Read Titanium (Bionics) Online
Authors: Alicia Michaels
Titanium (Bionics)
Alicia Michaels
Clean Teen Publishing
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Titanium
Copyright © 2012 by: Alicia Michaels
Cover Design by: Marya Heiman
Typography by: Courtney Nuckels
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address:
Crimson Tree Publishing
PO Box 561326
The Colony, TX 75056
Dax Janner and Yasmine Zambrano
Resistance Hideout in Memphis, Tennessee
August 17, 4010
10:00 p.m.
Every muscle in my body is tense as I step out from my hiding place to confront the dozen Military Police Officers guarding the entrance to the Memphis installment of Restoration Resistance. Everything that follows this moment depends completely on me and the frightened girl beside me. She doesn’t have to tell
me that she’s afraid, I can feel it. I can see it in the set of her wide, almond-shaped eyes as she joins me in the middle of the road. Looking at her, I can remember my first mission as a part of the Resistance and I know her fear, recognize it as my own. Today, we are facing the very people who want us dead, who fear us because we are different.
I haven’t known my partner on this mission—
Yasmine Zambrano—for very long, but everything I know about her tells me she’s one tough chick. I’m looking forward to seeing what she’s capable of. She stands beside me cool and collected, the sharp angles of her face accentuated by the tight knot at the back of her head. Her eyes narrow as our enemy approaches and I feel her hatred for them. It matches mine.
“Identify
yourselves,” barks one of the M.P.s, stepping toward me with his weapon set to stun.
If I weren’t focused on my mission, I might have laughed at this guy.
Identify yourselves?
Yeah, I’m so intimidated, Officer Asswipe.
Don’t even get me s
tarted on the fact that it’s 10:00 pm, dark as hell outside, and these jackasses and their expensive armor are lit up like Christmas trees. All they can make out about me is my long, bulky shape, but once they pull out the scanners they’re going to know what I really am. Then it’ll be time to run.
“Get ready,” I whisper to
Yasmine as Officer Asswipe and two of his cronies start walking toward us. They leave behind about ten others, but I’m banking on our discovery drawing them away from the hideout’s entrance. Even if one or two stay behind, I know that Blythe and Jenica can handle it.
“You are in a restricted area,” the officer warns as he draws near, his weapon still pointed toward the ground
, his finger ready on the trigger. His two friends are a few steps behind him, their weapons also drawn and ready. One of them holds a scanner. I brace my legs apart and bend my knees, ready to run.
The officers get closer and the glow from their solar powered armor—now fueled by a full day’s worth of sun—casts enough light for them to see us clearly. I know what they see as they stop in front of me an
d raise their weapons: six feet, five inches of muscle and brawn stretched beneath dark brown skin, a buzz-cut head, and light brown eyes. What lies beneath will be revealed by the scanners. That’s when the fun will begin.
Their equipment starts going off like crazy, clueing them in to m
y bionic prosthetic legs and titanium ribs. The scanner of the second officer reacts to Yasmine’s Kevlar skin as they close in on us, weapons raised.
“Hands up, both of you!” barks Officer
Asswipe, his gun trained directly on my middle. Yasmine is unflinching at my side as we both comply silently.
The third
guy speaks into a comm. device clutched in his free hand. “Sergeant, we’ve got two Bios here, one male and one female.”
A voice crackles from over the speaker. “Aside from their Bionic additions, are they armed?”
Officer Asswipe and M.P. number two both step forward to pat us down. My gut clenches in disgust as Yasmine’s officer allows his hands to linger a few seconds longer than necessary on her hips. To her credit, she continues staring straight ahead. She doesn’t even bat an eyelash.
“No weapons,” Officer T
hree confirms after getting clearance from One and Two.
“Take them out.”
The third officer wrinkles his brow and exchanges a glance with Asswipe. He glances as at the comm. device as if confused. “Sir?”
The voice retort
s “Those Bios are probably from the hideout. They’d be dead within the next hour anyway. President Drummond has given orders to gas it.”
I hear
Yasmine’s sharp intake of breath and it echoes my own fears. Thank God we got here in time with a plan in place. If we had only run a rescue mission to Stonehead prison, where some of the Memphis hideout Bios had been captured and imprisoned, those left behind would have been killed. I have seen the damage their poisonous gas can do firsthand. I’m talking seizures, drooling and crapping your pants. I wouldn’t wish that on my worst enemy.
“Roger,” says Officer T
hree as he stuffs the comm. device back into the clip on his belt.
“
On your knees,” says Officer Two as he exchanges the laser weapon at his hip for one of the ancient models that relies on bullets. They love to execute our kind with bullets because they like to see our blood spilled. The others follow suit.
“No,” I respond, lowering my hands back to my sides.
They curl into fists that I can’t wait to use on the M.P.s. Yasmine does the same.
“Who the fuck do you think you are, you
Bio
trash?” Officer Asswipe hisses from behind his helmet. The word ‘bio’ rolls off his tongue like an epithet. “Get on your knees now, both of you.”
“No,” we both respond in unison.
This is what I hate about the M.P.s. They don’t just kill us. They strip us of everything, including our dignity. Taking our freedom and our lives just isn’t enough for them.
“Doesn’t matter,” Officer T
wo says, stepping forward and pressing his gun to Yasmine’s head. My gut clenches with irrational fear. If anything, the fact that they’ve switched to bullets at this point is good. No bullet can pierce her Kevlar skin. “They’re dead anyway.”
He flip
s up the visor of his helmet and stares down at Yasmine. “Shame, too. This one’s kind of pretty. I wouldn’t have minded a go with her if we had time.”
“Fuck you, you fascist sack of shit!”
She growls defiantly, thought her voice trembles slightly.
My eyebrows shoot up and I feel myself reaching a whole new level of respect for the little spitfire hurling insults while staring down the barrel of a gun. In response, he pulls the trigger
. The sound is explosive. Yasmine rears back but maintains her footing as the bullet bounces off her head, falling to the forest floor in a steaming lump of dented metal. Shocked gasps ripple through all three of them as she glances up and smiles.
“My turn,”
she rasps before sticking Officer Two with a right cross. His open face shield ensures that her punch lands right on his nose and as blood gushes in a crimson spray, she twists his arm behind him so quickly he doesn’t have time to react. He bends unwillingly at the waist, screaming in pain as she brings her elbow down on his straight arm. The strength of her skin—as hard as diamonds—shatters his armor as well as a few bones.
Realizing that
they’ve underestimated us, the other two officers jump into action. Officer Asswipe doesn’t see it coming when I knock the gun from his hand. He takes a swing at me and I let him land it, taking the left hook to the jaw so that he’d get cocky. I see his smirk just seconds before his fist connects with my ribs in a right hook. The sound of his finger bones colliding with my titanium ribs is like music to my ears, which are topped off by his cries of pain as I give him a swift and painful kick to the middle with one of my titanium legs. My skeletal system is all metal from my ribs to my toes. It makes bar bets over how may punches I can take to the gut real interesting.
Officer
Asswipe goes flying away from me and lands at the foot of a tree a few feet away, and I turn just in time to find Yasmine trading blows with Officer Three. I catch him by surprise and knock him out cold before he sees me coming. I can hear the crackle of the dead officer’s comm. device as, about a hundred yards away, the others officers check on their fallen comrades. They’ll be on us in a matter of seconds, which is exactly what we wanted.
“You okay?” I ask as
Yasmine bends to retrieve the unconscious M.P.’s weapon.
“Peachy.
You think he’ll mind if I use this?”
I shrug, kicking at the officer with the toe of my combat boot. “I think he’s okay with it.
Didn’t know you could fight.”
She shrugs as she checks the gun’s setting.
I follow suit by taking an identical gun from one of the others. “Dad was a martial arts instructor. It’d be dumb for me to
not
know how to fight.”
“I’m impressed.”
“Good, but those guys don’t look like they share your opinion.”
I glanced up just in time to see
eight M.P.’s rising up off the ground on their sleek hover bikes. They speed toward us, weapons trained and ready. I glance at Yasmine and arch one eyebrow.