“It” will hurt him? I thought. What will hurt him?
Something would. And that’s what mattered,
Working off panic and instinct both, I made a beeline for the bakery. At the very least, it would have a freezer. I could hide my heat sig in a freezer.
When I reached the place, I hurled myself against the door—and bounced off.
Gods damn it. As I’d feared, the door would only open for ID chips. I turned, only to find the Hunter striding down the sidewalk toward me, arm raised.
I dove to one side, and the display window imploded, flinging all its glass inside the place. I heard it tinkle against the tile floor inside.
That’s one way to get in, I thought, rolling back the way I’d come, directly into the haze of dust and debris. My cuts were searing now, and I was leaving trails of blood, but the next gunshot struck the place where I’d been, missing me and giving even more dust-cover.
I ducked through the window and dove under the nearest display of cakes, the only one still standing. What was the point of finding a freezer now? The Hunter already knew I was in here, and I didn’t think a mere freezer could protect me from that gun.
They turned it into cake… it’ll hurt him….
I snatched at a plate above my head, gripping a handful of moist, frosted cake. I squeezed, but there was nothing in the cake but cake.
What had they turned into cake? And who the fuck were they?
Us. The people here. We’re “they,” I thought. The bird had called me a human. That meant the bird itself wasn’t a human, which was obvious, but maybe the Hunter wasn’t, either.
The nonsense of this went right over my head. Aliens. Robots. Superhumans made in a lab. I didn’t care who or what I was facing. I just needed to kill it.
“I don’t think you want to go in there,” the bird said, making me stiffen. It was too close, and it wasn’t talking to me.
“I told you to shut up,” the Hunter growled.
“You should just blow the place. Then again, that will aerosolize it. That’ll be fun, a sugar mist. You’ll get cavities.”
“I told you to shut the fuck up.”
The bird’s feathers ruffled, loud enough that I could hear them, but it said nothing more. My gaze slid to the back of the shop. Maybe I should take my chances with the freezer,
No. Running and dead ends were not options.
Yet… the Hunter hadn’t done anything.
Wait. If he knows I’m here, why hasn’t he come in? Why isn’t he shooting? Why is he afraid to turn cake into mist?
A foot crunched on broken sodiprene where the front door used to be, and the time for thinking was done.
I surged to my feet, pushing the table out in front of me. The Hunter reacted fast, bringing up a piece of sodiprene like a shield as several cakes tumbled toward him.
But he still didn’t fire at me. You don’t want to aerosolize it.
No. Fucking. Way.
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I forgot the freezer. I forgot good sense. I just leapt after the man, scooping up a flower-topped cupcake as I lunged for him. He saw me coming through that helmet, its visor honed to a mirror-shine. He raised his gun, aerosolizing be damned.
I shoved his gun aside and spun him, locking my arm around his neck. I could tell instantly that he was armored head-to-toe. He was hard as stone and he glowed, his suit glowing with grid lines.
Even if I had a weapon, it would never pierce this suit. His body buzzed with raw power, half-electric and half-muscle.
There was also a tube sticking out from the back of his helmet.
They’d rammed against my collarbone as I got behind him, the tubes connecting from the helmet to the base of his neck. Tubes on a suit meant air, or water, or power. Whatever the tubes transported, it was a weakness.
With my free hand, I yanked the tube out of his neck.
He gave a shout and threw us both back, slamming me against the bakery door. It didn’t cave in, though, and I was too focused to feel the pain.
I crammed the cupcake into the hole on his neck.
His body convulsed instantly, the spasm so fierce and intense that my arm dislocated as he wrenched me away from him. I cried out in pain, grabbing at my arm before dropping low and running right at him.
I roared as I went, my good shoulder slamming his gun arm. I spun, I dropped, and I leapt to my feet again, facing him.
Just in time to see his gun vanish.
He let it go in front of me, dropping it to reach for the tube at the back of his head. The moment his hand let go of the weapon, it turned into a holographic blue grid and disappeared.
“Deactivate! Fuck!” he shouted, trying to manually pry off his helmet. I glanced at the bakery’s sales counter, thinking of knives. I lurched over to it, my arm lolling.
“You can’t deactivate,” the parrot said.
“It’s just Setup! Deactivate!”
“You can’t do it during Setup, either,” the parrot said, from somewhere above me. I glanced up to see him perched on a shelf beside a framed portrait titled Employee of the Month.
“They changed it last season,” the bird went on, while the Hunter kept grunting and fighting with his helmet, as if he were trying to get it off. “Not that you’d know that, since you’ve never had to deactivate. You’re untouchable, remember?”
The creature sounded almost bored. The Hunter coughed and sputtered, not responding.
“Should I call for backup?” the bird suggested. “Maybe someone started off with a Cure-All instead of a weapon. Ah, but would they use it to save you? That wouldn’t be very wise.”
“Don’t call for anyone!” I shouted, reaching for the bedraggled remains of a wedding cake instead of a knife. Whatever the cake had done, it was far more effective than a blade was going to be.
I hugged the sugary mass of caked to my chest with my good arm, paused just long enough for the wax figure of the bride to poke me in the chin, then barreled toward the Hunter, cake-first.
We collided in a squish of crumbs and frosting.
“Aaaagh!” the Hunter shrieked, and for the first time I heard the raw, animal edge that told me he wasn’t human after all. There was something marine about that cry, like a whale over sonar. His voice fizzed, and then the words changed, turning to gibberish.
He’s using a translator, I realized as I shoved into him again, trying to press all the cake into the bottom of his helm. This time, he tried to back away, lost his footing, and toppled us both into the roadway.
As he thrashed, he managed a kick to my stomach. I gasped and shrank away while he scraped and clawed at the cake and the helmet, trying to scramble back to his feet.
As he rose, I saw his bare throat through the tears of pain in my eyes. It was gray and smooth, that throat, but it had to be his, because it didn’t match the deep blue, lit-up Kevlar he was wearing. Muscles strained and the gray skin bubbled. He’d been trying to get the helmet off, and he’d exposed himself.
With my good arm, I snatched the plastic dog off the top of a child’s birthday cake, and aimed it directly at the Hunter’s bare throat.
My fist went right up into the helmet. I screamed as a gurgling, white-hot liquid bubbled over my knuckles. I jerked back, dropping to my knees and trying to rub my hands clean on my salt-dusted suit coat.
Meanwhile, the Hunter continued to stagger, his shouts turning to gargles—but the sounds were coming slower now. Quieter.
“Well I’ll be fucked by a triple-tit dick-biter,” the parrot said. “You did it. You actually killed him.”
Still gripping my oozing hand, I looked up in time to see the Hunter drop to his knees. The roiling gore had fizzed out of his throat and down the front of his suit, and as I watched, the shape of his body seemed to change inside the fabric, as if he were turning to soup.
A few final, alien words burbled out of him. “Sheek yhewa Dave… sheek yhewa….”
Then the suit vanished completely, and the helmet dropped into the simmering mess of the thing who’d once worn it.
I stared at the helmet. Its visor stared back.
“You got a death wish, kid?” the parrot said.
I looked back at the bird. He’d perched on a bent piece of exposed rebar. I hadn’t even known these buildings had rebar.
The bird opened its beak and squawked at me.
“Put the damned helmet on! Before we’re both dead!”
