Stormblood

by Jeremy Szal

  My harness groaned as I rolled my stooped back. People will find out how you’ve manipulated them. They’ll find out the truth.’

  ‘People see what they want to see, picking and ignoring what suits them. So far, they’ve witnessed stormtech-ridden people turn into savage killing machines and drug-addled madmen. Once they know what Harmony has failed to protect them from, they’ll turn on them.’ She sniffed, as if struck by an afterthought. ‘Just like everyone on New Vladi knew what your father was doing to you and your siblings.’ Artyom’s muscles clenched, but he refused to look at me. ‘And that it was your father who hit your mother, her head cracking on the tiles. But it was easier to call her death an accident. People dislike hearing facts that bring them out of their comfort zone. They’re content to ignore suffering, as long as it’s not their own. It’s rather unfortunate you had to learn that particular feature of our species so early on, isn’t it?’

  My body made an instinctive jerk forward, imagining tearing her throat out. The stormtech was a live wire inside me, and I was twisting and thrashing with its motions. ‘You don’t understand what you’re doing,’ I growled.

  ‘Oh,’ said Jae slowly, ‘we absolutely do.’

  Her steely, cold voice triggered something in me. Thinking back to all the military-grade gear and preparations and manifestos I’d skimmed over. ‘You’re trying to contact the Shenoi.’

  ‘You’ve got some brains kicking around in there, after all. We’ve spent years analysing every scrap of researched data, salvaged intel from flyby probes, event-monitoring systems, emissary pods, deepspace expeditions. Now we’re ready. We’re going to awaken those who left us this gift, Fukasawa. And we’re going to do it on Compass.’

  I felt this ocean of insanity start to drown me in its thrashing depths. ‘What you’re doing is insane. You’re going to commit genocide!’

  ‘Again with the death and destruction. We’re uplifting humanity to the next stage.’ She stood stiff, chin turned upwards, truly believing she could achieve all this.

  ‘You can’t control it!’ I roared. ‘No one can! It’s too powerful, it’s not meant to be used!’

  ‘Like I told you, power is nothing unless you use it, as Harmony demonstrated so eloquently when they destroyed our worlds. Now, we destroy theirs, one Reaper and one skinnie at a time.’

  ‘You’re a botched abortion of a human being,’ I ground out past my muzzle. This was the woman who’d stolen my brother, poured poisoned honey into his ears, indoctrinated him into this world of horror and insanity. ‘I’ve been dealing with your kind my whole life. You’re just an evil bully with muscle backing you up. You’re a coward.’

  The steely expression on Jae’s face didn’t budge. ‘If you were any less arrogant, you’d understand. But the only way you educate a rabid dog is by beating it. You wouldn’t appreciate what we’ve accomplished even if you’d seen it.’

  ‘I’ve seen plenty.’

  ‘Oh, no you haven’t. We’ve been hiding out in Compass for years and your band of war-mongering brutes haven’t had the faintest clue where we are. Would you like me to tell you?’

  ‘Actually, I’d rather you drank a bucket of bleach.’

  The insult I’d fired at Jae missed her by a mile. She glanced outside the viewport, as she if she could see it floating there alongside the asteroids. ‘We’re inside the Void Zones,’ she continued. ‘Entire sections untouched by damage, containing perfectly sustainable living space. And that’s where we’ll be triggering the virus and initiating contact with the Shenoi, right under their noses.’

  My stomach churned as I imagined it. The chaos, the mass hysteria as all Reapers and skinnies and anyone who’d even dabbled in stormtech were turned into bloodthirsty robots, reprogrammed by the sticky alien matter squirming inside their brains, altered by a shadowy cult unknown to the public. Without someone to blame, the public would turn on the easiest targets: the victims. How many of them would they execute in self-defence before Harmony got it under control? Compass would be torn apart.

  And then the Shenoi would come along to deal the killing blow.

  ‘You can’t do this,’ I rasped. I was slipping and Jae knew it.

  ‘Your people took everything from me and left me to die. Look at where I am now. There is nothing I cannot do. Nothing. And you’re going to understand that as you watch it all happen and realise you’ve failed everyone. You’ll remember that as the others break you.’ She shrugged. ‘Assuming you survive this.’

  My body was in overdrive, the stormtech zapping in my nervous system like a live wire. Running through her words, the tail end of her speech caught like a splinter in my brain. ‘Survive what?’

  For the first time, a knife of a smile crossed Jae’s face. ‘You’ve been so obsessed with our enhanced stormtech over these last few months. How about a chance to try it out?’

  42

  Blue Deaths

  The door hissed open behind me. The buckles rattling as I strained to glance over my shoulder. Two cultists wheeled a device towards me. It was interlocked with tangled layers of heavy black machinery, two bulbous objects latched to the sides like diseased growths. They heaved and wheezed next to me, as if they were breathing. A series of cables plugged them into the gleaming cylinders of two fresh stormtech canisters.

  I knew I’d never leave this station alive. I’d accepted my fate the moment Artyom handed me over. If I was going to go out, it’d be like a soldier. A Reaper. Wasn’t about to grovel or beg for mercy that’d never come. But hearing the machine groan and croak next to me, as if excited to be put to use, I felt the blood drain from my face and icy fear rise up to replace it.

  ‘This is some of our purest, most chemically potent product. Normally, it would take you months to withstand something with this big a kick.’ Behind me, the two men checked the taut cables holding me for slack, clicking the buckles home, tightening my harness straps until I could barely breathe. Jae pressed her hands together. ‘You hurt my men. Killed friends who’d helped build this empire. So you get no such privilege. On the off-chance you do survive, you’ll be an excellent addition to our collection of test subjects in the Void Zones. We could run all kinds of interesting experiments on you for years, maybe decades.’

  Tendrils launched out of the tube and snaked towards me like carbon-black fingers. The sharp ends glinting as they jammed into my arms and legs, sniffing out the veins. ‘No, no, no,’ I whispered as more growths burst towards me. The cables and restraining harness held me like stone. Sweat ran down into my eyes, down my chest. Pinpricks of pain erupted through my body, the machine’s wheezing growing faster, more ecstatic.

  Jae stepped back next to Artyom. His jaw was clenched tight, hands curled into fists.

  ‘You can’t,’ I choked out.

  ‘Oh, Fukasawa,’ Jae’s eyes were so deep and dark they threatened to drown me. ‘What did I tell you? There is nothing I can’t do.’

  The tendrils kept coming. Piercing my chest, my thighs, cramming up my nasal passages, jamming below my eye sockets until I was tethered to the whirling machine like a robot to its recharging station. This would corrode my brain, crumble my organs and shred my flesh from the inside as my body struggled to keep up with the relentless assault.

  They were going to Blue me out.

  Jae flipped the switch. The machine lurched forward into me and a chrome helmet with an open faceplate grew around my head. Ice-cold metal clamped to my cheeks, my forehead, securing me in place. ‘This is for every innocent Harvester you killed,’ she whispered. Her eyes were wet and shiny like fresh, dark paint. A flicker of the depths of pain behind those eyes, the things she’d had done to her, the things she’d done in order to survive. ‘Every bomb you dropped, every bullet you fired, every life you ruined. Harmony will pay for them all.’

  No one was coming to save me. Not Grim, not Kowalski. I glanced one last time at my brothe
r, his face cold and barren as a winter tundra. I struggled as the fluorescent blue liquid slowly, slowly gurgled out of the machine and coiled through the shivering tendrils and into me. I jolted against the restraints as the shockwave rolled through. My body already knew something was wrong. The stormtech was mutating, clawing inside me like a live creature. Every attempt I’d ever made to fight it, every mental exercise, every rehab technique, was being torn and shredded apart like wet paper with vicious, alien fingers.

  Agony like I’ve never known detonated in my skull.

  Blood was dripping from my ears. I could smell myself: the overwhelming sticky sweetness oozing out of my pores like a skinnie. I gagged as the stormtech inched up my lungs, clawing up my throat. Blue froth foamed from my mouth and nose. The assault burned through every cell, every crevice, fusing the stormtech to the depths of my body. It felt like freezing parasites had begun to take root inside my body, giving birth to slithering infestations, crawling under my skin. I thrashed and jerked against the restraints with bone-breaking force, my back arching, legs shuddering in a seizure. Eyes rolling to the back of my head, the world smearing in a black haze. Choked screams gurgling from my throat. A cascade of fire on every nerve ending. A hundred glass shards jamming into every joint. My bones wrapped in razorwire, shredding my body apart, tsunamis of pain crashing down.

  Artyom, blank-faced and stiff, watching me die from the other side of the universe.

  One last wave of agony smashed down over me, and I drowned in my own body.

  43

  Hold the Dark

  Most New Vladis believe in the afterlife. Not a heaven or a hell. Just some unnamed landscape where animals roam the endless wilderness and cloudy skies of never-ending light stretch over snowcapped mountains and seething blue oceans, watched over by guardian giants with sad, mournful eyes, their bodies constructed from rocks and animal bones.

  Never bought the whole idea. Not really. But there was always a sliver of belief buried in me somewhere. That very far away there existed a quiet, tranquil world tucked neatly away beyond the dimensions of life and death. The valleys trickling with rivers filled with fragments of lost dreams, broken memories and the nameless dead.

  Now I knew it was all a lie.

  There was nothing here. Nothing but an ocean of darkness and pain. I was just beneath the surface, hooks slowly trying to drag me under. My body was wrapped in a numbing void, all senses and stimuli locked out.

  I kicked back. Fought it. But I was barely keeping my head above this sinkhole. The stormtech hadn’t won its battle for my body, not yet. But it was close. Every time I fought it, it tried to claw me back, harder each time. It was like being swaddled in syrup. I clenched my teeth, tensing my muscles despite the blistering agony, attempting to shrug off the blue chains wrapping around me. Everything was alien and hollow inside, my body telling me something was terribly wrong. There was nowhere for it to go, so the stormtech kept drowning me.

  Something rumbled under me. The stink of oil and burning metal. A golden flash. Metal cladding. Engines churning. I was being taken somewhere by spacecraft.

  The stormtech ripped me back with a violent tug. Darkness clenching around me again. No, no, no. I wouldn’t let the monstrosity inside my body win. But there was too much churning and sloshing through me. It was like being devoured by an oil slick. Every time I shoved it away, something bigger came swarming in, wrapping wet and tight around my limbs. I was going to die here.

  Katherine, Grim, Juvens, Jasken, Saren. My friends, waiting to see me succeed, to find a way to live with the monster clawing inside my heart. Not giving up on me no matter what I did or how I treated them. I hung onto them as my lifeline. Imagining myself tearing free of the layers of thick, wet swaddling around me, crawling towards them. Fighting the stormtech with everything I had.

  But what if I did not fight it? Fight it, and it’ll fight you, Sokolav had told us Reapers. Draw closer to it, and it’ll draw closer to you. All this time I’d been battling it. Two opposing rips in a never-ending ocean current. Dividing my body. Never accepting the infestation rooted inside me. I’d spent almost a decade fighting Harvest, fighting my own body. I’d run away from my home and father rather than find an accommodation. I’d always picked the easy route. I’d always chosen to fight.

  My Reaper brothers and sisters torn apart on the battlefield. Their bodies pushing them towards the onslaught, even as they resisted it. Mindlessly shooting, hacking, tearing. My friends staring at me through the smoke and screams when it was all over. Heaving in their armour. Ash raining down on bloodied faces. Hands clenching with the need to fight and destroy. Hating themselves for it, but unable to stop.

  Alcatraz. Ratchet. Myra. Cable. Drummer. Me. Thousands of others.

  Locked in an endless war with ourselves. Breaking ourselves apart rather than come to terms with the alien matter squirming inside us.

  Except, the stormtech was me. Always would be.

  Maybe it was time to accept that.

  I saw my fellow Reapers. Lost to the chaos of the battlefields. Buried with their armour across sweeping grasslands and mountain valleys on long-forgotten planets. Coming home broken and lost. Their names whispered by comrades around campfires. Their dog tags worn around the necks of their brothers and sisters. Their sacrifices and bravery and brotherhood loyalty etched in the stars and in memory.

  Gone, but never forgotten.

  I felt them with me now. Part of me, as they’d always been.

  Once a Reaper, always a Reaper.

  I let myself go.

  I lowered all my defences and let the stormtech flow uninterrupted through the fabric of my body. A glow spread through me like a warm, wet mist. I relaxed, going limp, giving myself over to the stormtech completely. Gathering up all the broken, scattered pieces and merging them into one. Growing me gills to adapt to these waters. The throbbing of my heart boomed in my whole body, supported by an extra, powerful force. I inhaled. Air flooded my body, like the snow-fresh mountain winds of New Vladi, rushing and charging into my lungs.

  I’d done it.

  Another rumble up my spine. Jolting turbulence. I cracked an eye open and saw the blurry outlines of Hideko, Lasky and the Jackal gathered in the command cockpit of a small transport spacecraft. Crash webbing dangled above me like guts. I was strapped firmly into a plastic seat. I was still wrapped in my prisoner’s suit and harness, the muzzle still affixed to my face. Even when on the precipice of death, they weren’t taking chances with a Reaper.

  A foggy viewport to my right. I tried to look, but a wave of nausea slammed me back like a kick to the chest. Still adjusting. Couldn’t rush this. More slowly, I leaned forward. Starklands stretched beneath me. Every building, every object, every individual clear and visible as though projected on a high-def flexiscreen.

  Couldn’t celebrate just yet. Jae had said they were taking me back to the Void Zones, to be a test subject as they finalised their operation.

  I had to get out now.

  I reached deep into my body and allowed its warm, shivering sensations to cocoon around me like armour, lending me clarity and guidance. I stamped down on my instinct to struggle against my binding straps. Had to free my hands first. I levelled myself upwards, the straps biting hard into my shoulders. The spacecraft was one of those older models in dire need of repair and the metal wall cladding was peeling back in jagged strips. I stretched my bound hands, the chain tethering them to my chest going taut as nanowire, but I latched onto the edge. I pushed down, hard. The metal edge tearing into the meat of my wrists and drawing blood. One wrong move here and I’d slit them open. I reached for the stormtech’s wet, slithering pulse. Taking its focus and strength, keeping escape and stealth at the forefront of my mind. Sweat trickling into my eyes and smearing my vision, I pulled harder. Harder. The sharp edge scraped against the cuffs, driving a wedge between the chainlinks as my muscles burned. D
read grew in my gut. Had to glance up, see if the Suns had spotted me. Had to speed up, thrust downwards and break free, no matter how much it hurt.

  No. Couldn’t lose focus.

  The chainlink broke, my hands thrusting downwards, the jagged metalwork slicing a burning gash along my arm. I bit back a scream. With my hands free, I tore the jagged edge clean off the wall. Heart thumping in my chest, I positioned the edge over my neck restraint. Blood trickled from a wound in my neck as my hands slipped on the sweat-slick metal. Clamping down on my panic, gritting my teeth, I sawed a jagged line through the fabric one centimetre at a time, scraping past my jugular.

  The fabric snapped. Almost free.

  I planted my feet on the hard spacedecking and thrust my body forward. The thick, three-point safety straps biting into my torso, every muscle in my body straining, the stormtech working with me, wrapping around every fibre of my being.

  A silent chorus roared in my chest as something inside me ripped apart.

  The straps gave with a sudden, violent snap. Soaked in blood and sweat, I staggered to my feet.

  Free. I was finally free.

  I could have hacked the Suns’ throats open and wrestled control of the chainship. I felt the urge enveloping me. I didn’t fight it. I didn’t cave into it. Instead, I allowed the sensation to crash over me like a wave on a beach, accepting its existence but holding my urges in check until the feeling ebbed away and a secondary escape plan began to formulate in my brain.

  Past an emergency barricade for hull breaches was a glowing escape hatch and a series of mottled-white spacesuits with anti-grav protection webbed to the wall. A skyscraper was looming towards us, would be under us in half a minute. I’d throw myself out of the chainship and the spacesuit’s emergency override would steer me towards the roof. Wasn’t exactly my prime choice, but I wasn’t exactly overwhelmed with options right now.