I really don’t know what to say about this chapter.
I’ll warn you now, it’s disturbing. It’s violent. But it’s necessary. It’s not there just for the sake of violence. Trust me when I say I don’t write gore “because it’s cool.” I find that rather distasteful.
It’s meant to disturb. This whole series is meant to disturb. It’s meant to mess with your head, not to gross out.
If that’s not your kind of thing, you’re probably in the wrong place. I’ve expressed before how psychological and insane this was going to get.
“Like I said,” Jock began, pointing straight ahead, indicating a low helipad structure encased in a perimeter of chain link fence, “I’ve been here before. Many times. I could describe every room, every security terminal. The only thing I can’t give you is an easy way in. They’ve got it bottled up.” He fidgeted suddenly, closely pondering the situation. “I think- ...The best way would probably be through the back door, and there’s only one of those. That’d be the cargo gate. Trucks come, empty their loads, helicopters bring stuff out.” He pointed to one corner of the building. “You can’t see it from here, but it’s around there.”
Dominic lifted a pair of binoculars (that he’d stripped from a body at the UNATCO Headquarters) up to his eyes. He could make out several figures standing or patrolling around the compound. He also caught sight of short, metallic silhouettes - They slid across the freshly wet pavement on treads, navigating their preprogrammed path in an endless loop.
“Security bots?” Dom asked, turning to Jock. Everybody was there, the six of them. Jock and Alex were particularly uncomfortable ever since realizing they were still bugged, and by now, probably tracked. Brian said nothing, only followed. Jess kept to herself. She consistently looked at Dom like a stranger on the street. That sort of empty gaze, the thin recognition of another human being. As though she were merely imagining something she had misplaced. Nothing more.
All of them were lingering in the shadows of a portside warehouse, where on one side they had sight of the blackened silhouettes of the sleepless city, and on the other, expanded the flat, rippling expanse of ocean. Straight ahead of them was their targeted helipad. It, too, was on the coast.
Jock answered Bishop with his gaze still fixed on the structure ahead. “Yeah, they have bots. And not just the little ones you see around the place. Those ones have bigger brothers, but they’re all locked away unless an alarm goes off. And then there’s the bad-ass of the bunch.” He jerked his head in the direction of a haggard garage-like structure. One with a big metal door on it. “You don’t want to know what kind of monster is in there.”
Dom gave an empty nod. “You sure this is worth it?”
Jock looked at him blankly.
“Going after your chopper,” Dom clarified. “Seems like we’re about to bite off more than we can chew.” Dominic suddenly noted that the pains in his head had subsided. He no longer trembled, or felt as alien, as invaded as he once had. The presence was still there; He could feel it all the time. Maybe he’d just gotten used to it. Adapted for the time being.
“There’s not exactly an open market for stealth choppers,” Jock explained. “And we’re going to need one if we want to get to Hong Kong in one piece. Trust me when I say this is the safest way possible.”
“That’s fine,” Dom said. “It’s not like I have anything to lose at this point. Except a few more hours of sleep.” Strangely enough, he wasn’t tired in the least. “So we’re going in the cargo bay?”
“Hold it,” Brian unexpectedly broke the conversation. “Jock, you said you know the locations of every security terminal?”
“Every one,” the pilot confirmed.
“And what they do?”
“No, not all of them. But some. What do you want to know?”
“You said there’s a military security bot in that shed, right?”
“You want to turn it on, in our favor?”
Brian smiled, like a mischievous child. “Yeah.”
“That’d be a risky, but yeah, it could happen. If you want a bloodbath.”
Everyone abruptly looked at Dom. He rubbed his unshaven face with one hand. “We’ve already made a mess at UNATCO. And I don’t think they’re going to appreciate it if we walk up and knock on the front door.”
“That doesn’t mean we have to kill them,” Alex interrupted.
“Right,” Dom nodded. “So it’ll be a fallback plan. First we try the back door. That fails, we wake up the… the beast. Agreeable?” Nobody moved. It was an unspoken, hesitant yes. “Okay. Not all of us need to go. Some of us can stay here and wait, which would make sense, we could pick you up once we get the chopper, and less people usually means less noise.”
“Good,” Jaime stated, “because I’m staying right here. I’m a doctor. Not a spy.”
“Anyone else?” Dom asked.
“No doubt about me going,” Jock said, and then: “I’m the only one here that can fly that thing. And by the sound of it, I’d say the small one wants in on this,” to which he got an eager nod from Brian.
“I’ll stay,” Jess selected slowly. This came as a bit of a surprise to Dominic.
“So will I,” followed Alex. “I’ve had enough destruction for about a month.”
It was decided. Moments later, Jock, Dom, and Brian were over the poorly constructed fence, merging quietly with the enveloping body of night.
--- --- --- ---
“Here’s how it works,” Jock whispered hoarsely, sliding a fresh clip into his gleaming pistol and making sure everything was in check. The three of them were crouching behind a series of stacked crates outside the cargo bays. “There are two terminals that control the military bot. One of them is actually inside that hangar. The other’s in the control room on the top floor of the building. One of us is going to have to get up there, anyway; It’s the only place with access to the hangar door. I’ve seen them open it from there, nowhere else. Look, Dom,” he said, lowering his voice. “I say we just go for the bot right away. I know these people are just doing their job, but you don’t know who they belong to. What purpose they’re serving. That’s something I have yet to explain. Turning on that bot will be easier, tenfold, than trying to sneak through that place. Everything is tight, they have cameras, they have automated turrets, they have bots, they have an armed and restless human force. Maybe if we were all augmented Dentons, we’d be able to do it. But we’re not. If we turn on that military bot… We give them a distraction. It’ll be more than they can handle. They’ll be so overwhelmed with stopping it they won’t even notice when we get our hands on the chopper.”
Dom wondered why everyone counseled him with all the group decisions to begin with. When he became the leader of Jaime, of Jock, of Alex. Maybe they were just scared shitless of him after what he did at UNATCO. Then again, probably not. “We’ll do it. Who’s going where?”
“I think Brian is the only one among us who knows how to hack into a security terminal. Am I right?”
Brian nodded.
“So,” Jock continued, “I say Brian and I head for the hangar. You get into that control room, open the doors for us. It’s just a button, no hacking required. We activate the bot, slip out during the commotion, and meet at the helipad. You can’t miss it. Sound good?”
“Works for me. Where’s the control room?”
“See that window?” Jock pointed at an illuminated glass square high up on the compound. It was a window; An unrecognizable figure moved within. “Right there. I’d say your best way in is through the roof. You ready?”
“Yes.”
“Good... Good.” There was a pause. “Go. Now.”
--- --- --- ---
The wind lashed against his jacket. He peeled it off and watched it tumble away in the breeze, floating towards the dark body that everything faded into…
Someone might see it. The alarm might be activated. Dominic didn’t care. His pain had come back tenfold. His head throbbed. His vision reddened.
He had found a maintenance ladder on the side of the building. It was difficult to get to; There were several guards along that side of the building, but eventually the opportunity fleshed into existence, and Dominic brushed past them like a shadow…
Now he clung to it like an angered animal, slowly ascending upwards rung by rung… Eventually the top found him, and his body eased over the ledge, and he laid flat on his back on the wet gravel of the rooftop. The night sky swallowed his vision. He could not move. He felt as though thousands of knives stung their way through his flesh and cut at him with jagged edges. And then even the stars were gone, and he realized he was passing out just before he lost consciousness.
--- --- --- ---
He was standing in a great void. He couldn’t make out which color it was, only that it was a void. It might have been black, or white, or gray, or brown, or a swirl of those. It was undefined, indescribable. It rippled as though it were a liquid. And something rose from within it: A face. That of a man. It was completely hairless, and entirely smooth.
It was a machine. A great steel head, protruding from Nothing, writhing soundless lips. It was blue. The color stood from the surrounding nonexistence like a light in darkness.
Then it collapsed. The countless pounds of metal came down, with a silent crash, a silent groaning, nothing, as it was part of nothing.
Dominic realized that his hands were boiling. And his legs. And his face…
--- --- --- ---
He woke up.
He didn’t know how long he was unconscious. It could have been seconds. It could have been hours. He was standing now. He didn’t remember standing up.
Dominic was then fully impacted by the duty that had been assigned to him, by his objective that he did not currently pursue, by the sudden alarming weight of others depending on his actions. Everything became very clear then, and he lost all thought. He acted.
Glass broke beneath his feet. He came crashing down through the glass panel on the roof. He landed in the control room. In the midst of five armed men. They all looked at him in the same instant.
There was a defining silent moment. And each of them knew what was about to befall them.
Death came down around Dominic like he had never experienced it before. Hot metal pierced his flesh. He was being shot. He did not feel pain. He grappled one man… Threw him through the window… He heard the faint crushing of bone seconds later...
He was upon another... A gun was pointed to the man’s brow... Dominic’s gun, being held by Dominic’s hand... It fired... Blood sprayed...
Bodies fell around him. The room was devoid of life then. Only he stood in it.
A button gleamed in the corner of his eye. Immediately he knew its function. He pushed it. Through the window he could see the great door of the hangar open... And two small figures slip in...
Bullets shattered the walls around him. Some pierced his back. He turned. Guards had come into the room, and were attacking the violator before them.
Dominic was falling. He must have been knocked from the room... Out the window... His body was twisting within the gripping fist of gravity, and below him, he now saw as he flailed, the space between him and the ground stretched infinitely, completely out of comprehension. Blackness formed around the corners of his vision... He must have appeared to others as death itself, the tumbling, broken figure, drenched in red, his own red, the red of others...
Beneath him was the released security bot. The beast. He landed on it, and clung to its mighty back.
It shook beneath him. It vibrated with unquenchable thirst for conclusion, its body blistering with heat, firing round after round from its incredible arms... It sprayed explosives from itself, it fired constantly... The heat rose... The metal shook... The ground shook... Dominic felt and saw nothing but that massive hulking monstrosity beneath him, and then the familiar pangs of unconsciousness gripped him once again.
--- --- --- ---
He was lying on the ground again. The surface under his back was different now. Not the gravel of the roof as he had felt before, but the flat, rough texture of concrete. The glittering sky again filled his eyes.
He suddenly became aware of the gunshots all around him. They were distant, like a war being fought in a far off plane of existence...
He looked down at his body. He was completely riddled with the puncture wounds of pistol rounds, rifle rounds...
He could not see his legs. They were somewhere else. There, off to his side... The other half of his body...
--- --- --- ---
Again he awoke, perhaps hours later. He was in a helicopter, now. He could hear the monotonous whirring thunder of its blades.
Someone looked at him.
He sat up.
Everyone was there, Brian, Jess, all of them.
Dominic was astonished. He was astonished at his own life. He wondered if he were dead. He looked down at himself. There was not a wound on him, not a scratch... He was only drenched in blood, most his, some not...
“We found you passed out on your back outside the compound.” Dom recognized the voice that had spoken. It was Brian’s.
“We picked you up on our way to the helipad,” Jock said from the pilot’s seat. “Dom... Did you fall? From that height? There’s no other way you could’ve gotten down from that roof that fast.”
Dominic had trouble finding his voice, but eventually, it came to him. “Yes. I remember falling…”
They stared at him. With complete disbelief. Not the kind in which one does not believe the story of another, but the kind of disbelief that denies the reality of an event, even when its truth is obvious.
“You were soaked in blood...” Jess said as her voice quavered. “You didn’t have a scratch on you...”
Dominic became abruptly aware of his own immortality. He tore the pistol from Jock’s holster and turned it to his own mouth. He wanted to test it. He wanted to confirm his disbelief. It was impossible to believe.
RSS Feeds
