Inhuman(108)

“Djanet!”

She landed as 1 had, with a thud, but her eyes locked on Rich immediately, and she ran to him. “You’re alive!”

He threw his arms around her. “Thank God! Djanet! Everybody and their uncles and aunts are trying to kill me right now!”

“We’ll keep you safe!”

“Who’s we? What the hell is going on?” Rich asked, exasperated.

“Old-timer’s right behind me.”

Rich sighed with relief. “Oh thank God. Because Chief Gibson’s been trying to kill me all day and some android chick just deactivated my force-field!” he exclaimed as he pointed to the cloud of dust, 100 meters to their right and to the right of the base of the Tesla tower. “They’re after this.” He displayed the hard drive for her. “James and the A.I. were inside this hard drive,” he said, “but I think they used the tower to send their patterns to Earth.”

“A woman landed here?” Djanet asked, forcefully and earnestly demanding confirmation as she clutched Rich’s still-flesh shoulders, forgetting herself as he yelped in pain.

“Yeah!” Rich shouted in return. “Ow! Hands!”

“I’m sorry,” Djanet replied before looking into the dust. “I’ll be right back.”

“Wait!” Rich shouted. “I just got you back!”

“I know, baby,” Djanet replied, “but that was 1, and somebody has a lot of explaining to do. I’ll be damned if I’m not about to make them talk.”





12





“Listen, lady,” Paine grunted as he held 1 to the ground, his elbow to her throat to incapacitate her, “I don’t want to hurt you, so you just stay put, ya hear?”

“It can’t be,” Aldous stammered as the dust began to settle, the image of the man just two meters in front of him becoming more clear as he subdued 1. “It can’t.”

Paine looked up from his quarry and peered through the dust at the man on his back. “Aldous?” he reacted, astonished. “Aldous Gibson? Is that you?”

Aldous’s disbelieving face vanished in an instant, replaced by the face of pure hatred—of pure, unreasoning vengeance. He got to his feet, coiled his legs, and then pounced on Paine, seventy-five years of built-up thirst for revenge demanding to be quenched. “You son-of-a-bitch!” Aldous shouted as he drove Paine off of 1 and back to the ground. “You murderer! You devil!”

“Aldous?” Paine uttered, flummoxed as he tried to protect himself, holding his arms up defensively like a boxer, absorbing the vicious blows that were leveled upon him as best he could, his artificial flesh being torn away with each vicious attack. “What’s the matter with you?”

“You murdering psychopath!” Aldous screamed. “You’re not human! I won’t allow you to live! I won’t allow it!”

Aldous’s blows kept coming, Paine remaining on his back, unable to do anything other than to hold his arms up, protecting his face and torso from the worst impact of the heavy, life-threatening blows. After several attacks in quick succession on Paine’s right arm, it began to give, one blow causing Paine’s forearm to crack, the very next causing it to snap, nearly severing it from his android body.

Djanet attempted to intervene as she landed nearby. “Chief Gibson, stop!” she shouted before throwing her arms around his neck, lunging onto his back, a gesture which he easily shrugged off before backhanding her across the face, knocking her to the ground.

“No!” Aldous shouted. His revenge-obsessed eyes met the frightened orbs of Paine. “No one will interfere with this demon’s death sentence. You’re going to die today, Colonel Paine, once and for eternity.”

“Aldous!” a voice suddenly thundered from their right side at the same moment as the form’s body thudded to the ground, sending a terrific vibration through all of them.

“Craig?” Aldous replied as he narrowed his eyes, recognizing the silhouette as it took shape in the swirling dust and the beams of streaking sunlight that penetrated them. “Craig, this is the man that killed Samantha. This is the man that murdered our wife!”

A second figure suddenly appeared next to Old-timer in the dust, her frame even more recognizable to the former chief.

“Sam? Sam?” Aldous reacted, astonished as he stood to his feet. “Is it really you? How?”

Paine rolled to the side, away from his attacker and the fortunately abandoned death blow, his right arm dangling uselessly in front of him, having been mostly severed below the elbow.

“Aldous,” Old-timer said as he put out his arm, blocking Aldous from crossing to Samantha, who looked at him with morbid curiosity and confusion. “Don’t touch her.”