Eye of the Tiger: A Paranormal Space Opera Adventure (Star Justice Book 1) Read online

  One hit my collar.

  I already thought I was about to die when I exited the elevator, but the strike to the collar made me gasp again. I prepared for my existence to end, but instead of an explosion of darkness caused by the device giving up its life, I just landed on the gray tile floor. This level had an open floor plan, and the only cover was a small brick wall that wrapped around the perimeter of the place at waist level. I managed to crawl behind this barrier before anyone else could shoot me, and then I glanced around to get a better bearing on my position.

  The group of enemies were behind me. They had set up a synthetic barricade and were shooting into the elevator. A few of my companions had made it out the doors and found cover behind the short wall, but the rest of the team was pinned in the lift car, or dead on the floor of the room.

  A few of the guards noticed me peeking over the wall, and they turned to fire on me. I ducked down below the rim and reached for my smoke grenade while the bullets smashed into the stone next to me. The grenade pin came out with a snap of my finger, and then I counted for two seconds before I tossed it over my head. I heard the guards shout with a warning when it bounced next to them, but I didn’t bother to look and see exactly where the grenade landed, I was too busy crawling away from my old position.

  I had been lucky, and my armor managed to catch the bullets. Even if I had gotten shot, I probably would have healed through the damage, but the injury would make me move slower, and speed was a crucial component of any gun fight. Or at least, it was for this one, since it only took me a handful of seconds to crawl about fifty meters and circumnavigate the pack of guards.

  The group of armored security was backing away from the gray smoke of my grenade. They hadn’t realized I was no longer in my earlier spot, and I guessed that they must have assumed I was injured and couldn’t crawl. All of their backs faced me, and they seemed to be focusing their fire on my old position; as well as two other spots on the opposite side of the room. Armored tiger-men corpses lay everywhere, and I counted seven of them in the brief second that my eyes passed across the opened door of the far elevator.

  My shotgun barked in my hand like an angry pit bull.

  The first guard exploded into a spray of blood as the slug ripped a watermelon-sized hole in his chest. The next man died an instant later when his head disappeared from his shoulders. I risked one more shot at the back of the guard who seemed to have the nicest looking set of armor. The slug connected, and as soon as his torso disappeared in a fine red mist, I ducked back under cover behind the wall. Then I continued to crawl away from my old position.

  I didn’t think any of the enemy guards had actually seen me, but it didn’t hurt to keep moving. My surprise attack caused them to begin screaming, but I didn't understand the language they spoke, and I could only guess they were asking where I had gone.

  One of my fellow prisoners began to shoot back into the crowd of guards as they retreated, and I took the opportunity to pop up from behind my cover and assess the situation again. The guards weren’t military, that was for sure, and the shift in combat had eroded their battle plan.

  My shotgun fired a half a dozen more times, and each slug turned one of them into a corpse.

  “Subject Two, turn to your six. That hallway will take you to where the sample is. Subjects Eighteen, Thirty-One, and Twelve; you will cover Subject Two’s movement and then finish the rest of the guards. Confirm when the guards are eliminated so that Subject Two can move the target safely.” The woman’s voice came over my headset with an uninterested timbre, as if she was commenting on a boring football match.

  I turned around and saw the hallway the woman indicated. The smoke from my grenade had already filled the area, so I sprinted toward it while the other three prisoners opened fire on the guards.

  The crack on my helmet visor was skewing my vision a bit, but it was more of an annoyance than an actual handicap. I made it fifty meters down the corridor, followed the woman’s orders to turn left at the first intersection, and then came upon three guards that were painting the hallway with their rifles.

  The men fired as soon as I turned the corner, but I had predicted they would be there; either through my sense of smell, hearing, or animal perception. I slammed my right boot against the far wall and ran up the side for two meters or so. The first spray of bullets flew past my helmet while I fired my own shotgun. The slug took the first man in the chest, and he exploded into a spray of crimson like a dye filled water balloon. The second slug took the man on the left in the helmet, but the armor did little more than cave inward like a thin aluminum can of soda.

  I flipped off of the wall and fired my third shot while I hung upside down above the last guard. My jump carried me past his position by the time I landed, and my ears told me that the slug had ripped through his spine like a big rig truck. I continued with my sprint and twitched my ears a bit in their helmet cavities to test the hallway ahead of me. I didn’t hear any guards around the next corner, but I decided to execute a running slide around the edge just to be safe.

  There weren’t any guards, but I did see that the hallway turned into more of a laboratory type environment. The walls were all glass, and I sprinted past rooms holding a seemingly endless array of tables, microscopes, and glass tubes. I didn’t see any scientists, or doctors, which was a relief. I didn’t like the idea of killing men or women who weren’t armed, but I didn’t have a choice.

  Adam.

  I almost fired my shotgun with surprise when I heard the voice. Perhaps, ‘heard’ was the wrong word. It was almost as if I had daydreamed of someone uttering my name.

  “Huh?” I growled as I checked over my shoulder, but there wasn’t anyone behind me.

  “What is wrong, Subject Two? Keep your eyes ahead. There is a security door at the end of this hallway.”

  “Confirmed,” I growled into my headset as I continued my run.

  The woman had been correct, and I saw a massive metal door up ahead.

  “Insert the terminal wire from your helmet,” she instructed.

  I unwound the meter long cord from my helmet and plugged it into the terminal port of the door’s keypad. The door looked like something out of an old movie, with an actual bank vault type wheel I would have to crank to open once they had hacked the keypad.

  “The security on this door is robust. Please hold for a minute,” the woman’s voice said over my headset.

  “I don’t have a minute,” I growled as I looked behind me. A group of six guards turned the corner at the far end, and I swung my shotgun toward them.

  I didn’t want to be tethered to the side of the wall while the woman hacked, so I ripped off my helmet with my left hand and fired a burst of slugs toward the guards with my right. The hallway was incredibly long, I guessed a hundred meters or so, but I’d always been a good shot with any of the weapons my captors gave me. My first slug took out one of the far guards with a hit to the stomach, my second took another in the shoulder, but my third went wide, and made a fist-sized hole in the wall above their heads.

  The four remaining guards jumped back behind the corner, and I dove away from my helmet so that I could go prone. I fired another few shots at the end of the hallway when one of the guards stuck his head out, but I didn’t think I hit anyone with the shots. I definitely turned the wall and corner into Swiss cheese, so I figured the men might consider retreating a bit.

  Adam, please help me.

  It was a woman’s voice. Not the woman who spoke to me through my headset; her voice was slightly grating on my nerves, and I wasn’t wearing my helmet. This woman’s voice was beautiful, and it seemed to come into my brain as if I had thought of it myself. Even though it was soothing, her words made a chill run down my spine, and I squeezed the trigger of my shotgun a few more times to kick the feeling of fear away.

  What the fuck was going on?

  The guards hadn’t poked their heads back out from around the corner, and I wondered if one, or more, of my slugs had g
otten lucky. I waited with my belly on the floor for a few more moments and then crawled backward to my helmet. The keypad turned green, and I yanked the cord out of the port before I put my helmet back on.

  “Where did you go?” the woman demanded.

  “Had to drop the helmet so I could address the guards,” I growled.

  “Do not do that again. I almost triggered your collar,” she seethed.

  “Fine. I just didn’t want to be tethered to the--”

  “Subject Two, complete the mission,” it was the blond scientist’s voice speaking, and I felt my rage boil up from my stomach like hot vomit.

  I grabbed the wheel to the door and spun it to the left. I heard a bunch of locking mechanisms inside of the thing shift, and then a loud clicking sound when I reached the end of the spin. The door was lighter than I expected, probably because of the giant hinges I saw on the inside of the door when I swung it open.

  “Proceed with caution, Subject Two. There might be automated security measures inside of the storage vault,” the woman said through my headset.

  Help me, Adam. I’ve turned off the security. Only you can—

  “Guards are all eliminated,” one of my fellow prisoners growled through my helmet.

  “Excellent. Meet up with Subject Two, quickly,” the blond scientist said.

  I walked past the security door and let out a low growl of amazement. The inside of the vault was a jungle of computer monitors, vats of liquid, and black rubber tubes of various diameters. The rest of the building had been immaculate, sterile, and organized, but the inside of this vault looked like the innards of some sort of cyber monster.

  Adam…

  The voice panned between both of my ears with a dizzying effect while I stepped over a meter wide piece of tubing. The strange woman’s voice did seem a little louder now that the door was open. As if the voice was coming from inside of the vault as well as inside my head.

  The room extended back farther than I expected, and it became apparent that there had been some sort of struggle inside of the room. There were tipped computer monitors, broken tubes leaking a salty smelling mixture of liquid, and scattered wires where a path once was. I continued to move through the chamber and expected either the blond scientist or woman to make a comment through my headset, but neither of them did.

  Until I reached the biosample.

  “What is this?” I asked as soon as I saw the giant tank at the back of the room. It was maybe six meters tall, and three meters in diameter. It was in the shape of a cylinder and filled with the same hazy liquid that dripped onto the floor.

  There was also a naked woman inside of the tank.

  Chapter 2

  The woman wasn’t quite floating, or sinking, she drifted in the middle of the cylinder as if she was attached to an invisible string. Her hair trailed behind her head like a swirl of black ink, and I guessed that it must have fallen past her waist when she stood. She was curled up in a fetal position, and her eyes were closed.

  “That is the sample. To the right is the control panel for the tank. Move over there and plug your cord into the slot.” The blond scientist’s voice was euphoric.

  “A woman? You said this was a ‘live sample,’ not a woman. I don’t--”

  “Don’t question my orders. I can trigger your collar, and one of the other test subjects will complete your mission,” the scientist seethed.

  Adam…

  The voice filled my mind again, and I turned away from the panel at the side of the tank. It sounded as if it came from the woman floating inside the liquid. It sounded as if she was—

  I need your help. Will you free me?

  I stared up at the strange woman and tried to decide if I had just imagined the words. She didn’t even look conscious, and I saw no breathing apparatus on her beautiful face. The scientist had called her a live sample, but she looked as if she floated dead in the water.

  Then her eyes opened.

  They were red and seemed to glow when contrasted with her alabaster white skin. The strange eyes met mine, and it felt as if my vision tunneled until her face was the only thing I could see.

  “Shit! It is awake! Subject Two, get to the terminal now and plug in your fucking cord!”

  The strange woman untucked from her fetal position and the movement kind of broke my focus on her face. It had been a long time since I had seen a woman, let alone a beautiful naked one, and I had to blink a few times as I shook my head.

  “Subject Two! Subject Two!”

  The blond scientist screamed in my headset, but the strange woman in the tank held all my attention. She made a small gesture with her left hand, and the collar suddenly fell from my neck. For a fraction of a second, I just stared at the thick band of metal as it bounced on the ground of the vault, but my shock didn’t last long, and I kicked it away with a quick motion of my boot.

  “Kill him!” the blond man said too late, and I saw the collar turn into a ball of fire half a second before I heard the explosion pop.

  I turned back to the tank, raised my shotgun, and motioned for the raven haired woman to move away from me. She nodded and then swam down to the lower left portion of the tank. As soon as I guessed she was in a safe spot, I pulled the trigger of my shotgun. The first slug made a small crack on the glass, the second widened the crack so that it covered almost the entire length of the tube, and the third smashed the glass into a shower of a million diamonds.

  “Subject Two, what are you doing? You can’t free it!” the scientist screamed into my headset, but I ignored him.

  A torrent of water poured out of the broken tube, and I managed to grab the woman before the wave dumped her naked body on the glass. She was surprisingly light, and she leaned her head against my armored chest piece as soon as I swept her into my arms.

  Thank you, Adam.

  Her voice filled my mind again, and I glanced down at her face. Her red eyes were opened, but she didn’t look up at me.

  “You freed me. It was the least I could do,” I said to her. The collar had been wrapped around my neck for two years, and my shoulders felt a thousand kilograms lighter with the thing off of me.

  I carried the woman back through the tangle of tubes, and the helter-skelter labyrinth of computer equipment. If I was lucky, I could get out of the bottom of the building and into the streets of the—

  “Subject Two has gone rogue. Subject Eighteen, Thirty-One, and Twelve. Eliminate Subject Two and retrieve the live sample. Do not harm the live sample.” The woman’s voice came across my helmet.

  “Your mic is open to Subject Two, damn it,” the blond scientist screamed, and I heard a clicking noise in my headset.

  You don’t need this anymore. They have a tracker inside.

  The woman’s strange voice filled my mind, and she reached up to pull the helmet off of my head. I thought about resisting her since I kind of did need the helmet to protect me from the rifle fire of the prisoners who were now tasked with killing me, but I didn’t stop her.

  My helmet made a splashing sound when it fell at my feet, and I let out a long exhale of freedom. Between the collar and the lack of a visor, I felt as if I had just been unshackled from my previous life. I was still a monster, though, and I had no idea what this city was. Fuck, I didn’t even know what planet this was, or how I was going to get past my old comrades and exit this megatower.

  One step at a time, Adam.

  The voice whispered in my brain again. I looked down once more at the naked woman I cradled in my arms, but her eyes were closed, and her head was pressed against the armor of my chest plate.

  “Are you even talking to me? Or am I imagining this?” I asked the woman, but instead of her voice creeping into my mind, she just opened her red eyes and gave me half a smile. It was a gentle thing, her grin, and I felt the tension of my escape flee from my shoulders.

  Then a bullet smashed a computer screen next to me.

  I ducked to the side of the open vault door and set the woman down in a s
pot between two empty glass vats. A scattering of bullets pelted the side of the door and smashed into more equipment, but I had moved the woman out of the line of fire and didn’t think they could get a bullet into either of us until my opponents closed the distance.

  I slid to the edge of the door, made a motion out from behind the steel, and then popped back under cover. Their bullets ricocheted off the metal of the vault door, and I sprang out after their first burst ended. The three armored tiger-men were about halfway down the hall, and they were prone on the floor. I jumped back behind the door before their next volley of gunfire and then looked over at the strange naked woman.

  “There isn’t another way out of this room is there?” I asked her, even though I knew it was a stupid question.

  The woman shook her head, and her long wet hair dribbled into a pool of water at our feet. There didn’t seem to be any emotion on her face, but her strange red eyes stared into mine with an intensity that made me slightly uncomfortable. The sensation almost made me laugh. This woman was tall and slender, but even in my human form I still stood a good fifteen centimeters taller than her and outweighed her by twenty five kilograms. In this half human-half tiger form I was a good sixty centimeters taller and probably outweighed her by sixty kilograms.

  “Surrender Two!” one of the men, Eighteen it sounded like, growled.

  I felt a bit of remorse tug at my chest. My fellow prisoners and I all lived in solitary confinement and only saw each other when we went on these missions. Eighteen had been around for the last three months, and the prisoner was a good comrade. He didn’t want to kill me, and I didn’t want to kill him, but I wanted freedom more than anything else, and I wasn’t going to surrender to the collar or their experiments anymore.

  “Can you take off their collars?” I asked the woman, but she just shook her head again and pointed up to her eyes.

  “You need to see them?” I asked, and she nodded.

  Close as well.

  The voice spun in my brain.

  “They are about forty meters down the hallway. Is that close enough?” I asked urgently. If I could remove their collars, they would give up the battle. Then they could help me escape this building. I didn't know if I could trust the three other men, since we were all criminals, but any escape from this building would be easier with them than without them.