NANO Archive 01: The City of Fire

by Jason Crutchfield

  The monster's hideous face peeked over the lip formed by the wall that separated us. I stared into the endless darkness of his hellish eyes, but he only sniffed and stared down over the edge of the cliff. My breath caught in my chest; should I strike quickly and prepare for combat against the other hyped? Without the full use of my nanites, I felt a twinge of uncertainty, and that uncertainty sent tremors down my hands. The frightening prospect of becoming the pack's next exciting meal did not help matters.

  Just as the hyped prepared to turn and face me completely, he growled and snapped his head back in the other direction. He glanced to the second hyped that emerged from the cave across the valley; the two nodded at one another and began creeping down the walls through the shadows. Their trek carried them toward the giant cave at the bottom of the hill. I pushed the tense breath swollen in my chest out of my lungs with the force of a hurricane. When I leaned around the wall to look back down the valley's length, my jaw dropped.

  A small girl stood in the center of the valley just in front of the enormous hill. Her hair possessed length similar to mine, but it was a vibrant sheen of blond draped in loose curly waves along her back and rear. A white, dirt-smudged gown hung from her tiny body. She could not have exceeded the age of ten.

  She rubbed her bare, blistered feet together as though using one to scratch the itch of the other. Her eyes, a deep sea blue-green, peered with confusion along the valley and back toward the cave. Clutched in a strangling embrace, an odd bear doll constructed of cloth, synthetic cotton, and machinery dangled in front of her torso. She seemed for all the world like a little lost angel. Lost indeed; how did a girl like that stumble out of an intricate cave system right near a hyped pack's den?!

  I shot my eyes to the two creeping hyped moving down the cliff's shadows toward their unassuming prey. “Damn it, little girl, run!” I hissed and began moving as well. The girl's head tipped to one side as though instinctively responding to a stimulus. Perhaps she heard something from inside the cave? I did not doubt the hyped inside were quite enjoying the feast of their comrade; surely their sloppy eating made a bit of noise. Good, it meant she might run with wild abandon from the cave of monstrous humans and in my direction. It would certainly make intercepting the two stray hyped easier.

  “That's it, little one. There are bad things in there, just come this way,” I coaxed under my breath as I leapt from plateau to plateau, always descending toward the ground when possible. The two hyped leisurely took their time. No doubt they wished to ensure they did not betray their presence; an easy meal tasted far better than one that required immense effort, after all. I paused for a moment. Though I remained several hundred feet from the small child, I swore for a moment that her eyes met mine through the dark obscurity of the valley. Suddenly, she gasped softly as though she recognized the two pursuing hyped and bolted… straight for the cave.

  I vaulted from the last of the jutting lips that marked the caves of the ribcage valley and shouted after her, “No! Not that way!”

  It was too late; even if she heard me, her small frame had already vanished into the darkness. I started running. My cry reverberated through the valley like a cannon, and the two hyped pursuing the small girl snapped their attention to me. Their slobbering mouths dropped open hungrily, and they released nearly identical screeches before rocketing in my direction. My eyes never left the cave entrance. I unsheathed my twin daggers and spun the left into a reverse grip in my palm. “Little girl… little girl… little girl!”

  I failed to understand the reason for my desperation. It was one girl; why did she matter so much? Perhaps the scared, uncertain look on her face reminded me of myself as I stood in Yordleton at thirteen. Maybe the innocent gleam that sparkled in those glistening blue-green eyes represented a last hope for decent children to turn into decent adults. But while I failed to understand my own reasons, I understood that I would carve my way through an army of those afflicted assholes if it meant getting to her before they did.

  The first hyped and I collided. He stood at least a foot taller than I, so the only way to reach the necessary height to inflict true damage was to jump. I hated jumping. As his arms closed in to entangle me, I drove my heel against the extended ball of his knee and propelled myself up. Reluctant to activate my Supersoldier implant, I instead stabbed my left dagger straight down into his trapezius and tugged myself skyward.

  I lifted my right dagger, still pointing outward from my grip, in an uppercut motion into the underside of his jaw. The bloodied crunch as its length penetrated his lower jaw, upper jaw, and even his brain through his sinus cavity ensured his demise. My feet came to rest on either of his shoulders at the pinnacle of my vertical leap. As his hulking form descended and his eyes rolled into the back of his head, his partner appeared behind him intent on accomplishing what his pack mate could not.

  I easily culled my blades from the body as I rode it down, and when the second hyped reached the point where his arms stretched forward to grapple me from my perch, I hopped over the top of his head. “There's no time to deal with these guys!” I thought vehemently. When my feet touched the ground, I curled into a ball and rolled forward. The gathered momentum carried me into a sprint when the moment I jerked upright. I ignored the ravenous roars pursuing me from behind and bolted through the gaping hole in the hillside.

  The darkness saturating the tunnel seemed like tendrils designed for the sole purpose of impeding my progress. A dim light danced across the walls as I rounded a curve in the cavern. When the tunnel opened into an enormous room dotted with random fires consuming various items strewn about the cave, the pack of hyped, covered in the blood of the injured ally they slew, stood in complete stillness staring at the lonely little girl in white.

  Hyped were insane; psychosis did not begin to describe their affliction. However, to call them primitive or stupid would be a tricky mistake. While they certainly succumbed to base instincts, shunned society, and sought to destroy everything that moved, they often displayed questionable traits when left to their own devices.

  If they truly killed or destroyed with reckless abandon, why did the hyped occasionally form a pack such as the one that huddled in the cave? If their knowledge degraded to primitive understanding, why did they retain the ability to create fires or cohesive hunting groups? Their mere survival in the harsh wastes of the ruined world attested to their capabilities. That being said, when faced with the solid black eyes of a hyperaugmented, humanity was the farthest word from one's lips.

  The seven hyped in the small confines of the cave and the one in close pursuit outnumbered me, and with my nanites malfunctioning because of Oswald's experimental serum, they likely outclassed me as well. I decided to take the risk, and with a buzzing click my Cognitive Accelerator spun to life. What I witnessed in that moment engraved itself in my core forever.

  The apparent pack leader, characterized by his ridiculous height and girth compared to the other hyped, stood erect in front of the tiny girl in the white gown. With his hand extended, he placed his fingers against the small child's cheek. She stared up with an innocent smile and stood on her tip toes reaching her fragile hand toward his face, all while clutching her toy bear in her other arm. The remaining hyped stood calm and silent, both of which I found utterly preposterous. As I witnessed the surreal scene play out before me like dramatized theater, the black swirls of bestial demeanor within the leader's eyes flickered. For a moment, he looked human.

  Then everything went to shit. The hyped behind me exploded into the groundbreaking gathering; with the sluggish manner with which I perceived my surroundings, I heard the discordant roar burst from his throat like a popping bubble. The heads of the other hyped twisted toward me; I kicked into a dash straight toward the naive child. My pursuer dove to grab my ankles, but I escaped his grasp in the knick of time. The sap-like movements of the cave dwellers began in unison; they parted their lips to roar and lashed out t
o strike me or grapple me from my dedicated path. The slow, methodical manner in which the leader's eyes reverted to their enraged hatred sent shivers along my spine.

  When he fully regressed, he furrowed his brows and curled his fingers, still in close proximity to the girl's cheek, into a murderous fist. Finally, the child recognized her situation; with a shrill cry, she curled into a ball and lifted her toy bear over her head to shield her from the oncoming battery. Two fists from different hyped swung in wide hooks toward my face, one on my left and one on my right. I dropped to the ground in an old fashioned baseball slide and drew my leg back when the motion reached its climax. Once my slide carried me to the hyped leader, I stomped my foot into the side of his knee; the flow of inertia did most of my work for me and bent his leg at a completely unnatural angle.

  The bone's crunch reverberated synchronously with the hyped's tormented howl. He instinctively dropped to his broken limb; I planted both my hands on the dusty ground and quickly pushed to my feet. I threw a quick spin kick against his temple. The force sent his body careening to the side and left me standing like a stubborn bulwark between the small girl and the pack of crazed afflicted. I fluidly stepped forward and sheathed my right dagger; the pack leader, who recovered from the blow I delivered to his head, limped forward and clenched his fist with every intention of pummeling my chest into oblivion. Considering his hyperaugmented state, taking such a blow would be tantamount to standing in front of an oncoming train.

  But I maintained activation of my Cognitive Accelerator, and the injured hyped moved with all the swiftness of a snail; it left me plenty of time to react. I reached back with my free right hand to clutch the stock of my rifle. My eyes widened when the motion ended with my hand clenched in an empty fist. In the brief moment I possessed as the brute's fist sailed toward my sternum, my memories flashed to the operating chair tucked away in Oswald's trailer. I remembered setting my rifle in a lean against it, but I did not remember picking it back up.

  “Damn it Oswald… what the hell is in that stuff?” I thought with frustrated conviction. To leave my father's rifle behind, a part of me as inseparable as a limb, and to travel several hours aimlessly through the desert without realizing its absence was a mistake I never imagined I would make. And of all the rotten times to make it…

  The hyped's fist crushed into my chest, instantly shattering my sternum and several of my ribs. I regretted my mistake with, quite literally, every bone in my body. I sailed back through the air with a pained scream; the trauma when my back cracked against the stone wall next to the little girl snapped me from the effects of my Cognitive Accelerator. I gasped for air, desperately trying to work my diaphragm. I wanted nothing more than to fill my crinkled lungs with the cold air to quell the fire raging inside my entire upper torso.

  It was to no avail, nor did Panacea begin working on my injuries. “Ihlia, your Panacea is still a touch impeded!… The effect won't completely subside for several hours! Stay out of trouble…” Oswald's warning annoyingly echoed in my mind, but pain remained the most prominent sensation coursing through me. The small child's quivering whimpers heralded the certain end reaching for us like the Reaper's cackling mockery.

  “See? I told you, I told you just one more step,” he seemed to say through his grinning, bony jaws.

  I grunted with stubborn refusal embedded in every cell of my body. I swiftly gripped the hilt of my right dagger and flung it with lethal precision, despite my battered torso, from its sheath toward the leader's forehead. At the same time, my arm encircled the tiny waist of the child at my left, and with a painful cry I pushed from the wall of the cave and sprinted toward its deepest recesses. My dagger penetrated the hyped leader's skull with a loud thwack, and as we passed by his felled body, I could have sworn I witnessed the small girl sob and reach for the felled brute with unnerving sympathy.

  The rest of the hyped remained in pursuit even as I located an escape. Fortunately, the back of the cave possessed a tunnel leading into the extensive cave network running beneath the mountains behind the hill. Also fortunately, an extraordinarily narrow passage formed the tunnel's opening which, I asserted with all the certainty one might derive from a quick size-up, was far too narrow for the hyped beasts to pursue us. Unfortunately, the pitch black interior of the tunnel offered as much danger as it did rescue, and if the tunnel's shape betrayed its geometric design, the child and I were in for a steep drop.

  Without my rifle and with only a single dagger, I dove, with the little girl under my arm, into the foreboding abyss that presented itself as our only salvation. The descent seemed uneventful in the first few seconds, but just as I clenched my arm around the small child and placed my free hand on the back of her neck to protect her from injury, the first impact sent a shock wave through my ribs. The girl remained unharmed in my protective embrace as we bounced down the tunnel, but I was not so lucky.

  The slope at which the tunnel dipped caused a series of bone splintering slams which sent our bodies rolling and twisting through the air with each bounce off the jagged stones and stalagmites. Each somersault inflicted intense sensations of agony on my entire body. But through some miracle, I kept the small girl, still clutching my chest for dear life, atop me during each of our abrupt collisions. When the tumble ended and gravity ejected us from the tunnel, the two second free fall sent my thoughts racing to my comrades in Loftsborough.

  Oswald would be finding my rifle right about then with an “Oh bother…” to accompany his unfortunate find. Crelyos, the blond brute, would be sitting in the tavern downing bottles of sludge and waiting for me to waltz in and offer him a slap on the shoulder. As the breeze of our descent streamed through my hair and kissed the tortured injuries ravaging my body, I clutched the small girl tighter to my breasts and grit my teeth in preparation. The last thought that raced through my mind before the cracking impact sent absolute darkness to overtake me… was of Donovan.

  File 23: The Bald Eagles

  The darkness became a haze, the haze slowly morphed into vague shapes accompanied by muffled voices, and the shapes emerged as clear images of familiar people sitting attentively around a campfire. I stood directly behind a female; her mid length black hair dangled between her shoulder blades, and the militant outfit she wore accentuated the unlady-like manner in which she sat atop a thick wooden log.

  A black tank top left a small strip of flesh exposed just above her waist. A pair of camouflaged cargo pants clung to the swell of her hips, and the legs of her pants trailed down and tucked into her black combat boots. With both her legs spread and her elbows draped casually over her knees, she emanated a distinct air of masculinity. Her voice lifted as the first clear sound to tickle my ears.

  “Bradich, sir, with all due respect, why do we need to go overseas to Cairo? It's a dangerous hot spot, has been since the Global Conflict started. There are attacks there almost daily.” She spoke in a soft voice that exuded her youth. She could not have been older than sixteen. More importantly than that, however, she mentioned the name Bradich. My head jerked in the direction she spoke. From the shadows just outside the flame's reach, my former commander emerged. With his voluminous brown hair cascading down his shoulders and his strong but slim frame standing firm above the group of faces I almost recognized, I gradually pieced together the situation.

  “A dream? Or perhaps I'm dead…” I thought to myself. As I thought carefully, I recalled protesting against our deployment to Cairo in just such a fashion over ten years ago. I glanced down at the militant youth with obsidian hair; an unnatural blur concealed of her facade in inky obscurity. I supposed it made sense; after all, I would hardly be able to recall the nuances of my expressions considering I never actually beheld my own face. Despite desiring nothing more than to leap across the fire pit and choke the life from the Bradich of my memories, I stood silent.

  “Do you know why there are daily attacks on Cairo, Ihlia? Aside from the philoso
phical implications of humanity's base desire to destroy, that is.” Bradich's lips twisted into a challenging smile. I shook my head; Bradich's ever-fanciful jargon tangled my thoughts more than once during my teenage years. The young me lifted her thumb to her chin; I watched her vacuum her lower lip between her teeth and chew.

  “Don't think too hard about it, he's just trying to get into your head,” I spoke aloud. My surreal voice echoed like a watery ripple. Even as the words escaped my lips and my hand reached down to touch the shoulder of my former self, she remained unaware and simply shook her head.

  “No, sir, I do not,” she responded.

  “Well after the N-3 launched, and after the massive quantity of neurotech data filled libraries' worth of space, several laboratories dedicated to facilitating nanite research sprang up all over the globe. Of them, none are more advanced than the laboratory in Cairo. My brother believes he's on the verge of a breakthrough that will change the way we see nanites forever. I think it's idealistic dribble, but he's paying us well to guard him. And I am his brother, after all. I suppose I owe my flesh and blood at least that.” Bradich tapped the underside of his chin as though pondering the true extent to which he would go for the sake of his sibling.

  Despite Bradich's overwhelming love for money and the crude manner with which he rationalized the world, he always seemed driven by some pseudo-spiritual search of self. Older members of the Bald Eagles once informed me that such thoughts consumed him long before I ever joined their ranks. Around campfires when the jests grew stale and the old stories became boring, Bradich often proposed existential and soul wrenching questions to excite our crew.

  “What do you think the nature of our consciousness is? Are we just clusters of atoms with advanced neurons and an overdeveloped brain? Is there something more for us that waits for us after we die?” Such questions were common from our fearless leader.