“Oh my God, Bobby!” Bernadette’s hands were on his shoulders as she tried to ease him back onto the road.
Bobby pushed her away. “No, we have to keep going.” He tried to get up again, but he was feeling weak and dizzy from the gut shot. He got his legs under him but then lost his balance and fell back down. There was blood everywhere, soaking his shirt and the front of his pants.
This time he didn’t resist as Bernadette cradled him in her arms, her cheek pressed against his. She sobbed softly. Bobby thought this was a shitty way to go out—gut shot in the middle of some country road before the asteroid even smashed the Earth apart.
“Bobby, look!” Some time had passed, and Bobby roused from his daze enough to see a hopeful look on Bernadette’s face. He turned his head and looked down the road. A vehicle was making its way toward them. It looked like some type of supply truck that Paragon Energy used at the nuclear plant where he used to work until he got sent home permanently the week prior.
“It’s a Paragon truck! I bet they’ll help us out,” she said. She got to her feet and began waving her hands over her head at the truck. “I’ll tell them you’re an employee—they have to stop.”
Bernadette ran a dozen yards down the road yelling and waving her hands. The Paragon truck slowed to a stop with a squeal of brakes. Bobby managed to prop himself up into a sitting position, the wound causing agony in his guts.
“Sir, you have to help us! My boyfriend works for Paragon, you see, and he got shot in the stomach by some assholes that wouldn’t give us a ride. Please, you need to help us!” Bernadette was slapping at the driver’s side door now.
The door slowly opened, and Bobby heard a man’s voice. “Bitch, get away from my truck. I don’t care what happened to you and your boyfriend. I can’t stop for hitchhikers—I’m under specific orders. I’m warning you.”
“Sir, please,” Bernadette cried and reached up toward the man, probably to grab at his arm pleadingly, but Bobby’s view was obscured by the open door. What he did see was the man raising a pistol and firing it. The bullet tore through Bernadette’s cheek, sending her flopping over backward and sliding down the embankment. Bobby’s breath caught in disbelief as he watched the scene play out. The slam of the truck’s door snapped him back to reality.
Bobby roared in fury and grief. He fumbled for the shotgun but was slammed to the ground as the truck’s bumper hit him in the chest. His legs and hip exploded in pain as his pelvis, internal organs, and upper legs were crushed beneath the tires. “Paragon Energy: A Proud Subsidiary of Thorne Industries” proclaimed a decal on the back of the truck. The vehicle rumbled off up the road and quickly disappeared in the distance.
Bobby lay there crying in pain and anguish for what seemed forever, dropping in and out of consciousness. Eventually, he was awakened by a thunderous boom and a flash in the sky. Shortly after, the earth began to shake, and Bobby remembered the ground ripping apart beneath him and falling into darkness. After that, he remembered only bits and pieces. At some point, he must have fallen into an underground river and been carried some distance, as he remembered fighting to keep his head above water.
When he eventually awakened, he lay in a puddle of water at the bottom of a deep crevasse in the earth. The pool was filled with brackish, most likely irradiated water, some of which he must have swallowed, for his throat burned as if he had chugged a whole bottle of cheap vodka laced with shards of glass. He vomited weakly all over himself and cried at the pain in his throat and guts. The bile that came out was a sickly yellowish-green color, and he thought it might have been glowing a bit, but that may have been a trick of the light. He passed out again.
Sometime later, Bobby watched as fireballs rained from the dusky sky. He remembered the scientists saying the debris thrown out by the meteor’s impact would flame up as it re-entered the atmosphere. The dark walls of the crevasse blocked out all but a small slice of sky, but what he could see he just watched in awe as he lay there.
The next time he awoke, he realized he was no longer in pain. He had apparently crawled a distance away, for he didn’t recognize his surroundings. He lay beside a shallow stream of water. His throat no longer hurt, but he had the sensation of extreme thirst. He gulped deeply from the water. It had a metallic taste but was refreshing.
His clothes had been torn to scraps, and his skin was caked with muck and blistered all over. When he scraped the scabby material off of his belly, he realized the gunshot wound was gone. He dabbed the water on his skin and scrubbed at the muck and grime. He was alarmed when his skin and hair began sloughing off. Revealed beneath was new skin, but it was a mottled gray color with what looked like filaments of glowing green running throughout his skin.
An ache developed in his bones, which he eventually realized was a result of the metabolic changes fueling his growth in size and strength. He lay there for a time, recovering his strength and drinking of the water, which seemed to increase his vigor.
After a time, he followed the water out of the caves until he found a large crater with the fallen star. Others eventually would come as well, and months later, they managed to haul the great space rock underground where they established their home. Bobby would become the leader of his new people, who came to call themselves the Bright Ones. He was The First of the Bright Ones: the largest and strongest of his people.
Chapter 13
“Are there any more CorpSec units in the area? Nod your head for yes, shake it for no.”
The new recruit’s eyes bulged as his windpipe was crushed in the man’s iron grip. He clawed at the alloy hand, trying to pry the grip open but to no avail. The man asking the questions shook the young CorpSec recruit roughly. Finally, the recruit shook his head, eyes wide in terror, his face starting to turn purple. The side of his face was splattered with his partner’s blood and brain tissue.
The questioner finally let the young recruit go. The young officer sagged back against the side of the patrol cruiser, gasping for breath and massaging his throat. The attacker watched him for a moment and then quickly lunged, grasped the recruit by the head, and twisted, snapping his neck. The recruit dropped spinelessly to the street. The man grabbed him under the armpits and hoisted him back into the patrol vehicle next to the corporal who was slumped over the controls with the majority of his head blown off.
The man adjusted his wide-brimmed hat, pulling it low to obscure his face from any automated facial recognition systems he hadn’t detected. He had already taken out a microdrone with a well-placed shot from his high-powered Tachibana sniper rifle; the same weapon had removed the majority of the corporal’s cranium.
During his convalescent period from his grievous wounds, the man had had facial reconstruction done and implants put in as a way to circumvent the ubiquitous facial recognition systems found in everything from police drones to security cameras to personalized advertisements. So far, the surgeries seemed to have foiled the systems, but being a wanted man, he felt it better to be safe than sorry.
Old habits died hard, but after the crime he had been framed for transpired, he found that he no longer really cared. He had heard the details on a newsfeed, but he still had to look at the scene with his own eyes. Not really my own eyes anymore though, he thought grimly. They probably figured I wouldn’t be stupid enough to return to this address, hence the half-assed security.
The man shouldered the rifle and walked down the street to the darkened house at the end of the cul-de-sac. He had once lived there in the suburbs with a family: a lovely wife and two beautiful children. It seemed a lifetime ago even though it was less than a month since he had last seen them.
His boots crunched on the gravel of the weed-choked yard as he approached the door. Bright yellow lasers proclaiming the area a crime scene shone across the door frame. The front door had been broken off its hinges. That was a steel-reinforced door, he thought. Took some heavy augs or power armor to break that thing down. Or a highly advanced skin. He had plenty of experience kicking in
doors and had had the door installed himself after finding one with the specs to meet his high security standards.
“Wanted for Triple Murder of Family,” the headlines had screamed above his mug shot taken from his the official photo off of his old corporate ID. “Fugitive Thorne Industries CorpSec Officer Has Psychotic Episode and Slays Family.” The article went on to explain more fabricated details of the murder and the sizable reward posted by CorpSec. He didn’t care about having a reward on his head, though. I know exactly who did this. CorpSec skinjobs most likely… could have even been my old unit.
He passed through the lasers, not caring that it would sound an alarm and alert a CorpSec unit to the breach. If a unit arrived and he was still at the home, it would give him a reason to kill more of them.
The man walked into the front foyer of his old house, his optical augmentations adjusting automatically to the darkness inside the home. He strode down the hallway and saw shards of broken vases on the tiled floor and a dried pool of blood on the living room carpet.
Clenching his fists in rage, the man went upstairs to the bedrooms. Muddy bootprints led down the hall, staining the tan carpet. His breath rattled unsteadily in his lungs as he fought to keep his composure.
In the first bedroom, a blood-spotted mattress greeted his eyes, where his younger son had apparently been murdered in his sleep. A toy car lay shattered on the floor—it had been crushed beneath a heavy booted foot, he imagined. He remembered the joy in the little boy’s eyes when he had presented the toy to him on his eighth birthday just a few months ago.
The man stumbled out of the room as rage and grief fought for the upper hand over his emotions. He backed into the wall and felt something bump his shoulder as it fell. He reflexively snatched the object out of the air.
Looking up at him was a family portrait. Marsha had her lovely smile on her face, arm around her husband. His two sons stood to either side of them, mugging for the camera.
He slumped against the wall and slid down to the floor, the photograph clutched in his suddenly unsteady hand. Why did you come back here? he asked himself, but he knew the answer. He had left a message for Marsha to take the kids and go to a safe location only they knew about. After he had disappeared, she probably would have returned to the house to gather supplies, not knowing what else to do. What else was she supposed to do? I was lying in a morphine stupor in the Sprawl for a week, getting rebuilt. Not knowing if I was dead or in prison or whatever, she would have been understandably confused and demanding answers. She walked right into their hands.
When his eyes had been burned out, his tear ducts had been destroyed in the process, and his artificial replacements had no use for tears. So Mason sat there in the silent home, alone with the broken remnants of happier times. His shoulders shook as sobs wracked his body and his eyes itched from tears that wouldn’t flow.
***
Mason opened his eyes, and the dream slowly faded. By the flickering of the neon lights around the edges of the blinds, he knew it was still before dawn. Skin City never truly slept. Mason stretched and sat up on the narrow bed, wide awake now. The time was 04:15 according to his HUD. It was pointless trying to return to sleep.
He thought about the space he had rented in the Sprawl and the prisoner inside. At least, he hoped the prisoner was still inside. He should be just about ready to cooperate by now. This should be an interesting conversation.
But first, he had to pay a visit to a hacker and pick up a package he was paying a small fortune for.
Chapter 14
Marcus walked along the dusty main street in the direction of the hastily patched wall. The fresh air, although brisk, felt good in his lungs and helped to clear his head. He had woken up at four o’clock in the morning and, not being able to fall back asleep, had put on his filthy clothes and quietly stepped outside for a walk. His headache had dulled, and he felt better since the haze of the morphine was wearing off. He was restless and anxious to get back to civilization. He scratched at the bandage around his head, wondering how bad the damage was.
He realized there was a Datalink signal in the town and pulled up his HUD to try to call Bethany. “UNABLE TO CONNECT” was the warning when he tried to access the network. He ran a quick diagnostic and discovered the transmitter had apparently been damaged by his head wound. Shit, I wonder if that means I’m going to need a new implant.
The group of captured slavers were slumped down in a pathetic huddle, chained to the light pole in front of the main building, which Marcus thought of as an inn. A massive Ares-class combat bot, motionless and silent, stood guard over the group of slavers. He recognized Surfer among the group, sitting with his head in his hands.
The slam of a door caught Marcus’s attention. Outside the wall, Reznik had climbed inside one of the slavers’ vehicles. It was a big, rugged box of a truck with some type of big machine gun mounted in the rear cargo area. Wonder why he’s up so early?
A sentry stood atop the old school bus and nodded in greeting to Marcus.
“Can I go outside? I want to talk to Reznik.”
“You’re free to go. The only ones that aren’t are them,” the sentry said with a scowl in the direction of the slavers. “You should be able to lift the latch and slip through that temporary section of wall.” He pointed out the section.
Marcus thanked him and slipped through the wall. As he approached the truck, he saw that Reznik had climbed through the cab and into the back. He was examining the gun mounted in the back.
“You’re up early,” Reznik called. “How’s the head?” The big machine gun clacked as Reznik pulled out the loading tray and looked inside.
Marcus was surprised Reznik had heard his approach. He hadn’t been trying to be stealthy but didn’t think he had made any noise either. “Feeling quite a bit better, especially now that the fresh air is helping to clear out my senses. The morphine, you know?”
“Yeah, that’s some rough stuff. It sure as hell is effective, but takes its toll. I guess they still haven’t found anything better yet, have they?”
“Well, there are a few drugs, but they have nasty side effects as well.”
Reznik fiddled with the machine gun a moment longer and then opened up an ammo box and loaded a belt of bullets into the feed tray.
“Are you leaving?”
“Going on a scouting mission. Time is running short, and I need to get as much intel as possible about these monsters or mutants or whatever they are.”
“I heard you talking last night. I can tell you what I know about the mutants if it will be any help.”
“What do you know that would be helpful to us?” The Asian woman, Rin, spoke from right behind him, and Marcus almost jumped. He hadn’t heard her approach. She tossed her pack into the cab and regarded him with her strange turquoise eyes.
Reznik’s attention was on Marcus, too. “You know about these creatures, Marcus?” He hopped down from the back of the truck and looked at him expectantly.
“I do have some knowledge of them. I just have a favor to ask in return. Will you drop me off at an outpost near here? It isn’t too far away—just twenty-three miles from this town.”
“Our time is a bit short. I’d be willing to help you out, but can it wait until after we come back from trying to rescue the captured women?”
“I suppose I could wait, but it’s almost on your way to the exclusion zone,” Marcus said.
“What are the coordinates?” Rin asked. He thought she sounded interested, but he couldn’t be sure with her expressionless face.
He knew it would be frowned upon if he gave out the location of Outpost Echo to these wastelanders, but he didn’t really care anymore. Marcus wanted to be done with this misadventure and get back to his boring but safe life working in his laboratory. He was about to send them both the coordinates but remembered his Datalink was damaged. Instead he read off the coordinates from his HUD.
“Uh… what do I do with this, exactly?” Reznik asked, looking confused.
Marcus was as confused as Reznik looked for a second. “Enter the coordinates, and they should populate on your HUD map,” Rin answered for him.
“Oh, I see… nice,” Reznik replied, his eyes losing focus as he accessed his HUD.
What a strange pair, Marcus thought.
“You’re right—that is pretty much on the way,” Reznik said after a moment.
“Interesting,” was all Rin said in reply. “How do you have knowledge of these creatures, Marcus?”
“I’m a researcher in Thorne Industries’ Bio-tech Division.”
“The infamous Section 7, is it?” Rin was regarding him with an unnerving intensity.
“The one and only. To make a long story short, I was on a mission with my crew to capture a mutated mammal and bring it back alive for testing. That didn’t quite work out too well, and it got loose in the transport ship, causing it to crash in the wasteland. Liu and I got picked up by those slavers, and that’s how I ended up here. We captured a mutated canine that had grown to a massive size. It was extremely strong and resistant to both electro-shock rounds and the tranquilizers we gave it. We shot it up with enough to drop an elephant for forty-eight hours, but that thing was up and moving again in just under two hours.”
“Is that what was in the syringe Liu stabbed that slaver with?” Reznik asked.
“Yeah, couldn’t have picked a bigger asshole to give it to, either.” Marcus smiled sadly at the thought of Liu’s final heroic action. That strong of a dose would have been lethal to a human. I hope that fucker suffered. I bet that three-inch needle to the testicles wasn’t very pleasant.
“So these creatures must have been human at one time? Do you know what causes the mutations?”
Extensis Vitae: The Shattered Land Page 11