later.
Todget waited nervously, but his wait was short-lived. Presently, he heard Lily shriek out his name, her voice radiating with such fear and intensity that he knew there was no time to think. He didn’t need to think anyway, having rehearsed this escape in his mind many times before. He expected they would surround him and come at him from all sides, so he needed an alternative exit. He pulled the trigger. The BB gun was set to spray a razor-thin fan of molten fire, which instantly vaporized a sizable fiery hole in his floor. Then, as casually as a swimmer jumping into the deep end of a pool, he leaped down through what looked like a shaft into hell. He fell feet-first through his downstairs neighbor’s apartment and prepared to bend his knees as he landed, so as to absorb the shock. He already knew where he would run from there. He and Lily had mapped out their entire apartment mound weeks ago, and with any luck, the layout of the living mound had not shifted much since then.
Unfortunately, when Todget hit the apartment level beneath him, he ripped through the floor as if it were a thick, rotten web laid by some massive, long-dead spider. As it turned out, the dense, molten-hot alloy did not stop once it burned through his apartment’s floor, but continued to fall ahead of him, instantly burning everything it touched. The substance fell further and further downward, continuously burning everything in its path. Clearly, Todget had not fully appreciated the power of this devastating weapon. Indeed, it would later be discovered that some of the larger droplets of metal had ended up burning through six stories of apartments, killing two people and injuring six, burning all the way down until it embedded itself deep in the soil beneath the mound.
Todget continued to fall floor after floor, through the blazing shaft created by the BB gun blast, until at last one of the Swiss-cheese floors grudgingly bore his broad-shouldered frame. Fortunately, dro-vine was surprisingly elastic, especially under intense pressure. Nevertheless, Todget nearly lost consciousness as he slammed into the final floor and bounced off it again.
He was in agony. Not so much from the fall, for his frame was built for punishment, but from the burns. The burns were intense and had eaten away his flesh, despite the fire retardant gel and clothing. And unfortunately, it was in the places he had been burned the least that he felt the most pain. His third-degree burns-the worst kind- did not hurt because where the skin had been completely incinerated, there were no nerves-nothing to tell him he was in pain. He rose from the floor, ripped off his burning cloak, and then, bloodied and smoldering, ran.
It took Jacob a long time to find Todget, nearly six seconds. By that time, Todget had almost made it to the end of the hallway where, just as he reached for the door, he felt his legs go numb and his eyes darkened for a moment. When he came to, only a moment later, he was on the ground, unable to move, his eyes frozen open and his bladder emptying.
Although there were several dro-vine tissue walls between Jacob and Todget, Jacob’s short-range sensors confirmed the creature moving rapidly down the hall was, with a probability of over 98.6 %, his target. Jacob could not confirm this with a visual ID, but the speed of the suspect (which was more rapid than any human), along with the massive body type and the shape of the object he carried (probably a modern weapon), gave Jacob probable cause to fire the stun pulse. The pulse, strong enough to temporarily paralyze but not kill, penetrated through the intervening walls, knocking the suspect flat. Jacob wanted to be absolutely certain that he could interrogate this one. The weapon he carried and his unusual method of escape was worth further study.
When apprehending a dangerous suspect, the usual protocol for an angel was to first paralyze the suspect, monitor from a distance for some time, and then move in slowly. Jacob did not follow this protocol, however, having too much to do. First, he needed to secure the demon. Next, he needed to extinguish the series of devastating fires that threatened to consume the mound. Finally, there was the task of apprehending the woman who had called out a warning to this demon.
Jacob assumed the first task of securing the prisoner was nearly complete as he rapidly sliced through the walls toward the paralyzed suspect. What the angel did not know was that the BB gun was waiting for him. The gun, a new design, had sensors of its own, sensors that detected other sensors, specifically the shortest of the electromagnetic pulses used by angels to see their world. And as the weapon “saw” its enemy close in, it injected all the contents of all three of its canisters into the firing chamber. For a millisecond, it sucked oxygen into the firing chamber to fuel the reaction and then clamped down on all the valves, allowing the pressure to increase until-in a terrific explosion of fiery, superheated shards-it obliterated itself, Todget, and everything else around it. The angel, had he been capable of fear and surprise, would have been full of both.
CHAPTER 12
Why are products not allowed to exceed a DNA similarity with humans above 96.3 %? Because anything above that threshold is no longer judged a product; rather, it is human. The percentage of 96.3 is not arbitrary. It is the approximate similarity between nature’s closest relative of humans-chimpanzees. I suppose the reasoning is that, historically, if chimpanzees were not considered human, then neither would a product having a DNA signature deviating at least as much as a chimp. Keep this number in mind. Personally, I shoot for no closer than 95 % similarity in the products I design. You know, to give yourself some breathing room.
Having shouted her warning to Todget, there was nothing more Lily could do but run. As she and Todget had discussed before, their hunters were numerous and formidable. To fight them was a fool’s errand, a last resort. Just as she began her sprint, there was a loud boom followed by a low rumbling roar as though lightning had struck dangerously close.
The human she had just met-the one who talked about spankers, angels, and demons-was yelling at her. “Stop! Stop!” he shouted. “Where are you going?”
She glanced back over her shoulder and was alarmed to see the human and his cat-machine running after her. It was no matter. Like every human, he was slow and she would soon lose him. Still, she did not like the attention. He might call upon other, more effective pursuers.
“Stop! Let me help!” she heard him cry beseechingly.
At first she planned on pacing herself somewhat. She knew she would need to be on foot for a while and so did not wish to push her long, powerful legs to their limits. However, this human had to be lost immediately, prompting her to open up into a full sprint. It was shortly after she had turned up the speed when the human’s cat became a problem. The furry, black quadruped machine was far faster than its master and quickly closed in on her, at which point the cursed thing began running underneath her legs as though to trip her.
Lily soon realized she could not effectively escape with this automaton dogging her, so she slowed down and waited for her opportunity. The machine was fast, but not smart enough to anticipate Lily’s well-placed kick. Despite the fear of breaking her foot, Lily put all her formidable strength behind the blow. She was relieved to find the impact soft, as though striking spongy flesh, as her foot connected with the machine’s side. The force of her kick sent the cat through the air, but Lily did not look to see where it landed. Instead, she kept running. But certainly, the cat would recover and be on her again in a flash, or the man would call for aid. She decided that she needed to take the offensive. And so as she rounded a small mound which, although small, was thickly festooned with flowers and bulbous shrubbery, she hid and waited for a few long seconds for the man’s arrival.
Flip, this girl is fast! D_Light thought. He fancied himself fast. He had trained hard and had his share of engineering in his ancestry that gave him an edge in a foot race. Swiftness, after all, was more likely to save one’s life during Rule Seven than fighting ability. But this girl was off-the-charts fast! Clods of grass and soft soil ripped up and were flung behind her with every stride.
As D_Light rounded the mound, he was surprised to see that the girl was nowhere in sight since the path ahead was straight and stretched on for quite a distance. He’d barely had time to contemplate the girl’s whereabouts when he heard a sudden rush behind him, but it was too late. He felt a hard kick and one of his legs was swept back underneath him, sending him face down on the ground. The girl was on his back and he felt a
