by Rob Vlock
“Eat fire, Octogranny!” Alicia growled. She raised the flamethrower toward Roz. Her eyes gleamed ferociously as she reached into her pocket. Then she froze. “Hold on. Where’s my lighter?”
Will cleared his throat and held up the lighter he had confiscated from her earlier. “Sorry, I meant to give this back.”
He tossed the lighter toward Alicia, but one of Roz’s tentacles darted out and snatched it from the air midflight. A sharp hiss of escaping butane signaled the lighter’s demise. Roz dropped its blue plastic carcass on the floor.
“Oh, did I break it? I’m sorry, sweetie,” Roz simpered. “But you may as well come to terms with reality. You might have defeated Dr. Manson Shallix, but you will not escape me.”
She read the surprised expressions on our faces and laughed. “Of course I know what happened to him. Each Omicron unit has an overseer. And each overseer works as part of a team to ensure our plan moves forward in the event of unforeseen complications. I was aware the very moment Dr. Shallix was deactivated. I could feel him go offline.”
Overseers? The implications made my fingers tingle with panic. If there were six more Ticks to track down, that meant there were six more overseers that we were going to have to get through first!
A pair of Roz’s tentacles wrapped themselves around my waist. They felt like steel cables. No matter how hard I struggled, they didn’t budge.
The sound of something clattering to the floor drew my attention to Alicia. The flamethrower had been torn from her grasp, the fluid inside seeping uselessly into the carpet. At least half a dozen of Roz’s limbs encircled Alicia, pinning her arms to her sides and lifting her a foot off the ground.
I turned to Will just in time to see Roz immobilize him, too.
“Let go of us!” Alicia snarled.
Roz shook her head slowly. “Stop struggling, dear. You’ll only make this more painful than it needs to be.”
One of Roz’s tentacles reached out and caressed my cheek with its thick, discolored nail. “So you are Seven Omicron. Dr. Shallix cared for you so very much. It’s a shame you ended up disappointing him.”
“Don’t call me that! I’m Sven, not Seven!”
“You are Seven Omicron,” she tittered. “You represent the epitome of Synthetic development. As does my dear Dix, of course. Or, as he is properly designated, Six Omicron.”
At the mention of his name, Dixon called out from the bathroom. “What did you say, Roz? Can I come out now?”
“Nothing!” the woman barked. She paused and added in a voice dripping with honey, “Just a little longer, Dixon, sweetie. You stay in there. I’ve almost finished with these . . . reporters.”
Of course! Dixon had no idea he was a Tick. And Roz wanted to keep it that way. If he saw her for who she really was, he might be too freaked-out to sing.
“Dixon!” I shouted. “Oh, wow! Your pet monkey is here! And he’s so cute!”
Roz’s eyes grew wide. In an instant, every single one of her tentacles had retracted and disappeared back under her blouse. Will, Alicia, and I tumbled to the floor.
By the time Dixon had emerged from the bathroom, Roz looked every bit the frail old human lady. If it hadn’t been for the fact her shirt was in tatters, you’d never have known anything was wrong. But Dix was way too focused on searching for a domesticated primate to notice.
“Dixon, sweetheart,” Roz chirped. “You should go back into the bathroom until I’ve finished with our visitors.”
“But my pet monkey!” the pop star replied with an imperious scowl. “Where is it? I was told there’d be a pet monkey!” Dix began turning over couch cushions and emptying dresser drawers.
“Dixon, sweetheart,” Roz said soothingly. “Perhaps you can go back into the bathroom. . . .”
“No! I! Want! My! Monkey! Now!” Dix replied.
“Dixon, please be reasonable,” Roz pleaded. “Tonight is the most important performance of your life. We don’t want you stressing your vocal cords, now, do we?”
“There won’t be a performance if I don’t get a pet monkey this instant!” Dixon snarled.
The fury on Roz’s face slowly transformed into something else. Fear. “But you . . . you have to perform tonight. Your show is being simulcast on nearly every television and radio station on Earth. It will be the biggest musical event in history. The whole world will be listening.”
Dix glared at her.
“Dixon, honey, not performing would be—waaghhh!”
Whatever she was about to say dissolved into a startled yelp as a round, jag-toothed steel blade buried itself in the side of her head.
Alicia had taken advantage of Roz’s distraction to heave one of her magnetic throwing stars at the Tick’s head.
“Chew on that, sweetheart,” Alicia taunted.
Roz’s body jerked rigid, and she spoke in a mechanical monotone. “Physical breach. This unit is under assault. Damage assessment in progress.”
The tentacles she had hidden from Dix reemerged and gingerly reached up toward her head like a cluster of long, boneless fingers. Whenever they’d get too close to the magnets affixed to the blade, they’d recoil as if in pain.
I could see the skin and bone around Roz’s injury struggling to heal. Her emergency repair system was kicking in. If the blade hadn’t been magnetized, Roz probably would have already shrugged off Alicia’s attack as nothing more than a minor inconvenience.
But for Ticks like Roz—and me—magnets were the last thing you’d want anywhere near you. I should know. My face had been nearly ripped off by an electromagnet in science class. These weren’t nearly as strong, but they were enough to keep Roz’s wound from healing.
“Condition red. Defense mode activated,” Roz intoned. Her tentacles shot out violently, whirling in a deadly storm around her.
Dixon looked on in disbelief, a creak escaping his lips. It was probably the most musical thing that had ever come out of him. He finally stopped creaking and switched to making actual words. “What the heck is happening to her?!”
“Your manager is a Tick,” Alicia replied, her voice dripping with venom. “And so are you.”
Dixon shook his head. “She’s a . . . I’m a . . . what?”
Alicia ducked under a tentacle, which passed close enough to ruffle her black hair. “Can we please discuss this when she’s not trying to kill me?”
“She’s not just trying to kill you!” Will corrected, as a tentacle barely missed him. Instead, it slammed into a stack of mail, sending it cascading to the floor. “Do something!”
“Regeneration systems f-f-failing,” Roz announced flatly. “System shutdown i-i-i-imminent.” Her tentacles drooped and hung limply by her sides.
“There. Happy?” Alicia replied.
The saw blade clattered to the floor as the side of her head collapsed like a rubber Halloween mask. All that was left of her above the shoulders was a metallic box connected by a thick silver cable to her torso.
Roz’s arms reached up suddenly to the place where her human head should have been. She shook her fist at us a second before she slumped to the floor.
CHAPTER 13.0:
< value= [A Slip of the Tongue] >
THE ROOM FELL SILENT.
Dixon sat heavily on the couch. “I’m totally losing it, right? This is all some sort of hallucination. Somebody slap me.”
I turned to Alicia and Will. If they weren’t going to do it . . .
I stepped forward and slapped Dix’s face. I might have been a little overzealous about it. Oops.
“Ow! Hey!” the teen idol yelped.
“Sorry. But you did ask,” I told him, trying my best to smother my grin. “You’re not hallucinating, though. She’s a Tick. A Synthetic life-form designed to pass as human.”
“But-but-but-but . . . I don’t understand,” Dix stammered. “It doesn’t make sense. This can’t be happening.”
Alicia sat down next to him and explained everything. The Soviet robotics program that gave birth to the
Synthetic race. The secret war Synthetics were waging against humanity.
Dixon leapt up from the couch. “You’re completely loony! Either that or this is some kind of really stupid joke!” He looked at me. “How can you expect me to believe this?”
“Because I’m one too,” I replied. “And if we don’t do something to stop the people who created us, everyone on the planet is doomed.”
The pop star’s eyebrows shot up. But then a scowl appeared on his face. “No!” he roared. “I don’t believe you! You killed Roz! I won’t let you do the same to me!”
His muscular arm shot out in a right hook, his fist arcing toward the person closest to him. Unfortunately for Dix, that person was Alicia. She ducked his punch easily and sprang back up, delivering an uppercut to the bottom of Dix’s jaw.
A clack filled the room as Dixon’s teeth snapped together under the force of Alicia’s blow. Something tumbled through the air and landed on the toe of my shoe.
“Ahhh!” Dixon screamed. “My ongue! I bi off my ongue!”
It took me a few seconds to realize what an “ongue” was. But looking at the pink object on my shoe and watching Dixon dance around the room holding his hands over his mouth, I put the pieces together and realized . . . Dix had bitten off a piece of his tongue!
I extended my foot toward him, trying not to let the chunk of tongue fall to the floor. “Um . . . here.”
Dix regarded the piece of tongue like it was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen—which it probably was. He slowly reached his hand out and picked up the fleshy object that used to be firmly attached to him.
“Look what you did!” he cried through his fingers. “How am I going to ing with half a ongue! I cang ing like iff.”
“Oh, uh . . . sorry,” Alicia muttered. “Reflex. But it doesn’t look like a lot of tongue. You probably had more than you needed, anyway.”
He looked like he was about to respond when he froze. The piece of Dixon’s tongue flattened itself out in his palm, then squeezed its ends together, inching up to his wrist like an inchworm. It reached his shoulder, at which point it made a detour to the right and squirmed across his chest.
“That’s so nasty,” Will remarked, scooping up a handful of D&D’s and arranging them in neat rows on the table.
When the piece of tongue reached Dixon’s chin, it forced its way into his mouth.
“Aahhhhhh!” Dix screamed. “Wha happening?” His eyes goggled wildly in his head. “My ongue! It’th . . . it’th . . . it’s . . . it’s . . . better.”
He poked his now-healed tongue out and studied it in the mirror. It looked as good as new.
“Don’t worry,” I assured him. I had seen far too many weird things over the past few days to freak out over a crawling piece of tongue. “It’s a Tick thing. The same thing happened with my arm when it came off.”
“Y-your arm? What do you mean?”
“I told you,” I explained. “You and I are both Synthetics. So was your manager. I found out I . . . wasn’t human when I lost my arm in a bike accident and it reattached itself. Now we’re trying to stop the Ticks from exterminating everyone on Earth.”
“And you’re part of it.” Alicia fixed him with an icy gaze. Now that she saw what he really was, the starstruck spell she’d been under was broken.
Dix flinched at the menace in Alicia’s expression. “You’re saying I’m part of a plan to hurt people? That’s insane! All I want to do is write my music and sing.”
“Your singing is part of the problem,” I told him. “It has an effect on humans. Makes them act strangely. Do things they normally wouldn’t do. But to me, everything you sing sounds . . . well, awful.”
A hurt look spread across his face. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Everyone loves my music!”
“Yeah, humans love your music,” I replied. “Because you’ve been programmed to make music that humans love. But it’s really just a way to control them.”
“You’re . . . you’re saying my music isn’t good?” Dix growled, his fists clenched tight. “The song I was going to premier tonight? It’s my best yet! Listen to this.”
“No! Wait,” I cried. “Don’t si—”
“Ooooh yeah, girl, you make me cry; I love you so, I want to die. Our love can never be undone; it burns as brightly as the sun. I will never stop the fight; to exterminate the human blight.”
As soon as Dix started singing, my friends’ faces went blank. Then, without warning, their hands closed over each other’s throats.
CHAPTER 14.0:
< value= [I Spill Some D&D’s] >
“STOP!” I YELLED. “STOP SINGING, Dix! Look what you’re doing!”
But he was too focused on his caterwauling to hear me.
Aside from the fact that it featured what were quite possibly the worst lyrics ever written, Dixon’s song had to be stopped—before Alicia and Will killed each other.
I picked up the first thing that caught my eye—the big, heavy glass bowl full of D&D’s—lifted it over my head, and brought it down right onto the singer’s cranium. He was halfway through an Oooh when, with an explosion of glass and blue candy, the bowl hit its mark.
The horrific sounds pouring out of Dixon’s food hole fell silent as he crumpled, unconscious, to the floor.
Will and Alicia froze. They slowly lowered their hands to their sides and blinked.
“Wh-what happened?” Will croaked. “Why does my neck hurt?”
“Dixon’s new song made you want to kill each other,” I told her. “If I hadn’t stopped him, you probably would have.”
Will rubbed his neck. “Wait. I was trying to kill Alicia?” He cleared his throat and added sheepishly, “Sorry about that, Alicia. My bad.”
“Forget it.” Alicia ran her fingers along her black braids before stooping down to rummage through her backpack. Pulling out a roll of duct tape, she bent over Dixon’s unconscious form, gagged him, and taped his hands behind his back. “Imagine what would have happened if he had performed tonight.”
Will opened and closed the bathroom door. “Everyone in Madison Square Garden would have killed each other.”
“Not just Madison Square Garden,” I corrected. More like the whole world. You heard his manager. This show was going to be broadcast live on practically every TV and radio station on the planet. If the entire population of Earth reacted the same way you two just did . . .”
I couldn’t bring myself to finish the thought.
The silence hung heavily in the air.
Until Dixon stirred. “Mmmnnngggg,” he moaned. “Hmmnggg mnngggg mumphfff!”
Alicia squatted down next to Dix. “Listen to me carefully, Dixon. I don’t want to have to deactivate you. But I will if you try to sing again. Understand?” She kicked what remained of Roz to punctuate her point.
Dix’s eyes widened with fear. He nodded.
“I’m going to take the duct tape off your mouth so I can ask you a few questions,” she continued. “But if I hear anything musical come out of you, it’s the last thing you’ll ever do. You get me?”
She yanked the tape off Dixon’s mouth.
“Yeowww!” he cried. “Wh-what’s going on?”
“I’m asking the questions,” Alicia snapped. “We already know your mission. Your singing can control human minds. If you went onstage tonight, you would have started the most deadly riot the world has ever seen. What I want to know is who else is involved besides you and Roz.”
Dix shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean. I just like to sing.”
“Don’t lie to me!” Alicia snapped.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about! This was supposed to be the biggest day of my career! Now Roz is dead and you’re telling me I’m some kind of . . . of . . . flea!”
“Tick,” Will corrected.
“Whatever!” Dixon wailed. “I just want things to go back to normal!”
“Dix,” I said. “Listen to me. Nothing is ever going to be normal a
gain. Everything you thought you knew about your life is a lie. I know that’s tough to hear. I didn’t want to hear it myself. But I understand who . . . what I really am now. And, yeah, it stinks. But there’s no way I’m going to let the people who created us win. So we need you to tell us everything you know, okay?”
Dix nodded.
The only problem was, everything Dix knew was not very much at all. His parents adopted him when he was an infant. Roz showed up when Dix was only five, telling his mom and dad he had “an extraordinary gift” and it would be a “crime against humanity” not to share it with the world. For the next decade, Roz worked intensively with Dixon, until she decided the time was right to “unleash his talent.”
That was about a month ago. Since then, Dixon Watts had skyrocketed to greater fame in a shorter time than any other performer in history. He’d also become the most spoiled, overprivileged performer in history, at least if his pet monkey tantrum was anything to go by.
“That’s it?” Alicia demanded.
Dixon trembled. “I swear I don’t know anything else. I just thought I was a normal kid. Well, other than being extraordinarily talented, I mean.”
I rolled my eyes. “Ohh-kay, right. Listen, we need to get you out of here. The Ticks must already know about Roz, so we don’t have long. Let’s go.”
“I’m going to free your hands,” Alicia told him, using her knife to cut the duct tape from his wrists. “Don’t make me regret it. Because I guarantee you’ll regret it more.”
He glanced at his former manager and shuddered. He may have been a full head taller than Alicia, but at that moment, he seemed to shrink to half her size. “Okay,” he squeaked. “But where are we going? I’m not sure I want to go with you.”
“Trust me,” I explained. “You want to come with us. With Roz deactivated, the Ticks will be sending someone—or something—else. They already know your mission is compromised. Which means they’ll want to deactivate you.”
He flinched at the word. “Deactivate?”
“He means they’ll kill you,” Alicia said matter-of-factly. “So unless you want to end up like her”—she nodded toward Roz—“you’ll come with us.”