Beloved Weapon Read online

  Chelsea reached toward the floor and lifted a black case, unlatched its twin locks and lifted it open. Only then did Billy remember that she was carrying it when she approached him, and set it down as he came to his senses. He first thought it might have been a first aid kit, but then he looked at the contents of the case, and his eyes went wide.

  “You should have some fun with this,” said Chelsea.

  It was a huge handgun; a revolver with large chambers and two barrels that looked like a double-barreled shotgun tilted vertically. Casey wondered how a woman like Chelsea even managed to carry it to him.

  “It’s something R&D’s been working on for a while. I don’t have a name for it yet, but it should come in handy in case you need to take down a hard target…like Alvarez.”

  “And how am I supposed to catch up with them?” Billy grumbled. “What if they got away by now?”

  “Go to the garage and tell the grease monkeys that Dr. Chelsea said you can take the ‘JTB-36’. It’s a cool toy that they designed before I started working here…you get to give it the field test. Just make sure you read page 53 of the manual. That and the gun will be all you’ll need, okay?”

  Billy Casey nodded and accepted the weapon. He forced himself to his feet. Chelsea spoke one more time, standing with her hands on her hips.

  “Bring that shrew back for me, and you can have anything you want…” Chelsea said.

  She shifted her chin skyward and stuck her chest out as she parted her lab coat at her sides, putting her figure on display.

  “…Anything.”

  Casey stopped in his tracks and turned to face her. He looked Dr. Romedrux up and down, like a scanner tracing every curve of her form.

  She nodded with a devious look.

  And with that, newfound determination fueled Billy’s steps and he stormed off with energy he never knew he had.

  Nia Black charged toward the Security Soldiers with fight in her eyes. She ducked a punch and tangled the arm that threw it within her own. She dragged the Soldier’s arm down while shooting her knee up. A blood-curdling crack followed as his forearm was split across the middle. Nia threw a final roundhouse kick that sent the trembling Soldier soaring out of her sight.

  Before she knew it, a blow struck her in the back with the force of a lightning bolt. Every nerve trembled as a jolt of electricity traveled through her, but Nia quickly recovered. She winced and rolled on the ground, glancing at the Soldier who snuck her from behind with an electrified rod protruding from his gauntlet.

  “I see you guys shop at the same store as those punks at Romedrux Labs did,” Nia chuckled. “And you’ll go down just as easily, too.”

  Alvarez fought two Soldiers at once, keeping them at bay with far-reaching glancing blows and shooting kicks.

  “It has been a while since I’ve done this,” Jesús muttered as he caught one Soldier’s arm, twisted his wrist and sent his opponent swirling to the ground. Before his other opponent could react, Alvarez shot his elbow backward, cracking the dense armor and sending the second Soldier stumbling back. The sentinel reset his stance, pressed a button on his gauntlet and produced an electrical rod. Raising it to the sky, the Soldier charged toward Alvarez—

  And tumbled to the ground face first as Nia slammed her knees into his helmet-covered skull from behind. She pressed her palms to the ground, raising her legs skyward, and brought her knees together again, barreling her weight into the grounded Soldier and pressing his face into the dirt, leaving a deep impression. He did not move after that.

  Nia climbed to her feet and swept the dirt from her body suit.

  “What the hell was taking you so long?”

  Alvarez slammed his fist into the head of the Soldier he’d thrown to the ground, cracking his helmet and knocking him out. Alvarez then looked around and saw that Nia had managed to incapacitate the remaining five Security Soldiers, including Alvarez’s second opponent. Their comatose bodies lay in the dirt and branches, broken trees and mangled bushes strewn about.

  “I’d gotten dirt on my glasses,” Jesús mumbled, taking his spectacles off and cleaning them with a smooth, lint-free cloth.

  “So, I guess Hudson’s security team has specialists and what not,” said Nia.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Some of y’all are good at fighting, and others are good at…other stuff. You’re clearly one of the other guys.”

  Alvarez could only chuckle as they took off running toward the dock. “Well, you’re right. I’m a sharpshooter. Staying out of direct assault operations was the best way to keep my enhanced strength hidden from the Corp’s watchful eye. After all, it would only be natural that a man who specializes in marksmanship would have good eyesight and remarkable accuracy.”

  “And yet…you wear glasses…”

  “Glasses with specialized lenses, designed to automatically adjust to varying levels of brightness,” Jesús explained. “I don’t need them to see, per se, but in certain situations, they do come in handy. When you have heightened senses, there is a tradeoff; we also become more sensitive to extremes. Something you’ll learn in time…”

  The two skidded to a halt at the dock, where a speedboat sat waiting. Two guards were present, but Nia Black and Jesús Alvarez made short work of them, and in moments, they were cutting across the water, headed back toward the mainland.

  “It won’t be long,” Jesús said. “My car is parked at the dock on the mainland. We’ll get away and decide our next move then.”

  “So why not just take this boat and go somewhere else, somewhere way off the coast?” Nia wondered.

  “Do you want your guns back?”

  “Hell yeah! My bullets got mister ‘fondle-the-hot-black-girl-while-she’s-strapped-down’ perverted-ass motherfucker’s name written all over it.”

  “And I’m sure you want to keep your friends safe, right?”

  “Friends? What friends? You mean Bobby? Please,” Nia scoffed.

  “Hudson’s corporate tower is on the mainland…still want to take him out?”

  Nia folded her arms.

  “We’re not done, Miss Black,” Jesús said. “Soon, everything will be made clear. But we still have a bit of work to do.”

  Nia turned at the faint sound of a second motor, piercing through the roar of their speedboat’s engine as it slashed through the waters. She looked behind them and saw a small object speeding in their direction.

  “Is that who I think it is?” Nia gasped.

  “If you think that’s Billy Casey,” Jesús grumbled, “Then, yes.”

  Nia Black and Jesús Alvarez glared back, catching sight of their pursuer. Roaring across the water, cutting a massive wake that left walls of water spreading away from his sides at three times his height, Billy Casey drove a specialized vehicle that looked like a sleek combination of jet ski and hovercraft. Propellers mounted on its back provided the propulsion, encased in round structures that looked like tires, stacked similarly to the insignia of the Olympics without the center ring. The vehicle sped through the water like a torpedo, Billy Casey tightly grasping and twisting its handlebars almost as if he were operating a motorcycle.

  “Interesting vehicle,” Jesús muttered. “Fast, too.”

  “His stupid ass…” Nia chuckled. “We’re almost to the dock. What’s he going to do when we park and go to the car…get off his mutant jet bike and chase after us on foot? I say we just wait for him and kick his ass.”

  “Billy Casey is a lot of things,” Jesús muttered, “But a fool is not one of them. He must have a reason—”

  Then a thundering boom echoed and the speedboat shook! Alvarez glanced and saw a hole in the hull on the starboard side. He looked back and saw Billy Casey brandishing a large, double-barreled revolver, aiming it in their direction while holding the handlebars with his off-hand.

  “Ah,” Jesús sighed. “I suppose he means to do us in before we get to the dock.”

  Nia squealed. “I need my guns! I got half a mind to jump off this
death trap, swim over there and—!”

  “…Be completely at his mercy,” Jesús stopped her. “You still have a lot to learn. As you said, we’re nearly to the dock. Soon he won’t be a factor.”

  Nia rolled her eyes. “Do they pay you people enough to be this determined?”

  “Not usually. I suspect there’s something else driving him. He’s always been… ambitious.”

  “Well after that shit he tried back in the laboratory, I’ll be happy to oblige him if he wants to get himself killed,” Nia grimaced. “Just get me to my guns.”

  “Hopefully I can do that…” Jesús resolved, tightening his grip on the speedboat’s controls.

  “Don’t say ‘hopefully’!” Nia snapped. “You will. Let’s pull this off, get rid of this pest and get back to business. Hudson’s still gotta go down, right?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  Then a second shot rocked the boat! Alvarez looked back and saw a gaping chasm in the hull, and fluid leaking out.

  Fuel.

  “Well…” he muttered. “This is becoming a more interesting day by the minute. I hope you can swim, Miss Black.”

  “I just said I—what?!”

  Billy Casey fired again.

  Alvarez let go of the speedboat’s controls and sprang into the air, yanking Nia by the torso as he did so.

  The boat erupted in orange flame and black smoke with a deafening boom!

  As singed wood and metal and plastic and glass fragments crashed into the water, splashing everywhere, Casey raised the cannon and slid a new round of shells into its chamber.

  “Hope I didn’t mess her up too bad,” he muttered to himself. “The doc said alive… she didn’t say unharmed.”

  Casey stopped his watercraft, released the controls and knelt toward the water, trying to see below the surface as he bobbed up and down.

  “Hey, Miss Black!” yelled Casey. “I know you’re alive, and I know you can hear me! I also know you’re unarmed! You’d have shot at me if you could! You’ve got nothing going for yourself right now! You might as well come up! Alvarez can’t help you now, but maybe the doc and I will go easy on you!”

  Alvarez, floating about immersed in water, looked around and saw Nia Black drifting further into the depths beneath him, eyes shut, nonresponsive. He swam down to her, took hold of her cheeks and aligned her face with his.

  Nia’s eyes slowly opened as she felt pressure in her head. Her eyes bulged when she realized that Jesús Alvarez was pressing his mouth to hers, breathing hard.

  She wrapped her arms around his neck and closed her eyes.

  Twenty-Four

  Billy Casey grew frustrated.

  He’d been floating around the water on the specialized JTB-36 for several minutes after blasting the speedboat carrying Jesús Alvarez and Nia Black to bits. He saw their bodies flail into the water an instant before the boat blew, so he was certain they were alive. But he scanned the surface of the water looking for any evidence of a breach around him, circling like a lighthouse beacon, to no avail. He was certain his enemies would try to pop up and try to take him by surprise; after all, he was their lone pursuer, and a deadly one at that, so he thought, and even they had to come up for air eventually. But the density of the water would slow even them down; after all, enhanced or not, they weren’t fish.

  Casey had it all planned out. The slightest quiver in the water, and he’d send a thunderous blast from his revolver into the depths in kind. He figured, they’re superhuman; they can take a shot or two. Dr. Chelsea wouldn’t mind if Nia Black has a couple of nicks on her, he thought. But for Alvarez, Casey would fire considerably more shots.

  It hadn’t occurred to the self-centered man that taking him out was the furthest thing from either of their minds, at least for the time being.

  That was, until he shot a quick glance at the dock far away from him, and saw two figures: a tall man in a dingy uniform and a short, curvy woman wearing a white leather cat suit, dragging themselves out of the water and pulling themselves up on the wooden surface of the nearby dock connected to the mainland.

  He flashed teeth and cursed, aimed his pistol forward, and fired. The shot tore through a piece of the dock, sending wood fibers flailing in the air inches from Nia’s feet. They looked in his direction and sprinted off, running toward the parking lot well away from the docks.

  Nia glared at Jesús Alvarez as the two ran together.

  “Why did you do that?” Nia asked.

  “What?” Jesús exhaled in response.

  “You know…underwater…that. Why?”

  The two rushed to a car sitting in the parking lot, a convertible. Alvarez fished out keys, leaped over the driver’s side door and started the car. Nia Black leaped over the passenger’s side door and flopped into the seat next to him. Alvarez shifted the gears and floored the gas pedal, his tires screeching against the asphalt as a plume of smoke billowed behind them.

  “Slow down!” Nia shouted. “Where are my guns?”

  “Glove compartment,” Jesús said.

  Nia froze briefly, then opened the glove compartment as Alvarez said. She lowered the door and found her chrome-plated Magnum Research .40 caliber Baby Eagle pistols sitting there, waiting. She smiled as if she’d won the lottery as she checked and found their clips were fully loaded, then immediately straightened her face out, remembering her train of thought.

  “Answer me,” Nia growled. “Why did you—?”

  “You mean, give you mouth-to-mouth?” Jesús suddenly said. “It looked like you were unconscious. I thought you may not have had time to take in any air when we jumped from the boat.”

  Nia looked down. “Oh. Well, I…I did. I was all right. But thanks anyway.”

  “You’re welcome, Nia.”

  Nia looked toward the water and shot a glance at Billy Casey. “Stop the car. I want to take his punk ass out.”

  “Forget it. We’ll have more time for that later. There’s something I have to tell you. But now’s not the time. For now we get out of sight.”

  Nia sucked her teeth. “You’re pissing me off, you know.”

  Billy Casey grimaced. His eyes narrowed as he started the engine of the JTB-36.

  “Page 53 of the manual…” he muttered to himself. “Right.”

  Steering the vehicle in a circular path through the water, Billy built up momentum and sped toward the dock. The vehicle soon slashed through the waves with such velocity, it was almost as if it weren’t touching the water at all.

  Casey drove across the water, moving almost side-by-side with Alvarez’s convertible on the street. As the two vehicles soared forward, one on asphalt and the other on water, Billy Casey made eye contact with Nia, and looked sternly at her as she smiled cheerily and blew him a kiss in jest.

  Billy flipped up a small latch on the controls of his vehicle, exposing a red button. He pressed his thumb into the button and the propellers of the JTB-36 suddenly quivered violently, spinning at nearly thrice the velocity.

  He pulled back on the handlebars as the vehicle leaped from the water!

  Nia and Alvarez looked skyward. Billy’s vehicle was suddenly so high in the air that it blocked the sun before their eyes.

  The propellers stopped spinning and they rotated sideways, sliding along tracks on either side of the vehicle’s chassis as it as it sailed through the air. The propellers aligned parallel with the length of the vehicle, locking together on either end, until the four propellers transformed into two tires, one in front, the other in back.

  Billy Casey’s jet ski had become a motorcycle!

  “‘JTB’…” muttered Billy. “What, ‘jet ski-to-bike’?! So lame.”

  The vehicle landed on the road behind the convertible and its engine buzzed with life, Casey suddenly speeding behind them on wheels!

  “Well, I’ll be damned…” Nia raised her pistols. “Corp Hudson’s got some banging toys. But that’s all it is—a toy. It’s on now because I’m strapped and ready to—!”

 
“Nia…” Jesús interrupted her. Nia knew why, too.

  No sooner did they look back at the pursuing Billy Casey, Nia and Alvarez picked up more grumbling sounds coming from the distance; more engines.

  A group of bikers joined Billy Casey from an intersection, aligning with him in a V-shaped formation, their engines growling like a pack of wolves. Each biker wore full tactical gear and carried TEC-9 machine pistols.

  Billy Casey, riding behind the other four, barked orders.

  “Shoot to kill!”

  The chase led to a highway; a wide strip of road with three lanes on each side, a thick forest on one side of the road, the river on the other.

  Each biker raised his weapon and opened fire on the car, the deafening chatter of their high-powered bullets screaming in the air. Nia kneeled in the passenger seat of the drop-top and fired back. Alvarez weaved the car through the highway traffic, his tires screeching against the asphalt as enemy bullets ripped up pieces of the road around them.

  One rider pulled up alongside the car, aiming his gun directly at Nia. She lost no time whipping her guns around and yanking the triggers, her bullets like battering rams slamming into his chest. The soldier’s body flipped backward in a forced somersault, his head crashing first on the street. His neck cracked as his body bounced and tumbled away. The motorcycle flipped over and skidded backward, crashing into a car as the other four SPI bikers veered away from it.

  Nia glared at Billy Casey afterward, and when their eyes met, she could tell Casey had just learned something new about his target. She knew when to cease the fun and games. She knew how to be serious.

  Casey’s eyes followed the body of his man as it tumbled past him. He lowered his speed and distanced himself from the other three bikers. Though he knew what happened to Alvarez’s unit at the warehouse, as well as the security forces who attacked her at the Worthington site, he didn’t expect to see Nia kill an enemy that swiftly, without hesitation.

  But he also remembered that Nia Black would do her best to avoid harming innocent people.