Weir Codex 1: The Cestus Concern (21 page)

“Designate Cestus,” said Morrell, the modulation of his voice mimicking the now all too familiar robotic nature of a Project: Hardwired GMR unit. “You are hereby ordered to submit to my authority as a duly appointed representative of Project: Hardwired.”

Without warning, Mal cold-cocked Kristin’s soon-to-be ex-husband with a left-cross to his jaw, sending the man sprawling across the floor.

“Run!” screamed the cyborg super-soldier, springing into action.

Flipping the table up in the air with his hands, Mal roundhouse kicked it into Morrell and his team of government-sent assassins, sending them all crashing to the black tiled floor in a heap of tangled limbs. An instant later he had Kristin and Zuz running through the restaurant towards the exit.

Compact MP5K machine guns sprang into four of the downed men’s hands and opened fire, spraying the front of the restaurant with an angry hornet’s nest of steel-jacketed rounds. Mal intercepted dozens of the rounds, deflecting them with his armored prosthetics, but dozens more raced passed him, shattering the fake golden statues lining the entrance and obliterating the double glass doors a split second after the fleeing pair made their way through.

“David, why are my husband and his friends shooting at us?” asked Kristin, allowing herself to be led away from the gunfire.

Angling the perturbed woman towards a nearby escalator leading down to the outdoor mall’s underground parking lot, Zuz responded that people had been shooting at him for two days now and he still wasn’t completely sure why.

Now that he didn’t have to worry about the safety of Kristin or Zuz, Mal went on the offensive, his arms expanding and lengthening to gorilla-like proportions, hands transforming and merging into three-fingered machetes. These men were all that stood between him and reuniting with his beloved, and nothing would stop him.

The first of the GMRs to rise, a tall, thin man with chestnut brown hair and thick sideburns, tried to bring his gun to bear but was cut short as Mal’s bladed right hand took him in the mouth, spearing through the back of his head. Mal ripped his hand free, bringing with it the top of the man’s head and most of the soft tissue of his throat.

Using the GMR’s body as a shield, Mal charged as a second GMR let loose a blistering torrent of bullets from his shortened MP5K, tackling the agent and taking him to the ground. The man spit blood as eighteen-inch blades pushed through the corpse pinning him down and into his chest.

Mal blocked an attack by his third would-be assailant, a bear of a man standing more than six-and-a-half feet in height, who tried to club him from behind with a stun-baton. Mal caught the man with the back-swing from his arm as it pulled away from his comrade dying on the ground, cleaving him in half.

Seeing a river of blood and body parts falling to the ground, what few onlookers remained broke for the doors, screaming in terror. There was only so much even a jaded Los Angeles crowd could take and the fight had moved well beyond that.

An explosion of pain erupted in Mal’s side as Morrell took advantage of the distraction, moving in with a series of powerful blows to the cyborg’s side. The area was still tender from the earlier battles in spite of the rapid healing abilities given him by the nanobots running freely through his veins.

There was something different about Morrell, thought Mal. The man wasn’t a standard GMR unit—he was stronger, faster, and seemed to act on his own initiative. But he didn’t seem to be as powerful as a Prime like Gauss or the others. Whatever the good Captain Morrell was it certainly wasn’t human.

The two men exchanged a series of blows, each in turn attacking and blocking to test one another’s strengths and weaknesses. If he had been uninjured from nearly twenty four hours of fighting Mal knew he would have had the upper hand—his reflexes were faster and his cybernetics gave him far more power when it came to melee combat. But the newcomer was fresher and had back-up from the remaining three Gomers. Whenever Mal would focus attention on one in an attempt to take it out, the others would move in and tag him. Although their blows weren’t much on their own, in unison they were wearing Mal down little by little.

Realizing he had to do something fast, Mal caught a punch from Morrell and catapulted the man across the room in an Aikido throw. With the mightiest of the Project: Hardwired agents out of the fight it was an easy matter for Mal to evade the others and bolt for the shattered glass doors to outside.

Mal refused to look back even as the sounds of fresh magazines being loaded into compact machine guns hounded he from behind, bolting for the railing at the edge of the mall’s open air walkway, praying to God the ground wasn’t as far down as he remembered.

*****

Deep beneath the mall itself, Zuz opened the Cube’s back door and told Kristin to get in as he started the vehicle. Once she was settled, he pulled the car into the massive line of cars trying to exit the parking garage in an attempt to get away from the chaos Mal and his Project: Hardwired playmates were causing in the Mall levels above. Hundreds of vehicles, with horns blaring and drivers shouting obscenities at one another, jockeyed for escape.

While they waited their turn to leave, Zuz did his best to fill Kristin in on what had happened—as much as he figured Mal would be okay with. He told her about finding Mal the day before and being on the run for most of the day. For her part, Kristin sat back and tried to take it all in.

When the woman asked about her husband and what the real story behind him was, Zuz sputtered and rolled his window down, using the distraction of having to pay ten dollars for thirty minutes of parking as an excuse not to answer her question. The bald man decided that Mal would have to take care of that can of worms himself.

When the lot attendant raised the tiny exit gate, revealing freedom beyond, Zuz began the turn onto Santa Monica Boulevard, wondering where Mal had gotten himself to and if the man was okay. Before he could complete the maneuver, the pair was startled by a downpour of glass and stone debris from overhead. They were even more surprised when Mal shot out into the empty air space above them, followed by the sound of enough automatic gunfire to make it sound like the 4th of July.

“Mal!” shrieked Kristin in shock and worry as gravity reasserted itself on Mal’s body, dragging him down with enough force to crash through the top of a city bus unfortunate enough to be driving by at precisely the wrong time.

Zuz started to comment that it was okay, Mal seemed to be jumping out of things a lot lately, but was cut off when a trio of the Project: Hardwired GMR units Kristin had been dining with a few minutes earlier jumped off the mall’s second level overhang in an attempt to pursue their target. None of the government agents had the power or velocity of Mal’s Olympic-beating leap with all three crashing to the road directly in front of Zuz’s escaping Nissan.

Smiling to himself and in the mood for some payback, Zuz slammed his foot down onto the gas pedal, bowling throw all three men with a satisfying thud and shudder of his car.

“Did you just run over those men?!”

“Yeah,” grinned Zuz, pleased with himself. “It was pretty cool, huh?” Noticing the look of concern on Kristin’s face out of the corner of his eye, Zuz reassured her they weren’t normal ‘men’ and would survive the hit-and-run with his car—if anything. Heck, they probably did more damage to it than it did to them.

But it sure did feel good was his only thought as the car zoomed away at high speed, disappearing quickly into the distance.

*****

Recovering from his less-than-stellar landing on—and then through—the ‘out of service’ Beverly Hills bound bus, Mal climbed to his feet, proud of himself. All of the GMRs were either dead or disabled, and their boss was too far away to harass the cyborg during his getaway. Yup, thought Mal, heading for the front of the bus to get off, things were finally going his way.

That is until the elderly Hispanic bus driver yelled something about ‘oh, no, we’re going to die’ in his native tongue—Mal had gotten a ‘C-minus’ in Spanish back in high school, so he wasn’t positive about his translation—banged open the vehicle’s folding doors and hurled himself away from the bus. Although his mastery of the Spanish language was iffy at best, the driver’s action were universal in nature, causing Mal to rush forward to gaze out the bus’s large front window and see a fiery plume of super-heated exhaust gases illuminate Morrell, thirty feet above street-level, as the government operative fired a FIM-92 shoulder-mounted Stinger at him through a gap in Westwood Mall’s second floor security railing.

Arms and legs pumping furiously, Mal had nearly reached the rear of the empty bus when the miniature missile crashed into its front, detonating on impact and sending flames rocketing back after him. He was followed through the rear window by huge tendrils of fire and smoke as he drove himself headfirst through it and out onto the black asphalt road behind. An instant later he was forced to pitch himself to the side in order to avoid being crushed as the force of the rocket-powered projectile exploding flipped the bus end-over-end to land upside down, collapsing under its own weight.

Mal used the flames and subsequent second explosion from the bus’s gas tank to escape from the wreck unseen by his foe, contacting Zuz’s cellphone with the wireless connection provided by his internal computer system to arrange a meeting spot a few blocks away.

Zuz and Kristin were already waiting when Mal arrived thirty seconds later and climbed into his usual spot on the passenger’s side. The car was in motion, zipping through traffic, before the cyborg could get the door closed. With everyone safe, Mal could tell Zuz wanted to get the hell out of dodge before anyone else jumped out to try and kill them…again.

Mal leaned around his seat and smiled warmly at Kristin, trying to reassure her with a pat on her leg.

“It’s all going to be okay, Kris. We’ll get you somewhere safe. They’re after me, not you or Zuz. You two can lie low until I get it all sorted out.”

The car cut through the late afternoon traffic, aimless, just trying to get as far away from the government agency so desperate to capture Mal they’d risk shooting up a crowded public place like the restaurant and mall. Hundreds of civilians had seen the attack that time. It was insane.

After a few minutes of driving, Zuz finally asked Mal where they were going.

“Take Coldwater Canyon over Mulholland Drive. The hills should help throw off anything they might have to track us with. When we get over to the Valley side, I’ll see if my sensors can find any bugs or tracers they might have on any of us.” Looking back at Kristin, Mal said, “I’m sure that bastard Morrell must have planted something on you, Kris, just in case we got away.”

The woman in the back seat nodded her head weakly. Mal and Zuz exchanged glances—they could tell it was quickly becoming too much for her. They needed to get her out of sight and protected, fast.

As Zuz turned the Nissan onto the long, winding street lined by trees and houses built precariously up on steep hills, Mal told Kristin to get some rest. It would all be OK once she woke up.

Kristin laid her head back, struggling to keep her tears from falling. She wasn’t sure if she should be furious with Mal or glad he was there, and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t make sense of what had happened to Marc. What was he? Was their marriage even real?

Her eyes closed as the woman ran the day’s events through her head, exhaling deeply in a sigh. She listened as the car sped over miles and through the mini mountain range that bordered Beverly Hills, heading towards the San Fernando Valley and the ‘somewhere safe’ Mal promised.

Somewhere away from the husband who tried to kill her.

“Oh, Marc,” she whispered, this time unable to hold back the tears.

A buzzing almost soft enough to escape notice caught Kristin’s attention, sending the exhausted, confused woman rummaging through the handbag she’d kept clutched tightly in her grip during their escape.

The shootout at the restaurant had to already be all over the news, she thought. It was probably just her mom or her best friend, Lynda, calling to make sure she was okay.

Kristin’s call ID revealed a number she’d never seen before but something about it click somewhere in the back of her mind, causing her to push “answer” and hold the bright green phone up to her ear.

“Hello?”

The well cultured bass voice on the other end of the call spoke one word before breaking the connection. “Galatea.”

The phone fell lifelessly from Kristin’s hand and the orbs of her eyes glazed over as she reached into the side pocket of the Kate Spade purse, extracting the dull black Smith & Wesson SW99 pistol hidden within. Silently, Mal’s ex-fiancée raised the weapon and fired pointblank into the driver’s side seat at an unsuspecting David Zuzelo, sending two .45 caliber rounds into the center of his back and a third at his head.

CHAPTER 17

The first two shots took everyone in the car by surprise, blasting gaping holes through the padding in the Nissan’s seat and taking Zuz square in his back. His left lung was collapsed by the first bullet and half of his right kidney burst with the second. Mal had recovered in the quarter second it took Kristin to readjust her aim to base of the bald man’s skull and was able to deflect the third out through the top of the car.

The car’s horn bleated miserably, pressed solidly by Zuz’s head slamming down onto it as he blacked out from pain. Pandemonium reigned inside the vehicle, with Mal having to split his attention between fighting Kristin as the suddenly insane woman tried to unload the rest of her clip into Zuz, and trying to keep the still moving car from rolling over into oncoming traffic.

“Kristin?! What did you do?” shouted Mal while Kristin fought against him like a trapped lioness, kicking and striking as if a tornado had been released in the backseat of the car. Her attacks were so vicious she was able to force the car off the side of the road, causing it to hop the curb onto the sidewalk, and run headfirst into a light pole. The car spun uncontrollable for a minute, sideswiping a number of parked vehicles before coming to a complete stop just inside the parking lot for a large pharmacy and grocery store.