Alien vs. Alien

coach for me when it came to Mixed Martial Arts fighting outside of the octagon.
    “I don’t think so. I’m planning to flunk this exam.”
    She feinted and I swung my metal bar at her. I hit her head. The het think bar bent. Her hair and the skin on her face were kind of messed up, but other than that, not a lot of damage done. I tossed the bar away as I jumped back to avoid her reaching for me.
    “You can’t win. I’m so much better than you.” I waited for her to shoot projectiles of some kind at me, but she didn’t. So either she was out of ammo or I was supposed to be taken alive. Either option was better for me.
    “Blah, blah, blah. I’ve heard that one before. So, you killed Susan?”
    She shrugged as she moved her neck in a weird, totally nonhuman way. “It was expedient.” Her voice wasn’t slurring any more, and what I’d done to her head didn’t look nearly as impressive now, either. Too bad, the damage wasn’t much. Yet.
    “John in on this plan?”
    “Hardly. He, like the others, will be dead soon.”
    “How’s that? I’m not letting you out of here alive. I mean, alive for you, which, I guess, means I’m yanking your battery.”
    She shrugged. “I am only one part of the operation.” She smiled nastily. “I won’t have to listen to you much longer, though. And you’ll never see your husband and friends alive again.”
    This was probably supposed to scare me and maybe make me offer to come quietly as long as they left the others alone. But I knew how “they” worked. I had no clear idea who was behind this, though Esteban Cantu was up there on my Perennial Top Three Suspects List. But the League of Evil Masterminds all rolled the same way—lie to get you to do what they wanted, then kill you and anyone else they felt like. Well, not this time.
    All Sandra’s threat did was move me from really pissed off up to enraged. Excellent.
    “So, who’s pulling the puppet strings on this one, Pinocchia?”
    She gave me a nasty look. She had to be one of Marling’s creations—the man had been a loon of the highest order, but he’d done amazingly good work, and he was particularly good at creating androids so unlikable you’d never suspect them of being more than human. “The last person you’d ever manage to suspect.”
    Sandra hadn’t attacked yet. We were still circling each other and she was likely stronger, even if I was at my most enraged state. So what was she waiting for? Me to attack? Reinforcements? The signal that my husband and friends were dead or captured?
    “So, who’s that? If you’re going to take me dead or alive, might as well tell me who’s giving the directions for you to do so.”
    She smirked. “Why not? My instructions were given to me by Charles Reynolds.”
    True, this was the last person I’d ever suspect of these machinations. And also true, the fact that the smartest guy around had been stymied at every turn lent a certain credence to the idea that he was in charge and therefore ensuring nothing concrete was found. And maybe if I’d only known Chuckie for the past few years I’d have believed it.
    But I’d known him for more than half of my life, and I still knew him better than anyone alive. And among the many things he wasn’t was the kind of person who would do these evil, underhanded things. I als thf ofo knew how much our enemies hated him. It didn’t take a lot of mental effort to figure that Sandra had been told to tell me Chuckie was in charge in the hopes of slamming the Wedge of Separation between us so strongly that it would never come out.
    That was the goal, I was sure. Only that wasn’t the outcome. The outcome was that I was now seeing red I was so furious.
    I lunged at her. Either she really hadn’t expected it or I was moving so fast she couldn’t tell, but she wasn’t able to block me. I slammed into her, and we slammed into the wall behind her.
    And broke through.

    Yi

CHAPTER 12

    I WAS TOO MAD TO STOP, and besides, we hit another wall almost immediately because we were going so fast. We broke through that one, too.
    Clearly my mutation wasn’t over, because I hadn’t been able to do this before. I knew A-Cs were strong enough to break through walls—Jeff, Christopher, and Michael Gower had had to do just that the last time we’d been here, after all. But I was breaking through the super walls on this level, and they had more than drywall and the fluffy pink insulating materials in them.
    The positive was that