Weir Codex 1: The Cestus Concern (6 page)

They didn’t stand a chance, caught in the razor-edged whirlwind of Mal’s fury and rage and hatred. The carnage lasted less time than it took for a man to fall from a seventy-two-story building.

Mal gave himself completely over to his reflexes and his pain and anger clouded instincts, barely noticing as bladed ridges grew along the living metal of his arms, spikes covered his back, and men fell before his unquenchable desire for blood.

Arms were sliced from shoulders; legs hacked from torsos; heads chopped from necks, and none of it mattered to Mal, engulfed by the urge to have his tormentors dead. Their screams failed to reach his ears as one and all lost lives at his cruel touch.

When all was said and done, ten men lay dead, although from what was left of the men the LAPD’s coroners would have trouble confirming that count, so mangled were the bodies.

Not a single intact corpse remained and the pieces of once-living men were spread out at the feet of a shaking and weeping Malcolm Weir, arms glistening moistly with the product of his unstoppable attack. Blood soaked the air in a fine cloud of mist, covering the entire area and leaving a hot dampness across Mal’s body, soaking his clothes through to sweat-drenched skin.

So disturbing was the scene that Mal, once the red heat of the berserker fury had dissipated from his eyes, vomited at the sight of what he had done. With the sounds of police sirens quickly approaching from the street and another group of heavily armed government against running towards him from the entrance to the US Bank Tower building, Mal dropped to his knees, hands hung limply to his sides as his fantastic, seemingly inexhaustible stamina finally evaporated, leaving him a spent husk.

“Take him down!” commanded one of the approaching soldiers from behind the mirrored visor of his helmet.

Every remaining flesh-and-blood muscle in his body locked up in a painful, twitching cramp as a swarm of what seemed like a hundred taser darts peppered Mal’s body. Although Mal’s living metal arms seemed to absorb the majority of the incapacitating charge, enough juice remained to render him nearly paralyzed and cause his body to face-plant into the hard stone tiles of the blood-soaked courtyard, further shattering his nose with a sickening crunch.

“Yarges, Silva: get the adamantine cuffs up and lock those arms down,” ordered the officer who called for the taser attack. “Teran, Volante: put a restraining bolt on his rear power core, ASAP. I don’t want any surprises while we talk to the local cops.”

A hard-soled boot slammed down on the back of Mal’s neck, grinding his broken nose once more into the rough ground. The pressure of the restraints kept Mal from struggling as two pairs of hands clamped cold, smooth casings of metal over his hands, covering from fingertip to just over his elbow. He was trapped and his movement limited, with his arms drawn tightly behind his back and unable to bend or rotate except at the shoulder.

Mal could hear the squeal of brakes and the smell of burned rubber that announced the LAPD’s arrival at the location. Movement out of the corner of his eye showed the military man in charge of the operation striding out to meet the police officers…probably to try and keep them from getting involved and taking their new prisoner away.

Car doors were thrown open and the thud of what seemed to be a hundred feet hitting the ground almost simultaneously. The cacophony was quickly followed by the popcorn-like sound of a multitude of rounds being chambered into weapons. Mal’s inner voice told him the “multitude” was actually 12 rounds, but he stopped listening as it started to drone on with the specific breakdown of what those rounds and weapons were. He’d lost the ability to care.

“Drop your weapons and place your hands where we can see them!” screamed one of the cops—ten meters behind him at just over twenty-seven degrees off-center, quipped the voice. Mal was yanked to his feet from behind and hidden from view by the thick bodies of the men who had captured him.

“Officers, this is a government-sanctioned operation,” started the head soldier. Mal lost whatever the man said next as he was distracted by an incredibly ugly, incredibly boxy, off-white car hitting the curb nearby and launching itself a few inches into the air with a shower of sparks and tremendous grating noise.

Glare from the setting sun kept the driver hidden behind the car’s windshield, but Mal was convinced the man was grinning evilly as the vehicle’s brakes shrieked violently, sent up a blast of smoke and the entire thing fishtailed toward him.

The only thing that saved Mal from being crushed by two-and-a-half tons of a Nissan Cube, spinning nearly out of control, were his supernatural reflexes. Unfortunately, the group of government agents standing in a very tight group around him was not quite so lucky.

Bodies went flying as the fiberglass frame of the Cube slammed into the men at high speed—the one identified as “Yarges” took a header across the hood of the car, snapping off its radio antenna before he disappeared over the opposite side.

Injured men fell all around as the car shuddered to a stop, its passenger’s side less than an inch from Mal’s startled face. He had to snap his upper torso backwards and flop onto his side to avoid the Nissan’s rear door as it was thrown open.

Mal looked into the car and saw a man in his mid-forties, head completely shaved of hair, and a salt-and-pepper goatee encircling his frantically moving mouth. The crazed man looked familiar, but Mal couldn’t quite place his face. The man’s arms waved about insanely. It took Mal a couple of seconds to realize the man was yelling at him.

“Get in, Mal! They’ve got your face all over the TV!””

I’ve got it, thought Mal, grinning stupidly as he finally recognized the man. David Zuzelo—Zuz to his buddies—had been a friend of Mal’s back in college.

“Zuz! Man, what are you doing here,” babbled Mal, trying and failing to stand up.

The vehicle’s tinted rear windshield exploded as bullets began blasting into the car. A line of bullet holes appeared in the car’s side panel next to the dazed Mal, as if by magic, causing the man to chuckle.

Another window shattered and sent glass flying.

“Get in, you asshole, before they kill us both!” bellowed Zuzelo in his heavy New England accent, scrunching down his head behind the steering wheel in a vain attempt to avoid being shot.

Mal didn’t know what to do. Why was Zuz here…of all places? Was it his imagination?

“Withdrawal advised. Hostiles closing in on foot,” chimed in the computerized voice of the hitchhiker in Mal’s head, snapping him back to reality.

Mal made up his mind as he looked around to see some of the soldiers getting back to their feet and going for their weapons. Arms still cuffed with heavy metal manacles behind his back, Mal dove through the open passenger’s side door even as the ungainly vehicle started to pull away, barely making it into the backseat.

From his stomach-down position on vinyl seats covered in discarded soda cans and fast food wrappers, Mal braced himself as best he could as the driver leaned into the wheel, sending the vehicle into a hairpin turn, nearly slamming the opened door onto the hog-tied man’s flailing feet.

Zuzelo looked back with a wide, half-insane smile splitting his face and belched out, “Keep your head down…I’ll have us out of here in no time flat!”

A long, weary sigh escaped through Mal’s half-clenched teeth as he allowed his face to sink down onto the fuzzy, dark-gray seats of the Nissan Cube, eyes already closing as the unwanted passenger in his head stated without passion, “Commencing self-repair. All system shutting down.”

The last thing Mal heard before the comforting oblivion of exhaustion took him was his old friend belting out ‘Firework’ by Katy Perry at the top of his lungs. Mal thought the sound of distant sirens provided a rather fitting melody as he passed out.

CHAPTER 5

The sounds of screeching tires and an automobile engine being pushed to the max, somehow transformed into the high-pitched whine of a UH-60 Black Hawk in hard flight. Malcolm Weir recognized the sound instantly. It had been an almost everyday part of his life for the better part of a decade. There were times he swore he’d spent more time in the belly of a chopper than most pilots clocked behind the flight stick.

The familiar bumps and jostling of his bolted-down seat in the main cabin, something that had made him violently ill during training, were a soothing massage to his strapped-in body.

Mal allowed his head to lie back so he could feel the cloth covering on his ACH butt up against the hard metal frame of the helicopter. The ranger had to suppress a chuckle as he felt the sock he kept taped to the inside of his helmet out of nostalgia for basic training tickle the back of his neck.

This is how things are supposed to be, he thought to himself as he finally let the other voices in the cabin break through his bubble of government-issued comfort.

“I cannot believe yuh finally doin’ it, El-Tee,” boomed a deep bass voice in the worst attempt at a whisper Mal had ever heard. Corporal John Narcomy was a big man from Houston, Texas, and clocked in at somewhere in the neighborhood of three hundred and fifty pounds of solid, good-hearted muscle. “It ain’t right!”

Staring at the dark-skinned man barely contained on the flight bench by straps pushed well beyond their limits, Mal was convinced the Black Hawk was buckled to Narcomy for safety and not the other way around. The ACH cinched onto his head seemed too small to contain it.

“Got my acceptance yesterday. After we get back from this jaunt, I’m going back to school and then to JAG,” responded a smooth voice seated directly across from Narcomy and to Mal’s immediate left. Tilting his head allowed the young, brown haired Lieutenant Chris Donlin to come into view out of the corner of Mal’s eye. “But don’t worry, old son, I won’t forget the “little” people after I’m gone.”

A general round of laughter erupted from the six men seat belted into the chairs of the chopper: the men of Mal’s special response unit.

Technician Third Grade James “Jimmy” Jay, the round-faced ex-baseball player from San Diego sitting on Narcomy’s left, chipped in, “I was going to join up with JAG, but I’d miss the food at Fort Benning way too much.”

“Yeah and we can tell you ain’t missed food in your entire life, lunch box,” added Sergeant Steve Douros in a thick Philadelphia accent.

“It just ain’t right, I tell ya,” grumbled Narcomy, visibly upset by the news. “Yuh momma didn’t send yuh to ranger school just to go an’ become a lawyer. Whatta we need lawyers for anyways?”

Mal laughed out loud, enjoying the banter even if he had heard it all before.

“If people were honest, we wouldn’t need lawyers, Narc’,” counseled Lieutenant Donlin, grinning from ear-to-ear.

“And what would we do if lawyers were honest, LT?” Mal quipped at the exact same time the words spilled from Sergeant Douros’s mouth.

Mal’s eyes went wide even as the rest of the US ranger unit burst into uncontrolled laughter.

Something was wrong.

He HAD heard it all before.

Oh, no, Mal thought to himself, panicking. And I know what happens next!

He tried to scream, tried to tear the straps from his chest. Mal found himself unable to move, unable to speak, his face locked into a smile that fit in with the joviality of the men around him. They had no idea.

They were all going to die.

The laughter was interrupted as the Black Hawk jerked to one side and the static-filled voice of the co-pilot shrieked over their helmet communication systems.

“Incoming! Starboard side!”

It was too late.

An explosion rocked the chopper, shredding one side of the craft and filling the cabin with fire. All Mal saw before the entire world seemed to spin out of control was big John Narcomy vaporized in a flash of blinding white light.

CHAPTER 6

Malcolm Weir woke himself screaming, entangled in ragged strips of linen from the small cot he had been lying on, and covered in a fine dusting of what appeared to be goose down. For some reason his left arm was lodged in the middle of the bed, clean through mattress, metal springs and into the wooden base the entire thing rested upon.

It took Mal a moment to realize he was the perpetrator of the mattress-cide. His new body must have responded to the highly emotional state the nightmare had evoked in him and reacted accordingly. The hand Mal pulled up to inspect had formed the razor sharp knife-fingers he had seen during his escape from the Project: Hardwired labs, and a quick look at his shoulder revealed the defensive spines and plates had emerged as the living metal quickly adopted a more aggressive profile.

Standing up and disengaging himself from the tattered mess of the tiny bed, the smells of old laundry, dust and papers left too long filtered to his nose.

“Where am I?” muttered Mal to himself.

Mal let his gaze wander slowly. A cramped back-office somewhere was the answer he received from the rickety Swedish-made desk with an old computer monitor and phone resting on it, piles of white copy paper boxes over-flowing with old paperwork and invoices of some kind, and coat rack with a pair of dirty overalls he found during his search. The walls were off-white with a band of ugly gray coloring them for a foot up from the floor. A single spiral energy-saver bulb was stuck into the double light fixture overhead - Mal noticed the glass covering for which sat dangerously close to the edge of one of the stacks of boxes - although the light was off and the room almost pitch dark. A tiny, curtainless window on the wall above the destroyed cot and a half-opened door on the opposite one were the only exits from the space.

A spear of light from the open door seemed to bring with it the smell of old oil, gasoline, rusted metal and rubber.

A garage?

“Better go see where I am.”

Blowing a stray feather from its ticklish perch on his upper lip, Mal’s head snapped to attention, the spines on his arms flexing. Heavy boots on concrete. Someone was coming.

As if in answer to his next unasked question, the computerized voice announced, “Inbound target identified: David Anthony Zuzelo. Arrival in ten point two seconds. Target unarmed.”