Hardcore - 03 (40 page)

"Yes," said Pippa. "People are dying."

Franco nodded, and stared out over the snow.

Pippa wrestled with herself. She wasn't used to being nice to people. "I... I'm sorry about Mel, Franco. I know she still meant a lot to you."

"Yeah."

"What do you want to do now?"

Franco shrugged. "Pick up Keenan, I suppose. I feel weird, like a directionless familiar. Like a puppet, with some bastard controlling the strings and making me dance a stupid jig. But hey, I usually feel like that, so some fucking things will never change."

"We need to get off this planet." Pippa leant on the rail, staring the same way as Franco. The cold chill ruffled her bobbed, black hair. "Find Keenan, and get the hell off. They weren't joking when they called it Sick World. A fitting name, on so many different levels."

"It's not that easy," said Franco.

"What do you mean?"

"Well," he took a deep breath, "all those people, all those doctors and nurses, mutated patients, the lot of 'em, they were abandoned here, right? Quad-Gal left them to rot a thousand years ago. Something's happened down here. Something bad. Something which just ain't right. And I want to find out
what
. To hell with the junks, to hell with QGM. This matters, here and now, to these damn and bloody mutants."

"You want to save the world? Again?"

Franco puffed out his chest. "Well, somebody has to do it."

"This is too big, Franco. Way too big! We should pull out. These deviants, these mutations, they mean nothing to us. Why the fuck should we care?"

"I care," said Franco, staring hard into Pippa's eyes. "And if I can find out who's responsible for Mel's death along the way... well, I'll have me a handy slice of Revenge Pie whilst I'm at it." He grinned, showing his missing tooth. Then sighed. "I was hoping you and Keenan would tag along for the ride."

Pippa grasped his hand, wrist to wrist, in a warrior's grip.

"I thought you'd never ask," she said.

Cam lay breathless (although he had no lungs) and in pain (although he had no pain receptors). He was stunned (although, technically, he could not be stunned) and he was supremely pissed off. This, he could endure, because Cam was a GradeA+1 Security Mechanism with advanced SynthAI and a Machine Intelligence Rating (MIR) of 3450. He had integral weapon inserts, a quad-core military database, and Put Down[tm] War Technology. He was, to all intents and purposes, registered as core life. He could feel a close approximation of human emotion, albeit through a deviation of accelerated binary. After the addition of a backstreet bootleg Profanity Chip, Cam could also swear like a trooper and think
bad
thoughts unbecoming of a GradeA+1 Security Mechanism.

Now, as Cam lay smouldering, blackened, his shell crispier than a crispy fried duck, his circuits shorting and energy draining away towards a digital equivalent of death,
anger
pumped through him, electronic adrenalin surged his circuits... and Cam got good and proper mad.

He scanned. All around, Cryo Medics were messing about, analysing things, their guns loose, their attitudes relaxed. The threat had passed, moved on, and a little frizzled PopBot obviously offered little or no threat. He wasn't even worth sweeping up!

The
bastards,
thought Cam.
I'll show them, think they can abuse and torture a helpless little PopBot and then not have the decency to finish the damn job properly? Think they can just leave me here bleeding what bit of power I've got from my circuits like a dying fish flapping on the top of a pond? Eh? Well I'll bloody show them!

Cam reached out. He needed power. Lots of power. A nuclear blast of power! Yes, that'd sort out his processor. His chips. Cheap as chips! Ha ha. It'd be funny, if it wasn't so painful. A digital death, so to speak.

However. There were no advanced mechanisms lying around in the foyer of the Silglace. There was nothing of advanced military spec Cam could hijack. No vast power reserves he could tap into. No underground wealth of stored energy from which he could take a humongous Lucozade sip.

"Damn and bloody blast!" said Cam.

Then paused, in embarrassment.

He realised he was beginning to sound like Franco. And that would never do.

Smouldering and fuming, Cam reached outwards to the only power source available to him, and locked. It was simply the fires surrounding him, burning merrily, ignored by the poking Cryo Medics.

Very, very slowly, Cam started to recharge.

He watched the 0.0000000001% edge ever-so-slowly up towards the 0.0000000002% marker. He gave a very big sigh. At this rate, he was going to be stuck for a thousand years... but there was one thing he could do.

Cam focused. He sent a tribal beat of pulses on a back-line cube-whip to Pippa, and Franco.

Combat K, he decided, needed one another.

Keenan, groggy, aware of little more than muffled sounds and hazy vision, felt his arms locked to his sides. Gradually, awareness started to return, but as it did so heavy
clanks
and metallic
thuds
filled his senses, introducing panic and fear. Where am I? What's happening? What the fuck hit me in the back of the head?

Then, he remembered. Cryo Medics. With faces like circuit boards. What had he called it? The Electronic Medical Institute for Integrating Human and Machine? Shit. Shit! He had to get out of there... and fast!

His eyes flickered open, and his breath hissed with sharp intake. An inch before his face was what appeared to be a platter of ice. He could see his own breath dusting the surface with steam. He struggled, and found he was locked tight, arms by sides, ankles together, and he felt panic welling inside him because he was essentially mummified, buried, entombed, and a fist plunged into his heart and held it beating in an iron grip and he choked, could not breathe, and the lack of air, lack of oxygen, lack of
life
spread out from his heart, first spread out from his inner self and encompassed him,
consumed
him with the evil of utter and total and universal claustrophobia...

Keenan wanted to scream, but could not take in air.

Suddenly, he felt motion. A jerk, then whatever he lay within began to move. Slowly at first, and he heard a rhythmical thumping sound, a
du dum du dum
as if he was in a carriage on rails. Then his feet dipped, dropping away, and he tried to scream as he fell vertically, feet to the floor and head spinning and -

Breathe. With me. Be calm.

Keenan felt honey spread through his mind like a gentle narcotic. A warm yellow light infused him. Reality became a distant second-hand experience. As if through drug smoke, Keenan said, Who are you?

I am within you. I am part of you.

Who are you?

I am that element of you which linked to the Dark Flame.

Who are you?

I am Emerald.

The Kahirrim? I thought you died...

We never die. We simply shift phase. Be calm now. Be still now. Relax, and open your eyes, and you will live through this, I swear.

Keenan's eyes flickered open, and still the drug-smoke lethargy infused him. The carriage, or whatever had entombed him, was shifting at colossal speed. Down, then twisting and turning, banking, rolling, and then... it eased to a halt. There came hisses, of releasing pressure, and above Keenan the world shifted. A face loomed over him, little eyes amidst a barrage of electronic boards. Only, now, and this close, Keenan saw they weren't quite right; it was an electronics technology with a difference, each board consisting of tiny, tiny loops and wires, scalpels and needles... as if it was an electronics technology invented by somebody with an utter obsession for medical implements.

There came a
snap,
and Keenan was freed. A gun poked over the rim of the pod, or capsule, or whatever the hell it was, and Keenan sat up, slowly, rubbing at bruised wrists. Reality came slamming back and he was poked and prodded out of his... he looked back. It looked like a sarcophagus fashioned from crystal. On wheels. Attached, roller-coaster fashion, to a track. Keenan saw Snake being similarly disgorged from a second mummy-coaster and pushed, complaining, towards Keenan.

"You all right, mate?" said Snake, with a scratching rub of his whiskers.

"Been better," said Keenan, looking around.

They were inside a dome, under the ice. The place was a bustling hive of activity, with perhaps a thousand Cryo Medics rushing about their business. They worked at machines set at chest height, their circuit-board faces flashing occasionally with sparks of electricity. Around one section of the dome's wall squatted huge metal canisters, hinged and ribbed, and fashioned from what looked like an ancient black iron. There were many pipes and tubes emerging from cast valves. In the distance, by one of the chambers, two Cryo Medics were working. One held a yellow bag of medical waste, whilst another shovelled something from inside the chamber, depositing
lumps
into the yellow plastic. Keenan shivered.

"You, follow us," snapped one Cryo Medic, prodding his gun in Snake's chest. Snake grabbed the barrel with a snarl, and around them twenty guns
clacked
into action. Snake held up both his hands, and rubbed at his torn eye-patch. Beneath, flesh was weeping.

"OK, OK, be cool, dudes. But keep the damn gun out of my face. It's been a long day, and I might just ram it up your... up your diode chute."

"This way. Cryo Locum wants to speak with you!"

The circle of Medics gestured with weapons, and Keenan and Snake moved forward across the dome's floor.

"Where do you think we're going?" mumbled Snake from the corner of his mouth.

"Not sure," murmured Keenan. "But whatever happens, don't let the bastards put you in one of those chambers."

"Why's that?"

"I think this is where they make... themselves. Earlier, the Medic who captured us - he said something about integrating human and machine. Only I've got a feeling things don't always go well; hence the sick bag and shovel. See?"

Snake peered at the shovelling. Steam was still rising from the cubes of meat. "Understood, Keenan. Very deeply understood."

Their boots padded across the dome's floor, and Keenan stared up at the arches in wonder. They were white, but covering the entire interior surface of the Institute was a very fine golden thread in an incredibly complex pattern. It was so fine it was almost invisible against the white of the cavern, and as they walked Keenan found himself tracing patterns with his eyes; some of the wires glowed momentarily before fading back into gold, so that the entire surface looked like a vast network of optic fibre decorations.

"What a tacky load of shit," snarled Snake, following Keenan's gaze.

"No," he said. "It's beautiful."

Snake cackled. "Is this the Great Man Keenan going all soft at some tacky festive bauble? It looks like what it is, Keenan, a huge quivering tripe pie covered is a plethora of gold shit. Get real, man, this entire place is a retro-electronic graveyard."

"You don't understand," said Keenan, voice soft. "It's a map. A huge map."

"What?" scoffed Snake. "A map of what? My arse cheeks?"

"No," said Keenan, forcing his gaze to break from the glowing vision of the dome interior. He found it hard, almost impossible. He had been drowning in the vision; addicted worse than any Spuke-Crack addict. "It's a map of the entire planet. Sick World. Only... it's inside out."

Snake stared for a long time as they marched. It was cold, and their breath formed smoke streamers.

"Bollocks," said Snake, at last. "You're winding me up."

Keenan shrugged, but continued to stare. It was like spaghetti pooling across the front of his brain, twisting and turning and shifting. And then it went
click,
and moved into focus. And Keenan could understand the map. He could decode the information shifting between several dimensions before his very eyes, and he realised, knew, understood it was his alien blood, his contamination, his
taint
that made this possible. Keenan was something more than human. Or maybe something less.

He followed the map. He could see their path, in real-time, glowing and fading and glowing and updating and fading, even as he watched. He read the Silglace, and the trip here to this dome. With a frown, Keenan realised he could read his future path... and this shift of phase was his, and for him alone, and he was looking at the ArcPass, a mythical map a billion years old, something he'd read about in QGM broadsheets and kubes and ggg broadcasts. Keenan was staring at myth. At the impossible. At a legend. A bad dream.

"I can see our future," said Keenan, voice a drift of ghost-smoke.

"Are there lots of naked women in it?"

"Sort of."

"Great!"

"I... don't think you'll be happy when you meet these babes, mate."

"Where are we heading, then?"

"We're heading down," said Keenan. "We're going to find VOLOS. We're going to stop him. And there's only one route that can take us to the bastard."