Prophet of the Badlands (The Awakened Book 1) (53 page)

Wide-eyed, she backed into the wall, flattening herself against it in hopes he had not seen someone as small as her. The giant’s face tilted down, the eye-lens whirred, and long blades slid out of his hands, one per finger; each about nine inches in length. A mind whispered within the metal, thoughts simple―focused.

Little pretty thing. Should not be here. Boss want make scream. Smash. Kill.

The strength failed her legs and she collapsed to the ground in the corner, raising her hands over her face as if they would do something to stop such a creature from hitting her. Imminent death pushed her brain to a place it had never been before. Terror welled up from the deepest recesses of her soul and her mind lashed out with the only thought she had.

Someone help me!

Her mental scream staggered the oaf. His arms fell slack to his sides and he stared, unmoving, into space. A tendril of drool slid from his lip. Althea trembled on the floor, gazing up at him for a minute, too frightened to move. The gunfight continued in the distance; the sound of several shots in a row dispelled her hesitation and she slid along the wall to stand up. Tiptoeing to the side, she kept her eyes pinned to the unmoving beast of flesh and metal, edging around him to the hallway from whence he had come.

She took two steps backwards before a blinding flash of pain struck her on the bare skin just above her skirt along her spine. Althea fell with such speed it seemed as if the air in front of her became the floor in an instant. Her arms and legs twitched out of control as the sound of an electrical buzzing crackled between her ears. The anguish overwhelming, her muscles refused to obey.

“Well, well, well.” A high-pitched male voice rang out. “What have we here?” Someone clapped; a rapid staccato thing barely audible over her pounding heart.

A hand hooked the back of her shirt and dragged her along the floor past the oaf, over the scratching metal ground, towards the evil chair. Now she understood the dire feeling; he meant to put her on it. The sight of restraints made her twitch with renewed determination, and he dropped her. Another touch of suffering came amid a crackling of sparks. Her scream squeezed out through a rigid jaw refusing to open, a primal sound of agony that foamed snot out of her nose.

He brought her ever closer to the horrible contraption. She made a series of subhuman noises as she fought the paralyzing touch of whatever dreadful device the man in white had against her skin. It bit her again when her leg moved. Hot tears streamed down the sides of her head as the crackle sent wave after wave of disorienting misery through her.

Soft leather embraced her; she lay on her back atop the chair. Bands of thick material cinched tight around her wrists and ankles, and crushed against her shoulders and then her hips. Sinister cackling came from the man in white with each secured buckle. A wrinkled bald head with one silver eye hovered over her face. His sweat ran off in drops, landing on her cheek. Althea glared at him, searching for her power, she ordered him to release her, but her voice did not come.

“Such a pretty little throwaway. Almost a shame, really.” He drew a startled breath. “Such magnificent eyes. Glowing. Oh, this is truly a fortuitous find. I don’t know whether I should sell them or study them. I suppose I’ll have to wait and see if they keep glowing once they’re in jars.” He pushed his thumbs into her face so hard it hurt. “From the structure of your cheekbones, I can tell you’d have been quite beautiful. You’ll have to settle for being pieces inside someone rich and magnificent.” Before she could invade his mind, he ambled out of view over to some kind of machine.

Images and feelings flooded into her from her contact with the chair. Pain, horror, screaming; many people had indeed died on it, alive long enough to see their insides removed. Feeling came back to her limbs, and she writhed, twisting in an effort to find him. Blue and red light shone down from the silver ball above her, sweeping back and forth over her immobilized body as the steel arachnid came to life. Its motion gave her voice back in the form of a scream as laser lines crawled up and down her skin. She could not get away from the horrible seat.

Bullets whizzed overhead, clanging off the pipes above.

The man in white leaned to his side and pushed something on a distant wall. After a beep, his voice echoed like a thing out of nightmare throughout the entire building. “Will you three simpletons watch where you’re shooting!”

Althea quivered at the sound. “Please, don’t hurt me. I’m twelve. I’m just a little kid.” She radiated pity.

“Twelve? Perfect! Just under the minimum age. Ooh, very nice. Looks like you’re in excellent health. Your kidneys will be worth about two hundred grand each, and that liver… Oh yes… Intact, disease-free ovaries!” He squealed with delight. “Millions!”

Hot tears ran down the sides of her head. “Wait! I could be eleven, maybe ten,” she wailed and jerked her arms against the straps. “Everyone keeps thinking I’m ten. Maybe I just guessed wrong.”

“Even better, child parts are much harder to find.” He fiddled with something on the console she could not see. “That’ll be worth double or more.”

“No.” Her voice fell to mewling. “Please, I have a family.”

“Do they know where you are?”

“No, I’m trying to get home.”

He giggled and clapped. “Excellent. Then they won’t find your bones.”

“Please no… Why? Why are you doing this?”

He paused, tapping a finger to his lip as he considered the question. “Well, you see… The perils of modern society often take quite a toll on the bodies of those who live to their fullest. Fortunately for me, these same people tend to have gobs and gobs of money. Now, when they go and turn their lungs into crystalline dust from too much Icewhisper or their indulgence in synthetic alcohol turns their liver into pudding, I find someone like you. Some poor scrap that no one will miss, and take what they need. Don’t worry, child. It will only hurt for the first, oh, ten minutes.”

“Karina and Father will miss me.” She could not peel her eyes away from the orb of death.

“That is almost touching. Well, they should have thought of that before they let you run around the grey.” Something else beeped. “Now I just need to program in your measurements so Frankie here can convert that grubby little body of yours into money.”

Althea twisted and pulled at her arms and legs. Barely able to move, she rolled her head to face the stairs, and shouted, “Help!”

The rolling gunfight picked up intensity; a male voice screamed.

The robotic arms whirred to life again, spinning, twisting, and clicking as calibration routines ran. Various small tools at their tips whirred and clicked. The man in white bounced up to the side of the table, sliding his fingers under the neckline of her shirt. He held up an enormous pair of scissors and smiled at the terror in her eyes.

“Now, we just need to get these shabby clothes out of the way and we can begin the beautiful harvest.” He pressed on her abdomen, squeezed her leg, and forced her eyelid wider with his thumb. “Yes, yes. You are perfect.”

The icy metal slid along her chest, its jaws opening around the white cloth.

“No, I’m not. I’m malnurmished. I’m from the Badlands. I have all sorts of sick inside me that you’ve never seen before.” Althea stared into his eyes, tweaking at his emotion as he lifted her tank top. There was nothing in there to touch. This creature was broken. His emotions did not work. Her best defense was useless. The scissor started to close. The man in white gazed at her, eyes bulging from his head with glee.

“Such pretty blue light.”

She whimpered. “No.”

He ignored her. Fright became anger.

She commanded. “
Stop
!”

The man in white stalled as if frozen in time. A moment passed, she dare not struggle with the tip of the sharp scissor so close to her throat. More bullets clanked above, and she drew several breaths while glaring at this animal dressed up like a human being.

“Pretty… blue…” A line of drool slid out of his lip, pooling on her stomach. “Glow. Blue.” The right corner of his mouth twitched, teasing at a spasmodic smile.

Tugging at her fists and twisting her feet, she used the feeling of being tied down to intensify the psionic assault with fear and anger. “
Let. Me. Go.
Now
!”

His face twitched once, and again as the white of his left eye flashed red from hemorrhage. A trickle of blood fell out of his left nostril, his body shuddered, the bald head beaded with droplets of sweat. Drool rolled over his teeth. Her overpowering command had pulverized his mental faculties into a simple machine.

The ponderous scissor fell from his grip and slid off her chest to the side, bouncing off the cushion with a thump before clattering to the floor. The man in white reached forward without looking, undoing the strap pinning her shoulders. She raised her head to watch as he reached for the band around her left wrist.

Metal hands appeared without warning, crushing the man-in-white’s arms into his sides; muted pops came as bones shattered under muscle. The gloss grey fingers squeezed the white coat crimson.

The pain broke her control, and the man in white screeched. “What are you doing? How dare you touch me! Do as you’re told. Put me down this instant.”

With a bestial roar, the oaf lifted the squirming little man into the air and threw him to the side over a railing. Somewhere below in the dark, a cacophony of ringing pipes and debris rose up as he landed. She sat up as much as she could, wringing her body into a strange shape in an effort to get her teeth on the band around her wrist. Realizing she could not bend that way, she fell limp and out of breath.

“Why did you do that? He was letting me out.”

The huge heap of man looked at her, wriggling and helpless, and stepped closer. A stray bullet glanced off his shoulder with a dull
click
. She leaned as far away from him as the straps would allow, not knowing what to make of the bizarre tangle of emotions in his head. The mechanical iris enlarged and he traced his fingers over her head, as if petting a kitten. Involuntary trembles rippled through her from feeling trapped and defenseless.

The desire to destroy her was absent.

“Hi…” Her voice leaked timid as she tilted her hand to wave at him. “Umm, nice metal man.”

A placid female voice flooded the room. “Calibration complete. Organ harvest sequence initiated. Warning, anesthetic reserves at zero percent. Override code accepted, initiating procedure.”

The autosurgeon came to life. A dozen octopusine little arms whirred and spun, clicking and poking the air while sharp things gleamed in the light and stabbed at nothing. Others buzzed, one glowed, and some fired test spritzes of liquid out of tiny needles. Chattering, the insidious thing rotated about and lowered with a hydraulic whine until one metal arm extended from the mass of gyrating limbs, reaching for the center of her chest with a rotary saw.

The big man watched.

She screamed, wrenching at the belts. Blood surged into her arms as adrenaline both natural and psionic sent ripples of strength through her. A few threads started to give way, but she stopped fighting as the spinning horror nipped at her shirt. Forcing all the air from her lungs to make herself flatter, she strained to escape the rotating blade. Tiny flecks of white fabric jumped onto her face a second before it bit into skin, spraying her cheeks with blood.

Althea screamed, “Father!”

The oaf loosed a sudden roar and grabbed the saw-arm. He bent it back from her as though it were made of flimsy plastic, and snapped it off, hurling it into the distance. A grunt of anger escaped him before he slammed his fist into the killing sphere, crushing it into the ceiling. He continued snarling and huffing as he twisted and tore the machine out of the ceiling amid the screech of stressed plastisteel. She cringed as far as the restraints permitted, turning her face away from a shower of sparks that rained down from the wreckage. Hot flecks fell on her like a swarm of biting flies. She jerked about in an effort to shake off the ones landing on her and evade the embers that somehow got under her, lingering and burning out of reach. The large man swung the ruined machine into the ground three times before he spun around and hurled it; a heavy metallic crash came from the dark.

As if called by her pained whimpering, a presence drew closer; body heat she could feel from inches away. She looked towards the warmth at the metal-armed giant right against the chair. The straps arrested her startled jump.

He glared at her writhing body with a sneer and tide of anger that grew stronger each time she squirmed. Every pitiful gasp as her leg or back touched a point of burning enraged him. He touched her chest with gentle fingers, emitting a baleful sub-human moan at the sight of blood spreading through the white cloth. Loosing a terrible bellow, he raised his arms and the claws snapped out with a ring loud enough to mask the distant gun battle for an instant.

“No… please.” She cringed away, begging for her life with telempathic radiance.

The whisper of blades caressed her with a rush of air, and the chair shuddered with a series of clanks, yet she felt no pain. When the sound ceased, she quivered, too afraid to look until metal arms slid under and lifted her out of the shredded restraints.

Cradled into a chest so hairy it reminded her of the canid, and so warm it stalled her shivers, she opened her eyes and stared at a visage carved in the strong lines of a soldier. His one real eye met her gaze, leaving the lens of glass and metal staring off into the dark. She reached up to touch the half of his face not metal; his unshaven cheek rough to her touch and wet with tears for what he witnessed done to her. The titan, who once wanted to smash and destroy, now wanted nothing more than to protect.

His anger had fled; in its place, regret. She felt like a four-year-old cuddled by a normal-sized man, but his foreboding presence denied her any sense of calm. Althea slipped a hand under her shirt at the one-inch slice down to her breastbone. A little concentration mended her skin, and quenched the strip of pain. One huge hand brushed her hair from her face and returned the timid wave she offered moments before. His thoughts apologized for what the man in white almost did to her, but he lacked the ability to speak. Another stray bullet bounced off his shoulder, but he did not react.