Cyber-Knife: Apex Predator
Page 17
“Generals Dinesh and Maximilian,” he almost hissed as he spoke, “I had hoped you would stop by.”
“I'm afraid you have us at something of a loss, Colonel...?” Maximilian replied.
“Just the rank will do, General. Men in my line of work value anonymity as much as we despise informality.” It was terribly tough for either general to believe that the colonel didn't have a forked tongue that flicked out between his teeth as he spoke. “But, never you matter. Welcome to the deep storage bunker of Records and Archives.”
“You have our request prepared?” Dinesh said.
“As much as it can be, sir. The stasis chamber is at the end of the next row, where it must remain until it is either activated or terminated. You can make that decision with the flick of a switch.”
Maximilian looked like he might have strangled the colonel, if it had been at all within his physical capabilities to do so. “Why would we ask you to prepare it for us if we planned its termination?”
The colonel shrank back slightly, as if Maximilian's words had physically wounded him. “It's not my place to judge, sir; I simply do as I am told!” He took a deep breath to steady his nerves before continuing. “Though, were it up to me, I would disconnect it from the power source, wrap it in steel, dunk it in concrete, and throw it down a bottomless pit in another universe.”
“You understand that the engineers fixed the malfunction in its software, yes?” Dinesh replied. “That it made no conscious decision to butcher the team that activated it?”
The colonel puffed himself up a little at hearing this, unconsciously covering for some slightly wounded pride. “Frankly, sir, I do not care. Once they betray you, I feel you're better off casting them aside and starting somewhere else.”
All three of the men looked back and forth at each other in silence after this. Maximilian finally broke it. “Just take us there, please.”
The colonel deflated at hearing this, and gestured like some kind of embittered butler. “Right this way,” he practically grumbled.
He took a left turn at a break in the row and led the generals into a particularly shrouded sector of the room. The overhead lights had cut out, and some even appeared to have been torn away. The rest of the bunker had looked like an obsessively maintained archive, but this small section looked like it had survived some kind of small, pitched battle. Dinesh could swear he saw crease marks left behind by plasma fire.
After a few moments in near total darkness, light started to return. They could see the otherworldly purple light of the stasis chamber bathe columns of crates in its glow; it quickly overrode all other nearby light sources, until all in their range of vision was in some shade of purple. If Maximilian and Dinesh could've held up their arms to shade their faces, they absolutely would have.
“And there it is,” the colonel hissed.
The generals approached almost reverently, silently fascinated by their weapon in its frozen submission. Some of its lines were soft and organically curved, but most were hard, sharp, synthetic. Pointed tips looked as though they could cut slices out of the very air around them. They knew they looked at a perfectly compressed spring of razors, ready to snap out at the release of any pressure
“The ultimate fucking contingency plan,” Maximilian replied. “Cyber-Knife doesn't stand a goddamn chance against this little beauty. Isn't that right, MOM?”
The walls around them turned a sickly red color as a voice spoke out with absolute authority. “Son,” MOM said, “with the Cyber-Sword at her side, you won’t even know the half of it.”
Inside the purple tank, Lady Cyber-Knife hung motionless; even the individual strands of hair on her head floated in perfect stillness. Tubes led into every major vein in her body, and a sort of apparatus was hooked around her face. Little bubbles of air trapped in the fluid that preserved her hung perfectly still, themselves the same as they'd been when the tube was sealed. She wore what resembled an old-fashioned single-piece bathing suit, which showed off her most distinctive feature: the mechanical limbs connected to her body at her hips and shoulders.
As the colonel pressed a bright red stud on his control panel, her eyes snapped open.
THE END.
...for now.
Cyber-Knife will return.
Acknowledgments:
Phil would like to thank everybody with whom he discussed this idea during its lengthy development - especially Tim Davids and Vanessa Luna - as well as all the writers, illustrators, and filmmakers whose ideas have filled his head for as long as he can remember. No one does anything alone; no one creates anything alone. Thanks to anyone and everyone for inspiration and support.
Matt would like to thank his wife, and his cat.
The text on the front and back covers are in the BlackHole BB font, licensed from Blambot.com. The interior text, in Optima.
About the author, Phil Wrede:
Raised in the shadow of the Rocky Mountains by loving and supportive parents, as a child Phil was either forced, or fortunate, to have to fill his head with fictional terrors, rather than real ones. In time, he became aware of the rest of the world, and realized his imagination couldn't hold a candle to reality. Having wanted to write since the age of twelve, he eagerly filed all these terrors away for future inspiration. The only thing he's spent more time on in the intervening years than reading and writing is developing his own personal, impossibly intricate conspiracy theory that immediately disproves itself the second he tries to explain it aloud. They say that a cynic is just a disappointed idealist; deep down, Phil knows that's true, especially for him. He currently resides in Colorado, with his carefully-curated bookshelves of movies, comic books, and books and comic books about movies. If you'd like, you can contact him at phil.wrede@gmail.com.
About the cover artist, Matt Muse:
Neither born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, nor the killer of a bear before the age of three, Matt has never claimed ownership over a turtle, but he endeavors to do so, one day.