"How do our power levels look?" Malachi Joseph Prey asked his on board computer intelligence as he turned to face who he'd come to know was the leader of the now six men squad.
"They're at sixty-three percent and holding. But I must warn you, without solar energy we have no way of gaining any of the energy you're sure to be using."
"Then I'll have to be cautious." He watched as two of the men reached down and grabbed the girl by an arm each.
"Sorry, but I don't know who or what you are, but this thing is coming with us." The man's assault rifle snapped up to point at his face.
Malachi's head tilted to the side in a question. For what he'd become, a rifle might as well have been a pea shooter for all the good it would do them.
In a flash he was gone, so fast his passing left a muffled thumping sound as the oxygen rushed in to fill the void he'd just left. The next thing Mark Halis felt was the soft spray of warm blood as the two muscular arms gripping his prize were severed at the elbows and Six was dropped back snarling onto the concrete. Hissing, it tried to rise onto its hands and knees before a savage kick to its injured leg left it screaming on the ground.
Before the two men's arms had hit the concrete, Malachi was back in the place where he'd started. He didn't want to kill these men if he didn't have to. But there was something about the girl they'd captured.
"I take the girl, or you'll not like how this ends."
But Halis couldn't stop. If he didn't come back with Six, he might as well not go back at all. General Hayworth was not the type to tolerate failure, and he knew it.
"It comes back with us. Guys kill this freak." The word had just left his mouth when all six men were rendered unconscious. The two men with amputated limbs were saved with precision tourniquet and cauterization of the ends.
"Why didn't you kill them?" His computer companion asked.
"Because if you haven't noticed, there aren't many humans left. These guys may be jerks, but by their radio communications they're just following orders. If we get the chance, we need to take out their boss. Killing the grunts gets us nowhere." He stooped and with as great care as he could, picked the girl from the ground.
"Get your hands off of me." He heard a threat behind every word and chose to ignore it. In the last three days he'd been up against things a lot more powerful than a set of claws and some fangs.
Tamar felt like a doll in his arms, his strides ate the distance between them and his goal. In the darkness, his vision flipped from mode to mode until the world was covered in an overlay of deep red. Even in infrared the color was red. His entire world was seen in one or another shade of crimson now.
"I told you to get your hands off me." This time with a little more fire.
But still Malachi didn't answer. He had no need to answer. He'd just saved this girl's life, and he needed no thanks for the deed, he'd done it because it needed to be done, because it should have been done. Now he just needed to get her somewhere where they wouldn't be followed. Somewhere he could tend to her leg, and he knew just the place.
Looking skyward he gazed up the shear side of one of the cities monolithic buildings. The computer in his head counted off the floors and gave the read out on his heads up display. It was one hundred and sixty five stories tall, plenty tall enough for his purposes.
Walking to the buildings side he reached out his hand, palm flat and placed it against the cold steel. In an instant every bit of data about the buildings structural integrity was transferred to him. Stepping back, he nodded as his passenger began to shift in his arms.
* * *
What was the matter with this guy, alien, whatever he was? Tamar hated being carried hate, hate, hated it. It felt too close to being helpless, and she would never feel that again, ever. So as her carrier stepped back away from the wall, she sank the claws from her right hand into its chest and pulled downward. He didn't even flinch, nothing, it was as if he didn't even notice.
And if truth be told, he didn't. His on board told him what she was doing but there was no way her claws were going to come anywhere near his actual skin so he continued to ignore her as he walked around the skyscraper looking for a main structural member. There it was, a solid piece of steel attached to the foundation far underground, from there it stretched into the sky. Now how was he going to climb while not being able to use both arms.
Malachi's suit could do many things. He was learning more and more of them every day. It seemed its only limits were those of his own imagination. So with a thought, tiny coils of his suit began to snake their way around Tamar's arms and legs. They secured her to him, then began to move her inch by inch towards his back. With a chorus of hisses and shouts, she moved until she was flat on his back, her head on his shoulder.
"You're lucky I can't move or I'd kill you right now." She huffed. The snort of derision that was his only response only infuriated her more. But she could still talk.
"Where are you taking me now?" She asked.
Her answer came when Malachi grabbed the steel beam and hauled them both off the ground. Hand by hand foot by foot, he crawled up the vertical side of the building.
How is he doing this? He must be a new kind of alien unit, no one's seen yet. These thoughts flashed through Tamar's head as they passed the sixtieth floor. From her point of view she could see where he was placing his hands. Every time he lifted his fingers from the steel he left imprints in the metal.
It wasn't until they reached the ninetieth floor that he stopped and crawled in through one of the many shattered window. After standing, he saw that he was in what had once been a very expensive hotel suite. At one time it must have had a spectacular view of Lake Michigan, but now all the view held was darkness and despair.
A king sized bed dominated the wall farthest from the windows, so he walked over to it and his suit laid Tamar down onto it. The instant she was on the bed she sat up, the movement wrenching a scream from her.
"It you move any more on that leg you are going to do irreparable damage. You may heal fast, but even you won't heal from that kind of infection."
"Why do you care, freak? You're just going to use me like everyone else. So if you don't mind, I'll take my chances." She heaved herself to her one good leg and hobbled for the door.
"But I'm not." Malachi grabbed her by her tiny shoulders, hauled her off her feet and placed her back on the bed, not as gently as the first time.
"Stay here until I get back, and before you get any ideas about leaving, I'm sure you noticed that floors seventy six through seventy-two are gone, nothing but structural members. So unless you can fly, I would suggest you stay here." With that, Malchi turned and walked to the window ledge. Turning, he waved once and fell backwards off the edge, into nothingness.
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