The God Reborn

Chapter 16

From the cover of the streambed, Vinicius rubbed his shoulder and grimaced. The impact of the sniper's bullet had hurt, even through his armor. It must have been a .50 caliber rifle. He shivered. He'd removed his helmet. If the bullet had been a few inches higher, his thousand year life would have ended in a thousandth of a second.

Out here in the real world, he had no god's eye view of his attackers. But he did have inhumanely acute vision and hearing, which would be to his advantage. His horns were gone, but he could still eavesdrop on his assailants' radio communications with a small antenna in the base of his skull.

He peered over the edge of the embankment into the wilderness but at first he could not see anything in the mud and reeds. He zoomed his vision for a close up and caught sight of a spotter, squatting in the mud behind a thick stand of reeds. The fronds would have hidden the man from human eyes, but Vinicius' eyes saw heat as well as light. He located the sniper, lying prone next to the spotter. With a swipe of his arm, he sent a laser burst in their direction. Where there had been two living humans, he now saw several dismembered limbs.

No doubt there were other attacking soldiers, who now knew his position. He rolled several meters down the creek bed, and then popped up to look to his left. As he expected, a squad of four humans was advancing through the mud.

"Target sighted in the creek—" came the radio signal. It was accented by a burst of automatic rifle fire. But Vinicius' laser cut both short.

Before he could turn around, he felt bullets pinging off the right side of his armor. These bullets were smaller caliber than the sniper's round, and each barely left a bruise. But the angle of the impacts did help him calculate the exact locations of his assailants. With a leap and another burst of laser fire, he silenced these enemies as well.

He spent several minutes scanning the swamp to look for remaining pursuers and saw none. Kobus' forces must be in a state of confusion if they were not able to mass more than a small number of lightly armed soldiers to attack him. Yet these soldiers had been equipped with radios, and their transmissions would have been monitored by Laura. There would soon be another wave of assailants.

Vinicius knew there was a limit to how many more attacks he could fend off. He was in the physical world, in his physical body. Here, unlike in the ether, he faced constraints. His muscles could tire and he could become dehydrated. His lasers' batteries were already running low on power. They could be recharged by using energy in his blood sugar, but that would weaken him, and he hadn't thought to bring food when he escaped.

His best bet was to evade capture and get to Daniel's ruins. Maybe there, he could find proof of his innocence, and present it to Laura. Laura, he thought, would forgive him if he could just persuade her to listen. Kobus was another matter. Kobus had never forgiven him for Sarah's betrayal even after one thousand years. But maybe if he could convince Laura, Laura could convince Kobus.

He climbed out of the creek bed and began jogging through the mud in the direction the three humans had gone minutes before. The pain in his shoulder where the sniper's bullet had hit him was a constant reminder that he was running for his life.

As he darted forward, he heard a single gunshot echoing from the wilderness ahead of him.

***

Naomi was gradually coming out of the stupor that the heathens had induced. The strange sense of cheerfulness she had felt during her interrogation was fading, and she was feeling anxious and worried. She found herself reclining on a narrow, hard mattress in a high-ceilinged tent set over the muddy ground. She tried to get up, but found that in addition to her bindings, she was tied to the bed with wide leather belts.