“What was this supposed to be?” I asked Andi.
Chloe, Silk, and Mira all held their guns like a rosary, knuckles white and eyes rounded with worry. I understood. The entire room was unsettling and wrong.
“This was a secondary water control room,” Andi said. “Backup in case the pumps failed. There were manual overrides here and on the lower level at the drains, but . . . I don’t know what happened. The material we used was nanobot compound around hard—oh, there’s the core of one unit. Look,” she said, staring down and to the left.
Metal gleamed, grimy but still visible in the erratic light. It was part control board, part switching valve, and far larger than anything I’d ever seen before. “What did that do?”
“One of three units. A failsafe, but the housing is gone, and the system is in pieces. I don’t like our chances of finding the floors below in anything other than a full flood stage,” Andi said with some heat.
“Can they be overridden manually?” I asked. We needed those floors, both now and for the future.
“Sure, if you can swim in soup. I’m sure the water down there is anything but pure since it’s been stewing for who knows how long,” Andi said with a grimace.
“I can swim, just not sure I want to in a thousand-year-old petri dish. Hope my ‘bots are ready for a workout. I can’t imagine anything in the water but an array of vicious bugs,” I said. The water down there would be riddled with diseases, and no amount of ‘bots could protect me forever. “I think the best—target above,” I snapped, bringing my gun up in a blur.
The lights dimmed as something moved along the ceiling, and the purpose of the room snapped into focus as I stared into the face of something that was clearly a new addition to the world since my nap.
“Those aren’t sheets,” Chloe said with revulsion. “They’re webs.”
The spider froze when I made eye contact, which told me it had seen me and was switching to hunting mode. At five feet across, the body was three times the size of a basketball, supported on willowy legs that ended in hooks as black as night. The mouth parts continued to move as it stared at us, eyes reflecting the shifting lights of the nearest bulbs.
“The bastard is licking its chops,” I said.
“I see,” Andi said, craning her neck slowly as she scanned the ceiling. “Jack, do you want the good news first, or the bad news?”
“Bad news,” I said without hesitation. I didn’t think there could be any good news, not while I was staring at a spider the size of a wolf.
“You can’t use your gun. The fucker is right over an auxiliary cable dump, and any rounds in it will cut whatever chance we have of draining the lower floors,” Andi said.
“Blades it is,” I said, resigned to my fate. I judged my reach to be slightly longer than the spider, but only if I fully extended in a forward strike. It would be close, and those hooks were serious business. “Good news?”
“There is none. I don’t like to lead with negativity. Not my style,” Andi said with a wry grin.
“Thank you. I can appreciate that kind of upbeat attitude,” I replied, slinging my gun as I held both blades, their edges wicked in the artificial light. “Any chance we can lure this thing away?”
“Don’t know. Never fought one that big before,” Chloe said.
Then the spider charged, and all my options were gone in a flash of leg and fang.
Instead of dodging, I attacked the nightmare creature, despite every nerve in my body screaming in primal resistance to getting anywhere near the spider. My first blade took a leg off at the first joint, ichor flying as the spider whirled in an impossible motion, hooking my boot with one of those gleaming talons. I was jerked to the side—the fucker was heavier than I expected—but the motion let me bring my second blade around with a heavy blow, taking a second claw near the end of the leg. Bristly hair exploded from the creature as we collided, its black fangs extended toward my face as I turned yet again, rolling into the mass of the beast. Our impact threw my weight against its soft body, crunching it against the edge of a conduit that ran from ceiling to floor. The spider shrieked in a high squeal of agony and rage, venom flying from the fangs as it scrabbled to gain my back while Chloe and Mira dashed in to slash at the legs.
From behind them, Silk threw a knife, sinking the blade into the junction of a leg and midsection. The fluid spurting out covered my eyes in a viscous curtain as I fought to break free before the fangs could find their way into my neck. With the pommel of my left hand blade, I struck a shattering blow on the creature’s head, pounding the fangs down against the floor with an audible bang as I pushed up and away. Wiping at my eyes. I could see the spider draw down on Chloe, who still hacked at its legs with a series of expert blows, her blade leaving streaming cuts wherever it landed.
Despite the rain of attacks, the creature kept coming, incredibly strong and nimble despite its frail appearance. It skittered to the side, spun, and grabbed at Mira with a pair of legs that doubled back at an impossible angle, tearing her from the floor with a jerk that snapped her head back in a motion so violent I could hear her teeth crack together. Before the spider could press its advantage, I resorted to a tried and true move without thinking.
I punted it.
Kicking hard enough that the entire body collapsed on one side, the creature flew up into the webbing, spitting bubbles of clear fluid and gyrating wildly as it tried to reach back for me. Its remaining legs clung to the swaying silks, and when it reached the low point of its arc, I slashed up at the silk, parting it like a curtain as a rain of debris joined the wounded creature falling to the floor. The spider hit amidst bones, trash, and bits of metal, twitched once, and began to shudder along its sides like a dog shaking off a bath.
Then it leaped at me again, front legs streaking forward in unison as the fangs slid out and up for a killing stroke. It was fast.
I was faster.
My sword split the spider’s head like a melon, cleaving deep into the main body and stopping with a ripe splat. As I pulled my blade free, the spider’s momentum kept it going overhead, now a flopping assembly of innards and legs that spun crazily out of control before landing against an electrical panel with a wet thud. It shook again and fell still, dead and leaking its guts out onto the concrete floor in a spreading pool.
“I don’t like this place very much,” Chloe said into the silence, and all I could do was laugh.
“No shit,” Andi agreed, rising to kick at the spider’s nearest leg. She turned to me with a half-smile, stepping down on the spider’s claw hard enough to shatter it like glass. “It may surprise you to know these things weren’t here when I went in the tube.”
“I’d never sleep again if these were anywhere near the Oasis,” Silk remarked, curling her full lips in distaste. After a long look at the remains, she added, “I still might not, and it’s dead.”
“Anyone bitten?” I asked. In the fury of fighting, anything was possible. The last few minutes has passed in a blur, and even I wasn’t sure I hadn’t been scored by the murderous fangs.
“We’re good,” Mira said.
“I think we can assume that the entire area is in balance due to multiple predators. That conduit leading outside was made for something like a spider. No wonder it found this place,” Andi said, pushing through the web trash with the toe of her boot. “Seems the spider had a taste for rats, too.” She held up a rat jawbone, then dropped it with obvious distaste.
I flicked my blades to clean them of ichor, peering up into the swinging webs. “Any chance there’s something useful in the web? Might have grabbed humans through the years, not telling what they left behind. The poor bastards.”
“Wouldn’t hurt to look. We need the web down so I can see what additions were made to the power grid after I went under. Something doesn’t add up,” Andi said with some disgust.
“Start by searching this room. Andi, you tell me what you see, and then we get to CC. We need eyes on Rowan, and I’m getting tired of the en
dless parade of horror film monsters. I want us to have a timeline for battle in less than an hour. That way we can rest and get in position for whatever comes next,” I said.
“Sounds good,” Andi agreed. She began examining the panels and stations in a clockwise motion, murmuring quietly to Chloe and Silk, who watched and listened as she explained possible uses for the additional networking.
I reached up to the nearest web, filled with trash and hanging low. It was thick but not entirely opaque, the material somewhere between a worn bedsheet and clear plastic, shot through with thicker strands that looked like twine. When I pushed the mass away from me, something twinkled, like metal, and it was heavy.
“Hello,” I said, pulling a blade to cut along the bottom of the pouch. The mass smelled of decay, but there was something inside that had circuitry. It was worth a look, even if it made me feel like a scavenging pirate. “Avast ye, scurvy dogs,” I muttered, earning a quizzical look from Andi, who was only a few feet away with Silk and Chloe.
“You’re a pirate now?” Andi asked.
“A scavenger, but sure. I feel like a regular brigand searching this trash for treasure,” I told her, laughing as I slashed at the web. The contents of the mass spilled out on the floor, an array of bones, rotted hide, and a broken tablet computer, the screen smashed into a refractive mess. “Well, fuck it all. I thought this was a hidden—”
The spider that fell on me was four times the size of its mate, her fangs extended nearly a foot and dripping venom as she slammed me to the floor, wrapping her front legs around me in a crushing embrace. I fended off the first bite, my ‘bots screaming as her hooks sank into my leg, arm, and side, bristly hair clogging my nose and mouth while we began to roll in a desperate tumble. I saw nothing except the black arc of her fangs, their tips wicked in the flickering light as we spun about in a fury of blows. My swords were gone, my gun behind me and crushed to the floor by the weight of her attack, but every muscle in my body sang with effort as I hammered at her side and head while holding the fangs away from my face with my right forearm.
I struck again and again, impossibly hard blows that stove in the creature’s side, finally splitting the bristly skin with my fifth punch as my hand sank into warm fluid up to the elbow. The spider began to spasm and withdraw, but I locked my left hand around the base of a front leg and pulled until my eyes were streaming tears and my muscles shrieked in protest. With a wet tear, the leg came away in a spatter of warm liquid as I threw it to the side and reached for another.
I found the next leg and began to pull, howling in rage while Chloe and Mira struck down with blades. Andi had my legs, trying to pull me free, and the entire scene dissolved into chaos as I felt my hand lock onto the next spider leg, crushing the joint like a vise as the beast tried in vain to shake prey that was now predator. I wouldn’t let go, and in a series of savage tugs, the second and then third legs came off as I rolled the creature over me, my eyes now blinded by spider guts and sweat.
“Got her,” I grunted, pulling back as I slid my foot out to push against a power panel. I needed separation if I was going to finish her off, and I couldn’t do it with the fangs inches from my face. With a massive heave, I flipped the spider up, my legs working like pistons against the metal casing. As she began to fall away, I pulled my forearm from under her fangs to reach for a nearby sword, the handle close enough to grab.
Then the panel case folded in, and I slipped in the gore underneath me as the spider bore down to punch both her fangs into my chest. The points slipped in me with a kind of violation I never knew possible, pumping venom and shredding the muscles of my chest as her dying spasms wracked the fat body I’d ruined with my blows.
“Silk,” I tried to call, but my voice was a distant echo, weak and breathy. The fangs retracted, and the spider sagged off me, dead.
Above me, I saw Chloe and Silk and Mira, their faces white ovals of worry as the room began to grow dark. Inside me, the war began, ‘bots versus venom, and the first horrific bolt of pain struck home. I screamed, then clamped my jaws shut while hands lifted me as the women—my team, my people—began to speak in low voices.
The second wave of agony crashed home, and my muscles went rigid, twitching in a dance of the purest pain as every nerve in my body lit up from within. Panting, streaming sweat, and close to darkness, I heard whispers in the bedlam of my torture, and then I heard nothing at all.
15
“Jack, I’m not gonna lie to you. This is going to hurt like a bitch,” I heard, though it could have been anyone speaking. The voice seemed to come from underwater, or maybe I was underwater, drowning in a sea of my own pain.
I took stock of what I knew, and the news was far from good.
I was dying, or something close to it, I had wracking pains through every nerve in my body, my teeth were clenched so tightly all I could taste was blood, and I was pretty sure I’d pissed my pants. All in all, a banner day made worse by the fact that I was under lights that seemed to sear my skin.
“Jack?” The voice repeated itself, and I thought it was Andi. Or Mira. No, it was Andi, I decided after a moment of contemplation between seizing pains.
“Yeah,” I mumbled, or tried to. When the face above me nodded, I knew I’d spoken out loud.
“Good. It’s Andi, and Chloe, Silk, and Mira are all here. You’re down the hall in medical, and for the moment, you’re safe. Do you remember what happened?” she asked me.
“Fucking spider,” was all I could manage.
Andi smiled, and I heard nervous laughter. “Exactly. Big fucking spider. The female was up in the ceiling, guarding eggs. Don’t worry, they’re all dead—Mira really has a thing for popping eggs as it turns out, but you’ve got a hard hour ahead of you. I told you before that we would tank you up. Do you remember?”
“Mmm-hmm,” I answered, because that was all I could do with my head swimming in chaos.
“This isn’t any medical ward. This is a ‘bot station, and I don’t have the time to loop you through a renal hookup. The ‘bots have to go in the hard way, and it’s not going to be pleasant. These are several generations beyond what’s in you now, and they won’t play nice with your blood while they establish chemical and mechanical dominance over your systems. Eventually, you’ll pass out, but I can’t dope you up because I need you to talk to me in order to gauge the dose. With me so far?”
“Fuuuuuck,” I hissed.
“Exactly. Fuck,” Andi said. I felt Silk’s hand on mine. It was soft and warm. I could sense her worry despite my condition. “S’okay,” I said to her and the room.
“It will be,” Andi agreed. She vanished from above me for a moment, returning with a hanging bag and a needle that looked big enough to kill a horse. “The first dose goes in your arm, but the second has to go in your spine. We need these ‘bots in you yesterday or the venom is going to kill you. You understand?” Andi said, swabbing my arm with something cold while she talked.
“Okay,” I said. I was a master of the understatement while fighting off giant spider venom.
“Okay, I’m going to strap you down. It’s going to hurt, but I need you to remain still while I put the needle in. Then, I need you to stay with us,” Andi said.
“Mmm-hmm,” I said, leaning my head back to relive some of the pain in my neck. A fire was rising in my spine, like lava in a tube. Whatever was happening inside me, my ‘bots were losing.
“Dosing once, now.” Andi pushed the needle in and began massaging the bag hard, squeezing it to empty into my vein as fast as possible.
If there was fire in my spine, then there was lightning in my arm. “Fuck me,” I hissed. The pain was so intense, I saw floating fractals of red and black, flashing white across my retinas as the new generation of ‘bots began to colonize my body.
“Your impressive libido aside, they’re going in fine. No rejection at site. Yet,” Andi added with an ominous hint.
“I can’t—holy shit—” I started, losing my way halfway through the compl
aint. My body broke into full fledged war at the cellular level, as ‘bots clashed with older versions of themselves while activating against the hostility of venom. My wounds tingled, then went white-hot, then an erratic series of shocks ran through them, sparks of pain made worse by the open edges of my wounds. Warm fluid began to run across my chest where the fangs had been, but I couldn’t bend my neck enough to see even if I wanted to.
“It’s okay. Almost done,” Andi said. Silk put her hand on my forehead, now burning hot with a fever that was born of two threats, manmade and natural. “Unstrap and turn him. The next part is harder.”
I nearly screamed as they turned me on my side, new and horrible pains shooting through my body in places I never knew existed. Then, in the midst of it all, fear came to call, and it had nothing to do with my possible death.
It was a question of time.
“How long were we—was I?” I asked the wall. All the women were behind me, levering me into a balanced position on what felt like a surgical table.
“It took us a few minutes to get you here. Time is no worry, Jack. If this works, you’ll be up in an hour, if it doesn’t, we’re fucked anyway,” Andi said from behind me.
“Umm, give it to him now?” I heard Mira say.
“Go ahead,” came Andi’s response, and her tone was like a priest giving last rites.
When Mira leaned close, I could feel her breath on my ear, full of apology and fear. “Bite down on this,” she said. With two fingers, she slipped a length of cable between my teeth, the insulation tasting of rubber and oil against my tongue. I gagged, tried to spit the bit, and then resigned myself to the cable’s presence. I clamped down with aching jaws, saliva flowing around the cable in a spooling line that puddled on the table beneath my head.
“I’m sorry,” Andi said, and she really was. I felt the needle slip from my arm, now leaden with heat and cold in alternating waves of confused hurt, and then she pulled my pants down to expose the base of my spine. “So sorry, Jack.” Her fingers were busy swabbing at a point where bone met skin, and I knew whatever I’d experienced was going to fade away compared to what was coming.
Future Reborn Box Set Page 37
