Biohell (68 page)

Franco glanced sideways at Pippa.
“Is he taking the piss?”

Pippa said nothing; her grey eyes
were as blank as the matt metal disks in the sculpted, sweeping faces of the
GKs.

Franco snarled, and fought at his
bonds; but they held. Oz tutted, as if disciplining a particularly naughty
child. He turned back, gazing out towards the sweeping granite corridor which
led to this, his Palace; then held up a finger to his lips. Ruby sparkles edged
like gaseous blood around his fingers.

“Say hello to your friend,” said
Oz, as, at the end of the corridor a squad of SIMs came into view. They dragged
with them a limping, bruised Keenan, and marched him unceremoniously along the
expanse to dump him at Oz’s feet.

Keenan crawled onto his knees,
hawked a mouthful of blood, phlegm and saliva, and spat it onto Oz’s polished
boots. He grinned upwards through the bruises of his beating at the hands of
the SIMs. It had been an eventful journey. “Hey, if it isn’t Dr Fucking Oz. We
meet at last, you metal cripple.” He eyed the man’s diminutive size. “You’re
bigger than I thought you’d be.”

Oz smiled an easy, rolling smile,
and reaching down, helped Keenan to stagger to his feet. “I must apologise for
your... treatment at the hands of the SIMs. It was not what I anticipated.” He
made a swift and complicated hand gesture, to something just out of sight.
There came a sudden
blast
in the corridor and the ten SIMs were picked
up and thrown violently down the entire length, bouncing from walls and the
floor and ceiling, whirling and spinning, limbs cracking, bodies breaking,
skulls pulping as they were snapped away in a terribly vicious violent instant.

Keenan and Franco blinked, then
looked at one another. Keenan released a slow breath.

“That’s a pretty good weapon,” he
said, voice low.

“I agree. I designed it. It’s in
the walls. As a deterrent, you understand. Now, follow me.”

Dr Oz moved towards the edge of
the horizon which looked out, and down, across this— his miniature, created
world. In the distance a false sun was rising. Sunlight sparkled across desert
and jungle, cities and snowscape. “I had to synchronise the sunrise and
sunsets, obviously,” said Oz, “although different climates are handled at
ground-level using mid-level ion filters and hydrogen scales. Please, step up
onto the black circle.”

Keenan and Franco glanced down.
Before them squatted a circle of metal, and Oz moved to the forefront. Keenan
glanced over his shoulder, where Pippa and the three GKs had eased forward,
hemming the two Combat K soldiers in and brandishing MPKs with a honed and
honeyed threat.

Keenan feigned to see Pippa for
the first time. He gave her a nasty smile, and winked. “How’s it going, Killer?”

Pippa prodded him in the back
with her MPK, and he stumbled forward, growling. Franco followed, as did the
GKs, until the small group stood atop the smooth metal circle.

“I call this my flying carpet,”
said Oz, and a tiny device materialised in the air at waist height. Oz reached
forward, and skilfully manipulated compressed air controls. The disk lifted and
eased out, sweeping and dropping low over a range of desert dunes. Aboard, they
could smell hot sand and baking heat. “The Sahara,” said Oz, by way of
explanation. “It could be said I am obsessed by our heritage, by Old Earth.
This is a personality flaw to which I openly admit. After all, Earth was the
primus of our creation, yes? The point from which we stemmed. The original
sperm and egg for our decadent species.” He smiled, teeth glittering blood-red
in a face ravaged by power.

The disc hummed, lifting and
zooming over rolling dunes. Swiftly the landscape altered, blossoming and
morphing into greenery as trees suddenly burst like a fresh scented carpet
beneath their feet.

“I want to see Melanie!” snarled
Franco, scowling at Oz.

“As you wish.”

The disc accelerated and veered,
banking, and after a few moments of incredible high speed they approached a
looming city of dark, sodden stone. A cold wind arose, and rain lashed at the
group on the levitating disc making all except machine shiver. Buildings
slammed beneath them, and Oz slowed the disc, passing over miniaturised
haystacks and muddy fields, past tiny hovels with straw roofs and cattle and
pigs rooting around in timber enclosures. They approached a castle, a
magnificent edifice— despite being in miniature—and it appeared deserted. On the
outskirts, tiny people fled screaming, their voices squeaking and surreal as
they waved minute pitchforks and sticks.

Keenan peered down. “So, are they
real? Or projections? Or what?” He lifted his head, eyes connecting, staring
hard at Oz.

“We grow them in VATs, a similar
technology used thousands of years ago for the Slabs. Only this time we don’t
breed soldiers, just little simplistic men and women, and cows and pigs and
chickens. However, do not think of them as flesh and blood, like you or I. The genetic
codes used here are organic vegetable-based. After all... I wouldn’t like to
play at being God.” He laughed, as if enjoying a private joke.

“So we really are scaring the
shit out of them?”

“Yes.” Oz nodded. “In their
simple, vegetative minds. But then you might as well try scaring a carrot, or a
cabbage. If you grab one, bite it in half, they taste like tomato juice.”

“You mean you’ve tried?” Keenan
met Oz’s brown, glassy stare.

“Oh yes. I consider it quite a
delicacy. And
so amusing
to see little women running around on your
plate as you sprinkle them with salt and pepper.”

“You are one sick fucker.”

Oz held out his hands. “A product
of humanity,” he said, voice dry with dark humour.

The disc lifted, soaring over
castle walls trailing a stream of rain-water. In the wide courtyard below,
lying flat on a stone slab, was Melanie, all eight feet of her mottled deviated
flesh, sagging pus-filled orifices and macho, staggered jaw. Her eyes flickered
open as the disc settled on the ground, and she sat up, warily, hands and feet
bound by HotWire which had scorched vibrant rings like dark tattoos on her
skin. She moved carefully, as one afraid of very great pain.

“Melanie!” roared Franco, leaping
forward before anyone could stop him and launching himself at the eight foot
genetic mutation. He charged, barrel-chested, across the cobbled courtyard and
fell against her, his head pushing to nestle under her elongated neck with her
small head and distended features.

“Grwwlll? Ranco! Ou Ame!”

“Of course I came! I would never
leave you! We are to be married! And I’m not just some low-life dirt-box
scumbag with weak moral fibre who gives up just because his girl has turned
into a... turned into a... had a misfortunate accident! Reet?”

“Awww, Ranco!”

As everybody watched the reunited
couple with a curious mix of sympathy, tense apprehension and sheer out and out
horror,
Keenan moved, he moved fast and hard, and performed that thing
which he did best...

The act of violence.

Keenan rolled right, fast, away
from the GK AIs, coming up behind Oz in a
nanosecond
and looping his
wire bootlace over the man’s head, drawing it tight with one fist whilst
holding the man’s head encircled in his free arm. Everybody froze. Dr Oz
struggled, but Keenan tugged the cord tight and Oz gurgled, one leg kicking out
spastically as blood flowed beneath the wire. He halted his movements. Keenan
smiled, and patted him.

“Good boy.”

Nyx growled, lowering her head,
poisonous fangs glistening with tox. Keenan eyed her over Oz’s shoulder, glad
of the flesh barrier between him and certain, instant death...

“Wait.” Pippa held up her hand.
Keenan watched the three GKs visibly relax. They had been about to spring, an
attempt to rip him limb from limb... but that wouldn’t have saved Oz.

Keenan nodded. “Bright girl.”

“Not bright, Keenan, I’ve just
seen you pull this trick before.” She lowered her eyes to Oz’s purple face. “His
boot laces are TitaniumIII paracord; if he tugs any harder, he’ll decapitate
you. Relax, Keenan. Don’t do anything rash. We have all the time in the world.”

Keenan’s steel biceps loosened
their pressure and Oz choked, snot and saliva erupting from his nose and mouth,
spilling to glisten down his chin.

Keenan leaned forward. Pressed
his lips against Oz’s ear. “Listen carefully,” he said.

“Don’t kill me! You have this
situation wrong!”

“I do?” Keenan gave a low, evil
chuckle. “That’s funny. I thought I understood it completely.”

“No! It’s a test! This is a test
for Combat K! To check you still have the old magic.”

Keenan glanced at Pippa, then
across to where Franco was frantically trying to fight off an accelerating
frisky monster. He licked his lips. Time had
slowed
into honey-treacle.

“I don’t believe you,” he said. “That’s
just too neat. Too easy an escape route for you, my friend.”

“Why do you think we took
Melanie?” snarled Oz. “We knew Franco would come after her, and drag you with
him. We knew he wouldn’t let Mel suffer... it’s in his character profile. It
was a chosen pathway for Combat K.”

“Shit, and there’s me thinking I
came to NanoTek to decode the junk’s SinScript. And, of course, to find out
what caused the genetic fuck-up slurry on the planetside streets out there.”

“Wait!” Franco had escaped Mel’s
advances, and trotted over to the group. Mel came close behind him, her eyes
fixed glinting on the three GKs. She growled, tiny black hackles rising on her
corrugated neck. Franco prodded Oz in the chest. “What the
hell
did you
do to my girlfriend? Explain!”

“OK, it was an accident,” said
Oz, voice wavering, hands clenched into claws as blood flowed down his neck and
stained the collar of his shirt. “There’s a little boy, a bastard street-urchin
called Knuckles. He mugged a woman in the street—a simple enough crime—only she
wasn’t just any normal woman out shopping for shoes; no, this was Christiane
Solomonsson, fresh off the SPIRAL dock shuttle and heading for a meeting with
Ministers from Quad-Gal. She had her case hard-wired to her arm, but Knuckles
cut through the cord and stole it. Inside was a tiny bottle of biomods.
Very,
very
advanced biomods. The template for, shall we say, a super-soldier.”

Keenan, Pippa and Franco turned,
and stared at Mel. She growled, staring right back.

“So you turned my bird into a
mutated super-soldier?” snarled Franco. “You dickhead!”

“No, the biomod KJ-X elements
should have remained dormant... only, when the altered, pirated biomods reacted
out in The City, and everybody started to change, to deviate, then
everything
went wrong. Melanie became a prime deviant. PriD. One of the most powerful
genetic soldiers NanoTek ever designed.” He stared at her, eyes gleaming, face
twisted into... pride, despite the cord tight around his throat; an umbilical
of death leading straight to Keenan’s fist.

Rain lashed the group, and
distantly thunder roared. Keenan glanced up and around at the micro-climate. He
shivered. He was deep under the sea, in some madman’s personal play-pit. A
sandbox for the insane. Never had he felt so estranged from reality.

Franco took a threatening step
forward. His head lowered. His expression dropped into the sub-zero
temperatures of cold ice fury. “Oz. Change her back.”

“I cannot,” said Oz.

“Grwwlll,” growled Mel.

Franco’s eyes met Keenan’s.
Keenan nodded. “Change her back. Or you
will
die.”

“Then you’ll have to kill me!”
snapped Oz. “It’s an irreversible process! The PriDs are not designed to
fluctuate at will between human and military killer... they are simple fucking
machines designed to destroy all life. You understand? There’s a war coming,
Franco, and NanoTek will be at the forefront of military supply! We are
employed to design
soldiers...
but nobody gave us instructions what to
do with them when they finished the job. They’re not supposed to
turn back.”