He looked down at his naked torso.
There wasn’t even a scar.
“How long…” He rolled onto his back, breathing normally. The strange liquid he’d just coughed out rolled down the pillow, mixing with the hair on the back of his scalp.
“Longer than you’d like…” the raptor laughed. At least, the strange shrieks and shrill clicks sounded similar to a laugh.
“You’re a dinosaur.” Logan couldn’t think of what else to say. Why was there a dinosaur there? How was there a dinosaur there? Where was he?
“A velociraptor, yes,” the dinosaur said, adjusting the monocle on his scaly snout.
Logan tried to study his environment once again. The roof above him was metal. A spaceship?
What was the last thing he’d remembered?
The laser wound. It had completely severed his spine, leaving him unable to walk. He’d crawled his way to the base of the central processing unit, setting off the timer on his bomb. He’d used his plasma rifle on any Necrotron that got too close, counting down the seconds. Destroying the mainframe was the mission. Surviving was not.
There had been a flash of white light, every nerve in his body searing in white hot agony.
And then nothing.
…
…
…
And then a raptor wearing a monocle.
How the hell had he survived? They’d used the largest non-nuclear weapon in their arsenal. His asshole and elbow would have been blown miles part.
Had the bomb failed?
No. He’d felt the explosion tear through him. It had been only a millisecond, but he remembered the pain. Then the groggy peace, like he was asleep, comfortably warm. Then waking up.
Logan grabbed the side of the medical bed, clutching onto the metal rails. He needed to speak to command. Something had gone wrong. He needed to get out there and strike at the Necrotrons, at least while they were still scattered, confused.
“No, stay down!” The dinosaur pushed a clawed hand onto Logan’s muscular chest again.
Logan swiped away the claw, sitting upright.
Then leaned over the bed and vomited up everything left in his stomach.
He wiped his mouth, sitting upright, breathing hard.
“I am NOT cleaning that up!” The dinosaur folded his arms, the large amber eyes glaring at Logan.
“How…” Logan had a dozen questions to ask. But only one came to mind. “What are you wearing?!”
The velociraptor was wearing an old looking suit. Like something out of an old-time movie. A jacket, fancy shirt underneath. Was that a flower sticking out from one of the buttons?
The raptor slid off the monocle, putting it into the front pocket of his jacket as he stomped across the room. Avoiding the puddle of lumpy vomit, he picked up a glass of water, the claws clanking on the glass as he brought it over to Logan.
“Sip, take it easy,” the raptor insisted.
Logan pulled the straw out, swallowing half the cup in one mouthful before throwing the rest onto his face. He rubbed his hands over his face, cleaning up some of the strange bile that had matted with his hair.
“Charming… even the barbarian had more manners.”
“What the fuck is going on?!” Logan finally managed to wheeze out. “Why are you a dinosaur? Where am I? How am I not dead? Did the mainframe get taken down? What’s the latest report on the Necrotrons? Why are you wearing a monocle?”
“My left eye is not as robust as the right,” the dinosaur said, “and it helps me focus in on the details.”
Logan clutched the cool empty glass in his hand tight, staring at the dinosaur.
“What happened? Did my unit exit the building in time?”
“I thought you might ask.” The raptor picked up a data pad of some sort. It definitely wasn’t military issue. Logan didn’t recognize the design, but it looked old. A small crack in the screen, chips across the once smooth metal casing. “Casualties were minimal. The bomb only took out necky… necron… Necrotrons.”
“Did we take down the mainframe?” Logan was glad his soldiers had made it out okay. But he didn’t want any of their sacrifices to be in vain.
“Yes,” the dinosaur nodded, “every Necrotron in the ten systems has been dead. For nearly a hundred years.”
“One hundred?” Logan frowned, peering at the dinosaur dressed in the old-timey suit. “What are you talking about? I need to speak to command central.”
Logan threw the blanket off his legs, ready to swing his legs over the edge of the bed.
His tattoos were gone. The lady with the umbrella on his calf: gone. The spiderweb on the back of his knee: gone. The ‘Rexington Reckers’ symbol Lieutenant Huang had drawn up on his forearm: gone.
It was like he’d never gotten them.
“Wh…what the hell have you done to me?!”
He checked the back of his hands. No tattoos, no scars from plasma burns. His hands were even softer than before, less calloused. Like he’d been working a digiboard instead of a rifle his whole life.
Logan held his hand up to his left eye. Fifth combat drop, a piece of shrapnel had sliced across his face. It had just missed his eye, and the med team had taken a while to get to him. For the past seven years, he’d had a thick scar running from below his eye onto the forehead above. A perfect scar, making him easy to identify even in full marine gear. He could have gotten it healed off for a few credits, but he liked the distinguishing feature.
His skin was smoother than a plasma cartridge.
“This is my body, you sick bastard!” Logan swung his legs over the edge of the bed, standing up.
And falling flat on his face. He slammed hard against the metal, his arms instinctively swinging forward to take the brunt of the blow. He groaned, his leg only just missing the puddle of vomit next to him.
The dinosaur tutted.
“Are you committed to soiling every surface in my abode?”
Logan pushed himself onto his knees. Someone had put him in underwear for modesty’s sake. Apart from that, he was as naked as the day he was born.
His arms shaking, Logan breathed in deep. He felt weak, nauseous. Like he hadn’t been fed in a week.
“How am I not dead?” he finally asked. “I know I set off the bomb; I felt it.”
“What makes you think you’re not?” the raptor asked.
“…who are you?” Logan asked, unable to think of anything else to say. Logan wasn’t a particularly religious man, but he was pretty sure this wasn’t heaven. And it wasn’t hot enough for hell.
“Dr. Victor Cunningham. The Second.”
“The Second?” Logan’s knees were beginning to hurt, despite him only kneeling for a few moments.
“My father liked his name so much, he used it twice,” Victor said, his scaly green lips curling up into something resembling a smile.
“You’re a dinosaur.” Logan’s legs were beginning to shake, barely able to hold up his weight. He glanced around him as he felt his body swaying. He was definitely in some sort of medical bay, six beds lining the walls in total.
“Yes. I’m still a velociraptor,” Victor said with a nod. “Now, you must get back in bed; you need rest.”
“But what the hell is—”
“I’m your physician, not an encyclopedia. Now get back in bed.” Victor then hissed at him, his long green tail swaying slightly in frustration.
“You’re a doctor?” Logan clicked his tongue, rubbing his fingers together.
It didn’t feel like he was in a dream. And the pain in his knees would have surely woken him up by now.
Logan grabbed the edge of his bed, pushing himself back up. The muscles in his arms and shoulders burned, like he’d just finished a thousand pull-ups.
The figure lying in the bed next to his made him stop in his tracks.
“Why does that guy look like Hitler?”
It had been over five hundred years ago, but what that man had done to Europe was still taught in every cla
ssroom across every system. The poster boy for human cruelty, for stirring up hatred, for turning humans against one another.
Yet still, over five hundred years later, no one would dare shave their mustache to look like his.
Instead of answers, Victor pushed his clawed hand into Logan’s chest once more.
“Hey!”
Logan flailed back onto the bed, his head hitting the wet pillow once more. Victor pushed his neck up, flipping the pillow around, laying him back down on the dry side.
“What are you—”
“Rest!” Victor hissed at him, sliding his monocle back on as he pulled open one of Logan’s eyes, looking at the pupil. “You have a million questions, and I will still have a million answers when you wake up.”
If Logan had been at his usual peak physical standard, he probably would have noticed Victor reaching into one of his jacket pockets. Pulling out the hypo-syringe.
Instead, he only knew about the injection when he felt the short needle plunge into his thigh, the hiss as the hypo-syringe flooded his system with a cocktail of chemicals.
“Wait! Where’s Trent?! Did he…”
Everything went black as Logan flumped back onto the bed, dreamless sleep taking hold.
The last time Logan Rexington would have peace for a good long while.
Chapter 3
Dr. Victor Cunningham looked at the steaming puddle of vomit on the floor of his medical wing. The cleaning bots weren’t due for another few hours, and he couldn’t let it just sit on his laminated floor.
He sighed, his clawed feet tapping across the floor as he went to grab a bucket and a mop.
Hundreds of years in the future, and he was cleaning up sick with a bucket and mop. He hadn’t even had to do that during his medical training; that was what staff was for.
But Victor was alone in the medical wing, left to his own devices. So long as he kept the clones healthy and fighting fit, he was kept out of the arena.
So Victor tapped the control on the side of the bucket, a solution of cleaning chemicals spurting into the hot water he poured in from the tap.
They could of course buy cleaning bots just for the medical wing. Even nanospray that would help. But that would be an expense. Even though Lord Zemka owned more money than the king of England, he wouldn’t dare spend money unless he had to.
It had taken a while, but Victor could use his raptor claws as efficiently as he’d once used his human hands. Curling them around the wooden handle of the mop, he lifted it out of the steaming bucket of water.
He was a man of science, through and through. But the intricacies of computers still eluded the doctor on a daily basis. He knew they relied on detailed instructions, something called ‘coding’ to run. The machines that grew clones had been fed the wrong instructions, meaning there had been a ‘glitch’ of some sort. Instead of his soul and memories being put into the clone of his rightful body, they were instead put into the foul beast of a velociraptor.
The mind of the raptor inhabited his human body for all of three days before he was slaughtered in the arena.
Once again, Lord Zemka could clone Victor, give him a proper body.
But that would be an expense.
So Victor was instead left with his clawed hands, scaly green skin, and even a tail. He’d never be able to perform precise surgery like before, but at least he had machines that could do that for him.
Most of the medical procedures were automated. But they still needed someone with half a brain to administer, keep track, and provide a sparkling bedside manner.
Victor slammed the mop onto the laminated floor. He was pretty sure all he was doing was smushing the chunks of vomit around on the floor, but at least it was doing something.
Once he got the mess cleaned up, he’d apply muscle growth gel to the body. Get Logan up to fighting shape. He had a few days until Logan’s debut in the arena, but Victor liked to be prepared.
It was why he always had a Hitler to spare as well. He never knew when his employer might want to feed him to a T-Rex. Or a woolly mammoth. Or into the mouth of a volcano.
Finished with the vomit, Victor put the mop and bucket back into the cupboard, pulling out the muscle stimulants. Starting with the arms and legs, he stabbed in the needle, the programmed nanobots inside sending electrical charges to the muscles that needed to grow. The first of a dozen procedures, it would help build up the muscles in time.
“Ah, there he is!”
Victor already knew Lord Zemka wasn’t talking to him. A normal enough looking man, it was only once Victor got to know him that he realized how much of a psychopath he was. Jack the Ripper would have gotten along well with Victor’s new employer.
Wearing a jacket but no shirt, Lord Zemka looked over Logan Rexington, grinning from ear to ear. Blond hair like a Scandinavian noble, as well as piercing blue eyes. Lord Zemka’s smile never quite reached his lips, but he somehow showed all his teeth whenever he did.
A grin which quickly faded when he saw the left eye.
“Where’s the scar?!”
Victor was glad his reptilian face didn’t let him frown. “He’s a clone, not a copy. Scars and tattoos are not held within the DNA.”
“Can we get the scar on him for tonight?”
“He needs to heal more before we can traumatize his body, we need to… tonight?!” The first Logan Rexington match wasn’t supposed to be for another few days.
“Yes yes.” Lord Zemka waved his hand, like that somehow made it less of a problem. “Yateley went a little hard on his opponents during the matinee. They should be coming in any second now.”
Agent Glass, Lord Zemka’s right-hand man, dragged in the two soldiers. Victor had been horrified to learn there had been not one, but four world wars in between his passing and reincarnation.
These soldiers from World War II had fought for the Queen, yet the bastard Knight Yateley had severed off two legs and an arm between them. Crude bandages and tourniquets had been wrapped around the wounds, but they needed medical treatment fast.
“Get them on the beds now!” Victor snapped at Agent Glass. Even behind the sunglasses he always wore, Victor could tell he was glaring at him.
Agent Glass turned to look at Zemka, who nodded once.
Having received orders from his superior, Agent Glass laid the men down on the free beds. Victor scampered over, attaching the metal bracelets onto the severed limbs.
“These will have you back to fighting shape in no time,” he said. “Now let me grab you something for the pain.”
“Medical shipment won’t be for another couple of weeks,” Lord Zemka said, “and we didn’t order any surplus.”
“You don’t tell me how to run my medical wing,” Victor said, jamming the hypo-syringe into the stub of one of the soldiers’ wounds. “I don’t tell you how to murder people for sport.”
“Clones. Not people.”
Victor jammed a fresh hypo-syringe into the other soldier, the two men quickly falling unconscious as the bracelets began to slowly crawl up the stubs, the needles and tiny apparatus inside printing out the bones first, followed by the muscles. It was like watching a documentary where the tree growth was sped up, but with bone and gooey muscle instead of bark and leaves. Both fast and slow at the same time, it would be hours, maybe even a full day, until the limbs were fully fixed.
“And either you have Logan ready for tonight, or you can take a turn in the arena.”
Lord Zemka had made the threat a dozen times. It had taken Victor months to learn the ins and outs of the medical facility, and he’d refused to ever train a replacement.
Still, it didn’t mean Lord Zemka was above punishing others to make Victor get in line.
“Can’t you just kill another Hitler tonight?” Logan had only just finished gestating. His body wouldn’t be at peak efficiency for another day or two.
“Come on, it’s Logan Rexington we’re talking about!” Lord Zemka said with a smile (showing all his teeth yet again). “Bes
ides, if he dies, we’ll just grow another one, won’t we?”
Victor opened his mouth to protest once more when Lord Zemka turned and left the medical wing. Agent Glass quickly followed, his shoes smearing the blood from the soldiers across the floor.
Grabbing the bucket and mop once again, Victor glanced over at Logan Rexington.
Even with the medicines of the future, it would be a struggle to get him fighting fit for tonight. Victor had a lot of work ahead of him.
Thankfully his reptile body was cold, otherwise his blood would be boiling.
Chapter 4
As Yrsa’s chainsaw tore through the skull of the Nazi, she knew without a doubt she was in Hel. In Valhalla her opponents would bring more of a challenge. In Valhalla, in any arena, she would be the headline act.
Not whoever this Logan Rexington was.
But her fight with the beast of the week had been canceled, Yrsa bumped down into the penultimate act. Gladiators vs. Nazis.
Growing up, Yrsa had always been proud of her golden hair, her blue eyes. But when she heard a group of Celts had used this as an excuse to murder millions of people, it had made her blood boil.
The lands of Hel were strange. Time worked differently. Not only were there warriors from before Yrsa’s time, but after it as well. The beyond time.
People from the beyond time were strange. Many of the warriors had relied on strange metal crossbows, the bolts smaller than Yrsa’s fingers, but faster than the howling winds of the highest mountains. Some even harnessed the power of lightning, wielding the gifts of Thor in a crossbow. The lightning was sometimes purple, sometimes red. Just as deadly as the most furious storm.
But Yrsa never fought in the strange crossbow matches. For her it was always melee.
Chunks of skull flew in all directions as the chainsaw sliced through the top of the skull, cutting down to the right eye of the Nazi. The crowd around her cheered, thousands of them bellowing at the violent delight as Yrsa yanked the chainsaw out of the wound.
The Nazi crumbled at her feet, the crimson red blood pouring over the black uniform.
Clothes had gotten better in the beyond time. So had the weapons.
Arena of Doom (Clone Squad #1) Page 2