Jade Gods

by Patrick Freivald

  Panting, she fumbled the pistol. Her great strength couldn't budge the orange gunk, couldn't turn the pistol toward her own head, couldn't pull the trigger.

  An endless stream of cruel machinery cutting and slicing her flesh, crushing limbs, burning skin and muscle and organs, rending chunks of meat from bone, slicing off ears and nose and breasts, popping eyes. The visions – the memories – wouldn't stop, and unbidden a scream escaped her mouth, silencing only long enough for her to suck in a breath before it came again, and again.

  * * *

  Matt made it three steps before the minigun opened fire, the pummeling thunder of high-velocity shells mingling with Sakura's sudden shrieks in his ear. He ducked left, keeping his good eye toward the target, leaping the deadly spray of high-velocity metal. It swept back as he closed the distance. Dropping prone, the line of death swept over his head even as he scrambled up and closed with the metal monster.

  Gasping, he fell, the remains of his right calf blown across the parking lot. Incomprehensible agony overwhelmed conscious thought as his left femur shattered. Through a haze of jade clouds he trained the pistol two-handed on the thing and fired. It bucked four times before clicking empty, and a hydraulic claw closed on his arms, severing them at the elbow.

  Lightheaded, he fell back.

  * * *

  Throat raw, Sakura's screams had fallen to silence by the time they'd loaded her into an unmarked white panel van with Virginia plates. Athletic men in black combat suits had used electrical devices about the size and shape of Tasers to cut the orange webbing, freeing her from the pavement and wall without allowing the slightest struggle. They left the .357 in place, a sign of either their confidence in the technology or nervousness of what she'd do with a free hand.

  Shame accompanied the slamming doors, that she'd choose suicide over imprisonment, even by monsters such as these. Any given human life held no value except that given to it by loved ones, and she had no loved ones… but she had a duty and a debt and the honor to carry them with every last breath.

  "I'm sorry." Keene's low voice scraped rusty nails down her spine. It came from her left, his presence obscured by the hardened webbing. "I know what they did to you. What they're going to do. It's inhuman and it's wrong, and nobody deserves it, least of all you."

  She wouldn't beg, unless it bought her time to tear his lungs from his chest.

  "… but you don't understand the stakes, what we're fighting against and what we need to destroy it. Your power can't be left in the hands of two, or even a dozen or a hundred. We need it, and that means we need you, and though you have no reason to believe me, I respect your sacrifice even if it's unwilling."

  The back doors opened, and hope died.

  Matt's bloody torso landed on the gurney next to her, blue lips open to reveal a blue tongue, tourniquets on all four severed limbs. Alive, then, but soon he'd wish he weren't. She closed her eyes, licked her lips, spoke through a jaw she could just move.

  "You don't need him. You have me, and you can use me as you used me and I will not complain or attempt escape. Just let him go."

  "You honor your ancestors," Keene said. Then his voice turned hard. "But you have no cards to play." He hopped out, replaced by a guard in urban camouflage, his young face dusted with a hint of dark stubble.

  The van rolled, rocking her back and forth, before smoothing out to a steady acceleration, wind whistling through a cracked window she couldn't see. Her ears popped. Unable to turn, she rolled her eyes to the side to look at Matt.

  The blue in his lips and tongue had faded to a purple-pink, and the shredded muscles past his tourniquets writhed and grew.

  "You must undo the bands and cut away the meat as it heals over the bone, else he will heal at odds and need reamputation."

  "Be quiet," the guard said. "Or I'll make—"

  The van lurched, brakes shuddering as the computer struggled to keep the tires from locking. Small arms popped outside, and glass shattered. They stopped with a shriek of crunching metal.

  "Report!" Keene yelled through the guard's radio.

  "We're under attack!"

  The back door flew open to a series of gunshots and the guard twitched, falling out of sight as bullets riddled his torso, one punching through his neck in a spray of blood almost black in the dim van.

  An older black man stepped inside, stooping to remain standing in the cramped space, his eyes wide under bushy gray eyebrows. He tipped his hat – the same one with the gold oak leaf – and looked around. "How do we free you?"

  "No. Take him first. Get him to safety."

  "Beg pardon, ma'am, but—"

  "GO!"

  He stepped aside and Matt's gurney wheeled out of the van with a crash.

  A man's voice cried out, "Major! We've got company!"

  "Okay, ma'am, how do we get you out?"

  "The guard has an electric device." Automatic weapons chattered outside the van. "It cuts the restraints very easy."

  He crouched out of sight, then popped up with the remote control-sized object in his right hand. "Got it!" Clicking the buzzer, an arc of blue light shot between the electrodes, lighting up his beaming smile. "Now let me just—"

  His teeth exploded through his lips, spraying a red mist across her face and neck. He tottered, then collapsed to the side. The door creaked and a calm, careful voice said, "It's all clear, sir."

  Keene replied. "Get her out of there – we're going for the other van."

  Rage burned in Sakura's chest, fueled by a hatred for her own impotence, and a deeper hatred for Shane Keene. She struggled, muscles straining hard enough to tear ligaments and tendons, to crack the bones of a normal woman. Her restraints wouldn't budge.

  * * *

  Matt's eyes fluttered open to a night sky the hazy orange of sodium vapor lights. A deep ache wracked his body, a consuming, eternal agony that unconsciousness, shock, or death was supposed to spare the human mind. Every bounce, every jiggle sent hammer-blows through his brain, and unbidden he let out a low moan.

  "God, you're tough."

  Shane Keene. His face twitched, the only response he could muster to the desire to drown the man in his own blood. With herculean effort he managed to tilt his head back, rolling his eyes to assess the man pushing his gurney.

  Dark bags under his eyes, blood in his gray beard, a red split down his bottom lip, Keene's worried scowl turned the grizzled man's expression downright dour. His eyes flashed back and forth, ignoring Matt for the time being.

  But Matt couldn't capitalize, couldn't even lift his head to assess how badly he'd been hit.

  "Lie still, Rowley. You aren't in any position to be a threat, so save your energy." A thick strand of blood gushed from his nose to darken his mustache. He reached up, touched it with two fingers, pulled them away. "Shit."

  His grunt turned into a snarl and he stumbled out of sight. The gurney rolled to a stop, then shuddered as Keene crashed back into it. Blood leaked from his nose and eyes, dribbled from his mouth into his beard. He slammed the heel of his palm into his jaw, once, twice, three times, as his facial muscles twisted and contorted, bones cracking and popping as they reshaped and reformed.

  All at once the tension rushed out of him, and the gush of blood stopped. Matt almost didn't recognize the face staring down at him, but the eyes betrayed the owner more than Keene's beard and mustache could hide him.

  Conor Flynn grinned with Keene's nicotine-stained teeth. "It's really not something you want to do again, right is right."

  "Sir?" a hesitant voice said. "Are you all right?"

  Flynn booped Matt's nose with a fingertip. "Minute, sir."

  He disappeared, and someone screamed. The air filled with gunpowder, then a sharp explosion, likely a grenade. Matt's eyes stung as the acrid smoke drifted over him. A body slammed into Matt, tumbling him from the gurney, and the white-h
ot nothing blanked out the world.

  His vision returned in fireworks of red, just in time to see Flynn tear a man's throat out with his bare hands. Another of the fast men charged in, feinting with a combat knife. Flynn stepped into the feint, let the knife scrape off Keene's body armor, and shattered the man's nose with a vicious head butt.

  He stumbled back, hand to his forehead. "Riches and bitches, this body isn't used to that."

  The fast man buried the knife in Conor's neck. His responding knife-hand strike crushed his opponent's trachea, and he turned, scooping up a webbing gun and firing into a charging behemoth. The enormous metal humanoid shredded through the orange filament and reached out with a massive claw.

  The massive metal blades closed, severing Flynn's head from his shoulders. It tumbled into the dirt as the body collapsed, and the features relaxed into a hybrid of Keene and Flynn.

  A fast man's cough turned into bright red vomit, splattering his shoes as his squad mates scattered back. He clutched his gut and fell to his knees, moaning, then rose, haughty and proud, Conor with olive skin and rich, black hair. He turned on the behemoth, grabbed a hydraulic line from between two armor plates and yanked, spraying red-brown fluid across the ground. As the thing sagged Flynn swung up onto its shoulders, lifted off its helmet, and ran his hands through the pilot's hair.

  "How do you drive this thing? Levers and gears?"

  He shook his head. "No. Y-you just move, and it moves with you. It's all sensors."

  "Brilliant, brilliant." Conor twisted and pulled. The pilot's low, furious scream turned into a shriek as most of his scalp and face came off in Flynn's hands.

  Flynn sagged, dropping to the ground and landing on all fours. He looked up, face red from exertion. "Bridges. They take a lot out of you."

  Clanking metal and whirring gears heralded the arrival of another behemoth. Conor grinned. "You've got to admire their stick-to-it-iveness, don't you, Rowley? They just keep coming."

  His chest evaporated as a recoilless rifle shook the air.

  * * *

  Behind the van, Sakura concealed a snarl as a fast man appeared over her, Taser-thing in front of her eyes. He licked his lips and flicked the switch. "I can get you out but you have to help us. That man, that thing, he's killing everyone, and every time he dies he just comes back. You got to stop him."

  "Hai. Yes. I'll help you."

  With efficient slashes he disintegrated the bonding material. As the last piece fell away Sakura punched the .357 into her rescuer's neck and pulled the trigger twice. He stumbled and fell to the ground, jerking and flopping as his brain processed his body's death. She kneeled, scooped up the web gun and his pistol – a Glock 9mm much more suited to law enforcement than their line of work – and ran around the van.

  Conor Flynn whirled and struck in combat with two fast men and a circling behemoth, twenty feet from where Rowley lay, his arms and legs slithering masses of muscle overgrowing bone. Slower than she remembered, Flynn stood half a head taller and had thick brown hair instead of shaved black or maybe a hint of stubble. His wild swings spoke of lazy arrogance, but also fatigue.

  She watched from the shadows, assessing the new development. Flynn ducked a haymaker and hyperextended his opponent's knee with an open-palm strike, then twisted to block a knife thrust toward his back and kidneys. The behemoth swiped down, shattering Flynn's wrist, and the man with the injured knee punched him hard in the solar plexus.

  He fell to his hands and knees, and the behemoth stomped. Flynn's abdomen burst, and the combatants stumbled back, eyes wide, circling, looking for threats.

  Blood leaked out of the behemoth's helmet, and it reached up with a massive claw to tear it off. Flynn looked down at the fast men, with short blond hair and a smear of red down his too petite, too elfin face. Unprepared, the fast men didn't see the arms that crushed them to the ground, breaking their bodies against the pavement.

  Flynn turned to Matt. "Brilliant. I think I'm getting the hang of this, Rowley. As long as the world doesn't run out of killers and thrillers, I think I…" He staggered sideways, braced himself against a building with a hydraulic claw. "Wow. Doozy of a woozy there a minute, innit?"

  He took a deep breath, then another, then stood up tall, nearly ten feet in the massive chassis. "Right, then. Time to die, Rowley."

  Sakura rushed him, leaping at the last moment, and brought the butt of the web gun down on his skull. It crumbled under the impact, and the mechanical monster housing the body didn't even twitch. Hopping down, she crouched next to Matt and pulled a knife.

  "I have to cut away muscle. It will hurt."

  He blinked, licked his lips. "Careful. He… back."

  She shushed him, but her head tilted forward a few degrees, as close as she could come to a nod without giving up the game. He gasped as she carved away superfluous meat on his thigh, his eyes wide and glassy under the orange city lights. Sawing and hacking with brutal efficiency, she cleared his bones and moved up to his arms.

  The expected shadow appeared in the reflection of Matt's eyes. She let it move up, faster than human but so very much slower than Conor Flynn before he died, and only at the last second scooped up the web gun and fired it over her shoulder. She spun, kicked the man over, and fired twice more, covering the front of his body in the sticky goo.

  A face almost Flynn's but also Asian and terrified snarled and snapped and spit venomous curses that hurt her mind, but his struggles against the hardening fibers slowed and then stopped. Kazuko hummed under his curses, soothing the mental barbs away into ephemera, dying out only when he stopped. Kneeling next to him, Sakura slashed a knife along the back of his hand. Blood welled in viscous beads, then stopped. The cut healed, leaving the skin smooth and pink.

  Flynn chuckled, then spoke, his cheek mashed against the asphalt. "You can't kill me and no prison can hold me, so what's your endgame, Sakura?"

  With sirens in the distance heralding the arrival of armed men with dubious loyalties, she loaded Matt into the other OPD van, tossed Flynn face-down next to him, and drove down to the river, killing the engine several kilometers from the commotion. Matt's legs had healed into twisted, useless knots, so she pulled a knife and kneeled.

  Then she pivoted so that the knife hovered above Flynn's back.

  It entered at his shoulder, twisting around to free the joint from muscle and other connective tissue. He groaned, and laughed, and sobbed, and laughed again, but fell silent as she swapped the knife for the electronic device and trimmed the webbing from his almost-disconnected arm.

  "What are you doing to me, you crazy bitch?"

  Knee on his back, she grabbed his arm just above the elbow, twisted, then leaned into the bend until the bone popped out of the joint.

  Another string of venomous invectives streamed through his clenched teeth, and even as she worked the limb free new sprouts of muscle wormed their way into the air, entwining and grappling to form ever-larger tissues. A tangled collection of metal tools lay on the floor. She picked up a handful and jammed the grapefruit-sized bundle into the joint, holding it while muscle healed around it. As the wet, messy tissue grappled her fingers she pulled away with a sucking wound.

  She turned to Matt. A few moments of work cleared the muscle from around the tips of the bones protruding from his arms and legs, and then she repeated her work with Conor's right arm. The psychotic killer had shut up except for gasps and groans, a miracle in itself, and she could only hope that he had an inkling of what she had planned for him.

  More junk went into the second shoulder joint – pebbles and a broken beer bottle from the ground outside, an empty Glock 9mm pistol from the floor, a chunk of shredded fender she tore from a wrecked car in the brush – then she checked on the first arm. Flynn healed unbelievably fast. The foreign objects had served as a perfect obstacle, and the muscle had grown in knotted, twisted tangles around it, leaving fingers and w
rist bones jutting at random, useless angles. She weaved the second arm toward the first, entangling the slippery, skinless hash into a single chaotic braid, stopping here and there to tend to Matt.

  A shot with the web gun locked the misshapen, twisted limbs into immobility with the rest of Flynn's body, so she started on his legs, digging deep to access the ball joint in his hip. After a time his stream of black curses faded to incoherent blubbering punctuated by sharp breaths. She worked in the relative silence with methodical diligence, stopping only to collect litter and bits of the abandoned car.

  Three hours later Matt had sat up and could flex his new left hand, though his right arm had barely progressed past his elbow. Flynn had become a torso surrounded by misshapen, horrific tangles of muscle and bone, his stolen body's best attempt to cope with damage blocked by obstruction and deliberate manipulation.

  The van contained no snacks, no food, and she wouldn't leave Flynn unattended just to feed Matt. He'd be weak and starving even after wholly healed, but it served no purpose to bemoan what couldn't be helped. Flynn held power she didn't understand, and she'd take no chances with it.

  "What are we going to do with him?"

  She looked up at Matt's question, but Flynn answered first.

  "You're going to watch while I skull-fuck that pretty son of yours, you son of a bitch."

  "Be silent," Sakura said.

  "You, too, you sad cunt."

  With a flick of her knife she removed Flynn's lips, along with much of the flesh around his nose and chin. As he tried to jerk back out of the way she took his left ear, and for spite removed his eyes with two efficient jerks of the blade. The orbs dangled from the optic nerves until she grabbed them with one hand and popped them the rest of the way out.