The Post-Humans (Book 1): The League (32 page)

Seeing Brick was a relief, he and Esther had responded effectively.

Brad could hear Brick fearlessly hammering shot after shot towards the guards.

He wasn’t the most accurate shooter, but his courage made up for it.

One guard went down, critically hit and another held back using cover.

They were actors in slow motion.

It was all buying Brad the time he needed to get to the enclosures behind the plastic screens.

One of them had to be Furnace.

A bullet ripped through the protective pants he wore. It was a glancing hit; he had been too late seeing it gliding towards him. It broke through the skin, and Brad watched with fascination as the dark cherry liquid splashed out in a fan of tiny droplets.

He knew that some stage soon he would feel the pain, but he couldn’t afford it now.

He took this chance to make another run, this time, to the area with the big plastic curtains. He was moving so quickly that the steel equipment and computers all looked like simple objects blocking his way, only the things that moved were of any real consequence.

Brad slid over a table and then behind the white plastic screen that divided the area from the rest.

To his surprise there were big glass cases with a bed and a collection of computers and other equipment.

In the bed of the first glass case was an Asian girl, he couldn’t tell if it was Kiranda through the glass.

Then his attention was drawn to a dull thud, which echoed strangely in his heightened state of perception.

It came from the next cell.

He saw a second figure beating on the front of her glass prison. The cell was the second in a row of three. He couldn’t make out the third cell’s occupant, but the second was definitely Kiranda. She could hear the gunfire on the other side of the screen no doubt and was trying to get help.

“
Yoooouuuuuu
!” The word blurred out of the air somewhere behind him, even in his heightened state, he had no time. There was someone after him now, he had no chance of reaching the cell before he was attacked, especially if it was Cal. There were still over ten metres between him and the cell.

He pulled the Colt 45 from the back of his pants. If ever he needed accuracy, it was now. He aimed the handgun at the glass and steel latch of Kiranda’s cell and pulled the trigger once, then again. As he squeezed the trigger a third time he felt his body being shoved to the floor and a pain roared up his back.

The floor rushed up to meet him and everything went black.

The world came sparkling back to life, first with the white glow of the fluorescent lights above him, then the echoes of gunfire and the crashing of steel. There was Kiranda’s face looking desperately down into his.

It had been a long time.

“Can you walk?” she pressed, laying a hand on the wound on his leg and cringing. Kiranda was still an attractive girl, but her time in captivity and made its mark. She looked tired and a little under nourished, but her expression softened by relief.

“Maybe…” Brad tried to sit up, and felt a horrible pain erupt through his body. “Aaaah… Dammit! What was that sound?” he groaned.

“Someone’s driven a truck through the front.” Kiranda gestured with her head, the direction of the front of the facility. “Someone started World War Three out there.”

Brad half smiled.

Cleary’s group have made their dramatic entrance.

“I invited them to the party.” He tried to reach the sore part of his back to check the damage. “
Shit.”

“Got you good I guess. He clocked you with that over the back.” She pointed to long dented pipe on the ground. “Then I did my thing and he ran off like a little girl.”

Brad saw the burning computer consoles and black scorches on the concrete.

“Cal?”

“Cal? No, that American tosser. The bald one with the smug look on his face.”

“I was wondering where he got to.” Brad looked at the other glass cases and the broken hatchway on the side of the one that Kiranda had been inside. Then he looked back to Kiranda who knelt in a paper gown.

She smiled at him, like old times, but two bullets ripping through the plastic screens broke the moment.

Brad pulled himself up “I’ll free the others, you get us out of here.”

“What? I thought you were rescuing me!” Kiranda protested, but he knew she was joking.

“Trust me, lives have been lost to get us this far. And Cal is out there. The humans, they don’t have a chance.”

“Cal,” Kiranda said, frowning, “son of a bitch is brainwashed.”

“No kidding. Do what you have to do. The guys in black are friends.”

She nodded, suddenly all business.

Brad stumbled over to the first cell to let the prisoner free. The girl was strapped to the bed. Brad realized she was the probably the Indonesian Post-Human Seeker.

Kiranda walked with bare feet across the concrete floor to where bullets were flying in all directions.

There was a girl close to her, hiding behind a fermenter.

She was in black, so Kiranda figured she must be one of Apollo’s agents.

The girl looked over and relief came over her face. It had been a long time since Kiranda had seen that kind of look.

There was a clanging on the steel walkway above her, and through the grill she could see the khaki uniforms, the same ones she had been seeing every day since she had been caught.

It was time for them to fry.

Kiranda closed her eyes and let her feelings take control.

The tingle and throb erupted in her head and she could feel it rushing like water through her arms and legs. The goose bumps made her skin feel like it was someone else’s, somehow alive.

She looked at her hands and saw the shimmer of yellow and blue. It rippled up from her hands over her torso and through her legs. The paper dress began to darken, then it erupted in flames, leaving her naked with shimmering flames licking her body.

Don’t hold back
, she told herself.

And then she concentrated.

The flames grew a little larger then exploded up into the mezzanine and out across the floor.

The guards above began to scream as their clothes and skin burned and the air was ripped from their lungs.

She had become a human torch. No, a human
bonfire
.

The flames reached twenty feet high and swept across the floor like a golden storm.

“
Get out now
!” she yelled back to the girl in black hiding behind the fermenter. The gunfire in the facility was slowing down as the security and Brad’s fighters realized the growing danger.

Furnace cast her right hand at some equipment, and cast a ball of flames through the air. It crashed into the barricade, sending one guard running though the facility with his back and right arm ablaze.

Another ball of fire smashed into the woman who had cast the net at Brad only moments earlier, and she was left as a smoking, crackling husk.

Kiranda moved across the floor slowly and purposefully, like a God.

The iron roof creaked and popped as it heated and windows exploded.

Nowhere was safe.

There was a familiar figure amongst the fray; a human Kiranda recognized.

It was the bald man in the suit.

Evan Boothe.

He was shielding his eyes with one hand and trying to aim a gun with the other. She concentrated on the weapon and it grew hot and then began to fall apart.

The man dropped the useless thing on the ground and stared at her furiously.

“Next time, Miss Till. I promise, you freaks are gonna pay. You won’t be getting any of the warm hospitality that we gave you this time round. I’ll put you down personally, like a stray dog!” he yelled and turned to run, but not before Kiranda’s fire ran a circle around him.

There was no escape.

He couldn’t jump over the flames, and they were too hot to get close.

“You are going to pay for what you did to Nadya and my friends!” Kiranda hissed, and as she uttered the words she rushed towards the bald man and embraced his screaming form.

Boothe writhed and squirmed trying to escape. His screams became chokes as the air was sucked from his lungs.

She held his body until there was nothing left to hold.

Her flames began to diminish as she saw that the facility was mostly empty.

Only two terrified men in black outfits were left.

She frowned a little as she saw a man in a smart blue suit coming toward her.

Cal had never been one for business suits and smart haircuts, but seeing him this way made her realize how brainwashed he really was.

“Cal? Don’t you remember anything?”

“You killed Mr Boothe! You killed my boss!” Cal yelled at her accusingly.

Kiranda’s flames began to grow again.

“
No
!” she screamed as Cal charged at her with his arms outstretched, his iron fingers ready to crush her head to a bloody pulp.

He had only just grabbed her when there was the boom of a high caliber handgun and his head was thrown sideways.

Kiranda stepped back and unleashed a storm of fire around her body, Cal was tossed through the air into the machinery, wailing.

He crawled out of the tangle of smashed machines still screaming. His body was mutilated. His hands were gone leaving two bony claws, and his face was a mess of blood and burned flesh. Most of Terrance Floyd was immolated, his clothes were smoking charred rags and his skin was melted and stretched. There was blood everywhere.

Several metres away Brad stood, supported by Cynthia. He was brandishing the Colt 45.

The wounded beast of a man ambled about glaring at them, then made a dash for the entrance and the cold night air leaving the three of them standing in the burning facility, the sad remnants of The League.

Brad’s people began moving around the facility collecting the equipment and dragging the injured to where they could be treated.

Kiranda’s flame dissipated leaving her naked and cold.

“I can’t believe that was Cal. He was our friend,” Cynthia said, helping Brad sit down.

“Hopefully the others caught him and put him down,” Brad said as he hissed in pain. “I don’t think I’ll be fighting for a little while.”

“Where’s Nadya?” Kiranda said looking at the two friends.

“She’s alive, don’t worry. She’s hooked up to some stuff and couldn’t move. We will need a hand to get her out.” Cynthia reassured her friend. “And we better get us some clothes.” She said looking at Kiranda’s soot streaked naked body and her own paper gown.

Brad mused as he looked out of the smashed roller doors into the night and the sparkling city lights. They had found Furnace, but they had also found the girl Nadya, the Seeker.

Then what is happening at the Lucas building?

He rubbed at his sore back.

They feared that the Seeker girl was being used as some kind of radar to locate all the Post-Humans. And according to the equipment in her cell that is exactly what they had been doing, but she was here. Meaning there was some other reason for all the radio transmitters and the many coma patients with their synthetic dreams.

Brad shook his head.

What is Athan getting himself into out there?

He suspected that Athan knew something about the Lucas and Associates company that he did not.

He hoped it wasn’t a trap.

Cynthia gave Brad a friendly slap on the knee.

“Good to have you back,” Brad sighed. “I fear we may be getting a little too old for this.”

Cynthia laughed. “It is good be together again.” She watched as Brad’s people ran around the warehouse carrying first aid kits and stretchers. “But I disagree about us being too old.”

Brad sat the gun on the warm scorched concrete floor beside him.

One of his people came in and offered Kiranda a blanket and she wrapped herself in it before ordering them to follow her to where her friend Nadya was being held.

As they disappeared into the warehouse Brad turned to face the city lights, that he could now see clearly through the open doors.

Another blanket was offered and Cynthia took it and sat down next to Brad.

“We are not getting too old. Why do you think that, Apollo?” She stared out with him.

“I have spent so much of my adult life trying to make the most of a gift that I was given. I have a woman that loves me and I have been living a safe and secret life.” He turned to her. “But I was building myself a tomb.”

Cynthia nodded her understanding.

“Tonight wasn’t just The League again, it was life. I wasn’t just the man in front of the screen.” He looked back out and wondered which tower was Lucas and Associates.

“All of us, Apollo. We have all been living in limbo.” Cynthia looked back over to where Kiranda had disappeared. “Except maybe our friendly
glowstick
back there.”

Brad chuckled.

Cynthia patted him on the back. “We were meant for this. We can’t suppress who we are. Wherever we go and what ever we do, we need to first be true to ourselves. We aren’t like the rest of them. They can deviate from which ever paths they choose. Post-Humans are the same, but with a built in compass that always tells us where the best direction is.” She smiled. “I think at least the two of us have been living a lie. It’s time for us to wake up and show the world our purpose.”

Brad had always enjoyed talks with Cynthia, she was a little older than himself and had a very sketchy past, but she had learned many harsh lessons along the way.

“Deadfall, would you care to join Athan and myself in potentially saving the world?”

Cynthia smiled a little and stared out at the sparkling lights.

“Why not. It’s what we were born for.”

ATHAN CHARGED UP the carpeted stairs to the seventeenth floor with Dempsey and Steve close behind.

It was a beautiful and expensive looking open break area with a cafeteria and numerous leather lounge suites and glass coffee tables. At the back was a man in a suit, flanked by two guards. The guards had guns drawn and were ready to fire. “Split!” Dempsey hissed and ducked to the left behind a wooden divider. Athan and Steve followed suit, and only just in time, bullets crashed through glass tabletops and thumped into lounges.