Toxicity (52 page)

It didn’t take them long to find
the station from which they should have emerged on their Accelerator-blasted
train. In fact, the carriage stood there to one side, surrounded by soldiers
with machine guns and disintegrators, huge weapons that buzzed softly, nozzles
glowing blue.

Jenny felt herself turn cold, and
through a tiny air grille could count... maybe a hundred armed men and women in
olive-green uniforms, with the gold emblem of the Greenstar Company.

If they
had
ridden the
train to its termination,
they
would have been the ones terminated.

The soldiers were on edge, wary,
constantly looking about them. Several groups had taken positions on opposite
platforms. Anything coming out of that tunnel would be cut to bloody ribbons
within the blink of an eye.

She turned back to Zanzibar. “You
were right to seek an alternative.”

“Yes.”

“We need to find some kind of
control centre.”

“Yes.”

“Then bring this motherfucking
place to the ground.”

“Let’s do it.”

~ * ~

HORACE
SWAM, AND he felt more powerful than he had ever felt in his android life. He
had killed hundreds of people... killed
thousands
of people using his
superior strength, and agility, and intellect... but never had he felt like he
felt now, infused with the organic toxic sludge of an evolved sentient
decadence. He was filled to overflowing with toxic waste. It brimmed in him,
like a jug filled with water, to the point of overflowing. And he welcomed the
feeling, revelled in the power, and swam under the water, under the Biohazard
Ocean, until he found the inlet which met with the fast-moving waters from the
Yellow Virus Peaks: the River Tox. Horace flexed his muscles and drank in toxic
waste, breathing on the pulp of radiation and heavy metals and chemical
slurry... and with each gulp it made him stronger, made him more powerful,
until he felt like he would burst...

He swam, powering upriver,
skimming the river bed with its vast collection of dumped waste. And as he swam
in great lazy strokes, so he felt others join him, psi-children who emerged
from the underwater rocks and dumped, battered cars and old oil drums. They
emerged, and smiled, and swam behind him and he did not mind, welcomed their
company, for it meant he would not go into battle alone...

He swam for a day and a night,
never tiring, his toxic intake and excretion working in perfect harmony. It was
only when he reached the first set of vast waste pipes, leaving the Greenstar
Factory Hub and dumping straight under the wide, swirling, deep waters of the
River Tox, that he began to feel strange. First it came in his forearms; a
gradual swelling of the muscles, a tightening of his new body all over, but
mainly in his forearms. The uncomfortable feeling spread through him and he
paused, under the sludge, grasping hold of the thick metal grate guarding the
exit from the massive pipe into the river. With one hand curled around the huge
bars, Horace looked down at himself, at his naked toxic form, his flesh now a
puke-green colour, his skin covered with warts and sores and bubbles and lumps,
open wounds bubbling with pus and toxic venom, and
something,
a sudden
uncertainty, rippled through him.
Is this right? Or am I bubbling away,
disintegrating before I can complete my mission? Have my genetics rebelled? Has
the toxic overload destroyed me?

And then a hand, on his shoulder.
It was one of the psi-children. He looked back at her, down at her, and
realised she had shrunk. No.
He
had grown. He had become filled with
toxicity. Filled with waste. A carrier of filth and hardcore poison.

It’s okay. Do not be frightened.

I will not die?

We all die.

I will not die... yet?

Not yet. Be strong. Fulfil your
destiny.

With a roar, Horace grasped the
heavy grille protecting the outlet pipe, and his toxic muscles bunched and
warped and the steel screamed and bent, and bubbles shot up to the surface of
the river. Horace clamped himself to the grille, and fought the steel, and
slowly it bent out of all shape and recognition, and in disgust, Horace tossed
it onto the river bed, where ancient sludge awoke, arose, and engulfed the
iron, sucking it down into its toxic embrace.

You are inside,
said the girl. And she smiled.

Yes. I will go now.

We will accompany you.

Thank you.

They swam, a phalanx of toxic
creatures, inside the massive pipe, through which a juggernaut could easily
pass. Horace led the way, and now a hundred or so psi-children swam in his
wake, like an army of mermaids, only these had no pretty faces or pretty fins
or tails, for these psi-children were made from chemical effluvia and disease
and sludge and waste and poison.

I
am the trigger,
he
thought.

And then,
Don’t ever lose your
temper.

And he smiled. And he remembered.
And he found regret.

On they swam. Through the pipes.

Into the Heart of Greenstar.

~ * ~

SVOOL
STOOD ON the blasted, bleached moorland. It was dark, and a cold, sour wind
blew from the south, chilling him to his very core and filling him with bitter
thoughts. To one side, Sergeant Hardspore and his men, Quad-Gal Military in all
but name and sent on this insane rescue mission by the Shamans of Manna, had
set up a base camp. Three sets of cameras had been arranged in banks, with the
Greenstar Factory Hub in the far distant background. Between here and there was
a bog, a bubbling waste of fetid, sulphur-stinking marshes. They made Svool
feel sick.

He was about to head for his tent
- in the hopes it hadn’t melted - when the army AD arrived, waving a sheaf of
notes. “Oh, Mr Koolimax, Mr Koolimax, I need to go over a few things before you
retire to your trailer...”

“I haven’t got a trailer.”

The AD looked at him, head to one
side, as if to say,
oh, how unprofessional of you to point out such a basic
lack of film-maker luxury for our main star!
but he didn’t actually say it.
Just drilled it into Svool’s head with the drill-bit of his stare.

“We need to go over a few
directions...”

“Wait! Wait!” Svool held up a
hand. “You want me to create a poem, right? The most incredible piece of
anti-Greenstar poetry ever, yes? Well, I need to
finish the damn thing.”

Svool stalked off across the
barren wasteground, and ducked as he entered his military green tent. Lumar was
lying back on a small canvas bed, reading a manual. Svool slumped down onto his
own bed, which creaked in warning.

“Are you okay, Svool?”

“Yes. Let me work.”

And he picked up his pad, which
he had named
The Pad of Doom,
and he opened it and stared down at this,
the most incredible poem he had ever written, filled with mourning for an
entire planet, laid waste by the decadence and stupidity of the creatures who
abused Her...

Only he didn’t.

Because, for the first time in his
life, Svool had writer’s block.

~ * ~

SIXTEEN

JENNY
HALTED, AND held up her fist. Behind her, Zanzibar, Nanny and Meat Cleaver
readied their weapons as quietly as they could. They had agreed it was time to
leave the ventilation shafts, find a core location, and put down some heavy
destruction before they were found and killed. But this had proved trickier
than any of them had anticipated. A few hundred metres back, they had passed
some kind of control room - vast in size, and containing massive black tubs, short
and squat and fat, and numbering perhaps a thousand in total. Some of them
bubbled, and some were still. Around the entire vast laboratory were banks and
rows of computers and delicate machinery, and many benches set up with
apparatus for obvious experimentation. And yet they were still stuck in this
shaft...

“What is it?”

“I think I’ve found something.”

Jenny crawled forward, her gloved
fingers describing the shape of the inspection hatch beneath her. She listened
for a while, then eased her fingers under the rim and lifted the hatch. She
popped her head down, then lowered herself, dropping into a crouch in the corridor.
She braced her SMKK and covered both ends of the corridor whilst Nanny and Meat
Cleaver dropped down behind her. Zanzibar came last, slotting the hatch back
into place as he fell. It wasn’t perfect, but at least it didn’t leave a gaping
hole in the ceiling to attract immediate attention.

“We going to check out the lab?”
said Zanz.

“Yeah. Looks like an important
centre for operations. What concerns me is the lack of lab rats.”

“Lunch break?”

“Too convenient. You got the
HighJ? I would suggest this is a good place to start.”

Zanzibar rattled the canvas sack.
“Let’s leave them a present they won’t ever forget,” he grinned.

They moved warily into the vast
laboratory. The black tubs bubbled, and the bright lighting soon gave Jenny a
headache. Zanz tossed her a few cubes of HighJ, and more to the rest of the
squad, and they moved across the laboratory to the centre. Everything was
pristine, immaculate. Almost as if...

“It’s unused,” said Jenny, the
penny finally dropping. “The staff aren’t away on a lunch break; they’re just
not
here.
It’s new. Clean. Perfect.” The others looked around the room, and had
to agree.

“I don’t get it,” said Zanzibar.

“Well it’s quite simple, really,”
said Vasta. She had stepped from a half-concealed side-door. The E3 Accelerator
that had killed Bull was in her hands, and she had a tight, cruel smile on her
face.

“You bitch,” snarled Jenny.

“So we meet again,” smiled Vasta,
and ran a hand through her hair, as if preening before a new boyfriend. “It’s
interesting, tracking you - for believe me, you leave a trail so wide a new
college boy could follow you blindfolded - how totally incompetent you really
are. Is this
really
the best ECO terrorist outfit that Mr Candle could
summon to do his dirty work?” She laughed, a cold, cruel laugh. “Well. You won’t
be carrying out any more of your little plots and schemes. Flizz is dead. Sick
Note is, shall we say, very, very sick. Or at least, in separate pieces. And
Bull... poor old Bull.” She pulled out a sulky lower lip, like a child who’d
had a lollipop confiscated. “You all ran off in such a hurry, you didn’t hear
him begging and squealing on that underground train track.” Her face went hard.
“An 11mm Techrim bullet soon put an end to that.”

Zanzibar growled and reached for
his gun, but Jenny’s hand shot out, halting him.

At that moment, from both ends of
the laboratory, came the rattle of guns being readied and cocked. The
olive-green-uniformed soldiers came stampeding through the lab, boots stomping,
guns trained on the four ECO terrorists. Guns trained on Jenny and her squad.
She felt a cold fear settle in her belly.

They weren’t getting out of this
one alive, that was for sure.

Jenny felt the cube of HighJ in
her hand. If she could just arm it... then if they shot her, BAM! They’d all be
cat food. She twisted her hand, attempting to shield the small black cube, but
Vasta caught the movement and gestured. Three Greenstar soldiers strode forward
and relieved her first of the HighJ, then of her SMKK.