Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
This isn’t how it feels now. Now these words are an intrusion. A violation, almost. It feels like a parasite. I would’ve gotten them removed, but it can’t be done. Maybe, if you change your mind early enough, like within six months to a year after the tech is first introduced into your bloodstream, they can be filtered out. It takes about two years for them to really implant into your neural network.
But that would’ve put me at about age fifteen. And at age fifteen I couldn’t fucking wait to join the Sweep. There was no way I’d turn back.
Boots off now, I stand up, looking over my shoulder at the woman one last time, then take off the pants. She’s still sleeping. Or unconscious or whatever. So I get the shower—the water isn’t even close to lukewarm—wash up as quick as I can, then step out with a towel wrapped around my waist.
The next thing I know, I’m staring down the barrel of my own VersiStrike.
I blink at the half-naked woman’s glare. She’s still wearing my jacket, but it’s unzipped now, like she was about to take it off and got distracted. So I can see her whole bare stomach. Her hands are shaking as she points the weapon at me. It was a pretty stupid mistake to leave my battle belt somewhere she could get a hold of it. But in my defense, I thought she was unconscious and even with it pointed at my face, she doesn’t come off as threatening.
Not to a guy like me.
I put my hands up, wave one of them, and try on a smile. “Hello. Nice to see you’ve recovered.”
She doesn’t say anything, not right away. She stares at me for a moment, eyes narrowed with suspicion. Then she starts stepping back, putting distance between us.
“I’m not holding you hostage or nothin’, lady. You’re free to leave whenever you want. But if you try and take my Versi with you, I will hunt your ass down and take it back. So why don’t you just put it on the bed on your way out the door and we’ll call this whole thing even.”
Her arms stiffen and she shakes the Versi at me. It’s got a hair trigger, that thing. And I can’t tell from this angle if she’s got the safety off, or what setting she’s got it on, but when I used it last night, it was set to flechette. I only keep two cartridges of those loaded at any given time, so she only gets one shot. But it’s pretty hard to miss a target standing six feet away with a Versi set on flechette and I can’t think of a worse way to end this day than being assaulted with a barrage of tactical darts by a woman dressed like last night’s whore.
Especially when I just hauled her ass up a million flights of stairs.
“Who are you?” She’s spitting words at me. “Where’s the god?” She looks around, like there might be a god hiding in the corner of my tiny quarters. “Where am I!” She yells this last part, then starts shaking the Versi at me again.
I put up a hand, trying to remain calm. “Woman. Do not shake that weapon. It’s very sensitive and if you shoot me, I will kill you. Do you understand?”
She takes a breath and narrows her eyes. “Not if I kill you first.”
“You get one chance. Got it? And while being shot with a VersiStrike flechette cartridge would be epically painful and cause a lot of scarring, it most definitely will not kill me.” Now it’s my turn to narrow down my eyes at her. “So you will not be killing me first. You will just be pissing me off. And I get it, we don’t know each other. But take a nice, good, long look at me, darlin’.” She does. Her eyes fall all the way down my mostly naked body, then come back up to meet mine. “Do I look like the kind of man you wanna piss off?”
It’s a rhetorical question. I’m covered in Sweep tats, battle scars, and even though I’ve been out of service for seven years now, I’m nothing but muscle. I mean, while it was a bitch to carry her ass up those sixty million flights of stairs, there is a little part of me that’s proud I could still do something that physically demanding.
I feel the augments in this moment. It’s like a shot of endorphins. And then the blue words are falling down my vision again. They are senseless words this time. Or something more like symbols. Then something really fucking weird happens.
The woman in front of me begins to glow.
I meet her gaze and she gasps, taking quick steps back. She trips over something, the Versi fires, and tactical darts come flying out.