Warhead

by Andy Remic

  EARMIC: What are you doing? Just what the fuck are you doing?

  SONIA J:— liberate you from the threat of the HATE biological weapons when it was in fact their own guided warheads which delivered the toxic payloads in the first place! And now the Nex run a closed society in which men, women and even our children are slaughtered like diseased and wasted cattle and this is never reported, this abomination is never allowed into the public domain. I have seen these things and I know that you, sitting there on your fat arses on your comfy fucking couches have seen these things too. We need to rise up, throw off the shackles of our oppressors—yes, join the REBS! Join Spiral! Allow these pure-hearted victors to help you to help yourselves!

  EARMIC: Get her off! Fucking get her off. Cut the feed—yes, now, you fuckwits, cut the FEED!

  AUDIO: Classical music.

  VIDEO: Black background/white lettering Lucida Sans.

  NO SERVICE

  NO SERVICE: the words stared back at Sonia J from the semicircle of surrounding monitors. The audience sat in a stunned silence. Her gaze slid across to Mace who was smiling a malevolent, twisted little smile.

  From the edges of the stage she saw a bustle of activity and, ripping free from her EARMIC, she dragged out a Walther PPM 11 mm pistol and whirled around in a tight circle, scanning for enemies.

  Mace did not flinch; rather, he remained seated, hands in his lap, eyes watching with cold detachment. He’s too cool, realised Sonia with a sudden stab of doubt. Just way too cool...

  Sonia sprinted across the ChainTV studio, leaping a low settee and slamming against the wall in which sat the door which proudly proclaimed ON AIR in bright false letters across its processor-inset glass.

  Everything had happened so fast that the cameramen and JT8s were still standing, gawping uncertainly at one another. Then their instructions came through on hidden earpieces as Sonia banged through the door and into the path of six Nex with Steyr sub-machine guns pointed calmly at her face.

  Sonia J froze.

  A hand reached out. ‘Your weapon?’

  Sonia allowed her Walther to fall to the ground. Then a hand slid around her waist from behind. Mace moved around her, holding her in a gliding creepy embrace, and looked up into her eyes. He smiled then, and Sonia suddenly realised: Mace was dangerous. Awesomely so. Perhaps more lethal than any man—any Nex—that she had ever met.

  ‘Now, my sweetness, my little flower, I think we need a long and serious chat.’

  Sonia J spat into his face, but he did not flinch, and his copper eyes did not blink. His hands tightened around her waist. Sonia tried to back away, but found Mace’s grip incredibly powerful. Unbreakable.

  Then came another voice. Bobby Clough stumbled down the corridor, his poise for once gone, and lurched to a stop. He stared hard at Sonia, who transferred her disgusted gaze from Mace’s smiling face to Clough’s angry one. ‘What have you done?’ he hissed.

  ‘I have done what is right.’

  ‘You’ve lost your fucking job!’ he snapped. ‘You’re no longer on board!’

  ‘She has lost more than her job.’ Mace moved away, still smiling, and a circle of Nex steel closed around Sonia. She shut her eyes, yet when the first blow came it still surprised her, even though she’d been expecting it. She hit the ground, and within a moment the beating had rendered her unconscious.

  She was briefly aware of voices before she passed out.

  ‘... so, so, so sorry,’ Bobby Clough was bleating.

  And then Sonia J’s mind swam among diamond stars.

  Cold water splashed Sonia’s face, and groggily she came around. She coughed and felt sticky blood against her skin, her head and neck, and matted in her hair. She realised that she was bound with wire to a chair.

  They were in Clough’s boardroom. The lights were still subdued but now the room was crowded. Six Nex, four JT8s—all heavily armed. Bobby Clough himself sat on the edge of his lacquered table, holding his oiled curly head in his hands.

  And Mace was there, smiling.

  Sonia, groggy from the beating, ran a thick tongue around her sticky mouth. She realised that Mace’s demeanour had changed. Now he was exuding the power of the leader. The dictator. The torturer, came an unbidden thought at the back of her mind. Sonia shivered.

  ‘Welcome back,’ Mace said, almost cheerily. ‘Firstly, you’ll be pleased to learn that none of today’s Pussy_live! was actually broadcast. It was, of course, relayed straight back to Durell and other government agencies who have charged me with the responsibility of finding out just what rank you possess within the REBS—and then gaining answers to some difficult and vexing questions.’

  Sonia’s mouth opened, then closed again.

  ‘She made a very big mistake,’ said Clough, his steely gaze suddenly softening. He was a big tough man—but this game was not just played in a different league, it was fought like a war on a separate continent.

  ‘Yes.’ Mace nodded.

  ‘You fucked with the wrong people,’ Clough was saying, scowling at Sonia, running a hand through his oiled curls, skin drawn tightly across his skull with the stress of anxiety. ‘I warned you, I bloody warned you this, morning, told you that this was your final chance, that you would lose your job, that you had to respect the Nex because—’

  The shot sounded deafeningly loud in the confines of the boardroom. Bobby Clough slumped back against the desk, his head now sporting a hole with burnt shards of splintered cranium around its edges, his mouth gaping slack and lifeless. The flattened bullet had raised a little puff of plaster from the wall after exiting the back of Clough’s skull in a shower of pulverised brain matter.

  Sonia watched as Mace moved forward and looked down at her.

  ‘I have questions,’ said Mace.

  ‘I will give you answers,’ said Sonia, her voice soft, her sense of impending betrayal a knife buried in the depths of her own shrivelling heart.

  The simple pause seemed to last a lifetime

  Sonia kept thinking, it’ll be OK, the REBS will be here in a minute, they’ll come and save me—smash through the windows and doors, kill the Nex in a hail of machine-gun fire and we’ll fight a savage retreat and be gone from this place. And then she remembered. The show had not been broadcast. Therefore, the REBS did not know about her situation.

  Shit, she thought. She had not banked on the bastards faking a live-air feed. They had sensed her treachery. She had played a dumb game, stumbled like a blind woman into their waiting arms. She had given them a taster; and the taster had led, ultimately, to her discovery and her destruction.

  Mace carried a small black case and laid it down next to Clough’s body. Sonia J caught a glimpse of the dulled silver of polished medical implements.

  She felt suddenly very cold. She didn’t feel like a liberator, a saviour of mankind standing tall against the brutality of the Nex. She didn’t feel like a freedom fighter who would become a brave and revered martyr. She felt suddenly stupid, hasty, an emotional numbskull who had blown her great gift of live TV access on a network more controlled than any laboratory experiment—and in front of the largest audience ever—on a rant that hadn’t actually gone out, didn’t even fucking count ... and, at the same time, had also condemned her as REB.

  Mace moved into her view. He held a long silver implement which gleamed razor sharp. The blade was very thin, and had a twist towards the edge. He smiled down and his expression was chilling.

  Sonia saw him for what he was. A Nex in love with pain.

  ‘You are the leader of the REBS?’ said Mace softly.

  ‘No, I—’

  The blade flashed out and Sonia cringed—but no pain came as the blade flashed past her face.

  ‘You are the leader of the REBS,’ said Mace. He moved around her, pacing slowly, hands behind his back.

  ‘I am not.’

  ‘Sonia J—I will stand here and carve up your face. I will cut out your eyeballs. I will remove your tongue. I will slice off your nose. I will smash out you
r teeth with a hammer. And then, and only then, will I peel off your face, using a digital scalpel. All these things I will do—’ he suddenly dropped, so that his eyes were mere inches from her face ‘—if you give me one more false answer. There will be no second chance. You suffer—but you will not die, because first I will give you injections of pentathol amyldimorphate. You will feel, and you will suffer, but you will remain conscious. Do you understand me?’

  Mace’s breath smelt strangely sweet, and Sonia felt her own head spinning with the unreality of the situation. She prayed then—prayed to a God she did not believe in. ‘Are you the leader of the REBS?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sonia J, her voice suddenly strong. A new idea had come to her, one which could—if she got out of this situation alive—do some good. ‘But there are many sub-commanders in the REBS who are almost as powerful as me. I do not have complete control—I delegate to my SCs.’

  Mace considered this. ‘Where is your HQ?’

  ‘We have a mobile headquarters—in much the same way as Durell had a mobile HQ back in his early days. In fact, we stole the idea from your very own illustrious leader ...’ Sonia met Mace’s gaze then, saw him faltering a little. She frowned. ‘You will never pin us down to one location, Mace. Although we are not as technologically advanced as Spiral, with their GRID, we are nevertheless just as inventive. Now, I have a question for you, you deformed and stinking piece of Nex shit: when will EDEN be ready?’

  Sonia saw the flicker in Mace’s eyes that told her the answer. It was ready now. It had always been ready. But the Nex had no intention of unleashing the Eden_class substance into the world; no intention of purifying the toxic wasteland rendered uninhabitable by HATE. Because, she suddenly realised, HATE was the most perfect of control mechanisms. It kept the people of the world locked up with a biological key.

  It was then that they were interrupted. Mace turned and moved away, flanked by two Nex with balaclavas pulled down over their faces. When Mace returned, he was smiling softly.

  ‘You are Sonia J—the Media Queen. Durell has had the incredibly wonderful idea of a televised trial. It will make for great television and will obviously not go out live, so it can be edited to our own exacting standards. It will neatly show how Sonia J, Media Queen, is the head of the REBS and is thus responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent bystanders, mothers and children, thanks to badly placed bombs and stray bullets from street gunfights. It will also negate the damage you did yesterday with your Alexandra interview. It will be perfect!’

  Sonia J paled. ‘A trial?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Mace. ‘And your judge will be Judge Ronald Hamburger from the daytime trial programme Name Your Crime! I believe he is your greatest rival in terms of TV ratings and media competition. And do you want to know something, Sonia?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The outcome of this trial can only go one way. So take your last breath, your last look, and spill your final tepid tears. Your time on our precious planet is over.’

  The trial was a long one. A series of ‘witnesses’ was paraded before the jury, all of them coming out with the most incredible falsehoods and accusing Sonia J of being everything from a performer of witchcraft to a maker of digVID animal porn. She was a REB. Ergo, she was evil. She was a terrorist responsible for the deaths of children. She was anti-establishment, and she would achieve her vile aims by any means necessary—even if it meant the destruction of the whole world.

  In a whirl of noise and shouts and accusations, Judge Ronald Hamburger sentenced Sonia—predictably—to a televised death by firing squad. To be carried out in three hours’ time, after the trial had been aired. The actual execution would be run on every single network, every TV and radio channel. It would be a stern warning to the population. It would show the horrors of terrorism.

  And hell, it would make great TV.

  Sonia J’s brain was in turmoil as she sat in her cell. A part of her thought of the trial as a circus parade, a farce of the most epic proportions. And yet the cold hard reality of her situation still smashed her in the face like an expertly aimed half-brick.

  She was going to be executed.

  Murdered ...

  Welcome to the Nex State, she thought sourly as she banged her mug rhythmically against the bars of her cell. Unfortunately, it did little to annoy the Nex. They didn’t have the imagination, it would seem.

  With every passing moment Sonia J was growing more and more tense with expectation, awaiting the explosion that would blow a hole in the cell wall as the REBS came pouring in to rescue her. But reality kicked her in the face. Durell had successfully flushed out and exterminated a great number of REBS over the previous few months: their strength was in severe decline, and could they really spare such hefty resources to rescue one woman?

  Sonia closed her eyes and thought of the man she was protecting. The real leader of the REBS. She smiled a little at the thought. At least, somehow, the Nex had got their wires crossed by insisting on her status as the top dog. When, in reality, it was a lot more complicated than that. And his identity had to remain a carefully guarded secret. Because if they ever discovered who secretly controlled the REBS, who masterminded their modest hits, then Durell would surely throw every resource he owned into their elimination. And the REBS just did not have the resources, nor the technology, to combat such an onslaught.

  The JT8s came for Sonia after three hours. They beat her savagely with the butts of their Steyr sub-machine guns, strapped her arms behind her back with wire and dragged her into the narrow cold corridor. She was going to die.

  And nobody was going to save her.

  The execution yard was large and grey, with high walls that had thick coils of barbed wire along their summit. An anti-mortar mesh spanned the skyline. Snow was still falling heavily on this gloomy afternoon and the yard was crammed around its edges with baying reporters and cameramen. Sonia J’s gaze came to rest calmly on the firing squad.

  Ten slim masked Nex—holding heavy-calibre 13mm NailGuns—stood in a line, facing one of the walls. The wall had a disturbing peppered quality about it: innumerable former rounds had pounded the surface so that it looked like a crumbled moonscape.

  Sonia J shivered, glancing around the crowd, unable to brush the gathering snow from her shoulders because of her bindings. Her outfit was painfully thin, designed for the hothouse interiors of the TV studio, not the chill of a London snowstorm.

  Judge Ronald appeared. He seemed subdued, but brightened a little as the TV CAMS tracked his entrance.

  ‘Welcome back, folks! And thanks for tuning in!’ he proclaimed.

  Sonia J was prodded to stand against the wall. Now that she was close enough she could make out ingrained old dried blood and tiny embedded shreds of splintered bone. It smelled bad. Like a charnel house.

  Sonia felt herself fill up with an unbearable fear as she face the masked Nex. They levelled their NailGuns at her.

  ‘One minute to execution, folks!’ came the jolly words of Judge Ronald Hamburger.

  Sonia closed her eyes, not wanting the black masks of the Nex killers to be the last things she saw as she died. She thought back to better times as the execution yard clock counted down the last few seconds of her expendable life ...

  CHAPTER 9

  IN THE LAP OF THE GODS

  I will fucking kill them, thought Carter.

  I will maim them. I will burn them. I will fuck them with white-hot pokers.

  ‘That’s my boy!’ cheered Kade.

  ‘I will fucking burn you as well, fucker.’

  ‘‘Don’t be like that! I’m here to help!’

  ‘You never help me, Kade; you merely prolong my misery.’

  ‘One day you’ll thank me. We will sit like brothers, Brother, and you will look deep into my soul, and I into yours—we have shared many moments in this life, and our crossing is a jewelled prologue of what will come, what will be, what will exist. . ‘

  ‘Just what the fuck are you, Kade?’

/>   ‘You will learn soon enough.’

  ‘So you can read the fucking future now, can you, shit-head?’

  ‘No, no, Carter. But there are things here you do not understand; things you cannot remember ... Do you recall your little brother Jimmy? Do you remember his head splitting open like a ripe melon when he fell from that pipe onto the rocks? And later, the sanatorium? After you murdered Crowley? The sterile white walls, the stench of iodine ... oh, joyous days, happy days!’

  ‘Sanatorium?’ Confusion. Doubt. But reality—consciousness—came crashing back into Carter’s world, and his blood-sticky eyes opened to see square tiles scrolling past his swaying vision. Nausea swamped him—for he had been badly beaten—and vomit splashed thickly from his quivering lips, running down his chin and leaving a foul trail across the tiles. He was ignored; his vomit was ignored; he tried to turn, to struggle and fight but weakness had invaded his limbs and his strength had left him.

  Carter was being dragged by his arms and his boots thumped along the tiles. The Nex who dragged him ignored his feeble struggles and muted groans of pain.

  Carter shivered when he remembered the beating. It had been a long horror, a torture: they had punched him and kicked him, jumped on his spine, then beaten him with weapon butts. He had vomited blood, felt ribs smash within the cage of his body; and then they had injected him with a bright silver liquid and pain had screeched through him like nothing he had felt before, fire eating him from the inside out, burning him like raw acid in his veins and organs ... to finally drain away, leaving him a hollow man.

  Carter was dumped unceremoniously on the floor. He slumped into a heap and closed his eyes for several moments. Then he felt soft hands helping him up onto a seat. His eyes flickered open and he saw the face of Alexis, her copper eyes glowing, her smile filling him with confusion.

  Carter looked around. ‘Where am I?’ he croaked.

  ‘The Sentinel Corporation HQ in New York,’ came the voice of Durell. Carter turned slowly, burning inside with hatred and anger and a sudden need to kill.