside the building?”
“I do. What’s it to ya?”
“Do you know what he does?” I asked.
“Do you?” he returned.
“I’m pretty sure I have it figured out. He won’t be doing it anymore after tonight.”
“You came for the boss?” He looked past me. “And you came alone? You not very smart.”
I smiled. “Ugly it is, I guess.”
“Damn right it’s…gak!”
“What was that last bit?” I asked.
He gurgled and toppled over with a knife protruding from his throat.
“What the—” the next closest of the group of four started, before collapsing with another of my throwing knives sticking out of his eye.
The third had seen how quickly his partners had dropped and tried to turn and head for the door they had been guarding. I threw a final blade which sank into his neck just below the skull. Number four was already in close, swinging an old, hardwood baseball bat.
He swung for my head and I caught the bat with my left hand. His eyes bulged in surprise just before I slapped him across the face with the augmented strength of a Corporate Agent. There was an audible crack as his head spun to face the opposite direction.
That may be the first time I have seen that particular strike, Childers said.
“Seems like I remember it from somewhere,” I said. “But I was a woman when I did it. Which is a little bit weird because I was still Mathew Kade.”
If you could remember everything, you would have some very interesting stories to tell, he said.
“I wish I could,” I answered as I retrieved my knives.
The one that had severed the spine was a little more difficult to pull out as it was wedged between bones. I pulled a little harder and quickly stepped back to avoid the splash of blood when the skin ripped. It was a short burst of blood, but I didn’t want it on my coat.
Before Childers could comment, I said, “It’s my last one. It already has a bullet hole in it.”
I opened the door the four thugs had been guarding. The place used to be an apartment building. This area of the city had less Scrapers and more of these sorts of structures. Eight-to-ten story brick and stone buildings with numerous small housing units inside.
Somewhere in my cluttered mind I thought of low income housing. Maybe this had been used for that originally. Now, it was something else altogether. The man I had been looking for over the last few days would be inside. I doubted if Lorianne Waldon would still be alive, but I would find her or her body before closing this particular case.
The scuffle outside had made very little noise, so I slipped inside and moved away from the door.
My left eye twitched as I took in what I could see. The large atrium of the building was all that was left, and it was filled with things that would make a medieval torturer blush. Across the room was a single man with his back to me. I could see a girl strapped to a table in front of him. They seemed to be the only ones in the place. He was holding a serrated tool in his right hand and lowering it toward her.
I was across the room in a flash, and I seized the man by the back of the apron-like garment he wore. I threw him across the room, and he slammed into the exterior concrete wall.
He hit hard and dropped limply to the floor.
I looked at the girl who was gagged and strapped down, with her limbs pulled painfully tight in a spread-eagle position, on the table. I severed the bonds on her left side with my straight razor, then I circled the table to cut the other side.
“You’re going to be okay now,” I told her.
Then I heard the man groan from where he had lan
ded on the floor.
I could see her shake when he made a noise.
“He won’t be hurting you anymore,” I said. “What’s your name?”
“L…Lori,” she stammered.
“You’re Waldon?”
She nodded, but her eyes flooded with terror. “C…can’t go back there…”
My eyes narrowed, “We’ll talk about that in a moment.”
I turned to the man who was slowly staggering to his feet and rumored to be a former surgeon and a cannibal. “Doctor Gharik, I presume?”
“Who the hell are you?” he asked as he pulled a large knife from the sheath at his side. “I’m going to eat your heart.”
He charged me, and I met him halfway. I slapped the blade from his hand, and he screamed as his wrist broke. He dropped to the floor and grabbed the broken wrist with his other hand.
His scream was high pitched and cut off abruptly as my left hand settled on his neck to lift him from the floor.
“Just…doing…job.”
His gasp was barely audible, but I could make it out.
“Who pays for something like that?” I growled.
“Father,” he gasped.
I dropped him. “Her father?”
“Yes,” he groaned, holding the broken wrist.
“Tell me about it,” I said.
“You’ll let me live?”
“No. I’ll let you die quick instead of by inches,” I said. “Either way you die today.”
He looked at all the torture devices and shivered. “She ran away, and her father paid me to make her suffer for it before she died. He gave me a list of things I was to do, and she was to know exactly why it was all happening.”
I dragged the doctor to one of his own devices.
He struggled. “You said you would make it quick.”
“I lied.”
I hit him once to stop his struggling, then strapped him into the device and flipped the switch.
The doctor was screaming as I led the girl from the chamber of horrors she had spent the last day and a half in.
She cringed as we passed the four dead thugs outside the door, and I wished I could bring them back so I could kill them again.
Sometimes, I wished the bombs had taken this city when they took the world. It had once been called Philadelphia. Before the Corporate Wars. Before the bombs. All that was left was the skeleton of a huge city and the evil that seemed to thrive in it. Warlords ruling city blocks, ruling because they had the most guns or they were strongest. Most ruled with fear but, occasionally, there was someone better. I thought of Teresa Manora and her Society of the Sword. They still give me hope that there is something worth saving in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 2
I looked down at the sleeping Warlord. His face was cruel, even as he slept. The two naked girls beside the man made my eye twitch. They were several years younger than the girl I had just rescued from the doctor, and she had been fourteen.
I lowered the wooden bat I had brought back with me and tapped lightly on the corner of the bedpost. The man stirred. One of the girls’ eyes popped open, and she cringed away from me.
I motioned toward the door with my head. She slipped out of the bed and circled around to pull her sister from the other side. I lowered the bat onto the chest of Gregori Waldon. His eyes opened wide, and he tried to sit up. I kept pressure on the bat so he couldn’t budge.
“What is this?” His eyes landed on me as I smiled down at him. “Kade?”
But it wasn’t Mathew Kade standing over the struggling Warlord.
“Hello, Gregori, Mathew is not in today. My name is Stephen Gaunt. There are things we must talk about.”
Stephen Gaunt was a Corporate Assassin, one of the most feared of the personalities that reside in my head. He has unmatched fighting skills and a love for his job that is quite terrifying.
“I have fifty men within shouting distance. Give me a reason to—”
“You had fifty men. Now, you may have two children within shouting distance. After what you did to them, I strongly doubt they will be inclined to help you.”
“You’ll never make it out of this Zone alive,” he snarled.
“I will certainly get further than you will with that shattered knee.”
His eyes widened. “What?”
I lifted the bat from his chest and slammed it down. Stephen Gaunt chuckled while the rest of us watched from inside my head.
* * *
“I thought I might find you here,” a voice said as I rounded the corner.
A large black man leaned against the wall, with a sword resting point down in front of him. He was over six feet tall and three feet wide at the shoulders. The sword was a huge, two-hander that was four feet long.
“Hey, Poe.” I grinned. “How the hell are you?”
“Was doin’ just fine until Teresa sent me a message to come get you.” He pushed off the wall and joined me, walking east. “Ran into a girl who looked pretty rough in the Tees. She was being escorted by a couple of Mardins. Once she told me what happened, I figured I better head this way. Is this gonna be one of those Zones that’ll have a Chapterhouse for the Society in the near future?”
The Mardins were the people who lived in the Tees, the tunnels below the city. They kept the water flowing and the sewers working for a large part of the city.
“Maybe,” I said, with a short chuckle. “She might think about adding another one. The Warlord seems to have lost his daughter. He’s a little broken up about it.”
“I’m not sure I want to know.”
“Probably not.” I grinned. “Wouldn’t hurt to send word to Teresa, though. Place needs new leadership.”
“No warning this time?”
Several Warlords had been removed over the last year. I typically gave them a warning first. The Society of the Sword opened Chapterhouses in each of the Zones, and they now kept the peace.
“He didn’t deserve a warning.”
“That bad, huh?” Poe asked.
“Yeah,” I said. “Two more girls are on their way to Teresa. Dropped down in the Tees and snagged another Mardin.”
“They’re gonna get tired of being delivery boys.”
“They don’t mind, not after that dustup with Derris’ savages.” I looked toward the big man. “So, what does my lovely lady have in mind for me next?”
“There was a request from a Zone east of here. They sent a message with the Mardins about some cult of savages that were massing to attack them. You know how she is when something like this goes down.”
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s not fond of savage cults.”
“And this place is supposed to be something pretty special,” he said. “Not sure what it is, but I figure we’ll find out when we get there. Two Squires are already on their way, Rowland and Green. Several Knights have been notified, but they’re too far out to do any good. And then there’s us.”
“Three Squires are an army in their own right,” I said. “And conflatulations, by the way, on your promotion to Squire.”
“I’m pretty sure that’s not the right word.”
“Sure, it is.”
“I can’t believe I’m doin’ this again. But when Teresa says go, you go. I can’t just say no; she might cut me up into little pieces.”
“It’s not so bad.” I patted his huge arm and turned to the east. “Just think about all the savage cultists.”
The big man sighed and strode beside me toward the beleaguered Zone.
“What’s the name of the Zone?” I asked.
“They called it the Bastion.”
“Intriguing,” Gaunt said aloud.
“Indeed,” I answered.
“You know, it was disturbing when you had those conversations in your head. It’s even worse when you do it out loud. You gonna be doin’ that the whole time?”
“Maybe.”
He sighed again.
“You gonna be doin’ that the whole ti
me?”
“Probably,” he said.
I chuckled and glanced toward the big man. I had enjoyed his company on our last venture until a sniper had shot him. He’d pushed me aside, out of the line of fire. I had been distracted for a moment, and the big man had taken two bullets for me. Luckily, we had been close to Society headquarters, and he had gotten medical attention in time. He didn’t have the healing capability of an Agent, and I owed him.
We all do, Childers said. That first shot would have been a head shot. Even an Agent doesn’t walk away from that.
“True enough,” I muttered.
Some debts are more important than others in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 3
“That group is eyeballin’ us,” Poe said.
I pushed my coat back to bring the Sig Sauer in my shoulder holster into view. The two punks in front of the others lost their swagger when they looked into the cold, dead eyes of a different person than the one they had initially picked out as their mark.
“Why would they even think of attacking someone as big as a house?” I asked as the bravos turned to retreat into an alley.
“I wonder that all the time. Worse, they take one look at you and crap their pants.” Poe sounded puzzled. “Maybe I need to start carrying something to get their attention.”
“You could always walk around with a necklace of skulls or something.”
“Then everyone would run, not just the bravos, and I couldn’t stop at the vendors along the streets. I think that might be a little too much.”
“Could be.” I shrugged. “So, do you know anything about this Bastion?”
“Not much,” he answered. “I think Martin discovered them some time back. She’s one of the Knights Teresa would have normally sent over here since she likes to stay in this part of the city. She’s doing some work down south, though.”
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