No sense in trusting my fate to an old piece-a-shit security system that may or may not even work anymore. At least, not when I’ve got my gun.

It’s out of the drawer and in my hand and I step out of the bathroom to face Drake head on. His infrared laser is still scanning the room, and he walks towards the hallway where I’m standing. He hasn’t seen me yet.

I don’t even say anything. I just open fire. The gun kicks like a mule in my hands and Drake’s right shoulder snaps back, hit. In the next half second, he looks up, sees me, and starts running toward me with cheetah-like speed. I fire again, but the bullet whizzes over his head and thunks in the ceiling. I used to be a better shot with this thing. I have time for one more shot, which he dodges by half an inch, before he’s on top of me.

He grabs the gun from my hands like I’m a baby with a lollipop, and his fist is in my stomach. The breath leaves my body and I crumple just in time to look up and see him standing above me, one half-metal arm raised in the air, about to smash through my soft watery flesh. Guess this is the end.

But it isn’t. Looking up at him, I see a black blur jump over my prone body from behind and tackle Drake to the ground. Tess? I pull myself to my feet. She and he trade blows, she with her claws extended and he blocking with his partly-metal arms. The fight takes place at a superhumanly high speed, so I can barely understand who hits who at what moment.

As I stand dumbfounded, Tess yells at me to “Run!” which I realize is probably a good idea, all things considered. I turn tail and sprint out of my apartment. Drake screams “Wait!” as I leave, but he is otherwise occupied and luckily is in no position to stop me.

I’m down the stairs, taking two, three at a time, flying past the broken bottles and boxes of God knows what that clutter the slum I live in. Gotta get away in time.

As I run out to the alley below my apartment, I see Drake leap out of the fiery hole in the building that used to be my apartment. Damn. Guess he got away, the bastard. At least he’s gone though. Still, better play this quiet, lay low for a little bit. No need to go around making a scene that’ll bring the psycho cyborg killer right back to me. That was a close enough call as is.

I lean against a wall in the alley and catch my breath. Not sure I’ve ever had as close a call as that before. My heart’s beating like a tribal drum. Someone wants me dead. Real bad. All my intuition from years of practice in this business points one place; CyberCorp. Something’s going on that goes right up to the top. Of everything.

Something moves in the alley behind me