Extensis Vitae

Chapter 9



The portal room of Colony 13 was illuminated only by the emergency lights in the corners, which weren’t up to the task of dispelling the deep shadows draping the room. The red warning light that indicated that the vault door was open flashed its continuous warning overhead. It appeared that the klaxon was out of commission from a gunshot to the siren mechanism. A small vehicle resembling a golf cart was parked next to the guard shack.

The corpse of a naked woman hung from an overhead pipe in the center of the room, suspended by an electrical cord wrapped around her neck. The word “WELCOME” had been carved into her belly. Reznik’s breath involuntarily hissed out in anger and disgust. He clenched his fists around the handles of his weapons.

Judging from the lack of blood, the woman appeared to have been dead before her corpse had been carved up. The stench was plentiful, though, and a cloud of flies was buzzing around.

Reznik nearly gagged from the stench before he thought to hold his breath. He adjusted his vision to the low light and quickly made his way up the ramp onto the loading dock. The corridor leading out of the portal room was deserted. Dark streaks extended into the distance down the corridor. Must be the dried blood from when they dragged away the bodies of the Colony 12 team, he guessed.

The whole facility appeared to be running on backup generator power, as only the emergency lights were lit as far as he could see throughout the maze of corridors. The air was warm and stale, probably from the HVAC shutting down due to power loss. The flickering emergency lights and resulting pools of darkness throughout the facility combined with the eerie silence put Reznik’s nerves on edge. He could feel a cold trickle of sweat down his back.

Reznik boosted his hearing to the max. A symphony of white noise reached his eardrums. The distant rumble of the backup generators along with an omnipresent buzzing electrical sound and the distant dripping of water all battled for supremacy in his ears. He could also detect the faint hiss of what sounded like gas pipes.

He tracked the blood streaks down the hall to a room marked “INCINERATOR.” Looking inside briefly, he saw that the bodies must have been burned. Garbage and broken items lay strewn around the small room. He saw a shattered mirror lying up against the huge steel drum of the incinerator. Reznik stooped and picked up a good-sized shard of mirror and stuck it in the outermost pocket of his pack.

He searched the lower floor of the Colony and found nothing. It was mostly made up of storage rooms and unused space. He finished clearing the floor and was heading toward the main stairwell that led up to the living quarters when he heard a distant shout followed by a scream. He continued up the stairs, passing the living quarter level and up to the main floor as he followed the sound of another scream and subsequent crying.

They were in the common area, as he had suspected. Reznik dialed his hearing back down as he crept up next to the open doorway. He slipped his piece of broken mirror around the corner and quickly scanned the room.

Whereas the common area of Colony 12 had been nicely furnished, this room looked like it had been struck by a hurricane. The large banners had been torn down and whatever paneling had once covered the walls had been mostly ripped off, revealing the dull gray metal beneath. Heaps of garbage and broken glass littered the floor. Several bookshelves had been toppled, and, along with some broken furniture, had been cleared to the sides of the room, leaving an open space where the prisoners were kept.

An older man that had to be Dr. Kane was sitting in an easy chair with a book in his lap. His ankles were shackled with a chain that connected him to the other prisoners. Two women sat hunched together on a dirty sofa, their ankles shackled as well. The sound of grunting drew his attention and he swiveled the mirror farther around. On the far side of the room, one of the outlaws had a woman bent over a table and was raping her. There was no sign of any other outlaws.

The time for sneaking around is done, he thought.

Reznik sat the mirror on the ground and cocked the revolver. He pivoted around the corner and into the room. The outlaw’s back was to the door. His pants were down around his ankles and he was engrossed in taking his pleasure. Reznik aimed the gun and squeezed the trigger.

The deafening roar of the gun startled everyone in the room. The outlaw’s head exploded as the .45 slug plowed into the back of his cranium. He toppled forward onto the woman’s back. She began screaming as the blood and gore splashed over her. The hostages stared at him in shock.

Reznik spared a brief glance at the hostages and then quickly scanned the room again. Motion caught his eye as a young woman on the couch pointed behind him.

He spun on his heel in a blur, revolver leveled. An outlaw was a couple of yards away, a wicked looking katana raised to strike. He pulled the trigger.

Click. The weapon misfired.

In an instant the outlaw was on him, slashing at his chest with the sword. He hopped backward and barely had time to raise the machete for a desperate parry. He realized he was facing a lean, muscular woman.

Reznik tossed the revolver aside and tried to grab the woman’s sword arm, but she easily evaded his grasp. She slashed sideways at him and he jumped aside, raising the machete to focus on defense.

The outlaw woman was petite, with arresting eyes of an unnatural turquoise color. Her long blonde hair was pulled back in a high ponytail and three shiny studs pierced each of her cheeks in a line that angled down toward her mouth. She wore tight fitting leather pants and a vest that left her muscular arms bared. She had exotic features that—at Reznik’s best guess—were part-Asian. He thought she might have been strikingly beautiful if she was cleaned up. And if she wasn’t trying to kill him.

The woman sized him up for a brief moment. Her gaze took in the machete in his left hand and the shotgun slung over his shoulder. Her eyes narrowed and her mouth tightened in what he took to be anger.

She lunged at him, katana slashing again. He danced backward, just able to track the quick slashes of her blade thanks to his HUD.

1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta trained its operators in the finest types of combat in the world. Sword fighting, however, was not among the training Reznik had received. He doubted that Delta taught it at all. He was well versed in knife fighting, but that was quite different. Her katana had a foot or more length advantage over his machete, and his thick-bladed weapon was clumsy in comparison.

They exchanged a flurry of blows. Although he was focused on attack and defense—mostly defense—it registered somewhere in the back of his mind that his new body was ambidextrous, as the machete felt as natural in either hand.

As she tested his defenses, her blade became quicker and quicker. It slid past his desperate parries again and again, slashing in and striking blows incredibly fast along his arm, side, and torso. His HUD couldn’t process the attacks quick enough. He tried to snare her sword arm again, but she slid past his grasp each time. Holy shit, she’s fast—she must be juiced up like Haze, he thought.

Her sword stabbed him solidly in the thigh, and this time he felt the pain. A thin arc of blood came out as she pulled the blade free. A warning began flashing on his HUD. My nanites are running out of energy, he thought. I’ve been taking too much damage.

The woman’s lips twisted into a smile as she pressed the attack. She knew that he was weakening and wouldn’t be able to keep this up for long. He managed to deflect her blade again and even a counterattack, forcing her back a step. She avoided tying up weapons with him, negating his strength advantage.

She renewed her assault again, her sword quicksilver in her hands. Reznik brought the machete down in an attempted parry against her low stab, but her move was a feint. She caught his machete on the flat of the blade with a powerful downward chop.

The inferior machete blade shattered in his hand. He tossed aside the fragment of the worthless weapon while backpedaling and ducking at the same time, barely avoiding a slash that nearly beheaded him.

He remembered the shotgun slung across his back, but knew he’d never get to it in time. Oh shit—I’m in trouble now, he thought. I could maybe get to the immobilizer, but what I really need is a distraction.

As if reading his mind, the young woman who had warned him earlier picked up a large hardback book the size of a photo album. She caught his eye for a second, and then flung the book at the outlaw woman.

It was a good throw and would have struck the swordswoman in the head if she hadn’t sensed it. She turned and snapped the katana up and around in a quick arc, catching the book in mid-flight and cleaving it in half. She used her momentum to spin around and slash at Reznik again.

But Reznik anticipated the move and stepped inside her guard, catching her wrist in his hand. He squeezed and twisted, expecting her wrist to break, but it didn’t. She grimaced as he bent her wrist at an impossible angle. With his other hand he chopped down against the flat of the blade, finally knocking it free from her grasp.

The woman kicked Reznik in the knee, momentarily causing it to buckle, and drove a fist into his ribs. He grunted as his nanites absorbed some of the damage, but she delivered a surprisingly powerful strike for her diminutive size. She almost managed to knock him off-balance, but he recovered.

All right, I’m tired of playing around, he decided. Still holding on to her wrist, he grabbed her belt with his other hand. He lifted her off the ground, pivoted, and threw her hard against the wall.

Reznik could only gape in surprise as she twirled in mid-air and met the wall feet first. She kicked off the wall with her powerful legs, and then it was Reznik’s turn to go flying as her foot connected with his jaw in a spinning kick.

He stumbled and fell on his ass, stunned more by her athleticism than he was by the kick itself. Their eyes locked for a moment, and he thought he saw a hint of amusement on her face from his shock. Is she actually enjoying this? he wondered.

The moment passed and they both exploded into motion. Reznik yanked the immobilizer from his belt as the swordswoman dove into a somersault. He tracked her motion and fired the immobilizer a split-second before she came out of her roll with her katana once again in hand.

A blast of liquid metal shot out of the immobilizer and spread into the form of a net in mid-air. The woman brought up her katana and hacked at it, but she was too late. The metal netting ensnared her and began to cinch up as Reznik keyed another button on the device. It tightened around her, pinning her arms to her sides, the filaments digging into her skin until she was securely entangled, still in a kneeling position.

With a sound like the snapping of a guitar string, her katana severed one of the filaments. She growled and her muscled arms corded, and then in succession, several more of the metallic threads began to snap from the sharp blade.

Reznik would have been impressed by the feat of strength if he hadn’t been so annoyed. “I’ve had about enough of you,” he growled under his breath. He slipped the shotgun off his shoulder and put the muzzle to her temple.

“Stop resisting, or I pull the trigger,” he threatened. She finally yielded, allowing the katana to slip from her hands. Reznik pulled the sword free of the net.

He let out a deep breath and looked around the room. The others were watching him warily. Looking down, he took in the shredded, bloody ruin of his uniform. A dozen or so cuts with varying degrees of blood trickling from them lined his torso, arms, and thighs. I was damn lucky…she almost had me there, he thought.

Reznik looked over the captives. The older man was pale and gaunt with dark circles under his eyes, but other than that, he appeared to be in reasonably good health. The women, on the other hand, appeared to be in rough shape. The three of them were beaten and bruised, their clothing torn and disheveled.

He looked over at the young woman who had intervened and most likely saved his ass. “Thanks for the help.”

The woman nodded. “Who are you?” she asked.

Before he could answer, the old man spoke up. “I believe you are Mr. Reznik, are you not? I recognize you, you know. Or at least, I recognize the cloned body you are using as a host.”

Reznik smiled. “I’d imagine so. Dr. Kane, I take it? I’ve met your daughter.”

“My dear Myrna,” Kane replied. “What a clever girl, finishing my work like that.” He beamed.

“These two were the last of them, weren’t they?” Reznik asked, again surveying the room.

The young woman spoke up. “Yes. There were six of them that went down to the tunnel when the alarm went off, but it looks like you took care of them already. I’m June Wagner, by the way. I’m with the Colony 12 security team.” She appeared to be in her early twenties, and was tall and athletic-looking, with dark hair and eyes. A purple bruise on one cheek marred her attractive face. Recognition flickered in Reznik’s mind—she seemed to bear a strong resemblance to someone he had known, but he couldn’t remember who.

“Ah, that’s good—your parents asked me to look for you.”

“I wish the rest of our group could be brought back, but the other members of the security team were killed, except for Dr. Kane and me.” She frowned. The other woman had gone over to assist the rape victim.

“What about all the colonists that were here? What happened to them?”

“These two are all that are left here.” June gestured to the other two women. Her mouth twisted in disgust. “They’ve both been abused for weeks by those monsters. I guess there were a couple more women they kept, but they were killed when they tried to escape. From what Carmen said, maybe twenty or thirty colonists were killed by those freaks. The rest were taken away to some place called Skin City.”

The skin traders, Reznik thought grimly. He didn’t like the sound of that, but maybe the colonists would fare better out there than these women had fared in here. Especially the one who had been strung up in the portal room.

He looked over at the two women. The young blonde woman was trying to wipe all of the blood and gore off of herself with the assistance of the older woman. The woman helping her had Latina features and a deep cut on her cheek. They had obviously been singled out due to their attractiveness. “What are their names?” he asked June.

“Carmen is the brunette and Sara is the blonde.”

“Why were these thugs still here? Why aren’t they out enjoying all the booze and drugs they could buy from the profit they would make from the skin traders?”

Dr. Kane replied, “They were trying to see if they could lure a rescue party out from Colony 12. You were much more than they bargained for, obviously. In the meantime, they were enjoying the colony stores of food and drink. I imagine this is the best they’ve eaten in quite some time.”

Reznik looked over at the entangled swordswoman. She had managed to get into a more comfortable sitting position. “What should we do with this hellcat?”

“Bring her back for questioning?” June suggested. “She’s called Rin. She doesn’t speak much, but she will know where the others were taken to.”

“I believe this one here has the keys.” Dr. Kane gestured to the outlaw whose head had been blown off. Reznik recovered the key to the shackles and freed the hostages.

“June, would you give me a hand with her?” He didn’t want to take any chances with Rin, but the immobilizer net looked extremely uncomfortable, if not downright painful. He held the shotgun on Rin as he keyed the immobilizer and the net slid off her, again becoming a fountain of liquid metal as it reversed itself and flowed back into the cylinder.

June moved in and adeptly shackled Rin’s hands and feet in the chains she had been wearing. They made sure Rin didn’t have any more weapons. He removed a brace of throwing knives strapped around her thigh, but those were all the weapons she carried.

Dr. Kane was trying to massage circulation back into his legs. Reznik helped him to his feet. The doctor’s knees cracked loudly, but he waved off any more assistance.

“Don’t worry about me—I’ll be fine. Just haven’t moved enough, and it’s not good for these old bones.”

“How did they breach this colony?” Reznik asked. “From everything I’ve seen, these places are like vaults.”

“They used a mining machine to drill through the wall,” Carmen spoke up. “The walls are a lot thinner than the vault doors. The whole facility was vibrating and shaking from the horrendous clamor of the drill. Everyone was so scared; nobody knew what was going on. The security team was gunned down like animals when they tried to prevent them from entering. The administrator barricaded himself in his office, leaving the rest of us at the mercy of those freaks.” She spat in disgust.

“Was the administrator taken with the others?”

“No. They broke down the door of his office and tortured and killed him. But first they made him watch as they killed his wife and children in front of him.”

Reznik could only shake his head in anger. Good riddance to these bastards, he thought.