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BROAD DAYLIGHT ISN't the best choice, but by the time whatever local emergency crew responds, this whole damn mess will be finished. The armor, Xamse, Augments—I've put up with this bullshit for one purpose.
Tiny hatchbacks and scooters tail-dragging with passengers or bursting at the seams with cargo flood the city square. Drivers and passengers gape in wonder as I streak overhead, their erratic driving on the unlined road coming to choppy stops. I soar past the biggest building in sight, a walled-off five-story complex I'm guessing is a hospital. Power lines sway and spark as they collide in my wake.
I'm coming in hot. No need to slow down. The suit is banged up, but I've got the element of surprise, and I don't intend to lose it.
The lab isn't too far off the city square. The gate around the lot is only for show and to keep away curious passersby, but they've hardened this structure for a purpose. I know the walls are deceptively thick. The roof has been reinforced as well.
But it won't stop me.
"Collision imminent. Autopilot engaging."
"Override," I shout, selecting a point precisely where the flare-up of heat had been detected. Hot enough to seep through the concrete and metal like molten rebar piercing impregnable flesh. Searing skin, bone. This son of a bitch is dead.
I aim the Gravitational Shockwave Cannon and prepare for the impact.
A split second before, the targeting reticle outlines the guard. A rent-a-cop, he's not at his post by the gate but standing at the front door, peering through the glass. Audio enhancers pick up a shrill beep. An alarm of some sort.
Good. He'll know I'm coming. I want him to see it.
***
CYRUS LUNGED FOR THE computer terminal. Jackie watched Ember's face fill with malice and knew what was coming. She tried to scream an appeal. She'd just met the man and spoken with him. Did he deserve to burn? Drone footage, security cameras, reporters safe inside a green zone, she'd never watched Ember's work up close. Wreathed in flame, she fought her battles with pure destructive efficiency. What had always been missing to Jackie was the emotion. The raw feeling underpinning the Augment's actions.
Ember, she could tell now, craved the release. She enjoyed the exercise of a power barely contained under her skin.
Jackie had taken plenty of pictures of men and women in the heat of battle. Fear-drenched focus usually took over even the most brash soldier. The euphoric wash of adrenaline only happened after, once you knew you'd survived.
For Ember, the euphoria began the moment she ignited.
Cyrus didn't scream. It happened too fast. Flame engulfed his feet then his lower legs. Jackie smelled burning rubber first as his shoes incinerated, followed by the sweet, greasy smell she didn't want to admit she could recognize. Burning flesh filled her nostrils, like the Lady atop the hill or countless remnants of bombing runs. In the enclosed lab, she gagged.
Instead of smoke, a pocket of heat formed around the Augment and singed the hair on Jackie's arms. She backed away. White and blue flames licked up as he staggered. They crept just below his knees and vanished.
Cyrus toppled forward as though his strings had been cut. He hadn't registered yet the utter devastation done. His calves and feet had been rendered into blackened, twitching twigs. He rolled to his back as the agony set in but found the strength to shimmy away on his elbows.
Jackie covered her mouth to hold back a scream.
"Salaam alaikum, traitor" Ember hissed. She stalked toward the hobbled man, her scowling face made ferocious by the illumination of her flames. She crouched to survey the damage. "It's the only Arabic I know. But my daughter here, she's a smart one, huh?"
"Mother...please," Jackie gasped.
She rushed toward Ember, reaching for her mother. Searing heat nearly blistered her hand. How well did she really know her? Did she even have a name?
Ember laughed. "Tell her you'll be fine. They'll grow back good as new."
Cyrus made no noise. Blood vessels wormed along his neck and face with the strain. Short, grunting breaths caused his mustache to flutter. Bulging eyes flickered between Jackie and Ember. He tried to lash out and only succeeded in tumbling to his side. The move of the crippled man was enough to make Ember shift uneasily away.
"Naughty, naughty. You want a ruined stub for a hand?" Ember chided. "You won't be shutting down my powers. I've got orders to keep you alive for at least a few more minutes until my team gets here to steal your data."
"China?" Cyrus managed to grunt as he backpedaled on his elbows then palms until he'd thudded into a filing cabinet.
"You know me." Ember nonchalantly twirled her fingers. "Freelancer."
Jackie stared at the grisly trail left by Cyrus' ruined legs. Reddish streaks flecked with blackened chunks, some thin and curled, others coagulated lumps. She wanted to help him, find a way to ease the incredible pain he must be in, but her stomach churned. She had to look away.
Halfway to vomiting, Jackie felt forced to turn her head back to the scene when the first burst of genuine pain escaped Cyrus. He'd grabbed hold of his legs right above his charred shins like half-chewed drumsticks plucked of flesh. Through gritted teeth, he squeezed, and his hands unleashed a warm glow.
Flesh began to re-knit. Raw muscle came first with the blackened crust flaking away. It wrapped the bone coiling and scrubbing the surface clean into a polished, glistening white. Skin began to sheath the whole.
"My God." Jackie couldn't believe what she saw.
So many times, Jackie had seen people perpetrate violence on each other. This wasn't even the worst of it. Between the enclosed space and the casual way Ember, her mother, had committed to the horror, it had gotten to her like never before. Watching it reversed with the same ease—she'd never seen that. People were ruined on battlefields, left broken. Never were they the same, ever.
"If you so much as move toward that computer," Ember said, "you'll be patching a hole through your chest. How fast can you regrow a heart? Hmm? Before your brain figures out you're dead?"
Cyrus squirmed in discomfort as his feet grew flesh. He kicked away the smoldering remains of his shoes. "Doesn't matter. You won't get anything from me or the computer. All the data is heavily encrypted." He gave a final moan as the process worked its way to his toes and he wiggled them. "And since you've lost the element of surprise, I assure you, I can heal quicker than you think." He glared a challenge toward Ember. Her lips split in an eager grin.
"Stop it!" said Jackie. Despite the dangers, she moved to place herself between the two. "Don't try to play tough. We will get the information. They've got some hacker kid and his pet computer."
Cyrus seemed to forget about the incendiary threat. "Chroma? You brought her here?"
Jackie watched Cyrus' expression change. The guy who'd just had to regrow his own legs and was defiant in the face of Ember's power showed genuine fear. Something more to this complicated web of alliance and treason and Augment loyalties she didn't understand.
"That's right," Ember purred, latching on to the shift in his demeanor. "Her and her boy toy will get every bit of data off those systems."
He shook his head in disbelief. "What's your name?" he said, calmly to Jackie. She'd been staring at him, and he'd seen an opportunity to play the get to know you games she knew as a reporter.
"I... I'm."
"Get the door open," Ember interrupted.
Cyrus crossed his arms and set his jaw.
"Give me a second, I'll see if I can figure out how," said Jackie.
Blindly Jackie searched the lab. Cyrus grew distant. She knew he was calculating, planning his next move. Ember waited for him to take action almost impatiently.
If there were controls in the lab, they were on the locked computer. Jackie recalled the door they'd passed, the one labeled Authorized Personnel, and rushed out through the gap in the glass wall. Open the front door, signal the group. They'd know what to do. Hound would be here and maybe help keep Ember from being Ember.
She found the room unlocked. Apparently, Cyrus hadn't been expecting any problems. It worried her. On every assignment she'd been to, security rarely got lax until things got routine.
She found a closed-circuit television swimming with an off-track, gray image inside the office. She peered into the murky black and white and saw the front porch where the guard had stood. Several buttons filled a panel on the wall. Hunched over the monitor, she turned to shout she'd found it when she saw a whiteboard on the wall behind the door. Names and times filled the surface in neat rows. She stared, counting the individual entries. The dates stretched back several months.
The Lady hadn't been their first.
Jackie heard flames crackle followed by a scream of pain.
"Hurry up," Ember shouted. "Before I finish this asshole off!"
Jackie stabbed at the button labeled "front door". An alarm sounded. She stood frozen in bewilderment, resisting the urge to flail at the button and try to make it stop. The guard appeared off camera. He danced nervously at the window, trying to see inside. She'd been too hasty. The label applied to all the buttons in the row. She tried the next and could hear the metal screen rapidly ascending. Her triumph was short-lived.
"Damnit," she said as the guard rushed inside. She pressed herself against the wall beside the door, wondering if she could find a way to disable him before Ember melted the hapless guy into ash.
A massive rumble shook the building. She bounced along the wall, smacking the crown of her head. The foundation shivered, and a tremendous crash filled the hallway. Debris skittered outside in the hall from the direction of the lab.
"Die motherfucker!" came the distorted scream of the Black Beetle.
***
"TARGET ACQUIRED," WORMFOOD says.
That eagerness in the way he says it used to give me pause. I'm not sure the tone is even there, but I hear it. The same psychotic ravings heard as the man himself pounded my head into his office floor. This time, I'm on board with the bloodthirsty fucker.
Those other Augments decommissioned along the way, they'd been problems, or would be. Criminals with no way to contain them, what else could have been done? Negotiation wasn't ever an option. Tomahawk taught me that much. Neutralize the threat. Then maybe you can think about saving anyone.
Two targets display on the HUD, both obscured in a haze of pulverized concrete. One crouches, seeking cover behind a filing cabinet. The other is on their feet, hunched over, taken by surprise but ready to act. That's the one wreathed in otherworldly heat.
Vulkan.
"Fire!" I shout.
Wormfood and I, we go for the big guns. No sense blasting through the roof and not wrecking the place. The Shockwave Cannon is offline, but I've got plenty of other options.
Hot rounds streak toward the target. Heat spikes in a wavering shield before me, but I don't let up. I'm screaming so loud inside the helmet I've drowned out the sounds of the internal systems, the ambient noise. I almost hope he'll survive long enough to know who did this.
Eric wanted to get in here, probably steal their bullshit secrets. Hound, he maybe wanted to file a report with the U.S. Government. Fuck all that. We're gonna end this. Now.