“There’s another tunnel to Towers to the north.” Digger said, “Two more teams in the way but the threat is just mutant animals, I think you can handle that, don’t you?”
“We can definitely handle that.” Layla touched the folded, bazooka-like weapon hanging behind her hip.
“On the right! Security forces!” Another mercenary, ‘RIDLEY’ stenciled on his breastplate, shouted.
A row of men in black suits of body armour were moving up the road to their right. Digger had seen Slayerz guards like them at the prison where he was kept before the game. They looked almost like an antithesis to the mercenaries and he wondered if the merc group had planned it that way. Their suits covered every inch of skin but were black instead of white, and they looked less advanced. Their helmets were a different shape, with the kind of basic face shield a prison guard might wear. They carried advanced assault rifles and a variety of stun weapons.
“Contestants and intruders! Surrender now or you will be met with lethal force for trespassing and resisting!” The lead security officer said.
There were around twenty guards in all. Following them were three bulky and heavily armed security droids. Digger had also seen droids like them used on Slayerz before, a couple of seasons ago when the game had gone off the rails. The droids moved on a tripod of stubby legs ending in ball-shaped wheels. Their upper bodies were shaped like a huge wedge, with broad shoulders and a tapered waist, a red, glowing eye inset in the centre of each ‘chest’. A belt-loaded minigun hung from each droid’s right side and multi-barrel missile launcher replaced their arms on their left sides.
Homer moved even closer to Digger as they retreated toward cover. The other two contestants, Klou and Echo Three, were being covered by a couple of mercenaries.
“What’s the plan here?” Digger yelled.
“Take them out!” Layla said.
Mercenaries fanned out to get shelter in a professional, practiced fashion. The Slayerz security force were exposed, moving as one in the middle of the road as if expecting their show of force would be enough to stifle the situation. Layla opened up with her P90, a ripping tear cutting through the air. Gunfire erupted on both sides, filling the street with smoke and howling noise. Guards scattered, every man for himself. Security droids raised their weapons, miniguns and missiles exploding.
“EMP!” One of the mercenaries yelled.
A high-tech grenade arced over the heads of the Slayerz security force. It hit the ground and skittered toward the hulking security droids then exploded into a sphere of crackling orange light. Two droids were caught by the EMP blast, along with two security troopers. Forks of orange lightning shot across their bodies. One of the droids was hit full force by the EMP and simply shut down, arms and chest slumping as it went suddenly inactive. The other droid was on the outskirts of the blast and its circuits were scrambled but it didn’t shut down straight away. It wheeled around in a circle, arms swinging wildly.
“Danger, Will Robinson, danger!” Digger laughed to himself.
The two security troopers who’d been hit dropped bonelessly to the ground, looking scorched but mostly unhurt. The EMP grenade was technically nonlethal but the electrical burst would have scrambled their brains, just like it had scrambled the second droid. If they ever left the arena the two men would never be able to walk or feed themselves again.
Digger planted his H&K UMP45, now reloaded, against his shoulder and fired while the security force was scattering. Resenting being released from prison only to be locked up under the control of men like these, Digger took it as an opportunity for some revenge. The chestplate of one black-suited trooper imploded. Blood sprayed out of the fractured armour as the faceless guard tumbled to the ground. He’d thrown in his lot with the mercenaries officially now, Digger supposed. Not that he’d thought it through a great deal. Slayerz would probably not let he and Homer leave for certain. Several other guards were cut down as they scattered, bullets screaming in all directions, without the mercenaries taking a single hit.
“Watch out!” Miller, the medic, said.
The third security droid, the only one not hit by the EMP grenade, was still firing. A missile sailed through the mercenaries, twisting in a corkscrew pattern, and hit one of the pack mule droids the mercs had brought with them. While the mercenaries were all behind cover, the pack mules were at the back of the fight but exposed. The missile erased the mule in a tremendous blast of yellow fire. Parts were blown across the asphalt. Spindly, spidery limbs sprayed like debris from a swatted insect.
Another missile exploded in the middle of the street, causing rubble to rain from the sky. Digger and Homer were taking cover behind a low wall belonging to a parking lot. The security troopers on the other side were getting organised and firing back. Suddenly, a short burst chewed apart the wall only inches from Digger’s head. His face was sprayed with dust and chips of concrete. The bullets had come from the wrong direction, not from the security force but from behind Digger and Homer. Digger whipped around, gun raised. In the chaos of the battlefield, the Australian could see several mercenaries covering one another and firing who could have been responsible. One, by themselves, was retreating backward with gun raised. Their face was covered but Digger didn’t need to be able to see the name on their white chestplate to know it was Ellis who had just tried to take him out.
A swarm of camera drones watched the battle from overhead without interfering. Despite the appearance of the mercenary team, the broadcast was still going. After their initial failure to take cover, security were evening out the fight and firing back. Another EMP grenade exploded in midair in a crackling sphere of orange lightning. It knocked out several camera drones but failed to take down the third security droid. Minigun churning, the droid continued rolling through the middle of the street and fired its missile launcher. The mercenaries were protected but pinned down.
Layla Jackson straightened, firing her compact P90 one-handed. With her mechanical arm she drew back a regular grenade and pitched it like a cannon. The grenade glanced off a low wall that two troopers were hiding behind and exploded. Shrapnel tore through the two men, blowing off pieces of their black armour and hurling them backward. Layla threw another grenade at the remaining security droid. Shrapnel erupted in all directions, hailing off the armoured droid and its surroundings. Smoke billowed across the battleground, split by muzzle flashes.
One mercenary was hit. A couple of bullets ricocheted off their chestplate but one burrowed into the joint between their shoulder and upper right arm. Blood spurted out of the gap and stained the white armour. The mercenary, ‘ASFOUR’ on his chest, hit the ground thrashing in pain. A strangled cry echoed out from behind the mercenary’s opaque faceplate.
“Stay close to us!” One of the mercs covering the freed contestants said.
Half a dozen security troopers looped toward Digger and the others. It was hard to say what they wanted with the contestants. The idea was to have them kill each other even if they’d been cut loose from Slayerz control for the moment. If audiences wanted to see people just executed in the street by faceless firing squads they could watch newsfeeds. They fired high, trying to drive the mercenaries and contestants down. A row of cars parked at the sidewalk stood between them and the security force.
Digger and the two mercenaries returned fire. One trooper was cut down and flipped onto the ground as the others scrambled to find cover. Strugatsky, one of the two mercs, threw a regular grenade in the troopers’ direction. It exploded, the blast ripping apart the windshield and windows of another abandoned car that two troopers were hidden behind. Homer, Echo and Klou were all staying low and out of sight during the fighting.
Layla circled around, spraying bullets with her P90. Several shots chattered off her white armour and the slightly darker ceramic plates of her mechanical arm. She grabbed the wounded merc, Asfour, and dragged them back behind cover. One trooper popped up, taking aim at Layla’s exposed face. P90 tucked against her shoulder, Layla fired fi
rst and the man’s helmet shield shattered. The battleground was in chaos and Layla shouted to be heard above the din.
“Surrender! We’re better trained and better equipped, you can’t beat us even with numbers!” Layla said, “They’re using you just like the contestants, like cannon fodder!”
At least a dozen of the security troopers were down, almost half of the force they had brought with them. There was no order to retreat, however, even as the mercs dug in. Mostly there seemed to be no communication between the security force that could have given the order. Training for the guards hadn’t improved since last season, Layla thought to herself. The third security droid was closing in though, providing a storm of fire with its two huge weapons.
“EMP!” Someone shouted.
Another cylindrical, high-tech grenade sailed overhead. This time the droid actually reacted and moved to swat the grenade out of the air. The grenade bounced off the side of its bulky missile launcher and ricocheted across the ground, scurrying over the asphalt until it hit a wall that several security troopers had hidden behind. The EMP erupted, cooking the three men behind the wall and reducing them to vegetables.
Five troopers closest to the front line moved in, yelling, in a kind of suicidal charge. The mercenaries cut down two more of them. Digger joined in, .45 slugs roaring. Another trooper’s leg shattered underneath him, knee folding backward with a sickening crunch, and he went down screaming. The other two circled around the cars, guns blazing. Digger was forced to take cover, shielding his face as he carried his gun over his head, and Homer darted alongside him.
Echo was hidden behind one of the cars and she popped up, her axe drawn back. She swung as she straightened, throwing her whole body into the blow, and plunged the head of the axe into one trooper’s chest. The axe was sharp enough that it sheared through the man’s armour. Blood sprayed out of the wound as bits of broken armour tumbled off his chest and he stumbled back, gesturing wildly. Echo was exposed, however, and her partner was nowhere to be seen. The other security trooper rounded on Echo with his weapon raised. One of the mercenaries put them down, firing first into the side of the trooper’s head. Gore sprayed the inside of their faceplate and they dropped to the ground.
Straightening up, Digger spotted Dr Klou moving away from them between two of the gated communities. The doctor kept low, his long, freakish arm thrown over the top of his head for protection. He could use it much like Layla Jackson used her mechanical arm, the thick scales able to withstand bullets and any injuries to the limb able to regenerate much more quickly.
“Oi, that piece of shit mad scientist is getting away!” Digger yelled.
Digger gestured at the mercenaries. He wasn’t sure if they would care though, they weren’t there to apprehend the contestants no matter what evil they had done in the past. Digger wasn’t surprised Klou had slipped away first chance he got. No matter how desperate he was to live, nobody went back to the kind of hole he would have been kept in before being recruited for Slayerz willingly. What was less clear was just where the doctor would go if he got out.
“Cover me!” Layla said.
The security droid was making its way closer, weapons blazing. Layla picked up the body of one of the security troopers and threw it ahead of her. Like a rag doll, the body flew through the air and hit the droid. It draped across the front of the droid, blinding it momentarily. The droid swung its weaponised arms but it had no hands to simply grab and dislodge the trooper. It continued firing wildly as Layla closed in, the other mercenaries covering her from remaining Slayerz troopers.
The droid wheeled back on its ball-shaped tyres. It dislodged the body but Layla was already on top of it. She grabbed the droid’s minigun arm with her mechanical hand, her side locking up, and then ripped the appendage off. The droid turned with its single red eye burning. Layla tossed the sparking minigun arm aside, batted its missile launcher away and then punched the robot directly in the centre of its torso. Her ceramic-plated mechanical fist slammed through the droid’s armour, crunching deep into its internals, and electricity arced along her arm. Juddering, the droid rocked back and forth with smoke spewing out of the crater in its chest before dying.
The remaining troopers were routed, their will breaking. Mercenaries poured bullets into their positions and the men in black armour turned and ran. A final half a dozen returned the way they had come. Some of the mercenaries cheered. Tommy Nguyen was busy filming it all, his shoulder camera and ping pong-sized drones capturing the destruction and scenes of victory.
Digger stood up, leaning against the wall they had been using for cover with Homer next to him. He reloaded the UMP45. Looking around, he couldn’t spot Ellis, the man who had clearly tried to take him out in the heat of the battle, but he wouldn’t have gone far. The same could be said of Dr Klou.
“Miller, check out Asfour!” Layla said.
One of the troopers who’d been hit by the first EMP grenade was lying sprawled on the ground, his helmet having fallen off. The brains the helmet were meant to be protecting would be toast. Layla looked at their face for a few moments then walked over to another black-suited body. She pulled off the second body’s helmet and opaque faceshield. The face belonging to the second corpse was identical to the first, caucasian, boyish and plain features, light brown hair in a buzz cut.
“It’s like the reports said, they’re all clones, same build with wetware CPUs. That’s why they didn’t break until the order must have come through to retreat. Illegal stateside but nothing illegal about it here.” Layla said.
Chapter Seventeen
There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and liked it, never care for anything else thereafter.
-- Ernest Hemmingway
“Long Pig is the nation’s one and only legal supplier of cloned human meat for the intrepid diner. But now, Long Pig brings you a gastronomic adventure like no other!”
Sheer, rocky cliffs surround an emerald jewel of an island in the middle of a vast ocean. Dozens of identical clones mill around in large glass boxes like lobster tanks.
“Choose your weapon! Choose your clone! Choose your marinade! Discover the thrill of hunting for your own meal on Long Pig’s private island in the middle of the Pacific.”
Half a dozen naked clones flee through leafy jungle. A man and a woman in safari gear, middle aged with steely grey hair, track them. An old fashioned buffalo rifle is slung over the man’s shoulder. The woman carries a crossbow.
“After a full day of building up your appetite, retire to your personal villa where world class chefs will prepare your catch.”
A human torso sizzles over an open fire as two men in chef’s whites lather a baste and turn it on a spit. Flushed with a healthy glow from a day of exercise, the man and woman clink a couple of glasses of chardonnay.
“There is no hunting like the hunting you’ll get at Long Pig!”
Juan Sanzeros and his partner, Ludd, were scatterbrained after coming out from under the thing in the church’s control. The time between when they’d landed in the arena and when the thing died seemed like a quickly fading dream. Now the creature was dead, their brains couldn’t hold everything it had shared with them while infinite and godlike in its control. Rather than look for answers, the two had fled. The pair had taken off through the Shantytown section.
Crooked trash structures leaned around the network of dirt streets. Ludd’s suit whirred and clunked with each step. Interlocking plates of gunmetal grey armour covered the bulky robotic exoskeleton, much more industrial than the sleek model Lyncher Lee had been wearing. Sanzeros carried his stubby shotgun against his middle. The hacker had no idea how to handle the gun or how to handle himself in the kind of physical fight they were in, now that they were no longer being controlled like puppets. He’d never been good about following the mantra, if they think you’re high tech, go low. Even without the exoskeleton, Sanzeros was much slimmer than Ludd. He was starting to sweat under his hefty
coat, covered in zippers and buckles.
“What is that?” Ludd said.
Ludd grunted, raising one heavy arm with a whirring noise. Unseen generators had fired up again, releasing noxious clouds of green gas. Waves of the stuff moved through surrounding buildings. It swallowed the ramshackle shanties and dirt streets. Sanzeros stumbled backward, startled. He had no solid memories of the other contestant deaths that had been broadcast while they were being controlled but he could easily guess what the gas was.
“Poison gas! That’s got to be radiation giving it that glow!” Sanzeros said.
The two of them circled around the outskirts of Shantytown, keeping the smooth, grey wall of the section to their right. They came to another train tunnel-sized exit. With the green fog at their backs, the two men fled the length of the tunnel to the middle section of the arena. City Center, Sanzeros could immediately see the difference between the two sections. Paved roads, far taller and more solid office and apartment buildings, and much bigger ruins that had been strewn by bomb blasts and bullet holes. The screens on their wrists updated not long after the two men emerged into sunlight again. The exit to the tunnel they’d just passed through closed with a pair of massive blast doors.
“The Nazi, Boche, and Uzi Kahneman are here in this section!” Sanzeros checked his map, “We need to get somewhere safe! Maybe one of these buildings? I could hack our way in and we could wait it out.”
“We could run straight at them and make it a real fight.” Ludd said.
“We can’t take them, man. The Nazi is an actual supersoldier! And the other dude is ex-Mossad, they’re going to know what they’re doing.” Sanzeros said, “I bet they took out whoever else landed in here with them already.”
Kill Switch: Final Season Page 20