by A. G. Taylor
Kotler smiled and gave an order to his men.
“Shoot them.”
The Black Hawk helicopter sailed across the yard and smashed down in the mud before the boys. They ducked as bullets glanced off the wrecked machine between them and their attackers. On the other side, Kotler looked round in time to see what had just thrown the helicopter...
A four-metre tall robot made of re-formed junk and looking strangely like a gorilla was bowling towards the mercs. As the men turned their weapons on it, the battlesuit picked up a car and used it as a shield. Then, when it was within a few metres of the first group of mercs, it twisted the car in its huge hands and used it like a club, swiping all three soldiers off their feet and into the air.
“Fall back!” Kotler screamed and the men began to retreat. The robot slammed its fist into the earth, knocking a soldier down. Then it raised its foot and trod him into the ground.
“Back to the vehicle!” Kotler yelled at the six remaining elites. “Use the heavy artillery!”
In the centre of the yard, Alex and Wei stood up and looked from the fleeing mercs to the towering robot in disbelief. As they watched, a section of the battlesuit’s chest folded open, revealing the compartment inside where Hack sat. He was surrounded by wires and components and was grinning back at them.
“Finally managed to get this thing working properly,” he said.
“Wow,” Wei said.
A second giant stomped across the yard, followed by another. The breastplate of one of them opened in the same way Hack’s had – revealing Louise sitting inside.
“What are we standing around for?” she said to the open-mouthed Wei. “The mercs are getting away.”
“She’s right,” Alex said. “If we don’t fight them now, we’ll have to fight them all over again later.”
“Then let’s do it,” Hack said. He scanned the two vans up ahead using the battlesuit HUD. A thermal image showed up five remaining mercs, Kotler among them. Kotler. The man who had abused them worst of all of Bright’s men. And the one who had promised to kill him and May when the time came. Hack opened the battlesuit’s left hand and punched the right fist into it.
That isn’t going to happen.
“You guys might want to sit this out,” Louise said to Alex and Wei on the ground. “Wouldn’t want to step on you.” The chest of her suit folded closed around her, but as she moved off Hack placed a giant hand on her chest.
“Stay here and protect the others,” he said, voice piped through the mouth of the machine. “These are mine.”
Before Louise could protest, he headed off in pursuit of the mercs. Wei looked at Alex. “I really want one of those.”
Inside his battlesuit, Hack sat in a space that was claustrophobic at first, but which he was fast getting used to. The leg movements of the robot were controlled by thought impulse – a kind of telepathic link-up. He imagined moving his legs, and the legs of the battlesuit moved. Vision was provided, not by the eyes in the helmet, but by an incredibly sophisticated computer rendering of the outside world being beamed directly onto his retinas. Within the suit, he had the strange sensation of wearing no helmet at all, the illusion was so real. He turned his head to the right and the display floating before his eyes turned across the yard. The vision highlighted fleeing mercs in red as they raced to their vehicle and started to unload more guns…and rocket launchers. Warning markers generated by the suit flashed in the air around the threats.
They’re getting serious.
He sent his battlesuit stomping across the yard, knocking down car stacks as he went. A group of mercs peppered the suit shell with bullets. Hack opened the arms of the machine wide and brought them together in a sweeping motion, crushing the soldiers together. They fell to the ground in a groaning, mangled heap – alive, but out of the action.
A rocket flew from beside the van and hit him full in the chest. It felt like someone had driven a bus at the outside of the machine. Hack cried out in pain as warning messages flashed across the display. He realized that he was actually sensing mild pain around his body. I’m telepathically linked with this machine, he thought. If it gets hurt, I feel it too. Shaking his head to clear his thoughts, he focused on the van: the merc was slotting another rocket into the launcher.
With a battle cry that echoed across the yard, he raced forward and kicked out. The foot of the battlesuit connected with the van. Three of the mercs disappeared, caught in the path of the tumbling vehicle. A fourth dodged to one side, raising a launcher in his hand…
The rocket hit the battlesuit full in the face. Stars exploded in Hack’s eyes and he was aware of the machine’s knees buckling as he lost all control. Warnings blazed all around…
Kotler stepped forward with his own rocket launcher, calmly took aim and fired…
The explosion ripped the right arm from the battlesuit. Inside the shell, Hack screamed in agony. It felt as if someone had ripped his own arm out of the socket. A message rang in his head: Emergency – full system shut-down imminent – escape procedure activated…
The chest plate slid open automatically and Hack spilled out of the machine and onto the muddy ground. Minus an operator, the battlesuit staggered away and came to rest on its back. Still in pain, Hack looked at the face of the robot and gave it a final order before the telepathic link was severed. The red eyes went dim…
Hack pushed himself up, running for the nearest available cover. He almost made it before Kotler grabbed him by the shoulder and drove him down to the ground.
“That’s far enough!” the merc leader hissed, pressing the barrel of a pistol into the back of his skull. Metres away, the only other remaining merc jumped on the broken carcass of the battlesuit, rocket launcher still in his hand. The merc gave a whoop of triumph and started poking around at the exposed operator cavity of the machine.
“Get the others to shut down their suits,” Kotler ordered, his cold eyes glittering with satisfaction. “Tell them to show themselves or I’ll shoot you right now.”
Everyone stand down, Hack said, looking back to where Louise and May stood in the distance, still suited up, while Alex and Wei ran to catch up. I can take care of this.
Yeah, looks like it, Louise said.
Hack looked up at Kotler. “Two of you? Against the rest of them? You’d better run…if you want to live.”
Kotler sneered. “I make the threats around here.”
Hack shrugged. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
At that second the battlesuit sent him its final message: Self-destruct ready… Activating…
Atop the battlesuit, the merc looked up as a high-pitched alert sounded. Kotler turned fractionally as the merc shouted, “Sir, I think it’s going to—”
The machine exploded, throwing its remains in all directions. Hack hit the ground and threw his hands over his face to protect his eyes.
He lay on his back for a moment, catching his breath as he looked at the sky. The storm clouds had passed and now there was blue up there. Rising to a sitting position, then to his feet, he looked around and saw Kotler’s pistol lying in the mud. He picked it up and turned towards the merc, but saw that he would not need it. Kotler was lying face down in the mud, his body burned from where it had taken the full force of the explosion. With a deep breath he tossed the pistol far into the junk pile.
“Are you okay?” May asked, as she ran over, having climbed out of her battlesuit. She looked over at Kotler. “You got him.”
“Yeah, I got him,” Hack said quietly.
“He would have killed you,” she said, taking his hand in hers. “He would have killed us both.”
“I know. That doesn’t make it any better though, does it?”
“Come on.” She led him over to where the others were waiting and they all fussed about for a while before he convinced them he was okay.
“I can’t believe it,” Wei said, looking around the group. “We beat them.”
Louise grinned from the open front of her battlesui
t. “Yeah.”
“It’s not over yet,” May reminded them. “We still have to get back to the power station if we’re going to rescue Sarah. And now the mercs are out of the picture, the Entity will throw everything it has at us. The only way we can stop it is to destroy the hypersphere.”
“Then we’re going to need more battlesuits,” Wei said, unable to keep the excitement from his voice. “Right?”
39
Sarah awakes to early morning sunlight streaming through the gap between the window and the screen. Rising, she opens the screen to crisp dawn air and notices that at sometime in the night a new set of clothes has been placed next to the mattress. She picks them up to examine them: a black uniform fitted with multiple pockets that look designed to hold an array of tools or weapons. She finds the weapons wrapped up in a cloth case on the floor: throwing stars, knives, utility items such as a mini-torch, and a set of nunchaku. The uniform fits perfectly, designed to facilitate easy movement, while the soft material makes no noise as she moves experimentally around the room.
“What do you think of the outfit?” Daniel asks as she slips open the door.
Sarah smiles, remembering Alex’s uniforms. “It’s an improvement on the last one I was given, I guess.” She delicately removes one of the shuriken throwing stars from the case. The edges are razor-sharp.
“Everything a budding ninja could want,” Daniel says.
“It looks as if you’ve been planning all this for a long time.”
Her father’s face darkens. “You have no idea. Being in this place is like…an eternity.”
Sarah looks at him and feels suddenly sad. “Has it been very bad for you here?”
“No,” he replies. “Because I knew you would come.”
She looks down. “Perhaps you’ve got too much faith in me. I’m not sure if I can use any of these weapons.”
“Don’t worry,” he reassures her. “If you need to, you’ll use them. And I haven’t got too much faith in you. You’re the only person to take on the Entity. I believe that more than anything else.” He steps into the room and places his hands on her shoulders. “I know I wasn’t there for you and Robert when you were younger, but neither of you gave up on me. I promise when all this is over, I’ll be a proper father to both of you.”
Sarah smiles at him, seeing there are actually tears forming in his eyes. “I know, Dad.”
Daniel steps away and coughs noisily. “Well, anyway… We move out in ten.”
With that, he leaves her to finish getting dressed. Spreading out the weapons case on the floor, Sarah removes several of the stars and slips them into her pockets. She takes a couple of throwing knives and the torch, but leaves the rest.
In the next room she finds the family eating breakfast with Daniel. As she joins them, they look at her, nod and smile, but say nothing. When they finish the meal and the woman removes the bowls, Sarah leans over so she can whisper to her father.
“Do they know?”
He raises an eyebrow. “They know you’re not part of this place. They’ve seen the different ones before.”
“Are they...”
“Sleepers,” he replies. “Just like me. Maybe not human, of course.”
Sarah looks at him in confusion.
“The construct links all of the victims of the Entity’s virus,” Daniel explains. “From millions of different planets. There are billions upon billions of beings here. Only a few thousand from Earth, so far. We have to keep it that way.”
“You’re saying they’re aliens?”
“Shh. They’ll hear.”
“But they don’t…you know…look…”
“No tentacles and six heads?” Daniel asks wryly.
“Yeah.”
“The construct is partly created from the memories of the individual,” Daniel explains. “How it appears to you, might be different to me. And they appear to you as human, because that’s what you expect.”
“So I might look like I’ve got six heads to them?”
“I would say almost certainly.”
“Then none of this is real?” Sarah asks again.
Daniel picks up one of the remaining breakfast bowls and places it in Sarah’s hands. “Does that feel real? Did the rice taste real?”
She nods.
“Everything here is as real as it needs to be. The Entity makes it so.”
“So if we get hurt here…”
“The damage will seem completely real to you. You can feel pain. You can die.”
Sarah frowns. “Die?”
“Trust me,” he says, “you don’t want to die in the construct. You’ll fall into a kind of limbo. The link between you and the Entity will be severed, but you won’t be returning to your body on Earth. Your physical form will grow old and die, while your mind will be trapped here for ever.”
Sarah takes a moment to let that sink in. Somehow the unreality of the place – the Japanese setting, almost a copy of the images she’d seen in her karate books, and the presence of Daniel when he was really back in the sleeper casket at the HIDRA base – had convinced her that this was all some kind of a game. Ninja uniforms. Throwing stars. Back in the real world, her friends are fighting and probably dying without her.
“Are you okay?” Daniel asks, seeing the seriousness on her face.
“Yes,” she replies. “I just feel like I haven’t been thinking straight… I…”
“It’s okay, Sarah. Just remember that the construct is designed to do that – lull you so the Entity can keep control over your mind. You must be mindful that this is not your reality at all times.”
“How?”
“By fighting.”
The streets of London were filled with the comatose bodies of men, women and children. Through the thunderstorm that had lashed the city they had lain, oblivious to the rain and cold, but now they began to rise…
All across the capital people flicked their eyes open and, staring blankly, they stood. To an observer they might have appeared like a set of dominoes that had been knocked over, simultaneously rising up again…
And they waited, as if for some command. Unnaturally unmoving...
Then…
They began to hum.
First just a few, but like a virus the noise spread from one person to another. Young and old, all made the same noise… The same tone…
They were one...
“What is that?” May said as a buzzing noise rose around the junkyard. It almost sounded like an engine of some sort, but the sound was unnaturally even. Louise levitated to the top of one of the stacks and looked around.
It’s the infected people, she said. They’ve all risen up and they’re…humming.
May looked at Hack questioningly, who was in the process of checking over another of the battlesuits. They had five now – one for each of them. They’d need the advantage the suits provided if they were going up against the base defences.
“The Entity is booting up its slaves,” Hack explained as he worked. “Like computers in a wireless network.”
May said, “Then that means…”
“...they’re probably about to attack.”
Just then, Alex and Wei came running. “We’ve got trouble!” Alex yelled.
Behind them a line of people appeared, advancing slowly in a uniform progression. Each one of the people – be it a man, woman or child – had the same fixed expression. Each one was emitting the same low hum.
“What do they want?” May asked as they regrouped in the centre of the yard. A second line of people had entered from the other side of the yard and it was possible to hear the sound of others clambering over the corrugated iron fencing that surrounded the area. One of the men at the head of the first group picked up a rusty pipe as he approached. Others snatched up bricks, broken bottles, lumps of metal…
“I’ll give you three guesses,” Alex said. He and the others had formed into a circle facing out at the threat appearing from all around.
“I can take
care of them,” Wei said and a fireball appeared in his hands.
Alex turned to him and shook his head. “No. They’re just being used by the Entity. We can’t hurt them.”
“The suits are ready,” Hack said as the nearest group came within just a few metres. They clambered into the machines and Hack sent them hurried instructions as to how to use them, explaining the telepathic link between their minds and the suit controls.
The man with the pipe raised it above his head and ran at the nearest battlesuit, which was Wei’s. As the man started smashing the pipe ineffectually against the leg of the machine, Wei stumbled back clumsily and almost went over.
“Be careful!” Hack snapped. “You’ll crush one of them!”
The five children, made gigantic in the cumbersome robot suits, stumbled away from the approaching mob. The machines were designed for fighting and to protect the user, not to pacify crowds. Hack realized they were in serious danger of accidentally doing damage to the innocent people the Entity was using as its puppets as they swarmed ahead.
“Everyone, go high!” he commanded, leaping over a line of civilians in a single bound. As he touched down, he sprang again, hooked his metal claws into the side of one of the junk stacks and clambered to the very top. The others quickly got the idea, running and jumping onto high ground, away from the people crowding into the yard.
“What now?” May asked, crouching precariously atop one of the stacks and swivelling her head around.
Inside his suit, Hack brought up a scan of the city on the internal HUD – a holo-image highlighted Battersea Power Station in the distance.
“We keep moving,” he said, leaping to another stack and then another. Bricks, metal and wood were thrown at him, but bounced off the hard exoskeleton of the battlesuit. The main thing was no one got hurt as he reached the outer wall of the yard, leaped onto the road beyond and then hauled himself up the side of a building. On the roof, he turned and waved to the others, who were watching him from their vantage points in the junkyard.