by Duran Cross
Caufmann shakes his head, “Saifer? Why?”
“He knew more than anyone that something was wrong with our existence. He threw himself into the frontlines as if fuelling the rage would make him whole. Zillah followed. The two of them butchered thousands but their madness only grew. I didn’t think either of them would ever come back but sooner or later the fighting, the killing, the murder, has to stop. Like all things living, rage withers and dies.
“Saifer had nothing. Now he, himself, is nothing. He died without purpose and without value, in himself or anything. He represents the true tragedy of all of us.”
Rennin feels a light stab of anger in his throat. He feels affronted and takes incident with her words. To him, Saifer Veidan was the best he’d ever seen. He was strong, brave, and protected his troops whether human or android. He finds it difficult to swallow that Antares would dismiss him so easily. Though he can’t deny the truth in her words.
Caufmann can’t bring himself to cry. He would never cry and right now he envies Antares bitterly. He will never feel value as she does for anyone. The closest he’s come is a creature branded an abomination by most that is now dismembering contaminants far and wide across the city.
The doctor reaches into his pocket and pulls out the envelope containing the picture of the very much alive Forgal Lauros. Part of him doesn’t want to show her now that she’s chosen to die. He wishes he had found the time before she made her dash into an impossible fight, only to be cut down by friendly fire, of all things.
Maybe it would have given you hope.
“I can save your life if I get you to the lab. Your tomb will repair some of the damage and keep you alive well and truly long enough for me to get a proper surgery organised. But if I move you, it might kill you.”
“I’ve already told you, Nex, I want to… stay here. No more surgery. I don’t want to live as this thing anymore.”
Caufmann’s hand is trembling as he fumbles with the envelope and removes the creased picture of her husband. “I don’t even know if I should show you this. It could mean any number of things,” he says holding up the photo.
Her glazed, wet eyes, stare at it for a moment and it doesn’t seem to register but suddenly she holds her breath. Her eyes sharpen in an instant and focus intently. She looks to Caufmann, “He…”
“Yes,” he nods. “When I told you he was dead, I was absolutely sure he was. When I received this picture,” he says not glancing at Rennin. “I didn’t know…how to tell you. I didn’t know what it meant. I still don’t.”
“He’s still a slave.”
Caufmann blinks. “Perhaps. He could have been repurposed. Or it could be even worse.”
Antares spears the doctor with a piercing glare despite her condition. “He’s not a traitor. He doesn’t know how to be.”
She reaches for the picture and Caufmann passes it to her. She stares at it for a long moment even though the image is permanently written into her mind. Antares scans over it again and again, especially the face, trying to read his eyes. After being silent for a long while she drops the picture on the floor.
“He doesn’t know who he is,” she says wearily but her eyes remain focussed. “All right, Nexarien, take me to the lab. I’m going to burn Iyatoya base off the surface of the moon.”
Caufmann turns to Rennin. “Do you think Dead Star can still fly?”
Rennin nods. “There was nothing wrong with it, we just couldn’t risk flying after Desolator fired at us.”
Caufmann nods to himself. “We can’t bring it here or we’ll cause a mad riot to board it. Get a few people to help us take Antares to it. Leave Drej here, the fact a HolinMech is stationed here is helping morale enormously. Pick just two because they’ll be leaving Raddocks Horizon with you after we get Antares to the lab.”
“With me? You’re not coming?”
“No. I received an encrypted communication from Doctor Roths. The HolinMech Warrior squadron has been called and they’ll be sent here. She was to report to Iyatoya but she and Rethrin went to take command of the medical pavilion outside the city. They were afraid of the immune being used as test subjects. Rightly so,” his eyes turn distant. “I would have.”
“Why pick only two others? Many of us thought we were all leaving.”
“The smaller the team, the greater the chance of passing unnoticed. You also have all the tactical data and information that those outside need to know.”
◆◆◆
The two Rennin picked to leave with him were an obvious choice. Caufmann knew who’d he’d pick, and that’s why he suggested just two. Mia and Drake. He did so predictably. Caufmann still feels glad when he thinks of Rennin flying off on silent mode towards the borders of Raddocks Horizon. The gravity repulsor technology in the gunship could run so close to silent it’s almost inaudible. Though, the engineers haven’t worked out a way to make it very fast just yet. It’s good for patrols, but not tactical engagements. And unfortunately, silent running does not equate with invisibility to lidar scans.
A saved life. A definite saved life. Finally.
William Caufmann is walking around in the basement of the half destroyed Godyssey Laboratory. He’s activated the defence turrets around the complex and has kept his movements quiet. It is a massive risk returning here but Prototype doesn’t seem to be keeping an eye on it at the moment. Caufmann wonders if Prototype thinks he died when Desolator opened fire. Or perhaps since the city has fallen he’s no longer a threat to the progenitor-class. Or maybe it died after Del very nearly tore it to pieces.
First thing’s first.
Antares is entombed once more, though this time in Saifer Veidan’s pod since it’s never been used. Caufmann decides that his own tomb being empty doesn’t sit well with him. If another agent enters the lab and finds the CryoZaiyon Tomb it’ll stand out plain as day that there’s nothing in Nexarien Decora’s pillar.
He moves up the corridor to Room V, where the last three members of the CryoGen Team are kept. Timothy Fowl, Warwick Balkan and Jonathon Holin.
Caufmann needs a body for his pod. It doesn’t have to be an android, just something with organic life signs. John Holin is the man for the job, he surmises. The man that designed and built the first HolinMech systems. The man who sold the soul of CryoGen Industries to the venomous claws of Godyssey.
Caufmann initiates a crude rapid thaw that results in death eighty percent of the time. It doesn’t matter now if Van Gower picks up readings of a thawing stasis tube; with the city’s blackout it could be a malfunction for any number of reasons.
The block of ice is saturated in an oozing pink liquid that eats the ice away at an accelerated rate. Again the question crosses his mind: who stole the bodies of Nordoth and Straker? Who knew where they were and how did they get them out without anyone noticing?
A thaw that should usually take a week takes just over a day and all the while Caufmann stands there watching, patiently. He has read almost every document about the HolinMech program and the slaves it was to make. Is making, in fact.
Over the day of the thaw Caufmann has grown to hate him. This ‘man of science’ condoned and even patented the transmogrifying technology that turned human men and women into cybernetic thralls of incredible power. This man signed off on men and women being taken from their homes and their families to be experimented on, to have their very identity and soul taken from them. This man was the pioneer of the entire conversion program, the forebear of the Embryon Protocol through Candidacy and beyond.
Caufmann takes his lab coat and shirt off, baring his sea of scars. Surgical scars, blade wounds and bullet holes, all visible, all exposed. He wants Holin to see him when he wakes up. He isn’t sure if he’ll recognise him but he doesn’t care.
When the pink fluid has dissolved all the ice, the naked body of Doctor Jonathon Holin, author of the HolinMech Program, is left shivering on the floor. Caufmann remembers waking up as Nexarien Decora in a very similar fashion. Confused and weak.
&nb
sp; Holin isn’t reacting to the rapid thaw very well. He is showing most of the symptoms of hypothermia. He’s shivering and convulsing, almost fully aware now. As he reaches full consciousness, he rolls from the foetal position onto his back keeping his arms across his chest, squinting up at Caufmann who’s standing like a statue over him clutching a V6 Liston knife. It’s nearly a foot long with a razor edge on one side and jagged teeth up the back.
Holin’s eyes scan up Caufmann’s body, his old wounds, his imbedded gauntlet, and finally to his scarred eyes that glow eerily. Holin’s eyes focus, his breath stops for just a second, almost a gasp.
Recognition.
“Don’t,” is all that Holin manages to utter before a violent, powerful cut tears partially through his neck, jamming the knife into the floor.
The blade is stuck firm. Holin is coughing, trembling, trying to beg. Caufmann had intended to ask questions, though they are so far from his mind he can’t fathom anything apart from this very sudden, very brutal, aggression.
On any other occasion Caufmann would have cut with refined precision, taking the head clean off. He tries forcing the knife through but it still doesn’t move. He feels the knife scrape against Holin’s neck bone as he tries to wrench it. Caufmann slaps Holin’s reaching hand away from his face. With a grunt of exertion he grips a handful of Holin’s hair, dragging his head across the stuck knife. With a final effort and a spray of blood he rips the blade free of the ground, completing the decapitation.
Caufmann is seething far more than he thought possible. The very idea this disgusting butcher knew him means he probably saw him before he was turned into a CryoZaiyon. It meant he was probably one of the surgeons that cut out his humanity and imprisoned the last part of his being within a case, buried in his chest cavity.
As his anger subsides, the words of Antares run through his mind. It occurs to him that after all this time he does feel as strongly for someone as she.
It’s just not love.
◆◆◆
He drags the body to his tomb pillar and connects some tubes into the severed arteries and another down the remains of the oesophagus. He shuts the tomb and powers it up. The pillar fills with nano-nutrient water and the tubes come to life, circulating the remaining blood in the body, making infinitesimal life signs on the monitor. Without a head, at first glance the body could be Nexarien Decora and that is enough. He seals all the tombs back within their pillar shell casings, seeing Antares one last time, watching as she is fully encased, and once again safely hidden.
He leaves the CryoZaiyon Tomb and finds himself in Del’s birthing chamber further up the hall. Inside, the upright pod chamber Del was hatched from stands empty.
Next to it, in the other pod, is the form of his brother: Adrenin. His formation is at last complete.
Caufmann smiles at Del’s younger sibling, another clone of the Suvaco units. This one is so close to the original genome that he’d be indistinguishable at first glance. Caufmann presses a few buttons on the console.
The gestation tank drains of its nutrient water, allowing Caufmann to open the door, inspecting his creation for defects.
Adrenin wakes up a moment before sliding to the floor, unsteady on legs he’s never used before. His orange snake-like eyes look up at Caufmann. He attempts to step forwards, but his leg doesn’t seem to do as he wishes, so he slips onto the floor. Adrenin looks as baffled as he is able.
Caufmann walks over and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t rush yourself. How are you feeling?”
Adrenin coughs up some nutrient fluid from his lungs through his bared, sharp, teeth. “I… am not ready.”
Caufmann feels a pang of guilt. That is exactly what Del said. “Nobody is. The mission you were programmed for contains parameters that need to be reset.”
Adrenin looks up at Caufmann. “Status?”
“Breaking point. You were to help your brother unit in the field defending the city but Raddocks Horizon is lost. You have a new mission.”
“Command channel open,” Adrenin announces in a deep resonating voice.
“Del has…” he sighs, “malfunctioned, and needs to be…” he clears his throat, “taken out.”
Adrenin’s head tilts to one side. “I did all my combat training with him.”
“That is irrelevant.”
“We fought together and trained together.”
“It was all imprinted, it wasn’t a real experience. I assure you, the Del you’ll come across out there is not the one you know in your head.”
“I can’t kill my own brother.”
Caufmann is now disgusted with himself at how human he’s made his two finest creations. “Del has become a very grave threat.”
Adrenin looks at his hands, then to his birthing tank, then to Caufmann. “What are my additional orders?”
“You have your brother’s mission now, understand?”
Adrenin nods.
◆◆◆
Outside Raddocks Horizon in a survivors’ encampment, Outbound, Rennin has been in makeshift offices and portable, prefab rooms giving briefings on the conflict for almost two straight days.
Most of it has been like one long interrogation, but the data provided by Caufmann has gone a long way to smooth relations with what’s left of the local military presence. Dead Star is one of only three gunships to make it out of Raddocks Horizon. The Horizon Military have been crushed under the contaminant onslaught.
Rennin rubs the back of his neck for the hundredth time today.
This presentation is to the Head of the Defence Force, General Tristan Faraday. He is Rennin’s height, mid-fifties, and looks like he’s seen one battle too many. The only other person in the room is Doctor Jellan Roths, who stares at him as if her eyes possess Superman’s heat vision.
Rennin feels like he’s going around in one big circle. “So the general idea is to leave them stranded there ‘until further notice’?” he asks with his most polite sarcastic tone. “Even with all this information? The fortified zone in Whitechapel is secure, you can land and pull them out.”
“How many Suvaco units are there in total?” asks Faraday.
Rennin shrugs. “I don’t know, William didn’t say.”
“Armed with rockets and chain guns and all Godyssey weaponry?” asks Faraday, eyeing Doctor Roths.
“Stolen from the lab, yes,” she answers, meeting the general’s gaze.
“We have only three serviceable gunships and we can’t risk opening the underground train tunnel gates again in case of contaminants getting out and overrunning this position, you must understand that. And three gunships cannot evacuate civilians that number in the thousands.”
“Then call for aid, is it really so hard?” Rennin asks pinching the bridge of his nose hard enough to bruise it.
Faraday takes a breath, returning his regard to Rennin. “Given recent developments that you are as yet unaware of, we should be transiting people back into the fortified zone in Whitechapel.”
Rennin looks at him. “What?”
“There won’t be any help from outside here,” says Faraday slowly.
“Why?” he asks Faraday but the general looks to Roths again. Rennin follows his gaze to Roths. “Why won’t there be help coming?” he asks, finding himself smiling in frustrated disbelief, “Why won’t there be any help coming?”
“There is no one,” she answers plainly.
Rennin thinks for a moment but it only takes another second for the horrible truth to strike home to him. His face drops to a neutral expression and he doesn’t want to hear any more.
“No…” he breathes, taking a step back, then finding himself leaning against the wall for support.
“No one here knows yet. Faraday and myself were only informed the day you arrived here,” says Roths.
“How far has it spread?” Rennin finds himself asking without wanting to know. Asking is just a reflex.
“Isolated pockets so far in several major cities in this country, heaviest en
gagement was here. The hotter areas of the country seem to be less affected.”
Rennin remembers that the docks are all automated so crates of goods carrying the infection could have spread from here to hundreds of locations all over the world.
“A global pandemic,” the room spins a little.
Outside the conference room, Carla is waiting for him. When he emerges from the room she takes one look at his ashen face and takes his hand. Rennin is unresponsive, locked in his own thoughts. He paces forwards a few steps shaking his head, glancing at the horizon.
During his time trapped in the city he looked to the horizon as his goal, for safety. It was meant to be an escape. Reaching his goal has just crushed it. So recently that horizon was a hopeful goal, but now all it inspires is cold dread. In every direction there’s a horizon with another Raddocks Horizon happening at every one of them.
A strike to his face snaps him out of his daydreaming to a throbbing pain in his cheek. He comes back to reality to see Carla shaking her right hand and wincing in pain.
“What was that for?” he asks.
“We’re even now,” she says.
Seeing Carla again when he arrived three days ago was the happiest moment of his life, but now it feels tainted. No one is safe anywhere now. “Fifteen all, then.”
“What’s wrong?”
He looks into her eyes and his voice will not let him speak. He scans the perimeter of Raddocks Horizon. “I think the seriousness of all this just hit home,” he says, satisfied that he didn’t technically lie to her.
“It hasn’t ended here, has it?” she asks and his eyes meet hers briefly, long enough to her to read his mind. She reflexively grips his hand tighter. “Everywhere?”