by Wells, JB
The creatures worked from a cart and when it was empty the bully of the two started to push it away. The smaller creature called something and the bigger one returned, he whacked the small one so hard that he fell to the floor, asleep. The ugly creation lifted his KO’d friend from the ground and dumped him into the cart. Laughing to himself in its weird language it pushed the cart and creature away. The coast was clear. Kieran peered around the corner, and made a dash for the hole. It was just a normal looking metal chute, scratches and dirt covering its once shiny surface. He took a deep breath and jumped in, head first.
Kieran didn’t want to scream and draw attention to himself but his armour scratched and screeched its way along, leaving marks on both his armour and the slide. He gave in and screamed, mostly out of excitement because it was like a slide at the water park. It dipped and peaked then sloped to the right, back to the left and then dipped again. Kieran was picking up some serious speed. Every time he hit a bump his body flew and then landed back on the slide with a thump. It didn’t seem it would ever end until Kieran shot out of the funnel and skidded across the ground, and landed in a heap. He lay still for a moment, trying to still his spinning head. He turned over, his body lying on the lumpy moving ground.
“Dexter would have loved that.” He closed his eyes and chuckled to himself. He needed to slow his breathing and regain his composure. Once his mind had stopped racing, he slowly opened his eyes. There, sitting above him was a huge cylinder, at the end of it was the biggest diamond he’d ever seen.
“What is that?” Standing, he began to wander towards it but he tripped on something sticking out of the ground, and landed face first into what looked like mud. He growled, “Can’t things ever be simple?” His eyes looked to the right and there were eyes looking back at him, still empty lifeless eyes. “Ahh!” Kieran shrieked and scrambled backwards, his hands resting on something that moved. He looked and there was a head, he panicked and crawled further back and found arms, legs, more faces and many other body parts. Kieran had landed in the dumping ground. Every piece that had been created wrong was dumped in here. Kieran couldn’t believe it. The parts were discarded due to corrupt data making them look wrong. Shaking and disturbed Kieran didn’t know what to do. His crosshairs came to life once more.
“Give me a break!” He whimpered.
Around the edge of the room moved two robotic destroyers, their guns shooting any of the parts that were still moving. They were as big as houses, with three guns on the front of their upper body. Their legs were like robotic horses legs and their arms had more guns on the end of them.
“Seriously?” Kieran stammered.
The robots carried on around the edge scanning each area for movement, a green light shot out from one of the weapons and ran over a patch. Kieran saw something move out of the corner of his eye, there was an arm. The fingers of the badly created arm clawed their way across the heap and made it to the side trying it’s hardest to escape. The robot spotted it; he made a loud noise like a fog horn and ran. The ground shook under its weight and enormity. Under one foot, it trapped the arm almost toying with it. The arm struggled, the fingers clawed at the ground desperately seeking freedom to return to its body. Like a dog, the robot twisted its head, watching the pure desperation of the limb. The robot grew tired of its game then a laser erupted from one of its many turrets. The bodiless arm disintegrated into pixels like a puff of smoke. Kieran held his breath, the noise the robots turret made was yet another noise he had to get used to.
“Thirty seconds to Reboot.” A calm and soothing female computer voice called. “Nukebots to bay seventeen.”
Kieran was shaking, he was scared. The robots were closing in on him and all he could do was lie still, hoping he wouldn’t be spotted. An alarm rang out and he jumped, the robots turned and made their way out of the room. The cylinder in the ceiling began to spin and the diamond began to glow. “This can’t be good, nothing could be good in here!”
The Nukebots were gone and Kieran was standing on the discarded parts of the enemy. The diamond was starting to make a loud ringing noise and the cylinder was spinning out of control. Kieran ran seeing that the hanger doors were starting to close and he had to get to them. Hopping and jumping over extremities, he made his way across the heap. Over and over he called “Sorry, I’m so sorry.” The thought of treading on someone made his stomach twist with guilt. He knew they weren’t real people but they sure enough looked like it. He carried on dodging when something shiny caught his eye. Out of the ground was an arm, it was a human arm and hand. Kieran looked at the doors that were slowly shutting and then back at the arm. He sprinted towards it, as he closed in he could see the familiar green armour of a medic. “No,” he called. He dropped to his knees and started trying to pull the other bits out of the way to free up the medic. It was no use. They were all packed in too tightly.
The doors were still closing but Kieran couldn’t leave without knowing who the cadet was. He pulled the mangled shell of a biter free and revealed the cadet’s plate. On it sat proudly the name ‘777 Bill’. “Cadet Bill,” Kieran called over the ringing of the diamond. He glanced at the cadet’s hand to find a Recov still tightly in his clutches. Kieran pulled it free and bent down, “Thank you 777. I will return you.”
The door was nearly shut and the cylinder was spinning so fast, it was causing a vacuum of air to rush around. Kieran put the Recov in his belt holder and ran for the nearly shut doors. He jumped and nose-dived between the heavy bay doors, as he hit the ground a bright white light erupted behind him. The doors closed and a computer voice called out, “Hardware wipe complete.”
Cadet 777 was now another number in the repository.
31
Kieran was left speechless and shaking, he was standing outside of the room where all the body parts had been lying. A large window opened up onto the empty pool, dirty scratch marks and a few residual pixels were all that remained.
“Nukebots to repository one for residue clean up.”
Kieran hid behind a little wall, the creaking joints of the massive machines was loud and he knew if they spotted him, he would be vaporised. He watched as the two machines approached the door, they stood against it and inserted a key which opened the massive hanger doors.
“191, come in 191.”
“I’m here,” Kieran whispered.
“Where are you?”
“Adam’s repository, there are Nukebots deleting malfunctioning creations.” He kept low and watched over the wall.”
There was a scream, a human scream. “I will delete you, if you don’t let me go. You will regret it!”
“Hang on,” Kieran whispered. He watched as Emily Magnus was dragged behind two infected soldiers, she was kicking and screaming as they effortlessly pulled her away. She was hauled passed the Repository. The Nukebots watched with intrigue as they rarely saw anyone from the Institute still alive, this far down.
Kieran watched her and their eyes met across the dangerous space, for a split second it looked like she was begging him to help. A second later the vulnerable look that was in her eyes vanished, and she was her mean hard faced self again. “They’ve got Magnus, she’s being taken somewhere.”
“191, they will be taking her to the cells. You are near the backdoor to Tulsars Castle.” Chloe went quiet and the map of where he was appeared, he could see his dot flashing showing his current position, Emily’s dot was moving.
“She said she had to rescue her team, how many are in there?”
“Too many 191, you are ordered to get to the nearest transition pad. I repeat you are to download to the arena, you are not to continue on this mission.”
“But I can help them!”
“Kieran,” Chloe’s face appeared on his screen, “you mustn’t. You need to get back.”
“Where are the others? Where are the hunters?”
“We don’t know,” her reply was short and she looked away from him.
He knew she was hiding something. �
��Chloe?” she didn’t respond to him. “Guider, I request the current status of the team.”
“We don’t know.” Chloe looked upset and tried to calm herself. “They were last seen in the Sector B. When they ambushed The Wall, everything went haywire. A lot of cadets were taken to the cells, and some were lost. We suffered massive casualties. But Adam created interference, we are trying to re-establish connections now.
Kieran watched as the infected disappeared around a corner, with Cadet Magnus firmly in their grip. She didn’t stop screaming the whole way. “I found 777. He was in the repository and now he’s well…gone.” Kieran checked behind him and keeping low he followed the path that they had taken. He turned the corner and was faced with ten doors on both sides of the corridor. “Which door?”
“Cadet Bill will be placed in our repository until he is returned. You on the other hand have been ordered to return to the arena. I repeat, you are to return at once.”
“I’m sorry Chloe, I can’t.” Kieran carried on down the hallway, stopping and taking cover whenever he heard movement. Something was lying on the floor outside of one of the doors. Kieran scurried over and picked up a piece of armour, on close inspection he knew it was Emily’s glove and she’d left it for him to find. With a heavy sigh Kieran knew what he had to do. “I’m going in. I have to save my team.”
“191…”
“No one gets left behind!” He recited with pride, then without a thought jumped into the portal door.
The transition, this time, was painless. He jumped in and landed on the ground as he had expected to, feet first. Dust kicked up around him as his heavy feet landed on the stone floor. Kieran had jumped from a futuristic zone full of robots into a medieval castle. The dust he had kicked up settled and he could see prisons, full to the brim, running along each wall. The room looked exactly like the dungeon of a castle. It was dark, damp and creatures like rats were scurrying around.
There was a noise. It was the infected that had taken Emily, they were returning back to the caves. Kieran dropped to his knees and as quietly as possible, he crawled to hide behind a huge stone column that held up the basement of the grand castle. The infected talked for ages, about what, Kieran was unsure. But he was silently hoping they would hurry up and leave the room. The little rat like creatures started climbing over Kieran’s armour. He knocked one off to the floor and saw that it looked more like a crab. Clutching it by its silver shell, Kieran lifted and inspected it closer. The creature had a rat’s head with millions of razor teeth in its mouth, but the body was that of a crab. There was a scratching sound, Kieran dropped the creature and found another slowly gnawing its way through his leg armour. He flicked it off only to find more climbing his back and chest. He jumped and crashed himself into the wall, doing so he killed a few and stamped on the others.
The infected had gone; Kieran leapt out from his hiding space into the fire-lit walkway between each cage. Tentatively he crept along and looked in each cell. Each one was full of at least ten cadets. Some had flags on their armour signalling their country of origin. There were Americans, Spanish, Germans and more, there were even some soldiers from The Walls, all spread out in each cage. Every cadet and soldier that saw him sprang to their feet and gathered by the bars, hands and arms were grabbing him, the faces that looked back pleaded with him to help. Kieran regretfully freed himself from their grasp, “I will get you out, just keep quiet, please. I will be back.” He carried on until he heard some whimpering, he stopped again and peered over some barrels that stood at the side of the room. Three infected guards sat in the middle of the area, the stony walls and fire lights made them look a lot more dangerous than the many others he had faced. He sat down against the barrels, and stared at the wall. His hands were constantly knocking off the rodents that were climbing on him and his feet kicked them away. “Chloe?”
“191?”
“I’ve named a creature. It’s called a Crat, it looks like a Crab and a Rat.”
“I think you’ll find they’re already named. They are called Inchbits.”
“Inchbits?” Kieran scoffed and peered around the side of the barrel to see if they’d left yet. They hadn’t.
“Yep. But we call them Inchers because; they can chew through an inch of armour in thirty seconds and they are miniscule.
“That’s a pants name, Crat sounds better.” He swatted one into the wall where it blew up, sparks flew and level points counted up on his arm.
“Where are you 191?”
“I’m in the dungeons. Pied-Piper isn’t very creative with his programming, he has flame lighting everywhere.”
“It drains less energy using flame lighting. He has to get power from somewhere and a lot of power is drawn from him. It’s another reason why he needs to infect more people.”
Kieran looked again but the guards were still seated in the same spot, two were on chairs and one sat on the floor. They held weapons in their hands just waiting. One had a large axe but the blades were a shining blue pulse, the next had a gun that looked similar to the Hunters and the last had a long bar which was as tall as he was. On the wall behind them sat a large glowing red circle, it bulged and looked like some kind of interactive pad. Kieran sat back again and stared out of the small window high up. It looked out onto the floor of a courtyard of some kind. Every so often the time ripple flowed past on the outside and left the green lines. “What is the time ripple?”
“Everything in Plantranet runs on power, and the scenes refresh well over a hundred times per second. The ripple happens when the refresh rate is slowed due to lack of power. So, when he’s launched an attack or there is a growing force nearby, it drains the power faster. Can you see one now?”
Kieran watched as it passed again, “They’re happening about every two minutes.”
“That fits. He has infected so many and sent them all out to fight, he is spreading the power too thinly. Adam has a lot of people in the castle.”
Kieran watched the ripple overtake. “So what happens if you get caught in the ripple?”
“You get caught in the space between refresh, effectively you would be lost data and very hard to retrieve. What are you thinking?” Chloe sounded intrigued, her picture hadn’t come up on his visor but he could tell she was thinking along the same lines.
“Can we drain his power more? Would that allow the rate of infection to stop, could we stop him?”
“We could possibly lead an attack on the sector you are in, sector Z.” Chloe trailed off in thought. “Then yes it would, in a sense, completely stop the Trojan being spread here in the outside world, if only for a little while. But, the order would have to come from higher up.”
The infected made loud crashing noises, if anything they liked being heard. They fed off of the fear of others so they moved with as much noise as possible. They moved to the staircase at the back of the room.
“Make it happen, Chloe.” Kieran left the safety of the barrels and saw TakeDown in the cell that had been guarded. “Are you okay?” He held Emily’s glove out to her.
She snatched it away. “We’re fine,” she hissed.
Kieran could see Richard at the back, he was shaking and sobbing. Emily made a gesture to him. He stopped crying and turned his back on them all.
“How can I get you out?”
“You can’t.” Emily turned away, “just leave us and I will find a way out.”
Kieran heard the hard, gruesome footsteps of the infected returning. He fled back to the barrels and watched them work. They approached the TakeDown’s prison, and one of them retrieved a set of keys from its tattered caveman style dress and pressed it against the iron railings. The cell door vanished, and the Axe wielding soldier dragged out Richard and another cadet, Anthony Mullins. Richard screamed and tried to fight his way free, but it was no use, they were too strong. The two cadets were then led towards the big red circle on the wall, the soldiers screamed to each other and then laughed.
To Kieran’s right was a cell full o
f different clans. One of the medics caught his attention with hand movements. The medic was from Mexico, on his arm proudly sat the Mexican flag, above that was his name, ‘Ayon 87756’. Cadet Ayon knelt on the ground. His actions were slow and steady so as not to attract the attention of the soldiers. He flashed a Recov that was concealed in his hand. A young female cadet without her helmet on in the opposite cell had seen Ayon and Kieran. Kieran glanced from her to the soldiers, she knew what to do. Within a split second she screamed and it worked perfectly. Every cadet in the musty old room ran to see what the commotion was about.
Cadet Ayon threw the Recov and Kieran caught it perfectly, whilst the distraction took away the attention. Kieran nodded in thanks and Cadet Ayon returned to his original position, propped against the bars.
The ugly infected with the bar stomped towards the screaming cadet. His bar lit up like an electrified pole. It smashed the cell railings with its weapon, there was an almighty reaction and sparks lit up the room. She stopped screaming.
One infected soldier marched back up the stairs, leaving the other two alone. Kieran knew he would have to do something. One soldier held Richard still, whilst the other held Cadet Mullins by the neck, and he forced his head into the red circle. The room erupted in whimpers as they watched a fellow cadet being turned. Mullins’ body shook and the red circle vibrated, the process lasted no longer than ten seconds when finally the lifeless body of Mullins dropped to the floor. The soldiers laughed again, Richard screamed. His arms and legs were flying around as he fought his corner. Both infected gripped him tightly and moved towards the ring of infection.
Kieran had to do something, he didn’t like Richard but his job was to help. He had sworn an oath to protect all, and that is what he was going to do. An Incher scurried onto his leg and he caught it before it could gnaw its way through his armour. He held it by its metallic shell and it thrashed around trying to bite Kieran’s hands. Kieran looked at the squirming Incher and then at the Infected. He had a plan.