Free Darkness & Light by Dean Murray

just a precog like we'd known
for years, but that he really was on our side. Not that he was
around enough to make him much of an asset, even so. Of course, the
more likely scenario revolved around Croaker having finally figured
out how to send me eagerly running to my death. I couldn't pass up
a chance like this though, so it didn't really matter which it
was.
    Owens was still wandering around the stacks,
his eyes half closed as he tried to listen to whatever sick voices
drove him.
    Firearms were out. Oh, I could kill him and
then disappear before any official response put in an appearance,
but that would completely screw any chance of finding Croaker's
'fulcrum'. If I couldn't find him now, odds were I'd never have the
proof I needed and we'd have missed a major opportunity.
    I guess I'm just a do-things-the-hard-way
kind of girl. The little chip in my chest received its instruction
set, and flooded my system with adrenaline as the synthetic fiber
in my muscles launched me into a sprint. It should have been the
most glorious feeling ever. I mean who doesn't want to move faster
than a striking snake, the world slowing down to stillness around
you? Did I forget to mention it feels like your bones are tearing
themselves apart the whole time?
    Synthetic muscle fibers hadn't been easy to
invent, even for the company egg heads who'd had unlimited funding
for at least the last three centuries, but that was child's play in
comparison to skeletal reinforcement.
    In theory they could have put enough
artificial muscle inside me to life a bulldozer, but human bones
aren't designed for that kind of stress. Instead they'd implanted a
few Samson fibers in each of the long muscles in my body, and then
run all kinds of tests to establish exactly how much force they
could exert. The idea being to set the governors at a level that
would stop them from shattering bones and whipping the fragments
through my flesh in a gory explosion.
    Owens turned with blinding quickness, pulling
out a Glock as I tickled whatever spidey sense had kept him alive
for so long. I knocked the handgun away with the briefcase, smiling
as the titanium hidden under the black leather transmitted a jolt
into his right hand. With any luck I'd fractured a few bones.
    The pain wouldn't stop him from using his
hand, not with the level of artificial adrenaline currently
flooding his system, but it would mean that in a grappling
situation he'd be unable to apply the normal level of bone crushing
force our kind usually enjoyed. My hand razors slid out as my smile
turned into a full-fledged grin.
    His counter, a jab to my throat a split
second after the gun and briefcase went cartwheeling away from us,
was so fast it was all I could do to brush it away to the empty
space next to my left ear. Damn he was fast. That was the other
thing I'd always hated about Owens. Not only was he a damn
potential, he also got mods. Apparently they'd made some upgrades
since I'd left, upgrades that meant I was over matched yet
again.
    A quick kick towards his knee got deflected
by his closer leg, and then I was fully on the defensive. He was
just that quick.
    All the crap turned out by Hollywood doesn't
even begin to approach what a fight between two superhuman
combatants actually looks like. There aren't any strikes to the
head for one thing. An attack like that is just asking to have
yourself messed up for months while the docs try to put your hand
or foot together. Sure you kill the other guy, but with the amount
of force applied to the rather delicate bones involved on your
side, you generally end up a cripple as a result.
    No thank you. Soft targets are the way to go.
The neck, stomach, kidneys, or joints. You still ended up smarting
after blowing out your opponent's knee, but at least you tended not
to shatter any of your parts in the process.
    Also, there was no endless exchange of blows
as first one or the other of us got the upper hand. There would be
exactly one more blow landed in this