A.I. Zombie

by L. A. Johnson

  Carl! Everybody on Celestica knew the super cool werewolf doorman that worked at the Frenzy. If anybody could help her, he could. She took off at a run. Thankfully, it wasn’t too far.

  With the emergency lights flashing, of course it was packed. She fought her way through the crowd outside the door toward the friendly doorman.

  He caught sight of her and motioned her forward with his hand. She continued to fight her way to the front, hearing a chorus of grumbles as she skipped everyone.

  She finally reached Carl, who looked down at her quizzically. "You do not look like you're trying to get in. Too serious. And in work clothes. Or are you into that?" He grinned at her and winked.

  She got really close to him, so she could try some semblance of a whisper. "Look, I've got to do something dangerous." She pointed above her to the flashing lights. "Top secret. And, um, I need some protection, if you know what I mean." He produced an entire packet of condoms from somewhere in his pocket. "Girl, I feel ya, here ya go."

  Lyra shook her head.

  "Um, not that kind of protection. The rowdies kind of protection. Unless you have a weapon on you right now that you'd let me borrow?"

  "I do not, milady, but I guarantee you that almost everybody in there does," he pointed toward the inside of the crowded bar. "Especially tonight. Make your way to the back left of the room, follow the drunken shouting, and ask for Merck."

  Lyra leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. "If we all survive this, I'm going to owe you one."

  "You and half this space station, baby."

  Lyra made her way inside and weaved through the drunken, loud revelers. The place had the for-once appropriate feel of an end of the world party. She made her way toward the area Carl spoke of. Then she started shouting over everybody to find Merck.

  Just when she began to get frustrated trying to get around in the boisterous crowd, there was a tap on her shoulder.

  "How bout the end of the world, baby? You need a little loving from the Merck?" A tall, lean, orc loomed over her, the horns on his head were gleaming in the dark. He wore jeans, a white t-shirt and a purple bandanna.

  "Are you Merck?"

  "Who wants to know?" He smirked, not realizing he had already let the cat out of the bag. She wondered how much he had been drinking.

  "Look, I don't have a lot of time to convince you or negotiate or anything, but I need a weapon. You see, I'm trying to save the Space Station. I promise I'll bring it back. I mean, minus a bunch of bullets probably. But, if we survive, I'll pay you back. I'm totally good for it." She raised her hand in a goofy scouts-honor signal.

  He stared at her without blinking, obviously trying to figure out what in the hell to say to the weirdest proposition ever. Maybe. Lyra certainly didn't know his life.

  "Why you?" he asked after a long pause.

  "That's a damn good question. Why always me? I mean-"

  "What I'm asking," he cut in, "is where are all the other people trying to save the station? I mean, here I am drinking the blue devil here waiting for security to fix everything. Because they usually do. Are you telling me that the fate of the space station is in the hands of a cute doctor soliciting illegal weapons from a nightclub?"

  He had a point. How do these people keep roping me into doing everything for them? Oh yeah, they won’t do it themselves. “Oh sure, when you put it like that it sounds bad,” she said. "Hey, look, are you saying if I was a large guy with a sword, you'd just hand me a gun and believe him?"

  "No, I totally believe you. Something about the panicked look in your eye." He got closer. "Oh yeah, I've seen that look before. You've seen action, haven't you?" He smiled. "Well, you've got more than you bargained for, tonight. That's for sure. I'll loan you a gun, a really good one. I have several on me right now."

  Where? she thought. Lyra searched his jeans with her eyes for weapons before realizing that it looked like she was ogling him and brought her eyes back up to his face. "Can I see it?"

  "Excuse me?" he said with a smirk.

  "Look," she got really close to his face, and judging by the looks on his companion's faces, they expected her to kiss him, "in your dreams, but that security you talked about, who's in charge of them?"

  "That idiot Crash."

  "Yeah, that's right. And who has the only controls to the system wide alarms?"

  "Crash?"

  "Yeah, and who do you think I'm going to check on right now?"

  Some of the blood drained from Merck's face, and his expression finally flickered with awareness and something else, maybe even genuine alarm.

  He swallowed. "Okay, I'm in." True to his word, he produced a gun from his back pocket and handed it to her. "Okay, doctor lady, let's do this."

  "I'm so sorry, I forgot to introduce myself," she said. "I'm Lyra. And you don't have to come. I only asked for the weapon."

  "I know. That's why I said you got more than you bargained for." He grinned and turned toward the exit, weaving through the crowd much faster and more effectively than she had coming in.

  21

  Merck and Lyra came to a stop outside Crash's office. The doorway was left wide open. Lyra wasn't sure whether that was a good sign or not, she had never checked on him in his office before. She held up a hand to hold Merck back for a second while she peeked inside.

  She didn't see anything. She frowned. What she expected was carnage. Blood on the walls, something like that. But it looked like nobody was home. "It looks okay," she told Merck and motioned him inside with her.

  The first thing she did was to start looking around the room for a button or something. "Hey, Merck, I've heard that there's a button in this room can turn off all of the emergency lights."

  "But isn't this an actual emergency?" he asked.

  "Yes, but as it turns out all these idiotic lights do, after the first few minutes, is keep us from being able to think. Especially in the hospital. Trust me, once the lights are off, we're still going to save Celestica."

  She spotted a hand on the floor. Crash was laying under his desk.

  Oh no. She ran to him and knelt down to take his pulse. "Merck, keep an eye out." The pulse was weak, but there. She rolled him over and started CPR.

  "Come on, Crash. You're too idiotic to die like this." She got Merck's attention and tossed her phone at him. "Call Nancy. Tell her I need a team here right away for Crash at his office. Unknown injuries, thready pulse, not breathing."

  Merck dialed Nancy. "Hello. Um, I'm Merck, you see and-"

  "Hurry!" Lyra said.

  "Um, Crash is hurt and not breathing and-"

  "Nancy!" she yelled it loud enough so that Nancy could hear. "Put us on speaker."

  Duh, why didn't I think of that in the first place?

  "Lyra?"

  "Nancy, Crash is injured. Looks like a choking injury. I need a team here now."

  There was silence on the other end for a moment. Then she heard Nancy's voice in a stilted tone. "Um, hello, this is Nancy at the Emergency Room. I'm afraid we are very busy at the moment and we are not going to be able to send a team at this time."

  "Nancy? What the-" Click.

  "Did she hang up on you?" Merck asked, raising an eyebrow.

  "It appears so." Lyra frowned. "Something must be wrong."

  Merck put Lyra's cell phone on the desk and made himself useful looking around for buttons while she continued helping Crash. "Um, Lyra? I think you should look at this."

  "I'm a little busy at the moment." Lyra pounded on Crash's chest and worried. What is going on at the waiting room? Should she go and help them? But she can't leave Crash like this. She bent down to give him a breath and then looked up at Merck. "Hey, Merck, want to learn how to do CPR?"

  "So you can go running around saving the space station and leave me kissing Crash? Hard pass. But look, on Crash's computer, there's a crazy figure on the screen. This must have been what he was looking at when he was attacked."

  "Well, what does it look like?" Lyra asked.

 
; "It looks like a guy in a mask and a hood."

  "That doesn't help very much."

  "Well, it's scary. If you could see it, I think you'd be a little more freaked out than you are. Hey, it's a video, hang on." He pushed some keys on the keyboard.

  A minute or two passed while he watched the video and she did CPR.

  "Oh, man," he said at last. "It looks like that guy killed Celestica's gatekeeper. Just left him there on the floor."

  Lyra swallowed. "That's terrible." Things were deteriorating fast now. Merck started rummaging around the room again.

  "Hey, look, I found some buttons."

  Lyra looked up and the emergency lights stopped flashing. "Hey, great job." At least something was going right. She breathed into Crash again and then looked up while she pounded on his chest to continue trying to convince Merck to stay and take care of him.

  Crash regained consciousness. He started coughing and looked up at her.

  "Crash!" she said.

  He just put his hand to his throat and rolled over. She put a hand on him to steady him. "Slow down there. What happened?"

  He coughed and sputtered some more.

  "Slow down, Crash." She looked up at Merck. "You think you could find him some water?"

  Merck jumped into action. A minute later he had a little paper cup. The two of them helped Crash to a sitting position with the wall for support.

  "Attacked," he sputtered.

  "Who attacked you, Crash?" She watched him take a sip of water.

  "Halloween costume guy." He took another sip of water.

  "Did he have a name?" Lyra asked.

  "He had a weird name. Said he was going to free us all. Then he started using the force or something. And then he started choking me."

  Lyra took a deep breath and looked at Merck for a moment. "Hey, Crash, he didn't by any chance say that his name was Scythe, did he?"

  "Oh yeah, that's the one," he gasped.

  "Did he say anything else, Crash?"

  Crash shook his head.

  Lyra's phone started playing a dance song. Merck and Crash both looked toward the noise sound like it was insane.

  Merck spoke first. "Is somebody's phone playing the hit song: If a booty shakes in the wilderness, can anybody hear it?"

  Lyra jumped up and grabbed the phone.

  Crash grinned weakly. "I love that song."

  Lyra answered it. "Hello? Nancy? He's there, isn't he? What does he look like? Oh no. Ok."

  Grayson must have grabbed the phone from Nancy, because his voice whispered to her next, "We need help, Lyra. I've got an armed to the teeth lawyer, what can you bring to the party?" Lyra thought. "Ok, Grayson. I'll see your lawyer and raise you a regulation-free pest control badass. See you soon." She hung up.

  Merck and Crash looked at her. "It's an emergency ring tone, ok? Between me and Nancy. Tell anybody and I'll kill you both, but right now we have bigger problems. Crash, the person who did this to you is at the emergency room waiting area and he's causing problems. And it gets worse."

  "How could it be worse?"

  "He has some kind of rat army."

  "Um, yeah. That is worse," Crash said, struggling to get to his feet.

  "Where do you think you're going?" Lyra asked him.

  "I'm not going to let you guys walk in there and fight him without me. I'm the only security-"

  "You're the only security this space station needs. I know, so you keep saying. But you're hardly in any shape to fight."

  "Maybe not, but I have no shortage of fun weapons. You guys look over there." He pointed outside the open door. Lyra peeked, though, and he punched in a code somewhere in a desk and it opened a hidden closet. The weapons inside were impressive.

  Merck's face lit up. "Now we're talking!"

  "But you can barely walk," Lyra protested as the guys loaded up on laser rifles.

  "That's okay," Crash said, "my trigger finger works fine. Hey, didn't you mention a rat killer?"

  "Oh yeah, Maura." Lyra smiled. Give me a second." She grabbed her phone.

  Lyra, Maura, Merck, and Crash were a very strange, heavily armed group who earned barely a sideways glance as they made their way toward the emergency waiting area. They slowed as they approached the door.

  Lyra figured that the only thing they had going for them now was the element of surprise. She held her breath and quietly turned the handle. The door opened without a sound. She continued to hold her breath.

  "Finally!" A booming voice met her ears with a metallic twang. In fact, it took Lyra a few seconds to realize that the guy in the Halloween mask in the middle of the emergency waiting area, the one flanked by a bunch of large rats and holding everybody at bay, was talking to her.

  "You, Lyra, get in here. It's about time."

  So much for sneaking up on him and saving everybody, Lyra thought.

  Scythe stood tall in the center of the room and seemed to be holding everybody back with a hand. What is he, using some kind of psychic power? That must have been how he overpowered Crash. The rats were pacing back and forth behind him, eyeing the crowd hungrily.

  "You were waiting for me?" Lyra asked him. She leveled the small pistol that Merck had given her at him. "I really don't know what to say." She aimed and pulled the trigger.

  "No, don't!" Grayson yelled.

  Scythe wasn't intimidated, in fact, he didn't even seem to blink. He continued to hold eye contact through the mask. There seemed to be some kind of force field in place. The laser blast ricocheted off the invisible wall without affecting him. Everybody else jumped out of the way.

  "You can't shoot him, Lyra. Why do you think we're all just standing here, because we're morons?" Grayson got up off of the floor and went back into position with his hands up.

  "Well," Lyra began as she intended to answer Grayson. She didn't get to finish, though, because Scythe started to laugh at them. Rude.

  "I told you," the guy twanged in his metallic accent, "I am Scythe and I came here to set you all free."

  Lyra looked around at everyone to see if they knew what the guy was talking about. "I'm sorry, but what in the black hole are you talking about? And what is that thing on your face?"

  The group around her let out a collective groan.

  "Well, Sorr-ee," Lyra said. "But I honestly don't know."

  "For eons," he said dramatically, stopping to take a deep breath and preparing to launch into a prepared monologue the others had probably already heard, "I have studied intelligence in the cosmos."

  "I'm sorry," Lyra said, "I didn't catch your name."

  He stopped, as if processing the statement. "You're asking me what my name is?"

  "Yes, who in stars name are you and what are you doing on my space station?"

  Everyone around Lyra nodded seriously.

  He threw his head back and laughed. "It's funny, I reap creatures with intelligence and they serve me. But you, Lyra, with this witty, insubordinate streak. Well, I've missed that and I haven't encountered it in quite some time. I cannot wait to absorb you into my consciousness."

  "No thanks. I asked what your name was," Lyra continued.

  "Scythe. You may call me Scythe," Scythe answered Lyra's question, but his face was contorted in rage at being questioned. Or at least it appeared so through the mask, which bunched at the edges.

  “What’s with the mask, anyway?” Lyra knew she was getting to him, at least a little bit. She had no idea if irritating him was going to hurt or help. Judging by the combination of dirty looks she was getting, nobody else did, either. "Ok. Go on."

  "I was going to," he said, narrowing his eyes. "And no matter what you currently think, Lyra, you will be bowing to me soon enough."

  Doubt it, Lyra thought as loudly as she could. Maybe if she could get him to drop his guard for a second, they could rush him. Oh no, she was thinking again. Was he able to read minds?

  What was this guy's end game here, anyway? To stand there and talk us to death or to take us on all at once? And i
f he could do that, then why did he need a force field and a rat army?

  "As I was saying," Scythe said, "I'm here to free you all. For eons I have been studying intelligence in the cosmos. Mostly small, unattached, undeveloped intelligence. But then I grew horribly bored and decided it was time to move onto more complex organisms. Except like you, Lyra, they always resisted. They always plotted against me-"

  "Wait a minute, Scythe. I have a question." She raised her hand as if she was in school. "Exactly why were you waiting specifically for me?" Lyra asked, cutting in.

  Scythe stopped again. He took a deep breath and closed his eyes for a moment. "Because I want the best, you see. The smartest. When I make my new slaves, I want among them the person in charge."

  "I'm in charge, here!" Grayson boomed.

  "Yeah, show's what you know," Lyra answered, pointing at Grayson, "he's in charge."

  "Your pretend pecking order is meaningless to me. I can read all of your minds. Nobody here cares about what he has to say."

  "Hey!" Grayson said.

  "They have been here waiting for you, Lyra, to come and save them. In fact, from a cursory reading now that you've arrived, I see that this is it, the entire cavalry. You see, what I want is you, as my second in command, forever."

  "Huh," thought Lyra, who had never heard that phrase, second in command, her whole life and yet had heard it twice already today. Both by weirdos. Figures. Nobody real was running around offering her promotions.

  "You, Lyra, can save me from the infinite boredom of running my kingdom," Scythe continued, "of constantly having to tell idiots what to do. And you don't stand a chance against me, so let's begin."

  “Wait,” Lyra said, although now she was just buying for time. “If you’re here for me, and you say you are. Then I deserve to see. I want to know what you look like. Under the stupid Halloween mask. Or are you scared?”

  Lyra swallowed and Scythe froze. She was afraid that she had taken it too far this time. The room went completely silent with everybody wondering what in stars name was going to happen next.