Targeted

Day Two

Earth

Prowling his own quiet backyard or asleep by the fire, he is still only a whisker away from the wilds.

- Jean Burden

It was time to go, so I signaled Mehta to follow me, and headed to the door.

I felt the stone chips hit my face before I heard the passing of the flechette. I instinctively rolled backwards through the door, pulling Mehta in with me. His dive back into the apartment was actually more of a collapse. He was conscious, but he was in shock. I couldn't blame him, it had been a hard couple of days for him.

I crawled over to the window and peered past a closed curtain.

"They must be in the trees." I said, trying vainly to calm him. Still no response.

Mehta just lay on the floor staring at the torn image in the frame.

"We were followed after all. Someone really does not want us here," I said. "I suggest waiting a few minutes," I replied.

"We need to do something," Mehta whispered.

"We are. We are waiting."

I had misunderstood him. He was reaching around me, pulling at the curtains. "We have to do something!"

Two shots rang out, followed by a grunt. Mehta stumbled back, a new cut spilling a trickle of blood down his cheek. In his hands he held the torn curtain. He stood up again, unaware of anything but Imanda. Another shot broke through the glass and clipped him on the shoulder, but he ignored it. He carefully wrapped the curtain over Imanda's shoulders and brought it around her back, covering her nakedness and wounds.

Then we heard what I was waiting for. A scream. The scream of a man being attacked by something out his nightmare. Something, say, like a large black cat.

"And now we can move," I informed him.

I crept out the door. I hadn't taken a step before another flechette exploded above my head.

OK. Two shooters. I threw myself back into the apartment.

"Mehta?" I said quietly.

He finally shook himself out of his grief for a moment. "So what's the plan?" he asked.

"We wait." What the hell, I thought. It worked for me last time.

"Do you think this is the same person who killed Imanda?" I could see the pre-emptive rage rising in him.

"No. I do not think so."

"If not the sniper, then who do you think killed her?" he asked.

"Gregson, or someone working for him, perhaps. Or with him."

Mehta paused. "But, why? I don't understand. What would she have to give them?" It was the question I was waiting for, or something like it.

I turned to him. "Whoever did this wasn't after Imanda. This is all about Leena."

"Why all this for an escaped prisoner?" he asked, staring at Imanda's body.

"I am not entirely sure. I can't seem to put my finger on just why right now. I have the sense, though, that Leena is probably the most important person in the system right now."

The stench from the house was still stomach turning, so staying here was the least desirable of my options. I decided to continue with Plan A.

"We keep w–"

I heard the angry yell of a man in the trees, followed by the sounds of crashing through branches and leaves. Then the sound of a cat yowling in surprise. I wasn't expecting that last one.

Darwin came bolting out of the trees, eating up the distance between us in mere minutes. The thing that surprised me is that he looked for all the world like he was running FROM something, and I had never seen him do that before.

From the trees behind him burst another figure. It was, by initial appearances, a man. But he was moving too quickly, arms and legs pumping at an impossible pace. I had a brief glimpse shining metal and saw the spatter of a black fluid draining from his left arm where his shirt had been shredded.

"Cyborg!" I warned Mehta.

This was getting a little ridiculous. Whoever went to the expense of sending a cyborg after me was serious about having me become a resident of the local morgue. I realized that someone else knew how important Leena was, and was sparing no expense to get to her first. The race was on. I just had to survive this next leg.

"Mehta, get out of here, the cyborg is after me!" But he was frozen. I shouldn't have said anything.

"Mehta!" Still no response. He was frozen solid and the juggernaut was maybe three minutes away.

Then I slapped him. You have to understand how hard that was for me. Being on the receiving end is bad enough.

Darwin arrived and all but skidded to a halt, loping into the gruesome apartment to stand next to me in full bared-teeth extended-claws defense mode.

I looked around quickly and spotted a hand lamp with a standard power pack. I pulled out the pack and bashed it against the floor to disable the safety. Then I reversed and jammed it back into the lamp. The cyborg had come to a standstill outside the apartment. He was smiling, which was not a good sign.

"Get ready to run," I informed Mehta quietly.

I turned on the hand lamp as soon as the cyborg hit the door. I could hear the feedback whine start rising.

"Catch," I said to the cyborg, then threw it at him. He may have had biomechatronic parts, but he was still human in a sense, and in one of those weird psychological pre-programming flukes, when someone says 'catch,' you either duck or catch. He caught. The resulting explosion blasted away most of the door frame, and knocked our mechanical man back into the facing house. It wouldn't hold him for long.

I looked at Darwin. "Now, if you wouldn't mind." He gave me an 'I was waiting for you' look, then bounded off towards the rear of the small housing complex. I scooped up my bag and followed him.

Mehta had finally vanished by this time. I wasn't counting on him sending help, so Darwin and I were on our own.

I took a moment to release the diamond wire from my bag. I had embedded it into one of the handles for quick retrieval. It was a hand to hand weapon, and one meant for stealth, not attack. But it was all I had left.

We finally rounded the corner and I came to a halt. Apparently, this particular neighborhood was on a lakeshore. A manufactured lake, to be sure, but all full up with real water, the kind you can't just run across.

I could hear the rhythmic pumping of the cyborg's legs, a little slower now, but steady nonetheless. Even injured, he could easily run me down. I decided to make a stand at the lakeside.

I tucked myself around the corner of one of the outbuildings close to the lakeshore. For a manufactured lake, it looked pretty good. Reeds at the water's edge, docks along the sandy shore, the occasional skiff moored up. I heard the cyborg slow as he rounded the corner and saw the lake.

The one flaw in my plan, as I now saw it, was that if I was not immediately visible running away, then the process of deduction would force my hunter to conclude that I was hiding behind one of the outbuildings by the lakeside. I never said it was a perfect plan.

Darwin had taken a post on the roof above me, ready to pounce when the cyborg came in range. He wouldn't make the same mistake twice. I hoped he was going to go for the fleshy body parts instead of the arms this time. Then again, he usually was very good at learning the lay of the land.

What followed happened so quickly it seemed choreographed.

The cyborg rounded the corner of my hiding spot ready for battle. I couldn't believe my eyes. His left arm had been blown off below the elbow but the scars in the metal visibly healing. Great, I thought. Nanotech self-repair. This was a VERY expensive cyborg. Someone really wanted me very very dead. I had to act before the cyborg could complete its self-repair sequence.

I tried to throw a loop of diamond wire around his neck, but he raised his remaining hand in defense.

The wire tangled in his right arm, slicing easily through the cloth and surface skin, but it ended up jamming in the metal of his servos and skeleton. I tried to loosen it but only managed to tangle it even more. Diamond wire was designed to slice easily through flesh and bone. Hardened metal alloys were not part of the design spec.

He swung me up off the ground with his only remaining arm. His hand was seized up in a gripping position by the wire now tangled in amongst his servos, so he was swinging his arm wildly to try to dislodge me. I should have let go at this point, but I still thought I could turn this to my advantage.

When I heard a hiss in my ear, I realized that I had made an error. All my aerial acrobatics were doing was preventing Darwin from getting a clear shot at the cyborg. He was telling me to get out of his way. I was trying to not get smashed against the shed wall, so our goals were temporarily out of alignment.

The stump of the cyborg's right arm kept coming up, attempting to choke me, but succeeded only in spraying me with lubricant. My grip was starting to slip. I almost reached for the diamond wire to get a better grip, but realized that I would probably have lost a few fingers in the process. The attempt, however, resulted only in completely unbalancing both of us.

As we went down into the sand, Darwin made his move. He leapt from the roof, landing squarely onto my assailant's back. This elicited a mere grimace from the cyborg. Darwin tried to cause some more serious damage, but I only heard the sound of claws on metal. Was this guy entirely artificial?

We rolled for a bit in the sand and I finally was able to land a punch in his gut. Yes, you guessed it. Metal as well. Apparently laughing boy had money to burn because the cost of his modifications would have run a medium sized space station for a year.

Thankfully, it was a glancing blow, so I didn't break any fingers, but I still had no advantage. We came apart on the ground and he sprang to his feet with a surreal agility. His next move was primitive but deadly. Or it would have been had he managed to connect his stomping foot with my head.

The ground shook with the force of his step and the sand sprayed the back of my head as I rolled away. I finally managed to get my feet under me. Darwin took another leap at his chest, but the cyborg smashed his remaining arm against his own chest in an effort to crush him. Darwin, however, evaded both the arm and the foot by climbing up!

He ran up the cyborg's chest, burying his claws into his cheeks. Now the cyborg screamed in pain.

"The head!" I cried, "Go for the head!"

Darwin actually managed a 'no kidding' look as he leapt from the cyborg back to the ground and started circling again, looking for his next opportunity to attack.

I had no weapon on the other hand, natural or otherwise. My only remaining weapon was now in the possession of the one I wanted to use it against. The diamond wire was still embedded in the cyborg's left arm and one end was swinging wildly. I thought that if I could grab that end and go for the neck, I could finish this.

It would seem that Darwin had spotted the same weakness and decided to act at the same time I did. As I leapt in, I ducked under the swinging half-arm and made a grab for the handle of the diamond wire. If I had missed the handle and grabbed the wire instead, I would have had to part with several digits. As it was, my luck held. Or did it?

Darwin had elected to make his move at the same time, leaping to the cyborg's head and reaching around to the eyes with his fore claws he dug in, stabilizing himself for the kill. This he accomplished by opening both of the cyborg's jugular veins with his back claws.

The now profusely bleeding assassin instinctively swung both his arms up to belatedly protect his neck, but only managed to tangle me in a knot of arms and diamond wire. Though he wasn't crushing me, I couldn't extricate myself without slicing something vital open.

We stood there together in this awkward embrace for a moment while his life's blood drained from his neck and onto my face. Then, his strength drained away like his blood, he started to collapse on me, the diamond wire cutting a shallow slice into my arm. Darwin climbed over from his perch on the cyborg's head and, reaching the diamond wire, opened his jaw to bite it in half.

"NO!" I yelled. "It will kill you!"

His look asked 'd'you have any better ideas,' which of course, I did not. The collapse continued, unfortunately, and I was dragged with it. More unfortunately, I also knew what came next.

"Darwin," I said quietly, "you should get us some help. Quickly."

Darwin leapt from the cyborg and watched helplessly as both the dying cyborg and I fell into the lake.