Razor Kaine's Arc

Chapter 1 of 2

Razor Kaine hunted a name he did not have. Steel ran up his right arm and ended in a folded blade. More metal filled his chest, his spine, his skull. Someone had built this body and sold his mind for parts. He meant to find that person and cut them open. But the implants carried no maker's mark, and a man cannot hunt a ghost. So he came to the records vault, where the city stored every hospital file ever logged. He climbed through a service hatch and dropped into a cold room full of dead machines. His blade whispered open the lock on a storage cabinet. Inside sat a diagnostic scanner, its screen still faintly alive. This was the machine that had read his wounds the night the ambulance brought him in. He pressed his metal palm to the scanner's port. The screen woke. An orange warning triangle flashed. Lines of text scrolled past: patient intake, implant readings, a flagged defect. Then a logo resolved in the corner. A sharp arrow inside a ring. The scanner named the manufacturer that had wired his skull. Razor leaned close and read it twice. A weight he had carried for months finally had an edge. Now he had a target. A low whine cut the silence. He turned. A dog stood in the doorway, but no living dog. Steel plating wrapped its ribs. Pink and blue light ran along its legs. Its eyes glowed behind a scanning visor. The thing lowered its head and growled, and the sound buzzed like a saw. On its shoulder plate glowed the same mark. The arrow inside the ring. The dog carried the signature of his own body. Razor drew the sidearm from his hip. Twin screens lit on the barrel, one for stun, one for lethal. He thumbed it to lethal. "You found me first," he said. "That tells me they know I'm looking." The dog lunged. Razor fired. The bolt struck its flank and sparked, but the beast did not fall. It slammed into him and drove him into a shelf. His blade came up and sheared through one metal leg. The dog twisted free and bolted back through the door, limping on three limbs. Razor stood in the wreckage and breathed. Above him, a thin screen pulsed red. The scanner was transmitting. A pane showed a drone rising somewhere in the city, long and sharp, painted with the same mark. It climbed toward his location. He wiped sparks from his blade. He had the name now. The arrow inside the ring. But the name had seen his face, and it was already sending more than dogs. He pulled the scanner free and ran for the hatch. The hunt had started. He was no longer the only hunter.