The Breaker

by Nick Petrie

  To their right was a steel roll-up garage door with the open back of a semi-trailer visible outside, the same truck they’d seen from the top of the security building, probably the same trailer they’d ridden from Metzger Machine. This was the start of the production line.

  The assembly machines were fat white cylinders, like water heaters with arms. Most of them were on steel pedestals, bolted to the floor, but the first one had wheels. It was partway inside the trailer, a long segmented tentacle reaching to retrieve a pallet. Peter wondered if they ran the same stolen fast-learning software as the hyenas. He sincerely hoped not.

  The next assembler used a claw and blade to strip shrink-wrap from the stacked cardboard boxes. A third was loading boxes into big metal trays on a low conveyor belt, then peeling off the lids.

  Inside lay monster parts, neatly arranged.

  They were almost to the stairs when the wheeled assembler backed out of the semi carrying a fresh pallet. When it pivoted with its load, Peter saw three sets of those same translucent blue sensor domes. At the same moment Peter saw its eyes, the assembler froze in its tracks.

  A fraction of a second later, the whole production line stopped.

  Then, after a long moment, each assembly machine turned to face them, the bulbous sensor glass shining with reflected light.

  Oh, shit.

  As one, the segmented arms all stretched out to their full length, rising first into the air, then lowering down to point toward the three humans. Like slaves bowing to their masters on a prehistoric urn.

  Or maybe not.

  Behind him, Peter heard a faint metallic scrabbling. A small sound at first, it quickly got louder, magnified by numbers, then louder still. He turned to look at the long row of high storage shelves.

  Holloway’s monsters were waking up.

  * * *

  —

  Go, go, fucking go!” Peter called.

  Lewis broke into a run and sprang toward the steps, June fast at his heels. Peter felt the itch between his shoulder blades and followed, rifle raised.

  By the time Peter was halfway up, the hyenas were beginning to crawl from their shelves. By the dozens, they landed on their front feet with their back legs still unfolding. Each claw arm unbent to its full length in a slow, catlike stretch, then snapped back against the spine with terrifying speed and control. Peter looked for the metal tubes of their electric rifles, and felt a rush of relief to see they’d not yet been mounted. He tried not to think of the claws.

  From the south end of the balcony, he watched the creatures mass together, then flow apart again into two groups. The first and nearest group leaped forward to the south stairs, all liquid grace and motion, pack animals on the hunt. The second group ran around the workbenches toward the east stairs, cutting off any exit from the balcony.

  “Inside,” June shouted. “We need to get inside.”

  Peter fired short bursts and knocked some creatures down. He was grateful to see that Lewis’s green-tip ammo penetrated better than the pistol rounds he’d used before. He emptied one magazine, then another. He saw a flash of motion by the semi. A creature from the yard, this one with a Gauss gun along its side, slipped through the gap under the semi’s wheels, then stood to face them. Peter put three rounds through the front sensor domes before the thing could fire.

  The first pack had reached the bottom of the south stairs. Peter began to put rounds into their blue bug eyes. Another magazine gone. Behind him, he heard the steady disciplined sound of Lewis’s rifle as he began to take out the second group on the far stairway.

  But the things didn’t stop. They just climbed over their ruined siblings and kept coming. Peter shot them, and more came. Another armed creature from the yard crawled from under the semi, pushing its dead before it to clear the way. As the electric muzzle came to bear, Peter killed it, and the one behind it, and the one after that.

  His rifle ran dry again. By the time he dropped the mag and slapped in a new one, the creatures on the stairs had bounded halfway up, black feet sure on the steps, claws wide and reaching. Even if Peter could stop their advance, he was down to three magazines, ninety rounds. It wasn’t enough. “June’s right,” he called. “We have to get inside.”

  She was ten feet behind him, crouched by the door. She was breathing hard but handling it. “Tell me when.”

  Still firing quick bursts, Peter backed toward her, staying low and close to the wall so any sniper he missed would have a harder time finding him.

  Lewis was on her other side, doing the same. “Roger that. You call it.”

  The creatures closed in. Two magazines left.

  “On three. June, you back up to Lewis. I’ll hit the door. June, you follow me. Lewis comes in last and closes the damn door behind him. Ready?”

  He didn’t get to one.

  Behind June, the door opened.

  A metal monster stood in the gap. Its claw flashed out and snapped tight around her neck.

  69

  EDGAR

  Edgar sat on Holloway’s bed in the dark with his pain and waited for the pills to work.

  Outside the window, it was the last moment before full night. The southern sky was deep purple. It was the color of the ripest plums on the tree in his grandma’s yard, plums he was made to pick as a boy, but never allowed to eat. Round white chemical tanks glowed in the distance. On the far side of the river, a stream of lights moved on the freeway.

  After a while, the hurt started to shrink but now he couldn’t sit still. The whine and rattle of the assembly line came through the walls and right into his head. He felt hot and jangly and raw. He should have eaten something with the medicine, but now his stomach was strange. He wished he had a clean shirt. He needed a doctor.

  He knew the wounds were worse where the reporter had shot him. They had reopened after his fight with the protector. He had a new pain, too, this one low in his belly. He’d probably cut himself when he dove through the window, running from that scary dog, but he didn’t want to look at it.

  The jangly feeling got stronger. It was like drinking too many Red Bulls. Edgar had done that before. You had just to ride it out. You had to find something to soothe you.

  Muscles jumping, he got up and walked around the bed. The sexy doll lay in a heap on the floor. He didn’t know why, but it bothered him. To have a sexy doll dressed in sexy clothing was weird enough, but the way Holloway had thrown her through the door was worse. She looked like a person, and he’d given her a name, but he’d treated her like she was nothing. Like less than nothing.

  Holloway had promised Edgar a doctor, but the doctor hadn’t come.

  Edgar stepped over the sexy doll and closed the door behind him.

  In the big main room, the wall screens flashed with movement. All the lights were on, and it was way too bright. Edgar put his cool sunglasses back on. He was burning like a roman candle. Edgar always did like fireworks.

  The woman Maria sat on the middle couch with Harry Hyena right next to her, still holding tight to her wrist. Holloway sat on the near couch, his tablet computer on his knees and Maria’s laptop open on the next cushion. He faced the screens but he wore those funny goggles over his face. Two machines stood guard close beside him, and two more waited in the wide fancy entrance hall. Edgar didn’t like the machines. He didn’t want to get inside the reach of those claws.

  Holloway’s fingers flicked in the air like he had some kind of problem with his brain. He said, “Where the hell did they go?”

  “I don’t know,” Edgar said. “Where is the doctor?”

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Holloway said.

  Edgar reached over the couch back and tapped him on the shoulder. “Where is the doctor?”

  “Ow. Edgar, I’m busy right now. The doctor is coming. Let me work.” He waved a hand and the guard machines raised their claws and snapped at him.
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  Edgar wanted to stab them in their creepy round eye-bulbs. He wanted to grab their claws and crack them apart. He wanted to take his knife and cut them where it would hurt. Then he would do the same to the annoying man with the dumb goggles. He’d do it slow. He’d make Holloway take off the goggles first, so he had to watch. But he didn’t do any of those things. He had to save his strength.

  Then the noise of the assembly line stopped.

  “Oh, shit.” Holloway sounded surprised. “How did they get inside?” Then he laughed and his fingers danced in the air. “Let’s see how they like eight hundred hyenas on their ass. I’ll pull their arms and legs off, one by one.” The wall screens kept changing, showing new pictures, a jumble of machines.

  Maria didn’t watch the screens. Perched on the edge of the couch, she pulled at her wrist in Harry’s claw and watched Edgar. He studied her face. She didn’t seem scared or sad. Some of them just wanted it to be over. But Maria was one of the angry ones. She glared at Edgar like she wanted to bite him. Edgar liked that better. He liked to watch the change when they first felt the blade.

  “Fuck,” Holloway said. “Why do they have to come upstairs? Why can’t they just run away?”

  Edgar heard the soft pop of gunshots. He didn’t like guns.

  “I can’t believe this,” Holloway said. “Edgar, I need you to do something for me.”

  “I don’t feel good.” Edgar knew Holloway couldn’t see him, but he smiled anyway. “Maybe after the doctor.”

  “Fucking worthless,” Holloway muttered. The gunshots got louder. Soon it sounded like they were right outside. “Goddamn it. Hyenas two and three, guard the door.” His two protector machines leaped over the couch and bounded toward the entrance hall where the other two waited. Harry Hyena still held tight to Maria’s wrist.

  Edgar’s smile grew and grew. Maria yanked her arm hard and pulled Harry closer, his feet sliding across the thick carpet.

  Edgar ignored her and walked around the couch toward Holloway. He dropped to one knee and pulled the goggles off Holloway’s face. When Edgar showed him the long slim boning knife from the kitchen, Holloway opened his stupid mouth to speak. Edgar stared into Holloway’s eyes and let the smile fill him to the brim and slipped the steel into Holloway’s stupid belly.

  The first cut was fast and deep, to get Holloway’s full attention. The next time was slow and gentle, an inch at a time. This was Edgar’s favorite.

  He felt the plump flesh slip from the pointed tip and slide away from the sharpened edge, each parting of skin and muscle transmitted exquisitely up the finely tuned antenna of the blade.

  Holloway knocked the computer tablet away as he wrapped both hands around Edgar’s. The pain would come mostly as a surprise at first, then a shock. Edgar watched his eyes get wider as the pain turned real. The pupils were black.

  “No,” he said. “No no no you can’t.”

  But Edgar could and he did, another wonderful inch, then another. The smell told him when he found the intestines. When he was all the way inside, with the hot slick blood flooding his hand, he rotated the knife so the sharp edge was up, and he tugged the blade higher. First into the stomach, toward the sternum, and behind it, the heart.

  But not the heart, not yet. Edgar took the blade out and put it in again, nice and slow, over and over and over. He leaned into his work, grateful that Holloway had finally stopped talking, his mouth gone round, singing a song only he could hear.

  When Edgar came back to himself, he was warm and wet and happy. He smiled at the woman, Maria, remembering that he had yet another job to do. This one he’d already gotten paid for. Edgar loved his job.

  Maria had the computer tablet on her lap, her free hand tapping frantically on the screen. Edgar heard a soft, pleasing chime. The mechanical claw on her wrist opened wide.

  Behind him, in the fancy entryway, people were shouting. Guns were shooting.

  Edgar climbed off Holloway and considered his options. Did he want to use a fresh knife?

  “Hyena Command Override,” she said, then gave a string of letters and numbers. “This is Spark. Transfer all hyenas to my control. Personal protection mode.”

  Edgar frowned. It was no fun when he had to hurry. He supposed the boning knife would have to do.

  70

  SPARK

  She watched Edgar rise from Holloway’s body like some giant carnivorous ape. His hands were red to the elbow. His shirt was dark crimson, and fine droplets were sprayed across his face like the Milky Way of blood. He looked at the knife, then back to Spark. His eyes were hypnotic.

  “Hi,” he said. “My name is Edgar.”

  Behind her, there was gunfire in the marble entryway. People shouting. She was frozen in place.

  Edgar put a familiar palm on the corpse at his side. “Holloway already paid me for you,” he explained. “It’s my job.” Then he rose to his full height and took a step toward her.

  Spark found her voice. “Harry,” she said. “Kill Edgar.”

  She’d found the command override code in Holloway’s system the night before, in a file called Hyena Command Override. It had seemed like a good thing to memorize at the time.

  The hyena launched itself across her lap, its long arm coiling back to strike. Edgar turned and ran right over the back of the second couch, the hyena close behind. Its claw reached for him and he swatted it away. The force of the blow was enough to make the hyena stumble sideways. By the time it recovered, Edgar was running down the hallway toward the gym. The hyena ran after him.

  “Hyenas one and two, go help Harry kill Edgar.” She heard their servos whine as they leaped into pursuit. From the end of the hallway came a metallic collision and the crash of breaking glass. Spark was on her knees on the floor reaching for the VR headset. “Three and four, guard the front door.”

  The carpet was sticky against her skin. Holloway’s body smelled like raw iron, but she didn’t look at it. The goggles had a smear of blood across the bright chrome surface. She wiped them clean on her shirt and pulled them down over her eyes.

  The view inside the goggles was gorgeous, a hyena’s view of the scene in the entryway behind her. Three people struggling, two people shouting. The gunfire had stopped. Hyenas dead or dying, more hyenas closing in with their grasping claws. Even the colors were brighter, more vivid.

  She raised her arms and saw virtual hands appear before her eyes. The headset’s external cameras tracked their movement perfectly, a suite of controls at her fingertips. She understood their functions intuitively, as if she’d always known how, as if she were born to it.

  At the bottom of the display, a clock showed almost eight o’clock. That time was supposed to mean something. She was supposed to do something, but she couldn’t remember what. She didn’t care. It didn’t matter. She was home.

  She cycled through the sensorium and her senses expanded. Infrared to night vision to telescopic to the red circle of the targeting overlay. She flicked from one hyena to the next, seeing the world through their eyes, knowing the creatures were hers to command.

  Spark wondered why she had ever thought they were monsters. They were immensely powerful, especially networked together, but that only made them more achingly beautiful.

  And she was in complete control.

  She felt like a god.

  Had she become one?

  How would she know?

  Behind her, more shouting.

  71

  PETER

  Peter was sprawled on the balcony just outside the apartment door. He held June in his arms.

  Lewis crouched over them both, teeth bared, his rifle raised like a club. They’d run out of ammunition. Neither of them knew what to do.

  June’s eyes were closed. Her face was pale. A creature stood in the doorway behind them, its claw clapped tight around her neck. Its grip had cut off the blood to her brai
n. It had happened so fast. Peter pulled frantically on the metal fingers, trying to pry them apart. He couldn’t. The claw was too strong. He was helpless.

  On both sides of the balcony walk, countless creatures leaned toward them, black feet scraping, servos whining, long arms reaching. To get closer, the things had thrown their broken fellows over the railing, where they fell, cracked and twitching, to the concrete floor below. Peter had no idea how many he and Lewis had shot. Enough to empty their weapons. It didn’t matter. This was the end. He was waiting for the claws to come and break them all.

  But the creatures did not come. Instead, a voice spoke through them, through all of them at once, a voice both vast and terrible in its multitudes.

  “Why have you come here?”

  Spark’s voice, multiplied half a thousand times.

  “Please, let her go.” Peter’s words cracked in his throat. “You’re killing her. Let her go and I’ll do anything you want, I promise.”

  He looked at June. Her freckled face had turned a pale blue.

  “Spark, let her go.” Tears streamed down his cheeks. “Please, let her go, please.”

  Nothing.

  Then a high servomotor whine and the claw opened. The creature backed away. June’s eyes fluttered. Her chest rose. She coughed and put a hand to her neck. It was red and the skin was torn but she was not bleeding badly. Peter held her close.

  From the gathered creatures, the voices spoke again. “Bring her inside. Leave your weapons. If you try to harm me, I will smash you all.”

  “Yes,” Peter said. “Okay.” He dropped his rifle and rose with June in his arms. She coughed again and cleared her throat. Her face was turning pink again and her eyes were open, staring into his.

  He carried her through the wide marble entryway with Lewis at his side. Hyenas flowed in behind them and beyond.

  Ahead was an enormous living space with a wall of screens and three giant couches arranged in a U shape with a big square low table in the middle. Spark stood on the table, her hands spread in the air, her face unreadable behind dark goggles. The creatures arranged themselves around her, like acolytes before their queen.