by Jeremy Szal
Oh, hell.
A flash of a grin on Cinderblock’s face. He drove my arm up, driving his knuckles into my armpit, once, twice, three times. Pain poured through me in relentless waves. He locked me in a furious, sweating frenzy. Our legs tangled, faces inches apart, his breath blasting in my face. I headbutted him, his nose popping against my forehead, him stamping down hard on my toes. I locked my legs around his, sent us tumbling forward and tearing through a thin sheet of panelling with a great shredding sound and smashing onto a table, the flimsy object shattering under our tangled weight. I twisted away first, kicking to my feet, heart hammering, our chests heaving as we faced each other.
Never assume your enemy’s stupid, Alcatraz always told the fireteam. Observe them, get every advantage you can.
I feinted forward, the stormtech charging into my right arm as I raised it. He easily parried the blow. Only, I’d tricked him into staring at my stormtech. I chopped at his throat with my left hand, following up by clubbing him across the face. The stormtech now driving into my left arm, I instead thrust my right shoulder into his bulk, sending him smashing backwards into the faux-concrete, chunks of metallic foam spraying. I stuck my leg out to trip him and finish the job, but I’d overreached. Off-balance, he charged me, flipping me over his shoulder and slamming me to the floor so hard I expected to hear my spine snapping like a twig.
Head stabbing with pain, he wrapped his bulky body over mine, his weight pressing me down in a lock as his fists hammered into my sides. I thrashed for all I was worth, kicking up waves of bloody sand. Nothing. I was locked down. He rolled me onto my back, knees pinning my arms as he choked the life out of me. I gurgled, spraying his face with saliva as darkness faded in around the edges of my vision, my struggles becoming weaker and weaker. The stormtech twitching like crazy inside me, plunging into my arms to give me the strength to fight back. He was waiting for that, clamping down so hard around me I felt something inside me give a soft crunch. If it weren’t for the stormtech, I’d have already been killed. But my body couldn’t, wouldn’t, let me die.
My fumbling hand gripped a broken-off chair leg, nails peeking out at the end. I brought it clubbing down across his toes with everything I had. He howled and released me. I tore away, staggering to my feet. Body throbbing, skin dripping with sweat, mind on fire. I scooped the broken remains of the chair up as he ripped the wooden leg out of his foot and came charging. My body was striated with throbbing blue as I brought the heavy object smashing across his head like a hammer. It shattered, showering splinters across the arena with an ear-shattering crack. He was slammed sideways, head thunking off the wall, crashing onto the gritty sand. Unmoving.
I stepped away, my breath burning in my throat as blue strands swirled faster and faster around my ribcage, looping around my thighs. I hadn’t seen it this furious in years. I looked at Cinderblock’s mangled head, dripping blood and twisted at an odd angle. My muscles seized, my hands opening and closing, still ready to fight. High above me, customers exchanged winnings.
In an awful moment of clarity, I wondered what Kasia would think about this. Or Artyom. What would Kowalski say if she could see me now? I looked at my bloody hands and I hated them, hated the stain on my skin. But another part of me basked in being centre stage, in being the battle machine Harmony had made me.
I prodded my side tentatively. Had I broken a rib? Torn a muscle? The pain had dulled to an ache. The muscle already hardening, like a katana blade being folded over. Whatever it was, the stormtech was already repairing me as I fought. I stretched, feeling the power roll through muscles reforged by stormtech, smelling the toxic sweetness of my sweat.
My next opponent entered the arena. Tattooed face. Black hair, black eyes burning like a furnace. We circled each other, weighing each other up like panthers. My bare feet crunched on glass and wooden splinters, but I didn’t dare glance down. His lithe fists clenched and unclenched, knuckles festooned with swirling tattoos. His body was taut and lean. Made for quick, brutal strikes that would slowly chip away at me if I gave him the opportunity.
Someone above began spraying us with a firehose, turning the pit to gritty mud. Tattoo-Face was distracted, wiping water out of his eyes. I chopped a strike at his neck, stabbed a kick at his kneecap. I tried for a third blow, but gripped empty air. Lightning-fast, he went low and rammed his fist into my sternum before clubbing me in the side of my head. Blackness swarmed. I tried to feint, but he must have been watching the previous fight, seen the stormtech’s movements. He grabbed me by the scuff of my neck and drove his knee between my legs. The blinding pain dodged the guard of stormtech and I was drowning in agony so deep I thought he’d killed me. I choked on my own breath as I staggered, back scraping against the hard wall.
A glint. Someone had thrown down a slingshiv, buried hilt-deep in the bloody sand. Tattoo-Face was too close and too fast, scooping it up and slashing twice across my forearm, tearing open a flap of flesh the size of my thumb. A mist of blood sprayed three metres away to spatter on the wall. His arm blurring as he swiped at my forehead, nicking bone, the stormtech desperately trying to plug the pain. Blood sheeted into my eyes. The cut in my arm was slowly healing, stormtech welding flesh together again. Not fast enough.
We circled each other again through the wreckage. Our bodies heaving and bloodied. He routinely lunged forward with a vicious little strike, hacking and slicing me away piece by piece. I kept my arms up in an attacking stance. Sweat and blood dripped into my eyes, blinding me, but if I wiped it away that would be the opening he needed to bury the slingshiv in my throat. My opponent’s eyes dissected me. He spun the weapon, the bloody metal clicking and clacking. A shard of glass speared into the flesh of my foot and I tensed, my stride momentarily broken. Tattoo-Face lunged on rangy legs, performed a hacking slash across my elbow. Metal gouged into me, dangerously close to a vein, jarring off a bone. He slashed me across the cheek, then feinted and chopped downwards, trying to cut my hand off, grazing my fingers and hacking a table in half. Splinters sprayed in my face. I skidded backwards, putting distance between us as we resumed circling.
The stormtech spiralled through me, repairing damage, but it couldn’t hold back the pain that was throbbing harder and harder through my body. My savaged and sliced knuckles ached to the marrow. My heels scraped the sand. Sweat smeared my vision. Jeers poured down from above, trying to throw me. My heart pounded in my throat, limbs aching as I held them in striking positions. My body seemed to be on the verge of shutting down, jumpstarted at the last second by stormtech. The end was closing in. Tattoo-Face’s circles tightened. He was already timing the strike. The stormtech thrummed faster inside me in response, pooling into my right arm, prompting me to attack. He flipped the slingshiv around, the dripping blade pointing downwards. Our ragged breathing was heavy and echoing in the enclosed space. Our unblinking gazes held. He dared me to make a move first. A rusty nail bit into my heel. I stamped down on the rising pain, didn’t break my stride.
The stormtech could use my body. But it couldn’t choose my strategy. Let Tattoo-Face work with this. Unmoving, not tearing my gaze away, I let the stormtech flood through me again, building up as one, solid mass. My breath hooked in my throat. My body was shaking from my multitude of stinging wounds, sweat and blood dripping down my hamstrings. Tattoo-Face circled in, trying to gauge the stormtech’s reaction, where I’d strike. But I wasn’t readying my body in a singular fighting position. Wasn’t telling it how I wanted to enter combat. It gave away nothing.
This confused him. Between one blink and the next, he flickered his gaze away, skimming over my body.
It was long enough.
He lunged, fast. I was faster. The slingshiv grazed over my stomach, slashing into empty air. In one fluid motion I broke his wrist, tore the slingshiv away and used his own momentum to pin him against the panelling. Me and the stormtech were one unified being as I punched the slingshiv up through his eye and into his skull.
He was dead before he hit the ground, and I dropped kneeling to the sand with him. Screams and gasps were muted as they echoed above me. My whole universe, my entire sensory being, was my body. Sweat was beading on my arms, only now the sweat was bright blue, staining the grit covering me. There was a sucking, liquid roar in the centre of my chest like a black hole. Demanding more kills, asking to be fed.
And I’d feed it. Saliva dripped from my jaws as my muscles rippled and tightened. Heaving, sweating, I swayed to my feet. Dug my heels into the sand and waited for my next opponent.
A figure staggered forward into the arena, coming into the light.
The world deflated and I felt myself stepping backwards. No. No, no. It couldn’t be.
It was Grim.
25
On the Edge
Not Grim. Anyone but him. Anyone in the whole of Compass but my best friend
I tried to put distance between us. My mind knew I should have been looking at my friend. But my body, my primal instinct, said this was another enemy. A Harvester wearing camo-armour, hiding in the treetops, an armour-piercing sharpshooter rifle cradled in his hands. The House of Suns must have kidnapped him and brought him here. Their revenge was me tearing my own friend apart while people cheered me on.
The speakers crackled to life above us. ‘Bets in quickly, folks. How fast will our prize beast tear this little man limb from limb? He won’t be able to stop himself!’
He won’t be able to stop himself. Kasia had used those words about our father; we knew he would kill us all. I clenched my bloody fists together. Had I become him and never realised?
My back hit the wall as the chanting above swelled to a crescendo, getting my blood up. Grim staggered towards me. ‘Vak, you’re hurt.’
‘Grim,’ I choked out, waving him away. I didn’t recognise my own voice. ‘Don’t. Don’t come near me.’
‘Vak, I—’
‘Don’t!’ I shouted. ‘It’s not safe!’
Grim seemed to notice the bodies piled up around him for the first time. To realise where we were. He took a cautious step back. The sly playfulness drained away, leaving a cornered animal. My hands tightened on the railing. I’d been so stupid to lean into the euphoria and energy, to let the whirlpool drag me back down. But now it was up, I had no way of clamping it down. Blue sweat slithered down my ribs and oxygen burned in my lungs. I knew my reserves were draining fast, but my body told me it was a lie and I had to keep fighting. It’s how we won the Reaper war: we were very hard to kill, and we didn’t stop until we were dead.
Because we didn’t know when to stop killing.
My eyes locked on to the Harvest clan tattoos on Grim’s bare arms. The same pattern I’d seen so many times, on the Berserker killsquads who ambushed and attacked us. On the Harvesters who massacred civilians and laughed as they died. On dead Harvesters in mass graves. I felt my jaw locking, and was halfway to Grim before I realised I was moving. One step, two steps, four. He didn’t cower, didn’t run from me. I gave him a violent shove. ‘Get away from me!’ I croaked, tears blurring my vision.
But he didn’t. He just stood, back against the wall, watching me approach. His loyalty, our friendship, anchoring him in place. He was too good a friend to leave me. He thought too much of me to believe I would do it. It was like fighting against a wave of molasses, to stop the stormtech for the sake of my friend, this little scruffy guy who’d befriended a Reaper. But I couldn’t hurt him. I was better than that. He’d follow me to the edge of the universe, as I would for him, because we were best friends. I tore away from him without throwing a punch, screaming out the stormtech and sinking to my knees, panting like a battered dog.
‘One of you ain’t walking out of here alive,’ crackled the announcer. The stormtech tugged and strained against the insides of my flesh, as if trying to rip itself from my skin to attack Grim. It wouldn’t let me die. If it had to overpower me to kill him to survive, it would.
Me or him.
Then I heard it coming for us. The crowds screeching in protest as it ran through them. A metallic scrape, and then a shape plummeted over the banisters and thudded into the pit.
I couldn’t have called Kowalski without being shot. But I had been able to use my palmerlog to summon my armour.
I slid inside. Its powerful limbs, the whirring interior, clamped around my body and sealed tight, lending me strength and clarity, helping me push back the stormtech. Servomechanisms clicked. My HUD flickered on, all systems functional. I leaped into the air, hydraulics giving me that extra distance. The stormtech wanted me to keep fighting, to keep the blood pumping so I’d stay alive.
But it didn’t care who I fought.
I’d caught a of glimpse of Simmons from the area. Now I snagged a chain off the banister and flicked it as I fell, looping it around his neck. He was yanked forward, my weight choking him. He gurgled as I hit the floor, trying to pry the crushing chains away from his throat. My body clenched and my armpits strained as I pulled down harder, harder still on the chains, choking the life out of him.
‘You did this to yourself,’ I rasped as blue circled up my chest. He’d put me in the arena to kill my best friend. Now, he squawked and thrashed wildly as his face turned red. ‘Got nothing to say?’
He flipped backwards over the banister, smashing through a platform and hitting the floor with a dull crack, his neck broken and larynx crushed to a pulp.
I turned to Grim, peering at me through the strands of his wild hair. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ I croaked. He gave a nod as people began yelling, figuring out that the fight wasn’t what they’d paid to see.
‘Don’t let them escape!’ That sounded like Lasky. ‘Put that rabid Reaper down!’
My armour allowed me to spring upwards, running along the arena’s infrastructure, punching through the jutting beams that prevented arena combatants who had second thoughts from following up on them, and climbing over to freedom. Grim grabbed onto the chain, my body’s newfound strength allowing me to haul him upwards to safety with me. I drew my handcannon as we turned into chaos. People trying to claim their bets at the now-shuttered stations, others fighting over cards and stacks of Commoner winnings, people surging to escape. My trigger-finger itched. They’d been delighted to bet how fast I could break someone’s neck or have my own broken. To see me go crazier and crazier as the stormtech took over.
I could have mowed them all down like they were Harvest soldiers.
But I wouldn’t. That wasn’t me. It never would be. Instead, I fired three flat, echoing blasts into the ceiling that got the message out pretty clearly. They scattered. I made my way purposefully through the crowd towards the exit, taking Grim with me. I looked, but there was no one from the House of Suns to be seen.
There was a squad of armoured soldiers between us and the door. I’d aimed at the leader before I recognised them, a Harmony chainship landing outside, armed men and women spilling down the disembarkation ramp.
It was Kowalski.
I lowered the handcannon. ‘Right on time,’ I said.
All the smart folks from the House of Suns had slipped away. Well, not Simmons. But something told me he wouldn’t have been very forthcoming in Harmony’s interrogation room anyway.
We didn’t say much on the way back to my apartment. Grim told me they’d snatched him coming out of the Academy library. His answers were brief, his thin shoulders hunched over. He seemed to be looking away from me. Like he was afraid I’d hit him.
I’m not my father, I told myself. I’m not my father. I’m not that monster.
Autonomy. It’s a classic human issue that’s been repeated ad nauseum by stormtech: how much are you to blame for your actions when you have non-human biotech manipulating every element of your behaviour? I’d seen it during the war, convicted Reapers blaming stormtech for their war crimes, including the torture of Harvesters.
Denying all responsibility. Saying the drugs had morphed them into bloodthirsty, rabid dogs. It wasn’t until I’d been in the battlefields and mud pits and then the barracks afterwards that I fully understood how the stormtech ravages your thoughts, twists your body into something you’re scared to live in. I’d never known where my instincts and emotions ended, and where the borders of stormtech’s manipulation began.
I’d heard similar excuses before. Like when I was twelve and sprawled out on the floor, my body striped with belt lashes, warm piss trickling down my leg, my father standing over me. You provoked me. You brought this on yourself. It wasn’t me. It was never me.
I never imagined I’d one day be making these same excuses to a friend. Was the stormtech really turning men into monsters? Or was it just nurturing the evil rooted deep inside us all? Would the stormtech have killed Grim to survive, or would I?
When we got home, I got in the shower and set about cleaning out the fistfuls of sand caked under my armpits and thighs that had been grinding the whole walk home. The water turned muddy around my feet, layers of grit and grime and blood washing away. The stormtech was livid now. The bands thicker, the colour brighter, the movements faster. I traced a ripple of them down my bruised ribs with scarred fingers. It was hot to the touch. I felt it knocking and jarring against my bones, hungry for more.
What had I been opened up to?
I shut the shower off and rested my head on the fogged-up glass. Breathed in the steam. I had this under control. I had this under control. I hadn’t killed Grim. I hadn’t ploughed into the audience.
I so easily could have.
I heard footsteps as Kowalski arrived and guessed I’d better face the music.