Bitch: Puncture (book 2)

It was information overload for a moment. I’d never had so much information broadcast to me. I was able to see more than I ever had. And I was getting data from what seemed like hundreds of data points simultaneously. It was as if I had traveled every inch of hundreds of square miles all at once. But the data was different somehow, stale, cold and like a skeleton with not meat left on it. The shapes were still there but all the colors were gone. And it was pressing in like it was all trying to get into my head at one time. Like every sound from a day compressed and blasted into my ears in one second. I heard it all I just couldn’t make heads or tails of anything.

I shook my head trying to clear the noise. Then it all seemed to coalesce into one idea, one location. No other information mattered and it all faded back. My vision was tilted almost sideways until I realized that I had twisted my head, trying to somehow manage the invisible onslaught. The edges were fading back in where they had fuzzed out a second before. The nausea faded back as I slowly unwound my head and forced my muscles to relax.

The target, had just shown up on a mountain road southwest of our position. Suddenly I saw the view from a drone of a bronco heading up a two lane gravel road that snaked its way up a hillside to a prairie. The bronco was flying around the corners I could see from the fan tails of gravel spewing out the back. The drone moved to come alongside.

Then the video stream cut out in a burst of static, but the picture cycled back to a still image of the bronco and stills of Natalie, Arlene and Her, half under a blanket in the back seat.

I felt the cold dump of adrenaline. The armored black thing was already racing back to its vehicle down the mountain. A topographical map overlay lit up with all the pack units moving to intercept. I couldn’t help, but see the data flying past. It was everywhere I looked and felt as if it was coming from all my senses at one time. An irresistible wave of data invading my mind, but even that could not distract me from my target. And I was ready for it this time.

It didn’t see me. In three bounds I was moving full speed.

My front two paws hit it squarely in the back and I changed it’s trajectory straight into a tree trunk. It’s visor striking first with a satisfying crunch as it’s head bent back and snapped with my weight and it’s weight added to the leverage of the angle I’d chosen. I stayed behind it and backed away. I saw it’s dot on the map flash red, then go grey.

I waited for a picture of me to show up, or a new target, but saw nothing. No eyes in the back of their heads apparently. They were meant to attack from the front and sides. But they could be stopped.

A dispatch order for pickup of the terminated unit on the ground in front of me burbled by in a river of information. And I turned to find my next prey.