The flat effect of Ballsy’s voice told him everything he needed to know. “You’re a sociopath.”
“You’re a Cyborg.”
“What gave me away?”
Ballsy looked back down at the tablet in his lap. Gunner seeded through it but found more of the same offensive prickles from before.
“That right there. You’re trying to break into a space that’s protected against your kind.”
“Nothing is protected against my kind.”
“It is if it’s madebyyour kind.”
Gunner frowned, eyeing the systems in the room with newfound curiosity. “Who?”
Ballsy scratched his cheek. “Like I said, I understand intelligent systems better than people.”
“I’m not people.”
“And you’re never getting your ship back.”
Gunner rolled his gun right as Ballsy slammed his hand down on his screen.
A shockwave plumed out and struck Gunner before he pressed the trigger, and his missed shot burned a hole straight through one of the server towers behind his target.
The surge was hot and strong, knocking him off his seat. He barely managed to roll back and find his footing before another pulse blasted through the room.
Stunned. His tech fizzled and the machinery thundered. Ballsy winced and walked over to him, above him.
Gunner strained to move, strained to make the killing blow but everywhere he shifted, inside his digital self and his mainframe, he was surrounded by the same needle-like prickles he had come to know that protected Ballsy’s information.
The fucker blasted him with EMP-based malware—a virus that acted like a shockwave of tiny targeted EMP charges. He sensed it snaking through his body and rendering him useless. Gunner watched with rage as a booted foot came down on his chest and knocked him over against the floor. The gun remained tight in his hand.
“Don’t be mad,” Ballsy told him. “In my line of work, one can never be too careful. I won’t kill you but I won’t help you either. What is that saying?” His eyes glazed. “Damned if you do, damned if you don’t?” Gunner glared death. “My head’s on a pike either way, so I’m out.” The boot lifted and he turned around, grabbing a bag, throwing it over his shoulder.
“What’ve you done to me?” Gunner gritted out, already feeling his strength returning.
His hold on the ship was gone though, and the sirens blared to life. The server room, once filled with electrical life, was now nothing more than inert metal. The EMP malware had destroyed everything in the room.
“Electromagnetic nanobots,” Ballsy muttered halfway out the first door. “You’ll recover. No sense in destroying a creation like you.” His voice faded. “You’re inside a Faraday cage, Cyborg. You might want to move. The cage protects the rest of the ship from me, and me from the rest of the ship. They’ll be coming here first.”
“How,” he hissed through his teeth, his body seizing as if electrified, “are you not affected?” Ballsy had implants inside him too.
“My room wasn’t the only thing I put a Faraday seal around.”
And then he was gone.
Gunner knocked his head on the ground, straining his body with everything he had, willing it to move. His systems scrambled as the pulses sparked off like firecrackers against his skin. They neutralized his tech, did just about everything to it but destroy it like they had the rest of the room. A swarm of microscopic bees.
In the distance, he could hear Ballsy walking away and he knew the only place the man could go to get away from him was an escape pod. He focused on trailing Ballsy’s power source, his answers escaping him as his target made his way through the confusion.
His fingers twitched until he managed to curl them into fists. He heard the crew coming long before they reached the door.
When the first tumultuous shocks faded, Gunner rose slowly to his knees, his metal frame still too heavy for his body to handle just yet, but each second his nanocells fought off the derangement, his strength returned.
And you’re never getting your ship back.
The words flashed behind his eyes when the first bullet hit him in the back.
