Lake Tanna - Ballad of Ruby

by Neil Leckman

to assume they’re out there. Can the wave penetrate the door itself?”

  “I don’t know. I also don’t know if it’s possible for it to reflect backwards. With that in mind, it would be safest to stand behind me. I’ll step to one side and fire at the door at an angle, so if it does reflect it will do so away from us.”

  Walking around behind me Douglas said, “OK, I’m out of the way.”

  I pulled the trigger and felt a tiny vibration in the gun, “That’s it, now let’s open the door, and see if it worked.”

  Douglas removed the metal bars and unlocked the door, turning the handle he slowly open it as I stood, ready to fire again if I needed to. Nothing happened so he stuck his head out, looking in both directions, “Nothing. The halls are empty.”

  He held the door open for me while I stepped into the hallway. I looked both directions, floor to ceiling that is when I noticed the hole in the drop ceiling. The ground had some traces of it, a layer of white particles that proved that it was a recently made. When Douglas turned to look at me, I glanced up at the hole, not wanting to make any noise. We both stayed to one side of the hallway as we worked our way around it, and then turned towards the stairs. A couple of times we stopped as we heard a skittering sound up in the ceiling tiles. I kept the pulse gun charged and ready, checking the indicator light on top every few minutes just in case. Just as we walked out the door at the top of the stairs, one of the creatures darted out in front of us and stopped. Douglas raised his hand to stop and the thing hovered just inches in front of his face. The two of them stood like that, frozen in time, gazes locked. Finally they both moved, Ruby darted forward and landed on Douglas’s shoulder. He turned towards me, “I haven’t told you everything. When I was very young, I had a heart defect that they said would kill me before I became a teenager. My uncle came to visit me while I was in the hospital, sitting by my bed for hours. One night I woke from a troubled sleep and thought I saw him injecting something into the IV they had me hooked up to. Two days later the doctors told my parents that they could find no trace of the defect any more, and later that day discharged me. In the notes that my uncle left he talked about that night. He was working on a prototype nanobots that could repair damaged organs by tapping into a person’s own stem cells. He had injected all of the prototypes into me that night, knowing that even if they failed I would die soon anyway. When they were successful, he was ecstatic, yet never told anyone about it. I still carry those first generation prototypes. In his basement I found Ruby here, she was also a first gen prototype that the Tanna people were unaware they had developed. She was designed to respond to voice commands only, more specifically my voice. I had to activate her with the word “Shazam”; my uncle was a comic book buff. Since then she has gone with me everywhere, and at some level she responds to my thoughts, only at close range,” as he said that I saw a tiny flash of light spark in his eyes and dim.

  “The military doesn’t know about her?” I asked.

  “No, in fact she was designed to emit a signal that interferes with remote cameras, so that whenever she is within range they get nothing but static. Drove the systems people here crazy trying to track down the cause. Finally they decided that whatever was causing the intermittent problems was unfixable,” while he was talking Ruby walked around on his shoulders, staring at me the entire time. I have to admit that I felt a shiver or two watching her, I still hate spiders with a passion.

  “Ruby, check for others like you in the building, if possible neutralize them, if not return and report their locations, they are a threat to me, and my friend here, “he said indicating me.

  Ruby darted over in front of me and hovered a moment, than silently she vanished in a blur down the hallway.

  “Douglas?”

  He turned and looked at me

  “Can I trust you? I mean, are you human? Don’t get me wrong, I’m just a bit freaked out about the fact that the same thing I’m trying to kill is suddenly on my side!!” fiddling with the knob on the top of the gun without thinking made him look down at my hand.

  “I can’t think of any reason that you should believe me, or any way to convince you, other than the fact that I’m being hunted too, and I could have attacked you numerous times and haven’t”

  “I guess that’ll have to do for now. You don’t have any special abilities do you?”

  “Not that I’m aware of. Accept for one small thing, I’ve been told I have very nice handwriting for a man.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Unless, moving objects with your mind counts.”

  “Wow, you can do that?”

  “No, of course not, nobody can do that,” when he said that I saw the gleam deep in his eyes. Some kind of inner glow, and then it faded. I got the impression at that moment that this could be a very dangerous man. He smiled and walked away saying, “We still have to get out of here.”

  As he walked away, I noticed that he was limping a little, I didn’t say anything to him, but I did wonder what caused that. As I watched his limp slowly faded, and then was gone. Looking down at my prototype, I hoped that it would be up to the task at hand, and have enough power to get me through the next couple of hours.

  14

  “Tim, I think we need to go to that site, there’s nothing more that we can accomplish from here,” Saying that the Major pushed himself away from the desk.

  Tim ran over and helped the Major maneuver into what looked like a pair of human legs. Once he was position correctly on top several wives whipped up and buried themselves into the flesh on the stumps that used to be his legs. They pulled him to an upright position as he grimaced in obvious pain. Once that was done, he stood there for a few moments until the pain passed. The nanites would weave themselves into the bone and sinew of what remained of his legs; they would respond to his thoughts the same as normal legs. There were still some bugs that needed to be corrected before they would be considered fully safe and functional. Sometimes they would over correct with the gyroscopic automatic balancing and cause the Major to fall backwards. It hurt like hell but the Major was optimistic that they would be able to correct that soon, making them as good as real legs. He wouldn’t be able to run, jump or participate in sports, but he would be able to walk again, or as close to it as possible. Tim walked around the Major inspecting the connections before they did anything else.

  “Looks good Major, our transportation has been arranged, we will arrive on site within 45 minutes.”

  “Good, I need to get a firsthand look at what is happening there before things get too far out of control,” saying that he walked towards the door, with a minimal amount of clanking, swaying back and forth until he got the rhythm of it. As he crossed, the threshold to go outside Tim faded out of existence. The major looked back.

  “Damn I keep forgetting that he’s only a hologram!!” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and looked down at it.

  Tim smiled up at him, “Still here sir. Transportation should arrive at any moment. Call me if you need anything else,” then as if in a real room he walked out of the picture. The Major put the phone back into his pocket for now.

  15

  We walked around a corner and headed towards the door that we had come in; in a flash something landed on Douglas and stung him. He grabbed it and threw it away from him, “Shoot it!!” he yelled.

  I pointed the gun and pulled the trigger, I felt a slight vibration, and the thing stopped where it had landed, and as I watched it dissolved into a small puddle with silver streaks in it. Douglas turned to me and I could see his flesh putrefying where he was bitten, and healing as quickly. He leaned against the wall for support and moaned as the battle waged inside of him. His eyes rolled up in his head and he fell forward. Ruby shot forward and landed on him, anxiously darting up and down his body as it twitched. The twitching slowed down and stopped, and when it did, he glanced up at me, eyes hollow looking and tired.

  “That took a lot out of me, I’m not sure I could survive a second time.�
�� As he said, that Ruby took off and hovered above him. “Since my uncle was there when they developed the toxin he also made me somewhat resistant to it, however as with all things, it has evolved into a more virulent form now.”

  Ruby hovered near his head and I could see myself reflected of those multifaceted eyes and I felt a shiver run down my spine, making the hair on the back of my neck stand on end. I will never get over that fear I have of spiders, even if they’re created in a lab, in fact, I feared them even more.

  In the dim light of the hallway, his eyes seemed to glow brighter than before as we walked towards the door that I had originally entered the building through.

  “That gun of yours seemed to work very well, I’m grateful for that, if it hadn’t worked that thing would have kept stinging me until it succeeded in killing me, all part of its original programming.”

  When we got to the door, we both peeked out of the small window beside it. Outside, next to my car, the snake had evolved into something much worse. It was as tall as a man was, but had eight legs, the head of a snake, venom dripping from its fangs, and three tails like a scorpion, each sporting a very long stinger. There were two large wings, and the snake’s eyes were those of an owl. It noticed the movement in the window and it turned and stared at us.