Quake

by Andy Remic

  Carter stared at the medical notes.

  ‘So - she is dying.’

  ‘Yes. Very slowly. It might take a single week, maybe two. But the damage is too great; we could try nano-implants, but in terms of replacing kidneys and liver, they are unproven and we have been getting high failure rates ... and in the current situation they are not the easiest mod to come across. The biggest problems lie in Natasha’s internal structural damage - her body is rejecting her own organs, and we cannot work out why.’

  ‘And the baby?’

  ‘If you look at Scan 5, you can see it is currently healthy and alive. Kicking, shall we say.’

  ‘Can you not deliver the baby? By Caesarean?’ Carter’s voice was cold, almost uninterested ... but Mongrel and Nicky knew that he was forcing himself into a state of detachment - working out the best way to get the job done ... the job being the saving of Natasha and their unborn child.

  ‘We could deliver, but the trauma would certainly kill Natasha immediately. Due to the crushing injuries she has sustained, several organs and arteries have been moved - they are in the way. There is no clear path to the child without immediately putting Natasha in, shall we say, a terminal situation. And the other angle is that it’s almost as if Natasha’s body has caged her baby. The shock of such a long-drawn-out operation could also kill the child. In fact, I would say there was an extremely high probability. It might work ... but then, we wouldn’t do it until there was absolutely no alternative.’

  Carter tapped his Browning against the desk.

  ‘Doctor Callaghan, can you leave us for a few minutes?’

  ‘What? But - it’s my office ...’

  Carter stared at the man, his battered grime streaked visage a picture of menace. Without a further sound the doctor slipped from the room. Carter stared hard at Mongrel and Nicky.

  ‘Our motives are not completely selfish,’ said Nicky softly. She placed a hand on Carter’s shoulder. ‘We want Natasha back as well - we love her, you know? But Jam needs our help, and he holds a key to a machine that can save Natasha and the child. With no compromise ...’

  ‘If the machine exists, and if the machine works like you say it does.’

  ‘Jam was onto it; had been for a long time. Yes, he was heading up the SAD teams, but down in Egypt we stumbled across metal sheets with diagrams, instructions - took them from the dead fist of a Nex scout. The diagrams were on metal sheets carbon-dated to 6800 BC - some of the oldest “documents” ever discovered by man.’

  ‘Who has this machine?’ asked Carter tenderly.

  ‘We’re not sure. Jam had coordinates that he was going to check out after his mission in Slovenia. But then the shit hit the fan and the team went AWOL. He carried the coordinates in his head.’

  ‘What makes you think Jam is still alive?’ asked Carter. ‘For his ECube to initiate a PB he must have been on the verge of death. That’s the way it works, yeah?’

  ‘Yes, he was assumed dead initially. But the Spiral mainframes, piloted by the QII processor, were sending out random signature scans - they picked up a signal from Jam’s ThumbNail_Map. It only activated for about three nanoseconds, a distorted burst that the mainframes couldn’t pin; but it meant he was using the implanted device. Which meant he had to be alive.’

  Carter sighed.

  ‘You can stay here, Carter, while Natasha slowly deteriorates. Watch her die,’ said Mongrel, his face grave but showing no weakness. ‘Or you can come with me, help me track Jam and find this Avelach machine.’

  ‘The machine used for creating the Nex,’ said Carter softly. ‘Oh, how ironic. I would use it to save Natasha’s life! The machine responsible for so much taking of life.’

  ‘They have abused it,’ said Nicky.

  ‘Yeah, somebody always does.’

  ‘A gun is just a metal box containing bullets - unless there’s a finger to pull the trigger,’ she whispered.

  Mongrel nodded. ‘Nicky will coordinate between HQ2 and here, checking on Natasha; she will study metal sheaves we have, work out how to operate this machine for when we find it and steal it. That way, we signal her to rendezvous - and all we have to do is pull machine out and get here. Before that, all we need to find this Avelach device is Jam and coordinates in his head.’

  ‘I don’t like this,’ said Carter.

  ‘We’ve been granted clearance. Grade AA. Straight from top. With full-support WarCover and WarClearance - if we need any help.’

  ‘Our starting point?’

  ‘Where Jam was taken out,’ said Mongrel softly. ‘We’ll pick up his trail. He must have stumbled upon something.’

  ‘I thought it had been scanned by PopBots?’

  ‘It has,’ said Mongrel, ‘but I believe human eye see more than dumb-ass electronics.’

  Carter climbed to his feet, face sombre.

  ‘You need time to get cleaned up? Have a MedScan?’ Mongrel was looking him up and down.

  ‘No. I just want five minutes alone with Natasha.’

  ‘We’ll wait by hospital entrance.’

  Carter nodded and left Mongrel and Nicky behind. He could read their uncertainty, their fear, their need. He walked back down corridors, some filled with screaming wailing patients, overflowing from waiting rooms with relatives and friends, and finally reached Natasha’s side room. The ward Sister made eye contact with Carter in the corridor and smiled wearily; he let himself in.

  The monitors were chattering and bleeping with the subtlety of harmonics.

  Carter gazed down at Natasha.

  Tears filled his eyes but he pushed them angrily away.

  He took Natasha’s hand. It trailed tubes.

  ‘I will save you - save you both,’ he said, smiling gently.

  ‘Another of your empty promises,’ snapped Kade, emerging from the depths of Carter’s mind. His arrival was a black blossom opening its petals to welcome the radioactive death-light of a black planet.

  ‘Empty promises? No,’ said Carter softly, shaking his head. ‘I will save her. I have to save her.’

  ‘There are other fucking women.‘ Kade chuckled smugly. ‘You don’t need this one. Ultimately, she’s just another dead bitch. Come on, Carter, let’s fuck off, find you some fresh slick meat from the nightclub pork-market.’

  ‘I have to save her,’ repeated Carter. ‘Because, if Natasha and the baby die ...’ His voice went quiet, its volume dropping to that of an unsettling lullaby. ‘If they die, then I will bathe the world in blood. I will seek out and butcher God - and all his children. This I swear.’

  Kade did not - for once, could not - reply.

  Carter’s emotions burned him. And, silently, Carter’s dark twin departed.

  CHAPTER 8

  SCORPNEX

  In the dream Jam walked down a long dark corridor. There were a thousand black obsidian doors all leading from this central aisle and Jam strode, gaze flicking from one to another, his long black coat flapping around him, heavy leather boots stomping through the cold frost and leaving heavy tread imprints. And then he stopped. He could feel the malevolence beyond.

  Slowly he reached out, turned the handle and was flooded with a wash of violet light. Shielding his eyes for a moment he heard the growls creeping from within, and he stepped tentatively forward - could suddenly see the horribly deformed Nex emerging from the violet mist -and he said, ‘What is wrong with you?’

  ‘Everything went black,’ whispered the deformed ScorpNex through twisted fangs. ‘They changed me, they made me into ... this.’ It looked down in horror at the merging of carapace and muscle which still bled between strands of twisted spaghetti flesh.

  It moved forward, a bloodstained claw coming up towards Jam.

  ‘Help me,’ it said, drooling thick yellow saliva laced with skeins of blood.

  ‘Please God, help me ...’

  Jam’s eyes flickered open. He was cold, terribly cold, and his breath flooded out in smoke. He could see a massive vaulted ceiling above him and it was rough-hewn sto
ne, hung with glittering ice stalactites. He groaned long and low, agony throbbing through him like a distant scalpel carving his flesh. He turned his head to the left and saw hundreds of stone-slab tables spreading off into the frosty, gloom-laden half-light. Each supported a body: some were perfectly still, some twitched, some were bent into arched shapes and frozen in a rictus of torment - a stop-motion dance of suffering.

  And then Jam saw the wide straps holding the victims in tortured bondage against the thick stone slabs.

  He tried to move, then realised that he too was strapped down.

  He hissed in pain and frustration.

  ‘Don’t move. It won’t be long now.’

  Jam’s head jerked to the right - and there, fore-grounded against a backdrop of human suffering, stood Mace. His face was pale, gaunt, just a little deformed, and smiling softly.

  ‘Where am I?’

  ‘This is where we create the Nex,’ said Mace. He removed a small leather case from which he took the syringe. The needle glinted brightly against the gloom. The silver liquid glistened within, holding Jam’s gaze in anticipated horror.

  Jam licked his lips nervously.

  ‘No, not again, you fucker,’ he croaked.

  ‘You will like it this time,’ said Mace softly, placing his hand delicately against Jam’s forehead. ‘The inhibitor has worked ... you will feel no pain.’

  ‘No ...’

  The needle slid into his flesh and Jam tensed, tensed so hard that he thought he would burst. There came a burning sensation ... and then nothing. He floated, gently rolling through a mental landscape of silver blossoms.

  Another voice. Drifting lazily in the dream.

  ‘Do it.’

  Jam opened his blurry eyes and could see the black robes of Durell, the hint of slitted copper eyes within the hood. He smiled, filled with warmth - and then cold tore through him and he gasped. Mace was holding something that wriggled and Jam blinked, slowly, eyes stuck with honey - three times he blinked, and then focused on the—

  Scorpion.

  ‘What...’

  He was going to ask ‘What are you going to do with that?’ but his mouth would not work properly. The coldness had flooded him, turned his blood to ice, his saliva to frost, his eyes to glittering insect jewels.

  Mace came closer.

  The scorpion was struggling, its shell a dark and glistening terrible black - as if oiled and carved from stone. Mace held up a clenched fist and Jam tried to struggle as the need for survival kicked in. Durell produced a small silver box and opened it with a tiny click—

  Mace lowered the scorpion into Jam’s mouth. He wanted to scream but could not, wanted to struggle but the ice injection had hijacked his limbs and his will. He could feel the scorpion move inside his mouth, its legs pressing against his tongue and gums. He gagged, nearly vomiting, but the cold injection held him in thrall. The arachnid’s claws brushed his teeth, the sting lashed out -once, twice, three times - but there was no pain even though Jam could sense the poison entering his system like bad blood. Mace’s fist opened and he held a horde of squirming scuttling cockroaches, their stench stinging Jam’s nostrils. He poured them into Jam’s mouth alongside the scorpion and all Jam could feel was a hive of activity in his mouth and then down his throat. All he could think was, This is a dream, a nightmare, I will wake up soon, but whenever he opened his eyes he was still in the stone chamber and Mace was still staring down at him like a scientist conducting an experiment.

  Another injection. This time in the throat.

  Jam tried to scream, but the insects blocked his mouth and in panic he realised that he could not even breathe.

  Durell handed a black disc to Mace, who stepped forward and smiled down at Jam.

  ‘Soon it will all be over,’ he said, copper eyes shining with—

  Kindness?

  Fuck you! screamed Jam’s brain, but he was too busy trying to thrash his head from side to side to disgorge the crawling insects. Mace placed the disc over Jam’s mouth and stepped back—

  ‘You must welcome the Avelach,’ he crooned, almost singing the words.

  The disc was terribly cold and then it felt like liquid yet simultaneously solid metal. Jam felt it move and spread and change and expand as the thick black catabolic substance spread out from his mouth to his throat and neck and head. Then it sped across his naked torso and over his arms and legs until he could feel the tight cold metal cage clamping his flesh. It covered his skin completely, this dark liquid metal, spreading across all of him.

  The Avelach coated him.

  It entered him.

  It raped him.

  And for a moment it soothed his pain. The cold spread over his naked skin like a chilled layer of smoothest silks -and then flowed into his eyes, and into his mouth to scorch his lips and tongue and gullet. It burned, and it burned bad.

  Jam tried to scream and the cold oil-metal flowed and filled his lungs and merged with the insects in his mouth and throat. He breathed sulphur and insect blood. He drowned in white phosphor. He imbibed napalm.

  The pain was eternal.

  The agony burned him for a billion years.

  And then it was over, and a dry and dusty harmattan blew across his soul. His soft tears ran like silver droplets of molten ice across his scorched skin.

  The imago had begun.

  Durell sat back against the black leather high-backed chair, the cold all around him, soothing. His hands rested against the freezing leather. His head drooped, his slitted copper eyes gazing down at the stone floor.

  As Mace entered, Durell glanced up, hood thrown back, his horrendous disfigurements producing no more than a flicker of momentary interest across Mace’s face.

  ‘It is done,’ said Mace.

  ‘Has it been successful?’

  ‘As you know, we have changed the coding of the sequence and the make-up of the inhibitors - and we’ve used a slightly different breed of cockroach. Only time will tell if this will yield another ScorpNex.’

  Durell laughed softly. ‘The problems of trying to replicate a mistake! How many specimens have died so far? I have lost count.’

  ‘There have been sixty-eight attempts,’ said Mace, his copper-eyed stare fixed on Durell.

  ‘And this is the sixty-ninth? With luck Jam will prove his toughness and his will to survive. That was what made him Spiral.’ Durell spat the name like a ball of sulphur phlegm.

  ‘Yes. He has thus far shown great resilience - and we have done our utmost to keep the Blending pure.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘The next few hours will enlighten us.’

  ‘Good. Keep me informed.’

  Mace moved forward through the gloom. At this time of the night everything was silent; the Nex attendants were in their nests and Mace was completely alone ... except for the hundreds on the stone slabs in this cold underground world.

  He stopped in front of Jam ... the Avelach had long since retracted to its former shape and the black metallic disc, the machine, had been removed from Jam’s face and mouth and placed back in the sanctuary of the silver box that had been fashioned to protect and recharge it.

  Mace moved forward. Jam’s head was tilted back, his eyes closed, his face a deathly white. His lips were tightly closed and, reaching out, Mace prised open Jam’s mouth and clenched teeth. Reaching inside, he pulled out the shell of the scorpion - which was so brittle that it crumbled to dust under his fingers. Carefully, Mace scooped out the remains of the cockroach carapaces and allowed them to fall to the stone floor, across which they drifted softly in response to the cool breeze. Then, slowly, he undid the straps that fastened Jam to the bench and ran his hand down Jam’s naked and treacherously cold flesh. It felt glassy, cold, hard - and slightly tainted with oil.

  Mace smiled.

  ‘Good,’ he said, nodding to himself.

  Jam could feel them inside him. He tried to force them away but they would not and could not leave him.

  we are together
r />   merged

  as one

  they have made us one

  Pain blended them in fire and flowed like acid through his veins. A metallic copper stink like the stench of old bad blood pervaded his nostrils and tattooed his tongue and it was him, a part of him, injected into his flesh and blood and brain.

  Jam fell into a dark pit of despair.

  Then awoke.

  He lay for a long time on the stone, not really thinking, just mentally searching his body for signs of injury. Everything was cold. Stone was beneath him. The air was crisp and biting against his lips and tongue. He was breathing, his chest rising and falling, and he could feel air entering his lungs and then smoothly leaving again.

  Slowly, he opened his sticky eyes.

  There was no pain.

  That was the first real thought that struck him.

  No pain.

  He had spent the last few days suffering physical and mental torment so severe that he thought he would break - both mentally and physically. But now the pain had gone and all that remained was the cool and soothing embrace of frost.

  He moved his hand, lifted it to his face. His flesh was white, chalk white and he examined his hand, its structure, the tapering of his fingers, the roundness of his nails. He turned his head to one side, realised he was in a cell ... but not the dry dusty cells of his initial beatings, rather somewhere cold and sterile. There was a single light source, tiny against the damp stone wall; nothing more than an insect glow.

  Jam sat up, looking down at his chalk-white nakedness. A bad metal taste was in his mouth and he spat again and again. But it would not leave him.

  ‘Was it just a dream?’

  His voice rattled hollowly in the stone cage of his skull.

  On a low table there stood a clay pitcher of water and a cup. Slowly, testing himself, Jam stood, bare feet shuffling on stone, and moved to pour himself a cup of water.

  Something did not feel right.

  Within himself...

  His body felt... somehow wrong ...