by Noah Fregger
Sam cocked his head in question.
“I said, who fed y …” Mike placed his hand upon his neck, discovering something that hadn’t been there previously. He let his fingers glide over it momentarily, before making his way to the bathroom for further inspection. He stepped before the mirror. Jesus, he looked like shit. He’d made it a point to avoid them in the past for that very reason, but this was different.
There was something on his neck, something resembling scar tissue. Mike pulled his shirt lower, finding the mark continuing past his collar and down onto his chest. “What the fuck?” Abruptly angular in its various curves and adjacent shapes, it was something purely alien in execution. “No-no-no-no-no-no-no … ”
Something at the front door, something had been there, something big. The recollection had stirred by sight of the design. Something came and snatched him.
And there, within Mike’s reflection, his eyes were bloodshot, irritated. He leaned closer–something in them, thin and tucked away along the edges. With shaking hands, he pried the lids of his right eye apart, finding a soft, black tissue residing where the inner red of his skin should have been. Once touched, both membranes slid over, engulfing his eyes entirely. Mike stumbled back, colliding with the opened door, overtaken by his black-eyed reflection, his gaping mouth.
Frozen by terror, it took several moments before he finally had breath enough to scream.
23
The Hammer
Several men had already been replicated and reintroduced into the population. Reintroduction tended to be tricky business, however; and it mattered very much how that specific individual met their untimely demise. Not every man or woman caught by the scythe of the reaper could be replicated; and murder turned out to be the devilish sin that could render any of them permanently deceased. Their deaths needed to be a private affair, zero witnesses always preferred.
But the man first replicated, bullet hole in neck, had been a generous distance away from the shooter, according to Gabriel. The Traveler also concluded the killing to be random. Wrong place, wrong time–boom, dead. So fortunate guy got a brand new shot at this hell-hole. Hopefully he’d have better luck this time around.
So Gabriel kept watch on the replicants, hoping they’d eventually have the chance to wine and dine a lady into procreation. But no such luck, as of yet. Still it kept Mohammad busy, which also helped to keep his mind off the hunter. He’d gotten to let off a bit of steam the night before, so now it was time to get back to the work of the Traveler–his sole purpose in life, in fact.
Mohammad had already gathered two more for replication that day, and Gabriel seemed relatively pleased with his efforts thus far. The Fijian couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d have the rest of the night off from his duties. He used to enjoy the simplicities of the empty factory, but now it seemed more like confinement than his home–filled with someone else’s regrets and terrible memories. He hated the boiler room, couldn’t stand even to walk past it. Nothing but death lingered in there, and Mohammad was not the least bit interested in revisiting it.
He’d also found himself growing angry with the young lady whose end still marked its floor. He needed to get out. Mohammad had been a bird living in a cage his whole life, now given the world to explore.
So he’d chosen a door at random, caring not about any lingering population, and began to create a more elaborate system of hyper-walls. He wanted doors on every block, then every building, aspiring to be anywhere in the city in just a matter of seconds.
He wasn’t delusioned enough not to realize his own intoxication with the power, and the slow draining of humanity that went with it, like a sieve in his conscience. He knew it. Hell, he even embraced it. Mohammad, after all, was not the same man he was before; and where did niceties get him? To the grave is the answer. In order to avenge that man properly, Mohammad could not fall prey to the same pleasantries. He must be ruthless in all endeavors.
With the world still draped in night, darkness surrounding him from every angle, Mohammad was awoken abruptly. Unless manifested within his active unconscious, a peculiar noise had come to draw him from dreaming. He rolled on the nest and listened further … and heard it again before long–something scratching down one of the many aisles.
He slipped his fingers through the glove and peered down onto the rollroom floor. Its scratching and clattering was still quite audible; still the Fijian had yet to catch a glimpse of it. He fell from the nest and pressed his back against the immense roll of paper. Sounding something like a foot through wet leaves, the thing currently traversed the next aisle. Mohammad weaved through the rolls with the glove leading his stride. If this was a test by the Traveler, he’d be sure to ace it.
But nothing awaited him on the other side, the thing already somewhere else. He cleaved himself between the adjacent row and out again–still nothing. It was playing with him, whatever it was.
Must be the hammer, come to make a chisel out of me.
Again he heard it rustle through the darkness, and again it eluded his advances.
“Come and get me, Hammer,” he beckoned. “I haven’t got all night!”
The rustling ceased in that instant, the thing falling deathly silent. Mohammad spun in the stillness, expecting it to spring on him; but it didn’t come as he’d requested.
It waited, patient.
Something pumped through him like battery acid, his flesh growing hot.
A scratching emitted from behind as he turned to find himself beneath the thing’s scrutiny.
It stood a generous distance away, observing Mohammad intently–a dark creature, skin like stretched rubber, offering a view of the anatomy within. It was a being made entirely of whatever brought Gabriel’s bottom half to life, a being seemingly composed of both mechanical and organic matter. The thing continued to look on Mohammad with deeply hollow, fabricated eyes, a row of upper teeth visible through its transparent cheeks.
It was a thing of nightmares.
Mohammad curled his gloved fingers and attempted to dismantle it with a volley of plasma, but the glove did not respond. He pressed the device, opting for invisibility, still it neglected to aid him.
The thing shook its head slowly.
It seemed Mohammad would not have the luxury of the glove while fighting the hammer. This would have to be done the old fashioned way.
“Fine,” Mohammad muttered. “I prefer a straight fight, anyway.”
The thing uncurled its fingers, each sloping to a sharpened tip.
Hammer’s got claws.
It disappeared again into the rolls of paper as Mohammad attempted to tail it. But the place was a maze, every turn offering a number of routes the thing might have taken, so the hammer lost him in a matter of seconds. Frustrated, Mohammad slammed his fist hard into the roll beside him, his knuckles leaving their perfect row of dents. Anger would not help him, still he could not fight it; and it only engulfed him further when the hammer came to slice him along his spine. Mohammad shrieked; but the thing was already gone.
Blood soaked his clothes before the symbiote had time to mend him completely, still his flesh only remained unmarred for a short while. Blood filled his mouth as the hammer carved open a portion of his neck on its second pass, Mohammad swinging at nothing but air and shadows. The thing was impossibly fast. He would die if he stayed. The hammer would spill him out, little by little, until there was nothing left to mend. The rollroom was a death trap; but the converting area was more open.
Another strike, this time along his calf. Mohammad collapsed upon the severing of a tendon. Amused, the thing chuckled as it slipped again out of sight.
This was sport, after all. Even Gabriel must have been admiring the show, his thin lips curling into a grin.
Mohammad squeezed himself between two rows of paper, dragging his leg behind him. The hammer reached in after, shredding the rolls as it pulled its torso closer. It shrieked as Mohammad kicked it hard in the face. He kicked it again and it slipped out.
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When it stood before him at first, the thing appeared almost human in stature; but now Mohammad considered it more of a giant insect or arachnid in its method of attack. No longer finding the need for stealth, the sound of it was obvious as it clawed about his enclosure.
It felt as though serpents were slipping around within his skin–the odd sensation of the symbiote hard at work. When his leg healed he’d bring the thing out in the open. Mohammad wasn’t sure what he would do once he got there; but it would have to be a better set of circumstances than his present situation offered.
The hammer’s clatter grew faint as it increased the distance between them.
Where are you going?
It was no longer on ground level. The thing was climbing.
Oh shit.
It appeared again above him, clamoring down head first as it planted its talons into the paper. With jaw opened wide, its top row of teeth still looked human, but its bottom unfolded into a pair of lengthy mandibles
Healed or not, Mohammad yanked himself out as it descended. Trying his luck at running, he collided with a roll and skidded off toward the corrugator. Mohammad got to his feet again as the hammer launched after him. It crawled first on all fours, but reaching the clearing, its body twisted, joints shifted, and came to stand in its human form beneath the arching fire-door. The two of them paused there for a brief moment–the hammer seeming to size up its pray, Mohammad just grateful to be receiving the recess.
I don’t wanna be the godamned chisel.
He held out his hand nonetheless, beckoning the thing forward. “C’mon then, Hammer.”
It stepped out.
“Come teach me a lesson.”
The thing reversed its hind joints and buckled over, falling into something reminiscent of a panther.
Mohammad left in a sprint, carving the factory with the shape-shifter on his heels; and coming to the infeed line of the first converting machine, he yanked a roller free of the conveyor and swung it around.
But the hammer was not there to receive it.
The roller’s bearings swayed violently at its center, resonating through his fingertips as Mohammad twisted his head in all directions. The thing could be circling him, like some kind of mutant jungle cat. With an unusable alien weapon on his wrist, and nothing more than a six-foot metallic stick to defend himself, Mohammad was being hunted.
He’d read Burroughs religiously as a child; the knots presently in his stomach were similar to those he’d find as a boy, turning those classic pages of Tarzan–anxious to see the protagonist to victory, to see the mighty feline slain at long last. The thing was surely closing in, slinking its way through piles of corrugated stock, preparing to spill his blood upon the concrete floor yet again.
But this was a test, a conditioning process to teach him he was no longer human. He was something greater. This thing could indeed be beaten, only because he was anything but human.
“You are already dead, Mohammad.”
He found Gabriel standing a fair distance behind him, while the hammer, coming out of hiding, articulated itself upright as it went to stand beside the craftsman.
“I was just getting warmed up,” he insisted.
“This drone would have killed you, had I not intervened.”
“You don’t know that.”
Gabriel’s features grew stern. “I am hardly impressed with arrogance, Mohammad. The next time you meet the drone, I expect to see the effort and energy I put into you, not the slaughter I witnessed tonight.”
Both humbled and agitated by the Traveler’s words, Mohammad clenched his jaw and nodded in understanding. Gabriel fixed him in glossy, black eyes for several seconds before leaving with the hammer in stride.
“Next time, Gabriel,” Mohammad whispered, “I’m gonna tear that thing apart.”
24
Back-Stabbing Constituents
Later that morning Mohammad peeled off his blood-soaked clothing, and with sponge and bucket, scrubbed his skin clean beneath. Again, no lacerations, not so much as a scratch. The symbiote had Mohammad fully healed in no time, whatever blood he’d lost during the battle already replenished. No human would have survived that altercation, while Gabriel concluded Mohammad, himself, would have lost his life if the fight were allowed to continue.
Mohammad still doubted that assessment, however, as he played the fight over and over in his head, looking for weaknesses he could exploit the next time the hammer came to slice him open. It was an ominous thought; but Mohammad didn’t register pain like he used to, his threshold drastically magnified. He could surely take a beating, and as long as the symbiote could keep up, he was practically invincible. The trick was to keep moving.
If I’m confined, I die.
And without the glove, he’d have to find a more primitive form of defense. He needed a new hunting knife; and Mohammad was fairly certain of exactly where he could find one.
Requesting the emerald city, he enlarged the hunter’s store; and from it, chose the most prized door of any he’d constructed. All the violet people were gathered outside. It looked like Mohammad would be having the place all to himself. Already invisible, he penetrated it first with only his head, surveying the other side.
The hunter’s room, vacant and quiet.
Mohammad pulled the rest of his body through, allowing the hyper-wall to solidify behind him. The sheets on the bed to his right were quite unkempt, the comforter pulled almost all the way to the floor. It looked as though someone had removed themselves from it in a hurry. And on the wall beside it, the mark he’d left behind had been hastily erased, the remnants of it tinting that area the lightest shade of pink.
The hunter probably didn’t want news of the bogeyman’s infiltration to get out. That could certainly be damning from a leader’s perspective.
Scattered about the room, glossy in their gunmetal, from a multitude of knives to semi-automatics, plenty of weapons were available for his choosing. He didn’t have to look beyond this loft office, there was more than he knew what to do with. He played with the notion of taking everything, just throwing them all through the hyper-wall, into a heap of artillery on the factory floor. But it was in Mohammad’s best interest for the hunter to start feeling secure again, comfortable in his position of power. So instead he withdrew a single hunting knife from its sheath, admiring its serrated edges just before the blade met the hilt.
This will do nicely.
He turned to leave when he heard voices outside. Looking through the window, Mohammad found many of them staring back. He almost retreated from sight before remembering the special liquid that currently encased his body.
What are they looking at?
Curiosity was already getting the better of him. Adding the knife to his belt, the liquid accepted it graciously, hiding the stolen weapon from view as well. He unlocked the door, allowing the glove to lock it again behind him, before venturing down the steps and out into the sunlight. He came to stand alongside the group as they talked amongst themselves; and what he saw on the wall, addressed to the bogeyman, had an instant effect on him:
All complete with his very official black handprint.
That final female tally was Radia, the final human Mohammad. And there had been five others, just like him, who’d also been condemned to the same fate as well. This was meant to taunt him, to anger him. It seemed the hunter had distinguished the source of Mohammad’s distain, adding a bit of insult to injury, a little salt to his wound.
But for what purpose?
The hunter was clearly methodical in mind, surely not prone to spontaneous fits of threatening graffiti.
This is a trap–has to be.
Except the hunter had made a terrible error in planning. Not only didn’t he understand his adversary, but Mohammad was a being he could hardly even comprehend. Until becoming the final nail he’d be planting into the man’s coffin, the hunter’s ignorance would remain Mohammad’s most prized asset. But it was inevitable.
A
nd if the hunter was truly at the top of his game, if he was truly at the level he believed himself to be, the only conclusion he could possibly come to, the only rationality there was to find was that he was already dead.
And there, bouncing briefly off the death-wall, a burst of Mohammad’s laughter caused those around him to spin in dumbfounded circles.
He approached it, running his fingers along the marks, inspecting the truth of the hunter’s claims. It did seem to be a ranking, a competition, a scoreboard of legitimate sport. Surely it was true, the numbers accurate in their data. They’d kept track, possibly placing bets upon that very wall, those with the highest numbers becoming superstars of this unfortunate era–fitting then, to turn it into a gateway, to redeem the stone beneath.
With the group at his back, Mohammad constructed a new door there, through which he returned to the factory. His eyes adjusted again to the darkness as he found the immensity of Gabriel awaiting him. And for the first time, Mohammad didn’t nearly jump out of his skin at the unexpected sight of the Traveler. Instead he relinquished his invisibility, and greeted him with a kind smile.
“Good morning, Gabriel,” he said. “I do hope it’s not misfortune that brings you.”
“Misfortune?” he asked. “I suppose that all depends on you, Mohammad.”
The Fijian’s eyes narrowed.
“I trust you have the hunter situation well under control.”
“Yes.” Mohammad nodded. He’d walked amongst them as they slept, slipped past armed guards who hadn’t the slightest notion of his presence. How could Gabriel have any doubt? “I can’t get any closer than I am.”
Gabriel raised the portion of pale flesh above his glossy, black eyes. “Is that so?”
“Yes.” Mohammad was beyond confident.
“Then you must be aware of the plot to assassinate him,” the Traveler stated, crossing his large arms.
