Chapter Thirty-Five

Shots were fired, tearing like thunder through the night, and were quickly followed by several more in quick succession. I squealed in surprise and Ben shouted orders as I dropped to the ground, instinctively covering my head even though I was well aware it would do no good against bullets.

All around me footsteps rang out, sounding clearly despite the snow-covered ground. Androids just weighed too much to move quietly when they were in a hurry. But the footfalls were soon drowned out by intensifying salvo and angry voices. Bits of snow were violently uprooted far too close to my crouched body and sent flying. I stared at the empty nicks in the snow left behind and realized I might just be taken out of the picture tonight after all.

The shots were becoming gratuitous, and my ears were ringing.

“Stop firing, idiots!” someone yelled, straining to be heard over the shooting.

“Gray, cover Hart!” Ben commanded even louder. I looked up, peeking from beneath my fingers to find him attempting to run toward me. But explosive shots in the snow of his path repeatedly brought him up short. To my left, the man who must have been “Gray,” the hunter who’d been working with Ben, was in the same boat. He continuously pushed to get to me, but was unable to make any real progress due to obscene amounts of gunfire.

I was fairly sure a few of those bullets had found their marks in Ben or Gray or both, and as androids they’d simply managed to work past the pain – or turn off their pain sensors altogether.

The firing paused long enough for someone to get a few words of warning out. “We’re taking her off your hands, Cipher! Back off now or become an expenditure!” Then the barrage began once more in full force.

I didn’t recognize the voice, but my guess was it was coming from another bounty hunter. Or perhaps several. Ben apparently had competition – and hadn’t planned this as covertly as he’d thought. More importantly, the gunfire was sure to gain the attention of more company, such as the police or Zero’s soldiers.

I wondered whether these bounty hunters were the ones who’d heard IRM-1000’s public announcement and wanted to cash in on the prize, or the “chosen few” that Zero had made his private offer to beforehand. I decided it had to be the former and not the latter because I had a feeling IRM-1000’s hand picked wouldn’t jeopardize the very mark they were tasked with bringing in.

Ben bellowed a few choice swear words over the cacophony of bullets splitting the air. “You’ll kill the score, damn it!” he pointed out furiously.

The firing continued for another few seconds, and I felt like I might piss my pants when a few chunks of snow went sailing now less than a meter from me. Then it slowed, but didn’t stop. Whatever hunters were out there were well aware that if they allowed Ben to get to me, it would be over.

I needed cover.

The gazebo would provide a barrier at least. The lower half of it was wood with metal siding. If I could make it to the structure, I could pull Jack’s body against that metal wall and we could crouch behind its shielding until this idiocy was over. It was better than nothing. I couldn’t stay where I was; the bullets were getting reckless – and closer.

I counted to ten, watched and listened to the gunfire, and then swallowed hard and forced myself to move. As my boots pounded out the first few feet, I heard several men call out at once. One of them was Ben, probably telling me to stop. I was fairly certain another was his co-hunter Gray, agreeing with him. And the competing hunter’s voice rang out again as well.

“Hold your fire!”

But it was too late. A final shot rang out in time with his command, and this one didn’t displace any snow. Instead, it displaced flesh, muscle, and blood.

Mine.

Getting shot doesn’t hurt, not at first, at least not the way one might imagine thanks to movies, television and video games. You don’t feel the bullet tearing through your body. Rather, you feel an immense impact, as if someone punched you extremely hard. It can knock the wind out of you if it hits just right. But there’s no Platoon-ending style body jerking, and nothing quite worthy of Hollywood. I’d once seen a woman shot point-blank in the chest with four rounds that barely missed her heart. All she’d done is bend forward a little as the bullets kept coming, her hands touching her mouth and throat in that ancient human gesture that translated to profound disbelief at what was happening.

It wasn’t quite that profound an experience for me as the bullet struck me on my way to the gazebo. Instead, I felt it impact with my left side, and at first I thought it was Ben or Gray catching up to me. I looked down, expecting to fall, a heavy android body pressing me into the snow. But that didn’t happen. There was just snow and night and the sound of my boots as they broke through the fresh white fall ahead of me.

It wasn’t until two or three steps after the impact that I felt it for what it actually was. A kind of hard burning yawned open at my side, sudden and horrid and deep, and I stumbled. The burning spread to a deep throb that just felt wrong, and then of all things, I sensed snow making its way into the gap between my gloves and my jacket sleeve. I hated that.

But it made me realize I was on my hands and knees.

I pushed myself up into a kneeling position as my heart pounded like a static waterfall in my ears and all outside sound became muffled. Through my tunneling senses, I heard someone yelling, there was more swearing growing ever distant, and then I felt through the ground the pounding of running feet.

But all I could see was the snow.

There was a patch of it in front of me, a short distance from my left knee that had my attention like blinders. The snow was bright, beautiful red.

My blood, I thought as the pain began to go numb. Hell, my inner voice mused, I think I’ve been shot. “Idiots,” I whispered. At least, I was pretty sure I did. I couldn’t be sure because sound was dissipating just like physical sensation, drowning out in a cacophonous silence. There was no other way to describe it.

I felt myself moving and wondered if the snow would be cold on my face when I fell on it. But the ground retreated rather than coming closer as I assumed it would. After a few seconds, I realized I wasn’t actually falling. Strong arms had enveloped me and I was being carried. There were jolts of impact going through me, but they didn’t hurt either. I felt weightless to myself, devoid of mass and structure.

“Hey, Captain! Wake up old man!”

It was Ben’s voice, barking a staccato order.

I looked up. “Ben,” I said. At least, I was pretty sure I did. He looked down at me, so I must have.

“It’s going to be okay,” he told me. “The other hunters turned tail, and the bullet didn’t strike anything life-threatening.” He looked back up in the direction he was moving. “I said wake up, Captain! Samantha’s been shot and she needs your help!”

I turned my head to look as well. The dark bundle that had been loudly snoring earlier now stirred and mumbled on the floor of the gazebo.

“That’s it, get your lazy ass up!” Ben pushed.

Jack went still for a second as if processing, then tried to sit up. But his wrists and ankles had been bound, so instead of sitting up, he just scooted a little on his side and cocked his head back to glance around. “Sam?”

“I’m fine Jack,” I said. But my voice was weaker than I’d have liked it to be, and it took me a few seconds to realize it was probably because I was either losing consciousness or going into shock. “Fuck,” I eloquently whispered.

“No shit,” said Ben. A dark shape passed by us entering the gazebo, and Ben nodded to it. I glanced over to see it was Gray. He was busy yanking off his jacket and laying it down on the ground beside Jack’s prone form just as Ben knelt down in order to gently set me on top of it.

“Sam?” Jack said again. His eyes met mine, then trailed down my body. “Holy shit, you’ve been shot!” he cried, now struggling in his bonds.

“Just hold still!” Gray barked at him. He left the jacket and moved to Jack’s side, pulling a knife from the sheath in his boot to deftly slice through the rope securing Jack’s limbs.

As soon as he was free, Jack scrambled to my side and roughly shoved Ben away. Ben could easily have objected, fought, or even just stayed completely still and it would have been as if Jack had shoved at a brick wall. But he allowed Jack to take over and got to his feet instead.

“Gray,” he said, addressing his companion, “cover our tracks. We’re leaving.”

I looked up as Gray left the gazebo. I distantly registered that Jack was tending to my wound. He was putting pressure on both the front and back of my left side while he swore a steady stream under his breath.

I met Ben’s eyes, and he held my gaze steadily. “You’re letting us go,” I said.

Ben nodded, just once. “‘Not a scratch on her or I will end you.’ Those were IRM-1000’s words.” He smiled wryly. “This constitutes a good deal more than a scratch.” He looked into my eyes for a few seconds and his smile slipped away. “And he’s on his way.”

Jack’s head snapped up. “What?”

Ben ignored him and remained focused on me. “I notified him of our location when it became clear you wouldn’t come without a fight. I know you noticed. Your eyes went wide and your heart rate elevated dramatically.”

He was talking about the flashing EED earlier. Yes. I’d noticed.

“Oh that’s just fan-fucking-tastic,” Jack swore, gritting his teeth as if he were also in pain. I was betting he was, actually. Being poisoned wasn’t a laughing matter, and I imagined both his stomach and his head were in turmoil at the moment.

My brow furrowed when I realized I wasn’t actually suffering as badly as I’d expected to.

“And your friends are also on their way, no doubt,” Ben added as his steady gaze bore into me. “I expect you figured out a way to spare them from the sleeping gas?”

I nodded. No point in denying it now.

His wry smile was back. “Then I imagine you’re in for some excitement in short order.”

He was right. If Zero and his army and Prometheus were en route to meet up at the same place at the same time, it would be like two segments of torn-apart air crashing back into one another. Lightning was about to strike, and the thunder would be deafening.

But then Ben did something unexpected. He took a knee beside me and lowered his voice. Jack went still to warily watch him. “Besides,” Ben said, still ignoring Jack. “You have a lot of work to do, Samantha.” He held my gaze for several beats before he turned his hazel eyes on Jack at last, watching as Jack began to tend to my wound. “And I can see you’re in good hands.”

I blinked, then glanced down at my side and wondered why I wasn’t feeling as much pain as I should have been, despite the fact that Jack was now busy wrapping something around me – tight. But what I asked was, “What’s your real name, Ben?”

I looked up at him again. I knew it wasn’t Ben, even if to me that’s what he would probably always be. If he was renowned enough of a hunter to gain Zero’s attention, then he probably had more aliases than I had ideas for inventions.

Now it was Ben’s turn to blink. That smile of his was back, but smaller. And somehow more meaningful. “It’s Shizuka,” he almost whispered. “Shizuka Kage.” He pronounced the second name “Kah-geh,” but I knew how it was spelled because I knew the word and what it meant. He said, “I was commissioned in Tokyo by the leader of Cipher.”

Cipher was the name of one of the most elusive, and apparently elite, Yakuza mafia organizations in Japan. That must have been the source of the nickname I heard someone use earlier. Though, why Ben was here in the US and not in Japan was a mystery. Cipher didn’t just relinquish control of its properties, and I was willing to bet that Ben was considered valuable property.

I thought about his name as Jack knotted a rope at my side and I winced. Kage… and Shizuka. “Quiet shadow,” I whispered. “Appropriate for a bounty hunter model.”

Ben watched me enigmatically for a few seconds. “You remember how to speak Japanese.” He gave a short chuckle. “Why am I not surprised?”

My brow furrowed. Remember? What did he mean by that? I’d never had the opportunity to learn in the first place. At least… I didn’t think I had. Had I?

I was beginning to feel strange. Sound was moving even further away; that tunnel was narrowing. I hardly felt anything at all when Ben pulled off his own jacket and draped it around me, then zipped it up tight. It was leather and it smelled good.

He stood again beside me, then turned on his heel and descended the steps of the gazebo. I watched him go, suddenly worried for him.

At the edge of the park, Gray joined him. Ben turned back one last time, caught my gaze, and stepped into the shadows of the alley beyond, vanishing from sight.