by Andy Remic
But who commands them?
Who leads?
And just what are they doing?
He mused over this for a while, until the word sidled back into his tortured mind.
Escape.
The impossible.
How to achieve the impossible?
His stare scanned the walls; solid and slippery and very, very high. The room seemed almost to be carved as one unit, although he could in fact see very fine joins between the building materials. The floor was covered with a fine detritus of sand, which meant that they were probably somewhere hot - a desert region, or at least adjacent to one. Therefore he had been airlifted, carried some considerable distance from Slovenia.
The torturer - Mace - had claimed they did not need to question him due to their cracking of the ECube, but Jam doubted this very much. Yeah, just fucking with me prior to more torture, he thought grimly to himself. But then, if they had cracked the ECube, had wormed their way through its security features, then in theory they had access to all the Spiral networks and criminal databases ... and maybe even staff files, mission specifications - everything was stored somewhere. They would know where the new major Spiral HQ was, in the heart of London ... and the other secondary HQs ...
He shivered, chilled to his very core.
Focus.
One step at a time.
Escape.
Jam dragged himself to his feet, using the low bed to lever himself into a standing position. Waves of pain throbbed through his injured body, but at least he could stand. He limped around the cell, and spotted a tray near the door with a bronze jug of water and a loaf of fresh bread. At least they didn’t intend to starve him to death ...
He ate the bread slowly, for it hurt some of his broken teeth to chew. The water stung his mouth but he forced himself to drink despite the curious stale taste. If they wanted to kill me, he thought, they wouldn’t have to use poison - a single bullet would do the job more neatly.
When he had finished his spartan meal, Jam hobbled to the cell door and quietly peered through the bars. The corridor beyond was fashioned from the same huge sandstone blocks that he had seen when he’d been dragged to the large chamber for his second experience of torture under the needle. He could see two brands burning further down the corridor.
‘Hello?’ he called.
Nothing. No sound, no reply, no interest.
Returning to his bed, Jam sat and picked up the bronze jug. He drained the last few drops and went to work to see what weapon he could fashion from this primitive piece of metal.
The door opened. Three figures stood silhouetted against the flames of the torches.
Jam groaned, lying on the floor, and the figures moved to stand around him. Slowly, Jam rolled over and pulled himself into a seated position, shading his eyes - for with them his torturers had brought light.
As they halted, Jam noticed that one of the Nex had a limp. He lifted his eyes to connect with the burning copper gaze, and he smiled sweetly. ‘Fine piece of meat.’ He licked his lips. ‘Put a bit of Savlon on that, did you, laddie? To take away the sting?’
The Nex growled.
Jam laughed. ‘Come on, fucker, I’ll eat your fucking heart.’
‘Enough.’
The voice was rich, deep, commanding and Jam transferred his gaze to the speaker, who was shrouded and hooded but still dominated through sheer size. Then he glanced at the third figure, standing slightly back - again wrapped in a cloak but with a deformed face showing patches of black and a mouthful of crooked drooling teeth.
‘My, but you’re all butt-ugly. Like mescaline-popped whores on a crab-riddled Russian sailor.’
The dark figure made no sound, no movement. ‘Let me introduce my companions,’ came the rich deep voice. ‘This is Yushalo.’ He gestured to the Nex with the limp whose gaze burned with hatred. Jam smiled, licking his blood-crusted lips. ‘You owe him a great debt for his pain. And this is Xsala, apprentice to a Nex you know well -Mace. He would wish to test his newly found skills on your flesh.’
‘Hey, you not brought Mace with you? We could, you know, sit down, maybe party a little. You brought any cider? It would be so much fucking fun.’
Xsala moved forward and looked down at Jam. He towered over the Spiral operative and growled something low and crude. His hands, black and twisted, came from beneath the cloak and long black claws slid free of sockets. ‘Little man need know when not to speak with disrespect. We cause much pain.’
‘Fuck me, bit of a drool problem you’re having there, old fella.’ Jam smiled, wiping the slime concerned from his skin. Xsala backed away, giving a heavy bass growl, and Jam transferred his gaze to the shrouded figure. ‘You fucking want something, or have you just come to watch a weakened man suffer in pain, you perverse arse-fuck?’
‘Perfect,’ said the shrouded man softly, and turned with his colleagues, leaving the cell. The door closed and the light retreated as Jam frowned, face twisting with confusion.
‘What the fuck does that mean?’ he bellowed through the bars, but only a gentle hiss of cool breeze, sending a veil of sand swirling across the floor, replied.
Durell stood in the cold chamber, listening to the hum of the cooling fans. Ice rimed the smooth stone walls and made the polished marble floor treacherous to walk upon. The chamber was huge, the ceiling vaulting far above, the slightly concave walls stretching as far as the eye could see. Low slabs of stone were arranged in order, rough-hewn beds of natural rock, many bearing bodies covered with foil sheets.
Durell sighed, moving between the slabs, the cool air caressing him. He pulled his robes tighter around him, despite enjoying the cool air on his skin. He shivered.
It never used to be like this, he thought.
As he approached a slab, anonymous among all the others, Mace rushed towards him, a sorrowful look on his face which Durell knew had been placed there for his benefit. Nex felt few emotions, and a display was nearly always for effect - a throwback to the times when the Nex had been wholly human; a reminder of origins before the integration with insect kind; an almost unconscious physical echo.
‘We can do no more.’
Durell reached out with a clawed, twisted hand and pulled back the foil. There lay a body — the body of a man called Feuchter. His head lay twisted to one side, most of the back of the skull missing and what was left glittering with ice. His body had been laid out: parts of the skin were scorched and while the face was perfect the contents of the brain behind it had been destroyed during the final battle he had fought so many months ago against Carter ...
‘He was like a brother.’
‘The brain matrix is too far destroyed; we have tried and tried again to repatch and rebuild and model the organics, but there just isn’t enough left. We could bring the body back to life, but not the mind. He would be in a deep vegetative state.’
Durell toyed for a while with the notion of bringing the body back, just so that he could look at his old friend animated again, just so that he could talk to him ... But then, they would not be able to talk, they could not laugh together, they could not plot together ... Feuchter had been one of the few first Nex who had not been horribly deformed by the process of blending.
However, Durell himself had not been so lucky.
He reached out, one clawed hand resting against Feuchter’s cold dead forehead. He closed his eyes deep within the folds of his hood, tears welling, burning his skin as they rolled from eyes that were no longer human. And he felt rage welling from some unknown source within him, burning him like a poisoned blade ... and he knew that he did not have emotions, that he was cold and calculating but this finality and hatred came from somewhere deep inside him. He would destroy Spiral, he would destroy the DemolitionSquads - and he would kill Carter.
And that just as an aside. As a footnote.
Footsteps echoed across the cold stone, and Durell’s head came up. Xsala was there, flanked by Nex guards with JK49 sub-machine guns. ‘We have problem,’ rumbl
ed the huge warrior.
Durell nodded, tears still burning his skin, and covered Feuchter with the foil sheet one last time.
The door opened quietly and a Nex guard stepped in with a tray containing bread and water. His gun was slung across his shoulder negligently and he bent to retrieve the old tray - but it was gone.
‘Surprise.’ Jam grinned wildly, slamming the edge of the tray into the Nex’s throat. Choking, the Nex dropped to one knee and Jam stepped in close, stabbing his new hand-folded bronze dagger through the Nex’s eye. Blood poured out, staining Jam’s hands, but he held the crude home-made dagger there tight in his fist as the Nex twitched and fought, kicking feebly. Jam drove the dagger in deeper, one hand cradling the back of the Nex’s head until finally the legs ceased their kicking and he gently rolled the cooling corpse to the ground. He dragged the body into the cell and, after pulling his blood-smeared dagger free, he yanked off the Nex’s trousers, thin cotton jumper and boots and squeezed into them, pulling them on with choked-back yelps and groans of agony over his broken limbs and his many cuts and bruises. The clothes smelt strange - metallic - but Jam was beyond caring. The boots were incredibly tight and they crushed his broken feet, but he did not care as he lifted the JK49, checked the full magazine, closed the door and stood in the corridor, nose lifted to the scent of a gentle breeze.
He felt empowered.
Jam grinned a crooked, blood-crusted grin.
‘I’ll show you, fuckers,’ he muttered.
He reached down and activated his ThumbNail_Map. The ThumbNail_Map was a device, a tiny scanner which replaced an agent’s actual nail; to any security equipment it scanned as organic - human tissue - and yet with the right mental augmentation it would illuminate and scan the surroundings, giving an operative an immediate indication of his or her whereabouts. The ThumbNail_Map was still a prototype, but Jam was thankful for it now as the tiny image spun across his nail and located him in the centre of wherever he was imprisoned - a maze of corridors stretching off all around him as he found true north.
Jam moved stealthily, eyes and ears alert.
It was night, although he’d had no way of knowing this while he’d been in his cell. He moved down a long corridor and came to an intersection. Following the ThumbNail_Map, and climbing up a long sloping ramp at a fast limp, Jam halted, blood drying on his fist and finger poised on the JK49’s trigger. He listened carefully, listened past the pounding of the pain in his skull.
He moved swiftly, hiding in the shadows as boots trod the stone and four Nex glided past bearing JK49 submachine guns. They seemed alert - too alert, and Jam wondered if his escape had already been discovered. He had to assume that it had.
He limped on at speed, pain jolting through him, navigating, thoughts whirling through his now rapidly functioning brain. Priorities: escape, warn Spiral of possible security breach and apparent Nex hive - and Nex mission - kill a few Nex into the bargain and get the fuck away from whatever shit-hole they had dumped him in ...
Which desert country? Africa? Iran? Australia?
The ramps flowed past. He could hear more activity, distant but coming closer. He forced himself on to greater efforts, pain pounding him from his broken bones and grinding ribcage. He came to steps and groaned inwardly, body jolting with each step, the agony making him want to howl and vomit at the same time.
‘Where do you think you are going?’
Jam halted, JK49 trained on a dark figure up ahead, his broken fingers and constant pain making the gun’s barrel waver a little. Light gleamed behind Mace, casting his frame in shadows that stretched down the ramp. Jam blinked, pain his master, and he could feel himself swaying and he wanted to scream, ‘No! Not now, don’t fucking let me down now!’ but he was so weak and had lost too much blood and suffered so much pain that he thought, Fuck it! - and opened fire, bullets striking a spray of sparks from the stone by Mace’s head—
Something smashed into Jam’s back, forcing him down onto one knee. Bullets flashed across the space in spark showers, and then the shooting stopped. Cordite filled die air and the silence was deafening, reverberating from metal-scarred stone. Again, a heavy blow crashed into the back of Jam’s skull and his nose slammed against the stone ramp and broke with a terrible crack. He heard himself whimper in the voice of another man, a weaker man, a destroyed man. Got to reach freedom, he thought. Got to warn Spiral ... he tried to lift the JK49, to whirl and take out the Nex that had crept up behind him in terrible silence - but his body would not work, his fingers would not obey his mental instructions. His vision was hazy and blood had flooded his eyes, filled his mouth and he gagged, drooling crimson to the stone floor. He tried to focus on Mace but a heavy boot stomped on his hand, and he heard his remaining working fingers snap.
Jam’s vision swam.
And Mace was there. He held a hypodermic filled with bright silver.
‘No!’
‘What a shame you wish to leave behind our hospitality,’ drawled Mace. ‘I do, of course, humbly apologise in advance for the agony that is to come.’
‘No ... more ...’ said Jam through mangled lips, stare fixed on the hypodermic.
Mace bent and thrust in the needle. Jam arched his back, screaming ...
A large dark-robed figure moved into view. Burnt hands came up and threw back the hood and Jam was transfixed by the horror within. The slitted copper eyes stared down at him with true malevolence.
‘I did not introduce myself before,’ came the voice. Shoulders moved with a crackling of twisted flesh and tendon.
Jam, panting, head spinning, tried to push himself away from the monstrosity looming over him. With a curious movement, the heavy robed figure leapt at him and Jam writhed, trying to get away—
The unearthly eyes came close.
Their faces were mere inches apart.
‘Who are you?’
‘I am Durell,’ hissed cold breath.
‘But you’re dead.’
The head shook, and with his evil eyes gleaming like metal Durell whispered, ‘No. Carter shot me, the ship was destroyed ... but I was never killed ... oh Jam, our delicate nemesis - you have so much to learn.’
Jam’s mind was reeling. The hot mercury screeched through his veins. He was crying tears of blood as his gaze passed from the Nex to Mace and finally back with a shudder to Durell.
‘I will show you,’ said Durell soothingly, ‘I want you to know what it is to be a Nex. I want you to understand, my friend.’
Durell reached slowly, teasingly, towards the broken Spiral agent with the tentative care of a lover ... reached towards the helpless body of Jam with long, curved, bloodstained claws.
And Jam closed his eyes.
CHAPTER 6
FOUNDATION STONES
The small copper eyes stared at Carter and the creature’s twisted fangs drooled a little saliva. One claw dipped to touch its own body and it glanced down at its blood. Then it smiled nastily. ‘I think you suffer much pain, little man.’
The wind from the black helicopter increased behind him and realisation suddenly struck Carter. Natasha had lifted the chopper into the air and she was dipping the nose, the rotors tilting to form a vertical wall of flashing blades. Carter dropped to the ground and rolled under the flashing tips of the armoured rotors as Nats guided the machine forward a touch. The blades hissed and skimmed the snow.
The creature tried to leap forward, but was beaten back by the violent wind and the promise of instant flashing titanium death. Carter stared from behind this thrumming wall of lethal blades. Natasha held the helicopter steady with a hum of cold matrix engines, wavering only a little, and Carter smiled at the entity as if from behind a shimmering screen of liquid metal.
‘Next time, fucker,’ he snarled.
‘My name is Dake, and I’ll be waiting for all eternity,’ snapped the huge creature, blood pumping from the holes in its body - which it ignored.
‘Carter, I can’t fucking hold it!’ came Natasha’s panicked scream.
<
br /> He moved fast, climbing into the chopper as the armoured creature turned and walked leisurely to one side. The Nex opened fire; JK49s thundered across the snow and Natasha urged the helicopter into the air, bullets leaving trails of tracer all around and striking a triple thump across one alloy flank.
‘Quick thinking.’
‘We’re not out of this shit yet.’
They climbed steeply, engines howling and bullets screaming past them as the world of snow opened up like a huge white veil. The sky was a deep cool blue and Carter calmed his breathing, staring straight ahead, ignoring the whiz and hiss of bullets until the chopper finally sped out of range ...
‘Well done,’ came the corpse-cold voice of Kade.
‘Yeah, you want something?’
Carter could feel Kade smile - could sense the smirk as Kade mocked him. ‘You should have killed it. I would have killed it. You are showing your weakness, Carter, showing your fucking age ...’ Kade spat the word like a bullet. ‘You’re getting old, slow, weak, spineless, and it won’t be long now, my friend, before some big Nex fucker cuts you in half and leaves your bleeding twin carcasses twitching on the pavement—’
‘I thought you were here to help,’ whispered Carter.
‘Just trying to make you strong, brother. Just trying to warn you against the ravages of age, the natural slowing of the body, the terminal illness of the perpetually decaying mind...’
‘There’s only one decaying mind here, and that’s yours,’ snapped Carter. He forced Kade away.
Carter realised that his eyes were closed, and he opened them, peering out across the spectacular snow-clad mountains of Switzerland and the villages and towns tucked neatly away in the Earth’s folds.
He released a deep, pent-up breath.
‘We lose them?’
‘They’re not taking up the chase.’
‘We scared them away?’ laughed Carter, an edge of disbelief to his voice.
Natasha looked at Carter and grinned. ‘No, I think the dumb bastards shot up the other two helicopters! Jesus, give the Nex soldiers an IQ, somebody.’