Blackjack Wayward (The Blackjack Series) (40 page)

“Are you righty or lefty?”

I shrugged. “Either, really.”

“No,” she said, thinking a moment. “You’re a righty. Your first instinct with the bot was to throw a right.”

“Fair enough,” I said. “What does it matter?”

“Get on the balls of your feet,” she chastised, looking back, making me adjust my stance. “If you put your feet down on the ground flat, you’ll lose leverage and balance. And it’s important because your stronger hand will be your power hand. The left will be your lead hand. Now turn your body like this....”

Focus pivoted her hips so she was facing left, and I matched her move.

“...then raise your left hand over here....”

She placed her left hand almost at eye level, her left shoulder cocked forward slightly and elbow comfortably in front of it.

“...finally, you bring your right hand up and lower your chin a little bit.”

To complete the stance, she brought her right hand so it was just in front of her lowered chin, right shoulder rocking out a tad.

She flashed a look back and smiled, liking my stance.

“Stay like that,” she said, turning around and giving me a better look.

Focus stood to my left, where I was now facing – my new front – and nodded.

“Too far out,” she said, adjusting my left hand closer to the new centerline. “Let your feet rotate so they feel more comfortable.”

I shifted my feet more and the whole thing felt much, much better.

“Okay, now you know how to stand. Are you ready to learn how to move?”

“Let’s do it.”

“I can’t believe you’ve never had any training,” she said, bewildered. I was proving a bad pupil, slow and clumsy.

Turns out that fighting involves a lot of footwork, and I have the agility of a pregnant water buffalo. She tried teaching me basics, like the forward triangle technique, where your lead foot – in my case the left foot – shifts back, angling to the left, and your right foot slides forward to replace it. It’s a simple move, designed to switch stance from a left lead to a right lead, a move that’s more useful in practice than in reality where things are more fluid, but I couldn’t do it. It was a mental block of some sort, like my feet were of their own mind.

Despite my clumsiness, and overall ignorance of fighting styles and techniques, she never lost her patience with me, not once.

“Better,” she said, circling as I repeated the motion over and over. Left foot back and to the left, right foot forward to take its place, right foot back and to the right, left foot forward and taking its place.

“When you have a better handle of things, this is what it’ll look like.”

Focus stood in front of me, as an opponent would, and did it without even moving her hips. The switch was effortless and almost imperceptible, and in an instant she had swapped hands.

“See?”

The whole thing was an excuse to study her lower body, no doubt to the consternation of Moe, who was upstairs somewhere in a remote observation booth.

She straightened up and put her balled fists on her hips.

“That’s not very polite, Blackjack.”

“Huh? No, I was just watching where you placed your feet.”

Smiling, she shook her head and came closer. “I am trying to teach you.”

“Okay, okay,” I said.

“Let’s just keep going. Show me your jab,” she said, putting her right hand up as a target.

I fired one in there, nice and tight, and harder than she could have expected, but instead of being surprised, Focus caught it in her hand with a downward slapping motion, diffusing the power of the blow.

“Not bad at all,” she said. “Again.”

Another, and again she recoiled the target from the blow, catching the punch at its farthest point of extension, and slapping the tips of her long fingers on the back of my hand to reduce the forward motion.

“Okay, now throw a cross,” Focus raised her left hand now. It was weird, since my cross in the normal stance came from my stronger right hand, and I was trying to hit her left hand across her body.

“Put the other hand up,” I said, readying.

“No,” she said. “The cross goes here. Jab here,” she raised up her right hand. “And the hook over here,” her right hand stuck out farther, twisted sideways so I could hit it with my lead hand hook coming across my body.

“It’s weird,” I said, adjusting my feet to compensate.

“No, don’t do that. Just throw the punch.”

“I’m afraid I’m going to hit your face.”

She lowered her guard, for the first time slightly frustrated.

“That’s the whole point, to hit me in the face. I put the target here,” Focus raised her right hand up, close to her face, “so you can get used to how far your blow has to go to connect.”

“It’s just a pretty face,” I said, raising an eyebrow. “I’d hate to...you know.”

Focus smiled, enjoying the compliment.

“Don’t worry, you’re not going to hit me.”

“I’m just being careful. Moe put me on warning to not touch a hair on your body.”

She furrowed her brow, stepping back, instructor mode faded and gone, replaced with the little innocent girl. Focus walked off a moment, turning her back to me and looking up at one of the bright ceiling lights. She hopped on her feet like a boxer before a fight and loosened up her arms and neck. Her lithe musculature rippled, and her arms, while thin and long, had muscles I didn’t even know existed. Her back was broad and strong, her shoulders taut and ready.

“Don’t worry about Moe, okay?” she said, still facing a way from me.

“I’m just trying to be friendly,” I said.

“Is that all?” She was still, her head cocked to one side, stretching out her neck muscles.

I didn’t know what to say. Of course, I was interested. She was a pretty woman, sexy and athletic, how I like them. But there were too many obstacles to this woman.

Focus smiled and walked over to me. “I didn’t mean to get all serious,” she said but was regarding me with a strange look, as if she still hadn’t figured me out, as if I were some sort of enigma to be resolved, a ticking bomb to be defused.

Then the instructor returned. “Come on, let’s practice the jab-cross-hook combination. Time is running out.”

I threw a few combos, careful not to break one of her delicate fingers, but she kept prodding me on, making me adjust an incorrect launch point, forcing me to extend my shoulders on the cross, teaching me to contain the power of the hook, how to use the full torsion of my body and shoulder while at the same time not over-extending the blow, which would leave my side open to a counter attack.

Then she switched stances on me, gesturing for me to follow, and all hell broke loose. I couldn’t manage the mental function or physical dexterity to reverse the same blows, so my right lead hand mangled the jab and hook, and the left cross had a clumsy arc, stuck halfway between a hook and an uppercut.

Focus giggled at my clumsiness, dropping her stance altogether and covering her face with both hands.

“Laugh, why don’t you? But ask Epic what it felt like.”

I held up my left fist as a display, but her amusement faded, replaced with a look of concern, maybe even anger.

“Hit me,” she said, falling into her stance, her expression hard and serious.

“I’m not going to hit you,” I said, chuckling at the thought of us really fighting.

“I know. You’re not going to. But I want you to try.”

She inched forward and switched to a wicked stance where her legs were farther splayed out, her open hands like tiger claws ready to pounce.

“Don’t be afraid.”

“I’m not afraid, Focus. Look, I’m sorry I was an asshole.”

“I want you to see this,” she said, ignoring my apology. “Come on.”

I shook my head, wondering what the hell I’d done or said to get on her bad side. Did she have a girlish crush on Epic as well? The fop was pretty enough, but I couldn’t see the same human being having a crush on both of us at the same time.

“I said I’m sorry, Focus, okay?”

She clenched her jaw tight, the only sign thus far of how angry she was.

“What do you want? You want me to throw a punch so then you can do some Judo shit and gloat that you’re better than me? Is that it?”

I stared at her, but she was a blank slate, still in her stance.

“Okay, here,” I said, throwing a reasonably fast and powerful jab at her face.

The blow was meant to hit her, not to come close, but she side-stepped it with the grace of a panther, moving closer to me and grabbing my hand and elbow at the same time. With her right hand, she twisted my fist down against the wrist joint, and with her left hand, using her ring finger as a fulcrum, she collapsed the elbow joint. Pressing forward, so fast I didn’t even have time to react, Focus placed her left foot atop my right, pinning me, and continued into me, using her hip to tip me over and onto the ground. She still held my hand, twisting the wrist in such a way that jolts of fire danced up my arm and deep into my shoulder.

“Happy, now?” I muttered, wincing in pain, aware that any shift on my part would lead to a dislocated wrist joint.

She held me too long, her face stern, her mood dark, so I ripped my arm out of her grasp and rolled away onto my stomach.

“Take it easy, girl.” I stood, raising my hands in submission, but she came at me again.

Then the lights went out.

“Great,” I said, figuring this was part of the training, a session gone horribly wrong, but instead of getting beat up further, I could sense her pause in front of me.

A whirring sound rang out across the room and a self-illuminated robot came out of a ground silo. The faint light it emitted from the chest and eyes were the only thing that allowed us to see.

“That’s strange,” she said, her demeanor of hostility gone.

“What’s strange is you going psycho on me.”

The bot extended its legs and arms fully with a whirring of grinding gears. Once it deployed, it engaged and ambled forward toward us.

She ignored the robot, looking at me with a pained expression after registering my comment. “I’m sorry,” she said, but before she could continue her apology, the robot came right up to her.

“One moment,” she said, turning her attention to the robot. “It’s probably Moe sending us a message to–”

The robot lashed out and struck her. Despite getting caught flat-footed, Focus was fast enough to bring up her guard, blocking the blow with her left forearm. I heard the bones in her arm break under the force of the blow; she was driven to the ground, right arm cradling the left.

“Hey,” I managed, as the robot moved atop her for the coup de gras, and I kicked the thing off her. The robot flew across the room, its chest collapsed inward, sputtering from minor explosions, and crashed into the wall some twenty feet from us.

Behind me, Focus was coming to her feet, holding her broken arm gingerly. The robot was trying to rise again, but my kick had crushed its torso, and the body just folded upon itself like a man whose spine had been removed.

“You okay?” I asked her, but she winced, holding her shattered arm against her chest. “That’s a twisted sense of humor your buddy Moe has.”

Focus shook her head. “That wasn’t Moe,” she said as another two-dozen robots rose from their ground storage silos and engaged, stretching their arms and legs outward, to ready for combat.

Once they were ready, they charged us.

Chapter Thirty-Two

No time to move, no time to think. These bots came at us fast.

The first came right up to me, and right when I cocked back a punch, it stopped, dodged the blow, grabbed my arm and hurled me spinning through the air. I slammed into a metal wall, leaving a deep indentation as I fell to the floor.

The rest collapsed on Focus, one taking a hold of her legs and another grabbing her broken arm. They meant to rip her apart, but she kicked one off, a bright flash of blue energy exploding from her leg, shattering the bot. The other twisted her broken arm and she shrieked in pain.

I hurled myself at the robot’s legs, bowling it over with my shoulder and rolling to my feet to punch another that was clawing at me from behind.

The robot still held her arm, and my attack had only served to spin the robot’s grasp, compounding the fracture like an alligator in a death roll.

Again she screamed, and I reached for the robot’s hand. I got a good hold and ripped it off the body, just as another bot came and grabbed her away.

Still more robots swamped me, coming between us so she was gone from my sight.

Once more she cried out and I lost it.

“No!” I yelled, taking a robot and hurling it into another, then punching a third and following up with a brutal kick into a fourth, but there was an army of them, and I had only damaged a few.

I jumped over a destroyed robot, heading toward Focus, and saw her in the grasp of a damaged one. It held her head in one tri-fingered claw and jabbed into her stomach with a pummeling fist. Something grabbed me, and I turned, punching the robot so hard it exploded; the concussion knocked me to the floor.

Getting up, I charged the robot grabbing Focus and threw myself at the back of its knees, taking the whole thing down.

It kept a hold of her head as we both came to our feet, so I lunged for the arm and twisted the whole thing off. Only then did the claw release Focus, whose fractured arm was like a sieve of blood.

“Get behind me,” I told her, herding her into a wall, turning on the remaining robots. We had our backs to a corner, the most defensible place in the dark room.

“Moe, time to end this! She’s badly hurt, man,” I yelled, hoping that this was some sick joke gone wrong. But I heard nothing from the speakers, whether that was because of Focus’ command to mute the audio from the control booth, or whether he was just content to watch us fight for our lives, I couldn’t tell.

The robots took a moment to readjust themselves, tossing aside those too damaged or destroyed and so giving them a clear battlefield. One stepped forward, engaging its solid-light emitter, changing its appearance.

It was Cool Hand.

“Skeet, skeet, B,” it said with an almost perfect matching voice. “You hit it and forget it.”

Then I realized it wasn’t a synthesized creation, but an actual recording of a real conversation Cool and I had on Shard World. I lowered my guard, aghast, my mind racing, and it struck me, slamming me back into wall.

“Concentrate,” Focus chided me through clenched teeth, fighting the agony from her arm. Her face was swollen from several blows, and she was cradling the broken, bloody arm over her stomach.

“How?” I yelled, launching myself at Cool Hand and throwing him back into the others, who checked his momentum.

“Hey, B. You must get mad tail, right? Check it,” he said, motioning to the injured Focus. Again, it was a recording of an actual conversation with Cool Hand, this time on Dr. Retcon’s Rocket Flyer.

Another phased and turned to Influx.

“Come on, Blackie. You’re no good to me if you can’t handle a little action,” she said, as if someone had been recording Influx and me on the helicopter after the U.S. Tower fight in L.A. She was sauntering toward me, toying with her platinum blonde hair, flashing a toothy smile, her eyes gathering me seductively.

“Oh, God,” I said, stumbling back as they circled us, coming closer and closer.

What was happening? Why did these things have actual recordings of what had occurred? Did Superdynamic gather all this stuff off the base and the Rocket Flyer? Had he hacked into Retcon’s databases in the aftermath of Hashima?

Another one phased, this time into Apogee.

“I have an idea,” she said, smiling, reaching out her hand. “I’m Madelyne.”

Was this a dream? Did I ever really get out?

“Blackjack!” Focus screamed, snapping me out of it, and I looked back at her tear-streamed face. “The safeties are disengaged. The robots are trying to kill us,” she said, but her face grew worried when she looked at me. “You have to stop them or we’re dead!”

“It’s you and me,” Apogee said. “You’re all I have, you know?”

She looked so real, so beautiful and available, walking toward me among the throng of robots. I had forgotten how lovely she was, how her hair danced on her shoulders, the fullness of her lips, the fire in her eyes...

No. The eyes were dead.

I blinked a few times to make sure, but yeah, it was the bot, like the Epic-bot; close enough to real, but something was missing, something crucial.

Near the end of our ordeal, just before the final fight on Hashima, Madelyne’s tone with me had changed. Her eyes held me, loved me. She may not have said it, but her body, her face was broadcasting it loud and I was just too stupid to notice. It was only evident now, as the lifeless robot did its best to emulate what she had felt for me through a complex A.I. algorithm.

She reached out for me, as the others parted to give her a clear path. As she placed her lovely hands on my shoulders, I punched her so hard her head came off.

The solid-light display faded, revealing a head-less robot.

“Fuck you,” I snarled, feeling the fire that was burning in my belly start to overflow, to rise up and make my blood boil.

I lifted the robot’s body and threw it at the next one, the Cool Hand Luke wannabe. In my rage, my strength returned, unblemished, and the Apogee robot flew from my fingertips as if shot out of a howitzer, crushing both.

“Fuck you, motherfuckers!”

Another came closer, Influx, clawing at my suit. I caught her arm and spun, throwing all my weight into it. She flew through the air, over the onrushing robots, and crashed against the ceiling about fifty feet from me, exploding into a shower of flame and spare parts.

I bull-rushed the nearest, bringing it down, and hurled myself in the air, landing on its chest and crushing the cavity down on itself. A robot grabbed me, pulling me away, and I turned with a haymaker ready.

“FUCK YOU!” I roared, hearing the harrowing echo of my voice in the small training chamber. My punch gutted the robot’s chest like a spear. I grabbed something inside and used it like a boxing glove, swinging a powerful right at the nearest robot, then a left that knocked yet another off its feet. I stomped its chest, destroying it, and swung my arm so the boxing glove slid off, flying through the air to crumple yet another.

I didn’t wait, flying at the next one, knocking it down. Reaching around the head area, I ripped the thing’s head off, tossing it aside, and put my fists together, rocking them back as far as I could. The robot must have known what was coming, because it flayed at me with its claws, but nothing could stop me. My fists came down, right where its heart would be, destroying the thing in a massive explosion.

Picking it up the steaming robot, I ignore the scalding metal at my fingertips, using the robot as missile. It flew through the air, slamming into the one that was coming at me from the flank. With a churning of raw metal, both automatons exploded.

A few more remained, hanging back. Their hands retracted with a graceful twist, revealing twin assault cannons. I dove back at Focus as they opened fire, forcing her into a ball despite her protesting screams, and cradling her beneath me.

The robots unleashed a fusillade, peppering my body, tearing into the wall and floor, filling my area with shrapnel and stray fire. I had my back to them, screaming in pain as each bullet tore at my skin, eager to break through and rip my insides. The rounds weren’t strong enough to penetrate my skin, and despite the pain, I was able to create a mini-cocoon of safety for the smaller Focus. She gripped my chest, screaming as I pressed her into the crevice between the wall and floor, my body the only thing keeping the bullets from killing her instantly.

The gunfire went on for what seemed like a full minute, until they ran out of ammo. I turned to catch them readjusting their hand weapons and charging in my direction.

One sported a pair of flamers, another a laser torch and a holding claw, and the third two diamond-carbide tipped chainsaws.

I had no time to hesitate, running right at the flamer robot, angling away from Focus so she wouldn’t get caught in the pyre.

The thing lit me up as I reached it, but I jumped in the air, in part to avoid the majority of the flames, and landed on its chest. Grabbing down at its head, I almost ripped it out when the second one grabbed me from behind and lanced at my back with the laser torch.

I screamed but didn’t let go of the robot’s head, tearing it from the base of the neck as the momentum carried me back into the one that was grabbing me, knocking it down. It held onto me with the claw, but I reached over, bending the individual claw fingers out and sliding free. I turned and punched straight down, destroying it.

“Blackjack!” Focus screamed, and I saw her scrambling away from the third robot. It slashed at her with the chainsaws and was almost upon her.

“No!” I yelled, knowing I had no time to rush it. Standing, I grabbed the headless flamer robot and hurled it with all my might. The thing spun in the air, slamming into the chainsaw robot and crushing both into the wall.

And with that, all the robots were destroyed.

I ran over to Focus, noticing blood trailing from her leg. She had a pretty bad slash across her left calf where the chainsaw had torn her skin apart, and her arm was awash with crimson.

“It’s going to be okay,” I said, picking her up.

Her face was pale from blood loss and she was shaking, suffering shock from the overall pain she had endured.

I carried her over to the door and paused, hearing a small knocking at the other end of the two massive double doors. They were as thick as the walls in the room, and suddenly I felt a twinge of pain lance up my fist, a latent memory of the last time I’d had to bring down a wall of this caliber.

The knocking was persistent, but soft, far away. I figured someone was trying to get inside, but whoever had tampered with the safeties had meant for Focus and me to be left undisturbed.

I put her down. “Give me a second,” I said, and I strode over to the door.

The gap between the two doors was substantial, though there was an internal bevel that didn’t allow me to see through. I squeezed my fingers in there, ripping at the metal and trying to get a handhold.

Then I went at it, feeling my back muscles come to life, my deltoids and traps straining. The metal groaned and came apart a few inches, giving me hope, and I let out a roar to focus my anger into what I was doing.

As I did, the joints in the wall sputtered, grinding against the hinges, cracking at the seams. The two doors spread farther apart and I was able to adjust my grip, slipping myself inside the two doors, pressing my hands on one door and my back against the other.

My screams and the echoing of cracking metal were as one, and the doors slowly slid farther and farther from each other. The growing gap allowed me fit inside completely, each hand now pushing a side away. It was taking forever, but in a fit of rage, I forced the two massive doors flying on their railing, grinding back into the wall. They were mangled and misshapen, bent inward along the middle where I had handled them.

Standing in front of me, dumbfounded, were the remaining members of Superdynamic’s group and almost two dozen security guards.

“She’s hurt,” I said, reaching back for Focus and picking her up.

Superdynamic was on me in an instant, taking her from my arms and placing her on the ground. Beams of light exploded from his armor, caressing her body, taking a moment to scan each injury.

“She’s got some internal damage near her liver, Chen,” he told Mirage, who snapped a murderous glance in my direction before going to work on Focus. His healing abilities sealed the bleeding wounds to stabilize her before he turned his attention to her injured midsection.

“Get them to Medlab,” Superdynamic said, nodding to Templar. The kid was in full gear, armor ready and the ridiculously huge sword slung on his back.

He stepped near to Focus and Mirage, muttering something unintelligible as a spattering of light enveloped him. Silver ribbons embroidered with magical runes encircled him and the two others, spinning around the three and obscuring them from us. When the ribbons faded, Templar, Mirage, and Focus were gone.

“Will she be all right?” Moe asked.

“Hang on,” Superdynamic said, raising his hand. “What happened?”

Moe shook his head, “I was in the booth, man. I don’t know.”

“You had nothing to do with that?” I asked, already knowing the answer. He might not like me, he might even want to see me take a beating, but Moe wasn’t a killer, and he would never put Focus in danger like that. Besides, his face was awash with anguish; he was almost in tears.