Toxicity

by Andy Remic

  “I’m going to enjoy killing you,” she said.

  The blow hit Vasta in the side of the head, catapulting her from Jenny’s prone form and into an incredible tumble. She landed on her feet, atop a lab bench, uncurling gracefully. A few droplets of blood had trailed across the bench surface. She glanced down at Zanzibar with a frown. He was holding a length of iron. A crowbar. She tutted, and touched the long red welt on the side of her head.

  “I’ll deal with you later,” she said.

  “What are you?” said Zanzibar. “Class JJ? Or android?”

  Vasta tilted her head. Then relaxed, and smiled. “Android.”

  “What class?”

  “You don’t ask a girl a question like that,” said Vasta, clenching her fists. “Now, who wants to die first?”

  “That’d be you,” said Nanny, a cigar in her grizzled old mouth, as she pulled the trigger on the E3 Accelerator. The E3 gave a whine and energy exploded outwards. Vasta moved damn fast, but not fast enough. Her leap carried her torso, head and arms above the blast - but her legs were torn and accelerated free in a sudden slurry of blood and bone and winding, stretching, snapping tendon.

  There came a long, long pause.

  Most of the violence had finished, and the soldiers were dead or dying. The tar-coated figures were arranged around the laboratory, heads hung low, eyes averted, almost as if they were ashamed. Or... had completed their mission?

  Jenny shuddered, and breathed deeply. She climbed to her feet and walked over to the bench where Vasta’s corpse lay. Only it wasn’t a corpse. She was still alive, her eyes bright and feverish, her lips working soundlessly. She suddenly focused on Jenny and smiled.

  “Come. Here. My. Child.”

  Jenny moved close. Vasta was twitching, and blood surged out of her mouth. “Yeah, motherfucker?”

  “You were... tougher. Tougher. Than you. Look.” She smiled, and looked away, almost in regret. Her hands were quivering. More blood and drool ran down her chin. She looked back up.

  “Better believe it,” grimaced Jenny.

  “I’m an android. Anarchy Android. Waiting. Here for. Horace.”

  “Horace?”

  Vasta’s eyes were glazed. Her whole body, or the remains of it, was twitching now; twitching on the bench, like a side of quartered beef.

  “It doesn’t matter. I killed him. Killed my... own kind.”

  Her eyes lowered. Jenny shuffled closer. Suddenly, Vasta’s hands shot out and closed round Jenny’s throat. The strength was incredible, as if all the lost energy and power from Vasta’s legs had transferred into her arms. Jenny’s hands slammed up, trying to relieve the grip, but they were iron. Vasta pulled Jenny close. Real close. Her eyes were bloodshot and burning, burning bright. Her mouth opened and she was grinning, blood on her teeth, a maniacal snarl hijacking her face.

  “I should have tortured you...” she said... as Zanzibar slammed Jenny’s combat knife straight between her eyes with a crack of puncturing skull. Vasta went rigid, then relaxed, and Jenny fought her way from under the android’s grip.

  Zanzibar grabbed her shoulders. “You okay?”

  Jenny nodded. “Yes. Yes! Shit. What a bitch. A torturing android bitch.”

  “Look,” said Zanzibar, and Jenny gazed around. The child-like figures had lifted their heads after the mass slaughter of the hundred or so soldiers. Now, they were watching Jenny. One came forward, a slim girl, and she smiled up at Jenny, who was still rubbing at the savage bruises on her throat.

  “It’s time,” she said.

  “Time?” said Jenny.

  “Time to plant your HighJ charges. I’m Chorzaranalista. Me and the other psi-children have come to help.”

  “But...”

  “We saw you. In a dream. A prophecy. For us, the future is written. The toxicity has given us that gift... at the expense of many other things.”

  “I don’t understand. Where have you come from?”

  “The waste. The shit. The Toxicity. But you need to move quick. You need to focus now. More soldiers come. Thousands more! And... one who is hidden from me.” She touched her temples then, as if in great pain. When she opened her eyes, they were bright as falling stars. “This chamber is a connecting Fuel Port. Blow this with enough force, and the chain reaction will spread like you could never believe possible... destroy this Fuel Port and you destroy the Greenstar Factory. You destroy Greenstar.”

  Jenny nodded, and signalled to Nanny and Meat Cleaver, as Zanzibar hoisted his pack of HighJ explosives.

  “Come on, guys. Let’s blow this fucking place to the stars.”

  ~ * ~

  “WAIT.”

  It was almost a whisper. Almost.

  He stood there, in his armour and carrying his weapon, and he looked out of place, alien, but it was him. It was him, all right.

  “Saul,” said Jenny, and stared at her brother.

  Her brother.

  After so much, after so much time and so many millions of miles and years. He was here. He was now. He was part of this. He was part of Greenstar. A betrayer. A back-stabber. Acting a part to get Jenny to confess. Tortured? Ha. He wasn’t just an actor. He was a base, gutter-Greenstar pawn.

  “What the fuck do you want?” Her SMKK was already in sweaty fingers. She wanted to kill him. Kill him now. He hadn’t just betrayed Amaranth. He had betrayed her. He had betrayed their father. He had betrayed their fucking species.

  “Don’t do it. Don’t plant the HighJ.” He was looking around, at all the dead soldiers. Tentatively, he picked his way through the corpses. The psi-children let him be. Why? screamed Jenny’s brain. He’s alien evil a fucking piece of shit who should be on a noose kicking. Why?

  “I want you to stop. I want you to walk away from Greenstar. This is not your fight. This is not your war.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Jenny, trust me...”

  The bubble burst. The tears came. A riot of rage engulfed her brain. She opened her mouth and the words poured out, spilled out, puked out, and she said, “I’ve got to say, Saul, and this is a long time in coming, but you are a sorry fucking excuse for a human being. Yeah. You and your back-stabbing, cock-sucking wife. Look around, Saul - you have NO friends, cunt. Maybe you should ask yourself the fucking question - why? I remember you, remember your drug paranoia, remember you driving like a wedge straight through the heart and soul of our family... You say we behaved appallingly. What? WHAT THE FUCK? This just underlines your dual stupidity, and your dual ignorance. The truth is, Saul - you were stressed about all your stupid life decisions... no doubt TWATTED and PUKED up to fuck, on your needles and drugs, and with a few brandies chucked in there, eh, mate? And I dared to question you? About money? About responsibility? About our father? About your twisted fucking bitch of a wife? So you attacked me, and demanded the things you knew I could never deliver... Oh, you fucking cunt. You threw away your sister and our friendship - forever. And because of what? Because of your cheating wife, fucking her army of secret lovers. And I found out. And that made ME the bad fucking person. You asked my advice, and tracked her with the tracker in her car, and you bought that PI, and you caught her, Saul. You fucking caught the bitch. Yet you chose to take her back and forgive her, even though you told anybody who would listen what she did to you. You told me you would slit her throat and dump her in the canal. I truly believed you meant it. My advice to you was don’t do it, you’re my brother, I love you, don’t do it, don’t go to prison for that scum white trash. You told me how she fucked all those men, including the one in the wheelchair, sucking his cock and saying your name as he came down her slick, eager throat. You told me how she was fucking you financially, and what did you expect me to think? What did you expect me to do? Well, fuck you. Fuck you real bad, motherfucker. Your lack of humanity in the past always disturbed me. I saw it when no other cunt did. You’re not just immoral and illegal; you’re just bad. Bad to the bone. A bad fucking egg. Bad blood, through and through. So. We have two ways forward, fuckw
it. We can agree to disagree - and you never, ever come near me again. You walk away now and that’s the end of it.” She cocked her SMKK. “Or I’ll give you a present you’ll never forget.”

  Saul stared at her. His eyes were burning. But there was no love there. No sense of family. No joy. No kindred.

  Just hate. Pure hate.

  Saul leant forward, slowly, and spat on the ground. Then he looked back at Jenny and his eyes were masked; his face was a mask. He smiled then, a slow evil smile, and she knew she’d lost him -

  This was no longer her brother.

  This was some other thing...

  They raised their guns at the same time, but Jenny fired the first round. Bullets screamed from her SMKK and hit Saul in the face. His own bullets cut into Jenny’s shoulder and then off up the wall, chewing tiles and spitting plaster and sparking from steel joists. But Jenny struck first and her bullets chewed a hole in his face so big she could put her fist through it.

  Saul hit the ground dead, his face destroyed. Smoke rose from the charred rim of the hole.

  Zanzibar put his hand on Jenny’s shoulder, and she jumped.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “Fuck him,” she said, but she did not mean it. For, once, they had been best friends. Once, they had been brother and sister. But he’d destroyed it. Now it was gone and done and over.

  ~ * ~

  IN GRIM SILENCE they planted the charges, the psi-children watching and standing guard against further attack. Jenny, Zanzibar, Nanny and Meat Cleaver moved methodically around the laboratory, planting the small black cubes that looked so harmless in gloved hands-, and yet could deliver a punch big enough to destroy cities.

  Jenny placed a cube next to a tub of tox, which, Chorzaranalista had informed her, contained a skein of lirridium fuel that would spread across the entire Greenstar Factory network and beyond...

  Jenny’s mouth was dry as she planted the final cube of HighJ. Slowly, carefully, she slid in the charge relay, and it blinked with a tiny green light. On. Active. Ready to blow...

  As Jenny stood, mind whirling, Chorzaranalista approached her and stood, looking up, head tilted to one side. Jenny had the horrible feeling her mind was being rifled with the same precision as a professional burglar going through a jewellery box. She blinked, and felt... something withdraw.

  “Now you must get as far away from this place as possible.”

  “We must detonate,” said Jenny.

  “No,” said Chorzaranalista, and her finger lifted and touched Jenny’s lips. “You cannot detonate here. It will not work. Your conventional detonators and charges have been neutralised by focused EMP blasts. Greenstar has protected itself - and protected itself well.”

  “So how do we blow this shithole?” snarled Jenny, feeling suddenly cold and empty inside. All this way for - for nothing? So many dead to fail at the last hurdle? What use a bomb without a detonator?

  “We will take care of it,” said Chorzaranalista, and her toxic, ravaged face smiled. She winked, then turned and leapt, splashing into the toxic tub, a pipe leading down, down, down to the bowels of the Factory.

  The rest of the psi-children left, clambering into the black waste. One by one, with a splash and a kick of their legs, they disappeared from view. Jenny stood there, arms limp by her sides, wondering what to do.

  “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here,” growled Zanzibar.

  “We’ve failed,” said Jenny, crestfallen.

  Zanzibar grabbed her chin, and lifted her eyes to meet his own. His dark brown orbs were triumphant. “No. We’ve won. It’ll happen, Jen. Trust me. I promise you. I can feel it, here, in my breast.” He thumped his own heart, then ran a hand through Jenny’s hair affectionately. He growled, “Meat, check our exit. And Nanny, cover the rear with that beautifully devastating E3 Accelerator. Let’s go.”

  They ran across the laboratory, HighJ planted but... dormant. Jenny hated herself, hated herself for leaving the job unfinished. And she realised - she no longer trusted anybody. Except, maybe, the tattered remains of her ECO terrorist squad. They had become closer than family. They were her friends... in life, and death, and oblivion beyond.

  Meat Cleaver reached the lab exit, slid to the edge, peered around the corner - and was blown across the room by a shotgun blast. He hit the ground hard, face a bloody pulp, sliding across tiles to slam into a bank of steel cupboards, denting their fascias. He twitched, then lay still.

  Jenny and Zanzibar sprinted forward, SMKKs screaming, bullets howling out into the corridor. Nanny, behind them, fired a random blast with the Accelerator across the lab. Cupboards and computers and equipment were picked up in a maelstrom of swirling violence and with a huge WHOOSH slammed across the space, disintegrating everything in the blast zone. Jenny and Zanzibar reached the doorway, and Jen fired off random rounds as Zanz crawled over to Meat Cleaver. He rolled the big man onto his back and checked for a pulse. He shook his head, once.

  Growling, Jenny fired off another ten rounds and then slammed her back to the door. She glanced to Nanny; they were too open, in too big a space. They needed cover. They needed a new escape route!

  A red dot appeared on Nanny’s skull, and a silenced round hit her forehead, drilled through her skull and brain, and exploded the back of her head in a mushroom shower of pulp. She was still chewing her cigar.

  “No!” screamed Jenny, searching for the sniper, disbelief ringing in her skull.

  “Get down!” yelled Zanzibar, and crawled back towards Jenny, slamming his back to the wall alongside her. Their SMKKs shifted and weaved gentle patterns, searching for the enemy. They were on edge, fingers on hairline triggers.

  Suddenly, Zanzibar turned his head and stared at Jen. She could read his eyes. Read his face.

  We’re going to die, said that expression. There’s no getting out of this shit alive!

  She opened her mouth to speak, and Zanzibar smiled; an it’s been great knowing you, working with you, fighting with you smile.

  Suddenly, bullets yammered down the corridor outside, and there were crumpling noises, then silence. Zanz and Jenny stared at one another. Jenny licked her bone-dry lips.

  Shoes clicked on tiles, and a figure appeared in the doorway. He was tall, physically big, brown hair greying at the temples, and with a broad, strong face and neat moustache. He lit a thin, evil-looking cigarette and took a long drag. In one hand he carried a small 9mm pistol. He wore an expensive black suit, long overcoat, and brown polished shoes. He looked more like the director of a company than a killer or assassin. He was smiling.

  Jenny looked up, and he was gazing down at her. “Hello, Jenny,” he said, and the voice clicked immediately and Jenny found herself unable to speak. The voice was instantly recognisable because, because she’d been dealing with this man and his orders for a decade. This was Mr Candle. He organised the Impurity Movement terrorist cells. Hell, he was the Impurity Movement, handing out contracts to McGowan and all the other Cell Commanders. Candle organised funds, guns and explosives, and decided which targets to hit.

  “Mr Candle,” she said, blinking rapidly.

  He held out his hand to her, but she glanced about nervously. “Get down, sir! There are still enemy in the vicinity!”

  “No,” he said, gently, smoking his cigarette. “I have neutralised all enemies in the area. You are safe, now. You can stand up, Jenny Xi.”

  Still Jenny did not move, her eyes fixed on Candle’s strong, open, honest face. Then she glanced sideways at Zanzibar, who was also looking at Candle, but wearing a different expression. His eyes were narrowed, his expression one of confusion. As if to say: Why are you here? How are you here? What the fuck is going on? Didn’t Zanz recognise their illustrious terrorist leader?

  Suddenly, Mr Candle levelled the pistol at Zanzibar and shot him through the head. Zanzibar slid slowly sideways, leaning against Jenny, blood tricking down from the gunshot wound just above the bridge of his nose. His hands went slack, and the SMKK shifted slowly down his
crouched body to clack on the floor. And Jenny was staring at him, watching, and she could not believe this, could not understand what was happening, and what had just happened. Zanzibar’s eyes were open, but she watched the light die in them, slowly, going out like a starved (Candle, hush)...

  “No,” she sighed, and took Zanzibar’s head in her hands, and stared at him, then stared up at Candle with tears streaming down her face. That was the last of it. This was the end of it. They were all dead. All dead and gone. And she was alone. Alone in a cold, cruel world, and without the job done.

  Greenstar were laughing at her.

  She looked up at Mr Candle, who was still smiling, still holding his smoking pistol. He took another drag on his cigarette, and Jenny sat there, waiting for the bullet. But it did not come.