Darkness & Light (8 page)

It was during this block of time that I wrote
"I'rone"," Backlash" and "Beginnings". I seem to sometimes have a
hard time keeping my projects from exploding into novels. With
"Beginnings", I was fortunate in that I hadn't really spent a ton
of time yet developing the characters I wanted to use to tell my
'Serial Story'. Because they were still a little nebulous, I didn't
have to get caught up in their life story or a giant conflict that
altered the course of their lives. Instead, I just told the story
of the day that launched them onto the path that ultimately would
take them in a drastically different direction than any of them
expected to go.

I learned some things about my characters,
Coffee in particular, and invented Croaker as a way of taking care
of a plot driver that I'd known I was going to need to implement
but hadn't ever quite got around to implementing. Of course Croaker
is an entirely different story all by himself, Coffee's moment in
the spotlight really was the beginning of my 'Serial Story'. Not
the beginning I'd originally planned on, but still one of the
beginnings to a story that I was quickly finding had more starting
points than I'd ever intended.

You'd think that particular afternoon at
least would be one of the few where I woke up free of pain. No such
luck. My implants, not those kind of implants, had been acting up
for years, but the degeneration seems to have really sped up during
the last few months.

Most of the mods I got installed while still
with The Company work like clockwork, but the hand razors were
apparently released into service prematurely. The metal still works
fine, but the flesh is another matter. I've developed severe
arthritis in the first joint of each finger. One of the guys down
in research suggested I just get pregnant. I almost ripped his head
off before he explained something about an unknown pregnancy
hormone temporarily suppressing arthritis. I told him to shut up
and finish isolating it. For that I'd even suffer through daily
injections.

Rather than jumping out of bed and rushing
off to meet our supposed 'savior', I swallowed twice the suggested
dose of my normal drug cocktail and then slowly pulled myself
vertical. The biology dweebs supposedly whipped the meds up
specially for my condition, but I still spent the first twenty
minutes of my day in extreme pain as I tried to work some mobility
back into the joints.

Dressing was simple, fashion following
function and all that. Leather cleans up the best and short equates
to greater freedom of movement when things get dicey. The fact that
most guys lose their higher brain functions when skirts shrink past
a certain point is just a bonus. Of course then you have to deal
with the alpha female sluts who think you're trying to muscle in on
their territory, but most of them would think that regardless of
what I wore.

It wasn't strictly cold enough to really
justify the black, thigh-length overcoat I chose to match the skirt
and top, but it was the only way to hide the 9mm and mags that were
the most crucial part of any outfit. Sure I could kill most people
just as fast with my bare hands, but sometimes I was up against
things that weren't strictly speaking human and guns are still the
great equalizer.

When I left my apartment fifteen minutes
later, a casual observer wouldn't have guessed that I was armed; or
that the nondescript, black briefcase I was carrying held, among
other things, enough money to cause most people to commit all kinds
of illegal acts.

It took less than fifteen minutes to get from
my hotel to the university campus. Some people might have taken the
ease of my commute as a favorable omen. Of course those are the
same people that go in for that faith healing crap.

The complete lack of stoplights was actually
due to the fact that I've got a baby super computer parked just
above my right lung. My chip interfaced with the car's electronic
suite and hacked whatever it needed to hack in order to give me
green lights the entire way.

It's the same thing police cars do, just
better because I can tweak it on the fly. It's also highly illegal,
but I haven't worried about little stuff like that since before I
defected.

The Company had actually tried to park the
chips inside peoples' heads back in the day, but quickly scrapped
the practice. Apparently there's too much that can go wrong when
you start using up the volume behind your eyes with things that
give off electrical charge. Of course for the computer to do
anything truly useful you still have to wire it into quite a bit of
that gray matter. Still, the simplest option is to place the
bulkier pieces in the relatively accessible chest cavity and then
run a line of fiber optics up along your spinal cord.

It's a dominatrix when it comes to everyday
life, but that chip has saved my life more times than I can
remember. There are certain benefits to being Company, or
Ex-company as it were. It still didn't compensate for the damn pain
or the fact that my chip was also busy downloading everything I
heard and saw for later review by some pencil-necked geek tasked
with making sure I wasn't some kind of double agent.

Find the doubters. Put them on the path to
belief. Trust the honest soul.
 What is it with messiahs
and all of the vague, mysterious guidance? This target happened to
have the quaint charm of not knowing he was going to possibly rock
the inhabitants of this sorry world. Really though, it wasn't much
when weighed against all of the aggravation of having a head case
like Croaker send me halfway across the country with nothing more
than a few worthless references about turning points and a
character description.

The library was one of those open, spacious
units with plenty of natural light. All of which mattered only
because it gave me an excuse to leave my sunglasses on.

Of course I still attracted too much
attention. The tall, blond guy by the reference desk was eyeing me
within seconds. He probably would have been a problem if not for
the girl next to him. They looked like they belonged in some
fashion magazine. You know the type, guys with bodies that
obviously spent time in the gym, girls with pants all but painted
on them, and tops that risked displaying all kinds of assets if the
wearer ventured into any kind of vigorous activity.

Speaking of vigorous activity, she all but
grafted herself onto him when he directed a rather winning smile my
way. Got to hate it when actual competition arrives on scene and
screws up a done deal. She waited until he was distracted with some
question or other, and then looked me up and down.

Stupid slut, I half wanted to backhand her
into a wall. Then again I might have missed seeing Owens if I
hadn't been returning her glare when he walked between the stacks.
It was just a glimpse, but I didn't need to replay the video to be
sure. The baby-killing bastard was unmistakable.

Thanks to my chip and its domineering ways I
was up and moving before I'd made a conscious decision to act.
Moving a little too fast judging by the expression of the slut.
Sometimes it's a damn pain trying to blend in with normal
people.

Owens being here was bad no matter how you
looked at it. He claimed to be some kind of partial. The Company
Suits had given him his head, so the eggheads must have verified
his claim with tests of some sort. He'd mostly spent his time
wandering around schools. Every so often some kid would disappear
and he'd defend the action by saying they'd have grown up to be a
threat.

Most of the resistance just chalked it up to
some kind of sick psychopathic urge to kill children. Despite being
on opposite sides, I'd agreed with them for quite a while. Then
he'd managed to escape death at my hands again and again over the
years since I'd defected.

He had some kind of ability, I just wasn't
positive he could really sense the shape of things to come like he
claimed. Then again if he could, it meant that Croaker hadn't sent
me into a trap. That Croaker wasn't just a precog like we'd known
for years, but that he really was on our side. Not that he was
around enough to make him much of an asset, even so. Of course, the
more likely scenario revolved around Croaker having finally figured
out how to send me eagerly running to my death. I couldn't pass up
a chance like this though, so it didn't really matter which it
was.

Owens was still wandering around the stacks,
his eyes half closed as he tried to listen to whatever sick voices
drove him.

Firearms were out. Oh, I could kill him and
then disappear before any official response put in an appearance,
but that would completely screw any chance of finding Croaker's
'fulcrum'. If I couldn't find him now, odds were I'd never have the
proof I needed and we'd have missed a major opportunity.

I guess I'm just a do-things-the-hard-way
kind of girl. The little chip in my chest received its instruction
set, and flooded my system with adrenaline as the synthetic fiber
in my muscles launched me into a sprint. It should have been the
most glorious feeling ever. I mean who doesn't want to move faster
than a striking snake, the world slowing down to stillness around
you? Did I forget to mention it feels like your bones are tearing
themselves apart the whole time?

Synthetic muscle fibers hadn't been easy to
invent, even for the company egg heads who'd had unlimited funding
for at least the last three centuries, but that was child's play in
comparison to skeletal reinforcement.

In theory they could have put enough
artificial muscle inside me to life a bulldozer, but human bones
aren't designed for that kind of stress. Instead they'd implanted a
few Samson fibers in each of the long muscles in my body, and then
run all kinds of tests to establish exactly how much force they
could exert. The idea being to set the governors at a level that
would stop them from shattering bones and whipping the fragments
through my flesh in a gory explosion.

Owens turned with blinding quickness, pulling
out a Glock as I tickled whatever spidey sense had kept him alive
for so long. I knocked the handgun away with the briefcase, smiling
as the titanium hidden under the black leather transmitted a jolt
into his right hand. With any luck I'd fractured a few bones.

The pain wouldn't stop him from using his
hand, not with the level of artificial adrenaline currently
flooding his system, but it would mean that in a grappling
situation he'd be unable to apply the normal level of bone crushing
force our kind usually enjoyed. My hand razors slid out as my smile
turned into a full-fledged grin.

His counter, a jab to my throat a split
second after the gun and briefcase went cartwheeling away from us,
was so fast it was all I could do to brush it away to the empty
space next to my left ear. Damn he was fast. That was the other
thing I'd always hated about Owens. Not only was he a damn
potential, he also got mods. Apparently they'd made some upgrades
since I'd left, upgrades that meant I was over matched yet
again.

A quick kick towards his knee got deflected
by his closer leg, and then I was fully on the defensive. He was
just that quick.

All the crap turned out by Hollywood doesn't
even begin to approach what a fight between two superhuman
combatants actually looks like. There aren't any strikes to the
head for one thing. An attack like that is just asking to have
yourself messed up for months while the docs try to put your hand
or foot together. Sure you kill the other guy, but with the amount
of force applied to the rather delicate bones involved on your
side, you generally end up a cripple as a result.

No thank you. Soft targets are the way to go.
The neck, stomach, kidneys, or joints. You still ended up smarting
after blowing out your opponent's knee, but at least you tended not
to shatter any of your parts in the process.

Also, there was no endless exchange of blows
as first one or the other of us got the upper hand. There would be
exactly one more blow landed in this fight, and it would spell
death for one of us. Sadly enough, it was starting to look like I'd
be on the receiving end.

Owens' hand and feet licked out with speed
that was almost impossible for even me to follow. They'd either
found a way to spread the stresses out over more of each anchor
point, or strengthen the individual bones. Whatever it was, only
the fact that he was down a hand was keeping me in the hunt.

I slid out of the way of another neck shot,
and then saw my chance. As his arm recoiled back to ready position
I got my arm up to where I could slide my fingers along it as it
moved past. As you may recall my fingers are tipped with half-inch
long razorblades.

That doesn't sound like much to most people,
but you'd be amazed at just how many fairly significant veins and
arteries there are just half an inch or so from the surface of your
skin. I guess there is one exception to that one strike rule. One
that oh-so-many of the operatives forget about. If I can bleed you
out, then you die even if I never manage to land a really solid
blow. I don't put up with half an hour of agony every day for
nothing.