by Ian Woodhead
The giant insect hung its head. Ellis could only guess that this was the creature's way of displaying shame. “Wait. How can they escape? According to Jason, we're all stuck inside this giant energy dome. Those things aren't leaving. Besides, we're not soldiers. What chance do we have against all that lot?"”
“Options with one choice not needed here, soft flesh,” it replied. “Their energy dome. The Mantil's plan is no longer restricted. Not soldier but seeders. They'll spread their core far once the barrier is dropped.”
She needed no translation for that! Ellis couldn't believe what she was hearing. “You expect us to murder our own kind? There must be some way to cure these poor people.”
The insect hung its head even lower. “The seed given form cannot revert. Mantil expect and safeguard against the obvious.” It lifted its head. “You three are all there is left inside the dome.”
“We should have brought the fight to them,” growled Jason. “A few high-ex detonations inside their site would have made them think twice about picking a fight with us.”
“Help is required and gratefully given. The hatched are dangerous but still learning. We shall remove the threat.” The insects moved as one. They turned once reaching the far wall then vanished.
“Come on then,” muttered Jason. “Let's get this over with.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
He had decided not to allow these sensory anomalies to get on his tits too much. Andrew guessed that whatever the fuck he was currently seeing was what that geek described as projection. Right now, he kinda preferred the last walking hallucination of watching that sad bastard try to beat that high score as opposed to wandering through what resembled a medieval market place full of human insect hybrids.
It could be worse, a lot worse. At least none of these biological fuck ups were trying to murder him. In fact, quite the opposite. Most of them looked uneasy in his presence. Hell, a couple of them even hid under the trader tables when he passed.
“Okay, staff. I know you're just dying to start gobbing off. Fine. You can talk, I don't mind. Just none of the weird perv stuff like before. That's proper creepy.”
He had no choice a while back to threaten the weapon with being snapped in half if it didn't shut its trap. The stuff it was saying was seriously freezing him out, but what made Andrew snap in the end was the simple fact that the damn thing was turning him on. How that could even happen while in the midst of the scariest and strangest situation he'd ever been in was beyond him but he couldn't deny it was happening.
[I don't see why I should tell you anything,] it pouted. [Not if you're going to continue being really mean to me.]
“Christ on a bike. Now you're trying to guilt trip me. You know, my ex played that game almost every day of our shit marriage and I'll tell you something for nothing. Didn't get her anywhere.” Andrew stopped beside a stall full of fruit, at least, that's what he assumed it to be. “Come on, spill the beans. Behind that façade, I know you want to.”
The staff weapon sighed loudly. [Well, maybe just this once, but only because I find your silky voice incredibly sexy. You are right. This is another projection. Only difference with this one you are in now is that this is an amalgam. A fusion of thousands of projected thoughts. What you see is your poor human mind struggling to make sense of all their jumbled up visions, pasted over the real world.]
The voice now sounded like his old history teacher. The only teacher in his high school that Andrew was actually afraid of. Was it doing this on purpose? Andrew watched two of those hybrid things right at the edge of the market. They were looking in his direction as well as pointing. Something told him that his presence here was causing more than just a minor disruption. Another hybrid distracted him, knocking into his shoulder then apologising before running off.
“I don't understand why they seem to be so afraid of me. Don't get me wrong. Them running away is far better than them shooting bolts of green lightning at me. I guess you know the reason too huh?”
[It's me,] it whispered. [It doesn't matter how well a Mantil can project, the weapons of the Order always stay visible. And only soldiers are permitted to carry weapons, naturally, the locals will be a little uneasy in your presence.]
“Oh yeah. You're insects and you're all really big with the hierarchy thing with your queen bees, worker ants and what have you.”
[A bit of a generalised and stereotypical reply but why should I expect any different from a soft flesh?]
“You call us Soft Flesh?!” He snapped his mouth shut. “Sorry. Forget I said that. Go on, continue what you were going to say.” The attention they were getting started to make him more than a little uneasy. Andrew hurried through the last of the market stalls and out of the enclosed building. He threaded his way through narrow alleys, heading nowhere in particular, he just followed the routes where there appeared to be fewer signs of life.
[I suppose back when we were just primal intelligences, basking in the knowledge that we were the first ever terrestrial species to achieve sentience, we did cling to the old ways, of the fixed hierarchy. Why not? It worked for countless aeons, there was no need to change.]
“That explains quite a lot,” he muttered.
[No, it doesn't, Andrew. You do not understand. Our species did change. We threw off the shackles which bonded most of our society into a lifetime of servitude. Okay, so maybe the process wasn't as flowery as that and took thousands of years, a lot of sacrifice as well as huge advancements in genetics, but we did once achieve our goal of a peaceful society where every individual was free to do as they desired. But it did happen.]
He finally found an area empty of people. Andrew stopped walking. He found a round boulder which came up to his thighs and sat down on it. “So what went wrong? I'm guessing something did happen which put a spanner in the works.”
[The Mantil discovered that they were not the only sentient form of insect life living within the planet's core. First contact didn't really go well. I won't bore you with the details here, Andrew. Let's just say that there were deaths on both sides and, as you can imagine, both sides blamed each other and a war started. A war that we have been fighting ever since. It's why our species reverted to the old ways of strict hierarchy. It was the only way to survive.]
“Wait on, is that it? Why can you bore me with the details? I want to know.”
[I can't because a squad of Mantil troopers have become aware of our existence. They are heading our way as we speak.]
Andrew heard their footsteps moments before the soldiers shuffled into view. Seven Mantil warriors, larger than any he had encountered before, ran towards his position. He fell off the stone, and managed to scramble to his feet. Andrew managed to get a metre away from the large stone before he felt hard claws brush over the top of his head, and then…
His eyes were closed. Andrew didn't remember shutting them. He couldn’t remember a lot of things, the most prominent that demanded an answer was where the fuck was he now? Andrew kept his eyes closed for a moment longer, just until his head stopped spinning. Keeping his eyes shut tight sounded like the dumbest fucking idea on the planet considering just a moment ago half a dozen armour-plated giant insects were after his head but those vile smelling bastards had gone. The fact their stink no longer assaulted his nose told him that much.
He opened one eye and moaned softly. Just the one eye was enough to show Andrew where he was. “No, no fucking way. This has to be another one of those projections.” Andrew opened both eyes and brushed his fingers across the rough bed sheet covering the top bunk bed. It felt real enough. Even so, since when did that mean anything? Andrew nodded to himself. It had to be a projection. There's no way that he could somehow find himself back in his old cell otherwise.
Andrew climbed down, walked over to the cell door, grabbed the window bars and pulled. The door swung inwards. He peered out onto the balcony. The place felt deserted. Andrew resisted the urge to start shouting. “That's not very professional,” he muttered. “The screws
would never leave my cell unlocked.” He grinned to himself. “Not after the last time.”
What sort of game were they playing at? More to the point, did he really want to play? Not wise considering he didn't know the rules, if there were any. Andrew wandered back inside, leaving the door open. He scanned the interior, looking for anything that might help to tell him what all this was about. He'd already clocked that the staff wasn't in here, like the bastards were going to be daft enough to leave that thing lying about.
Crap, he was missing that silky seductive voice already. How weird was that. In a strange way, her voice had helped to keep his emotions kinda level. Not exactly chilled out, that wasn't going to happen, but calm enough to stop him from losing his rag every ten minutes.
There was nothing else that might help him on his unknown quest, not that Andrew really expected to find anything. Useful items like a shotgun, a teleport bracelet or the keys to a motorbike were not the usual things to find inside a prison cell. He closed his eyes and counted to three. Upon opening them, he found the room hadn't reverted. Andrew wasn't all together sure he would have wanted to go back to outside that marketplace, not with the soldiers getting ready to stove his head in.
A beach would have been nice though. Andrew shrugged to himself, grabbed the cell door and walked out onto the balcony...and found himself back in that rented hotel room. “Okay,” he yelled. “Now you're taking the piss!”
The room didn't look any different to when they were last here. The playing cards hadn't been put away. The two coffee cups were by the side of the chairs and Nelson's baccy tin was still on the upturned crate. “The old bastard was looking for that,” he murmured. Andrew approached the table, picked up the cards and started shuffling them while trying to figure out what all this bullshit meant.
Andrew turned the cards over. “Oh yeah, fucking hilarious. My sides are splitting.” Every card showed a picture of his face wearing a joker's hat. Andrew dropped the cards.
He walked over to the window, not totally sure what to expect. Andrew had the feeling that whatever all this was leading up to, the answer lay beyond that glass. How he knew this was beyond him, it just felt right.
The view showed the centre of town, but this was no place he recognised, at least not at first. Hundreds of skyscraper sized structures disappeared into the dark, grey clouds. Each one identical and composed of the same pale blue honeycomb material. "Bloody hell," he said. Andrew pressed his face against the cold glass and squinted. The honeycomb covered the original buildings! Through the gaps, he could make out brickwork, shopfront displays as well as bits of signage.
There were insects everywhere. The giant things, the bastards that took out most of the population made up the majority but every now and then, he saw bipedal insects. He guessed they were the Mantil invaders but it was hard to tell at this distance.
This was what the future held for this planet if those bastards were not stopped right here. He turned away and saw whoever was fucking with his mind had done it again.
The room had stayed the same but there were differences. The playing cards were back on the table, he also saw he was no longer alone. Nelson sat in his chair, giving him the evils. The old man picked up his cup, found it empty and dropped it. The cup hit one of the chair legs and the handle snapped off.
“You're dead.”
Nelson's expression changed. The scowl fell away and a nasty grin took its place. “Yeah, thanks for that, you tosser. Still, I shouldn't complain too much, I guess. Where I am now is a shit load better than what my life used to be like.”
“What do you want?”
He leaned forward. “What do I want? I want to smash your head against the wall over and over until your mashed brains leak out of your ears.” He shrugged. “We don't always get what we want though, do we? It's what they want, Andrew. I'm just the messenger.”
“Right, that's a relief. So they don't want to kill me?”
Nelson laughed. “Oh, you're a funny guy. Course they want you dead, you daft fucker.”
“Oh.”
The old man got out of the chair. “Man, don't look so fucking down in the dumps. It's only your body that dies.” He tapped the side of his head. “They'll keep what's up here going. They were able to sort me out. I mean, if they can stitch me up after what you did to me, they'll have no problem processing you.” Nelson's left arm snapped out. His fingers tightened around Andrew's wrist. “You're special to the Mantil. They want you so bad. Best go quietly. Seriously, you really don't want to make a fuss.”
Andrew ripped his arm back. Gave the old man the sweetest smile he could muster then pushed him back into the chair. “Thanks, but I think I'll decline.”
“That's the wrong answer. You are something special, man. You can operate their technology. That shouldn't be able to happen! Andrew, I'm begging you here. Let them absorb your consciousness. Help the Mantil move up to the next level.”
“Man, you really have lost it. Watch my lips, Nelson. Go fuck yourself.” He made a beeline for the open door, fully aware that the old man had left the chair and was coming after him. He ran through and found himself back in the prison cell.
“Come on, for fuck sake. Can I not have a break?”
It took him a few seconds to realise that this cell wasn't the same as the one he left earlier. He also realised that whoever was doing this to him certainly wasn't in any mood to give him any kind of break. The thing on the top bunk proved that.
Andrew slowly backed away. He didn’t leave the cell, not yet. Christ knows where he'd end up if he went through that door. A place worse than this? Unlikely but still possible, although he wasn't sure how it could get any worse. The thing slivered along the top of the bed. A pair of segmented, dark green appendages curled around the metal bar and a distorted Mantil head lifted from the cover. A pair of black compound eyes fixed him to the spot. They drilled right through to his inner core. Whatever defiance he had left just melted like hot wax. Andrew wanted to scream, to shriek out and beg this vile creature to pull its cold, mental tendrils out of his mind. He knew that this thing, this beast stripping out every part of his being piece by piece was the Mantil's main leader. The queen, the creature which ruled over an empire of billions.
It slid off the bed and dropped onto the floor, landing in front of him in a large wet lump. For a brief second, its vice-like grip on his mind relaxed, enabling Andrew to realise that this monster wasn't all that different from the Mantil soldiers, only a third taller and its innards weren't protected by an armoured exo-skeleton.
Andrew tried to flee but his shaking body betrayed him. He turned around and fell onto his face. That thing had already drained every ounce of physical and mental strength from him, leaving Andrew as weak as a baby.
One of its appendages curled around his neck and dragged him onto his feet. It turned him to face its eyes again and that mental stranglehold returned with vengeance. The bastard knew that Andrew didn't have a hope of escaping. All it had to do was to prise open the last door and it would be all over for him. All that would remain of Andrew would be a hollowed out, dried husk.
It easily brushed away what little defences he'd managed to erect and tunnelled even deeper inside, eager to uncover what secrets Andrew kept.
A bright, dazzling white light erupted and he knew it was all over. In a few moments, the being known as Andrew would simply cease to exist.
[Get your stinking paws out of his head, you dirty freak! Andrew, come on, darling. You need to fight the bastard. Focus.]
“Focus? Focus on what?” The pain the thing originally inflicted on him came back even worse. “Focus on what?” he repeated. Andrew wanted it to stop. He had already resigned himself to whatever fate that thing had lined up for him.
[It's just another projection, Andrew. You have to influence the outcome. You have the same built in abilities as every Mantil. Use it, Andrew, bring me forward. Pull the staff weapon into this fucking projection, Andrew. Hurry, before it regains contro
l!]
The notion sounded so simple. All he had to do was imagine it by his knees and it would appear. That's all it would take but to accomplish even that, Andrew had to wrestle some control back from the intruder. It would only be a small amount but even that proved to be as slippery as the creature itself: those segmented appendages had him firmly tethered. Nothing Andrew tried shifted them.
“I can't do it!”
[Then you're going to die here. Is that what you really want, my precious? I don’t think you do.]
A deep grinding sound rumbled through his mind. That thing was laughing at him. The bastard thought it had won! “Not yet you haven’t,” he said through gritted teeth Andrew stopped trying to fight it. Instead, he opened up his mind much to the wailing cry coming from the voice of the staff weapon. The creature tasted victory and dived through. When it did, it left its own mind momentarily unguarded. Andrew seized his chance and pushed with all his might.
The creature roared in both shock and fury. Obviously not understanding how such a primitive creature could possibly penetrate the mind of such a powerful and ancient being. He had just seconds to do what he intended before this mind swatted him into oblivion.
Andrew used the creature's own mind to imagine the staff weapon beside him. He snapped open his eyes and there it was, he couldn’t remember ever seeing anything so beautiful in his life. Andrew snapped it open and rolled out of harm’s way.
“Eat this, you fucking bastard!” he growled. Andrew squeezed the base, grinning wider that he'd ever grinned when a blast of super-heated energised particles literally turned the creature into a puddle of smoking gloop.
Andrew fell to his knees. He felt so tired, drained of energy and of will. He looked at the stinking puddle of black goo slowly flowing towards a drain in the corner of the cell. “Is that it then, is it dead?”
[Honey. What part of it's only a projection do you not understand? It isn't dead. You can't kill the Mantil Queen so easily. All you have done is pissed her off but you have managed to buy yourself enough time to get out of here. Come on, my darling. You need to stand up.]
