Jak Koke - Stranger souls

The world tilted under Ryan, the solidity of the ground

rocking and shifting and sliding away like his fleeting will. He leaned on Nadja for support. With her help, he had won. He had beaten Roxborough. He'd overcome his desire for power at the expense of his friends.

Burnout's world narrowed to a pinpoint.

In the waning light of the sun, his eyesight zoomed down to take in the scene. Burnout's awareness focused in on Ryan Mercury and the item that hung from the human's belt. The human and his hostage were inside the helicopter now. Trying to escape.

Burnout would not allow that to happen. He moved up to the side of the hangar, a silent ghost of metal and flesh. Longing for the power he sensed Mercury carried. It was the pinpoint, the center of Burnout's existence. And he would have it at any cost.

As he moved carefully and silently in the lengthening shadow of the hangar, Burnout swung the minigun and held it in one metal hand, ready to fire. He adjusted the ammo-belt as he rounded the corner of the corrugated metal building, making sure there were no twists or kinks.

He flipped his grenade launcher into his other hand, and surveyed the scene. A cluster of people crowded the helicopter. Three inside, including Ryan Mercury, the elf biff hostage, and the pilot. Seven others stood slightly away as the helo's blades began the slow rotation to power up.

No more than five meters from the helo, Burnout saw the VTOL jet-a Lear-Cessna Platinum III-cooling on its wheels. He estimated that no more than five people could be left inside. Besides, all he had to do was target the fuel tanks. Easy, loud, and spectacular to watch.

There were people in the hangar, but he would worry about them after he'd taken out the rest. The rotor spun faster. The helo's rising whine creeping through Burnout's circuits like a software glitch. Like that drekking psychosomatic itch that he could never scratch.

/ will not let the power escape.

His universe collapsed then, his entire existence focused down on his goal, drawing him out of the shadows. Moving across the tarmac, his weapons ready to start screaming, Burnout accelerated up to full speed. Anyone in his path would be blown to tiny shreds of bloody flesh. None would be spared. None deserved the effort.

Standing inside the helicopter, Ryan breathed in the night air, drinking up the odor of Nadja. She felt solid and real in his arms, but he needed to know that she was well; he needed to regain her confidence. He had beaten the evil inside himself; he was sure of that now. He wasn't going to become another Thomas Roxborough. He trusted himself again, but did she trust him?

"You okay?" he asked her.

She looked into his eyes, the last rays of sunlight catching the dark emerald of her irises. "Honestly," she said. "I've had better days."

"I'm sorry."

"I know," she said. "I'm sorry too."

"You were right all along," Ryan said. "I'm still Quicksilver. But not the same as before. Roxborough is inside me too-his memories, his personality. It's part of me now, and it's helped me learn that I can no longer blindly follow the instructions of anyone. Even Dunkelzahn."

"But, Ryan-"

Ryan held her tightly to him, whispering in her ear. "Nadja, I've decided who I want to be. I do want to complete my mission, and I will. But for my own reasons, not just because Dunkelzahn decreed it. I believe it was important; it is important. Crucial to the survival of the world and all its people. I'm going to complete Dunkelzahn's instructions, but not blindly like I used to. Along the way I'm going to look for my own answers. I want to know why"

Nadja nodded as if she understood. "Our roles have changed since Dunkelzahn died," she said. "We carry on his grand plan, but he's not here to instruct us on every step so of course we'll have to improvise."

She did understand, as he suspected she would. / love her. The realization struck Ryan like a sledgehammer. And he knew that he'd nearly killed her because of his love for her. Roxborough's twisted logic at work there. An icy shudder passed through him at the thought.

At the edge of his awareness, Ryan caught movement across the tarmac. A silhouette running quickly, a shape he recognized from somewhere. Then he heard the whine of a minigun as it spun in the seconds before the bullets fired. Then the deep boom of a grenade launcher.

Ryan threw Nadja to the floor of the helicopter just as the minigun opened up, a staccato roar followed by the metallic ping of bullets ricocheting off steel. Holes appeared in the jet, and fuel erupted from them, pouring to the ground in a gush. A second later a grenade bounced into the growing pool.

Ryan ducked to cover Nadja, drawing his pistol as he fell. The security guards reacted as though in slow motion, turning in exaggerated surprise just as the grenade exploded in a spray of flame and shrapnel. The report deafened Ryan and the explosion blinded him for a split second, making it hard to find their assailant again.

"Dhin," Ryan yelled. "Get us out of here!"

Then the jet's fuel ignited. Flames engulfed the machine as more bullets from the minigun ripped through the knot of surprised security guards. Their body armor offered little protection from such an onslaught. The barrage of slugs hit like a wall of force, the impacts lifting them bodily into the air.

As the helo rose, and began to back away, Ryan watched the massacre, a sick feeling in his gut. Three guards were thrown back and tossed to the pavement like rag dolls. The troll caught one in the head, the exit wound opening up the left side of his face like a bloody eruption of sinew and gore.

The jet exploded just as Dhin pulled the helo off the edge of the canyon. The aircraft was still only fifty meters away. Ryan saw sheets of fire roll out from the silver hull just before the body vanished in a blast that sent a mushrooming cloud of fire and smoke into the hot evening. A second sun in the growing darkness.

The wave of heat hit them a second later, burning around the helo. Throwing them off course. The machine rocked and

pitched, falling slightly before Dhin regained control. Hovering a few meters out over the abyss of Hells Canyon, eye-level with the inferno.

"You all right?" Ryan asked Nadja.

"I think so," she said. "What about the others?"

Ryan shook his head.

The black shape streaked toward them. A speck of moving shadow against the red-orange backdrop. Who is that? What is that? Its silhouette grew and grew as it approached, moving too fast for a human, too smoothly. Ryan had seen it before, and as it got close, he remembered it. He had seen that shape-the too-small skull sitting bald and symmetrical on oversized shoulders. The malproportioned legs, the calves elongated like some perverted gazelle.

Ryan shifted his perception into the astral to make sure. Yes, the man before him glowed like a constellation of quickened spells. A fireworks display of greens and reds surrounding a dark core, an aura that was out of phase with his body.

Burnout.

"Dhin!" Ryan yelled. "Pull us up." "What?"

"Get us farther up. NOW!"

But it was too late. Burnout reached the periphery of the compound and jumped. He was moving fast, having dropped his weapons to gain speed, up to about eighty klicks per hour. His leap carried him up, higher and higher out over the abyss, the darkness stretching to infinity below.

Dhin lifted the helo and angled it away from the compound, and for a second it looked like the cyberzombie would miss. That he would plummet into the chasm.

At the last second, Burnout reached out with a cybernetic hand. The last joint of his fingers cocked back as Ryan watched, blood dripping from the torn skin at the edges as the telescoping fingers shot out. The chrome snakes extended from his hand and touched the helo's runner below Ryan. Three of the fingers wrapped around the metal bar and hung on.