Nox

I angled my head so I could see through the gap between the train wheels and the bottom of the car above me.

They were there, on the maintenance platform. Both of them were deliberately keeping their voices low, but they were still easy to tell apart.

"It has to be in here somewhere. There's no way out but the way we came." That was Rolland's tenor.

Havier's husky baritone: "Don't be so sure. You've read the file. Whatever you do, don't underestimate this thing."

They reached the railing of the platform and rotated slowly away from each other, both of them scanning the unlit service bay.

My vision flickered orange at the edges, and I ducked my head, blinking. For a moment that golden grid sprang up, overlaying everything around me in a glowing mesh, whether it was cloaked in shadow or not. And once again, that quiet, mechanical clicking began at the base of my skull, radiating downward. I grunted, my breath seizing in my lungs as super-heated pain followed every tiny movement. My brain went molten, throbbing in time to the steady beat of the machine in my chest. With a gasp I bent double, clutching at my head as everything burst into white-hot agony.

"There!" Rolland shouted, and both men vaulted down into the rail-bed, their footsteps echoing like gongs in my over-sensitive ears as they ran along the steel-clad walkway.

It was only a matter of time before they found me. And when they did, there was no way I would be able to keep that thing inside me from tearing free again. I was barely holding it at bay, my grip on it weakening with every stab of that flaming dagger in my skull.

The men split up, one of them taking the corner of the catwalk where it branched over the sunken rail wells, the other continuing straight. Both of them slowed as they approached the hulk of the derelict freighter at the end of the line.

"Nox! I know you're in here!" Havier bellowed.

The clicking in my spine became a ratcheting grind between my shoulder blades. I opened my eyes, glancing frantically around, trying to translate the orange flicker and blur. There had to be a way out of this hole of a place. I couldn't run on my ruined leg. I took a breath and ground my teeth together. This was going to hurt.

"Come on! Face me like a man, you coward!"

I heard the telltale hiss of an ion revolver engaging a round a few yards away. I was out of time. I closed my eyes, forcing my brain to concentrate. With a gasp, I dragged in a shuddering, weirdly hollow breath as my mangled body unraveled around me, each woven metal strand coiling and reforming, driven by the thought I held in my mind. 

Havier and Rolland were quickly closing in. They would be right on top of me in seconds.

No time like the present...

Rolland stumbled backwards, eyes widening in disbelief as I rolled out from under the belly of the freighter in front of him, and rose to my full height in a glide of shifting steel. My left leg still ended at the knee in a tangled, dripping mess of wires, but I didn't need it anymore. Massive wings unfurled between my shoulders, razor-sharp pinions snapping into place. Then I was lurching upward, burning the last of whatever fuel coursed through my metal veins in one wild, desperate bid for freedom.

"No one said it could fly!" Rolland shouted, then swore as he brought his revolver up, sending several rounds after me.

But I was already heading for the wall of leaded windows that overlooked the city's main rail hub. If you can't find a door, make one...

Below me, Havier came running around the freighter, already firing. Bright, lime-green trails of ion-phosphor rounds zipped through the air around me, spangling the lofty tin ceiling with pinpricks of moonlight.

Havier was an excellent shot, and I felt several rounds tear through my skin. The new pain only drove me faster, my mechanical heart thundering in my chest as I hurtled toward the windows. A single layer of milk glass was all that separated me from the night. I clung to that and drove my ruined body forward. One wing beat, another. I ducked my head, lifted my arm, and crashed into the window, sending diamond-shaped panes flying as my shoulders punched through the webwork of lead. And then I was clawing my way out, pulling my shifting body into the open air as the last of my strength faded. 

My limbs went slack, my vision blinked out, and I was weightless, plummeting toward a line of coal cars waiting to be togged onto a southbound track. My last thought was of a white wall and a hanging plant, and then the world crashed to a halt. 

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