by Andy Remic
He glanced left, to his dead comrades.
“It is you,” he said.
Amba tilted her head. “Explain.”
The man smiled, saliva strung with blood. “Fuck you,” he said.
Amba lifted the silenced pistol, and put a bullet through his kneecap. He went rigid for a moment, his breathing becoming heavy and laboured, and he slumped back a little against the broken mirror.
“Explain,” she repeated.
“No,” he croaked.
“Who do you work for?”
He stared into her eyes, and despite his pain, there was an iron will there. He would not talk. Maybe could not talk. He either did not know answers, or he’d been fed braineeze drugs. Amba gave a narrow smile, but there was no smile in her eyes. Shit. Or maybe, maybe he was just tough. She’d soon see how tough.
She lifted her right hand, extended two slightly hooked fingers towards his eye, and watched as understanding dawned. She would scoop out his eyeball and feed it to him.
“No...” he whispered.
“Tell me, fucker,” she hissed.
There came a clatter, and a woman appeared with her daughter, who was perhaps ten years old. They were staring, the woman’s mouth open in shock, a realisation of horror dawning in her wide brown eyes. But the child stared at Amba in innocence, head tilted slightly to one side as if analysing the android. She was getting a good long look, and it was too much, and it was too bad. Amba’s arm snapped up, and at the end of it was -
the gun.
She shot the child first. It was always easier that way. If she’d shot the mother, she would have had to watch the pain of realisation in the child’s eyes. So Amba got it done the hard way, but also the easy way. She got it done the right way. The young girl seemed to settle down on her haunches with a sigh, a kind of sad deflation, her arms going floppy, a red hole in her forehead above one eye. The mother was turning even at the phzzt of the silenced gun. Turning, mouth opening, breathing in sharply to scream -
Amba fired twice, one bullet through the lungs, killing the inhalation with a hiss, second bullet through the woman’s mouth, destroying lips, teeth and tongue, then on through the back of her skull. Killing her instantly. Blood spattered the wall in what auteurs called Picasso Piss. She was dead before she hit the ground, with shards of teeth and shredded tongue on her blood-drenched chin.
Back to the man. The goon. The heavy. No time. No time.
You’ve no time, said Zi, and Amba knew it. He had his hands raised. He understood. She gritted her teeth. Shot him through his hand and eyeball. He bounced back onto a sink, which began gushing water, then slithered to the floor. The water sounded like rainfall. Beautiful, sultry rainfall.
Amba put another bullet in his skull, then moved through the other attackers, delivering a second blam to each. She dropped the gun, washed blood speckles from her hand, and on her way out stopped by the mother. She stared for a moment.
Slowly, drawn by an invisible, unstoppable cord, Amba’s head turned to the child. She was pretty. Beautiful, even in death. Her eyes, like her mother’s, were large and circular and brown. Amba licked her lips. Shit. Shit.
She stepped over corpses and closed the restroom door. Turning, her slender fingers closed over the digital lock and crushed it, twisting. Locking it. Disabling it. Her slender fingers were a lot stronger than they looked. A lot.
She queued through passport control, and unusually, her heart was beating fast. After all, this was just another murder, just another killing, right? It was what she did. She did the job, did the job well, did the killing well. End of story. End of fucking story.
She boarded the Shuttle. Was shown to her comfy seat. Her face was impassive. And as she settled down, settled back, watched a glass of water placed before her, rested back her head against the comfortable headrest, and watched the surface of the water disturbed oh, so gently by the Shuttle’s take-off - she thought back, back to the girl, back to the bullet in the skull.
Why me, Mommy? Why did the bad lady shoot me?
Cold, hard eyes staring at her. Because she had to, darling. Because she had to protect her own anonymity.
But I wouldn’t have said anything, Mommy. I promise! If only she hadn’t shot us. If only she hadn’t killed us.
Shh, darling. Go to sleep. Go to sleep for... well. Forever.
But why, Mommy ? Why?
Hard eyes. Cold eyes. Eyes drilling into her soul. Eyes drilling right down to the core of her existence to find the apple-core was rotten; and she was dead inside. Dead. And lost. And gone.
Because, said Mommy, slowly, her mouth forming words with care, her smashed mouth, her torn mouth with its broken teeth and ripped tongue and bullet-slashed lips, mouth filling with blood even as she spoke, blood which spilled down her chin and stained her flowery blouse, because she is an android, and androids aren’t human; they look human, they sound human, but there’s something missing that no genetic engineer can ever create. You see, they’re a made thing, a machine organism, and, my sweet, there’s no genetic craftsman alive in the Four Galaxies who can build a soul...
~ * ~
The Shuttle cruised smooth, and Amba dreamed about the white house with the terracotta roof. She walked towards the door, the peeling door, the blue door - only now, in her path, stood the young girl she had shot. The bullet hole above the child’s eye glistened. She looked pale as moonlight. Dead as a corpse.
What do you want?
I want to understand.
Why?
Because until I understand, I can never be at peace.
What do you want to know?
Why you killed me. Why you killed us. We did you no harm.
I killed you because I had to. To protect my position as...
A killer?
Catch 22.
Round and round we go. Where we’ll stop, nobody knows.
~ * ~
Amba awoke with a start, and spent a moment reorientating herself. It was rare she slept. The Anarchy models could operate on one hour’s sleep every sixty. She gazed out of the Shuttle’s porthole at the endless drifts of space. Amba shivered. Here was something far more vast than the desolation of her soul; more empty than her empathy. Here was eternity. Here was cold death.
Amba shivered, and accepted a coffee from a passing drone, which also offered her a thermblanket when it noted her temperature. The drone hovered for a moment, then disappeared. Amba sipped the hot bitter brew, and wrapped herself up tight. She was shivering, and felt far from well. What the hell was the matter with her?
Guilt? mocked Zi, crawling from under her mental rock.
Get fucked.
You need me.
I need you like a hole in the head.
For the hundredth time Amba pictured the little girl she’d killed, and recognised in herself that she was not right. Nothing affected her like this. Not murder. Not mass execution. Not genocide. So what was so fucking different now? Where the fuck had this new humanity crawled from?
A queasiness crept over her, and she felt sick. She stumbled down the aisle and into the toilet, which locked behind her and began to play a gentle piano track. She heaved over the sink, vomiting coffee, and then stayed there for a while, shivering, her skin clammy, a sour taste in her mouth and in her soul.
“Damn this place,” she muttered. “Damn this mission.”
~ * ~
When she awoke, a planet filled the Shuttle’s porthole. It was vast. Vast. Theme Planet turned below, in slow motion, majestic, titanic, the oceans painted blue like some wonderful pastel painting, its different continents showing amber and grey and green. Clouds streamed like molten silver. Sunlight painted vast patterns across the oceans. Amba was impressed, and it took a lot to impress the cynical Anarchy Android.
She watched, entranced, as they began to plummet through the atmosphere, and felt a queasy sensation inside. The Shuttle was smooth, with only a little entry vibration, and Amba sipped a snorkel of water and listened to the squeaks o
f joy from children around her, bouncing in their seats as the Theme Planet’s rides steadily came into focus.
“Ladies and gentleman, this is your pilot, Kevin, speaking. During our approach to Theme Planet, you can just make out to your left Adventure Central. I, Kevin, can personally recommend the Museum of Baron Nutcase, which I have wandered around for days at a time. For those with an adventurous streak, and I count myself amongst those people, there’s the Skycloud Mountains, especially popular with climbers who want the thrill and danger of high peaks without the danger of falling off and dying... a-ha-ha-ha... there’s the Pterodactyl Castle, in which I heartily recommend the Hunt Your Own T-Rex Supper quest, and if you squint really tight right now you can see The Canyon of Eternal Torture. See how big it is? See how deep it is? See how many have been impaled a ha ha ha only joking youngsters! To your right, the pink, quivering, wobbling island you can make out amongst gently lapping silver waters is Pleasure Island, and this one is for the mums and dads, boyfriends and girlfriends, and young lovers of every alien persuasion. I can heartily recommend Sex City where, ahem, every whim and nuance is catered for [sigh] and indeed, walk hand in hand through the Glade of Eternal Delight, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon and around the lapping shores of Virgin’s Lake, which is exactly the same shape as a pus... oh, we’re coming into land, buckle yourselves down and prepare to visit...” - all the children joined in to shout the words - “the Theme Planet! It’s better than drugs! It’s better than sex! It’s fun, it’s fast, it’s neat... If you haven’t been sick, you soon will be! BLEEEUURGGHHHH hahahahahahahaha!”
Amba sipped her water. She heard the crack and whine as landing gear descended, and then closed her eyes and rested her head back, because she was thinking, reliving memories of a thousand infiltrations and fast SLAM drops and going into battle, machine guns rattling, yammering, bombs exploding, the pattering of shrapnel on the hull of armoured vehicles. She shivered. Shit. And here she was. Back on the ground. Back in the jaws. Ready for the kill. She opened her eyes and shrugged off her humanity like a disintegrating shroud.
Good. That was the way it fucking should be.
Six murders. Six hits.
Then she could go home.
Then they could all go home.
~ * ~
“Madam, could you please come with us?”
Amba stopped, holding up the queue of people eager to get through immigration and onto the rides.
“Come on, missus, get out of the way!” said one little girl with green eyes and black hair. Amba stepped smoothly to the side, and one of the guards took her arm in an iron-firm don’t-fuck-with-me grip.
Amba glanced around. There were five guards, armoured, with black insect-eye helmets. To the right, she saw another ten with machine guns. And there were people - hordes of people, pushing and jostling, eager to get out on the rides, eager to enjoy the Theme Planet, to enjoy their vacation!
“Am I in some kind of trouble, officer?” Amba said, smoothly. “There must have been a mistake.”
She moved with the man, who guided her expertly. Amba could have killed him five times by the time they reached the flat grey door, a door that was easy to miss and blended with the wall. Amba tutted to herself. She had let her guard down for an instant, and they’d taken her in a public place. Far too public. No. She would bide her time. Wait.
“This way,” he repeated.
She stepped through the door, and something cold touched the back of her neck and zapped her. She was unconscious before she hit the floor.
~ * ~
Amba opened her eyes. The walls and floor and ceiling were chrome, polished and gleaming. “That was neat, what you did back on Earth,” came a voice, a female voice, and Amba frowned. It rang some distant memory. She placed her hand to her chest, protectively, but Zi was still there, as hard as her heart. She smiled at that. Very funny.
We can do it now, said Zi.
Soon, she soothed, recognising she would need the FRIEND’s violence. Intuitively, she realised things were getting... serious.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Amba.
“Well, your denial is of no consequence.”
There came a hissing sound and Amba’s eyes flared wide. Gas! So quick? She hadn’t anticipated...
Her nostrils twitched. Krakkium cyanide.
She leapt at the wall, hands tearing at the smooth chrome, but was punched back by a massive electric shock which tossed her limp and rolling across the floor.
“Relax,” chuckled the voice. “Enjoy the ride.”
~ * ~
CHAPTER FOUR
TH3 M1SS1NG
Dex yawned and came round slowly from a deep, necessary sleep. Recharge, he thought. That’s what this holiday is. A recharge! The option to get away from it all, get away from the stresses of life in London. To sit back, and relax, and weigh up one’s options in life.
Gradually, light oozed through his slumber and, yawning, Dex rolled over and reached out for Katrina, hoping for that soft warm flesh contact that made sleeping with a woman so special. The space next to him was empty. But damn, she was an early riser - even after all the wine and sex? Dex grinned to himself, remembering their previous evening’s antics. God, I’m good, he thought.
Slowly, he sat up. “Katrina?” No response.
Dex climbed to his feet, back aching a little, knees aching a little, everything aching a little. I’m getting old, he thought with just a touch of sourness. Soon it’ll be time to visit the joint-refit doctors! But he knew, deep down, he never would. Some people visited the blades for sheer fun. Vanity obsessives. Others, more restrained, visited only when their human shells - their organic chassis - started to break down, to creak, to show its age like a ground-down, ungreased ball-joint. But Dex, Dex was old school; probably got it from his dad. He hated machines. Hated doctors. Hated scalpels and needles and medical circular saws... he shivered.
Dex padded into the bathroom and peered in the mirror. “Getting old, you old gimmer bastard,” he said to his reflection, eyes serious, then cracked his face like an egg and broke into a yolk smile. “Yes, but it’s your children that make you feel young again. Right?” Talking of children, why weren’t they bouncing up and down on his fat belly?
Dex yawned again, and hit the red button on the mirror console. The mirror shimmered and two tiny openings appeared; from the quivering holes emerged two metal arms, which whirred into life, one holding a toothbrush with paste, which was gently inserted into Dex’s mouth to brush at his teeth, the second holding a self-foaming razor, which began its shaving duties. Dex stood, grumbling a little and wondering why he couldn’t just do it himself, but Kat insisted he “catch up with the machine times” and “enjoy the technology of today” and, more specifically, that he “stop being a moaning old git of a goat.”
As the arms clunked and clattered away, Dex moved to the toilet and relieved himself, eyeing the small fluttering butterfly moppers which cleaned the toilet seat even as he sprinkled. Frowning, he deliberately pissed on the floor. They mopped that up as well. Oh, to live in such a perfect world! Where the air is always clean, the flowers always beautiful, the people constantly nice to one another. Theme Planet. Theme World. The perfect vacation. The perfect time for fun with the family...
Dex thought back to London. The guns, the dirt and the killing. Ha! His existence there made Theme Planet even more surreal. His job in the PUF police made his time here and now even more drug-induced; a different world.
Dex stepped into the shower and had a long, leisurely soak. Then he stood as air-blowers dried him, and he stepped out to discover some machine, somewhere, had laid out fresh clothes. He picked up a thin cotton shirt. It smelled distantly of lavender.
“Too fucking perfect,” he growled, and dressed in shirt, shorts and sandals.
Dex left the bathroom and moved through the hotel suite, and stopped for a moment in the wide corridor outside the kitchen. Something was wrong. It was quiet. Too quiet. Moll
y and Toffee were never that quiet. Even asleep, they argued like torturer and victim.
Dex flip-flopped into the kitchen and put his hands on his hips, looking around. At the dining table were plates of crumbs, and juice cups, half full. The coffee machine was also half full, a tiny red light signalling it was still heated. On the breakfast bar was a cup.
“Kat? Molly? Toffee?”
Dex shrugged, and moved to the empty cup. There was a lipstick mark on it, and dregs nestling in the bottom.
“Must have gone for an early morning swim,” he muttered, and moved to the comm.