Advance (Animus Book 4)

by Joshua Anderle

  “And you think you can take them all? Madness leads to many things, suicide included.”

  “I’m mad, not insane,” the merc clarified and shifted his fingers on the triggers of each weapon. “You have a ship waiting back at the port, right? The pilot may be too much of a pansy to break protocol, but the least you can do is scoop me up once you get back. I’ll make a smoke signal or something and cook a couple of these bastards while I wait for ya.”

  Magellan was taken aback by the man’s sudden bravado. He studied the debris the panzer lurked behind. “I can scale up with my hook. I’ll toss it back down and—”

  “Don’t start with that trash.” Lazar snarled. “Get out of here. I need to kill some more. Come back if you feel like it, and if not, I guess I’ll become one with the jungle or something. I don’t look that far off from a gorilla so I’ll blend right in.”

  Magellan pursed his lips and sighed as he pulled the brim of his hat down. “I’ll come back for you. Don’t die on me, ya hear?”

  “Yeah, whatever.”

  “Lazar!”

  “What? Do you want me to wrap my pinky in yours or something?” he barked, and a few of the shriekers above leapt back. “Get going.”

  Magellan placed his rifle on his back, switched the pistol to his other hand, and raised his free arm to fire his grappling hook to the top of the building. “Thanks, Lazar.”

  “Thank me by taking out that pissy pussycat before you head out,” he grunted.

  The panzer climbed on top of the debris and snarled at him as he ascended. “I didn’t think you would simply let me waltz out of here,” he sniped and aimed his pistol. The mutant cat roared and lunged at him. Magellan fired, and the force swung him away from the beast’s claws as the electric bolt hit the panzer in the jugular. It sparked and the beast twitched and spasmed around a frazzled hiss as it was jettisoned back to the ground.

  The shot released pandemonium. The shriekers cried and leapt from their platform, and the nagas spat their acidic venom at both men. Lazar dove quickly out of the way and fired a grenade that erupted in the middle of the coil of mutants.

  Magellan used his body weight and twisted himself in the air to avoid the deadly spittle, but a small splash landed on the wire of his grappling hook a few feet above him. As he wound closer, he huffed and swung himself quickly to a ledge on his right. The wire snapped as he whipped himself onto the edge and the sudden disconnect enabled him to make the couple of extra feet it took to grab the ledge and hoist himself up. He readied his rifle and placed a few quick shots through the heads and chests of the shriekers before Lazar looked angrily at him. The bounty hunter raised his rifle and held up a hand before he turned to search for a staircase or ladder he could use to climb the rest of the way.

  “This is bad,” the pilot muttered as she examined the wounded soldier. An open holoscreen of his vitals hovered above her. “This kind of wound…getting stabbed by anything is horrible enough, sure, but such a precise strike? Who did this?”

  “A serial killer named Gin Sonny,” Chief said. She looked around for a moment before she saw the small orb in the corner the vitals screen.

  “What are you?”

  “I’m his EI,” he explained. “We can make proper introductions later. Right now, there isn’t much we can do. We’ve treated the wound as best as we can physically, but he lost a lot of blood. Do you have any regen or hemoreplicant?”

  “I have replicant.” She nodded, fished it out of the box, and grabbed an injector from the bench.

  “Administer the entire vial. If you have any relaxant, administer a small dose of that as well.”

  “Right,” she acknowledged and focused on his arm. “I need a place to inject him.”

  “Disengaging his armor locks.” The buckles and grips on Kaiden’s arm unlocked with a quick hiss and slid off. The pilot pried the armor along his arm off and left only his underlay, then cut a hole with a pair of snips so she could look for a vein. “It’s so shallow,” she whispered.

  “Quickly, please,” Chief instructed. She found a spot and administered the replicant.

  “That should help with the blood loss, but everything else needs further treatment,” she explained as she sorted through a collection of vials. “The wraps and the foam will keep him alive, but it’s not a proper fix. Will this work?” She held up a small vial of purplish liquid.

  Chief scanned it. “That’s too strong, at least to administer in full. A fifth of the vial.”

  The pilot removed the empty vial of replicant, adjusted the injector knob to lower the injection pressure, and slid in the vial of relaxant. “I know I promised to wait, but seeing this…I’m not so sure I should wait for the other two. He needs help asap, and it’s a long flight back to the port.”

  “They have a few more minutes,” Chief stated. “Give them that.”

  “I thought you EIs had instructions to give your host’s life precedence in situations like these.”

  “We do, but we also adapt to the desires and mindset of our hosts. He has his…faults, but he would tear himself up about leaving others behind for his sake, a point of stubbornness. I don’t want him to die, but I don’t want him bitching at me when he comes to, either. I can at least say we waited as long as we could.”

  She unlatched the bottom of Kaiden’s helmet and removed it. He had paled dramatically, and his mouth was agape. Quickly, she traced her fingers along the neckline of his undersuit and moved it down his neck in search of a place to inject the relaxant.

  “Then I hope they make it back in time.”

  Magellan raced up the steps and headed for the top. He wasn’t sure if this would lead to the roof or not, but up was good enough for now. If he had to, he would blast his way through the ceiling.

  A crunching sound stopped his ascent. A pair of shriekers munched on the corpse of another mutant or animal two stories up, too preoccupied with their meal to notice him. They must have been attracted by the pheromones but found the corpse more appealing than the smell. He leapt up the stairs and onto the platform of the next floor and steadied his rifle on the bars.

  One of them turned as he fired and the top of its head exploded. The other, startled, jumped back and bit the bone in its mouth in half. It turned to the bounty hunter and bounded at him. The severed bone pierced its stomach and it screamed in anguish. Magellan moved aside, but it swung its long arms and knocked him down as it crashed to the wall. It grabbed the upper half of his leg and dragged him closer. He thudded the bottom of his boot into its head, raised his foot again, and brought it down into its eye. The shrieker yelled and swatted at the boot. The man rolled away and grabbed his rifle, fired a shot at the mutant, and silenced it as he continued to ascend the stairs.

  When he reached the top, he found a hatch. He folded his rifle and slid it onto his back, gripped the lever, and pulled. The hatch clicked, and he pushed it open to the welcome hum of the dropship’s engines as he hoisted himself in. He was on the opposite side of the roof and ran for the ship. As he passed the hole, he couldn’t resist looking down to where Lazar still fought below. Another pang of guilt coursed through him. The merc was bathed in blood, and he grabbed a naga and smashed it into a wall while he forced the others back in a hail of gunfire.

  He should have stayed.

  “Hey!” a voice called. The pilot waved him over. “Hurry the hell up. We need to get this kid to the port.”

  The bounty hunter grimaced. He took one final look at the battle, then sprinted to the ship. As soon as he hopped in, the pilot closed the door and headed to the cockpit. “The other one didn’t make it?”

  “He stayed behind. I’m coming back for him later,” he explained as he moved to look at Kaiden.

  “I told you I can’t come,”

  “I said I would,” Magellan snapped. “Don’t worry about it. Take us back as fast as possible.”

  “Then strap yourself and the kid down,” she ordered. He nodded and crossed the straps over Kaiden’s body to fast
en him in as the ship prepared for takeoff.

  “You guys have trackers for us, right?” he asked and headed to the cockpit.

  “Well, yeah, but nothing invasive,” she muttered as she took the ship into the skies. “Merely a basic one, to keep a lookout. But we only use it when a long time has elapsed or with your permission—”

  “It’s fine,” he interrupted and held out a hand. “Let me see it.”

  Blood dripped onto the floor with small plopping sounds and accompanied a few muttered groans and haggard breathing from the shriekers. Lazar sat on the crates that the Panzer had tried to hide behind. He looked at its unmoving corpse and decided he really had to get one of those guns if he made it back.

  The merc scrabbled in the large pocket of his pants for another box of cigarettes. It was crushed, but he opened the lid and looked inside. Most of the cigarettes had either snapped or come undone, but a couple were still relatively intact. If he vaped, his device would have probably been destroyed in all the commotion, so he had the wiser vice.

  He found one of the decent ones, lit up, and took a long, slow drag. The battle was over, and he had finished off the last of the mutants a few minutes before with his bare hands. He gazed at his metal arm, now coated in blood. Maybe bare wasn’t the right word.

  Lazar wondered how long it had taken. He was probably stuck there for a few more hours. He knew Magellan would return. Guys like that were the honorable sort, and it almost made him wish he had fallen in with that crowd earlier. But he still had a chance to make the boys back home into something like that.

  A scraping sound like a boot sliding over dirt and gravel caught his attention. The merc inhaled deeply. Assuming he got back home, he reminded himself.

  He scooped a glob of blood from the shrieker’s corpse below him, stood, and looked around. The sun had set, but light still seeped through. A couple of minutes passed before he saw it—a slight haze, barely there, revealed in the low light of the sun arcing off the wall on the floor above.

  He removed the cigarette from his mouth and spat on the floor before he heaved the blood at the figure. The blood impacted something well away from the wall and pillars.

  “I thought so.” He grunted and rolled his cigarette in his fingers. “Magellan usually only meets his bad guys once, but I’ve known plenty of bastards like you. You guys like to come back to see your handiwork.”

  The blood moved forward and dropped off the second floor. A small cloud of dust was kicked up as someone landed. Lazar placed the cigarette back in his mouth and folded his arms. The air shimmered before a figure in white appeared.

  Gin reached up and removed his helmet to reveal a wide, cocky grin. “Well, you are much keener than you let on,” he said approvingly and tilted his head as his smile faded to a rather unnerving blank look. “It’s a great pity you aren’t as wise.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Lazar eyed Gin cautiously. This was the first time he had seen him get… Mad wasn’t right. Anything but annoyingly coy or whimsical. “Are you pissed that Magellan left or something?”

  “Oh, extremely,” the killer muttered. “But also that my little plan failed.”

  “Did you not notice it didn’t exactly work the first time either?” Lazar growled through another long drag. The cigarette burned down to the end and he let the smoke trail out as he finished. “Did you think the second time would be the charm or something?”

  “It makes me realize how pointless my stay here was.” The killer sighed. “At least from a practical standpoint, I got to meet a couple of interesting people.” His smile returned, though only as a small smirk along the lines of his mouth. “Although considering I’ve only killed two people in the last few hours, I feel I might have lost my touch or grown sluggish. Tell me, how’s Kaiden doing?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t talked to anyone since Magellan left. They are too far away to reach on comms at this point.” Lazar’s metal hand closed and opened a few times. “You should worry less about that, Gin. You still have me to deal with.”

  His adversary cocked an eyebrow. “I should keep a tally of people’s last words. Or at least the clichés.”

  Lazar spat out the butt of his cigarette “Do you have a God complex too? You’re as beaten and ragged as any of us were. You can play demon as much as you like, but you feel it. I’m made of tougher stuff than the poor bastards you typically get off on killin’.”

  “Which makes you slow,” Gin pointed out. His hand snaked to the hilt of his blade and flipped a switch on its holster “Thick-skulled as well if I should take a guess. You seem to be out of weapons, gangbanger. For someone so sure I would return, you haven’t prepared that well, have you?”

  The merc smiled. “I may be out of ammo, but I held back a little.” He retrieved two thermals from behind his back. “That blood I threw on you wasn’t only to mark you but to make sure it wasn’t another of those annoying holograms.” He hit the activation buttons on the explosives and rolled his arm back. “You won’t escape this time.”

  He threw the two grenades at Gin. As he moved to dodge, Lazar kicked his foot to knock his machine gun into the air. He grabbed it in one arm and fired the remaining rounds at the killer. A few knocked him back enough to keep him in place. The explosions surged forward in a hot wave of force and Lazar staggered back. He leaned down and steadied himself with a hand on the ground as the blasts engulfed the room. The entire structure trembled and debris crashed from the wall and floor above.

  The shakes wore off, and he smiled proudly as he stood and looked at the smoke. “I guess I should have said almost out of ammo.” He chuckled. “Magellan made this sound like it would be hard, but explosions have a way of making damn sure things end the way they are supposed to.”

  “With the target alive and well?”

  Lazar narrowed his eyes and snarled. The dust and smoke cleared and Gin stood lazily amongst the debris, surrounded by a purple field “I’m not sure if you noticed, but my cloaking device was perfectly functional. Maybe you depended on my barriers to recharge slower? They do, but your deduction skills aren’t as great as you seem to believe they are.”

  The merc tossed his now empty gun away. “Whatever. It’ll be more fun like this. Besides, did you think it was such a smart idea to create a large hard-light barrier after a quick charge?”

  The barrier dimmed before it evaporated. Gin looked around for a moment. “So you hoped it would kill me, but if not, it would drain my barrier’s energy.”

  “It’s always smart to keep up with your tech’s maintenance,” Lazar growled and took a few steps forward. “Without the power those vanguard shields supply, you don’t look like you have the strength to do anything more than hit me with a few pansy slaps.”

  The killer drew his plasma cutter blade slowly out of its holster. “It’s not my fists you should be worried about,” he warned and tapped the weapon on his shoulder armor. His smile was now narrower, sharper, and more disturbed. “Whatever. It’ll be more fun like this.”

  Lazar roared as he charged and swung his large metal fist in an arc to smash his adversary’s skull. Gin leaned back to avoid the blow, and the fist struck the ground and smashed a rock nearby. The killer flipped the blade in his hand, pointed it at the man’s neck, and stabbed at him. The merc blocked with his other hand and the blade cut into the side of his palm, but he caught his opponent’s hand. He tightened his grip, turned, and threw Gin into a pillar which broke in two and thrust him to the ground. The floor above finally gave way as the middle section slid and crumbled into itself. Lazar walked out of its path and noticed a piece of long, twisted metal spiked into the floor. He seized it and held it like a lance as he ran at the other man.

  Gin regained his feet and, as Lazar thrust the spike forward, he parried the attack and sliced at the metal to cut through it easily. The merc flipped it and held the other end in the air like a sword. He dodged two swipes from the killer and lunged at him with the back of his gauntlet. His adversary lean
ed back, and as the fist sailed over him, he placed his hands on the ground and flipped backward. Lazar howled, sprang forward, and attempted to chop him with the improvised weapon. Gin spun in place and when the attack failed, countered with his own. Lazar leaned away but felt a searing pain in his cheek.

  His teeth clenched in anger, he shoved his boot into Gin’s chest and knocked him back. He grabbed the metal in the center and threw it like a spear, but his opponent used his bionic arm to snatch it out of the air. With a smile, he closed his fist around it and snapped it in two and dropped the pieces to the floor. Lazar charged again and threw punches which the killer side-stepped before he grabbed the merc’s artificial arm. Lazar pressed forward with all his strength, but Gin didn’t budge. Instead, he leaned in with a cocky smile. “Yours is bigger, I’ll admit.” He snickered. “But quality over quantity and all that.”

  “You may have the latest model,” Lazar snarled. “But I have something you don’t.”

  “Rust?” his adversary questioned mockingly.

  “Novelty,” Lazar muttered and with his free hand, spun the dial under his thumb as far as it would go. The top opened, and a large jet of flames blew into the killer’s face.

  Gin cursed and stumbled back. His shades slid off his face as he tried to guard it with his free hand and his grip released. The merc grimaced at the indentions of the other man’s claw in the side of his gauntlet. The flame stopped, completely tapped.

  “Did I burn your pretty face, Gin?” he taunted. “Hold still and I’ll make all that pain go away.”

  The killer straightened, his hand still pressed against the side of his face. He rubbed it for a moment before his hand lowered and he turned to look at Lazar, whose eyes widened in shock. His face was slightly seared, but his eyes were black and small circular dots glowed white where his irises should be. They widened slightly before they shrank once more like the shutter of a camera. The killer sighed when he saw that his shades had been trampled. “I was quite fond of that pair.”