Fifty feet beneath him, the uninjured man was struggling to help his wounded comrade stagger forward, but the slick of blood that trailed behind them was enough for Garro to know that one of them would be dead in minutes. ...
Garro had seen enough. He stepped up and over the edge of the suspended walkway and dropped the distance to the deck below, hitting with the impact of a demolition hammer. The metal flooring flexed under the force of his arrival, putting the thugs and their would-be victim off their feet. The panicked believer was quick to recover, however, and scrambled away toward the gaping alley.
...
Garro took a step forward and met four bullets fired in quick succession by the gunman. The shots hit him in the chest and belly, breaking the outer layer of his epidermis but penetrating no deeper. He grunted with irritation and reached into each of the wounds with thumb and forefinger, pulling out the flattened heads of the kinetic rounds and flicking them away. Blood, thick with gene-engineered Larraman cells, was already clotting the trivial wounds.
The one with the gun was clearly an imbecile. Instead of putting distance between himself and Garro, he came closer, aiming the heavy pistol up to target the legionary's head.
Garro stepped in to meet him. With a lazy backhand, he smacked away the weapon, shattering the bones in the gunman's forearm. He could have left it there, but there was a lesson to be taught, and so he put what he considered to be a light punch into the squealing gunman's chest. The blow caved in the thug's ribcage, collapsed his lungs and stopped his heart.
The man covered in phosphor-glowing tattoos cried out the dead man's name, and turned tail and fled back in the direction of the marketplace.
The thug with the beard and the push-sword yelled and slashed at the air before Garro, attempting to force the legionary back with a wild, uncontrolled feint. He was trying to put Garro on the back foot, perhaps so he could extend away and flee as well.
The warrior watched the criminal's pattern, saw it, and in the next breath he grabbed the razor-sharp blade and yanked it forward. A seasoned swordsman would have let go of the handle, but the thug's best challengers had only been untrained civilians with no grasp of
bladecraft, and he had no more moves to make. Ignoring the distant sting of pain as the push-sword cut into his palm, Garro twisted his wrist and disarmed the bearded thug, the motion breaking fingers in his opponent's hand.
The blade fell to the deck and he stamped on it, the steel heel of his bionic leg snapping it in two. Garro reached out and grabbed the thug by the shoulder and squeezed, feeling bone grind on bone.
'You have made several mistakes,' he told the man, as he listened to him panting. 'And your path brings you to me.'
'Please…! Don't…!'
Garro shook his head. 'That time has passed.' He shook back the cuff of his robes and showed the man one of the sigils branded into his flesh, the device of a skull against a six-pointed star. 'You attacked a legionary. Do you understand that?'
The bearded man's eyes were wet and streaming. A patch of dark colour spread on his breeches as he soiled himself in fear.
'I want to know where they are.' Garro nodded in the direction that the surviving believer had gone. 'You know. Tell me.'
'Don't…don't know!' gasped the thug. 'Don't remember….'
'You do,' Garro corrected gently. He tapped the thug's forehead. 'Memory chains in your brain tissue. Either you access them…or I will.'
'What…?'
Garro put his other hand around the man's skull and slowly began to apply pressure. He would need to be careful, to crack the bone without destroying the soft organ inside. The warrior took on a gentle, lecturing tone. 'When the genesmiths made me what I am, they placed an implant in my belly called a preomnor. A stomach within a stomach, if you will. It allows me to ingest poison and toxics, subsist on edible materials that would kill any other living thing…'
A wet crackle sounded from beneath Garro's fingers, and the thug cried out in terrible pain, fruitlessly trying to peel the legionary's grip apart.
'Moreover,' he went on, as if this were instruction for some neophyte battle-brother, 'there is a second implant, the omophagea. Capable of separating genetic memory from ingested matter, if you can conceive of that.' He leaned close and looked the thug in the eyes. 'What I eat,' he said, with cold clarity, 'I take the memories from. Do you understand?'
The thug's cries became whimpers, and Garro knew that he did.
'One way or another,' said the legionary as he increased the pressure, 'you will tell me where to find the hidden church.'
