one split second, I wished I believed the way the other field operatives did. Wished I had a bag of religious symbols and the confidence someone wanted me to win. But as far as I could tell, we made our own decisions.
I took my Deliverator and stepped out onto the pier. I wasn’t even dressed for a fight. Sure, I wore the same shade of dark gray all BSI personnel did, long sleeves and pants, but that was the end of my similarity to Brynner. My suit wasn’t even one of the normal tailored ones. I bought it on the clearance rack at a thrift store. Not that the police could tell. They backed away, giving me space. Thinking I was somehow ready, or trained. Or fit.
I couldn’t ignore the screams of terror inside. With a shaky hand, I pulled open the restaurant door. My heart pounded in my chest like it was trying to make a break for the safety of the car. In that moment, I stepped out of my safe, normal assignment and into a building with a real co-org.
I couldn’t see the source of the screaming. Like most of the pier restaurants, the dining room ran parallel to the water, and wide windows from floor to roof showed sparkling waters beyond. The co-orgs stood out, silhouetted by sunlight across the water. I’d seen them in labs before. Stripped of clothing, tattooed with measurement marks so our scientists could detail changes in the body structure. These still wore the clothes they were buried in.
Behind me, the door clicked closed, and one of the co-orgs turned toward me. Once an overweight man, most of its belly was gone, a raw expanse of intestines all that remained. What was the phrase Brynner used for it? Meat-skin? It fit. The thing in front of me sagged on its bones, jaws hanging loose, eyes vacant.
Just behind it, Brynner wrestled with another one, while another corpse lay on the floor.
I set my feet, raising the Deliverator in both hands to keep steady. The .22 I’d used in training barely kicked at all. When I squeezed the trigger on the Deliverator, it just about tore my arm off.
A hole the size of a teacup blossomed in the co-org facing me. It lurched backward, slammed into a table, and staggered forward. I waited this time, putting a bullet directly into its sternum. And still it lumbered toward me.
“Hold your fire, damn it!” Brynner screamed as he fell backward.
Recognition bloomed, making me sick. The bullets had passed right through the co-org in front of me and buried themselves in the co-org he fought. Two inches over and they would have punched a hole right through him.
So I chose the better part of valor, running down the row of tables, throwing chairs down behind me. This one truly seemed mindless, stumbling, falling, and then getting up and sprinting. I outran it, circling the dining room all the way back to where Brynner wrestled.
The co-org lay on top of Brynner, with one arm wrapped around him. With the other arm, it attempted to strangle him. By attempt, I mean, “did a good job.” I ran at it, doing my best soccer kick right into its ribs.
I might as well have kicked a boulder. The Deliverator slipped from my hand, and I went flying over both of them, tripping and crashing into a chair. My leg went numb everywhere it wasn’t sending bolts of pain through my spine.
Brynner bellowed, “What are you doing here?” He seized a broken chair leg, shoving it into the co-org’s mouth. In the same movement, he rolled out of the way of the one chasing me and swiped at its ankle, tripping it.
It fell at my feet, its head crashing into a table corner on the way down.
Brynner whipped out a set of daggers and stabbed both of them into the co-org he’d been fighting with, releasing a cloud of black smoke.
I stared. My first time ever seeing a co-org die. The patterns in the smoke weren’t random. They were almost like gnats in flight, or a swarm of bees. The smoke—the smoke might be the Re-Animus. The idea left me amazed. Stunned.
The co-org at my feet latched on to my ankle. With a grip like stone, it crawled its way along me, using the foot I’d smashed as leverage. I rammed an overturned chair at it, kicked with my other leg, and used both hands to intercept the claw it forced toward