Weir Codex 1: The Cestus Concern (11 page)

“It doesn’t matter anymore, just drive,” Mal watched as Kristin’s house, and his dreams of returning to his former life, faded into the distance.

CHAPTER 9

Mal had been silent for the entire ninety-minute drive back to Zuz’s garage in City of Industry, failing even to offer any sort of comment at the large sign on the junkyard hideout’s rusted steel front gate warning that “trespassers would be violated.”

Kristin’s words and her anger had drained all life from the cyborg soldier. Mal had thought he’d find answers to what had happened to him after the helicopter crash in Dahuk—that he’d find out why his memory was gone and, more important, why Kirstin was married to another man. And she had given him some of those answers, but for each one he received, five new questions seemed to emerge.

Why had he left her? It just didn’t make sense to him. Mal couldn’t imagine loving anything or anyone more than he loved Kristin. She was all he thought about every day he was deployed in Iraq.

Even more puzzling to Mal was how he went from being an ICU patient missing most of his internal organs, as well as an arm, to finding himself as a black-ops cyborg super-soldier acting as an assassin for a covert agency for the US government.

If he was honest with himself, it all sounded like the plot to one of those God-awful “B” horror movies Kristin used to make him watch every Saturday on the SyFy Channel. None of it seemed real.

When Zuz walked into the main area of the garage with a pair of coffee cups containing a thick, black substance barely above room temperature (eight-five degrees according to the electronic hitchhiker in his brain), Mal waved him off, snatched the silver and black laptop out of its resting place in an old “Super Mario Brothers” backpack, and plopped down on the old barstool positioned in front of the big iron worktable.

After banging on the keyboard for a few minutes, Mal stared at one particularly intricate set of code on the screen. Zuz took the cessation in work as an invitation to join Mal at the table.

“None of this makes any sense,” groaned Mal, exasperated.

“Dude, I know,” Zuz leaned forward and rotated the portable computer so he could better see what Mal was gazing at. “It looks like some sort of high end variation of the AES, probably needing a 256-bit key to access the information. Nothing I’ve got has been able to break it. If you give me enough time I might be able to use a quantum algorithm to crack it. Grover’s might do the trick, but we could be talking days or weeks.”

Zuz failed to notice the completely dazed look on Mal’s face.

“It’s a probabilistic algorithm, so we’d need to run it through at least a few times to verify the results.”

A living metal hand reached up and snapped the laptop closed.

Shaking his head, Mal said dejectedly, “I have absolutely no idea what any of that means.”

“The Grover algorithm for searching unsorted databases,” Zuz saw the look of total confusion in the cyborg’s eyes as his explanation continued to fly over Mal’s head. “Quantum computing? Lov Kumar Grover from Bell Labs? None of this ringing a bell?”

“The only Grover I know lives with Big Bird over on Sesame Street, Zuz,” sighed Mal. “And, to be honest, I was talking about the entire situation more than the mess you pulled out of my head.”

“Oh!” Realization slammed hard into Zuz’s brain, somewhere just between his eyes. “Yeah, that shit with Kristin was a real mind-fuck.”

“What do I do now, David?” Mal leaned back on the stool, locking his fingers behind his head. “According to Kristin, less than a year ago I was confined to a hospital bed with almost no chance of survival. Now…”

Mal back-flipped off his perch, landing lightly on his feet, arms out stretched. With a casual shrug, the living metal of his arms reformed his hands into gruesome, gleaming claws.

“…I’m a God-damned killing machine.”

“Mal…” started Zuz, unsure of what to say. “…I…”

Before Zuz could finish his attempt at comfort, a wave of nausea pushed through Mal as the garage lights flickered and dimmed. The feeling was bad enough to force Mal to brace himself against the dark metal of Zuz’s welding table for fear of collapsing to the ancient, cracked concrete floor.

“Mal?”

Unable to respond at first, Mal rubbed his temple and tried to clear his head. Looking around, the edges of everything around him were blurry and half-formed, and he found himself unable to focus on anything. Even stranger, the background voice of the computer passenger installed in his brain was completely silent for the first time since he had awoken at Project: Hardwired, and that worried Mal most of all.

The lights continued to pulse one and off in conjunction with each beat of sickness in Mal’s head.

“What’s wrong?”

“Everything’s gone…fuzzy. It’s like I’m seeing, hearing through cotton,” answered Mal, rubbing his temples. “It almost feels like something is messing with my senses. Even my tongue is numb.”

Pushing past Mal, David Zuzelo flipped a series of switches, activating the security monitors he had installed throughout the junkyard right after he first purchased it five years earlier.

“Shit, shit, shit,” he said as all of them filled up with the crackling “snow” of a dead video signal. Zuz rubbed his bald head frantically and, even with his sense dulled, Mal could tell the man was on the verge of a panic attack. “Every single camera is down. The feeds are all gone…they’re probably jamming you, too. We’ve got visitors upstairs.”

“Visitors?” repeated Mal.

“Yeah,” responded Zuz, “and I’m betting they’re the kind with computers for brains. How the hell did they find me so fast?”

“They probably just looked for the guy with the biggest piece of shit car on the road,” Mal joked, heading for the door to the yard upstairs.

Zuz was glad to see the light return to his friend’s eyes, although he did wish it was for happier reasons.

“Dude! Don’t dis my ride. It saved your sorry ass downtown.”

Smiling, Mal reached to open the door. “You wait here-” was all he managed to say before the ten-foot high metal and wood doors were blasted in from some force outside. Only Mal’s superhuman reflexes saved him from being decapitated by the flying projectiles which impacted against the rear wall of the garage with a thunderous clang. A giant cloud of dirt, rust, and debris billowed in on a surge of warm California morning air from outside.

Mal’s arms bulked up in response to the attack, a covering of six-inch long spikes covered them from shoulder to wrist, and even longer claws replaced each of his fingers.

“Computer?” thought Mal in a poor attempt at a Scottish accent. He hoped to get a response from his inner voice, but all he found was static. At least they hadn’t been able to remotely shut down the systems that ran his cybernetics. If they figured out how to do that he and Zuz would both be dead men.

A quick series of hacking coughs from Zuz let Mal know his friend was still alive.

“Hey, Z,” Mal whispered as loudly as he dared. “Do you have a back door to this place?”

“Yeah,” coughed Zuz, rubbing thick gobs of dust from his eyes with the sleeve of his sweatshirt.

“Grab your laptop and get out of here. I don’t want whoever our visitors are to get the info on it.”

“Ok, Mal.”

Before Zuz could make his escape, a loud voice tore into the large underground bunker, reverberating off of the thick walls, surrounding the two men with power.

“Designate Cestus,” the bass voice cut through the clouds of dirt filling the area like a warm knife through butter. “In concordance with the United States government Department of Defense, the FBI, and Project: Hardwired, you are ordered to stand down and surrender to my authority and my men. Failure to do so will result in your termination with extreme prejudice.”

Both men were stunned as the owner of the voice marched into the room, flanked by a pair of mercenaries wearing the dress of Project: Hardwired GMR-class soldiers.

Standing at somewhere south of five-feet seven-inches in height, the man was obviously a cyborg created by the same labs that gave Mal his bionic “improvements.” The man’s own enhancements seemed to consist of an irregular pattern of metal plates, mounted to every bit of exposed flesh: arms, neck, chest, and face. A Project: Hardwired patch was stitched to the left arm of his black fatigues. Topping it all off was a cherub’s face covered in freckles and top with thin, fiery red hair.

Mal’s first impression was of a human picture-puzzle.

“Command told me to wait until Gauss arrived,” continued the little man, stopping to run his hand over the mass of twisted metal left over from Mal’s tantrum the night before, “but I wanted to take a shot at the Golden Boy myself. Besides, he had his chance and failed, right, buddy?”

Zuz and Weir exchanged glances, neither one completely sure what to make of the newcomer or his rather impressive entrance.

“Buddy?” quizzed Weir, positioning himself in front of Zuz to protect the man. He was worried about keeping Zuz safe while going toe-to-toe with another batch of Project: Hardwired’s Frankenstein monsters.

“You remember me, don’t you, Ces?” Seeing the clueless look on Weir’s face, the man shook his head, smirking. “We were partners. We went on a lot of missions together: Shiraz, Isfahan, Anau, Herat, Paris…”

“Do you know this munchkin, Mal?” asked David, easing down to pick up his sledgehammer. “It kind of sounds like he has a crush on you.”

“Shut up, hippie,” squawked the ginger cyborg, “the grown-ups are talking.”

Mal’s inside voice supplied the rundown, which he relayed to the men in the room.

“He’s Designate Talos, one of the heavy hitters of Project: Hardwired, and a prime unit like me and Gauss. The database calls him a…,” Mal’s face scrunched up at what came next. “A mechanimorph. Able to merge with metal and mechanical items, reforming them to suit his needs.”

“Mechanimorph?” this time is was Zuz’s turn to shake his head. “Exactly how much of the Project: Hardwired budget was set aside for inventing new words? So he’s like a human erector set?”

“But shorter,” quipped Mal.

“Enough!” shrieked Talos, finally having enough with the pair’s insults. “GMR units Rho-Two and Rho-Three, detain Mister Zuzelo while I apprehend Designate Cestus. If the civilian resists, kill him.”

“Confirmed, Designate Talos,” responded the two Gomers in unison, advancing on David, MP5/40s at the ready. “David Anthony Zuzelo, you are to come with us.”

“Mal?” stammered David Zuzelo, backing away from the approaching half-machine soldiers.

“Get out of the building, Z. We can meet up outside once I’m done with shorty and his friends.”

In one fluid, effortless motion, Mal snatched the sledgehammer from his friend’s grasp and hurled it at the oncoming cyborgs, hoping to knock one down and give Zuz time to escape. To everyone’s surprise, Talos intercepted the makeshift missile, interjecting his five-foot six-inch frame into its path and allowing it to slam head-first into one of the metal plates on his forearm.

Talos’s smiled widened as his eyes flashed bright yellow at the impact, which spun him almost completely around and took him down to his knees.

“Yes!” blurted Zuz, thinking the attack had taken out one of their opponents, but his celebration died out as Talos rose back to his feet, apparently unharmed and with a new weapon emerging from his body. The metallic sledgehammer had merged with the cyborg’s left arm.

“Thanks for the new toy, meat,” said Talos as he charged Mal, swinging his new tungsten-alloy hammer-fist.

“Run!” screamed Weir at his friend, narrowly blocking a devastating overhead strike by Designate Talos that had enough force behind it to nearly rattle his teeth out of their sockets.

From the corner of his eye, Mal saw Zuz grab his laptop from the long workbench and bolt through a side door with the pair of government cyborg grunts hot on his tail. A flurry of attacks from Talos snapped Mal’s attention back to the task of defending himself. Deflecting another murderous blow from Talos that caused a rain of sparks to erupt from his forearm, Mal wished his friend a silent “good luck” and lashed out with a powerful thrust kick of his own that landed squarely in his foe’s midsection, sending the diminutive man flopping down hard on his back.

Mal smiled at the small grunt of pain from Talos. He concentrated on his cybernetic arms, causing them to bulk up to nearly twice their normal size. His fingers merged into vicious blades and Mal leaped into the air in an attempt to end the battle quickly.

He was worried about Zuz’s chances against two Gomers on his own. Unfortunately for both men, Talos wasn’t about to let Mal go without a fight.

*****

High above the battling pair of cyborg super-soldiers, David Zuzelo wasn’t quite as concerned. After all, this was his house and no one came in and pushed him around.

They definitely didn’t just come in and kill him all willy-nilly like. Zuz had a plan.

The truth of the matter was that David Zuzelo had been expecting a government-sponsored raid on his warehouse for years now and had prepared for almost every contingency. Not that Zuz thought he’d ever be fleeing for his life from a pair of cyborg assassins while another pair battled down below. That’s just not something you think you’ll have to plan for.

But, still, he’d been planning and building for nearly five years and was pretty sure he could escape from just about anything.

Turning down the hall where Mal had shredded the cot, Zuz made his way to a flight of metal stairs and maintenance elevator that lead from the sub-basement level to the roof nearly five stories straight up, tripping a series of switches along the walls as he went. He wasn’t sure exactly how tough the “Gomers” were, but according to Mal they weren’t very bright and were nowhere near as powerful as the prime units.

Hearing the steel-booted footfalls of his pursuers approaching close behind helped keep Zuz motivated. He was barely able to slide the mesh doors to the emergency lift and dive inside before the first Gomer burst around the corner and opened fire with his submachine gun. The carbon-fiber mesh of the elevator was too tight to allow the cyborg’s projectiles through, but Zuz was still showered with hot sparks from the impacts.