by Kevin Holton
“Oh, sweet. Need a light for that?”
Steve leaned forward as Grover snapped his fingers, leaving his thumb sticking straight up, a tiny flame dancing on top. I closed the distance and yanked the cigar out of his mouth. “No! I am not letting the guy covered in bombs run around with a lit cigar in his mouth. If I die today, it will not be because of you self-destructing! Now how do we fit more people on this truck?”
“Five minutes!” someone hollered behind us.
Grover ran to the back. “How much do we need the trunk?”
“We don’t! Fuck that shit!” Steve yelled.
“Wait, no, what are you planning?” I asked.
He opened the trunk, then grabbed it at the hinges, melting them clean off and tossing the whole rear section aside. Beaming, Grover gave us a thumbs-up, which Steve returned while I groaned. It was too late to ask him to fix that—if he even could—and we didn’t have time to talk about it anyway, so I sprinted back across the camp, looking for Lisa. I didn’t find her.
I did, however, find Akila. “Are your people prepared?” she asked.
“No one, in history, across the whole globe, has ever been prepared for Medraka to show up, and that includes Hyperion company. So, on that note, are yours?”
She shook her head. “We didn’t have time to prepare any weapons, not even the convergence protocol.”
While it would obviously have been nice to have more destructive force on our side, I had to ask: “Can your people even die? You’re a swarm of nanobots. I thought, like, each of you is backed up to a cloud server, and holographically stored in that swarm, so your physical body retains all information of the person, rebuilding if it’s destroyed somehow.”
With a heavy sigh, she said, “The body may reform, but the mind is still human. There’s only so much one can take. With us, it… it’s more a matter of sanity and the will to live. If a Nanite loses its mind, or wants to die, the person can reformat their own cells, deleting his or her self out of existence. The bots return to us, still in shape, but are little more than a shambling remnant of the friend we’ve lost.”
This was a dire, urgent situation, with our recruits sprinting in all different directions, barely enough weapons to go around, and not nearly enough people who could actually use a gun anyway. Still, hearing this, and imagining Damien’s body returning to camp, eyes blank and mind empty, I stopped a moment to look at her, eyes wide. “Good fucking gods, remind me to never become a Nanite.”
She was about to reply when the air around us sucked in, then snapped back out, knocking us all away from the epicenter. Medraka had materialized, punching its way in from whatever pocket dimension it called home, looming just a little outside the west edge of camp. Though gut-turning and sun-eclipsing as ever, I couldn’t help noticing the right side—the side I shot—still moved. It was grayer, the arms a little stiffer, a black spot the size of a volleyball on its putrid chest, but it moved. Aiming up, I peered through the thermal scope of my rifle and saw no heat signatures from that side of its body. A hint of blood, but nothing suggesting organ function.
People screamed all around us. From the corner of my eye, I saw one recruit fall silent, drop to his knees, raise a pistol, and coat the nearby ground with his own gray matter. He could hardly be called the first to kill himself upon first seeing the thing, but there was a chance, however remote, that he’d be the last.
Medraka leaned down, all four arms bracing against the ground, the two torsos parallel to the ground. They snapped and smacked together, an alligator turned sideways, sizing up its meal. It made the sound of raw meat thrown at a wall, even as its skin rippled, ready to unleash a swarm of Phranna. Last time, it had seemed too angry to bother with grunts, preferring to do the work itself. This time, now that it knew we knew how to hurt it, the kaiju was going all out.
Time to kill or be killed.
In the distance, I could hear the live radio chatter switch over to “…Medraka sighting just south of the city! It looks distracted, but anyone living on the city limits should still consider fleeing immediately.” Another grim and, frankly, unnecessary reminder of our goals.
The flesh of its cleaved torsos rippled, then ripped, spilling out Phranna directly into our camp. Our borders had only been breached twice, and both times were massacres. Now, the enemy was dropping directly into our camp. I knelt down, not bothering with vantage points or cover, and began picking them off. Breathe. Bang. Bang. Bang. Breathe. Bang. Bang. Five dead, one that had been ready to eviscerate a young woman we’d only brought on two weeks earlier. She looked over, pale, slightly green, nodded at me, and sprinted away from the horde. One youngish man sprinted directly to the horde, laughing as they sliced him apart.
Medraka clapped its two upper hands together, letting out a shockwave that leveled our tents, sent our equipment flying, and knocked many of the closer recruits around. One tumbled, hitting the ground at odd angles. I had no idea how many bones the poor kid broke, but he never got a chance to scream. All I could do was pray he’d died sooner rather than later, because when we found him later, he was a reverse pin cushion, with bone fragments sticking through pretty much every inch of his ravaged body. Medraka stood far enough off that I, and those near me, were only shoved back a few feet, though my hearing took a big hit.
Mari, Grover, and Allessandra all raced in, ready for action. With a glance over my shoulder, I saw Steve mounting weaponry to the top of the Humvee, preparing it for others to use. Smart idea there—his explosives would’ve been useless at best and dangerous at worst now that the fighting was within our walls, but making sure we could all help take these creatures out if we had to flee? Nice to know they wouldn’t be chomping at our asses.
The trio that had raced directly into the fray were doing pretty damn well. Grover may not have had much range, but his finger gun shots were remarkably effective, and unlike bullets, fire could melt straight through their armored head plating. Allessandra and Mari all but danced around him, with our resident psychic effortlessly tearing apart Phranna with a wave of her hands, and our newest member slicing them apart as easily as they would tear into us. Once he got into the rhythm, Grover began doing some trick shots, firing off from behind his back and over his shoulder.
The air around Allessandra rippled strangely. I thought back to her comment about feeling psychic energy like she moved underwater, and that’s exactly how it looked. Reality thickened and slowed around her, succumbing to her touch, each flick of her wrist the flap of a butterfly’s wing, creating future hurricanes. Chaos in motion.
I kept the flanking Phranna at bay, noticing that Medraka had slowed, rearing back up to its full height, yet not actually attacking. I couldn’t get a read on it, but it seemed to be thinking. A creature that was all mind and no brain stopping to think gave me a very bad feeling.
The dance macabre before me took down Phranna as fast as they came, the other recruits wising up and staying the hell out of their way. One behind me began crazily laugh-sobbing, the hard thwack of a fist against a jaw rang out. The laugh-sobbing stopped, so I looked over and saw the young woman I’d saved standing over a different woman, whom I didn’t recognize. A gun lay in the dirt by her now-unclenched fist, and based on the angle, it had been pointed at me. The woman who’d now saved my life gave me another nod, taking the gun for herself.
Tides shift slowly, so I’d always been annoyed when people referred to ‘the tide of battle.’ Maybe that made sense in older days, when wars were fought with swords and spears, and winning was usually a matter of who had more bodies to throw at the enemy, but it didn’t anymore. We weren’t huddling in a phalanx, shields up to protect from a rain of razor-sharp arrows, nor were we calling on gods to aid us. The ‘tide’ could turn in an instant, even before Medraka. Guns. Tanks. Nukes. Whatever we decided to use, they could turn even the worst loss to victory in moments.
Medraka knew this well, and it raised one of its gray arms—one of, I now realized, its dead arms—and pointed it
at Mari, who stumbled, slowed, and stopped. She stood unsteadily, weaving a bit, equilibrium lost, then turned, blades still raised, swinging at Grover. Even without looking through a scope, I could see her eyes were black.
“Oi!” Grover yelled, throwing himself onto the ground, where he tucked into a backward roll, springing to his feet. “Watch it!”
She stalked toward him, running the blades over each other, a chef sharpening her knives as the Phranna began swarming en masse. With two of the three busy, it was up to Allessandra, with a little assistance from me, to protect the rest of the crew. I’d seen this before. Only once before, but it was bad. Once Medraka took over someone’s mind, there was no way to free it. She closed in on Grover, who took fleeting shots at the bugs around him, but the obvious distraction prompted some of our lower ranking members to rush in. Their pistols and SMGs were helpful, but not very. Within a few seconds, a Phranna had grabbed somebody, ripped his head clear from his shoulders, and threw it at another of our grunts hard enough to crack both skulls, leaving the other unconscious.
“Hey, a little help?” Grover glanced my way, as if I could do something.
Well, actually, I could do something. I raised the gun. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.
I’d only mercy killed three people. I’d never outright murdered someone, possessed or otherwise. That burden never fell to me.
My aim was thrown off when she lunged forward. Grover, thankfully, had decent reflexes, and managed to dodge. She swiped another few times, but her usual expertise seemed dulled by Medraka’s influence—or maybe she was resisting. Nanite integration, even slight, might’ve provided a layer of defense.
They spun, fighting, still in close quarters, Grover doing his best to kill the Phranna he could without harming Mari, but a delayed move left a gash in his left arm. Like all his wounds, it cauterized itself in seconds, but I heard him fire off a fairly long string of expletives as he raised both arms, creating a heat shield that melted her arm blades clean off.
Mari stopped, eyes still black, but mostly unmoving, looking at the pool of metal on the ground. It was already edging toward her, looking to reintegrate with its host. She looked up, mouth curled into a rabid dog’s snarl.
I raised the gun again, but heard Allessandra yell for me to wait. Lowering my gun, I watched as she grabbed Mari’s shoulder, turning her, and smacked her across the face.
Mari reeled, stunned, and stopped. Then she dropped to one knee as her arm blades reassembled. Her head hung in deference, hair obscuring her face as Allessandra turned, clapped her hands, and let out a shockwave of her own. It wasn’t nearly as hard as Medraka’s, and only made the Phranna stumble, but it was enough to make them slow, second guessing the frontal assault. It gave Grover an opportunity to rush in and set up a wall, buying us some time.
“Get up,” Allessandra snarled.
Mari rose.
“You joined this team to fight for us, and you will fight for us, or so help me, I’ll rip you apart. Are we clear?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Mari’s voice replied, but it didn’t sound like her. The words came in a cold, hollow tone, as if she were speaking into a steel pipe. Raising her arms, Mari took stock of her surroundings.
Her eyes were still black.
She turned to face the horde, held at bay by Grover’s flames, sliding her blades together, making a steady snick, snick, snick as she approached. He looked back and forth nervously, until Mari spoke. “Allow me. You’re needed elsewhere.” She motioned for him to step aside.
Medraka trembled with what I could only assume was anger, seeing its pawn turned back against it. I didn’t know what to be more scared of: the infuriated, senseless monstrosity, or Allessandra, who raced back toward me with Grover tailing her. He, too, looked at her with a mix of awe and anxiety.
“She’ll buy us time.” Allessandra’s eyes appeared a little darker.
“We—I guess we have to take out the other heart,” I said. “That side, the gray one, the one we shot, it’s still dead, but I think it’s using its psychic powers to… I don’t know, to imitate life, like a marionette with invisible strings.”
“That’s bullshit!” Grover yelled. “And where’s Warrior?”
An engine roared behind us, and the recruits scattered as the Humvee rolled up, Steve seated in the main gunner seat with his kinetic cannon. Lisa had taken the wheel, but leaned out. “You!” she yelled, pointing at the ground troops. “Make a line, hold the line! Don’t let any of those hardbacked freaks get closer. We’ve got support inbound, but you’ve gotta be the defense of defense. Mari’s not gonna be able to handle them all on her own. You three,” she added to us, “get the hell in!”
“Support inbound? Who?” I yelled, climbing into the now-wide-open trunk, holding on with one hand while the other kept my rifle close. Grover got in next to me, while Allessandra hopped onto the roof. Her presence had changed, in ways I couldn’t quite identify. She leaned back, a hand against the roof, casual and poised. This wasn’t remotely close to the panicked chaos of those around us, or even her own behavior just a day earlier.
As if in response, Nanites flooded out from the south, flanking the Phranna. “They were holding off, waiting to see if they could integrate Medraka’s blood, like we’d talked about. Sorry I took so long,” she said, flooring it out the side of the camp so we could circle the beast itself. Allessandra, though having no supports or seatbelts, didn’t budge, unaffected by the acceleration. “I thought I’d be back sooner, and that it’d be back later.”
“So did it work?” Grover asked. “Because I think fire will still hurt it. And, you know, we have Allessandra.”
Our psychic glared up at Medraka with all the wrath of a younger sister envious of the first-born sibling. There was no way to know if she’d just re-brainwashed Mari, or was controlling her directly, but I sure wasn’t going to ask.
“Let’s worry about where to shoot before we worry about… Oh, god,” she said as Medraka turned toward us, tracking our movements. Phranna continued to spill from its flesh, racing into the camp, where the Nanites were too busy holding them off to target the source. “It knows us. It really, really wants us dead now. Heartbreaker, you on that?”
I aimed high, targeting the hot center of its one living torso. “My plan’s to blow its heart straight out its god damn back, Warrior. Any help with that, Mindcrusher?”
“Absolutely.” She didn’t move, but added, “You’re ready. Go… No, hold off, Hennessy. Warrior, floor it.”
Looking away, I almost asked what she was talking about, but I had the grave misfortune of seeing what she was talking about firsthand. With a series of sonic boomfs as they appeared, buildings had begun appearing around Medraka’s body. Its four arms raised, grabbing some, while others floated, or twisted like drills, just as the shards of metal had during our previous battle, except these weren’t going to impale us. They were going to crush the shit out of us.
“Fuckin’ shit! It’s throwing the whole of god damn Cincinnati down on our asses!” NAFTA yelled, eyes on his cannon. No matter how powerful he’d made it, there was no way he was deflecting an entire building. We sped up, veering off course, no longer concerned with circling Medraka. We needed to get the hell out of there.
“I’m gonna pull us away from the camp! Maybe that’ll get it away from our troops,” Warrior yelled from the front.
“Whatever, Warrior, just maybe don’t get us killed!” Cindy yelled as a five-story apartment building crashed down barely fifty feet away. Dirt exploded up with a resounding boom, but it wasn’t loud enough to mask the screaming I heard shortly before impact, or the relative silence after.
“Oh, god. The buildings, they’re still full of people!” I shielded my eyes as blood cascaded all around us.
A phone booth hit the ground hard behind us, sending shattered glass in our direction. Fortunately, the shards couldn’t keep up with the car, even when we skidded out, Warrior turning the car sideways and slamming on the breaks to avoid
a small clinic that had been dropped pretty much straight down. Hitting the gas, we peeled out, moving circularly around Medraka again, this time to the south.
“Well, Heartbreaker, maybe if you pull your head out of your ass and kill that sonofabitch, we stand half a cyborg’s chance in a thunderstorm of getting those bitches out alive!” Cindy snapped.
We were approaching its feet, and I had a pretty unobstructed view of its chest, as well as the Nanites who’d joined with our troops to desperately attempt stemming the tide of Phranna. I’d never seen such an endless outpouring from the creature’s flesh, and at this rate, they’d tear apart our camp, Great Bend, and all of North America in weeks.
Losing was no longer an option. We’d win, or we’d die.
I crouched, doing my best to aim, leveling the barrel at the heat signature I assumed was its heart. In the time it took my finger to move off the trigger guard and onto the trigger itself, Medraka slammed its torsos together, sending out a shockwave that knocked us back even at our current distance, our vehicle bouncing over the terrain, unstable and sputtering for purchase. Then it slammed its four fists into the ground, and if each building had been a comet, Medraka unleashed a meteor shower.
Medraka’s combination of complete rage and having no senses is likely the only reason we didn’t all immediately die. I’d said it before, and I said it to myself then: rage makes you sloppy. That rule applies to everything, even kaiju.
Everything from one-story ranch houses to massive office buildings began smashing into the dirt around us. Some collided in midair, showering us with debris that Cindy and NAFTA blasted away, or tried to. We all clung on tight, veering in circles, Lisa trying desperately to open a window for me to take that last shot, but then a stop sign, of all the damn things, rammed through the chassis, and we flipped.
If I hadn’t fallen into the cabin, I would’ve fallen out. Cindy wasn’t so lucky. He was flung from the vehicle, hitting the ground hard, crying out, “Oh god, my bones!” as he skittered off behind us. NAFTA sat locked into the gunnery seat, and I almost screamed out for Mindcrusher. Then I realized we were floating. Flipping, sure, but not falling, just floating, carried forward by momentum as our psychic, telekinetically anchored to the roof, dropped us back on our wheels, yanking the sign free as Warrior tested the pedals. The engine revved, spitting out pebbles behind us, but Cindy was still a way back.