Chemicaust (Mad Element Saga)

by Daniel Moore

before. The bodies had been moved, the blood was too difficult to see in the dark, or cleaned away while he was unconscious. He was tied now, tighter than before, his hands behind his back, a rope looped uncomfortably around his neck and another cutting the circulation off at his heels. Behind him there was the smell of smoke, and slowly Luke’s hearing returned. There were voices, telling a joke about a blonde and a turtle. Luke cracked a grin. He’d never thought about life humorously before, though he’d understood jokes made around him, he’d never been affected by them before now. The smile created warmth in his chest, it relieved the edge of pain which kept furrowing into his brain, and made him less upset over his failed suicide. He started to laugh and found once he’d begun, that he couldn’t stop. Laughter made everything lighter and it took over Luke’s body, continued even after he heard the movement behind him, and felt the rope around his neck tighten. The laughter continued until there was no air, and then it died slowly into a whisper. Luke coughed. The rope burned, and he shut his eyes. He didn’t sleep and the headache didn’t recede, but the rope loosened again and the air from the broken windows cooled his sunburnt body.

  Luke heard, “you can leave, Benjamin, your mother will want you home – looks like fog tonight,” and then, “explain.” The voice of the woman shattered Luke’s serenity just as the tightening of the rope had choked away his good humour. There was only anger left and when Luke’s eyes snapped opened, they shone with it. His words were slow and hoarse from the damage done to his throat, the anger in his words was obvious, the sincerity behind them unrelenting:

  “I won’t explain, unless you are willing to go get that rifle you toted about so willingly before, bring it back here, press the muzzle against my head, and pull the trigger. For that price, I’ll tell you my story, and for no less.”

  “Your price is your death?”

  “Yes.”

  “You killed two men today, one a friend of mine and father of a boy I consider brother of my own child. I should think granting you the same gift a very easy thing.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But you’ll excuse me if I hesitate to hold a rifle for the duration of our conversation, which I want to keep short as much as you seem to.” She drew a silver revolver from a deep trench coat pocket and pressed it into a clump of Luke’s short-cut hair. The dark curled around the polished barrel of the gun deeper black when measured against the sheen of the weapon. His hair insulated him, he couldn’t feel the cool of the barrel as he could before. “Now talk,” she breathed, her weary eyes locking with Luke’s.

  “Thank you,” Luke said again, his anger fading, “I won’t keep either of us waiting. When I was young, a short year after I was born, I was given to the army by my parents. Each of them belonged to the cult of Michael and had faith in his revolution. I was processed for the corps, my left arm was cut away and I had a drive installed, the clockwork, the servos and vents within my arm were upgraded as I grew, unlike those retrofitted at adolescence. The drive, of course, repaired my arm and the tissue regenerated over-top of the implant. My arm grew around the drive and from year one the drive was a part of me.” The woman blinked, she knew all of this. Luke continued, “I was incorporated into the army; I received psychological conditioning, and emotion repressing implants which have ceased functioning. I was attached to a network of free officers and far beyond them like a spark in the depths of my mind, Michael himself, the living God. The neural connection was established the day my arm was severed. Several days ago I was freed from corps control; thought-freedom was thrust on me. Never have I had my own decisions to make, and the choices that assault me now are something I do not understand and cannot face. I was – I am not human and it is a role I am not prepared to play. I am a soldier no more. That is why I want to die. But you would know why I came here? You would ask how a soldier of the corps was freed from neural control? And how I survived the shattering.” The woman nodded wearily, the pressure of the revolver against Luke’s skull lessened.

  Her eyes were green and old beyond their time, glazed with cataracts. Her skin was pale, her brown hair graying, but on her person glowed carefully cared for trinkets. Around her neck she wore a cross from some long-dead religion. It was polished silver, like her revolver, each stainless steel and well cared for. In each ear she wore an earring, simple loops of copper. The rings varied in thicknesses around their circumference making them interesting to view, shimmering in the fading light. The last piece of metal on her person was a belt buckle which Luke couldn’t see clearly, but which he saw was inscribed. The belt wrapped around the outside of her trench-coat and held the cloth warmly against her body.

  Luke went on, longing for the click of the hammer, the shattering sound of a gunshot at close range: “I was a sergeant with a common unit. We had been re-tasked from a simple patrol to a political retrieval; we were the closest unit available for retrieval of a prisoner from a merchant airship called the Question. We were meant to receive the prisoner at Cassius, the only city in the area with the equipment to accommodate an airship of the Question’s size. The ship never arrived at port and we were re-assigned to find the wreck and the prisoner. In Holos forest we found the individual we were looking for and one other survivor. The other survivor was unconscious, a work-hand from the ship. It was a fog night. The political prisoner had lit a fire.” Weariness faded from the woman’s eyes, replaced with a light of understanding, a look tempered by fear. Lighting a fire in the wilderness, in the open air, was a special kind of insanity. In the upper atmosphere there flickered the ever-changing currents of oily chem. On some nights, with the cool air, the chem drifted down and formed a sort of fog on the ground. Outside the window such a fog crept from the sky, unhurried fingers reaching towards the rubble and pot-holes of the street. Unable to resist, she turned to watch it creep down, removing the revolver from Luke’s head, her hands dropping to her side.

  Outside the broken windows of the building a low cloud of luminous chemical was forming, the consolidated chem which was barely visible during the day shone brilliantly when darkness fell. Luke spoke as the woman watched the fog. “As I approached, a soldier in my unit at my side, the chem drifted close to the flame and a spark flitted as if with intelligence, towards the lowering cloud of chemicals. The explosion was enormous flames spouting from the fire to the rainbowed cloud, settling for a moment and then expanding outwards. The entire colour spectrum pulled my skin from muscle, tore at my body and burned my lungs. Like sweat the heat clung to my body and flame like acid melted its way to bone. I don’t understand how I survived, but I was not the only one.” The fog outside billowed gently in the wind, and glowed with a soft spectral intensity. The cloud was like the aurora borealis, or like sun reflected in a pool of oil. It was beautiful, but intimidating. Both woman and soldier stopped to admire the sight. There was no sound except her breathing and the beat of his heart.

  She turned back to her prisoner, not quickly enough to splay her coat out as it had when she was angry, and weakly she returned the revolver to his head. She pulled back the hammer and he continued: “When I woke, my drive had died. It repeatedly attempted its self-repair procedure, and each time it failed. I was paralyzed from the neck down. I couldn’t speak. The explosion had warped the forest, destroyed the trees, and removed the life from a large area around the campfire. Vermin crawled over my body, but I couldn’t feel them. The majority of my unit was gone, disintegrated or dead. The one other soldier who remained recovered more quickly than I did. The rat thought me a corpse, and the other man’s intelligence, his humanity, had shattered with the explosion. The rats wouldn’t eat me until I had died; my comrade had no similar concerns. He took my eye from me, though now it seems repaired, and I see only half what I once did. Colours are too dark and too light, they aren’t brightly coloured, but washed together. Everything I once saw is closer to grey, but I survived. My comrade’s disturbance of my body must have jarred the drive, renewed its self-repair sequence. I remember the sound of g
ears grinding and the sound of wind when they stopped. I was revived and empowered. I had chem, it flowed through my veins, and I rose in anger. I destroyed my fellow soldier, I cast him into fire. It wasn’t something I could control. Anger was new to me, as was hunger, regret, guilt, shame and vengeance. I’d never desired vengeance before, but I did then, and I wrought it on the rat, the soldier who sought to take my sight and let loose my soul. I came here hoping to find an end to the limitless possibilities of my life. I wanted to find soldiers and turn myself in, be reintegrated, or else be killed. You have promised me this last escape. Take choice away. Pull the trigger.” The gun came away from my head; it rested at the woman’s side and she held it by the grip as she wrapped her arms warmly around herself. For a moment there was nothing, then her empty hand rose to her face; she rubbed her eyes with thumb and index finger, pinched the bridge of her nose. Her eyes closed against the stress that could be seen mounting in the faint lines of her face. She was made uncomfortable by indecision. Time ticked away.

  “Daniel!”