At The Hands Of Madness

by Kevin Holton

  Snorting, Grover said, “Please. After all we went through today, this is hardly more than a twig in a forest fire. Now, as you know by this point, this is gonna hurt a bit.” He raised his arms to her sides, pressing her fingers along her injuries. A loud hiss rang out from his touch as she gritted her teeth, eyes shut against the pain as he cauterized the wounds. When he pulled away, he left two slightly charred looking lines behind, one per side, her skin red from heat but undoubtedly free of any budding infection.

  “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to that.”

  He nodded, face falling as he looked at his hand, creating a small coat of flames across his palm. “I hope you never have to.”

  Then, jerking up and sniffing loudly, he turned his head back to the fire pit. “Crap!” He jumped up, running over to yank something off the heat. He could allegedly smell when something was close to burning. I don’t know for sure if I believed that, but he’d never overcooked a dish, so I had no reason to doubt it, either.

  Turning back to Allessandra, I asked, “How you holding up?”

  She rubbed at her sides, head cocked to listen to someone else, then said, “Okay.”

  “Just okay?”

  “Yeah. Just okay. Sometimes, okay is all you have to be. After today, ‘okay’ is good.”

  “Huh. Okay.” She smiled a little, and I told them I was going to check in with Damien so I could leave without seeming abrupt. Some rules of social etiquette managed to apply no matter what the situation, and even a two-bodied, headless, psychic monstrosity couldn’t do away with the fact that walking away from a conversation with no excuse was rude. Fortunately, it did provide a lot more excuses.

  For what it was worth, Damien appeared to be getting along with the Nanites. They found a nice, wide common ground to stand on: techy weapons. “…so I used an EEG sensor array with a quantum entangled connection, allowing the wearer to pilot the mech no matter where it is. The two-way system allows you to see and hear through its eyes and ears so, you know, you actually know what you’re doing.”

  “Fascinating,” said the Left Nanite.

  “If I might ask, why do you not have defensive fortifications? I see walls, of course, and plenty of vantage points for your sniper,” Center said, gesturing to me, “but no stationary weaponry of any kind. Not even manual posts.”

  It was a fair question, and one we’d discussed on many occasions. Damien gave them the short version. “It’s a two-fold problem. We don’t have much room for automated weapons due to resource scarcity. Bullets aren’t exactly easy to come by, which is a huge part of the second reason. The second is that manual turrets don’t really have the range to assist. It would be dangerous to post someone way out away from the camp, so by the time the Phranna are in range, our specialists are already in the fray. A Gatling gun or any other kind of spray-and-pray weapon would be just as likely to hurt one of our own as the Phranna. We arm some people for situations like today, where we’re caught off guard by a multi-pronged attack, but for the most part, our core crew has the fighting covered, and they don’t need ammo. Why put innocent lives at risk trying to kill those things with a pistol, when, say, Allessandra can cause them to implode? Or Steve cause them to ex-plode?”

  They nodded. Then the center did something fairly odd for a Nanite: his head cocked as he expressed confusion. “Speaking of Steve… what exactly is that?”

  He pointed, and I followed his gaze to our resident strongman, who was talking to Grover through the flames while holding up a massive, two-handed gun that looked to have been put together from scrap metal and bad ideas. Haphazardly-welded metal plating and glowing bits stuck together in a way that made R’lyeh seem orderly.

  “Oh, god only knows what that guy made now. He’s our explosives and big weapons expert. Well, expert might be a little much. That implies training and caution.” Damien tried to seem exasperated, but we both knew he appreciated the man’s presence. Major explosives had saved more than a few people on more than a few occasions.

  He’d gotten me curious though, and I figured our guests were too, so of course I was going to ask. “Steve!” Steve looked over. “The hell is that thing?”

  “This?” he said, raising the gun as if I might’ve been talking about something else. “It’s a kinetic cannon. Built it a few days ago, works like a charm. Got a crazy recoil though.”

  “Okay, yeah, but what’s it do?”

  With a dreamy smile, he said, “It can grab stuff, then just… launch ‘em. Zwoop, and blam! Ever go Phranna bowling? Well, now you can.” He looked at the gun, then at me, and added, “Actually, no, I think the recoil would kill a shrimp like you. But someone like me can use a Phranna to knock the rest down like bowling pins, and it’s a lot of fun.”

  “He tried it right after I melted most of those out to the east, since some managed to circle around me.” Grover had to yell a bit over the crackle of the flames surrounding him. “Grabbed one, pulled him through one of my firewalls, blasted it right back through and at least two dozen on fire with the impact. It was… God damn, so beautiful.”

  “I’m trying to see if I can minimize the kick, or maybe just make a smaller version, so you can use it, Mr. Noodle Arms.”

  “Hey, sniper rifles aren’t exactly low-recoil either, bub. Ever fire a .357?” I shot back.

  “This thing can fire a car.”

  Lisa sidled up next to him. “Can I take a look? If you bothered to jot down schematics this time, I might be able to make a scaled version for me.” Her shiny, chrome arm gleamed in the firelight.

  “What am I gonna do, say ‘No, don’t make a sick ass kinetic arm cannon’? Of course you can. Let’s talk.”

  “But… the food!” Grover held up a metal tray, passing it onto a table just outside the pit.

  Damien looked over at the Nanites. “Do you… you know, eat?”

  “You really don’t know anything about us, do you?” Center replied.

  He let out a heavy breath. “The only things I know are things I wish I didn’t. But you all seem okay, so if you do eat, by all means.” He gestured toward the cook.

  They rose, not in unison this time, thankfully. Their synchronized movements were starting to weird me out. Grover had placed the food on a long banquet-style table because he was the only one who could actually hold the metal serving trays without getting burned, on account of the fact that they’d been in the fire with him. The Nanites went to join the line forming around the table, but turned back first. “We really do appreciate your hospitality,” the Right said. “I understand this isn’t the easiest decision for you, personally.”

  He snorted. “You said ‘I’ that time.”

  The Left shrugged. “We are a we, but also an I. Separate, yet unified.”

  Damien thought for a second, giving his reply a moment to form. “I can’t imagine what that’s like, being so integral to a group that your identity is half—or more—about the collective. About being some… extension of a single thing, rather than your own being.”

  The Center looked around the camp, at the people lined up to eat, at myself and Allessandra, who hadn’t gotten up yet, at Lisa and Grover, who were off talking weapon schematics, then settled his gaze back on Damien.

  “I think you can.” Center walked off to eat, leaving Damien in thought, chin resting on his fist, face flickering red and yellow as the moon rose high overhead, cold and empty.

  Chapter 5

  I woke too early after a night of too much excitement. Turns out, the Nanites really know how to party. Every cell in their bodies can convert to ‘filtration mode,’ allowing them to drink heavily with no risk of poisoning or hangover, so once Grover broke out the whiskey, all hell broke loose. He is, after all, the only person who can breathe fire without wasting alcohol, but people still try to one-up him. Damien managed to relax a bit, too, though wasn’t exactly buddy-buddy with the ‘borgs after they were done talking specs and weapon tech.

  Stretching my arms overhead, I clicked on th
e coffee pot in the kitchenette tent we’d set up. Allessandra had apparently once suggested this in order to take some of the burden off our fiery friend, so we had a solar-powered generator that kept the coffee pot, microwaves, toasters, and other appliances functioning. Once I was ready with my daily cup of two-cream two-sugars, I stepped outside to look around.

  It was a little after six AM, and while the radio was on in the background, there wasn’t a lot of other sound to take in. We had grunts take turns flipping through radio stations to listen for Medraka. Not that it would really help. Listening gave the younger, newer members a sense of control, but those of us who’d seen it and lived to tell about it later—with their minds still intact—knew there was no control when it came to Medraka. It could appear from anywhere, at any moment, and level a city in hours without moving a muscle. The US Air Force once fired a nuclear missile at it, and the missile vanished, only to detonate in a desolated province in southern China several days later. No one could verify where it had been between those times, but the death toll, thankfully, was low.

  Medraka’s purpose was as unclear as its origins. I didn’t have real answers, but always summarized it by saying, “It came from chaos, and now, it’s trying to make a new home.”

  A frustrated groan drew my attention. Walking east, I caught sight of Grover on the highest sniper vantage point, looking off toward the sun. Stairs creaked and groaned as I climbed up, so I noted to repair them later, just in case. Needless to say, he heard me coming.

  “Mornin, Hennessy,” he said.

  “Morning,” I mumbled.

  Cindy smirked at my half-asleep face. “Maybe you should go back to bed, bright eyes.”

  “Nah.” I looked out over yesterday’s battlefield. “Can’t fall asleep again once I’m up. What about you? Why are you awake?”

  Eyes on the horizon, he spoke in an almost wistful, longing way. “When the sun rises, so do I.”

  “Because it’s a big ball of fire?”

  With a grin, he replied, “Precisely.” Then frowned and looked down at his hands. “But I guess that’s my problem today. Those Nanites had a point, I guess. I don’t think they meant anything by it, but yesterday, they called me imprecise. And they’re right. I’m used to using fireballs, or flamethrowers, or firewalls to keep the Phranna at bay, but… I’m useless to the rest of you when fighting close together. The most I could do is maybe superheat myself and punch-burn the Phranna. No telling if that’d actually hurt them or just get me killed. Still… I don’t like…” He grimaced.

  “You don’t like feeling like you might be dangerous?”

  He nodded. “All it takes is one forgotten cigarette to burn down a building.”

  I let his words settle in the morning air, which hung heavy and without breeze. The faint stink of charred bodies wafted our way, just far enough that our camp didn’t reek of death, but still close enough to remind us of the battles we might fight in a month, or week, or day. Of the battle that might kill us all if we didn’t devise a real strategy to kill Medraka, the source of the poisoned river that was slowly drowning all hope of returning to a normal life.

  “That’s how my parents died, you know.”

  He caught me off guard. “What?”

  “Apartment fire. Mom fell asleep smoking and…” Grover set his hands against the railing, staring at the ground. His words fell heavy and slow, so I just let him talk. “I was twelve. Dead of night, I woke up to fire everywhere, parents’ room blocked off. Got scared. Ran. A fireman told me they’d been unconscious. Smoke inhalation. Probably never knew they were burning. They were only two of fifteen people who died that day. The other thirteen, they probably knew. Not sure how many, but people blocks away heard the screams.”

  Pulling back, he conjured a fireball into his hand, raising it up to pretend it was the sun. “Sometimes I try to tell myself this is… control, in a way. That using fire, bending it to my will, it’s fate’s way of giving me a chance to right what happened. To turn pain into power.” The ball vanished. “Power has a way of feeding itself. The more I use, the more I can use, but…”

  He trailed off, so I stepped in. “But you’re afraid of what ‘too much’ might do?”

  An uncertainty crossed his face. “Not afraid. Not really. More… guilty. Like I’ve already crossed a line, and pray I’m on the right side, ‘cause if I’m not, who knows what’ll happen. Sometimes, fires that burn the brightest burn out the quickest. Other times, they set whole states ablaze, and blot the sky for hundreds of miles.”

  I turned to the north, where a gleaming metropolis sat, waiting for us to come home. But we couldn’t go home. Not yet. The millions of people living in that city, in cities just like it, all across the globe, were still living out their normalcy, the day-to-day monotony of stock markets and going to the gym and texting their friends about the next Marvel movie, as if half of the world’s militaries hadn’t been wiped out by a headless, interdimensional monstrosity. As if the remainder of our militaries hadn’t survived by giving up.

  “You know,” I said, “your power comes from… well, you. It’s in your DNA, right?”

  “Yup. Gene splicing accident. Doctors said that since diabetes is, in part, a disease stemming from inflammation, my body got confused. Instead of reducing the inflammation and curing the disease, it learned to generate fire. Became one with the flame, rather than eliminating the reaction.”

  “So maybe it’s about your approach. Maintaining control might be more about mentality than will power. Mind over matter, you know? Like with me. Yesterday, I missed a few shots. Especially toward the end. If I start focusing on who’s out there, who’s getting hurt, I get flustered. Anxious. Start messing up, missing, even with the tracking scope, but staying cool and calm, staying collected, bang, kill shot, every time. If I keep my head level, I keep my sights level. So… Maybe you’re thinking too large scale, too future possibility, too ‘I’ve got to kill everything to protect everyone’ and not enough ‘I have to kill that one particular thing.’”

  He nodded. “The more I kill, the less likely they are to kill others. …I see your point. Be more like an engine. Controlled combustion. Fire one cylinder at a time.”

  Grover stared at his hands a moment longer, then raised his right arm, curling his fist into a finger gun. A tiny flame appeared at the tip of his finger. “How do you usually shoot? Like, how do you… focus in, get that perfect shot?”

  “When I train, I try to envision the weapon as part of me. I guess that’ll be easier for you, since you’re, well, the weapon, but feeling that power as part of who you are makes it easier to control. Then I exhale, and pull the trigger.”

  Squinting his eyes, he aimed his finger at the sun. “Breathe… and burn.” The tiny fingertip fire coiled in tight, then shot forward like a bullet, arcing off into the sun, where I lost sight of it since I didn’t want to go blind staring into a star.

  “Looks like you’ve got it.” I smiled.

  He frowned. “Range wasn’t that good. Have to work on that.” Then his eyes showed a bit of relief. “But all the best fires start with a spark.”

  “You have a lot of fire puns lined up, don’t you?”

  “Fire puns are roughly fifty percent of what I say.” He nodded. “I’ve got work to do. Feel free to watch, but I’m not gonna be talking much.”

  Raising both hands into finger guns, he took a deep, steady breath and fired again. I watched for a moment as he took aim at the bodies below, around a quarter mile off, and tried hitting them. I saw his concern now—the bolt fizzled out halfway there—yet after a few minutes, his range was already increasing.

  I walked off, wondering what I might do to pass the hours, when I caught sight of Lisa leaving the coffee tent, coffee in her only hand. She hadn’t bothered to put a replacement on her other arm, or perhaps had taken it off. Seeing me, she waved with the stump, its circular metal attachment port shining in the dawn light. “Morning.”

  “Morning.” I wondered when
we collectively agreed to stop saying ‘good’ before ‘morning,’ and if we’d all lost our sense of ‘good’ in the world at the same time.

  “Can’t believe I’m awake,” she groaned. “I was up with Steve talking about the kinesis cannon until, like… an hour ago.”

  “Holy hell, go back to sleep! We have like thirty people up and around, keeping watch, not counting Grover, who counts as probably five to ten. Maybe more.”

  She shook her head, blonde hair shimmering like a waterfall in the dawn light. “Made a lot of headway, but I want to see if I can hammer out the final touches before anything else happens. Don’t want to be unprepared.”

  “You really think something’s up?”

  Lisa took a long sip. Craning her neck around, she surveyed the camp, as if expecting something to already be on top of us. “Yeah. Stomach’s not sitting right.”

  That was, perhaps, our best warning sign. She’d been present for Medraka’s arrival, and managed to survive despite no one knowing what it was, or how to kill it. That was also how she lost her arm. Lisa had been in the military at the time, and that deranged beast caused every vehicle there to spontaneously burst. A piece of metal sliced through the air, detaching her arm so cleanly and suddenly that she didn’t realize it was missing until she tried to pull her pistol on an approaching Phranna. Phantom limb had tricked her into thinking she just kept missing the grip, until she looked down and realized what was actually missing.

  Since then, her instincts have always known when something was going on. The Phranna didn’t bother her though. Never them. Only the big one.

  “Shit,” I mumbled. “Good thing Damien’s got that mech.”

  “Yeah, and the Nanites mentioned something about biometric targeting parameters. They have resources that’ll help him build better systems, so we don’t have to scramble out of the way of his mech’s death ray next time we’re getting overwhelmed. But the helmet’s the fascinating part. He designed it to link directly into the user’s brain waves, amplifying them to help the mech channel them, in a few shitty words. That’s why he was so aggro when the Nanites first showed up. A biofeedback loop made the mech receive him clearer, but also made him temporarily more…”