CHAPTER 2

“What about Miko?” Maggie asked.

Jack turned his awareness back toward the diner they were in, away from the headlights streaming past the window. He had to think for a moment. Part of him was still looking for threats, and might always be. “Year below us, short, loud, pink streak in her hair?”

Maggie nodded. “Miko Nakadai, yeah.”

Jack shrugged. “Didn’t she go back to Japan?”

“Yeah, but she came back to LA last year.”

It was past midnight. The three of them sat in a booth in Frankie’s, probably the nicest diner this side of the highway. Plates and bowls lay strewn across the table between them. Thirty-percent PTSD didn’t give Jack much from the Department but, hey, it was enough to buy his two remaining friends their meals.

“Aren’t you on Facebook?” Maggie asked.

“The website? Uh, I’ve got a Myspace which I don’t know the password for?”

Maggie scoffed. “Glen, back me up here.”

Glen, halfway through his second sundae with no intention of stopping for something as banal as conversation, shook his head.

“Maggie, look,” Jack began. “I get what you’re trying to do. I appreciate it, really. But I don’t think I’m ready to subject anyone to this.” He tapped his temple twice. “Not yet, anyway.”

“We just think you need someone to talk to.”

“I’ve got my mom,” Jack offered. “And her birds. And you guys. And, y'know, the counselor.”

“Jack,” Maggie said, brow furrowing, “you spend most of the time you’re with us not saying anything. Which, y’know, no worries. But we just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“What’s to say, Mags? It won’t bring anyone back.” He shrugged again, sighing. “I need someone who understands. Not that I don’t appreciate you guys for trying, but...”

“It’s okay, Jack.”

“Everyone keeps saying that! ‘It’s okay, Jack.’ ‘It’s okay.’ It’s not okay, Maggie. I’m not okay. I don’t know when I’ll be okay, and I don’t think it’s fair to put this on anyone else’s shoulders until I’m okay again.”

“What about the giant robot—” Glen began. Maggie turned toward him, eyes wide.

“Glen, you freak!”

“Maggie, my brother in Christ Jack is suffering! And I don’t know about you, but I want to hear about what he has to say! You’ve been on the Internet, you know there’s all that stuff going back to the Eighties—”

Maggie groaned, head in her hands. “Glen, now isn’t the time for your conspiracy theories. Jack, I’m so sorry.”

He felt himself smile. Glen’s interest in the weirder side of history went back to high school. “It’s fine. Brett—uh, my counselor—he says it’s fine to talk about it. Even if it feels real, it can’t be real. Helicopters don’t turn into giant robots, right? No one can do that. It’s not physically possible.”

But Glen just nodded. “I’ll have to check the literature,” he mused. “Like, I’ve read some crazy things online, man.”

“It looked crazy, that’s the thing,” Jack replied. “Like, if I say ‘giant robot’, you think of one of those Japanese anime robots, right?” Miko used to draw pictures of them, he was pretty sure. “But this looked like the chopper had just realized it could rearrange its body and start walking around. It was so big, and it had these red eyes.” Here, under the fluorescent lights of the diner, it was so obvious how ludicrous an idea it was. “Who could even build something like that?”

“It’d be some Area 51 shit. Like, Roswell stuff, man.”

“Try MechWarrior,” Maggie said.

“You watch your tongue, Margaret! MechWarrior? It’s BattleTech.”

The conversation moved on, and Jack was thankful for it. Brett said that the first step to combating his symptoms was talking about them, trying to find symbolism in them, because it’d help reveal how illogical they were. But, still, the image of the walking helicopter persisted. It wore the six blades of its primary rotor like a rigid cape, three over each shoulder. If there was symbolism there, Jack couldn’t see it.

Not that he saw much logic, either.

----------------------------------------

Later, when it was time to leave, Glen and Maggie offered him a ride. Jack waved it off. The night wasn’t too cold, and he’d be safe. He knew these streets like the back of his unmarred hand, and the only thing he had to fear was handing over a few dollars to some of more entrepreneurial members of the homeless community. He didn’t have a problem with that. Some of them were veterans, too. Could there have been another life, where he was begging for money, frantically trying to tell people about a walking helicopter?

But there was something else that bothered Jack. Two-hundred and sixty-seven people at died in the attack. More than both battles of Ramadi and Fallujah combined, and the government was content to keep it ‘under investigation.’ It didn’t make sense. Why didn’t people care? But, Jack knew, people are home didn’t know the scale of conflict, the cost of war. So many dead, and it was like everyone had decided it was acceptable to move on.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

That was what bothered him most of all.

Something clattered behind him. Probably a homeless guy, but his instincts fired and Jack turned about all the same. Something slipped down a side alley, as quick as a thrown switch. Had to be a homeless guy. Maybe a spooked mugger. But, just for a second, Jack’s mind insisted it was a very large cat.

Jack quickened his pace.

He crossed a street, then a parking lot, and ducked between two buildings. Something large landed on the roof behind him, and it growled. Jack wasn’t afraid, but there was a tactical sense of concern. Someone was following him, trying to psych him out. But while they were on the roof—and how the hell did they get on the roof?—they couldn’t jump him. And, if they tried, they’d find that Jack Darby was still a Ranger in skill and training if not in occupation.

He consulted his mental map of suburbia and turned left. It’d take a circuitous route to home. If someone was following him and trying to stay out of sight, Jack wouldn’t lead them back there. Now, they’d have to force a confrontation or lose interest. He kept moving, and heard nothing prowling behind him, growling or otherwise. It might’ve been nothing more than a stray dog. He was just making himself jittery. Satisfied that no one was tailing him, Jack turned down a road that would lead to home, and something leapt down before him.

The first thought Jack had, staring at it, was that it was a large black puma—but then, in a second, his brain realized how wrong that thought was, and how familiar the thing was. It was all dark metals—obsidian and burnished chrome, hard angles and sharp protrusions, quadrupedal and armored for bear. The robotic nightmare vision of the world’s most insane felinophobe. A single red eye—and he knew that gaze, he knew that look—burned within a socket atop a maw of sleek teeth.

And it was about as big as he was.

That thought broke through the paralysis, and Jack took a step back, and then another, and then ran for it. His instincts picked the direction more than his mind did, and he ran. The giant mechanical cat came after him, bounding after him. Jack slid through a puddle, throwing his body around a corner, into an alley, and the beast leapt through the space he’d just been, tail lashing.

The alley was tight and narrow. The beast couldn’t overtake him. He heard it clamber along the brick wall, growling, and it leapt for Jack as he attempted to dodge down an intersecting alley. It threw him around, grasping him by the arm, left him not quite dangling from its grip. Jack tugged at his arm, and the cyclopean cat’s jaws tightened just a fraction, the message clear.

Then, it spoke.

“Now, now, fleshling. This chase has gone on long enough.” The mechanical beast had a voice like a serrated knife, wicked and terrifying. “Move any further, dare to struggle or scream, and I’ll rip your arm from your pathetic body.”

Terror froze Jack’s body before he could decide to comply. It couldn’t be possible, he had to be in the grip of a psychotic episode. Standing there in an alley, holding his arm out like it was caught in the jaws of a robotic beast. The moment stretched out, and he knew—he knew—that if he moved or screamed he’d never make that mistake ever again.

Then, another growl—low and throaty, the first exclamation of a combustion engine—and the high-pitched roar of a motorcycle flooring it. The robotic cat let go of his arm, turning toward the noise, snarling—and a green and white blur tackled the cat into the wall, and through it.

Dust enveloped Jack, bricks raining down around him. He rolled clear, heard a distinct tsche-chu-chu-chu-tsche, and then the heavy impacts of metal on metal. The robotic cat snarled and spat words in a language Jack didn’t recognize, and a woman’s voice answered in defiant challenge. And that voice—

It couldn’t be.

It didn’t matter whether it was a delusion or a nightmare or genuinely real. Jack turned on his heel and ran for it. A half-mad sprint like someone had called in a fire mission, and they were cutting it finer than danger close. “C’mon, Darby,” Lennox shouted in his memories, “move or die!”

Glass shattered, another explosion of masonry. The sounds of battle continued—steel striking steel, heavy and potent. He’d never quite heard anything like it, but he didn’t dare turn to look. Ahead of him, someone had fenced off the alley, and Jack was halfway up the chain link when he spotted the razor wire cresting it..

“Shit,” he said, dropping back to the ground, and then—footsteps.

Slow and measured. He’d heard that gait before, but on a titanic scale. Jack turned and saw a figure through the smoke. Taller than him. Jack wasn’t sure he’d even reach their chest. He held his ground.

He thought of the helicopter.

The figure stepped through the dust. They were not human. In the alley, the rays of moonlight caught on hard lines and smooth panels and the bifurcated wheels and tires that covered their shoulders like armor. Two cobalt eyes glimmered in the gloom.

Set on him.

“Stay back,” Jack said, and grabbed for a weapon—something, anything. Found a brick, raised it high. “Stay the fuck back!”

The robot kept coming—not quickening, not slowing. “Oh,” it said, and it had the voice of a woman. “If you throw that at me and dare scratch my paint job, soldier boy, I might just regret saving your life.”

Another one. How could that be possible—how could there be three of them? This one, this smaller one, came through the night air like the helicopter colossus through the smoke and fire. “No,” Jack muttered, dropping the brick and clutching at his head. “No, God no. No, no, no-no-no, no!”

He was going insane. He was completely losing his mind. Maybe he was still trapped under the burning Abrams, alive through pure dumb luck. Maybe it was another nightmare. But this couldn’t be real. It could be anything, but it couldn’t be real.

The robotic woman’s footsteps drew closer. He heard the whine of mechanics and servos as she crouched down to his level. He couldn’t control his breathing. He couldn’t breathe. He was trapped, and he couldn’t breathe and all of his friends and brothers were dying, and they needed him, they were his responsibility, and all he could do was scream—

“I feel so extraordinary,” the robot said, holding a tune. “Something’s got a hold on me.”

His lips responded in defiance of his panic. “I get this feeling I’m in motion, a sudden sense of liberty,” he replied, voice hoarse and trying to sing. “But...” He looked up at the myriad of silver plates that made up the robot’s face. “What?”

There was a growing commotion now. Sirens in the dark, and screaming closer.

“I’m not going to hurt you, soldier boy—but I need you come with me, right now.”

“What do you mean?”

In one smooth motion, the robot was already dropping into a backflip and coming up on its (her?) hands and knees, panels and pieces shifting into place, limbs disappearing into a sleek chassis, tires dropping to the concrete. It was a motorcycle. Sadie’s motorcycle.

With Sadie’s voice.

“I mean: hop on.”