Free Crysis: Escalation by Gavin G. Smith Page B

anger. The
girl was shaking with fear.
    ‘What’d I tell you?’ he demanded.
    ‘Which time?’ she asked, confused and terrified.
    ‘Are you trying to get fresh with me?’ He lifted his hand up as if to backhand her. She shrank away from it in a way that told Prophet she’d been hit plenty of times
before.
    ‘Hey,’ Prophet said softly. The man froze. ‘Turn around.’ The man managed to control his fear long enough to do as he was told. He couldn’t see anything. He looked
around and, still finding nothing, his fear was replaced with anger as he started to turn back towards Alice. Prophet made sure that the man saw him appear out of nowhere. The man let out a
high-pitched scream. The scream was choked off as Prophet grabbed him by his chin and lifted him off the ground. The man soiled himself.
    This I understand, this situation I can handle, the proper and correct application of fear and violence.
    He could feel the man’s jaw crack and then splinter under his power-assisted fingers. The man was somehow still making whimpering and squealing noises as he drooled blood.
    ‘I could be anywhere and you’d never know,’ he whispered to the man. ‘You’re going to look after Alice and all the other children in your care to the best of your
abilities. You will never raise a hand to them, or even an angry word. You will treat them with as much kindness as your resources will allow and you will stop drinking or doing whatever it is that
turns you into a foul smelling, evil, little worm, because I will be checking. I will be checking frequently, and if I don’t like what I see I will remove limbs and solder the wounds shut. Do
you understand me?’ The man didn’t answer. ‘I said, do you understand me?’
    ‘I don’t think he can talk,’ Alice managed through the terror. At the sound of her voice Prophet felt the guilt wash over him. He’d forgotten she was there. This was just
another bit of violence for her to witness. He dropped the man, who curled up into a ball and made whimpering noises.
    ‘Get out of here,’ Prophet said quietly. The man didn’t move, he just whimpered. Prophet took a step towards him and the man made a run for it, scrambling away on all
fours.
    Prophet looked down on Alice.
    ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
    ‘God will forgive him for his sins, and you.’
    He felt like crying. He knew that this frightened young girl was concocting an elaborate fantasy around this strange figure she’d been confronted with. That he was an angel fallen from
grace and that to earn his redemption he would watch over her and keep her safe. The awful knowledge that under the carboplatinum-reinforced coltan-titanium exoskeleton was the animated corpse of
her older brother somehow made it all the more horrifying.
    ‘Did you mean what you said? Will you be watching over me?’
    Prophet thought long and hard about lying. He desperately wanted to. He just wanted to tell her what she wanted to hear, but he couldn’t. She was far too nice, forgiving and naïve to
survive in the situation she had found herself in.
    ‘No,’ he told her. ‘What I said was to frighten him into looking after you. It might work but probably only for a little while. You’ve got to be smart, keep your head
down, keep out of his way and look for a safe way out as soon as you’re old enough, and I mean school not the streets, and Alice, you’ve got to learn to look after yourself, stand up to
people. You don’t want to get in a fight if you can help it, but if they hit you, hit them back, harder. You understand me? God will understand.’
Or fuck him, quite
frankly.
    She nodded, tears in her eyes. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.
    ‘I guess you’ve got other kids you’ve got to help, right?’ she asked through the tears, wiping her nose on her sleeve.
    No. There’s the mission and
only
the mission, if your brother will let me.
    He nodded, mumbled platitudes at her and then turned away. He made