by Andy Remic
So they haven’t been told, then.
Yes.
Do you feel no remorse?
Never.
The others cars screeched to a halt in an arc of blaring lights and flashing stroboscopes which momentarily blinded him. He smiled. That was the idea, surely? Doors were slamming open, PUF officers disgorging, and someone screamed through a megaphone “Get down on the ground and put your hands over your head!”
And then Horace was moving, and when Horace moved, Horace moved fast.
He ran at the first car, flinching left even before the D4 shotgun made a low, heavy boom. He leapt onto the bonnet, T5 dropping low to punch a bullet through the officer’s face. His hands twitched on the D4 as if playing the flute. Now Horace was on the roof, leaping as guns rattled and cracked, knowing they were focused on his last position. He landed in the mud and stones on his knees, rolling low and shooting under the next car. Five bullets ripped out, killing two PUF officers, who flopped back, still staring up towards the house and its haunting darkness. Horace saw tongues loll out. Saw blood in eyes.
A boom crashed behind him and stone rattled against his flank. Clever. Swift. Almost good enough to be an Anarchy Android. Horace calculated the location by sound and the scatter of stones, and the T5 fired backwards, blind, and punched a man through the throat. Horace rolled onto his back and looked up through the rain and bright lights. The man had dropped his shotgun and was clutching his windpipe. His eyes were wide and pleading and filled with disbelief and despair. But that didn’t matter to Horace. None of it mattered to Horace. He fired another shot, and the officer’s brains mushroomed from the top of his skull. Then he crawled forward and took the shotgun. It felt good in his hands. Cool and slick and perfect.
Scattered images. Sounds. Memories.
Guns cracking.
Lights flashing.
BACKUP, WE NEED BACKUP!
The boom of a shotgun.
The rattle of automatic fire.
The explosion of a car tyre, and the car slumping down on one sagging corner.
The rain, falling, pattering in puddles.
Bullets whining through the air like insects.
The wham-wham-wham of shells punching holes in car bodywork.
The splash of Horace’s boots through the mud.
He strode the world like a colossus, untouchable, bullets tearing into faces, the D4 shotgun booming in his hands and sparking through the darkness, through the rain. One PUF officer cowered behind the door of his squad car, and Horace shot him through the metal, then leaping onto the roof of the car, shot him through the top of the head.
A bullet whizzed along Horace’s cheek, a hair’s breadth from opening his face like a zip. Horace moved his head accordingly, and even as the PUF officer was screaming in anger - hatred - disbelief - a sound of violence and rage - so the shotgun came up and blasted him backwards against the squad car, where his blood left a long smear down the glass and panels. Horace hopped down from his perch and put two shotgun shells in the officer’s face, effectively destroying most of the man’s head. The body flipped and twitched and Horace knelt by the corpse, hand reaching out to rest on the deceased man’s belly. “Shh,” he told the corpse. “Shh. It will be all right now.”
He scanned the area as the policeman loosened his dead bowels and a stench rose around Horace. Horace did not mind. It masked his own aroma of sweat and metal - whether real or imagined. Although an android was totally organic, Horace almost fancied that he was a robot, a created thing of gears and cogs and pistons. He did not mind that he was not human. He revelled in the fact, for humans were weak and shallow and petty and pointless. Androids were strong and merciless. It was always the strong and merciless that survived the horrors of Fate.
There.
Horace moved fast, leaping, connecting with the final PUF officer as the man tried to make a swift covert exit. The man hit the ground on his face, shotgun flying from slick slippery fingers. He sprawled in the mud, whimpering, and very slowly rolled over onto his back and stared up at Horace.
“D-d-don’t kill me. Please!” He held up both hands, pleading, tears running down his face. “I have a young wife, we’ve only been married a year, and a baby girl. She’s a beautiful creature, something we’ve always dreamed about... she’s just started to walk, and talk, and it’s the most incredible thing I’ve ever been part of - don’t take me away from her, please, please, sir, don’t take away her daddy.”
Horace shot the officer through the shoulder with his T5, and the man screamed, flailing back in the mud. Horace looked left and right, bald head gleaming under the rainfall, and strode forward to kneel beside the stricken PUF officer. Shards of bone poked from the shell’s exit wound, and the officer was whimpering, crying, tears mixed with rain. His hands clawed at Horace’s arm.
“Don’t do it. Don’t kill me, man. Please. My baby girl...”
“I’m not going to kill you,” said Horace, and gave a little smile.
“Thank God!”
“I’m going to torture you.” Horace’s finger extended, and pushed into the officer’s eye. The man screamed, grabbing Horace’s arm, legs kicking as he fought with what seemed an impossible strength. Horace pushed, and felt the eyeball squish and squirm, then pop. Then he was through, and into the mucous jelly. “I want to know,” said Horace calmly, removing the eyeball with a little pop, “who set me up.”
“I don’t know, I don’t know!” screamed the officer, thrashing, fighting, striking out.
“You really need to think harder,” said Horace smoothly, “if you want the pain to go away.”
There came a flash and a crack from the darkness. A bullet slashed the arm of Horace’s suit, cut through the flesh beneath to open it like a knife. Ignoring the sudden stab of bright pain, Horace put a T5 bullet in the tortured officer’s eyesocket and leapt, clearing the road, to plummet into the toxic underbrush...
Branches and grass whipped at him, and he powered down a slope and skidded to a halt. The woodland was very tightly knitted together, with hardly space between trunks and thorny bushes. Horace knelt for a moment, observing the ridgeline of land above him. He waited patiently, watching. Who had come? Backup? Support? Or had they dropped snipers down the road a little earlier on to cover them? If that was the case, they’d done a fucking poor job. Horace had killed ten cops. He spat on the ground. Ten was not enough.
Shadows shifted, highlighted by the flashing police lights. Horace had picked his spot well, as he knew. There were three men. Special ops. Snipers. Whatever. They were being careful. Very careful. Horace observed their movements, watched them split, saw the flicker of their hand signals. They were spreading out, moving down the gradient, through thick woodland. They were going to hunt him like an animal - or so they thought.
Horace got down on his belly and moved through the dense vegetation, slowly, a snake on its belly, picking each inch with the utmost care. And then he waited. Waited, in the cold and the dark, rain pattering on the treetop roof canopy, irregular thick drops dripping all around. It was cold. Very cold. Only now did Horace realise just how cold it was, and he realised his breath was smoking. He stopped breathing.
Without breath, Horace’s heart beat sounded louder in his ears. Bu-bum, bu-bum, bu-bum. He eased himself to his knees as the first armoured police sniper came past, drifting like a ghost; professional, yes, but unaware of what he hunted. Well, that answered that question. So. A simple response unit, then? Yes. But they knew he was fucking dangerous, or why send so many men?
The man was shifting softly, each footfall a gentle rolled depression. Horace eased himself up as the man glided past, and his hands snapped out, taking the weapon. The man made a startled “Ah!” taken completely by surprise, and drew a knife, but the machine gun cracked against his jaw, breaking it with a brittle SNAP, and he hit the ground squirming. Horace worked swiftly, stripping off the man’s clothing, taking his own dagger, then cutting long grooves down both his arms, around his chest and
waist. He dropped the gun and with bloody dagger between teeth, Horace grabbed the flapping sections of skin and - skinned the man. First he tore off the arms, then the chest and back. The sniper screamed then, writhing in the mud. He screamed and screamed and screamed, and his comrades came crashing through the trees, voices bellowing, guns weaving frantically. They let off random shots, but Horace was on his belly, waiting. As they arrived, and mouths dropped open in horror and surprise, so the dagger went through the first man’s boot, pinning him to the ground. He fell back, machine gun rattling, bullets cutting up his comrade who dropped, spewing blood, to the woodland floor. Horace stood amidst the three, covered in blood, eyes gleaming.
“Now, boys, it’s time to talk,” he said.
And with that, Horace went to work.
~ * ~
HORACE WALKED DOWN the road and found the aircar “Chris” had told him about. It had a SlickCloak covering it; a electronic light diffraction fabric. They weren’t perfect, but unless you were actively looking for the hidden, or “cloaked,” object, especially at night, they could be hard to spot. Horace pulled the SlickCloak from the aircar, noting the BMW badges, the gleaming panels, the stowed miniguns. Powerful. Expensive. Not normal PUF funded kit, of that Horace was certain. This whole thing stunk like a dead donkey of Greenstar involvement. Their own private fucking urban police force. Their own army.
It had taken every inch of Horace’s skill as an Anarchy Android torture model to extract the information he’d wanted. He had tied all three PUF snipers together by their ankles, stripped their skin, put out their eyes, castrated them, played Russian Roulette. The officer accidentally shot by his friend had - unfortunately for him - not died under the stray discharge of bullets. And so had begun his ordeal. It had only taken ten minutes. But Horace was sure it was the worst ten minutes of their lives... leading right up to their swift, brutal deaths.
Now, he sat in comfort in the BMW aircar. It bobbed as he got in, and plush hydraulics closed the wide arched door. His suit was completely drenched in blood - sodden, in fact - and the car registered he was wet. Small hot-air fans hummed into existence and began to dry him, wrongly assuming he was simply wet from the downpour. Horace pulled out the control deck and fitted the headset. A HUD flickered onto the windscreen internals and with several key presses, Horace ignited the near-silent engines and lifted vertically from the covert parking spot, up fast with streamers of rainwater cascading from the BMW’s gleaming hull.
Horace hit MANUAL OVERRIDE and killed the lights.
“Warning,” came a gentle, female voice. “You now have no lights and may present a hazard to other aircar users.”
Horace gazed down, at the large white house with its sweeping gravel drive and three dead androids, at the skewed Police Urban Force cars with their still-flickering stroboscopic lights, and at the scatter of corpses. Nothing passed through his mind, other than perhaps the concept that it was a job well done. The Dentist had carried out his work with skill and precision, and, yes, maybe he had indulged himself a little bit in the pastime of
(torture)
but, hell, an android was still skin and flesh and bone, still had thoughts and feelings and emotions. Or so it was claimed. Horace smiled at that. So it was claimed. But maybe I’m different? Maybe they made me different? Maybe I was intended for a different market, a military market, or the assassination market? Horace frowned, and stared down at the distant corpses of the police officers. And that’s all they were. Old meat. Dead meat. They meant nothing. Were as nothing. Yes, they had wives and children and mothers that loved them. But so what? So. Fucking. What? So did every other species on this planet and a million others. And when a rabbit ran out into the road, was squashed by a groundcar into a bloody pulp of split skin and bulging bowels, its squashed skull and brain painting a portrait of fresh meat on the concrete roadway, didn’t that creature have parents, and children, and another rabbit it had mated with? Did the human stop and get out and weep and wail for the loss of a rabbit? When a wasp crawled on a human’s arm, and was squashed by a heavy hard blow - guilty and murdered before committing the crime - didn’t that wasp have the good of the hive, the good of the fucking Queen at heart? What made humans so much better? So much more important? Life was life was life. And if you live by the sword, then you should fucking well die by the sword. Horace lived by the sword, and when he eventually got a machete through the neck, sending his head rolling down the road - then so be it. That was the way it went. But if you left the house with a fucking gun or a knife, for whatever reason, or even if it was just your fists and an intention to do harm - then you were guilty. And so many were guilty.
Horace noticed he’d clenched his fists. Anger was raging through his mind.
He calmed himself. Forced himself to be calm.
He looked at himself in the smoked-glass rear-view mirror. Really looked at himself. Why so angry, Horace? What’s the matter now?
But he could not place his finger on it. Could not identify the deviant feeling inside.
Never lose your temper.
“The fuckers.”
He slammed the aircar into gear and powered off, away from the murder scene. He swept away, through chundering rain, away from the lights and the city, away from the people and toxic pollution. Over slag-piles of abandoned crap the aircar hummed, until he was gone from Bacillus Port and was out in the wastes, out in the rocky wasteland where few wandered and few dared to explore.
After all, who knew what presents Greenstar had left for the unwary traveller?
~ * ~
NOW, HE HAD a name. A focus. A target. Juliette JohNagle. Horace confessed to being surprised when he found out his new target was actually a man-i-woman. Not that it mattered. Man, woman or child, he truly did not care who he annihilated. Men-i-women were neither and both; not just a “chick with a dick,” as some politically incorrectibles would deem them (usually in a pub after nine pints of Japachinese lager), a man-i-woman was actually a full merging, a full blend of two separate individuals. Sometimes a married couple would do it - become one. Sometimes, it was strangers who had met through the small ads of the ggg or cube, become bored with life, or felt that something important was missing, something deep down at root level; a sliver of necessity missing from their very existence. Whatever the reason, men-i-women tended to be a strange breed of creature - mainly because there were two minds intertwined, a schizophrenic made real, made flesh. And as the process was a one-way process, there was a possibility of the two minds becoming sick of one another. On many occasions, a man-i-woman had gone quite literally insane and hacked itself (herself/ himself/themselves) apart with a cleaver or other sharp implement in a mad, brutal attempt to get away from each other. Juliette JohNagle, on the other hand, was a successful director of Greenstar - and a successful politician peddling the success of Greenstar Company across the Manna and the other galaxies.
Horace shrugged. It was irrelevant, unless it made the target harder to kill. And in this case, and flicking through the news papes on the aircar media channel, Juliette JohNagle would hardly be hard to miss...
Now, also thanks to his torture victim, Chris, who had overheard a damn sight more than he should have done back in that police boardroom, Horace had a location for his target. Not some wild stab in the dark, like was offered by the Fat Man. This was Meltflesh City. A beach hotel on the slick oil beaches of the Biohazard Ocean, where Juliette JohNagle, no doubt, was fucking and snorting his/her/its way into an oblivion heaven of powder puff whores and beyond. If the papes were anything to go by.
So, target and location secured.
Another set-up? Maybe. But this time, Horace would be ready.
He brought the aircar around in a massive thirty-mile loop in order to avoid any follow-up PUF traffic. He’d disabled the craft’s onboard trackers, and flew without lights, low, returning to a slumfest back-alley a few streets away from the Bacillus Hilton. This time, he needed the big guns. And this time, he needed backup.
<
br /> Horace moved slowly through dark and steaming alleyways, nostrils wrinkling occasionally at the toxic vapours that emerged from the sewers. What’s the point? he thought. What’s the point of sewers, when the whole damn city stinks like this?
He made it back to his hotel room without incident, and as he slowly closed the door - and not exactly relaxed, but at least stepped down from his highest level of tension - he left the light off and moved around in the darkness.
Fresh clothing. A fresh suit. After all, one must always present a professional image at all times.
“That went badly,” said Silka, her young, smooth voice penetrating the room with a crisp clarity.