The Society (A Broken World Book 1) (32 page)

When I was still twenty feet away, I reached down into my boot and slipped out the knife I'd taken off of the guard outside my room. It made crawling that much more difficult, but the blade was blackened and I was going to need it if somebody noticed me before I was ready to initiate my attack.

I adjusted my course slightly, trying to keep what was left of a rusted oil drum between me and the closer guard. The adrenaline flowing through my system was making it hard to keep from shaking, but I managed to get to the oil drum without making any noise.

I was within ten feet of my target now and couldn't realistically count on getting any closer without being seen. I took a deep, quiet breath, reversed my knife so the blade stuck out in front of me, and then exploded out around the barrel that had been concealing me.

I covered more than four feet with my first step, moving at a speed that would've been the envy of any participant in the Anniversary Games back home. Neither of the guards realized what was happening until my left foot hit the ground and launched me forward five more feet. By then it was too late for the first guard.

My blade took him in the chest as my left hand swept his barrel off to the side. It was a killing blow, one that was so close to instantly fatal that it hardly mattered whether he'd lost consciousness or not by the time I ripped the blade free of his body.

I pivoted to the left, spinning on the ball of my left foot as the knife came back by my ear in preparation for a throw that I wasn't convinced I could make. As my wrist snapped forward and the knife went spinning away from me, a trio of shots rang out in rapid succession and I cursed.

The knife sank home in the second guard's throat with a sickening thunk and then I stumbled as the pain hit me. I'd thought that Jasper had shot the second guard before I could throw my knife, but I'd been wrong. There hadn't been three shots because he'd forgotten to change the selector over on his rifle, there'd been three shots because the guard had just shot me.

I looked down fully expecting the blood I found coursing down my arm, but knowing that I had to confirm I hadn't been hit anywhere else. I hadn't, which meant I could keep fighting—at least for as long as it took me to bleed out.

Jasper arrived at my side a second later, my rifle in his left hand. "You're hit!"

"Yeah, but we don't have time to do anything about that—any second enforcers are going to come pouring out of the building."

I grabbed my rifle out of his hand as I was speaking and then turned and charged towards the doors. Hopefully his people would be smart enough to grab the guards' weapons as they went by. I hit the doors at a run, throwing them open with my injured shoulder, and stepped into a killing field.

Anyone else would've died within the first second of entering the building. Unlike some of the other gang leaders, Piter hadn't traded any of the weapons he'd gotten from Brennan to other territories. He'd been stockpiling them, and based on the hail of bullets headed towards me, he hadn't sent any of his people with rifles out to watch the border.

Only two things saved me. The first was that I'd come into the building at a dead run—and I was much faster than any normal human. The second was that Piter's people had been so low on ammunition that they'd never been able to practice with their weapons like they should have.

The entryway into the building was a three-story atrium that had seen better days, but the second-floor balcony on the west side was still functional and the better part of a dozen people were lined up there waiting for me as I entered the building. A whisper of sound brought my head around just in time to see the gunners and my training stood me in good stead. Rather than stopping and trying to return fire, I dug down deep for every ounce of speed I possessed and streaked across the broken marble floor as the wall behind me exploded in a deluge of gunfire.

The door I was headed towards seemed impossibly far away. I was moving at more than thirty-five miles per hour, which meant, it wasn't going to take me more than a second or two to make it to shelter, but I wasn't sure I was going to have that much time.

The trail of destruction along the wall to my right followed me with unnatural speed as the gunners tried to track my movement. With each step I could feel them catching up to me, and with each step I became more and more sure I wasn't going to make it to cover. I was two steps away from the doorway and positive that my next step was going to be my last when a second source of gunfire cut loose behind me.

I thought I was dead. It only made sense that Piter would've positioned a second group of men where they would have a clear shot at anyone who'd managed to cross the kill zone, but for once the most likely explanation wasn't the correct one.

Jasper and the others hadn't been quick enough to make it inside the building before the shooting had started, but they'd been smart enough to fall back to where they would have a clear line of sight to the gunners targeting me.

They opened fire on the enforcers through the windows, and my last step forward into safety was accompanied by the sound of shattering glass.

No place inside of the city—other than Brennan's compound—was very well-lit, but Piter's men had moved what light sources they had down to the first floor so they would have better visibility in the kill zone. That meant that Jasper and the others were mostly aiming by the light of their targets' muzzle flash, but their efforts were good enough to cause the enforcers to take cover, and that was all I needed to disappear into the doorway I'd been aiming for.

I brought my rifle up to my shoulder as I slowed down and assumed the bent-kneed gait I'd been taught in training. It was slower than the sprint I'd just been using, but had the advantage of providing a stable firing platform, which was the most important thing at that moment.

I could still feel blood trickling down my arm, but I had to make it up to the second floor and eliminate Piter's gunmen if Jasper and the others were going to have any chance of survival. My nanites were just going to have to do the best they could.

Ears straining for any clue of what was up ahead of me, I came round a corner and someone grabbed a hold of my gun, yanking me forward. I had only a second to react. Judging by the force with which I was pulled forward, I was up against someone who was much bigger than me, so rather than pulling backwards to maintain my position, I threw myself forward.

I used the enforcer's hand on the barrel of my gun as a pivot and slammed the butt of the weapon into the side of his head. That got me out of the way of the knife he tried to jam into my gut, but it didn't do anything to stop the sword his partner was wielding.

The slender length of steel took me in the abdomen—down low, on the left side—but my opponent was nothing more than a thug with delusions of grandeur. He'd let his excitement to land a blow on me pull him off balance, and I took ruthless advantage of that.

I went with the inertia from my blow to the head of the first enforcer and continued around in a circle, wincing as the sword tore free of my stomach. The enforcer hadn't even had time to realize how badly he'd erred before my right foot swept his leg out from underneath him. I grabbed his right arm—mostly to keep him from cutting me by accident as he flailed for balance—and then used it to change the direction of his fall and slammed him headfirst into the floor.

The sound of gunfire had changed in the few seconds it had taken me to deal with my latest two opponents. Brennan had been very careful about the number of rounds he'd allowed to leave the compound, which meant that Piter's men had probably burned through a significant percentage of their reserves in their attempt to kill me, but they had Jasper and the others outnumbered by more than two to one.

The reduced volume of fire coming from above was a good indication that the enforcers had realized exactly that, but I didn't like the sound of the shots coming from my level either. It no longer sounded like they were all coming from rifles pointed into the building. It sounded like some of the insurgents had been forced to start dealing with threats from other directions.

I bit back a curse as I cleared another doorway that was thankfully free of hostiles and headed up the stairs. This was exactly the reason it had been so important to make it inside the building before we started shooting at people. Jasper and the others were being surrounded, which meant it was only a matter of time before they were all dead. If I was right that Piter had kept all of his guns in the hands of people inside the building, then the insurgents at least didn't have to worry about gunfire coming from multiple directions, but they were still in trouble.

The ambush when Piter's people had grabbed Brennan was plenty of proof that some of his men were expert archers and the insurgents were going to be just as dead from an arrow through the throat as from a bullet through the chest. I had to give them somewhere to go, had to make it safe for them to retreat into the building.

I kicked the second-floor door open and then stuck my head out for just long enough to assess the situation. I ducked back behind cover a split second before someone filled the space I'd just been occupying full of bullets. I waited for half a heartbeat and then threw myself forward before the door could finish rebounding off of the wall next to it.

My timing had been perfect. The gunner had just let go of the trigger to avoid burning through the rest of his ammunition when I appeared as if by magic four feet past the door, rifle at the ready and already acquiring my first target. I stroked the trigger and was rewarded with a three-round burst that took my target on the left side of his chest.

It was the first time I'd ever fired a rifle in a real combat situation, and I was surprised at the godlike detachment I felt as I lined up my second target and put three more rounds downrange.

Somehow when I'd agreed to the Citizen-President's mission I hadn't actually expected to have to kill anyone. I'd trained for the possibility, mastering as many different forms of combat as possible in the window I'd been allowed, but it had still taken me by shock when I'd been forced to kill Bash and the other enforcer on my first night inside the city. That had been a frantic, scary experience. I'd killed because I'd had no other choice, and I'd done so knowing full well that my nanites couldn't fully offset the advantage in the size and weight of my two opponents.

Each fight since then had been the same way. Blurs of motion in which I'd matched my limited training and nanites up against men who were older and more experienced than me, some of whom had been training for decades.

This, though, this was different. My nanites seemed to have realized that the fight had shifted. Rather than speeding up the neurons running between my brain and my limbs, they'd kicked my brain into high gear. It was like there was a fiber-optic cable running from my eyes to my brain and then down to my trigger finger.

I was still bleeding—losing twice as much blood as before—but the fight had changed into something I felt like I couldn't lose. I moved like a machine, with metronome-like precision as I identified targets and executed them. I could still die, I wasn't any more able to dodge a bullet than I had been five minutes before, but I was up against men who were woefully unprepared to face me on these terms.

The enforcers who'd come within fractions of a second of killing me only moments before had been reduced to silhouettes that crumbled with every stroke of the trigger. I calmly moved across the balcony and killed every single gunner in less than ten seconds before being forced to take cover from fire coming up from Jasper's position.

"It's me. The balcony is clear. You're free to fall back into the building."

The abruptness with which incoming fire dropped off was all the confirmation I needed that Jasper's team had heard me, but I waited for a couple of seconds to make sure before standing back up to take in the situation outside. It appeared as though the two dozen enforcers who'd been dispatched to help deal with Victoria's assault had returned, and they were making life difficult for the insurgents.

I identified an archer who seemed to be giving Jasper a particularly tough time, and drew a bead on him. It was difficult given the poor lighting we were dealing with. That was actually the only reason that Jasper and others hadn't managed to cut the enforcers down within moments of their arrival. The flickering light from the few fires burning in the area provided plenty of shadows, and this was exactly the kind of fight the enforcers were used to from the turf wars they'd spent their entire lives fighting.

They had spread out and were slowly working their way in close enough to be able to use the weapons at their disposal. Jasper and the others were slowing their advance with semi-targeted bursts into any shadow that seemed to be moving, but they were up against the same problem that had been plaguing Piter's gunmen. They had a lot more ammunition at their disposal, but it wasn't endless and already two of the insurgents had been forced to stop firing so they could load fresh rounds into empty magazines.

Not for the first time, I wished that my nanites were capable of improving my night vision, but there was nothing to be done about that particular problem. I studied my aim, breathed out half of the air in my lungs, and squeezed my trigger again. There was a yell of pain, and then the archer stumbled out into plain sight and one of the insurgents finished him off.

I was tempted to stay there and help cover my team's retreat, but all that would do was burn up what little ammunition I had left against targets that were little more than ghosts. No, I needed to work my way deeper inside the building.

I reached down and ripped a swath of fabric off of the shirt of one of the men I'd just killed. I begrudged the time it took me to tie the material around my stomach, but it couldn't be helped. Blood loss would kill me if left unchecked for long enough, but that wasn't the only danger I was up against.

Nanites were capable of infiltrating any part of my body, but they primarily used my circulatory system to get around. Every drop of blood that I lost contained nanites that I desperately needed if I was going to be able to free Brennan.