by Andy Remic
Keenan rolled onto his side. Glanced up into gloom, where high above it seemed to rain oil. Several pipes emerged, feeding into this huge cylindrical chamber. Keenan lay on a narrow con-cretealloy lip circling the interior of the cylinder. Metal walls reared off above him. Before his eyes, the pool of gunk was thick, gelatinous, and a central whirlpool spun denoting interior suction.
“Franco?” he hissed. He could see nothing moving in the pool. “Cam?”
No response.
Keenan stood, checked his weapons, glared around.
He was alone.
He fished out his PAD. “Franco? Cam? Copy?”
Silence.
“Bastard.” Keenan—and Cam, who had formulated the plan—hadn’t anticipated the force of the cooling system with which they merged. It had quite literally ripped the group apart. And that meant... Franco, Cam, Xakus, they could be anywhere within NanoTek. They could be dead...
Keenan was on his own.
He breathed deep, calming himself, and narrowed his eyes, moving cat-like around the cold metal cylinder. Gunkfall pattered around him, splashing his boots. He scraped it from his eyes, and found a metal ladder.
NanoTek. Dr Oz. GreenSource Mainframe.
Keenan wanted answers. He wanted them now.
He started to climb, up past the oilfall of gunk and—he blinked, hundreds of pipes which fed into this huge, towering cylinder. That’s a big cooling system, he thought. What the hell does it cool?
He clambered up the ladder, hands and boots gunk-slippery on slick rungs. Up and up he travelled, until the pool into which he’d fallen was nothing but a distant dot. He shuddered. He was lucky. He’d emerged low, and hadn’t taken a dive from this kind of height; the impact, WarSuit or not, would surely have snapped his spine like a dry twig.
Far up on the greased ladder, Keenan paused. He tilted his head, sure he’d heard a rattle of gunfire. He fished out his PAD again, and tried to contact Franco. Nothing. He set it to scan, but it simply blipped at him in the negative. It would not, or could not, formulate a map.
“Bastard.”
Keenan carried on, slipping and sliding up the rungs, gunk-spray tickling him. Finally, he spied an access corridor high above, and gritting his teeth, muscles burning, hands raw despite his gloves, he powered on, boots squealing on slick metal and threatening to toss him back into the devastating pit.
He finally slammed down into the low-ceilinged access corridor, and realised it was little more than a rectangular pipe. Coolant gunk churned through a gully down the middle of the corridor. Keenan realised this meant, despite its access pretensions, it was still operational as part of the cooling system.
Rolling to his knees, he started to crawl. Fast. He wasn’t sure how much time he had. The metal floor beneath him was slippery, and it was probable it was used as a pipe, either an overflow or runoff of some kind. If a jet of gunk caught him there, in that place... he’d be forcibly ejected like a bullet, fall like a suicide jumper, and compact as readily as any meat pie in a groundcar crusher. Son of a bitch.
Keenan slid and slipped along the bowed floor, and saw a horizon approaching. Tubes fed in at roof height, with injectors pointing directly into Keenan’s emerging, snarling face. He squeezed past the evil narrow nozzles to find himself balanced on a high gantry overlooking a vast, vast warehouse. At Keenan’s level, a sea of matt black steel rushed away, support beams, H-section, alloy, ironanium, spirals and tubes and blocks and cable-carriers. Keenan moved carefully, warily, from the access tube and dropped down onto a thick, H-section beam. He crouched, grabbing hold of a tube over his head, and stared down into the heart of the NanoTek HQ.
At one far end, huge juggernaut SlamTruks were beeping and revving engines, reversing into a swathe of loading bays as wide as any average city. Some were leaving with spouts of churning acrid fumes. Keenan shielded his eyes, staring, trying to make out what they were... unloading? There were long crates. Cranes worked, whining and banging, unloading the SlamTruks and dumping crates onto skeeters and blobs.
Keenan’s gaze swept the vault, from the loading bay to the...
“Holy mother of God.”
Keenan’s jaw, quite literally, dropped.
Half of the vast, titanic chamber was full of zombies.
They stood in ranks, row upon row upon row, crammed and silent and stationary; thousands upon thousands of deviant, broken, buckled, torn, pus-weeping figures. Keenan crept along the beam, keeping low behind thick tubes, to get a closer look. Reaching a junction, he stood, balanced high above the sea of motionless zombies, turned, and leapt onto an adjacent beam. He caught his balance, steadied himself, then moved out over the ranks.
They’re a battalion, he thought.
They’re an army.
What the hell are they doing here?
Keenan frowned. Who’d want an army of zombies? They’re slow, (well, slower than any trained soldiers), they’re useless, they moan and dribble and fight amongst themselves. But then, he thought, look at them now! Happy as puppies. Docile as dopers. Not an ounce of aggression amongst their ragged... torn... exteriors.
Keenan frowned. Something was wrong. Something, far down below him, didn’t fit. It wasn’t right. Like a clever puzzle designed to fool the brain, Keenan fought against what he was witnessing; then he relaxed into the game, allowed his eyes to play over the scene, around the edges of the vault, and he realised and smiled a bitter, sour smile. That was it. The discrepancy. The mind-fuck.
The zombies were organised by deformity.
So, there stood a rectangular battalion of zombies with sloping shoulders and distended jaws. Then, arranged neatly next to them, another battalion with buckled ankles and twisted claws. Another, seven feet high with eyes popped out on quivering stalks. And on and on it went, the zombies, although clothed differently, were arranged. And, Keenan was damn sure zombies didn’t arrange themselves like that. And they certainly didn’t stand docile and... waiting?
These zombies were not the wild, random creatures he had seen out on City streets. These were well-behaved. Conditioned. They seemed to be obeying... orders.
“Ha!”
“What you doing here, pep? You not look like maintenance staff. Are you maintenance staff? Give me your name and rank serial, so I can check if you maintenance staff, silly little pep staff straying out of the main service route where only maintenance staff are allowed.”
Keenan’s heart sank. What? Up here? No, it couldn’t be... But it was. Keenan turned. The voice belonged to a Justice SIM. A Justice SIM with an MPK machine gun... Keenan smiled weakly. “Hi,” he said cheerily. “I was just looking for the cooling chambers. I had a routine maintenance job to do. Should I not be up here? Sorry. Sorry!”
All the time he spoke he was moving towards the SIM... which frowned, mechanical eyes clicking, face impassive and emotionless. “We don’t have any cooling chambers,” said the SIM. Its gun snapped up. “You stand there, pep, you illegal, you illegal immigrant, how you get in? You not able to get in? I’m scanning now... you not have...”
Keenan’s Techrim boomed, three times, and bullets kicked sparks from the MPK which smashed from the SIM’s gloved hands and went sailing out over the sea of motionless zombies, a few bullets rattling from a hastily trapped trigger. Fire blossomed from the barrel. The gun turned. Keenan ducked as bullets whined overhead, pinging erratically from metal beams.
The SIM charged him...
Keenan fired off a few more shots, scrambling back, but the SIM’s armour absorbed bullets with little jelly whumps. A fist slammed Keenan’s face, and he ducked a second swing, dropping to one knee, powering a blow to the SIM’s groin which cracked metallically. The SIM kicked out, the blow lifting Keenan and sending him staggering back. A second kick sent his Techrim flying out after the falling MPK. Keenan glanced down, watching his trusted weapon disappear. Below, none of the zombies had moved; none looked up. None seemed the slightest bit interested in the fight taking place over their heads.
/> The Justice SIM smiled. And that was unusual. They normally didn’t have the personality.
“I’m going to make you hurt, pep.”
“Come and show me, dickhead.” Keenan was edging back across the beam. A quick glance told him his retreat was blocked by waist-thick pipes. He’d have to go for his MPK holstered on his back... and even then, he knew, the fight would be a hard one—
SIMs didn’t die easy.
He went for the MPK as the SIM charged, but it was too fast. Keenan lashed out with a combination of punches, all of which connected and rocked the SIM. It staggered, then smiled, eyes clicking. It pulled out a long knife from an embedded compartment at its waist...
Keenan was grappling, trying to pull free his MPK, but something had trapped it against his pack. Had it been the fall? The rush through high-pressured cooling tubes? Whatever, the gun was jammed, wouldn’t tug free, and Keenan dropped to pull a slender knife from his own boot. In comparison to the SIM’s blade, he might as well have held a toothpick...
Man and SIM faced one another.
Keenan was sweating, and he wiped it from his eyes.
The SIM started forward. Slow. With care.
Keenan retreated, until his back slammed the pipes. They vibrated with a hollow, clanging reverberation.
“I’m going to gut you like a fish, pep. Your kind are inferior, pasty, so weak and brittle and easily broken. You were the template for the SIM; yes, but look now how superior we are! And yet, still you are arrogant little man, patronising, think you so superior. You... humans... you make me sick.”
~ * ~
Franco fell down and slapped along through thick gunge, flapping his arms like a madman. “Aarrghie!” he screamed as the pressure spat him, and he sucked in a mouthful of gunk that made him choke and splutter and splurge. Everyone was gone, Keenan, Cam, Xakus. He flowed like a drug in an arterial system, slammed along at a fair old rate spreading his own special brand of Franco high. “Get me out!” he screamed. “Get me out of this place!” He zig-zagged through more pipe junctions. “Get me out! Get me out of this trap!” He sped and rushed, hands flapping, trying to slow his accelerating insanity. His hands juddered from the insides of the rubberised pipes and were nearly ripped off at the wrists. “Get me out! Get me out of my brain!” And then, as the speed seemed to shiver and hum through every single vibrating atom of Franco Haggis, making him weep and scream and wail and want to die with every pounding pressing crushing second, so—a miracle happened.
“Get me...” he began.
And it did. It got him out. Ejected him like a bout of diarrhoea from a colitis-riddled giant. Franco sailed onto a metal platform, high in the air, and rolled over and over and over again, rattling to a stop and staring down at knurled alloy. He was panting. He was sweating. His WarSuit was making funny erratic clicking noises. Franco glanced right, to where gunk poured under high pressure and fell into a velocity well far below. If he’d gone down with it, he would have been instantly crushed. Thanks be to God! he praised.
His head turned the other way. To see gleaming boots. “Ahh. Haha. Yeah, right, sure, it was never going to be that easy, right? Bugger.” His eyes blinked a few times, and his depth of vision returned. Behind the boots were... metal legs. Three sets. They looked solid, well-crafted, sculpted, even, in a kind of sturdy, efficient, robot-killer kind of way.
Franco looked up, sheepishly.
He blinked.
And blinked again.
A hand reached down towards him. Franco took the hand, and allowed himself to be helped to his feet. A big, beaming smile smacked like a kipper across his face. His eyes went wide, glistening in happiness. His nostrils twitched involuntarily at her natural perfume. The scent of the wild woman. The aroma of the sexy bitch.
“You are one lucky son of a bastard,” said Pippa, still holding on to Franco’s gloved hand. “Three feet less, and you’d have gone into the grav, your whole body compressed to the size of a pin-head.”
“Pippa!” he roared, and embraced her in a swathe of gunk-smeared clicking WarSuit. There came three hardware clunks and Franco met the eyes of the GK AIs, Nyx, Momos and Lamia. There came a rush of noise, like ice-hail on a windscreen, like machine gun bullets against corrugated steel, and five thousand needles rippled across Nyx’s arms and torso as her sculpted head lowered, and the discs of her eyes fixed on Franco.
Franco held up a hand, palm outwards.
“OK, OK, no need to get frisky, doll.” He took a step back, and looked Pippa up and down. “By God, girl, it’s damn good to see you! And I don’t even mean that in a sly sexual way, although of course, you know how it is with little old me, and if you do change your mind you know I’d be the first one to jump into a bath of hot marmalade with you, despite being on a mission to save my beloved Mel!” He grinned. Slapped her on the shoulder—at the same time she slammed cuffs around his wrists.
“It’s good to see you, Franco.” But the smile wavered, and disappeared from her face. “It’s a shame things have changed for the worse. I have a new job now.”
Franco stared at the cuffs incredulously. He tugged at them, not quite believing they were there. “What? WHAT? What’s this, Pippa? Who do you think you’re betraying? What you doing here in NanoTek? And with them bloody buggers who tried to smash us up back at that library?” Franco’s face relaxed. He released a breath. He nodded. “So. The Big Boys got you on payroll now, eh girl?” He grinned, only this time it was removed from the grin of friendship he’d offered a few seconds earlier.
“This is my job,” said Pippa, stiffly.
“This is me, Franco.” He shook his head. “What the fuck’s going on in your head, girl? After all the shit we’ve pulled? All the hardtime missionwise we went through? Pippa, you’ve got your head on all backside fucked.”
“This is my job!” she snarled, moving close to Franco, cold grey eyes narrowing. “How can you criticise me} After the K Jump went wrong, after we went to... that place.”
Franco’s voice was cool. “I just know we all had to be strong,” he said. “It was a bad time. But we worked together to break free. We worked as a team. We are a team.” He eyed the three advanced AIs standing dangerously languorous behind the woman. “But I see some things have changed, right? Killing Keenan’s family... well, that’s fucked with your skull. Now you’ve took up with some new slick fresh-oiled meat.” Franco leant over, and spat at the AIs. They did not move. “Man-murdering meat-fuckers. I thought MICHELLE ragged you all over the place. A shame to see you still standing.”
Pippa took a step back, gestured to the AIs. “Take him.”
Momos and Lamia moved, like flowing liquid, smooth and seductive animation that was not lost on the horn that was Franco. They grabbed him, roughly, one under each arm. Their heads turned, the matt black discs of their eyes fixing him; enamelled jaws smiled on sliding greased pistons.
Pippa strode ahead, down a high-roofed, alloy-floored hallway. Behind, the gunk from the coolant system faltered and suddenly dried up; as if a simple tap had been turned. A passageway closed. A job well done.
Franco dragged along, boots bumping. “Pippa! Pippa, don’t do this! We’re still a team... hey? Still Combat K! You can never change what you are! Never kill what lies in your heart! You were born Combat K. And you’ll die Combat K.”
Pippa halted. Turned. Smiled a tight, cold smile. She eyed the GK AIs with cool compression. When she spoke, her voice was melting ice over frozen alcohol. “Nyx, Momos, Lamia—if the,” she savoured the word, “prisoner... speaks again... then hell, please feel free to kill him.”
She strode off, boots clacking down the hall.
~ * ~
Cam felt his strands ripped free from direct contact inside Xakus’s brain; and as the old professor slammed off down a pipe, Cam knew instinctively that the old man was dead. Sadness swamped him—for a nanosecond—until reality kicked his small AI brain into gear and he focused on his dangerous situation. It was a massive surprise to be swept aw
ay, each of them jerked in different directions and sent spinning down separate coolant pipeways. Cam spun fast, at first trying to fight the flow, then relaxing into a current too powerful for his motors to drive against without burning out, or at least becoming seriously damaged. Cam flowed, zipping down pipes, along pipes, even upwards if his gyroscopes were to be trusted. He coolly logged his direction, speed, co-ordinates. He monitored for Keenan and Franco... but, worryingly, could find nothing. Had the pressure killed all three men? Cam cursed in machine code.