Zombie vs. Cyborg: Place Your Bets

[Zero]

***** Hibernation cycle complete. Initializing full system diagnostic.

\|/|\|/|\|/|\|/|\........

***** Diagnostic complete. Connecting to satellite uplink.
***** ERROR: Satellite uplink not found. Retrying in 5...4...3...
***** OVERRIDE: Aborting connection. Now initializing primary wetware.

I awoke with metal scream in my head. It was always there, like a bad toothache. The voice of the machine.

"Report. What's my status?"

***** Hibernation and maintenance queue complete. Results as follows:
----- Sensory systems functional.
----- Primary operating hardware optimized.
----- All servo joints operating within preferred tolerances.
----- Armor integrity 67%.
----- Battery power 83%.
----- Satellite uplink still unavailable. Directive: Return to closest available Vanguard facility for repairs.

"Like hell."

Every time I returned to my recovery pod, it was the same strident demand. The machine was screaming for help, scanning for a signal through a satellite relay that would never send or receive anything ever again. I had cut those systems out of my pod weeks ago (http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?p=336019&#post336019). Whoever had put this machine in my head was no friend of mine, and I didn't want them finding me.

I reached forward and pushed open the lid of my pod, which lifted like a matryoshka egg. I guess the warehouse beyond was dark, if you were looking at it with eyes. My ocular, a red, cyclopean lens in the middle of the blank white shell that passed for my face, always knew what spectra would give me the clearest view of my surroundings. I had gotten used to it, wasn't even bothered by the HUD or the recursive images or the digital artifacts. If I knew nothing else about myself, I knew I could adapt, even to this nightmarish existence, a machine without a purpose, an engine running on fumes.

The umbilicals popped free of their ports on my back, my arms, and my legs as I stepped out of the pod. "What's the progress on those genetic sequences?"

***** Analysis complete on all available samples. Current library is not large enough to make reliable predictions of traits. Recommendation: return to nearest available Vanguard facility to access a more complete library of genomes.

"I've told you that's not an option. And, look, I don't need to predict every mutant trait, just one. Just one damned trait. Can't you scan for that?"

***** Insufficient data. Perhaps the analytical suites at Vanguard would be better-suited to the task--

"One more mention of Vanguard and I'm sticking my head into another transformer." I took a few steps into the emptiness of the warehouse, and my recovery pod sealed shut with a hiss behind me. "I'll just have to hunt down some more samples. What time is it?"

***** 0130 hours. Prevailing conditions are clear with an accumulation of smog. Visibility poor.

"Good hunting conditions then. Do I still have optic camouflage?"

***** Optical diodes operational. However, reserves of thorium fuel at twelve percent. Recommendation...

"Yes?" My voice was a knife's edge.

***** Seek alternate source of thorium fuel.

Huh. Maybe there was such a thing as artificial intelligence.

"I'll do that. Just watch my back until then."

I felt for the hilt of my adamantium ninjato sheathed in a groove along my back, and for the clip of tranq-tipped senbon on the band around my waist. As far as I could tell, I had been built to hunt mutants. Turned out I was very good at it.

[Jane]

Los Angeles was quiet after one AM. The air was still, warm, and stale. Earthquake weather, was what the locals called it.

The smog had settled in over the valleys, obscuring the not-so-distant mountains in a brown haze. Jane craned her neck and looked straight up through the palm trees at the 'clear' sky, squinting against the streetlights at the black, trying to find even one star. So much different than where she used to live.

She was walking the so called 'mean streets' of East LA, and was wandering. She knew where she was going, of course, but the journey was sometimes better than the destination. And the destination in this case was -

Jane paused, and turned her head slowly, looking down between two blocks of storefronts. An odd light had caught her attention in her peripheral vision, but now that she looked down into the alley there was nothing unusual. Still, what was that she was just thinking... about the journey? Jane hitched up her work weight Dickies about her hips and walked down the side of a building that held an adult video store and a consignment shop into the alley that ran behind the stores.

[Zero]

***** ALERT: Mutant DNA detected. Bearing 118. Distance seventy-eight point four meters, heading south.

"Yeah, I see her."

There was probably no point in answering the damn thing. I didn't think it knew everything that was in my head, but it could read my ocular input just as well as I could. The tall, slim woman was wary as she turned down the alley below me. She had good reason to be, in this neighborhood.

"Got an analysis yet?"

***** Working. Genotype not on file. Predicted phenotypes in order of certainty:
----- Altered metabolism (58%)
----- Strength (42%)
----- Speed (6%)
----- Shapeshifting (2%)

I prowled along the rooftop to keep the woman in my sight. "Probably can disregard the last two. Altered metabolism, hm? So I probably can't trust one senbon to knock her out."

***** Insufficient data for recommended course of action.

"Figures." I drew two needles from the clip on my belt. My HUD switched to targeting mode, with indicators for windspeed, target velocity, projected fields of view. "Guess we'll just have to find out the old-fashioned way."

I let the pair of senbon drop on a course that would carry them straight into the woman's shoulder. Before they even struck, I stepped off the rooftop behind them, prepared to fall on my target and bear her to the ground if the tranqs didn't do their job.

[Jane]

"Gah!" Jane slapped her hand to her shoulder, looking up as her fingers closed around a couple three inch long... darts? She ripped them out of her skin, causing some blood to seep into her shirt, and had time to narrow her eyes as a dark shape fell on top of her.

She braced herself for the impact, but it still took her down to the potholed asphalt. Jane kicked out with her steel toed boots, sticking her hand in the guy's face to try to buy some time as she fumbled with her necklace with her other hand. The top popped from her pendant and the contents partially spilled to the ground as they grappled, but she jammed the small container to her nose and sniffed hard.

[Zero]

***** Subject's heartrate and respiration remain elevated. Tranquilizer appears ineffective.

"I can see that!" I rasped as I grappled for control of the struggling woman between me and the asphalt. She snorted at some little vial hanging from her necklace. Drug of some sort - maybe it fueled her mutation.

I twisted myself to drive my elbow down across the side of her head, pressing her face down into the pavement. "Don't struggle, and I won't have to kill you."

My voice was grating and unnatural enough that it served as a powerful deterrent for most people. I could take a sample from her while she was conscious, but it really would help if she didn't move too much.

[Jane]

Jane kissed the ground as the guy slammed his elbow into her head, and got gravel in her mouth as he tried to pin her there like some bug on a card. For a moment she relaxed her body, feigning defeat, just long enough... The weight on top of her shifted in response to her limpness, and she surged up, leading with her left elbow and cracking her attacker in the faceplate with her fist.

He ground her face into the asphalt as she forced him off her back, bucking and getting her feet underneath her. Jane scrambled away, turning to face whoever it was and only seeing a dark shape with a single red eye. Would it really kill people to change the bulbs on their security lights once in a while?

She cast about for something to use as a weapon, her hand closing on a bit of wood from a broken pallet. Better than nothing.

[Zero]

"Oh, for crying out loud..."

The elbow to the face wasn't enough to do any damage, but it knocked me off-balance. I bolted lightly to my feet in time to face off against her as she brandished a shank of wood.

I reached up and freed my adamantium sword from its groove across my back. "You really want to do this, mutie?"

[Jane]

"You started it," she panted, heart beating rapidly as the cocaine hit her system. Before the man could do anything with his wicked looking silvery sword, Jane chucked the wood at him as hard as she could.

Bits of it plunked off his chest as he slashed it in two, but she had already turned and run, boots pounding on the pavement as she cleared the chasm between the buildings and dashed into the abandoned street. She could hear the hunter behind her, could almost feel his sword slicing into her back or his hot breath on her neck, and then she was across the street and slamming into the plate glass window of the mom and pop hardware store.

Rolling to her feet in the shattered debris Jane grabbed the first thing she could get a hold of as blood dripped down her face from a cut on her scalp. She could feel some glass sticking in her hip, like tiny remembered pin pricks, but the sensation quickly faded as she turned the heavy hammer over in her hand. The hunter wasn't far behind.

[Zero]

I sprinted after the woman. It wasn't difficult to keep pace with her, but I didn't expect her to throw herself through a storefront window. Maybe she had rock-hard skin or something - but my HUD found the blood glistening on the edges of the hole she'd made. Maybe she was so high she couldn't feel it.

I leapt through the broken window after her, skidding slightly on the shards of broken glass under my rubber-soled feet. And then a proximity warning squealed in my left ear, and I tucked and rolled to the floor as something hard and heavy swung through the air where my head used to be.

I landed in a crouch and saw the woman coming at me with a sledgehammer and a snarl of manic determination, speckled with bits of glass and streaks of her own blood. I held my sword in front of me in a guarding stance.

"I'm not after you. Just your blood. I can get what I need off the floor, so save yourself the trouble."

[Jane]

The guy had great reflexes, considered Jane, as the sledgehammer smashed through a plywood display, pegboard and metal hooks scattering through the broken glass on the floor. "This isn't the Red Cross. I'm not donating!"

She surged forward on the last word, her mutation powering her muscles and giving her some extra speed as she aimed to knock the sword aside with the heavy hammer.

[Zero]

The thing about a heavy hammer is, for all the impact you get in a good, solid swing, you need to pay up-front with a long wind-up. I could see the arc of the swing unfolding, and I was reasonably certain, if I didn't mind taking a shot to the armor over my ribs, that I could take her hands off with a flick of my sword, or even charge straight into her and impale her through the gut. The machine even helpfully highlighted target points for each maneuver.

Instead I turned the edge of my blade to meet the arc of the sledgehammer and cleaved the iron head right off the wooden handle. It went spinning into the darkness behind me, crashing through a rack of chains on spools. The sudden loss of weight threw the woman off-balance, and I caught her by the front of the shirt in my free hand and flipped her over my shoulder, hurling her upside-down through the shelving unit behind me. The whole thing collapsed into the aisle beyond in a thunderous crash of metal and splintering plastic.

[Jane]

Adrenaline pumping, Jane barely felt the collision with the shelves as she rolled sideways and scrambled to her feet. That armored douchebag wasn't going to get her blood without a fight.

For a split second she considered how ridiculous that sounded, and then she chucked the wooden sledgehammer handle at the red light and shoved at the ruin of the shelving unit, slamming the whole mess of it into the hunter's legs.

[Zero]

The wooden handle was hardly even an annoyance, but the mess of metal sheets and cheap household goods colliding with my shins was enough to make me stumble. I fell to one knee and stayed there - we were both on the ground, both immobilized for a moment. I decided to take that moment.

"You haven't used your mutation yet," I rasped. I took some perverse satisfaction in knowing there wasn't a hint of exhaustion in my artificially modulated voice. "Why are you holding out on me?"

[Jane]

"Haven't I?" Jane grabbed a circular metal stand that had been holding seed packets until it had fallen over, and hefted it easily. "What, you don't even know what it is, do you."

She swung the stand like a bat, far enough away from him because of the length that he was forced to block it instead of going for her. Hoping that his sword would get caught in the metal hooks that covered the pole, Jane launched herself at him over the stand, having decided to try to wrench his shiny helmet off.

[Zero]

The pole hit my sword on the flat and jerked it out of my grasp, and then she was on me with a speed that even I had to appreciate. We backpedaled to the front wall of the store, and another display rack collapsed under my back, spilling bags of candy bars to the floor. I was surprised to find her fingers digging at the seams in my fiberglass helmet.

I didn't resist. I even spread my arms and laughed.

"Go ahead, take it off. If I still have a mouth, I'll kiss you."

[Jane]

Jane snarled at his quip and switched her hold to his shoulders, kneeing up into his groin area as hard as she could. Her knee crunched into his armor, and the hunter only laughed some more. "What the hell is your deal?!"

She grabbed a loose display hook and jammed it into the hunter's neck.

[Zero]

The mesh around my neck was softer than most of my armor. I felt the blunt end of the hook dig in and send minuscule sparks of pain into my dead flesh, tantalizing in their immediacy.

"That's it, mutie. Hurt me. Help me pretend I'm still alive."

I grabbed her by the shirt and rammed my face into hers as hard as I could.

[Jane]

Her nose broke, blood spraying across the bottom half of her face, and she fell away from him. Stumbling backwards Jane grabbed a turf de-thatcher with her left hand, spinning it around and then closing the distance between them again.

The sharp metal blades glinted in the emergency lighting of the store as she slashed at him.

[Zero]

After weeks of solitude with only a glorified DOS prompt for company, it was a thrill just to face another person and know I had her complete attention. All the better that she was only trying to kill me. Danger, fear, the instinct for survival - machines could simulate them, but it was no substitute for the real thing.

I didn't bother going for my sword - that would only end the encounter too quickly. I saw the flash of the incoming thatch rake - a row of bladed spikes on the end of a long pole, probably enough to seriously tear up the mesh that coated my joints. I threw myself backwards into a handspring, flipped end over end out of the path of her weapon. As my hands came down in the pile of broken glass she'd created moments before, I seized a pair of shards off the floor and hurled them in her direction on the way up.

[Jane]

A primal scream was building inside Jane as she ran to close the distance between her and her acrobatic attacker. She spun the turf rake, building up deadly momentum to slam into him once she caught up, and saw the glass fly through the air towards her.

One shard sliced into her upper arm, the other embedded itself into her chest, but she still came on, yelling and wielding the pole if not like an expert, then as someone who'd had practice at it. Jane went to sweep his legs out from under him and intended to slam the spiked end of the thatch rake into him once he went down.

[Zero]

I hit the floor on my back with crunch of glass, and I saw the business end of the rake swing upward like a trap preparing to close on my chest. What would that do to me? I honestly didn't know. My chest was where the armor was the thickest, but she wouldn't have to penetrate that far to hit something important, like a power cell or a fuel line or, oh that's right, my heart. Mechanically sustained or not, it was still in there, pumping a fluid solution that was close enough to blood to not matter, keeping my biological components supplied with nutrients and oxygen. Yeah, best to stop the rake.

I put up my hands to catch the pole above my chest, and my elbows slammed backward against the floor. The impact would have shattered a man's hands, but the nanofibers of my gloves reflexively stiffened to absorb the blow, and the wicked-looking spikes stopped centimeters above my chest. I pulled hard on the pole, figuring I'd either relieve the mutant of her weapon or pull her straight down on top of me.

[Jane]

The pole popped out of her hands as he yanked on it, and Jane abruptly changed tactics, turning and running towards the back of the store. She passed where his sword lay tangled in the display rack, and considered trying to grab it, but didn't want to waste the time on the hope that it would slide free easily.

She pounded down the central aisle, shoving some empty garbage cans down behind her in her wake, and found herself in a row of barbecues. Just beyond that was the gardening section and then the power tools. Jane vaulted over a Traeger Grill, leaving a bloodied hand print on its matte black finish, and grabbed a thick dowel that was nearly as tall as she was.

With a grunt of effort she broke it in two over the top of a Weber, holding one section in either hand.

[Zero]

I sprung off my back and onto my feet, then shook off the splinters of glass clinging to my armor. It wasn't difficult to track my quarry as she moved through the store. I strolled after her without any real urgency, stopping only to free my sword from the wreckage of another display and slide it back into its groove on my back.

I heard a sharp SNAP of wood and figured that meant my opponent had armed herself again. I looked around for anything that might make our next encounter more interesting - ah. There was a thick pipe that ran up to the metal rafters in the ceiling. It was pitch black up there. At least it was to someone without enhanced vision.

I warmed up the magnetic generators on my hands and feet and crawled up the pipe into the metal canopy above.

[Jane]

Jane saw the hunter's figure disappear up into the ceiling, and she snarled, "What are you, some sort of spider?" She backed up, clanging into some unfortunately placed barbecue tools, and then skirted around another display, heading for the counter at the back of the store.

A green EXIT sign flickered by the hand lettered TOOLS repaired card that hung over the counter. Jane climbed over it, the dowels left on the counter as she found something more to her liking. And someone had left a charged battery pack beside it, to boot. She slid the pack into the base of the nail gun and craned her neck at the ceiling, trying to locate her mysterious attacker.

[Zero]

"So what is your mutation, anyway? Resistance to pain? Adrenalin? That could just be whatever you're high on."

I worked my way through the rafters, enjoying the aerial view from fifteen feet above the vinyl floor. I saw her disappear behind the repair counter, obviously seeking something with a little more punch. I started working my way around her.

I crouched on a crossbeam over the glowing exit sign with a clear view of where she was hunched down over some sort of power tool. "You're not really a shapeshifter, are you?"

She spun around, and I suddenly saw what she was holding. "Oh, shit!"

I dove headfirst off the beam as she started firing.

[Jane]

Jane gritted her teeth as the nail gun fired its pointed projectiles, nails pinging loudly off the metal crossbeam and ricocheting off into the darkness. He plunged off the beam and she traced his arc as best she could with the tool, holding it in front of her with both hands to steady her aim.

"Shapeshifting? What the fuck." Jane aimed for the red glow and fired off a few more nails, just to keep him honest. "They call me Zombie. I'll assume you're called Dickhead."

[Zero]

I hit the floor with my hands extended and went into a forward roll, and the sword-groove on my back turned horizontal to accommodate it. I ended up flattened against front of the counter listening to nails plink away through the aisles.

And then a white-hot spear of concentrated pain in my side told me I hadn't come away as cleanly as I'd thought. The bitch had got me just under the back of my ribcage.

I changed my scope to thermal so I could see her silhouette behind the cheap particle board backing the counter. Then I pulled my sword from its resting place and drove it straight backwards, aiming for her calf.

[Jane]

Jane knew he was on the other side of the counter, but she wasn't expecting to get stabbed in the leg through the partition. Still, with her adrenaline high she barely felt it as the sword narrowly missed her bone and nearly filleted her calf muscle from her leg before sliding back out. She stumbled backwards, giving the counter as much space as she could.

"Definitely Dickhead," she said, standing with most of her weight on her good leg and holding the nail gun up to try to angle the nails so they would land at least near the guy crouching on the ground. Then she ran along the backside of the counter, skipping a bit as her wounded leg refused to work correctly, working her way towards where she hoped she'd find more nails to feed into her new favorite weapon.

[Zero]

Zero stabbed through the counter backing again, edge forward, and, still crouching, he crept along the counter, carving through the particle board and two wooden supports as he went. Jane would see the blade sliding along beneath the counter, marking her enemy's position, until the blade stopped near the corner and stuck there, lightly quivering.

[Jane]

"Fuck."

No nail cartridges to be found behind the counter. Jane reached the end of the counter and flipped the gate up, continuing her hop/run along the back of the store. She shot a few more nails to the side, in case he was about to pounce on her, and then skidded on her own blood and slipped down behind the last row of shelves.

Surrounded by neat rows of screws, arranged in tiny drawers according to size. Screws. "Fuck."

[Zero]

I rose from my hiding place and followed her trail, not even bothering to pull the nail out of my side. It stung me with every step, but it was plugging the hole, and the pain gave me focus.

I silently slipped into the aisle behind the one she'd entered, and I heard the guttural expletive on the other side of a rack full of hammers, levels, and screwdrivers, a couple hundred pounds in all. I lowered my shoulder and rammed into the shelf, tipping the whole unit over and collapsing it onto the aisle beyond.

[Jane]

She heard the impact on the other side of the shelving unit, and looked up in time to see the shelf reach its tipping point. Jane threw her arms over her head, crouched on the linoleum, and was rained on by screws and bolts and washers and God-knows-what. The adjustable shelves crashed into her back and shoulders, and then the base structure of the unit fell on top of that.

Once everything stopped rattling on the ground there were a few moments of silence. Then the pile of detritus shifted, and Jane crawled out from underneath it, blood smeared on her face from a cut on her scalp under her hair. She had a screwdriver in one hand, a huge one that was almost an inch thick with a flat tip, but her other arm was hanging askew, a tell-tale lump under the skin of her forearm where a broken bone wanted to push through.

Jane looked around, wiping blood out of her eyes with her broken arm. "Had enough, Dickhead?"

[Zero]

I was surprised at the sight of the apparition crawling out of the debris. I'd been pretty sure that would keep her down, or, at least, bring her mutation to the forefront, stone skin or acid blood or whatever was keeping her on her feet. All I saw was a woman who didn't know when to quit.

"Have you?" I took a few lazy steps toward her, not really concerned about the little shank of steel in her hand. "You're going to make me feel guilty for beating on you. All I wanted was a little blood."

[Jane]

She took a few steps away from him as he walked towards her, making a show of pointing the heavy screwdriver at him. It was useless as a weapon, but she felt better having something in her hand.

Nearly back at the repair counter a gleam caught her eye at knee level. Jane dropped the screwdriver and turned, yanking the wicked looking sword out of the particle board. "Take the blood then. I'll take this."

[Zero]

She crossed the distance faster than I could have anticipated. I stood in the alley between the aisles and started toward her.

"You don't want to do that, mutie," I warned. "You really don't."

[Jane]

Jane narrowed her eyes. "Enough with the gene insults." She lifted the sword, holding it up and across her body in a guard position. "You're starting to piss me off."

[Zero]

"I'm only going to say this once."

I grabbed a six-foot length of copper pipe out of a barrel and held it like a staff.

"Drop the sword."

[Jane]

The corner of her mouth twitched upward in either a smirk or an involuntary muscle contraction. The wound in her calf was leaking blood into her boot and it was puddling on the floor beneath her. If she stayed put any longer her heart rate would slow and then she'd be fucked.

Jane flexed her good arm and lunged forward, denting the pipe with her first swing at the cyclops. He seemed to fall away from her, only to press an attack of his own while she adjusted for another slash. She parried the pipe just in time, a long curly slice of copper falling away as the two weapons screeched against each other.

[Zero]

I knew my own weapon. If I tried to stop a strike head-on, the blade would slice clean through the pipe and probably through my wrist, too, depending on how much strength she could muster. And unlike her, apparently, I couldn't afford to be cavalier with my own skin.

I hopped back away from the initial clash and held the pipe at arm's length like a spear, hoping to lock up her grip at the hilt and twist the sword out of her grasp. But she was cannier than that and whipped the lighter, nimbler sword around, neatly chopping off the last twelve inches from the pipe.

"I'm serious, you don't know who you're screwing with now."

[Jane]

"If its not you, I'm going to be disappointed." Jane was beginning to feel a little winded, but she methodically continued attacking, her dilated eyes shining in the red light from his helmet.

Another forceful swing of the sword sliced another few inches off the pipe, and she used the opportunity to slide the sword up under the pipe, trying to get at his gut.

[Zero]

As she slid the sword toward me, I pressed the pipe against the edge of the blade. The sword sawed up into the copper tubing, which bit at it from either side and gave me leverage. I twisted hard, hoping her grip would break before the pipe did.

[Jane]

She gritted her teeth as the sword caught in the pipe and was nearly pulled out of her grasp, but she was still operating with above average strength and kept her grip. They were locked together for less than a second, her bloodied face lit by his helmet, the red making her blood bright against her pale skin.

Jane heaved against the twist, the sword continuing its cut through the pipe and suddenly it was free, the majority of the pipe falling to the ground with a dull clang. She reversed her swing, and the hunter leapt backwards out of the way, defenseless.

"Feel alive yet, Dickhead?" She smirked again.

[Zero]

"Feel like dying yet, Zombie?"

I took another step back and, against the protests of the machine, switched on my optic camouflage. With a shimmer and a crackle of energy, I disappeared from my enemy's view.

[Jane]

She stared at the spot where he'd been a little wide-eyed, and held the sword out in front of her. Turning slowly, Jane decided the best thing to do was to put her back against the wall, and began to step backwards, straining her eyes for any movement.

She thought she heard something on her left, and slashed the sword through the air preemptively.

[Zero]

That noise was the roofing nail I'd pulled out of my side and tossed to the floor beside her. The moment she committed to that direction, I lunged straight at her, my faulty camouflage flickering with the sudden movement. I reached around her waist and clamped my hand down on her broken arm while I reached for the sword handle with my other hand.

[Jane]

Jane tried to pull away from his grip automatically, the bone in her forearm splitting the skin and erupting as he grabbed at the sword with his free hand. She twisted, trying to get free, but the blood loss was beginning to get to her and her movements were in danger of becoming sluggish even as her heart rate spiked.

She kicked back where she thought his knee would be, her steel toed boot heavy and fast enough to do some damage. If she got lucky.

[Zero]

I twisted to avoid taking the full brunt of the blow on my knee - even armored, my joints were by necessity the weakest parts of my suit. I absorbed the impact and backpedaled, swiping my sword through the air as I went.

The blade painted a thin streak of blood through the air. The mutant gasped and folded over as both her legs split on a slanted line, completely severed.

[Jane]

She fell on her face, breaking her collapse with one arm as her legs went one direction and her body the other. Jane could feel a dull throbbing in her thighs with every pump of her heart, and her hand automatically went to her neck, fumbling with the chain of her now empty vial of coke.

Frustrated, she pushed against the floor with her hand and the stumps of her legs, rolling over just enough to get a glimpse of the cyclops who was flickering in and out of visibility. "I guess... you got your sample."

She coughed, blood spattering the floor and bubbling at the corners of her mouth. "Dickhead."

[Zero]

I killed my camouflage and flickered back into sight. She was right - there was plenty of DNA to sample on the blade of my sword. I looked down at my handiwork. She writhed in a rapidly-expanding pool of her own blood. For a moment, I imagined the pool was carved out of the floor, and she was partially submerged, crawling out like some tormented soul in hell. I could sympathize with that.

"I warned you," I said. "You could have made it much easier on yourself."

She didn't answer. Even with her enhanced metabolism, I figured shock had to be setting in. She must have lost more than half the blood in her body by now; a human would already be dead So why wasn't she?

I shuffled the viewing spectra on my ocular lens and, to my surprised, detected a passive microwave signal - a cell phone in her hip pocket. I knelt in the pool of blood, which was deep enough now to have ripples in it, and dug the phone out of her saturated jeans. I could have taken it with me, downloaded its data, maybe searched its contacts for other mutants to sample. I could hear the machine in my head advising me to do just that.

Which was reason enough not to. I set my sword aside, took the woman's hand, and pressed the cell phone into it.

"Call for help if you want. Or don't. People like us... we're dead either way."

I turned and walked out of the hardware store, leaving my victim where she lay.

[Jane]

Jane gritted her teeth, gripping the cell phone and bringing it to life with a touch. It had a heavy duty case that boasted one could drop it off a building and submerge it in water with no ill effects. So far, it had done great.

She pressed the call button, and hit speaker, laying her head on her outstretched arm as she lay on the floor and stared at the phone. It rang twice before someone at the empty commercial building the Brotherhood was using as HQ picked up.

"Jane, you missed the meeting. Boomer's pissed -"

"Shut up, Tron. I'm at... 54th and ... and MLK. Hardware store. Got fucked up."

"Shit, should we -"

"Just send someone to get me," she hissed, her heart slowing to dangerous levels. "Before the security company shows up and finds me."

[Mute]

Mute watched Redención House from across the street. The house was in darkness, except for the warm glow from a couple of windows where he imagined Jim was busy poring over star charts and Ronnie was helping himelf to a midnight snack, and the thought struck with him a strange sense of nostalgia. It had been his home; a place where he was welcome, where he slept, and ate, and washed, where he played video games and planted vegetables, a place where he had friends. But that was Cameron Bell, he reminded himself, the non-mutant who didn't quite add up.

It was his shift watching Banyon Street, which meant that - given his history with the house - he had to keep a low profile. So he slouched lazily in a classic Chevrolet Caprice and kept guard in the gloom. In the wing mirror he noticed the shapes of two young men approaching, inside his jacket pocket fingers coiled around rings of steel, and he waited. They staggered past, drunk, and completely oblivious to his presence. Mute felt a pinch of regret, and then something else, his celphone buzzing against his thigh. There was a message from Tron.

54th and MLK. Hardware store. Zombie down.

Shit. The black coupé coughed itself alive and rolled off without much fuss, until it was clear of Banyon Street, then the V8 engine roared into the night. Five minutes it took to cross town, and once he was on 54th Street, it wasn't difficult to identify the hardware store in question. The window was a black maw with jagged glass teeth, inside the shop was in a horrific state of disarray, and bathed in an unnerving hue of dim red light.

Mute proceeded with caution, cursing the crunch of glass under his feet, and kept his eyes fixed for movement in the dark recesses of the room. Then he saw her, broken and bloody, sprawled between collapsed shelving and a splintered counter. He closed in quickly, noting with a short spike of appall her dismembered legs, and knelt in a pool of cold blood. Pressing a finger to her kneck, he saw her eyes flicker, and in his curiosity, leaned closer to feel the soft brush of warmth from her mouth.

[Jane]

Jane's right hand grabbed at the man's arm, gripping with surprising strength. She tried to focus on him, but she was effectively blind this close to her regeneration coma. "Get me home." Her voice was a rasp, but there was still steel to it. Tron had said he was sending Mute, and by the silence she figured that was who had found her.

"Home. I... I'm not dead." Her hand squeezed his wrist and then she breathed out, a slow rattle that caused a bit of blood to bubble on her lips. Jane's hand relaxed, and her body went limp. There was no discernible pulse.

For all intents and purposes, she was dead. And yet... not quite.

[Mute]

He watched her die, head tilted, with the same kind of detatched interest with which one would watch animals mating in the wild. After the death rattle, he stared for a moment, fascinated with the emptiness in her eyes. Then a sense of decency compelled him to close her eyelids, which he did by brushing the palm of his hand over her face, and then she looked like she was sleeping. He gave her a sad sort of smile, wondering just how many times Zombie had died in the past, then leaning closer still, kissed her on the forehead. It was time to go.

She was light in his arms, owing partly to her slim build and mainly to her missing limbs, and he carried her outside. A quick glance confirmed the street was empty and, from what he could tell, no-one was watching from any windows. Balancing her limp corpse over his shoulder, he unlocked the trunk of the car and laid her to rest, slowly and with care. The trunk was lined with thick plastic sheets, which was admittedly bizarre, but given Mute's line of work and his current predicament, it was a feature which proved itself invaluable, again and again. He disappeared back inside the store for just a moment, then returned with a pair of bloodied legs and gave them a quick once over before tossing them inside the boot and slamming it shut.

There was blood on his hands, which he regarded with disdain before slipping inside the car, and as he drove off he wondered if it would be insensitive of him to present Zombie with the cleaning bill once she rejoins the land of the living.