Pandemonium

by Christian Kallias

  I’ve already traveled down at least ten stories; now it’s time to get back inside. I deploy my left wrist blade and use my right repulsor in thruster mode to propel myself against the nearest Plexiglas window. It explodes upon impact as I’m thrown tumbling into someone’s living room.

  I hear distant shouts and footsteps in the midst of the surrounding chaos. But my body hits something and my tumbling stops. My heart is beating fast and feels like it’s skipping beats, which is not a pleasant sensation. Clearly, a side effect from the current that has been pumped into my body for too long a time. I honestly can’t tell if this whole ordeal lasted a minute or an hour. The intense pain and disorientation made it impossible for me to keep track of time.

  “Three minutes and twenty-seven seconds,” says Tanya cheerfully.

  “Show off!”

  “Perhaps. But Cole, haven’t you forgotten something?”

  I get dragged on the floor but backward this time, approaching the window fast.

  Yeah, I forgot I had an unconscious body attached to mine when I jumped out the window, and now he’s bringing me down with him. I manage to stand by using my whole body as a counterweight while skidding and shoot another grappling hook from my other forearm armor into the opposite wall. Two loud noises follow.

  The first one is my own scream when the tension exerted by being between the grappling hooks dislocates my shoulder as the lieutenant’s body stops its free fall toward the ground.

  The second is a distant and muffled thump as his body hits the Plexiglas of an external window many floors below.

  I have a high tolerance for pain but these past few minutes have not been very kind.

  “Let me help you,” says Tanya as she diverts the drone to use its tractor beam and bring the body back into the room.

  I’ve made quite a mess around me; whoever lives here will be pissed. I brush the thought away; unless I’m successful in preventing Ahmed’s nefarious plans for today, everyone in this building will be incinerated before the sun has set.

  I can feel my nanites working on my internal wounds. But they won’t be able to relocate my shoulder, so I’m gonna have to do that myself. I quickly glance at Ahmed’s lieutenant, Samir Faysal. I’m not even sure he’s still alive.

  Tanya chimes in. “His vitals are quite low, but I think he’ll live, at least for another twenty minutes or so.”

  “We won’t need him alive any longer than tha . . . aaaaaaaarg—” I scream after I propel myself against the nearest wood cabinet, its glass window imploding upon impact with my shoulder. The bones make a cracking noise, the pain goes straight to my head, and I almost pass out from its intensity.

  “Better? You could have used a wall to do that.”

  I don’t know if she’s teasing me or if she’s serious.

  “Yeah, I could have. As for feeling better, let me ask you this: are you sure you still want a body?”

  “Mine won’t have pain receptors, only pleasure ones.”

  “That’s cheating,” I hiss between clenched teeth, still hurting and aching everywhere. “Whenever you feel like administering painkillers, by the way, be my guest.”

  “I’ve done that already, Cole, I’m afraid to give you anything stronger. You need to stay clear-headed.”

  Not that it was so clear to begin with.

  There’s a moment of hesitation when I want to tell her to screw that, but she’s right. I need to be able to think on my feet. A wave of shame permeates my thoughts as I realize my mind was clear earlier and I still managed to go charging in like a rookie.

  “There’s no point in blaming yourself now, Cole. What’s done is done. I should have told you to wait before you made your move.”

  “I didn’t give you time to do that. My impatience to get the mission started got the better of me.”

  “Correct, but I could have stopped your muscles from working. I didn’t have enough information at the time to predict what would happen, and I know you don’t like it when I force you to do anything.”

  “Yeah, well, seeing how this turned out, you have my permission to intervene next time I display signs of recklessness.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes—no. I don’t know. Use your judgment.”

  “This is not helping me establish a baseline from which to decide to take over in the future.”

  “Yeah, that’s part of being human, honey. Better get used to it. It’s not all zero’s and one’s.”

  I feel something viscous and awful tasting in my mouth and spit it to the ground. A large quantity of my blood spills onto what was once a pretty carpet. Now it’s mostly torn to shreds and covered with thousands of Plexiglas shards. I take a look at the mess on my body. I have cuts and bruises all over.

  That’s when I realize that Tanya is silent. There are another ten seconds of silence before she speaks.

  “Did you just call me honey?” she says with what sounds like a mix of surprise and utter satisfaction in her voice.

  I chuckle painfully. “I guess I did.”

  Two

  Mission completion time: T minus 526 minutes

  “Tanya, can we get visual confirmation that Ahmed died in the explosion? I can’t seem to be able to contact the drone,” I say.

  “I’m afraid the drone’s camera was damaged in the explosion. Would you like me to recall another one? The nearest one is about five minutes away.”

  “No, that’s okay. I’ll get the visual confirmation myself.”

  I secure Ahmed’s lieutenant, bounding both his arms and legs with lock-foam. The white shaving-cream-like material solidifies in less than two seconds to form unbreakable restraints.

  I’m out of the apartment and rushing back upstairs, climbing steps three at a time. I need to see it for myself. I need to make sure Ahmed bit the dust. The staircase reaching to the sixty-fifth floor has been damaged in the explosion, and I have to use my super strength to leap high enough and land at the top of the stairs.

  The second I land, I feel the floor give in. The structure isn’t stable enough, and before I know it I’m stumbling back down. I instinctively fire my repulsors in thruster mode just in time before hitting the ground below, and soon I soar back up.

  When I land on the floor where I stormed the apartment earlier, the entire corridor is in flames, sparks shooting from the walls, and I feel something’s wrong with my neural HUD. The interface is blurred and jittery. At first, I wonder if it’s because of interference from the surrounding damage.

  “What’s happening, Tanya? Status report?”

  There is no response. I try again.

  Then something weird happens.

  My vision is filled with a holo-view of Tanya, but the image is distorted. I can see her speak, but no sound reaches my brain. I slap my scalp. The last thing I need today is hardware failure of this kind. The image gets more and more distorted and then her face is replaced by another.

  My heart skips a beat. It’s Vassiliki. She smiles and looks at me for a few seconds.

  What the hell is this?

  Her smile vanishes into a frown, a solemn look on her face. Her lips part, and I hear her voice. It’s distorted as if the quality of the communication is weak. Her words send shivers down my spine.

  “Cole, do not trust anything you’ve been told. There’s more to this mission than meets the eye.”

  “Vassiliki? How is this possible? You—you’re dead,” I say, feeling a tear travel down my left cheek.

  To my despair, her image fades away and is replaced with Tanya’s avatar. She’s still speaking to me. It takes a couple of seconds until the words are comprehensible.

  “Cole—we can’t stay on this level for long. Too much interference, and it’s affecting all my systems.”

  No shit!

  I want to tell her to run diagnostics. I need to know what the feck seeing Vassiliki was all about. But then I remember why I came here. First and foremost, I need to find Ahmed’s dead body. It’s very hot, and I don’t h
ave time to help fight the flames, so instead, I activate my temperature shield augment. It radiates the right amount of sub-zero air around the force field surrounding me so I’m unaffected by the blazing flames.

  Soon, I reach the room I ordered the drone to blast a few minutes ago. I scan the area for the remains of a body, anything to confirm that my nemesis perished in the explosion. But I find none. I punch a hole in the nearest wall before storming back downstairs.

  On my way there, I ask Tanya to run a self-diagnostic. I don’t know what happened earlier, but it worries me. Before I reach the apartment where I left Samir, she answers.

  “Self-diagnostic complete. All systems nominal.”

  Why do I have trouble believing any of it? Is she hiding something from me or am I being paranoid because of all the stress caused by seeing a holo-feed of my dead wife?

  When I arrive next to Samir, he is still unconscious. I approach and kneel beside him, and Tanya deploys the drug injector from my right index finger.

  “Wake that fecker up please, Tanya.”

  “In his current condition, he won’t last long. Fifteen minutes at best.”

  “That’s more than enough time. It’s going to be a short conversation.”

  I press my index finger against his jugular vein and feel the drugs inject into his bloodstream with a slight pneumatic depression from the tip of my finger.

  The drugs act fast, and Samir comes back to consciousness screaming. I put my hand over his mouth to muffle the sound as I grab a knife and put it under his left eye, applying enough pressure to get his attention.

  “Listen to me, asshole, I don’t have time to waste. The only words I want to hear from you are answers to my questions. Are we clear?”

  His bloodshot eyes stare at me with pure hatred. I remove my hand slowly from his now silent mouth.

  He spits his answer like acid venom: “Go feck yourself, infidel!”

  “Wrong answer!”

  I plunge my knife into his thigh, slightly next to the artery and twist it ninety degrees, resulting in more screaming.

  “Listen to me, Samir, I have no intention of going easy on you. If you think this hurts, you obviously don’t comprehend how far I’m willing to go to get the information I require. So let’s try this again, shall we?”

  Samir’s eyes are now closed shut from the pain.

  “You know I don’t like it when you torture other human beings,” says Tanya, trying to be the voice of reason.

  What she doesn’t understand is that I can’t afford to be a feeling human being if I am to accomplish my goals. Not when the fate of hundreds of thousands of souls hangs in the balance.

  In times like these I simply switch off my emotions completely and only focus on getting results. This pathetic excuse for a human will suffer and then he will die. How much of the suffering he will have to endure is entirely up to him. But both his pain and death are set in stone as far as I’m concerned. Nothing can change that now.

  “Where is Ahmed’s dirty bomb located at the moment? Give me what I need and I’ll make the pain stop.”

  Samir blinks his eyes back open. I can start to see fear in them. The dance has begun. He still has a healthy dose of defiance though. That tells me I need to keep pushing.

  I grab one of his fingers. They’re arched from the pain, but he can’t move his hands because of the lock-foam. I go for the little finger. I don’t need to use much of my augments for this next move. I break his pinky, hearing every tiny bone crack under the pressure and rip it from his hand.

  By now, I no longer hear Samir’s screaming and moaning. I just need the intel I’m looking for; the rest of the world around me is only background noise.

  “Now, Samir, let’s try this again: where’s the dirty bomb located? I don’t enjoy this, and I’m sure neither do you. There’s no way out for you. Today is your last day, and it’s up to you if you want to die fast or have me make it a living hell for as long as it takes.”

  “Allahu Akbar— you shall burn in the flames of hell for all eternity,” he replies, tears of pain forming around his eyes.

  I take the knife out of his thigh and push my finger in the wound.

  “Not the answer I’m looking for, Samir!”

  His teeth clench hard and his eyes snap shut.

  I approach his ear and whisper:

  “This, what you feel right now, is nothing compared to what will come next. Do you understand me, Samir?”

  But Tanya interrupts the process. “Cole, the wound in Samir’s leg. It will make him go into shock soon and probably die shortly after. If you continue on this path with your interrogation, it will end prematurely and then he won’t be able to give you any answers.”

  I remove my finger from his wound and activate one of my repulsors in concentrated fire mode. A short, blue-tinged flame comes to life. I usually use this mode to solder things. It will do the trick just fine. Time to seal the laceration wound. I burn it to stop the bleeding. Without anesthesia, I can only imagine the level of pain that is coursing through his body.

  I give Samir a few seconds to recover from the shock. Then I pry his left eye open and place my blade under it once more.

  “Don’t force me to do this!” I scream. “Tell me where the bomb is!”

  He mutters something in Arabic. Tanya translates: “I do not waver in the face of adversity. Allah the merciful is my guiding light.”

  “Allah can’t do shit for you anymore. Last chance, Samir!” I shout, seconds away from crushing his face from frustration.

  I can feel him trying again to close his eye, but I don’t let him.

  I exhale deeply. “Very well, Samir, you asked for it.”

  I use the tip of my blade and plunge it under his eyeball, and with a swift movement, I pop it out of its socket.

  “Stooooop! Please, stop!” he begs.

  Now we’re getting somewhere. His eyeball dangles on the side of his face.

  “Where—is—the nuke? Answer me, or I’ll keep going!”

  A few seconds elapse before he responds.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “I don’t believe you,” I say as I grab his eyeball and close my fist around it and start pulling, slowly.

  The sound he emits is beyond agonizing. His facial grimace a testament to the pain he’s going through.

  “This next part will hurt more than anything you can ever imagine,” I say, my voice ice cold.

  “Please, just—kill me.”

  “I will the moment you tell me where to find the bomb, Samir. I give you my word. You can meet your maker any minute now; all it takes is that one piece of information.”

  “World Security Center!” he screams.

  “I didn’t ask what the target is. I already have that intel. I need to know the exact location of the bomb at this present time.”

  “Only Ahmed knows that. I don’t know where the bomb is, I swear!”

  Tanya intervenes.

  “Cole, he will not be able to take much more of this, and I detect no deception in his last statement. Maybe we should give it a rest. We have another lead in our mission’s intel package, and perhaps we should get your friend and go pay a visit to Rasul Yasser instead. I don’t think we’ll get anything useful anymore from Samir.”

  “Very well,” I say as I rip his optical nerve in frustration and throw it to the side.

  He screams in agony from the bottom of his lungs and part of me disagrees with my move. That part is called my conscience. It’s not happy about this unnecessary act of brutality. I know full well this was gratuitous and that Vassiliki wouldn’t have agreed. I’m surprised at the thought.

  I usually can contain my emotions better than this during interrogation. But there’s no denying it, today I’m off my game, and I can feel it. The nightmare has shaken my foundation, and I’m not able to turn off my human side the way I know I need to in order to accomplish tasks like these. They test my resolve not only on a psychological level, but also on an empat
hic one. The only way I can be an efficient interrogator is to switch that part of my being. But today it’s not working all that well.

  I grab a sonic grenade when my arm stops moving.

  “Tanya! What are you doing?”

  “Cole, you don’t need to do this. Just shoot him in the head and end his suffering already.”

  “Tanya, override and give me back control. Now is not the time, you hear me?”

  I can feel the sensation come back in my arm and shove the sonic grenade in Samir’s open mouth, breaking and dislocating his jaw in the process. I don’t activate it just yet. I get up and leave the room, and when I’m far enough, I send the mental command to detonate it.

  I don’t need to turn back to know what happens. I get the mental image of Samir’s head being blown into pieces and spread all around his corpse.

  “Was that really necessary?” asks Tanya with the unmistakable weight of disappointment in her voice.

  I don’t answer.

  I know there’s nothing I can say that will justify my actions. I normally have no problem admitting defeat and ending an interrogation with a simple laser blast or bullet hole to the head, but I’m beyond mad right now. I recognize that. I also recognize that it’s not a good emotion to feel while in deployment.

  My augments usually allow me to control all my emotions, but today is different. Something is lurking inside my brain, doubts doubled with fear, and that’s a very dangerous mix.

  I get back on the jet bike and soon we’re flying over New Geneva as the day unfolds little by little. It all seems peaceful at the moment. People going to work, public transport getting them to where they need to go, thinking this day is like any other. They’re unaware of what will happen to them if I fail to stop Ahmed.

  “Failure is not an option,” says Tanya, her tone grave. “Or have you forgotten that?”