Humanity 2.0, Year 009, Day 014

One of them was looking at the ground, in the area where I had been. His gun began to follow a line, moving in my direction. He brought up his sights onto my location just as I ducked behind the tree again. The fucker had noticed my footprints. I thought frantically. I heard their crunching footsteps on the dead leaves on the forest floor, approaching in a wide formation intended to surround me. I wasn't going to be able to take them all out in one shot; if I went for one, the others would just shoot me. If I didn't go down in one shot, they'd just unload the whole clip.

To make things worse, I heard the rhythmic, fast thumping noise in the air right about then. A helicopter. It was around to the west now, but rapidly circling around. I couldn't see it yet. I tightened my grip on the knife. Maybe this was it. I let one hand stroke Nina's cheek once, brushing her hair back from her soot-blackened face. She looked quite peaceful now, snoozing away our impending demise. I readied to throw the knife at the first enemy face I saw. Maybe a few would die before I would.

The first one to jump out was too far to the left; I'd been looking at the right, for some reason. I knew even before I'd turned to him that I wouldn't make it in time; he had opportunity enough now to put several shots in me. My thoughts turned to Emily and Bethany. Would they ever know?

Suddenly, the trooper in front of me slumped over, and I noticed the hole in his forehead, spurting blood. An instant later, I heard a loud, but distant, gunshot from the southeast. Shouts and calls erupted around me, and I heard the other four firing away, all in the direction I'd heard the shot come from. I shook my head, looking down at the body of the man who'd been about to end the future of all of us.

His head was an unrecognizable mess of blood now, and his rifle was a few feet away from his body. All the voices in my head trying to drag me off in multiple directions and courses of action suddenly united. I felt motion before I even thought to move. The rifle was in my hands, the knife in my teeth, as I bounded out from behind the log, placing each shooter around me based on where I heard their gunfire coming from.

The closest one I simply dumped five or six rounds in. He shuddered and went still. I didn't stop moving, firing as I went; he had been only ten feet away or so, not really necessitating any kind of aim. I immediately turned to the next, who was just noticing me – too late for him too. I put another two bursts of fire into him. I heard shouting from the two remaining men, and dashed behind another large tree trunk.

I heard, and felt, gunshots hitting it behind me, chipping off pieces of bark on either side. I held the gun out to one side, firing wildly until I felt a click. Out of ammo. I heard the leaf-crunching sound of both men going to ground to get cover, and dashed out. I summoned my full strength, tossing the rifle away and grabbing the knife out of my mouth. I charged at the closer of the two, who was coming up from behind a log and leveling a rifle at me.

Emily and I, on an abandoned school track in the Ukraine, had once set out to clock my real speed when I cut loose. We'd found that I could do about forty miles an hour sustained, and almost seventy in short bursts. The girls had been stronger and faster than me in the early years, but that was certainly no longer the case. That test had been two years ago, and I knew I was faster now but I hadn't measured it since then. I didn't quite have enough of a start to reach my full speed, but it was close enough.

I turned just before I got to the log he was behind, letting my feet slide wide of it, while my speeding fist caught him just under the nose. I felt his skull and jaw shatter inside his helmet, and his body was flung back a few feet. With a roar, I turned to his companion, who was still facing the wrong direction. I hadn't been much more than a blur of speed, probably not what he was expecting. People back then tended to assume that bigger meant slower.

The knife streaked out and landed in his neck. It made a grimly impressive fountain of bright red blood as he gurgled a few times, going limp. I looked around, surveying the bodies. I suddenly registered the sound again. The helicopter was over the clearing now. I turned and saw it. It was a big, heavy, boxy and lumpy-looking thing, with a sense of age to it – but it had a kind of utilitarian deadliness too. Some voice in my head repeated from memory one of the many things that Nina had had me memorize – it was a Mil Mi-24, better known as the Hind.

The thing was an old Soviet gunship and troop transport, a relic of the Cold War – but despite its age, I knew the thing was more than enough to kill me. Its two stubby wings were loaded with canister-like missile pods, and to the left of its two-seater cockpit was mounted a massive machinegun. The thing rotated around, coming down low and surveying the blast site, and I dove behind a log.

I heard an odd sound, a popping, crackling noise. I placed it – the inside of one of the helmets. With a quick motion, I grasped the closest one and held it near my head. They were speaking rapidly in Spanish – too rapidly for me. I was still learning it and couldn't make enough sense of it. Judging by the increasing urgency of whatever the person talking was demanding, probably he was asking his buddies on the ground what was going on.

I knew I wasn't going to get another chance. He was barely thirty feet off the ground. If he stayed high up, he could either pelt me with rockets and gunfire, or just turn and leave, then radio in for his buddies to surround all the exit points of the forest. I grabbed the nearest body, fishing through it quickly.

I found them on his shoulder sling – three grenades, older US pineapple-style makes, but looking serviceable. They were meant for anti-personnel use. I knew the Hind was one of the most heavily armored things that could fly, and the grenades weren't going to puncture its steel plating. Neither would the soldiers' rifles. None of them happened to be carrying an anti-aircraft rocket.

Time to set a new personal record again. I rapidly finalized the plan in my head. I came up into a crouching runner's starting position, and took off, weaving through the trees and building up to as fast as I could go. The chopper spotted me, and out of the corner of my eye, I could see it rotating around to face me. I had to do this before he could bring his guns to bear, or I was dead. I squeezed even more energy out of myself, forcing my body to comply as I whooshed through the forest at blinding speed.

Right where I'd planned, I turned hard to the left, entering the clearing and heading straight for him. With one finger I pulled loose the pins on all three grenades. Between me and him was the big rock formation; it didn't block his line of fire, though, he was too high up. He had barely twenty or thirty degrees of turning to go.

With a roar, I leapt upward toward the lowest of the rocks. It was still about ten feet up. I felt one boot land solidly on it, and I let my inertia bend my knee low before launching myself up to the second, then the third, trying to keep as much forward speed as I could. The rocks blocked my view for a few brief moments, until I reached the top.

Without hesitation, I launched myself toward the gunship, figuring I'd fine-tune the plan in midair. My eyes focused, and the enormous helicopter was directly in front of me, getting close with a terrifying speed as I flew toward it. It suddenly hit me what an incredibly bad idea this was. Had I been a half-second later, one tap to the firing pin and I'd have been Swiss cheese.

I almost missed. My hand flattened against the side of the cockpit, and it was only with a last-second tightening of my grip that I found purchase on one of the seams. With a roar I'm sure neither of the poor fools inside heard – they both wore heavy helmets with the visors pulled down, and were turned to face me, their mouths open wide – I smashed my fist through the glass, released the grenades, and let go. I fell the thirty feet to the ground, rolled, and immediately took off running.

The explosion went off seconds later, at first a small popping sound, then a whining as the chopper went out of control into a wild spin. I reached the treeline and dove behind a particularly thick trunk as it hit the ground. There was an awful grinding, screeching noise as its rotors smashed into the stone formation, wrenching high-speed engine components apart. I waited a few more seconds. Nothing seemed to happen; its weight shifted and settled as the rotors slowed to a stop.

It blew up right then, of course. I guess it took a few moments for the fire to reach its fuel, or maybe one of the rockets misfired or something. I shielded my eyes and face as it went up, blackening a significant chunk of the clearing. Pieces of it rained down for several seconds afterward, and a few smaller ones clanked to the earth near me. The wave of heat hit me then too, like standing in front of an oven. Black, churning smoke billowed out of the wreck as secondary explosions went off inside. I turned and ran toward where I'd left Nina.

She was there, and safe; I let out a sigh of relief. She was starting to come around. I considered just shouldering her again, but I decided to take the few minutes to wake her up; it would mean getting out of here faster in the end, probably.

"Ben...." She croaked. Her voice sounded harsh and raspy. "You... okay?"

"What the hell, Nina, worry about yourself for once." I sighed, and slid one arm underneath her back and one below her knees. I gently lifted her. I felt one of her hands weakly stroke my chest, and she smiled up at me through disheveled, sooty blonde hair. Suddenly she shifted, looking away, off to my left, as she saw something. I turned.

A small woman was about ten yards away, leveling a long rifle at me. Next to her, Melody was resting against a tree trunk, nursing a dislocated shoulder. The other woman, who was I guess the person Nina had spotted earlier, was Melody's age – mid thirties, I would have guessed – and, had she not been leveling a gun at me with the cold eyes of someone ready to kill, she would have been fairly cute.

Her hair was nearly white, and came down around her head in a short-bob. She was very small, as Nina had said – she was shorter than any of my other girls, even Bethany who had gotten shorter during her transformation. She was scrawny too; without seeing her face, or the way she moved, one might think she was a kid. She had the same grace Melody did, the practiced, effortless motion of someone who had trained endlessly. The combination of her obvious deadliness and the vulnerability of one so small gave her an odd mystique that interested me.

"I need you to answer me right now." The woman's voice was high, breathy, and monotone, and had a similar British accent to Melody's. I recalled Melody saying a name as she rushed off – Hannah. "What are you?"

Nina struggled and tried to get up. I put a hand on her, stopping her and shaking my head. I turned back toward Hannah. "That was you, when I was surrounded, wasn't it? You took that first shot and gave me an opening."

"We still have questions for you. I couldn't afford for you to die yet." Hannah tightened her grip on the rifle. "You don't get a third chance to answer. What are you?"

I guessed she must have been staring right at me as I ran at seventy miles an hour and punched through the cockpit of a helicopter in flight. Not much use trying to pretend it was because I ate my Wheaties. Nina looked up at me, then at her. I took a breath, and looked Hannah in the eyes. "Short version... the next kind of human."

She kept the gun leveled at me for a while, then finally lowered it. She looked over at Melody, who nodded toward her. She looked back at us. "I guess that'll do for now, but I want the whole answer later. In the meantime... we have something of yours." Hannah reached into a small pack on her waist, and extracted a metallic vial. Inside, I could see a blackish-red substance. "Recognize this?"

I wracked my brain, then shook my head. "Not really, sorry."

She tossed it toward me, and it landed at my feet, rolling another foot or so before it bumped against my shoe. "That's apparently the only existing sample of your blood from you first became... you. Or something. To be honest, we were hoping you would fill us in on the details."

I froze. I was guessing she meant back when I first had 15226's male version of the retrovirus inside me, in the hospital. I bent down, shifting Nina's weight onto one thigh as I lifted the small container. The blood inside was goopy and almost black, probably infused with some kind of preserving agent by now – almost ten years later. Bethany had mentioned, all those years ago, that they'd taken my blood as I was there in the hospital – they were desperately trying to diagnose my illness. I guessed that one sample that she'd told me she forwarded to the CDC for analysis before she knew the truth had ended up going much further than she thought.

"Why do you have this?" I asked. I noticed Nina was surprisingly silent – she wasn't unconscious, just docile for once.

"We up and stole it." Hannah gave a predatory smile, which softened quickly. "We do that sometimes. Few months back, a European pharma consortium hired us to grab it and hand it over to them." She sat back slightly, letting the oversized rifle lean against her shoulder – it was nearly as long as she was tall. "But as we were casing the site where the targets were keeping it, we learned more and more of what they were trying to do..."

"We couldn't let it continue." Melody said it flatly, cutting Hannah off. "Hannah and Melody, by the way, the best acquisitions team money can buy... we usually work under the name of the Shining Stones Jewelry Company. Most pleased, and we do apologize about the ruse of the past two days. We aren't normally this violent, but these are extenuating circumstances."

"Umm..." I glanced down at Nina. She looked up at me and blinked. I could see she was still out of it – but even then, she seemed to be at a loss for once. It was time for a judgment call. I went with my gut. "No harm done, I guess. To us, I mean. But I think we'd like the truth from now on. What were they trying to do?"

"We don't know the specifics. All we found was where they kept the failed results of their experiments." Melody looked grim. "We didn't have time to count how many women's bodies were in there, but..."

There was an uncomfortable silence. I felt my stomach twist. It wasn't much to go on, but 15226 had specifically warned me that going public with my true nature would result in a horrible catastrophe. If some big company or agency had had hold of my DNA, or worse, the retrovirus that turned me into what I am... I had no idea what that would make possible.

Hannah nodded toward my foot. "We're giving that back to you. It's a token of our good faith. We seem to have made a mutual enemy, and we were hoping you wouldn't mind joining sides for a time, at least until we both think we're clear of them."

"This explains a lot, Ben..." Nina croaked it out lowly as she looked at the vial in my hand. I let her take it, cradling the thing against her chest. "We need to get out of here, though. Let's... tell them as we go." Nina looked up at me. "Everything."

I knew the glimmer in her eye. We'd both thought of it already. They were smart, good-looking women, who clearly had a lot of useful skills to people in our situation – and most of all, they wouldn't have been there, asking this of us if they didn't have some kind of fundamental moral character.

I nodded toward her as I let Hannah lead the way, to where she thought the troops had stashed a vehicle a mile or two away. We both stole glances at her camouflage-clad ass as it swayed, her crouching little walk between the trees now looking both graceful and sexy. Melody wasn't far behind her, staying closer to us.

The two had a practiced synergy that spoke to an unbreakable bond of friendship and trust. I idly wondered what kind of mischief it would be to introduce bisexuality in both of them in the near future. I grinned down at Nina; she smiled back, probably thinking the same thing. It was time to start recruiting again.