Nightmare factory, p.34
Nightmare Factory, page 34
Low blood pressure, insufficient O2 levels, multiple neuro toxins, and a rapidly spreading response to internal trauma. The tissue on his neck felt oddly detached. As I pressed harder, part of it seemed to slough away to the floor. I jerked my hand back.
If it caused him more pain, he didn’t show it.
“Master Sergeant, you were my most fun creation.”
I didn’t enjoy thinking of myself that way, but it was clear that parts of me were designed or created in one of these war factories. Mine resembled a hospital, but the research came from somewhere like this. I was sure of that now.
“Doc… Magnus. I need the med packs. Or the compounding drugs. What do I need to do to stay alive?”
He smiled. “Don’t worry about that, Kovach. I’ve taken care of everything.”
What in the hell did that mean? “My body is shutting down; I can’t even get out of this place.”
“Is Voss with you?” he said weakly. “I was told by Nevis she would be here.”
My face had to show my confusion and my irritation. Who the fuck was Nevis, and what difference did Voss make? “Yeah… she fled after we encountered your MechaDroids down in the basement.”
He looked genuinely concerned, which was hard to imagine for someone in his shape. “You went there? Why on earth…”
A large crash behind me cut his words off.
“They are our Titan class mechs. If they are armed for war, we designate them by loadout.” He wheezed but was clearly still proud of all his work here. “The staff here call them by several names, but most often it’s Decimators. The operational ones simply do the heavy lifting down their in the storage bay. You should be fine as long as the others weren’t activated.” The man’s voice was weak and distant.
My insides went watery as I recalled all of those alcoves lighting up around the enormous cavern. Inside each one, a Titan class Decimator was coming to life.
“Ada, can you do anything for him?” I asked silently. I wasn’t exactly feeling compassion for the man but he could be useful especially if I didn’t find the drugs.
“I’m sorry, Prowler, but no. I can ease his suffering if you wish.”
I looked around the lab. More horrors awaited me, I was sure. “No.” This man had helped create horrors. Yes, he had saved me, but only to let me suffer an even more painful death.
Somewhere below me, I heard the muffled thumps from the mechanical beasts hitting something solid. “They’re making monsters.” The thought came out, although it had been there the entire time. These were not war machines; this was something else entirely. Of late, I’ve come to realize that when it comes to keeping in front of the global arms race, there is virtually no line of research that’s definitively off limits. So, without government oversight, where had the twisted minds here at Hammer Industries gone? What’s worse, I was recognizing some of the experiments going on here as things Banshee had recovered from mission raids. Illegal shit that Space Force Drop teams had been sent in to shut down. Missions that ended my friends and nearly me.
The sounds behind me were growing closer. Doctor Reichert’s head lolled to one side, unconscious or dead. I didn’t shed any tears. My fingers searched his pockets removing a key fob, ID badge, and a small black hexagon that felt like marble or onyx. I pocketed it all and moved past him and toward the flickering green-lit walls.
The massive chamber was different. It looked more organic as if it had simply grown out of the earth. It also had a definite Gigeresque quality of ridges, coils and spikes that immediately reminded me of the alien movies my dad was addicted to. Even in 2D those things gave me the creeps. It must have stretched hundreds of yards under the abandoned industrial park. The ceiling was at least twenty-five feet high, supported by large polycrete pillars a good five feet across. I pushed past another steel door, just as massive as the first. There were racks of computers—the high-end kind. I knew they would use supercomputers for whatever genetic mapping and editing was going on here. There were tables filled with unknown scientific equipment, and a dozen stainless-steel dissecting tables. On one was a clearly mechanical limb, but attached to it were muscles and tendons that looked clearly human. There were also more bodies in this room.
Many, many more bodies.
Like in the prior chamber, most appeared human, and none of these were whole. Legs and arms, ragged torsos, bodiless heads lay scattered across the floor.
I stood there, aghast at the scene. I’d gone into battle in some of the worst hellholes on the planet. I’d come face to face with my share of humanity’s worst. People who would do anything for money or to expand their ideology, but this was worse than any of the things our enemies had ever cooked up. I was appalled at the science and couldn’t wrap my head around the slaughter. What had done this?
But then, my eyes were drawn to the far wall. Even with all the death, the smells, and the gruesome tableau of horror in every direction, how could I not look? How could anyone not stare at what was there?
Aisle upon aisle of large transparent cylinders, each a dozen feet high and as thick as a dining room table. All filled with a green, algae-colored liquid that smelled vaguely of ammonia and death.
Most of the tanks were otherwise empty. In some, the contents had gone dark, and my light wouldn’t penetrate. But in others, creatures floated inside. These could have been humans at some point. The heads, arms, and feet were clearly something else now. They were all naked, powerfully built with bulging muscles under a skin that looked oddly artificial. Each arm ended in a long appendage that ended in a claw, or more accurately, a blade. A label at the top read FU-Y288. In my mind, they instantly became known as Furies.
They floated in the green liquid; cables ran down and attached to the connections buried in the creatures’ skulls and spines. I froze as one of them twitched. It wasn’t dead. The interface at the base of its neck activated, and I could see a faint blue glow under the skin radiating down from the base of the brain stem to the spinal cord. The device was not unfamiliar to me. It was exactly the kind they added to me when I was augmented with Ada.
“This is me, would be me,” I said out loud.
“It is not you, Joe.”
Ada’s voice surprised me. It had been so long since she had done anything approaching a conversation.
“What is it then?” I asked.
“I’m still processing. There is an enormous amount of data in these computers. Some of it I can access. I believe they were using a new form of transformational genetics to create augmented life forms.”
“How…for what purpose?”
“War would be my assumption. Transformational genetics is useful in searching for methods of changing specific DNA and essentially rebuilding it so that a new custom-made code can be developed.”
She paused as I moved in closer to one of the tanks. A female with dusty rose-colored skin peered out through the glass.
“I am detecting something else, Joe. They are using XNA.”
“I remember that term from that earlier mission. As in no source code?” I asked, my voice rising in pitch. The female suddenly kicked out, causing a deep thump to sound through the room. I jumped back and likely pissed myself just a bit. These things were horrendous but oddly mesmerizing to look at until I saw the first one with an open mouth. It was just a gash with thick rubbery lips, between which I could see row upon row of dagger-like teeth. Instead of a tongue, undulating waves of tentacles lined the mouth. Once they bit down, I knew getting away would be impossible.
“Artificial or synthetic DNA,” Ada continued. “Meaning they don’t have to combine existing species to make their creations. They can design one from scratch. Each of these seems similar but different, as if they are iterations on a common baseline of XNA coding. They can experiment freely, picking out the most desirable characteristics.”
“Shit…” I let that one just hang there for a moment.
The Furies I could see were indeed all slightly different, with scaly skin that ranged from an emerald green to a deep purple. As they moved, the colors seemed to vibrate and shift to other iridescent tones. Then one stretched its limbs, which caused a row of hidden spikes along the curve of the back to arch up. The things looked lethal but still mesmerizingly elegant.
This place was evil. Not satanic evil, no possessed or inhabited but just devoid of anything remotely human. As if someone had bleached away everything but the pure essence of life and then decided what components to keep and what to discard. Idly I thought that mankind had been destined to the discard pile.
CHAPTER
SEVENTY-NINE
BANSHEE
“I’ve lost touch with Prowler and G-force,” the ship’s AI informed Lieutenant Riggs. “Telemetry and comms are both offline. They are on a sublevel of the Hammer facility.”
Bayou tried hard to stay on task. Yes, she was busy looking for a proverbial kitten in a tree, but it was important to Kovach and therefore important to Banshee. Ada had passed along the video of her own sister, but she would have to deal with that later. The world was shit and maybe saving one kid would help balance things — at least a little. Still, she was glad she got the autopsy report to Joe; that might help him in that damn place. He needed to know these creatures were based on Hammer Industries’ biological patents.
The TriCraft settled in directly over the roadway. Bayou, Priest, and Halo exited in a staggered defensive line. She hurried down the hill, following the marker in her heads-up display. Activating external comms, she called for the boy, then the dog. The target location was near the bottom of a deep ravine. She saw the bicycle first, the wheel bent sideways, and the frame mangled beyond repair.
Bayou’s heart sank as she pieced together what must have happened. She glanced nervously back up at the towering hill they had just flown over. The downhill had to be nearly a half mile at a good nine percent incline. This kid had some nerve to take that on an old bike. Then she remembered what was on the other side of that mountain and the bodies at the top. Lux knew he’d had no choice.
“Lux, can you hear me?”
Bayou fine-tuned her battle suit sensors but picked up nothing, no kid, no dog, no sounds of life even. She pulled the bike out and saw blood covering one of the handlebars and a bright red smear of it across the faded pink seat. That was when she heard a soft whimper.
Minutes later, she emerged carrying the puppy. The animal’s limp body felt like nothing in the warriors’ arms, but she treated it like a fallen comrade, passing it off to Halo, who rushed it up the embankment and inside the stationary dropship. Seconds later, Carol came down the ramp, jumping the last few feet to the road.
“I’m sorry, nothing but the dog. Help me look,” Bayou offered. She didn’t want the civilian out here, but she was trying hard to put herself in the mother’s place. What would she do to save her own child? If she ever could have had one.
“There’s blood on the bike? Do you think he was…” Carol couldn’t finish the sentence and Bayou preferred not to share her theory. There was no body, so the crash must not have been fatal.
“Packer, give me a perimeter sweep, all life signs,” she ordered.
“Yes, Chief.”
The ship’s systems were more sensitive than her suit’s and located higher up, so they could see farther.
“May have something, a faint trail slightly warmer than the surroundings, sending to you now.”
Bayou studied the image and agreed it was better than anything she had.
Minutes later, they were all back aboard and drifting just over the treetops on a slight southwesterly course, following the meandering trail indicated on the infrared scope. It might simply be more deer or a bear, but the size of it suggested something large, much larger than a young boy. Bayou had a bad feeling.
The call from Gi was garbled, but the context was clear enough. He and Kovach had gotten separated, and they were under intense enemy fire.
What enemy?
Bayou eyed the IR scope; they were hunting for a kid while the rest of their team was engaged. She needed to be there; this was a lost cause. “Packer, lay in a course to Gi’s location, expedited routing.”
“That’s going to be a high-g ride LT. Short geo-hops are the worst for a beast like this.”
She knew it was going to be tough. The gravitational dampers cut in, making the ride to orbit gentler than an elevator, but when you added lateral movement at the speeds the TriCraft reached, you began encountering inertial shearing forces. Forces more than what the dampeners could handle and rather unpleasant for humans, too. From across the flight deck, the mother made eye contact. Bayou knew she understood, but the anger and frustration were clear on the woman’s face.
They would be abandoning her son to whatever came across those mountains. After the kid had somehow survived the fucking apocalypse on his own for weeks, salvation would evaporate just when it was so close. She heard a mewling whine from the puppy. Goddammit. Debra hated being put in this position.
“Course plotted and ready to execute,” the pilot said.
“Hold! We have something,” Halo called out.
“Belay that jump,” Bayou yelled. “Show me.”
Lux was aware of the movement, but very little else. His head jostled from one side to the other, and he smelled something foul. He coughed, only to feel every bone in his face ache.
Where was Junie?
He tried to open his eyes, but they seemed almost glued shut. He struggled, and painfully, one slowly opened. He saw only blackness. It wasn’t dark out—no, something was covering his face. Lux attempted to move the blindfold, only to find his arms wouldn’t move. They were lashed together behind his back. He remembered Mister Bill’s warning about ‘bad’ people. He was lying on something hard; it was moving, and he was a prisoner. He’d made a mistake, and now the bad people had him.
The men. The hunters from the top of the hill. It had to be them.
The thought hit him hard; he thought he’d gotten away, the puppy and him, but something had gone wrong… a crash, a tree coming at him fast, then pain and nothingness. He tasted vomit and knew he’d been sick. Now he wanted badly to wash his mouth out.
“Not good, Lux, not good at all,” he whispered to himself.
He’d been through some tough times the last few weeks, but this one trumped them all. What would they want with a kid? His pack had a few things in it, but they could have just taken that. He didn’t understand. Of course, he didn’t understand grown-ups that well, anyway. Marcie always tried to explain things to him, but it rarely made sense. Like when his dad and mom used to fight, which was about nearly everything. It always seemed to end up with his mom hitting the end button on the screen and burying her head in her hands. The tears always came, and there was nothing he could do to stop them. Deep down, he always felt like it was his fault. The arguments always seemed to start with something to do with him.
Lux struggled with the bindings, but the rope seemed to be around his wrist and another higher, around his elbows. He tugged the arms backward and felt his legs move as well. They tied his arms to his feet? That’s weird. It almost didn’t feel like rope. His fingers brushed over the thin, hard strands. Some kind of wire. Even if the men had not found the knife in his pocket, he wouldn’t be cutting through this stuff.
Man, his jaw hurt, and he had a monster, gigantic headache. It was so bad he was having trouble concentrating on what he needed to do next.
“Oh, you’re awake,” a voice said from behind him. “You whacked the hell out of ‘em trees back aire.”
The man’s voice was odd, like a cartoon hillbilly, but even harder to understand.
“You coulda warned us about that shit coming,” he yelled. Lux could tell the man was clearly angry. “My dad and my cousin Jessie…”
Lux couldn’t hear all of what he said, but he got the feeling the man was alone and that he was somehow blaming Lux for what… the vines attacking? That made no sense, but clearly this man was ticked off. He knew firsthand that when people were hurting, they sometimes did stuff that made little sense.
The movement of whatever they were riding slowed, and the sound of the machine puttered to a stop. Lux felt hands on the wire restraints. He was lifted up and out by the wire, his arms pulling back painfully, causing him to scream in agony. He didn’t want the man to hear him hurt. That’s what gave bullies power, that was some of what Marcie had always told him. He gritted his teeth, flexed his tiny arm muscles and fought down the anger. He would find a way out of this. He had to get back to Junie and then somehow find his mom.
The man dropped him face down on the ground, then snatched the cloth bag off his head. The bag had been stuck with dried blood, which ripped open fresh wounds. Blood began seeping down Lux’s face and into his eyes.
“Damn, that’s gonna leave a scar,” the man said, grinning.
He was skinny, but Lux couldn’t tell his age or much else about him. He was probably one of the men on the hilltop, but he’d been too scared and going too fast to pay much attention.
“What do you want with me?”
The man’s expression let Lux know he didn’t really have a plan.
“Dunno, but it ain’t gonna be good. You going to pay for not giving us any warning about what was coming.”
Lux managed to rub his face on his shoulder, clearing one of his eyes a bit. They were in a clearing with a small house, or maybe just a barn. It was run down, not like the ones back home. He saw what must have been pens for pigs or something. It smelled, but then again, so did the man. The animals were making a lot of noises. It reminded him of all the ones fleeing the killer vines earlier.
“I… I’m sorry about your friends. I was just scared.”
The slap surprised him. “You don’t fuckin’ talk about ‘em… they is family. You… you ain’t nothing. In fact, you less than nothing.”
