Metal

by Thomas Hall

  SOMEONE WAS SHAKING HIM AWAKE. THERE WAS NO light in the station, so he couldn’t see who was there. He started to move away until Samuel spoke.

  “What is it?” Brett said.

  “I need you to come with me,” Samuel replied.

  Brett got to his feet. His soldier’s instinct kicked in and he knew that now was not the time to ask stupid questions like why? or can’t it wait?

  He followed Samuel past the others who were sleeping. He wished that he could be with them, but whatever Samuel had woken him for was important.

  They walked towards the door but then went past it. Samuel took him to a part of the station which was better lit. There was a dirty window in the ceiling and enough light that Brett could see the look of concern on Samuel’s face.

  “Where are we going?” Brett said, now that he could see, he felt more able to speak.

  “I need to show you,” Samuel said.

  Brett nodded and didn’t ask again.

  They stopped in front of a staircase that led down. They were already on the ground floor, so that could only mean one thing. For a moment, despite the look of concern on Samuel’s face, he felt hope.

  “Is it still open?” Brett said.

  “I think so,” Samuel said.

  “Can we use it?” Brett said.

  Samuel shook his head. Brett looked down into the darkness and tried to come to terms with the fact that it felt like home. He had never expected to become so attached to the place. When he’d arrived, it was because he had nowhere else to go, now he felt as if there was nowhere else he wanted to be.

  “There’s people down there,” Samuel said.

  Brett turned to him. “What?”

  Samuel didn’t respond. If there were people down there, then that was a good thing. If there were people down, there then they would help and they would be home that much sooner.

  “Have you spoken to them?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Samuel pointed to the wall over the stairs and Brett saw what had gotten him so worried.

  Printed in large red letters, beneath a picture of a lion, was the phrase:

  DEUS EX MACHINA

  “A god from a machine,” Samuel said, as if Brett needed any help understanding what it meant.

  “Why?” Brett said. It was an ancient phrase, Latin or Greek or something, but it was more timely now than it had ever been. “Why?” he repeated.

  “It’s a cult,” Samuel said.

  “A cult?”

  He nodded. “They worship the Machines, think they’re the natural evolution of man. They think the Machines are god.”

  “Are they dangerous?” Brett said.

  Samuel nodded.

  “So what are we going to do? We can’t stay here.”

  “I know. But we need to rest. The others can sleep.”

  “What about you? Have you slept since we got here?”

  Samuel shook his head.

  “You need to get some sleep.”

  “I need to keep watch. If they find out we’re here we’ll need to leave.”

  “Are you sure they don’t already know?” Brett said.

  Samuel shook his head.

  “You go and get some rest,” Brett said. “I’ll watch.”

  Samuel shook his head. “We both need to watch. If something happens to one of us…”

  He didn’t need to say more, Brett knew what he meant. He nodded. “Fine. We’ll both stay.”

  He turned back to look at the motto painted above the stairs and wondered what he would do if he had to fight humans. He’d never killed a person before, it seemed like such a waste.

  “Come on,” Brett said. He turned and started to walk away.

  “Where are you going?” Samuel said.

  “If we’re going to watch them all day, we can at least do it from somewhere comfortable.”

  Samuel followed Brett to a row of chairs which were still upright. They sat down so they were facing the stairs and began their vigil.

  Distant shouting and the clank of machinery were the only signs that there was anyone nearby. It sounded like construction. Brett wondered what a group of people who worshipped Machines might be building.

  He wasn’t sure he wanted to find out.

  He began to grow restless. Samuel seemed to have no problem sitting still and waiting, but Brett was a man of action. He felt as if he should be doing something.

  “I could go in and investigate?” Brett offered.

  “No,” Samuel said, leaving no room for discussion.

  They fell back to silence and Brett felt his eyes growing heavy. “Have you met them before?” he said.

  “Who?” Samuel said.

  “The cult,” Brett said.

  “In a manner of speaking,” he said.

  “What manner?” Brett said.

  Samuel looked at him for a long time, his expression fixed and unreadable. Then he tapped his metal leg.

  Brett didn’t know what he meant by it.

  “You thought I was born like this?”

  “I don’t know,” Brett said, but if pushed, that was the answer he would have given.

  Samuel sighed.

  There was silence for a moment.

  “I never wanted to join the Resistance,” Samuel said. “You remember back at the start of the war, when they were looking for volunteers?”

  Brett nodded.

  “All my friends joined up. We thought it was going to be over in a month.” Samuel laughed. “Sounds crazy now, right?”

  Brett nodded.

  “I didn’t go with them. I didn’t know what I wanted to do, but I knew it wasn’t that. I’m not a fighter.”

  “So what did you do?” Brett said.

  Samuel shook his head and pinched his nose between his eyes. “I didn’t do anything. I carried on going to work, I waited for an opportunity to present itself. Time went by and things got worse. By the end of the first year they were saying it might take five years to destroy all the Machines.”

  Brett remembered. They had never called it a war, because war gave the enemy legitimacy. The Machines didn’t deserve that. They were defective robots that needed to destroying. Then they evolved, quicker than any human could have expected. Soon they were the most powerful enemy mankind had ever faced. By then it still wasn’t a war because humanity had already been conquered. The only thing preventing complete extinction, were the pockets of Resistance fighters.

  “By then no one I’d gone to school with was alive,” Samuel said. “But some people were. People who needed my help. I found them and brought them together. I found Victoria and her sister living in a bombed out military base. Their parents had been dead for two weeks. Don’t ask me what happened to the bodies. I found Lisa in the river, I thought she was dead.”

  “You looked after them,” Brett said.

  Samuel shrugged. “I got cocky. Thought I could save everyone. That’s when I met the Machinists.”

  Brett nodded.

  “They didn’t want my help. They thought I wanted theirs. They operated on me, removed my leg and replaced it with... this. They might have taken more if Richard hadn’t found me.”

  Brett had never imagined that Samuel’s leg had been removed on purpose. It seemed so barbaric.

  “They’ve all got enhancements,” Samuel said. “They take the things that the Machines discard and use it to ‘upgrade’ themselves. They want to become Machines.”

  Were they as strong as Machines or as weak as humans? Had they gotten the best of both worlds, or something less than the sum of its parts? He didn’t know, couldn’t know. All he could do was try to imagine what they were doing in the tunnels at the bottom of the stairs.

  An idea occurred to Brett: “Do you think they had anything to do with the Droid’s that attacked us?” he said.

  “What do you mean?” Samuel said.

  He wondered if Samuel even realised that the Droids had been something other than normal. Had it
occurred to him that the things that had attacked them hadn’t been the same as every other Droid in the country? “They’re corrupted. Droids don’t usually look like that. They don’t act like that.”

  Samuel shook his head. “It’s not their M.O. They want to become more like Machines, they don’t want Machines to become like them.”

  “Maybe they’ve changed. Evolved?”

  “Maybe,” Samuel said, but he didn’t sound convinced.

  They fell into silence again, but this time neither of them broke it until the sun began to set. They made their way back to the others.

  They were ready to leave in ten minutes.

  There was nothing to eat so they marched on an empty stomach, it was becoming the usual way of things. Brett didn’t even feel hungry, only concerned and keen to get back to the tunnels so they would be safe.

  Outside it was dark and a stiff wind was blowing through the streets. They walked in a tight group, none of them spoke. Each lost in their own thoughts, not paying enough attention to what was going on around them.

  The shape in the distance moved fast enough that Brett thought he was imagining it. He slowed down suddenly. Joanna was walking so close behind that she walked straight into him.

  She mumbled an apology.

  “Stop a second,” Brett said.

  They did.

  None of them asked him what it was, they had grown used to doing as he said.

  He stared into the distance but everything was still. He might have imagined it, but he didn’t think so. He watched the end of the street, only a hundred metres away but obscured by the darkness. Was there something there? It seemed better to be safe than sorry.

  “I saw something,” he said.

  “A Droid?” Samuel said.

  “I don’t know.”

  What else could it be? A Droid was the only thing that made sense, but the movement hadn’t been Machine-like at all.

  “I’m going to check it out,” he said, pulling out his Blaster.

  “I’ll come with you,” Samuel said.

  They set off, moving along the dark street in single file. They stopped at a T-junction. He looked both ways but saw nothing.

  The sudden blast seemed to come out of nowhere.

  He had time to register the fact that it was an energy weapon, rather than a projectile. Then the warmth engulfed him and it felt as if the air was humming.

  A weapon designed to hurt a Machine didn’t affect him, but he wasn’t the only one there.

  When the energy dispersed, he turned towards Samuel.

  “Where did it come from?” Brett said.

  Samuel shook his head. His fixed expression was unreadable.

  “We have to get back,” Brett said. He was already starting to turn in the direction of the others, but he caught Samuel shaking his head. “We have to warn them.”

  “I can’t,” Samuel said.

  “What do you mean?” Brett said.

  Samuel looked down at his leg. At his mechanical leg. “I can’t move it.”

  Brett began to hear movement and soon he could see six shapes emerging from the darkness.

  He didn’t know what to do.

  “Can you take it off?” Brett said. “I can carry you back.”

  Samuel shook his head.

  Of course, he couldn’t take it off, the Machinists hadn’t given him a prosthetic, they’d given him a new limb.

  “Shit,” Brett said.

  “You have to go back,” Samuel said.

  “I’m not leaving you here on your own,” Brett said.

  “You have to. Get the others and go back to the tunnels.”

  Brett shook his head. He didn’t move.

  “DROP YOUR WEAPONS,” a mechanical voice said.

  “Go!” Samuel said.

  Brett raised his Blaster. He had never fired it at another human, but he guessed that the Machinists didn’t count as that anymore.

  “If you shoot them they’ll kill me,” Samuel said.

  Brett didn’t lower his weapon.

  “Go back to the others, I’ll find a way out.”

  Brett glanced at him and wondered whether Samuel believed that. It didn’t make much difference now, because Brett realised he didn’t have a choice.

  He lowered the gun.

  “We’ll find you,” Brett said.

  Samuel shook his head. “You need to get the medicine back to the tunnel. That’s your priority.”

  “We’ll find you,” Brett repeated.

  Then the Machinists were on them and he had to go or get himself caught as well. If that happened he wouldn’t be able to warn the others.

  He turned and fought against every instinct he possessed. Brett ran away from Samuel and away from the Machinists. He ran until he reached Richard and Lisa and Joanna and Victoria.

  CHAPTER 18

  THE STATION ECHOED WITH THEIR LOSS. WITHOUT SAMUEL, the group had no cohesion. It was still dark outside but none of them wanted to move. None of them wanted to abandon Samuel to whatever fate the Machinists had in store.

  He could already be dead, Brett thought. It was possible, but he didn’t like what it meant. If Samuel was dead, then what were they supposed to do? If Samuel was dead, then who was in charge? If Samuel was dead, and this was the big one, then was he responsible?

  The way the others looked at him made him wonder whether they were thinking the same thing.

  He remembered not wanting to go on the trip at all. He’d wanted to be left alone to get on with his miserable excuse for a life. And, now that he thought about it, Samuel had played him there. He’d blackmailed Brett. The rest of the group didn’t care whether he was a Resistance fighter or not. He could have refused to go and nothing bad would have happened.

  Brett found himself drifting away from the others. He could see them sitting together, huddled around their grief. They weren’t talking but from time to time they looked up and saw him there. They didn’t believe him about the Machinists, he was sure, but then what did they think had happened?

  Did they think he had killed Samuel?

  He shook his head and continued to pace. It was starting to get light and that meant they wouldn’t be going anywhere soon. They were stuck, and would continue to be stuck until one of them grew some balls and took charge.

  Brett kicked the ground. It achieved nothing except to remind him that he had two biological legs. That was the reason why he was still there. In all other respects, it would have made more sense for the Machinists to capture him. He was the one who had spent his life fighting Machines, he was the one who trained to destroy them.

  But they hadn’t taken him, because they hadn’t wanted to. Because Samuel had something that he didn’t have. And not simply the mechanical leg.

  Brett started walking. He didn’t know where he was going, only that he wanted to clear his head and work out what he was going to do next.

  Without meaning to go there, he found himself back at the staircase. Could he go down there to get Samuel back?

  He hadn’t promised not to. Despite Samuel’s insistence. And it was getting lighter, so they couldn’t exactly leave. It wouldn’t cost any time at all.

  Brett sat on the edge of the bench and took out his Blaster. He passed it from one hand to the other while considering his options.

  He could go back to the group and sit with them until evening. One of them might take charge, or at least suggest what they should do next. He could go back and take charge himself, although that was the least likely of all scenarios. He wasn’t even sure they would listen to him if he tried. Self-doubt wasn’t exactly an asset in a potential leader. Or he could go down into the tunnels and get Samuel back. Vindicate himself in the eyes of the group and return their leader to them.

  Brett stood up. He hadn’t slept for more than twenty-four hours. It was catching up with him, but he couldn’t afford to wait. If he was going to get Samuel back then he needed to do it now.

  He walked to the stairs and tried no
t to think about what he might find at the bottom. Walking into unknown danger seemed to be part of his everyday life at the moment, but it didn’t mean he liked it. He gripped the Blaster and told himself that he wasn’t going to be shooting people. The Machinists were more like Droids with fleshy components.

  He reached the stairs, took a final breath as if he was about to enter the water, and started to climb down.

  He walked through a low-ceilinged tunnel with advertising posters hanging behind plexiglass frames. He walked towards the sound of grinding metal, but never seemed to get any closer. At the end of the first tunnel he found two escalators and went down.

  At the bottom there were several tunnels, but it wasn’t obvious which one to take. The sound seemed to come from everywhere at once and light glowed from all the entrances.

  Brett checked the charge on his Blaster, and went towards the nearest one.

  The tunnel led to a train platform which was lit by a vague glow from unseen lights. No people. Pieces of rubbish skittered across the ground, carried by a warm breeze.

  He jumped down, the lumps of coal shifted and he struggled to regain his balance. Then he started walking.

  It took a long time to reach them and when he did he felt the doubts all over again. There were more Machinists than he had anticipated and the noise was overpowering. He could see sparks flying in the distance and the smoke was so thick that he struggled to breath. Although he couldn’t see well, he could tell that they were building something.

  He crept forwards, sticking close to the wall.

  They moved around like bad stop motion puppets. He watched them climbing around and heard a staticky noise as they did so. Only when he was closer did he realise that this was their way of communicating with one another.

  Although he hadn’t expected them to have given up on speech, in a way, he supposed, it made sense. The noise was like an old-fashioned modem. If it served a similar purpose, it might mean they could pass information more efficiently than talking.

  When he was close enough to see the intricate workings of the machine, he stopped. He didn’t want to go any further until he had an idea of where he was going. Wandering around was a sure-fire way to get himself captured or killed, and he hadn’t come all this way to do that.

  From where he was standing, the tunnel appeared to be functional chaos. He couldn’t work out a pattern to the way things worked. The Machinists were moving around, darting back and forth, uttering their strange language. As far as he could see, no one was in charge, but that didn’t mean they weren’t following instructions.