Emergence (20 page)

The gang member who had taken the car door to the face groaned, so the Other punched him, making sure he was out cold. Some of the other gang members were down with bullet wounds; there were only three left on this side of the street now.

The Other heard
cheering
over the sound of gun fire and looked up to see a teenager watching him from a second-story window, shouting down encouragement.

“Get down and hide,” the Other roared at the dumb kid.

The window of the blue sedan he was crouched behind shattered as a bullet hit it. The Other scurried around the car and tore the driver side door open, releasing the handbrake. He moved behind the car, put his back against it, and pushed. It slowly started to move.

Gaining momentum, the Other kept behind the car as it closed in on the first gang, the ones with the yellow kerchiefs around their arms. Only two gang members wearing the angel patch remained and as the sedan passed one, the Other grabbed a small stone from the road and hurled it at the man. His aim was perfect and it struck the thug's temple, collapsing him in a heap.

The last remaining angel patch ganger stood from his hiding spot and aimed a large pistol at the Other. Three bullets tore into the ganger's chest, and he dropped to the ground. The Other let out a curse, he preferred to do things cleanly, no deaths, but that wasn't always possible. Putting his back into the blue sedan, he pushed even harder and felt the car pick up speed.

Bullets hailed around him, the sedan filling with holes and lead. He crouched down behind the car and then the sedan
crashed
against another car. The Other streaked out to the left, charging in a low crouch at inhuman speed. He took two of the gang members in a full body tackle as they fired on him. He felt at least one bullet ricochet off his armored suit. There was no pain, so he guessed the armor had saved him.

With both gang members stunned, the Other grabbed them and ducked behind a silver truck. More bullets struck the ground where he had just been. He rendered the two jackasses unconscious with a series of furious strikes, then he waited for an opening.

He heard the
click
of an empty magazine and a curse from a gang member.

“I'm out,” the ganger cried.

“Me too,” said another.

The Other poked his head up for a look and saw only two gang members remained, both had thrown their guns away and drawn knives. The Other stood and walked around the truck. Both gangers moved to flank him.

“Who the hell are you meant to be?” one of them, a man with a bloody sash around his head, asked.

“I'm the Other.”

“The other what?” said the second gang member, a man with a lightning bolt tattooed under his bottom lip.

The Other looked at the bloody sash gang member, then sprinted towards the man with the lightning bolt tattoo. Blocking a stab, the Other punched the man twice in the chest, fast and hard, before turning and throwing him into his approaching comrade. Both of them went down and the Other advanced upon their crumpled forms.

A feeling crept up the Other's spine, a feeling that something bad was about to happen. He turned to find the giant gang member behind him, swinging a metal baseball bat. The bat looked small in the giant's hands, and it
crunched
into the Other's ribs. He flew sideways,
crashing
against a nearby stairwell.

Spitting blood and clutching one arm to his midsection, the Other struggled to rise. His powers would heal him soon enough, but not before this fight was over. The giant advanced, baseball bat still clutched in a meaty, over-sized hand.

The Other stood and stretched, feeling his ribs twinge in pain.

“You're big,” the Other said, wincing.

“You're dead,” the giant growled and swung again.

This time, the Other saw it coming. He ducked underneath the bat, getting inside the giant's guard. He delivered four thunderous punches to his mid-section and jumped back outside his reach. He wasn't quite fast enough. The giant's back-swing with the bat caught the Other's left arm, spinning him around and making him cry out.

Stumbling away, the Other tried to clutch at both his ribs and his left arm all at the same time. There was simply no way he could match this giant's strength. Bruisers were a class of chimeric who grew much larger than a normal human and their strength increased to insane levels.

As if to prove this, the bruiser crouched down near a black Crown Vic and grunted as he picked the vehicle up. He tossed it at the Other.

The Other threw himself sideways, and the sedan narrowly missed him. The thugs just beginning to come to behind him were not so lucky. Their screams were cut off as the vehicle landed on them and slid into a building, leaving behind their smeared corpses on the pavement. If the bruiser had any remorse over killing two of his gang buddies, he showed none, already charging towards the Other as he struggled to stand.

The bruiser probably expected the Other to run, to dodge, to use speed. He probably wasn't ready for a head-on collision, so that's exactly what the Other gave him, leaping at the giant.

They
crashed
together, the bruiser's mass and momentum carrying them forward. The Other managed to get in one punch before the bruiser enveloped him in a crushing bear hug. The Other gasped for breath, awash in agony. The bruiser squeezed harder, and the Other felt like he was being crushed. He thought he heard his bones
creak
. His healing powers could do much, but he couldn't survive death.

Pulling his right arm free from the bruiser's grasp, the Other felt his vision start to dim as the pressure increased. He punched with all his worth, right fist after right fist straight into the bruiser's face, each one met by a meaty
thud
and a
grunt
of pain. The Other may not have the bruiser's size or strength, yet he wasn't a lightweight.

After seven punches, the bruiser's grip around the Other's midsection loosened. They dropped to the ground, and the Other extricated himself, scrambling away and gasping for breath. His vision flickered. The bruiser stood up for a few moments, his arms to his sides, a vacant expression on his bloody face, then he collapsed sideways, hitting the ground hard.

The Other let out a painful
sigh
and lay back on the street, his breathing ragged as he stared up at the night sky. Just one star winked back at him, the problems of modern light pollution. A chuckle escaped from his mouth. He couldn't help it. A joyful laugh followed it up. His ribs twinged with every movement.

“Is he okay?” asked a woman's voice.

Slowly, the Other rolled onto his side and pulled his knees up beneath him, pushing unsteadily to his feet. Quite a few civilians were gathering, and he saw more in the windows of nearby buildings. He also heard sirens. The cops were on their way. Probably the DCD with them.

“Are you okay, mister?” asked a small boy. The lad must have been no more than ten and held onto his father's hand. His face showed a mixture of awe and concern.

The Other nodded, already looking for an escape. This was not how he wanted to introduce himself to the world. Actually, he had
never
wanted to introduce himself to the world.

The crowd started talking all at once, some professing the gratitude while others showing concern at the Other's condition. He was slouched at an angle with his left arm hanging useless and his right clutching at his ribs. He tasted blood. It was all a bit too much.

He turned and fled as fast as his battered body could move. He ran towards the nearest alleyway and, from there, jumped onto a fire escape, climbing painfully to the rooftop just as the emergency responders and DCD vans arrived. He took one last look down toward the streets and the carnage below, and then ran.

#

Daniel woke to his alarm, and then gasped as the pain hit. With more than a little effort, he managed to roll out of bed and stumble over to his clock. His ribs ached. His back was agony. He rolled his left arm and it felt bruised, but he saw no signs of injury on his skin.

Looking down at his bed, Daniel made a quick search for any springs that might have pulled loose. There had to be some explanation as to why he was waking up aching so badly, and he doubted his violent dreams were the cause. With a slightly painful shrug, he went about his morning routine.

There were some interesting articles circulating the net that morning. Front and center was a report about a possible new superhero in town. A chimeric by the name of the Other had broken up a gang war in the middle of Jefferson Avenue in Arkwood City.

Daniel swallowed hard. That area was less than four miles north of Polito, of his home.

He looked at pics of the Other taken by a resident’s cell phone. The man was tall and well-built and wore a blue suit with bits of armor. Apparently he’d rendered close to twenty gang members unconscious, including a Class B chimeric called Boneyard. The article said the police were attributing all the deaths to the gangs, but a Department of Chimeric Defense rep said the jury was still out on this helmed vigilante.

Daniel ground his teeth. It didn't matter if the Other was touted as a hero or a vigilante, he was a chimeric, and that meant he was a threat. Daniel’s modifications might allow him to match speed and strength with the man, but he knew nothing about fighting, nothing about combat. Daniel determined to inquire at his local gym about self-defense classes. He could spare an hour each evening to make certain he could fend off attacks.

He glossed over several other articles, his mind on this ‘Other,’ then read about how the nuclear power plant east of the city had gone dark for a second time in the past week. Officials were still claiming it was scheduled maintenance, but the reporter went on to suspect a large number of alarming causes. Daniel finished charging his modifications and went about his exercises, dismayed at how much pain he was in.

At work, Daniel spent another day in his office. His plans for a device that would allow him to predict the reappearances of a teleporter were well-underway, but they were still untested plans at the moment. Actually, he had no way to test them, but that wouldn't stop him from building the predictive modification and installing it into his body.

He attended a brief meeting with some Biotiq shareholders. Every quarter they liked to be kept up-to-date with what the company was working on, and Daniel's lab had made some startling breakthroughs in recent years. They had created the current market-leading cybernetic corneal implant, which had made Biotiq a lot of money. As such, Daniel and his lab were expected to make more breakthroughs leading to similar profit numbers. It was quite a lot of pressure.

Daniel told the shareholders about the bone replacement therapy his lab was working on, and they seemed suitably impressed despite his claims it was at least a year away from sanctioned human trials. True though his claim might be, they didn't need to know that he had already tested the therapy on himself and could attest to it being an unparalleled success.

After the shareholder meeting, Daniel went back to his office and continued working on his new design based off the stolen technology. He wanted something ready to show to Urksky.

#

Two weeks later, Daniel had a prototype. It was nothing more than a tiny microchip, but it held all the data he needed. He was ready to see Urksky and ready to safeguard himself against teleporting chimerics.

Jake Urksky was a criminal, and he was the first to admit it. He lived and worked underneath a nightclub in Bay Island, one of the less affluent neighborhoods; it was far from being a gang-controlled slum, but not so far that the cops didn't keep up a presence.

The nightclub was called Neon Dream and was about as seedy as the neighborhood. It played music at least a decade old and sold drinks at prices so cheap even junkies strung out on Jazz could afford to get wasted. Daniel was not the only person from the more well-off neighborhoods to be visiting, and it was known that a number of powerful people visited Neon Dream, though always incognito.

The nightclub itself was not Daniel's destination. A stairwell led to a heavy steel door. A camera hung above the door, and it blinked to life as he approached. Daniel stared up at it for a few seconds and heard a loud
thunk
as the door bolt slid back. Opening the door, he stepped through into darkness and closed the door behind him, the bolt
thunking
into place again. A few moments later, lights switched on.

The first basement was filled with stacked metal kegs and crates full of bottles. Daniel ignored them, followed the path he had trodden many times. Behind a stack of kegs marked as empty was another door, one that looked more sturdy than the last. Another camera blinked to life as Daniel stepped close and, after a few seconds, the door slid back into the wall revealing a staircase. He went down without hesitation.

He remembered the first time he had come here. Daniel had been terrified and shaking like a leaf. The journey to Urksky's workshop seemed so ominous and seedy that he had no idea what to expect. Little had he known back then that he had nothing to worry about.

Jake Urksky was hunched over a workbench with a soldering iron in one hand and a robotic finger in the other. The man was tall and thin and fiercely struggling not to go bald. He wore an apron covered in oil and blood in equal parts.

“In a minute, Danny,” Jake said, still staring intently at the robotic finger.

“It's Daniel,” Daniel said, looking around the rest of Jake's workshop. Most of the parts were top of the line models. They still seemed antiquated to Daniel. If the public only knew that their 'newest' models were five years out of date before they even hit the market.

Prosthetics had taken huge leaps in the past decade, now more about robotics and cybernetics. There wasn't much in the human body that couldn't be replaced; of course, there was the philosophical debate about when that body would stop being classified as a human. Picketers had staged more than one rally outside the Biotiq laboratories over the issue. They were luddites afraid of technology.