Tessa activated the device and an electromagnetic pulse shot outward at the speed of light, tearing through all electronics within a hundred-yard radius and frying them instantly. A weaker pulse would have passed through our bodies without notice, but this one had enough of a punch to make itself felt.
I reeled as a wave of dizziness and disorientation shot through me like a bullet, thankfully disappearing as quickly as it arrived. Moments later Baga crashed to the ground, unconscious, after a nanite-enabled Tessa had dealt him blows too quick for me to follow, even if we had been in broad daylight. As it was, the EMP had killed even the faint illumination Baga’s electric lantern had provided, sparing Tessa from having to destroy it herself.
I crouched behind a nearby tree while my partner tore through Baga’s pockets, accompanied by a chorus of shouts and curses coming from a dozen panicked mercenaries spread out around us, men who had all become blind in the same instant. The EMP had annihilated the sensitive electronic components that allowed their night-vision goggles to gather and amplify trace amounts of light, the sophistication of their equipment working against them. Some tried to revive the devices, unsure of why they had stopped working, while others tore them from their faces.
Baga’s strategy had been excellent, but Tessa’s mini-EMP had completely turned the tables. He had arranged for his men to be able to see us while we couldn’t see them. Now it was just the opposite. Even better, they thought we were all in the same boat, that we were just as blind as they were, having no idea how well we could see in the dark.
I heard other noises mixed in with the chatter coming from the mercs, which I soon realized were the death throes of several drones that had fallen from the sky above us and were now crashing through the trees.
Tessa finished relieving Baga of weaponry and quickly moved to where I was crouching, handing me a gun while she kept one that shot tranquilizer darts, demonstrating a clear intention to spare as many lives as possible. “Stay here,” she whispered. “Be back soon.”
Tessa moved like a cat when she wasn’t enhanced. But now she ate up ground with both fury and balletic grace, contorting through tight gaps between trees and jumping over logs and rocks to reach the three soldiers to our west in record time. She shot two in the neck with the tranquilizer gun and put the other in a sleeper hold, lowering him gently to the ground before moving on to the next group of men.
I felt useless from my protected perch. I was getting tired of Tessa risking her life to protect me. It was emasculating, at least according to the more primitive parts of my wiring, and I had to admit that I had never felt more like a man than when I had incapacitated commandos to save her.
But now? Cowering behind a tree while she did all the fighting? Not so much.
Just as she was about to reach the next concentration of three soldiers, one of them shot a chemical flare high into the night sky, which burst into life, illuminating the entire combat zone like an enormous flashbulb, except one that remained on. When the flare reached its apogee, fifty yards up, it sprouted an oversized parachute that would keep it in the sky for an extended period of time. Without being asked, the nanites adjusted my eyes so the new brightness didn’t blind me.
Baga had said his team was well equipped, but it was bad luck that this equipment included an item impervious to an EMP attack that could level the playing field—something even Tessa hadn’t anticipated.
The three men closest to my position could now see me clearly in all my cowering glory and reacted immediately, spraying bullets in my direction. Now that their own lives were on the line, they had decided that delivering me alive and cashing a paycheck was no longer a top priority.
I dove behind a tighter grouping of trees and rolled, coming up firing through a V made by crossing trunks. I hit the kneecaps of two of the hostiles, sending them screaming in agony to the ground, their guns dropped and temporarily forgotten, while the other soldier dove out of the line of fire, taking cover behind a moss-covered boulder.
My speed and marksmanship were breathtaking. Once I had unleashed the nanites, they had become adaptive, sensing what I needed and working to provide it. I had wanted to hit these men in the kneecaps, and my eyes were able to zoom in on these targets like binoculars, coordinating the movements of my hand accordingly, so that I could aim a handgun with sniper-like precision.
I rushed toward where the third merc had taken cover while another of Baga’s men sent up a parachuted flare, keeping the light coming. The man I was after saw me racing toward him and rose to fire, but I reacted more quickly and accurately than any non-enhanced man could, even without combat experience, and shot the gun out of his hand, taking several of his fingers with it.
He screeched in pain and fell backwards as I continued rushing toward him, closing the distance and then hurtling over the boulder to land behind him. He spun around and looked up from the bloody remains of his hand just in time to see my shoe coming toward him, slamming into his face with enough force to break his cheekbone, and knocking him out. Even so, I had left him alive, a courtesy he hadn’t seemed worried about extending to me.
I had cruelly kneecapped two of the men, but it had been my only option short of killing them. It had been the only way to ensure they would be debilitated and in too much agony to recover quickly. But one had crawled to where he had dropped his gun and now had it pointed in my direction, his arm shaking from the pain and trauma of a shattered kneecap and significant loss of blood. He fired multiple rounds, but my superhuman reflexes allowed me to dive out of his line of fire and roll to my feet. By the time he could recover from the recoil and shift his arm to try again I was already upon him, and seconds later he was unconscious on the forest floor.