Cyborg hunter, p.1
Cyborg Hunter, page 1
CYBORG HUNTER
Kill or Be Killed
by
Neale Rawlings
Copyright © 2025 Neale Rawlings
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations used in reviews or critical articles.
First Edition
Hardwood Pond Publishing
St. Paul, Minnesota
Cover design by Neale Rawlings
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN (Paperback): 979-8-9937763-0-9
ISBN (eBook): 979-8-9937763-1-6
Dedication
This book is dedicated to my loving family.
I started it with a simple idea—to help my young son get interested in reading. The books at school felt boring and uninspiring for a kid with a big imagination, so we sat down together and began writing a few chapters of a story I’d been thinking about.
It worked. He became excited about reading, then moved on to graphic novels and fantasy adventures. Today, he’s an avid reader as a young man. Mission accomplished.
The book itself never really left that unfinished stage until now. He kept rereading what we had written and loved it. In fact, some of those early chapters remain nearly untouched because of that affection. That’s part of what makes this story special.
I hope you enjoy it as much as I did creating it.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1. The Rush
2. The Aftermath
3. The Rooftop
4. The Healing Initiative
5. Cipher
6. The Return
7. The Veteran
8. The Echoes
9. Iron Revenant
10. The Plan
11. The Advocates
TABLE OF CONTENTS (continued)
12. Oblivion Unit
13. Cerberus Rising
14. The Breach (I)
15. The Retrieval
16. The Revelation
17. The Tomb of Machines
18. The Holdout
19. The Breach (II)
20. The Merge
21. The Fall of Cipher
22. Revelation (II)
“When the rules are written by machines,
humanity becomes the glitch.”
—System Audit Report, Cipher Division
Chapter 1—The Rush
Nick ran through the mall. He knew he only had fifteen more minutes until time expired; he needed to find his way out to the parking lot, get into his car, and drive as fast as he could. The cyborg had processed Nick’s every possible move out of the mall, like a chess player determining all the next possible combinations of moves. It also knew it only a short time left to kill Nick, as it was programmed to do.
Nick slipped into the nearest department store and made his way through the men’s clothing area.
“Can I help you?” asked a salesclerk.
He muttered, “No thank—” Before he finished his sentence, he remembered the cyborg had voice recognition software and could pick up his voice from nearly anywhere. “Dammit!” he knocked over the shoe display as he quickly made his way to the nearest exit.
The cyborg quickly picked up Nick’s location and headed to the department store.
“Watch where you’re going, mister,” said a teenage boy as the cyborg bumped him, but it was on a mission to locate Nick, not to argue with punks. However, it was getting thirsty for an Orange Julius.
“Seven more minutes,” thought Nick. He was also having the rush of his life. He had always been a highly successful video gamer, and when he had the opportunity to play the ultimate video game, Cyborg Hunter, he jumped at it.
Ten K to play and have a Level 1, 2, or 3 cyborg hunt you for twenty-four hours. Lose and you’re dead—it played for keeps. Live and you’re out the ten K, but at least you are alive. Destroy the cyborg before it kills you, and you get your money back.
He thought, not yet. I’ve made it twenty-three-plus hours; I’m not giving up now.
He was also thankful it was only a Level 1 cyborg, as he knew he would probably be dead by now otherwise.
Back in Mission Control, the creators were hoping for another cyborg victory. As gruesome as it may seem, death was good for business. Dead clients meant this game had proven to be the ultimate thrill and was to be taken seriously.
With so many things being conquered and thrills and rushes harder to find, people had seen this as the opportunity to feel more alive, even if it meant certain death.
Level 1 was a starting point for most; it was a sophisticated half-machine with many capabilities—GPS, infrared and night vision, voice recognition, and Logica CMG facial recognition, for starters.
A Level 3 was near suicide to the inexperienced, and even to some of the more seasoned players. It had highly sophisticated tracking capabilities and was linked to satellite and computer databases worldwide. If you made a purchase with your credit card at any store anywhere, it would instantly get that information and could then link to live satellite and track your movements from there. If your image were captured by a security camera, it would receive that information instantly as well.
All cyborgs were programmed with the intimate details of their opponent. The differences from Levels 1 to 3 were minor but significant—speed of learning, data processing, level of smart A.I., weapon accuracy, and intensity of pursuit were all set to the maximum at Level 3.
The weapon of choice for most cyborgs was a standard-issue semi-automatic twelve-gauge shotgun. They had a multitude of weapons at their disposal, including but not limited to RPGs, sniper rifles, chain guns, machine guns, and swords. Weapon choice depended on the profile of who the cyborg was hunting and personal preference. A stronger, heavily armed, and more experienced foe meant more and better artillery.
Those who were not intelligent enough or didn’t understand the seriousness of the game were easy prey for the cyborg. A simple handgun, a twelve-gauge blast to the face, a stabbing, or even an ’80s-style beating would suffice in eliminating most people. The intelligent and more experienced players, however, had studied and knew what the cyborgs were capable of, having learned their weaknesses before they even began to play. It was a matter of life or death.
Out in the parking lot, Nick now knew that the cyborg was aware of his general position. He decided his car would be the first place the cyborg would go, so he stayed on foot. Staying low and moving quickly but quietly, he headed toward the bus stop across the street. With some luck, a bus would come right away, and he could sneak on undetected and make a safe and timely getaway.
The cyborg ran out the nearest exit and quickly scanned the parking lot for Nick’s vehicle. It didn’t take long to find it. It walked toward the vehicle and was prepared to blow Nick’s head off. He wasn’t there, and time was running low.
“Hey, are you one of those Cyborg Hunters?” asked an older man.
The cyborg looked coldly at him.
“I saw a guy creeping around those vehicles across the parking lot,” he said as he pointed toward the southern end of the lot. “Maybe that’s your guy.”
The cyborg turned and headed toward the bus stop.
Nick waited for a moment at the bus stop. While the final few minutes were winding down, he still wasn’t feeling comfortable. He reached into his pocket to remove the only weapon he had on him—an electrical circuit jammer. If he were to get close enough to the cyborg without being killed and attach it magnetically, it would jam the circuits and shut it down. He was hoping to avoid a confrontation, especially in the last three minutes, but he still needed to be prepared.
A bus approached, and Nick was eager to get on it. Looking north, he noticed an ominous-looking figure walking his way—the cyborg, he thought. It was still over a hundred yards out and scanning the parking lot for him. He tried ducking behind the bus shelter to wait for the approaching bus; the cyborg caught the movement, recognized him, and started to move in.
Nick saw it lock in on his location and could almost taste his heart beating—it was so far up into his throat. “This is it—kill or be killed,” he said to himself.
Nick started playing video games as a young boy. He mastered nearly every game he played in very short order. When he got a little older, he began playing competitively, and by the age of twenty-four had earned nearly six hundred thousand dollars in tournaments worldwide. As he approached twenty-six, video games had lost their luster. It was a large amount of time to dedicate, and he was tired of sitting inside for days on end playing the same games over and over so he could master them. A lack of a social life was also wearing on him. He wanted a wife and a family of his own one day, so he had to start living out of the shadows. Those wasted years had also left him yearning to experience something more—he wanted to do something exciting, something that would make him feel more alive—and he wanted to do it before he committed to starting a new life for himself.
He had been intrigued with the idea of the game Cyborg Hunter for a few years now.
Dr. Madeline Jones began working with cyborgs to help people—helping the elderly, teaching kids, walking dogs, and whatever someone needed help with. Cyborgs were generally better than robots because they were part human and could make a connection in a way a robot could not—human brain power with robotic durability and strength.
Dr. Madeline Jones developed a way to create lab-grown brains, program them, and use them in her cyborgs. However, funding from the government eventually dried up because of the ethics of using these; they were, after all, human in a way, and this was perceived as wrong. Private funding quickly followed suit.
With nowhere to turn and cyborgs to use, Dr. Madeline Jones decided to create the game Cyborg Hunter—a live-action video game like no other. Sure, there was AR and VR, but people were getting bored; even with realism, something was missing. Actual cyborgs hunting you down for a real game of life and death was the next level. People paid big money for the ultimate experience. Sure, there was a good chance they would be killed, but for that twenty-four hours they really lived. It was a huge success, and people played all over the world.
Nick had heard stories of people being killed by their particular hunter, and he paid special attention to how players spent their final hours or how they overcame the odds and were victorious. He learned that many of the losers would try to hide, hunker down, and outlast the cyborg for those twenty-four hours. This was always a fatal error. These cyborgs knew everything about you—family members and their addresses, workplaces, shopping habits, the cars driven by everyone, credit-card info, etc. They had all the information they needed to quickly find, track, and kill you. There was no hiding.
The next deadly error was confrontation—trying to fight the cyborg one-on-one. A cyborg would learn as it went and become even stronger and smarter the longer the fight wore on. If you didn’t defeat it immediately, it would quickly learn your capabilities and weaknesses and begin to anticipate your moves until you were defeated. Victory and intelligence went hand in hand. Constant awareness of your surroundings, staying undetected and on the move, and diligent preparation were all necessary to survive.
Nick had trained and prepared for nearly six months before taking on his cyborg. Up to this point, it had been everything he hoped for—exciting, competitive, and an adrenaline rush like he had never experienced before. However, this was the closest the cyborg had gotten to killing him, and while exciting, reality has a way of turning that excitement into terror. Nick had to regain his edge and last a couple more minutes—the longest minutes of his life.
The bus pulled up, and Nick quickly got on; luckily, he was the only one waiting. The door closed, and the bus pulled away as he grabbed a seat. The cyborg rushed to reach the bus and managed to grab hold of the side door. The other passengers moved away from the area, as they knew what was coming and wondered who the poor bastard was that this cyborg was after. The cyborg managed to open the door and enter the moving bus.
Nick turned to look at the approaching cyborg and took what little shelter he had behind his seat as the cyborg readied its twelve-gauge sawed-off shotgun. It needed to fire at extremely close range and was programmed not to harm anyone except its primary target. If it needed to kill Nick by choking him out, it would do so if it meant not harming anyone else nearby.
Mission Control had begun watching this particular event unfold from an installed camera on the cyborg in the last five minutes. They huddled around a single large monitor hoping for a kill.
“Since it’s on a bus and in the public’s eye, I hope it doesn’t blow the guy’s head off with the shotgun,” said Dr. Madeline Jones. “That would be awfully messy and would look awfully bad.”
“Yeah, hopefully it can just choke the son-of-a—” The audio feed spiked, cutting him off.
“Anyway a kill is a kill.”
The bus came to a stop at a light, and Nick jumped at the opportunity. Diving forward and grabbing the lever to open the door, he made a run for it. The cyborg ran to the open door, and seeing it had a clear shot, fired a round at Nick from the twelve-gauge. The spread was way too wide to hit Nick at that distance, except for a few bits of shot that caught him in the backs of his legs. It burned, but it didn’t slow him down. He ran, knowing time was about to expire—and he survived.
The cyborg went into default mode, grabbed a seat on the bus, and it was over.
Chapter 2—The Aftermath
The street outside the bus depot was empty and wet, the kind of night that left a taste of metal on the tongue. Nick limped along the curb with his hand pressed to his side, the adrenaline finally leaking out of him like heat from a cracked engine. He could still feel the echo of the shotgun blast in his legs. It burned, but he was upright. He was breathing. He was alive.
“Twenty-four hours, one cyborg, and I feel more alive than I ever did behind a keyboard,” he said to no one. It sounded ridiculous in the dark, but true things often did.
A siren drifted somewhere far off. He stopped beneath a streetlight, checked the torn fabric, and kept walking. The rush had been a tidal wave. Now there was the undertow—shaking hands, a hollow chest, and a brain that would not stop replaying the last five minutes frame by frame.
Across town, the arena’s mission room settled into the hush that followed any completed match. Screens bled to gray. Chairs scraped. Techs signed off with soft, practiced voices, stacking clipboards, powering down. Only one monitor still held an image—Nick caught mid-stride on a bus aisle, eyes fixed on the thing that had come to end him. The time stamp blinked at the corner. Someone had left the sound off.
Dr. Madeline Jones watched the quiet picture, chin in her palm. A single desk lamp left a halo on the surface beside her. The telemetry graph scrolled in clean lines: pulse spikes, cortisol surges, micro-tremors in the hands. Fear, will, fear, will. In the combined curve she saw a pattern she knew well.
“Fear as the trigger,” she murmured, almost tenderly. “Courage as the cure.”
An assistant hovered at the door, hesitant to disturb her. “Do you want me to close the Kade file for the night, Doctor?”
“Archive it under behavioral optimization,” she said without looking away. “Tag the final five minutes.”
The door clicked shut. She rewound the footage. When Nick reached for the bus lever, she paused and studied his face. Not the bravado of a man who thought he could not die. The clarity of a man who chose not to. There was a difference.
Nick made it home on the steady autopilot of habit. He washed the grit off his skin and the blood out of the shirt, hissing once when the hot water hit the peppering in his calves. He taped what needed taping and found he could finally unclench his jaw. The apartment was as he’d left it—one plant that refused to die, a window that stuck if you opened it too far, trophies lined up on a narrow shelf like polite ghosts. A cheap metal cup from a regional tournament. A photo with a sponsor backdrop and a grin that belonged to a younger man who hadn’t learned yet what winning cost.
He sat with the cup in his hands and let the weight of it settle. He had lived whole years in rooms like this, lit by screens, trying to squeeze meaning out of simulation. Somewhere along the line, the prize had turned to noise. Tonight had been different. The stakes were not a bracket and a check. They were skin, tendon and air.
He thumbed his wrist console and brought up the official match reel, the one every player could request after their time was up. He watched the last ten minutes again, but this time as a student and not a survivor. The cyborg had taken a bad angle at the first exit—too direct, expecting him to run a straight line. It had corrected immediately. That micro-delay had been the window. There were other tells, too. It favored the left on quick pivots. There was a four-second logic loop between visual reacquisition and trigger squeeze when bystanders were present, even with a clear shot. He had felt that delay without thinking. He had always been good at feeling where code would go next.
“Every bot has a tell,” he said, setting the cup back on the shelf. “Even the real ones.”
A thump rattled the mail slot. He blinked at the hour and crossed to the door. A flat black envelope waited on the mat with no return address. Inside, a card lay in tight foam—a matte rectangle with a small, raised sigil and a line of text debossed so faint you had to angle it toward the window to read it.
ADVANCE TIER CLEARANCE AUTHORIZED
CONTACT WITHIN 72 HOURS
