Haywire (13 page)

“
Get her under control!” Laroux ordered, his voice arrogant, but shaking.

Another whip struck out, and then another. The Titan pulled both pirates toward her and eviscerated them with blades that sprang from her arms like magic before the whips could be electrified. The sudden metallic stink of blood and internal organs made Shawn’s gorge rise, and his eyes watered from the bitter taste that rushed into his mouth. Two more whips came at her from the remainder of Laroux’s crew and wrapped around her wrists. She brought her arms together to pull them toward her, but electricity poured into her, and she convulsed in pain. Arcs of lightning lit off her armor like a Tesla coil. She screamed.

“
Yes, not so deadly now, eh?” Laroux said. A sneer slid across his face.

His two crewmen manipulated the handles of their whips, and the Titan screamed louder. Her body shook as more current pumped into it, and her armor liquefied to a quivering mass on her skin. She fell onto her side, her limbs twitching and her head thrown back in pain.

“
Stop hurting her!” Shawn yelled, but no one paid him any attention. He looked at his mother. She was pressed against a wall looking around with wide, terrified eyes.

“
It is time we put you out of your misery, Mademoiselle.” Laroux drew one of his pistols and aimed it at the Titan’s bare, trembling head. “I had hoped to make my fortune off you, but you’ve proven to be more trouble than you are worth. Perhaps your dead body will help me recoup at least some of my losses. Adieu.”

Shawn stepped forward and held out his hands, ready to plead for her life. “Stop, please. Don’t do this.”

The pirate captain swiveled his eyes and looked at him as though he was less than worthless. “Unfortunately for you, Monsieur, you are no longer of any value to me.” He brought his arm around, pointed his gun at Shawn’s chest, and fired.

All Shawn remembered after that was blood, pain, and screams.

Alicia screamed when the gun fired, and her universe collapsed into a singularity of terror so powerful it swallowed her whole as Shawn’s body fell to the floor and a dark red stain spread across his chest. Nothing else existed, nothing else mattered. Her scream was primal as she lunged toward him, and her knees had barely hit the ground before she had his head cradled in her hands.

“
Mom?” he said, his voice high and his eyes shifting around in confused panic. Blood flecked his lips as he spoke.

Her mind wanted to run away from her in horror, but she reined it in with all her strength and touched his face. “I’m here, Shawn.”

He coughed, and more blood spotted his mouth. “What happened? Is the Titan okay?”

Alicia felt like a boat that had slipped its mooring lines and was drifting further and further away from the dock. “The Titan? Oh, yes, she’s fine.”

Shawn’s gaze became lost, aimless. “Good, I–” A coughing fit overtook him, and globs of blood spattered across his chest and her hands.

Alicia glared up at the pirate captain. The hatred welling up within her was enough to boil oceans and blister steel, but her body felt cold, something apart from her that she hovered over, as though it was too small to contain her pain and rage. “You bastard! I’ll kill you. I swear to God, I’ll kill you.”

The gun that shot her son turned toward her head. Laroux smirked. “Not likely,
Madame
. Have no fear, though. You will be joining him soon enough.”

The barrel of the pirate’s gun should have made her heart quake, but deep inside she welcomed it. It was her fault Shawn was here, and death didn’t seem that harsh a fate if it meant she no longer had to feel the agony of his dwindling life in her hands. She recalled every squandered moment she’d had to love him, every mistake she’d made, every chance she’d had to better their relationship, and the accumulated pain of it broke her. She almost breathed a sigh of relief when the pistol went off and the room filled with thunder. When the sound wasn’t accompanied by a jolt of pain, she looked up to see what had gone wrong.

The Titan stood in front of her, her body a protective shield. A small cloud of smoke drifted up from where she’d deflected the killing shot. The Titan shook her head, her face set in a grim expression.

“
Don’t you ever die?” Laroux asked, bringing up both pistols.

The speed with which the Titan moved was unbelievable. Before Laroux’s two remaining crewmen could drop their whip handles – which were made useless when she tore the coiled lengths of metal from around her neck – and draw their guns, she crossed to one, grew a blade from her arm, and sliced his head off with a single swing of her arm. His body was still standing when she crossed the room to do the same to the other.

Laroux, quicker to react, stepped backward and pulled the triggers on his guns, but the weapons were worthless against her armor, so he grabbed for his whip and snapped it at her. In a blur of motion she sidestepped the attack, grabbed the whip, broke it, and yanked the pirate toward her. She caught him like an owl latching onto a fleeing field mouse.

“
If you want to have any hope of surviving the next five seconds,” she said, raising one of her blades toward the pirate’s head, “you’re going to tell me how many more of you are out there, and where.”

Shawn shivered in Alicia’s hands, and hope faded in her heart like a dying ember. She looked up at the Titan as she stroked his damp forehead. “Please, help me. My son is dying.”

The Titan lowered her arm, looked down at her, and then tossed Laroux backward with a flick of her wrist. He slammed against the far wall with a loud, fleshy thud before sliding to the ground in an unconscious heap. As he slumped onto his side, she walked to Alicia and squatted onto her heels.

A detached part of Alicia’s brain wondered at the sudden change in the Titan. Whatever sickness had ailed her before now seemed all but gone. Her voice was steady, her movements sure, and her armor looked solid. Alicia couldn’t begin to guess what had wrought such a transformation, and she would have been delighted if her son wasn’t dying in her arms.

“
I’m sorry,” the Titan said, “but I’m not a doctor. I can’t help him.”

Alicia’s heart fluttered, sending spasms of pain through her chest. “Then help me get him to one. He’s dying because he wanted to help you. Do something, goddamnmit.”

The Titan looked his body up and down, the lights in her eyes twirling back and forth, and her hands lightly examined his wound. After a moment she shook her head. “It’s too late to get him out of here. I don’t know if he’d even make it to the surface. I’m sorry.”

Grief crashed against Alicia like a tidal wave. Tears burned her eyes and cheeks as they fell, and she balled her bloody hands into fists. “Then damn you,” she whispered. Her son was fading away in her lap, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. His mouth moved soundlessly, like a fish out of water trying to draw breath. She wanted to comfort him, help him, do something to save him, but her anguish was too much to allow her mind a way to think through it. She’d never felt so helpless in her entire life. Her muscles contracted until her bones ached under the strain.

The Titan touched his face, then let out a long sigh. “Do you really want to save him, no matter the consequences?”

Filled with sudden hope, Alicia’s face was numb when looked up and nodded, her lips held tight against the screams that wanted to fly out of her. If there was even the slimmest possibility of saving Shawn, she had to take it.

“
Then let me have him,” the Titan said with a firm nod.

Alicia’s instinct was to clutch her son to her, but she resisted it and leaned back. The armored giant gathered his body up like it weighed nothing.

“
You see that canister I set down? The one your son found? Grab it and follow me.”

The Titan turned and walked away before Alicia could ask questions, so she grabbed the metal canister in blind faith and ran to catch up. When they reached the elevator, she expected them to enter it and ride up to the surface, but instead the Titan kept walking, taking them down a dark corridor that stretched in the opposite direction from which they’d come. A dozen meters later they passed through a doorway and entered a dark room.

Near the back of the room Alicia could just barely make out the Titan shoving several large switches upward with the arm not holding her son. The floor began to hum and overhead lights sputtered to life. In their glow Alicia saw a massive machine sitting at the far end of the room. The right half of it was all computer displays and buttons, with a badly aged plastic chair sitting before it. The left half, which was composed of a long metal tray situated beneath an array of nozzles and probes, had a distinctly medical appearance. It looked familiar, and yet not. Alicia had no idea what it was, but it scared her. It sat there like a beast of chrome and silicon chips, silent, waiting.

“
What is that?” she asked, setting the canister down on the floor with a dull
thunk
.

The Titan stepped toward the tray and laid Shawn down on it. After clamping restraints over his wrists and ankles, she shifted to the right and flipped a toggle. The computer monitors powered on and buttons began to glow. A light swept over his still body.

“
I asked you what that is.” Alicia’s anguish was slowly giving ground to an understanding she wasn’t ready to process.

“
You already know,” the Titan replied as her fingers pressed buttons. “Want me to stop?”

Alicia wanted to reply yes, she did, he was her son and just a child, but as her eyes locked on his pale, bloody face she stopped herself. If it could save him, that was all she needed to know. Blood still seeped from his wound, but it was slower now, and that terrified her more than anything. But it wasn’t until the Titan picked up the canister and shoved it into a chamber of the machine that her mind fully grasped the magnitude of what was about to happen.

“
Wait, I’m not sure I–”

The armored woman nodded sternly and pressed buttons. “I am.”

“
But it’ll kill him! His body won’t–”

The Titan grunted loudly, cutting her off. “Despite the wound, his odds are favorable. He’s young, and the scanners say his genetic markers are good. Astoundingly good, actually. Correcting physical issues and ailments is part of the process. One of my initial duties after becoming a Titan was assisting Groesbeck. Trust me, I’ve done this before.”

“
But he’ll–”

“
He’ll live. That’s what you want, isn’t it?”

Uncertainty flickered through Alicia’s heart like a moth caught in a jar. She wanted to save Shawn more than anything, would have traded her life for his in an instant if she could, but the drastic action the Titan suggested would change her son forever. He would live, but what would he become? Would he still be Shawn? How much would still be him, and what would be other? She didn’t know the answers, and the doubt tore at her insides. Ultimately, though, she knew there wasn’t really a choice at all.

“
Yes,” she whispered.

The Titan nodded, pressed a button, and stood back. “You’ll want to look away. This won’t be pretty.”

Pain had overwhelmed Shawn’s body when he’d been shot, but that was nothing compared to the agony raging through his body now. It came in waves that had no beginning or end - it just was. Every cell within him filled with fire that forced away all other sensation, and the way it moved through him was like a living thing, which, in a strange way, it was.

In a distant part of his mind he heard his mother’s screams echo with his own.

“
Let go of me! Shawn!”

His trembling arms reached out for her from where he laid convulsing, but the Titan kept her metallic arms locked around his mother.

“
There’s nothing you can do for him. He has to finish this.”

Shawn heard the words, and a small part of his brain even recognized what they meant, but the rest of his mind was driven into an animal frenzy of fear and misery that was unable to listen. His body was invaded, attacked, infected, and his natural reaction was to fight back.

“
Then stop it! Stop hurting him! Get him out of there!”

He stiffened and vibrated at a fresh surge of pain. Padded metal restraints secured him to a bed or gurney, and he ached from the strain of pulling against them as he twisted in torment. His muscles burned, and his skeleton was pounded to dust.

“
We can’t stop it once it’s begun. He has to go through the infusion process, and he has to do it on his own, just like I did.”

Hell pumped through Shawn’s veins, filling his body with torture, and the idea of a painless existence seemed like a faraway dream. He heard himself cry out, felt his limbs flex and spasm. Needles of fire dug deeper and deeper into his skin. His eyes felt like they were melting into his skull, and every cell in his body vibrated until he was sure they would all shatter. The agony increased until he was convinced it had gained life within him and was desperately clawing its way out. In the throes of his suffering the metal restraints shattered, and his convulsions sent him shuddering near the edge of the slab. But, before he could fall, the pain eased just the tiniest bit.

“
It won’t be much longer. The infusion process is painful, but the nanites make quick work of it.”

His thrashing lessened as the flames within him slowly died, and the chill that crept across his skin was sexual in its pleasure. His muscles relaxed, his fingers uncurled, and his mouth opened in a prolonged sigh. All of the pain evaporated away until he felt almost human.