Fallen Metropolis (Omnibus Edition)

by Matthew J. Barbeler

  “No,” Doctor Harris said. “About a week and a half ago there was an incident. A hull breach down in maintenance. Then, a few maintenance workers came complaining of strange sores and growths. In a span of days, the infection had spread to most of the domestic animals. Dogs, cats and the like. Packs of dogs started attacking passengers, and a few days later the infection had taken hold in the passengers and crew.”

  “Have you ever heard of anything like this before? Any other similar infections?”

  “No. This is beyond anything I’ve ever seen or heard of. Even the deadliest viruses back on Old Earth didn’t have the destructive force that this thing does. I would hate to see what an organism like this could do if it touched down on an inhabited planet.”

  “A week and a half to infect one hundred thousand people... I wonder how long it would take to infect a whole planet.”

  “Weeks. A month at most. If it was a densely populated planet like Central, I think the infection would spread even faster. Because it doesn’t just infect animals. It infects plants too and turns them into infection vectors. Instead of ingesting carbon dioxide and exhaling pure oxygen, the oxygen is laced with infectious spores as well. A single tree infected with this organism could silently infect hundreds, if not thousands before they figured out where it was coming from.”

  The thought made Jaxon’s blood run cold. If even a single infectious host of this organism escaped from on board the ship, entire civilizations could be at risk.

  “How have you been able to figure all this out?” he asked.

  “It’s all I’ve been able to think about. I was a surgeon slash hobby xenobotanist back on New Earth before I accepted a position here on the Metropolis Seven. And I’ve had my own experiment going since I was infected,” Doctor Harris said. She motioned behind them to a clear glass case set back into the wall.

  It would have normally been used to hold infectious waste material, but now it was home to one of the most grotesque pot plants Jaxon had ever seen. It had once been some kind of bonsai tree. But now there were bluish tumorous growths all over its leaves and stems. It roots had grown out of the soil and were coiled around what appeared to be a disembodied hand. There were other cleaned white bones strewn around the specimen’s pot.

  “After something gets taken over by this infection, they become carnivorous. Even plants. They need meat and protein to survive and grow. They don’t even care whether it’s infected meat or not. They’ll eat anything,” Doctor Harris said.

  “Is this what you do with all the bits you cut off of people?” Jaxon asked.

  “Just the small ones. We incinerate the bigger pieces, like we’re going to do with your friend’s arm.”

  Ava’s infected arm moved, and Jaxon stepped back. The toothy gash in the middle of her forearm closed a little, relaxed open again, then tried to snap shut again.

  “What’s it doing?” Jaxon asked.

  “These organisms have metabolisms unlike anything I have ever seen. We’ll need to up the anesthesia to keep it quiet while we remove the limb,” Doctor Harris said as she held her finger against the illuminated clear glass control panel. The anesthetic levels went up, and Ava’s infected arm stopped twitching.

  As soon as the limb stopped moving, Doctor Harris grabbed a small plasma cutter from the instrument table and felt the area above the greyish purple skin above Ava’s elbow. She felt around the entire surface of Ava’s arm, working her way slowly up to Ava’s bicep. As she reached Ava’s bicep, Doctor Harris stopped feeling and flicked the plasma cutter on.

  A bright blue jet of energy burst from the end of the cutter. Doctor Harris adjusted the plasma blade to a small cutting edge, just long enough to cut through the layers of skin on Ava’s arm, but not to cause damage to the muscle beneath. She touched the cutting edge to Ava’s skin and drew the cutter across the bicep.

  Red blood welled from the site of the cut immediately. Ava’s skin crackled like a pan-fried steak from the extreme heat. Doctor Harris lengthened the cut and used a pair of forceps to widen it. Jaxon stood behind her and watched her work. She gently shifted Ava’s bicep muscle and swore under her breath when she saw a lumpy purple tendril winding through the muscle mass and around the humerus.

  “The infection has spread this far. If it’s made it to her shoulder joint or her collar bone, there will be no saving her. It will already be in her chest, and I can’t very well remove that.”

  “Do what you have to do, doc. She’ll make it. She’s strong.”

  Doctor Harris continued to cut upwards from the initial incision and followed the tendrils as they wound through Ava’s flesh. She found three tendrils in all. Jaxon held his breath as the doctor exposed inches of infected flesh.

  Doctor Harris stopped cutting and breathed a sigh of relief.

  “We’re clear,” Doctor Harris said. She folded a flap of skin back down over the exposed muscle and bone.

  “She’ll make it?”

  “Yes. But we need to take her arm. It’s dangerously close to her chest cavity. Another hour and there would have been nothing I could have done.”

  Doctor Harris immediately got back to work and began cutting the skin around Ava’s shoulder joint. After the skin had been incised, she pulled it backwards, down over Ava’s bicep as though she were pulling off a bloody sock. She left a single flap of skin, which would serve as the cover for the wound after they had removed her arm. Doctor Harris methodically cut through the muscles and tendons that held Ava’s arm to her body.

  Her arm came free. The ball at the end of her humerus slid out of the joint exposing white bone and cartilage.

  “Grab me a medical waste bag from that cabinet over there, would you? A large one,” Doctor Harris asked.

  Jaxon grabbed a waste bag and brought it back over. He unzipped the bag and held it open. Doctor Harris picked up the remains of Ava’s infected arm and dropped it into the bag. She then took it from Jaxon, zipped it up and dropped it in the nearby disposal chute.

  “It’s done. The incinerator has been running non-stop since all of this started. In a couple of minutes, her infection will be nothing but ash and smoke.”

  Doctor Harris walked back over to Ava. Her smooth white shoulder joint was empty. Doctor Harris began to fill the wound with healing gel. She then stretched the flap of skin from the outside of Ava’s arm across the wound. The healing gel gripped onto the flap of skin and held it in place while the doctor fused the edges shut with the plasma tool.

  After the wound was fused shut, Doctor Harris wrapped Ava’s right shoulder in bandages. The healing gel inside the wound had put a stop to the bleeding. Only light spots of blood soaked through the layers of bandages.

  “Why did you want to know if I’d had any prior surgical training? You didn’t actually ask me to do anything,” Jaxon asked.

  “I could tell that both you and the redhead wanted to be here. Which would have been fine, but your friend looked like he was about the pass out. I didn’t want him in here if he couldn’t handle what was about to happen.”

  Jaxon nodded, then looked over Ava’s motionless body and wondered how the hell he was going to get her out of this ship alive.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Aloysius led Draco and Raze slowly through the café plaza. The fleshlings continued to watch them as they walked. Draco kept his pistol up. Raze kept his assault rifle trained on the infected lining the plaza. Aloysius held his rifle with its muzzle pointed to the ground.

  “Do you know what the hell is going on here, Al?” Raze asked.

  “No, I don’t. I don’t understand why they’re not attacking us. These things have done all they can to try and capture us since we arrived on the ship, but these ones are not. I do believe there is a reason for their non-aggression, but I currently have no idea what that reason might be,” Aloysius said.

  “That’s not very encouraging,” Raze said.

  The end of the café and restaurant plaza opened into a circular open market. It reminded
Draco of the markets they held on Sundays back on Orpheon when he was a young boy. The stalls all used to sell hand-crafted jewelry, trinkets, bootleg entertainment and home-grown fruit and vegetables. Each stall was covered in a canvas cloth, to keep the sun off the stalls and their owners.

  The stalls on the Metropolis Seven were covered in multi-colored canvas cloth as well, even though the artificial sun inside the ship didn’t produce heat or ultraviolet radiation. Most of the stalls in the plaza had been destroyed or damaged. The rotten remains of fruit and baked goods were strewn across the ground. In places they had been trampled into dark brown mush.

  The outside ring of the market was roofed with red brick tiles. There were hundreds of fleshlings standing sentry in the shadows, watching and waiting. Draco, Raze and Aloysius weaved through the debris and crossed the market. They came to the outside of the ring and found their passage blocked by an impenetrable wall of the misshapen fleshlings.

  They came face to face with the cluster of them which were slack-jawed and staring. One of the creatures had a growth that looked like a malignant tumor pushing its jaw almost down to its chest. Small tendrils had begun to weave the flesh of its jaw and chest together. Another had a head that bulged so far to one side that Draco wondered if there was any room left in its head for a brain. Two creatures had flesh that looked as though it had been melted together in a fire. Their bodies were attached to each other at the back and shoulder. It was almost impossible to tell which of the lumpy growths had once been their arms.

  Each fleshling had once been human, but now they had been changed. They were something different. They made no movement to attack the crew of the Icarus, but they also made no attempt to move out of their way and let them pass.

  Aloysius stepped forward and spoke.

  “I hope that you have some intelligence left inside of you, for I need you to listen to me now. We need passage through your ranks. Stand aside and allow us to pass. We will not cause you any harm if you do not cause us harm.”

  The fleshlings did not respond. They just stared back at Aloysius blankly.

  “Uh, I don’t think they can understand us Al. Maybe we should-” Raze started to say but fell silent as the infected began to move.

  The fleshling with the tumorous growth in its mouth made a wet gurgling sound and moved out of Aloysius’s path. The others moved too. They joined their voices to the moaning chorus. They moved with clarity of thought that Draco didn’t think possible. They moved in unison and made a path that was wide enough for two men to walk abreast. Once they had shuffled backwards, they continued to stare blankly at Draco, Raze and Aloysius.

  Aloysius took the first step forward, and relief washed over Draco when the infected didn’t immediately fall upon them and attack.

  “This is the most terrifying thing they’ve done so far,” Raze said.

  Draco nodded in silent agreement. They slowly walked along the path through the infected and left the circular market through a large red stone arch. They crossed the street and approached the building on the other side of the road. It was a squat domed building that looked like it should have been part of a military compound, not part of a Metropolis long-vacationer. There was a single door at the front. The rest of the building was black and completely featureless.

  “It’s a hazard shelter,” Aloysius said. “It protects from all manner of threats. Explosives, biological, radiation, nuclear. There are shelters like these all over the ship. They also shelter the devices inside from EMP blasts.”

  “Sonofabitch. How about outside communication? Could we get back in contact with the Icarus?” Draco asked.

  “I am unsure,” Aloysius said. “However, if there is somewhere capable of bypassing the communications block coming from Metro Tower, this would be the place.”

  Next to the door of the hazard shelter was an identification swipe panel. The light at the top of the panel was red. Draco tried to open the door, but it would not budge. Aloysius held his hand over the ID panel, and the light changed to green. Something clicked inside the door. Draco pushed on it, and it slid open smoothly. The door opened into a small lit chamber, and Draco stepped across the threshold.

  “How did you do that?” Draco asked.

  “While in the system earlier I gave myself crewmember access,” Aloysius said. “This is the air lock. We have to be decontaminated before the ship will let us enter the shelter itself.”

  As soon as Raze stepped inside, Aloysius initiated the decontamination sequence. The door clicked as it locked shut and jets of steam laced with decontaminate shot out from the roof and walls. After a few moments the mist dissipated, and the door into the hazard shelter slid open.

  ‘Please exit the decontamination chamber,’ an automated voice said over the loudspeaker.

  The inside of the hazard shelter was smaller than Draco thought it would be. It was made up of a single circular room with a number of tables and chairs arranged in the middle. There was a terminal on the far side of the room, and it looked to be functional. Next to the terminal was a locked cabinet marked munitions. Finally, some firepower! Draco could replace his missing assault rifle.

  Aloysius walked over to the closest set of table and chairs and sat. He beckoned Draco and Raze to join him.

  “Please my friends, sit.”

  Draco and Raze both pulled up chairs and sat down. Draco wouldn’t say so out loud, but it felt good to sit. He didn’t know how many hours he had been awake and couldn’t remember the last time he’d had something to eat or drink. But on board the Metropolis Seven, he wouldn’t have trusted any food even if he found some. The passengers of the ship had been infected with something, and Draco hadn’t seen anyone but the little boy Pim who had been spared. Could the food be one of the infection vectors?

  Draco suddenly lost his appetite.

  Aloysius began to speak, “While my body was in stasis, my consciousness wandered, and it found many interesting things. I believe those things may alter our end goal aboard this ship.”

  “All right Al, hit us with what you’ve got,” Draco said.

  “Firstly, I am now completely sure that whoever has been manipulating us since we arrived on this ship is not a guardian shell program. It is someone masquerading as a guardian shell program. They wish to appear omnipotent aboard the ship. They attempted to assert their dominance over us. However, if it actually were a guardian shell program, it would do all it could to keep us alive. It wouldn’t actively attempt to put us into danger.”

  “So, there’s a puppet master trying to pull on our strings, just like we thought.”

  “Trying, yes. But failing. They have access to most of the ship’s function from where they are, so they must be located on the bridge. At the top of Metro Tower. I found a small piece of information floating in the datastream that shows that the Captain of the ship disabled the engine controls from the bridge directly.”

  “Why in the world would he do that?” Raze asked.

  “Any number of reasons. Perhaps the Captain felt that the growing infection aboard his ship should be destroyed, but whoever took control of the ship from him thought otherwise. This may be the Captain’s way of ensuring that whoever took control of the ship from him couldn’t achieve their goals,” Aloysius said.

  “If that’s the case, then we played right into their hands. They told us to get the engines back online, and we went and switched them back on.” Draco shook his head.

  “Captain, are you saying that we should have just left the ship in orbit and let it burn?” Raze asked.

  “I’m not saying that Raze. We had an obligation to investigate this ship. Both legal and moral. But now that we have some more information, we might be able to make a more informed decision going forward,” Draco said.

  “There was also some further worrying information in the datastream, Captain Goldwing. It appears that this vessel’s main medical facility in the heart of the city was outfitted with a whole slew of new medical equipment roughly one New
Earth week ago. There were encoded pieces of data referring to an infection and quarantine. We may have walked aboard a plague ship, Captain. There may not be any escape for us.”

  Raze shook his head and said, “I still don’t know how you managed to find out all this info, Al. You’re like a wizard.”

  “No, just very lucky. Our friend up in Metro Tower was jamming long-range and wireless communication for the longest time, but the initial EMP blast completely knocked his jamming system out. There is a shielded data network running throughout the entire ship to protect against their network going completely down if they were ever attacked or boarded. To ensure there would still be a secure means of communication. And it just so happens that I was able to bypass the extremely simple defenses they had on their network and get access to it. That took a little wizarding,” Aloysius said and inclined his head.

  Raze laughed. “Al, the technomancer. You always come through in a pinch.”

  “I do try,” Aloysius said.

  Draco smiled. “So where do we go from here, Al? It sounds like all roads lead to Metro Tower.”

  “Indeed, but there is some further information I need to impart before we proceed any further. I came across some other worrying information in the datastream. It seems as though -” Aloysius said, but was cut off by a familiar voice coming through the comm channel.

  ‘Al? Al!? Is that you!?’

  “Vynce! It’s good to hear your voice! How is Ava? And our time-traveler friend?” Aloysius asked.

  “Full report, now,” Draco ordered.

  ‘Uh, shit’s all kind of fucked up here, cap. Ava’s in surgery right now. Jaxon’s with her-’

  “Surgery? What’s going on?” Draco asked.

  ‘She got hit by one of those things. Some kind of sharp needle thing went straight through her. Cut straight through her smartsuit. And ever since then, something has been growing inside of her. The doctors here, they said they’ve seen it before. They need to cut her arm off, or the infection’s going to spread. Then she’ll be just like all of those other creepy fuckers shambling around the ship.’