by Gareth Clegg
“We have to get it secured.”
“I’ve got two technicians doing the best they can.”
“Curtis, belay that last order,” she shouted as he was about to pull the young girl onto his shoulder. “Give her to Blake. I need you to coordinate efforts here. Secure the area. Take whatever you require and seal that gate.”
The man snapped a sharp nod and handed the girl to his colleague.
Lynch looked back to Nathaniel. “You said Gabriel was in ops?”
“She’s with Raphael, trying to find out what’s wrong. It looks like he intentionally shut himself down earlier and is now struggling with being reactivated.”
“Shit. It was bad enough when he was just paranoid. It’s risking the whole bloody network.”
“Where’s Simmons?” Nathaniel asked, his voice catching.
“He’s fine. We left him topside. He insisted we got the Empress to safety while he went to track Maddox.”
“Maddox?”
“Yes, it appears he led the Black Guard here. Simmons was insistent that he didn’t get away with it.”
“Oh,” was all Nathaniel managed. Maddox was the reason Simmons had become involved in the whole affair. He’d never let that drop until one of them was dead.
“Don’t go anywhere,” Maddox said sneering at Simmons’ broken form as he stood to face Annie. He was a beast of a man. Heavyset, muscular and though there was a growing bloodstain on his clothing above his left hip, it didn’t seem to slow him in the slightest.
Annie was an athlete, lithe and fast. Simmons had seen it in the way she moved at their first meeting. He still couldn’t get over how tall she was, standing two inches above Maddox.
“What are you doing here, Annie? Got a soft spot for old farts like Simmons, eh? I don’t think he’s in any state to keep you entertained, love.”
“No, me and him made a deal. I’m here to collect my pound of flesh on Gracie’s behalf.”
“Gracie?” he feigned ignorance tapping his finger against his temple. “Sure I’ve heard that name before somewhere.”
“Stop fucking about. Let’s get to breaking bones.”
“Oh, that’s it,” he said, face lighting up with mock surprise. “The bitch whose neck I snapped after she gave me this,” he pointed at a scar on his left cheek, “with that sparkly shit she called a diamond.”
Annie stared at him, eye’s smouldering, her lip lifted at the corner as she exhaled. “Enough.”
“No, there’s more. You should know how she squealed and begged before I offed her. Promised me anything I wanted, the filthy whore. I beat the crap out of her first though. She was screaming and weeping, tears, blood and snot everywhere. Her face was a right mess, not so pretty any more. But I didn’t realise she was your favourite plaything. If I’d known, I would have been more creative, gone to town on her with my knife.”
He was goading her and Simmons could sense the anger in her building, a volcano ready to erupt. Keep your head, girl, but it was too late. She exploded at Maddox like a wild beast, covering the last ten feet in a flash. Maddox turned his body to absorb the punches and kicks on his bicep and thigh. He weathered the flurry of blows waiting for an opportunity that inevitably presented itself. His upper torso rotated from the hips pulling his right arm back as he unleashed a powerful left.
The crack as his knuckles struck her chin echoed across the room, and Annie spun from the blow, collapsing to the dirty ground like a rag doll. Maddox let out a hoarse laugh. “Fucking women. Think they can fight. This isn’t a scratching competition, love.”
He turned towards the doorway. “Isaac, just get the fuck away from here, or do I need to give you a slap too?”
The old man leant on the doorframe, chuckled and crossed his arms.
“Didn’t you hear me? What are you waiting for, my boot up your bleeding arse?”
“No,” said Isaac, his voice calm. “I’m staying for the next round.” He nodded behind Maddox to where Annie was pushing herself to her feet. She spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva. A blood-beaded string hung from the corner of her mouth. “Not a bad shot, Maddox,” she said, rubbing her jaw, “for a girl.”
He whirled on her, eyes wide. “You should have stayed down.”
“What, you think this is over? I’m just getting warmed up. I’ve had worse than that while romping around the bed with Gracie. If you want to feel a real punch, come and bring your ugly mug over here.”
Pain flared as Simmons turned for a better view of the two fighters. Blood smeared Annie’s face from her swollen split lip, and her jaw was already darkening. This time she let Maddox throw the first shot and slipped it effortlessly. As it glided from her left forearm, her body swayed like a cobra, her right fist leaping to catch him a solid blow. His head snapped back, and he grunted.
He stepped away, and Annie grinned. “Look, you have a matching scar on that side now.”
Maddox reached up to touch his face. His hand returned dripping with blood from three gashes which tore across his cheek.
Annie caught his eye and winked. “You know what they say, ‘that which doesn’t kill you only makes you uglier’. And fuck me if you haven’t been near-death on way too many occasions.”
“You fucking bitch!”
Maddox came on like a raging bull, his fists flying at her. She ducked and weaved, dodging or blocking the storm of blows, but gave ground, allowing him to unleash his anger and frustration on the space between them.
Simmons shuffled and found an angle to see them as they approached the end of the aisle. The barrage was unrelenting. It seemed only a matter of time before Annie missed a block. She couldn’t withstand this constant assault forever, could she?
She stumbled as she moved backwards, her guard dropping on her right side, exposing her head as she backed into the wall. Maddox took the opening, firing a powerful straight left into her eye. A gut-wrenching crack of splintering bone, followed by a roar of pain burst from the large man.
Annie was a seasoned street-fighter, she’d played him with a move so beautifully orchestrated that he’d ploughed on thinking he could finish the fight in one blow. But she hadn’t stumbled. She’d exploited his instincts to go for an obvious opening, then swayed out of the way allowing the full force of his punch to strike the brickwork behind her.
He stood, cradling his ruined left hand, his face contorted with agony. The strange sound from him was somewhere between a whimper and the feral growl of an injured predator.
“Oh, that was close,” Annie said shuffling in a boxer’s stance. “You nearly got me that time, lucky I slipped, eh?”
He roared in defiance and charged her, ignoring the pain that must be raging through his shattered knuckles. They collided with a flurry of blows from Annie, glancing from his solid guard. He propelled her into a wall with a sickening crunch. They both cried out, but Maddox had her by the upper arms, limiting her strikes into his torso with no room to build any power.
He pulled his forehead back, ready to drive it into her. “No,” yelled Isaac. The rippling muscled neck snapped his head forward into Annie’s unprotected face. The crack of bone and cartilage made Simmons’ stomach lurch, and he watched in shocked silence as Maddox stood then stumbled, his features a bloody mess. Annie lashed out with a knee into the bloodstained area above his hip, and as he buckled, finished with a vicious left hook. A spray of blood-flecked spittle flew from him, and he slumped to the ground in a boneless heap.
Annie reached up, rubbing her head, hair matted in a dark mass of sweat and stained crimson. “Fuck, but he’s got a bony nose.”
She bent to retrieve a chain from around Maddox’s throat, a red stream dripping from the rings on her left hand. Holding the silver links before her, a single ring sparkled in the sunlight. “This was for you, Gracie,” she said, stamping down on the thick bull neck with a resounding crack.
Isaac was running from the door towards her. “Annie, I thought you was a goner,” he said between gasps for breath.
>
“Nah. It’s a prize-fighters trick, pull your chin down when someone tries to butt you, let their soft squishy bits hit your bony ones. My dad taught me that when I was a nipper.”
Isaac hugged her.
“Calm down, fella. Is that any way to be treating the new leader of the Elephant and Castle gang?”
“No, I suppose not,” he said, releasing her and stepping away. “But you’ll forgive an old man for hugging his favourite daughter now, won’t you?”
The place was in an uproar as Nathaniel and Lynch arrived. Technicians surrounded Gabriel and were all shouting at once, and nobody could hear a thing.
“Shut up!” roared Lynch. Nathaniel jumped from the unexpected noise from the usually soft-spoken woman. The room fell into silence. “Let Gabriel speak,” she continued.
“Thank you,” Gabriel said. “As I was trying to say. Neither myself nor Callam fully understands what has happened to Raphael, but all three security gates to the tunnels are locked open, and we can’t close them. The most pressing is the south-east gate where we’ve identified intruders on the tunnel sensors. We need people there to defend that area while we continue to work on getting the systems back online to seal the entrances. With Major Lynch’s return, I shall hand over defensive operations to her and her team. You will follow her instructions as if they came from me, understood?”
Gabriel waited as the group mumbled their agreement. She motioned for Lynch and Nathaniel to approach, and they retreated to an office for privacy. “Please give me some good news, major.”
“We rescued the Empress though she has been heavily sedated. She needs cleaning up and a medical check-up.”
“Great news. I’ll get onto that straight away. In return, as I mentioned to the crew, you need to take over defensive preparations and get the south-east tunnel defended. We received a garbled message from Peterson that shows he encountered trained military troops.”
“Yes, It’s a Black Guard assault unit. We saw them when we first arrived and had to move around them. As far as I am aware, they didn’t spot us.”
“Good to know who we are fighting against,” Gabriel said. “Nathaniel, help Callam. He’s struggling with Raphael. I’ve tried to talk to him, but Raph is babbling nonsense about being a danger and needing to be shut down. I need to understand what’s happening here and get it sorted out. If he goes offline, we lose main power, and all the other systems fail. I can’t allow that to happen.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Nathaniel said, standing to leave.
“Before either of you go. Thank you for all your efforts. I may not have another chance to say this and I wanted you to know how much it means that we’ve rescued the Empress from the Black Guard. Let’s hope we can all make it out of here in one piece.”
With that, they each left to carry out their appointed tasks. Nathaniel could hear Lynch barking orders to both her team and the assembled technicians as he ran up the corridor to see how Callam was getting on with Raphael.
Callam spun as he crashed through the operations centre door. “Nathaniel, thank God you’re here. I need your help with Raph. I’ve tried everything I can think of.”
Nathaniel stared at the dejected figure plugged into a mass of cables in the middle of the room. “What’s wrong with him?”
“I have no idea. It’s like he’s given up on life.”
Raphael lifted his head as he heard Nathaniel’s voice. “Kill me, shut me down. It doesn’t matter how, just do it now.”
The dented and ruined half-metallic face twisted and scowled at him, but beneath it all, Nathaniel could see the torment in him.
“We can’t,” he said. “Why would you want us to?”
“There’s something wrong with me. If you don’t stop me, I’ll destroy this whole place.”
“You’ll be fine. We’ll sort this out.”
Raphael didn’t answer. Instead, he tucked his chin into his neck and closed his eyes.
Nathaniel and Callam moved to the side of the room to discuss their findings. The systems Raphael oversaw were fluctuating but stable, much better than when he had shut down.
An alarm sounded, and they both jumped. The communications channel was flashing, Callam reached it first pressing the button to open a line. Lynch’s voice crackled over the airwaves. “We have contact with the Black Guard. Taking heavy fire.” The sound of weapons discharging was clear in the background. “We need all the manpower you can spare down here, or they will overrun us.”
Nathaniel turned to Callam. “Do we have a lens down there?”
“Yes, I’ll patch it through.”
He pushed a few buttons, and the screen nearest them blinked into life. Dim at first with a green haze, then resolving into a view of the platform where they had all met. The viewpoint was somewhere high looking down towards the open gates into the tunnel. Lynch’s team were in cover near the entrance, exchanging fire. Flashes of light and arcs of electricity flashed back and forth in a silent exchange.
The image fuzzed and wobbled, a strange glow around the outer edges on the screen.
“What’s that?” Nathaniel asked. “It looks like magnetic distortion.”
Callam thought for a second. “Perhaps it’s Fletcher’s rifle. It uses a magnetic field to propel the projectiles. Maybe she’s situated somewhere up near the lens?”
As the combat continued, the image distorted again, and an attacker dropped while trying to change cover.
“Good guess,” Nathaniel said.
The communicator crackled into life. Lynch’s voice rang out amongst the raging battle. “Taking too many casualties, we’re pulling back to ArcNet.”
A huge explosion burst from the speakers, and their eyes shot to the screen. Dust filled the shaft beyond the gate, rolling into the platform area obscuring the camera’s view.
“Did it collapse?” Callam asked.
Streaks of light cut into the cloud from above, and a towering shadowed figure rose from a crouch in the swirling eddies of fine particles. Shots pinged off it from the troopers further down the tunnel as a familiar form resolved within the light and thinning dust.
Callam squinted at the screen. “Is that another ArcAngel?”
The bulky armoured shape stood, rising to stand ten feet in height and whirled to face the Black Guard troops. Twin rotary cannons spun up to speed then disgorged a raging torrent of electrical firepower into the darkness. The sound from the communicator cut in and out, the noise of the automatic fire deafening.
“My God,” Nathaniel said as the figure turned towards the platform. It raised its half-ruined face, perfectly framed on the screen, tendrils of smoke rising from the slowing Gatling guns attached to both arms. “It’s Josiah.”
“Callam, you need to tell Gabriel about this,” Nathaniel shouted.
“What about Raph?”
“I’ll deal with Raphael. Gabriel is the only one who has a chance of standing against him.”
Callam jumped to his feet, heading for the exit. “Best of luck, Nathaniel,” he called over his shoulder as he left.
“You too, my friend,” he replied. “Now, what next?”
“Destroy me.” Raphael’s voice made him jump, and he turned seeing the ruined ArcAngel’s eyes following his every movement.
“I can’t.”
“Callam was incapable of doing it. You are strong enough to do what’s required. Can you not see the ruin I have already caused? It will only continue to worsen.”
“What is the problem?”
“I’m not sure, but I am corrupted. It has been eating away at me like the taint.”
“You aren’t affected by it,” Nathaniel said. “You’re mostly machine.”
“I didn’t say I had contracted the ailment. There is something hidden in my systems. Now I spread it as a disease, infecting all I touch, and I am connected to almost everything here. I have links to over ninety percent of ArcNet. That is why you must shut me down. It may already be too late for this facility, but you m
ight still save the crew.”
“Even if we followed your idea, how would that help? We have the Black Guard and now Josiah on our doorstep.”
“If I manage to wrestle control back for the security gates, I can close them and flood the tunnels. There is an escape route through the core for the staff. Everyone will need to retreat inside ArcNet, to safety, or they’ll get locked out once I deactivate.”
A flicker of movement caught Nathaniel’s eye, and he examined the view screen. From the high vantage point, the lens captured groups of rough-looking men and women descending on ropes from the hole Josiah had crashed through in his dramatic entrance. They wore bright colours proudly announcing their gang affiliations. Red Hands, Black Canary and Silver Hatchets stood shoulder-to-shoulder, a brotherhood of street thugs.
The defenders had withdrawn to safety behind their steel shutters. A lone figure walked from them towards the assembled crowd who jeered at Gabriel’s approach. The microphones near the lens were working better now. Perhaps Fletcher had moved, and her rifle was no longer interfering with the electronics.
“Josiah, isn’t it?” Gabriel asked as she approached. Her armour made her an imposing figure, but she looked like a child next to Josiah’s monstrous machine, she barely reached his chest.
“Yes,” he replied. “You must be Gabriel. What an amazing facility you have hidden away down here. No doubt filled with all manner of exciting toys.”
“Why are you here?”
“For all this,” he said, turning with arms outstretched. “I want it all, Gabriel. All of your heavenly technology, and this fine establishment too.”
“It’s not mine to give.”
“Come now. You are lord and ruler here. Let’s not delude ourselves about that.”
Gabriel shook her head. “No Josiah, I follow a higher power.”
Josiah’s laugh echoed from the walls, and the crowd followed his lead. “I fear you have been in storage too long. You are the creation of man, not some God.”
“You misunderstand me,” she replied. “I serve the Empress and take my orders from her alone. Only she could allow me to hand over property of the crown.”