I did not see the motion nor feel the knife blade enter my thigh up to the hilt, but I felt the searing pain as he began dragging it down my femur. The razor-sharp blade cleanly separating tendon from bone. As he neared my knee, he removed his hand but left the blade imbedded in flesh.

  “Simply brilliant,” he said, marveling at the destruction on my body the tool had rendered.

  Ada offered to dampen my pain receptors more, but I stopped her. He seemed unaware of my battle AI or my enhancements, and that was about the only advantage I had right now. I wanted him to see my pain although honestly it just fucking hurt, and I wasn’t exactly thinking clearly at the moment.

  “She is one of the Sisters,” he said. “Sisters of Light.” He said it like the words themselves had a foul taste.

  I grunted something as my body spasmed in pain.

  “Did you know that when she hired you?”

  “I don’t know any fucking sisters, you goddamn sadist.”

  “Sadist? No, no, my friend. That I am not. I take no pleasure in your pain. Pain is simply a tool, something I use to get my job done. Probably much as yourself. We have unpleasant tasks to perform in our chosen careers, but other than the satisfaction of a job well done, we both undoubtedly must separate ourselves from the horrific tasks that we sometimes must do, no?”

  He removed the knife and laid it aside, then picked up a tube and showed it to me. I couldn’t move my head enough, so he loosened the restraint on my forehead. He squeezed the tube like toothpaste and rubbed a small bit between his fingers then applied it to the long slash in my leg. I felt a stab of pain, then a numbing pressure of his fingers and hand running down the cut, then nothing.

  “Amazing stuff,” he said. “Anadium, just one of the many products that has come out of my employer’s research.”

  “Industrial painkillers, thanks. Still not worth destroying the world.”

  “Oh no, sir. Not a pain killer. Your leg is being healed as we speak. Nanoparticles are binding the cell walls back together and repairing blood vessels, even reattaching tendon to bone. The pain receptors are blocked during the process so, yes, the analgesic effect is wonderful as well. “So, you see…” He held my knife up again and then stabbed it down on my other leg.

  He could torture me over and over again without risk of killing me. The pain was unbearable, but I got his point. He could literally make this shit last all fucking day, all week even.

  “What do you want, you son of a bitch!” I screamed it, spittle flew out of my mouth and tears were burning their way down my cheek.

  “I want to know about the Sister you work for. Who is she, for starters?” He gave the handle of the knife a thump with his finger which sent shockwaves of pain through my entire body. I could just see the knife still embedded in my right leg just like he’d done on the other.

  I instructed Ada to dial back the pain receptors. I needed to think clearly, and my suffering was getting in the way. I did like that Anadium stuff, though, that shit was amazing. I could see the blood flow had entirely stopped on my left leg, and the pain on the other side hadn’t been bad even before Ada adjusted the settings on my nervous system. I need to kill this bastard; he isn’t going to willingly give up anything.

  Through half-closed eyes, I watch him move along the back wall with his cat-like grace. I could see he was speaking to someone on his comms. Ada could likely lip read some of what he was saying, but I assumed he was getting instructions on what to do with me.

  We were in Nevis Carson’s coastal estate. That was just a guess but seemed likely despite me never seeing a house. The Decimator had been waiting for us before we even got close. That meant he had been surveilling us remotely. I wondered—how long? As if in response to my thought, a small wasp flew around the beams high overhead and slowly descended until it landed on my bare arm.

  Insect drone. The little buggers had kept getting smaller and more capable for the last fifty years. Any this small still had a limited range but could send voice and comms back for miles, especially if you had plenty of them networked together. If the one on my arm was a drone, it was a damn good one, because I could clearly see the angry-looking face and the yellow and black bands on its belly writhing just like the real thing. Then, it tensed briefly and drove its stinging barb deep into the flesh of my arm before flying off.

  It stung like a wasp, but before Ada even said anything, I knew it hadn’t been a real insect.

  “We have a message from Voss.”

  She had somehow encoded a digital message into the wasp-sized drone and delivered it to me here inside this compound. Damn clever, the nanoparticle-sized payload obviously couldn’t hold much information, but it might just be enough, if I could just hang on. As I watched the creepy man approaching, I knew that might not be all that easy.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-NINE

  The message had been a one-way communication, but I appreciated it. Voss was with Sumo, and they were in a relatively safe location. She had identified my captor as a man named Bertrand Acevedo, a hired killer who was a known associate of our target, Nevis Carlson.

  “You are not my mission,” Acevedo said moving back to my right side. He peered over and looked at the wound on my leg.

  “I may have nicked an artery. Not the femoral, fear not. I am not that clumsy. Perhaps the profunda, although to be quite honest, that is not so much better for you. Death, it is still… hmmm, how should I put this? Just outside the door. My mission is the girl, tell me what I need, and I will release you.”

  “Release me from my bonds?” I asked, knowing full well what he had meant.

  “Not exactly, but they are quite remarkable, aren’t they? Another gift from some of our researchers. Very similar genus to the lavender vines that now cover much of the country. The ones that feed off the decaying bodies.”

  He looked at me and grinned. “Oh, you didn’t know that was what their purpose was, eh? Yes, much like other carnivorous plants that trap you, there is a neurotoxin producing a mild narcotic combined with a paralytic. Then, they wrap their victims and slowly liquify and directly absorb the nutrients as the body decays. From what I understand, it was one of the simpler genetic designs. At some point in Earth’s history, a plant like that did exist. They just had to roll the clock back on the DNA a few million years. Dust to dust and all that. We are all just compost in the end, right?”

  I felt a small jolt on my back which I knew was Ada doing something with the neural interface that was imbedded at the base of my neck and upper spine.

  “Mister Acevedo may have just offered us a solution, Kovach. I was unaware the restraints were absorbing blood and tissue, but we can use that to our advantage.”

  “How?” I asked internally.

  “I am modifying a few of the billions of nanoparticles that are always present in your system to attack the cellular structure of the material. If it is still living tissue, I am going to give it a cold. If it works, you may feel them loosen…just slightly.”

  As an augmented soldier, I had been given nanobiotic regiments since basic with even more complex nanobody infusions during my extensive lifesaving upgrade. Truth was, I had boatloads of internal microscopic machines to spare.

  “My employer wishes to know your name, Master Sergeant.”

  He removed my knife from my leg, and I made sure to yell out in pain, although I really didn’t feel it. He scraped the blade up my bare arm and pushed the base layer of my suit up until my service tattoo caught his eye. The iconic starfield on black left little doubt as to who I was with.

  “Hmmm, that explains much but also conjures up many new questions. You are not just a simple soldier, are you?”

  I felt a slight quiver in the restraint on my left upper leg. “Honestly, Dude, I am pretty simple.”

  “No, no… you are special. You’re a drop trooper, right?”

  “As my pops would say, that just makes me a special kind of stupid.”

  He held up the tube of Anadium. “You are bleeding out, Gunny. Answer my questions and I can at least make things a bit less unpleasant for you.”

  I did want the painkiller cream, but bleeding out wasn’t a terrible way to go. I mean, the pain was gone, so it was essentially like going to sleep. I felt the quiver again, stronger this time, then a twitch from one of the other strands.

  “Tell me about the girl, what has she told you about the Sisterhood?”

  “Uh, uh, know nothing of the Sisterhood,” I said, my voice heavy with faked grogginess, although truthfully, the blood loss was starting to be a real issue.

  “The Sisters of Light? A coven of witches but much more dangerous.”

  “Danger?” I asked, truly confused about who they were.

  “Si, they almost managed to stop all of our plans, despite the trillions of dollars we had invested and the massive security protocols we had in place. I hate them, but I do not deny they are a formidable enemy.”

  I was an Alliance Space Force Tier-1 Operator, and he was more concerned with Voss and her Sisters? I began to understand that I needed to know more about my partner out there. I gave a moan and rolled over, my eyes going glassy because of a few bio manipulations by my AI. She offered to make me throw up, but I thought that might be overkill.

  “No, no, don’t die just yet, soldier.” I felt the man rubbing something in the gash on my right leg. The healing cream again, I guessed. He wasn’t quite ready for me to die either. That was good, and I knew he’d laid my knife down near my injured leg. Several of the living restraints were significantly looser now. I wasn’t entirely sure I could break free, but I was damn sure going to find out.

  I stretched my body, flexing every muscle to expand the reach of my bindings and held it for a count of four. Acevedo was using a datapad to take a picture of my face.

  “He’s going to run facial recognition, Prowler.”

  That wasn’t good. Although none of my information was on public record, and I’d gone to great lengths to keep my information private, I had no doubt Nevis and his group had access to military data. While my face may not produce any hits, if he ran a retinal scan, he may learn much more than I wanted him to know. He turned away slightly, keying something into the screen.

  I relaxed my body completely then arched up high in a good approximation of a seizure. The assassin turned to watch me writhing under the restraints. While they had loosened after Ada’s nanovirus, they didn’t release.

  “Gunny, you are going to injure yourself even more.”

  His tablet beeped; he eyed the readout then looked at me. His face gave little away, but I sensed an increasing level of concern. His threat index had just increased, and I sensed he had my info and suddenly realized that keeping me alive might have been an error.

  I hadn’t expected the bands to just fall away, that had not been my plan. My plan was to reach the handle of my knife, which now was wedged under my damaged thigh, my right hand gripping it tightly. Now I just needed the bastard to get a little closer.

  I’ll say this for the man, he was not stupid. He had taken inventory in a microsecond, and while he may not have known what was wrong, he knew something was off. Acevedo backed away several steps and drew a pistol from an unseen holster.

  I slid the knife from beneath me and activated the vibrasonic blade. It would now slice through nearly anything with ease.

  “Mister Kovach, my apologies. I hadn’t realized I was in the presence of military royalty.”

  I backed the blade through the nearest strap, which parted. I couldn’t cut myself free before the man shot me, which at point blank probably would kill me no matter where it hit.

  I gave Ada a silent command to activate my suit’s beacon in three seconds. The main part of my battle armor was lying on a table a dozen feet away. I was slicing before the killer noticed the alarm and high-contrast strobe. To his credit, he didn’t turn to see what it was, but his attention was no longer fully on me. He fired as I flipped off the table landing hard on my two injured legs. The cream might be helping, but I wasn’t fucking healed…not yet.

  My opponent had a handgun, I had a knife. In the movies I used to watch with my dad, the guy or girl in my situation would always throw the blade, catching the gunman with a perfect strike, embedding the knife in the opponent’s skull. Funny thing, knife fights don’t work that way, and I’d been in a lot of them. The last thing I wanted to do was throw away the only weapon I had. I was badly injured and at an extreme disadvantage. He was a skilled professional and still in charge, and I had to come up with a way of evening up the odds on this battle.

  I felt several more rounds hit the table I was hiding behind. I also noticed the tube of painkiller medicine which I squeezed liberally into my still gaping leg-wound. My immediate assessment was I was likely stronger and faster despite my injuries, so I needed to use that and any other advantage I could find. Interestingly, I found absolutely nothing handy. Then, I realized I was wearing what I needed.

  A class-1 RDT Battle Suit is not like a suit of armor, not exactly. Instead, it is a modular piece of equipment that is customizable to each soldier and each mission. In this case, I’d kitted out in one of my standard versions. Heavyweight protectors on the chest and back, with lighter weight protection guards on my arms and legs. My leg armor was obviously removed, as was my back plate. He hadn’t figured out how to remove my chest rig, though, and that was damn luck. Lucky for me, not so much for him.

  While I was unwilling to throw my knife, my chest armor comes with a number of nifty tricks, including a row of snap-out pitons for climbing sheer rock faces. They are about five inches long, solid titanium, and blend in with the protective shell as to be virtually invisible. I dropped two out and hurled one at the killer’s head before rocketing out the other side of the table.

  I guessed correctly he would dodge the spike and fire as soon as he swiveled toward my new position. I hadn’t gotten a close look at his gun, but Ada had cataloged it as an older Italian Bianchi XL88. Depending on the configuration, it could hold up to twelve standard rounds. I felt reasonably sure the professional killer had opted for the larger magazine, which would give him fifteen.

  My right arm snapped out before I’d even thought about it, and a piton lodged in Acevedo’s chest. My aim was too high; he was hurt, but it wasn’t a killing blow.

  “You are a very capable warrior, Master Sergeant Kovach. Perhaps you would like to discuss terms.”

  I knew he was hurting as much as I was, but damn, his voice was flat and neutral as if nothing at all was happening.

  “Nah, I’m good.”

  “Ahh, but you aren’t. Think about it, my friend. I still have a Decimator and acres of wildlife guarding this property. Wouldn’t you like to know how to not have to fight them to stay alive? Trust me, Joseph, you want a place in the enclave? We can always use a man of your particular talents.”

  “You are a paid killer, a security dog, you can’t offer me anything but answers, and I am going to get those from you, anyway,” I snarled before diving for another piece of my armor that I’d seen. His shot nearly shattered my shoulder, but my suit’s shoulder plating deflected most of it. I quickly checked the shot count; Ada and I both had been keeping track and had him at seven. He hadn’t reloaded, and I didn’t think he had a back-up piece, but that was a lot of assumptions. I pulled on the back plate and slid my helmet from its receiver and back into place. I was still vulnerable but not like I had been.

  I stood, snapping off another piton that caught him in the wrist nearly severing it. He smoothly switched hands and shot me in the face. That was just fucking rude, and should have been fatal except Ada had activated my helmet just in time. Despite the armor, it hurt. I charged and sliced but only got a bit of flesh. This guy was fast, too fast. It suddenly occurred to me that he could have received upgrades, too. He smiled knowing full well what I had just figured out.

  “No, you are not the only one,” he said before firing again.

  One of the jacketed rounds tore through my exposed arm. The damage left it nearly useless, but I switched the knife to my other. My second round of upgrades, the ones after I’d been killed, had done a number of things, but being ambidextrous was one I had barely noticed until now. My left hand strikes were just as lethal as my right. I slipped another piece of armor on, my vital back plate this time. A single forearm sleeve was also nearby so I added that to my growing ensemble.

  As a combat soldier, I knew most fights were over in thirty seconds or less. When at least one of the fighters is armed, it’s almost always less. We’d been going at it for over a minute, but even I knew my blood loss and injured lower body had taken a toll on my stamina. I needed to end this so I could recover.

  “Bertrand, why don’t you tell me where Nevis is?”

  If using his name bothered him, he didn’t show it. I could see part of his face as he took cover behind a large cabinet. I was debating whether to slide one of the leg sleeves on. It would take time, but the built-in servos in the armor would make up for my weakness. His next shot persuaded me to come up with another plan.

  “Your friend might want to know that it was I who killed her Sisters in France. Telepresence is such a wonderful thing. Unlike you, Gunny, I didn’t even have to be on the continent.”

  That was what Voss had been so upset over earlier today. She hadn’t shared a lot, but his remark had hit home.

  Shots left? Three, assuming we’d both counted correctly. I launched my last piton high over his head then activated the grenade launcher on my back. Yeah, I know, overkill. Welcome to Prowler’s Battle Rules number four. Overkill is underrated. The two whumps arched out to each side, and I went down shielding my unarmored body parts the best I could.

  The blast and overpressure in the confined space was tremendous, but I was up and moving toward my opponent before the sound had died away. The room was in shambles; thousands of bits of shrapnel and wood fragments had pierced everything, I was counting on one of those things being Acevedo, but he met me mid-stride running toward me firing blindly in the smoke. I went low and slashed up in two vicious strikes, then used my armored forehand to smash his face in.