Doran's Arc

Chapter 5 of 5

Doran wore Kira's coat over his rifle arm. The corporate cloth hid the serial code from sight. But hiding it was not enough. The checkpoint scanned deeper than cloth. Atlas walked beside him as they neared the road's end. "The scanners read metal," the mech said. "They will find the code beneath the coat." Doran already knew. The problem was not the guards' eyes. It was their machines. A tall shape crossed the road ahead. A mechanical giraffe, plated in brass and steel, stepped slow across the pavement. Its long neck swayed. Doran stopped to watch. They were thought gone from this world. Then a pack of predator drones broke from the trees, sleek and clawed, chasing the giraffe. Doran raised his rifle arm. Atlas caught it and pushed it down. "Not here," the mech said. "The checkpoint is close. A shot draws every gun." Doran lowered the arm. The drones tore past. The giraffe ran on. They moved closer. Ahead sat the fortified post. A robotic guard stood behind armored glass, its red eyes fixed on the road. Guns bristled from the roof. Then Doran saw a man near the wall. The man touched his suit and vanished, his body blurring into the stone. Only a faint shimmer marked where he stood. Atlas's optic pulsed. "A cyborg," the mech said. "Like you. But his mind is whole." Doran had never met the man. Yet the shimmer knew him. It moved toward the post, not away. "Cipher," the guard's speaker announced. The camouflaged man reappeared beside the inspection window. He was young, dark-haired, calm. He glanced at Doran's coat, then at the arm beneath it. "You wear Vance's gear," Cipher said. "But you carry the company's oldest rifle. I can smell the code from here." He smiled without warmth. "They sent me to fix what she failed." Doran had one move left. He could not mask the code. So he would not try. He shrugged off Kira's coat and let it fall. The rifle arm glowed to full charge. "Then flag me," he said. He fired into the inspection post, not at Cipher. The blast burned through the scanner console. Sparks rained. The robotic guard swung its guns toward him. Atlas charged, ten feet of steel, and drove a fist through the guard's chest before it fired. The machine folded. Cipher went invisible. His footsteps made no sound. Doran fired wide across the wall, hunting the shimmer. He missed. A blade grazed his back. But the console was dead now. No scanner remained to read his code. The way north stood open through the wrecked post. "Go," Atlas said, covering him. Doran ran through the smoking gate. The checkpoint could no longer flag him. He had destroyed the thing that named him. But Cipher lived, unseen, and now the company knew Doran had killed his way north. They would send more than one silent man next time.