Intestines steamed like fat sausages on a griddle as the cold rain hit them in big, spattering drops like marbles. The rain diluted the blood, shit and bile into a bilious cocktail. It washed into the gutters, clogging them with severed fingers and offal that floated like macabre little boats of organ meat, bobbing merrily in the sanguine rivulet. A jumble sale of limbs, bone and muscle was tangled in a disorganised heap in the street, stray dogs already fighting over the ‘bargains’ amongst the dross.
“So…” Said Jartan, flicking blood and viscera from his blade. “What the hell kind of sword is that anyway?” He’d never seen its like, half again as long as a power claymore, double-bladed and apparently with no connection between the haft and the blades themselves. It looked… wrong.
T’nk looked down at him disapprovingly, shaking out her fleshy dreadlocks and showing her sharp teeth in a display of dominance. “A trophy, taken from a worthy foe on a faraway world. I call it the M’nth K’Knn, ‘Far Soul’ in Killan.”
Jartan looked down at his own sword, feeling a little inadequate somehow, even though he’d done his own fair share of the killing. “A trophy? So it’s not SLA technology then? I’m surprised they let you keep it.”
T’nk grunted again, nudging half a body into the gutter with the toe of her boot. “The killing is done. Why do you want to talk?”
Jartan tried to look nonchalant as the rain beat a boss-nova rhythm against his helmet. “Just making conversation… new to the team, you know. It’s not every day you get caught in a DarkNight ambush with your squad leader.”
T’nk rolled her eyes. Perhaps if the humans lacked vowels, they wouldn’t be so keen on filling the air with mindless chatter either. “The duel I fought was caught on camera. The blade is associated with my brand and marks a defeated enemy. So… my sponsors insisted, and Head Office acceded. To them, it means money; to me, honour. Since you ask… what of your blade, it looks non-standard to me.”
“This?” Jartan raised his own sword once more and tried to make it sound as good as possible. “This is a custom Dynamic Precision Blades vibrosabre from Mother’s Milk Studio. Offworld ceramic, custom inlay, shock battery, twice the vibe of your standard model with a sword-breaker back edge and a lifetime guarantee on the cutting edge. Cost me a pretty penny and seems to have paid off.” He tried a smile on her and began to pick his way across the strewn body parts, almost slipping on the fleshy slurry that the rain was only beginning to clean away.
“Nice.” T’nk offered, which was as close as she ever seemed to get to a positive word. “Though small.”
They sheathed their blades and stepped out from between the buildings, and the rain came down harder, washing them clean.
“Should we…” Jartan hooked his thumb back towards the alley and the tangle of growling dogs.
“Leave it for the Shivers.” She said and started down the street. “It’s what they’re for.”
There’s a sort of background hum to any home, whether you live in downtown, uptown or anywhere in between.
Power lines, devices, appliances, heating pipes, water pumps. You get used to it after a while, and you no longer notice it, but you do notice it when it’s gone. That sudden silence can wake you up more surely than any alarm clock, and that’s what happened to me the other night.
I woke up with a start, and it was pitch, fucking, black. For a moment, I thought I’d gone blind. Sure, it gets dark in downtown, but not that dark. Everyone has to see. There’s always a standby LED or the sodium glare of the streetlights, the flash of passing traffic. This time, nothing. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.
I tried to swing out of bed to find a torch or something, but… well, you won’t believe me, but the floor wasn’t there any more. My foot found nothing but empty air, and I had to scramble not to fall off the bed. I was terrified. I almost shat myself. Was it a nightmare? It didn’t feel like it.
You’d think the amount of time you spend in bed, you’d know your way around it, where the pillows were, how the sheets or the blanket are folded over, how big it is, but you really don’t know at all. I was fumbling around like a newborn, clinging to the bed for dear life, when I felt someone else there with me.
I didn’t feel them exactly, not to start with, but I was aware of another presence, another weight, pressing down on the bed, shifting when I shifted, breathing when I breathed. I reached out again, and a hand touched mine, our fingers interlaced, but it was cold where I was warm.
I spoke to it, I said ‘Hello’ and… it said ‘Goodbye’ in this mocking, sarcastic tone… but it was my own voice. I reached out with my other hand and… it touched me… intimately. I’m not making this up… it.. it… felt like my own hand, it moved like my own hand and… Loa save me… I…
It stole it. It stole ME. It took me away, but I can still feel it… They’re doing things to it. To me. They’re taking ME and putting me inside things. Making things. Bad things. What woman is going to want me now? How am I supposed to take a piss? When are you going to let me out of here? You can SEE I’m not lying… do you want to see? LOOK!
I’m not going to tell you to go to school. You don’t need qualifications to sit in front of the TV and eat ready meals.
I’m not going to tell you to stay out of the gangs, fuck knows if you want to live past twenty, you’ve got to hook up with someone.
I’m not going to sell you some bullshit about joining SLA and hitting the big time; if you had prospects, you’d already have been picked out from a crèche.
I’m not going to say you should keep off the drugs, fucking things might be all that keeps you from killing yourself down here, might even keep you out of trouble. Better to be indoors tripping your tits off than outdoors cutting someone else’s tits off.
I’ll give you a break this once. Put the jelly beans back on the counter and set down that CAF-gun piece of shit, and me my partner here won’t break every bone in your body in alphabetical order and feed you to the Carrien.
My advice? Go home. Sit your arse down in front of Captain Contract and think how fucking lucky you are that I hate paperwork.
The Prop is looking over with barely concealed contempt. A squatting, armoured presence in the corner of the dingy, unlicensed bar. A hulking mass of dense, dirty armour, flakes of paint peeling away layer by layer, showing years and years of previous livery. Behind thick quartz panes, his gaze stares, unwavering. Is it contempt or hatred? Jealousy or insecurity? Does he wish he were one of us or just that we weren’t here at all?
Last season’s clothing, last year’s gun, last decade’s armour. Pitted and scarred, whatever that suit once was, it’s vanished beneath a half-dozen modifications and repairs. He’s built for practicality, not for style. There’s a brutalist aesthetic to everything about him, all square edges and totalitarian chic. He’d never make the evening news, but down her,e that doesn’t matter so much as reputation.
He grunts and slides his visor up, a face as pitted, scarred, old and ugly as the armour that covered it. He sips at some godawful soft company brew made in the lower levels from macerated and fermented Fruity-Chews, just the colour makes you nauseous. The barstool creaks and bends slightly as he shifts his panzer-bulk. He’s sensible enough not to start anything, but he knows he could cause you trouble and expense, and he’s not willing to lose face here in front of his clients, in his patch, trusting to the hope that you’re not here for him.
Another sip of that sickly brew and he closes that armoured faceplate again, fastening the bolts, loosening his holster – just to be ready – heavy glove laid by that big, old-fashioned gun.
Bloodshot eyes open to a blank room that smells like dentistry and antiseptic. Confused and blurred, vision flickers left and right, head unable to turn, seeing no doors, no way in or out, no light fittings, no fixtures, just a directionless glow of light that banishes all shadows.
Why can’t you move?
You don’t know why.
Is this a dream?
You’re inclined to think so until the man in the surgeon’s outfit and featureless blue mask seems to appear out of nowhere, coalescing almost out of the light next to you.
“Ah, you’re awake. No, don’t try to talk, you won’t be able to unless I let you.” A light shines into those bleary eyes for a moment, and that stretched, featureless face is even closer.
“My name is Doctor Klüt. I work for Blue Scream. No, you’ve never heard of us. No, you won’t remember this. I’m going to be ah… interrogating you…” The blue skin stretches differently, in something that might be a smile.
“Yes, interrogating you. To ensure that your loyalty is without question, or at least significant question, to ensure that you won’t reveal anything too easily to our enemies and to be sure that you aren’t compromised.”
That ghostly, hidden smile again and then, again, as though out of nowhere, the Doctor’s hand is replaced with razors and needles.
“This is going to hurt, but you won’t remember, and Life After Death has been extended to you free of charge for the duration of this ah… interview. Shall we begin?”
Here the water doesn’t come down as rain; it comes down in sheets.
It pours through the slits in the firmament of Suburbia and falls in a shimmering curtain.
Umbrellas won’t protect you, raincoats won’t help in the slightest.
If you walk through one of these glistening shrouds, you’ll get soaked to the skin. It’s like walking through a cathedral of glass, plummeting from the sky.
It’s a massive abstract, scattered with cubist patterns like a watery Mondrian. All angles and squares lit by the streetlights into a synaesthetic display of colour and sound.
The constant flow damps down all noise with its broken-TV hiss, creating gaps of water, light, and sound that are cut off from one another, divided and sliced piece by piece, so that one ‘box’ can be another world compared to its neighbour.
Here, the bright light shines off the falling water and creates a miniature ‘hell’ where the Scorn Street Devils command their little ‘fort’ made from stolen skips and boxes. Music pulses and booms, shaking the liquid walls in a sympathetic vibration. The first sign of a Shiver, and they vanish through the scarlet curtains and disappear from sight.
There, speckled UV light, beaded by water droplets, shines on sickly, yellow, potted plants, limp flowers and greying moss, tended by an old man who hides in this corner, out of sight and mind, coughing up his last lung from the damp but bringing a little life to this little patch of rust and concrete.
“The Necanthrope is, besides money, the most powerful weapon in SLA’s arsenal,” the drill sergeant barked, marching up and down in front of the recruits. “It is also their weakness, a mark of their reliance on the strange, the unknown. A living metaphor and symbol for SLA itself, either ugly as sin, a ravaging terror, or a beautiful and beguiling lie. Take down a Nec, and you’re taking down a symbol of SLA.”
The suit was in pieces back there, torn, burnt, frozen, shattered, even a powersuit wasn’t built to take that kind of punishment all at once but she managed to escape, crawling out the back into the rubble and debris while ceramic melted like wax and metal caught fire, bullets cooking off like popcorn. The inner suit, gashed and leaking coolant, wasn’t any protection worth a damn, but better that than naked.
“Rule one when fighting one of these unnatural bastards… don’t get out of your suit. They’ll eviscerate you, boil you, freeze you solid, rain acid down upon you until you’re nothing but bone and a bad smell. You’ll only be able to stand up to them – toe to toe – in the heaviest armour you can find.”
She clutched her pistol so tight her hand bled, squirming through the shattered concrete like a worm, a pale maggot, leaving a slick trail of coolant behind her, cocking her head, listening, his heavy clawed tread was crushing the debris even more, wearing it down like it had worn the armour down.
“Rule two, heavy weapons. You need a cannon or something fully automatic at the very least. DPU is a must when taking on this opponent. Get your weapons laced with it, make sure you have a mag or drum of the good stuff in reserve, just in case. Not a lot else is going to get through a high-end deathsuit, and you know they’re going to have more than that to defend themselves with.”
Gouts of light and flame were blasting into the rubble now, sending red-hot fragments scattering in all directions. It was looking for her, toying with her, playing with her; it wasn’t taking her seriously. It was kind of insulting, but it made sense. What kind of threat was she now?
“Rule three, don’t. If you can at all avoid it, do not engage with these sons of whores. Leave it to some other poor fuck or hit them from orbit.”
Ah, screw it… what did the sarge know? She’d escaped, she was underestimated, and she had the element of surprise? What was the worst that could happen?
She cocked the gun, slipped off the safety, and tensed…
“Station Analysis, this is Communications Operator Jansen McNamara, signing on.”
Jansen sipped his coffee and tip-tapped his password into the console with practised ease as the isolation door closed behind him. He tapped the microphone to check it was working as the screens came up, and then he began scrolling through the information he needed.
His Aug sprite came up, Sheila, the little cartoon devil-girl that helped organise his information. Wiggling her little red bottom and flapping her wings, she flitted to-and-fro between the various screens, prioritising his reports and lining up the calls.
He coughed once and began to tap at the screens.
“NIM, proceed to the spaceport. The female stormer prototype has been reported to have been spotted by a spaceport Shiver patrol in the company of a taxi driver, unidentified but suspected to be a rehabilitated war veteran. Your pay has been authorised to double and the BPN has been upgraded to red. Acknowledge?”
He nodded and clicked to the next channel.
“Razorblades and Icecream, do you have an updated ETA? Good, good, I have an update for you. The cause of the incident has been determined to be DarkNight corruption of the office water supply. Security in the Axis Tower has barricaded themselves in and is stockpiling arms and fortifying. This is now a sweep and clear operation.”
Click.
“Oddbodies, come in Oddbodies?” There was no answer. “Control, no contact with Team Oddbodies, last assigned to investigate the disappearance of a newly inducted Necanthrope, codenamed ‘Bell’. Shiver units and teams in the area have been reporting temporal anomalies and a few could be sightings of Team Oddbodies. I suggest bumping this one up to a more experienced and higher SCL team.”
He stopped a moment and put in his eye drops, needing to concentrate and focus. It was a busy day, and he had too many teams to coordinate.
“Mad Dog, your team is stationed outside the building with Shiver support. Can you give me an update on your situation…? Five men? Four men… well done. They’re not Thresher? Your earlier report said… I see. A soft company… you don’t know which one. So why…? Ah, the data tap. I see. I’ll see if I can get you some more help.”
A quick chat on the emergency line to his boss, and that one was bumped up the line to Head Office. Something important, then, no use worrying about it. No point worrying about it. Dangerous to worry about it.
Click.
“Operative Draig, you’re off-mission. You are not cleared for undercover work, you are not cleared for Soft Company contact, and you are supposed to be on forced leave. No… no sir… I don’t think I should put the microphone there… why don’t you just come in before you’re declared renegade? You must be nearly out of drugs by now… If you want revenge, go through channels… fine, I’m alerting central and fuck you too, sir. Twice. Sideways.”
“Sissin, are you secure..? Good. Head office wants an update. Are you in? Good… no suspicion? Do you think you can win? I’ve been instructed to tell you to humiliate them; it’s not enough to expose the Trang, they must be shown up completely. This martial arts mystique must be stamped out. Check in tomorrow, same time.”
“Team Golden, psychologists predict a fifty-percent chance that the inhabitants of the secure media room will join forces and try to escape rather than complete the reality show format. Please update your status to orange and get non-lethal weapons on hand. LiveDead Media would prefer the twelve contestants to be subdued and keep the show going. You will..? Thanks.”
A sip of water, his throat was dry, he spun his chair left and right, shifting his bottom on the mock-leather seat to stop it going numb.
“NIM, is the situation resolved? Excellent… got another BPN if you think you’re up to it, your luck to be in the right area. Yeah? Good stuff, I’m authorised to pay a twenty-credit bonus for picking this up. Alright, there should be a ship coming in from New Paris in the next hour. There’s a wanted paedophile serial killer on board, codename ‘Lion’, and he may have a young female accomplice with him. Take her alive if you can, TWEP him. Alright, I’ll log that for you.”
“Solstice, this is Jansen with Station Analysis. We’ve got confirmation that the Thresher drop ship has been disabled on its way out of orbit. We’ll be sending you in to board it. Yes… I appreciate you’ve been sitting there for two and a half hours doing nothing… no, that doesn’t qualify as hazard pay. I’ll remind you not to swear at me if you want help in the future… apology accepted. Good luck.”
His stomach rumbled, and he laid his hand on his belly, glancing at the time on his Finance Chip, not quite time yet. Sheila reproached him, waggling her finger and tutting. He sighed and tapped up the next call.
“Operative Espada no, for the fiftieth time, we have no reports of a six-fingered mutant infiltrating downtown and rising in the ranks of the criminal gangs. I am also tasked, according to your file, to remind you that you are a Stormer and, thus, have no father. I am also required to remind you that you have missed two psychological evaluation appointments and that if you miss your next one… tomorrow at eleven-hundred standard time… a BPN will be issued for your forcible keeping of the next appointment after that… I don’t know what you just said, but it sounded obscene… good day.
Who’d be a call officer? Really? Oh… yes… people who didn’t want to be unemployed.
“Cereal Killaz, got some preliminary information from Solstice about that Thresher drop pod in your zone. Apparently, it contained a sleeper agent who may not even know, herself, that she’s a Thresher agent. You’ve probably only got a window of twenty minutes to track down a ‘stranger’ in that area before she moves on. Don’t envy you… yeah, heh, yeah… good luck. Ask Stacy if we’re still on for tonight? Thanks, over and out.”
He was really hungry now and the screens were hurting his eyes, he took a deep breath and decided to risk it.
Postmortem Studios 