by Drew Cordell
As we reached the top of the stairs, I spotted three of the fast-moving HKs. They rushed behind cover, and my HUD outlined their silhouettes, attempting to track them so I wouldn’t lose their position as they moved. They weren’t shooting, and I didn’t have a clean shot. The hangar was off to the right, and the HKs were directly in front of me.
“Bernie, get to the hangar. I’ll hold them off. Shoot any moving robot you see and don’t stop shooting until you’re sure it’s destroyed,” I yelled.
Bernie nodded and started running toward the hangar. The HKs stood and started shooting, their strange weapons booming. Bolts of the blurred matter slammed into the surrounding walls, throwing chunks of superheated metal into the air. I shot at the HKs, but they were too quick and darted behind cover again, shifting their locations and working in unison to distract me and mask their location as they moved. I flipped on my camera and broadcast it to Mary and Marwin. “Marwin, walk me through this!” I shouted.
“We’re pinned down. Don’t be afraid to overload your weapon and switch to your handgun. I’ll try to come to you as soon as possible.”
“Jake, be careful. Just get back to the ship!” Mary yelled.
“Working on it. Keep the comms clear,” I growled, trying to focus on the moving HKs.
Just as Bernie was about to clear the opening, one of HKs shifted from cover and fired its heavy weapon at him. A cloud of red mist burst from Bernie’s side as the bolt pierced through him. He screamed, whirled around, and fell to the ground, blood pouring from the gruesome wound.
Pressing the button on the side of my SMG, I overloaded the mag and fired a ball of condensed plasma toward where I thought the HKs were. The ball exploded when it hit the floor, sending the three HKs soaring through the air. My weapon hissed as I ejected the red-hot magazine from the weapon, the heat visibly blurring the air in front of me. My HUD displayed a warning that the weapon was overheated, and I dropped it to my side after slamming a new mag into the receiver. I willed an injection of combat stims with my mind, feeling the drugs burn through my blood instantly. My mind sharpened and became dissociated with the subtle nuances of a duller reality. I was calm now, relying only on instinct. Drawing my sidearm, I aimed and drove energy bolts into the heads of the HKs struggling to lift their ruined bodies from the floor.
“Help me,” Bernie wheezed, pressing his hands on both sides of his wound. His efforts weren’t doing much, and if I didn’t take action he was going to bleed out. There was so much blood—too much blood.
As I was pulling a bandage from my pack, more HKs cleared the corner. They started shooting, but they weren’t shooting at me and they weren’t using the same disruptor weapons as the HKs I destroyed. They were shooting some sort of black goop at Bernie, and it was coating him with thick globs. Another fired some sort of dart that struck Bernie in the chest, and his body started convulsing. Grabbing his coat, I started dragging him toward the hangar, his body sliding on the pool of blood and spreading it like a mop. The black goop started moving, crawling toward Bernie’s wound feverishly. The gel sealed the hole, then started covering his joints, hardening as the electricity from the dart jolted into his body.
Reaching down, I flipped the switch on my suit’s power membrane and yanked the dart out of Bernie’s chest, tearing it free and stopping his convulsions. I pulled him up and placed his arm over my shoulder. Relying on my suit’s strength and the burning stim injections, I ran forward, pulling Bernie with me toward the hangar. More HKs fell in behind me, shooting us with the black goop. I shifted us to the side and raised my handgun, firing at the robots while still supporting Bernie’s weight. My shots connected with one of my targets and broke through its armor. The robot fell to the floor, catching fire and remaining still.
“Bernie, where is the transponder oscillator?” I yelled, pulling us forward and around another corner, temporarily shielding us from the swarming HKs.
“Front right pocket. It has to be installed; it won’t work,” he grimaced. “I can’t move my legs. Whatever they shot me with locked them in place. Help me, Jake.” The goop was covering me too, but it appeared to be harmless without the electro dart to harden it.
HKs fell in from behind us, shooting disruptors again. One of their shots hit me in the back, shoving me forward and knocking the wind from my lungs. Not expecting the sudden surge of force, I fell, landing on my face and dropping Bernie. My face plate cracked from the impact, sending crystalline fractures through the glass visor and disrupting my HUD display, making it impossible to read. Blunt pain surged through my back; it felt as though I’d been hit in the spine with a sledgehammer. I injected myself with more stims and painkillers, fighting the fatigue and failing systems of my armor to lift Bernie. I raised my SMG and once again overloaded the mag, destroying the approaching HKs as I once again started toward the hangar. I was grinding my teeth together, fighting against the burning pain and mind-splitting stimulants. Everything seemed to slow down, and my mind felt disconnected from the rest of my body.
“Jake, I’m coming to help!” Mary yelled.
“Mary, stay on the ship, get the engines running. We’re leaving!” Marwin yelled.
The HKs were endless. For each one I destroyed, two more took its place. My suit’s power membrane finally gave out, and the full weight of Bernie slowed me to a grueling shamble. I continued to shoot as I walked, but there were just too many of them. Bernie screamed as a blast took off his left leg below his knee, the limb flipping in the air in front of us in a vortex of blood. Just as before, the HKs switched to the black goop, sealing the wound and shooting him with another dart. With my breached suit, the surge of electricity passed through my body and locked my muscles. My legs cramped and gave out, and I dropped Bernie, relieving the impossible muscle tension from the electricity that coursed through his body.
Marwin connected to a private comms channel with me, removing Mary and everyone else, but his voice was distorted through my failing armor. “Jah— —Ke —J.” I slapped the side of my helmet, and his voice became clearer.
“They aren’t trying to kill him. You aren’t going to make it out with him. Do you understand me?”
“I can’t,” I said, understanding what he meant immediately. I had cut my video feed to Mary, but Marwin was still seeing everything clearly. “We can make it!” I yelled, grabbing Bernie again and dragging his body across the floor. The electricity from the electro dart had faded, and I could once again move him without losing control of my muscles. I pulled us around another corner, temporarily giving us cover from the robotic horde following me.
“This is bigger than us. Make the right decision and do what needs to be done.”
Bernie was screaming as I moved him across the floor. It would be worse if the HKs got him. I couldn’t let that happen; I couldn’t let them capture us.
“Jake, please. What’s going on? Where are you?” Mary yelled. I pressed my chin down on the helmet, silencing her voice.
“I’ll make it to the ship,” I said to Marwin, muting him as well. I was scared of the way my voice sounded.
There wasn’t a right way to do this. Nothing about it was okay. I placed the barrel of my handgun on the back of Bernie’s head and squeezed the trigger.
12 ESCAPE
Another blast from a disruptor caught my chest and threw me to the ground, but somehow my armor held. The pain was unbelievable, and I was sure a few of my ribs were cracked from the hit. Taking jagged, shallow breaths, I injected myself with more stims, ignoring the warning claxon that blared in my ears. My helmet was warped, and the air filters weren’t working properly. The inside of my helmet was fogging up, and the air was getting hot and thick. With all my might, I forced off the broken helmet and tossed it to the ground, taking deep breaths and filling my lungs with fresh air. I cleared the final corner, running as fast as possible toward the hangar. I didn’t have time to look back now; I could only move forward. Marwin and Nick appeared in the doorway in front of me, rushing me in an
d shooting over my shoulder at the approaching HKs.
Nick was shouting something at Marwin as he closed the door behind me, but all I could hear was a screeching ring that blocked everything else. My vision blurred, and everything started spinning. Pain erupted through my chest, and breathing became impossible. White light flooded my vision, and I collapsed to the floor.
Air flooded my lungs, pulling me out of the dense pool of white light and back into focus. I inhaled sharply, my heart racing in my chest. Where was I? Mary and Emily were standing over me, tears flowing down their faces. We were moving; that was clear now. There was motion below me, jolting and rumbling.
“He’s alive!” Mary yelled through her headset. Her words were drowned out by the loud hum of engines, but I could make out the words from her lips.
Nick was holding the datapad wearing a grim, determined expression. I looked back and forth from Mary and Emily, trying to understand what was happening.
Brushing away her tears, Mary grabbed a pair of headphones and placed them over my ears. “Don’t ever do that to me again!” she yelled. “You died, Jake.”
“What?” I managed. I couldn’t remember where I was or what had happened; it was all a blur. The memories rushed back to me, and I jolted upright, at least I tried to. Pain exploded through my torso as I moved, sending sharp stabs through my aching body. I eased my body back down to the floor of the dropship, staying still and waiting for it to pass. I remembered the HKs, and I remembered the decision I made to make it back to the dropship. We were in the air in either the Mids or the Slums, and I had killed Bernie.
“You overdosed on the stims, and you might have broken bones,” Mary said, helping me keep my body level on the floor. “Don’t move. We’re almost in the Slums, and we have the data. We’re going to get help for you when we land.”
“Mary. I—”
“Don’t talk, just relax. Breathe,” she said.
Emily appraised me with glossy eyes filled with dulled pain. I looked away as soon as I met her gaze. She pulled off her headset and buried her face in her hands, crying. The engines drowned out her sobs.
“Did we get the data?” I asked.
Mary nodded. “Yeah, we got it.”
“Bernie’s device?” I asked.
“Nick installed it while we held off the HKs. We almost didn’t make it, but we pulled through and got out of range of the Omniscience Engine frequency after the data transfer went through,” Mary said, kissing me on the forehead and wiping away her tears.
My stomach dropped as Marwin cut the main thruster and fired the front thrusters in short bursts, slowing our momentum to a halt and dropping the ship down through the sky. I couldn’t see what was happening since all the lights were out, but it was easy to tell we were falling. The Enforcer dropship was clunky, and I could tell Marwin was trying to fly it like the sportier models he was used to. His piloting intuition didn’t transfer well, and the maneuvers he executed were painful for me. Marwin’s flying strained the ship and its engines, pushing them to the limit as he bolted through the dark sky.
“See anything, Nick?” Marwin asked through the headset.
“Nothing; we look to be all clear. Does the Upper Level have any dropships designed to destroy other ships?”
“No, nothing like that, but they do have missiles. I guess we learned that one the hard way.”
“I love you,” I said to Mary, holding her hand and suppressing the complex emotions and thoughts flooding my mind. I couldn’t believe what I had done, and I doubted any of them, except for Marwin, knew what happened. I knew Bernie was suffering—I knew he wouldn’t have made it. I wouldn’t have made it. I tried to convince myself I had done the right thing, but I knew it was a lie. I had taken an innocent person’s life to save myself. The end should have justified the means, but it didn’t feel that way. Squeeze. It hadn’t felt any different from any other time I had pulled the trigger.
Focusing, I layered away the thoughts and growing dread deeper down, burying it to face later. For now, I needed to focus. If it weren’t for Mary and the hope of helping the Champions, it would have been easier just to slip away forever. Maybe it would have been better that way. No. I couldn’t do that to Mary. I needed to be here for her.
Emily put her headset back on. “Jake, I need to know what happened,” she said.
I met her gaze, relying on the barrier in my mind I was maintaining to hold my composure. “You have to believe I tried. We were both dying and your dad died from a third disruptor shot. There was nothing I could do; I knew there was no saving him.”
She looked away, rubbing her eyes and crying again. Pain tugged at the corners of my mind, threatening my barrier, but it held. I couldn’t tell her I shot him in the head to keep the HKs from capturing him and torturing him until he exposed everything he knew about us before a horrible, painful death.
“I’m so sorry, Emily. I did everything I could, and I’m sorry it wasn’t enough,” I said.
“You did your best. At least his contributions might mean something; they might end all of this madness.”
“Your father was a hero. Without his help, we never would have made it out and we never would have retrieved the data from our contact. Because of your father, we have a chance to save humanity,” I said, tears blurring my vision.
“Thank you, Jake. I know my father was grateful for you trying your best.”
I dropped my gaze, staring at the corrugated metal surface illuminated by the pale green lights from above. “I’m sorry,” I said.
Marwin slowed the ship’s descent, and we stabilized.
“This is Inquisitor Marwin Zaris. We’re about to land and will approach the Guild Hall. We have the data. Repeat. We have the data,” Marwin said, blasting the encrypted message on the Guild’s frequency. There was no response.
“How are you feeling, Jake?” Marwin asked.
“Not good.”
“Do you think you’ll be able to walk? I don’t have any idea what we’ll find on the streets of the Slums at this point. Unlike the Mids, I know for a fact there wasn’t an internment camp set up in the Slums. It’s going to be a lot worse unless everyone is already dead.”
“I’ll manage with help. Any chance of fixing my suit? I might not be much good without the power membrane.”
“No, but I’ve got a few energy resistant vests and you can wear one. It’s better protection than the armor you’re wearing at this point.”
“All right. Can I hook up my Nanotech to the vest?” I asked.
“Do you have any charge left in your prosthetic?”
I tried moving my fingers, but they were frozen. “I can’t tell. I can’t move my hand. It’s either jammed or out of charge.”
“Jake, look at your arm,” Mary said, lifting my cybernetic arm and showing me the problem. There was a massive hole through the center of it that went all the way through. I was lucky it hadn’t been my other arm.
“Oh,” I said.
Marwin appraised it. “They can fix it in the Guild Hall once we get there. We need to get you to Medbay to be sure you’re all right. Next time, if you have the choice, don’t overdose on stims. I’m surprised your suit let you dope up that much, but the regulator could have been damaged when you were hit.”
“Maybe. Thanks for saving me,” I said, grabbing Mary’s hand and holding it. She looked at me again, gazing into my eyes with a questioning look. I could tell she knew something was wrong, that I wasn’t telling her something.
“I’ll tell you later,” I mouthed. She nodded.
“Mary, get on the left gun and turn on the high beams. We’re coming in and the noise from the engine is going to let everyone and everything know we’ve arrived.”
Mary squeezed my hand before standing and walking over to the gun. She clipped the safety line from the anchor above the turret to her armor and grabbed the handle of the energy turret, a similar weapon to the one the robot claiming to be my father had used. Unable to move without pain, I r
emained still on the floor. Emily stared at me, and I broke eye contact, looking outside the opening on the ship into the great darkness that was once my home. She must have known I was hiding something.
“There’s no smog,” I said, suddenly noticing the lack of the distinct Slums plague I had known all my life.
“The smog was never real; it was entirely preventable. Kept the resource cost of running the Slums cheap. The smog kept people off the streets and was vented from the major factories through the Undercity into the air. The energy barriers from the floor of the Mids kept it sealed in, and the sea gates kept it from escaping out toward the Atlantic.”
Emily had a confused look on her face, but she didn’t say anything.
“Everything is a lie,” I muttered. It was unbelievable how artificial my life in the Slums had been. I was just a number, and now almost everyone I knew was dead or living in hell.
As we descended, a horrible smell flooded the cabin of the ship. It wasn’t smog.
“Masks on; the air is no good,” Marwin called. Emily pulled masks from the wall of the dropship, handing them out to each of us. When I pulled the mask over my face, the odor was replaced by a sterile, chemical smell.
“What the hell is that?” Nick complained.
“Death,” Marwin said.
As the ship touched down, Mary and Nick scanned the surroundings and reported it was clear. Mary helped me up and helped me remove my broken armor. Thankfully my undersuit was more or less intact and kept me warm. I loosened the straps on the vest I was given, improving my comfort. I fastened my R78 to my waist and grabbed one of the GXT-9 rifles from the bag Marwin loaded on the dropship—I had fried my SMG in the Mids. The GXT-9 had a good balance between weight and power. The weapon was light enough for me to carry, but I dreaded having to use it, scared of the pain from the recoil. My back had stiffened and rotating my torso sent new waves of pain through my aching body. I wanted to lie down and go to sleep, but that wasn’t an option right now.
