by Adam Thielen
“You might be oversimplifying—”
The facility lift door slid open and Robert Green ran in, carrying a metallic harness. He looked around to assess the situation.
“Another one is dead, Robert,” sighed Koch.
“I hurried, dammit. This was not easy to get,” he said, lifting the harness. “What happened?”
“The same fucking thing as before. Don’t think it was Matthias this time. Somehow I know that machine is involved, but before we can do anything it’s going to be too late,” explained Koch.
“We can at least put this harness on the last one, right?” asked Green. Koch nodded.
Green waved the doctor to the pod. “You do it.” The doctor opened the glass cover and submerged his hands and the harness into the gel, delicately wrapping it behind the vampire mage Gressen and locking it into place.
Koch motioned to the other staff to leave the room.
“Okay so we are down two, but that should stop it right?” Robert hoped.
“No guarantees,” said Koch, pulling out a vaper and puffing on it.
“Talk her out of it,” blurted Phillip. Angela shot her gaze at him, squinting while taking a slow drag, then put the stick away.
“Talk her out of what?” questioned Green, turning toward Koch.
“We only have one left, Rob. We have to wake him if there’s even a small chance it might prevent his death, which I think you would agree there is,” she reasoned.
“You’re not fucking serious,” snorted Green. “She’s joking with you, Phil.”
“Do you realize how big the failure is if he dies?” she asked rhetorically, gesturing at Gressen. “That son of a bitch is the only reason we are here right now.”
Green’s demeanor turned serious. “Fuck you, Angela. You’ll get us all killed!” vowed Green.
Koch swung her right hand upwards toward Green, the centrifugal force extending a short metal tube with a grip attached in parallel. Before he could react with anything but a surprised face, she squeezed the grip, igniting the pin in a shotgun shell. Her arm did not move from the recoil. The full force of powder exploded a mix of silver and steel shot from the barrel, blowing Green off his feet. His body flew backward only a meter before landing on its side.
Koch turned her head to Phillip then back to Green. “I’ll deal with you in a minute.” She pulled a small pistol from inside her suit jacket with her free hand and walked over to Green’s body. She leaned down and lunged forward with the sleeve shotgun, piercing his jugular with the sharpened rim of the barrel. His body twitched slightly. She removed the barrel, allowing blood to drain out of it onto the facility floor. More blood spurted from his neck.
“Jesus fucking Christ!” shrieked Phillip, hiding behind one of the consoles.
Angela stalked toward the scientist. “You men sure act tough when the going is easy. Then when it gets a little tough, you turn soft. All the excuses in the world won’t change the consequences of our action or inaction. I’m not going to let a couple pussies stop me from fulfilling our mission here.”
Angela stopped a few feet from Phillip, who continued to duck behind the console.
“I’m not going to kill you, Phil,” assured Koch. “Green was never going to agree with me. If I didn’t kill him, he would have killed me. That’s the rules. If you think you are in the right, you can’t let anyone stop you. It’s a brutal order.”
Phillip slowly stood up straight. Despite being a vampire, he was an egghead first, and even minor violence made him squeamish.
“Now, wake him.”
“Uh… It…. It isn’t that simple,” stammered Phillip.
“Don’t start lying to me now,” warned Koch, waving her arm with the barrel still extended.
“I am not… it has to be done gradually, and the machines have many failsafes just to prevent someone from doing this. It will need your authorization, likely several times.”
“I’ve got no place to be. Get started.”
* * *
Charles sat down on the bench outside the armory. “I may have shat myself.”
“Is that the face you were making?” joked Tamra as she realized that while Wu was surely a capable warden, he was not the mythical hero of mage enforcement lore others made him out to be.
“I really did not expect that to be my reaction,” moped Wu. “When people told stories about the fiend and your fight, I thought they were trying to create a fable.”
“That wasn’t like the fiend we fought,” she started. “And that may not be the worst thing we find by the time this is over.”
Tamra had drawn her assault rifle and had been standing with it at the ready since the apparition appeared. Almost ten minutes had passed. She moved to the door and slowly opened it. The sun had fallen behind the concrete jungle west of the campus. Turning to Wu she said, “I think we should move on the council chambers. We may be out of time.”
Wu sighed and lifted himself from the bench. He checked the clips in both of his guns. “You are right; we can at least sniff around their lobby.”
The wardens climbed into Wu’s vehicle, an armored sedan itself laced with polonium strands, and made for the Noxcorp building at the edge of downtown. The sun disappeared below the horizon about five kilometers from their destination.
“What in the maker’s ass is that?” Tamra awed at a massive shadow appearing from behind the clouds above them. “What is that thing?” she asked again, this time pointing.
“That is…” Charles paused. “I have no idea.”
“We have a large UFO above the Noxcorp building,” Tamra spoke into the car’s radio.
“What kind of UFO?” replied the dispatcher.
“The unidentified kind,” sassed Tamra. The shape continued to grow in size, always partially obscured by fog and clouds.
“Are you requesting action, Lieutenant?”
Wu raised his voice. “Get drones into the air and find out what the fuck it is!”
“Yes sir, dispatching drones now,” the dispatcher obeyed. Tamra grinned, enjoying her own pocket council member.
As they got within two kilometers of the building, the shadow loomed over it. They both watched in amazement as tiny black figures started dropping from the sky. Moments later flickers of light burst from several points on the bottom of the giant sky silhouette. Long streaks imitating a laser-light show followed in rapid succession, briefly illuminating the clouds and revealing bits of a large flying fortress as they swept across the Noxcorp complex. Sound caught up with light and the wardens heard the distinctive zipping noise of gatling storm cannons. Bullets fired from each gun at a rate of one million per minute, emitting a high pitched noise that without dampening would carry over one hundred kilometers and deafen anyone within a half kilometer instantly. While still loud, Tamra knew these cannons must be very well dampened.
“Dispatch, I want to—” Charles was cut off by an explosion just below the flying war machine. A wave traveled in all directions, appearing as a bubble expanding, refracting the view inside of it. The edge slammed into Wu’s car, frying its electronics and rendering it inanimate. It was an electro-magnetic pulse. The EMP also traveled through their polonium, discharging electricity through their bodies and wrenching howls from their lungs as they convulsed.
Without current to keep them open, the wheel’s brakes clamped down. The car screeched to a halt halfway off the road. Tamra’s body ceased its violence and she leaned forward slowly, unable to fully control her limbs. She cranked her head around to look at Charles. He too was stunned, but looked otherwise unharmed.
“Mmmmffffhmm flhuuu,” he drooled. Tamra just moaned in response. Slowly regaining control of her motor functions, she fumbled with the manual belt release and then opened the door and rolled out onto the pavement. They both crawled to the front of the vehicle on their stomachs, wheezing heavily and occasionally moaning.
“We have to—,” she breathed, “keep going. Can’t let them remove the mage.”
“No,” Wu shook his head. “That’s a coup… and an army to carry it out.”
“I can’t walk away,” declared Tamra, now on her knees She took two deep breaths. “We can approach slowly, carefully. Might be able to infiltrate the chamber with the mage.”
“There’s just no way,” he panted.
“Stay here then,” said Tamra disdainfully, rising to her feet. She started limping toward Noxcorp, now less than a kilometer away.
“Oh, damn it all,” he heaved, crawling along behind her.
* * *
Angela watched her life’s work crumble in front of her eyes through the displays inside the vampire mage chamber. Doors were being blown apart by armed men. Ridiculous, thought Koch, most of them are unlocked. Men with black balaclavas hiding their faces stormed the various rooms of the building, opening fire on every person, every vampire they came across. Eventually they would find and blow the secret facility’s lift hatch open and invade the stasis chamber. She knew it was a matter of time, likely of minutes. Phillip sat holding his head in his hands.
The only advantage she had was that the chamber was shielded against EMP. The pods, sensors, and electronics functioned as they should, with display feeds coming into it through long fiber channels.
“Phillip,” she said gently, her voice calm and quiet. “Is he ready?”
“Ready for what?!” Phillip cried, still planting his face into his palms.
“Is Gressen awake?”
“Yes, malnourished, emaciated, confused, barely cognizant, awake.”
“Soon men will breach this room and kill us. We may be the last to die. All our colleagues and friends have been slaughtered out there. How would you like to make these men pay?” enticed Koch.
“I don’t see how.”
“Unleash him,” she said, nodding toward Gressen.
“Oh come on!” Phillip despaired, his head sliding past his hands and to his knees. “I don’t want to die.”
“In a few minutes you will be dead, Phillip. I can’t threaten you into doing it. You will be a corpse and those men out there,” she pointed at the screen, “will be standing over it. You can whimper in a corner waiting for the end, or you can take them with you. The rules are out the window. The game we were playing, protecting our people, is over. We lost. It’s time to knock over the board, and this is the only way to do it. Let’s give these assholes a real surprise,” she rallied.
“Oh, God, what was the point of all this?” Phillip said, looking up at the ceiling. He sighed. “This is madness… Fine. We need to feed him. A lot, and fast. Lucky for us, he no longer has to share. I will start re-routing the tubes from the other two.”
Koch turned back to the displays. A grin formed on her mouth, then a broad smile. She tried to fight it, but could not maintain a straight face. Then she started to giggle. Phillip thought at first she was sobbing. Koch audibly breathed in and started laughing quietly. Phillip felt disgusted by the sound before realizing that he had started smiling. Koch’s laughter grew louder as she continued to stare at the carnage. Several moments passed, and when her laughter didn’t subside, Phillip found himself infected with it and began to titter along with her.
Episode 11: Scorched Earth
By the time Tamra and Wu had reached the Noxcorp central headquarters campus, the flying fortress had started floating eastward. Within a few minutes time it was completely cloaked by clouds as night set in.
Men patrolled the grounds in pairs, and Tamra could hear gunfire coming from inside the buildings. Both of them had prepared for a silent assault, and the noise would help conceal their presence. Tamra switched her AR to gas propulsion. Wu’s pistols were suppressed already by design. They skulked along the shadows, ducking behind a hedgerow as two of the men passed. Wu nodded, and they stood up in unison, firing one shot into each of the men’s skulls.
They dragged the bodies behind the hedge and waited for signs of discovery. No one noticed. The patrols weren’t speaking to each other. Tamra thought perhaps their coms had been fried by the EMP. The men had flashlights powered by luminescent isotopes on their rifles. Most munitions with sensitive circuitry had some form of magnetic shielding.
Tamra pulled the mask off one of the men, raising her eyebrows. “He’s a vampire.” Wu removed the mask from the second man, revealing him to also be a nightstalker.
“A coup, but not of the corporate variety,” guessed Wu.
“Is it possible they know about the vampire mages?” wondered Tamra.
“Odds don’t favor coincidence,” he replied.
Wu and Tamra circled around the campus toward the council hall. As they rounded a corner, they saw another patrol, this time checking in with a man standing stationary on a paved walkway to the entrance. Waiting two more minutes, another patrol checked in with him. Then another, like clockwork. Tamra and Wu looked at each other, knowing eventually the timing would be off.
Tamra counted out the seconds. When she got to one hundred and ten, she looked in both directions. No patrols. From behind a tree, she peered around and took aim with rifle, using the long scope. The man too had noticed no patrol within view and looked at his wrist. He reached to its screen with his finger—
ZIP! A bullet whizzed through the air, striking the man between the eyes where Tamra was sure he would be least protected. His head jerked back violently, his body stiffened, and he stumbled two steps before falling over dead.
“We have thirty seconds, maybe a bit more. Let’s move,” ordered Tamra. Despite losing his rank, Wu simply nodded and followed her as she walked briskly for the door. Charles walked backward, covering their rear.
Tamra stopped at the door, now blasted off its hinges, and took cover to the side. Poking her head around, she saw more men. They were not patrolling, but simply standing in place; one every five to ten meters down the wide hallway. She saw lights coming from corridors joined to the main hall at ten meter intervals that each led to the right; likely more men.
There was no way to sneak past these occupiers. “I know the route,” Tamra whispered. “All in, no quarter.” In other words, there was no turning back now and everyone had to die.
“Kneel while firing,” Wu suggested. “I will stand. No crossfire.”
Tamra nodded, then pulled a fire grenade from her jacket. She expertly tossed it over the head of the first man at an angle, bouncing it off the wall of a connecting corridor. The three men visible in the hall reacted, but not as quickly as Wu. Wielding a pistol in each hand, he simultaneously fired several shots into the first two men. A third man, previously hidden in the perpendicular corridor, dove out of the blast direction of the grenade, landing in Tamra’s line of sight. Her first shot hit the man in the chest. He tried to roll away, and Tamra continued firing, each shot landing. After four hits, he stopped moving.
The duo sprinted down the hall to the first intersection. The fire grenade exploded and a short scream followed from a guard that had not cleared the blast in time. The path to the right was now blocked by a wall of fire. The wardens continued down the main hall, Wu in the lead.
Upon reaching the second corridor, Tamra took her last grenade and tossed it back to the main doors. Wu started climbing the wall using gloves and boots styled like climbing crampons. Curved hooks with diamond tips tore into the foamcrete.
The second grenade exploded. Wu reached the top and hung with one hand and both feet dug into the ceiling. He nodded at Tamra, pulled his body flat against the ceiling and slid partially into the intersection. Two men knelt ready to fire, but they weren’t looking upwards. With his free hand, Wu swung his arm down and shot one of the men on the top of the head. Tamra used the wall as cover, firing on the confused mercenary just as he caught sight Wu.
They waited for more men, but none came. Voices shouted from behind the fire at the main entrance. Wu dropped from the ceiling while Tamra moved down the corridor ahead.
* * *
“Quid hōc est?” the man gurgled through motionless lips.<
br />
“I don’t understand. No comprende,” tried Koch.
“Quod lingua, momento…” the man closed his eyes.
“Uh, lingua? Lingua English. You are in a stasis pod, it has kept you asleep for a very long time. There are men—”
“Who are you?” he asked, opening his eyes again.
“I am Angela Koch—”
“Vampire council, you wield power… faltering. No, you used to.”
“They’ve discovered the hatch!” exclaimed Phillip.
“How do you know?” asked Koch.
“Well, they are pointing at it and gathering around it.”
“You are old,” spoke Gressen, a slight smile showing on his face; the first facial expression he had exhibited in over a millennia.
“Yes dear, but you are older,” she countered.
“I’m so tired,” said Gressen, lifting an arm out of the gel slowly.
“We are working on that.”
“Why… am I here?” he asked.
“You’ve been sleeping a long time.”
“I know,” Gressen claimed. “But why?”
“That is complicated. Short story, the masses don’t like being ruled by the few,” lectured Koch.
“The current system of government seems to indicate otherwise,” observed Gressen.
“You know about the corporatocracy?” she said with surprise.
“I know much. Why did you wake me?”
“For revenge I suppose,” began Koch. “We are under attack. Our ranks were always thin, and now they’ve been decimated. My friends were murdered while I sat down here trying to keep you and the other two alive.”
Gressen sat up and looked around at the other pods. “They are dead then.”
Koch nodded.
“I am not your tool,” he said.
“No,” she started, “Consider though, what your fate would have been if you were kept asleep while these usurpers breached this chamber.”