Floor 21- Dark Angel

by Jason Luthor

  “Just tell me, Yousef. Look me in the eyes and tell me you had nothing to do with whatever she’s talking about.”

  He takes a deep breath and looks over at the president. The two just stare at each other for a long time before Yousef sighs. “Fort Silence conducts many military operations into the Deadlands. Perhaps one of those is what she’s referring to.”

  President Branagh stares at him for a long second before looking back down at his screen. “Damn it, Yousef. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to you stepping down as general. But, mark my words, we’re going to find out what happened. I want to know if you provoked them somehow.”

  “They’re raiders. They’re barely civilized. What if this Tank woman is just trying to find any reason she can to justify attacking us?”

  “I pray that’s the case, Yousef.” He looks over at Martin. “Could you please go check our records and see if there’s anything we have in our operational logs about this?”

  “I’m on it, sir,” he says before leaving the room. That just leaves the rest of us, watching and waiting as Jackie keeps up the fight against the Tank.

  Jackie’s Recording 25

  I feel the Tank lifting me up above her head before I go flying across the deck. She’s on me in a second, her huge fingers locking around my neck as her fist clocks me hard in the face. “I had to become this. Do you understand? Because of people like you. War mongers. You take everything good in the Deadlands and horde it. You use the Creep like a weapon against your own people.” She punches me again, this time hard enough that I feel like I’m seeing stars. “And you? How could you? You call yourself the Dark Angel? Is that really what you want to be? One of them?”

  In the middle of my blurry vision, her words catch my attention and suddenly, it’s like the whole world becomes clear. “One of them?”

  “The Angels! The ones who’ve been stripping our homes of technology,” she screams.

  “You know about . . . Angels?”

  And that’s when I could swear that I hear a voice I haven’t head in months “Interesting. She knows about Angels, too?”

  “Stranger?” I whisper.

  The Tank looks at me like I’m crazy. “What? What stranger?”

  I feel a rush of strength run back through me as I lock my hands around her wrist, tuck my legs into my body, and kick out with only the kind of force someone like me can deliver. It doesn’t wind her, but it does send her stumbling backward, giving me just a few seconds to leap forward off my back and onto my feet. “I’m sorry,” I tell her as I look at her. “I’m sorry you had to change your body. I didn’t choose to change mine. I didn’t choose to be this. But I’m not going to stand around here, wasting time, if the Angels are out here.”

  Her eyes narrow. “Wasting time? Wasting time hurting my people?”

  “For the last time, I didn’t hurt your people.”

  She screams again, her arms stretching out toward me and compartments sliding away from her forearms. The targeting reticule in my visor tells me what I already know. Mini-rockets. Suddenly, the air’s full of them. It doesn’t matter. My sword materializes into my hand just as they’re on me, slicing circles through the air and blanketing the room in a cloud of explosions that mask the world in smoke and flames. I don’t back off this time. I fly forward, and the next thing I see is the Tank’s shocked face as my shoulder goes right into her chest, sending her flying backward along the deck. She’s groaning as she’s picking herself up off the floor, but I don’t let her have enough time to recover. I fly into her, my knee clocking her chin and sending her reeling up and back. Before she can balance out, I twist and, with every enhanced muscle of my body, turn with a punch that hits her square across the side of her face. I can see the muscle and skin rippling from the impact in the second before she goes rolling sideways. Her jaw goes slack as she goes unconscious. Then, I’m left standing there, sucking in a huge breath of air as I give my body a second to recover.

  That’s when I take a look back to see the other girl. The sister. She’s still sitting there. Through the entire fight, she hasn’t moved. It’s just then when I realize that she’s hooked to something. “Command. The Tank’s down. I’ve got the sister here, and she’s hooked up to some kind of helmet.” I get closer to her. She doesn’t even respond to me. It’s like she’s completely oblivious to the world. I take a knee in front of her, my hands running along the helmet. It’s thin, just covering the back and top of her head, but the wires run back into the computer. “Any idea what I’m looking at?”

  The voice of Doctor Watson comes back across the comms. “It appears to be some sort of neurological interface, although what purpose it serves, I could not say. Though, given the sheer size of the Panzer and the multiple functions it is currently operating, it may control the entire behemoth.”

  “What should I do about it?”

  “Well, if you want to stop the assault, then I would suggest taking it off.”

  “Taking it off?” I frown. “That’s it?”

  “What else would you do with a helmet?”

  I shake my head and mumble, “Thanks, I guess.” Then I’m left kneeling there, staring at a woman who won’t even look me in the eyes. Her short hair is still long enough that it covers the front of her face, and her cheeks look thin. She’s tan and healthy, just not saying anything. “Alright. Look, I’m going to get you out of here. Just stay calm, okay?”

  When she still doesn’t say anything, I put my hands around the helmet. It doesn’t feel like it’s connected to her in any kind of special way, so I just gently tug at it. It comes off, just like any normal helmet would, and I let it fall to the ground behind her. “Hey. You with me? I need your help. I need to know if you know how to stop this thing.”

  “Jackie.” It’s the professor. “The Panzer has come to a standing position.”

  “What?”

  “When you removed the helmet, the Panzer stopped moving. It was indeed a neurological interface.”

  That’s when I realize the girl’s hand is on my cheek. It feels weak, but it also feels like she’s pulling me in. She’s leaning forward a little, like she wants to tell me something, so I lean in close to her. Her left hand is caressing my cheek and her lips are brushing my ear. I actually feel my breath stop as I think back to that night when I saw her and the Tank. Then she whispers, “I need to tell you something.”

  I nod, even as I’m kneeling there with my head in her hand. “Yes?”

  There’s a long pause as she presses her face against mine and says,

  “I’m the Tank.”

  I don’t get to say anything else before I feel something slice clean through my stomach. I can feel my sword fall from my hand, my breath stopping as my blood feels like it comes to a stop. Half a second later, my vision goes black, and when I can finally see again, I’m being held in the air. My body’s hanging above the ground, and when I look down at my stomach, I can see a long, insect like arm that’s cut clear through my stomach and out of my back. She’s Creep infested. My eyes follow the arm, down to the girl standing there, that long arm connecting into her spine. The wheelchair’s been tossed to the ground, and that whole act, all the weakness, is gone. I suck wind as I wrap my hands around the long claw that’s holding me in midair, but I can barely find the strength to move. The arm raises me higher, and the girl, the real Tank, looks me straight in the eyes.

  “My name is Ishara Suliman. You may know my brother. Yousef.”

  Tommy’s Recording 32

  Everyone’s eyes turn to the general. President Branagh looks like he’s about to lose his mind as he screams, “What the hell is going on here, Yousef?”

  The general blinks, his eyes going from the screen to the president. “Branagh, I can assure you, I . . .”His gloved fist clenches before he squeezes at his temples. His other hand braces against the table as he exhales. “My sister died. I promise you. She died.”

  Branagh hesitates and his voice get a little lighter.
“Yousef, I . . . Look, not to sound like a broken record, but you honestly didn’t know about this?”

  The general’s face shoots his direction. “I’m telling you the complete truth. My sister died in the Creep. I saw her die there. Do you understand?” He practically looks like he’s about to go crazy, too. “No, Branagh. No. No. My sister is gone . . .” He starts to suck wind, like he’s about to hyperventilate. “My mother . . . my sister . . . both of them . . . both were lost to the Creep.” His face starts to go pale, and Branagh extends a hand out to him.

  “Whoa there. Yousef. Okay. Alright. We’ll . . . we’ll settle this all out when this is over. Alright?”

  The general shakes his head, barely able to talk, before he looks back down at the screen. “We have to . . . All we can do now is . . .”

  “I know. All we can do now is hope Jackie figures this one out.” He looks at me. “Has she ever taken an injury like that?”

  I suck hard at the air and breath out. “Plenty. Just . . . She’s not invincible. And the Tank . . . Yousef’s sister . . . if she’s infected too . . .”

  From out of nowhere, Doc Watson’s voice rings out. “Then it will mean that she has quite the regenerative ability herself. Just like our Dark Angel.”

  Jackie’s Recording 26

  She stares at me, her eyes cutting into mine. “You were his new pet. His new dog of war. Didn’t he tell you?” I don’t say anything. I’m too busy focusing on the fact that I’ve got a man-sized claw right through my stomach. “Does he do the same with you as he did with me? Whisper all the ways he wish he could improve as a man. Tell you all the ways he wishes he could be better. And all the while, the world you know and love becomes a little dimmer, day by day.”

  I grit my teeth. “I’m giving you one last chance to surrender.”

  “Surrender?” Her smile wraps from ear to ear. “Oh, you are a silly one. Is this why my brother likes to play with you? Sending you into all of my secret places to check up on me. Have you heard him cry about his dead father? Or does he just skip that one now? Are the stories now about me? Has he replaced tearful stories about his father with tearful stories about his sister? How familiar. You know, he was a brilliant actor when he was young. Does he put on that mournful tone and quote Shakespeare still?”

  “Like I said . . . Last chance.”

  “You think you’re the first person to put on a suit of armor or shoot themselves full of Creep? You don’t think there’s a whole city out there with people trying to be just like you? People who want to win this arms race and recapture all the technology from the Old World? To master the Creep?” Her smile fades. “So, you’re just like the rest of them, are you? A Creep junky. Trying to change her genes. To use the Creep to evolve, to become more powerful, not even knowing that you’re killing yourself. You’re just like the rest. You just happened to go a little longer without turning into a monster.”

  “You really need to learn a little more about me,” I grunt as my hands wrap around where the razor sharp blade ends and connects into that long, insectoid arm of hers. “Because there’s nobody else like me.” She’s about to say something else when my hands twist with enough force that my fingers crush right through the arm, blood covering my hands as my fingers sink into the muscle, flesh and bone breaking between my clawed gauntlets as I break the arm in two. I can hear her screaming as I fall to the ground, my hands bracing against the fall as she goes stumbling back.

  “How?” She’s asking. “How did you . . .”

  I’m already back on my feet, that long blade of hers still pinned right through my stomach. “Because . . . I didn’t inject myself. I’m no junkie.” I grab at the end of the broken claw. “You think I ever wanted to become this?”

  “What are you doing?”

  “I am what I am, because I have to be. Because people need me to be. To protect them from the real monsters out there. That’s why . . .” My fingers lock around the claw and start to pull. I can feel it budge, the length of it starting to slide out as my muscles strain to rip it out of my body. Seconds pass as I stand there, screaming, my hands slowly pulling the claw from out of my stomach until it finally rips loose. I don’t look down. I don’t want to see, even if I can feel the blood pouring down the front of my armor. I just keep staring her dead in the eyes, looking as she sees exactly what this is like. What it’s like to be me. I drop the claw to the ground and stand there shaking as she watches. I still refuse to look down, because I already know what’s happening. My stomach is closing up and repairing itself, the armor’s nanotech resealing the gap in the plating. Every second of it hurts like fresh hell. “When was the last time you had to recover from something like this? Or is the best plan you can come up with is a sneak attack on someone who thought they were trying to help you?”

  “I . . . I didn’t . . .”

  “You didn’t what?” My body’s still shaking as I scream at her. “What didn’t you do?”

  Her eyes finally connect with mine again. “I didn’t know. Creep junkies . . . can’t do that.”

  “And you know this how, exactly?”

  She straightens out, hesitating as she watches my stomach closing. “I told you. There’s an arms race. Everyone is fighting for the future. For everything Apeiron left behind. But to answer your question . . . Yes, I have recovered from something like that. Worse than that. Because, you see . . . I’ve died and come back. Can you say the same?”

  I just smile. “Yeah. Actually, I can.”

  She scowls at me for a long second before tendrils erupt from her back, a half dozen of them growing instantaneously and rushing at me. Each one’s clawed at the end with blades like extra-long machetes. I’m exhausted beyond being exhausted from being blown up and beaten, but . . . it doesn’t seem to matter. I react before they can get me. The first goes at my legs, and I raise my knee as it takes a swipe at my feet. The second comes at my face and so I lean back, still on one leg, my body arching backward as the blade goes past my chin. My arms come behind me and I do a back somersault, my body spinning and twisting, dodging tendrils that are lashing out at me before I land back on my feet. The rockets on my back roar to life and send me rushing at her, my body contorting sideways as the last two tendrils race at me. Then I’m there, right in front of her, my shoulder burying into her stomach as my arm wraps around her, the thrusters on my back sending us crashing into back wall.

  I can feel the breath empty out of her when she slams into that wall, but she manages to lift her arms. She gets them around my face, and I feel the superhuman pressure that only someone infected by the Creep can apply. The warning lights in my visor are roaring across my screen as I feel her hands bending the metal frame of my helmet and pressing it into my skull. Before she can do any more damage, I throw my hands outward, breaking her grip around my skull before I rear back and drive my fist into her face. She eats it like it’s nothing before driving her own fist into my stomach. It’s a cheap shot in my condition, but effective. I go doubling over before I feel her clubbed hands come down across the back of my neck.

  It's when the world around me changes in a way that’s familiar, in a way I first felt back in the Tower, that I feel that old fear, that sense of dread. Talk about the Creep as much as I want to, about how much I’m used to it, but seeing someone like Ishara suddenly make the room come alive with it makes me flashback to my fight with Judge. It’s like the room just suddenly starts dripping with muscle and tissue as she launches at me, her jaw distending into this hanging, vicious maw. I’ve seen it before, on Sally. I’ve seen it in the film of me killing raiders at Highpoint. And I clutch up when I see it again, so much so that she slams right into me, her clawed hands digging into my shoulders and slicing right through my armor and into my bones.

  She sends me tumbling back, and for a second I’m screaming there as she leaps on top of me, her feet planted on my stomach and her claws swiping at my armor, tearing into it before her jaws come down and latch onto my collar. I scream again when h
er teeth bury into me, my body ripping apart underneath the pressure of her jaws. I feel it when she rips back, tearing the muscle from my shoulder and sending pieces of my armor scattering across the ground, the Creep struggling to repair the wounds at the rate she’s digging into me. It’s like, all at once, all the fighting from the last half hour catches up to me, and I feel myself struggling to breathe.

  For a second, I’m staring up at the ceiling, my vision getting blurry but with the sight of Ishara still clawing into my chest. I can feel pieces of me being ripped away, and for a second, I think I’m going to pass out. Then I blink, and when I do, it’s like all the pain is gone. Ishara’s teeth are locked into me again, but it’s like I’m there and not there at the same time. Someone else is in the room, though. Over her shoulder, his face staring down at me from underneath his hood, I see that decaying face of Judge as he’s watching us struggle on the ground. His eyes are glowing orange as he looks at Ishara, then at me, his skeletal jaw shifting as he asks me just one question.

  “Are you really going to let this pretender get the best of you when I could not?”

  And then, when I blink, he’s gone, but just the memory of him makes my blood start pumping. My adrenaline is surging so hard that when I bring my fist down, I feel the base of Ishara’s skull crack. She’ll be fine when the Creep heals her, but in that moment, I’m back onto a knee. I’m on the ground for barely a second longer before she leaps at me again, her fist flying across my cheek with so much power that it breaks right through the metal. My head’s only turned away for half a second before I rotate onto my feet and back toward her, my closed hand driving right into the bottom of her chin and hitting with enough force to send her backward and nearly into the air. The second I have my opening, I’m rushing her, my fists driving into her stomach one after the other. I get off a dozen clean hits before she takes a swing, her punch swiping at air as I duck beneath it. Then, one jab to the nose, a cross along her face, and a hook to her stomach. I take the wind right out of her again and she goes leaning forward. When she does, I wrap my hands behind her head and drive her down, my knee smashing into her nose. I can’t help but squint at the thought of taking a hit like that but . . . you can’t use kid gloves on people like her.