“You’d compromise the city's infrastructure for its citizens? I’m very impressed at the Mark Seven reasoning code.”
“Thank you, Vidar.” Nicky rolled off, the majority of their supplies contained in his backside.
Jessica couldn’t believe the difference a day made in trust. Then again, he’d had every opportunity to betray her in the past, her last time at a firehouse still in clear memory. He seemed as lost as they were, and though he could live indefinitely without them, he not only questioned his superiors, he defied them to follow his own sense of right and wrong. Whether he was delusional or a robotic saint, she’d come to rely on him, trusting him as much as Ayla.
This firehouse was again a smooth-edged red box, except sitting alone on a small reservoir’s shore. A pair of full-bellied bots blurred away from the rooftop, their AG shells glowing, leaving tracers. She wiped her brow with her bandages, feeling glad she’d learned her lesson on timely reconnaissance. Nicky soon emerged from the garage, beckoning with his tentacles.
The group hustled from their bus stop to the firehouse. The brothers watched the sky and their backsides, a lot more nervous than she’d expected. If she had any sense, she’d be nervous too. Was she really doing this again?
From the unseasonable street-roast to cool shade and air-conditioning, they skidded to a halt. Two visor-lights blinked in the garage. The nearest belonged to Nicky. The other was a shiny, clean twin, arms unfurled, one holding a net, another a wicked looking stick-and-hook.
Jessica cursed, fumbling for her plasma pistol. She heard Calvin rattle his rifle. Ayla didn’t seem the least bit perturbed—too trusting with machines.
“No, stop!” Nicky said. “Spangler is a friend.”
She paused, though her gun was ready to fire. “Thanks for the fucking heads-up.”
“His high frequency communications are malfunctioning. He’s been silent since the flare. I thought he was disabled.”
“Happy reunion!” Spangler wiggled two free arms in the air. “I just got here. Pleased to meetch’y’all.”
“Good to see crazy runs in the family.”
“Ah, so you’ve found your spitfire Valkyrie.” The bot laid the net over Nicky’s puncture wounds, stretching his rubbery belly and prodding with the humming hook. “Congrats.”
“I’m a corporate engineer,” Trent stepped forward, laying down his railgun. “What do your Self-D run-throughs say about your H.F. trans and coding?”
The conversation quickly degenerated into thick strings of jargon. Spangler paused in his work, snaking an arm to the garage’s maintenance cage, returning with a briefcase computer and toolbox. As one bot repaired the other, Trent had Spangler remove his conical helmet and plugged a cord into an access port among blocks of red crystal. The technological circle-jerk didn’t interest her.
“Hey, Calvin. Want to check shit out?”
He looked from the open garage door to his brother, hesitating.
“C’mon. We’re the ones taking the risk. He’s safer with those two than if we had ten of us.” She clubbed him on the back of the head. His lips twisted in a frown but soon turned to a smirk. “Cool. We’ll leave you to it, guys. Gunna have a look around.”
“Try downstairs,” Spangler said. “Have yourselves a merry jailbreak.”
“O-Kay?”
“Careful, kids.” Trent didn’t look up from the bot’s head. He held what looked like a laser flashlight, the pen-sized instrument beaming all colors of the rainbow.
“Sure thing, pops.” Jessica dragged Calvin away, Ayla and Khan pacing behind them. In the garage’s corner were the stairwell and hyper-lift. Given the state of science these days, she opted for the stairs.
* * *
The firehouse’s bottom floor was a labyrinth of generator rooms, water filters, supply closets, and fallout shelters. They should have waited for a guide; the tunnels ran two-Nicky’s wide and twenty feet tall, always turning at right angles. The halls and rooms were named with letters and numbers—meaningless to her, though she tried to keep track of their entry-exit point. Calvin never left her side, being rather chivalrous for a dickhead.
“He doesn’t really like you, you know,” he said out of nowhere. A dickhead, proven.
“Like I care.” Eventually, the electrical humming ended and the offbeat pounding and moaning began. One of the only coherent signs, ‘detention area,’ invited them to a long stretch of corridor. The forlorn echoes filled the hallway. The surveillance system seemed to be down: each door’s internal-monitor displayed a flat gray.
“Just don’t get any ideas, that’s all.”
“What the fuck is your problem, Calvin?” Neither of them broke stride, scanning the doors for something other than the obvious.
“He’s in love. And he needs that to keep fighting, to get home.”
“Like you.”
“Yeah, like me.”
“Trent ain’t you. He can make his own decisions.” Jessica paused, squinting at a screen that showed not gray, but a field of static. She made out human shapes, ones that moved. “Let’s try one.”
In her attempt to learn the door’s controls, it swished open, no keypass required—oops.
A ragged trio stumbled to their feet, fists raised. Two men and a middle-aged lady, they shuffled to the rear, all staring at Calvin’s gun. Rage lit their eyes.
“Nice job,” he said. “A shotgun would sure come in handy now.”
“Are you retarded?” Jessica clubbed his barrel down, pocketed her plasma pistol, and raised her hands. “Hi.”
The tallest man cleared his throat. His lips were cracked and swollen. He rasped, “Stay back.” She wasn't sure if he was talking to them, or his fellow captives.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Calvin didn’t raise his rifle, but his fingers tensed around the grip and trigger.
“Shut up, Calvin. Look, we’re not here to hurt you. We’re on a jailbreak.” The men and woman glanced to each other. How long had they been here? She tiptoed a look above their shoulders, seeing a prone body, a shirt draped over its head and shoulders. Dead, but not revived? “D-Did you know him?”
“No. The boy was sick when we got here.” The woman’s voice cracked. “What’s going on?”
“The government hasn’t stepped in. We’re saving ourselves. There’s people in the other cells, people we can’t help. They’re not human anymore.”
They knew that much. They related a brief account of their stories—if she had some water to offer, she would have. They'd all been picked up the first night, during The Mission’s attack on City Centre. They thought it had been a harsh evacuation, but thirty-six hours without food or drink later, they’d remained prisoners with only their voices and the Dvorak’s moans to keep them company. More than once they’d heard screams in the hall, people dying or being taken away.
“We’ll get you upstairs, to somewhere safe, but you’ll have to trust us.” Jessica couldn’t stop staring at the body. Why was he really dead-dead?
“But we don’t trust you,” Calvin continued. “Ten steps behind me, always. We won’t put you in danger, but if you try and jump us for our guns, I’ll toast us all. A shotgun would sure come in handy now.”
As extreme as it was, he made too much sense to argue with. In the corridor, Kahn stalked the trio from behind, much to their discomfort. Jessica offered no explanation.
They reached the back wall and began a room-by-room search. The moaning ones were easy no’s, but with Ayla’s help, they identified the cells with survivors. The introductions and threats were repeated a half-dozen times, each time the mob growing a bit larger—and more uncertain. Twenty-odd large, Jessica purposely opened a wrong door, allowing her and Calvin to nuke a Dvorak-stuffed room. The show of force silenced the survivors. Ayla went from Dvorak-detector to Kahn’s muzzle, spending most of her attention keeping the tiger in check.
Back towards the exit, the clatter of restless corpses banged in one room, responding to muffled female screams in i
ts neighbor.
After seeing a dozen motionless bodies having succumbed to injury or thirst, Jessica knew in her heart someone was alive in there. Was a finally-revived Dvorak attacking her—why now? The cell’s screen flickered between solid gray and absolute static.
The mob didn’t advance when the door slid open, though she and Calvin were both poised to attack, attention diverted. The screams filled the hall, but immediately broke. Her eyes grew wide; her jaw dropped.
A nude man slumped over the back of a woman, a girl, who rested her face against the floor on forearms and knees. Both faces snapped towards the door, eyes at once droopy and shuddering with shock. The girl, also naked, scrambled to the corner, clutching a skirt over her chest and crossing her legs. The young man did the same, but found nothing to cover himself.
You gotta be fucking kidding me.
Jessica glanced back at the survivors, as did Calvin, watching their back.
“J-Jessie?” said the boy inside the room. A familiar voice.
She thought she’d been imagining things. Her initial reaction was to set the cell afire. She forced her gaze back into the room, her jaw cramping from being clenched. A long breath later:
“Hey, Dillon. How was your day?”
~ 19 ~
Unsettled unions
November 30, 4124 – 6:51 PM
“I-Is she your girlfriend?” The petite, black girl hung on Dillon’s arm, both now dressed, albeit not properly. The buttons on her ebony-lace blouse were off-center, her handlebar hairstyle frizzed and just as confused. Was she pretty? Definitely—just his type—she looked about fifteen.
“No, Christy. Just someone I know.”
Go fuck yourself.
The situation added a new layer of tension over the entourage, all twenty-nine of them. Jessica ignored the murmurs, leaving it to Calvin and Kahn to keep them in fearful-calm. While it was a rescue, the moment one of them decided to rescue themselves, with their saviors’ guns, there would be a fight and someone would die. She felt the same as Calvin: absolutely unwilling to give their power to people who hadn’t a clue what to do, where to go.
Dillon’s every question dropped her to a new level of hate, asking about how she got there, where her shoes were, and what happened to her family. The quintessential moment:
“Are you mad?”
“What the fuck do you think?” She shouted, two steps from the stairwell. “Can you even understand what I’ve been through, what I’ve lost? Everyone is fucking dead. My mom, Jacob, my friends, your friends. I burnt Tabby to a crisp, destroyed my hand, and could have been eaten too many times to count. I mean it Dillon; how was your fucking day?”
“Pretty shitty,” he mumbled, looking from her, to Christy, to Calvin, to the anxious thirty-some at his heels. “She’s a sweet girl. Blame me, not her.”
Christy flushed under brown skin, staring at the floor. She fumbled at her buttons.
“Let’s move,” Calvin nodded upstairs, rifle still aimed at the survivors. “Call your friends.”
She snarled and summoned the furries through the ranks, who promptly parted for the tiger. They ran up the stairs, yipping and panting, animal-speak. Jessica finally looked beyond Dillon to the faces she’d liberated. Ranging from a few ancients to a couple of kids, and one baby, the disheveled mob seemed more full of energy than herself, all by the spark in their eyes. While some of it might have been spite at new, young captors, the majority of it looked almost bright, hopeful, ready to fight, ready to live.
That was the very mindset she and Calvin had been defending against, though hadn’t attempted to squelch. If they’d been going for domination, they could have taken their clothes and intimidated through violence. These people were just as strong as them, and deserved as much respect as survivors, and as rivals.
“You’re on your own up there,” she shouted, “but I suggest you stick around for a minute. We didn’t count on finding ya’ll here, but we might come up with something. We’re on our way to a fight, and not taking guests, so you’ll have to make up your own minds on what to do now.”
Not waiting for answers, Jessica turned her back and followed her critters upstairs.
* * *
“How many firehouses are there in City Centre?” Trent gawked as the survivors filed into the garage in an unending line, staring at the bots with blatant vitriol and suspicion. Jessica hoped they could play this with some tact.
“Five.” Nicky plugged into a hydrant, his belly expanding. Ayla and Kahn ran circles around him. “This scenario likely repeated throughout.”
“It’s not your problem.” Spangler’s helmet was back on. “Holly’s counting on you. We all are. We’ll worry about the Mark Sixes and captive survivors.”
“Shannon isn’t stupid, or whoever’s doing this,” Trent jammed the briefcase computer and toolbox into Nicky’s already overstuffed storage, playing Tetris with weapons and ammo. “Holly’s trick won’t work a second time—”
“Unless we attack now. I’ve just relayed our situation and strategy to the other Mark Sevens. Most have agreed to copy our efforts for similar goals.”
“Fixing you was a good idea.”
“Yeah, it was,” Spangler said. Rolling parallel to the released captives, he raised his voice, “I can’t presume to apologize for your loss and captivity, but I’m sure you locals know the difference between apples and oranges, Sixes and Sevens. A mighty fine peach of ours is how y’all got free, and she’s got a group of you’s in the Bay District, safe and sound. They’re waiting on these fine people to open the door for your rescue. Staying here means getting captured again. Scattering on your own would get you eaten. Not saying you ain’t got a choice, but I can take you to the others while these heroes do their job.”
Heroes? Fine, whatever kept the crowd in line.
The captives had no leader, no voice, but as a group, they shuffled between Jessica and the brothers, who took an opposite wall to let them pass. Not a word of thanks was said, not even by the children, who seemed mute at best, catatonic at worst. Spangler offered water-on-the-go, often accepted, sometimes not.
Jessica struggled to keep her frustration in check. It wasn’t that she was looking for pats on the back for doing the obvious. The catastrophe was at fault, not the people, not even the city or bots as a whole. She couldn’t get her head around anything but her own perspective, her pain and trauma.
Another distant explosion vibrated the ground. Outside, the sun was well-along its decent to the horizon. It was time for everyone to go, including them. Two of the survivors stayed behind, Dillon and his pedo-girlfriend. Trent moved to speak, but his brother held him back.
“Don’t lag behind,” Jessica stared him dead in the eyes.
“I’m with you.”
Since when, asshole?
“Not a good idea.” Calvin walked to her side, rifle slung behind his back. He cradled her arm by the elbow, looking from the bandage to the setting sun. His touch was gentle, warm. Despite herself, she blushed. He unwound her bandage. “Get going, already.”
Dillon clenched his fists. “We ain’t traveling with a fucking bot and thirty half-dead fish-in-a-barrel.”
“It’s your life to lose, asshole,” She flexed her healed fingers—while new-flesh pink, they felt no worse for wear. She grinned, resting the hand on Calvin’s shoulder. “We passed a hotel two blocks up Clydesdale. Why don’t you hole up there and fuck some more.”
Christy appeared a moment away from fainting. Dillon’s face contorted. “That’s none of your fucking business, slu—“ He wisely chomped the word off. “I know you. We’re coming with until we find something better. Try and stop us.”
“The deadline, Valkyrie.” Nicky detached from the hydrant, pointing at the sunset with a dribbling arm. “Make your decision.”
Trent stared outside, jaw set. His brother remained stoic under her hand, though fixated on the door. Even Ayla seemed to share the sense of urgency, pacing back and forth at her heels.
If the ball was in her court, she’d return it, as always. The newbies were on their own, whether they tagged along or not. Jessica didn’t care anymore. She could rank her new family on one hand. Five was enough. Seven didn’t fit.
Arc 3
The Spire
~ 20 ~
Doorstep — Smoke
November 30, 4124 — 8:14 PM
“Shouldn’t we wait till tomorrow, or something?” Dillon peered into the deepening shadows with the utmost scrutiny.
“Did you hear something, Ayla?” Jessica said, over-viewing her dog, tiger, tank, and pair of boyfriends—er, brothers. Her original plasma rifle rested on her hip; Calvin held the new one. “Sounded like whining. Tiny, tiny, whining.”
He clammed up, his tart still firmly attached to his arm, right where she aught to be. It’s not like the newbies could turn back now, but she didn’t feel much sympathy for people who could indulge their lust, especially under those conditions. Moral high horse, sure, but this was par for the course with Dillon, even during an apocalypse. He could find a free ride, along with an easy fuck, in any condition, under any circumstance. She’d be nicer to Christy, except that the girl didn’t seem to have a spine or opinion of her own.
The Spire’s floodlights activated damn near on cue, at their approach. The megalith, one of Earth’s tallest building, looked as if it touched the stars themselves from this perspective. It certainly scraped the sky, its lights static or twinkling depending on how high one focused. The two hundred and twenty-third floor appeared an eternity away, though in reality not a tenth as far as they’d already traveled.
Not a problem.
Trent or Nicky would kill the Umbrella, then the word could get out, and in no time they’d all be rescued. A simple plan was a perfect one. After that, she’d take a bubble bath, marry one of the brothers, or both, with Ayla and her undead cat as ring bearers. They’d tie cans to Nicky’s butt-box and ride off into the sunset as strangers from far away lands threw rice, commemorating their achievements in little Nome. A fantasy fit for a queen.
Anatali: Ragnarok Page 10