by Ian Williams
“Bastards…” Gregson yelled as she took aim. “Give us the order, sir.”
Once again the quietness of the evening was shattered, this time in the form of an angry volley of bullets from the front line of enemies. Their weapons growled as they let loose their metal spittle, the sudden release lighting up the dim room. It pushed each soldier into a defensive posture, hiding behind the concrete wall. Captain Rigs had no chance to give his own order to fire before the carnage began.
A wall of bullets began ricocheting off of the front side of the wall, chipping the barricade away one sharp piece of concrete at a time. It showed no sign of stopping either, with the entire front row of Sentients appearing hell-bent on emptying their armoury into the building. It gave those covering themselves from the attack barely a single opportunity to return fire. Only when a few of the enemies were forced to reload did the moment finally arrive.
“Fire,” Captain Rigs roared, before unloading an entire clip into the enemy. Everyone else followed his lead after that.
Graham was horrified to see almost all of the front row of Sentients fall away and land in a neat pile a second later. They made no attempt to avoid being hit, they just took the attack as it came. He knew the death-toll would continue until every single Sentient had been claimed. But still, and despite his conflicting feelings, he tried his best to educate the angry soldiers around him. A decision he knew would set him once again against Captain Rigs. “Stop, please, you can’t kill them, they’re still human inside,” he screamed at the top of his voice.
No-one listened to his plea. They continued to fire and showed no sign of stopping, not even when the next row of bodies stepped forward to fill the gap.
“Graham, make them stop, you have to make them stop.” The other him appeared by his side and begged of him.
“I said stop!” Graham reached for the Captain and took a hold of his arm to pull him back from the mindless attack.
“Get the fuck off me,” Captain Rigs replied, shoving Graham back to the floor. He then continued to reload and begin firing again. They were sure they were making progress.
But progress was not to be determined by body count, but by their escape from the fight. For that to happen something would have to give, and it was set to be Graham’s group that eventually would. He had already seen his companions go through a couple of magazines; they were surely running out of bullets by now.
The instant they did the enemy would surely overwhelm them.
“You’re killing innocent people,” Graham said quietly. He cowered down behind the concrete wall and tried his best to ignore the horrific scene of tangled limbs and bloodied faces playing out just beyond the building’s entrance.
“This is why we have to keep the military out of here, Graham.” His second self had a noticeable stutter to his voice.
The military would kill every last one of them, regardless of the human and Sentient lives lost in the process. Graham quickly realised his unseen friend had been right all along. He finally understood the terrible cost of Isaac’s war, and could now see the real fight for the first time. His lesson had been a tough one to learn, but he had learnt it now. If he could not convince these soldiers with words, then he would have to find another way.
To do that he would find a Conduit and show them instead.
Chapter 14
From darkness
The fighting lasted another half-an-hour, on and off. It slowed as each side saw the futility of their actions. Neither would win outright like this; one side needed to take the initiative and crush the opposition once and for all. Understandably, Captain Rigs was determined to make sure that was his side. So after using up most of his ammo he turned to throwing grenades into the crowd instead.
Each explosion only spurred him on more, to the point where his companions had to restrain him from leaping over the wall all by himself and charging the few Sentients who had made it into the building.
For Graham it had become a heart breaking scene of chaos and devastation. He did his best to keep his mind focused on what he now saw as his one last mission in life; to see the end of such fighting. The thought of what was going on just beyond his field of vision threatened his concentration more than he cared to admit, yet he had little choice but to try and ignore it. There was nothing he could do to stop it now.
The only way he had of blocking it out was to close his ears and eyes off to the world and shrink back into himself. While the fighting continued he could do nothing in terms of figuring out a plan of escape from there. He was trapped until something changed.
With his mind slowly having disappeared into his own head, Graham had missed the progress of the enemy. His last peek over the wall had revealed a small group huddled behind the potted plants at the bottom of the escalators. They had not lasted long and were dealt with swiftly by a grenade that landed at their feet. Seeing them all bursting in a red puff of blood and guts was the last straw for him.
After that he lost his appetite for the battle.
When the need arrived to bring him out of his imaginary safe zone he initially resisted with a rigorous shake of his head. It was only when the person attempting to get his attention forcibly removed his hands from his ears that he finally came back to reality.
It was Gregson.
“Graham, listen to me, they’re stopping,” she shouted.
He soon understood the urgency as he found the night almost peaceful all of a sudden. The popping sounds from the weapons fire had ceased and only the creaking and cracking of the hot slugs embedded in the front of the wall remained. “Is it over?” he asked.
“For the moment, yes. They began to back off a few minutes ago. We think they’re regrouping for another attack.”
This was not quite the news Graham had wanted to hear. Silence was only set to last a short while, then it was due to become bleaker still.
“Can you slow them down somehow?” Gregson posed the question to him with Watts’ tablet in her hands. She barely waited for longer than a blink before shoving it into his stomach.
“I can’t do anything with this.”
“But the Captain said you were sent here to hack the enemy, so bloody do it already.”
Graham quickly came to realise something; the Captain was missing. He would normally have been the one ordering everyone about and looking for their next move, but he had left Graham’s side. “Where’s the–” He stopped shortly after spotting the man he sought a few metres away.
He then noticed the spattered blood all over the tablet in his hands.
“Davis was hit in the throat,” Gregson said.
As well as Captain Rigs, Watts was there too, bent over the body and rapidly tending to the wound. It looked beyond their help, from what Graham could see. The growing pool of blood, as black as the night, stretched at least a metre away from the top of the dying man’s head. Death was surely only moments away from taking him finally, yet those around worked as fast as they could to slow it down.
“This is so messed up,” Gregson began again. “I’ve never seen an enemy like this before. It’s like they don’t understand what’s going on. Not one of them reacted when hit by a bullet.”
“We’re all dead if we don’t find a way out of here,” Graham replied. He was unable to take his eyes off of the frantic attempt to keep Davis from bleeding out all over the floor. It was a fate he saw each of them suffering soon enough too.
With one last compression of the injured soldier’s chest it appeared it was no good. He had been too far gone to survive the ordeal. Captain Rigs slumped down beside the body as it breathed its last, blood-filled breath. For Watts it was still not over. He held his hands tightly around the dead man’s neck and ignored the obvious signs of having lost him already. The wound had stopped seeping now, but his arms were covered in blood.
No-one spoke while the loss sunk in, undoubtedly the first of many if they chose to stay put. Even the noises from outside could not break the solemn mood now sprea
ding throughout the group. It took a sound much louder and familiar to them to draw them out of the circle of blood upon the floor.
Graham heard it too; it was the flutter of rotors, lots of them.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me. The drones are back,” Captain Rigs shouted out. “Everyone, back into cover.”
Gregson turned back to Graham and lifted the tablet up. “Do something. They’ll pick us off in minutes if you don’t”
“I’m sorry, I can’t.”
A deep thumping of the drones’ rotors soon overwhelmed all other sounds, making the area almost unbearable. They hovered a few feet above the ground, the line made up of five of them. Using the lights on their noses, the drones highlighted the exact position Graham’s group was hiding. Next came a collection of red targeting lasers that swooped about the inside of the lobby, shining just above Graham’s head. Once they found where they were planning on firing they each beeped and clicked in readiness.
The end was now only seconds away.
If you’ve got anything, now’s the time to try it, Graham said internally to his other self.
The reply was simple; “I’m sorry, G.”
By now each of the remaining soldiers there were cowering behind the protective wall, using what remained of its crumbling structure to take as much of the coming attack for them as possible. So when the first blast from the drones was released they all dropped as low as possible.
But the shot never hit the wall. Instead a bright white flash of light and an electrical fizz blew past them like a hurricane wind. Every piece of electrical equipment in the soldiers’ possession popped and crackled, leaving some of it burning. Watts’ tablet had not survived the influx of energy either. Graham threw it to the floor and watched as its insides continued to disintegrate while it slid away
“What ... the fuck ... was that?” Gregson said. She was first to her feet to see the status of the enemy.
“Someone let off a damn EMP,” Captain Rigs called out. “Everyone check your equipment. Leave anything that doesn’t work behind.”
Graham followed quickly after her and bobbed his head above the wall. What he saw brought a skip to his heart. Had his other self finally managed to do something? He peeled back the bandage on his hand to see if it too had been effected and found it blinking in a seemingly random pattern. He considered this for a second before turning his attention to the enemy. The diamond embedded in his skin was not unlike the human made tech after all; they were both easy to damage with an EMP blast.
The five drones had weathered the short storm even worse than the tech Graham’s group were now without. Their Laser targets no longer shone, nor did the bright lights that had forced the soldiers out of the darkness. Graham could see the lifeless carcasses of the drones all lying on the ground in varying states of disrepair. Beyond that he saw another, equally promising, sight in the form of a stationary crowd of Sentients. The ones lucky enough to have avoided being hit by a stray bullet were now an unmoving mass of people just past the piles of bodies.
The blast had stunned them all.
Movement outside the building caused an outbreak of shouts for whoever was there to stop where they were. Someone was hiding behind the veil of the night-time rain, and approaching with a slow step-by-step motion. When the person reached the open face of the lobby it was their feet crunching glass that first gave them away.
“Stop right there!” Captain Rigs ordered of them again.
The person who stepped forward at the bottom of the escalators was clearly not one of the enemy, as demonstrated by their choice of clothing. They were not wearing the same black fatigues of the Sentient soldiers, but ordinary clothes, dirtied with long smears of muck and grease.
Yet that was not the important thing about this person. That Graham recognised them was, however. “I don’t believe it,” he said as he took a step toward the half-destroyed barricade at the top of the escalator.
“Stay back, Graham, that’s an order.” Captain Rigs grabbed him by the arm to hold him in place.
By now the person below had seen him too and was trying their best to reach him, with an urgency Graham completely understood. He felt the same himself. More soon came out from behind the veil of rain to join the other. Four were there in total, and each carried a hefty looking black weapon in their hands, with strange Orbs on the end.
“Phoenix!” Graham shouted to the woman, wearing a thick black cotton hat over most of her head.
“You know her?” Gregson asked, her eyes popping with delight and obvious relief.
But Graham could not answer the question; he was in shock.
The surprise at finding a familiar face had caused Phoenix to hesitate too. She dropped her weapon to her side and took a step back down the metal steps. “Holy shit!” she said.
One of her friends at the bottom of the steps, with the slight look of a heavy metal fan, quickly broke up the reunion with a sharp warning to them all. “Hey, Phoenix, we need to leave. Now!”
“Just give me a minute, Rhys,” she angled her head to the side to say, before returning to Graham a moment later. “How are you here? Last time I saw you, you were…”
“Dammit, we don’t have time to chat,” Rhys protested with a quick scan of the area behind him. He was noticeably jumpy, more so than the others. “They won’t stay like this for long, so we gotta go now.”
“Who are you people?” Captain Rigs said.
Phoenix smiled to Graham and then replaced it almost immediately with a stern look to Captain Rigs. “There’s no time to explain. If you give a shit about surviving this, then you’ll follow us. If you don’t agree then you can piss off, OK?”
“Yeah, it’s not like we risked our lives to help or anything.”
“Shut it, Jack,” Phoenix fired back to another member of their team. “So, who’s coming then?”
“We all are,” Graham said, pulling a piece of the barricade away, and his arm from the Captain’s tight grip.
Captain Rigs responded with a sweeping look about the faces of his soldiers, all with signs of the battle they had endured. It was clear for all to see that there was only one choice. He confirmed it by taking the other end of the table Graham tried to move and pulling it free from the pile.
Soon after the rest of them joined in, until the escalator was clear of debris.
“Hey, come on, we need to hurry.” Phoenix had spotted Watts in the background kneeling over Davis’ body and yanking the tags from around the dead man’s neck.
They were then finally ready to get out of there and away to freedom. After having been trapped in one place during such a hopeless fight, it was with a swiftness that they left it all behind. Most were carrying much less than before too, as the EMP had rendered it all useless. Not even the torches attached to the soldiers’ weapons worked anymore.
“This way,” Phoenix called over her shoulder as she led the way out of the building.
The rain fell harder now and had begun to wash away the blood that threatened to stain the paved ground. It quickly soaked through the clothing of the bodies lying about the place and partially blocking the way.
“You guys really did a number on this lot,” Rhys said this as he sidestepped a loose hand sticking out from beneath a body.
It was a disturbing scene to walk through and one that contained too many blank faces for Graham to stand. In almost every place he looked he saw yet another innocent person staring back at him. For the others who had faced the enemies now lying on the floor, it was only a reminder of how close to joining the dead they had been.
Behind the many bodies lay another obstacle. This time the faces were stuck in place, but far from dead. Each Sentient stood with their chin resting against their chests and their eyes aimed to the ground. There had to be dozens of them all waiting as though in some form of standby mode. A shower of rain drops fell from their bodies as they remained still, like fountain sculptures. Graham remained vigilant as he followed the others weavin
g a route between the frozen enemy soldiers.
“We should kill them all, before they wake up,” Gregson said while aiming her rifle at the centre of a nearby enemy’s chest.
A slap on the barrel of her rifle soon put an end to her thoughts on that subject.
“Save your ammo,” Jack said, tucking a loose strand of his bright blonde hair back under his cotton hat. He only let go of the rifle when he was satisfied no harm was to follow.
Finally past the crowd, Phoenix then stopped to allow the rest to catch up. She waved them each ahead after relinquishing the front to Rhys and Jack. The pace sped up drastically shortly after, with everyone adopting a jogging speed. She then waited for Graham to catch up with her. “Graham,” she said, with a nervously quick look to him. “Where’s my brother?”
While they left the enemy behind and headed through the nearby streets in almost pitch black darkness it gave the two of them the chance to catch up. There was so much he had to tell her, but for the moment he focused only on what she wanted to know. The rest of it required much more time for him to explain without causing more confusion.
“Sean is fine; you don’t have to worry about him. He and the military are outside the shield, they have been since the beginning,” he replied as his breathlessness caught him suddenly by surprise.
“Is this all they sent?”
“No, there were more. We were ambushed the second we entered through the shield.”
“So more are coming?”
“I’m afraid not. This is it.” Graham hated giving her the hint of good news only to pull it away from her again. The truth was he had nothing good to tell her at all. In fact, he looked to her for the very same thing. They were trapped together now.
Rhys brought the group to a sudden stop at the end of a street corner. By holding out his arm and sweeping it back beside him, he told everyone to stick to the wall. He shot a quick look around the corner, which he ended with a rapid snap of his head back into cover. A finger to his lips spelled out the danger that resided just beyond. “Nobody move,” he whispered back along the line. “They know something is up.”