Weir Codex 1: The Cestus Concern (14 page)

With his enhanced senses, Mal navigated the flaming wreckage that littered the area with ease, quickly leaving Zuz far behind. Vaulting over displaced steel girders and the still-burning husks of Zuz’s collected of junked vehicles, Mal raced through the area, looking for proof that Talos was a corpse.

Dropping twenty feet down into what remained of David Zuzelo’s once impenetrable underground garage workspace, the silent computerized voice in Malcolm Weir’s head gave him the bad news.

“Designate Talos located,” came the calm, passionless voice. “Unit has initiated self-repairs and will regain system integrity in t-minus seven minutes…”

There was more, but Mal stopped listening as a cool gust of metallic wind from above cleared the area of smoke and dust, revealing a terrifying sight.

Mal’s eyes went wide as he saw what was left of the human parts of what had once been the man known as Designate Talos, his skin liquefied and oozing freely over charred bones. Hair and eyes burnt to cinders. In spite of the massive damage—damage that would have been a gruesome death for any normal human—Talos was still alive and his cybernetic implants were merging with the bulldozer’s broken husk.

Already the involuntary systems that had been grafted onto Talos had rebuilt his spine and left arm, even as the blackened jaws of his skull opened and closed in a silent scream.

“Dear God,” was all Mal could say.

From the floor above, David’s voice called down, “Is he dead?”

Mal climbed back up and stood next to his friend.

“No. Somehow, he’s still alive,” Mal said softly, strangely moved by the plight of the man who had just tried to kill him. “Whatever those bastards did to him won’t let him die. It’ll keep him coming until one of us is completely destroyed.”

Words left Mal as Zuz joined him, both men staring down through the oily black smoke at the decimated form twitching and spasming below them.

After a moment, Zuz’s laid his hand on Mal’s metal shoulder, giving it a firm tug.

“We have to go, Mal. They’ll be here any minute.”

“I can’t leave him like this,” Mal’s voice was a hollow echo of itself.

Zuz rummaged around in the pockets of his cargo shorts, spilling change, keys and other unidentifiable bits to the ground as he did. After a few heartbeats, he found what he was looking for and tossed it to his distressed friend.

“Here.”

Mal looked at the object, shiny and black in his hand. A cell phone.

“What do you want me to do with this,” puzzled Mal, turning it over in his metallic palm, “call 911?”

“I’ve got thermite on every support beam and hundreds of pounds of C-4 planted all over the yard outside and in the walls of the garage. Even in the foundation right under Talos,” Zuz turned and started to walk away from the conflagration. “For just in case.”

Mal nodded as he turned to follow his friend after a final look below.

“With the jamming signal gone, it’s not just a phone,” continued Zuz. “It’s a detonator.”

“Let’s go,” Mal said, pocketing the electronic device.

The pair hurried from the building. At first, Mal wasn’t sure where to go, but Zuz guided him back to where his car had been parked.

The Nissan sat in the same spot Zuz left it, surrounded by destruction.

“I hit that thing pretty hard earlier,” said Mal as Zuz unlocked the car’s doors with his remote key fob. “There’s no way it’s still going to run. Let’s hop the fence and steal something on the street.”

Zuz ignored his friend and hopped into the driver’s seat, sliding the black-tipped key into the ignition.

“Don’t be stupid, man…we’d don’t have time for…”

Mal’s mouth dropped in pure awe at the sound of the car starting on the first try. Not only did it start, but the engine seemed as strong as ever. Well, as strong as a one point five liter straight-four engine could be. Zuz smiled and buckled his seat. Mal hopped in, amazed.

“How is it that in all of this mess, all of this destruction, that your piece of crap Nissan is still running?” Mal asked, incredulously.

“I told you not to dis my ride, Mal…don’t make me say it again.”

“Fair enough,” was Mal’s response as the duo peeled out of Zuzelo’s Junkyard and Recycling Center. Half a block later, Mal punched send on the tiny phone, sending what was left of Zuz’s former life straight to hell.

Their car was out of sight as the sound of a quartet of military helicopters bearing the seal of Project: Hardwired filled the skies.

*****

Dressed in his standard uniform of a black tank top and matching black fatigues, Designate Gauss had already shoved open the cabin door of the lead Sikorsky UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter and, without waiting for it to set down, leapt out at nearly fifty feet above the ground.

The Project: Hardwired Prime Unit cyborg super-soldier landed with such force his steel-reinforced boots splinted the concrete and asphalt just outside the location the eggheads up in tech had identified as belonging to the man who helped Designate Cestus escape from the downtown L.A. labs. Gauss was up and running a heartbeat after his feet hit Terra Firma.

“Base, can you connect me with anyone from Rho-Squad?” Gauss demanded into his radio headset. He could feel the frustration already building in his stomach. “This place is a mess and I’m getting no sign of their team.”

“Negative on Rho-Unit, Designate Gauss,” responded the nasally voice of the mission’s comm-officer. “Rho-Unit had a jamming vehicle on site and communication was no-go during their op.”

“Well, shit, Base, is there anything at all you can tell me or are you just sitting around with your head up your ass?” Gauss looked down on the normal humans he served with. After all, they were all safe-and-sound back at HQ, monitoring things remotely, while he and his men were out in the thick of things. “Where is Designate Talos?”

“Unknown,” came the voice over the radio. “His vitals flatlined two minutes ago.”

“What?” Gauss was more annoyed than surprised by the loss of a fellow Prime operative. “How the hell did a mechanimorph lose a fight in a junkyard? I always thought Talos was an asshole. Give me his last recorded location.”

Gauss lifted up the polarized sunglasses he wore to better scan the area. Too much dust in the air had coated his favorite Oakleys and messed with the effectiveness of even his enhanced vision.

The flickering glow of flash buried deep within an ocean of smoke caught the cyborg’s attention. Gauss saw the fiery remains of David Zuzelo’s workshop garage building and knew his quest was over.

“Belay that,” barked Gauss into his headset, “I think I found Designate Talos…or, whatever is left of him.”

Extending his highly polished metallic chrome arms in front of his body, Gauss’s body began humming as he activated the power of his cybernetic implants. The hum built to a moan, which built further to what felt like the bass-line at a rock concert, and finally cumulated into a reverberation more felt than heard. Gauss ripped his arms back apart at the apex of the effect, sending a cone of force out in front of him that hit the scrap like a tornado, clearing a path to the smoldering ruins fifteen feed wide by nearly sixty feet long.

“Secure the premises. Eyes open for Designate Cestus and the civilian, David Zuzelo. Consider them both armed and dangerous,” ordered Gauss to the soldiers climbing out of the four choppers that had finally landed behind him. “Zeta-Unit, you’re with me.”

A moment later, Gauss and the ten GMRs of Zeta-Unit stood over the burning pit containing a hundred tons of collapsed building and, somewhere beneath it all, the blasted charcoal remains of Designate Talos.

“That’s what they get for sending a midget to do a man’s job.”

Zeta-One stepped forward and spoke, “Area secured, Sir. No sign of Designate Cestus or the civilian.”

A quick hand signal announced the team was finished and Gauss turned on his heel to march out of the smoke-filled remains of the building, with Zeta-Unit close behind.

“Have command get the boys from tech down here to clean-up this mess, and let them know Designate Cestus is still in the wind.”

Gauss climbed back into his waiting helicopter and was in the air almost instantly. Staring down at the blistering mess below him, Gauss spat thickly into the heart of the steam and oily smoke, “Asshole.”

CHAPTER 11

The rolling hills and highway billboards streaked by the boxy Nissan Cube so fast it seemed like Han had just told Chewie to jump to light speed. If he was forced to take a guess, Zuz would have said they were tearing down the freeway at a shade under a billion miles per hour. With one hand wrapped tightly around the vinyl ‘oh shit’ handle just over the passenger’s side door and the other pressed firmly onto the dashboard, the decision to allow Mal to take the wheel was looking to be one of the worst so far.

And that included the one that led to having his junkyard blown up. Twice.

Teeth grinding together from an emotion that existed somewhere between abject horror and mind-numbing terror, Zuz decided conversation might be the best way to take his mind off his fear.

“I still can’t believe. I’d have bet money I had hidden my tracks well enough over the years to avoid something like that. I’m surprised they were able to track me down so easy.”

“You’re surprised?” laughed Mal, jerking the steering so hard in order to avoid an old pickup loaded down with gardening supplies, two of the car’s wheels left the hot afternoon asphalt. “I’m more surprised you had that place loaded with five hundred pounds of explosives, and why the hell would you have a bunch of Doctor Evil-style death traps?”

If Zuz’s hands hadn’t already been preoccupied with holding on for dear life, he would have “Z” snapped at his friend and exclaimed “Oh, no you didn’t!”

“I don’t know, uh, to make sure a black ops team of assassins didn’t waltz in and crush my nuts one day,” Zuz let himself get worked up into a frenzy. “And besides, Mister Billion-Dollar Cyborg, I saved ‘yo ass, didn’t I?”

“Good point,” conceded Mal. “Where did you get the idea? It’s not like there is a “paranoid crackpot” home security catalog…is there?”

“A, I take offensive to that statement,” replied Zuz, relaxing a bit finally. “B, I got the idea from that Will Smith movie.”

“Hitch?”

“Hah!” Zuz shook his head. “No, the one with Gene Hackman. I can’t remember the name”

Mal shrugged.

“C’mon, man. Tony Scott directed it,” frustration began to bubble up in Zuz’s chest. “Lisa Bonet…Jon Voight? Any of this ringing a bell?”

“Dude, I have no clue.”

Zuz bit his lip, an idea popped into his head.

“Ask the computer,” Zuz tapped a finger to the side of his head. “In there.”

“You want me to use the military computer the government wet-wired into my brain to figure out the name of a Will Smith movie for you?” Mal gave his friend an incredulous look.

“It’ll drive me crazy if you don’t,” pleaded Zuz, jutting his lip out in the worst pouty face Mal had seen in his life.

“Seriously?”

Zuz’s head bounced up and down in enthusiastic affirmation.

“Fine. One second.”

Mal split the lane between a pair of semis, nearly causing Zuz to void his bowels in shock.

“Computer,” There was no need for Mal to speak out loud to his internal systems, but he knew making a big “to do” out of it would help appease the man sitting across the car from him. “Will you please tell me the name of the motion picture which starred Will Smith and Gene Hackman?”

“Directed by Tony Scott,” Zuz wagged his fingers to get Mal’s attention.

Mal sighed. “And directed by Tony Scott.”

Eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning, Zuz was nearly bouncing in his seat.

“Enemy of…”started Mal, repeating the information supplied by his inner voice.

“Enemy of the State!” interrupted Zuz, his nodding growing to resemble an insane bobble-head doll. “Enemy of the State, that’s it. You ever see that one?”

“No,” responded Mal in the most serious tone he could muster, “I never could stomach action movies—too much excitement for me.”

The pair stared at one another for a second before both erupted into uncontrollable laughter, which continued for nearly five miles and ended with Zuz wiping tears from the corners of his eyes.

They’d both been so wound up with everything that had happened that the emotion release was cathartic. Once it was done, though, neither man was sure what to say and silence filled the car as it continued down the 57 freeway.

With his home gone and the government now actively hunting for him in addition to the runaway cyborg, an uneasy realization crept over David Zuzelo.

“What are we going to do now, Mal,” asked Zuz, fiddling mindlessly with the black automatic window buttons set low on the charcoal gray lining of his door.

Mal’s face went serious, the familiar line burrowing its way back between his eyes in response to his brain kicking into high gear.

“I recognized one of the soldiers back there…one of the Gomers,” said Mal, eyes still focused on the road ahead. “He was a sergeant. A member of my unit that went down in Iraq and I’d have sworn he was dead.”

“Not to restate the obvious, but you were killed, too,” quipped Zuz.

“I was able to access some of his files in my head, so I know what they did to him. I just can’t figure out why…or who did it.”

“Did you get anything from the sergeant before you, y’know, re-killed him?”

Mal laughed a cold, humorless laugh at his friend’s comment. “No. It seems like once they’ve been converted, whoever they were before is gone. They erased who he was somehow and replaced it with a living robot they control.”

“So you’ve got no idea at all?”

“His file mentioned our old commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Denman,” Mal sped up, dodging around cars, forgetting the two were supposed to be keeping a low profile. “Maybe he can give us something. If we can find him. Do you think you can track him down in the data you pulled out of my head? Maybe he’s in there somewhere that I don’t have access to?”

Zuz unbuckled his seatbelt and flipped around in his chair to more easily rummage around in the back seat. After a quick search, Zuz swiveled back around clutching his laptop tightly in his arms.