by A W Wang
When I stand above the pair, the woman pulls off her helmet. Hair with red streaks cascade around her blood-painted face.
“Hello, Belle.”
Her unblinking, dark eyes stare as she cackles again. “The master has many plans for you, Brin.”
“You mean Syd.”
“He has progressed far beyond a mere name.” She coughs, and blood dribbles down her chin.
I eject the empty magazine from my weapon. As I reload, I tickle the knife extending from her abdomen with my boot.
A shriek of pain leaves her mouth, and then her eyes glaze as her mind wanders into fantasy. “So much fun. So much pleasure when he catches you.”
“Too bad you won’t be there.”
She puckers her bloody lips. “Give us a kiss.”
I fire into her chest.
After the last breath leaves her body, I head to the shore and step into the final retreat boat.
A disconcerting quiet hangs over the surrounding islands. That’s a terrible sign.
Looping deep into the channel to avoid the plants, I set course for the last stand position.
Fifty-Four
Before the boat touches dry land, I hop into the shallow water and drag it ashore. Something is occupying the enemy, and I don’t intend to waste time.
Odet waves from the bluff. The position sits across a wide channel from the landing beach of our home island and is the last point Syd needs before assaulting the flag.
There’s no immediate danger, but I sweep the area with my rifle as I trot to her.
She raises an eyebrow. “Bob?”
I lift my gashed visor. Spinning his death in the best way possible, I say, “He’s gone, but he took a bunch of them with him.”
“That’s good.”
The dark shapes of the other two team members run to us.
After motioning for everyone to stay low, I say to the grim-faced newcomers, “We didn’t have a chance to meet personally. I’m Brin.” Since we’ll be dying together, I should at least learn their names.
Already knowing whom the nine sigma is, the two nod and lift their visors.
The nearer one, round-faced with inset eyes and barrel-chested armor, softly shakes my hand. “Blue.”
It’s the same as the unhelpful ally in the scenario with the seven sigma. Weirdly, not knowing her name causes more guilt within me than being the instrument of her death.
The other man, prominent-nosed, more a professor than a soldier, extends his hand and says his name.
“Jock?”
“No, Jack.”
“Good to meet you,” I say, grabbing his hand, relieved not to be haunted by ghosts from the past.
“What’s the plan?” Jack asks.
Odet answers. “Kill as many as you can.”
In the face of death, their calmness is a positive, and despite the odds, I grin.
Blue says, “They haven’t tried the river, yet.”
“They won’t until they wipe out this position. They’ll be coming from overland,” I reply.
“Strategy doesn’t appear to be their strong suit.”
Shaking my head, I say, “It’s not.”
And they don’t need it.
A shriek pierces the night.
We dive on the ground, readying our weapons.
Through the broken moonlight, a distant form runs toward us with wild, stumbling strides.
Suspicious, I peek at the flanks. Empty. If anything, this smacks of a rather obvious decoy making it unlikely this actually is a decoy. “Don’t shoot,” I tell the others.
The helmetless figure rambles closer, now clearly gimping from a leg wound and curiously not carrying any weapons.
“It’s Cleo,” Odet says.
Her good leg slams into a leaf and she tumbles, spilling her disheveled hair over her face. After rolling back onto her feet, she staggers more than runs the final steps to us.
Before she can hurt herself, I jump up and catch her. When she’s firmly in my arms, I gently set her on the ground.
“Calm down,” I say, brushing hair from her eyes. “What happened?”
Tears streak her cheeks. Her breaths come in broken gasps. “Coming. Coming,” she says in a hoarse voice.
Odet marches over and squeezes Cleo’s chin between armored fingers. “Tell us what happened.”
Cleo looks past us, seeing a threat that isn’t there.
When Odet moves to slap the distraught girl, I grab her hand. “That’s enough.”
With a scowl, Odet steps backward as Cleo fights back more tears.
“Cleo, I can’t help unless I know what happened,” I say in a sympathetic tone. “Cleo? Take a deep breath, we don’t have a lot of time.”
Her eyes focus on me. “There isn’t any time!” she cries out. “You only have enough time to decide how you want to die.”
“That’s nonsense,” Odet says. “Brin’s over nine sigmas.”
“They have a 9.99,” Cleo retorts.
She met Syd.
Given that tidy fact, the panicked response is perfectly rational. “Start with him and go from there.”
Her eyes glaze as she relives the nightmare. “We were captured. They tortured the others. Even with all the experience threads, I never imagined anything close to what they were doing. They made me watch while they—”
I don’t need the details. “What happened when they finished?”
She shivers. “That 9.99.”
“Syd.”
“Yes, I think that’s his name. After they finished, he came to me. He said to tell you he’s coming for what was promised.”
“I’m not afraid of him.”
Her hands clutch my forearms. “You should be. He’s unstoppable. And he’ll win and when he does…” The final word trails into a sniffle.
“Keep going.”
“He told me what he’s going to do to you. To all of us. Worse than what happened to the others.” She stops, her eyes wildly roaming over the landscape.
Odet interjects, “What things?”
The poor girl’s body seems to shrink. “Terrible. I can’t repeat them.”
I try to imagine something ten times more gruesome than anything I can imagine.
What Syd would have done to me if Suri hadn’t interceded.
“Get yourself together,” I snap at the sniveling girl.
“That can’t happen to me,” Cleo says to nobody. Her hands quiver, shaking my arms. “This is your fault.”
I struggle to pull away, but her grip is too tight.
“Don’t you understand? He wants you, Brin. We’re going to die horrible deaths for his pleasure because of you!”
This time, when Odet steps up with a raised hand, I do nothing. She delivers a solid slap to Cleo’s cheek.
Cleo lets go of me and shockingly, grabs Odet’s pistol and scoots backward, swinging it wildly back and forth between us.
I raise my hand to forestall any bad reactions and keep my assault rifle aimed at the ground. “Cleo, think about what you’re doing. We aren’t your enemies.”
A twisted laugh pours from her lips. It can’t be the blue liquid, but Syd’s insanity has somehow infected her. With a crazed stare, she replies, “I’m your friend. I’ll be doing everyone a favor by killing you.”
“No, you won’t. We still have a chance.”
“You have no idea, Brin. None. He’s saving the worst things for you,” she says, pointing the gun directly at my chest.
I force myself to remain calm as she pulls back the hammer. Although only a 2.5 sigma, she has every black and red thread I have. At this distance, she can end my life with a simple pull of the trigger.
Odet points her rifle at Cleo. “Drop it.”
One of the men hollers, “Movement. They’re coming.”
Everything is a shit-show.
I make one final plea. “Cleo, let’s kill as many of them as possible. I’ll make sure you don’t fall into their hands. Let’s go out fighting.”
Cleo looks at me with pity. Then she points the gun at her temple and pulls the trigger.
The silencer quiets the shot, and the only sounds are the tiny piece of lead cracking through her skull and the soft sighing of her body slumping onto the hard sand.
Assault rifles chatter.
I slam my visor closed and dive into cover.
The battle is on.
Fifty-Five
Gunfire slings dirt over my helmet as I stare at Cleo’s prone form. Beyond volunteering for the Ten Sigma Program, she didn’t deserve this fate.
“Idle sympathy will get you killed,” my internal voice warns.
I push my attention to the raging firefight.
Lit by the orange bonfires and intermittent moonlight, an oversized team of sixteen advances across the rippled landscape. As the dim, shifting figures dart between cover, their bullets hiss past, spraying sand, destroying rocks, and exploding the aloe vera-like flora with loud pops.
A close impact blows apart a nearby plant. Waves of sharp debris rattle over my armor.
Flinching, I push myself further into the ground. These foes are superbly talented—at least fours—and far superior to my teammates.
However, despite being outnumbered and outmatched, we have to stop the composite personas from getting through us. And I can’t call upon my one-time dalliance with the taste of murder to help.
We are totally screwed.
Odet curses over the noise while Blue and Jack blaze away with their assault rifles.
“Save ammo,” I yell.
A rational commander would use the cover of the attack to advance along the river and take our flag. Instinctively, I check the water. There’s nothing but a thin mist curling over its surface.
Syd is sending just enough force to whittle away the rest of my less accomplished and less lucky peers without killing me.
He wants me alive.
I’ll oblige him by killing as many of his people as possible. “Odet,” I scream.
Hugging the ground, she turns her head.
The weight of fire is pushing us back. They’re coming in roughly a straight line, intending to shrink our perimeter against the bluff where we’ll be captured or drown in the channel. “Hold this position. No matter what.”
She quickly nods before returning to the fight.
Cutting past the attacking flank to the riverbank presents the best opportunity to increase our odds. I keep low and push to the right. At the edge of the shallow crest, I stop and peek past the side.
Sharp impacts smack around me.
I jerk back as sand rattles against my armor.
Three of them have gathered to prevent exactly what I’m trying to do.
I return fire with quick shots. The spider cracks spreading from the gash in my visor make a clear line of sight impossible, but I can’t remove it because I don’t need one of the sharp leaves blinding an eye.
Between aiming and snapping off rounds, I switch positions but am constantly checked since I’m stuck in the death cage of flying lead like everyone else.
Odet gets lucky with a center-mass hit, the limp form of the attacker flopping onto a plant, but it’s not even close to equalizing the disparity of numbers.
After a minute, the rate of fire slows to a trickle. Both sides are low on ammunition from the extended fighting, and when it runs out, our enemies will only need to march over and beat the snot out of us.
Since I started later, I have more. I toss a few magazines to Odet who passes the valuable commodities to Blue and Jack.
The breeze shifts and a feral keening scrapes into the shrouds of darkness.
As my stomach clenches into a knot, I look to Odet.
She hears it too. The shrill sounds grow louder, similar to a rebel yell, only a thousand times more frightening. I can’t believe they’re coming from human beings.
“What the hell is that?” Jack screams.
“Shut up and shoot,” Odet replies. Despite the bravado of her words, everyone is near the breaking point.
“Pull back to the next defensive crest,” I say. While halving our fighting area, the tactic will allow me to better control the others.
As they slither backward, I keep up a steady rate of protective fire.
An object floats from the night sky. Odet hollers, “Grenade.”
While the others duck, I follow its trail. It’s too big and floppy to be a grenade.
Blood spatters when it lands.
Surprised, I wipe dark droplets from my visor and grimace. The mushy shape is an internal organ, maybe a liver.
More gory things arc past the twinkling stars. A head impales itself on a nearby plant and splits open, pouring brains over the sharp leaves. A soft organ flops behind me. It’s a penis.
Jack screams, “They’re from our team. The prisoners.”
Or at least parts of them. While disgust taints my thoughts, I appreciate their mastery of psychological warfare. “Stay calm,” I shout to no one in particular.
Blue curses as more gore lands around him.
A bewildering instant passes before I recognize the next item that splats in front of my face. It’s most of a vagina. As my hands curl into a ball, I curse, wishing for a bath in the worst possible way.
More grisly pieces rain. Hands, feet, hearts, other unidentifiable organs make gruesome impacts around and on us. I can’t understand how they’ve managed to carry so many body parts and their weapons too.
A thrown penis hits Blue on the visor. As he wipes the mess away, his fear turns into fury. “Screw this!”
Before I can stop him, he rises and charges, his weapon flashing against the darkness. The audacity of his attack catches our tormentors by surprise, their reactions slow in switching from terrorizing us to actual combat.
Bullets smack around Blue with one blowing out a piece of his leg, but he keeps charging. Odet fires to support him, yelling incoherent words of encouragement. Past the enemy line, their gunfire shreds a dark silhouette in the process of throwing another organ.
The moment of confusion is an opportunity. I unclip my grenades and toss them at the three foes in front of me.
Panicked shouts come as the grenades explode, spraying metal along with dirt and plants over the area.
The flank is finally open.
As the fight rages, I rush to the right. Staying in cover but using precious seconds, I hug the ground, plowing over soft sand and pebbles as I hurry to the river bank. When my boots squish into damp ground, I peek over the embankment.
Blue screams in defiance from his knees as he bleeds from a half-dozen wounds and fires his pistol. Two prone forms lie near him.
Jack also is down to his pistol while Odet fires her rifle from next to him.
Twelve of the enemy remain, and my three teammates won’t last long.
A bullet explodes Blue’s head, and his body flops onto the ground.
I roll over the lip of the embankment. Using every wrinkle in the shallow terrain, I rush, rapidly closing the distance to my three opponents.
The disturbing wails of insanity increase in volume. As the horrible sounds hit an apex, they rise and charge at Odet and Jack.
Ignoring the chills running up my back, I straighten and fire at my closest enemy.
The cracked visor isn’t an issue at this range. The bullet plows through his helmet, an instant kill.
Before his body hits the ground, I advance, shooting at the other two women guarding the side. The first falls as a bullet explodes her face against the inside of her visor while the second twists, receiving only a crease in her shoulder armor. Her pistol whirls in my direction and fires.
The bullets fly high as I sink to a knee and shoot her in the throat.
With her neck blown out, her head tilts at an odd angle while she crumples between a couple of plants and disappears into a crevasse.
Two of the charging enemy notice me and t
urn. When they aim their weapons, I dive into a ditch and run into a nasty surprise, folds of human skin holding human organs. While I cringe, my logical mind informs me that Syd’s people used the freshly cut skin as carrying bags for the body parts of their victims.
I’m going to kill them all by myself.
Shaking from the discovery, I control my rage and popping up, shoot the first one through the visor.
There is a rat-tat-tat of impacts from a silenced pistol. They’ve run out of rifle ammunition.
I lunge to the side and fire into the second opponent, splashing huge red blossoms over his breastplate and then slam my last magazine into my rifle. Shooting quickly while dodging return fire, I manage to kill one more, although hitting anything else of value without hurting any of my teammates is impossible.
As my rifle clicks on empty, I dash into the melee and everything turns to chaos.
Odet has killed one and of the five remaining, one fights with Jack, two charge at her, and the other two, one thin, one stocky come at me.
I toss the rifle and pull out my knife, a more effective close weapon than a gun.
As the stocky woman aims her pistol, I duck and slice at her hand, keeping her between myself and her partner.
She curses something incomprehensible and takes a wild swing with her free hand.
I step up, and blocking the movement, thrust my knife into her elbow.
The gun falls and I twist and fling her into her partner who brushes her aside and shoots.
Rolling on the ground to dodge, I nab her pistol and kill both in rapid succession.
A click comes from behind.
I twirl, avoiding a bullet, then a kick slams into my side and I crash onto a plant, crushing its leaves with crinkly metallic pops and losing the pistol. My body stops tumbling near a bloody pile of organs. As my female attacker leaps, I grab the skin sack and toss it. The contents drench her in every vile kind of gore and blood.
Yanking out my pistol, I dive and fire into her crotch.
She bellows in madness as her legs give way.
A final shot silences her.
Odet grapples with a shadowy form while Jack is in big trouble.
I scramble to help him.
His bigger enemy knees him in the chest, crushing his breastplate and breaking ribs. As Jack crumples, his opponent grabs a plant leaf and stabs at his exposed throat.