Forty-Three
The bike came to a halt at one of the large roll up doors that was used for ingress and egress. Gabriela clumselly put her feet down to steady the stationary bike.
“We need to wait until Cy-Tech is fully engaged.” Soma explained.
“Okay.” Gabriela took the brief time to inspect the rifle Angela had given her. It was compact, with a magazine that loaded on the top, running the length of the weapons back. Gabriela pulled the magazine out and examined the ammunition. 5.7x28mm rounds. Small, but high velocity. She slammed the magazine back into the weapon and pulled the hammer back, chambering a round.
“Gabriela. I am going to inject myself with stimulants, and it could cause my system to crash in the near future.”
“Why?”
“There is a 70 millisecond lag for me. I need to be able to react as quickly as I can.
“What do I do if your system crashes?” She demanded.
“You will be at the dam by then. Don’t worry.
She was worried, she was more than worried. She was deathly afraid of what was about to happen.
“Here we go.” Soma warned.
The door lifted up and Gabriela brought her feet up when the bike shot forward. The sound of gunfire was deafening, even with a helmet on. The Sons were laying down a heavy blanket of suppressive fire, giving her the opportunity she needed to escape. The bike accelerated further. The HUD in her helmet showed the speed rising rapidly from zero KPH to over one hundred. She gripped the bike as hard as she could with her legs, her thighs protested in pain.
Gabriela caught a glimpse of the mangled bodies that seemed to lay everywhere around the building. They were all dead, all because of her. She forced herself not to think about, forcing her tears back. If she was lucky she would have time to grieve later, if she was lucky none of those people would have died in vain.
The bike sweeped past the chaos and carnage, dipping to the left and right as it quickly made its way around obstacles. Their speed increased well past two hundred KPH when they had made it past the warzone. Every light they came to turned green, causing traffic to come to sudden stops.
Faster and faster they went until they took an on-ramp to one of the main arterials that ran through the city. Gabriel allowed herself to breathe when they hit the arterials, but her relief was short lived.
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A gunship rose out of the smoke and fog of the Lower City, banking to the right before it leveled out behind them.
“Fuck.” Gabriela cried out. “Soma!”
“I know!”
“Can you kill its engines?”
“No, military hardware is not easily hacked, I turned off its targeting. You will need to take care of it.”
Gabriela shouldered her weapon and turned around, pulling the trigger. The weapon bucked and kicked in her arms, the rounds pelted the glass of the gunship's cockpit, marring it, but failing to penetrate the reinforced glass.
The gunship backed off and banked back to the left before it opened fire. Chunks of asphalt and concrete exploded around them. Gabriela fired back, emptying what was left in the weapon’s magazine. She ejected the magazine, the wind that rushed around them ripping it away from the weapon before she loaded another magazine.
Gabriela dropped the gun when Soma swerved to the left and then quickly to the right, maneuvering them around the vehicles surrounding them. The gun trailed behind her, still attached to the shoulder strap. Gabriela frantically pulled it back and cried out when the gunship fired again. A car next to them was thrown violently in the air, showering flaming debris and wreckage around them as it spiraled over head and landed on the other side of the road.
“Aim for the rotors.” Soma demanded as he righted the bike.
Gabriela took aim at the spinning blades at the tip of the gunship's wings. Soma slowed the bike suddenly, putting them under the ship. The tourette began to move down as Gabriela squeezed the trigger. The rapidly spinning blades ripped apart, causing the gunship to spin out of control. Soma accelerated and Gabriela watched the ship crash and explode behind them.
“That should be it.” Soma’s voice came through muffled and crackled with static. “We are almost there, Gabriela.”
The bike began to slow and wobble. “I’m sorry, I can’t hold on any longer. You need to make it to the dam.” Soma’s voice trailed off in a loud trilling sound before the bike toppled over. Sparks shot out as the vehicle slid to a stop. Pain shot through Gabriela’s arm when it broke from the impact, causing her to scream out in pain.
She layed on the pavement, her breathing heavy and labored, her heart pounding. Slowly coming back to awareness, she managed to kick the bike away. She took the time to assess herself. Her arm and leg were bleeding, but other than the broken arm she seemed fine.
She was close to the dam, less than a kilometer away.
She took a deep breath before she broke into a long, sobbing wail. Gabriela allowed herself to weep for only a moment or two before she struggled to her feet and removed her helmet. Dropping it to the pavement.
She was alone. For the first time since this nightmare began she was alone. She was lost, unable to take another step towards the dam. She fumbled in her pack, looking for her meta deck, her hands gripping around the first thing she found. She pulled the object out and stared. It was the photo of her daughter, the glass was cracked, but the image was still displayed. Her fingers brushed lovingly over the cracked glass.
She put the photo back in her pocket, retrieving her meta deck. “Call Detective Brian Elis, badge number 257-17.”
She needed to talk to someone. She needed to tell someone that she was innocent of murder. She needed someone to believe her.