A deep seated satisfaction washed over me. At my very core I felt a strange joy, some wild passion awoke within me. The idea of ripping apart the Mazikim felt delightful. I wheeled and headed for the next closest target to intercept.
I got the one further north on the hillside and then the race was on towards the town. I could see the tracking points arriving there. But I was on the hunt and I didn't show up on any of their maps.
But after the sixth one died beneath my paws, something flagged my trail of kills and dispatched drones to recon and all local units along my path were to re-group into quads to observe and defend.
I could see the points converging on the fairgrounds. I saw video of the first dog being killed. I could see through the units as they got pelted with lead or chewed up on the combines. A disorienting wave of information swirled through my mind.
And then the call for air support which began firing before their own units left the target zone.
I stutter stepped for a moment, surprised. They believed that she was there and only wanted her annihilation. That realization began to creep into my bones like being paralyzed in a regen tank as it slowly fills with icy water.
I could see the utter carnage wrought for myself as I crested a small hill just east of the town. And the blast of noise crashed over me like a waterfall filling my ears with it's wet thunder. The fairgrounds were a smoking crater. Fires blazed in the surrounding buildings and homes to the south and east. Dust clouds seem to hang clotted around buildings and the holes in the ear, and black smoke streamed into the sky.
I could see the drones headed towards my position. I raced towards the strike zone. I had to know if she still breathed.
I headed into the pall of smoke and dust. A fine light grey haze seemed to hang over everything as if twilight had fallen early. The burnt smells of flesh, deep wet dirt, charred metal and the burnt sulphur of gunpowder. People were screaming, crying, yelling and running. I practically attracted no attention at all. People blinked unseeing as I loped past them.
I raced across the fair grounds to where the ring had been but there was nothing identifiable there just churned dirt, rocks, and twisted metal. I could smell nothing of her anywhere.
The drones were overhead now. The smoke was hiding me for the moment and they'd begun their search patterns. Two SUV's with multiple occupants were set to arrive in minutes. And two quad Mazikim units were coming up the road from the East. There would soon be more than I could handle at one time.
Just then I noted that one of the drones had spotted me through the smoke. My form recognized by the AI and I was suddenly highlighted. All the drones headed towards my position and apparently were armed. I spotted an exposed drainage pipe that had originally run deep under the fairgrounds.
I crossed into the dark of the pipe just as the ground around me was pelted from the sky. The lead seemed to slap the soft churned earth.
The information about me suddenly froze and then it all just disappeared. It was suddenly almost silent and I was blind. It was just me and the pipe and I did not have the space to turn my body around. I could only shuffle crawl as the pipe split off I hoped I chose the right path.
Behind me I heard the cement pipe being chipped away as one of the drones had apparently flown down to shoot down the pipe.
It was quiet and the stench in the pipe was starting to get to me. But my building rage kept me grinding my body along in the wet fetid pipe. It is a blur now of slow movements to finally escaping out into the air once again near the edge of town.
The data and the air hit me at the same time. Time feels blurry somehow and hard to remember when I think back about what happened. I can't remember much more than the feelings that were so intense they keep me from touching those memories.
I destroyed the two SUV's before Stinger tracked me down and darted me. I was surprised that he didn't kill me. That was what he'd promised after all. But someone else was pulling the strings now. I found myself strangely disappointed and filled with guilt for living, two emotions that I had no previous memories of feeling. It had never been wrong to live before.
