Free The Kabul Incident: A Weir Codex Novella by Mat Nastos

down at his body to see what she was talking about. What he saw caused his world to shatter.
    A spider’s web of scars, long healed over, crisscrossed his chest and ran down his sides. The scars’ state and pale white appearance spoke volumes as to just how long Mal had been blacked out. It would take a very long time, many, many months for wounds such as the ones he was looking at to close up and heal like that.
    He had been out for a very long time.
    What happened to me, he thought, eyes going fuzzy around the edges as they glazed over with tears?
    Moving his hand to trace a finger over the network of off-white tissue is when Mal finally noticed his arms. What he saw stole the breath from his chest.
    His arms, hands and upper chest were covered in metal. At first, Mal thought he was wearing some sort of armor made up of uneven, interlocking chromed plates, but where the armor met his flesh there were strange puckered scars and the metal itself seemed to merge with his skin. Whatever had happened to him, whatever it was, the armor was part of his body.
    Clark’s calm, self-assured voice rolled over Mal’s shaking form, “You are Designate Cestus. You are property of Project: Hardwired and were brought in for a system upgrade when you were damaged,” she moved closer to the man, oblivious to what was building inside of him with every word she spoke. “Something compromised your AI and shorted out our system. Now I need you to return to the table.”
    With the truth slamming into him with the force of a freight train, Mal let loose with a primal scream—a scream of rage and despair and terror all rolled into one; a scream that, for a moment, drowned out even the noise of the still-sounding alarms.
    The desperate man began to tear at his own flesh with fingers of metal, trying to rid himself of whatever had been done.
    “Stop! You’ll destroy your implants!”
    Mal’s eyes became the hate-filled eyes of a predator as they focused on the tall woman. A second scream seemed to propel the man in a leap that covered the nearly twenty foot distance between he and the doctor, the sudden burst of movement tore the tubes and wires from what remained of his human flesh, and left a fine mist of blood and IV fluids in his wake.
    Fueled by anguish and fury and wildly pumping adrenalin, Weir reared back with a fist of unyielding metal and struck out against the only thing he could: Doctor Rebecca Clark. For ten long seconds, hands that were now cruel weapons of unbreakable titanium and unknowable technology rose and fell, each blow met with increasingly wet sounds, and less and less resistance.
    With a final blow that cracked the floor beneath his feet, Mal stopped his assault, breathing heavily from the exertion, rivulets of sweat stinging each of the multitude of tiny wounds left behind by the IVs and monitor wires being wrenched from his skin. For a long moment he stared down at the crimson and black mess before him, unable to comprehend what was once the head and torso of the middle-aged doctor, but was now an unrecognizable mess of shredded flesh, broken bone and spent life.
    Realization dawned on Mal as his senses now told him there were only three heartbeats registering in immediate proximity to him. Holding up his hands, Mal stared at them, dumbstruck. His fingers, now covered in dripping red gore, had elongated into terrifying looking claws, and the armor along his arms was now covered in one and two inch spikes.
    All the better to kill you with, he thought grimly, rising to his feet unsteadily. Mal couldn’t believe what had just happened. He’d never killed anyone before. Not once during his time as a ranger and never ever in cold blood.
    “What have I done?” he whispered to the bloodstained weapons that had taken the place of his own hands.
    Mal was a killer now. A murderer. He needed to find someone in charge to get things sorted out and turned over to the authorities, decided the soldier.
    Before he could move