Floor 21- Dark Angel

by Jason Luthor

  “Central’s entire justice system revolves around the idea that you’re innocent until proven guilty. You’re not supposed to do stuff like this without some sort of justification based on evidence. Otherwise, you make the whole city paranoid because everyone thinks they’re being watched. Do you know how bad that would be for morale?”

  “But the security—”

  “Yousef, you’re already destroying their trust in you!”

  It takes him a second, but he finally nods, his hands folding together in front of him. “I’m sorry. I see your point and I see that this is obviously something that’s important to you.”

  “I don’t want you to change things because of me, I want you to change things because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “I do. I do,” he says as he puts his hand across his heart. “I’m so used to making these choices without anyone contradicting me, I never even considered this would be such a breach of trust. I’ll let the War Council know we need to be more specific in our wire taps. Evidence based, just like you said. No more warrantless wiretaps.”

  “You’re going to . . .” I shake my head because I can’t believe what I’m hearing. “You’re just going to stop the wiretapping? Just like that?”

  “Jackie, I told you, you remind me of Ishara. She was always better about dealing with the people and morale. The human side of things. She brought out my better angels, so I listened to her. She kept my more extreme instincts in check. So, just the same way that I listened to her, I’ll listen to you. If you say it’s a bad idea, then we’ll revise our strategy.”

  I stare at him for a long time before I say anything. “I don’t get you, Yousef.”

  “That’s not true. You get me better than most people. Both of us are outsiders. Both of us have unique powers. Both of us have people we’re responsible for protecting. We both carry the burden of leadership. You know all of this, because of that night.”

  I sigh and just look away, at the ground. “I want to believe in you, because I want to believe in everyone. But I told you, I’ve seen how people betray other people. I’ve been betrayed more than once, sometimes by very powerful people. Don’t be that person, Yousef. Just don’t.”

  “I’m trying, Jackie. You know, you could call, one in a while. Let me know your thoughts on how things are going. Tell me about your concerns. I’d like to make the point that I’ve never had to worry about leading anything other than a military state, a nation of people trained to live by military discipline. I would appreciate your advice while I try to become better at being a leader of people and not just a general.”

  “Maybe. I don’t . . . Alright. I’ll get in touch, once in a while.”

  “I’m glad to hear it. I’ll be visiting Central soon. Maybe we can have some food and talk about the state of things in the city. You could let me know the ideas you have for keeping things running smoothly?”

  “God. Yeah. Okay. Just . . . don’t screw up.”

  Personal Recording of Devleena Kumar 02

  Outside the armor, we’re all just normal people. Normal people who can crack your skull open in a fight or put a bullet between your eyes from a hundred yards out, but still, normal people. And sitting around in the garrison, after duty hours are done, we talk like normal people. Belinda Torres and Jakob Roberts are the two people I talk to most on the team, and they’ve sounded bored ever since we got into town.

  Torres is the first complain as she sits with her legs kicked up on the chair. “I don’t like it, sarge. Nothing to do around town.”

  “Yeah,” Roberts agrees. “This is nothing like clearing Creep in the Deadlands or doing a drop from 10,000 feet up.”

  I can’t help but chuckle at the thought. They’re not wrong. Our armor’s made to give us an advantage in almost any situation. I say almost, because unless you’ve been in the Creep when it’s completely riled up, you don’t really understand just how vicious things get out there. There’s nothing as frightening as a wall of Creep giving birth to hundreds of Stilts, those poor souls who died out there and are basically just walking feeding machines. These days, I wish that was the worst things we saw out there, but it’s not. Not even close. There’s those Bulgas, these large dog sized creatures with whipping, knifed tendrils that shoot from their backs and jaws that can chomp into even our armor. But the biggest threat out there on the ground, at least from what we’ve my people have seen, is the Basilisk. These things are giants, about our height with jaws as long as a man’s torso. Makes it a lot easier to see why General Yousef calls on us to go into the Deadlands first when there’s a heavy Creep infection.

  Which also makes it weird that we’re in Central, and I can’t help but agree with Roberts. “I get it guy. I realize we were all born with a death wish,” I tell him with a smile, “But you know, sometimes it’s good for us to be out of the Deadlands. Not that I don’t miss barely escaping from thousands of Creepers with all my limbs still on me.”

  “I could do without the Creepers,” he tells me. “What I miss are the drops.”

  “We all miss the drops, Roberts.” The drops. Cruising at 10,000 feet or higher above the city skyline, waiting for the moment when we get sent plunging to earth in an armored suit made to bring hell and fire. Thinking about it brings a smile to my face. It’s dangerous to take the Dynamis too far out from the coast, but when we do, it’s a thing of beauty. Cruising out over raider held territory and falling out of the skies like the hand of God, crashing behind enemy lines and tearing apart the enemy defenses from the inside out.

  Other times we do the impossible and just drop right into the Creep. Maybe some of our guys and gals get trapped during a block clearing, or maybe the Creep just decides it wants to have a bad day, but we’re the ones who get sent in to clean the mess up. Nothing makes your heart start pumping like having your feet slam into that pavement, then having just a couple of seconds to get yourself ready before a thousand clawed Creepers start swarming onto your position. My eyes shoot back up to the two of them, and I almost laugh. “I’m sorry, what were we talking about?”

  Belinda laughs. “You’re really weird, sarge.”

  “Just missing the action,” I tell her. “But we’ve got policing duty here in Central and we’re going to stick to it, dammit. Even if it means wasting combat skills honed carefully over years of training that we’ve all gone through since we were kids.”

  “You weren’t kidding about the death wish.”

  “Actually, I was. I like fighting, but I’m not stupid.” I take a deep breath to steady myself. “They need us here for oversight. Normally, I trust everyone from the fort to do the right thing, but they’ve never had to work this close with a civilian population. None of us has. So, if things get dicey, that’s why we’re here. To put a stop to it. Quickly. And quietly, please? I don’t need anyone barking down my back because civilians got hurt.”

  Roberts nods as he gives me this sly smile. “I thought there already was someone in Central who could take care of oversight.”

  We all know who he’s talking about. “She’s on their side first, not ours, and I don’t care if she’s as good a fighter as we all think she is. She doesn’t understand why we run our forces the way we do. She’s a civilian first.” I sigh, and I can’t help holding back the smile on my lips. “With all of that said, she is one hell of a fighter, and I hope we get to see her up close.”

  Belinda smiles my way. “You got a crush on her, sarge?”

  “I’ve never seen her under the armor, Belinda,” I bark back playfully as I wink her way. “Not that I don’t want to.”

  “Good God. Keep it in your pants, why don’t you.”

  “A girl knows what she likes. Seriously though, we all saw the video. She lifted, what? Something like 30,000 pounds of weight into the air and threw it on a group of remote piloted Apotheosis suits? Can any of us do that?” Everyone shakes their head. We’re giants in our Zero-Ones, but we’re not gods, as much as we feel like it sometimes. “She lifted
it without power armor. That suit she’s wearing doesn’t have the hardware to lift something like that. We’re talking about a different class of fighter.”

  Roberts looks my way. “That’s all well and good, but what if she does end up on the wrong side of all this? Say an incident breaks out and we end up staring each other down. What do we do then?”

  “The diplomatic solution is always the best solution in a situation like the one we’re in. I hate saying it, but it’s true. We’re here to protect peoples’ lives, not ruin them. If push came to shove though,” I say with a shrug of my shoulders. “Then we do the same thing we always do, boys and girls. We shoot to kill.”

  Excerpt from “On Purity,” by Yousef Suliman 02

  Not all of us who have taken up arms understand this great threat that is now poised to destroy humanity from within. Still, many of us have seen the threat I’m talking about. The abusers. The corrupted. Those men and women bent and broken into a perverse reimagining of the humans they once were, not because they were unwillingly infected, but because they purposely twisted themselves into new forms out of a misplaced pursuit of power.

  Our ancient forefathers knew the power and the glory of mankind, built into its very nature. Our own ancestors wrote, “What a piece of work is a man. How noble in reason, how infinite in faculty. In form and moving how express and admirable. In action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god.” Even more than a thousand year ago, our ancestors knew what made us unique. But mankind, despite its intellect and courage, even with all its ingenuity and bravery, its capacity for greatness, once again turns away from its destiny by embracing a crooked path upon which to walk.

  These men and women who twist themselves enjoy for brief moments a power many might envy. While their minds remain their own, they hold the genius of mankind and the power of creatures so savage they can tear through steel armor. However, we know where those paths lead. We know what becomes of these people in time, because the same destiny awaits everyone touched by the Creep. They bend, bow, and break. They become unthinking, savage beasts, capable of incredible destruction. This is not something I merely claim but which many of us have encountered, out there, beyond the bounds of civilization where the world is dark, the Creep endless, and the fear unending.

  We have seen them control that darkness, manipulate it to their own desires. We have seen them turn the Creep against their own people. We have seen them exchange the glory of their humanity for a moment of power, only to become feral beasts, prowling the Deadlands and feasting on the lives of others.

  And so, humanity’s greatest threat lies not from the mindless beasts that wander through the Creep, but from those within its own ranks who purposely embrace the disease. Humanity’s greatest threat lies among those who exchange their humanity for inhuman powers, who can turn the disease like a weapon against their own people. The threat is not only that they endanger the lives of others. No, the threat is that they twist themselves into something else. Something inhuman. They undermine the very qualities that make our people great.

  If we were all to follow that path, then where would it lead? What would become of humanity? We would become nothing more than a memory. All of our culture, all of our accomplishments, sacrificed for the sake of perverse power. It would no longer be our ingenuity that determined our path forward, but the corruption of what makes us our very selves. Humanity as we understand it would cease to be, left for extinct and replaced by beings physically stronger but lacking in the spirit and resolve that has defined us as a people for thousands of years. This is the future we must guard against, at all costs.

  Watson’s Recording 04

  “I’ll admit,” I tell her as she moves between workstations, “It’s been quite some time since I had a research assistant with such . . . skill.”

  The girl, Dodger, turns to me. “I tried helping Cynthia doing work at the medical depot. It was nice and I want to go back, but I don’t know. I didn’t really feel like I was using what I’m really best at,” she tells me as she taps at her head. “The old noodle.”

  “Noodle. Hmph.” I admit, it makes me smile. “To be terribly forthcoming, I actually do not derive much happiness outside of my research. Almost as if that little part that makes me human is missing, somehow. There may be a reason for that , but of course, with my missing memories, I have no way of telling.”

  “You’ve never tried to find out how so much of your memory just vanished?”

  “As we’ve previously discussed, I’ve typically attributed it to the simple weakness of the human mind to stand up to the rigor of five hundred years of time. Though, as of late, I’ve contemplated whether they were . . . removed, somehow.”

  Of course, the notion causes her some alarm, which I can see across her face. “I don’t understand how that could happen. Would they zap you with something, or use some sort of virus to do it?”

  “I understand that in your daily life, your friends appreciate that you talk to them as a layperson would. However, with me, if you could be more precise.”

  She breathes deeply, the first sign of her trying to draw upon the wealth of her vocabulary that I understand she normally keeps locked away. “Chemicals in the brain, Messenger RNA, help change the structure of synapses by creating proteins. That’s what happens during the creation of memories. Could some sort of virus or directed energy have disrupted the protein formations in your brain and the synaptic structure?”

  It earns a smile from me. “Good. Good. Not quite the accuracy I’d like to see you display over time, but generally accurate enough. Remind me to lend you some reading so you can study up on memory formation and other aspects of the brain’s functions. But, more to the point, I have contemplated that such methods may have been used to disrupt the composition of my brain such that I can no longer remember most of my life.”

  “Why not just run a brain scan and see if something was done?”

  “And compare it to what? We have no baseline for what the brain might look like after five hundred years of continuous use. Any findings I uncover cannot be compared against my contemporaries, considering that I have none.”

  “That makes sense.”

  “At any rate, I will continue to endeavor toward an answer, just as soon as we have fulfilled our duties to the city. How far along is the viral multiplication?”

  “Oh, uh, pretty far along. It looks like there’s enough of the virus for at least one sample we could use.”

  “Good.”

  “You’re sure it won’t be dangerous?”

  “It’s absolutely harmless, in its current state. It’s very well close to inert as of now. We’ve managed to multiply it in the organic solution, but to activate it into its infectious state, it must first take hold in the human lungs for a few hours, allowing it the oxygen rich environment required for full activation. That makes the host a living, breathing carrier. With every exhale, they release the virus. Even then, the activated virus is only harmful to Creep cells.”

  “So, basically all we have to do is inject someone with the virus and get them close to the Creep.”

  “We could, though the virus in its non-active form will also absorb effectively through the skin. Under such circumstances it would still become active. The genius of the virus’ creation is that it becomes especially virulent in the presence of standard Creep cells, much like a starving wolf in a herd of sheep. It should take only minutes for it to begin killing off Creep at that point.”

  She shakes her head as she turns to the side. “It’s still a little scary to think about.”

  “Science is wonderfully frightful, both in the same moment.”

  “That does remind me . . . You know when Jackie came in with the, uh, the rocket in her stomach?”

  “Metal casing, but yes. What of it?”

  “We watched her stomach patch up the second you took it out. That was more than a little freaky.”

  “Extraordinary is the word I would use. Healing capabilities
beyond anything we might imagine. Though, what else would be expected from the Creep?”

  “That’s just the thing though. I was curious if there was any sort of limit to just how much Jackie can recover from?”

  I nod to her. “Oh, yes. She’s quite aware of it, too.”

  “She is?”

  “Why do you think she chooses to wear the armor instead of simply going without it? She knows that despite her physical resilience, excessive reliance on the Creep’s regenerative capabilities comes with its own risks.”

  The girl looks concerned. “I don’t understand. “How would she know about that? And what sort of risks are we talking about.”

  Frankly speaking, the question disturbs me slightly, as I stand there unsure of whether I should be honest on the matter. “You’ve heard her mention this other ‘place,’ correct? Where she learned how to use her armor. Where she resupplies her weapon stocks.”

  “Yeah, she’s never been specific about it though. I thought she would tell us eventually, but she keeps a lot of what happened in the Deadlands a secret.”

  “I cannot speak to her other secrets, but I harbor my suspicions about just where she learned about the armor’s capabilities, though I won’t specify exactly where without further evidence. Nevertheless, if she knows what the armor’s true purpose is, then she knows the real reason I placed it on her in the first place.”

  Dodger’s look of concern has only grown since I began speaking, and she takes a step forward. “Doc, is everything okay with Jackie? Is she in any danger?”

  The statement draws a chuckle from me. “No. It is we who are in danger, every moment we are around Jackie Coleman.” Her eyes go wide as I speak, but I choose to continue. “You see, she may be in symbiotic stasis with the Creep cells circulating within her, but they have the capacity to grow beyond her control for brief periods. There are two things that can cause this. The first is excessive, uncontrolled emotions, though you should know this since you are aware that the Creep is psychoreactive. It preys on human feelings, specifically negative ones. However, in instances where her wounds are excessively severe, the Creep will multiply at magnitudes its normal rate to save its host. In either instance, Jackie is left in a feral state, easily on par with the madness you witnessed with both Sally and Judge and with a strength magnitudes greater than she currently possess. In all honesty, I believe that even in her current state, she has exceeded both of them in terms of raw physical power.”