Chapter 23
Roland looked down, over the deck onto the yellow grass that led up to the shores of the lake. The warriors of Rolling Fuck had started to assemble themselves there. A large group of men and women had started to unpack dozens of Quadrophracts. The four-legged robots had been built by Boston Dynamics, back before the fall of the old U.S. They’d been meant to ferry men and equipment up steep Afghan mountainsides. Roland stared at them, and-…
Chapter 20: Roland
The only thing that had seemed off to Roland was an odd scent of anxiety in the air. It wafted off the guards and hung in a thick cloud above the entrance room. The odor reminded Roland of countless hours spent sitting with nervous men in the cramped belly of an APC or drop aircraft. He assumed this had something to do with the giant explosion he’d caused earlier, or his escape from the training facility…
Chapter 17: Roland
A man in the crowd turned and stared at Roland. Volume man, volume. Roland guessed he’d heard just the tail-end of his last sentence. The word ‘pussy’ had probably piqued his ears. Before the man could say anything, Roland pointed towards the gallows and let out a loud ‘WHOOP!’ followed by a, “PRAISE GOD! PRAISE GOD!” The inadvertent eavesdropper started cheering along with him and turned back to the impending execution…
Chapter 14: Roland
Roland popped open the cab so he could change into a clean set of spare clothes. He was grateful that Skullfucker Mike had packed them bags to lend their story extra versimillitude. Manny changed too, and once his hands stopped shaking they rolled off to the next checkpoint. Roland tried not to think too much about the men he’d just broken. It helped that one of them had been an asshole. It helped that none of them had died. But still…
Chapter 11: Roland
“I don’t need your killyness. I need your sneakiness. You can still take faces, right?”
Roland’s memories of his time in the army were as patchy as his memories of everything else. He didn’t remember much about how they’d used him. But he knew that some of the wetware they’d installed in him allowed him to modify his skin and bone structure to fool facial recognition scanners, thumbprint readers and, of course, human beings.
“Yes,” he said, “but…”
Chapter 8: Roland
He shoved the wrench into his waistband and threw himself into an elegant backflip (he maybe wanted to impress Bigsby a little). He landed fourteen feet back from his prior position. In the same continuous motion he picked two fist-sized chunks of concrete off the ground, flipped back again, and launched both improvised missiles at the retreating martyrs…
Chapter 5: Roland
Roland’s response was another deep gulp of his coffee. “Anyway,” Jim continued, “I know you don’t care for cash. But there is something I think you might want, and I can buy it back for you if you’ll help me out.”
“Wait- buy it back? Buy what back?”…
Chapter 2: Roland
Roland’s brain didn’t wait for the acid to do its job; nanomachines couriered the lysergic diethylacid direct to his synapses. The drugs took hold in a manner of seconds. Acid softened the world around him. His hindbrain’s running commentary faded into a sort of generalized hyper-awareness of the world around him. He sighed, relaxed, and remembered…