Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4
Note: This is a plot part and contains no tickling (though the next part should make up for that). Also thanks to all those that have given feedback, things should pick up a gear or two plot wise from here on in.
Part 5
It took about twenty minutes for a small fleet of cop cars to turn up, all running silent, blues and sirens switched off as they pulled up across the road, forming a very effective roadblock. I hadn't been idle while I was waiting and had managed to check most of the outlying buildings for any signs of life. That left a group of four long, low factories in the centre of the yard as possible targets. A young lieutenant passed me over a bundle containing my usual equipment, and I felt a strange sense of relief pass through me as I strapped the knife back to my arm, and secured the shoulder holster under my jacket. I guess it had been so long since I'd been without a weapon for any length of time I never felt fully dressed without one. Another officer passed broke out the first aid kit and quickly wrapped a regen pad around my knee, followed by a splint. It wouldn't eliminate the injury, but it should mean I could move more or less as normal, though any sustained running would still be a definite no-no.
A quick thermal scan of the buildings showed me all I needed to know. All bar one were stone cold, the fourth was showing two definite heat signatures, one had to be the engine of the getaway car, still cooling in an underground garage. The second was blurring and moving slightly as I watched, probably two or three people having a brief meeting as they tried to figure a way out of their current predicament. Not that I intended to give them the chance, the image of the police woman from the club seemed to float in front of my eyes, her face turning into those of the known kidnap victims. No, this ended here.
There was no way the police could approach that building without being seen, and besides I wanted this one all to myself. Something about that woman tore at my mind, a feeling that she was something, someone important but how, or why, I had no idea. Still, it didn't matter, right now I had a job to do, time to get on with it.
Making an approach to the building on foot would have proved damn near impossible, too much open ground to cover and no obvious point of entry. Fortunately I wasn't limited to that option. Moving quickly I found a decent vantage point on the opposite rooftop and took aim with a grapple dart. A brief tink noise was the only sign they had a visitor as I swung over to the fire escape and made my way to the roof, and judging by the lack of response they hadn't noticed.
Getting inside the building proved surprisingly easy. It wasn't in a good state of repair, which proved fortunate as I eased a metal grill out of the roof, not even needing to remove the bolts as they had long rusted through. I guessed this wasn't a regular meeting place as I swung down into a crawl space in the roof, as a thick layer of dust covered the wooden beams. I paused for a moment, switching back to a thermal view as voices filtered along to me from the far end of the building. Back to night vision and I started moving silently towards the source of the conversation.
It took me about ninety seconds to get close enough to hear them clearly, and what I heard made me pause for a moment. There wasn't any way out of here, at least not one that didn't involve dealing with me or the police at some point in the proceedings, and any information might prove vital in locating the victims. I spread my weight along the beams and concentrated on the voices.
One I recognised immediately as the women from Dragon's, the other though barely sounded human. An odd, high pitched voice with a low, rumbling counterpoint made it impossible to tell if the speaker was male or female, and imparted an odd sense of menace to that voice that made me shiver for an instant.
“You were told not to expose yourself to undue attention” that strange voice said, a definite air of menace infused with the words.
“Hey” the woman snapped back, seemingly unimpressed by the unknown speaker “it was your men who took those police officers captive against my instructions. If it hadn't been for that, there would have never been a police presence at my club tonight!”
“The police? Police don't worry me, it's the bloodhound on your tail that worries me my dear. You of all people should know how annoyingly persistent they are.”
What did he mean by that I wondered. Had this woman run into one of us before and somehow gotten away? I made a mental note to check recent case histories once I got back to the station.
“Well, that's why you hired me as your insurance policy wasn't it? Don't worry, if and when he shows up here we've got a little surprise waiting. I trust you agreed to the extra security I sent?”
“Yes, yes, it's in place as discussed, now what about the packages?”
Packages? Why did these people always insist on referring to their victims by such absurd abstract names I wondered, could they just not face the fact that what they were doing had an impact on normal, innocent people, or had they just seen one too many spy movies?
“Of course, all twelve have been processed through stage one and should be in place for stage two by now. You're confident your people can handle this, it is rather a delicate matter after all?”
“We've been through this, your part in this is finished, for now at least. Once we're finished with them they're all yours, those that survive anyway, but you'll have to wait. Besides, it was you that recommenced a new face for this stage.”
A sigh from the woman, rather theatrical from the sound of it, reached me. “Yes, I know, and it is far more effective this way. Still, it's a shame, it's so much more entertaining than simply breaking them.”
“Maybe this will ease your mind, doctor. Ten million has been transferred to your account, the rest to follow when we complete. Now, if you will excuse me, I believe we've overstayed our welcome here.”
I'd heard all I needed to, and pulled my pistol, pausing only to check it had a full clip before gathering my legs under me and jumping straight up off the beams and kick down as hard as I could in the confined space. The neglected wood shattered under me and I dropped the ten feet to the floor, the splint wrapped around my knee doing its job and letting me move as if nothing was wrong, landing crouched, the gun covering the woman in front of me perfectly. I pivoted right slightly and caught a glimpse of something shining from a side door at about head height. A glimpse was all I got though as a steel door, obviously a later addition to the run-down building slammed into place. I rushed over, keeping the pistol trained on the woman as I gave the door an experimental shove but there was no way I was going to get it open without a few pounds of plastic explosives.
I grabbed the handcuffs from a pouch on my right leg and moved quickly over to the woman. Smiling she said nothing, just held her hands out in front of her. I grabbed her wrists and forced them behind her back, knowing better than to ever let a prisoner have their hands in front of them while bound. They could cause far too much trouble that way and it wasn't worth the grief.
“Alright, I've chased you over half of London, been shot at, had my mind permanently damaged by some of the things I saw in your club and been hurled into traffic. You can safely assume that I am not in a good mood right now. I really suggest you co-operate as I'm in no mood for any shit tonight. Got it?”
She simply kept smiling at me, turned and started to walk slowly towards the stairs. I fell back a couple of foot, bringing the gun up and kept it leveled at the back of her head. Something about this felt wrong, she was far too calm and self-confident and that surprise she'd mentioned kept ringing alarm bells in the back of my brain. I switched quickly to thermals but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. She kept walking until she was about ten feet from the stairs and then stumbled left into the wall. I reached out quickly to hold her up, not willing to give her a chance to try anything.
The next thing I knew something had hit my gun hand hard enough to knock the pistol fifty feet down the corridor and damn near crack the bones. A second shot hit my ribs and not even the body armor could absorb that sort of force. I flew sideways into the opposite wall, landing flat and hard, the wind knocked out of me for a second or two. I looked over at where I'd been standing and couldn't believe my eyes.
The wall was gone, scattered in pieces over the corridor. In its place was a mountain of a man, at least six foot six tall, and about the same wide it seemed, a solid wall of muscle as he fixed a predatory grin on me. Without breaking his stare he reached over, grabbed the chain of the handcuffs with one hand and squeezed. There was a snapping noise and the links of the chain dropped from between his fingers like confetti.
“You Gen 3's always were too confident for your own good” the woman said, waiving her now freed hands in front of her like a magicians assistant after a particularly good trick. “Let me introduce you to your, I guess successor would be the right term. Go ahead, say hello.” I struggled back to my feet as the monstrous man crossed the gap between us faster than I'd have believed possible for something that big. He reached down, grabbed me by the front of my body armor and with seemingly no effort threw me a good twenty feet down the corridor. I felt the splint around my leg come apart on impact, my knee folding up as I hit the ground.
“You see,” the woman continued, “we could never manage to quite deliver what we wanted with the gen 3 series. You were the best examples of humanity we could engineer, but it still wasn't good enough.” The creature was walking almost casually towards me as I struggled to my hands and knees. A foot lashed out into my ribs, and I rolled away, clutching my side as I staggered back to my feet.
“Besides there were other problems, mental instability, a lack of consistency in the results between subjects and of course the need to follow normal growth patterns and times. So we shifted to, shall we say, more flexible methods.” I saw the punch coming and ducked around the fist, lashing out with a shot of my own, aiming for the nerve centre under the right arm. My blow struck perfectly and I spun away, trying to get some distance, some room to move.
The woman laughed from her position by the stairs. “A waste of time I'm afraid. The human body really is only a shell for the gen 4's. Every limb and muscle is cybernetically enhanced, a perfect mix of human and machine. You could take out ever nerve centre in his body, and it wouldn't even slow him down. Show him Luke.”
The man, Luke I presumed, darted to my right, his foot arcing around in a short curve that ended on my already damaged knee. The leg just collapsed under me and I fell hard to the ground. Before I could move he was on me again, grabbing my left leg and arm, pulling me up and swinging me like a shot-put around his head, I felt him let go and tried to cover up as I hit the wall. There was so much energy involved that I actually went through the first wall and across the office behind it before bouncing back off the more substantial external wall. I lay in a broken heap on the ground, sprawled face down, blood coming from my mouth and what seemed like a hundred cuts all over my body. Something had snapped and I was having trouble breathing.
One more shot like that and I was done, there was no way I could take this sort of punishment much longer. I stayed on the ground, not waisting the energy to get back to my feet, one last, desperate gamble going through my head. Luke loomed in the doorway, the woman right behind him with a hand touching his left arm, holding him back for a moment.
“Basically, you're obsolete. A shame, you always were the most promising of the gen 3 program, a pity it had to end this way. Luke, end this please.” I heard the footsteps as my executioner approached, forced myself not to react. He reached down and grabbed the back of my head, pulling me up to my knees, fire ripping through me as I had to put weight on the right leg. His left hand wrapped around my throat as he pulled me off my feet, bringing me up to his eye level, wanting to watch me die as he choked me.
With one motion I stabbed forward with my right arm, triggering the knife hidden against my wrist. It flew out, adding a deadly edge to my punch as I drove the blade up under his chin, through the soft tissue of his throat and up into his skull. The grip around my own throat failed as he tried to grab my arm to pull the blade out, but I had no intention of giving him the opportunity. With the blade still buried deep inside him I reached out and grabbed a handful of his shirt, ignoring the pain racing through my body as I gathered everything I had left. With one motion I took two steps to my right and heaved the giant off his feet and through the window, releasing my blade from its sheath as I did so so as to avoid being pulled after him. It was a good four floor drop to the ground, and with all the extra mass of the cybernetics he built speed quickly as he dropped. There was a thud that seemed to shake the ground as he landed, a last spasm from those massive limbs and then he lay still.
Turning quickly I dove full length at the woman who seemed to be staring in shock at what had just happened. She turned to run but it was too late and I hit her around the thighs in a perfect take down. I landed on top of her and felt the hard outline of a pistol dig into my ribs. Reaching down I yanked it out from her waistband and held it to her head, the barrel pressed against her skull none too gently. I didn't trust myself to keep her down though, I was too tired and hurt for that. Keeping the pistol where it was I reached out with my left hand and brought it down in a perfect chop on the side of her neck, rendering her unconscious immediately. I heard the howl of sirens outside as the police raced to the building, alerted by the shattering glass and the fall of the body.
Booted feet pounded the stairs, thinning out slightly as some left to search each floor on the way up. Finally lights flickered on the wall and at least twenty uniformed police officers burst out, sidearms drawn. Detective Williams was in the lead and from the look of horror on his face I guessed I looked about the same as I felt.
“What the fuck happened here?” he asked, genuine concern on his face, a rare sight indeed. “Are you okay? Whose the hulk's big brother outside? And who the hell is this?”
I held up a hand, slowly as my ribs protested each movement. “I'll live, but I could really do with a decent doctor sometime soon. The guy outside is called Luke, should be considered dangerous until proved completley dead but more than that I don't know. And this” here I indicated the woman lying alongside me “just may be the key to this whole thing.”
Detective Williams watched me for a long moment, clearly wondering what the hell to do next. “Okay, that'll do for now. First priority, get both you and your date back to the station, we'll patch you up and see what she knows.”
“No,” I replied “that'll take too long and I don't think we've got the time to spare. Whatever's going on just stepped up a gear and she knows at least some of the details.”
“Well what do you suggest? Whatever she knows we can't just beat it out of her you know, we do have to follow the law or hadn't you noticed we're police officers?”
I paused for a second, thinking quickly. “Okay, bring her along and follow me. We're going to go for a ride”.
“And where exactly are we going?” the Detective asked, visibly annoyed now.
“We're just going to be good civil servants and give her a ride back to her club.” I replied.
Note: This is a plot part and contains no tickling (though the next part should make up for that). Also thanks to all those that have given feedback, things should pick up a gear or two plot wise from here on in.
Part 5
It took about twenty minutes for a small fleet of cop cars to turn up, all running silent, blues and sirens switched off as they pulled up across the road, forming a very effective roadblock. I hadn't been idle while I was waiting and had managed to check most of the outlying buildings for any signs of life. That left a group of four long, low factories in the centre of the yard as possible targets. A young lieutenant passed me over a bundle containing my usual equipment, and I felt a strange sense of relief pass through me as I strapped the knife back to my arm, and secured the shoulder holster under my jacket. I guess it had been so long since I'd been without a weapon for any length of time I never felt fully dressed without one. Another officer passed broke out the first aid kit and quickly wrapped a regen pad around my knee, followed by a splint. It wouldn't eliminate the injury, but it should mean I could move more or less as normal, though any sustained running would still be a definite no-no.
A quick thermal scan of the buildings showed me all I needed to know. All bar one were stone cold, the fourth was showing two definite heat signatures, one had to be the engine of the getaway car, still cooling in an underground garage. The second was blurring and moving slightly as I watched, probably two or three people having a brief meeting as they tried to figure a way out of their current predicament. Not that I intended to give them the chance, the image of the police woman from the club seemed to float in front of my eyes, her face turning into those of the known kidnap victims. No, this ended here.
There was no way the police could approach that building without being seen, and besides I wanted this one all to myself. Something about that woman tore at my mind, a feeling that she was something, someone important but how, or why, I had no idea. Still, it didn't matter, right now I had a job to do, time to get on with it.
Making an approach to the building on foot would have proved damn near impossible, too much open ground to cover and no obvious point of entry. Fortunately I wasn't limited to that option. Moving quickly I found a decent vantage point on the opposite rooftop and took aim with a grapple dart. A brief tink noise was the only sign they had a visitor as I swung over to the fire escape and made my way to the roof, and judging by the lack of response they hadn't noticed.
Getting inside the building proved surprisingly easy. It wasn't in a good state of repair, which proved fortunate as I eased a metal grill out of the roof, not even needing to remove the bolts as they had long rusted through. I guessed this wasn't a regular meeting place as I swung down into a crawl space in the roof, as a thick layer of dust covered the wooden beams. I paused for a moment, switching back to a thermal view as voices filtered along to me from the far end of the building. Back to night vision and I started moving silently towards the source of the conversation.
It took me about ninety seconds to get close enough to hear them clearly, and what I heard made me pause for a moment. There wasn't any way out of here, at least not one that didn't involve dealing with me or the police at some point in the proceedings, and any information might prove vital in locating the victims. I spread my weight along the beams and concentrated on the voices.
One I recognised immediately as the women from Dragon's, the other though barely sounded human. An odd, high pitched voice with a low, rumbling counterpoint made it impossible to tell if the speaker was male or female, and imparted an odd sense of menace to that voice that made me shiver for an instant.
“You were told not to expose yourself to undue attention” that strange voice said, a definite air of menace infused with the words.
“Hey” the woman snapped back, seemingly unimpressed by the unknown speaker “it was your men who took those police officers captive against my instructions. If it hadn't been for that, there would have never been a police presence at my club tonight!”
“The police? Police don't worry me, it's the bloodhound on your tail that worries me my dear. You of all people should know how annoyingly persistent they are.”
What did he mean by that I wondered. Had this woman run into one of us before and somehow gotten away? I made a mental note to check recent case histories once I got back to the station.
“Well, that's why you hired me as your insurance policy wasn't it? Don't worry, if and when he shows up here we've got a little surprise waiting. I trust you agreed to the extra security I sent?”
“Yes, yes, it's in place as discussed, now what about the packages?”
Packages? Why did these people always insist on referring to their victims by such absurd abstract names I wondered, could they just not face the fact that what they were doing had an impact on normal, innocent people, or had they just seen one too many spy movies?
“Of course, all twelve have been processed through stage one and should be in place for stage two by now. You're confident your people can handle this, it is rather a delicate matter after all?”
“We've been through this, your part in this is finished, for now at least. Once we're finished with them they're all yours, those that survive anyway, but you'll have to wait. Besides, it was you that recommenced a new face for this stage.”
A sigh from the woman, rather theatrical from the sound of it, reached me. “Yes, I know, and it is far more effective this way. Still, it's a shame, it's so much more entertaining than simply breaking them.”
“Maybe this will ease your mind, doctor. Ten million has been transferred to your account, the rest to follow when we complete. Now, if you will excuse me, I believe we've overstayed our welcome here.”
I'd heard all I needed to, and pulled my pistol, pausing only to check it had a full clip before gathering my legs under me and jumping straight up off the beams and kick down as hard as I could in the confined space. The neglected wood shattered under me and I dropped the ten feet to the floor, the splint wrapped around my knee doing its job and letting me move as if nothing was wrong, landing crouched, the gun covering the woman in front of me perfectly. I pivoted right slightly and caught a glimpse of something shining from a side door at about head height. A glimpse was all I got though as a steel door, obviously a later addition to the run-down building slammed into place. I rushed over, keeping the pistol trained on the woman as I gave the door an experimental shove but there was no way I was going to get it open without a few pounds of plastic explosives.
I grabbed the handcuffs from a pouch on my right leg and moved quickly over to the woman. Smiling she said nothing, just held her hands out in front of her. I grabbed her wrists and forced them behind her back, knowing better than to ever let a prisoner have their hands in front of them while bound. They could cause far too much trouble that way and it wasn't worth the grief.
“Alright, I've chased you over half of London, been shot at, had my mind permanently damaged by some of the things I saw in your club and been hurled into traffic. You can safely assume that I am not in a good mood right now. I really suggest you co-operate as I'm in no mood for any shit tonight. Got it?”
She simply kept smiling at me, turned and started to walk slowly towards the stairs. I fell back a couple of foot, bringing the gun up and kept it leveled at the back of her head. Something about this felt wrong, she was far too calm and self-confident and that surprise she'd mentioned kept ringing alarm bells in the back of my brain. I switched quickly to thermals but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. She kept walking until she was about ten feet from the stairs and then stumbled left into the wall. I reached out quickly to hold her up, not willing to give her a chance to try anything.
The next thing I knew something had hit my gun hand hard enough to knock the pistol fifty feet down the corridor and damn near crack the bones. A second shot hit my ribs and not even the body armor could absorb that sort of force. I flew sideways into the opposite wall, landing flat and hard, the wind knocked out of me for a second or two. I looked over at where I'd been standing and couldn't believe my eyes.
The wall was gone, scattered in pieces over the corridor. In its place was a mountain of a man, at least six foot six tall, and about the same wide it seemed, a solid wall of muscle as he fixed a predatory grin on me. Without breaking his stare he reached over, grabbed the chain of the handcuffs with one hand and squeezed. There was a snapping noise and the links of the chain dropped from between his fingers like confetti.
“You Gen 3's always were too confident for your own good” the woman said, waiving her now freed hands in front of her like a magicians assistant after a particularly good trick. “Let me introduce you to your, I guess successor would be the right term. Go ahead, say hello.” I struggled back to my feet as the monstrous man crossed the gap between us faster than I'd have believed possible for something that big. He reached down, grabbed me by the front of my body armor and with seemingly no effort threw me a good twenty feet down the corridor. I felt the splint around my leg come apart on impact, my knee folding up as I hit the ground.
“You see,” the woman continued, “we could never manage to quite deliver what we wanted with the gen 3 series. You were the best examples of humanity we could engineer, but it still wasn't good enough.” The creature was walking almost casually towards me as I struggled to my hands and knees. A foot lashed out into my ribs, and I rolled away, clutching my side as I staggered back to my feet.
“Besides there were other problems, mental instability, a lack of consistency in the results between subjects and of course the need to follow normal growth patterns and times. So we shifted to, shall we say, more flexible methods.” I saw the punch coming and ducked around the fist, lashing out with a shot of my own, aiming for the nerve centre under the right arm. My blow struck perfectly and I spun away, trying to get some distance, some room to move.
The woman laughed from her position by the stairs. “A waste of time I'm afraid. The human body really is only a shell for the gen 4's. Every limb and muscle is cybernetically enhanced, a perfect mix of human and machine. You could take out ever nerve centre in his body, and it wouldn't even slow him down. Show him Luke.”
The man, Luke I presumed, darted to my right, his foot arcing around in a short curve that ended on my already damaged knee. The leg just collapsed under me and I fell hard to the ground. Before I could move he was on me again, grabbing my left leg and arm, pulling me up and swinging me like a shot-put around his head, I felt him let go and tried to cover up as I hit the wall. There was so much energy involved that I actually went through the first wall and across the office behind it before bouncing back off the more substantial external wall. I lay in a broken heap on the ground, sprawled face down, blood coming from my mouth and what seemed like a hundred cuts all over my body. Something had snapped and I was having trouble breathing.
One more shot like that and I was done, there was no way I could take this sort of punishment much longer. I stayed on the ground, not waisting the energy to get back to my feet, one last, desperate gamble going through my head. Luke loomed in the doorway, the woman right behind him with a hand touching his left arm, holding him back for a moment.
“Basically, you're obsolete. A shame, you always were the most promising of the gen 3 program, a pity it had to end this way. Luke, end this please.” I heard the footsteps as my executioner approached, forced myself not to react. He reached down and grabbed the back of my head, pulling me up to my knees, fire ripping through me as I had to put weight on the right leg. His left hand wrapped around my throat as he pulled me off my feet, bringing me up to his eye level, wanting to watch me die as he choked me.
With one motion I stabbed forward with my right arm, triggering the knife hidden against my wrist. It flew out, adding a deadly edge to my punch as I drove the blade up under his chin, through the soft tissue of his throat and up into his skull. The grip around my own throat failed as he tried to grab my arm to pull the blade out, but I had no intention of giving him the opportunity. With the blade still buried deep inside him I reached out and grabbed a handful of his shirt, ignoring the pain racing through my body as I gathered everything I had left. With one motion I took two steps to my right and heaved the giant off his feet and through the window, releasing my blade from its sheath as I did so so as to avoid being pulled after him. It was a good four floor drop to the ground, and with all the extra mass of the cybernetics he built speed quickly as he dropped. There was a thud that seemed to shake the ground as he landed, a last spasm from those massive limbs and then he lay still.
Turning quickly I dove full length at the woman who seemed to be staring in shock at what had just happened. She turned to run but it was too late and I hit her around the thighs in a perfect take down. I landed on top of her and felt the hard outline of a pistol dig into my ribs. Reaching down I yanked it out from her waistband and held it to her head, the barrel pressed against her skull none too gently. I didn't trust myself to keep her down though, I was too tired and hurt for that. Keeping the pistol where it was I reached out with my left hand and brought it down in a perfect chop on the side of her neck, rendering her unconscious immediately. I heard the howl of sirens outside as the police raced to the building, alerted by the shattering glass and the fall of the body.
Booted feet pounded the stairs, thinning out slightly as some left to search each floor on the way up. Finally lights flickered on the wall and at least twenty uniformed police officers burst out, sidearms drawn. Detective Williams was in the lead and from the look of horror on his face I guessed I looked about the same as I felt.
“What the fuck happened here?” he asked, genuine concern on his face, a rare sight indeed. “Are you okay? Whose the hulk's big brother outside? And who the hell is this?”
I held up a hand, slowly as my ribs protested each movement. “I'll live, but I could really do with a decent doctor sometime soon. The guy outside is called Luke, should be considered dangerous until proved completley dead but more than that I don't know. And this” here I indicated the woman lying alongside me “just may be the key to this whole thing.”
Detective Williams watched me for a long moment, clearly wondering what the hell to do next. “Okay, that'll do for now. First priority, get both you and your date back to the station, we'll patch you up and see what she knows.”
“No,” I replied “that'll take too long and I don't think we've got the time to spare. Whatever's going on just stepped up a gear and she knows at least some of the details.”
“Well what do you suggest? Whatever she knows we can't just beat it out of her you know, we do have to follow the law or hadn't you noticed we're police officers?”
I paused for a second, thinking quickly. “Okay, bring her along and follow me. We're going to go for a ride”.
“And where exactly are we going?” the Detective asked, visibly annoyed now.
“We're just going to be good civil servants and give her a ride back to her club.” I replied.
