Duel Nature (17 page)

All four heavy pieces of equipment rocked
slightly as our were bear wolf vented his rage in a roar that
turned heads in every part of the busy Border station.

“Sos!” I said at slightly louder than normal
speaking level.

The rocking of the enclosed SUV slowed and
the roars lessened to a dull growl.

“Smart, ‘cause if he gives us any grief,
we’ll just crush him where he is!” the blonde agent said.

Her nametag said BLADE. The others were just
as edgy. SHIV, BOWIE, KATANA, TANTO were all there as well as a
tall lanky guy named KRISS. I sensed a theme.

Gladius led us into the building, ignoring
the regular border agents who moved out of our little group’s way
with puzzled looks.

We threaded through several sets of doors,
finally entering an interrogation room that came complete with a
one-way mirrored wall. A desk with two steel chairs in front of it
occupied one end of the room. A man with thinning brown hair and a
dark suit sat behind the desk, watching us coldly. I recognized
him.

“Agent Gentis, what brings you to Michigan?”
I asked. I had only met him once, on the campus of Columbia
University when he had tried to bring me in for questioning.
General Creek had sent him packing, but now here he was, a long way
from New York, with a squad of paramilitary agents who reminded me
strongly of the black ops unit that attempted to snatch me and my
goddaughter.

Gladius and Blade roughly shoved my vampire
and me into the steel chairs, while two of the others took up
position behind and slightly to the left of us, gun barrels pressed
to the junction of neck and head. The other agents took up position
to around the room, mostly behind us.

“Chris Gordon and …Tatiana Demidova,” Gentis
said, looking at our passports, then making a show of writing our
names on an official looking form. The black clad guards around us
were almost vibrating with alertness as they watched us for
movement.

“Both persons of interest attempting to leave
the country,” he said aloud as he wrote the same words on another
line of the form.

“Yeah, about that, I need to get to my
grandfather,” I said. He ignored me.

“Transporting a dangerous wolf hybrid,
multiple edged weapons,” he said, still looking down and
writing.

“Chris, isn’t it odd that
this ….
agent
,”
Tanya started, making agent sound like an insult to the word,
“…found us here – at the border? I mean we didn’t even know we were
coming here till you got that call.”

Gentis glanced up at her but she kept her
attention on me.

“I never told you this, but I had your
grandfather’s medical records lifted and copied last time we were
visiting him,” she said. “Doc S looked through them and told me
your Gramps was healthy as a horse, absolutely no sign of heart
disease or diabetes, cancer or any other major disease. Quite
remarkable was the term he used.”

“You think that
he
engineered a heart
attack knowing this would be the place we would show up as the
fastest route home from anywhere in the Upper Peninsula?” I asked,
not really surprised that she had creeped on Gramps medical
condition. Few humans mean much to Tanya but those that do are the
focus of intense affection.

I was starting to get really angry
though.

“That’s exactly what I think, and I also
think these bozos are the same type that hurt Toni,” she said
offhandedly.

She was right and I was suddenly homicidally
angry. Grim angry.

“So now that you have ‘Brutal Asset’ what’s
your nefarious plan? Secret lab, dissection?” she asked Gentis,
whose face reflected a small amount of admiration for her
intelligence.

“Well, Miss Demidova, I must
say, I am impressed. Beauty and brains. How rare. And you know of
us…the
Agentes in Rebus?
”

We glanced at each other,
then she answered him. “Well we knew
of
you, but we didn’t know your little
organization’s title,” she said. “Those who are involved in
Matters? Is that how that translates?”

His adimiration was slightly more
sincere.

“Educated in the classics. I guess I
shouldn’t be surprised, based on the average age of your tutors,”
he said.

“
So you’re what? The Roman
Empire’s secret police?” she asked. I didn’t recognize the name of
his group, but it obviously fit somewhere in Tanya’s knowledge
base. I never spent much time on history, being more interested in
learning the practical arts of survival.

He frowned, then chuckled. “No, we borrowed
the name as it fits our role here in America. You see Miss
Demidova, we live in the greatest nation on earth, but our
forefathers left some glaring gaps in the structure of the
government. Four to eight years in office is far too short a time
frame for our leaders to secure this country’s borders and
interests. Administrations turn over too quickly, leaving too many
jobs undone,” he said, warming to his monologue. “Our organization
was formed over a hundred years ago by patriots who saw the very
few mistakes that the founding fathers had made.”

“Let me guess. A.I.R. hides away in the
cracks and crevices of the government and runs operations to
protect the country?” Tanya guessed.

“Much too simple a summary Miss Demidova,” he
responded like a pompous professor. “We influence things at all
levels. A word here, a grant there, a stern reminder when
necessary, that’s much of what we do. But we also have an active
element, one that takes the fight to our enemies where ever they
may be.”

He waved a hand at the black unformed troops
standing behind us. “We have the best operators in the world and
the fortitude to use them. The group behind you is responsible for
eliminating more Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders than the entire
hunter-killer drone program, we just can’t advertise that”.

“So why are you poisoning old soldiers that
fought for this country?” Tanya asked.

“Mr. Gordon’s service to his
country is duly noted, but we do what we must. Our mission requires
that we have the best of everything, from the gauss rifle
prototypes that you see here to the Centurion class operatives that
wield them. Our people are faster and stronger than our enemies
because we’ve learned to harvest the proteins that give
your
people their
abilities. But your boyfriend here is another level altogether,
although I must say that you, yourself, may add a dimension or two
to our studies,” he said with a smirk.

“So where do you fit in with this group,
Agent Gentis? Pretty far down the ranks I’d guess,” Tanya said.

He frowned at her. “Actually, I occupy a rare
position, with quite a bit of power and latitude, Miss Demidova.
I’m empowered to make decisions in the field…life and death
decisions.”

She studied him for a second or two then
shook her head. “No I don’t buy it. I think you’re in the position
of the goat in a tiger hunt. You know—the goat that gets staked out
to be killed by the tiger?”

“You’re much more of a mental opponent than I
had envisioned. I thought Gordon here was the mouthy one?” he said,
frowning at me.

“Oh, he is, Agent Gentis, by far. Except when
he’s really, really angry. It seems to me that everyone would have
figured out by now that pushing him and making him angry ends up
with him another level stronger and the pushers….well….dead!”

I had tried mono blading my wrists to cut the
cuffs but the blades wouldn’t form. Of course, it was only steel
with a DU coating so the whole time I had been sitting there, I’d
been stretching the steel, pressing with constant, very slow
pressure. Now, I just pulled my left wrist free, grabbed the metal
seat back behind me and crushed the chair.

It shouldn’t have been possible, there wasn’t
any natural way to get any leverage to pull down, but vampire
energy methods make the impossible possible. I Posted to the floor
through the soles of my feet, then Pulled both with my legs and
with energy, dropping into a squat. My left hand shot up and
grabbed the barrel of the rifle, pulling it down toward Gentis
while I crouched low as the steel chair was crushed flat like a
soda can. My right hand grabbed my guard’s leg and pulled it from
under him.

The gauss rifle made a high pitched whine
then a super loud crack as the depleted uranium round left the
barrel at six or seven times the speed of sound, blasted through
the air just above Gentis’s head and blew through the building
behind it as if the bricks didn’t exist.

My grip crushed the barrel then let go, which
was good, because the next shot blew the gun all apart, taking a
sizeable portion of the guard’s right hand and forearm with it.

While I was playing with new toys, Tanya had
been busy. She went up instead of down, jumping into a back flip,
circling her bound hands under her tucked feet even as she came
down behind her very surprised guard. His shock was cut short by
her bound wrists which went under his chin, against his throat,
then broke his neck and back as he performed an impossible back
bend at her insistence.

My crushed chair wasn’t very much use to me
anymore so I threw it like a Frisbee at one of the guards in the
back of the room. Then I raced it to see which of us got to the
guards first. I’ll call it a tie, though if I’m honest, the chair
might have won by a centimeter. It took the blonde guard, Blade,
off her feet and part way through the wall. I sent Katana along
beside her with a straight arm to his sternum, which collapsed
before it met the wall. A glance to my left found the other two
guards dead, one draped through the now broken mirror glass into
the empty observation room. My girlfriend was standing between them
with blood on both bound hands.

Gentis was crouched behind his desk, shocked,
his hand covering the ear on the side of his that the gauss round
had passed. Probably a busted eardrum from having a hypersonic
projectile pass next to it.

“Wow, Gentis, these new guns are cool!” Grim
said using my voice, while I ripped Tanya’s cuffs apart.

Picking up a Gauss rifle, I examined it.
Blocky and overly heavy, it was packed with batteries,
transformers, and the barrel was ringed with coils. Like a railgun,
it used magnetic fields to accelerate a projectile much faster than
chemical propellants could, pushing the kinetic energy of each
round to explosive levels. The thing had to weigh thirty pounds
making it unsuitable for most troops but these had been much
stronger than normal humans. Still, even at thirty pounds it was a
technological achievement. I was most likely holding the future of
combat weapon craft in my hands.

Tanya blurred across the room, scooped Gentis
up by his neck and slammed him down on the desk top. Her face was
frozen and cold –beautiful but cold.

“What are those soldiers?” she asked, her
voiced pitched for compliance.

A wet stain appeared on Gentis’s crotch as he
answered in a shrill and shaky voice.

“Human soldiers, treated with an enhancement
drug.”

“And where does this drug come from?”

“Vampires. The idea came from the Hance drug
that hit the streets a few years back. But this is just a mélange
of proteins and enzymes, purified from vampire blood.”

“How do you get it?” she asked, her voice
scary even to me and I was on her side.

“W…wee..we’ve captured a few vampires over
the y-years,” he replied.

She studied him for a second, then bit,
faster than thought. His legs kicked for a moment before he passed
out. She drank for a second or two, then stopped, wiping her mouth
with the back of one hand. She glanced at me and grimaced.

“He pissed me off,” she said, looking just
slightly chagrined at her own actions.

“How was it?” I asked in my own voice.

“Sour,” was her answer.

***

Leaving the customs station
wasn’t as easy as escaping Gentis. Mostly because we both agreed we
should avoid hurting any
real
law enforcement types or any civilians.

Our first order of business was freeing
Awasos, but when we left the customs building we found the Kubota
tractor that had blocked the rear of the car was flipped on its
side and the back of the SUV was ripped open. The other pieces of
equipment showed damage; metal operator cages shredded, engine
cowlings smashed, and in the case of the giant front-end loader,
one of the massive tires was destroyed.

An enraged roar told us where our were bear
was, about eighty yards away, between the bridge to Canada and the
customs building. We raced at vampire speed but just as we arrived
two Border Patrol agents opened fire on ‘Sos with M4 rifles on full
auto.

My bear cowered in the face of the gunfire
and I flipped out. Completely. One massive aura burst left my body
and every loaded firearm in a two hundred yard radius exploded.
Holstered, held in hands or left in vehicles, it didn’t matter. The
cartridges all simultaneously fired, blasting out the bottom of
grips, bursting metal magazines, jamming actions and barrels. In
that one instant it was over. Except for the panicked screams of
the travelers and the cries of pain and shock from the agents, the
action was done. The crunch of fenders and bumpers smacking each
other was loud and clear as panicked travelers sought to get over
the bridge and away from the violence at the border station.

Awasos was already healing from the bullet
wounds as we led him away from the chaos my little trick had
caused.

“That’s a new one,” Tanya commented.

“Yeah, I didn’t know that was a possibility.
Grim came up with it,” I said.

“Your Grim side has a real genius for
mayhem,” she said with admiration, which oddly made me slightly
jealous, which was stupid. Grim is me and I am Grim. As I thought
this, Tanya grabbed my hand and smiled. “Two sides to the same
coin,” she said.