Her male counterpart stared at him with his sidearm drawn and pointed at him. He looked like he was barely out of his teens.
“Look at my trigger finger, boy. I so much as twitch and she's gone.”
“Don't move!” cried the soldier in retaliation. “Kill her and you're dead.”
“They didn't tell you, did they? I'm a framework; blow my head off and it'll grow back. Try it, you won't get another chance.” Jake moved his feet just enough to confirm that he was bound to the chair.
“We're treated with armour gel, you can take a shot and it won't kill her. So I can take my shot, you can take yours, she'll be fine and you'll wake up or regenerate or whatever in a cell.”
There was no hesitation, no warning. Jake pulled the trigger. The sound of the pulse going off so close was nearly deafening, the heat from it burned his hand, but he didn't allow himself to show it. The scorched flesh was regenerating regardless.
The young soldier was right. They didn't need helmets, whatever gel they applied to their skin was protection enough.
“Can she take two shots?” Jake asked with a grin.
His captive's breathing came faster, her calm was completely broken. Her eyes were widened in a panicked expression. The creak of his finger putting very slight pressure on the trigger was audible only to Jake and his hostage.
“What do you want?” she asked quietly.
“Release my shackles for a start.”
“Do it, Richard.” she said, staring wide eyed at her partner.
“We'll both be put out of the service,” he countered as he looked down the sight of his sidearm at Jacob. He was nervous, shaky.
“Do it, he'll kill us if you don't.”
“Listen to the girl.” Jacob confirmed ominously.
He brought up a small interactive holographic control using the back of his glove. It showed a perfect depiction of the room and as he touched the representations of the shackles around Jake's ankles, they snapped open and he pulled himself free.
“Now, my things. Where are they?”
“It doesn't matter, they're locking down the entire section.”
“Where are they?” Jake persisted.
“Two compartments up from the interview room,” answered his hostage.
Jake pulled a grenade free from his captive's vest and tossed it against the transparent steel mirror to his left. Before anyone could say anything he did the same with another.
“No!” shouted the guard training his weapon on Jake as he ran for the door.
Jake stood, hauling his captive with him, putting her between the grenades and himself. He jumped towards the door with reckless abandon, hurling himself in the direction of the other guard.
The grenades went off as the door opened, blasting him and the guards out into the corridor and surprising the four standing outside.
Jake rolled to his feet, the ringing in his ears fading fast and grabbed the nearest guard by the collar. He wasn't interested in more hostages, his trigger finger started working and didn't stop until that fresh guard from the hallway was falling to the ground.
He shot another several times in the face before he was fired upon. The rifle blast caught him in the back of his thigh and he fell to the ground turning so he landed on his back, half strewn across a corpse.
He could already feel the strange itch and burn as his framework body worked to repair the damage done as he brought his captured sidearm up firing at the soldiers who had their rifles unslung, ready to gun him down.
His energy blasts filled the air as one of the guards succeeded in shooting him in the stomach. His framework body was drawing on all the excess energy in the air, using it to recharge itself as it repaired wounds. The pain was incredible, but Jake could only focus on one thing; fighting his way free.
The last soldier died with an expression of disbelief on his ruined face.
The only one left alive was the soldier he'd taken hostage. She had taken shrapnel, one of her arms was barely hanging on, and her face was an open wound, but she breathed, she sputtered.
Jake's thigh was still healing, the wounds in his stomach were nearly unbearable, but he managed to roll over towards her and pull her emergency medical nanobot canister free from her vest and inject it into her neck. “You'll live, I'm sorry it had to happen the way it did,” he said, looking into her one good eye. “I've been in a prison like this before, and I'll tear everything to pieces and kill everyone who gets in my way before I spend another minute inside.”
The nanobots were already at work, she had stopped bleeding and her breathing was becoming more regular. His own healing process was going just as well. His leg was repaired and the pain in his torso had been muted. It was still there, but his body was blocking most of the pain as the injuries were under repair.
He stood up, looked down and hoped that it looked a lot worse than it was. The flimsy jumpsuit they'd put on him was burned away from his ribs to his pelvis, and there were three slowly closing holes surrounded by deep burns there. They were healing so quickly that the difference was visible from one second to the next.
Jake took in his surroundings. Dark metal polished decks, light grey walls and a two and a half meter tall ceiling clearance were the most notable features of the corridor. There was one door to his left and many to his right. Hurriedly he removed four grenades from a guard and ran a couple of doors down.
Looking back at the surviving soldier he could see many of her wounds were closed, her face had been mostly mended and she was staring at him. “This door leads to the equipment room?” he asked her.
She didn't answer.
He slowly brought up his stolen weapon, taking aim at her head.
“Yes,” she managed to whisper.
Jake attached the grenades he'd stolen to the door, set all the timers to five seconds and ran back to the four corpses surrounding the woman. He rolled into place beside her and pulled a corpse into place to shield them from the force of the explosion.
He barely had time to pull another body into place before the grenades went off.
Again, his ears rang, his skin stung from the heat, but it all diminished quickly. When he rolled the bodies off he was satisfied that he and his former captive had been protected. The wounds in his stomach were healed and he had a feeling that his body was fully charged. That was all, a feeling. It was a new instinctive knowledge, like feeling hungry or full. He had the sensation that his framework skeleton had all the energy it needed and realized that since he could remember the feeling had been there, had gone unnoticed because it never changed.
With such grievous injuries to repair and such a great absorption of energy underway, the status of his cybernetic components were changing quickly, drastically, so it only made sense to him that that feeling would reflect it. Still, it was something new, an affirmation of how he was made, of his physical nature that was new, strange.
There was another feeling, something was changing in his hands, and after a moment he realized he could feel the status of the sidearm he was holding. It was charged to eighty six percent and had an active sighting eye.
Rolling to his feet he tried to see through that eye and realized that he was looking down the sight of the weapon at the same time as he saw the world through his own eyes. The electronic sighting eye wasn't as clear, it didn't feel as natural, but after he shook his head, caught his balance, he quickly became accustomed. There's a digital interface in my palms. I don't understand half the data I'm sensing, but the visual and status readouts are as plain as day. The electromagnetic pulse bombs or healing process must have activated them. I wonder what else I have stuffed inside that I don't know about?