Twitcher: An Illustrated Dystopian Cyberpunk Tale of Revenge and Redemption

by Kaleb Schad

  And there it was. He should have known her crusade wasn’t about saving lives any more than his was. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but he couldn’t deny a part of him was disappointed. “That’s what this is about.” Tyler said.

  “You’re talking about the Cullings,” Farris said. “Oh my God. You do actually want to end them. I never believed it.”

  “Shut up,” Sara said.

  “The only thing keeping us from cannibalism—the smartest civic infrastructure we’ve ever implemented—and you actually want to end them.”

  “See?” Sara said to Tyler.

  “I never believed it,” Farris said.

  “They’ll never stop. They only care about themselves,” Sara said. She shook her open hand.

  “No.”

  “Goddammit! We had a deal!”

  “Yeah,” the boy said. “You did.”

  Both Tyler and Sara looked at him. He was twisting the end of a bandage on his arm. When he looked at Tyler, there was both distance and closeness between them. Intense resignation. “You made a promise.” But as he said this, he included Sara in his gaze.

  “Yeah,” Tyler said.

  “I did,” Sara said.

  Deciding to kill someone—it was the kind of thing Tyler had learned was best done with a clear mind. A calm mind. A murder was like a domino. You had to see the full chain to know the price. Later, Tyler would wonder if Sara had even tried measuring that chain before she killed Dr. Farris, Ph.D. in microbiology, genetic engineering and getting shot. He doubted it. If she had, she might have waited a little while. Leave Tyler alive to deal with the next motherfucker upstairs first.

  “Anyway, it doesn’t matter,” Farris started to say. “You cut—“

  Sara shot the woman in the face. To Tyler it seemed as if her hair flapped up in slow motion, her skull and every thought she’d ever had misting out the back of it.

  “Wait,” Tyler shouted.

  The other soldiers fired into the backs of the kneeling technicians. Blood and fabric streaked across the floor. And then Tyler felt the rounds tearing into his own guts and ribs. Four of them, at least. Armor piercing, not that it mattered. He fell backwards, the recombinant plunger twirling out of his hand like a baton dropped at the finish line of some race he had known he was in, but had never really thought he could win.

  He landed on his back with his head wedged against the door to the lab, like a steel pillow. Black sleep circled his vision.

  Sara stood over him, the boy next to her. The boy.

  When Sara raised her gun, an MK-9 like Tyler’s own, and her hand shook as she aimed at his head, Tyler wondered: she held the gun, but who was pulling the trigger? Somewhere in his Twitcher brain he could tell she had a habit of dropping her wrist when she pulled the trigger, that she might miss his brain, but that this was going to hurt like hell.

  He looked at the boy. “I’m sor—“

  The gun barked a single shot.

  A KILLER

  CAUTION, the warning label read. Only hold the incinerator by the handles, the composite handles that hid the inferno between your hands. The vacuums trundled behind, erasing. A scattered few screams and flashing lights. Warnings that would go unnoticed by almost all as they dreamed in their cradles. One second, they were a hero in some syncast, fucking and fighting and handsome, thrilled and erect. The next second, fire between his hands, the whoosh of fuel racing ahead of flame, the swirling containment fields wrapping the body. CAUTION: HOT. Ashes. Dust.

  Ben couldn’t remember much from Cerebus Gate North, the hit on his head having rattled his memories as much as his body, but he thought it had probably sounded like this. Machine guns arguing back and forth, concrete puffing around them, pinging ricochets off of the steel railings. Ben was counting. Ms. Sara had lost seven of her men in the fighting on the stairs and now they were running to get to Mr. Staern’s pen-house. That didn’t sound right. Penthouse? Whatever that was.

  He tried to decide if his plan was working. Mr. Tyler was going to die anyway, so was Ms. Sara killing him first the best way that all could have gone? Either way, he knew he needed one of them to kill the other before he got to Mr. Staern. Ms. Sara was easier to make do things. Mr. Tyler never did what he asked like the others did.

  “That worked out better than I’d expected,” Ms. Sara said when the fighting was done and they were climbing to the next level.

  “I think he just pretended not to trust people,” Ben said.

  “Not just that. I’m pretty good at getting what I want. He was easier than that Kibashi girl. Convincing her to set herself on fire in front of her daddy’s company without using any drugs or synwarps, now that was something to be proud of. I’m good at getting what I want.”

  “Me too,” Ben said.

  Blinding, wrenching pain, as if he were gutted from face to crotch. He tried to open his left eye, but it was crusted shut. The Sakanaya dark.

  Tyler carefully, carefully put his fingertips to his face. He wiped at his eye and was able to see through a pink haze. He was lying on the floor in the lab. When he moved his hand to the Sakanaya, twisted metal greeted his fingers. Damn if Sara wasn’t a shitty shot, Tyler thought. He kept moving his hand around the side of his face and felt where the bullet had exited. It had been deflected by the cybernetics and came out the side of his skull just in front of his ear. Brushing his fingers against the wound lit an inferno across his face. Seconds passed before the pain stopped and he could sit up.

  First, gripping a protruding power outlet, then a door handle, then the lip of a window, he climbed, dragging his soggy hair along the wall in a crimson arc. A slurping sound sucked from his belly every time he breathed. He looked down. Three of the slugs had already been purged from his guts, he could feel. He reached under his shirt and pulled them out. That meant his JACKK was still working. Had been working. But what was left?

  He looked at his watch. 00:00:06:37. Look at those zeroes.

  He leaned against the door to that…whatever….behind him, filled with nightmares and in front of him, five dead scientists, a silent scarlet lake reflecting the ceiling lights. This would be the setting of the climax of his life. His final resting place. Surrounded by death. Like the last time he’d thought he would die. The last time he’d tried to die.

  And like last time, his death would be in failure. Then, failure as a son. Now, failure as a….what? Kidnapper? Assassin?

  Father?

  For the first time in maybe ever, Tyler cried.

  He was sorry to see Mr. Tyler die. Ben thought he was nicer than he wanted everyone to think. And Ben hadn’t wanted to hurt anyone. He’d never wanted to hurt anyone in his life, but they’d hurt him and they weren’t going to stop hurting him. It wasn’t fair that they had made him be like them. It wasn’t fair that they kept trying to use him and make him do things he’d never wanted to do. It wasn’t his fault he was a Cull. He hadn’t asked to be one. That was Mr. Staern. Well, they were going to get Mr. Staern now. And then Ben would get them all.

  First, he’d need to get that recombibent—or whatever it was called—the medicine thingy that would help him kill people. He needed that from Ms. Sara. That was super important.

  They stopped at the door to the top floor.

  “Stay close to me,” Ms. Sara said, her voice stupid and hollow from the suit. “Once they breach the door, we’re moving fast. There are security doors in here and we don’t want to get trapped behind one.”

  “You should give me the recombinant,” Ben said.

  “I’ll hold on to it,” she said.

  The explosion to open the door was quieter than he expected. The scary soldiers with X’s on their masks pushed it open and jumped into the hall.

  He thought about every person he’d ever killed, every operation he’d led or executed singly. The joyful carnage. Trimming his beard had more meaning to him than the lives he’d ended. How did that happen? When?

  Only one life had mattered more than his. No. That was
a lie and now, with minutes left, was not the time to lie. Her life didn’t matter more than his, but it had mattered. Her death was more. It had changed him.

  As would the boy’s. The boy. Had he used Sara to try to kill Tyler? Tyler thought about that. Were he in the boy’s position, wouldn’t he have done the same? The kid was learning. But learning what?

  Had Tyler not tried for vengeance, had Eddie Fahrs not died in the fight, had Tyler killed Laser Dick and Glasses and the other SLS assholes that had appeared at his cabin, then let the boy and Fahrs go, where would they all be now? One thing for sure: he wouldn’t be on the one-hundred-twentieth floor of the last place on Earth the kid wanted to be, getting the trigger that would vaporize his life into trillions of murdering stegs.

  What had he told the boy? For one thing to live, another must die? Tyler was dying. That was foregone. But whose life would his death buy? Or did his life have so little value left as to be worthless? Could his death buy nothing?

  -00:00:04:14.

  He pushed himself off of the wall and wobbled, then stood. He could barely move. What was he thinking?

  -00:00:04:02.

  What had she called it? Ephermycalthrizine. In the lab, she had said. For JACKKs, she had said.

  He catapulted one leg in front of the other and somehow made it to the counter without falling.

  -00:00:03:53.

  Ben clasped Ms. Sara’s left wrist. It was the hand holding the recombinant plunger, her other hand holding the gun she’d shot Mr. Tyler with.

  Dark, raw wooden beams lined the hallway, two rows of cedar columns, carved and magnificent. Warm torches stood sentry in sconces all along the walls, granting the space an amber gentleness that Ben knew wasn’t true. The floor was polished mahogany hardwood. It clicked under their boots. Ben had never seen anything like it. Wood!

  Two black seams revealed emergency doors that could be closed near the stairs and near the penthouse.

  Ben bumped into the back of Ms. Sara and his amputated arm sizzled with pain. She started backing up.

  “Dammit,” she hissed.

  At the end of the hall were two massive wooden doors, each with three panels and standing in front of them was a man. He was big, like Mr. Tyler had been. Black lines traced up his neck and peeked out from under his sleeves. A moment later, when the man started to move faster than any normal person should move, he recognized what they were—the telltale carbon fiber blood vessels of a Twitcher.

  Vials clinked as they fell out of the cabinets like broken champaign glasses. Empty promises. And how many damn paper towels does a lab need? Tyler moved to the next set of cabinets. Behind him, a dozen open doors gave the cabinets the look of pinned butterflies.

  He missed his Sakanaya. It would have been scanning the labels for him, infinitely faster than his one swollen eye trying to focus on the damned small print. Now it was just a piece of broken metal lodged in his face.

  Hacking, then sucking a rattling breath, Tyler curled over the counter and vomited chunky blood.

  Don’t look. It won’t help, he thought.

  He looked. -00:00:02:35.

  He flipped open the next cabinet and saw a vial with the letters EMCT on it. It was small, only 30 millimeters or so. He squinted and tried to focus on the full name: Ephermycalthrizine. A viscous, yellow liquid with silver flecks rocked inside.

  There was no way to know what it did or would do. Maybe the scientist had been lying, manipulating him into killing himself. Maybe it wouldn’t do anything, his body too far gone for it to help. At this point, did it matter?

  The next cupboard had a plunger. He grabbed it and seated the vial into its chamber, closed the cover, put it to his elbow port and pulled the trigger. A single dose snaked into his veins. When the gun had recharged, he pulled the trigger again. If one dose was good, two would be better.

  He looked around the wreckage for his bag. The Mark 37 was still slung over his shoulder and the MK-9 was still in his leg holster, but all of the extra magazines in his belt and vest were gone and it looked like the bastards had taken his bag. That left him with one magazine each.

  He dropped the plunger and started walking towards the door.

  They were dying now. Ben stopped trying to count, but the Twitcher man had shot four of them right away. Bang, bang. Bang, bang. And that was before anyone was even able to move.

  Now the Twitcher had closed on another soldier. He slapped the man’s rifle up into his own face, then spun him and used him as a shield while shooting at the others. Another two soldiers died trying to move sideways to get around him. The columns in the hallway were the only thing keeping any of them alive, wooden protectors shunting shots off their course.

  This wasn’t going to work, Ben knew.

  “Here.” Ms. Sara handed him the recombinant. While shooting with one hand, she unclipped a silver cylinder from her belt with the other. Ben remembered Mr. Tyler using something like that in Cerebus Gate before the semi truck blew up. It frightened him. He didn’t want to blow up again.

  Ben tightened his grip on the recombinant, then looked at the emergency door they’d just passed under.

  The Twitcher’s rifle was out of ammo, so he’d dropped it and was now beating the men up really hard. He was smiling. An awful man, just like Mr. Tyler said. Like everyone.

  Ben shoved the recombinant into his waist band and started running for the stairwell they’d come through.

  Ms. Sara lobbed the grenade, then turned. “No!”

  This time felt different. When last Ben was in an explosion like this, whether he wanted to admit it or not, he was grateful to have Mr. Tyler’s steel arms wrapped around him, the fatherly warning that this would hurt, the sacrifice of the man’s body for the child’s. This time, Ben was on his own, the vicious absence of help.

  But also the explosion was different. This was a concussion grenade and not a super-exploding grenade, Ben decided.

  The explosion threw him to the ground. Furious pain lanced up his amputated arm and wrapped around his eyes like serrated claws. Everything was muted and ringing.

  As he stood, he saw Ms. Sara starting to get to her feet, her eyes locked to his. The Twitcher was already back up and all of Ms. Sara’s men were crawling and trying to stand.

  Ben lurched past the black line of the emergency door, found the alarm panel and slammed his palm into it.

  “You little—” The door dropped like a verdict, silencing Ms. Sara’s scream.

  Was the ringing in his ears from the concussion grenade or guilt? Through the windows in the barrier, he watched Ms. Sara hammer her fists to the gate, watched her face warp with her screams. The fear in that face. Ben felt like he was going to be sick. She was going to die and he’d done it to her. But she was going to kill him. Everyone wanted to kill him or make him kill. Well, they’d have their way. He would kill. All of them. Everyone. Everywhere.

  He looked down at the recombinant in his belt. It wasn’t there. He spun to look behind him by the alarm panel. Not there. He frantically patted down his pants. Nothing.

  Ms. Sara had turned her back to the fire door and was shooting at the Twitcher. Ben stepped up to the window. There were only three men left and her. Three men, the Twitcher, Ms. Sara and the recombinant at her feet.

  Twelve minutes! Twelve-mother-fucking-glorious minutes! -00:00:13:58. Look at that. A one in front of the three!

  Tyler took the steps three at a time with loping leaps and not a flicker of pain. No after-taste of the ten or eleven bullets he’d eaten in the last two days. And he could hear again! Not just slacker norm hearing, but JACKK hearing. The kind of hearing that told him someone was sitting on the top floor of the stairwell crying and that there were four tired security guards running up the stairs behind him.

  A silver bulb, no bigger than Tyler’s fist, zipped up the center of the stairwell. It hovered on four flapping wings, a minuscule chain gun for a beak. When it fired, Tyler couldn’t help but laugh. It buzzed like a pissed-off hummingbird. />
  “Oh, c’mon, you guys,” Tyler called down the stairs. He fired at the bulb, but missed. “A little birdie to kill me?”

  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this much fun fighting.

  Shooting left handed, so he could sight with his left eye, was a lot harder than he’d thought it would be. It took three more bursts before he could nail the drone, but not before it had sent a dozen pellets into him. They burrowed into his arm and cybernetic hand, some skipping off of his rifle, but the kit let him ignore the damage.

  Killing the four Staern Life Sciences security officers coming up the stairs behind him was easier. They weren’t ready for Tyler’s speed or, frankly, his brutality. Odd how men working in the company that invented the Joint Auto-pharmaceutical and Cybernetics Kinesis Kit would have no idea what to expect when facing such a soldier. But there it was. And there they were, four of them, the bodies stacked like cordwood in the stairwell.

  He checked their weapons, but confirmed what he’d thought he’d heard in their guns’ reports. Mark 41s, not 37s, like his. That meant they were chambered in 8.22mm instead of Tyler’s 7.62mm and that the guns would be sync-locked with the guards’ cybernetics. He looked at his own rifle. Twelve rounds left, plus his pistol.

  Sniffling came from the top of the stairs.

  Three flights up, he saw the boy. He was sitting on the landing, his back to the steel door. PRIVATE was printed across it in block letters, then smaller underneath AREN INDUSTRIES GENE SNIFFER X16 EQUIPMENT, NEW YORK, NY. Bullets from the hallway had pimpled this side of the door.

  Crusted blood marked the child’s face and neck. Raw skin from falling. His amputated arm soaked with blood from the wound that must have reopened. The boy looked at Tyler. Tears tumbling over his round cheeks. Seeing the boy, something broke inside of Tyler.