Haywire (27 page)

His mother patted his knee and stood up. “Okay. I’ll go pay the bill. Meet me outside.”

Shawn rose to his feet without hassle, but Artemis had to push herself up, and her legs were less than steady. When they got outside he noticed that the Promenade was less busy than it had been before. Much less.

“
Wow, break time must be over,” he said. “Their bosses are slave drivers.”

Artemis looked around, her shiny eyes taking in everything around her. His enhanced vision noted that her temperature rose and her body stiffened. “Odd. The foot traffic in this area has dropped more than seventy percent since we entered the restaurant, but I didn’t hear any bells or shift alarms. They could be operating on a different clock cycle, but–”

“
Are we ready to go?” his mother asked as she exited the restaurant. Door chimes gave her words a cheery note.

Shawn looked at Artemis, who still stared up and down the Promenade, then said, “Yeah, I think so.”

His mother took the lead, and together they made their way to the corridor that led back to the
Bonny Lad
. As they passed a row of stores and entered an area crowded with vending machines, he noticed that the number of people around them had slowly thinned to zero. Suddenly a voice called out to them.

“
This is the AFI. You are surrounded. Stop where you are and put your hands in the air.”

Artemis’s reaction was so fast Shawn barely saw her move. Her armor sprang through her skin, shredding the spacesuit that had covered it and increasing her size by a considerable margin. Blades extended from her arms, and she crouched low, her head moving every direction at once, looking for threats.

There were many.

Shawn turned one direction and then another, and all around him figures move into view, each of them armed. Half of them wore black outfits that reminded him of shows where federal agents went in for a bust, their shoulders bearing American Alliance patches and AFI stenciled across their chests. The rest of them wore red and black clothes with SECURITY printed across their chests in bold letters.

Confusion swirled through his head at the sudden turn of events, and while part of him wanted to break free and unleash his nanites as Artemis had, another part still wanted to keep them hidden, pretend he was still just a kid. But then he saw a face among the federal agents that he recognized.

“
Alicia, please tell the Titan to stand down,” Agent Alex Delgado said. Shawn recalled his face from the picture in his mother’s house. Her boyfriend looked a lot more imposing with a gun held out in front of him and a team of armed agents backing him up.

“
Alex?” his mother asked as she turned to face him. “Is that you?”

Agent Delgado lowered his gun, but he didn’t holster it or flick the safety. “Yeah, Alicia, it’s me. Before things get more out of control than they already are, I need you to tell me what happened. There are a lot of dead bodies at the museum, and a lot of questions about how they got there. Tell the Titan to stand down, and then follow us back to our shuttle. Will you do that for me?”

His mother opened her mouth to reply, but before a word could leave her lips a loud shot thundered through the corridor, and a federal agent fell to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut. Everything after that was chaos and flashing alarms.

When Alex heard the first shot, his instinct was to duck and find cover. But, when he saw Agent Grace fall to the ground with a ragged hole blown through her head, he snapped his eyes toward where he’d last seen Alicia and hoped she hadn’t met a similar fate. When he found her alive and whole, relief poured over him, but then he saw the figure that stood guard over her, and reality slipped. It was her son, his face so familiar from pictures Alicia had shown him over dinners and late night talks, but the young man he’d looked forward to meeting was not who he saw now. Shawn was encased in armor similar to the female Titan standing close to him, and claws grew from his hands, their points sharp light glinted off them. As the realization of what had been done to the boy settled in, it answered some of the questions raised by the investigation, yet created all new ones in their place.

But questions and answers had to wait. At that moment Alex had far more pressing matters to attend to, such as who was shooting at them. He dove for cover as another shot rang out, followed by a smattering of automatic fire. Bright orange lights spun and speakers blared from alarm panels on the walls above him as the station’s alert system let everyone know bad things were happening. Shadows ran down corridors as people scrambled toward the nearest escape pod.

“
Take cover!” Agent Hutchins said as he propped his back against a support pillar. The rest of the SWAT team and the station security were already moving.

Behind his own pillar, Alex shifted to the right and looked back at Alicia. Being the smart and capable woman she was, she’d already moved to hide herself between two tall vending machines four meters away, and her son stooped down next to her. The female Titan moved like lighting toward a crossway at one end of the corridor, and then turned her gaze toward the other end. A helmet covered her face, but the way she held her head and shoulders said she was hunting.

“
What’s going on, Alex?” Alicia shouted. Panicked danced at the edge of her voice, but she hadn’t given into it yet. Good for her.

“
I don’t know,” he replied, raising his voice to be heard over the alert system. “Someone just killed one of my people, so they aren’t friendly. Maybe it’s those pirates you fought with back on Callisto.”

The Titan stopped staring down the corridors and shook her head. “No, these aren’t pirates. Those were idiots. These are profess–”

Her words where interrupted when a high velocity round struck her helmet with a resounding gong. It didn’t break through the armor, but the force of it spun her around and sent her to one knee. Just then a shot struck the pillar Alex was using for cover less than four centimeters from his face. What startled him more was that the shot had come from the opposite direction as the first one.

They were surrounded.

Alex turned to warn everyone, but as two more SWAT agents and three security guards fell – the kill shots coming from all different directions – they clued in quickly enough. Those who could scrambled behind vending machines and put as much cover around them as possible. Others moved to food stalls. The rest hunkered down and kept their eyes opened.

Alex spun out from the pillar and settled between vending machines just a meter down from Alicia. As he ran he saw several people dressed head to toe in black armor dashing down the corridor toward him. They all held large machine guns and they moved with the synchronized perfection of highly trained soldiers. A large stone settled into Alex’s stomach as he thought about what that might mean.

“
If they want a fight,” the Titan said as her arm blades shortened and curved into scythes, “then I’ll give them one.”

Shawn reached out his hand and said, “Artemis, wait!” but he was too late. She was off like a cannonball before his first word could hit the air.

Alex gasped at the blazing speed with which she raced down the corridor and engaged their attackers. Her arms swung like a farmer out harvesting wheat, and within seconds three soldiers were cut down. Their armor clanged as it hit the deck.

“
Delgado, we have to move,” Hutchins said as two more soldiers moved into view, this time from their right.

“
Then go,” Shawn said as he moved to a vending machine further down, ripped it from the floor, and threw it at the approaching soldiers. They scattered like roaches as the hunk of metal tumbled toward them. “Get my mother out of here!”

Alicia, always the practical person, shook her head. “We have to decide where we’re moving to first. The ship we came in on is that way.”

She pointed over her shoulder. Alex shuffled his feet to look that way, but a hailstorm of bullets forced him back. Several pinged off Shawn’s armor. He flinched, but none pierced his hide.

Hutchins dove from his cover and settled in next to Alex. Space was getting tight.

“
Our ship is down the corridor to the left,” the SWAT commander said. “It’s closer, and right now fewer bullets seem to be coming from that way. If we tighten up and keep the suppression fire going, we can make it.”

Shawn looked at his mother, then turned and looked at the other Titan. An intense struggle played out on his face, but after a few moments he nodded and said, “Alright, go that way. Artemis and I can handle these guys. It doesn’t look like their weapons can hurt us.” He then popped his head up, shouted, “Artemis!” and pointed to the hallway Hutchins had indicated.

More fire rained above Alex, but he had to know what the situation was, so he peeked his head out. Several black figures were approaching from corridors on the right and ahead of them, but a pile of bodies in another said the Titan had been busy. She removed her blade from a solder’s chest and move toward another one, but when she turned to face Shawn, the soldier swung his arms at her and sent her flying backwards. The soldiers weren’t wearing just any armor – it was powered. Great.

“
Oh no,” Shawn said when Artemis didn’t immediately jump back up. “I think she’s breaking down again. I better go–”

The Titan was slow to rise, but her legs still worked, and she used them to kick at the soldier who’d knocked her down. Her feet broadened into sledgehammers, and when they rammed into the soldier blood poured from his helmet in a bright red spray as he flew through the air. Artemis then pushed herself to her feet and moved toward their exit corridor.

“
That’s our cue, folks,” Hutchins said. “Rally on corridor Blue-Three on my mark!”

Alex looked at Alicia from around cover, and her eyes were wide and gleaming white. She was still alive though, and he intended to keep her that way.

Shawn’s heart pumped hard enough for a warning message to appear in his eyes. He tried to calm himself, but the sporadic spraying of bullets and the cries of the wounded had him wound too tight. It wasn’t until his mother touched his arm that his brain settled in his head.

“
It’s okay,” she said. “We’re okay. I... I hate to ask this, but... can you help get us out of here?”

He nodded and tapped her fingers. Even though he’d never been in a violent situation like that in his life, he wasn’t afraid. Without realizing he was doing it he’d already started planning where to move, what weapon to use, and where cover was in relation to the people shooting at him. Artemis had mentioned his nanites came preloaded with basic combat training, and now he knew what she’d meant.

“
Yeah, I can do that.” He shifted his gaze to Alex and Agent Hutchins. “Give me a few seconds, and then get moving.”

After they nodded back, he rolled out and moved toward a pair of soldiers sneaking up from their rear. In the upper right corner of his vision he saw a simple map of the area around him, a map created by his nanite-enhanced senses as they took in all of the sights and sounds. Red dots appeared, representing the attacking soldiers, and green dots represented everyone else. It should have been a strange thing to have hanging in his sight, but too many years of playing gaming had made him used to the idea of a HUD. But this wasn’t a game, and the stakes were life and death.

Moving quickly he dashed forward and grabbed a soldier by the throat. The soldier tried to remove his hand, and the strength he displayed took Shawn by surprise, but Shawn’s muscles were stronger than the soldier’s powered armor, and he crushed the soldier’s metal-clad neck in a crunch of bone and muscle.

Vomit rose up his throat as he realized what he’d just done. He hadn’t thought about it as he’d leapt forward, just worked on instinct, knowing he had to do whatever he could to save his mother. His fingers had broken the man’s neck so easily, taking almost no effort at all. If he could do that to a soldier in state-of-the-art powered armor, what could a horde of crazed Titans do? He shuddered, partially in horror at the horror that was coming, and partially at the life he’d just taken. As the dead soldier slid to the floor he thought he could still feel the broken neck in his hand.

“
Shawn,” Alex called out behind him, “look out!”

Shawn turned just as another soldier grabbed his shoulders and shoved him into a wall. The pain was intense, but it also woke him up. He pushed away from the wall and returned the favor by grabbing the soldier’s right arm and spinning him into a section of wall that turned to lead down another corridor. The man’s body hit the corner with so much force he nearly folded in half.

“
Start backing toward us,” Artemis said in his head, startling him. At first it felt like some sort of telepathic connection, but then he noted a small comm window in the upper left of his sight. He hadn’t been aware that Titans could generate their own radio channels. That was handy. “I’m-I’m-I’m clearing the way ahead.”

Not sure how long she could hold things together, Shawn stepped backward and looked over his shoulder as the last of the SWAT agents cleared the area. He turned to follow them, but energy packets drummed a staccato beat up his chest from a pair of soldiers moving to take the place of the two he’d just killed. Their weapons didn’t penetrate his armor, but they still stung like hell. Long claws extended from his fingers, and he dashed down the corridor, moving from side to side to avoid their fire. They backpedaled, but he was on them as their ammo clips ran dry. The one on the right was dead within seconds as he tore though the armor and severed the soldier’s heart. The soldier on the left lowered himself and delivered a powerful blow to Shawn’s abdomen as his partner’s body fell. Sharp pain lanced though Shawn’s midriff, but he grabbed the soldier’s arm and used it to lift him off the ground and hammer him into the wall. The wall plates dented. As the soldier hit the deck, Shawn drove his claws through armor and chest muscle. Death was instantaneous.