Ex-Purgatory by Peter Clines (best book club books TXT) 📕

a deep breath to blind the titan with a burst of fire and his chest screamed with pain. A hundred spikes stabbed between his ribs. He coughed out some smoke, a few flickers of flame, and then slumped to his knees.

The battlesuit stepped forward and leveled the M2 against his head.

“STOP IT!”

Danielle ran along the garden. Her hair and shoulders were soaking wet, and her shirt was plastered to the dark contact suit beneath it. She pushed past some terrified onlookers, took a few panting breaths as she swung her legs over the wall, and ran toward the battlesuit. “Gibbs, stand down now.”

The armored skull turned to her. “Ma’am?”

“That’s St. George,” said Danielle. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“He’s gone rogue, ma’am. He’s threatened civilians and tried to overthrow—”

“He’s been asleep,” Danielle said. “We’ve all been asleep for two days. He hasn’t done anything. Now stand down.”

“Lieutenant,” yelled Christian.

The huge lenses turned her way.

“They’re in this together,” shouted the mayor. “Don’t you realize that?”

Danielle heard the voice. She knew the tones and inflections from back when John Smith was the guy she worked with almost every day and woke up with on more than a few mornings. She recognized the sly smile. Seeing it all come from Christian threw her, but not by much. She’d come to accept pretty much anything where Smith was concerned.

The titan swung back around and glared at Danielle. She’d never realized just how aggressive the armor’s face could look. The battlesuit took two stomping steps toward her.

“You, too, ma’am?” the titan said. “I respected you.”

“This isn’t going to work, Gibbs,” she said. “Just stop now. You can’t win this.”

The M2 swung around. The barrel settled in front of her. “Not really sure how you see it that way, ma’am.”

The cannon’s muzzle was huge. She looked up at the helmet’s round lenses. “Because you’re inside my armor,” she told the titan, “and you can hear my voice.”

Gibbs’s snort echoed over the battlesuit’s speakers. “Are those your last words?”

“Not quite,” she said. She wiped a wet strand of hair off her face and took a deep breath. “Patriotic! Crustacean! Houdini!”

The bright lenses flickered. Just for a moment. Loud clacks came from the ammo hopper. Across the armor, two dozen small panels opened at the shoulders and hips and around the waist, each one the size of a matchbook. Four of them popped up around the thick collar the helmet sat on. A gleaming bolt sat under each one.

The cannon pointed at her trembled but didn’t fire. She stepped back and Gibbs growled inside the armor. “What the hell have you done?” he yelled.

“A subroutine I wrote a while ago to save time,” Danielle said. “Back when I had to do most of this myself.”

The steel fingers flexed, and he snarled. It was a rasping sound through the speaker. She imagined him trying to activate the stunners again and again with the optical mouse.

She took another step back. “Cerberus is preparing for disassembly. The weapons systems are offline,” she told him. “You can’t turn any of them back on without a hard reboot.”

The battlesuit took a step forward. She took two more back. The eyes flickered again.

“You might want to stand up straight,” said Danielle. “Once I shut it down, the gyros won’t keep the armor stabilized anymore.”

Cerberus growled and lunged at her. The huge fingers spread, ready to snap shut on her skull. She flinched away and heard a clang of steel on stone.

St. George grimaced as the fingers tried to crush his arm. “Thanks for the breather,” he said.

“No problem.”

“Well, that really sucks.”

Christian Smith shook her head and pushed her sunglasses up. She’d recognized Danielle, even twenty yards away and soaking wet. And despite some quick improvisation, the unarmed, unarmored redhead had already disabled the battlesuit to some degree.

She was always the clever one.

Smith hadn’t expected this combo. She’d expected one or two heroes to fight the battlesuit—hopefully St. George and Captain Freedom. Best case, they’d be killed, worst case they’d all be beaten senseless and easy to control. It had never crossed her mind that Danielle could just shut the suit off from the outside.

She adjusted her glasses and took a few steps along the garden. At least Gibbs would keep the heroes busy long enough to get Plan B up and run—

Something sharp yanked Christian’s skull to the left, like she’d slammed the side of her head into a beam or pipe. Her sunglasses tumbled away and the side of her face sagged. Just as the sound of the gunshot reached her, the dark line along her temple burned into her skin and became a stream of hot blood. It soaked her ear and her jaw and rained down on her shoulder.

In the corner of her eye, a shadow slid closer across the parking lot. Stealth had one of her Glock 19s aimed at Christian’s head. A faint wisp of smoke came from the barrel. “That was a warning,” she said. “Do not move and do not speak.” She walked forward and her cloak swirled around her.

“Oh, God!” Christian screamed. She grabbed at her head and her fingers came back wet and red.

“Turn around. Get on your knees.”

“Please don’t kill me,” Smith begged with Christian’s voice. “Please. I never meant all those things I said about you and the others. I was just angry. I didn’t—”

“Silence.”

“I don’t want to die!” she wailed. “I don’t! I don’t think you can hold that gun, do you?”

Stealth’s arm dropped and the pistol clattered on the pavement.

“Gotcha,” grinned Smith.

The cloaked woman lunged forward, her fingers curling for a strike.

“Punching again?”

She stumbled in mid step and came to a halt. Her fists trembled.

Smith raised a hand. “Let’s calm down, okay?”

Stealth froze for a moment. Then she spun and her boot caught Smith in the gut. Air whoofed out of the other woman and she stumbled back. The cloaked woman followed through with a second spinning kick that cracked across Christian’s jaw.

“I