he meant her no harm, “I don’t know what’s going on here, or where I am or why I’m here…please. Help me.”
Her response left much to be desired, at least from Mal’s point of view.
A gun pulled with amazing speed out from under her coat and a trio of bullets fired with amazing rapidity into his chest caused Mal to rethink his manners. The pistol was a tiny .22 caliber job and Grace wasn’t the most skilled of marksmen, but only his hyper-enhanced reflexes and speed allowed Mal to avoid taking a slug to his vital organs: two bullets flattened themselves against his chest armor, harmlessly, while the third pinged off the forearm he threw up to shield his face and ricocheted up to leave a nasty gash across his right cheek, burrowing a burned and bloody line into his face.
Grace moved to fire her weapon again but Mal was quicker and caught her hand in his increasingly savage looking one. All she could manage was a sharp intake of breath as a quick flex of the soldier’s gleaming chrome muscles crushed the gun in her hand, and the fingers around it.
“My, God,” croaked Grace as the pain from her pulverized hand slowly began to register in her brain. Mal didn’t give her time to scream as he did the chivalrous thing and head butted the woman into unconsciousness.
Smoke from the fire continued to billow into the passageway and gave everything a red hue. Mal’s sensitive hearing picked up the sound of sprinklers going off in the room next to where he stood. The sound of heavy booted feet stomping through water allowed him to identify where the armed group of men were—they hadn’t charged in right after the grenade went off, which was the only thing that had saved him from taking a barrage of bullets from behind as he dealt with Grace.
Eyes narrowing in an effort to block stinging smoke, Mal squinted to try and find an escape route before he was discovered. Down the hall and away from the rooms he had just vacated were a series of doors and a T-junction at the end, perhaps a hundred feet or more away. Bright light, a clear blue sky and glimpses of buildings showed through a nearly floor-to-ceiling window in the opposite direction. One way led deeper into the unknown, the other to a freedom, but he’d have to make his way past two rooms filled with men who were armed to the teeth and ready to kill him.
Shouts from within the fire-engulfed room announcing his discovery spurred Mal’s legs into action. He headed for the window and hoped there were no nasty surprises waiting for him from within the surgical suite’s shattered doorway.
“Target locked!” shouted a voice from somewhere within the rooms and a nearly perfect horizontal line of armor piercing bullets tore through the wall right behind him.
Mal spit out a curse and sent his legs pumping.
Moving at full speed after only a few steps, Mal was able to outrun the rain of death from behind. Unfortunately, as he approached the well-lit doorway of the operating room, a pair of the GMRs emerged, wielding stun-batons loaded with enough electrical juice to take down an elephant.
Mal was about to stop and reverse direction when the inner voice chimed out, “Melee mode engaged.”
The ever-present feeling of buzzing electricity grew to an uncomfortable pitch that ran from the fingertips of both hands in to his spine, causing Mal to almost lose his footing as he leaned his head down to rush the men. From the corner of his eyes, Mal watched as one arm molded itself into a nearly three foot long blade of glimmering steel, thrusting out from where his forearm had been. The other arm seemed to bulk up, metal plates flanging and flaring out, and his fingers elongated into five claws that would have made Wolverine shit himself with envy.
The GMRs were fast and raised their electrified clubs into position to strike him as the distance closed, but Mal was infinitely faster. The man on Mal’s left was split in half, from groin to collarbone, dead before he