Built Different [Cyborg Superhero ProgFant]

Watching Silhouette appear was a surprise. An expected one, for whatever that juxtaposition was worth. I had neither the wit nor the energy to react to this development with anything other than a spiraling sense of finality. After all that I'd been through, I was eager to hit the finish line. Exist beyond this family drama.

Chevalier was equally intrigued, but just as hesitant as I was.

"So it was true," he murmured. "The other rat, hiding in plain sight."

Silhouette stopped a dozen or so feet away from us, the slim blade in his hand held casually. "It's difficult to get time off work during such a busy period. I couldn't miss the family reunion, however."

The knight shook his head. "Would have been nice if the suits had let me know that it was you, Arbalest. Having a man within the League must have been a card kept very close to their chest. Not that I need your help with our brother."

I shot a dull glare toward the newest arrival at our picnic. The prospect of him being the mole seemed too… nonsensical. A stealthy spy being a double agent? Far too on the nose. Unpalatable. The reveal of his old name shuffled around some complaining file cabinets in my aching mind, but only one pertinent fact slid out into view.

Arbalest had been on Chevalier's side in the split.

Silhouette, however, looked at us nonplussed. The central yellow light he had as an eye stand-in didn't even flicker. "I have no connection to that name, nor any recollection of you."

"Another wayward brother," the knight decided, adding a short, hollow chuckle. "Allegiances, forgotten. Trespasses, forgotten. Drawn to this turmoil, for what purpose?"

The short answer was easy. We were doomed. Built to kill and chew through whatever problems our masters pointed us at. We had grown inefficient and turned on each other. Our simple role now complicated, a new fate was nailed to our foreheads. Erasure. That any of us lived was just luck - bad or good. Yet… our destiny had been decided for us. Any remaining resistance was now circling the drain, before the final death gurgles put a black line through the last paragraph of the redacted report detailing our existence.

Silhouette had a less poetic and verbose answer to the question.

"I am a hero, and you are a villain."

Were we not already in a frozen standoff, Chevalier would have paused in surprise. I knew this because the stance of my fellow hero equally refreshed me.

"Brainwashed," the knight spat, vitriol clear in his voice. "Here I was getting my hopes up."

I didn't wait around for further clarification of where everyone sat. My stims would only give me functional energy for so long. Then I'd crash. Yapping was just biting into my killing time, and every second wasted ran over my brain like sandpaper.

Legs took me forward as I punched out once more. Foam shot to his inner elbow, slowing the response of his lance. As he went to greet my advance with his firearm, Silhouette flickered forward, deflecting the weapon downward with a swing of his sword.

In lieu of a taunt, Chevalier just roared against our insolence. The foam popped from his plating earlier than expected, and the tip of his pointed lance swung past my face by inches. Silhouette vanished as the oversized melee weapon continued over the area he had been standing, missing him.

I collided with the knight as if I were able to knock him off balance. With a heavy thud, I was certain I had done more damage to myself than the walking tank. Still, he took a short step backward to stabilize himself. Shadowy tendrils ran up from the ground, snaking around the leg. A trap laid by my brother.

Chevalier turned just in time, as a large blast came from somewhere over in the top left of the Arena. Narrowly missing his head, the impact of the heavy projectile left a bright silver welt through his shoulder plate. The wide indentation was left hissing, steaming.

"Arbalest, huh?" Silhouette said as he faded into view behind the knight. "Now the soul-linked stealth cannon makes some sense."

I didn't have the time or energy to seek out what had fired the impressive ammunition. His words gave sufficient context. He had always been a stealth assassin, but the sword use and ninja getup appeared to be something for his League-granted persona. A sniper turret usable from a distance was probably a secret none outside of a tight-knit circle knew about. No wonder he was always so confident, even when I could see through his invisibility.

The knight tried to turn to face Silhouette, but the trap around his foot made it difficult. It was a distraction.

Sanguine stake snapped into my arm, and I leveled a bloodline-ending punch toward the thick helmet.

Interrupted by the lance. An unwelcome surprise as the weapon jettisoned from his arm like a harpoon, clearing the distance I had made between us without needing to be swung. I was already in motion, and couldn't avoid it.

Either by luck, or willpower twisting my reluctant destiny toward my favor, my shielding finished recharging. It immediately broke again. The pointed end of the spear turned at the last moment before it hit me. I felt the metal grind between my ribs, putting pressure on my cybernetic bones. Right lung punctured. The last-second diversion prevented the weapon from tearing through my heart instead.

For what it was worth, my shield stopped the lance from getting any further than that. Ribs were bent slightly from the impact, but the unexpected projectile dropped from my body, too heavy to stick in place. As warm blood soaked through the frayed edges of my tactical gear, I cast a weary gaze off to the right.

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

Maestro stood atop some of the concrete walls, hands outstretched. Fuck. Now I owed the asshole one.

Chevalier was too distracted to take advantage of my sustained injury. The odd blade my brother wielded against our combative sibling bit through the air like a snake. It wasn't a magical artefact—I could tell—and I was unfamiliar with the technology it employed. While the energy-based katana wasn't strong enough to cut through the metal plating of the knight, it had left scores of white lines across the black armor.

If I had a few more working brain cells and a little less blood loss, I'd probably find some irony in how we were all at an impasse. Equal in stalemate. Brothers till the end. My remaining stims did their best to patch up my lungs so that I could stop gasping. Fresh skin and muscle stitched itself together, trying to patch up the hole in my chest.

The knight raised his arm just as the phantom sniper cracked out through the stadium. Another fist-sized indentation burst and burned into Chevalier's left elbow, causing the inner workings to shriek and flicker with spent electricity.

I stumbled to the side and tried to find a target for my Sanguine stake. With that singular thought in my mind, it was easy to ignore everything else. The pain. The exhaustion. The fact that Maestro was now watching me.

Chevalier must have read my mind, as he leveled a solid punch at Silhouette—knocking him away—before spinning on me. I raised my lagging arms, expecting some blunt trauma. To be sent sprawling across the concrete with fresh injuries to heal. Instead, a flap opened up on the knight's chest plate. A brief high-pitched whine flooded my ears before a burst of electricity struck me.

The smell of burning filled my re-breather. Legs… held me upright, by a miracle alone. Every nerve in my body felt as if acid had soaked through my skin. I blinked away the temporary stun to see the blade of an axe head swinging down on me. A replacement for the lance.

I grabbed the handle and dropped to my knees. The sharp edge hummed an inch away from my eyes, shaking as Chevalier tried to seal the deal. My own metal arm was numb. A mechanical thing alone. With the scream of a machine gone awry, V-Force drove the Sanguine stake up through my palm.

The shaft of the axe split, and my fingers parted by some coded safety feature. With the power dampened from the projectile, the hunk of supernatural metal flew skyward. The head of the axe bounced heavily from my chest to the floor, not causing anything worse than a bruise. Sparks rang out from the back of my assailant as Silhouette found a weak spot in the back of his armor.

"You're really getting on my nerves," he growled.

Despite the whittling attacks we had labored him with, he wasn't exactly in much danger. He was staying in melee to help avoid the sniper shots, all the while weathering most of our attempts with ease.

Still, he finally used that new firearm. At close range against my brother, the spray of small-caliber shots first caused Silhouette to turn invisible, before then revealing him. Several bullets ran up his torso, knocking him onto the ground.

Chevalier ejected the magazine as a fresh one clicked in automatically from a rack running along his faux forearm. He stepped closer to the downed hero, intent as clear as day.

My legs didn't want to respond, yet somehow I found myself standing once more. Head was hazy. Unsure which time period I was living in. Maybe this was just a vivid memory. A narrative my brain found fitting to retell at this point. I went through the motions, on the rails.

I gripped at the dropped lance and tried to lift it. Inoperable V-Force Drive flickered in one of my eyes. The spiraled weapon felt like it weighed a ton. I struggled. Some unknown force off to the right helped me bring the lance up to bear. Re-routing Drive Capabilities. My vision dimmed, everything in monochrome.

The shadowed figure stood above the one lying down, gun in hand. A picture-perfect snapshot of familiar noir nightmare. Blood and gunpowder ate away at my senses. Built for a singular purpose.

Chevalier turned to me, spinning in place as I launched toward him. Every last remnant of energy I could gather within my body, I forced through the failing V-Force drives. My body alight with pain, my very spirit vented from the back of my elbow. This was my all. Quake shot left the barrel and struck him, the aftershocks holding us in place immediately.

On a better day, this might have been where the chapter ended.

The pair of us stood frozen again as the air vibrated, another brief snapshot that seared itself into my memory. His hand gripped the lance, his own metallic strength against my own. The weapon had been stopped.

A trickle of blood ran down the black metal, twisting along the spiral.

The tip had pierced the red visor, breaking through the reinforced material. His own weapon buried an inch or so into his eye. Blinded, but he had prevented me from writing my signature across his brain. The last quake reverberated the area, before simmering away.

Every joint—mechanical or biological—in my body had seized up. Locked in this position, Chevalier had no option but to step backward and draw the tip of the lance from his eye socket. I didn't dislike the sound. His wide foot stepped into another tendril trap left by my brother.

The weapon dropped to the ground, slipping from my weak grip. On the side of my gun-arm, the chamber slid open and closed ineffectively. Still standing. Dead on my feet.

Then I saw the light. Not my approaching death - but the ruddy hue painting the Arena softened to bright daylight. We each gave a brief glance to the surroundings. The barrier was lowering.

Silhouette was now also back on his feet, maintaining a stance that looked as though he was about to launch a signature attack to impress the crowd, not that there was one anymore. Half-expecting him to cut the knight in twain, or for the walking tank to finish me off for taking his eye, I stood in silence as an unknown force fluctuated around the Government pawn.

"I'll make sure you regret this," he hissed, emotionless.

Before I had the chance to put a coherent sentence together in response, blue rings burst up around him. Silhouette swung, but it was too late. With a shimmering light that hurt my eyes…

Chevalier teleported away.

The resultant vacancy in his position caused an odd fluctuation in gravity that made me want to throw up. Instead, I simply staggered forward two steps. I flexed my fingers and glared at Silhouette.

His yellow eye flickered slightly, as if he were ashamed. "I wasn't aware he could do that."

For his efforts, Silhouette had gotten off lighter than I had. I watched as his katana blade fizzled and dissipated, the energy vanishing so he was just left with the handle. His suit had absorbed the bullets, although I was sure he'd be bruised come morning. Compared to me, he was-

An explosion rocked the terrain to our left. Intense heat washed over me, and I staggered away from the gust of air again. From the cloud of powdered concrete, a burning figure of bright amber stepped over to us.

"Where is he?" Roxy snapped, most of her visible skin already flowing lava.

[Getting ready for round two.]

While her immense anger turned to shock at seeing the condition I was in, my eyes drifted away to my messages.

//Clara: Unable to track. That technology is new to me.
//Clara: Sincere apologies, Gunquake.
//Clara: While you are idle, I may have a lead on Kingston.
//Clara: Please advise.

Roxy's voice was distant and muted as she split her attention between barking at Silhouette and fussing over my injuries. I lifted an aching left arm and pulled my hood back. With blurry vision, I looked out at the empty stands. Beyond the highest point of the Arena, I could see clouds of dark smoke from various points in the city.

My right arm shuddered as I tightened my grip into a fist.

[Let's go be heroes.]