Free Crysis: Escalation by Gavin G. Smith Page A

places to live, once. The wooded area was scattered with old bottles, tins, needles and other
drug paraphernalia. There was the remains of fire in a dip in the ground.
    ‘I’ve been reading my bible.’ The girl was talking again. ‘Momma was always said it was a good thing to do. A righteous thing. Before they took her away.’ The girl
swallowed hard. She looked like she was about to start crying.
    Prophet hadn’t had much interaction with kids. He’d been good with them when he had to be, when his friends started pairing off and starting families, maybe a little too strict but
that was the military in him. They’d liked him, though, he knew cool stuff and could do cool things. But he had no idea how to handle this.
    He remembered her. Alice, his little sister. His parents had had children way too late. He remembered being surprised that his dad hadn’t been shooting blanks at that age. He remembered
how young Alice had been when Mom had been diagnosed with early on-set Alzheimer’s. He’d wondered if she’d been suffering, undiagnosed, when she’d gotten pregnant in her
forties. Maybe even earlier, when they’d had him.
    The religious stuff had always been there. As an adult he’d become convinced that half of it was fear and half of it was his mother’s need to look down on and judge others. When the
Alzheimer’s kicked in, well, then the real fun and games had started. He’d known it was the disease, but that didn’t matter much when you were just a kid, getting beaten on and
screamed at about how you were going to hell. In comparison the Marines had seemed like a pleasant alternative.
    No! That never happened! My name is Laurence Barnes, I grew up in San Diego. They call me Prophet!
Prophet knew these to be false memories. They were someone else’s. Red warning
signs were appearing on the HUD as the suit tried to understand what was going on in his head. He’d been in fire fights in over a dozen countries and here, in Jersey, confronted by a
ten-year-old girl, who at some level he knew was his little sister even though he didn’t have one, he was having a panic attack.
    ‘Momma said that the bible had the answers. That’s armour you’re wearing, isn’t it, mister?’
    Prophet forced himself to calm down. The pain in the dead flesh of his skull was nearly overwhelming. He could see white lights and wanted to scream.
    ‘You’re an angel, aren’t you, mister?’ He almost laughed and thought he felt like throwing up, if only he still could. The things he’d done made that question seem
like an obscenity. ‘You’ve lost your wings. Is god angry at you?’
    No, it just feels that way sometimes.
    ‘Alice!’ the harsh voice cut through the humid night air. ‘Where are you, you little bitch?! Get over here now or you’ll feel the back of my hand.’
    Prophet didn’t like the sound of the voice. He stepped back and engaged the stealth mode. It was only then he saw how frightened Alice was.
    Alcatraz had always tried to be hard where his mother was concerned. He’d had no problems about cutting her off after she’d been institutionalised. He’d always told himself
that there’d been no guilt about never going to see her. Despite how she’d terrorised him growing up, Prophet knew this to be a lie.
    When she’d ended up in the psych ward his,
no, Alcatraz’s
, dad had basically wasted away. He’d gone out with a whimper, not a bang. Alice had ended up in a foster
home. There had been tear-filled conversations, with her older brother promising her that as soon as he was back home she could come and live with him.
    ‘Then I just went and died in New York. Sucks, huh?’ Prophet whipped around, looking for the source of the voice and seeing nothing. The weasel-faced man in the wifebeater, pyjama
bottoms and, oddly, spats, must have heard something because he looked around to where Prophet was hidden. Deciding it was nothing he turned back to Alice. His bloodshot eyes full of