Net Force--Kill Chain by Jerome Preisler (e book reader txt) 📕

You are a child of accelerated evolution. Of heroic science. You are the Russian future.

She breathed. In, out. In, out...

The shape was closer. And Bryan was down there on the ground. Alone. She couldn’t lose another second.

She breathed deeply. Then she reached for the branch he’d grabbed moments earlier, swung out, and scrambled down the tree in the blowing rain.

He was gathering up his pack and Maglite when she jumped down into the soggy leaves.

“You have everything?” she said, rushing over to him.

“Except for the blanket.”

Bryan cocked his chin up at it hanging above them. He was awkwardly lifting his pack off the ground with the flash in one hand.

“Wait,” she said. “I’ll help.”

She took the Mag from him. Its handle was wet and dirty. She wiped it off against her jacket and glanced over her left shoulder.

The shape she’d seen a minute ago had tightened up into a definable form. She could see it clearly. So clearly. It was a man. Of course it was. Large, tall. She could see him coming toward them between the trees.

“Do you think we can cut across the creek?” she asked.

He fumbled with the backpack’s twisted straps. “I don’t know,” he said. “Rain like this could—”

She grabbed his wrist. “Yes or no.”

Bryan looked at her. He still hadn’t gotten on the pack.

“Yes,” he said. “I think we can.”

Natasha snapped her gaze to the left again. The man in the woods was closer.

“The creek,” she said. “Run for it.”

Kai moved through the swaying trees, walking quickly at first, then trotting, then running. Freezing rain sprayed his face and he heard the insistent wash and decay of wind waves from the shore. The ground graded up and down, matted with roots and last year’s soggy leaves.

The leaves squished underfoot and sucked at his shoe bottoms. He could see his marks up ahead, silhouetted in their own light, that light moving eastward in the darkness. They were running too. Due east. At a good clip. Why?

He sent a mental command to his onboard. His optic ganglia fired as if the image was transmitting from his retina, a clear overlay map of Chacagua. He saw the creek roping east past the tree house for a hundred, hundred fifty yards and then curving north between his marks and the shell beach.

No more roundabout route for them, then. They were in a hurry to cross it and reach the kayak.

Why?

Because they know I’m here.

Kai’s nostrils flared. Adrenaline surged from his glands, its taste metallic in his mouth.

Wild excitement rising in him, he raced forward like a panther sensing a kill.

Natasha barely noticed the wind and rain as she dashed toward the creek. She did not feel the cold sting of sleet on her cheeks. But she could see the forest around her clearly in the dark. See it all in minute detail. Everything, every tree, shrub, stone, and droplet of water, was divided and subdivided into a chromatic matrix of blues, greens, violets...an infinite palette of color.

It’s like somebody flipped a switch in my brain.

And it was like that, exactly like it. But what had been trippy and intoxicating hours ago now seemed normal to her senses, like the movement of her legs and the pumping of her heart and the feel of her lungs expanding and contracting with each rhythmic intake of breath.

She was running for her life. For Bryan’s life.

About twenty seconds had passed since they’d dashed out from under the maple. They had covered a hundred yards, maybe a little more, leaving some fifty to go before they reached the creek’s near bank. Natasha ran, Bry hustling along behind her with his pack against his chest, keeping a steady pace despite the blinding rain and the squashy, slippery softness of the waterlogged ground underfoot.

She flicked a glance over her left shoulder. Their pursuer was still coming toward them through the woods. Fast. His outline luminescent to her eyes, highlighted by the darkness. She could see the gun in his hand, the night vision goggles on his eyes, and even the ball cap on his head...the Dev Zero ball cap. She no longer had any doubt that he’d seen the Maglite blazing at the foot of the tree. That he could still see it in her hand like a moving beacon. But Bryan didn’t have her amped-up eyes. He wouldn’t see six inches in front of him without it. She couldn’t turn it off.

Natasha kept running. She didn’t know how they would shake the guy off when they reached the creek. She could only hope that if they crossed it first, they’d gain enough time to lose him. It was a slender, maybe irrational, hope, but there was nothing else.

They sprinted on for another fifteen seconds and then, suddenly, the creek was ahead of them, its west bank rocky and shrub-lined and high enough above the water so neither could see it. Natasha ran across the final yards, pushed through the brush, and stopped at its edge, sweat and rain streaming together on her face, Bry pulling up beside her with his pack cradled in his arms.

They could hear the booming rush of the creek below.

She took in a breath, angling the Maglite down onto the water for Bryan’s benefit. She could already see it.

“Shit,” she said.

The creek was wider and more swollen than she’d expected even in the worst-case scenario, flooding the lower bank as it swept northward. It foamed and pulsed and looked easily five feet deep.

“Tasha, we can’t cross here,” Bryan said. “It’s too deep. The current’s too strong. I never saw it like this before.”

She instantly glanced south, then behind them. There was no sign of their stalker, but it hardly settled her mind. He hadn’t just disappeared or run off somewhere.

She looked back down at the flowing water. “Come on,” she said. “You’ll have to lose the backpack.”

“I—”

She grabbed his wrist. “Come on!”

A split second later she dropped onto her rear, tugging him down beside her,