Excerpt: Borrowed Lives

Chapter One

“Why does it never go smooth?” Lucy shouted over the sound of gunfire as she crouched in the back of the armored van. “We can never just walk in and have a nice quiet heist. NO, they always have to shoot at us.”
Daniel looked across the floorboards at her, his face was pale and his eyes wide. “Their system was too.”
“Just shut up and let me outta here so I can help,” she said, brushing him off as she pulled a pistol from a holster strapped to her leg. “I hate shooting things.”
Just outside the van Enna and Dinah were pinned down behind the van’s bulk and Salem was underneath, taking cover behind one set of tires. His machine pistol was trained on the four Machar guards running out of the building bearing their own, very much larger, and not to mention more advanced, guns against the small group. Lucy crouched just inside the open back doors of the van and took a quick glance through the crack between door and van before she stood, balancing herself with one foot inside the open back of the van and one foot on the bumper.
There were no windows in the doors so she used one as cover and stuck her pistol over it, firing shots wildly in the direction of the four, massive lizard aliens who were still slowly approaching them taking cover behind every post and trashcan they could find.
“Lucy!” Salem shouted his voice cracking. “Get back in the van that’s where we need—“
The tallest machar, probably a surrogate, xe had to be at least six foot ten inches when slouching, shot a heavy burst of auto fire directly into the door where Lucy was taking cover. As the armored door lunched back into Lucy with a sickening crunch against her shoulder she went sprawling to the pavement below the van.
She let out a long, ragged scream as the impact shifted the metal brace screwed into her legs. She panted for breath, keeping the frame of mind to point her pistol vaguely in the direction of the Machar and fired off the rest of her clip while trying to climb back into the van or pull herself behind some form of cover before the Machar could…
A bullet tore through the flesh of her foot sending a wave of cold-hot pain radiating through her body. A pair of hands plunged out of the van and jerked her up, pulling her front half into the cargo area before she pushed with her good foot and lunged fully into the van.
“We need to pull out.” Dinah was surprisingly calm for a situation like this. “The big one’s down.”
Someone jumped into the driver’s seat and vaulted over the console to pop a gun through the open passenger window. The van rocked with the motion of bullets as automatic fire and large ballistic rounds plunged into the van’s armor plating. Another body vaulted in and pulled the driver’s door shut.
“Salem get your ass in—“
“Just shut up and drive,” Salem said, pulling the still free doors of the back of the van shut.
“I’d . Love. To.” Lucy spit through gritted teeth as Daniel popped a med vial into the jack in her back just to the left of her spine. “But it appears. That. I’ve been shot.”
“Enna!” Salem shouted, pulling off his hole-riddled shirt and wrapping it around Lucy’s foot and putting some pressure to the bleeding.
“I’m on it,” a surprisingly feminine voice shouted from the front and the van as she threw the van into gear. “Hold on to something.”
The entire crew was thrown against the side of the van as she tore out of the parking lot and into the streets, leaving thick rubber tracks across the cracking concrete.
Lucy screamed as her brace caught against one of the cargo straps that littered the back. “Enna if you don’t straighten this boat out right now I’m gonna shoot you.” Lucy was actually beginning to feel considerably better as the Ince that Daniel had jacked into her bloodstream began to take effect. She knew she had to keep alert but the fire in her foot and legs slowly disappeared and she felt like she was floating along in the back of the van, detached from her body.
Salem kept steady pressure on Lucy’s foot. The wound wasn’t too bad, but it was still and pretty fantastically deep graze. No bullet in the wound, though, which was a plus and probably meant she wouldn’t get any heavy metal poisoning from it. Machar were pretty nasty when it came to fire arms and ammunition.
“What the hell happened back there? Daniel, you hijo de puta, what in god’s name—“
“They had a system employed hacker. He damn near took me out while I was still jacked in. I had no way to get the alarms off long enough…I told you we couldn’t walk in a steal it….There is no way that Feine…” Daniel babbled, not looking up at Salem. He knew he screwed up. He busied himself with the med pack and pulled out heavy gauze bandages and a needed and silk for some on the fly stitches. “I didn’t get a chance to warn—“
“Ferme-la,” the older man said, brushing his blond hair away from his forehead with a hand bloody with his pilot’s blood. “I need Lucy ready to take off when we get to the ship or we’re humped, you got that?”
“Yes, sir…”
The van jerked into another hard turn and cut across a three lanes of traffic. As the three in the cargo area slammed into the far wall of the van a volley of gunfire rattled against the closed back doors. Without skipping a beat the girl in the driver’s seat pulled a tight turn down one of the side roads in this side of Seattle and headed straight for one of the worst neighborhoods she could find.
“Tu dé connes ou quoi? Where the hell are you taking us?” Salem said, trying to brace Lucy from sliding around too much.
“It’s fine, captain,” the other girl chimed in from the passenger seat. “Enna, Dan and me know a pretty good street doctor. Taught Dan enough to triage just about any wound, we’ll be in and out, he’ll patch her up for a little bit of coin and clear the Ince-fog Dan seemed to put her in.”
Salem looked at Lucy’s face. He was usually a very stern man but he felt frozen seeing her look so helpless and lost. “Just try not to kill us in the mean time.” He said by way of acceptance of his hired muscle’s plan.
Lucy reached behind her back and pulled the vial of Ince from next to her spine, letting the synthetic skin reseal over the opening where it’d been plugged in. She dropped the vial on the floor boards and looked up at Salem and Dan, working to keep her foot more or less intact. “Did we get the?”
Dan, Dinah and Salem all turned to look at Lucy. Salem shook his head after a moment. “No, we didn’t get past the second floor.”

The van screeched to a stop in the middle of an old industrial district and Dinah jumped out of the front passenger side and ran around to the back to fling open the doors and help Salem lift Lucy and carry her into one of the supposedly abandoned warehouses. The inside of the building was divided into rooms and hallways with boxes, stiff industrial plastic sheeting, boards, sheet metal and even blankets strung up with wires between posts.
“This is the place?” Salem said, his eye brow quirking almost comically high as he took in the fetter and festering filth of the place while following Dinah through the maze of walkways. “This better be one hell of a doctor.”
“No offence, Captain Raleigh, but shut up. Just let me do the talking.” Dinah snapped at him, letting herself into one of the sectioned off ‘rooms’ seemingly picked at random.
There was an old table in the center of the room that might have once been used as part of a booth in an old fast food joint. Dinah and Salem helped Lucy sit on the table her legs stretched out in front of her while Salem stood behind her to hold up her torso. The table was just too small to let her lay down on. Lucy reached up and held onto Salem’s hand where it rested on her shoulder, her knuckles white.
“Hey you in there, Doc don’t have no appointments today.” A male voice boomed out from an adjacent room. “Come back when you learn yourselves enough manners to knock before you rush into a man’s operating room.”
“Reg, I got a team member been shot and I want her patched yesterday.” Dinah shouted back, a broad grin crossing her face making her look her own age for once. For someone only twenty-three years old she gave off the air of a mother, someone much older than herself. “If Doc wanted office hours he should have gone legit and set up a real office.”
“D? Is that you?” This time the voice was given a face to go with it as a short Hispanic man barreled out of his hiding spot and nearly took Dinah down as he flung his arms around her ribcage and pulled her into what looked to be a bone crushing hug. “How long you been in town and not called me, Amiga? Why’d you do that to me, ain’t we been friends too long for that?”
“It’s nothing personal Reg, been in town on a bit of business had a job needed doing is all.” Dinah said, wriggling free of his grasp. “Need Doc to put the quick on her, she’s our wheelman and we can’t really get nowhere without someone to drive the boat.”
“How long you staying in the city, Amiga? I need to take you out, get you into some clubs.”
“As long as it takes Doc to put my pilot on the mend, chingado. We’re in deep and I don’t got the time. Go get Doc so we can get outta here. Tell him Dan doped her with enough Ince to kill a small rhino. Gotta get her to cut the haze and quick.” She shoved the shorter man towards the entrance he’d rushed in through.
He stopped long enough to take a look at Salem and Lucy and snorted. “Running with a new crew again, D? Who’s the gringo?”