join up with JAG, but I’d miss the food at Fort Benning way too much.”
“Yeah and we can tell you ain’t missed food in your entire life, lunch box,” added Sergeant Steve Douros in a thick Philadelphia accent.
“It just ain’t right, I tell ya,” grumbled Narcomy, visibly upset by the news. “Yuh momma didn’t send yuh to ranger school just to go an’ become a lawyer. Whatta we need lawyers for anyways?”
Mal laughed out loud, enjoying the banter even if he had heard it all before.
“If people were honest, we wouldn’t need lawyers, Narc’,” counseled Lieutenant Donlin, grinning from ear-to-ear.
“And what would we do if lawyers were honest, LT?” Mal quipped at the exact same time the words spilled from Sergeant Douros’s mouth.
Mal’s eyes went wide even as the rest of the US ranger unit burst into uncontrolled laughter.
Something was wrong.
He HAD heard it all before.
Oh, no, Mal thought to himself, panicking. And I know what happens next!
He tried to scream, tried to tear the straps from his chest. Mal found himself unable to move, unable to speak, his face locked into a smile that fit in with the joviality of the men around him. They had no idea.
They were all going to die.
The laughter was interrupted as the Black Hawk jerked to one side and the static-filled voice of the co-pilot shrieked over their helmet communication systems.
“Incoming! Starboard side!”
It was too late.
An explosion rocked the chopper, shredding one side of the craft and filling the cabin with fire. All Mal saw before the entire world seemed to spin out of control was big John Narcomy vaporized in a flash of blinding white light.
CHAPTER 6
Malcolm Weir woke himself screaming, entangled in ragged strips of linen from the small cot he had been lying on, and covered in a fine dusting of what appeared to be goose down. For some reason his left arm was lodged in the middle of the bed, clean through mattress, metal springs and into the wooden base the entire thing rested upon.
It took Mal a moment to realize he was the perpetrator of the mattress-cide. His new body must have responded to the highly emotional state the nightmare had evoked in him and reacted accordingly. The hand Mal pulled up to inspect had formed the razor sharp knife-fingers he had seen during his escape from the Project: Hardwired labs, and a quick look at his shoulder revealed the defensive spines and plates had emerged as the living metal quickly adopted a more aggressive profile.
Standing up and disengaging himself from the tattered mess of the tiny bed, the smells of old laundry, dust and papers left too long filtered to his nose.
“Where am I?” muttered Mal to himself.
Mal let his gaze wander slowly. A cramped back-office somewhere was the answer he received from the rickety Swedish-made desk with an old computer monitor and phone resting on it, piles of white copy paper boxes over-flowing with old paperwork and invoices of some kind, and coat rack with a pair of dirty overalls he found during his search. The walls were off-white with a band of ugly gray coloring them for a foot up from the floor. A single spiral energy-saver bulb was stuck into the double light fixture overhead - Mal noticed the glass covering for which sat dangerously close to the edge of one of the stacks of boxes - although the light was off and the room almost pitch dark. A tiny, curtainless window on the wall above the destroyed cot and a half-opened door on the opposite one were the only exits from the space.
A spear of light from the open door seemed to bring with it the smell of old oil, gasoline, rusted metal and rubber.
A garage?
“Better go see where I am.”
Blowing a stray feather from its ticklish perch on his upper lip, Mal’s head snapped to attention, the spines on his arms flexing. Heavy boots on concrete. Someone was coming.
As if in answer to his next unasked question, the computerized voice announced, “Inbound target identified:
“Yeah and we can tell you ain’t missed food in your entire life, lunch box,” added Sergeant Steve Douros in a thick Philadelphia accent.
“It just ain’t right, I tell ya,” grumbled Narcomy, visibly upset by the news. “Yuh momma didn’t send yuh to ranger school just to go an’ become a lawyer. Whatta we need lawyers for anyways?”
Mal laughed out loud, enjoying the banter even if he had heard it all before.
“If people were honest, we wouldn’t need lawyers, Narc’,” counseled Lieutenant Donlin, grinning from ear-to-ear.
“And what would we do if lawyers were honest, LT?” Mal quipped at the exact same time the words spilled from Sergeant Douros’s mouth.
Mal’s eyes went wide even as the rest of the US ranger unit burst into uncontrolled laughter.
Something was wrong.
He HAD heard it all before.
Oh, no, Mal thought to himself, panicking. And I know what happens next!
He tried to scream, tried to tear the straps from his chest. Mal found himself unable to move, unable to speak, his face locked into a smile that fit in with the joviality of the men around him. They had no idea.
They were all going to die.
The laughter was interrupted as the Black Hawk jerked to one side and the static-filled voice of the co-pilot shrieked over their helmet communication systems.
“Incoming! Starboard side!”
It was too late.
An explosion rocked the chopper, shredding one side of the craft and filling the cabin with fire. All Mal saw before the entire world seemed to spin out of control was big John Narcomy vaporized in a flash of blinding white light.
CHAPTER 6
Malcolm Weir woke himself screaming, entangled in ragged strips of linen from the small cot he had been lying on, and covered in a fine dusting of what appeared to be goose down. For some reason his left arm was lodged in the middle of the bed, clean through mattress, metal springs and into the wooden base the entire thing rested upon.
It took Mal a moment to realize he was the perpetrator of the mattress-cide. His new body must have responded to the highly emotional state the nightmare had evoked in him and reacted accordingly. The hand Mal pulled up to inspect had formed the razor sharp knife-fingers he had seen during his escape from the Project: Hardwired labs, and a quick look at his shoulder revealed the defensive spines and plates had emerged as the living metal quickly adopted a more aggressive profile.
Standing up and disengaging himself from the tattered mess of the tiny bed, the smells of old laundry, dust and papers left too long filtered to his nose.
“Where am I?” muttered Mal to himself.
Mal let his gaze wander slowly. A cramped back-office somewhere was the answer he received from the rickety Swedish-made desk with an old computer monitor and phone resting on it, piles of white copy paper boxes over-flowing with old paperwork and invoices of some kind, and coat rack with a pair of dirty overalls he found during his search. The walls were off-white with a band of ugly gray coloring them for a foot up from the floor. A single spiral energy-saver bulb was stuck into the double light fixture overhead - Mal noticed the glass covering for which sat dangerously close to the edge of one of the stacks of boxes - although the light was off and the room almost pitch dark. A tiny, curtainless window on the wall above the destroyed cot and a half-opened door on the opposite one were the only exits from the space.
A spear of light from the open door seemed to bring with it the smell of old oil, gasoline, rusted metal and rubber.
A garage?
“Better go see where I am.”
Blowing a stray feather from its ticklish perch on his upper lip, Mal’s head snapped to attention, the spines on his arms flexing. Heavy boots on concrete. Someone was coming.
As if in answer to his next unasked question, the computerized voice announced, “Inbound target identified:
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