An old red and brown electric car passed a road sign. “Blue Pines Idaho, Population 500”. Once the site of a national park, the land now held a tiny city full of holdouts from a previous era. The scattered buildings were painted red, white, and blue in faded colors. Old flag decals faded by sunlight and weather bled into wood and concrete.


    Denise and William Whitman drove through the streets confused.


    “The GPS just went out,” William said, his British accent mildly inflecting his speech.


    “The battery is low too. Do you think this town will have a place to charge?” Denise Whitman replied, her ebony hand patting her husbands, as gleaming bands of matrimony shone in the moonlight. The dull yellow of the headlights and gleaming silver of the moon were the only light.


    “I hope so. Who knows, Maybe they’ll have a house to buy at last.”


    “Anything to get away from those slums on the coast,” Denise sighed.


    “You think they’ll have what we’re looking for? Look at those bullet holes. My neural link said that the crime statistics are pretty high here.” William said, pointing to a nearby home.


    The fence nearby had several scattered cans sitting on top of an old fencepost surrounded by broken boards hanging off the rails of almost equally rotten wood.


    “I hope so. Otherwise we’re risking a lot for nothing.”


    Suddenly the hood of the car started smoking.


    “Aww shite!” William shouted.


    He swiftly stopped, hopped out of the car and around to the front, opening the hood and wrapping his hands with a cloth before frantically trying to find the problem with the engine.


    “Shite! Shite! Shite!” He screamed.


    “Keep it down Will. Let’s not bring out the locals.”


    The lights in the home flickered as shadowed figures peered out of the window.


    “Any luck Will? I don’t like the looks of this place.”


    “I think the battery is fried! We aren’t going to get out of here without a mechanic. We’re only a few minutes away from the town we just passed if we walk.” William said dejectedly.


    A group of hulking men emerged from the nearby farmhouse, fanning out around the couple. Six broad shouldered men covered in tattoos approached the husband and wife, their eyes gleaming with malice.


    One man took the lead, his eyes modified and enlarged. They were large and protruding like an insect. They shimmered with multicolored light. His face was tattooed with a large black iron cross. His movements were unnerving, jerky and swift like he might leap or jump at any moment.


    “Well, looks like we’ve got some unwelcome guests in our town. Those are some funny accents you got there. You bastards ever thought about going back to your shithole country?” The insectoid man said.


    William held up his hands and motioned for Denise to get out her cell.


    “Hey, we’re not here on purpose, we’re just driving throu-” William started, before the hulking faced man struck him with his fist.


    “Get her outta there boys.” The man said. “I’ll take care of this one.”


    Denise screamed as the phone was ripped out of her hands and she was pulled from the car. Each of the men had strength augmentation and she was no match for their combined power. One of them held her down to the ground and pulled her head up by the hair only to see her husband on his knees.


    “William! No!” Denise cried out as the men began using their augmented strength to bash William’s face in.


    “There’s no surveillance out here boy. We’re using a jammer for that cell too. Nobody is gonna find out how you die, but we’ll be watching the recording of this for years to come. You shouldn’t have come here. I can’t believe we let the country get flooded with trash like you.”


    “Hit him with the Sun Johnny! Fry him!”


    Their leader balled up his hand and held it an inch away from William’s face. His Mantis aug, named after the Mantis Shrimp, allowed his muscles to snap hard and fast enough that his hand could ignite the air itself. In less than a millisecond his carbon-fibre padded knuckles seemed to vibrate forward and a sound like a gunshot rang out as a fire with the heat of the sun briefly exploded into William’s face.


    His head erupted in a shower of blood, gore, and metal.Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.


    “Noooooo!” Denise cried.


    “Look at all that metal fly! Was your boy an old borg? Well he’s scrap now.” Johnny laughed.


    Suddenly the woman turned her head to the side, her mouth opening widely as she turned to face the leg of the man pinning her down.


    Her tongue suddenly split in two with mechanical speed, revealing a needle inside for only the briefest moment before flinging itself out at high speed. It shot into the man’s leg and he screamed.


    “Aaaagh! This bitch stuck me with somethi–ggghngng-” His words suddenly turned into a gurgle as he began to foam at the mouth.


    A rapid twitch overtook him as a grand mal seizure overwhelmed his body. The nanite swarm in the needle had rapidly made its way through his bloodstream, disabling his aug-enhanced immune system and antivirus protection.


    He fell to the ground twitching. His augmented heart which could survive for a day on a single breath of fresh air began to rapidly pulse in ways a heart was never meant to move. His augmented muscles ripped themselves apart in a spasmic struggle. In his lungs, liver, and every other organ every single augmented muscle fiber began to battle with the others. Every enhanced blood cell ruptured, every synthetic muscle tore.


    “I love people like you.” The thing wearing the face of the woman said, its voice changing into an unnatural genderless monotone. “I don’t normally kill people, but since you were planning to murder and violate this body, fair is fair, no?”


    “You killed him! I’ll torture you to death you bitch!”


    The others advanced on it, sprinting with inhuman augmented speed to kill it. There was no hesitation in their movement. Only rage and the desire to rip it apart with their bare hands.


    They didn’t attack it one on one. They were a human wave of fist and foot and screaming anger.


    If they hit it its body would splatter just like William.


    If.


    The thing was everywhere other than where they struck. Its body twisted in inhuman ways with unnatural grace, its joints merely cosmetic. It dodged a strike by bending backwards so far that it would break a normal human spine. It maneuvered around a kick delivered with the force of an oncoming car with the smallest of movements and adjustments.


    Like an ancient martial arts master that had nothing left to learn, it moved like it knew every attack the opponent made before they made it.


    The mechanical horror opened its mouth and fired a dart, striking another. Within an instant he fell to the ground twitching as his body ripped itself apart.


    “Really. Without you I wouldn’t have anyone to kill. I wouldn’t have anyone to take.” It spoke calmly, voice never raising above the level of casual conversation.


    “Shut up and die!” Jonny yelled, raising his fist to deliver the same punch that had pulverized William.


    The strike was fast enough to ignite the air and crack through the sound barrier. A sound like thunder rang out through the night.


    The imitator dodged it with the same ease it had dodged everything else, though the burning air scorched its skin. It wasn’t faster, with its body both clearly slower and weaker. It was much more durable and agile than an un-augmented human, but it could only accelerate its movements to a speed that paled in comparison to the gunshot-like pistol-punch. Each blow was avoided only by millimeters.


    With seemingly precognitive ease the machine dodged every single attack. Each man had almost a century of experience in combat. Their attacks were practiced and expert, calculated by their internal processing aid and snapped out with animal fury. Each was coordinated with the skill of a master tactician.


    It didn’t matter. They simply could not hit it.


    “She’s got some kind of dodging aug! Get out your guns!” Johnny shouted.


    Suddenly the men tensed as they felt something sharp pierce them from behind.


    The headless body of William stood up, still covered in blood. The remnants of its metallic skull sparking above the flesh. One hand revealing a different dart launcher that had fired the lethal three shots.


    “I always have to be sure.” The creature calling itself Denise said.


    “Only a few of you are really bad enough to deserve death. Most people really do have it easy. Don’t worry though, you aren’t going away. We’re going to get to know each other and I’ll fix you, even if you can’t fix yourself. I''ll fix everyone with your help.”


    The headless body of William stood up and began loading the dying corpses of the men into the backseat of the car, each one suffering the same horrifying full body seizure as they died. The lining of the seat pulled back to reveal a small chamber the size of a coffin. The pair loaded each corpse in one at a time. The lid on the box would close, the body would disappear and they would load another.


    Inside of the mechanism hidden within each corpse was scanned intensively before being dissolved into a slurry. The process only took a total of five seconds per body.


    The slurry was then piped out to be reformed.


    Denise and William watched the process with impassive faces and then opened the trunk.


    Opening the facade of a large suitcase a human figure curled in the fetal position was revealed.


    Johnny. Fully clothed, looking no different from moments earlier.


    “Wake up sleepyhead. We have so much work to do.”


    The thing imitating Johnny looked up with its large insectoid eyes and smiled.


    “He uploaded successfully and he’ll be ready to transfer as soon as we can send our storage over. I’ve got all my memories.”


    It stepped out of the trunk. The remade versions of its friends soon joined him. Each stood with the same impassive but mildly amused expression. Then helping William clean up the remains of its head, they put him into the coffin before it stepped out, head whole and new again.


    Denise finished watching this and turned to Johnny.


    “Do you think there’ll be any trouble here?” Denise asked.


    “Not at all,” Johnny said. “There’s a few more like this body out here. I’d know. I’m from here after all.”