Mardock Scramble

by Ubukata, Tow

  –Go and investigate, Medi. See that the target doesn’t escape through a window. I’m heading to the basement.

  Without looking back Medium raised his right hand to acknowledge, then glided down the corridor, footfall silent, disappearing around the right turn.

  He removed his gun from its holster on his hip, and his eyes flashed red behind his sunglasses. His computer-enhanced eyes picked up all the obstacles in the dark, clearly and accurately.

  –Building secured. Sending through floor plans of the whole building now.

  Flesh’s voice echoed deep in his ear.

  Medium’s eye flashed. A semi-transparent diagram appeared directly over his retina. There were little markers to show where he and the other members of his gang were, and the rooms where their target was likely to be were highlighted in red.

  –Move in, Rare. Mincemeat, standby on alert five meters from the entrance hall. Flesh was giving the instructions now.

  “Here we go!” Medium used his real voice, not the wireless. A smirk formed on his face.

  He pushed on, cross-checking the data on the map in his retina with what he could see, and decided on his best route.

  If he’d wanted to he could have brought up an image of the field of vision of the other gang members, but Medium stayed fixed on the floor plans as he advanced down the corridor. It was a long corridor. Some sort of special setup, thought Medium. This is massive. Why would you need a bathroom that’s more than twenty square meters in size? Must be to clean all those dead bodies. There was almost no light now, and he passed by a number of doors but barely paid them any notice. He’d already checked in his retina that the target wasn’t behind them.

  And this was why he completely failed to notice the white shadow that emerged from one of the rooms and started to tail him, following in his footsteps almost casually.

  Medium turned a corner in the corridor and before he knew it he appeared to be inside a small closet.

  Medium froze to the spot. Darkness enveloped him and seemed to stretch out forever.

  –Fleshie? What the hell is going on? Where am I?

  –Calm down. Calm down. There’s a door right in front of you.

  –Door? I don’t see any…

  But then Medium realized that he was indeed staring at a single door right in front of him.

  –Found it. A door. What’s on the other side?

  –Someone’s waiting for you.

  –Waiting?

  –Someone’s holding a gun and waiting for you.

  Medium smirked.

  –Okay, Fleshie. Let’s work out if it’s our target or the PI. Give me their exact location and physical characteristics.

  An image flashed up in Medium’s eyes—an orange silhouette of the figure beyond the door.

  –Wow, a giant. At least two meters tall. Must be the PI, right?

  –That’s right. And if you shoot, you’ll hit him for sure.

  Medium aimed his gun carefully at his enemy beyond the door.

  –Let’s see who’s the faster shot, tough guy.

  He fired.

  All fourteen shots in three seconds flat. He swapped magazines immediately, then kicked down the door that was now riddled with bullet holes.

  Something came hurtling toward him, enveloping him.

  –What the…

  Cold water.

  Medium scrambled to ready his gun, no idea what was going on.

  Something slammed into his shoulders and body, forcing him over in a backward somersault.

  He thought for a moment that he had been hit by some explosives that the enemy had planted.

  But, as it transpired, he was wrong.

  His eyesight returned to him and cut through the haze, and he saw it was something entirely different that floated to the surface. A large white mass.

  Medium’s gun shot up, a reflex action.

  It was a bundle of wet toilet paper.

  Soaked through now, Medium took his sunglasses off and opened his eyes wide.

  He was in a toilet stall.

  This was the place that he had kicked the door down to and rushed in.

  The toilet was in smithereens, obliterated by the electric charges fired at it, and it was vigorously spewing out water.

  “What…what the hell is all this?” He spoke out loud again, unthinking.

  He left the cubicle. On the wall to the right of him he saw four urinals. On the opposite wall, mirrors and sinks.

  The giant expanse of space he’d been in had disappeared without a trace.

  Medium turned back to look at the stall again.

  It was the only stall in the bathroom, and his eyes went to something on the wall above the destroyed toilet.

  Written on the tiles, in a bright poppy-red color:

  I’M GONNA TO SNARC YOU UP!

  –Fleshie, what the hell am I looking at…

  –I’m coming…

  –What?

  –Let’s see who’s the faster shot, tough guy.

  The bathroom door opened.

  All Medium could do was stand and stare.

  A girl stood before him, dressed in brilliant white.

  Pure as snow, from tip to toe.

  Her clothes had a bondage-gear feel to them, as if she were wrapped up in white restraints. Or it could have been an evening dress, or a wedding dress.

  One thing he was sure about—the striking figure in front of him was unmistakably the Teen Harlot he had seen in the video.

  Rune-Balot.

  An unusual name…

  He wondered whether it was the PI in charge of her case that was responsible for her extraordinary appearance.

  “Drop your weapons.” A man’s voice, out of nowhere. Surprised, Medium raised his gun. Had the voice emerged from this defenseless girl standing right in front of him?

  Balot’s left hand rose, and the snow-white silken glove turned with a squish into something else.

  A gun.

  Light glinted off its silver barrel.

  Medium gulped. His finger pulled the trigger on his gun almost reflexively.

  A tremendous spark flared between Balot and Medium, lighting up the room.

  Medium’s eyes were now wide enough to split his eyelids apart. He realized with horror what was happening:

  The girl in front of him had actually shot at, and hit, his bullet.

  Howling like a dog, he fired again.

  Sparks. Explosion.

  Steel shrapnel splattered against the walls, spilled to the floor.

  But this time that wasn’t all. Medium felt a searing pain in his shooting hand. All four fingers, his thumb, and the grip of the gun had all been pierced by shrapnel.

  The very definition of perfect marksmanship.

  “Uh…” Medium’s face went white.

  His left hand disintegrated and fell to the floor along with his destroyed gun. The water continued to gush out of the ground behind him, covering the tiles.

  Medium tried to jump out of the way, but Balot shot at the gun on the floor. At the grip, the magazine that he had crammed full of electronically charged bullets.

  All the bullets exploded at once, and a blue-white flame enveloped Medium from the feet upward.

  He had no voice left in him, and instead of screaming he danced a bizarre dance in the flashing light. His whole body stiffened and burst at the seams.

  The air was pregnant with the stink of burnt flesh and hair.

  The blue-white light traveled across the water-covered tiles and struck Balot’s body too, but was repelled by the white raiment that bound her body tight, fizzling away harmlessly.

  Thunk—Medium collapsed in a heap. Sparks continued to leap from the side of his head. The various electronic devices implanted in his head had short-circuited, and now pitch-black blood was pouring from his eyes and ears.

  He wasn’t quite dead yet—but he’d seen better days.

  Balot looked at the geyser of water that was jetting out from where the toilet had
been. She intercepted the building’s water supply system—and snarced it. The flow of water slowed, then stopped.

  She approached Medium and, with the lightest of touches, put her hand on Medium’s forehead.

  She sensed a weak current and recognized it as a voice being transmitted directly into his head.

  –What’s the matter, Medi? Are our transmissions not getting through? Was the target there? We’re not getting any response from Medi, Well. Medi, If you can hear…

  –I’m fine.

  Balot answered, in Medium’s voice.

  –There’s nothing here. No sign of our target. I’ll continue searching.

  Then she stopped snarcing the transmission, left the men’s toilets, and closed the door behind her.

  02

  –No, it’s definitely weird. It doesn’t add up.

  Mincemeat heard Flesh’s voice at the back of his mind.

  “Wassup, Fleshie? Explain to me what’s so weird.” Mincemeat held his Boston bag under one arm, waiting leisurely just outside the entrance hall.

  –According to Medi’s audio records, he’s just heard a number of gunshots. One of them doesn’t show up anywhere on my database—my database. So we must be talking about some pretty unusual equipment.

  “So there’s someone with different equipment from us. One of the PIs?”

  –Yes, but Medi seems to be saying he’s all right…

  “Hmm…”

  –You’re the closest one there to Medi, Mincemeat.

  “Fine, I’ll check it out.” Mincemeat gripped his Boston bag and headed straight for the entrance. “If the target runs from the building you’ll have to get Rare or Well to catch her, ’cause I’m heading in to see if there are any enemies closing in on Medi. Open the door for me, will ya?”

  –Sure.

  Mincemeat gave the lobby door a gentle shove and it swung open without resistance.

  He walked straight on into the hall.

  Checking that there was no one behind the window at the reception area, he shoved his hand into the Boston bag. He pulled out the reserve firearms—in the shape of an attaché case—and walked down the corridor in large strides.

  He shed his Boston bag and pushed on farther down the corridor, where he heard an elevator door chime and open.

  He slipped deftly behind a pillar and silently opened the lock on the case in his hands.

  The box folded out in both directions, and a double-handed grip appeared in the middle, which he held firmly. There were muzzles where the box folded out, pointing outward—this was a fearsome automatic weapon.

  After taking note of his surroundings, he opened transmission channels.

  –Is this elevator your work, Fleshie?

  –That’s right.

  –You want me to get in it?

  –That’s right.

  –I thought Medi was on the first floor, though? Do you think he’s found the enemy?

  –That’s right.

  –Send me the floor plans, will ya? Right, so that’s where Medi is. I’m moving on out.

  –That’s right.

  –Huh?

  The transmission ended abruptly. But the floor plan showed clearly the route he needed to take.

  Mincemeat shrugged his shoulders. “Jeez, talk about impatient.”

  Paying close attention to his surroundings, Mincemeat slipped into the elevator.

  He looked at the operating panel inside. There were five buttons, one for each floor from the basement to the roof. The button for the second floor was already flashing yellow.

  The elevators closed, and Mincemeat braced his large body as best he could.

  The pressure pulled him down. The lift was rising now with ferocious speed. Mincemeat just about managed to stop himself from buckling over.

  The violent screeching of the wires could be heard overhead.

  Then the elevator shuddered to a sudden halt, throwing Mincemeat’s huge frame into the air for a second before he crashed back down onto the elevator floor, slamming his knee against the steel.

  Mincemeat’s face was twisted in fury.

  –Flesh, you little shit! This isn’t a fucking carnival ride!

  –That’s right.

  –Huh? That’s all you’ve been saying since…

  A cold sweat broke out on Mincemeat’s brown skin and his lips trembled as he heard:

  –THAT…IS…RIGHT.

  An unfamiliar voice, straight in his ear—inside his own head.

  “Who the hell are you?” Mincemeat couldn’t stop himself from yelling out.

  The elevator immediately resumed its ascent, throwing Mincemeat to the floor again. It stopped suddenly on the third floor before plunging straight back down again.

  “You shithead!” he roared. He pointed the firearms in his hands at the panel on the door and shot it to pieces with both guns.

  The elevator stopped.

  A smile returned to Mincemeat’s perspiration-bathed face. “I used to be a pilot, you know. That was nothing…”

  The lights went out, but that didn’t worry him. A click at the back of his eyes and his pupils shone red.

  Dark, light…it was all the same to him. He rechecked the floor plans showing in his retina.

  The bottom third of the elevator door had gotten as far as the second floor. With his two-hundred-thousand-dollar butter knife in his left hand, he burnt off the rest of the panel and pulled out the wiring. He pointed his other hand, firearm and all, at the door.

  His eyes skipped over the wires until he found the one that opened the elevator door.

  Just then, a fizz, and something sprang up under his feet. An unbearable heat ran through his body. He jumped with a shriek.

  Something else leapt up from straight below him, piercing straight through his firing arm.

  He rolled up his sleeve to take a look.

  There was clean, round hole right between a pair of eyes on his arm. The eyelids were open wide, as if the transplanted eyes were surprised.

  Mincemeat broke out in a cold sweat.

  It was one damn thing after another.

  The shot that came from below had hit the thumb on his shooting hand.

  A series of screams emerged from Mincemeat’s mouth as he was shot again, in his hands, legs, and buttocks.

  Mincemeat danced his bizarre dance to an audience of no one, yelling inside the box, where no one could see. When he dropped his knife, that too was shot to pieces. An intense surge of sparks erupted forth, scorching his right leg.

  He found a moment to squeeze the grip of the gun with his right hand. He pointed the gun straight downward.

  At the same time, a 10mm bullet came flying into his left eye. His mechanical eye was crushed right in the socket. Sparks and blood spurted out, littering the floor.

  “I’m going to rape the shit out of you for this, you fucking bitch!”

  Mincemeat fired dozens of shots at the floor, turning it into mincemeat, living up to his nickname.

  Plenty of steaming holes were open in the floor now, and he peered through them, but saw no one. He turned to the elevator door, shooting it up just as he had the floor. When the bullets in the top half of his gun case were spent, he flipped it up into the air and gripped it the other way around.

  He pulverized the door, leaving it a bullet-riddled mess.

  “I’m going to kill you!”

  He charged the door with his shoulder, and it bent open. He pushed it open with his left hand—now minus a thumb—and tumbled into the corridor, out of breath.

  Blood and sweat trickled down him in equal measure—his whole body was drenched.

  He crept down the corridor, crawling, and hid in the shadow of a pillar.

  –Fleshie! Answer me, you bastard! Well! Flesh has been hacked! Well! Medi! Rare! Shit, answer me, someone!

  But the only answer he had was wild laughter from an unknown voice, echoing all around.

  Confused, Mincemeat scanned the corridor to the left and to the right.
/>
  No one.

  The laughter was happening inside Mincemeat’s head.

  He tried to cut the circuits but found he couldn’t.

  Tears welled up in his one remaining good eye.

  Regression disorder, someone had called it.

  The sounds of battle brought all the bad memories back to him in a haze of black smoke.

  His helicopter had been shot down, and two days later he was taken captive. It was on the day of his release, a year later, that he thought up his plan to transplant his wife’s eyes into his arm. His ex-wife, actually—she had served him with divorce papers earlier in the year, when he was already at the limit of human endurance, suffering all sorts of ill-treatment as a prisoner of war.

  And his ex-wife had been giving him a look of the sincerest contrition every day—from his right bicep.

  Mincemeat tugged at his hair and ripped off his blood-soaked clothes, revealing all the eyes transplanted onto his upper body.

  He screamed a wordless scream as he forced himself up.

  Brandishing his gun he pulled himself down the corridor, dragging his legs behind him.

  The laughter in his head continued loud and shrill, driving him to distraction.

  A pair of shutters slammed shut right in front of him—and behind him.

  They were fireproof shutters—and odor-proof, made with the building’s particular requirements in mind.

  Mincemeat realized that he was once again trapped in a small space, cornered on all four sides.

  “I’m gonna fuck you up good and proper, you little bitch! I’ll rip your eyeballs out and skull-fuck your eye sockets!”

  He was firing indiscriminately now, shooting everything he had in all four directions. Empty cartridges flew in all directions, and the walls were remodeled under the barrage of bullets.

  Just then he felt heat behind him. Mincemeat turned around.

  The shutters were right in front of his eyes.

  And from beyond the shutters, more bullets came flying.

  Both his knees were shot to pieces at almost exactly the same time, and he fell onto them, gritting his teeth in agony.

  As he collapsed both his elbows were blown off. His front arms drooped down, useless.

  Every single blow was accurate to the extreme.

  And in the twinkling of an eye—literally. For each of the eighteen pairs of eyes implanted into his body were being targeted, methodically, ruthlessly. The liquid from the eyeballs was splashed around the room, and the crystalline lenses of the eyes, intermingled with blood and tears, seeped across his body in a thick soup.