Visceral

by Adam Thielen

  Taq lifted her from the chair, a blanket wrapped around her. Tamra carried the chair as they took the stairs down to a vacant floor, with unfinished concrete for walls

  The small station with the tube was empty. Kate had slowed security forces enough to allow them an easy exit now that they did not have to backtrack through the upper floors. Any turrets networked to building controls now fired upon corpsec, lights turned off except to blind any low light visuals via random strobe, and doors were locked to create the longest possible path to the trio.

  They boarded the tube. Tamra strapped Kate into one of the seats, then grabbed a first aid kit from one of the pill’s compartments. She sat it on the seat in front of her and pulled out what looked similar to a small meat tenderizer with short sharp pins in a grid formation. She sat down, looking at Taq expectantly. He moved his hand from his bloody arm, and Tamra pushed the numbing device into his flesh and back out. Taq whimpered and put his hand back in place.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “It’s working. Give me some room.”

  Tamra stood and stepped away. “I am paging Matthias,” announced Tamra, gesturing to the image injected by her com.

  “Tamra? What’s going on?” asked Matthias.

  “We have Kate. We are scraped up, but alive. Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I’m just fine, thank you for asking. I took a shotgun blast full of silver to the face. Really hurts.”

  “I knew you were fine or we wouldn’t be talking,” she replied.

  “Fine. I got something, but technically it’s none of your business. The problem is, it’s encrypted. The guy with the codes was taken.”

  “Was it really to the face?” asked Taq.

  “Close enough.”

  “Send me a sample,” Kate demanded.

  “Nice to hear from you too Kate, but I don’t think my employer would appreciate that.”

  “Just a sample. I have keys, a lot of keys. One of them might work. I died for a while by the way.”

  “Oh, crackle,” Matthias sighed. “Had to one up me.”

  “Sample.”

  “Fine, sending.”

  Kate’s eyes closed and she began running pattern recognition on the sample after running it through decryption with each key. She had over forty thousand of them she had stolen from various corporate stores.

  “Hey uh,” said Matthias. “If you have any from Grapeseed or Neuroscape or Noxcorp, try those.”

  Kate opened her eyes. “I have many from— nevermind.”

  “Noxcorp?”

  “Nevermind.”

  “You were going to say Noxcorp.”

  “I’ll start with the ones I downloaded from Grapeseed.”

  Taq closed his eyes and slowly moved his hand away from the bullet hole. At four centimeters he stopped and his arm twitched for a moment before a piece of metal snapped into the palm of his hand. Tamra wrapped gauze around his arm.

  “You did good back there, kid.”

  “I killed a vampire ninja,” Matthias’s voice proudly proclaimed through the com.

  Tamra rolled her eyes and strapped herself into the control seat. A console was mounted in front of her, and several controls were built into the armrests. Fiddling with them for a few moments, the pill sprung to life.

  “Do we know where this thing goes yet?” asked Taq.

  “We don’t have any more time to find out; they are cutting the door open,” Tamra explained.

  “Matthias,” Kate said excitedly. “I have a match.”

  * * *

  “Why me, babe?” Frank puffed on the end of a small atomizer. It activated from the touch of his lips, creating vapor from a solution of nicotine, THC, and flavorings.

  Scarlet rolled over, laying her head on his chest. “Babe. That’s funny.” She stroked his chest hair. “Maybe that’s why. You aren’t like the rest of us.”

  “How so?”

  “You look human. You speak human,” Makida cooed, rubbing her hand over his chest. “You even smell human.”

  “I’ve met a few like me,” he said, admiring her perfectly silver hair. “Sort of.”

  He put down the vaper and ran his hands through her hair and down her back. She shuddered with pleasure. “It will be nightfall in a few hours. We really gonna do this?”

  “Oh yes,” she said slowly. “The Neuroscape files confirmed what I suspected about the council.”

  “What about the zombies?”

  “This outbreak has created an opportunity that I didn’t expect. I think we should take advantage of the chaos.”

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  “No offense, dear, but I dare not even think what I’m planning too hard for fear of espionage. You’ll like this surprise.” Her hand slid down his stomach and wrapped gently around his dick. Frank hummed in approval.

  * * *

  Using his com, Matthias flipped randomly from file to file, decrypting the data on demand. None of it meant anything to him. Technical jargon, pictures of locations he didn’t recognize. Some blueprints with symbols that meant nothing to him.

  It had been almost an hour since the pill had slid to a stop at the end of an unfinished tube. No corporate security had followed them, but the tube had traveled over fifty miles. The three had waited hoping that Matthias or Kate could discern where the tube had taken them and figure a safe way out. A large tunnel continued on southward. With no other choice, they continued on foot and wheelchair. The tunnel was lined with dark porous tiles that looked strangely fancy for a tube tunnel.

  “God dammit,” Matthias yelled. Their coms were still connected.

  “You’re still fumbling around in those files aren’t you?” Kate snarked.

  “You can’t have them,” he pouted.

  “Matthias,” Tamra interjected.

  “Tamra.”

  “If Neuroscape is Grapeseed…”

  “Yes?”

  “And Grapeseed is trying to protect data Kate stole…”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Data that contained a key to decrypt your data…”

  “About her stolen data…” Matthias started.

  “You can’t have it,” said Kate.

  “It’s encrypted isn’t it?”

  “Some of it,” she admitted. “Either this cache was worthless or the information I want is in the encrypted batch.”

  “I have some keys.”

  “Really?” she perked up.

  “No.”

  “Either way,” started Tamra. “Your benefactor will be pleased you decrypted the data, so you kind of owe Kate. We need to learn why Grapeseed is suddenly willing to break corporate treaties.”

  “As far as I’m concerned, we are even,” Matthias retorted, referring to Kate’s favor to free Taq. He put his fist to his mouth and furrowed his brow, realizing this was not known to Taq.

  “For what?” asked Tamra..

  “You know…” Matthias stalled a moment. “I saved your asses in case you forgot.”

  “Oh Jesus,” Tamra sighed.

  “Fine, I’ll upload the data,” Matthias relented.

  “There’s too much,” Kate said. “It would take hours. Turn your com to remote server and send me a request.”

  “Uh, okay.”

  A few moments passed. “Send it yet?”

  “I, uh. Is it here?” Matthias said, muttering to himself. “Nope not there. How do I do that?”

  “Just motion to server mode, select remote, select open channels, select the one that ends 3088,” she instructed.

  “There we go,” she smiled as she was granted full access to execute searches and analysis from his com. It would run more complicated functions at a snail’s pace compared to her neuro implants, but it was workable.

  “I’m closing the voice channel. I am going to explore the building while I am stuck here. Koch will likely have a car here for me in a couple hours.” Matthias said. He walked the halls of the first basement level and found what he was
looking for; a fitness room. He considered feeding off the desk attendant, but decided for now to ignore his thirst.

  * * *

  “Where are we?” asked Tamra

  “I haven’t had a GPS signal since we entered the tube,” replied Kate. “My spatials say that we should be under Santa Cruz. Nothing from the data yet.”

  “Where is that?” Taq queried.

  “Near a coast.”

  Taq pushed Kate’s wheelchair down the tunnel, led by Tamra. She shone her com light ahead. The tiles that had lined the tube stopped, then the cement underneath stopped and all that was left was wooden beams and dirt.

  “I don’t like this at all,” Tamra said softly, as if fearing surveillance somehow embedded in the soil.

  “Where does this lead, and if it’s any place we can actually escape from, why haven’t they come for us? It doesn’t make sense,” reasoned Taq.

  Kate snapped out of her data reverie and checked the handgun Taq had given her. “I won’t be caught again.”

  “We are making it out of here,” assured Tamra. “I see a light ahead.”

  Sure enough, at the end of a long stretch of dirt and wood and some rocks was a metal door with a small window and a light mounted above it. The door hung on a wall of concrete. As they got closer the tunnel got taller and wider and two machines sat in alcoves, presumably for excavation. Above the light was a camera.

  Tamra looked at Kate expectantly.

  “I detect no local network here,” she said. “It’s hiding somehow.”

  “Maybe it’s all hardwired,” Taq mused.

  “There are signals in the right band ranges here, but no handshake. The building must use static encryption. Risky in the long term, but I can’t hack it while it lies dormant.”

  Tamra approached the door with Taq and Kate armed and ready keeping their distance. She approached it from the side. Listening and hearing nothing, she waved her hand over the window and waited some more. Still nothing. She peeked through the glass and saw a flashing red light attached to a hall. No signs of life, and no attention paid to potential trespassers.

  The door was unlocked. Tamra opened it expecting alarms. If there were any, they were silent. The lights inside were eerily dim. The flashing light brightened the hall, coloring it red once every two seconds.

  Taq and Kate followed her inside. They crept through the hallways. Blood was splattered randomly on the walls and trailed through the otherwise white floor tiling.

  “Be ready,” Tamra whispered.

  The halls were almost maze like, but smeared blood all pointed the same direction. As they approached one of the many rooms the blood led them through, Kate whimpered. Taq and Tamra stopped.

  “Something is interfering with my neuro implants here. Please move me back,” she cried.

  Taq moved backward with Kate in tow while Tamra held her pistol at the ready.

  “It’s better here. I didn’t notice it before, but I do now. Like a low humming that gets exponentially louder from this point.”

  “Some sort of jammer?” asked Taq.

  “I found something in Matthias’s data. Specs for a machine that would likely emit a lot of electromagnetic interference. I think it’s here.”

  “What does it do?”

  “It doesn’t explain,” she twisted her head up to look at him. “It’s labeled ‘Neuralnet Hub’.”

  “Sounds like a way to bring minds together, doesn’t it?” noted Taq. “It’s what you suspected all along.”

  “Actually, I wasn’t expecting some mere machine,” she sounded disappointed.

  Tamra walked backward, pointing her gun toward the entrance to the room. When she reached Taq and Kate, “If we are moving into that room, I want to do it before we are discovered flat-footed.”

  “I will be alright if I turn off my neuros and break connection with Matthias’s com.” Kate’s eyes fluttered a moment then opened again. “Ready.”

  Inside the room stood a smaller room sectioned off with thin glass panels. Inside the glass room was a metallic cylinder two feet across, reaching seven feet into the air. It came to a rounded point at the top and appeared to be mostly of stainless steel. Deep vertical grooves separated the device into quadrants, each one with a column of lights lit and unlit in no discernible pattern. Each light had a thinner row to the left and right filled with countless pinholes. Extruding several inches from the pinholes of the activated lights were wispy black tendrils.

  Standing within arm's reach of the cylinder were a half dozen bodies, listless and docile. They wore telltale lab uniforms. At their feet were more bodies, lifeless. A thin layer of blood covered most of the floor.

  One of the listless turned toward the intruders. It was a man, or used to be one. The eyes were composed of a dark yellow sclera, with white orbs where the cornea and pupil should be. They sunk deeply into its face. The head had only small thin patches of hair left on it. It was gaunt, the skin pale with blemishes of gray. The fingernails had grown to sharp points, blood still fresh on some of them. It looked similar to a fiend or thrall, but even more grotesque and deformed. It matched the description given for the creatures appearing throughout the world since Winter’s death. The media was calling them ghouls, and it was a fitting label.

  Tamra approached the glass on point. She wasn’t sure if it was her imagination, or if she too could hear the same hum that resonated through Kate’s implants. No, she realized, it wasn’t coming from the phallus but from her polonium. It had started to glow slightly, revealing the lines in her arms. She activated her ethersight and was blinded by the blue glow of the machine. She turned away reflexively but it was too late. The implant deactivated immediately, possibly burnt out. Tamra opened her eyes, looked toward the machine again and could barely make out the blurry forms of the ghouls standing around it.

  The monster that had turned to face them opened its mouth. “Release us,” it rasped. It shrieked for a split second before Tamra reacted, shooting a hole through the glass and then the creature’s forehead. The rest of the ghouls immediately spun around, crouching defensively low. They began shrieking and charged at the glass panel between them. One stood back and began spellcasting motions, pointing his palms toward Taq and Kate. Taq pushed his palms forward. Before the ghouls could reach the glass, it imploded upon them, sending thousands of small glass shards at them. A few suffered minor lacerations, and two more were shredded with heavier shards that sliced through their bodies, spraying blood behind them. The latter two fell to the floor dead.

  Kate calmly but quickly moved from target to target, firing twice. She kept switching even if she missed. Their movement was erratic, and she could not draw a bead. Those that weren’t killed by Taq’s spell soon rose and charged for them again.

  Tamra’s vision was a blur. She rolled onto her back, knees to her chest. She knew she couldn’t just blindly fire, but would have to wait until one was upon her.

  At the moment the ghoul mage finished his spell, Taq cried out as he felt his body explode with pain. Fire had enveloped him. It lasted only a moment, but his clothing stayed lit afterward. The pain traveled over the entirety of Taq's skin, overwhelming him. His body shut down from the shock, and he collapsed onto the ground unconscious. Smoke wafted from his body as the flames exhausted the short supply of fuel in the synthetic fibers of Taq's clothing.

  Kate switched tactics, firing at the bobbing figure that had just cast until a shot landed on its chest and the ghoul mage dropped. Another ghoul had rushed her from the side and swung at her with its claws extended. She brought her arm up to block. The claws sliced into her arm, pushing it limply aside.

  Tamra fired at the hazy figure as fast as she could pull the trigger. After a few shots it fell at Kate’s feet.

  The last of them leapt at Tamra, still prone on the ground. She fired and missed. As the ghoul fell onto her, blue lightning arced from Tamra’s chest to the ghoul, killing it instantly. The energy from the machine had been slowly building up during th
e fight.

  Kate cried through gritted teeth and bent forward on her chair, droplets of saliva coming loose with her breath. She hovered her hand over her sliced up arm, wanting to grasp it, but knowing she shouldn’t. Blood streamed out of the wound and onto the floor. Tamra rolled to her knees, her vision still blurry. Taq had passed out from the heat.

  “Help me, Tamra!”

  Tamra stood and walked up next to her. “What is it? What do I do?”

  “My arm, it’s bleeding. I think it’s bad.”

  “Yes,” a third voice, masculine but flat, said. “You will bleed to death without an artificial skin wrap, or possibly stitches. There is another problem, but that must be dealt with first.”

  “Who is this?” Tamra asked.

  “The man at your feet has an override key; it will be easier to use than digging out an eyeball. There is a door opposite the one you entered. Go through it, turn right at the first intersection and continue straight until you reach the infirmary. I will help you there.”

  “What about Taq?” Kate asked as Tamra obeyed and fished the key card out of the white jacket of one of the bodies.

  “I will watch him,” the voice assured. “You have no time. Kate’s wound is quite serious.”

  They did as instructed, finding the room. A complicated servo arm hung from the ceiling. It branched into four smaller arms. Two of which had an artificial skin wrap held taught and waiting. Underneath it were several slabs. Two were unoccupied. The third had a body lying on it with a mechanical arm reaching down to its forehead, covering it with what appeared to be a neural interface. Wires extended from a bend in the arm and penetrated the body’s chest.

  Tamra lifted Kate onto the slab under the machine, and the arms expeditiously went to work. Kate’s head slumped forward, she could not hold it up any longer.

  “The other problem,” the voice began again. “Is that you are infected.”