Victoria rushed past the woman cradling Simon in her lap over in the kitchen. She put the duo between herself and the small front windows and open door.
The first of the red forms stared in through one of the windows and fell backward with a new hole in his head. A pair of red forms charged through the front door and were also killed on sight. One of the brutes in the distance called out, then repeated his call when he his first words had no response. That young man roared and charged through the front door. He tripped on the bodies of the two who died in the doorway, which was the only reason Victoria’s bullet didn’t meet with his skull. He got up and was shot before he could crawl.
“She’s hiding in the kitchen,” the woman cradling Simon shouted.
A lone red form moved ahead of the remaining three outside and charged a heated device that was held like a rifle at the hip. A reactor inside the weapon glowed yellow, then hot white.
Victoria ducked down and let the two siblings in front of her take the hit of an energy discharge. The humidity spiked as two people were vaporized. The smell was like ionized gas with the unsettling scent of a corpse added as an accent. The heat spiked another twenty degrees higher in an instant.
Victoria fired at the head of her attacker but spotted the next man coming up to the apartment with weapon ready. She ducked to assess his movements.
The man with the second energy weapon stalked along the walls toward the front door, but never poked his head through the entry point.
The other person outside had too much form at his top, like he held an item up to his head.
Victoria glanced upstairs and saw one of the siblings upstairs on the phone to confirm her suspicions. That person ended the call and ran downstairs. Victoria jumped up from her hiding spot behind a charred dining table and the red mist that was once two people and rushed to the hallway. She encountered a middle-aged woman at the bottom of the stairway.
“Give me your phone.” Victoria didn’t wait for a response, but slammed the woman into the wall, then broke her right arm at the shoulder, elbow, and wrist with a rapid set of movements. “If you make another call, I am coming back and making your arms match. Now sit here.” She ripped off the woman’s mask and threw it in the living room before she rushed to the back door.
The woman thrashed and attempted to kick Victoria.
“Very well.” Victoria delivered a single stomp with her durable boot to the woman’s head. The loud snap preceded the body falling backward below Victoria.
The two cousins outside sprinted around the apartment block and toward the car ports in the back.
“Aunt Kayla, back away,” a young man ordered. “We just need grandpa back in his living room watching TV.”
“Go away, Craig,” Kayla said.
“Kayla, shut up! He is using your voice to track you.” Victoria rolled as soon as she cleared the back door. “Come my way, twerp.”
“Ben, you see her?” Craig readied his energy weapon.
“Did they hire a mercenary?” Ben also charged his weapon, but broke away from Ben to aim back toward Victoria.
“I am over here.” Victoria crouched behind a dumpster. “That is good, walk out from behind those cars.” She shot Ben in the head and changed her magazine.
“Craig, you are the last one on my lucky rabbit list,” Victoria said.
Kayla and her children moved around the end of a short brick wall which held up a canopy over parking spots. The clatter of parts falling off the stretcher’s control panel gave away their position.
Craig’s red form rushed between cars and right to his relatives. He kicked Kayla then pulled the stretcher toward the house, all while he kept aim on the children with his energy weapon.
“You fire at me, mercenary, and I get rid of your patron,” Craig said.
“I am a technician,” Victoria said. She wove between cars to get a good line of sight on Craig, but his erratic movements made it hard to be precise enough to hit him without the risk of hitting Kayla and her kids, or causing him to fire his own weapon at them.
“This mech needs some fixing, tech.” Craig kicked the stretcher enough to destroy a leg and tugged at another leg until it twisted completely off in his grip. “Oops, it might drop grandpa now.”
“Thank you,” Victoria said as she lined up a shot and fired. “For getting yourself clear of your aunt.”
Victoria rushed to the family and knelt at the stretcher, which again was immobile.
“Android, hold Gibson,” Victoria said.
“Do what she asks,” Kayla said.
The android complied and held the old man in its arms as if he didn’t weigh more than a pound.
ns 172.69.59.89da2
