Hath No Fury

by Melanie R. Meadors

  A blond man next to me cleared his throat and shook his head. “We’ve lost almost everyone. MegaCorp made sure no building was left standing.”

  “We knew this could happen. We’ll save our tears for after we’ve won,” Darla said. “Baron, show MC what we’re fighting for.”

  Baron tapped a few commands into the panel on the box. Vents in the floor opened up and a fine orange mist escaped them. The Infected tilted its head and looked at the vents curiously, ceasing its attempt to escape.

  He morphed right before my eyes. First, his posture relaxed. His shoulders dropped and his chest stopped heaving. The frantic, wild eyes stopped scanning.

  When he wrapped his arms around his naked body and looked at the group outside, not with bloodlust, but with confusion, I realized what happened. Baron immediately opened the door and a team of people entered with a blanket and water. They started talking to him and taking his vitals. He had the demeanor of a scared toddler.

  “Holy shit,” I gasped. “You have a cure.”

  Dreadful gestured for me to step away from the crowd with her, most of whom were already going back to work. She led me to a workstation set aside from the rest.

  “We can’t save all of them. We don’t know exactly how it’s affecting their brain, but we do know people experience it differently. Some of them are too far gone to come back. Usually the older ones.” She tapped at the screen, pulling up video footage. “You’d probably be surprised to know a cure has existed for nearly a century.”

  Dreadful showed me a video of a low-tech lab. In it, an Infected was strapped to a chair. The tendons and veins budged in her neck as she strained against the strap secured against her forehead. A figure clad in biohazard gear injected something into the Infected’s neck. I watched another transformation take place, startled by how quickly the feral look in her eyes gave way to fear and confusion.

  There was a watermark on the footage. That same logo was on the biohazard suit.

  “I’ve known about MegaCorp’s corruption since I started writing. I knew it went deep, but withholding a cure?” I glanced at the man in the box. My mind was putting the puzzle together and everything fit. “They wouldn’t release it. They own the infrastructure of the Havens. They own the media, our economy. They own you. There’s more profit and control in allowing the Infected to live and reproduce than to eliminate them entirely.”

  Then I realized what piece didn’t fit. “If you have a cure, why aren’t you releasing it?”

  “Because, curing the world isn’t enough. The world can’t truly change unless people understand why it’s fucked to begin with.” Dreadful opened up schematics of a building on the screen. I recognized them immediately. It was the Arena. “We need to make sure MegaCorp is obliterated and that they will never have power again.”

  Screw retirement. This was it; the story of all stories. The one that would make a difference. No more conspiracy, no more pointing figures from the safety of the Web. This was the truth and every person deserved to hear it.

  PACIFIC NORTHWEST HAVEN, 2459 A.D.

  HEAVY RAIN POUNDED THE CEMENT of the airship landing pad. The news station building was the second tallest in my Haven. From my vantage point I could see the blur of hundreds of billboards and neon signs glowing in the night, the ones farthest away nothing more than a smudge of blinking color as ships passed them by.

  I waited until Jimmy’s ship floated off into the night sky, then popped in my earpiece while I took the elevator to ground level. I’d given up on settling my nerves and accepted the nervous electricity pumping through my veins. Minutes later, I hit the bottom floor and walked onto the street.

  I’d never seen the streets so empty because every year prior to this, I was at the Arena. The spectacle of Bonecrushers obliterating hordes of Infected was the highlight of everyone’s year. No one missed it. Including me.

  All the street food vendors and shops were shuttered. There was something lonely about the billboard screens advertising to no one, the lingering smell of noodles and airship exhaust. Yet I knew I wasn’t alone. Not really. I felt the mechanical eyes of hundreds of security cameras on me—me, the only person walking the streets on the annual night of the Arena.

  Three deep breaths. Slow in, slow out. I made the call.

  “Holy shit, MC! What happened? Are you okay? I thought you were dead!”

  I heard the roar of the crowd in the background and knew Boss was at the Arena. While in the back of my mind I assumed people thought I died in Mercy, it was still unsettling to hear him say it out loud.

  “I’m fine. Still alive and kicking.”

  “What the hell happened?”

  “I was attacked by that damn bodyguard you sent. Darla Dreadful saved me. Boss, you won’t believe what I found out. I’m going somewhere safe right now. I’m sure MegaCorp is gonna be after me once they find out I’m back in the city.”

  My blood turned to ice as all sound went dead in my earpiece. I stopped walking and stood, looking around, waiting. This was part of the plan. That didn’t make it any less terrifying.

  “Boss?”

  “An airship will pick you up in approximately twenty seconds,” a cool, calm female voice answered. “You will be scanned for augments, nanotech, and weapons by a MegaCorp representative prior to entering the ship. Thank you for your cooperation.”

  Just as she finished her spiel, the promised airship landed ten yards in front of me. It was a sleek, vaguely insectoid looking model that was almost silent as it touched down. A lone man in a dark suit stepped out of the ship.

  “WOULD YOU LIKE A BEVERAGE? Perhaps a relaxy?”

  Despite the fake plants and landscape paintings on the wall, the giant waiting room was sterile and a few degrees too cold to be comfortable. The walls were white, the black floor so polished it was a dark mirror. The receptionist was so augmented and modified I wasn’t sure if he was human or bot. It didn’t matter, but I found myself looking for seams in his skin.

  I was in the Arena itself, though you’d never know it. The walls in the lobby were soundproofed so well I couldn’t hear even the slightest hint of the half million people in the arena around me. When we touched down on the executive roof landing pad, I heard the full force of them. I could almost feel the presence of the nearly two billion people across the world watching the live Arena broadcast.

  Behind me were the elevator doors where I entered, and on the opposite side behind the receptionist, were what I guessed were the doors leading to the private skybox of the Directors of MegaCorp. I’d seen their skybox before, jutting out atop the Area. Of course, then I was a patron of the gory display.

  “No,” I answered, finding my voice. “How long is it going to be?”

  The receptionist turned and glided back to his desk. He had to be a bot. A nice one. Humans couldn’t move with that much grace.

  “They’re here now, actually. Just arrived from their mid-ceremony speech down below.”

  The elevators opened with a soft swoosh on cue. Four suited guards stepped out, followed by two men and a woman. These last three were dressed in varying shades of gray, their faces neutral.

  “Well, well. If it isn’t our favorite journalist, risen from the dead,” the woman cooed.

  “Bartholomew. Drinks.” The order came from the eldest of the men. He was tall and impossibly thin, his skin stretched taut over his skull.

  Without missing a beat, the trio crossed the glossy black floor to the other doors, which slid open as they approached.

  “Go right on in,” the receptionist said and gestured with an open palm to the doors. “Let me know if you change your mind on that relaxy.”

  Glass windows floor to ceiling were the first thing my gaze snapped to, because beyond it was the sprawling, bloody arena where a battle between Bonecrushers and Infected raged. Nearly three hundred yards long, I only saw a fraction of the display.

  One wall of the skybox was covered in monitors showing closeups from the drones flying about
the entire Arena. I spotted Randy Dandy using a flamethrower on an oncoming horde of Infected. Betty Butch and Princess Chainsaw were at his back, shooting down dozens of Infected charging them. They were dangerously close to a Feeder—one of a hundred gated tunnels that released Infected every twenty minutes. But the lights around the Feeder were a cold shade of blue, indicating the waves had stopped for the mandatory mid-ceremony break. The Bonecrushers were mopping up the stragglers. Still, it was no time to relax. The Infected could still overtake them, and if they did, thousands of gallons of fatal gas would be pumped into the arena, killing everything in it.

  Bonecrusher or Infected.

  My stomach churned. Out of everything I stood for, how could I have participated in this?

  “My dear,” the third, portly member of the trio said. He collapsed into an oversized leather chair facing the window. “Look at that hair. That skin. So pale. Come sit by me?”

  Bartholomew pranced in with a tray of drinks and distributed them to the Directors.

  “God, Richard. Introductions first. You’re so crass.” The woman took a sip of her drink and flashed me a shark-like grin. “Of course, I’d imagine you know who we are. But still. I’m Constance Mallen.”

  Portly Man raised his hand in a flourish. “Richard Carlyle.”

  “August Von Berg,” the thin man finished. “Windows, dim.”

  The windows darkened to a solid black. I shifted my attention to the room. The carpet was a rich redwood. I figured it had to be real. Three oversized chairs were placed in the center of the room on a platform that looked like it could spin if the Directors wanted to face the monitors. On one wall was a bar where Bartholomew was already mixing another round of drinks.

  All seated, the Directors watched me from behind the rims of their glasses. Von Berg set his glass aside and steepled his fingers together. I sensed he was the true powerholder among them.

  “So. An uprising? Tell me more.”

  “I don’t think I will,” I said.

  “Don’t be foolish. Whatever your Bonecrusher friends have planned, it will fail.”

  “I doubt that.”

  Von Berg snapped his fingers. “Bring him in. I’m already tired of arguing with this woman and we’ve barely begun. MC, I don’t like wasting time. Let me show you how serious I am.”

  A moment passed, then the guards dragged someone in. Not just any someone.

  “You let him go, you bastards,” I shouted.

  Boss was gagged, his face red and sweaty. From the time that I called him till now, they’d beaten him. His right eye was swollen and one of his legs wasn’t quite at the right angle.

  This wasn’t supposed to happen. Darla Dreadful promised me she and her team would grab the Boss after I made the call. That they’d protect him.

  Either Dreadful lied to me, or something had gone wrong.

  Von Berg took long strides to Boss and reached out for the handgun one of the guards offered him. He pressed it against Boss’s temple, his eyes never leaving mine.

  “You’re in over your head, darling,” he said simply, then pulled the trigger.

  Blood and brain splattered across the floor. Boss’s body hit the ground. More red bloomed around his head. Von Berg handed the gun back and returned to his seat, unfazed by what he’d done. Bartholomew brought him a steaming, pristine white washcloth with which the thin man wiped his hands. He dismissed the guards, leaving us all alone.

  “Enough. Let’s put all our cards on the table and get this over with. The Arena is resuming shortly.” He finished off his drink. “We know those pitiful, rogue Bonecrushers are up to something. When Darla Dreadful contacted your Boss and requested you specifically, we knew it was a fine opportunity to find out exactly what.

  “Why did she choose you? That was the question. We dug deep and quickly learned of your ridiculous, unsuccessful, and slanderous articles and figured she wanted to use you to spread a message. We were right, weren’t we?”

  I opened my mouth to rebut. Von Berg didn’t give me a chance.

  “Of course we were. So, you go to Mercy and meet up with Dreadful. You kill one of our own and then show up here claiming an uprising. Know this, my dear. Your life is meaningless to us, but everything to you. So tell me, what does Dreadful have planned?”

  Holy fuck. He was insane. That knot in my stomach twisted tighter, now in rage. My body began to tingle. I needed to gain the upper hand and fast. Boss wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but he wasn’t evil and he sure as hell didn’t deserve to get shot in the head to make a point.

  I cast my eyes down and played defeat. The trick in telling a convincing lie was to put a dash of truth in it. I took a breath. “They can cure the Infected. They know you came up with the cure and they’re going to show the world you’ve been hiding it. Darla Dreadful was going to prove it tonight at the end of the Arena.”

  The directors were silent as they exchanged glances and communicated solely in expressions. Finally, Constance laughed.

  “Releasing the cure now wasn’t part of the three-century plan our forefathers set in place, but…” A wicked grin crossed her lips. “Oh well. We’ll make it work.”

  Richard snapped his fingers for another drink. “Certainly, it will be more manageable than the accidental release of the virus in the first place. God, now there was a mess. My great grandfather said the collapse of society was quite hard to deal with until the Havens were built. The cure getting out prematurely isn’t so bad. August, I’d imagine we should let Dreadful carry out her display? Then martyr her somehow and claim credit for it all?”

  Stay cool. Stay cool. I repeated it in my head despite the excitement building inside me. Darla didn’t know this. This wasn’t part of the plan but it sure as fuck worked for us.

  Then Von Berg was up again, his long limbs graceful as he strode towards me. This close, I could smell the fumes of alcohol on his breath, see the topography of his face.

  His eyebrows softened. He set his hand on my shoulder and spoke softly. “You’re a victim, MC. How little you know.”

  “What does he mean?” I asked, loud enough that the whole room could hear. “Accidental release of the virus?”

  Again, that fucking hyena laugh from Constance. “If he tells you, he’ll have to kill you.”

  “Tell me. I know too much. I know I’m not making it out of this alive.”

  Von Berg tapped my nose and smiled. “Smart girl. If you insist on knowing, we made the cure right after the virus escaped. The virus escaped before MegaCorp finished it due to an accident involving improper lab procedures. It forced MegaCorp’s grand plan into action eight years too early, but we recuperated over the course of a decade.”

  This was bad. Horrifying. Tragic. But at the same time, this turn of events was better than what I expected to get out of him. If he was going to go all Evil Villain Reveals the Big Plan on me, he was more than welcome to.

  He had no fucking clue what was coming.

  “Why?” I clenched my fists and stayed firmly planted. “Why would you want to release a virus like that? You killed billions of people.”

  “Darling, you have no idea what it was like back then. Our forefathers saw the polarization. The corruption. The imminent doom of mankind. The virus wasn’t finished yet. They were still tailoring who it would target when it escaped and caught the world on fire.” Constance pouted. “Many were lost who didn’t deserve to die.”

  Von Berg leaned against the bar, running his finger up and down the polished wood surface. “We saved the world. Unified it. The next generation was meant to release the cure, further proving MegaCorp’s greatness and allow us to reclaim the rest of the world from the Infected. Humanity is still too ignorant and idealistic to see the grand scope of it all. Richard, let’s not let the cure out quite yet. If anything happens, gas the arena. In fact, gas the stadium, too. Population control, anyway. We’ll play it off as a huge, awful accident. What do you—”

  The tint on the windows disappeared. L
ight from the Arena flooded the skybox.

  The Bonecrushers in the arena were gone. Instead, there were thousands of Infected. Some idled about, others fought out of boredom or rage. Every screen in the Arena showed crystal clear footage of the interior of the skybox. The shot came from behind the bar, where Bartholomew stood. It came from him. I knew Techno Joe had cameras planted somewhere. I hadn’t anticipated he hacked a high security bot.

  Bartholomew was standing still in that way only bots could. His eyes were wide open, watching the scene. For the first time since I stepped into the room, I moved, making my way behind the bar.

  The wall of screens adjacent to the windows all went to the same feed. The volume was deafening.

  “In fact, gas the stadium, too. Population control…in fact, gas the stadium, too…”

  It replayed Von Berg’s last statement over and over.

  No one moved. Richard and Constance were frozen, their faces slack in horror.

  Darla Dreadful’s face suddenly appeared on all the screens.

  “You are not a means to an end. You are people. You are all people.”

  A thin orange mist pumped into the arena. Slowly, the Infected stopped moving. They stilled as the cure took hold. The mist began to spread upward, but didn’t flood the entire arena. Techno Joe had come through, hacking the gas system. Dreadful had the toxic gas replaced with the cure mere hours before the Arena commenced.

  The world knew everything. They knew who MegaCorp was and what they’d done. They had proof of it all right in front of them.

  Von Berg made a struggled, choked sound. He spun on his heel and ran for the door, futilely trying to open it. Too bad Techno Joe had it locked down.

  I found the nicest bottle of whiskey the bar had to offer, poured a glass and savored the burn as it went down. Richard and Constance were openly weeping in each other’s arms.

  “It’s over! Christ, they all know!” she sobbed. “August, get us out of here!”

  Von Berg returned to the window where he leaned his forehead against it. His arms hung limply at his side. His face was ashen.