"They were the peak, even when it was just four of them, at being a fucking nuisance. I never stopped hating them. Even after I fixed my engine." - Gaz
Upgrade took a deep breath as I walked up to the door. It was flattering that he was worried about me, but honestly with the way he looked it was misplaced. Like, way off base. I’d filled up on calories while we ran towards the back because I knew what I was going to have to do just based on the not-very-unlikely chance the heist went downhill.
See, all four of us had way, WAY different ideas about how the heck we were gonna escape from New Detroit’s beacon of progress and also the place they were keeping a dude’s mind and soul on a flash drive. Alive, that is. What we’d settled on was actually a few plans in a trench coat masquerading as one plan because too many things could happen that we couldn’t account for. Upgrade had called us something like a Raiding Party, at least in this sort of incursion.. That meant we ran in, fucked shit up, took what we came for and left. I wasn’t so good at the first, but the second and last? Easy fuckin money.
The hinge of this escape plan was teamwork. Also, my superpower that no one can seem to explain no matter how much testing or explanations we come up with.
The entire reason they called me Shift on this team is that anything I can do can be simply summarized by saying I'm “shifting.”
I don’t have the wherewithal to explain it scientifically. The barebones of it is that sometimes I make stuff slow, sometimes I make stuff fast. Sometimes I switch places of things. The whole amnesiac thing is prohibitive to me being able to rationalize it, but it makes sense for me.
In my less… lucid moments where things hidden in my memory just come to me I’ve word vomited enough to give Upgrade enough information that he’s strong together a theory full of jargon and technobabble that sums up to: “She’s a quantum superposition with an inherent ability to shift her position within time and space.”
Whatever that means is beyond me. I just go “wooo” in my head and im faster than everyone, or go “waaa” in my chest and everything else is slower. Then I focus and go “BOOP” and things get switched around. It’s really that simple to me.
The other other thing I can do was to expend a lot of power at once, and shift into High Gear, as I like to call it…
I peeked at Prodigy who was trying hard to pretend her freshly burned skin wasn’t screaming in pain. She gave me a nod, and I responded with a wink. Gabe slid a pair of goggles over my head for me.
“Be careful hermana,” he spoke all suave even through the clearly battered and bruised body.
“Not to worry,” I responded with an airy tone. Careful wasn’t in my vocabulary. I didn’t need it. These three had saved me from a lonely cell and cold, brutal scientists experimenting on me. I’d take any risk, any daredevil act to be helpful… to take some of the stress off of them. It was why I kept a smile on, and tried to make them do the same. I took a deep breath, ready to keep paying back the only friends I had.
I took the vial and threw it back like a shot of the worst tasting vodka soda you ever had.
The world slowed to a crawl as my spatial awareness and ability to Shift through space both multiplied in potency.
High Gear achieved.
I pushed the door open, and popped out into a world moving in slow motion with three quick steps. The goggles protected my eyes, but every bit of exposed skin felt the bite of friction and wind as I accelerated towards the center of the small blockade of police cars and the dozen or so cops trying to halt our escape. Before they could even get guns trained on me, though, I’d shifted behind them in a stinging blur of movement.
The SWAT team hadn’t been in the first response team, which meant that the worst we had to survive was normal, run of the mill cops with pistols, maybe shotguns if we were particularly unlucky. I wasn’t about to find out, though, so I jabbed the end of my escrema stick into the base of the nearest cop’s skull. He shook like a wet dog, and then he fell, but I was long gone by then. One downside of being this fast was that I wasn’t going to be able to use the shock again while the charge built up over a few seconds. Instead, I focused on the man next to my first victim and smacked the pistol out of his hand. The weapon wasn’t even halfway to the ground before I aimed another swing up into his chin.
His eyes rolled but he wasn’t unconscious. High Gear made me fast, but my position in the universe while in High Gear wasn’t super concrete. The scientific explanation was supremely wordy and filled to the brim with jargon that I couldn’t care less about. Simply put: I’m an anomaly that reality isn’t certain of, so I can be faster, I can teleport, I can slide and shift, but the more I do, the less of my body is really there so much as it’s suggesting it’s there.
Confusing, but there ya go.
SO while I could be annoying as shit swatting arms so the barrels of guns would be thrown off, and be gone before they could turn it back, I wouldn’t be able to do as much damage. Still, I flowed like a butterfly, being just barely out of reach before I forced them to switch places with me or their friend.
The tussling was made all the worse for them when finally Prodigy’s dangerous ass finally managed to close in. I slid past her sightline, her eyes locking on mine as I signaled at two men who had the most dangerous. Marauder and Upgrade could never keep up with me if I whipped this trick out, but I could coordinate with her. They managed as well as they could. Mine wasn’t to coordinate anyway. My part of all this was to distract and disable while we were outnumbered like this.
I had to give myself a second to breathe, inhaling and exhaling slowly so my body could catch up. I’d done a lot, pushed fairly hard, and the world was spinning in two directions now while my senses dealt with the backlash. Frankly, I found it unfair I couldn’t just be in go mode all the time. Like, how rude of my powers and my body to be at odds due to me being a Quantum entanglement superimposed upon the third dimensional perception of reality.
Yeah, like I said super jargony.
No time to rest, though. Prodigy got in place just in time behind me. The shockstick was ready again, and as I shifted out into the open, I picked a target pulling the trigger, and swapped places with him, throwing off his aim and putting him directly in the line of fire with -
----------------------------------------
My fist collided with the jaw of the cop trying to shoot at Marauder. I’d started to swing the second I saw Shift take off again from beside me. I hadn’t even realized she knew I was there till she rocketed off in a blur of motion, but I’d followed and threw what Upgrade called a superman punch. The power had to be measured so as not to kill a man just doing his job. There was always a part of me that pulled a punch. Made sure not to go even an iota too far. His head snapped back, but not hard enough to kill. Instead he went down, limp but breathing. Maybe a concussion.
The next moment, I was getting out of Marauder’s way.
His aim had never really been bad, per se, but when you can see everything like the world is moving in slow motion it becomes difficult not to pick apart everything about someone’s choices in the moment-to-moment. Each bullet flew like rain falling sideways, chaotic even if every path was ordained the moment the hammer struck the casing and the bullet roared out of the barrel ahead of the black smoke. Even as I slowly felt my brain warming up from relying on technology that could sharpen the blade that was my already sharp senses, I watched for far too long as the trajectory of his every shot seemed so random, plinking off of the cars harmlessly but making them afraid to try and return fire on him and Upgrade.
Truly, such unruly and chaotic violence would be unimpressive on anyone else, but for him it simply worked. As for me, I was surrounded by three men, two running towards me with batons and third reloading his pistol, so I did not exactly have all the time in the world to just stand there and critique my less practiced comrade. While Shift was a powerful distraction, she was just a distraction. The transition from an opening stroke to a decisive follow up was important. A feint had led and put them off balance. I was the catastrophe of having a haymaker strike your chin after your defenses had fallen. It had been the merger of two plans.
I moved 4 inches to the left and pressed the back of my wrist into the fist holding a weapon that glided like a harmless moth past my head, directing it through a car window, and wasted no time hopping a foot off the ground and bringing my elbow down to dislocate the man’s shoulder. No break, just something to put him out of my way.
I had to pirouette around him, seeing a gun pulled on me by one of the two other partners I had in this ballet, and shove him, along with his now bloody fist, directly towards his partner. As for number three, my hand was already moving in the way of the line between the barrel of his pistol and my head, focusing on the palm to harden it with the power of the Yin. Like steel, my hand stopped the first and second bullets as once more I pivoted away from his firing line and stepped deftly into place.
It would be a lie to say that the straight punch, packed with all the fury of a dragon, sent straight into the overweight man’s gut was not over the top, but he had tried to shoot me. Three broken ribs was nothing in the face of that. I could have shattered his sternum and been justified if not for the fact that technically I was the villain here.
Pushing off the ground I closed the distance as the first to pull a gun on me found himself back on his feet.
The strength I drew from the Yang empowered my kick to the same degree, and I delivered a precise blow to his chest, sending him rolling backwards over the hood of the car. No time to waste.
I felt each of my cybernetic implants jumpstart, my entire body warming up as I, too, kicked myself into high gear like my teammate and merged tech and magic into balance.
So long as I maintained equilibrium, I could manage the damage I was doing to my body by allowing the steel and electricity to course through me. The implants in my brain and down my spinal column were made to empower my every thought, and extend that increased brainpower to aid in how I controlled the cybernetics that made their homes in the rest of my body. High end combat and military implants, the kind I had been fitted with, were dangerous even after years of training and intense therapy, and most weren’t meant to be as thoroughly intertwined and connected with a person’s body as mine were. Combined with constant overclocking and stressing of the built in limitations to the hardware, it was a tightrope walk to maintain anytime I activated them. Anyone else would be dead by now.
I am not anyone else.
Cosmic balance.
If you were to ask what my power was, I would tell you that and nothing else.
Even Upgrade only understands so much with that massive, overloaded brain and those intrusive, all seeing eyes. He sees FORGE technology that makes me the perfect killer. The man reeling from the strike that impacted his chest and rocked his world might also have an opinion on those… additions to my body. That tells half the story.
In truth, reaching within, and grasping the power lying dormant there was what kept me alive. The abilities I drew from understanding Eum, (or as most knew it, Yin,) and Yang had opened doors beyond precision and perfection of movement. Strength. Speed. Healing. Endurance. I could draw out all of those to augment my potency. It was my very soul brought to bear: willpower given form and direction to create harmony between Spirit, Mind and Body.
If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
So long as I could remain focused, and not overdraw one way or the other, anyway.
Easier said than done, even for me.
My plan, when we had been deciding what our exfiltration would look like, relied heavily on myself because I, more than anyone else, could rely on myself and what I could do.
I could hardly rely on Marauder to do anything but be chaotic and Shift had, as predicted, made an opening and subsequently ran out of steam part way through her - No, that was not a fair way to think of what they had done. The chaos was proving to keep them off balance. The opening had put them in that state in the first place. Still, I was the wrecking ball, now.
Without so much as a last regard for the man crumpling before me as I came back from being lost in thought for what I felt as minutes, I vaulted over him and allowed power to flood my veins like flame spreading through a forest.
It took 4 steps to put myself between Shift and the men moving to apprehend her as she stopped to catch her breath once more. Guns were trained on her, but naturally a new threat had presented itself, and so those same guns were now aimed at me.
Even with half my body singed from the cannon fire I hadn’t fully escaped the wrath of, I was far from scared of mere pistols and a shotgun. Such mundane weapons would not be enough while I was aware. It would not do, however, to take any unnecessary risks. I whipped my wrist out, snatching a knife from my barely-attached belt loop and it flew directly into the shotgun cop’s arm, causing him to drop the weapon and fall from the force alone.
Two steps in and I was met with gun fire. Bullets careened through the air, and I did what I could to avoid their trajectory as they approached. Bullets, however, are faster than I am no matter if I could see their paths, and so some still landed, shattering against my skin with a feeling closer to a high fps BB gun than the real thing. I was being merciful even as they tried to kill me, and rather than return the favor I snapped one leg up in a kick that shattered one man’s wrist and sent the gun flying into the air. Stepping just past him, pressing my hand into his chest, I shoved him into one of his two compatriots hard enough that they both toppled over each other.
The last of the four of them was already backpedaling, and I sighed. “Drop it and I will let you go.”
He considered, and I furrowed my brow, clearing him of any doubt I would do great harm to him if he didn’t kowtow. His already white skin turned a sick pale, and he dropped the weapon, kicking it towards me. I nodded, allowing him to run. Mildly amusing.
With a deep breath, I turned to Shift, who had been sweating buckets. She looked up, giving me a smile as thanks. She, frankly, looked as emaciated as a starved zombie. I reached into my back pocket and tossed her a mostly intact Chewy bar.
“Ah, Prodigy you’re my favorite,” she rasped out, snatching it from mid air.
“Yo!” Upgrade yelled out as the last 4 standing got a break from Marauder’s wanton submachine gun fire and stood up to take aim at me and Shift.
Once more I dug deep, feeling power reach the surface and ripped a door off a car beside me to use as a shield from the incoming fire. It was mostly for shift, who was still scarfing down the granola bar as fast as she could.
I picked my moment carefully, hearing two of them stop to start reloading. With my door as my guardian shield I ran them down, crossing 80 feet in a few seconds and bashing the nearest one before he had a chance to move aside. I skidded to a stop as he lifted off the ground ahead of me. I let him fall backwards and used the door to smack his nearest partner with a shield bash, throwing him to the ground.
The last two were backstepping and shooting, bullets plinking off of my shoulder and rib cage, but I spun in a tight circle and put a bit too much strength behind my throw, watching a grown man fold like he’d been rammed into by a clothesline made of stone. As he fell, no doubt having a few cracked ribs, I wasted no time on sympathy and jumped, closing the distance and driving my foot into the skull of the last man standing and following through, turning a flying kick into a stomp.
“Alright!” I called. “We did the hard work.”
To the tune of a group of police officers groaning or requesting back up, all of us started running towards where we’d stashed the car.
----------------------------------------
We got halfway to the ride before someone caught us hoofin it into an alleyway. I was finally running low on bullets, and there was no way Shift could pull that trick again with the adrenaline rush she’d given herself without fainting. The alley was long enough we would probably get headed off before we made it to the other side of the alley. Prodigy put a good show on, all that super strength and speed and precision, but I wasn’t blind enough to ignore that she was panting, and every few seconds her eyes twitched. Headache setting in, probably.
Yeah, they’d done their part blitzing the people watching the back door, but her and Shift weren’t gonna be too reliable to keep that up and maintain a good enough pace that we wouldn’t get boxed in. No, now was the time for me to flex a bit, and so I let the gun swing by its strap as we got halfway and let out a sharp whistle to get their attention.
I touched the wall, fingers glowing a hot white as I focused on my power. It spread, destabilizing the brick and mortar violently. Like a chain reaction, the net of energy collapsed, bringing a section of wall smaller than I intended down. Size and effect were tough, but the job was done. We ducked in just before the fuckers caught up to the alley, and wasted no time making for the front door.
We had no time to lose, but Upgrade still held up a hand to stop us before we rushed through the doors. “Silent alarm… taken care of.”
We dashed through the store, kicking the front door out and continuing our mad dash. Behind us, and also a little further ahead, more cops were on their way. “Gloves are off, right?” I asked.
“We don’t want to kill anyone if we can avoid it!” Upgrade boringly reminded me. While I could understand not wanting to add “cop killer” to our reputation, I also wasn’t the biggest fan of the cops overall after growing up in all the poorest parts of South America. Still, he had a point, so as the cars chasing us and the ones ahead tried to block us off…
I threw a grenade.
I know what you're thinking: “Marauder, estan todos loco!?” First, yes I am, but also the small metal explosive wasn’t the kind that would completely destroy a car. Not the way I’d painstakingly modified these in the Garage anyway. Nah, it was more flash and fire than explosive, not that you’d want to be standing on one of them. I’d thrown these in dining rooms earlier in the week and not burned the whole building down so I was sure they’d be fine. Probably.
With some luck.
The grenade landed just barely ahead of the squad cars and SUV rushing towards us, and the explosion served to stunt their progress. To the tune of screaming tires burning their rubber, Prodigy took advantage of the moment to jump, cracking the place her foot had left the ground. Straight into the bright and blazing fireball she sailed, Shift already having teleported or whatever she did into place. Upgrade and I met eyes, and I motioned for us to turn. Without needing to speak we did so, moving in time with each other, and he reached out a hand to steal control of the tech parts of the vehicles and slam on their brakes. His fake eye glowed and lines of code flickered across it in waves every half second. I fired into their windshields, none aimed to hit anyone but rather to make them panic and second guess leaving the cars. Meanwhile, Jefe had locked the doors, the steering wheel and turned the car radios to maximum volume. Old trick, but a damn useful one.
We turned and ran again, putting some distance as the fires of the initial explosion died down and our hit-and-run duo finished putting the ones who’d cut us off out of their misery. Figuratively of course. Unfortunately. “Well done,” Prodigy called out as they fell in step. I was still panting, but gave her a smile and nod.
“All you, hermosa,” I spoke as we rounded the last corner that took us off of Woodward and into another alley where the Forte waited for us. Before we piled in, each of us waited in silence. My finger never left the trigger, waiting as squad cars flew past the alley, none the wiser. Upgrade’s eyes glassed over a bit. His fake one in particular looked like data streams were flickering on and off as he worked his way through something. I didn’t know what, but I stood at the ready to have his back while he was distracted. Whatever was going on, it had to be tough to require so much attention.
“Fuck yeah, got it,” he breathed out quietly. I glanced at him again, and he went on again. “Sent a fake call out and blocked the dispatchers everywhere in a 30 block radius. Their off our trail; they think we stole a squad car and doubled back. We’re clear for now.” We piled into the car and the sigh of relief came from all of us at once. Prodigy would be driving even with her body burned up and bruised from the explosion, and I let Shift have shotgun so I could take a look at Upgrade’s arm.
“Mierda jefe, you did a number on yourself,” I said as he bit back a scream when I extended it. “Two breaks I can see by the way your arm is sitting and bruising up. Oh, three. Yep. Definitely three. The yield on that punch must have been insane for him to go flying like that. What did you-“ I stopped, realizing he was glaring at me. I let his arm go and he slowly pulled it back. “Let’s talk shop when we get home.”
“Yeah, let’s do that, and not keep holding my broken arm at full extension, if ya don’t mind.”
Prodigy was the best of us at driving by far, so she was always our getaway if we could help it. Across half a dozen high profile missions similar to this one, we’d almost always relied on her reflexes to get us out. Today was no different.
Upgrade held the blackbox, robot eye aglow with that haunting, dark green light it shined as he worked his magic on it, already fast at work getting it open.
Shift put her head out of the window, looking back even as the tongues of flame making up her hair made it hard to see. At some point she’d lost her ponytail holder. When she popped back in, I had one ready for her over the seat.
“Oh, nice thanks Maw,” she commented and I nodded, slumping back. “Man you guys are great. What would I do without you?”
“No, really, what would you do?” I joked back. Prodigy, despite herself, cracked a smile as she started the car.
“Get some rest, everyone,” she said softly. “Long ride back to The Garage.” Upgrade nodded and spoke after.
“Good shit. We got kicked around a bit, but we definitely beat some ass today. Shit,” he groaned holding his arm.
“No shit we did,” Shift followed up.
“Not like anyone should be surprised. I mean, it’s us right? We’re probably the best in the world at what we do,” I confidently added in.
Upgrade chuckled. “Yeah, us four knuckleheads are dangerous. But you know why? It’s cause despite our abilities, our real power is in the teamwork a-“
I cut him off before he could get preachy about teamwork. “Yeah yeah we know jefe,” I groaned.
“Yeah you and Prod sure didn’t seem like it earlier this week, is all I’m sayin,” he said but held his hand up in surrender. Still, I caught her eye in the rear view, half a second for me, probably a lot longer for her. Understanding passed between us. No apology. Nothing so… useless for the two of us.
Upgrade was right: we’d been rocky while he was out, and it coulda got bad. Tempers had gotten outta hand. Way out. And I’d started it but she’d been willing to make it escalate.
We had no great love between us, Hyo and I, but we were part of a team. Sileena was already asleep, our support specialist, and Upgrade breathing deep as he cuddled with the box.
Reconciliation had been reached already, but I heard him. He said it with a goal in mind, making us recognize we needed each other, and he wasn’t subtle.
That man had been my best friend for years and even we’d had friction. A lot of it. That was my nature. I hated Hyo at first, didn’t trust Sileena. But over time? We found common ground.
Our power was teamwork, sure, but any team worth the title could say that. Our common ground, intially, was hating the FORGE. It grew into wanting a better tomorrow after revenge, or after righteousness. Motivation to win, survive and sometimes to not look like we got our shit stomped doing it. Our power wasn’t just teamwork. It was Unity.
Hyo pulled out nice and easy. “You too Gabriel. Sleep. I’ll wake you if I need you.”
“You sure?”
Her turn to be cheeky. “Would you like to drive?”
I made a fake snore in surrender, and let her handle what she saw as her duty.
It took longer than usual to get back since the safest and least conspicuous route to the garage had been hard to find. We got out just ahead of his blackout in their communication ending, according to jefe, who slept only when he was sure. Still, the fact that Halogen had been intending to keep this on the low had been lucky. That had slowed down the response times by a lot across the various groups the FORGE would otherwise have kicked up. By the time everyone was roused, we were safe at home base again.
“Home sweet fuckin home!” I yelled into the garage after I kicked open the door.
“Mission well done, team. Can I get a hand setting this?” Kendrick groaned holding his arm. “Prodigy is gonna get a rest so it’s gotta be one of you two.”
“I got it, Sileena probably needs to eat some more,” I accepted, patting her back.
“Dope, meet me in twenty? Ima shower,” he said.
“With a broken arm?”
He paused, looking up like I’d reminded him about something he’d forgotten seconds after asking for help with it. “I’ll figure it out.”
He did, but the whole twenty minutes he bitched and moaned louder than he probably meant to.