XOM-B

by Jeremy Robinson

  “You have no place to go, Freeman,” he says. “No place to run.”

  The undead have arrived. I don’t need to turn around to see them, they’re emerging from the city all around the park.

  In a final flash of railgun fire I see the last soldier fall and squeeze off a final shot that caves in the automaton’s head. The useless body falls to the ground, greatly improving the time it would take for Sir to retrieve a weapon and fire it at me. But that’s only if I run.

  And I’m not running.

  I slide my hand out of my pocket, pulling out the small computer chip with golden prongs. While I don’t experience stuttered speech like Hail, most likely because I am … newer, there is no doubt that a great deal of information trapped in my mind has been blocked.

  “It’s just the two of us now, Freeman,” Sir says. “Brother against brother. Some of the most powerful and influential battles in human history involved brothers. Cain and Abel. Moses and Ramses. Romulus and Remus. It seems fitting that the future of the species who inherited the planet to begin the same way.”

  I place the small device against the backside of my hand, pretending to wring my hands together nervously.

  “Who will you be, Freeman? Cain or Abel?”

  In answer, I press down on the small device, shoving the gold prongs into my skin where they make contact with the microscopic fibrous transistors, and speak a single word, “Everything.”

  51.

  It happens in a blink. One moment, my knowledge of the world is limited to what I have experienced during my brief lifetime or what has been revealed when it was most needed. In the next moment, I have access to an exabyte of data—more than a quintillion bytes of raw, unbiased information. As I spoke the word, “everything,” I was concerned that the sudden rush of knowledge would overload my system or incapacitate me in some way, but the data has always been there, just beyond my reach.

  History, science, math, culture, art, even slang are no longer mysteries to me. Perhaps more importantly, I now have a complete understanding of military strategy, fighting techniques and advanced robotics, meaning I not only have the means to strike, but also the knowledge to guide my attack.

  Despite all of this information, I remain fundamentally unchanged. This is why Mohr hid the information from me. He wanted me to become myself first so that this knowledge, some of it horrible, would be filtered through me rather than define me. I suspect he would have preferred I had more time to grow, but the strongest metals are forged in the hottest fires.

  I smile at this new knowledge and it stops Sir in his tracks. He’s looking at me, perhaps trying to understand the sudden change in my stance. Or maybe it’s just the confidence in my eyes that has him unnerved.

  But my confidence doesn’t just come from a new belief that I can fight Sir and win. It comes from my senses. It’s not that I’m seeing things or hearing more than I could before, it’s that I’m fully understanding it all. Viewing the world through all spectrums I can see that Heap is not growing colder in death. I can hear the hum of power within him, growing stronger. Likewise, Luscious has not grown cold. In fact, she is warmer, and the electromagnetic signature pluming from her body is unlike any I’ve seen before … except one.

  I can also hear feet running. Not the confused shuffle-run of the dead, but healthy, heavy feet crushing dried grass. Without looking, I can judge the distance, the newcomer’s weight, approximate height as well as make and model, which allows me to identify him as Harry. I can calculate the time of arrival. And I can act, with precision so that I do not have to fight alone.

  I rush forward, pressing the attack and forcing Sir into a series of defenses that I know he will successfully predict.

  He almost surprises me when he allows himself to be struck in the chest and uses the sudden opening to strike my chin. The blow is hard and delays our schedule. So I make an adjustment.

  While reeling back from his uppercut strike, I fall backward. As I descend, I kick out with my right leg, aiming for the more fragile knee joint. The power of my kick inverts the leg.

  Without a shout of pain, Sir falls forward, his angry glare menacing, but no longer feared.

  I land on my back, pulling my left leg back and extending it like a piston, striking Sir’s chest. His advanced armor protects his core from the blow, but several of Newton’s laws come into play as Sir is lifted from the ground, launched up into the air, strikes the side of the VTOL gunship and plummets back to the ground.

  With a jerk of his leg, Sir puts the knee joint back in place. It’s damaged, but still functional. And though he may be dazed, he is still quite dangerous.

  When Sir gets back to his feet and charges, I rush to meet him, subtly adjusting my position, thereby adjusting his as well.

  And the exchange of blows continue. Punches and kicks thrown, blocked and received. We roll through a series of fighting styles, neither one making ground or causing harm.

  All the while, I’m sensing and decoding the world around me.

  Heap is waking up.

  Harry is close.

  Luscious is watching.

  And the first of the undead horde will arrive in forty-five seconds.

  A timer in my mind begins a countdown.

  Five seconds.

  Sir throws an elbow strike toward my face. Rather than simply dodging the strike, I knock his arm beyond me, drawing him in close and driving a fist into his stomach. He attempts to take hold of my wrist, but before his fingers fully close, I twist my arm and pull, slipping free.

  With his face wide open, I drive the heel of my fist up into his fleshy chin, cracking it open, further damaging the synthetic skin. His head snaps back and while his eyes are turned to the blue sky above, I spin him around, plant my foot on his back and shove.

  “Harry!” I shout as Sir stumbles toward him.

  The shotgun comes up in Harry’s hands.

  Sir sees this and stretches out his hands, but a fraction of a second before he reaches the weapon, both barrels explode. The powerful shells aren’t enough to pierce Sir’s armor, but it removes a thumb and sends him sprawling toward Luscious.

  Sir staggers, fighting to remain on his feet, but Luscious kicks out hard, striking his already damaged knee and drops him to the ground. He slides to a stop, looks forward and groans.

  The big blue foot of Heap fills his view.

  Sir looks up and says, “You should be dead.”

  Heap shrugs. “Upgrades.”

  Sir snarls and angrily shouts, “You’re a robot!”

  Heap’s massive form leans over Sir. With one hand he taps on the faded, scratched and dented text on his chest. PROTECT AND SERVE. “I’m an enforcer.”

  Sir lunges up, reaching with both hands, no doubt prepared to deliver a crippling blow. But his hands never reach Heap’s head. Instead, they become locked in the crushing grip of Heap’s massive hands.

  “Even I saw that coming,” Heap says, then tosses Sir with all his strength. To meet his fate, and perhaps justice.

  Sir screams as he realizes where he will land. Then he hits the ground, crushing one of the zombies beneath him. His sudden arrival catches the horde’s attention and they whirl toward him, creating a wave of interest that draws in even more of the monsters.

  Sir screams ferociously. Bodies fly and break, but there are too many.

  They bury him beneath their weight.

  All of these seemingly random events weren’t just predicted by me, they were created. I saw all of this, aside from Heap’s pithy replies, in advance.

  Somewhere in the mass of hooked fingers, scrambling limbs and gnashing teeth, one of the undead finds the soft flesh of Sir’s face, bites down and transmits the Xom-B virus created by the same woman who awakened Sir, gave him the gift of free will and watched him exterminate a civilization. His scream is sharp and fills me with the last emotion I would have expected, regret.

  Sir could have transformed the world.

  I see the potential Mohr an
d Hail once did. A mind like his could have cured the world’s ailments.

  Instead, he became a genocidal tyrant.

  And now …

  The horde backs away from Sir’s prone body, no longer interested in the infected. I watch with great sadness as his red body rises from the ground, disregards the forward bent knee and staggers forward, wanting nothing more than to spread the virus.

  Which turns his attention back to us … along with hundreds of other undead closing in all around. The fittest of them break ranks from the shamblers and charges, letting out unholy and hungry howls. Charging forward, through and over the pack, are several soldiers—recent converts whose powerful robotic bodies enable them to perform physical feats and fight far more formidably than the average undead. Sir, slowed by his leg, hobbles with the slowest.

  “Freeman,” Heap says in his usual protective tone. I turn around, rush back to the VTOL and find Luscious being helped up the stairs by Harry. But they’re not going to reach the top of the stairs before the horde arrives, which means I need to stay and fight.

  “Help them inside,” I say to Heap.

  “I will not leave you,” Heap says.

  “Heap, you’re free,” I tell him. “You have no one left to protect.”

  He shoves me down and throws a punch, striking an undead man and shattering his body to pieces. I look down at the ruined man, then back up the staircase. I calculate the time it will take them to reach safety. Twenty seconds.

  The horde will arrive, in force, in fifteen seconds.

  A woman lunges at me, arms outstretched. I sidestep, grip her tattered clothing and use her momentum to launch her into an oncoming pair of running corpses.

  Heap faces a group of five zombies, rushing him from all sides. He lowers his body, widening his stance and then spins around with extended arms, pummeling the group.

  When he straightens back up, I ask, “Why didn’t you do that before?”

  “You would have known,” he replies, spinning again and crushing the metal skulls of two more zombies.

  “That you were a robot,” I say.

  “It would have been too soon,” he says.

  The first of the soldiers arrives, his approach faster and more deliberate than the undead following in his wake. But I am not the same man who feared these faster and stronger zombies. Instead of seeing a monster, I see an opportunity.

  I kick the rushing soldier hard in the chest, clutching his arm as I do, tearing it free at the shoulder. The one-armed soldier arcs through the air, over the rushing mob, and I use his titanium limb as a club, striking down two more undead and stepping back toward Heap.

  “Time to go,” I say at the fifteen-second mark.

  His reply is drowned out by the hum of repulse engines. Three glowing discs pulse to life, lifting the VTOL several feet off the ground and crushing the undead beneath them. A grinding rattle fills the air next and before I can ask what the noise is, two whirling guns extending out of black orbs on the bottom of the gunship’s wings open fire. Hot orange tracer rounds crackle through the air, as lines of high-caliber bullets disintegrate the horde around us.

  I’m about to ask who is controlling the gunship when a booming voice shouts through a speaker. “Get inside! I’m detecting an outgoing signal.”

  Hail.

  The VTOL rises higher.

  Hail’s voice returns. “Hurry! The signal started when Sir … when he died.”

  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the most vengeful and remorseless killer the planet Earth has ever seen will have something horrible in store for those who brought about his demise.

  A shadow falls over us and Hail’s voice booms from the speaker. “Incoming! Look out!” The gunship peels away, its repulse discs crushing scores of undead to the ground, but leaving Heap and me exposed.

  As the shadow narrows, Heap and I jump away in opposite directions. The ground shakes beneath me as I land, but the quake has nothing to do with me and everything to do with whatever has just landed behind me. I roll onto my back and find six red eyes staring down at me. It’s the tallest of Sir’s robot soldiers I have ever seen, standing at least fifty feet. Unlike the other soldiers, this one doesn’t carry a railgun. It’s so big, I doubt it needs one.

  A zombie slides into view above my head, jaws opening, teeth descending toward my face. I reach back with my legs, grasp the undead man with my feet and fling him over me. The man collides with the giant’s leg, falls to the ground and begins righting himself for another charge. But the soldier turns its body toward me, shifting its massive foot and crushes the dead man.

  I’m positive the soldier will just take another step and crush me into the ground, but it doesn’t. Instead it leans forward and down, bracing its torso by planting its hands on its knees. A very … human gesture. The six glowing red eyes blaze brightly, casting a thirty-foot circle in the color of blood.

  Then, it speaks. “Councilman Mohr was not the only one with secret projects, Freeman.”

  The voice is loud, like an engine, but also terribly familiar. “S-Sir?”

  The colossus stands tall again. “Version two point oh.”

  52.

  “It took me ten years to build this body,” Sir says, his new, mouthless body projecting his voice through unseen speakers. “If I’m honest, I had hoped to never have a need for it. But here we are, the greatest sons of Mohr, one destined to kill the other. And this time, you will not be saved by a virus.”

  His giant foot lifts up and slams back down faster than something so big should be able to do. I dive to the side, narrowly avoiding being flattened. I have no time to marvel at how close I’ve just come to death because the undead have arrived en masse.

  Kicking and punching to defend myself, I see the shadow of a foot over the group. My legs react, almost on their own, springing up and propelling me twenty feet into the air just before another crushing stomp smothers the undead that had encircled me.

  My brief glide time gives me a moment to think. And in that moment, I come up with nothing. Not just because defeating a fifty-foot-tall war machine driven by the world’s keenest military mind seems impossible, but also because I’m about to land in a sea of living dead, all reaching up for me with greedy fingers.

  Remembering that I have yet to really find the limits of my own strength and toughness, I land.

  And run.

  I stomp a path through the undead, cutting through their numbers. None of them can see me coming through the heads of their neighbors, so I take each one of them by surprise, leaving a trail of confused grunts and broken bodies in my wake. As I run through the horde, I glance up to my left and see Sir, tracking my movement with his six eyes.

  But I also see the VTOL lowering down behind him. To my surprise, Hail doesn’t open fire. Right now, the gunship is our best bet of defeating Sir 2.0, but then I see why. Clinging to the nose of the red vehicle is a splotch of deep blue. Heap.

  I zoom in briefly, see the determination in his eyes and guess at what he’s about to do just a second before he does it.

  Heap lets go of the VTOL and throws himself toward Sir’s massive back, repeating the same poorly conceived strategy I attempted in the swamp.

  I’m not sure what Heap is planning to do, but I know he won’t have a chance if Sir realizes he’s there. So instead of continuing my circuitous route around the park, I make a sharp turn toward Sir and jump as high as I can.

  But this is Sir.

  He predicted this potential attack—not that it’s much of an attack—and responds instantaneously, swinging out with his twenty-five-foot arm. Just before the moment of impact, I tighten myself into a ball, flex my body and take the hit like a baseball—a game which I now fully understand.

  My flight through the city is … revealing. The streets below are absolutely mobbed with undead. If the impact of landing damages me too severely, I will be defenseless. While the undead won’t infect me with the Xom-B virus, to which I am immune, there will be
nothing to stop them from tearing me apart.

  I realize that won’t be a problem, however, as I begin my descent toward a large flat roof of a five-story building because of the two missile bays that have just emerged from Sir’s shoulders. Twenty missiles, ten from each side, tear into the air, all of them headed in my direction.

  Remembering who I am and what I am, I set my mind completely on the task of calculating the perfect landing. To my surprise and delight, my mind sifts through thousands of projections and finds the optimal course of action in just a fraction of a second, which is good, because I reach the roof two seconds later.

  Reaching out with my hands, I reduce the impact with my powerful elbows, then arc my body in a way that I roll over the roof, three times, gradually getting back to my feet, unharmed, which is beneficial because there are twenty missiles at my back.

  Rather than stopping and facing my end head-on, I use the speed of the fall to propel me forward, running across the roof, which creaks beneath my heavy feet. When I reach the edge, instead of leaping off, I dive forward, reaching out with my hands. Catching the small wall on the side of the roof, my feet come up and over and I fling myself straight down toward the ground fifty feet below.

  This time, I absorb the impact of landing with just my knees. For a moment, I lament at not fully understanding the capabilities of my body before. Several previous encounters would have ended differently. If I’d known how to roll with a punch when I encountered the first soldier-zombie in the sewers, I might not have been damaged. Speaking of which … I activate all of my ocular implants and see the world through a variety of spectrums.

  The missiles that had been following me are unable to make the 90-degree turn toward the street below. Several of them overshoot, striking the building across the street. Glass, fire and brick explode outward as the remaining missiles pummel the rooftop above.

  With a groan, both buildings topple inward, toward the street, and me.

  But my mind, now free to think at full capacity, responds as though time had been slowed. With debris bursting into the air all around me, tearing into the horde of undead in the street, I sprint for the far side of the street and leap up, to the third-story window of the crumbling wall. Before it can fall out from under me again, I jump away, back the way I came, landing on what remains of the missile-ruined roof, which is now tilted at a 30-degree angle and dropping rapidly. My feet pound over the roof, fueled by a sense of purpose and driven by confidence in my abilities.