The Machine of Flesh

Chapter Seven: To Bite the Hand That Feeds

Chapter Seven: To Bite the Hand That Feeds

I noticed the small pill of TPE-49 in my mouth, behind the space between my wisdom tooth and my third molar. I bit down on it and ran between the concrete chunks separating the Nazi forces and I. Time slowed down to a standstill. I laid suppressing fire while running and from my AK-47, rounds spewed out at a speed slower than humanly perceivable. Manfred quickly fired rounds from behind the smoke screen and dashed to the other concrete block next to a war ravaged apartment building in Berlin.

How the fuck did I get here?

"Alright Heinrich.." Manfred said while reloading his AK47, discarding an empty magazine to the side. Manfred cocked the AK47's slide and readied a round into the chamber.

"There's about thirty Nazis in the middle of this apartment complex square. I see you've popped your TPE pill." Manfred said as a hail of stray bullets decimated a chunk of the concrete block we were hiding behind exposing the rebar sustaining the inner structure of the concrete I of the building.

"Quickly. We have to get inside and get a vantage point to kill a few of those Nazis before we can move forward. This are like the old times Heinrich, just like your great, great, great grandfather's war. This time, we're the Allies." Manfred said while pushing me first into the building covering the rear entrance of the apartment building, with the AK47 propped against his shoulder.

In front of me was only a set of stairs, winding, zig zagging five floors up.

I ran up the stairs with my rifle perched against my shoulder with Manfred covering me from behind. While on these time dilating drugs, I was effectively superhuman. My neuronal networks in reality, were overclocked and my neuronal firing rates were exponentially faster. My heart rate was perceivably higher, faster than my usual eighty eight beats per minute. I could with the TPE-49 and the augmentation of Freiheit within me, sense the oncoming enemies. Underneath the next flight of stairs, I could sense a Wehrmacht soldier trying to sneak down the stairs. I grabbed a grenade from my bandolier-belt on my waist and held it in my hand, pin disengaged, until it had but only four seconds until it would explode. I lobbed the grenade against the wall and it bounced towards the soldier. Manfred had his rifle perched against his shoulder awaiting the soldier just incase he decided to run down the stairs guns blazing.

"Verdammt, du verdammter Untermensch!" the soldier said in the final two seconds of his life before he the grenade shrapnel annihilated him. The next flight of stairs sustained heavy damage, leaving us little time before the structural stability of the stairs would be compromised. Manfred and I sprinted up the stairs leaving us with little protection and no element of surprise. With the grenade going off, we could hear the shouts and commands from the squads of Nazis upstairs and outside trying to reach us.

Freiheit interfaced with me directly and I had become like a SONAR receiver, seeing in the third person, out of my mind and body, the resonating shapes and figures of the people up the stairs on the walkway which lead to the various apartments on that floor. Up the stairs, there was only two small walls that narrowed the entrance into walkway. I readied my last flash bang grenade and threw it up the stairs onto the walkway as the Nazi soldiers left themselves exposed. At the walkway entrance, the two narrow walls gave us little room to pick off the soldiers in their disorientation. I summoned Freiheit once again in my mind and augmented myself with him as time slowed down to a crawl. I shouted to Manfred,

"I'll fire, then you fire!"

I aimed the rifle around the corner and stabilized myself against the wall and let off singular rounds aiming for the eye slits of the Wehrmacht helmets to guarantee kills. With my position against the wall I only had twenty degrees of firing angles I could effectively use to target the soldiers on the walkway before it became impossible due to the wall impeding my arm muscles from accurately shooting the gun. One shot rang out and one soldier was dead. The second shot rang out, and a second soldier was dead. A third shot rang out and the third soldier was dead too. A fourth shot rang out and the final soldier on the walkway from these angles I could kill was dead.