Extensis Vitae, page 8
Brute attacked, trying to blindside him. His machete slashed at Reznik with enough force to cut him in half, but Reznik dropped into a crouch and swept his leg around, catching Brute behind the knees. The big man stumbled forward and dropped to one knee as Reznik darted behind him. Reznik stabbed out once, twice, into Brute’s kidney area. Blood spurted as he pulled the knife free and stepped back. Brute grunted again, but started climbing back to his feet.
Reznik was forced to defend himself as Haze attacked with a knife in each hand. His HUD was able to track each attack, and he slashed and parried with his own blade. Faster and faster their blades met, steel ringing and sparks flying. Their hands and knives became a blur, so fast was the deadly exchange.
Haze forced him back, knives twisting and slashing inhumanly fast, his dual blades an advantage over Reznik’s single one. He’s as fast as I am, Reznik thought, having to work to intercept and turn aside each blow. Then he felt the blade cut into his fingers where he held the knife. If it hadn’t been for his dermal plating, his fingers would have been severed and he would have been disarmed.
Another slash cut across his midsection, and Haze cursed at him as he saw the lack of damage he was inflicting. “Got some fancy tech, do ya?” he snarled.
Reznik hurled the knife at the outlaw and followed with a lunge. Haze instinctively went to deflect the thrown blade. Reznik grappled with the outlaw and grasped him by both wrists. He sharply twisted Haze’s arms down and inward, causing him to lose his grip and drop the daggers to the ground. He has the speed to match me, but not the strength, he noted. He could see the track marks along the inside of Haze’s forearms. Must be better living through chemistry.
Haze cursed and spat in Reznik’s face as he fruitlessly tried to break his iron grasp. He lowered his shoulder and tried to drive into Reznik, attempting to throw him off-balance. Reznik took a step back and was about to counterattack when he backed into a wall of flesh.
Brute’s hand went around Reznik’s throat. Haze tried to knee him in the groin, but Reznik blocked his strike. He yanked Haze forward and drove an elbow back into Brute’s stomach, but his fat seemed to absorb the impact. Haze struggled to free himself, but Reznik tightened his grip, crushing Haze’s wrists.
“Get him off me, you stupid fuck,” Haze screamed. Brute lifted Reznik in the air again, the big man’s massive hand trying to crush his throat. It became harder to breathe, but the nanites in his body hardened in response to the pressure and kept his airway open.
From his position in the air, it was easy to drive his knee into Haze’s face. The outlaw’s nose flattened and blood sprayed out. Reznik released him as he cried out, probably more in shock than pain, due to his chemical enhancement. Reznik turned his attention to Brute. I should have finished this one off already.
He couldn’t see his assailant, as the man had him by the throat from behind, but he could see the machete Brute had dropped in order to grab him with his good arm. Reznik grasped the fingers around his throat and strained to loosen them. Brute’s grip was like a vice, but Reznik’s enhanced strength allowed him to pry the fingers loose one by one. Brute hissed in anger as Reznik snapped the little finger. After he snapped the next one, Brute bellowed in pain and dropped him.
Reznik dropped down and snatched up the machete. He turned and darted past Brute’s grasping hand, slashing out and severing the tendon behind his knee as he went past. The big man dropped like an avalanche, roaring in pain as he crushed the remnants of one of the crates. Reznik was on Brute’s back in a flash. He grabbed Brute by the forehead and pulled his head up enough to get the machete around and hack through his thick neck, opening his jugular vein.
Hot blood spurted out onto the floor. Brute bucked beneath him at first, as if he was trying to get back up again, but then he shuddered a couple more times and was still.
Remembering Haze, Reznik got back to his feet, scanning the area as he wondered where the outlaw leader was. He got his answer in the form of a shotgun blast that hit him square in the back. The force of the buckshot threw him onto Brute’s corpse.
He rolled free and saw Haze standing a couple yards away. The outlaw held an antiquated sawed-off double-barrel shotgun. The lower half of his face was covered in blood from his smashed nose, and his mouth was twisted into a snarl as he stepped closer.
“Die, you fuck,” he rasped as he fired the second barrel at Reznik’s face. Anticipating the move, Reznik could feel the surge of either adrenaline or augmentations—or a combination of the two—rush through him, boosting his reflexes. He grasped Brute’s massive arm and twisted, pulling the corpse up as a shield between him and Haze.
He was partially successful, as the blast blew off Brute’s arm at the shoulder. Reznik’s head and neck were peppered with buckshot and gore.
Shaking his head to get his bearings, he wiped the blood out of his eyes. Haze was reloading. With a cry, Reznik hurled the beefy arm at Haze. The arm clubbed the outlaw in the chest, and he cursed as shotgun shells spilled onto the floor.
Reznik sprung back to his feet and came at Haze with a sweeping slash of the machete. Haze backpedaled, spilling more shells on the ground from the pouch on his belt. Reznik swung the machete again, and Haze deflected it with the shotgun. He feinted with a slash of the machete and kicked out at Haze’s knee. The outlaw’s kneecap shattered under the blow, and he went down with a cry.
His next attack slipped past Haze’s desperate attempt to parry again with the shotgun. The blade hacked deep into Haze’s forearm. Reznik twisted and wrenched the machete free. With his enhanced strength, the thick blade tore the rest of the way through his forearm. This time, Haze screamed as a fountain of blood spurted from the stump of his arm.
Reznik stepped on the wrist of the severed hand and pulled the shotgun from its clutching grasp. The outlaw sagged back against the tunnel wall, and his eyes began to roll back in his head as a rapidly growing pool of blood spread out beneath him. Reznik leaned over and backhanded Haze across the face to keep him coherent.
“Where are the prisoners?” Reznik could tell he was almost finished. Harsh interrogation will be pointless on this one. A couple minutes max, and he’s a goner.
Haze’s face was pale with shock and his eyes focused on his blood draining out onto the floor. He fumbled in his pocket with his remaining hand. Reznik held the blade to his throat, but he only pulled out a crushed pack of cigarettes and a book of matches.
“Ah shit, you jacked me up good.” All the fight had gone out of him with his lifeblood. He put a crumpled cigarette between his lips and fumbled weakly with the match, trying to light it one-handed. The matches slipped out of his hand.
Reznik picked them up and lit one. He held it up and Haze inhaled, lighting his final cigarette. Sometimes all it takes is a minor show of kindness in their final moments to make them decide to cooperate. No matter how sorry a piece of shit they might be.
Haze blew out a long stream of smoke, and his face softened slightly. “Ah, thanks, mate. It was nothing personal, you know,” he rasped, slumping back against the wall. “It’s what we do—‘survival of the fittest,’ and all that shit.” He closed his eyes.
“The prisoners,” Reznik repeated. He thought Haze was gone, but after a moment, the man took another draw on the cigarette.
“Most of them we sold to the skin traders. We kept the old doctor around, and a few of the women, too, for our own enjoyment.”
“How many more of you are there?”
Haze exhaled a large puff of smoke and coughed weakly. “Just a couple more of my people in there.” He clutched at an object chained around his neck. “This—I meant to set her free…I did…” He looked like he wanted to say more, but he gasped weakly and his eyes rolled back. Reznik yanked the chain from Haze’s neck. It was a small, cylindrical object about the size of a AAA battery with some type of interface on one end. A logo of three intertwined triangles was the only marking on it.
Reznik stuck the object in his pocket and surveyed the carnage. What a mess, he thought. It looked like the set of a horror movie, with butchered corpses and buckets of blood.
He wondered if it would be possible to draw the others out, or if he would have to hunt them down. They hadn’t come out to investigate the sounds of what was obviously staunch resistance to the ambush, so he assumed they had been commanded to stay at their posts and guard the prisoners.
When he looked back down, he saw the flow of blood from Haze’s stump had ebbed away. The outlaw’s lips had turned blue; now that he no longer drew breath the cigarette only smoldered.
Reznik quickly searched the area, looking for weapons, ammo, or any other items of interest while staying alert in case any more of Haze’s gang turned up. The sawed-off shotgun, a .45 caliber revolver, the machete, various knives, the shuriken, and the metal cudgel were the most serviceable weapons he recovered, along with some ammo for the guns. He kicked the cudgel aside, as it was too clumsy of a weapon to be of much use. With the exception of a couple rusty knives, the rest of the weapons he packed up and took with him.
Haze had some type of electronic keycard in his pocket which he thought might be of use. All of the outlaws had been carrying some type of small disks that resembled poker chips. Some type of currency? Reznik wondered. He stowed those in his pack, as well.
Reznik slung the shotgun across his back. He carried the loaded .45 in his right hand and the bloody machete in his left. Striding through the carnage, he entered the open portal of Colony 13.
Chapter 9
The portal room of Colony 13 was illuminated only by the emergency lights in the corners, which weren’t up to the task of dispelling the deep shadows draping the room. The red warning light that indicated that the vault door was open flashed its continuous warning overhead. It appeared that the klaxon was out of commission from a gunshot to the siren mechanism. A small vehicle resembling a golf cart was parked next to the guard shack.
The corpse of a naked woman hung from an overhead pipe in the center of the room, suspended by an electrical cord wrapped around her neck. The word “WELCOME” had been carved into her belly. Reznik’s breath involuntarily hissed out in anger and disgust. He clenched his fists around the handles of his weapons.
Judging from the lack of blood, the woman appeared to have been dead before her corpse had been carved up. The stench was plentiful, though, and a cloud of flies was buzzing around.
Reznik nearly gagged from the stench before he thought to hold his breath. He adjusted his vision to the low light and quickly made his way up the ramp onto the loading dock. The corridor leading out of the portal room was deserted. Dark streaks extended into the distance down the corridor. Must be the dried blood from when they dragged away the bodies of the Colony 12 team, he guessed.
The whole facility appeared to be running on backup generator power, as only the emergency lights were lit as far as he could see throughout the maze of corridors. The air was warm and stale, probably from the HVAC shutting down due to power loss. The flickering emergency lights and resulting pools of darkness throughout the facility combined with the eerie silence put Reznik’s nerves on edge. He could feel a cold trickle of sweat down his back.
Reznik boosted his hearing to the max. A symphony of white noise reached his eardrums. The distant rumble of the backup generators along with an omnipresent buzzing electrical sound and the distant dripping of water all battled for supremacy in his ears. He could also detect the faint hiss of what sounded like gas pipes.
He tracked the blood streaks down the hall to a room marked “INCINERATOR.” Looking inside briefly, he saw that the bodies must have been burned. Garbage and broken items lay strewn around the small room. He saw a shattered mirror lying up against the huge steel drum of the incinerator. Reznik stooped and picked up a good-sized shard of mirror and stuck it in the outermost pocket of his pack.
He searched the lower floor of the Colony and found nothing. It was mostly made up of storage rooms and unused space. He finished clearing the floor and was heading toward the main stairwell that led up to the living quarters when he heard a distant shout followed by a scream. He continued up the stairs, passing the living quarter level and up to the main floor as he followed the sound of another scream and subsequent crying.
They were in the common area, as he had suspected. Reznik dialed his hearing back down as he crept up next to the open doorway. He slipped his piece of broken mirror around the corner and quickly scanned the room.
Whereas the common area of Colony 12 had been nicely furnished, this room looked like it had been struck by a hurricane. The large banners had been torn down and whatever paneling had once covered the walls had been mostly ripped off, revealing the dull gray metal beneath. Heaps of garbage and broken glass littered the floor. Several bookshelves had been toppled, and, along with some broken furniture, had been cleared to the sides of the room, leaving an open space where the prisoners were kept.
An older man that had to be Dr. Kane was sitting in an easy chair with a book in his lap. His ankles were shackled with a chain that connected him to the other prisoners. Two women sat hunched together on a dirty sofa, their ankles shackled as well. The sound of grunting drew his attention and he swiveled the mirror farther around. On the far side of the room, one of the outlaws had a woman bent over a table and was raping her. There was no sign of any other outlaws.
The time for sneaking around is done, he thought.
Reznik sat the mirror on the ground and cocked the revolver. He pivoted around the corner and into the room. The outlaw’s back was to the door. His pants were down around his ankles and he was engrossed in taking his pleasure. Reznik aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger.
The deafening roar of the gun startled everyone in the room. The outlaw’s head exploded as the .45 slug plowed into the back of his cranium. He toppled forward onto the woman’s back. She began screaming as the blood and gore splashed over her. The hostages stared at him in shock.
Reznik spared a brief glance at the hostages and then quickly scanned the room again. Motion caught his eye as a young woman on the couch pointed behind him.
He spun on his heel in a blur, revolver leveled. An outlaw was a couple of yards away, a wicked looking katana raised to strike. He pulled the trigger.
Click. The weapon misfired.
In an instant the outlaw was on him, slashing at his chest with the sword. He hopped backward and barely had time to raise the machete for a desperate parry. He realized he was facing a lean, muscular woman.
Reznik tossed the revolver aside and tried to grab the woman’s sword arm, but she easily evaded his grasp. She slashed sideways at him and he jumped aside, raising the machete to focus on defense.
The outlaw woman was petite, with arresting eyes of an unnatural turquoise color. Her long blonde hair was pulled back in a high ponytail and three shiny studs pierced each of her cheeks in a line that angled down toward her mouth. She wore tight fitting leather pants and a vest that left her muscular arms bared. She had exotic features that—at Reznik’s best guess—were part-Asian. He thought she might have been strikingly beautiful if she was cleaned up. And if she wasn’t trying to kill him.
The woman sized him up for a brief moment. Her gaze took in the machete in his left hand and the shotgun slung over his shoulder. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened in what he took to be anger.
She lunged at him, katana slashing again. He danced backward, just able to track the quick slashes of her blade thanks to his HUD.
1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta trained its operators in the finest types of combat in the world. Sword fighting, however, was not among the training Reznik had received. He doubted that Delta taught it at all. He was well versed in knife fighting, but that was quite different. Her katana had a foot or more length advantage over his machete, and his thick-bladed weapon was clumsy in comparison.
They exchanged a flurry of blows. Although he was focused on attack and defense—mostly defense—it registered somewhere in the back of his mind that his new body was ambidextrous, as the machete felt as natural in either hand.
As she tested his defenses, her blade became quicker and quicker. It slid past his desperate parries again and again, slashing in and striking blows incredibly fast along his arm, side, and torso. His HUD couldn’t process the attacks quick enough. He tried to snare her sword arm again, but she slid past his grasp each time. Holy shit, she’s fast—she must be juiced up like Haze, he thought.
Her sword stabbed him solidly in the thigh, and this time he felt the pain. A thin arc of blood came out as she pulled the blade free. A warning began flashing on his HUD. My nanites are running out of energy, he thought. I’ve been taking too much damage.
The woman’s lips twisted into a smile as she pressed the attack. She knew that he was weakening and wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. He managed to deflect her blade again and even a counterattack, forcing her back a step. She avoided tying up weapons with him, negating his strength advantage.
She renewed her assault again, her sword quicksilver in her hands. Reznik brought the machete down in an attempted parry against her low stab, but her move was a feint. She caught his machete on the flat of the blade with a powerful downward chop.
The inferior machete blade shattered in his hand. He tossed aside the fragment of the worthless weapon while backpedaling and ducking at the same time, barely avoiding a slash that nearly beheaded him.
He remembered the shotgun slung across his back, but knew he’d never get to it in time. Oh shit—I’m in trouble now, he thought. I could maybe get to the immobilizer, but what I really need is a distraction.
As if reading his mind, the young woman who had warned him earlier picked up a large hardback book the size of a photo album. She caught his eye for a second, and then flung the book at the outlaw woman.
