Ilox Saga 1: Eris Monroe: More Than Human Read Online Free PDF Page A

uld tell it was the exact same target dummy that had just been fired at. A timer showed intervals elapsing in thousandths of a second. A gauss flechette round blasted the head in the middle of the forehead. The timer elapsed three hundredths of a second and another blast hit the exact same spot, widening the hole slightly, then again another blast appeared in the same spot. Three shots all hit the same spot in the same hole.
    The evidence was incontrovertible.
    “Impossible! No one without any kind of neural implant can do what she just did - no one!” Sergeant Henderson’s mouth was wide open. The other men of his unit had stopped and stared at the display and were silent.
    “Just let it go. You lost. Man up and admit it. She’s better then you thought. Hell, she’s better then all of us. ” Diaz smiled ruefully.
    Eris was already walking out the door. She paused and looked over her shoulder. “Hey Diaz, your good for the two hundred and fifty credits you owe me, right?”
    Diaz shook his head slowly and whistled. “Smooth, Commander… real smooth.” The rest of the Division Six men crowded around him and began to joke. Eris left them far behind.

CHAPTER 3
     
    The sounds of traffic - loud honks from cars and the ceaseless whisper of shod feet on pavement woke Eli from a troubled sleep. His head pounded and his mouth was dry. Eli Bowman was over one hundred and eighty six centimeters tall, but at the moment he was sprawled out on his back and lying crookedly against a wall.
    Groggily h e realized it was night time in a city…exactly what city he didn’t know. He couldn’t exactly remember where he had been and what he had been doing. His mind was in a fog. He thought hard about that, not being able to remember such a simple thing was frustrating. Memories swirled in his mind – moving too fast to focus on. All he knew was that he shouldn’t be here…wherever here was. He staggered to his feet. He noticed more of his surroundings. A constant rush of vehicles streamed by, driver’s blaring their horns seemingly non-stop.
    Groups of people on foot also moved by him and if they noticed him they paid no heed. He looked around and noticed that the street signs were in English. Suddenly a memory swam into his consciousness.
    He was on Kanpur, at the Dawson Slope mine and men all around him were dying with blood streaming from their eyes. In his mind’s eye he faced an alien opponent, something he had never encountered before. The pain in his skull had felt like the worst headache he had ever suffered multiplied ten-fold. Eli instinctively had known that the alien was a machine. Eli had always been able to control machines. It was a struggle unlike anything he had ever faced. The memory of it made him close his eyes. More memories came into sharp focus. The alien entity had been extremely forceful, probing for weaknesses and constantly assaulting his mind with images of death, destruction and white hot lances of pain.
    Where Eli had always been able to mentally interface with any machine and make it do what he wanted, he had struggled with the Entity as if it had been coated in grease – he hadn’t been able to get a firm grip on the thing, and it had been painful throughout the ordeal. He remembered now…something had finally snapped and he had controlled the alien machine and been able to turn it off. However, doing so had triggered something else inside of Eli, and a surge of power followed by pain flowed through his body at that moment. The memory was one of ecstasy – as if the entire universe had flowed through him at once. Now he was here…a familiar place, but at the same time unknown.
    He began walking down the street, fe eling better with each step he took. The nausea was receding. An ATM up ahead had a few people waiting in line. No one paid any attention to him as he stepped in line behind a portly woman and waited his turn. It was amazing that people still wanted to use hard currency - cash that