The lizard stared at the monitor, banging on it once in awhile to stop it from rolling or to try to clear the static that kept shooting across it. He moved the two joysticks carefully, moving through the damage control monitor. His tail swished back and forth, a sign of his agitation, and he stared at the bright red wireframe of a brain. He suddenly sat down, shaking his little head, and began pulling the panels apart as information flowed across the damage control monitor.
Syntax Error
boostrap.exe not found
Continue? (Y/N)
Operation Timed Out - Continuing
DANGER! Multiple Processors Offline
WARNING! CPU Core Voltage Low
Empathy Circuitry Not Found
WARNING! DIMM Voltage Spikes Detected
LOGIC COPROCESSOR NOT RESPONDING
WARNING! Clock Voltage Low
Repair Systems Not Responding
WARNING! Repair System Voltage Spikes Detected
Volatile Memory Damage
Non-Volatile Memory Damage
Repair System Diagnostic CRC Error
Repair System Status: Unknown
I watched the people move around outside the wavy transparent plexiglass that surrounded me. I knew them, or knew of them, or perhaps they had known me. I recognized two of them, both female soldiers. One I knew I had done something terrible to. That I had sent to some terrible place where she had been tortured and psychologically mutilated.
But I couldn't remember why or when or where.
She sat watching me, slowly smoking cigarettes, blowing smoke toward me so that the smoke hit the plexiglass and billowed around me in a circle. Her eyes were hard and calculating as she stared at me. I could see a slight halo around her, gold shot through with silver. I could feel some kind of warmth emanating from her. Her blood sang, the power flowing through it a sharp brittle tune that vibrated something inside of me.
The cold chunk of ice in my shoulder throbbed, trying to press into my chest, but the smell of apple blossoms and honey suckle filled my nose and the throbbing eased. Her eyes flashed again as she turned and spoke to a blurred shape beyond her. I couldn't understand what she was saying, but it didn't matter.
The lizard was working, squatted down to pull out boards and wiring from beneath the consoles and check them out. Chips were melted, bus lines were fried out, capacitors were nothing more than destroyed memories. Still, he worked, heading for the core systems first. My heartbeat picked up from the slow beats it had been doing, stuttering and speeding up, until the little lizard tightened down a valve.
My heartbeat had steadied out, thudding hard. Nancy and Aine both had commented how strong my heartbeat was, how it made my chest jump, how you could literally see the muscle vibrate as it hammered inside the armor of my ribcage.
I coughed again, blood filling my mouth and then drooling down my chin. I tried to inhale, but nothing happened beyond another slight cough that sent more blood running down my chin. There was still no pain, no sensation beyond a slight warmth starting to trickle down my back and the steady thudding of my own heartbeat.
The woman toed out her cigarette and stood up, reaching forward and scraping her foot. The plexiglass vanished with another liquid snap, leaving me standing in the room. The smell of pregnant woman filled my nose and I growled again, feeling a strange urge that got the lizard's attention. He pulled up one of the brushed steel floor panels and looked into the wiring down there.
The hard faced woman, Cromwell, took my chin and tugged my head down so I was looking at her.
"Stillwater, we need to go on the offensive. We needs weapons, ammunition, extreme cold weather clothing. We need geared. Do you understand?" She held my eyes.
I comprehended, slightly. I nodded and tried to answer, but instead I coughed and blood ran down my chin again.
"Lead the way."
I nodded again.
"Extreme prejudice on anyone we meet who looks like they're going to attack," Cromwell said, reaching forward and putting her hand on my back, holding onto me as I opened the door and moved out of the room. The door shut behind us as I moved through the darkness.
The lizard leaned over and started to kick something under the floor, sparks and steam showering from the opening in the brushed steel floor.
I coughed again, blood drooling down my chin.
The darkness didn't bother me, didn't inhibit me, as I headed for the third floor, to the Lobotomy Ward. I knew, without looking, that the snow was piled up to just below the window. There would be a channel carved through the snow where the road was, but that's what I was shooting for.
Cromwell held onto my belt as I moved through the dark.
Someone was in the stairwell, just reaching the fourth floor landing. I could sense they were intending on searching the offices.
I went stock still in the middle of the room.
Cromwell let go of my BDU top and ghosted to the side of the room, pressing against the wall and crouching down, staring at the floor to avoid staring at someone and giving them any warning that she was there.
The door opened slowly.
"Please don't let that big asshole be up here," Someone said.
"Quit being a chickenshit. He wasn't in any of the other offices, and there's no heat, they had to have gone somewhere else," A second said.
"We should be checking the rooms," A third said.
Three of them. Four. One was silent, breathing heavily.
My fists clenched and I moved over to where the door opening would block any sight of me.
The urge to kill welled up in me. A dark and sick thing, filling my mouth with the taste of rotting flesh and blackened blood.
"ONE ALIVE!" Cromwell's voice rang out in my memory even though the woman herself was silent, almost undetectable by my senses. She faded even further as she tossed white crystals from her hand into a scattered circle around herself, until she was suddenly gone.
The door opened and three men and one woman walked into the room, two of them carrying flashlights. Three had axe handles and the woman had a crowbar in her hand. I'd seen their rank as they passed by. The one in the lead was a Specialist, the others were privates. All of them were roughly mid-20's, with a strange soft look.
The urge to kill all of them overwhelmed, causing sparks and flames to shoot out from beneath the console with the big red "Combat" button on it. The lizard jumped up, hitting switches, spinning dials, and lifting the clear plastic cover over the combat button with his tail.
Target systems came online.
Four targets. Specialist is the oldest one, with some grey at the temple, more wear on his uniform. The three others were all wearing the single hash mark of a PV2, and were all in their very early 20's. The woman, as well as the men, seemed to have an odd petulant look on their faces.
The axe handles all read "Property of 2/19th SWG" burnt into the handles. The crowbar's middle section was spray painted yellow with black stripes winding down it. I'd seen that one before, it belonged in the Supply Room.
None of them knew I was there. None of them knew that Cromwell was crouched next to the fire extinquisher before she had vanished.
"Hope we find that little pregnant redhead," One of the PV2 said with a nasty tone.
I knew why. For a second I could see him vividly, pushing the redhead's face down into the tile while she cried, his erect penis thrusting in and out of her backside, blood between her butt cheeks as he punched the back of her head.
This time the taste in my mouth was hot coppery and sweet and tasted faintly of overripe berries.
"You're disgusting, Merrill," the woman laughed.
I stepped forward, moving into them like a shark into a school of fish.
Something warned them. Some sense that reached out and touched me when I was only a step behind them.
The woman turned and saw me when the flashlight in her hand passed over me.
She opened her mouth and started to scream.
The lizard slapped the button, pressing it down and holding it with his tail as he refined my targeting with his two claws, his eyes locked onto the screens that displayed what my senses brought in.
My fist took her in the face, the bones collapsing, her eyes popping free as my fist kept moving, tearing out the side of her head in a spray of blood and gore. She spun to the side, blood spraying black in the darkness. It hit the wall and floor, freezing in under a second.
All of them turned but it was too late, I was in with them, too close for them to bring the axe-handles into play.
One went to lift the axe handle but I punched him in the chest. Normally the ribs provide enough armor to stop most kinetic hits, but it didn't work this time as my right fist crashed into his chest as a continuation of the blow that had torn through the woman's head.
His sternum shattered, the ribs blew into fragments, all of it forced into his chest cavity by the sheer power of the clenched fist that hit with the sound of an axe hitting wood. Blood sprayed from his mouth, covering my face and chest, but it didn't block my sight.
Target three had the axe handle over his head. Target four was backing up, gabbling in fear.
The lizard's tail slipped off the button and with a click the combat chemicals he was feeding into me shut off.
Everything went to normal speed. My movement was like molasses, long moments between making a decision and my body carrying it out like there was something seriously wrong with my body and mind.
Well, not "like", but a sign that there was.
I coughed, blood pouring out of my mouth, tasting of dead old blood like a socket in the gums that a tooth had been in.
The axe handle started swinging toward my head as I just stared at the man in front of me. Thoughts were turning sluggishly in my mind, but my body was moving independently of what small parts of my mind were working.
My hand came up, catching the axe handle with a loud meaty smack. The man's eyes widened right before I reached forward and palmed the front of his head.
And tore off his face.
The raw blood skull screamed as the man collapsed to his knees, letting go of the axe handle and coming up to his bare skull.
I turned slowly, very slowly, looking at the last man.
He swung the axe-handle, missing me by at least a foot, and I stepped in, my hands coming up again. Blood dripped freely from my palms, falling in the darkness and onto the floor silently.
The lizard managed to press the button down again.
Everything went back to normal speed.
I slapped the axe-handle aside, grabbed his arm, and broke it in two places. When he sagged in my grip I yanked him up into me, wrapped my hand around his other shoulder, dug my thumb into the joint, and pulled his shoulder out of the socket, using the raw power that infused my body to do something I'd normally never be able to do.
He screamed again, pissing himself, as I let go of him so he collapsed onto his knees, sobbing and trying to hold onto his arms.
I turned, moving over to the man who was missing his face. He was on his back, still holding his face, still screaming.
I stomped in the middle of his chest, his rib-cage collapsing and blood bursting out of his mouth. I coughed again, only this time a wad of half-congealed, half-coagulated blood filled my mouth right before I coughed again and hot coppery blood filled my mouth.
I spit it out on the floor and it splattered.
The room was silent except for the last survivor crying.
I drew in one deep, shuddering breath, feeling a painful tightness in my chest. Oxygen flooded into my lungs, and I could feel my cells yearning for it as they passed through the small tissues of my lungs, greedily sucking up the oxygen molecules and flowing into my veins, carrying their loads to the cells that had been deprived for so long.
The combat chemicals finally kicked in, flooding my body. Everything bobbled as my point of view shifted, like I'd suddenly stepped into a hole.
"Crawm-wah-ell," I managed to groan out.
My limbs were shaking as adrenaline kept flowing through my system as I exhaled a large cloud of condensation.
Cromwell suddenly appeared, her hand waving over the floor. She stood up and moved over to me, looking at me.
Her eyes were level with my chin as she reached up and cupped my cheek, tilting my head down.
"Stillwater?" She breathed as I exhaled condensation into her face.
"Yaaahhhsss," I said.
"How interesting," she breathed. She turned away from me. "Don't kill this guy till I'm done questioning him."
"Yaaahhhsss," I managed to say.
I coughed, and this time red blood gushed into my mouth. Instead of letting it drool down my chin I swallowed thickly before wiping my chin with the sleeve of my uniform.
She looked down at the man with two useless arms and smiled.
"To quote Tiffany and the Beatles: 'I think we're alone now'," she smiled, lifting up the bayonet.
This time the man's scream had nothing to do with his arms.