Archangel

by Scott Harrison

  Prisoners wander up and down, unhurried, oblivious of their surroundings. A uniformed man appears at the bottom of the screen. He stands half in and half out of the entrance to a cell. He backs up slowly, keeping his face towards the cell, looking into the open door.

  Two guards drag a prisoner from the cell. The man is injured, beaten and bloody. He holds up his hands like he’s surrendering. The first man steps forward, extending an arm towards the prisoner. In his hand he is holding a metal rod, forked at one end. He touches the prisoner with it and the picture flares, crackling briefly with interference, then clears. The prisoner screams, his body convulsing, twisting in agony, spittle frothing at the corners of his mouth and running down his chin in bloody rivulets.

  CUT TO:

  Remote Air Camera 012—Perimeter Fence (South West)

  A section of paved ground covered in grass and weeds. Beyond that is grey sand and ocean. There is a flash of movement at the edge of the beach: something is moving through the long grass. Then all is still again. A squad vehicle moves into shot, passing inches from the grass, blocking the patch of ground from view.

  CUT TO:

  *

  The observation suite was surprisingly small, despite the amount of surveillance equipment and scanning tech that had been crammed in there. The main operations desk took up most of the space, positioned at the far end of the room, below a bank of infrared and thermo-heat monitors.

  Avon waited for Vila to slide in through the half-open door, checked the corridor one last time—just in case someone had found the three dead security officers and raised the alarm—then sealed the door shut behind them.

  Most of the lighting had been either turned down or off completely, giving the interior of the room a gloomy, somewhat muted tone. The only real light came from the instrument panels that littered the main desk, the rest from the bank of monitors on the wall.

  Avon nodded towards the equipment. ‘What are you waiting for, introductions?’

  It wasn’t exactly what Vila had been hoping for, but, as usual, he had to work with what he was given and was expected to perform miracles. ‘Don’t rush me. I’m thinking.’

  ‘Is this really the time to be trying new things?’ Avon asked.

  Vila approached the operations desk like a concert pianist, hands raised, palms forward, wiggling his fingers to limber them up. ‘OK, OK. Just give me a second or two. I need to familiarise myself with the equipment first.’

  ‘Every minute we waste in here increases the chances of being discovered,’ Avon said. ‘Whatever you need to do, do it faster.’

  Vila pulled an assortment of electronic key-cards out of his tunic pocket and began to steadily shuffle through them, as though he were about to deal himself a winning hand of Jixx. When he was satisfied with his chosen three key-cards, he set about feeding them into the card-drives on the main desk.

  He waited until the constant thrum of the equipment became a steady, throbbing pulse, before pulling the electronic probe from his belt. He waved it towards the computer terminal.

  ‘Alarm systems should be off-lining in a little under three minutes. After that the computer network is all yours.’ He winked at Avon, a smile plastered across his face. ‘I know what you’re thinking, I’m a technical genius. You’re right, of course, I can’t deny it. It’s a gift.’

  Avon unbolted the maintenance cover on the terminal in front of him and began removing the memory circuits from the computer’s motherboard, replacing them with the reprogrammed circuits he’d brought with him from the Liberator. When this was done, he thumbed the communication button on his bracelet.

  ‘Blake, the computer network is rebooting. Surveillance systems will be down in approximately two minutes. Stand by.’ He cut the connection then rechecked the progress of the network reboot. Once he was satisfied he turned to Vila. ‘If we make it out of this alive remind me to give you a quick lesson on the virtues of modesty.’

  *

  A grainy holographic map of the interior of the labour camp flickered into life on the console in front of Cally, the image no bigger than her hand, shimmering in and out of focus as it spun lazily on the spot.

  Cally glanced across at Orac, who sat on the table at the front of the flight deck. The supercomputer had been silent for a while now, ever since the others had teleported to the planet’s surface, leaving it with a list of instructions.

  He’s probably sulking, Cally thought to herself.

  It amused her to think that someone as brilliant as Professor Ensor would create a machine that was as emotionally unstable and unpredictable as a human such as…well, as Vila. It made absolutely no sense to her. To think that something with the ability to perform just about any task it was requested to undertake—and had access to almost limitless knowledge and information—had also been imbued with a temperament that often caused it to fly into fits of childish stubbornness and irrationality.

  She shook her head and shifted her gaze back to the holographic map that continued to spin in front of her. Reaching across, she touched the image gently with the tip of her finger. It shuddered briefly, as though made of water, then it started to fold outwards like a flower opening its petals, eventually becoming an intricate, three-dimensional layout of the labour camp on the planet below.

  It was the only map of the complex they’d been able to access. All the others had been either security encrypted or data-locked. In the end Orac had found a poor quality first-generation blueprint on a disused Federation computer network in the Ursinu system. The only trouble was it was incomplete—obviously created before the camp was redesigned to double as an ore-cracking station. Not only that but somewhere along the line the data had become corrupted and as a result the transmission just wasn’t clear enough.

  A wave of white noise rippled through the image and Cally tried switching off the power regulators, hoping the sudden electrical surge would clear the programme enough for her to extract the necessary information. At first nothing happened and she began to worry that the image might be lost altogether, but after a few seconds the rushing tide of static started to recede.

  Cally tapped at the console, slowly sorting through the accompanying data as it flittered across the screen, cross-referencing it with the broken and incomplete pieces of information that littered the holographic map.

  After a moment Zen began to twitter, lights flashing urgently in time. Cally raised an eyebrow in response, only half-acknowledging the computer’s presence.

  ‘INFORMATION: LONG RANGE SENSORS DETECT FEDERATION PURSUIT SHIPS ON AN INTERCEPT COURSE WITH LIBERATOR, BEARING THREE-FOUR-TWO, MARK ONE-SEVEN.’

  Slowly Cally looked up from the computer screen, her face pale, eyes wide with shock. Without thinking, she reached over and jabbed the communicator controls to warn her friends.

  *

  It took Blake three attempts to prime the explosives. It wasn’t so much that he was afraid they were going to explode in his hand (although there was always that worry, particularly as he’d not used this type of explosives before) more that the constant curtain of misty rain was coating his hands, making the delicate work of wiring in the primers very tricky.

  Not to mention dangerous.

  With a sigh of relief, Blake snapped closed the casing of an explosive charge and placed it on the ground with the others, then reached into the front pocket of his holdall for the last one.

  Jenna pushed her way through the grass and hunkered down next to Blake, scooping the explosives up carefully, one by one, and placing them back into the holdall, out of the rain. The last one she held on to, weighing it thoughtfully in her hand as she waited for the guards standing at the side gate to move a little closer. She twisted the small metal cap at the top of the explosive then yanked it free, taking careful aim.

  At first nothing happened. She had counted to six before throwing it towards the target, just as Avon had instructed. It had landed exactly where she had intended it to, by the door of the sentry station. But
so far there had been no explosion.

  Blake raised his head above the waving line of grass and peered towards the side gate. He could see the explosive lying on the paved ground, a metre or so from the door of the sentry station. One of the gate troopers, a short stocky sergeant, was scowling suspiciously, not quite knowing what to make of it. He swung the rifle from his shoulder and began to approach the object cautiously.

  The explosion lifted the man off his feet, pitching him head first into the metal gate some 30 metres away, the impact snapping his neck, killing him instantly. The other trooper was dazed. The blast had ripped the helmet from his head and cut his forehead pretty badly, the blood running in deep rivulets down his face.

  Jenna twisted the cap off a second explosive device and tossed it in the same direction as the first. This time the explosion came on the count of ten as it was supposed to, ripping the side gate from its hinges and filling the air with a noxious cloud of sooty ash.

  Through the now open gateway, Blake could see the first of the squad units emerging from the buildings beyond. There were twenty or thirty men in total, although Blake knew that this was only the beginning. More would come soon, many more, not only from inside the complex but also from the direction of the spaceport. There’d be armoured vehicles too, eventually. That’s when it’d get really tough.

  ‘Here they come!’ Blake shouted, and carefully aimed his gun at the approaching troopers, at the same moment the communicator on his wrist started to beep.

  Beside him Jenna drew her gun and quickly chose her first target.

  artefact [2]

  It was the first time that he had seen what he looked like.

  Not that he had any real memory of his life before, that had been taken from him months ago—all traces of his life flushed away, not just from his own mind but from the Federation banking system, the computer archives, Central Records, everywhere.

  Nothing left.

  It was easy enough to do, if you had the right piece of technology. They’d released a dataworm into the system, that’s what Keldo had told him not long after the first phase of implants, when the pain was finally subsiding.

  ‘It’s not really a worm, of course. At least, not in a real sense.’ The cyberneticist had been standing by his Cradle, adjusting the nutrient-feed that was attached to the vein in his arm. ‘It’s a sentient viral strain that is programmed to work its way through the information systems and eat away all traces of…well, whatever it’s been programmed to eat away at. In this case your biodata.’ Keldo stopped, glancing sideways at him. ‘It doesn’t really eat the data, of course. At least, not in a real sense.’

  After that, he’d heard very little else of what the cyberneticist had said, the sedatives were starting to wear off and the dull throb of pain was returning. Very soon it would blot out everything.

  There was no sense of time in this place, not any more, not since the experiments had begun; but he knew that he must have been here for quite some time. It was the Cradle, it had a way of altering your memories, distorting your perception of the passage of time, until time seemed to bleed into itself and one day was exactly like the next.

  And so he found himself sitting in the operating room one morning, without any recollection of how he’d got there, looking at himself in a mirror for the first time. The metal table was cold beneath his bare buttocks and the patches of skin on his extremities, chest and forehead, where the wires of the Cradle penetrated his body, suspending him from the lab ceiling, were itching like mad. From the corner of his eye he could see Keldo watching him, ready to step in the moment he saw any signs of a mental shutdown. Sometimes it was a shock for them, particularly after the extreme isolation of the Cradle Room, Keldo had told him. So far he’d had to deal with three such cases—the two girls and the pilot. Which effectively meant starting again from scratch with them—memory wipes, the lot. To tell the truth, he’d had serious misgivings about allowing Subject Four the mirror this early into the tests, but it was out of his hands. The Project Director had insisted.

  ‘This is you, Zarachiel,’ Keldo said cheerfully. ‘Your new self. Or, rather, the road to your new self—we’re far from finished yet.’

  The man who was now called Zarachiel put a tentative hand to his face and trailed the tips of his fingers along the fusion of skin and metal that criss-crossed his face.

  Keldo nodded encouragingly. ‘The implants have taken nicely, I’m really rather pleased with them. They may be a little red and sore at the moment but that’s normal for this type of procedure. You’ll get used to it, in time.’

  The man said nothing for quite some time, continuing to stare at his own reflection. After a while he reached forward and gently plucked the mirror from the cyberneticist’s hand, turning the reflective glass this way and that, as though he were admiring the man’s handiwork.

  At first his face was blank, totally expressionless, as he regarded the horrific image that stared back at him, slate-grey eyes almost black in the harsh lighting of the overhead sensorlamps. Then a shadow passed over Zarachiel’s face; something new, something that Keldo had never seen before, and instinctively the cyberneticist reached for the panic button.

  It was too late. Zarachiel’s fingers were no longer caressing the reddened flesh. He had worked his long fingernails into the joins, where fused skin met metal implant, and was pulling the two apart. There was a soft, wet ripping sound and Zarachiel began to scream as his flesh tore, yellowy-red pus spilling from the hole as the plate ripped away from muscle and bone.

  When the orderlies arrived they halted inside the doorway, unable to move, staring in horror at the man’s bloody body. Keldo shouted for them to restrain the test subject and they quickly darted forward, grabbing at the man’s wrists, forcing them down by his sides. His hands were clenched like talons, clawing fiercely at the air in front of him, glistening red strips of skin hanging from beneath his fingernails.

  By the time they had managed to sedate him and strap him down onto a medical trolley, he had torn most of the new implants free from his chest and neck. His face was almost unrecognisable, the skin and muscle obliterated, his left eye hanging down from its socket on a thin, sinewy cord.

  *

  ‘Is he beyond repair, or can we still salvage something from the wreckage?’

  Keldo peered through the glass at the bloody mess lying on the operating table and sighed. ‘With all due respect, Director, this is a human being we’re talking about. We won’t know whether we can repair the implants until his condition stabilises.’ He took a deep breath, then added, ‘If it stabilises. The damage he inflicted upon himself was quite extensive.’

  ‘So I gather.’ The Project Director really didn’t sound pleased. ‘This time the implants were torn out right in front of you and still you failed to stop it happening.’

  Keldo turned and stared into the darkness, towards the direction of the Director’s voice. ‘I did everything I could, under the circumstances.’ He shook an accusatory finger. ‘I warned you that Subject Four was not ready for this, his mental state was far too fragile. It was exactly the same with the other three. You were sent all my reports along with Neumann’s psych evaluations. Our findings were plain enough. We didn’t give them enough time to adapt. You have to understand it’s not only the physical trauma our test subjects have to deal with, but also a massive mental upheaval. Most of them don’t even have the capacity to –’

  ‘This is the fourth such incident in as many months,’ the Director snapped, cutting him off. ‘I want steps taken to see that this never happens again.’

  ‘But that’s what I’m trying to tell you,’ Keldo said. ‘There’s nothing we can do about it. We cannot hasten along a human’s mental state any more than we can push the moon out of its orbit with a single pursuit ship. It’s impossible. The test subjects will be ready when they’re ready, simple as that.’

  There was a faint squeal of metal, followed by the rustle of heavy fabric, as the Director stood
and strode across the room towards the cyberneticist. ‘Time is the one luxury that we cannot afford, Keldo. The High Council is already demanding results. I need something I can show them, something solid, something positive.’

  ‘What about the propulsion tests? Pellas tells me that the craft refits are almost complete.’ Keldo tried to sound optimistic. ‘Perhaps Bishov or Ardell could speak with the High Council, show them the extent of their work?’ He spread his hands. ‘It might placate them a little, give us more time to perfect the grafting procedure.’

  The Director stepped closer to the glass and gazed into the darkened room beyond. ‘The High Council is not concerned about the Stingers. They saw the working prototypes for those a long time ago. No, it is this,’ and the Project Director tapped a fingernail lightly on the glass, ‘that is making them nervous. Unless we can present something to them soon they will get cold feet and shelve the entire project. They are close to it already.’

  They fell silent for a moment or two, watching the masked figure in the other room intently as he probed the test subject’s self-inflicted wounds. When the examinations were complete, he straightened and turned to face the glass partition. He shook his head solemnly, before dropping the bloody scalpel into a nearby sterilising dish.

  The Project Director turned away from the scene, back pressed against the glass, and sighed. ‘You’ll need a new test subject to replace him, preferably another male.’ The Director smiled. ‘I think I have the ideal candidate in mind. I’ll have him relieved of his duties and shipped out here immediately.’

  Keldo nodded. ‘I also require another mutoid. If we are to start from scratch I’ll need more tissue samples. All the others have atrophied. We’re finding it difficult to keep vampire meat fresh for longer than three days.’

  The Director pushed herself away from the partition and moved across the room towards the door. Keldo watched her go, finding it almost impossible to drag his eyes away from her retreating form.