by RD Hale
Emmi stamps on his toe and tilts her head, giving a couple of inches of visor to aim at. A surge of electricity travels from my cerebellum through my spinal column, shoulder, arm and index finger which caresses the trigger. The slug spins out of the barrel in a trail of smoke as the gun recoils into my line of sight.
I straighten my arm to squeeze the trigger again but a hole has appeared in the officer's visor and his grip on my sister's neck eases as I approach. Emmi flings his arm and my heel connects with his chin guard, causing his body to skid towards a graffiti mural. Shoving the gun into my pocket, I rip his helmet off to unveil a bloody entry wound in his brow and he is breathing but his eyes are aimless.
'LOOK AT ME! She's just a little girl,' I roar, spraining my knuckle with a nose-crunching punch but he fails to respond.
'Arturo, they've got Mila in the van,' Emmi shrieks.
'MILA! She's here?'
Rushing to the doors I draw the handgun which offers one chance to save my acrimonious soulmate and the terror of failure risks destabilising my aim. An armoured transport reverses onto the road and I fire at the windscreen with the intention of taking out the driver, but bullets ricochet off the impervious glass.
The vehicle spins ninety degrees and I switch my aim to stop these evil cunts in their tracks but my shooting arm cannot readjust fast enough as a side window lowers. Flames leap out of an enemy's barrel; the roar of hell bringing bullets shattering my ribcage and tearing my lungs to shreds as I stagger, dropping my gun.
'Arturroo!'
Slumped against the wall, I can only splutter as my mouth fills with blood and I drown in bodily fluids; every attempted breath bringing devastating pain. I know this is the end but I have only one concern as eyesight fades into greyness and the van skids away. 'Mila......'
My head flops as a sobbing figure leans over minced meat and greyness darkens to overpowering blackness. I am departing this bitter-sweet life with the lingering torment of failure as my final thought. To live and die in abject poverty after the glimpse of what could have been seems like the cruellest joke. We could have been so happy.
My body is closing down organ by organ as agony and emotion dissipate into evanescence. A singularity of senseless, weightless, timeless, nothing__________________________
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Chapter Sixteen
Only Fear of Death
What??????? Who?????? Where?????? Light...... Chiming...... I...... Me...... I exist......
Faint chimes come from the source of light. Louder and louder. I am waking up. Not from a sleep. But from myself. Once again filled with feeling, I sense warmth. I am standing. On feet. Light intensifies into scintillating brilliance. I raise these fiery things. Hands. Arms. Before eyes. I am ablaze.
A flame of increasing cognisance, of pure energy vivifying the spacetime continuum, privy to the full spectrum of zoetic experience from the agony of birth to the beauty of death with a connection to every organism in the entire universe. Experiencing every ounce of joy, pain and every sensation in between as extant knowledge seeps into consciousness, providing answers to the unanswerable.
Our passions, they stem from the fear of pain. Love is the determination to fight perceived negativity. Pacifism is equivalent to indifference. Good and evil are interchangeable. War is inevitable.
With nothing around or beneath apart from billowing light, I walk towards a shifting hollow of darkness in the endless inferno and a shadowy figure speaks:
'You have a choice. You can go back or you can fade away. If you stay you'll be free from the suffering you have faced but the world will suffer. The flap of a butterfly's wings can alter the fate of an entire world. Or the actions of a sixteen year old boy. You're faced with an improbable task, but it is only through overcoming adversity that a man can truly live. You must ask yourself do you want to live or do you want to do die? The meaning of your life is what you choose it to be. Heaven and hell are merely fleeting points of view. Lives are dependent on you. Does your life have a meaning?'
'My life has one meaning.'
'In that case return. Leave the light. You will suffer and you will struggle but you have a chance to put things right. Always believe in yourself.'
Fiery light races away and I writhe in pain as detail and colour momentarily fill the shadowy face which shrinks to nothingness. 'FATHER!'
Suspended in the purest blackness I convulse as something cuts into my flesh, tampering with connective tissues. I pray this evisceration is only my purgatory, but it seems the assertions of my hallucination were misleading because the agony will not relent. Shredded internal organs are torn out by invisible demon hands which play inside blood-filled cavities for their own amusement. The pervading torment of oblivion becomes accepted normality and I expiate sins for an everlasting instant.
All hope of a return to life was abandoned long ago, but the timelessness is disrupted by a searing in these redundant pupils and I squeeze eyelids tight. When I reopen them, light viciously floods optic nerves and I hear a vaguely familiar word:
'Arturo.'
'E.....E...E...Emmi?'
'You did it! You did it! He's waking up.'
I feel something on my arm. A hand. Extreme brightness fades. Fine details of reality emerge. The face of my wonderful sister. Surrounded by mechanical arms and an electronic display. A lamp with three bulbs. A stand with a bag of fluid. A table covered in instruments. The room is dusty. Grimy. Unsanitary. Friendly faces emerge through a door. Then a figure who is instantly unwanted for reasons my unused brain is still piecing together.
'You,' I gasp.
'Arturo, he helped save your life. If it wasn't for Jardine you'd be dead now,' Emmi responds.
Jerking upright, I am halted by a sensation in my throat which causes me to retch, coughing uncontrollably to eject something. I reach for my mouth and pull a tube, aggravating cartilaginous rings of my trachea. Wires are stuck to my chest, electrodes, so I rip them off and my flesh is covered in faint pink circular scars. Otherwise I seem one hundred percent healed following the wounds inflicted by gunfire which suddenly springs into memory. My spine trembles.
'How long was I out?' I growl.
'Four days,' the monster replies with feigned timidness in his tone.
'I wasn't asking you. Mila - what happened to her?'
The gang exchange glances with stupid gawping mouths unsure of how to say the opposite of what I need to hear. Jumping to bare feet I fling the bed, clattering the table of instruments.
'WHAT HAPPENED TO HER?' I roar.
'W-we don't know. They took her when they shot you. There was nothing we could do,' Emmi replies.
'How can we find her?'
'We think they were coming for Dynah. We just got in the way. Everyone else is okay, but they have her,' Emmi says.
'What if they think she's like Dynah? They could be interrogating her. They could be experimenting on her... No, that's not why they came. They wanted Mila and me because we implanted the virus. It's his fault!' I point at Jardine with a rigid arm.
Breathing turns into hyperventilation as the likelihood of Mila's torture, imprisonment or execution dawns and I am ready to lash out at those who could not help, irrespective of my own failure. This rebellion once rescued an unsightly miscreant against improbable odds and she who is infinitely more important must come home at any cost. She cannot suffer like I did so I slam the colossal frame of Jardine against the wall like he is boneless.
'You're going to tell me how to find her or I am going to crush you.' My elbow dig into Jardine's throat.
'Ar... Arturo. I think I know where she might be, I had a dream,' Dynah says.
'Where? You can sense things, if you dreamt it...' I release the terrorist from my grip.
'I dreamt they took her upwards. I think she's in Orbital City and I know she's still alive,' Dynah replies.
'Arturo, we can't just stroll in. They're looking for us. The systems will recognise us instantly,' Jardine suggests like the word 'we' still has a meaning.
'You can get us in.'
'I can get you in, but what do you think you can do? You can't get her out of that place. It's too heavily guarded and central command are going to blow the place any day now.'
'So much for just knocking the power out... Get me inside and then I'm not your problem any more.'
'Arturo, I like you. I don't want you to throw your life away.'
'Throw my life away! What about all the people you're going to kill? You're no different from any other terrorist. I used to think Samarianism was the problem with this world, but now I realise it isn't religion that's the problem, it's people like you. Samarianism is just an excuse. Take it away and people like you will always find another. I came back to this life for one purpose and one purpose only. If I fail then you, me and everything else on this goddess-forsaken rock can rot, because this world will matter to me any more.'
'I'll do what I can. The rest of your clothes are in the corner.'
A jumper, jacket and pair of socks are neatly folded on the bench beside my wallet which is still stuffed with credit notes. Once dressed I squeeze into a pair of trainers and stride into a section of the bunker where rifles line the walls. My comrades sit at a table as Jardine activates a three dimensional map of Orbital City. Faces are contorted with the confusion of seeing me return from the brink, only to throw myself back towards the hands of death.
Prowling back and forth like a caged neanderthal, I feel stronger than ever before. I am unable to explain how, but my capabilities have improved exponentially. Sharp enough to dodge a bullet. Muscles fizz with energy. These fists can pulverise flesh and bone. I am a near indestructible piece of metamaterial. A rebel reincarnated as a superhuman. Adrenaline fills my blood. Raw aggression floods every thought. But time is of the essence and NOTHING is going to stop me.
'Ar... Arturo, I don't want you to go up there. I can't lose you as well,' my sister pleads with hands clawed.
'I have to go, Emmi. She's the only reason I came back.' I turn my back because eye contact would arouse emotions I cannot afford to feel
'B... but what about me? If I don't have you, I don't have anything.'
'Then you'll know how I feel right now. I have to do this and if I can't, then I'd rather die.'
Jardine removes contact lens cases from a holdall and places them onto the table, dipping a cloth in liquid. The coming discomfort is fully accepted as he grabs my wrist to once again scrub away my fingerprints. The rewriter clamps onto my tips and I clench teeth as a third identity is burnt into my skin.
'Here's a phaser. It's made of dielectric composites so it is difficult to detect. Take this Citicard. Most security systems only check eyes or prints. However, some recognise faces. Move quick and keep your head down,' Jardine advises.
'I'll go with you,' Smig offers with a redundant sense of loyalty.
'No, Dynah's coming. She's the only one powerful enough to be of any use to me.'
'I'll come. I can help. This is the way it's meant to be.'
Dynah undergoes the fingerprint rewrite as I jab my eye, despite previous practice and when I fit the first contact lens it feels like I have a hair caught beneath my eyelid. The other contact lens is fitted with less clumsiness and I squint until vision adjusts. Then I snatch the phaser from Jardine's hand, shoving the weapon into my jacket lining as I stride to the door.
'Emmi, come here.'
My sister approaches timidly as though she is hoping hesitance will nullify my dogged belligerence but this is a necessary step because it may not be too late. A tear rolls down her cheek as I squeeze her wrist and place my wallet in her palm; pursed lips trembling as the failures of our parents cause torment to rise, like lava which incinerated thoughts of the life we should have had.
'I don't want you to go. Please don't. If I lose you...'
'When you lose someone, all you want is one more chance to bring them back. That's all I wanted with Lel, but I never had the chance. With Mila I do. This wallet has a lot of money in it. If I don't return, keep it. Get yourself away from here. I don't want you having any part in this war. If other people want to waste their lives that's their choice, but you're not wasting yours to help them. You're better than this.'
'No, I don't need this because you're coming back. You and Mila are both coming back.'
Emmi tries to hand the wallet back but I close her trembling hand, staring into beautiful blue eyes whilst imagining how she would cope without two of her closest friends, without her big brother. This girl is far from incapable and a lifetime of over-protectiveness may have led to her being underestimated, but we inhabit such a dangerous world. I have no idea how she would survive the shattering of her foundations, but I cannot remain for her sake and the selfless act I am about to embark upon suddenly feels so selfish.
'Emmi, I can't promise you that I'm coming back... I...'
The words I must tell her are interrupted by a siren and flashing lights as an alarm system is triggered. Jardine frantically adjusts the holoscreen and the change of display shows armed guards rampaging through the complex. A gun turret mows one of the bastards down, but his ally throws an EMP grenade which neutralises our automated weapon. Jardine no doubt has other tricks up his sleeve and these evildoers are going to experience some serious pain.
Turbo and Smig grab rifles with invaluable fearlessness but we are outnumbered and they should allow the one who is already dead to even the odds. Emmi's affrighted expression shows such uncertainty as the government's killers come for us. After years of trying to shelter her, my little sister is forced to deal with a situation she should never have found herself in, but now she has an effective protector.
'Guys we have company. Follow me now,' Jardine instructs and we bolt across a grated floor, reaching a junction where Jardine turns sharply, slipping to one knee as phaser fire leaves glowing circles on the wall. Gut instinct urges my rebuilt frame to burst out and take down these foolish weaklings with bare hands, but I have a duty to defend first and foremost. We retreat to a cramped room with a generator and pipework occupying most of the floor space.
'In the vent.' Jardine slams the reinforced steel door behind us.
Tearing the grid from the wall, I shove Emmi into the vent and without pause for panic I force daunted faces into jiggering soles. The clank of enemy footsteps is followed by a sizzling on the far side of the reinforced door, but I feel no concern because self-preservation should be telling those misguided pawns to flee. Ignorance will be their undoing.
'They're using their phasers to remove the hinges,' I advise.
'You next, Arturo.' Turbo pats my shoulder with a sense of altruism which further messes with my head.
'No, you!'
Shoving Turbo into the vent, I press his rifle down to prevent it from catching the wall and when he is gone a friend and foe remains. Jardine is clearly too broad to squeeze into the vent, but his self-sacrifice for the team makes it impossible to abandon him, regardless of the crimes he must answer for. I stand shoulder to shoulder with my manipulator as steel beams criss-crossing the door become transparent, revealing bones, pulsating hearts and energy beams liquefying hinges.
'It's too late. Get ready too fight,' I advise.
A skeletal foot kicks open the unhinged door which I swipe with my forearm, flinging Jardine into the corner. A phaser points at my face and I sense a flash of energy as a synapse in the guard's brain sends the command signal to shoot, but it is already too late for him.
Grabbing the guard's wrist, I kick upwards and my foot bends his elbow in a direction it was never meant to go in. My spare hand clasps the weapon he is still holding and I reposition his body to provide a human shield. There is a loud snap as I twist his arm towards his allies and twice squeeze the trigger. Two electrified bodies flop.
Flinging the phaser, I wrap my forearm across the face of my whimpering, broken-armed attacker to disconnect his vertebrae with a life-ending crunch. Two more lambs await slaughter in the corridor so I charge forth, swerving between golden streaks as they shoot. A burst of fire emerges from behind me to engulf one of the men and I lunge past the phaser of my now solitary attacker. Planting my feet, I lean back to thrust my palm onto the tip of his chin, catapulting his body down the corridor.
'This way!' Jardine yells as he catches up, peering around the corner to check the area is clear but I could have advised it was without looking. We lock ourselves in a cupboard which contains a dormant droid a third of Ivor's size with machine gun arms and wheels instead of legs. Jardine activates this killing machine then opens a trapdoor to reveal a maintenance tunnel with wires running along walls.
'Boris, when we are in the tunnel get out there and soufflé any San Terian guards on sight! Arturo, I never got a chance to tell you - we didn't just fix you, we improved you. We used experimental technology, it was your only chance of survival. You are stronger, faster, you have extra senses, improved instincts,' Jardine explains.
Footsteps clank overhead as we crawl through the wire-tangled tunnel and I am itching to lift the floor panel to ambush these expendables, but I opt for restraint. A hail of machine gunfire makes me snigger as Boris mows down enemies and blood drips through the gridded floor. Progressing to a dead end we climb out of another trap door, emerging in a similar cupboard to the last one, which is filled with bottled chemicals but no robotic bodyguard this time.
'The exit is just beyond this door,' Jardine mutters.
Opening the cupboard door, I peer through a closed emergency exit at an armoured van with two adult male skeletons in the front seats. A few paces later I kick reinforced iron from hinges, sending the door skywards and I charge towards the vehicle. Startled occupants clumsily raise weapons, but I arrive before they can lower their windows to fire at my enhanced anatomy.