"Yeah, I can do that." I pick up my gear and put everything back in place before looking back at her. "Be safe."
"It's not me I'm worried about."
With that ominous response I head outside to confront Marcus.
Part XVIII
I left Mary packing and walked down the hallway leading outside, checking my gear as I went. My new body’s systems much have picked up on my tension because I was in serious combat mode. The HUD attached to the GENIE guns came up and gave me an ammo check on both. It checked my sword and gave me green on the molecular-edged katana. My nanites reservoirs were full and fangs and claws ready. My move-by-wire system and boosters were running and the world was slowing down around me.
I forced myself into as natural a walk as I could but I know I still looked like a lioness on the tail of prey. I stopped and took a breath before opening the door and stepping out into a suddenly chilly night.
Marcus was leaning against a car, watching as I came out. His cat-ate-the canary grin grew larger as I stepped out and he put away the knife he was using to clean his nails. He pushed himself off the car and doffed his hat.
“Evening, lovely lady. We’ve been worried about you since you didn’t come back from what should have been a very easy job. Imagine my surprise when I tracked you here. Really, Mary? After all these years? How is she? Still batshit crazy?” He smiled again and I was hit by a very, very powerful sensation of “something else” looking at me from behind those eyes.
“Come on babe, time to get you home and repair your uplinks. You know the Union and Conclave don’t like it when one of us goes offline like that.”
With that he turned and started walking off. “My ride is just around the corner.”
I nodded, trying to think how to stall for time. “Give me a few, OK? Mary and I are just about done. I was running some of the stuff I got from Ice Queen past her.”
Marcus stopped and I suddenly knew that I had said the exact wrong thing. He slowly turned around and looked at me. REALLY looked at me and his eyes went wide.
That’s when things turned to complete shite.
I was starting to move when Marcus raised his left hand, almost as fast as I could and, at that moment, too fast for me to really see. There was a sharp crack, a blinding light and I was thrown back and into a wall, the smell of ozone burning my nose. Stunned for just a second I moved before rounds stitched the wall where I had been. My guns were up and out before I even thought about it, on target and firing. I saw Marcus’s eyes widen and he dove behind a car but the cry of pain told me that he had been hit at least once by the GENIE rounds which had directional vanes and followed him around the car.
I slammed into another car, moving like the wind and looked down at my body armour. There was a charred area there which was still smoking. ‘Seriously, he just threw lightning at me?’ I thought to myself.
The HUD in my right eye was suddenly replaced by an image of Marcus raising his hand and a vid playback started, vastly slowed down. I saw a dart exit his hand and a long spool of nanowire fly out and hit me, discharging a massive jolt of electricity. There was a flash and the playback stopped.
The motherfucker hit me with a giant damn taser that made it look like he was throwing lightning!
Pretty cool, actually.
“Dirty pool, Marcus. You’re not supposed to hit a lady, especially in ambush like that.”
His voice came back to me from the left of where he had been. He was behind another car, thinking he could flank me. “I don’t know what your game is, Vamp, but you’re coming back to Union HQ one way or another so we can figure it out.”
“The fuck I am!” I popped my fangs and sprayed a long stream of nanites at the car he was hiding behind and watched as it began melting. Marcus screamed out “FUCK!” and moved away before he was hit by any of the vicious little machines. I took the opportunity to open up with the left hand Glock but the dirty bastard did something tricky: as he moved he hit the car with another massive shock and threw the targeting systems of my rounds off so they hit the car and ground around him. I saw the gun in his hand before he opened fire.
Militech R93 Smart-Gun. Heh, Smart Gun, old school. He’s fast but I’m faster, a fact driven home by the way I watched the bullets coming at me and simply ran through them, like dodging raindrops. Everything around me was moving at a snail’s pace now. I was fully boosted and in combat mode and I was pissed.
He tried to bring his hand up to hit me with another one of those shocks but in the millisecond it took me to close on him I had holstered both pistols and drawn the katana, bringing it down in a beautiful diagonal slash. There was a spray of blood and I watched his hand fall to the ground, counting the drops of blood before ramming into him shoulder first and feeling his armour - trenchcoat and dermal, give way. He was on the ground with my sword at his throat before his brain even processed the pain. He gave a short scream before his body was flooded with pain killing medication and his eyes went slightly glazed.
He gasped, trying to talk around a flail segment and pneumohemothorax. Blood began to bubble from his mouth. “What…the…fuck, Vamp? What…are…you…doing?” He looked at me with eyes narrowed in pain and once again I got that sense of something vast also looking.
“How did you track me, Marcus? Tell me or I’ll drip some nanites on you and let you melt here on the street.”
He shook his head. “What…happened to you? I don’t…even…know you.”
I wasn’t about to give him and anyone else watching the answer to that question. “Just tell me and I’ll let you wait here for help. Otherwise you’ll be a puddle before they arrive.”
“Tracker…on your…bike. You should…know that.” His eyes narrowed some more and focused on me more intently. “Who are you? He wheezed.
“I’m on my own. Anyone else comes after me and I won’t be so merciful. Got it? Leave me, leave Mary, alone.” A quick strike to the temple with the pommel of the sword had him unconscious and I got up and quickly ran to the bike, accessing the schematics and finding the tracker which I pulled off and threw on a passing AV.
I sent the signal to the bike to turn on and keyed my comms to Mary. “You safe?”
“Yep. Jesus, I had to slow that crap down to follow it. You two were like gusts of wind. Leaving him alive isn’t going to win you any slack from the Union, you know.”
I climbed on the bike and hit the power, feeling the sleek beauty take off like a rocket. “I know but I’m no killer. If he comes after me again I’ll deal with it but until then, I’m not spilling any more blood.”
She sighed in my ear. “You keep thinking like that and you’ll get dead fast.”
“You let me worry about that. Can you find out more about this Conclave he mentioned?”
There as silence for a moment and then she sighed again. “Fine, since you already have me knee deep in crap I might as well go all in. Stay alive, chica, you die then I die and I’m not ready to die.”
“Yeah, you too.” I cut comms and raced off into the night.
Comments
Yaaay!!!
So glad to see this continuing, but whaaaaaa a teaser! =] Glad that you're still updating the story for us to drool over!
Can't wait for more!
Sara
What she said
Huzzah. I have been hoping for more as well. Thank you.
Kaetii
Cyber space
I'm not into this but your writing is nice. Looks like she's in an impossible situation.
Good chapter
Gwen
Marcus'
taser isn't very handy now!!!
I think he also got the point not to try and sucker our heroine.
Thanks Heather for the latest update, it was well worth the wait.
Serious Bladerunner/Shadowrun vibe here
Just started reading this and it has a real nasty vibe to it. Keep it going!
Super-exciting
And leaving me hungry for more!
Love the tale, keep up the enthralling writing!
Amy
This is great - cool and edgy
Very reminiscent of William Gibson, of course, but with originality and charm all of its own. Now you have me hooked and you've left me waiting for more.