While it is common knowledge that one should never look a gift horse in the mouth, Martin was starting to wish that this job would be a little harder, not second Chechen war hard, but when jobs got this easy it did feel like something was going to go horribly wrong in the immediate future, but that’s what pay checks were for. Getting up from where he was sitting, he stepped over to the window and looked out over the street. At the moment he and his posse had planted themselves in an empty office space further up the street. From where he stood he observed the target’s home, according to the bugs she was in the process of packing up to leave. “Alert out employer that the target has come home, and we will have her base of operations shortly.” The mercenary slowly scanned the street, searching for anything that could cause any problems, apart from a van parked up the other end of the street along with a few dozen individuals moving up and down the street. Michael was about to turn away from the window however something caught his eye. Turning back to the street, his eyes were pulled towards one of the pedestrians, for the most part she was not to different from the other people on the street, all hurrying from one point to another. However, this one was different, she was moving with considerably more purpose then the rest, slightly less noticeably was her clothing, significantly heavier jacket with cargo pants that looked simultaneously far to loose but also appearing to tight in others. Michael frowned; something was off. “Get a team together now. We’ve got a problem.”
Meanwhile
“Hey Garrett, isn’t that you’re sister?” Max’s voice caused Garrett to jerk up from where he was sitting.
“What?” He said as he stumbled over to the monitor, one of the cameras was focused along the length of the street, the camera shook slightly as it zoomed in on one particular hooded individual. “Oh shit.” He muttered. Jumping to his feet he jumped out of the van only for Maxwell to grab his arm. “What the hell are you doing?” he hissed, eyes narrowed dangerously.
“I’m going to stop my sister from wandering into the middle of an operation.”
“If you do you will be blowing our cover and probably putting your sister in more trouble than she already could be in.” Max growled; hand still locked in a death grip around Garrett’s arm. Garrett stopped pulling, finally looking Max directly in the eye.
“If Laura is as dangerous as you think, then I can’t go having my sister in a room with her.” Max was about to speak, however his eyes twitched sideways, his eyebrows furrowed, and then shot wide in surprise. Garrett followed his gaze to the monitor, just in time to catch his sister slipping into the apartment. Max pushed past him, shoving the man on the cameras to the side and tapping away on the keyboard. The video quickly started reversing, rewinding for several seconds. Max hit a key to pause the video before straightening and swearing before grabbing the radio from his belt. Garrett stepped forward as well and scanned the screen, for a few seconds the problem eluded him, but then he caught it and his pulse spiked. In the image was Kaylee in the process of scanning the street, her eyes seeming to burn from the inside. And peaking out from the edge of her coat was what appeared to be some sort of barrel, like if HR Geiger had reimagined a rifle or an SMG with its swirling chitinous exterior with bits of mechanical tubing and other parts that blended with apparently biological elements, turning to Max who was in the process of reporting to someone up the chain of command.
“Permission to interfere?” He inquired, his normal light-hearted tone replaced with deadly seriousness. Max looked at him and simply nodded, at that Garrett grabbed a pistol from a rack and tucked it into his pants, throwing his jacket over it to conceal the weapon, with that he jumped out of the van and began to jog across the street.
Kaylee stepped into the shadow of the lobby, shifting the coat to disguise the ripper. Approaching the lifts she pressed both the elevator buttons and stood back and waited, for several seconds she let the silence wash over her, there was a beep and the doors slid opens. Raising the weapon, she let off two bursts, the weapon shrieked, tearing the cabling along with drywall and aluminium apart in a shower of sparks and dust. With that out of the way, Kaylee opened one of her pockets allowing about a dozen dragonfly-like creatures that began to scuttle out of her pocket and began to flitter away in various directions. With that Kaylee began stepping up the stairs, ripper rifle raised. Laura turned the corner head down, a nervous frown on her face as she half walked, half jogged to the elevator, giving the recall button a tap she began to nervously look back and forth along the hallway, half expecting dozens of droids to begin pouring out of the doorways and pummelling her with bolts, there was a ding and the door opened. And Laura yelped as she almost took a dive down several stories, grasping doorway Laura swore before quickly backing into the hall. As she was starting to make for the stairs her phone began to hum.
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
“Laura, where are you.” The voice of Garrett came through the second Laura accepted the call.
“Um, yeah I’m at my apartment.” Laura cringed, immediately realising that maybe answering that question was a bad idea when the person she was talking to worked for the same government she was trying to evade.
“Laura, you need to get somewhere hidden. Now.” The tone immediately had Laura backing away from the stairwell and creeping back towards her apartment, with a mental twitch her pistol assembled itself in her hands and she warily raised it. Six meters, 5 meters, each step took her just a bit closer to safety. Her heart leapt into her throat with a shriek and a crack as the door was demolished in a shower of splinters. That was enough for Laura and she turned and bolted inside, slamming the door behind her.
Stepping out of the stairwell, Kaylee scanned the hallway, stepping towards the apartment she began to stride towards Laura’s apartment, as she reached the door she gave the handle a quick jerk, unsurprisingly it did not give, with that she raised her weapon and let loose a barrage of fire.
Laura slammed the door shut, locking the door as she went. From outside she could hear the steady footfalls of whoever this assailant was. Withdrawing the pistol she quickly began fabricating a small drone while sending a series of commands to the fabricators down stairs. Garrett’s voice burst from her phone and Laura swore realising she was still on the call.
“Garrett I’m here, someone is shooting up the place.” Laura feeling oddly detached from the whole experience.
“Laura. Keep quiet, I’m on my way up.”
“Wait how are you already here?” Laura butted in, the concern of being hunted suddenly resurfacing.
“I was coming in anyway when I saw Kaylee and now I’m on my way up.” Garrett’s voice maintaining a level calmness that Kaylee honestly would have been surprised by if she weren’t distracted by the rattling of the door handle. With that Laura ended the call before letting loose the drone with a few quick instructions, it hovered for a moment before orientating and zipping out a window just as the door exploded inwards, unlike before when she had been jumped by the spider Laura found that time didn’t slow down nor did she feel more aware, instead it felt like she was watching a movie at 5 times speed. As the shooter burst through the doorway Laura’s mechanical arm rose, the pistol unfurling in her hand, the shooter was striding into the room, a twisted alien rifle sweeping the room as she entered. The pistol went off, there was an electronic shriek and a flash. The assailant jerked as the bolt struck true, sending her tumbling sideways and to the ground. The pistol shrieked again, missing the prone attacker by several feet and ripping a hole in the floor. Trying to steady herself, Laura resighted on the now rising attacker and fired again, nocking her opponent down again, this time she did not rise.
“FREEZE!” the order had Laura snapping her head around almost instinctively bringing her pistol to bare. Standing in the doorway with a pistol levelled at her head. For several seconds the two stared each other down, then Laura dropped her hand, the pistol retracting into her arm once again.
“Hi Garrett.” She laughed a giddy laugh.
“Hi” he replied, as he stepped to the side of the attacker, reaching down to check her pulse.
“And by the way, how did you know Kaylee would survive being shot?
Wait Fucking Kaylee? Laura immediately jumped forward, lifting up the head and almost passing out, it was indeed Kaylee, as the pair flipped the unconscious woman, Laura finally got a good look at her face. Parts of the nose, around the eyes, forehead and lower jaw had been coated in some sort of chitinous armour, inspecting Kaylee’s arms more of the chitin was apparent, not quite complete but spreading across her entire body. Sitting back Laura sat back, feeling oddly calm, Laura picked up Kaylee’s hand. As she ran her thumb along the smooth contours, she lifted up her own mechanical hand, admiring how different and similar the two limbs were. While Laura’s hand was blocky and mechanical while Kaylee’s was smooth like a beetle’s shell, sparkling brown with half a dozen hues. There was a sudden intake of breath from Garrett, looking up Laura realised she had been ignoring the reports from the fabricator downstairs, and the readiness reports of the three bots now crowded into the corridor.
“Garrett its ok.” She whispered, the man re-holstering his weapon after a second’s deliberation. Standing up Laura gave a mental order to the robots. The one at the back rotated and began to stride down the corridor followed by the second, the lead on the other hand stepped further into the room and took position watching the doorway.
“So, you’re actually the commander of a robot army?”