Scythe’s black-gloved hand went toward his face. He grasped and then removed the mask. Everybody in the room who could see him gasped.
Scythe had only sunken holes for eyes, although he still seemed aware of everything going on in the room. The skin on his face was a sickly, oily green that was barely hanging on. Lyra tried and failed to stifle a scream and her heart started racing. What exactly were they dealing with here? And how was this guy still alive?
"Ian," Lyra said, not even trying to hide the newfound fear in her voice, "what about that disrupter?"
"Sorry, Lyra. It has the same effect as the laser blast. He has some kind of psychic force field or something.
“Lyra,” Scythe said, “you got what you wanted, a peek behind the mask. And now, I’m afraid your time is up.”
Think, Lyra. There was no time to think, however, as Scythe pulled out a small, oval orb with a ticking clock on it. In large, laser, projected numbers bigger than the object itself, a countdown clock was running. It was down to thirty seconds.
"Has that thing been on this whole time?" Lyra asked. The bomb, if that's what it was, would not only kill everybody in the room, it would seriously damage the space station. How was it possible for this thing to keep getting worse?
Scythe closed his eyes and pointed at the door, the only exit in the room except for the ambulance bay exit which was currently blocked by him and his force-field.
Fifteen seconds.
"No, no, no," Lyra screamed, "get to the door, quick." Merck got there first and pounded on it. It was too late. Somehow, Scythe had sealed it from the inside.
Ten seconds.
"Wait," Lyra screamed, "it's me you want, open the door and let them go."
"No, I want all of them, plus you," Scythe answered. "I told you that I'm going to free you all."
"So you keep saying," Lyra said. "But a bomb seems a very weird, and frankly unfriendly way to do it. And if you get a second, could you please put the mask back on?"
"You see, like the rats here, I've been experimenting with reanimating brain matter. Infusing it with my own power. But first, in order to do that, I have to-"
"Kill us." Lyra finally understood what was going on here.
"That's right." Scythe smiled at her.
She had to fight to not retch. "And then you’ll turn us all into weird A.I. zombies?"
"If that's your preferred term, then sure."
"Like the patient you sent us, a mindless, soul-less homing beacon."
"Ah, Ben," Scythe said. "Great job, Ben, by the way," he shouted back toward the patient rooms.
This can't be happening, Lyra thought. I can't die and then be ugly and undead like this. She thought about the patient behind Scythe, and then the other patient rooms and then she remembered Arthur. Arthur! As far as she knew, he had never come out from working on the Cephalopod patient. Maybe he was still back there.
"Arthur!" Lyra yelled. "Arthur, help!"
The clock on the bomb ticked down, this time with a robotic auto-voice vocalizing the last five numbers in addition to the visual representation. "Four, three, two…"
Lyra felt a wave of sadness that these people had thought that maybe she could save them and yet she couldn't. She closed her eyes.
The metallic voice said "One, one, one, one…"
Lyra cracked an eye open. MACRO. He was able to sneak up behind Scythe because he was over at Gorb's desk. It looked like he was jamming the bomb's transmission somehow. Arthur came running around the corner behind Scythe screaming and brandishing a cutting saw.
The surprise in Scythe's face from the bomb not going off was priceless, and gross. And then he wheeled around to face Arthur.
This was it. This was their chance. Lyra felt her face contort into a snarl. "MACRO's blocking the bomb. Get him!" Lyra screamed, and then charged.
Arthur got to Scythe for a moment, but then was thrown against a wall on the opposite side of the room. That meant that Scythe's force-field was down. The other evidence of that was the rat army was loose now.
Vax came out swinging with his sword, doing his best to keep the rats at bay. Maura was also doing damage to the rats, taking them out with a blaster and a scream. Ian hit Scythe with the disrupter ray before he could put the force-field back up.
Crash and Merck created thunderous booms, aiming their weapons fire at the evil mad scientist in the center of the room. And every once in a while, Floyd got a shot in too.
"One, one, one…"
Lyra swerved away from Scythe so she wouldn't get caught in the crossfire and dove behind the desk where MACRO was. "Hey, MACRO. I could kiss you. Good job, little buddy. Keep up the good work, ok?"
"One, one, one…"
Lyra peeked up behind the desk and got an idea. She watched the orb bomb swaying perilously in the hands of the mad scientist. "Hey, MACRO? If I get that orb and bring it over here, do you think you could disable it?"
MACRO beeped yes.
"One, one, one…" the voice continued.
Taking a deep breath, Lyra screamed as she ran. "Hold your fire, people!" Scythe's face turned to her as she had purposely attracted the entire room's attention. It was clear that Scythe expected her to attack somehow, and so he was taken aback when Lyra instead swerved and grabbed the orb out of his hand and headed back to Gorb's desk.
"Ok!" she screamed. "You can get him again." She bent down and put the orb in front of the little robot. "Do your thing, MACRO. And thanks."
Vax was making headway against the rats, but despite being able to get the orb away, Scythe was winning the battle against everybody else. All of the weapons appeared to be useless against him, even without the force field.
She heard Arthur scream and looked up. The zombie patient from 22b was upright and attempting to fight him. The patient was doing it clumsily, and in a perverted looking way which made it all the more horrifying. She looked at the chaos and fighting going on in the room. Now what?
22
With that Lyra person long gone, Callista sat back, gun in hand, and bided her time. Soon her strength and power would return. Soon, she could go forth and figure out what exactly was going on.
Either this Lyra minion was telling the truth, and the station itself was in trouble, which would explain the alarm, or she was the threat herself, in which case she would be dead. Either way, it would be handled and soon. She tapped a finger absent mindedly on the distressed wooden desk.
All of her office furniture looked dated and covered in dust. Pity. It had all been recently renovated when she fell asleep, at least that was one of her last memories. When she closed her eyes, she tried to remember, to recall the former things, but as usual they came only in bits and pieces.
Then there was the alarm of course, the beeping going off inside of her head. She knew that wouldn't shut off, not until she'd neutralized the threat. She was able to tap her feet. This waking up was going faster than the last one. Either she was getting better at it, or the threat was more grave than she expected. Either way, as soon as she could physically get up, the beeping would transform into something real, a map inside her head leading her toward whatever threat needed to be neutralized. Such was her role, and the absence of said role had caused her to go to sleep. She hated going to sleep.
What if I simply don't save the space station? Will I stay awake then? Probably not. If the space station were to be destroyed, there's no telling what her new role, if at all, would be.
She looked down at her clothes. Jeans and a flowing black lace top. Try as she might, she could not remember this particular style. Strange. However, right now it was not a priority.
And so, she closed her eyes and grimaced, and pulled herself to her feet. She wobbled a little bit. So far, so good. That was the good news. The bad news was the beeping inside her head became more insistent.
She may not have been awake for very long, but she had been alive long enough to know that that meant the possible destruction of the space station was imminent.
>
Ten seconds later, she was sprinting down the hallway. Space station residents would whisper and hug the walls at her approach. She didn't even have to ask them to move. Something was different, very different than the last time she was awakened. Something that she couldn't put her finger on, but it would have to wait.
Scythe turned his attention now to MACRO, who was beeping furiously at the orb.
"One, one, one…"
The initial adrenaline shock of the countdown had worn off, but the danger was obviously still there. There was no way she was going to stand there and let that monster stop MACRO from diffusing the bomb. Lyra had only one play. She rushed Scythe with a primal scream. You want me? Well, here I come.
She only got within ten feet of Scythe when he made eye contact with her through the mask and reached out to her with a hand.
Something loud and overpowering hit her mind. That's what it felt like. Like somebody had taken a frying pan and hit her in the brain with it, bypassing the rest of her body.
Lyra dropped to her knees. She felt the sensation of her knees hitting the waiting area floor. Then everything went white.
Lyra had never lost consciousness before, but she expected everything to turn black, not white. After the initial blast of color or lack thereof, she regained some semblance of her vision. Only now it was different. The saturation was off or something. She looked around at everybody fighting, and the way she was processing everything, it seemed like a slow motion out of body experience. And that's when she looked down and saw her actual body, unconscious on the floor.
Everybody in the room looked different in the light of this new reality, but Scythe was completely transformed. Instead of weird rotting face and stiff movements, he was tall, muscular, and beautiful. She shook her head. In this reality, he looked like a superhero. Whatever was going on, she didn’t like it, and alarm bells were going off in a far corner of her brain. There just wasn’t anything she could do about it.
Scythe turned his attention and his face toward her while simultaneously pivoting and battling several opponents at the same time. None of this was making sense to her anymore. He gave her a smile and a nod. She heard his voice inside her head.
"Welcome, Lyra. You will be happy here."
The voice sent a tingling of happiness, peace, and well-being down to her core. She was overcome with the overwhelming happiness, but at the same time she could feel a tiny piece of herself screaming. The tiny piece of her that seemed to be objecting was getting farther and farther away.
Another glance showed that patient zero had also transformed. Instead of a balding, middle aged freak with liquid oozing from his eyes, he was young and strong and fierce. He waved at her too.
Lyra watched Arthur take several blows from the patient and curl into a ball. Grayson was doing his best, kicking a rat and throwing a ceramic mug at Scythe, who dodged it easily. Ian looked down at Lyra's physical body and screamed, reaching out to pick up his disrupter weapon again.
Something caught her eye, a crackle of light, something with possibly a tinge of blue. It streaked across the room and then dissolved. Whatever it was, it caused her to cringe and shrink back in fear. She had no idea why, but she noticed that Scythe also seemed afraid of it. Whatever was going on now, Lyra knew she was on the wrong team.
A little voice in the back of her mind was screaming a name over and over again.
MACRO. Oh yeah, the robot. Lyra hovered over toward the welcome desk and there he was. Lyra was astonished. Instead of the small, dented, obsolete robot with the blue fin on his head, she saw what looked like a super processor on wheels. MACRO was working so hard at his calculations that smoke was literally coming out of his ears as he stared at the small orb, which had transformed into a symbol for four sticks of dynamite.
A crackle rippled across Lyra's mind, coming out of nowhere. She felt herself being ripped backward and down. She felt herself hit the floor again, and yet somehow the sensation of physical feeling was strange and unreal. Then, everything really did go black.
23
Grayson watched Lyra rush Scythe, and then he watched her go down. "No!" Grayson yelled. "What are you doing to her?"
He watched Ian's disrupter swerve over toward Scythe, but with a wave of his hand, Scythe sent him flying. Ian's improvised weapon skittered across the floor.
Then Scythe sent Vax and Maura flying as well, freeing up several unskewered zombie rats. Arthur was still grappling with the slow, but surprisingly tenacious zombie patient. The intermittent sound of the operating saw just added to the horror noise cacophony in the room.
The only thing for certain was the fact that he was in charge. And whether they were all about to die or not, he was tired of being ignored.
"All right, everybody!" he screamed loud enough that every head in the room turned to him, including Scythe. And yes, it had fully occurred to him that the effort was going to get him killed, but at least he would go out in charge, sort of, with everybody in the room finally paying attention to him.
That's when behind him, the door went flying off the hinges. He turned to see a tall, spindly, cyber Morticia enter the room. Her face was jagged, her clothes were ancient, and her expression was grave.
"What the-"
"Interloper!" Cyborg Morticia screamed, and Grayson could swear that iron veins were visible in her gaunt neck. "You will leave now, or I will take you apart molecule by molecule."
Grayson's gaze swung over to Scythe. Scythe repositioned his hands to deal with the new threat and released Lyra. In fact, Grayson could swear that he saw fear ripple across Scythe's mask.
Lyra tried and failed to get to her feet. Grayson rushed over to her and caught her, backing up and pulling her out of the way.
"Everybody out!" Grayson pointed to the opening where the jammed door used to be and yelled loud enough for the space station residents to hear, but hopefully not loud enough to distract the two newly feuding freaks. He grabbed a weapon on the floor and backed up with Lyra to a wall where he could take care of her.
Crash looked up and made eye contact for a moment before retreating to the opposite wall supposedly for the purpose of covering the evacuation. He was also closest to MACRO and the orb. Barely audible above everything else was the continuing nearly final countdown. "One, one, one, one…"
It stopped. The bomb stopped its countdown. Grayson closed his eyes in case that meant it was going off. Then he opened them again. The little robot did it!
People were still streaming out of the door and soon it was just him, Crash, and Lyra left in the battle.
Lyra stirred and looked around. "Callista?"
"What's going on, Grayson?" Lyra asked, her words slurring. Her body was trembling. She tried to crawl further away, but she was having trouble coordinating her movements.
"Um," Grayson said. "Let's see, the little robot diffused the bomb and Vax took care of most of the rats. Then this one came flying in here out of nowhere," he pointed at Callista, "busting the door down to fight that one." He pointed at Scythe.
"That's Callista," Lyra said weakly. "The cyborg looking Morticia one, not the evil mad scientist one. I thought you had seen her before."
"No," Grayson answered. "I'd remember. You think you can move? I'd like to get out of here, bomb or no bomb."
Lyra couldn't look away though. Both of the figures were doing some weird sort of psychic battle with each other and using ancient and super-lame verbal jabs. Their faces were contorted in concentration and their hands were flailing around with imaginary blows.
But Lyra had been inside the mad scientist's head, or maybe it was the other way around. The whole thing was kind of fuzzy. Maybe there was something from her experience that could help.
She tried to think back at the entire experience. She was shaken at how positive it had been, how beautiful, and how even now, even knowing what she knew, she had an intense desire to go back.
She shuddered. A shame washed over her at not being able to control he
r emotions. Then she remembered, the one that she had feared on the inside, maybe it was the one thing that Scythe feared too. She took a very deep breath, fighting the idea that she was about to betray the closest, most intimate friend she had ever had. Why was this so hard? Focus, Lyra.
"Callista, hit him with the color blue!" She didn't even know if it would matter, but it was all she had. Callista, for her part, adjusted her stance and switched hands. The two of them then exchanged what looked and sounded like a series of lightning bolts.
Grayson started dragging Lyra out the door. Ian darted in and helped, and they made it around the corner. They could still hear the fireworks, but for now they were in the clear.
After a few minutes, there was a loud scream and then everything went silent. The sound of footsteps crunching through the rubble rang out. The space station residents cringed waiting to see who would emerge.
It was Callista, clothes all askew. She stomped toward them, stopping for a very brief moment to smooth the jagged hair on her head. "Lyra," she said and nodded, and then continued walking slowly down the hallway and out of sight. They all continued watching in the direction that she had disappeared. Then a few brave souls peeked inside the waiting area.
What they said they found inside was substantial cosmetic damage to the room, a happy and intact MACRO, and Crash and Merck happily dispatching the last of the mutant rats.
"Where did Scythe go?" Lyra asked Crash later.
"I have no idea," he had said, "he literally disappeared in front of my eyes, clothes and all."
Lyra wondered if Callista had made good on her promise to take the scientist apart at the molecular level and wondered if that was even possible.
As they all sat in the hallway outside of the demolished waiting room, she quizzed Crash over and over on his eyewitness account of what he had seen and heard while she was unconscious and after Grayson dragged her to safety.
A.I. Zombie Page 15