Biohell (76 page)

~ * ~

Mel
climbed. The rocky wall was jagged, and she struggled with her long claws and
her own physical bodyweight, but scrabbling and scraping, distended jaws
chewing at air, working spasmodically like a dog with a bone, Mel climbed and
climbed, ascending towards the green glow high above. Below, magma churned.
During the climb the lava seemed to be growing in molten discontent. Mel
shrugged. She didn’t understand such things. All she knew was that Franco, her
beloved, was somewhere up there... and she couldn’t leave him to
die.

Claws raking rock, Mel finally
heaved her bulk over the edge of the precipice, and dripping blood from a
hundred wounds torn in mottled torso and thick corded muscles, and with tiny
head bobbing, black pebble-eyes narrowing, she turned to see—

Dr Oz.

The man responsible for the
creation of the bio-mod “human upgrade”.

The man, then, responsible for
her present condition.

As deviant...

Mel lowered her head. Saw Pippa,
unconscious, beyond. She glanced left, tracking for Nyx, but couldn’t locate
the escaped AI. Mel growled, a low, low rumbling which started in her bowels
and travelled up through her belly, to finally emerge through cracked and distended
jaws...

Mel leapt, snarling, and Oz
whirled, the yukana hissing out, causing Mel to rear backwards. Oz slammed the
blade down, but Mel moved far faster than he’d anticipated. She grabbed the
black sword, and flung it off where it clattered against the far wall, and
toppled down end over end into molten magma.

Distantly, the blade sizzled, and
vanished.

Mel grinned at Oz. Then charged
him. His fists came up, delivering a cracking right hook that shook Mel’s small
head but she rolled with the blow, long neck crackling, claws lashing out and
grabbing Oz and picking him up, hoisting him high above her head where she
strained at him, bending him and he screamed as his spine
cracked
and
snapped and then was almost instantly repaired by the nanobots. Holding his
feet, Mel slammed Oz against the rocky ground and his head caved in, then
melted back into shape and she lifted him once more, slamming him down, where
again his head caved in. Brains splashed volcanic rock. Mel lifted him, and the
wounds healed and Oz screamed, “No more! No more!” but Mel slammed him down a
third time, and his head detached, rolling away and disappearing under the SLAM
Cruiser. Mel tossed the limp body aside and moved to Pippa, stooping, staring
down at the injured woman. Pippa lay in a wide pool of her own blood.

Behind Mel, there came a
crack.

Mel stood, confused, and turned
to see Oz on his feet, head swirling, engulfed by a black mist, flesh melting,
skin and skull forming into a solid, perfect rendition of that which he’d just
lost—

Oz smiled a dark smile. His eyes
glittered. He rocked his head sideways, and there came the
crack
of
realigning vertebrae. “I
wish
you people would stop
doing
that!”

He leapt, even as Mel leapt, and
his boots slammed Mel’s head sending the mutated woman reeling back, claws
scraping grooves in the rock. Blow after blow followed, rocking the large
deviant and she bellowed, snarling, pus and saliva spraying out under the
pounding onslaught of Oz’s fists and shoes. Suddenly, he dropped to the ground,
hand groping and lifting the CNP 1mm dropped by Steinhauer.

“Bitch,” he snarled. “I should
never have created you!” He fired, a screaming stream of needles hurtling into
Mel’s body, ripping and tearing. Blood splashed the slippery rock. She charged
Oz, screaming, and picked him up above her head, mighty muscles curling, to
hurl him towards the Green-Source Mainframe... where he was half-absorbed, then
violently ejected...

~ * ~

Pippa
groaned, and pushed herself to her elbows. She coughed, and pain slammed her
throat. She breathed oxygen, and it was the sweetest flavour she had ever
enjoyed. No mind it was laced with the stench of blood, and pus, sulphur, and
distant scorched rock. It was
honey.
It was
nectar.
Sweet and oh
so necessary.

Pippa rolled to her feet, and
clutched at her opened side. She swayed, almost collapsing, and focused on the
battle a hundred metres away. Mel and Oz were rolling on the ground, pounding
each other, and she watched for a while as one of Mel’s weighty claws punched
clean through Oz’s head leaving a gaping ring of skull-bone, face and brain
totally demolished, claws flexing at the back of his hollowed out skull. Mel
pulled out her fist with a sickening
squelch.
Instantly, Oz’s features
reformed and he was
screaming...

Maybe the biomods had seemed like
a good idea, she thought. At first. But here, and now, she read the agony on Oz’s
face. She shuddered. His soul was tortured. His spirit was broken. Sometimes,
she thought, it’s better just to die.

Pippa gathered herself, and
jogged across rock towards the SLAM Cruiser. She glanced up, but could see no
sign of Keenan, nor Franco. But she knew. When they came, they’d be moving
fast... and Hell would be on their tail.

~ * ~

Keenan
slammed to the top of the Line, and with a
hiss
it slid him neatly
sideways and deposited him on a sterile tiled floor. His sweeping gaze read the
chamber. The SPIRAL dock was large, circular, the hub a suite of desks and
screens for checking in and out, but currently deserted of staff or customers,
presumably due to The City’s state of emergency and martial law under QGM
instruct. The ceiling was high, vaulted, and covered by a single flowing liquid
plasma screen, currently set to a serene silver lake effect where gentle
ripples curved out, flowing across the ceiling and promoting...
calm.
Rows
of traditional seats were set in eco clusters, along with comfortbubbles and
against one wall a high row of Swallow Couches. They filled the majority of
space. Keenan’s head turned left as Franco stepped from the Line close by, and
running to the wall Keenan delivered a powerful sidekick which shattered safety
glass. He pulled free a hefty steel fire-axe, tossed it to a dazed Franco.

“Deal with the AI. I’ll plant the
explosives.”

Franco tossed back the axe, which
Keenan grabbed from mid-air.

“Hey, why don’t
you
deal
with the AI, after all, I’m the damn and bloody detonations expert! I’ll plant
the explosives!”

Keenan hurled back the fire-axe,
and snarled, “Because
I
know where the detonation points are, idiot, and
I haven’t got time to fucking explain!” Keenan hoisted the pack of High-J, and
sprinted away. Franco stared at the long gleaming axe in his hands, then turned
as Nyx stepped from the Line... He swung the weapon with a mighty roar, and it
bounced from Nyx’s head, slamming the AI back into the Line booth with a shower
of sparks. Franco heard a growl. He gulped.

Nyx sprang from the booth,
hammering into Franco and sending the man stumbling back, axe held up between
them both, poisoned jaws snapping frantically at his face. Franco cracked a
right-hook, shaking Nyx’s head, then another as he was forced back, stumbling
over a seat and landing heavily on his back with Nyx atop him. Poisoned needles
rippled across her torso, and man and machine wrestled for a few moments, face
to jaws.

Franco watched glooping poison
glimmer above him from rows of razor teeth. Then, as he stared, hypnotic, a
snake before a charmer, a long umbilical detached, lazily, and started to
fizzle the alloy floor by his ear.

Franco began to struggle like a
maniac.

But Nyx was too strong...

~ * ~

Keenan
halted, panting, and wiped sweat from his eyes. Four points of explosion would
do it. He knew how SPIRAL docks were constructed. They were built using AGE
anti-gravity engines placed equidistant around the dock’s perimeter in order to
stop the structure’s sheer weight tearing itself from low orbit and crashing
into the world below.

Keenan’s eyes scanned.
There.
He
kicked through the unauthorised access door, ran down a short corridor, and
stopped, glancing left, sweat whipping from his hair. He could hear a
thrum.
And smell the acid of an organic engine. He moved on, and the heat was
incredible now, and still rising, as he came to a large room. At the centre,
pulsing, was an AGE. It looked like a giant, red heart, a muscle, beating, the
very
pulse
of the SPIRAL dock. Some spiritualists said an AGE was the
detached heart from a long-extinct alien species. Keenan didn’t know. All he
did understand was they were awesomely powerful, and nobody truly understood
their origins, despite what academics might argue.

He ran down galvanised steps,
boots echoing, and knelt. He planted a High-J charge. Set the control timer.
Activated a quad-synchronicity circuit. Then switched it on.

The High-J beeped. A small blue
light glowed.

Keenan turned, and sprinted for
the exit...

~ * ~

“God,
your breath stinks!” said Franco, snarling up at the AI’s face close above. It
was beautiful, he realised, lovingly sculpted and yet—inherently
evil.
False
life. False life
created
to remove real life, which was just plain
wrong, if that made sense. It made sense in Franco’s head. But then, he was a
madman.

“You are destined to die, Franco
Haggis!” said Nyx, voice powerful, mature, more full-bodied woman than machine.
Franco gawped, mouth open, as they struggled around the barrier of the
fire-axe.

“You can speak?” he squawked.

“Fool. Of course I can speak.”
Nyx released her grip on the axe, and punched down at Franco’s head. He
twisted, her knuckles grazing his cheek, and her fist went straight through the
tiles and embedded in the floor. The AI tugged at it, but her one remaining arm
was locked in a mesh of under-floor piping.

Franco wriggled out from under
the snarling, kicking machine. Nyx’s head slammed left, single black eye
focusing on Franco as he hefted the axe and weighed it thoughtfully.

“Look, I’m sorry about this,
love.”

He swung the axe with all his
might, and the blade
clanged
from Nyx’s head, veering off and clattering
against the floor with such
shock
that Franco dropped the haft. He
picked it up again, blowing on his vibrating fingers.

“Hot damn! That hurt!”

“I will poison your soul,” hissed
Nyx.

“Look, I’m not too happy about
axing a lady in the head, if that’s any consolation.”

“I will curse you to eternity,
human!”

Franco looked at the machine
thoughtfully. “Aye,” he said. “But then, I’m the one with the axe.” He slammed
the hefty blade at the machine again, and Nyx squirmed around the pivotal point
of her trapped fist; sparks flew, and Franco leapt back from snapping jaws and
clutching feet-fingers. Again he struck, and again, dancing around like a
madman waving the axe, then blundering in and thumping the hard-forged axe-head
against Nyx’s battered spine and abdomen and legs and distorted skull.
TitaniumVI was tough. But it could only take so much. Franco noted it was
starting to
flake.

“I need something stronger!” he
muttered. He ran off, clutching the axe like a prize, eyes scanning the SPIRAL
dock for something he could use to kill Nyx. “Shit. SHIT! Bugger. BUGGER!”
Completing a circuit of the lounge, he came to the reluctant conclusion he was
going to have to bash on with the axe until he finally bludgeoned her to death.
It, he corrected himself. He ran back to where Nyx was pinned, then stopped,
mouth open, tongue lolling out.

Nyx had gone.

Are you sure this is where you
left her?
teased
an internal dialogue.

Yeah! I mean, I
think
this
is where she was.

Are you sure? Are you 100% sure?
Crazy boy? Dog dick? Madman? After all, you had all those weird imaginings at
The Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the “nice and caring and friendly home
for the mentally challenged”. Remember the pills? Remember the electrodes?
Remember your testicles?