In seconds, Agent 957’s armor fell to the ground, expelling a cloud. Some of the grey particles floated in the air, others fell out of the bottom of his helmet, creating a small pile. It made me grateful that the Rocket suit filtered the air. It wouldn’t do me harm, but I didn’t like the idea of breathing him in.
The four-handers ran away, deeper into the tunnels, unwilling to take the chance that we wouldn’t kill them. Given that there were more than 20 bodies on the ground, most of them killed by me, I couldn’t blame them.
The beam hit Marcus’ chest, but it didn’t get through his new costume. While I hadn’t been planning to go to war, I knew that he and Jaclyn were more vulnerable to heat and lasers than they were to anything physical.
I designed their costumes to disperse heat and reflect lasers.
In Marcus’ case, I designed his to adjust to shapeshifting to the degree that it could—which sometimes worked against protecting him. Continue reading Unhidden: Part 7→
That turned out to be a fool’s dream. Agent 957 barked out a command that my implant translated as, “Target him!”
“Him” in this case meant me and the four remaining soldiers ran at me, the front two firing their weapons, hitting my armor. I felt the warmth. Even as I began to aim the sonics directly at the nearest soldiers, one of them fell over, taken out because Tikki recycled one of their own shots.
By shots, I mean burning blasts of energy and technically they didn’t ring out so much as sizzle through the air. Of course, a technicality of description wouldn’t make their weapons less lethal.
Marcus flattened out against the wall—though not before Tikki stood in front of him with her bubble of time distortion filling the tunnel. I was on the wrong side—the unprotected side. That wasn’t bad. I wanted to be able to do things, but it was inconvenient for Marcus.
That said, head on fights with people using energy weapons weren’t his strong point. Like Jaclyn, he’d inherited some level of toughness from their grandfather, but it worked better against physical hits. Continue reading Unhidden: Part 5→
I considered if we had any alternatives to making a last stand in the tunnel. We could run to the next intersection and take another tunnel, but if they were managing to track us anyway, that wouldn’t help.
I could try to bring down the tunnel behind us. The Rocket suit could do it, but I’d have to punch the wall or ceiling. It might land on me.
My laser was powerful enough to punch holes in the ceiling, but I’d still have to be close to cut any appreciable amount of rock. Continue reading Unhidden: Part 4→
I called the bot back and started running faster. It didn’t take long to catch up. Their group was only walking at a normal human rate.
I slowed as I caught sight of them. Marcus’ suit had to be registering my presence, but caution meant lowering the chance of accidentally fighting each other.
Marcus’ voice filled my helmet. “Nick! I was wondering if you died. That earthquake was massive.”
Far behind me, the cavern fell into itself. I felt the rumble as I ran, followed by cracking noises, a lot of them. It seemed like they stretched out for minutes, but doubted that was true. I wasn’t checking the time.
However long the quake went, it was too long. The floor shook along with each rumble and crack, finishing in a loud but muffled thump that may have been the end of the cavern, but wasn’t the end of the noise. Smaller crashes continued behind me, blowing fine dust upward into the tunnel.
He didn’t know where he was in the endless caves around him, but his implant had kept track of his every step, so he had a limited map. The soldiers within range fed their information into his implant as per instruction, giving him an overall picture of everything within range.
He open up a communication channel with the soldier at the front of the line. “Are we close to them yet?” Continue reading Unhidden: Part 1→
“No,” I said, straightening my hand and then thrusting it like a spear through the top of the device, smashing its internal computer and separating the power from the main mechanism.
Lines of electricity surrounded my arm, but I didn’t feel it. The suit’s systems for handling massive amounts of electricity had been in advance of anyone else as far back as the 1950s and had only improved in the versions created since then. Continue reading Warriors: Part 13→
Tunnel Four wasn’t far away—just two buildings down the same street. We ran at a comfortable pace, thirty miles per hour or so. We didn’t have enough space to go faster. Kals didn’t have any problems keeping up.
Tunnel Four sat between two buildings that weren’t much different than the buildings at Tunnel Three—except that we didn’t see anyone here. Wherever the plant had gone, I hoped he was safe. My bet was that he’d gotten the last people out over here and gone with them when he realized that he’d missed Kamia and the others.
