29

Callus barely glanced at the girl and her father when they started to argue. His attention was on me as we both maneuvered for advantage. One on one, I wasn’t sure I could win this fight. The man was damaged, but also pissed off. His crack about being a new and improved version of a Reaper wasn’t a lie. And we’d danced this dance already. He had seen my best tricks.

“Just do what I say!” Hastings yelled, voice cracking because he knew he was losing to his daughter.

“Why should I? Let’s go!” She dragged him the way she wanted to go despite being much smaller.

Callus drew his sidearm and fired. It caught me off guard because I expected him to go with his primary weapon, the short-barrel HDK carbine that was clipped to the front of his gear with frost still clinging to parts of it.

Moving at the exact same time as my attacker, I threw myself sideways, firing two shots before I hit the ground and rolled, and two more as I came to my feet.

Bullets struck my light recon armor. If I’d been standing still, the force would have penetrated, killing or staggering me.

This kind of close-range pistol dance was the most dangerous and stupid type of fight. I wanted to move to cover and engage with my HDK but couldn’t get a half second of time to do it.

We both reloaded on the move, firing the pistols dry a second time and transitioning to the carbines in near perfect synchronization. His armor was heavier and more modern than mine, but he knew better than to slug it out with the HDK.

This close, we’d kill each other with the first volley.

He slipped around a large pipe running away from the water tank to get at me. I ducked behind the door to a ladder, quickly coming around the other side to fire on his position.

He moved to do the same thing to me. “Why don’t we see what the big guns can do?" he shouted, raising his HDK carbine and firing a stream of bullets at my hiding place.

“Throw down your weapons and step out in the open so we can talk this out,” I yelled back, inserting my final HDK magazine. As much as I hated to admit it, the arm blade was my best chance.

The weight of my enhanced left arm didn’t feel right. I wasn’t sure if it was losing power or was damaged. Snapping down my hand, I forced the blade to extend while I pulled the HDK in tight to my right shoulder to use it one-handed.

Shooting this way sucked, but it could be done for short bursts.

Running out into the open to cut Callus down and pump him full of HDK rounds would have been awesome if the tactic had even the slightest chance of working.

I also doubted he was waiting for me to accept his challenge.

The spec ops super soldier was working his way to my flank. Otherwise, he’d be shooting and or taunting me. I waited, ready as I’d ever be.

The top deck shook like a battlecruiser had wrecked into it. Dust and debris swirled around me. Broken pipes released new clouds of steam, but what was more ominous were red and orange smoke clouds from fires in other areas.

“Will you get out here and fight?” I yelled. “There’s only so much oxygen under the environment shields. But you probably know all about void death after I kicked your ass off the ship last time.”

He charged out of the shadows, emptying a magazine from his HDK as he rushed toward me. Spinning out of the way and returning fire, I looked for his melee weapon, expecting to see an axe or flamethrower but realizing there was the hilt of a sword protruding from the back of his armor.

He cast aside his HDK and drew the sword with his other hand. “You were never anything, Reaper, just a hopped-up street thug. Never deserved to be a Reaper.”

I watched the way he now held the weapon with both hands, feet moving from one perfect fighting stance to the next, eyes always on me.

“Your vigilante spree was more successful than you realized,” he said. “Really tested your limits. Impressed a lot of people.”

“Don’t be jealous.” I lunged, forcing him to retreat a step. “And don’t bullshit me. I know where you’re from. Who you are? Why do you hate me?”

Callus adjusted his stance and stayed mobile. “You think you did a good deed, killing all those pieces of shit. And their friends. The way you scoured their hideout was the bloodiest thing I’ve ever seen. They play it in dark ops orientation now. Did you know that?”

“Then you should know better than to come after me.” Rushing him, I slashed downward from left to right, then upward with the same speed. The real attack was another lunge that followed immediately, piercing his left bicep.

It didn’t matter, but I’d recognized the streetwise accent under his gruff military tone. He wasn’t just from the neighborhood, he was from one of the gangs I thought I’d wiped out. Probably one of their soldiers.

My thrust should have been through his heart, but he was fast as hell.

“You’ll pay for that!” he roared.

“Fucking come get me!” I shouted back.

He started laughing bitterly. “You know the gangs didn’t kill your father, right?”

I froze.

He lunged, catching my light armor and shoving me back. The blade didn’t penetrate my flesh. I’d jumped back just fast enough to avoid dying right there.

“Dark ops did that,” he said. “Had to provoke you to see what would happen.”

Sound seemed to vanish. I felt like I was cut off from all sensation. Voices screamed from behind soundproof windows in my mind. X-37 talked excitedly, trying to convince me of something, but I was in my own dark place where none of this mattered.

Callus drove his sword into me, the blade piercing my torso and deflecting along one of my ribs. We fought like animals—stabbing, slashing, kicking, punching, and pushing.

Exhaustion and an explosion through the top deck forced us to separate and rest for several seconds.

What I didn’t understand was why he didn’t hate the Union more than I did. He had to be lying. Had to be.

“I’m not saying I killed your father, but I’m glad someone did,” Callus said. “The project would’ve been shut down without proof of what men like us could do.”

This fucker had no honor. He joined the people who wiped out the gang. The man was too weak to fight against the Union, so he joined them.

Which made me hate him even more.

“I nearly burned to death when you firebombed our hideout. A Union dark ops team pulled me out. Promised I’d have my revenge.”

He hadn’t finished talking when I attacked. Thinking of nothing, I slammed my weapon into him again and again. He retreated, desperately parrying blows and shutting his fucking mouth—finally.

His mistake was letting me get too close. My arm blade was shorter and easier to maneuver. His back struck the wall of the massive water cistern. I grabbed the back of his helmet with my right hand and shoved my blade up through his throat with my left.

His sword fell from his hands and his body went limp. I held him up and stabbed him again and again. When his head finally popped off from the excessively forceful stabs, I hurled his body on the deck and stomped on him until I couldn’t breathe.

“I advised you to control yourself,” my Reaper AI said.

“Fuck off, X,” I said, striding away from my work. Then, on impulse, I returned to the corpse, found one of his grenades, and shoved it under his body with the delay set to twenty seconds.

“Perhaps you should run to cover,” X-37 said.

“Zero fucks given, X,” I grunted, wiping blood from my forearms and torso.

“Noted.”

I didn’t talk to X-37 for a while. Callus deserved what I’d done to him. It was hard for me to think of the man as human. Genetically modified and cybernetically enhanced, he’d also swallowed the Union’s propaganda whole. There were a lot of people like him who wanted to use Elise to create even more deadly soldiers.

I didn’t know the details, but I’d find out if I had to kill someone. That was what Reapers were made for—infiltration, assassination, and acquisition of secrets necessary to the well-being of the Union and its investments.

I wanted to vomit. Anger could be a tool, but Callus had drawn out a kind of rage I didn’t like. It scared the shit out of me.

“Hal, do you read me?” Elise said in my earpiece.

“I copy. Did you make it to the shipyard?” I asked.

“Yes. What happened? Are you okay?” she responded.

“Stay where you are. I’m headed your direction.” I didn’t want to talk to Elise or anyone else. Fantasies of killing Callus and anyone like him wouldn’t let go of my imagination. The rage was building toward another explosion that would destroy me.

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