Hardcore - 03

by Andy Remic

  There came a snap, and Keenan was freed. A gun poked over the rim of the pod, or capsule, or whatever the hell it was, and Keenan sat up, slowly, rubbing at bruised wrists. Reality came slamming back and he was poked and prodded out of his... he looked back. It looked like a sarcophagus fashioned from crystal. On wheels. Attached, roller-coaster fashion, to a track. Keenan saw Snake being similarly disgorged from a second mummy-coaster and pushed, complaining, towards Keenan.

  "You all right, mate?" said Snake, with a scratching rub of his whiskers.

  "Been better," said Keenan, looking around.

  They were inside a dome, under the ice. The place was a bustling hive of activity, with perhaps a thousand Cryo Medics rushing about their business. They worked at machines set at chest height, their circuit-board faces flashing occasionally with sparks of electricity. Around one section of the dome's wall squatted huge metal canisters, hinged and ribbed, and fashioned from what looked like an ancient black iron. There were many pipes and tubes emerging from cast valves. In the distance, by one of the chambers, two Cryo Medics were working. One held a yellow bag of medical waste, whilst another shovelled something from inside the chamber, depositing lumps into the yellow plastic. Keenan shivered.

  "You, follow us," snapped one Cryo Medic, prodding his gun in Snake's chest. Snake grabbed the barrel with a snarl, and around them twenty guns clacked into action. Snake held up both his hands, and rubbed at his torn eye-patch. Beneath, flesh was weeping.

  "OK, OK, be cool, dudes. But keep the damn gun out of my face. It's been a long day, and I might just ram it up your... up your diode chute."

  "This way. Cryo Locum wants to speak with you!"

  The circle of Medics gestured with weapons, and Keenan and Snake moved forward across the dome's floor.

  "Where do you think we're going?" mumbled Snake from the corner of his mouth.

  "Not sure," murmured Keenan. "But whatever happens, don't let the bastards put you in one of those chambers."

  "Why's that?"

  "I think this is where they make... themselves. Earlier, the Medic who captured us - he said something about integrating human and machine. Only I've got a feeling things don't always go well; hence the sick bag and shovel. See?"

  Snake peered at the shovelling. Steam was still rising from the cubes of meat. "Understood, Keenan. Very deeply understood."

  Their boots padded across the dome's floor, and Keenan stared up at the arches in wonder. They were white, but covering the entire interior surface of the Institute was a very fine golden thread in an incredibly complex pattern. It was so fine it was almost invisible against the white of the cavern, and as they walked Keenan found himself tracing patterns with his eyes; some of the wires glowed momentarily before fading back into gold, so that the entire surface looked like a vast network of optic fibre decorations.

  "What a tacky load of shit," snarled Snake, following Keenan's gaze.

  "No," he said. "It's beautiful."

  Snake cackled. "Is this the Great Man Keenan going all soft at some tacky festive bauble? It looks like what it is, Keenan, a huge quivering tripe pie covered is a plethora of gold shit. Get real, man, this entire place is a retro-electronic graveyard."

  "You don't understand," said Keenan, voice soft. "It's a map. A huge map."

  "What?" scoffed Snake. "A map of what? My arse cheeks?"

  "No," said Keenan, forcing his gaze to break from the glowing vision of the dome interior. He found it hard, almost impossible. He had been drowning in the vision; addicted worse than any Spuke-Crack addict. "It's a map of the entire planet. Sick World. Only... it's inside out."

  Snake stared for a long time as they marched. It was cold, and their breath formed smoke streamers.

  "Bollocks," said Snake, at last. "You're winding me up."

  Keenan shrugged, but continued to stare. It was like spaghetti pooling across the front of his brain, twisting and turning and shifting. And then it went click, and moved into focus. And Keenan could understand the map. He could decode the information shifting between several dimensions before his very eyes, and he realised, knew, understood it was his alien blood, his contamination, his taint that made this possible. Keenan was something more than human. Or maybe something less.

  He followed the map. He could see their path, in real-time, glowing and fading and glowing and updating and fading, even as he watched. He read the Silglace, and the trip here to this dome. With a frown, Keenan realised he could read his future path... and this shift of phase was his, and for him alone, and he was looking at the ArcPass, a mythical map a billion years old, something he'd read about in QGM broadsheets and kubes and ggg broadcasts. Keenan was staring at myth. At the impossible. At a legend. A bad dream.

  "I can see our future," said Keenan, voice a drift of ghost-smoke.

  "Are there lots of naked women in it?"

  "Sort of."

  "Great!"

  "I... don't think you'll be happy when you meet these babes, mate."

  "Where are we heading, then?"

  "We're heading down," said Keenan. "We're going to find VOLOS. We're going to stop him. And there's only one route that can take us to the bastard."

  "Which way's that?"

  "Through the Asylum," said Keenan, his voice grim.

  They stopped, and were manhandled so they stood side-by-side. Before them on a throne of crystal sat the Cryo Locum. He was larger than the Medics, verging on eight feet in height. As a human specimen he would have been magnificent, a towering powerhouse of muscle and sinew, his fists the size of dinner-plates, his biceps thicker than Keenan's thigh. His entire face and naked upper torso were riddled with a hundred circuit boards, soft-welded into flesh, joined to slightly leaking veins and arteries, to the Cryo Locum's own natural electrical circuitry, and to his spinal and lymphatic systems. To his very brain.

  He stood, as Keenan and Snake were prodded forward, and gazed down with tiny black eyes hidden under folds of green and red circuit boards. Charges of electricity flickered along channels. The circuit boards moved, shifted, and Keenan realised he was staring at a smile on the face of an electronic human lunatic.

  "Nice to meet you," growled Keenan. "What's your next party trick? You switch on a light bulb poked up your arse?"

  A boom of crackling laughter rolled out, and Keenan gave a nod. It was nice to see that brain-fried, circuit-board faced, eight-foot cryogenic lunatics had a sense of humour. Although, Keenan realised, it was probably going to go bad.

  "Keenan. You think we don't know who you are? Or why you are here? VOLOS knows everything!"

  "Can he see us? Hear us? Now?"

  "Of course!" boomed the Locum.

  "Hey VOLOS!" shouted Keenan. "Your days are numbered, fuckhead. We're gonna root you out and fuck with your game. You understand?"

  Locum boomed his laughter again, shoulder shuddering, electricity crackling along circuits and diodes. Then he stepped down from the dais on which his throne rested, and Keenan and Snake did everything they could not to take a step back. The electronic man was awesome.

  Snake leant towards Keenan. "Do you ever get a really, really bad feeling we're going to have to fight this fat-arsed motherfucker?"

  "Happens to me all the time," muttered Keenan.

  "This is the way it works," boomed Cryo Locum, leaning forward a little, as a Towering King would address his little subjects. "We are going to change you, Keenan, and little Snake Man, you are going to join the ranks of my Cryo Medics! You will become Integrated Electronics! You are going to Combine with the Circuits! You are going to Electrify, little men, Electrify!"

  A cheer rent the air, and all the surrounding Cryo Medics - which now seemed to be the entire thousand-strong workforce in the domed arena - had formed a huge circle, and many fired off ice-guns into the air in plumes of freezing, shattering, tinkling ice bullets.

  "But?" said Keenan, head to one side and taking a step back. Reading his intent, Snake moved back also, rolling shoulders and stretching
his ligaments. Both men could sense it was going to kick off worse than any Nottingham nightclub at closing time. They began loosening themselves ready for battle. None of the Cryo Medics intervened. They were obviously looking forward to the entertainment...

  Cryo Locum placed his huge, white, almost albino-skinned hands on his hips. When he spoke, ice-smoke ejected from between the circuit boards of his face. "We need to put you into the machines." He gestured, to the dark, foreboding chambers, witnessed previously full of human cubes - or chunks, as Cam liked to call them. "But you are currently too volatile. Too violent. We cannot repair these machines if broken, so they are indeed precious to us. Instead, first, you must be broken."

  "And you're gonna do it?" snapped Keenan, taking another step back. The Cryo Medics had formed a circular ring of flesh. He didn't have much further to retreat. There was nowhere to hide; nowhere to run.

  "Breaking little men, well," they could almost feel Locum blush, "it is a great vice of mine. A great, shall we say, sexual pleasure." As if on cue, a bulge appeared in his component-inlaid pants.

  Keenan shivered.

  Snake screamed and charged, both boots launching at the huge figure's grotesque groin. Snake connected, and arcs of electricity shot up and down his body in sparkles of red, green and blue. Snake hit the ground with a grunt, steam rising from his clothing, and Locum kicked him in the ribs, a slow, easy, pendulous gesture that picked Snake up and accelerated him across the chamber. The ring of Medics parted, and Snake rolled over and over, slapping the ice, to lie still, panting, staring down at the floor in shock. He glanced over at Keenan, grinned, and spat out a mouthful of blood. "Your turn, Big Guy," he croaked.

  Keenan moved forward, gritting his teeth... and cursed the day he'd been born.

  Cam checked his sensors. 0.000006% and rising. It was slow. Far too slow, especially with him sending the pulse comm signals. Frustration screamed through his circuits. Anger battered his CPU with a disintegrating ALU. Binary chased hex chased base 10. He needed more power, or he'd spend an eternity bleaching scabs of energy from pointless pitiful power sources like moss on a rock sucks distant sunlight.

  Damn! Damn and hot bloody blast!

  And there, he'd done it again. A Francoism! Damn that little ginger midget!

  Idly, Cam watched the Cryo Medics messing about, searching through the remains of the Giga-Buggy. And then... it struck Cam like a sock full of marbles. Of course! He'd been so stupid! Dim-witted! No brighter than a Philosophical Hoover (a PhilHoov), no more intelligent than a Psycho-Analytical Toaster (a PsychoAT). Doh!

  The Buggy's battery.

  Garnering his energy, Cam used what few micro-amps of surge remained to roll his battered shell across the rocky ground towards the disintegrated Buggy. And there! He sensed the trickle of gradually leaking energy. Cam jigged himself along, then clattered to a stop beside the black cube, spinning a little. With the last remnants of dying power, he extruded a monofilament and drilled into the battery cells...

  It was being born.

  Like the blind, given sight.

  Like the lame, discovering the ability to walk.

  Cam yodelled in machine code, quite a feat, even Cam had to admit, and sucked in juice like a junkie guzzles Lemon Crack. Power flooded his circuits, and despite the blackened frizzles to his shell Cam ran a quick machine-gun succession of diagnostics and found he was -

  Alive.

  "Right, motherfuckers," he grumbled, and lifted unsteadily into the air, wobbling. The few remaining Cryo Medics turned towards the blinking red lights which scattered like angry hornets across Cam's casings.

  Guns turned on him, bullets whined, and Cam shot out in a wide arc, cracking skulls in quick succession, and like a bowling ball scattering skittles he decked the twelve remaining Cryo Medics in less than a second.

  Cam yowled in glee. Gurgled in gluttony. Bopped a jig of joy with a funky dance of death!

  He checked his power.

  1%.

  "You've got to be kidding!" he moaned, and realised in horror that the Giga-Buggy's battery, whilst powerful for a vehicle, was minute when aligned to the requirements of an advanced AI PopBot. In essence, he needed more juice... or, he checked his run-time, in another sixteen minutes, he'd be on the deck again.

  Cam did a quick circuit of the chamber, then sped out into the corridor down which Keenan, Snake and Ed had fled. And there it gleamed like a silver snake, the river itself, a winding twisting platter of silver.

  Cam scanned for power - and could sense nothing. And yet... and yet he suddenly knew there was a power source in there, somewhere, a source of energy which would revitalise him, make him whole again.

  Cam moved, dropping to a single millimetre above the surface. He fancied he could hear voices. Ghosts. And that was impossible. Cam didn't believe in ghosts. In his digital world, they could not exist.

  Cam hovered, uncertain. He tried to scan component elements of the silver river, but it came back blank. Which meant this river was fashioned from a substance found nowhere else in Quad-Gal, and thus not supported in Cam's chemical database. Either that, or it was sentient and shielding itself. Which meant it was living, or AI. Which meant it had power cells, organic or otherwise.

  Cam readied himself to plunge in -

  What if it's dangerous? asked a tiny voice at the back of his mind.

  Ha, scoffed Cam to himself. It's only a silver river. How dangerous can it be?

  Keenan circled the Locum warily, fists raised, and the huge monster watched Keenan without motion. Keenan moved in, and the Locum raised his fists, and Keenan stepped back. The sound of Snake vomiting blood did nothing to calm his raging mind.

  Be calm, he thought.

  Be still.

  He relaxed, body and mind and soul, and distilled everything to this moment. For long seconds nothing existed outside this arena, outside this simple match of one on one, and there was no bigger mission, no bigger picture, no chamber or Cryo Medics or map-infused inner dome... just Keenan, and the enemy.

  He charged, a blur, and the Locum leapt towards him, a huge fist swiping out. Keenan ducked the blow, which whistled past his temple, twisted, rolling into the Locum's legs with a thud designed to knock the Locum from his feet - instead, Keenan was winded, and he saw a huge boot lift into the air and he moved fast as it slammed down, cracking the ice. Keenan kicked out, both boots slamming the Locum's knee, and the Medic took a step back. Keenan slid forward, delivering another blow to the same joint, and a third. There came the faintest of splintering sounds, and Keenan rolled as a fist slammed at him, thudding into the ice. Keenan drew a knife from his boot, and rammed the blade into the back of the Locum's circuit-board covered hands. Sparks raged and leapt like fireworks. The Locum let out a high-pitched shrill scream, long and warbling, and Keenan pushed himself back as the Locum stood up straight and stared down at his fist, pinned into a club by the long blade. He reached forward, started working at the dagger, then let go and screamed again, an almost electronic sound like a fast transfer of data, and Keenan ran, both boots connecting with the Locum's face, making the huge lumbering figure dance backwards, off-balance, and buoyed by his success Keenan leapt again - into a right blow that moved so fast he hardly saw it coming. The fist slammed Keenan's chest and he was knocked, twisted from his trajectory and sent spinning across the ice. He slid to a halt, and sat, coughing, pain raging through him, fire burning him and, wondering if the bastard had broke his sternum... the Locum charged with heavy ponderous steps and, stooping, picked Keenan up in one huge hand, with Keenan beating and slamming his elbow into the giant's limb. The Locum hurled Keenan, who curled into a ball, slamming from the ribbed and finned exterior of one of the huge blending machines. Metal struts cut Keenan like whips of steel, and he folded around the curves of the machine's flank, then rolled limply to the floor. Pain and blood-red images of impact danced through his mind. He heard footsteps, saw the ponderous approach of the Locum, and he spat out a tooth. Bastard. Bastard! Keenan p
ushed himself up, then staggered to his feet. The Locum swung its damaged fist, Keenan swayed back and struck out, slamming the embedded knife with the palm of his hand to a grating soundtrack, the snapping of several severed tendons, a grunt of shock... Keenan dropped, slammed three blows to the Locum's groin, then rolled free as a boot tried to stamp his head. Now, the Locum had turned, had his back to the machines, with their age-old iron alloy and promise of flesh and metal and electronics merging to form a wholesome whole.

  "Enough!" roared the Locum, and his voice was edged with raw agony.

  "Hurt, does it?" sneered Keenan through a mask of sweat, and dirt, and blood.

  "You will die now," said the injured Locum. "No integration for you. Medics! Get the other!" Cryo Medics converged on Snake, and grappled the man to the ground but even as this happened Keenan attacked, thundering blows in the Cryo Locum's transistored face. His fists beat wires and complex electronics, sparks showered, and Keenan felt a PCB board crack under one heavy blow. The Locum took a step back. Keenan ducked a whistling sweep, and leapt, boot cracking the Locum's face. Blood dripped from beneath the boards, and one twisted and dangled from his face revealing the pale white flesh beneath, skin mottled, flaked, like a wound left to fester under sick bandages for years. A terrible stench of putrefaction rolled out, making Keenan gag, but still he attacked, raining blow after blow into the now staggering Locum's huge figure - until he stumbled back, and slumped down heavily on a bench just inside the machine. Keenan reached out, and slammed shut the corrugated alloy door. Locks hissed. Suddenly, the Locum surged to his feet as understanding flooded him and Keenan whirled on the console, the entire panel in an alien lexicon, but he felt a pulse of dark blood within his veins and he felt Emerald with him in brain and blood and soul... he reached out, fingers caressing the console, and stroked a series of keys, first in one pattern, then a second, and finally a third -