NOVEL NEXT --LII--
--ovw--LII--ovw--
"Heat signatures," Connor said.
MONDAY
9:14 AM
Northwest of Windcreek
"I'm running straight into them," I said. "I got this."
I tapped my own holographic projection and immediately saw two bodies- human bodies as far as I could tell. We were only a half-kilometer away from the abandoned mine's lift.
"Visuals." I spotted them, both in black, masked- almost similar to Sarah Peters back at the hotel, but not quite exactly identical.
As they pulled out their guns, I roundoffed into a whipback and launched for a long arc takeoff, facing the direction of our antagonists.
They almost reminded me of those evil bandits in that one video game Kaylee and I played, Webesteria.
I smiled.
"Coming in hot, my friends!" I yelled from above them.
As if in slow motion, I slid the U.S. tapping device face shut and closed the hologram, pocketed the mobile, and spun into my left and into my backwards arched layout. They shot at me but that wasn't good enough; if there was one thing as unpredictable as the Overwoods weather, it was possibly my spin lines and the modifications I made, to in-air body positions.
And Sam, probably.
Two seconds later both my of my beat-up black shoes were on the taller adversary's shoulders.
"Hello there," I said. "Tell me what you know, and I won't have to knock one of you out and then otherwise silence the other."
"Is this kid on crack?" said the other masked adversary, a seemingly female voice.
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"If by crack you mean apples," I said, "then yes."
I twisted and spun fast into a forward quadruple as she shot but missed awfully, horribly- because as I did, I saw the blood start to flow heavily from one of the ears of the bandit I just took off of.
Well, bandit- or criminal or gangster or warden or bouncer or guard or whatever. Either it was just his ear hopefully, or, hopefully not, somewhere near his skull. His or hers or theirs or xeirs, I didn't know the pronoun at the time.
I landed on the woman's shoulders- with ignite on this time- and dropped into a double-twisting hurricanrana whip to a hard right elbow to the side of her cranium- the hardest single elbow I had thrown that day so far. There was no need for the Americana submission arm lock Carter White taught me. I pocketed her two Bauer 355OD handguns (instantly feeling disgusted because at the time I generally still hated guns) and ran back to the taller person.
"Hey," I said. "Are you okay?"
The muffled response rang clear in the empty space between us.
"Stay back!" the man said- in some kind of neutral mainland U.S. accent, he sounded almost like James, or even a little bit like me, "this is protected territory!"
Protected?
Protected by who?
The man tried to shoot but only dropped his one handgun upon pulling the trigger, stumbled back, and put his right hand to his temple- near his ear, where all the blood was coming from. He dropped to some kind of partly sitting, partly crawling position- half on his back and half on his side. It reminded me of that centipede I saw outside of school back in the Suburbs.
Well, a heavily bleeding centipede.
Didn't he have backups? Fellow recruits? A healer or a medical agent, like I was depending on the mission?
"Help," he said to no one in particular.
I front walkovered in his direction, hands on the ground then feet then hands for four flips and a half, soundlessly, until I lowered myself onto the ground beside him for the final landing. I simply tossed his handgun to the side with my left hand, tossed it down beside the lift, where it slid into a rock and then fell down. Down, down, down, into the enormous mine. I stared at it until it disappeared from any human eye's field of perception.
"Help," he said again to no one in particular.
"I got you," I said.
See, this is why I hated guns.
At the time I did...
"Help," he said for the third time.
I tore his mask with one of my small black combat knives, hollered at Kaylee, as Happy the raccoon bounded toward me, riding on top of Jupiter Two. I placed two fingers into the mess of blood and torn skin.
Suddenly, I was afraid. Afraid that we might not save him- this... this whoever he was. The blood that pooled around our legs was sizeable in amount and pool diameter and I'd survived it before in Nightingale and otherwise- but... what about him?
"Happy! Kayles! Asses over here!"
"We're here, we're here!" Kaylee hopped over the unconscious woman's body, whereas Sam stepped on both her breasts and then took the cash from her pockets before zooming over. Kaylee immediately made stielvine to wrap around the bandit's head.
"We need him conscious," I said. "Arrowvine- read his mind, now. Get whatever you find. Cognito, Edge- surveillance. Let us know what's down there."
"Eldredge copies!" cheered Sam. "Last one to the lift is a monkey's megacigarette butt! Oops, sorry, you lose!" She zoomed to the old, creaky-looking lift. "Pulling up in dat whip, I done dat dumb shit..." she rapped to herself as Connor made his way toward her.