by Alex Rudall
The group of soldiers turned to look at Lily as she approached. Mary stepped out to meet her, a reassuring smile on her face.
“Ready?” she said.
Lily shook her head.
“You’ll be fine,” Mary said.
The police spread out in a line. Mary looked at Lily one last time and nodded.
“We have Lily out here,” Mary said, facing the ink barn, her voice distorting a little through the amplification, “She’s going to come through the ink and bring you a walky–talky so we can talk to each other. She’s not armed, I don’t want anyone else getting hurt, we just want to talk and figure out what to do next.”
There was silence. The trees rustled. The smoke from the grenade had cleared, and stars were visible, winking overhead. Looking up, Lily could see many lights moving about the sky, very high, very far away. She wondered if there were cameras watching her; she supposed there were. Mary nodded at the man standing with Lily, who pressed a hand gently into the small of Lily’s back and pushed her forward.
“Lily is coming in now,” Mary said, amplified. “She’s unarmed.”
Lily walked slowly towards the edge of the expanse of liquid. She could smell the ink in the air. Despite her fear, her heart raced at the thought of transdermalling. She looked back at the soldiers. They all had their guns trained on her. She took a step into the liquid and then another. She could feel it pressing on the boot from the outside. This part was all yellow, the ink of excitement and alertness; a favourite amongst beginner recreational users. She stopped, looked back again. Mary waved her on.
She could see what could only be a dead soldier, completely covered in the bright yellow liquid, and the collapsed Tom–thing about three metres ahead. It was between her and the barn. She could hear fizzing as the ink started to burn through her boots. She gasped as the aerosolised drug rushed through her system, garlic taste strong in her mouth. The pleasure was overwhelming. She wondered, her thoughts accelerating, if the ink would burn through her boots. If she would die and dissolve like the soldiers, or turn into a monster like Tom.
She heard a hissed “Keep going, go forward!” from behind her and snapped her head round. Mary had put on a gas mask and come right up to the edge of the ink.
“Get back!” Lily said, her voice fast and loud now, the yellow fully taking hold. She was shaking with pleasure. She strode forward as quickly as she dared, passing through a swathe of green and back into more yellow until she reached the corpse of the Tom–thing. Part of its upper body and face had not been covered by the ink when it flowed out of the barn, and she could see its huge mouth, eyes above them, the shape perhaps just a little reminiscent of Tom, spiky hairless head, grotesquely muscled chest. Her heart was racing.
Lily stared down, her vision distorting under the influence of the yellow. She thought her left foot felt a little damp. The grotesque face of the Tom–thing, black skin stretched taut under great jutting bones underneath, teeth white and razor–sharp, seemed to get larger, and she could suddenly see it twitching slightly, drops of ink rolling over the surface, disappearing through the skin…
She stepped over it and walked hurriedly towards the steps to the barn. Her feet slapped at the ink – she was sure her left foot was touching ink now, she could feel it rushing up her leg, more and more of it, green now too, the overwhelming thrill of desire mixing with the excitement of the yellow. She ran, sprinted the rest of the way to the steps and up them and slammed into the wall next to the hole where the door had been.
Lily looked back at Mary, across the ink.
“Are you OK?” she shouted.
Lily nodded, and stuck up a gloved thumb. She could feel the green in her left boot. Naked shapes were moving in the trees that she knew could not be there.
“Brian, Annie, Lily’s OK, she’s going to come in now. You need to help her, she’s got a lot of ink on her, she’s going to come in in a second. Go in, Lily.”
Lily put her head around the corner. The only light was from the moon through the skylights. She could see nothing, just the ink barn, the vats, and darkness at the end where the computers were. There was more ink on the floor, around the destroyed vats, and bricks from the wall everywhere. She swung her foot around and tried to step on the bricks to keep her out of the ink, but they seemed to be moving and her vision was swimming, so she slipped off one and in the end just ran in, past the ruined empty vats of green and yellow, into the darkness.
After a few feet the floor was clean of ink, and she pulled off her mask and threw it away, shouting “Hello? Brian? Annie?” as she pulled the body–armour over her head, kicked off her boots, and pulled off the over–trousers. Her left sock was completely soaked in yellow, so she carefully peeled it off, heavy gloves still on, and threw it on the pile of hissing clothes. She wiped the worst off her foot with the glove, amazed she was still alive, let alone conscious, and threw the gloves on the pile too. She looked up into the ink barn. There was silence from outside. She checked her jeans and her t–shirt —they looked OK. She pulled the walky–talky that they had given her out of the pocket of her jeans. Pressed the button.
“I’m inside,” she said. “I can’t see anything,” she added. Mary’s voice crackled through the set.
“OK, have you got all the contaminated clothing off?”
“Yes,” she replied.
“Move forward carefully, call out to them.”
Lily took a couple of steps forwards, the concrete cold and dusty under her bare left foot.
“Brian,” she called, and then she shouted as loudly as she could, “Brian! Where are you? Annie!”
There was a noise up ahead, what sounded like a footfall. Lily jumped slightly.
“H–hello?” she said.
A figure lurched out into the gap between the final two vats ahead of her, moaning quietly.
“Annie?” Lily said, her heart racing.
With a bang the lights went on and the air conditioning and computers whined into life. Annie was bleeding out of the side of her mouth and she was not standing straight. Her eye was drifting about unfocused. Brian was standing behind a desk at the back of the room, pointing a handgun at Annie’s back.
“Are you OK?” Lily said. She took a step towards Annie, who flinched a little.
“Stop,” Brian shouted, and he sounded panicky. “What’s happening? I’ll kill her, I swear to god.” His eyes looked huge, wild, his skin very pale. His slick hair was a mess.
“No!” Lily said, “They just want to talk!”
“Come up here,” he said.
Brian stepped around the desk and put his arm around Annie’s chest. He pulled her back, pointing the gun at her head, which lolled forward a little.
“Come here,” Brian said. “If they come through I’ll kill her.”
“They won’t,” Lily said. “Annie, are you OK?” Annie didn’t respond.
“What have you done?” Lily said.
“She wanted to surrender,” Brian said. “We can’t surrender. If we surrender they’ll destroy everything, the whole world will be destroyed. If we just wait, we can stop it, destroy the GSE, do anything we want.”
“What have you done?” Lily repeated, walking slowly towards him. “What have you done to her? What have you done to me?”
“Just a mild sedative,” he said, “She was going crazy, she was at the door when they killed Leonard, she saw it all. She wanted to come and look for you, keep you safe.”
Lily stared at Annie’s bloodied mouth. Brian glanced at Annie.
“She fell, when I sedated her. She’ll be fine. We’ll all be fine if we can just hold out long enough.”
“Long enough for what?” Lily said, but she already knew.
“You’re going to be the mother of a god,” Brian replied, a fierce grin on his face. “You’re going to save the world. It’s a new kind of human, a hybrid of singularity and man. It’ll protect us from the GSE, it’ll be able to give us everything we want. Anything we want.”
/> The radio crackled.
“Are you OK?” Mary said. “Let us know what’s happening, Lily.”
“Stall them,” Brian said. “We have to stall them until it’s strong enough. They’ll kill it otherwise, they don’t understand, they’re scared of anything new, just because the GSE went wrong.”
“Is it part you, too?” Lily said, nauseous suddenly.
“What?” he said. “The baby? No, it’s artificial, pure ink, the human part will be all you.”
“You drugged me and injected it into me.”
“Yes, I’m sorry, I had to, that was the last part. Most of it was done with the primer, earlier that night, a mix of all the inks and some sedatives. I’m sorry, but I knew you’d never agree, I knew Tom wouldn’t want it. Annie would have carried it, wouldn’t you dear?”
Annie’s head lolled against him.
“But she’s infertile, so it wouldn’t have worked. She wouldn’t have the ink resistance, anyway, although we’d been trying to build it up, her thighs are all stained from it.”
His eyes were very wide.
“You’re crazy,” Lily said.
“No I’m not,” Brian said. “Come up here, now. Come up here or I’ll shoot her.”
“Please, no,” Lily said, taking a step towards them.
“Good,” Brian said, “Good, now, just sit down over there.”
Lily began to walk over to the desk he had pointed at, and then several things happened. First, the lights went out, plunging the barn into darkness, and the computers and air conditioners whirred down and stopped. Before they had fully quietened, there was the roar of an engine outside the barn. Lily shouted, “No!” almost at the same moment as Brian shouted the same thing, and Lily lunged towards Brian. There was a terrible crack as the gun went off, and as the muzzle–flash lit the room Lily saw Annie falling away, Brian’s face grotesque and filled with horror and anger. Everything slowed. Lily felt a rush going through her body, like an ink–rush only stronger, and she suddenly saw the whole barn in stunning clarity, the sheen on the undamaged vats, Annie’s blood and skull fragments and what was inside falling through the air, Brian’s sweat, her own ink–infused left foot.
“No!” Lily screamed, and there was a burst of light in her eyes and in her head, and everything seemed to turn suddenly.
Then she was on her hands and knees on the concrete, and she could see, even in the darkness, Brian staring at her, aiming his gun at her, and then jerking it away again as he remembered the baby. He jumped left, into the computers, and she saw him hitting his palm onto something on a desk, and as the jeep slammed into the hole in the barn, the soldiers pouring out, leaping over the ink and towards them, the four remaining ink vats erupted in air and flames, and there was another flash of light. She was in a ball of air while the whole world burst into flames. And then Annie was staring brainlessly at the stars while pieces of masonry fell on her.
The roof was gone. Lily was on her back. She pushed herself up on her elbows. She was intact, even her bare foot. All around her were huge pieces of metal and wood from the roof, and great globs of burnt ink, and what looked like parts of people, a gloved hand and she was pretty sure the remains of a masked head. The end of the barn where the soldiers had been coming in was completely gone, and she could see the farmhouse outside and the jeep burning on its roof next to it.
“Annie!”, she shouted, but she knew that she was gone, her body smothered in rubble amidst the blackened ruin of the vats. She remembered Brian and rolled over to look where he had been, her body aching. The computers were all knocked off the desks and there was a hole where the back wall had been too. She pushed herself to her feet, looking around warily. He was gone. She turned back towards the soldiers. A second jeep was slowly backing over towards the barn. There were several guns sticking out of it, pointed at her. She raised her hands. She looked at the ground. Everything except a circle around her about a metre wide was covered in rubble, ink, and blood. Only she was untouched. She looked at her clothes; there was no ink or dust on her at all.
If the soldiers knew what was in her they would kill her.
“Lie on the ground!” one screamed.
Lily closed her eyes. They would find out and they would kill her. They would kill Tia.
“No,” she said.
They opened fire.
Amber
Voices were muttering on the edge of hearing. Amber woke and did not want to open her eyes. Her chest was tight with pain.
“Em,” she managed, inside.
There was no response.
“Emily!”
Nothing.
She opened her eyes. The ceiling was white, blotted with grey stains. Thin cracks ran over it. She moved her head. Her neck was stiff. There was a thin fluorescent strip buzzing gently and giving off a weak light. The air smelled like anti–septic. She turned her head to the side. There was a large white medbot sat next to her bed, its long arms plugged into her own with wires and tubes.
She looked towards the door. It was open a crack. That was where the muttering was coming from – there were people talking outside. It was two men having a conversation.
“…always miss out on the action,” one said, his voice quite gruff, Scottish accent.
“Psh,” the other growled. “I get paid as much stood here as I do being shot at.”
“They’ll be done by now,” the first said, sounding unconvinced. “The world’s ending and you’re thinking about your paycheque.”
“I’ve seen apocalypses before.”
“You’re crazy. If they don’t destroy the ink tonight, we’re done,” the younger said.
“How do you know?” the older said. “You’ve got no idea what it’s thinking. You were a kid when it went up, but I wasn’t, I remember what they were talking about before the GSE happened. They were talking about building a god, changing the world for the better, ending hunger. For all we know it’s coming back to help.”
“Yeah, well,” the younger said, annoyed. “Haven’t heard you say that to any of the higher–ups.”
“That’s “cause they have to toe the line. That’s what ITSA’s for, people are scared so they want ITSA, and the governments are scared of people so they spend everyone’s money on ITSA. And what I get paid for is not saying stuff like that to the higher–ups.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t get paid to say it to me either.” He sounded angry.
“That’s true. But I enjoy it.”
The younger didn’t reply to that. They were silent. Amber’s mind raced.
ITSA were on the island. They knew about the source of the signal. They would find the girl, scan her, realise what had happened, and eradicate her, and, if Amber was right, destroy the entire universe in the process.
Amber wondered suddenly if the GSE knew. Maybe that was why it was coming here, to protect the girl and save itself.
She wondered if they would believe her if she told them. All she had to base it on was what she had learned on the darknet. In their eyes she was a traitor, a Chinese operative even, who would say anything to confuse ITSA or harm their cause. But she had to do something. She might be the only person who could.
They must have deactivated her implants. She realised with a shock that they might even have erased Emily. For a moment that hurt more than the physical pain.
With considerable effort she raised her head and looked down at her body. There were thick bandages around her chest but her limbs were free and, apart from her left arm, the older injury from Kathmandu bandaged neatly, her body at least looked like it should work. She was alive. But her implants were deactivated or destroyed and she had a chest injury of unknown severity. She heard movement outside and quickly shut her eyes and dropped her head. Footsteps clumped over to her.
“Still out?”
“Uh… yup. Plenty more ECG activity though, she should be coming round pretty soon. Then we get to talk to the traitor.”
“Thank Christ. Can’t we shake her about
a bit to wake her up?”
“You’re joking. We can’t lay a hand on her unless she’s resisting. Her implants could still be recording.”
“They’re switched off, right?”
“You trust the techs with that?”
“Pretty sure they’re on our side.”
The other man just grunted.
The boots clumped away again. The door closed. Amber didn’t open her eyes immediately. It gave her a moment to think.
Her body was functioning, to some extent.
They thought she was unconscious. But they also thought she was a traitor, so they probably would not hesitate to kill her if she tried to escape. And yet she did not want to hurt them. She still thought of them as her colleagues, though it was not a courtesy they returned.
Tentatively, Amber began to move her arms and legs a little from side to side, half–expecting the medbot to scream for the guards. The pain in her chest continued to be intense, but her limbs, even the one she’d been shot in, seemed to be serviceable.
She sat up, slowly, pushing herself up with her elbows. She almost cried out with the pain. She looked around at the medbot.
“Don’t make any noise,” Amber whispered to it. “Silent mode activated,” flashed up on the screen. “Retract everything from my arm,” she whispered. The various probes and needles slipped out of her skin without a noise. The pain was sharp.
She slid her feet off the bed. There was a window looking out over an area of grass. She was on the second floor. It was night but the strange light of the GSE was over everything. Amber could see Goat Fell towering above, creepy in the weird light. She was in Brodick Hospital, then. There was an analogue clock on the wall. It read 1:55 but had no date. She was wearing a hospital gown and nothing else, but her clothes were folded on a chair in the corner. She padded over, grabbed them, slipped into her underwear and trousers, pulled her t–shirt and jacket over the gown. Her boots were nowhere to be seen. Her clothes stank of filth against the antiseptic hospital air.
“Em?” she tried once more, for good luck. Nothing. She was on her own.