Kade

by Christopher Woods

  She laughed and moved off to our right, toward the next group of soldiers. They had sent close to five hundred men and women to take the facility, along with two Behemoths. They would have rolled right over the thirty-two men and women guarding the place, if not for the six of me.

  The four of me on the ground were wounded.

  I had taken one to the leg and side as well as several stabs in my arms.

  Two had been shot once in the arm and stabbed in the side.

  Three had been firing from the entrance to the building, but he had still managed to take a bullet in the shoulder.

  Four had been shot, stabbed, and hit by the Behemoth, which had left a massive welt on her left side.

  Five was on the roof with the Barrett, and Six was protecting Doc Bern and Regina.

  All the JCs were dead.

  * * *

  “They’ll have a Plan B, Doc.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If the attack fails, they’ll have a contingency plan,” Two said.

  “We do too,” Bern said. “We’ll move to the northern lab. No one knows about it.”

  “Then we have to hurry,” I said.

  “How did they find us?” Bern asked.

  The sound of the gun was deafening in the closed space, and my pistol was in my hand without conscious thought. Five bullets and a kukri knife slammed into the OAS traitor who shot Bern.

  “Shit!” I cursed.

  Regina had caught the Doc, who lay in her lap with blood spreading across his chest.

  “They’ve killed me, Gina,” he gasped, looking up at her.

  “Not yet, they haven’t!”

  I grabbed Bern and dragged him to the imprinter.

  “What are you doing?” Regina screamed.

  “Not me,” I said and pointed at her. “You are going to upload him into the database.”

  “I can’t do that!” She shook her head. “He’ll go insane!”

  “Or he’ll die,” Four said.

  I pushed him into the imprinter. “Do it now, Regina.”

  She ran to the console and initiated the machine. “It will take ten minutes. Can he last that long?”

  “We’ll just have to see,” I said and began digging in her purse. “You have any pads?”

  “Pads?”

  “Gonna tape him up so he doesn’t bleed out in the next ten minutes.”

  “I got it, One,” Five said. “You guys patch yourselves up.”

  He pointed at Four. “And you put some damn clothes on. I’ve got a reputation to uphold.”

  She nodded and headed to the locker room.

  I nodded to him and turned to the other OAS men. “Prep a truck to move to the north lab, like the doc said. Then you are to report back to your headquarters and tell them what happened here.

  “Won’t you need us for defense?” Sergeant Malcolm asked.

  “We’ll be defense until we get there and make contact.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Two was trying to patch one of the wounds on his own back.

  “Let me help you with that,” I said, grabbing the pad and duct tape. “Three, go help Four get patched up. She had several wounds I know she can’t reach.”

  He grinned.

  “Pervert.”

  “I happen to know you’ve…”

  “Piss off,” I said.

  I had almost gotten Two taped up when Regina’s hand landed on my shoulder. “It’s done. He’s gone.”

  I placed my hands on her shoulders. “It had to be done, girl. It’s his only chance to survive.”

  “I know, but I hate to think that I condemned him to insanity.”

  “Doc may be made of sterner stuff than that,” I said. “At least, he’s not in there alone.”

  “He will be until I can get the database back up and running in Philly.”

  “Then we had best get a move on. Get it packed up, and we’ll plant the charges.”

  “Charges?”

  “We can’t leave all this tech behind,” I said and pointed at the imprinters.

  She shook her head. “You’re right, Mister Kade.”

  “It’s Mathew,” I said. “Now get me and the Doc all packed up while the rest of myselves get ready to move out. We’ll be going north with every damn thing in that armory.”

  I could tell she was close to the edge, but she had guts. She took a deep breath and straightened her slumped shoulders. Then, she nodded to me and returned to the computers.

  “Let’s go load some guns in the truck,” I said to Two.

  “Damn straight.”

  * * *

  “You know, I almost terminated this copy of myself when you put me into that Agent body. Hard to believe it’s been close to a year.”

  Bern moved his knight toward my bishop.

  “Kind of glad you didn’t, Doc.”

  “Surprisingly, I’m rather glad you talked me out of it,” he said.

  “You’d miss all of this,” I said, motioning toward the surrounding greenery in the virtual garden.

  “The periodic updates from the version of myself outside help keep me straight.”

  “They’ve been good for me, too,” I said. “I still have all of the memories from them and those from myself. As a matter of fact, there should be a new upload soon from that last copy the other you downloaded. He said he was going to try something new. Didn’t elaborate much past that. Have you had an update recently?”

  “No, I haven’t.”

  “Oh, well.” I shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out together.”

  I glanced to my right and saw another form walking toward us through the garden.

  “That’s odd,” I said, pointing at the new inhabitant.

  He looked up and saw me, and I recognized those eyes. They were mine.

  “That’s not the way one of these normally goes,” I said.

  “Indeed,” Doc agreed.

  “Hello Mathew,” the newcomer said with a precise voice unlike any I would use. “My name is Stephen. These roses are absolutely delightful.”

  He looked over his shoulder, and I could see dozens of additional people coming. They all looked different, but they all had my eyes.

  “Oh, yeah,” he said. “I forgot to mention it. I’m not alone.”

  Things can get complicated in this Fallen World.

  * * * * *

  Part Two

  I opened my eyes.

  “You’re looking good, Red,” I said and paused as I heard my voice. “And…I’m a woman again.”

  Gina chuckled. “At least you’re young again. I don’t have that luxury.”

  The last ten years had been good to her, but she had still aged. There was a touch of gray where her hair was beginning to turn.

  “I don’t think I qualify as young at the ripe old age of a hundred and twelve years.”

  She handed me a mirror. “You’re aging well, Mathew.”

  I looked into the mirror into vibrant green eyes and Asian features. “Where do you find these bodies? I look like a schoolgirl.”

  “Miss Chu has been an Agent donor for six years, Matt. She signed up at age twenty-one. You know the nanites don’t let you age quickly.”

  “Maybe I’m just getting old,” I said. “She looks like she’s twelve.”

  “I thought you old geezers liked the young ones.”

  “I like them around forty-five, with red hair. Nurse’s outfit is optional.”

  She shook her head. “You have hit on me almost every time you load up, Mathew. Be careful. One day I might take you up on it.”

  She brushed a hand across my cheek. “And you wouldn’t want that time to be when you’re a teenage girl.”

  I grinned.

  “You’re incorrigible, Mathew Kade.”

  “Just part of my charm, girl.” I rose from the imprinter. “What’s the job?”

  “We have a heated conflict near Headquarters, and they have requested an Agent to end it.”

  “Ah. Just nee
d an old soldier.”

  “I figured you would like the time out. I suppose I could have called up Childers. But, frankly, I like it when I can talk to you. Do you know you’re the only one who comes out of the machine with any memory of the time inside?”

  “What about the Doc?”

  “Well, I guess you’re one of two, then. But I don’t get to talk to him anymore. Not since they moved him upstairs.”

  “Is that why he hasn’t been uploaded in a while?” I asked. “He’s been wondering when they’ll do a refresh.”

  “I’m not sure they’ll upload him again.”

  “That’s a little disappointing. These uploads are what keep us sane in there. If they stop, I don’t know what the repercussions will be.”

  “Maybe when the war with JalCom is wrapped up.”

  “They have to be close to folding,” I said.

  “There are rumors. I think this latest attack is their Hail Mary.”

  “We’ll see,” I said. “I guess I should get some clothes. Perhaps when it’s done, we can—”

  “Go do your thing, Mathew.”

  I chuckled and strode up the ramp toward the locker room and armory. The time gave me a chance to adapt to the body I was using. It didn’t take me long, I’d been using all sorts of Agent bodies for over a decade. There weren’t many I couldn’t adapt to pretty quickly.

  I glanced up at the cameras. “That’s new.”

  I kept moving and entered the locker room. There were twenty lockers, and all of them were empty except the one labeled “Chu.”

  “Looks like we’re pretty busy,” I said.

  I opened the locker with a thumbprint. Inside were a set of BDUs.

  I slid the underwear on and snapped the bra with more experience than one would have thought. They had loaded me in every type of body imaginable over the years. Being a female was nothing new.

  The clothes went on in quick order, and I pulled the boots from the locker and sat to pull them on.

  I glanced over and saw another woman enter the locker room.

  “Gloria,” I said as I finished lacing my boot. “How bad is it?”

  “We have the transport ready, Matt.”

  “I’ll grab some weapons, and I’ll be there ASAP.”

  “You still have a half hour of adaptive time before we leave.”

  “Don’t need it,” I said. “Been a girl before.”

  “But—”

  “I’ll adapt on the transport.”

  “Roger that.”

  I stood and followed the soldier to the armory where I donned the body armor and weapons of the trade. I pulled two extra combat knives from the rack and attached them to my harness.

  Chu’s body was strong, but not as strong as it could have been if she had been a large man. But she would be fast, and speed meant more than strength in the middle of large number of people. Her size would also make her a smaller target.

  I wasn’t dissatisfied with what I had to work with; I just needed to plan accordingly.

  Slipping the two knives into sheaths, I turned to Gloria Dans. “Let’s do this. You can give me a SitRep on the transport.”

  She nodded.

  * * *

  “Really getting tired of seeing this,” I said.

  “It seems to be getting worse,” Gloria said.

  “It always does near the end. Most of what’s left are the fanatics. The regulars have left the company by this point. The DU was the same. The last days featured some of the most brutal fighting.”

  “You were in the DU?” she asked. “I thought the Agent program started after that war.”

  “It did. I was a regular grunt back then.”

  “That was seventy years ago.”

  “That it was, Major.”

  She nodded.

  I looked at the display. “This will do.”

  “We’re still pretty high, ma’am,” the pilot said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said and winked at Gloria. “Meet you at the extraction point, Major.”

  “What the—”

  The pilot hadn’t expected me to jump out of the craft. We were only fifty feet above the tops of the buildings. Not too difficult for an Agent. I landed with suitable flair, the prerequisite knee and fist hitting the ground.

  “Not sure if that is necessary every single time,” Dans said over the comm.

  “Of course it is,” I said.

  She chuckled. “Of course it is.”

  I grinned at the flyer as it cruised into the darkness. Gloria had sent me out on more missions than most of the other handlers at our hub. We weren’t the closest hub to this particular action, but it seemed that JalCom was turning up the heat as far as they could before they went down. It was obvious they were done, but some of the company heads would rather destroy everything than let Obsidian win. I never understood this mindset. All it did was get more of their people killed. I remembered a country before the Corporations that would have fought to the last breath, but Corporations were different. Most of their people had already left their employ, but there was a core of fanatical forces that would fight until told by their “Kings” to stop.

  And those “Kings” were going to fight to the end. Or their people would. When there was no one between them and the warriors of Obsidian, they would surrender. They wouldn’t die for their cause like they expected their most loyal forces to. We’d all be better off if they would load up our boy, Gaunt, and just remove the Heads.

  Or I would gladly do the job. Almost any of the imprints would be happy to do it.

  Obsidian wouldn’t allow that. After all the pawns were dead, the Kings and Queens would be absorbed into the great corporate machine. Meanwhile, their soldiers died.

  I remembered the time before the Corporations were in charge. I got to watch the greatest country in the world collapse around me and become something else as I grew up.

  But we are what we are, and the price I paid for the chance at immortality was to serve one of them. So, I did the jobs and watched as the best of those Corporations slowly fell into the same pattern as the others. Obsidian used to be something to be proud of. It had slipped into the gray area between good and bad a long time ago. I felt like I was seeing more and more of the darkness lately.

  “Maybe ending this war will give us time to get some of it back,” I said as I looked over the edge of the building I had landed on.

  I shook my head, dropped over that edge, and caught a ledge about thirty feet down, then dropped another thirty or so to grab another ledge. Many of the new Agents were more hesitant about doing the incredible things they were capable of.

  I had been doing them for over a decade and didn’t think twice about dropping over the edge of a sixty-story building. Each drop took me that much closer to the ground, and I landed lightly.

  I accessed the visor of my helmet and located a sizeable group of our people who were pinned down.

  “That’s my first target,” I murmured and launched forward down the street, dodging people running the other way.

  There were always innocent people involved these days. JalCom didn’t care about collateral damage anymore, and I wasn’t sure Obsidian did either. The soldiers still cared, and they tried to mitigate the damage as well as they could. That was part of the reason they were pinned down at the moment. They had to keep the JalCom forces engaged while the civilians escaped the warzone.

  “Allied reinforcements incoming.”

  Gloria was informing the Obsidians I was coming.

  “How many should I expect, ma’am?”

  “One.”

  “One, ma’am?”

  “One is all you will need.”

  “Oh shit,” I heard, as he still had the button pushed. “Agent inbound! Look sharp!”

  I heard part of that in stereo because my hearing picked it up from just ahead.

  “Ally, incoming!” I yelled.

  “Incoming!”

  I leapt over a car and walked into a posit
ion where fifteen soldiers crouched behind the crumbled walls of a fallen building.

  I crouched beside the sergeant. “My sources say there are close to two hundred JCs closing. Keep a sharp eye out. I’ll handle them. If any make it past me, shoot them.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I nodded.

  “Two hundred is a lot, ma’am. Are you sure?”

  I grinned. “Don’t worry, Sarge, I got this.”

  He was still looking doubtful as I drew two combat knives and jumped straight up twenty feet to clear the ragged wall between them and the approaching forces.

  The helmet HUD showed a concentrated group of red dots, and I charged out of the darkness into their midst. Blades flashed, men and women screamed, and I left a trail of blood behind me as I entered the night, once more, on a direct course with another cluster of red dots.

  Three JalCom soldiers made it past my assault, and I heard the gunfire as they ran into our boys. It took me less then fifteen minutes to slaughter two hundred and sixteen of them. I found myself hesitating at several points, but the dead behind the JalCom forces changed my mind. There were soldiers lying in the streets, but that was to be expected. What caused me to withdraw any pity I felt for the JCs was the family of five lying in the ally where they had been hiding.

  The JCs had shown no mercy, so I served them their own treatment. If I hadn’t seen the three that made it past me killed, I would have pursued them and seen to it myself.

  I crouched atop a building and watched the Obsidian soldiers leave their position and follow my trail of death as the sun lightened the horizon.

  The final days were always the worst.

  I turned and crossed the rooftop, then jumped to another, quickly making my way to the medical center where the transport would be waiting.

  I slipped inside the door, and the pilot gasped. I was covered in blood.

  He looked at me with wide eyes, several times as the transport lifted off. He stopped looking when I grinned. It had to be a little disconcerting to see the Cheshire Cat grin on my blood-soaked face.

  “Please, stop that, Mathew,” Gloria said. “I don’t want to have to bring in a new pilot.”

  “What? What’d I do?”

  “And can you make sure you clean up well before giving the body back to Chu. You left blood in Denny’s hair. He freaked out just a little. Chu is a sweet girl and doesn’t need the trauma.”