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I'VE NEVER BEEN OUTSIDE the prototype in action. The thing is a poetry of death and destruction. Defensive capabilities ready to respond to any conceivable threat, and offensive weaponry hidden under every spare plate, this is the specter of death I thought I'd witnessed only moments ago. Shifting, covered in angled plates, sharp like knives, undulating in response to the most sensitive environmental changes, the bug-headed humanoid weapon glares at us.
Ayana's inside. Has to be her.
Wormfood towers above, but empty and wide open, derelict. Most of the room is caught up in the charged moment of an impending collision. If I can get a few seconds, I can suit up, take this fight outside.
"Hound, Danger...both alive and well. I see you've failed in your mission, Spencer." Ayana hasn't bothered with the voice scrambling. She wants me to know. I can imagine myself in the expansive HUD, just one more targeting reticle outline and her browsing through the many ways to finally snuff out her competition. "Betrayal has one price."
"Hold on." Ember steps forward. "I've got a score to settle with a fucking bug. You'll do."
She arches her back and thrusts her chest forward as though throwing out all the destructive force raging inside her, a strident move to call forth the blistering flames.
Nothing happens.
Ember goes pale, and she finds Cyrus. "YOU!"
She releases an inhuman wail and charges. Jackie screams behind her, trying to call her back. Cyrus raises his hands. Anyone else, it might be a defensive gesture, but he's preparing to engage her hand to hand.
Ayana laughs as the two collide. Ember's ferocity appears helpless in the face of Cyrus' flawless technique. He swats away blows until she's wrapped up, shrieking in his arms. She squirms free, and he strikes her with a crushing blow right above her abdomen. Without the fire and fury, she deflates and slaps hard the ground on her hands and knees.
"No sense in fighting. My security forces have the building surrounded. The only ones who walk away from here will be those I let walk away."
Jackie drops. I think maybe she's collapsed from the shock, or maybe in sympathy. But no, she's frantically digging through the rubble, and I don't know why. A girl in a hospital gown? What weapon could she have possibly dropped? She's going to get killed here.
Hound doesn't wait. His semi-auto is out, anything larger probably left behind so they could cross the city streets. Bullets glance harmlessly off the reactive plating. I search my mind for any weaknesses a nine-millimeter round might be able to exploit, and there are none. Danger watches, unmoving. My first thought is he's realized the futility, but I see him breathing in short huffs. He's focused and tuned out the entire room.
Hound's clip empties, and he ejects it to the floor, reaching for another. Wordless command, he's shot Eric a glance. Buying time, that's all he's doing. Eric starts to plug in his laptop to the computer.
Chroma. She can get there fastest, secure the information even if anyone doesn't survive. But would she do that? Are we that fucking desperate?
Mom hasn't moved. All hell breaking loose and she's absent. Physically, she's in the room, her back to all the chaos, absorbed by the metal hatch in the wall. Fuck, she might not even be here. Gone, on vacation to her beachfront property at the worst possible time.
Those multi-lensed eyes, they see all. Ayana's likely to focus on me. I've done this before, though. Dodging killer robots. It wasn't an open room wrecked with rubble. I had some cover. Walls, cars, shelves in a home improvement store, but maybe this is our only chance. I've got to do something, and I'm not quite desperate enough yet for my own backup plan.
I race across the lab right into Hound's line of fire. He doesn't even check the next shot, just aims it where it whizzes right above my scalp, rustling my hair. My foot hits a hunk of concrete, one I'm sure is stable but isn't. My footing pitches. I'm going down.
Ayana points her arm. This would be the high caliber cannon she's got. It'll end quick.
Behind her, I see Mom finally turn. The withering stare she gives the prototype has no effect and fear overcomes her. She switches to me. No, not quite, just off my shoulder.
The cannon fires with an ear-shattering explosion in the lab. I recall Jupiter dropping in the junkyard like just one more discarded thing. I close my eyes and hope it doesn't hurt.
The next thing to strike feels heavy. All the bullets and ordinance I've fired and I, not once, have been shot, don't know the sensation. A weight crashes down. This isn't a bullet. I've been tackled and brought into the rough concrete and pellets of glass, hard.
Danger tumbles off me. We're both groaning and wallowing. The individual stings and cuts add up to one vicious skid along the right side of my body. It burns as tiny fragments dig beneath flayed skin.
"Shhhit," I hiss. I don't think I've been hit. Shock might keep me from realizing it though. And there's plenty of blood. A nice sized spatter fans across my torn T-shirt.
"Interesting," I hear Ayana say. "The MANTIS platform can kill any Augment it seems."
I roll to one side, my shredded arm held close, but I don't dare touch it. Danger's on his back. Dark blood seeps from the corner of his mouth, a viscous substance plumbed from deep inside the body. He's gritting his teeth and clutching at a hole in his chest.
Past Ayana, Mom faces the room, impassive. Hound skids through the rubble to Danger mid-reload. Eric has even frozen to gape, the laptop he uses to connect to Chroma out and open. Jackie's hands are covered in gray dust, wrist to elbow. She's no longer digging in the wreckage, just poised on her hands and knees, her gown forgotten. She looks almost feral, trapped in instinct.
I don't have a choice but to do this.
"Chroma! Check your open wireless connections!"
Having been in the pilot's seat, I know inside Ayana's frantically scanning the system reports. She'd assume I was bluffing—hell, I would. She might have time to eject, pull a chest-burster exit and yank the cable. The arm cannon frozen in my face swings toward Eric and the laptop. He squeals and huddles into a ball then remembers Chroma and uselessly attempts to gather her from the workstation. But she's not there. She's never in one place, one terminal. She's anywhere an open connection exists. Anywhere beyond a sabotaged firewall.
The shifting plates of the armor fall slack.
"Spencer!" she exclaims with no distortion. Hers is a voice I'd recently gotten used to Mom wearing like a borrowed set of clothes. Confusing as fuck really, though I can tell them apart. The difference has nothing to do with the vocal cords they shared, or Chroma's flawless digital rendition of them post-singularity. The manic, excited tone isn't that of my mother. "This is sooo amazing! Why didn't you invite me sooner?"
"Any chance you can point that somewhere else?" Staring down the barrel of the ballistic cannon is unnerving.
"Oh, sorry. She's a fighter this one." A strain, a visible sluggishness to the movement, but the gun finally lowers. "Makes me miss the psychic control days, but this is more fun. I get them to do what I want by controlling the things which control them."
"Or by giving them false information," I say.
The suit, the harbinger of death, giggles.
We hear shouts outside. A helicopter flickers past the hole in the roof. There's a controlled explosion from the lobby area.
"Chroma, listen to me. You can use the voice scrambler and tell the men to stand down. They'll think you're her. Buy us some time," I say. I need to find a way out of this with as little blood on my hands as possible.
"I could do better than that." A perfect imitation of Ayana's voice comes from the prototype. "But there's somebody else in here. He's speaking to me!" Chroma gasps. "This isn't a person. He's like me, Spencer! And he's got better ideas."
"We just needed time—"
"Why?" Chroma protests. "Wasn't she going to hurt you?" she asks, blissfully unaware of the hurt she's caused to everyone she's ever met. "You know how I feel about people who want to hurt you. Let me hurt her friends first, so she sees what that feels like. She needs to learn."
Then she's gone. Out into the open air, the cannons already blazing.
Fuck. This is not my brightest moment.
"Cyrus! Get yer ass over here!" Hound is trying to patch Danger. He shakes the dust off a wad of gauze and tosses it to the ground with a cry of anguish. "Hang in there, Reggie! Cyrus'll patch it up. Just fight, soldier! Eric, get the goddamn data!"
Gunfire and explosions echo outside. Everybody is staring in disbelief at the fallen Augment. Jackie stands, her knees shaking. Even Ember has given up trying to pummel Cyrus. I don't care what sort of Kung Fu bullshit this guy has, he's going to fucking help.
I stumble toward him and seize his arm. "You're the healer on this raid, bitch. Make it happen."
Nobody can understand. Death could never find Danger even if he had an ankle bracelet. So many times, he'd sensed it coming and this time, he walked right in front and took the hit. With Cyrus here though, maybe that's why he did it.
Hound is up and righting the toppled operating table for his fallen friend. He trashes the surviving supply cabinets and counters. He might not believe Cyrus is going to help and he's planning to play field medic.
But this isn't a flesh wound. I squat beside Danger. The smell is horrendous. In through his back, exploding out the front, that's how the round had traveled. The mess of flesh is unidentifiable and streaked with tissue running the gamut of every organ once beneath his dark skin. He struggles with each breath.
"Why?" I ask. I'm not worth a man's life. I'm not one of his soldier pals or even a distant friend. He didn't have any real commitment to my Dad. And his powers, they seemed to guide his every move. He could've lived forever maybe.
He can't answer as more blood spurts with a cough. All he can do is turn his head. His eyes land on Mom.
She's still on her side of the room, just past Wormfood. She's no longer transfixed by the odd hatch in the wall. She'd facing everybody but studying the ground, intent on not looking us in the eye.
"The woman in the armor...I couldn't control her." She says softly.
Cyrus mutters some sort of curse in Arabic. He kneels, his hands ignite, and Danger makes one agonizing move. With a shaky aim, he puts his gun to Cyrus' face, pressed close to the center of his mustache.
I'm confused, trapped between my mother's guilt and my own at the refusal from the man who saved my life to keep his own. What the fuck is happening?
Cyrus and Danger lock eyes. They peer into one another until Danger, his mouth drawn tight, grunts and casually spits blood to the side. An internal debate rages inside Cyrus. An oath he'd probably taken won't let him watch somebody he could save just die. But what if they wanted to? Can he force him to live?
Cyrus stands and turns his back.
Hound roars and swats the tray he'd been prepping to the ground. Jackie and I both jump with the chaotic crash. He vaults the operating table and Cyrus has just enough time to turn before Hound drives him painfully against a countertop.
"You will do your fucking job, traitor! Heal that goddamn soldier! I ain't about to lose him, you hear me?" Cyrus flops limply in Hound's grip. He isn't fighting, and he's doing everything he can to not engage. A roar of rage and Hound tosses him to the ground. He presses his gun against the back of Cyrus' skull, execution style.
"Don't!" I shout.
Hound's lip curls and he digs the barrel into Cyrus' neck.
"He wants to die." Mom's quiet voice fills the room. "He's ready. This was the only way. He couldn't do it himself. The compulsion of his power kept him from it."
Danger signals his agreement by letting his gun hand drop. Sorrow etches his features and overrides the pain. Tears drip from the corner of his eyes.
"I want to be free of this," he croaks. "Free." Hound falls at his side and struggles to keep back his own tears. Danger turns his head and fixes his dying gaze on me. "Don't waste the life you got. What's done is done."
Danger lets the gun fall and digs through his pocket, the shaking of his hand turned to violent tremors. I’m about to help when he produces a compact memory card held between trembling fingers. He forces his grimace into a smile and offers it to Jackie.
Jackie gives a mournful sigh, but she doesn’t move, her face wracked with sorrow. I take the card and hold it out to her. She shakes her head, refusing whatever it is he’s offered.
We stay at his side until he passes. It isn't much longer. I don't know when to move until Hound reaches up and yanks the dog tags off his neck. He rises and flares his nostrils, bloodshot eyes swimming.
"Eric, you get that data yet?"
"Uh, sure," Eric whispers. "Almost done."
"That bird on standby? You get us a ride?"
"Uh, yeah, no problem," Eric replies, every word subdued.
Hound nods vacantly and heads for the hallway. "Gonna see if Chroma's done," he says.
"What about Cyrus?" I call out.
"Don't think yer Mom'll let him hurt ya," Hound mutters.
"No, what do we do with him?"
Without turning, he says, "Don't care what happens to that son of a bitch."
Outside the gunfire has quieted. I know the sound of the jets and each weapon, and they've all stopped too. Multi-role Augment Neutralization and Threat Intervention System. It's the and part which does it. No threat too great or too small. A lightly armored team like Ayana's security squad, no matter how well trained, wouldn't stand a chance.
"Jackie, you should go get your clothes," Ember says, stopping to pick up Danger's discarded gun and follow Hound through the exit. "I'll be right back. If there's some motherfucker to shoot after all this."
Jackie glances from face to face. She's been quiet throughout. No screaming, no running for the exits, I suspect she's got more experience dealing with the chaos than I know. But the uncertainty she shows now feels misplaced. Her robe shredded, she's got it partly under control. There's nothing showing, but it takes two clenched fists for it to work. Concern at everyone staring is the last thing on her mind.
"I thought we were going to die when the new Beetle showed. I really did," she says, nodding to herself as though confirming the thoughts are valid.
"We're fine. You're fine." Ember tries a pained smile.
"I really thought we would," she says. She looks down at the ground. "Someone had to do something."
An empty syringe lies in the rubble.