by Andy Remic
"You want to show me paintings?"
Elana smiled again, on that curious pitted face, and Keenan realised the facial gesture was for his benefit. To try and put him at ease. Shit, he thought. What I would give for a solid MPK machine gun right now. Gritting his teeth, and limping a little, he followed Elana across the rocky floor and into a side-cavern; here the colours began to dissipate, and the air felt cleaner, more pure, and Keenan suddenly felt almost abused. As if he'd been breathing some toxic agent. He coughed, and rubbed at his chest with broken fingers, realising his lungs were burning.
The cavern was lined with paintings, some large, some small, some twisting out from canvas and paper and bark and glass and metal, erupting in colourful splendour from a 2D background into resplendent 3D, all in paint, without any form of structural support. Keenan, ignorant to art by choice, walked across the rocky ground, eyes scanning the thousands upon thousands of pieces of work. He realised Elana had stopped and, turning, he gave her a questioning look. "What am I searching for?"
"You contain the Dark Flame. Use that which resides in your soul."
Keenan shrugged, and strode along row upon row of paintings on glass using metal inks. Then something seemed to stab him in the throat, pain flaring, and he turned, focusing on a tiny image no larger than five or six inches. He walked towards the painting, boots scuffing on rock, and had to crouch to see the picture clearly.
Keenan stared - and with a start, he realised the picture stared back.
It showed a metal face, simple, with round eyes and a mouth spewing cables. "Welcome, Keenan," said the painting.
"How can you know me?"
"I have been waiting for you."
"I don't understand."
"I knew you would come. Down the millennia. I have waited for you."
"But you're just a painting?"
"No. I'm a timeline, an umbilical between one moment and another, two static points of space and time locked and held in place by powerful machines created by the Spinners."
"So, you're alive?"
"In my present, yes, but it is many thousands of years before you even exist. You must listen, for time is short, and VOLOS awakes even as we speak. VOLOS is a Machine God, this is his planet, his world; it has always been his world. Once the Junkala ruled VOLOS with powerful engines, bending him, twisting him, forcing him into subservience in the name of Culture. After centuries of imprisonment, VOLOS broke free of his chains, and his retribution was terrible. He slaughtered, maimed, and helped deviate the Junkala..." Suddenly the metal face calmed. The junk, for Keenan suddenly realised, this was what he perceived, relaxed and exhaled with eyes tight shut. Then the orbs flashed open, swirling dark crimson, and the face said, "Keenan. You must find VOLOS. You must destroy VOLOS. He helped Leviathan create the junks. He controls the junk armies. They are his plaything. He is bored, millennia bored, and cannot be bargained with."
"Where will I find VOLOS?" Keenan's voice was cracked, like desert-dry timber.
"Seek the Silver River."
"Who are you?" whispered Keenan.
"I am the Junkala King. I am He who ruled VOLOS. I am He who corrupted VOLOS," he smiled sadly, eyes downcast, "thus bringing about the downfall of my species. He's coming, VOLOS is coming..." Suddenly the face screamed, such a high-pitched terrible screaming as Keenan had ever heard and his hands slammed over his ears as he reeled backwards, hairs on his neck standing tall, skin crawling in horror. Before him, the metal face in the painting disintegrated, became liquid, and flowed like mercury on oil spreading into a faceless, amorphous, shimmering pool.
Shaking, Keenan turned to Elana.
"He just died?"
"Yes. You witnessed the Breach of VOLOS. It is part of junk History. The One Lesson."
"But... I saw it happen? Right now?"
"Yes." Elana nodded. "Only the Spinners could explain. They were experts at manipulating Time." She looked around, and Keenan suddenly realised the whole cavern was trembling. Elana hissed, crouching, and snapped, "This is no Rockfall! VOLOS has followed the signal from the Junkala King, VOLOS has tracked you down through millennia to here at this point, this time, and he's coming for you, Keenan!"
A roaring filled the cavern, and the vibrating rose in mammoth leaps until the whole world felt as if it were being ripped apart, and Keenan stood at the epicentre of the largest and most violent earthquake he'd ever encountered. Huge rocks fell from above, tumbling and crashing around Keenan, who sprinted, slamming his back against a wall as the top of the Cathedral was physically ripped free, as if by some awesome storm.
"What can I do?" screamed Keenan; panic, a rarity, welling in his soul.
Elana turned fear-filled eyes on him, and she was crying. She was crying blood from red junk eyes. "Run!" she screamed. "Run for your life! Find VOLOS! Destroy him if you can, and you will stop the spread of the junk armies!"
A rock, larger than a house, slammed down from above and obliterated Elana from existence. Keenan blinked. A sickness surged through him, and he leant against the vibrating walls as blood ran in trickles from the edges of the huge boulder.
"Keenan," came the impossible words of VOLOS, from above. They weren't spoken words, or any form of communication Keenan had ever experienced. They were just there, digitally transcribed at the forefront of his brain in a deafening, roaring cacophony of anger and rage and pure white hatred. There was a choking noise, and Keenan realised, in horror, that the terrific, deafening sound was laughter. "I have waited such a long time for you, Keenan! Come to me. Come to me, little man!'
PART II
WAR OF THE WARDS
CHAPTER SIX
ACCELERAPER
Pippa dreamed, and in the dream she walked barefoot through sand and sun shone on her glowing skin and the world felt fine. Somebody approached at a fast run from behind, feet padding sand, and Pippa fought down the urge to draw her yukana and slice off his head as hands grabbed her, hoisting her into the air, squealing and kicking, her wet hair snapping round as she was pulled into a tight embrace and she looked down into his face, the face of her dream lover, once real, now gone. "I love you," she murmured, nuzzling him and kissing him, and knowing deep down inside that it was this love, this nurturing, this connection which killed the violence in her soul, turned her from monster to human, from killer to sane. He kissed her back, tasting sweet, and lowered her gently to the ground, bearing her to the sand, his hands stroking her wet hair, and her eyes were closed and she was lost in the ultimate pleasure of the moment, welling deep down within, radiating outwards as she felt the pleasure building, building, escalating and rising to consume her -
Her eyes clicked open.
It was dark. She knew immediately something was wrong and tried to move, to sit up, to glance about, but found she was strapped tight to a metal trolley. Her mouth tasted bad, like a skunk had sprayed it, and her head pounded with a three-bottle punch. Above, strip-lights lay in metal darkness. There was a humming sound, bass and deep, and the air felt fuzzy, strange, almost unreal. It reminded her of something. Something bad.
She remembered the ecstasy of her dream. It had been a false pleasure. A drug orgasm.
"Shit."
She turned left, saw only a whitewashed wall containing... oxygen tubes, and a set of strange metal pipes running up into the ceiling. She glanced right, and blinked. Betezh lay, strapped to an alloy trolley, his shirt and suit ripped open and a large red circle drawn on his chest. Pippa glanced down. She, too, had her WarSuit open revealing her pale breasts and flat belly. From her sternum to lower abdomen, somebody had drawn a large, red circle.
"That's not good," she muttered. "Betezh?" She raised her voice a little. "Betezh!"
"Urh."
"Wake up, dickhead!"
"Urh. What did I drink? I feel like I drank an ocean of bad whisky."
"No, you were injected by tiny flying insects. What needs to worry you right now, is that we seem to be in an operating theatre with our shirts open and large red
circles drawn on our bodies. So open your bloody eyes and help me think of a way to escape."
Betezh licked his lips several times, and tried to sit up, struggled for a moment, then lay still. "Ahh," he said. "Ahh. It's like that, is it?"
"Yes. What can you see to your right?"
Betezh glanced. "It's a trolley. Full of, um, nice shiny medical equipment."
"Like scalpel-type shiny medical equipment?"
"Yeah. And those hooks they use to pulls things out, and forceps to keeps things open, and long thick needles for injecting." There came a long, long silence. "You don't think they're going to use them on us, do you, Pippa?"
"Well, let me think for a moment now. Of course I fucking do! Can you reach something sharp? Something we can attack these straps with?"
Betezh strained. "No."
"Damn. Can you move anything?"
"No Pippa. Not even a testicle."
"Not funny, Betezh. This situation is starting to make me sweat."
"Ahh yes," said a voice, from beyond both soldiers' field of vision. "That could possibly be because we are about to remove your internal organs."
There came a period of contemplative silence.
Betezh coughed. "Did you just say that, Pippa? In that kind of comedy educated voice that only posh people on TV use?"
"No," said Pippa gently, eyes glinting, "I think it came from our captor."
"Yes, that would be correct. Forgive my lack of manners, and allow me to introduce myself." A figure moved into their line of sight, standing between the two trolleys and resting a hand reassuringly against both patients' feet. "I am Dr. Bleasedale." A face smiled, and Pippa squinted, unsure whether the figure was a man or a woman.
There was a clang, and the buzzing sound increased. Intense triple-halogen theatre lights sprang into life, filling the operating theatre with a brightness that dazzled Pippa and Betezh. They squinted, and slowly watched Bleasedale swim into focus.
She was modestly small, with short curly brown hair and a large purple burn scar covering half her face in a wide crescent. Her eyes twinkled, like a mischievous child. She wore a starched white doctor's uniform, a small white peaked cap, and high black leather boots. She carried a short black stick in one hand. She seemed a curious mix of scarred doctor and Nazi imitator.
"Why," said Pippa, speaking slowly and moistening her lips, partly because of the expired drugs, partly due to a fast-growing avalanche of fear, "why would you want to remove our internal organs?"
"I thought that concept would be obvious, daarling," said Dr. Bleasedale.
"Not to me," said Pippa, in a small voice.
"Because," said Bleasedale, twitching her stick so that it struck Pippa's lower leg, "we have a shortage of internal organs here at the Kludek Institute, ya?"
"The Kludek Institute?" said Pippa.
"Ya. Here, we pride ourselves with the finest of medical and surgical procedures, stringent aftercare, and the rehabilitation of patients in need of generous rest and respite. It's all in our policy documents and aftercare procedures. They're quite extensive. I wrote them, daarling. You should see the Health and Safety Policy! It's full of health. Lots of health. And lots of safety." She smiled.
Betezh gave a moan. "I kind of like my internal organs," he said, close to tears. "I mean, I like, I kinda need, I kinda want them. They're mine. They're what, you know, keeps me alive and digesting food and all that stuff."
"Mere formalities," snapped Dr. Bleasedale impatiently. "You will be recompensed for your loss, and given temporary replacements." She smiled then, and her androgynous scarred face split into nothing less than an Evil Dictator Grin, the sort of arrogant smile found on all high-ranking individuals who abuse their positions of power and are not afraid to trample on the Little People in their stampede for more. More of what? Hell, more of everything.
"Don't we have to sign a consent form, or something?" muttered Betezh.
"Already signed and sealed. Whilst you were unconscious. Don't worry yourself about such trivialities. Soon, you'll be the proud owners of Hecker and Guttenberg Ersatz Mechanical Organs, the finest in the business!"
Dr. Bleasedale's stick rested on Pippa's leg, close to her right hand. If she could just stretch a little bit, just manage to... Pippa lunged for the stick, but Bleasedale was surprisingly quick. The stick moved, swept back, and slammed across Pippa's cheek with a snap that made her gasp, and left a long welting mark against her fair skin.
Pippa, whose head had dropped with the blow, lifted her chin, and in her eyes shone a dark light of murder. Her eyes watered, but they weren't tears of pain or fear, it was an outburst of sheer rage-filled animal frustration.
"I'm going to fuck you up," snarled Pippa.
"Unlikely, daarling," said Dr. Bleasedale, turning her back on the two captives and moving towards the trolley filled with instruments. She started to busy herself, readying tiny machines and trailing wires to the two Combat-K squaddies. She attached pads to faces and chests, and soon the operating theatre was filled with blips and beeps signalling blood pressure, respiration, heart rate and brain activity.
Dr. Bleasedale turned back and, with a smile, placed her stick on the trolley. She pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, and they were quite the most ominous pair of rubber gloves either Pippa or Betezh had ever seen.
"Now lie back," said Bleasedale. "You won't feel a thing."
She smiled grimly.
"Actually," she said, "you will feel quite a lot. All of it, in fact. We call it open cavity surgery, aha. Ha ha. But then, that's what the Great VOLOS would want. It's all part of the Sacrifice, and it's the Sacrifice that counts."
"Wait!" squealed Betezh like a pig with a spear up its arse. "Don't do this! Kill her, her over there, the pretty lady with the funny bob."
"Betezh!" hissed Pippa, eyes wide.
"I'll do anything, tell you anything, just don't kill me, please!"
There followed a long, embarrassed silence.
"Dickhead," spat Pippa.
Dr. Bleasedale held up her stick. In her other rubber-gloved appendage, she held a syringe. "Betezh. Thanks to your whining, your pleading, and your willingness to sell out your fellow Combat-K operative, I am willing to change my plans for you."
"Thank you," breathed Betezh, going limp against his straps.
"Bring out the decapus!" shouted Bleasedale. Almost instantly, double doors were whammed open and a trolley wheeled in by shuffling zombified nurses. Their skin was green, hanging off their bones, and each visible orifice - and there were many - oozed a treacly brown pus. The trolley contained a decapus. It was big, caged, and had a bulbous rubberised black body, with ten tentacles curling and whipping from its core in obvious agitation, if not downright enraged hostility. There came a steady clang as a limb bounced off the bars. Occasionally, one would curl between the bars and wave madly around, as if seeking an enemy. Amidst the black blubbery flesh, somewhere deep within folds, were many tiny black eyes and a yellow beak. In all, it was a seafaring monstrosity that would have probably benefited from being left in the sea.
"What," said Betezh, "are you going to do with that?"
Even as he spoke, a tentacle curled out, caught one of the green-flesh nurses (still peroxide-blonde, still cherry lipped), and started to repeatedly bang her against the cage bars, first dislocating limbs with crunches of stressed bone, then ripping her (it?) limb from limb in a scatter of rancid putrefied flesh. Betezh nearly gagged. Pippa smiled grimly.
Bleasedale seemed oblivious to the carnage going on behind her jackboots. She smiled down at Betezh with her best Nazi leer, and said, "This, daarling, is my decapus. I have been searching for subjects for some time, in order to experiment with transplant surgery."
"Transplant surgery?" queried Betezh, in a toddler voice.
"Ya, we cut off your arms and legs, and transplant the decapus tentacles in an attempt at cross-surgery and combined genetic misplacement." She had moved closer, was leaning against Pippa's trolley. Pippa's eye fel
l to the syringe, which dripped a clear, viscous fluid with a slow, steady tick.
"I don't want bloody octopus limbs!" howled Betezh.
"Decapus," corrected Bleasedale, pedantically.
Pippa's boot suddenly lashed out, catching the syringe and flicking it upwards. It spun, and landed in Pippa's outstretched hand. She smiled grimly, and Bleasedale, taking several steps back, shrugged. "You think that will do you some good, ya daarling? It is a pain enhancer, simply injected to enable you to suffer all the more."
"Good," snapped Pippa, and with unerring accuracy, flicked the hypodermic at Bleasedale who moved, too late. The long thin needle embedded in her eyeball and she gave a shriek multiplied by ten as the pain enhancer went immediately to work, injecto-brain. Clawing at her dart-stuck face, Bleasedale staggered back - straight into the tentacles of the decapus, which picked her up like a flopping ragdoll and starting waving the doctor around, squealing and wailing, before tossing her with awesome force against the wall, where she crunched, crumpled, and hit the ground.
"Great," snapped Betezh. "And how does that help our situation exactly?"
"Oh please don't hurt me nasty wasty doctor lady, I'm just sooo afraid of dying," mocked Pippa as she struggled with her bonds. "You fucking back-stabbing little Judas."
"Hey, Pippa, girl, chick, it was all a ruse, right? I was just buying us some time until you found a way for us to escape..."
Pippa cursed. Somehow, she had made her bonds tighter. "I'm wrapped tighter than Franco's bondage gag. Can you get out of your straps, Betezh?"
"Oh yeah," hissed Betezh, "like I didn't think of that one before, oh no, I thought I'd just lie here during the whole crazy crazy peepshow and not even, like, get a hand free and grab a scalpel and attack the bitch, or something."
"Betezh, shut up."
At that moment, there came a terrible bone-crumbling roar, and the decapus opened the bars of its cage like a key opening a sardine can. Pippa and Betezh glanced at one another as the decapus crawled free, and extended its black blubbery body, brushing the ceiling a good fifteen feet above, tentacles whirling like tensioned steel cables as they whipped and snapped about.