Scarier and Meaner than Reality.

Another clip from Harry’s Reality — Book One – Symbiosis by Jack Shaw

perf7“Look, I’m here because someone I respect very much seems to think you can help us,” she said impatiently. “I can’t tell you everything. Some things you’ll just have to learn for yourself. The true dangers out here are not what you think. In fact, they’re worse. Scarier, meaner…you pick.”

Harry looked even more nervous so she continued, “And those are just the things you can see for yourself. Hell, my people don’t even tell me everything.”

She was right. He could see it for himself by thought-blinking. Admittedly he hadn’t been forthcoming with that knowledge. What could these “Touchables” possibly want with his thought-blinking? It’s not like he could give it away. Besides, he had his own demons to wrestle. So far, he’d only found thought-blinking lately to result in lots of pain he rather not go through again.

Desiree heard a faint click.

“Down!” she screamed. The sky exploded with a blinding light and a deafening roar. She grabbed Harry and pulled him down, covering his body with hers as tiny particles shredded the clothes covering her back with stinging, searing, pain. Because they wear locked together, the shock wave that followed caused them to roll and slide for about 20 yards. Now, in addition to the minor lacerations, both are bruised and scraped.

Harry ended up lying on top of her, face-to face, with a childlike helplessness at this moment as he found himself in a most intimate of sexual positions.

“Are you all right, Harry?” she asked evenly while still on the bottom.

“Fine. You?”

“A few bruises and scratches.”

“Makes me feel truly alive. Real pain.”

“Good for you,” she rolled her eyes and grunted. “You can get up now, Harry,” she said as she nudged him in the side with a knuckle. “It’s over.”

Embarrassed by his sudden physical arousal, he nervously slid off her but stayed somewhat glued to the ground face down for a minute.

“What was that?” he asked, breathlessly.

“I’m not sure.”

“Are you all right?”

She knew her back probably looked like raw meat beneath her tattered clothing but she didn’t want Harry to know. That could only serve to increase his fears at a time when she needed him to be confident and brave.

“Feels like I’ve been run over by a street cleaner,” she said.

“What?”

“Funny little cyberts—kinda cute actually—clean the streets of debris. Seems not all cyberts are agile enough to dodge a little trash.”

Harry eyed her curiously.

“They’re harmless, Harry. Primitive communication capability. Local only. No danger if you stay out of its way.”

“Are you hurt?”

“A few bruises, scrapes, cuts. You?” She faced him to hide her back.

“Same. Sore.”

As they stood to brush themselves off, Desiree looked in the direction of the blast to survey the damage. Buildings looked intact. Harry seemed intact as well. Her back stung and burned from the blast, but she’d get something for it at the meeting place.

“Shock grenade, I think,” she said. “I’ve heard they stop cyberts for quite a radius. Means Shadows…”

Without warning, a Shadow separated from the darkness and moved into the light. He held two heads—small but deadly cybert heads—in one hand aloft, his cloth-covered fingers in a single eye socket in each head. With the other hand he tossed his hood back exposing his face and grinned. He was a handsome dark-skinned Bio, with dark gentle eyes and a wide grin that seems to say he was no threat. He held up the cybert heads as if proclaiming victory, or some kind of peace offering, then, without a word, he placed them in a bag made out of the same coarse fabric as the rest of his garb. He reached inside his cloak to retrieve something. He tossed a small object to them. It clattered to the ground. A small cybert shaped roughly like that of an insect—a bee.

The gesture, simple as it was, exclaimed, “Watch your back. Makr knows.”

Then he was gone.

“That…Sha…Sha…Shadow?”

Harry couldn’t help the stammer. He saw the Shadow change into a man and then become the Shadow again.

A Monster in the Making

harrry-cover-1For all the revolting things someone might say about Leach, he was Outsider to the end; he would have none of the easy life Inside kowtowing to Makr. He had been willing to give it a try for a human face, but when he saw the horrible result he had vowed revenge on all Cyber. He hated them even more than he hated Carlos.

It was ironic that it had been Carlos who discovered the ancient and abandoned Bio cloning labs—a machine shop for humans—so he could help Kieran now with her part replacement, as well as other Outsiders who were wounded and had lost limbs. However, those cloning labs could only accomplish so much. None of the Outsiders knew how to transplant a face complete with bone and muscle structure, and that was the only thing that could have helped Leach. In Leach’s twisted logic, Carlos’ connection to the cloning labs gave him all the more reason to hate his superior.

All the walking to get Kieran back to the Nest had resurrected a burning sensation on his hip where the Bio surgeon had taken some of the bone to patch his jaw. His people kept telling him that his pain wasn’t real, that he shouldn’t be feeling pain, but they were wrong. Like Kieran, the pain in his head went deep. The intensity of this day’s Cyber encounter and the laser ax accident had caused a flood of feelings and reflection of times past for both of them.

The skin covering Leach’s metal eye socket was tender; exposed nerves, they’d said. He couldn’t deaden the nerves without losing what little muscle control he had left in his face. That bitch knew what she was doing when she gave him a stinging reminder. I’ll get even some day!

With her! With Mama’s boy, too!

Only reason you get to lead, Carlos, is that your mother is the Mother-General. The fact she is your mother is reason enough to hate you. But you did this to me. You made me hate. You should have trusted me, supported me, but you didn’t.

I’m a soldier—a good soldier—probably better than you. I wouldn’t spend all my time on the factory cyberts and their guards. I’d go to the heart of the matter—to Makr Himself—and blow His Ass to space! One look at you and I could tell you didn’t trust me. You should have, Carlos. So I wasn’t “pretty” like you. Our enemy did this to me. All because of you!

You said to wait. “Don’t disintegrate the cyberts just yet,” you said. “We can use them to our advantage.”

How many more will you sacrifice for parts and information? You waited too long. You let them burn me with their lasers. While we waited for you to decide, those same cyberts blew up a building with hundreds of residents. Hundreds, at least, Carlos. Bad enough that the blast nearly took my head off, but to kill hundreds?

“Collateral damage you said. Sorry ’bout that.”

“Sorry ’bout that! Sorry ’bout that” when I called you on it! And you had the nerve to try to have me banished from the Nest for insubordination! But I had friends and Mother-General couldn’t banish her own son..oh, no! She let you off with a warning and demoted you to Captain for the “incident.” It wasn’t an incident. It was collateral damage. For hundreds dead, you get to stay on as an officer.

Me? You tried to discard me like the garbage, but your mother wouldn’t allow it. Is it guilt of having a living reminder of your pathetic leadership, or, are you just disgusted with the sight of some half-human, half-cybernetic creature like me back on your team?

“Bad for morale,” you said, when Mother-General assigned me back to your squad. I can’t believe you thought I was bad for morale after all the damage you personally had caused. “Not a nice thing to say, but it was the reality,” you said.

Well, I know about reality, too. You’ve got me, you bastard, and I’ve got seniority. I’ve got support in the Nest. Not friends exactly, but favors owed. I was out here fightin’ for the Cause while you were still sucking your mama’s teat.

Like it or not, I’ll follow you to your grave. I’ll not “follow” you in the Shadows anymore, but I’ll be there; I’ll even hang on every word like you can do no wrong. You’ll just think I’m on your side, that I’m your loyal subordinate. But the moment will come, and I’ll see you to your darkest hour.

That last thought makes him smile. Lost in his reverie, he almost forgot the servile task Carlos had handed him now.

Kieran, being pulled along almost gently now, was baffled as to how to take him. At times, Harlan Leach seemed so brave and determined, ready to destroy all cyberts. He was a proud warrior, a true patriot. But at times like now he was distant. What goes on in that head of yours? She asked herself and the answer echoed in her mind. You don’t really want to know.

Carlos, why did you send me back with this creature?