AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Where the fuck were the ports?
“Neumann! What the hell are you doing?”
Sebastian whipped his head around to see the squat guard standing just in front of the factory line door but coming closer. And still holding that gun.
“Get back in there and watch the workers before they do something stupid,” Sebastian barked.
The guard’s face convulsed in shock and disdain. “You don’t give me fucking orders, Neumann.” Damn, Sebastian had been hoping he was a higher rank. “I give you fucking orders.” Damn again.
Sebastian dropped his eyes back to the console. Where. The. Fuck. Were. The. Ports!
“Neu—”
“I’m looking for any suspicious activity reports.” Sebastian blurted the first thing that came to his mind, anything to delay the man’s understanding as he advanced. He was still coming down the hall, getting closer and closer, and thank god for that. His overly large gun would be a lot less useful the closer he got.
“That’s not a security console,” the man said slowly and threateningly, and Sebastian knew the game was up. The guard planted his feet, just out of arms reach, and raised his gun. Sebastian’s heart jumped into his throat. He’d had plenty of guns pointed at him since he joined the Resistance, and it never got easier. “Step away from the computer.”
Sebastian straightened slowly. He lifted his arms and turned to face the man. There was no love lost in those beady eyes. Why did S. Neumann have to be such an unlikeable man? This probably would have been a lot easier if he didn’t seem intent on making everyone his enemy. Where was that nasty crony he’d had? Not that he was probably the sort of man who would step up and defend him.
“Tell me what you were after.”
“I was looking for suspicious activity reports. To figure out where to look next.”
“But that’s not a security console.”
“I was confused.”
“You were confused.” The man’s fingers flickered over the trigger, and his eyes narrowed. Then they flickered across Sebastian’s face, down to somewhere a little lower, and narrowed further in confusion. “Where did that blood come—”
Sebastian ducked and lunged and tried to come up under the gun. But the guard knew his business and swung the butt of it into Sebastian’s jaw. The world flickered in front of Sebastian’s eyes, spinning and darkening, as his body struggled with the hit and his claws lost their purchase on Neumann’s brain.
He righted himself before hitting the ground and hooked a hand around the heel of the guard’s boot. He yanked with all his might and pulled the man’s leg out from under him. The gun flew away and hit the wall with a clatter, and the man fell with a thud.
Sebastian scrambled to get the strong position, but the guard proved adept yet again and booted him in the stomach. The air whooshed out of his lungs, and the guard toppled him over and was on top of him. In no time at all, it was a ground fight.
Sebastian hated ground fights. They were brutal and dangerous, and they were double, triply hard in a new body he didn’t yet fully know the limits of.
The guard straddled him, and he bucked and rolled and managed to flip them but found himself locked between the man’s thighs in a strong guard.
Over and over they went, burrowing close to each other to blunt each other’s strikes, biting and clawing, and throwing their weight. Sebastian’s muscles screamed to end it, and he itched to leap from this body and into the guards, but they were scrambling too quickly. There was so much motion that he might end up outside both bodies, writhing around on the floor and inviting a boot to squish him and turn him into nothing but a smear on the polished concrete floor.
Finally—finally!—Sebastian landed an elbow in the man’s face and used the opening to get behind him. He wrapped his legs around the man, an arm around his throat, and stretched the man as long he could go.
The guard started scrabbling and flailing, trying to get leverage, and Sebastian pulled them both long to deny him it. He tightened his arm around the man’s neck, felt the ridge of his windpipe, and heard the man’s pained choke. But that wasn’t what Sebastian was going for. He adjusted his grip until he got the man’s throat unto the V of his arm and flexed his muscles against the man’s arteries.
Sebastian could tell the man knew what was happening by his sudden renewed struggle, but in moments, it was over. As soon as the man went still, Sebastian released the choke and fell back heavily on the ground, the man a dead weight on top of him. He closed his eyes and panted.
He didn’t know if the man was dead. He could have ensured it, but Sebastian didn’t want to. He had killed. He had killed scores at this point. But to feel a man’s life drain out of him, to choke it out of him, to hold on through the death throes… Sebastian shivered. It was worth it to avoid death himself, but only just.
After a few moments, and a dangerous few moments at that, Sebastian opened his eyes, looked up at the console just a bit above his face, and scowled.
There were the fucking ports. Behind the damn thing.
Sebastian rolled the guard off him, hoping he was still alive, but not having the time to check, and heaved himself to his feet.
He pulled the data strip from his pocket and plugged it into one of the elusive little ports. The light on the strip flickered on, red, then orange, and after a few moments, green.
Then with a pop like a small firecracker, it self-destructed, half falling onto the floor like so much tech junk and half melting into the port.
