Mardock Scramble

The window crumbled into fragments, and light scattered all around. Had it been a wall that she’d hit, there would have been nowhere for the shock to travel, and her rib cage would have shattered. But because the bullet threw Balot into the air and out of the building, much of the energy was dissipated and the impact to her body was lessened.

Her bodysuit had hardened instantly to form a defensive breastplate, and this now crumbled away, having absorbed the shock. At the same time the hems of her bodysuit spun out new material, wrapping Balot up as she scrunched herself into a ball in midair as she fell through the window and toward the ground below.

A giant white egg formed around her and bounced like a rubber ball against the street.

Two or three times it bounced, hitting the wall of the building on the other side of the street. A crack appeared in the egg. The white bulletproof container opened up and Balot emerged. Her hems returned to normal, and fragments of shock-absorbent material fell off her like powder.

She sensed Boiled pointing his gun at her from the other side of the window. In a slick, inevitable movement, Balot fired at him. Boiled fired. The bullets clashed, and Boiled’s deflected round hurtled into a lamppost. The lamppost toppled and smashed into the street, scattering shards of debris.

As this was happening, Balot summoned a shield. A car—headlights blazing—sped over to her to hide her body. It took the bullets meant for her, its door smashed and hood crushed. Balot jumped out of the way just in time to see its gas tank igniting and spewing out a tongue of fire.

Across the fire, she sensed Boiled jumping down from the window.

Balot summoned another car just before he landed. Not as a shield this time—the car’s lights flashed on and off aggressively as it hurtled toward the spot Boiled was going to land on.

Boiled fired at it the moment he landed. One of the tires blew, and the car flipped onto its side and careened into a telephone booth before slamming into the storefront of a multi-purpose building.

Hiding behind the wall of fire, Balot focused her senses on how much damage Boiled had taken.

Two bullets to his right upper arm, one to his right thigh. Blood was spilling from the wounds, dripping down his arm and leg.

Even so, the walking menace known as Boiled loomed as threatening as ever.

Voices were heard—townspeople, tentatively emerging from nearby buildings, reacting to the commotion. Then a voice closer to home—an old man emerged from the entrance hall that had been wrecked by the car. He was yelling something and brandishing a shotgun.

Balot stared at him in surprise, but Boiled’s left hand was casually lifted up and pointed right at him…

Balot fired as quickly as she could to stop Boiled. Boiled was forced to activate his anti-gravity shield, which changed the flight path of his own ferocious bullet—instead of taking out the old man, the bullet slammed into the wall of the building right next to him. The old man was thrown, and his shotgun fired off in a random direction, smashing the shop window of a building on the other side of the street. The old man collapsed in fright, and a couple of younger men jumped out of the building he had emerged from and hastily dragged him back inside.

“When monsters like us fight each other, civilians only get in the way,” Boiled muttered, and fired at the wrecked car now embedded in the storefront. The hydrogen-powered engine, so typical in the River Side district, didn’t stand a chance. The car flared up and the whole building trembled violently.

That was all it took for the remaining bystanders to run back into the safety of their buildings. Boiled and Balot were the only two people left in the street on the whole block.

Boiled ejected his empty cartridge, and it clattered to the ground with a metallic ring. He used his blood-soaked right hand to pull out a speed loader from his pockets and effortlessly reloaded his gun.

“As long as the gunfire continues, the police around here will keep their distance.” His voice was as eerily calm as ever. “Let’s finish what we started.”

He shook his revolver sideways. The cylinder was now back in position.

For a moment Boiled seemed to Balot not only inhuman but something quite otherworldly. His face was blank. His eyes were utterly ruthless, glinting with fire. His limbs were as steel, impervious to pain. And his heart was an engine fueled by hatred and murderous intent, its only purpose to combust and consume all in an explosion of nothingness.

Balot bit down hard on her lip. She tried desperately to avoid taking to heart the phrase Boiled had just spoken so casually. Monsters like us.