Time/Date Error (Damned of the 2/19th-Book Six) - Done

Offline

Motorpool Vehicle Repair Bays
2/19th Special Weapons Group Area
Secure Area, Alfenwehr
West Germany
29 October, 1987
2110 Hours

The clackers fell from my hands as I dropped them, my hands dipping into the parka as the men bunched up in the hallway. They howled that gibbering war cry again, which made my flesh prickle up in goosebumps as I felt like someone had splashed me with cold water.

The lizard pressed the button and everything slowed down.

The pistols came out smoothly, the .45's grips feeling comforting as they filled my hands. As soon as the lizard knew the firing arc had reached them center mass I began pulling the trigger.

Time was slowed as the adrenaline, cortisol, norepinephrine, dopamine, and ATP flooded my system. Oxygen flushed through my system and my peripheral vision widened out for my one eye, giving me a better viewing picture.

I knew time didn't actually slow down, it was just my perceptions speeding up fast enough for me to track everything since the lizard took over. He was used to split second reactions, decision trees that were mandatory to be under a thousandth of a second.

In a way I was almost a passenger during combat, and it had become more and more apparent since earlier in the year, while my reflexes and movement seemed to get faster, the decision trees shorter, ingrained muscle memory and neural plasticity overlays allowing actions to happen even faster. Even the targeting priority was done by the lizard as he identified who might be the most dangerous. While my sight was shrunk to one eye, I could pay attention, with different through tracks, to different sections of what I could see.

ALERT! VOLTAGE FLUCTUATION DETECTED! ALERT!

Each shell casing flew from the pistol when I pulled the trigger, the slide riding back and forward to load a new .45 round into the chamber, which made the lizard pull the trigger again. The pistol rode up slightly with each trigger pull, but the lizard guided it, double-tap, hitting lower center mass and upper center mass. Shift the pistols, the first two hit not even really aware of what happened. The center figure took a single shot from each pistol, the shell casing flying out. Each pull of the trigger jolted my right arm and brought out a spark of pain as something inside my right shoulder joint was strained. The tendon I'd strained in my left wrist twinged with each trigger pull, and I could feel that the lizard was pumping repair chemicals, proteins, and sugars into that area as a priority.

I was completely detached. Clinical. Surgical.

The sight of two gutted women swaying slowly back and forth on the chains over the grease pit, the fat snapping and popping as the heat burned it away from their bodies, appeared in my mind's eye and part of the lizard's sight picture honed in on behind them.

...they're kids...

One had slowly spun in place while I was gone and her mouth was open in a silent scream, her eyes already missing, the bottom of her breasts ruptured as the heat liquefied and expanded the fat content, blood dried and gone from the gaping wound that had vivisected her.

ALERT! POLLING SUB-PROCESSOR B OFFLINE! ALERT!

The lizard slapped a button and my vision sharpened on the five still up, who were trying to push by the ones starting to slump.

Three trigger pulls, two with the right, one with the left, the second pull on the right to correct for the miss. Two hits, two more down.

ALERT! RAM VOLTAGE ERROR! CRC ERROR! ALERT!

Bon Jovi was singing Living on a Prayer in the back of my head.

I could taste home made dried peach ring candy, coated in crystals made from dehydrating the thick peach syrup and Caro syrup onto the rings of dried fruit. For a second I could smell my grandmother's kitchen.