by Andy Remic
The ball of foam was gone from Jenny’s mouth, and she spat out the shrivelling phlegm lump, moaning, her eyes fixed on Flizz’s dance of blood and torture, and Randy came close and his eyes were bright and the scars on his face were weeping. “Tell me, tell me where we can find Mr Candle...”
“My throat,” wheezed Jenny. “Can’t... speak...”
Randy was close, his tattered rebuilt ear close to Jenny’s mouth. It was a simple duck and turn to place her teeth against his throat, and then she bit, and she bit deep and hard, her teeth sinking through flesh and oesophagus, taking in his entire Adam’s apple and holding him there as blood ran down her chin and down her throat and Randy shrieked and gurgled, fists lashing at her, not punches but a panic-fuelled battering. And the more he struck her, the harder she bit, blood gushing into her mouth and throat, and all the time she could see Flizz being striped by the razor and dancing a jig like a puppet of death.
Suddenly, Randy stopped hitting and Jenny released her grip a little. He was panting, his throat held in her jaws; stalemate.
“Rweese mwe,” said Jenny through her mouthful of flesh and windpipe.
Randy himself could not speak, but he got the idea real fast. Jenny heard a jangle of Minotaur keys, felt Randy’s shaking, shuddering hands rising towards her bonds, and they melted away and her hands were free. For a moment, her muscles spasmed with cramp and nothing worked, but then she grabbed Randy’s head and they both fell to the floor, and she relaxed her bite and spat blood in his face. He was vibrating like an epileptic having a seizure. She took the long digital keys from his grip and released her ankles, and gazed down at Randy, his eyes fixed on her, his mouth working soundlessly. She’d damn near bit out his throat.
Smoothly, she took a pistol from a holster at Randy’s hip and, looking around, placed the gun at his head. “Time to die,” she snarled.
“Freeze, motherfucker!” screamed a voice and there came a cocking of guns, of SMKKs. Jenny rolled fast and leapt at the mirror/TV screen, arms up to protect her face, leapt towards the tortured, thrashing figure of Flizz in all her ribbon-torn tagliatelle-skinned agony, dancing like a marionette on rubber strings. There came a scream of shattering glass and sparking electronics as Jenny struck the portal, and she felt it fold around her, break around her, shards slicing into her arms and flanks, and she was through, sailing through cool air and she expected to land on the floor and see Flizz, poor tortured Flizz, and she’d put a round through Vasta’s skull and rescue her true love, her one love, her only love...
Shards tinkled all around her. She landed on sharp broken pieces of glass in a tiny square room. All around, black holes filled with cables fed off into blackness. There was no Flizz. The image was a projection. Somewhere, Flizz was still being cut to ribbons. Jenny heard boots behind her, and reversed the pistol and fired off ten shots, the gun booming in this narrow confined place. Then she picked a tube at random and squeezed her slim, naked body into it, squeezing in amongst the cables and pushing herself forward as fast as possible. It was hot in the tube, and wires sizzled the hairs on her arms. She could smell hot oil and grease and hear a thousand different pitches of buzzing sound. Behind her, SMKK rounds screamed and clattered, but they faded as she shuffled quickly forward, onwards, not thinking about where she was going, or about rescue, or even about what she was going to do. One bright primal spark sizzled hot in the centre of her brain. It was a spark of existence; the need to survive. Jenny squeezed her way onwards into the darkness, tears leaving streaks in the dirt and blood on her face.
~ * ~
RENAZZI LODE STOOD, hands on her hips, as Randy was helped to his feet, one hand clamped protectively around his gashed throat. It took him a long time to look up and stare at the fury in Renazzi’s eyes.
“You let her go,” she said, voice soft.
When Randy spoke, it was as a low croak and caused him considerable, obvious agony. “She tried to bite out my throat.”
“You fucking let her go!” snapped Renazzi, punching Randy on the nose. He fell back, and she strode over him and stared down and her eyes were narrowed and evil. “She went into the tube, fuckwit. There are ten thousand miles of fucking tubes in fucking Bacillus Port, linking every single fucking factory and unit we own. I want you to get in there and find her...”
“But... I need medical...”
“Now!”
Randy struggled to his knees, and patted where his pistol had gone, and looked up weakly.
Renazzi was pointing a gun. For a moment he thought she was going to shoot him, there on his knees. A basic execution. But she reversed the weapon and handed it to him.
Grimly, silent, Randy climbed to his feet, and - with one hand still clamped to the teeth gouges in his throat - shuffled through the smashed TV portal and towards the many tubes. He felt the dark brooding presence of Renazzi Lode behind him, like a toad on his shoulder; like a cancer in his soul.
“You’ll need this,” she said, and punched him in the back. He gasped, and felt the gem from her ring burrow through his clothing and flesh and bone, and settle in his heart, monitoring him.
Okay, said Renazzi in his mind, words buzzing like insects. Now I see what you see, hear what you hear. There’s no fucking it up this time, Randy Zaglax. If she gets out of here in that state, tells the fucking media what she has seen, it could be extremely damaging for Greenstar.
“You want me to kill her?”
Yes.
“But what about Mr Candle?”
Flizz spoke. Sang like a tortured chicken. Even now she’s being fed through a mincer and will be en route to a recycling food plant within the hour. Now... kill Jenny Xi. Don’t fuck it up, Randy, or you’ll be in the mincer, too.
Randy moved to the central four tubes and examined them closely. One had a scuffed edge. He hoisted himself up and forced himself into the narrow space. It was hot and claustrophobic, cables digging into his arms and body and legs. He was forced to move his hand from his wounded throat, which wept blood into the cabling innards.
Randy vomited, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and crawled through his own mess
Kill her, said Renazzi. I’ll be with you every step of the way.
~ * ~
TWELVE
HORACE, THE DENTIST, Anarchy Android, one of the most revered and feared hunter, torture and killing models ever created by Anarchy Inc., tumbled under the ocean, turning slowly, beat left and right by currents but turning, turning, winding himself in a cocoon of the heavy steel cable which pinned his arms to his sides and weighed him down. Blackness filled his mind, poured into him like oil, and the Biohazard Ocean poured into his mouth, into his throat, was sucked in and down into his lungs and belly, filling him up with its poison; with its hatred. With its toxicity.
You are going to die.
Yes.
You are dying.
I know.
Fight it!
Fuck you.
Fight it, damn you! You’re an Anarchy Android! Show some... RAGE!
No.
It was a simple word. The simplest of them all. No. But it carried such weight and such awesome power. Horace was satisfied to impose his will over that inner voice which had haunted him for so long. His tormentor, his brother, his controller, his subversive, mocking inner demon. His KillChip. His fucking KillChip.
Yes. He knew about his KillChip. A Quantell Systems Sanity Module designed to keep him sane, ha-ha, how the fuck was that supposed to work? By giving him voices in his head?
With the first two generations of android, there had been a predisposition to go off the rails: crazy, postal, call it what you will. But Anarchy Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Earth’s Oblivion Government, had felt the need to fit a controlling module straight to the brain. Androids were never told about the implementation, and each one was massively different, a discrete AI personality but with a sole functionality - to keep the android sane, and by keeping the android sane, to make him a more efficient killer.
By fitting a device that almost made the android feel like he was hearing voices in his head, a dark brother (or sister) who would mock and cajole and question his actions; well, instead of making an android crazier than a jilted paramedic who finds his wife being fucked in the woods by his best mate, it somehow made him more sane.
Dying, he thought.
I am dying.
But then... so be it, because I am an android and I’m an Anarchy Model; a torture and murder unit, a device that hunts down humans (and other androids, hush) and slowly takes them apart until I discover whatever insipid information I have been charged with finding. And then I kill. And I don’t always make it sweet. This is no dying in your sleep. This is no sudden heart attack or being hit by a truck. No, I make it fucking personal, and I make it fucking personal on purpose because -well, death is a serious business. It should hurt. Should be remembered. Like the old Viking warriors dying in battle; if you didn’t die with your sword in your hand, if it didn’t hurt in life, then you’re weren’t getting into the fucking afterlife, that was for sure.
So death had to be special.
And the more it hurt, the more special it was. Right?
And so, yes, now I die. I am ready to meet my maker. Ha-ha. But I already met him, a sterile scientist in a lab of white Formica and cheap stainless steel. Glass test tubes. White lab coats. Oh, daddy, why did you forsake me?
So... you mean there’s no Heaven? No android Heaven?
Do you not believe?
I believe, all right. I believe in the sanctity of the organism, I believe in replication and separation and multiplication. I believe every organism is an island and we’re born alone, created alone, and fucking die alone...
But what of love? And honour? Friendship? Truth?
No such thing, my little KillChip compadre. Just social webs put in place to make us try to care; when, in reality, empathy is a learned thing. Look how cruel a human child is? Pulling the legs off spiders. Standing on slugs. Swatting wasps. Battering little brothers and sisters. Smacking other children in the playground over petty shit. There’s no empathy there, no in-built natural need to look after fellow humans. Children are a distillation of the human condition - before social conventions are forced into place, like a behaviour brace instilling fear. You will behave like this, or God will punish you. You will behave like this, or you’ll spend your life locked in prison. Or worse, hang from a loop of rope until your neck is broken. Humans don’t protect other humans because they care about them -they protect them out of fear. Social etiquette is simply a framework for self-preservation.
Horace sank. His mind was a fluttering of black and blood red.
No oxygen, he thought.
He laughed at that.
Greenstar had fucked him up good. Killed him.
But that didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. His death had simply been a matter of time, and Horace, The Dentist - well, he knew that his passing would make the world a better place.
What good deeds did you do?
I never executed a very young child.
That’s good!
I simply crippled them.
That’s not good.
Who are you to judge? That’s the way I was programmed. The way I was made. I was a distillation of the human fucking condition. I never learned to fear the system. I wasn’t force-fed alien religions in the hope of making me a better person. No. I was android. I was pure. A pure killing machine.
And that’s the way you’ll die...
Yeah. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth... just like the Bible II Remix jokes about.
It’s sad.
Why? Live by the sword, die by the sword. And I’ve lived so very strongly, Killer.
The water pressure of the Biohazard Ocean was growing now, not that Horace could feel or endure any more pain. He had reached his limit, as much pain as is physically possible to feel, and in reaction his body was shutting down; his brain was cutting off his pain synapses, severing nerves, halting vital functions. Preserving itself. Until it, too died. And then it would be game over.
And yet...
Something was happening.
The murk, the undersea gloom, was growing brighter.
Horace saw rocks, huge mountain ranges under the ocean. And they glowed, glowed with toxic waste and toxic sludge, a radioactive, bacteriological nightmare of polluted seaweed and heavy metal detritus. Horace came to rest on a mountaintop, gently bumping along until he wedged between two rocks. He struggled for a moment against the steel winch cable that bound him, but then the last of the fire left his system and he lay there waiting for his brain to die, and for all thoughts to cease...
All around lay glowing weeds, shifting gently left and right in ocean currents. Tiny fish darted in front of Horace’s eyes, deformed, many with beaks and legs and massive flippers, and then disappeared, flitting between the rocks on the ocean-floor mountain-top.
I’ve been on the mountain, thought Horace, and nearly died laughing.
He sat there for what seemed an age. It was certainly long enough to drown. Long enough to drown fifty times over.
I am not dead.
And then the voice came to him, and it was not the bitter, sardonic, mocking laughter of his inbuilt KillChip; this was something vastly different. The voice was soft, almost female, and it didn’t come to his mind via his ears, but felt more to be absorbed from everything around him. Confusion was suddenly his master. Everything he had known and trusted and believed in turned out to be a lie. He should be dead. He should be fucking fish food...
Welcome.
Horace considered this.
I should be dead, he said, although he did not speak with his mouth.
Yes.
But I am not.
No.
Why?
Who knows?
Who are you?
I am... and a flicker of images that transcended verbal language. It showed the rocks of the ocean, the waters filled with pollution, the deformed fishes in the sea, the distorted seaweed on the rocks. It was all of these and yet more.
Horace felt suddenly very small, and very hollow.
Like an android speaking to God.
As he considered what next to say, he watched some glowing seaweed fronds detach, and float towards him. They hovered in front of his mouth, as if waiting to gain entry through an iron gate. Horace blinked, still incredibly weak and squatting on the razorblade of death.
May I?
What?
I wish to search your... again, images. But there was no doubt what the voice meant. It did not mean his mind or his feelings or his memories. It meant his soul. His android soul.
You may, he said, filled with sudden bitterness and regret. But you will not like what you find.
Horace opened his mouth and the seaweed drifted inside. He felt it slither down his throat, along with more gallons of toxic pollutant. Horace waited, suddenly tense, wondering if, when the floating voice discovered what a bad person - he corrected himself, a bad android - he had been, it would rip him apart from the inside out.
He waited. Waited to die.
Again.
He laughed at that, and bubbles escaped from his mouth in the underwater gloom.
Eventually, there came a sound. Like a sigh.
I see, said the voice.
So you hate me?
And he got a sudden image of an all consuming rage, like molten mountains rearing from the oceans across an entire planet and laying waste to a billion people who had destroyed the world...
Not unless you can match what Greenstar has done to me.
You’re the planet, aren’t you? Amaranth?
No.
You’re the ocean? The waters of the world?
No.
Then what, by the Mother of Manna, are you?
I am the Toxicity, said the voice.
Horace considered this, and he considered it for a long t
ime.
I do not understand.
For decades, toxic waste has been pumped into the oceans, under the mountains, into the air, into the very seams of the planet. Across the entirety of the world known as Amaranth, every manner of biological hazard, poisonous heavy metal, toxic pollutant, radioactive material and general purpose waste has been pumped and dumped and tipped and buried and strewn without regard for what was done; what, really, was being created.