Freaks in the City by Maree Anderson Page A

other humans she’s come to care about.
    Movement in the shadows. Someone’s sharp
inhalation. A muffled footstep. A whispered acknowledgement to the
person listening and barking orders on the other end of the comms
device. More movement, furtive and quick.
    She sprints toward a parked car and they
follow, exactly as she planned. A wholly un-cyborg-like feral smile
curves her lips. Only once before has she allowed them to get this
close to her. They will be unable to resist the trap she has
set.
    She ducks behind the car, waits…. And as
they break cover, she upends the car on its side, using it as a
shield as she darts toward the next vehicle.
    Despite her precautions a bullet rips into
her side, just below her ribs. She runs a quick diagnostic,
determines the bullet has been designed to lodge in her body, and
emit a signal to scramble her circuits and render her helpless. She
emits an electronic counter-signal that will dampen the effects but
it’s too risky to leave the bullet where it is. She digs it out
with her fingernails and stashes it in her pocket to analyze at a
more opportune moment.
    The wound is deep. She licks two fingers and
shoves them into the wound, coating it with her saliva to stop the
bleeding and aid healing. The injury won’t slow her down, but the
fact that she failed to dodge the bullet makes her chest tight and
her breath come in short sharp pants.
    Her fists clench and she grinds her jaw. Now
she easily recognizes this emotion. Anger. She takes out her
frustrations on the nearest vehicle—a florist’s van—and launches it
into the air.
    A part of her realizes emotional overload is
playing havoc with her control—hence this little temper tantrum.
She inhales, counts to five, exhales. The possibility that all the
surrounding properties in the vicinity are empty of people is
remote. She doesn’t wish to be responsible for the deaths of
Snapperton residents whose only crimes are curiosity.
    She’s off and running, zigzagging down the
street in a random pattern. If a bullet hits her this time, it’ll
be pure luck.
    She leads the extraction squad to a new
housing estate. Construction has stalled due to lack of sales.
Those residents who can afford the pricey houses have no desire to
live cheek by jowl with the commercial district bordering the
estate. Her pursuers will believe she’s chosen this particular
property because it’s one of the few completed buildings, affording
her maximum cover. But there is nothing random about her selection.
She purchased the property to ensure it remained vacant. It’s
booby-trapped with C4. All she needs to do is flick the switch on
the remote timer in her pocket to begin the countdown.
    The first man senses her stalking him and
whirls. He hesitates, vacillating between his gun—a known
quantity—and his as yet unproven EMP weapon. He chooses the EMP but
she is already reacting, knocking the weapon aside with her forearm
and chopping him across the throat.
    She had no intention of killing him—she
pulled her blow so she didn’t crush his windpipe. He’s only
following orders, after all. But as he lands he smacks his skull on
the lip of the concrete garden edging.
    Before she chose to hide in Snapperton,
before Tyler, she would have felt neither regret nor sorrow, nor
anything at all over this man’s senseless death. Now she feels
something. It’s fleeting, a twisting sensation in her stomach, a
brief overwhelming sadness and regret that shrouds her before she
can shrug it off. It’s yet another indication of how she’s
evolving.
    One by one, she takes out the rest of the
squad. She’s more careful now, more aware of how fragile humans can
be. She knocks each man unconscious before fracturing one leg and
the fingers of both hands, ensuring each man is incapable of
wielding a weapon. It would be more efficient—easier—to kill. But
even if she kills them all now, the killing won’t stop. The man
calling the shots, the man who wants to possess