Crysis Escalation - By Gavin G. Smith Page 0,71

Stalker hanging down from the ceiling. That stank as well.

‘The guns, they’ll see the fire, man,’ Chino managed. ‘Fucking Psycho. Where is he?’

Dane shook his head sadly.

‘Psycho’s gone, man, somewhere I can’t see or reach.’ The armoured figure moved over and knelt by Chino.

‘I’ve bound your wounds. You’re messed up, but you’ll live.’

‘What happened? Where were you, man?’

Dane looked at him as if making a decision.

‘I saw the sky catch fire,’ he finally told Chino.

More crazy Lazy Dane shit, Chino thought.

‘The fucking Brits sold us out,’ Chino said, pained. Dane was shaking his head.

‘No, they were true, righteous. The sun fell to Earth. They walk with me now.’

Chino tried to make sense of this.

‘Shit,’ he finally said. ‘It’s over then.’

Dane shrugged.

‘Nothing’s ever over man, we just change state.’

Chino closed his eyes. It had all been for nothing, the fighting, the pain, all the dead. CELL would win. The world was theirs now. It probably had been for a while.

‘You know what this place is?’

‘A graveyard?’ Chino suggested, giving into his pain and the despair.

‘It’s a necropolis. All of them. Our guys, CELL , the victims of the disease and everyone back to when this was a swamp and it belonged to the first people. They’re all still here. Ceph too, human and alien living together, it’s beautiful man. It’s dead and it’s beautiful.’

Chino said nothing. There wasn’t much he could say to a crazy person’s ramblings.

‘Thank you,’ Dane said.

‘For what, man? You saved me.’

‘For being my goat.’

Chino stared at him. ‘Your what?’

‘When a shikari hunts a tiger he . . .’

‘Tethers a goat to a tree and bleeds it a little to get the tiger’s attention.’

Dane nodded. Chino stared at him. He doesn’t think he’s one of us anymore. He thinks we’re playthings, mere mortals.

Chino spat in his face.

Maybe if the nanosuit hadn’t been so badly damaged Dane would have heard their comms. If Chino hadn’t been so badly hurt, if both of them had been alert, then maybe they would have heard them moving around beneath them.

They had been pinpointed by thermographics. The fire hadn’t helped.

The floor of the open plan office exploded in a circle around Dane and Chino. They fell through to the floor below them. The impact made Chino scream as multiple wounds were badly jarred and he started to piss blood again. The campfire exploded in a shower of sparks.

Dane was moving. Disappearing, becoming transparent, fading into the background. Then he was wreathed in lighting. Electrostatically charged pellets fired from K-Volt weapons stuck to Lazy Dane’s suit. The pellets dropped the cloak, making him visible. More and more of the pellets stuck to him. The voltage he was receiving grew and grew. The damaged suit’s systems were overloaded. They started shutting down. The pellets were electrocuting Dane as he tried to move. There were four members of the CELL spec ops armed with K-volts. They continued laying on the fire.

Dane looked like he was made of electricity as he stood up. Members of the spec ops team took a step back.

Chino saw his Majestic. He was reaching for his big revolver when someone stood on his hand and then kicked him in the face, hard. He saw lights and felt sick. He felt darkness swimming up to claim him.

‘Reloading,’ the first K-Volt gunner said as he ran out of pellets. There was only a hint of panic in the man’s voice. He swapped out the magazine as the next, and then the next gunner, ran out of pellets as well. Dane took a step forwards.

Reloaded, they started firing again. Dane took another step forwards through the electricity crackling all around him and then toppled over.

‘Don’t stop firing, the Commander ordered.’ They didn’t.

Chino came to again. He glanced over and saw Dane being dragged out. A VTOL was circling the building, using its spotlight to provide light for the spec ops team. Chino wasn’t sure he’d ever seen someone so singularly bound with restraints as Lazy Dane.

‘Commander, he’s awake,’ a CELL commando standing over Chino said. The Commander of the Spec Ops team turned to look at her subordinate. She shrugged.

‘He’s surplus to requirement.’

Chino looked up at the gun barrel. He saw the finger tightening around the trigger.

He felt calm.

A Foreign Country

Screaming. Agony. Then nothingness.

London, 2016

Jab, jab, hook, cross, move your fucking feet. Mike reflected that the less he had trained, the more out of shape he’d gotten, the more he hit the drink, the food, certain recreational pharmaceuticals, the more he’d been fighting. I said