Chapter 2:

First Kill

Altruist


Snow’s vision was hazy and indistinct. He couldn’t hear anything except a constant ringing. Then his sensors recalibrated, and he was jolted into awareness.

He found himself surrounded by burning debris. His clothes were also on fire, but he patted them out quickly.

Snow stood up, miraculously free of pain, but with an itchy, ticklish sensation where cuts, abrasions, and burns had damaged his skin. Luckily the damage was superficial. None of his sensors detected damage to his core components, and he was only leaking trace amounts of fluid.

The same couldn’t be said for David. Snow found his comrade facedown, missing an arm and a foot. When he turned him over, he was greeted by the grisly sight of a bloody skull stripped of its face. He feared the worst, but a brief inspection revealed that the skull itself was undamaged, which meant the most vital part of David’s body, the brain, hadn’t been harmed.

David’s fingers began to twitch, signaling his return to consciousness, and Snow helped him sit up. His eyes, ears, and nose were all gone, which meant he wouldn’t be able to sense his environment or hear Snow talk.

In order to communicate, Snow grasped Davids’ remaining hand and pressed it to his own, making a series of movements with his fingers in the unique sign language the Compact had taught them.

Are you ok? Snow asked.

“Yes,” David said, rasping. “Just blind, missing an arm, and a couple liters of fluid.”

For a normal human, those would have been extremely serious injuries, but for cyborgs like David and Snow, it was more of an inconvenience than a problem.

We need to find a fortified position, Snow communicated.


“Let’s get inside a building,” David suggested. “But first, grab our gear.”

His speeches was slurred on account of his missing lips, but his tongue was still functional, and Snow understood him with acceptable clarity.

Snow climbed inside what was left of the armored vehicle, which was spewing smoke. He had internal filters to process the smoke and deliver oxygen to his brain, but they wouldn’t work indefinitely.

Searching quickly, he found that only one of their bags had survived, and it happened to belong to David. That was mildly annoying, since David couldn’t make use of any of his tools in his current state, and he and Snow preferred to use different equipment. With the bag in hand, Snow returned to David and slung him over his shoulder.

Snow blinked his eyes three times in short succession, paused for two-seconds and then blinked three times again. This pattern triggered his infrared vision. They still had cover from the smoke and no more missiles had been fired, but he suspected their attackers were still in the area, looking to confirm their attempted assassination.

“I think I’ve spotted them,” Snow said, after performing a 360 degree search. “There’s a building to the Southwest with four figures crouched near an open window. They’ve got some other items with heat signatures, maybe guns.”

When David didn’t respond, Snow remembered he couldn’t hear what he was saying, and he restated my message in sign language.

“Let’s take cover in one of the adjacent buildings. Then we’ll engage the enemy,” said David.

Our smoke coverage doesn’t extend to any of the buildings, Snow signed.

“Not a problem,” he said. “There should be some smoke grenades in my bag. You know the best way to use them, yeah?”

Snow let him know he did, and then he set about activating the devices. He threw six of them, each in separate directions towards separate buildings. This created six smoke tunnels extending out from the wreckage of the vehicle. Snow grabbed the bag, repositioned David, and started moving as soon as the last grenade was thrown.

Their previous position was soon lit up with gunfire coming from the Southwest as Snow expected, but they successfully made it inside the building next door. It was one of the multistory tenements. The first floor appeared to be a communal space with a dirty kitchen and a table with some playing cards scattered atop it. No one was in the room.

He set David down in a chair placed at one corner of the room, and then he began rifling through David’s bag. There were several weapons to choose from, including a rail gun. It was powerful but unwieldy, and it required extra assembly because it was far too large to fit in the bag. Instead he settled on a standard issue laser rifle. Snow preferred handguns, but the extra fire power and accuracy offered by the rifle would be useful for shooting through the walls.

With his infrared vision, he found his targets, all four of them, still crouched by the window of the adjacent building. They had stopped firing on the now empty vehicle and seemed to be in the midst of conversation.

Snow lined up the shot, which would pass the wall of the building he stood in and then through the wall of the building the enemy occupied. He put his finger on the trigger, and…hesitated.

“It’s your first time, isn’t it?” said David.

He knew David couldn’t see or hear me, so Snow was surprised that he had noticed his hesitation.

“Your first kill is always the worst,” David said. “After a while, the nerves go away. You get numb, and you act without thinking. Maybe, we shouldn’t be like that, but it’s necessary. Now pull the trigger and put this behind you.”

He took a deep breath, lined up the shot again, and pulled the trigger. One of the figures dropped. Snow couldn’t see their expressions, but from body language alone he recognized the fear instilled in the man’s companions. Despite no longer having his internal organs, Snow felt a deep wrenching and twisting pain where his stomach had been.

He forced the suppressed the unpleasant feelings and pulled the trigger again. Another enemy dropped. With two more shots, the last two were down.

David was fiddling with a small box he had pulled out of his pocket when he let him know he had finished off their attackers.

“You did good,” he said. “Now help me-“

The concrete wall beside them burst open, knocked down by what Snow thought was a battering ram until he saw the tread visible on its underside. He recoiled in fear when he realized what he was looking at.

It was an Enforcer Drone, one of the unstoppable killing machines that had crushed the opposition to the Council of Seven. And now it was setting its sights on him.