Apex Cypher (Prequel to The Techxorcist series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

malicious code, and her physical prowess. He had no doubt that the electrical blast from Shelley’s fence would have killed a lesser person.
    They continued on into the city of Baicheng. Among the scrub land, covered in dry hard-backed dirt, were small patches of soy plants. A larger field, no more than fifty metres long appeared to be subdivided into specific areas. He guessed these were one of the various gangs’ food sources. Around the soy plants were fences with various crudely made signs. Gang signs.
    Petal leaned over to grab a handful of plants—it was trivial to get the protein from them and the soy plant had proven to be quite resistant to nuclear radiation. There were compounds within it that actually provided the consumer with a degree of a protection from various heavy metals and radiation.
    “No, girl, I wouldn’t do that.” Gabe pulled her back by the collar of leather biker’s jacket.
    “What the hell, Gabe?”
    “Look.” He pointed past the fields to a flat-roofed building. Half of it was crumpled from a missile strike; the other half leaned away at an alarming angle. Rebar and steel reinforcement jutted out at awkward angles. The setting sun shone through the various empty windows from the other side, lighting it up inside like the building has some kind of force within it.
    “It’s a ramshackle building, what of it?”
    Grabbing her by the shoulders, Gabe pushed her to the ground and fell down with her, just as a gunshot split the air. The bullet crashed into the hard ground a metre beside them, sending up a cloud of dust.
    “Crap!” Petal said. “How the hell did you?”
    Gabe looked at her, flashed her a grin. “I may be old, but I got damned good vision. Stay low.”
    On their bellies they scrambled through the soy plantation, using it for cover, stopping every few metres to change direction. Luckily, amongst the field were various piles of rubble and steel and leftover farming machinery. Using those for cover, they dodged a further five shots.
    “They’ll give up shortly,” Gabe said. “They won’t want to waste ammo.”
    “I hate this place already.”
    “Well keep ya little grabby-hands to ya self, and we should be okay.” Gabe peered through a gap in a rusted shell of a tractor. A bullet ricocheted over the roof, and made him jump. Before the sun dropped below the horizon, he just caught a shadow move in one of the open windows. It appeared the sniper had given up. Not surprising giving the impending darkness and their covered position.
    Petal coughed, brought up a splash of black liquid. It was the ‘Stem solution. He reached over, and pulled her goggles up. Her eyes were a deep red colour. That wasn’t a good sign. She’d need to get a suitable node soon and download the various AIs and viruses that she was carrying from their last few jobs. They didn’t know what would happen if she went over capacity, but they knew it wouldn’t be good.
    “Is it bad?” Petal said.
    Gabe shook his head. “Nah, ya okay for a while yet. Besides, if we complete the job, we’ll cut down our journey to GeoCity-1 by two weeks.”
    “Come on then, let’s get on and find Jericho.” Petal kept low and crawled out from behind the tractor shell. Gabe followed and they soon reached the end of the plantation. Beyond that was a wide road leading to the centre of the city. To either side and just in front of them rose two rusted hulks of buildings. Gabe could just make out the signs. On the left was a tram centre, the one on the right a train station. The latter seemed to be some kind of gathering place. He heard voices echo over the air, and through the gaps of the thin sheet-metal exterior he saw the first flickers of a fire. A few seconds later, he smelled smoke and roasting meat.
    Further past the transport hubs, among the various semi-destroyed buildings, was an obelisk-shaped monument in the middle of a square. The monument was broken in half, leaving jagged fragments of marble to poke