Beloved Weapon

  BELOVED WEAPON

  By Jonathan Price

  BELOVED WEAPON

  Copyright © 2011 by Jonathan Price.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner

  whatsoever without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief

  quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real persons or events are entirely

  coincidental.

  This city is home to exceptional people blessed or cursed with abilities through scientific or biological experimentation, abilities that have changed the face of law enforcement. For every simple gang banger or convenience store robber, there’s a being who can throw cars like bags of trash, deflect bullets with a wave of the hand, or leap across the rooftops as if playing hopscotch.

  The business of creating tools to deal with these “Exceptionals”, is a lucrative one. One of the largest, most powerful defense contractors in the world, Corp Hudson, specializes in the development of weaponry for law enforcement and the military for the sole purpose of taking down the most powerful of targets. Corp Hudson seeks to corner the market on developing combat tools by taking their research to the next level: the development of human-weapon hybrids strong enough to defeat any enemy force. But before Corp Hudson can move forward with their ambitions of creating the perfect superhuman army, they need to study one unique subject…a subject that, unlike all other Exceptionals, was mysteriously born with her abilities.

  She uses her abilities for one purpose: to make as much money as she can by sabotaging the efforts of Corp Hudson and companies like it, doing what she can to keep the corporations from dominating the world with their oppressive power. The streets know her as the most dangerous, most beautiful, and most elusive bandit of them all, the criminal underworld’s top go-to girl, Nia Black. But Corp Hudson has another name for her:

  Target Omega.

  One

  “Intruder alert. Intruder alert.”

  Time stopped for Dr. Kane Romedrux. He and his employer were merely talking outside of his building. Then the alarm cut off the prepared speech Kane Romedrux been spouting to his employer, and suddenly all his rambling about his security and his accomplishments became meaningless.

  The repeating computerized voice stifled all attempts the researcher made at explaining himself. All Romedrux could do was stare meekly into the eyes of his benefactor, the powerful and formidable Maxwell Hudson.

  The alarms were joined by flashing orange lights that shined through every window of the building. It was at that moment that Hudson spoke a single line to the trembling scientist.

  “Why are you still standing here?”

  Electronic sliding doors swooshed open and Dr. Romedrux stormed into the foyer. The alarm that was a whisper before became a full on scream, the entire building a menagerie of rushing security officers and pulsating lights.

  Romedrux bellowed to the security personnel with strength and poise that belied his humility, and though his orders were redundant, speaking them instilled the scientist with a sense of authority. He was the lord of this castle, and no intruder would get away unpunished, especially since the situation gave him the opportunity to impress Mr. Hudson.

  “Block all the exits! Secure the examination rooms! You, come with me! To the vault!”

  As guards took their positions in the corridor leading to the heart of the building, Romedrux slowly looked backward at the array of windows that made up the entire front wall. Staring back at Romedrux through the tinted glass was Hudson, silent and still as a monolith, with his arms folded as if he needed to express how domineering his presence was. Romedrux quickly ran down the hall, joining his guards.

  Romedrux trembled with fright, realizing that there was only one thing any intruder could have been after.

  No…the prototype! Not now! Not with Mr. Hudson here!

  Hudson commissioned Kane Romedrux to develop a new kind of weapon, one made to aid law enforcement with the apprehension of targets that—for various reasons—proved too powerful for conventional arrest methods. A weapon meant to take down exceptional beings.

  Romedrux was so proud of his security that it must have taken an ‘exceptional’ person to breach it. Telling himself that was all he could do to reassure himself.

  Romedrux and his accompanying guard reached the vault within the building’s inner sanctum. It bore a twelve-inch-thick titanium steel alloy door, resistant to any form of demolition. The only reliable means of entry was through the correct sequence of numbers entered into a keypad to the door’s immediate left, followed by a retinal scan and voice verification.

  Romedrux rushed ahead and jabbed the keypad with his index finger, punching in a special code only he knew that would bypass the security system completely.

  As the massive circular door grinded aside, Romedrux’s heartbeat hammered his chest, his mouth became dry and his eyes watered. He thought of what might happen to him if Hudson discovered his corporation’s newest device was in danger. Maxwell Hudson’s power and influence were commanding enough to move mountains. This kind of mistake could destroy a man’s life.

  Romedrux stopped trembling when he peered into the curved slit between the vault door and its frame. He spotted something, an image that both brought him ease and made his hair stand on end at the same time.

  The weapon was still there.

  In the hands of an intruder.

  And the intruder was quite a sight indeed.

  A curvaceous woman stood before them, young and short, yet her stance exerted dominance and strength that belied her appearance. She wore a tight leather jacket and pants laden with compartments and pockets. Her narrow brown eyes matched the unwavering stare of the guard in such a manner that he was as taken aback by her beauty as he was by her brazenness.

  She was standing directly under an open ventilation shaft, its grate carelessly cast away on the floor. The intruder moved carefully and methodically, lifting the weapon from its shelf, despite clearly being aware of Romedrux’s presence.

  Dr. Romedrux and his guard entered the vault, and with every step, Romedrux felt more assured. The thief could not go back through the vent without becoming an easy target, and the only other exit was the vault door itself, which the guard blocked.

  Sliding the device into a satchel, the thief turned about and faced Romedrux with controlled, graceful, confident movements. If the bandit were at all concerned about their presence, it didn’t show.

  “I guess you got me,” the thief grinned, apparently amused.

  The guard recognized her immediately. He read the papers and saw composite sketches of her on the news, but never imagined that he would be face-to-face with her. She was an infamous and dangerous criminal, pursued heavily but for some reason never caught.

  “Doctor,” the guard began, leaning towards his boss, muttering in a low voice. Then Romedrux’s eyes widened.

  “Are you certain? Alert everyone!”

  “All units,” the guard immediately spoke into his radio. “Target Omega is on the premises. Repeat. Target Omega is on the premises.”

  A fuzzy voice crackled back over the radio. “Copy that. All units are in position.”

  Target Omega! Romedrux thought. Of all the luck! It’s her…the one Hudson’s been searching for! This is my chance!

  “Who sent you to this facility? How did you know about the weapon?” Romedrux growled, his overwhelming sense of zeal inspiring him to stand firm in the face of his feared intruder.

  “Yeah, right,” she sighed. “Like I’m gonna tell you that.”

  “Well it doesn’t matter; you’ll never escape with it,” Romedrux asserted with a lau
gh, though it was more nervousness than condescending. “I have guards all over the building. Every exit is covered. There’s no way out. Don’t throw your life away for nothing; just return the prototype, if you please.”

  The woman smiled. Then her stance went taut.

  She pressed her toe to the floor and before anyone could utter another breath, she’d already soared across the room through the air—her knee colliding with the guard’s skull at blinding speed!

  The guard fell to the ground lifelessly, his stumbling body taking Romedrux along with him. Romedrux swung his head toward the shelves where all his special projects and prototypes were stored—minus Corp Hudson’s weapon and the woman. He looked in the other direction and stared in horror as he saw the woman heading down the corridor, the satchel containing the stolen prototype weapon securely in her grip.

  Romedrux was flabbergasted. How did she move so fast?

  The scientist’s face reddened with every passing second. His emotions outweighed his strength, but he had to do something. He had to stop her. His future depended on it.

  He snatched the walkie-talkie from his defeated guard’s belt and screamed into it.

  “All units! Get her!”

  Sentries from other posts in the building ceased guarding the exam rooms and rushed toward the vault, their footsteps rumbling.

  Racing through the narrow halls of the building, breezing past various offices and research rooms, the thief threw the satchel over her shoulder.

  A platoon of guards appeared before her in the hallway. They wore heavy black helmets and armor with Kevlar and metal accouterments, with large gauntlets and shin guards.

  One guard’s face tightened as he closed his fists and raised his gauntlet, a chrome cylinder rod twelve inches in length protruding from a slot above his knuckles. The rod crackled with electricity as his partners mimicked him, producing shock rods of their own and assuming fighting stances.

  “Hold it!” he roared.

  The thief’s small grin stretched into a full smile as she secured the satchel’s strap diagonally across her chest. She tightened her fists, relaxed her knees and wagged her finger at them, daring them to step forth.

  It was then that they learned why she was feared so. There was something about her, something exceptional. A juxtaposition of limitless confidence and razor-sharp skill; stories of her battle prowess were qualified with adjectives like remarkable, unstoppable, invincible. And she reveled in that reputation.

  The first guard to accept the challenge darted at the thief. He swung left, she swayed right and he hit nothing but air. He swung right and she swayed left; again, he missed his mark. He bared teeth like a beast, let out a growl of frustration and raised his shock rod high in the air. He barreled it down toward her head with enough aggression and fervor to rip a hole in a wall. But for all his bravado, he was dramatically slow to the thief, who simply stepped sideways as his arm connected with the floor, cracking the tiles beneath their feet in a flash of sparks. He turned to the woman now above him as her body swirled around; her boot smacking his head with enough force to propel him from the floor into the wall behind him. He slinked back down to the floor and stopped moving.

  Two of the remaining three guards charged her, planning to flank her and give her no place to dodge. But she rushed forward and became a whirlwind of flying fists and feet amid a storm of sparks hitting every surface except her body. She dodged back, buried her palm into one guard’s throat, her elbow in the chest of the other; swayed to the side, ducked another attack and countered with a knee strike to the belly and a double high kick to the face.

  It almost looked choreographed.

  She sent the second guard sailing head first to the floor with a leaping axe kick, dodging a low thrust from the third guard at the same time. She landed, crouched and swung her leg around, taking the third attacker’s feet out from under him with a sweeping kick that send him crashing on his back, his skull hitting the floor first.

  She instantly outstretched her other foot to answer the would-be surprise attack from the last guard. Her foot collided with his gut with force fueled by his own rushing momentum. He stumbled back further than expected, falling on his butt, unable to comprehend why the heel of such a small woman cost him his balance.

  Then he felt like a building crashed upon him. Before he realized what was happening the thief smashed into him from above, slamming both knees into his torso like an avalanche, cracking the floor underneath.

  She rolled backward off her last opponent and stood up straight. Leaving her attackers squirming on the floor, the thief continued her flight, eventually making her way to the foyer.

  She sprinted ahead and sharply turned left, away from the main entrance, rushing toward the window-wall.

  Drawing one of the two handguns she carried from holsters resting at the small of her back, she opened fire and left spider-web cracks all over the windows.

  She sprang and tucked through the air and crashed through the weakened window like a wrecking ball in a brilliant explosion of glass.

  As shards showered the ground like crystal rain, the man named Hudson turned and glared at her. She landed a few feet away from him on the sidewalk and quickly trotted away, vanishing into an alley on the side of the Romedrux Labs building.

  Hudson slowly approached the alley, looking inquisitively into the shadows.

  He heard a metallic jingling, then a low-pitched grumble. Then a blinding light flashed in his face and he immediately lunged backward.

  A silver motorcycle leaped from the alley, its engine’s deafening growl shaking the air as it smashed aside garbage cans and frightened stray cats. The sport bike came to a brief stop inches from the rear of Hudson’s limo, perpendicular to the lengthy automobile and facing the open road. The curvy rider twisted around and grinned at the outlandishly tall businessman, flashing a smile that pierced him like a dagger. It was a smile of confidence and victory, a smile of fearlessness. This young woman not only paid his presence little heed, she seemed to recognize how that frustrated him. She reveled in that. Slapping her goggles over her eyes, her engine roared like a lion as her bike rocketed away and disappeared into the sunset.

  Hudson slowly walked in her direction, shards of glass crumbling under his alligator skin shoes. Watching her through the billowing smoke of her engine with a guttural breath, he slid his hand into his pocket and drew a cellular phone. He made a call, and glanced at the building’s front door as the silhouette of a short man came into view behind it.

  Moments later, the main doors slid apart and there was Romedrux, stumbling to a stop as Hudson clasped his phone shut. The scientist backpedaled. He saw the fierce, hardened face of Hudson and the wisp of smoke from a motorcycle long gone.

  There was no saving face. Kane Romedrux’s eyes went wide and his mouth fell agape as he shifted focus from Hudson to the open road and back again. The thief was long gone, along with the prototype. Romedrux knew it.

  He’d failed Hudson.

  Maxwell Hudson slid thin leather gloves on, and Romedrux trembled as Hudson’s chauffeur opened the rear passenger door of the limo.

  “Dr. Romedrux. If you would, please join me inside my limousine. I have decided to move up our discussion regarding your future with Corp Hudson.”

  Several blocks away, the leather-clad young bandit glanced at the satchel over her shoulder, the weight of the bag’s contents satisfyingly pulling against her as she sped across the roads, the streetlights and flickers of traffic blurring on either side.

  She smiled. That’s one less weapon you’ll be putting in the hands of some punks on the street, and another fat payoff for me.

  Two

  A soft misty rain blanketed the streets one quiet, cloudy night. Inside the Jazz Hall, a sophisticated nightclub downtown, the atmosphere was alive with music and merriment. The faithful, fancy suit and cocktail dress-wearing patrons that attended the performance that evening cared nothing for the wet weather. They would never miss a li
ve performance from Bobby Styles, the club’s proprietor and master of the saxophone. Filling the air with calming, tranquil tunes, the sax, played expertly by one of the region’s favored musicians, subtly augmented by bass notes and light drumming in the background from the band, created an ambiance of coolness and grace.

  The languorous music of Bobby Styles and his jazz band held every patron in the club in a state of perpetual hypnosis like a siren. Some gazed because Bobby was the source of the music and an inspiration to those who wanted to express their own musical gifts, but many of the women looked upon him for a different reason altogether. He was a smooth-looking brother, draped in a teal silk shirt just thin enough to show the bulges of his chest, his lack of an undershirt blissfully apparent to every woman examining him. His faded haircut, sharp moustache, and clean features drew the eyes of every woman to him, leaving them unsure whether to focus on his soulful eyes or hardened pectorals.

  The Jazz Hall’s front door creaked open and the bouncer showed in a woman, tightly holding a satchel. She harvested the brief attention and lingering looks from most of the men present, including Bobby. The way her appearance demanded attention defeated Bobby’s music from top to bottom.

  The young woman looked like the star attraction of a hip-hop video. She wore a form-fitting black jacket partly opened. A golden pendant adorned with an opal stone sat around her neck and dangled, deliciously and tantalizingly, just above her cleavage. A tight leather miniskirt, gossamer panty hose, and black leather boots with short heels completed her outfit. Her short black hair, perfectly styled in a smooth, silky bob, curved from the peak of her head and slid across her rounded cheeks like a waterfall, a scant few locks intentionally slid within the frames of her tinted glasses.