CHAPTER 2: FIGHT

I felt the gun against me.

I didn't like guns. Never had. They weren't commonly used by Specials most of the time. In my opinion they were rather clumsy instruments only to be used by those who didn't have any real physical prowess or skill. Only in extreme circumstances, when defense of the city was necessary, did Specials ever use guns. Most of the time we relied on ourselves to do the job. I knew how to use one, of course. It had been part of my basic Special combat training to know how to lock, load, and fire guns.

And I also happened to know that they weren't very common. So how this obviously non-special person got one was beyond me at that point.

"Mutant?" I said casually, still on my knees on the ground, with the still-unseen man behind me. "That's not a very nice thing to call someone."

"Shut up," came the growly voice again. "What are you doing out here?"

"I could ask you the same question you know," I replied pleasantly.

"I'm the one asking the questions here!" he yelled.

I smiled. It couldn't be long now. Just a couple more comments would send him over the edge. "Is that so? Well, ask away, my friend. I'm all ears!"

"You got one over there, Cal?" came the voice of another man. Dammit! There were two of them around. This wasn't going to be as easy as I had planned. Not impossible though.

"Yeah," growled the first man, named Cal apparently. "The trap worked. Walked up right next to the first one we caught right here." He kicked that unconscious special on the ground. I gritted my teeth, fighting the flashes of anger in my mind. It was all I could do to stay with my knees on the ground while some creep with a gun kicked a defenseless fellow Special. You will be avenged, I thought to myself.

"A trap, huh?" I said, continuing in a matter-of-fact, unworried tone. "What did you do, jam my heat scanner or something?" I laughed. "Oldest trick in the book, boys."

"Apparently it fooled you, though, didn't it?" said the second man, flashing a bright light in my face. The light from my flashlight, which he'd obviously picked up off the ground. Through the light I caught a glimpse of his face. Pretty, not more than thirty years old at the most.

I pretended to squint. "Hey, watch the light, man! You don't need to-"

"Shut up!" Cal shouted again.

"I suppose I have to say this just to be official," I said flatly. "I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to."

I heard the sound of the blow to the back of my head before I even felt. There we go. Just mouth off to people enough and eventually they'll get so mad that they'll hit you. They always make that one mistake.

As soon as my head was knocked away from the gun, I sprang up on my hands and shot my legs out from behind, sending Cal crumpling to the ground as my boots dug into his stomach. I heard as shot go off behind me as he fell.

The other man with the flashlight lunged at me. I rolled to the side and swung my left out, sweeping his feet and bringing him down. I grabbed the man around the neck and activated my sedation ring, which shot out a needle into the man's back. He instantly went limp in my arms, knocked out by the drug from the ring. I ran over to where Cal lay on the ground, writhing in pain. I had most likely broken a few of ribs with that kick. Just to put him out of his misery, I gave him a shot with the ring and let him sleep Then I pryed the gun from his hand, looked at in disgust, and sliced the barrel off with my hoverknife, rendering it useless. Like I said, I hated guns. The less guns there were in this world, the better.

I searched Cal, looking for any sort of jamming device that might have caused my scanner and com-link to foul up and not work properly. In his pocket I found a small silver metallic rectangle with several buttons and control switches on it. It was made from some ancient material and appeared to be a makeshift electronic device made to create undetectable interference. I had seen devices like that did this sort of thing before, but I had never seen one so outdated and old-looking, like something out of the Rusty era. Who were these guys?

After slicing the jammer device in half, I powered up my heat scanner again. Good, no one around except for me and three unconcious bodies. I turned on my com-link and brought it up to my mouth.

"Agent Acamar to Agent Kilon," I said.

"Transmitting..." came the Sentinel's lifeless voice, which was replaced by Kion's. "Kilon here."

"It's Acamar, sir. I-"

"Acamar!" he exclaimed. He was always interrupting everyone. "What happened? Where are you?"

"Where I was before," I replied. "At the lab post. I found an injured Special lying here in the forest and I was ambushed by two men with guns. I've knocked both of them out and have them here now."

"You were attacked?"

"Yeah. Two mid-pretties, by the looks of them. No idea where they got the weapons or what they're doing out here. What's going on at the lab post?"

"We don't know," Kilon said. "I sent a team of four agents to your position. They'll be there in twenty minutes. Someone's managed to seal out the lab from all computerized or physical entry. Wait until the team arrives, then see what you can do about this situation."

"Kilon, I don't think I should just sit tight until they get here," I protested. "There could be more of them around. I'll try and get into the lab and-"

"No! Just stay there until the team arrives. Kilon out." The com-link went dead.

Well, that wasn't much help. Here I was in the middle of the woods with two unconsious enemies, one injured friend, and a laboratory facility that had been taken over by some unknown malicious entity. And apparently I was just supposed to wait around for four more Specials to show up and then we'd go from there, meanwhile who knows what was going on inside the lab.

I dragged the bodies of the two mid-pretties next to each other and searched them both again, still unable to find any sort of identification or interface items to tell me who they were. No communications devices, no sort of interface rings or cuffs. I brought out my com-link and raised the man called Cal's hand up to the back of the device. Com-links carried by Specials weren't just used for communications. They were miniture computers, capable of storing security information and keeping track of where people had been. Best of all, they could scan fingerprints. I placed is left thumb up against the back of the com-link and allowed time for it to complete get an image of his print. I dropped his hand and then patched myself in the Sentinel.

"Headquarters here, identify, please."

"Agent Acamar, position confirmation not applicable. Override code Omicron-Omicron-eight-seven-zero. Identify current print sample aquired on my com-link."

"Downloading," said the Sentinel. "Please wait.....No matches found. No interface code assigned to print sample aquired on your com-link, Agent Acamar. Suspect foreign entry, unable to ascertain origination of print."

No matches. So they weren't from around here. Another city? Impossible. The nearest one was hundreds of miles away, and peaceful as far as I knew. They all were. No city government would ever dream of becoming involved in another city's affairs.

"Sentinel, log scan and save print sample. Acamar out."

Puzzled by whole situation, I searched the fallen Special still on the ground. I found his com-link and downloaded its database to mine, which would give me all his indentification information and such. Agent Jak Orion, age twenty-two. I looked at his face. He didn't look familar. Though I wasn't the most social person in the world, I knew most Specials that were my age. Jak Orion. Never heard of him. I scanned more information out of his com-link. Apparently he had been assigned to stand guard outside the lab this evening. That was weird. Outposts usually didn't require guards, and when they did the jobs were almost always done by high-tech security drones, not individual Specials.

I checked the last contact he had made on the com-link. All it told me was "encrypted message." Interesting. Who had he been talking to?

The com-link buzzed in my hand. Surprised, I powered it up and said, "Hello?"

"Jak!" came a frantic female voice. "Where are you? Help us!"

"This isn't Jak," I said quickly. "I'm Agent Acamar. I found Jak in the woods and I'm on his com-link. Who is this?"

"We're in the lab!" the woman yelled. "We can't contact anyone! They've got us blocked in here! Help us!"

"I can't get in the lab, it's locked out." For a moment, I thought I heard here reply, but then realized that the message had endend. "Call back," I said to the com-link. It beeped and tried to established contact, but nothing happened. Whoever I had just spoken to had either turned off their com-link, or someone else had taken it from them and destroyed it.

A low hum came from behind me. I turned, keeping silent and looking into the dark forest. The noise grew lounder, solidifying into a constant dull roar. Lights appeared up ahead.

Hovercars.

Was it the team of Specials Kilon had sent to help me? No, they would have come from the direction of the city, and on hoverboards, not in cars. Only one other explanation remained.

More enemies.

I snapped my fingers, my hoverboard springing to life and zooming under my feet. For a split second I looked down at the unconsious Special, the mysterious Jak Orion, debating what to do with him, then I deftly scooped him up into my strong arms zoomed ahead.

Carrying someone on a hoverboard isn't the easiest thing in the world. In fact, it's pretty hard. I'd only done it once, back in my Ugly days when one of my friends had fallen off their board and had gone crashing into a tree trunk. He hadn't been wearing a bungee jacket, the idiot. Anyway, as far as I could remember, I had ended up carrying him back with me to the hospital on my board. It nearly made me sick to bring that old memory to the front of my mind. I had hated those days, and I tried my best to forget them.

I looked behind me. They were getting closer, less than three hundred feet now. I started to turn to the side and angle back towards the lab when a sharp, cracking sound split monotonous hum of the cars. Dammit! Whoever these guys were, they had guns, too. Forget going back to lab then. I'd be a sitting duck in the clearing. My best hiding place was in the darkness of the forest.

I swerved to avoid a rather large tree and plunged downward. Another shot rang out. All right then, if you want to play rough, bring it on! I lowered the limp body of Jak Orion next to a tree, propping him up against the trunk. "Stay safe," I whispered, then flew back upwards. If I was going to have to deal with two hovercars, I didn't want a fellow Special getting hurt by any collateral damage.

The two cars were still following me. For half a second, one of them even got me with their searchlight, which was followed by another gunshot. I zoomed in and out of the foliage, leading the two cars aways from the lab and back deeper into the woods.

I already had a plan in mind. I'd dealt with stuff like this before in Special Circumstances combat training, and knew just what to do. As soon as I was far enough ahead of the cars, I turned downwards and stopped my board just before it scaped the ground. I hopped off and crouched down low behind a fallen tree, trying to look as inconspicious as possible. Once on the ground, I flipped my right hand over with one quick movement, and my hoverknife sprang out of its sheath and into my grasp. I was ready.

I heard the roar of the two cars as they came closer. They were flying low, maybe thirty feet or so off the ground, probably hoping to catch me if I tried to pull a fast one and duck down onto the surface, like I had already done. Too late, guys, I thought.

I waited until the car in the lead was almost over my head, then I snapped my fingers and hopped on the board. The first car's roared over me, it's lights scanning in every direction and more gunshots coming from it. What the hell did they think they were shooting at? Morons. I turned and looked back. The second car was right behind it, and that's what I as waiting for.

Closer......closer.......right....NOW!

I kicked my hoverboard down and it soared upwards at maximum speed, propelling my body through the air as though I had been released by a huge elastic band. I rocketed into the sky. At Exactly at the same height as the passing car, I leaped from the hoverboard and grabbed the back of the open-capsule vehicled. It wasn't a very big vessel, fifteen feet long or so, big enough to hold a few passengers, not much more.

A face turned from the seat in front of me and gazed at me in shocked horror. Before he could even comprehend what had happened, I knocked him in the face with the blunt end of the knife, then leaped over the back of the car, grabbed the man by the scruff of his neck, pulled him out of the seat and threw him over the side. He screamed as he fell through the night. I smiled in grim satisfaction.

The driver had only a few seconds to realize what was happening before I slid into the seat beside him and pressed the knife up to his throat. "Keep driving," I ordered. "Make any sudden movements and I'll cut your neck open and you'll leave one hell of a bloody mess on the nice interior of your car. I don't want to hurt you, but I will if I have to."

I could see the fear in his eyes. He was a mid-pretty, just like the all the enemies I had encountered. This was turning into one strange night. "W-who are you" he managed to stammer out.

"Don't ask questions, that's a very easy way to die with someone like me holding a knife to your throat." I looked ahead of us, the wind past my face as we sped through the forest. The other hovercar was nowhere in sight. "Drive back to the lab in clearing." His hands didn't move on the half-wheel controller. "Now! Move!"

A gunshot sounded behind me, and I was suddenly blinded by an intense light behind me. I winced as the first hovercar roared over us, less than a few feet from my head. I was suddenly thrown against the side of the seat as the hovercar lurched and rolled to side. I saw the driver take advantage of the temporary distration to cut the wheel all the way right, spinning the car into a spiraling dowards crash course. I reached out with my one free hand and knife, groping the smooth surface of the car, despeartly trying to find a handhold. I felt myself slipping out of the seat as the car turned on its side.

Then it gave one final shake and I toppled head over heels off the car, speeding relentlessley to the hard ground below me.