Chapter Thirty-Nine

I twisted around, dragging myself to my feet and staring after her, my heart in my mouth as Reign flew out over six stories of metal and pursuing monster machines…

Only to catch onto a post between one of the slowly swinging bodies, connected to their ankles, and then flipped herself up.

She was like a lanton, leaping from brace to brace, not a care for the drop below, until she could stand comfortably atop a slowly rising section of bodies.

The one that she’d grabbed first was shaking and making gargling noises, but beyond the shock, didn’t seem too badly disturbed, and I winced, imagining what the impact of me, fully armed and armored would do to those chains and braces.

I squinted left and right, searching for a solid link to jump to, afraid I’d snap someone’s sodding feet off and have the brace come free, but there was nothing.

I backed up, still searching…

…then the whine of the miniguns spinning up rose from below and I was running before my mind finished processing it. I jumped, bracing one foot on a corner section and the other on the top of the gantry, then flung myself out into space, my arms reaching desperately as the scream of minigun rounds tracked after me, carving the gantry apart.

My hands reached out, fingers extending and… I fucking missed.

Where Reign had leapt across like a goddamn lanton, I plunged past, my fingers inches from the post I’d been aiming for.

I hit the next level a few meters further on and down, smashing full bodied into the gently swaying and unsuspecting victim before me, the weight, the unprepared impact alone causing bones to break.

I grabbed onto them, half sliding down their torso, ripping cables and tubing free, liquids and solids cascaded from the broken connections, as did electricity, sparking wildly as I dragged myself up the unfortunate figure, hissing as I tried to ignore the possibly fatal damage I’d done them.

Shots rang out again, the miniguns falling silent as more and more rounds were fired downrange, and I hissed and cursed, dragging myself up, reaching…

And a hand appeared from a sudden blur as Todds stealth field dropped, the mad bastard standing atop two of the swinging forms with a handgun in one hand, firing down past me, as he helped me up with the other one.

“Fucking fucks…” I groaned, dragging myself up and planting a boot on the shoulder of the spread eagled figure below me, using that to level myself up and onto the frame, figuring the faster I was off them the better. “…shit am so, so—” I started to apologize, only to have Todds shift for a second and shoot my unwilling climbing assistant in the side of the head.

“What the hell?” I asked him, shocked.

“What?” he asked, confused, then grinning. “You thought they were alive?”

“They’re fucking moving.”

“Specters after all, boss,” he assured me, shaking his head. “The whole farm, specters being hooked up and drained, the machines protect it and it looks like the others load it and keep them going. No clue what’s going on, but it’s a fucking weird place!”

“The machines…?” I asked, looking down and swaying as I tried to catch my balance, shifting and grabbing the rotating system overhead.

“You need catch the rhythm, boss,” Todds said. “This row is going up and back, they’re on wheels or something, so the level above are going clockwise, but you’re seeing the bottom, they’re going past you and back behind as they lift, while the one we’re on is at the top of its arc, heading ahead. Just work like they’re monkey-bars from when you were in basic.”

“Swing from them?” I asked, vaguely getting the gist, even if I didn’t know the name.

“You move from one to the other, feet going in one direction, arms the other, it’ll take you a minute, we had them in the scout obstacle courses, so I’m ahead of you that’s all!”

He stepped down onto the rising next form, took the time to shoot the occupant in the head, then resumed firing on the machine below.

It was still coming, the miniguns tracking us, but unable or unwilling to fire while we hid amongst its charges.

Reign’s rifle boomed from somewhere overhead and it staggered, sparks rising, before it started to climb again, another round slamming into it a few seconds later and starting black smoke curling up from somewhere deep inside.

The machine clambered two more meters, as the smoke grew thicker, before it shut down, sagging and hanging from the section of gantry it’d been traversing.

A final shot from Reign, this time at a tentacle, and the body fell, three stories, straight down to land atop its half built companion.

Both laid there, silent, as I shifted slowly, keeping my balance as our row slid further and further back.

“This way, boss,” Todds called to me, stepping into the middle of the two ‘wheels’ of forms, and grabbing onto a rising post. He clung to it, lifting up into the air, grinning down at me as he was carried higher.

I looked about for an alternative, then sighed and moved to the same spot, grabbing the next post and clinging on, trying to ignore the figure who I literally dangled below.

They thrashed and made muffled noises, but as close as I was now, and paying attention?

They were clearly not alive, not in the usual sense.

The body was grey, not the somewhat solid healthy grey that some orcs had either, more the ‘I’m a single step from rotting’ grey.

While they were clean, more or less, presumably they were jetted down before they were loaded into the system, they were still bodies, and I was damn thankful for the helmet’s air filters.

I dangled for about thirty seconds as I was lifted out and around, before I managed to brace my feet atop the next frame, and then Gessh was there, her hand reaching down to grab mine as I rolled round.

One more level we ‘rode’ the specters for, until we were at the roof, and the turrets all around us were dead. Here handholds, presumably ‘just in case’ were readily available and once again I gritted my teeth and dragged myself across.

Dropping onto the walkway next to Luna, I shook my head, blowing out a long breath and moving quickly back from the edge, a sick feeling rising steadily in me as I tried not to look over the side.

“You okay, boss?” she asked, and I nodded and tried to wave her off. “Boss?”

“I’m fine.” I lied. “I just…” I took a deep breath, then looked around, seeing the others were watching me as well. “Fuck’s sake, alright look, I threw myself off a cliff in my armor alright? When I was shot down in the fingers, to make sure nobody found my friends? I powered down my armor and wiped the locational data, then rebooted and threw myself off a cliff to hide it.”

“Right?” Reign said, having heard this before.

“Well, there was a storm going on and I didn’t realize that the ground below was another cliff, and another. I fell and bounced for a long way, a hell of a long way, and that’s why my mods all needed replacing. I was seriously broken up, my suit was trashed, hell they almost left the suit on the mountainside, destroyed it with thermite grenades, that’s how badly I miscalculated, and after that?”

I shrugged and gestured to the space below us. “I don’t have an issue in an aircab, but like this?” I shook my head. “I don’t like it, that’s all.”

“Understandable.” Todds whistled. “If I fell off a cliff and almost died I think I’d stay away from high places too.”

“Yeah, well.” I shrugged, before squeezing Reign’s hand, as it found its way into my own. “Thanks everyone, but we need to find out what the fuck is going on here.”

If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

We looked around, finding a seriously thick and well protected door at the very end of the walkway, previously flanked by two turrets, but now very much alone.

“Todds,” I said. “Open that door.”

“Yessir,” he said, moving ahead, pulling out a small scanner and getting to work on the door.

“You okay?” Reign asked me quietly, moving in close as I leant against the wall, pointedly not looking down.

“Yeah,” I assured her, getting control of myself and nodding. “Honestly, don’t worry.”

“I am,” she told me. “So are the others, Luna and Gessh sent me direct messages asking me to distract you.”

“I’m fine.” I pushed off the wall and moved to the edge, gripping the handrail and looking out over the slowly rotating mass before us. “Who the fuck would do something like this?” I muttered. “And more to the point, fucking why? ”

“Specter research groups.” Reign shrugged. “Sure it’s weird, but there’s a few of them.”

“Like the ones we sold the Banshee to,” I said. “But why this?”

“Let’s find out,” Todds said from a few feet away, and I realized I’d said that last bit on the team, tac-net, rather than in private to Reign.

The door clunked as locks disengaged, and slid back, alarms going off again, as someone tried to stop the door opening, but Todds snorted and overrode it.

Seconds later the massive door, clearly designed to hold off an army of specters, slid back easily, and we stepped in, moving into a clean, well-lit corridor that led to…

…to a small apartment complex.

An apartment complex filled with terrified lab-tech types, and a single security guard who nodded a greeting to us from the floor, his guns set aside neatly as he waited.

“What the fuck is this shit?” I asked walking in and looking around.

“It’s not worth my fucking life is what it is,” the security guard said. “I surrender. Under Artem City Law, as a formally surrendered…”

“Yeah, yeah.” I waved at him. “You didn’t shoot at me, you’re fine.” I hesitated. “Wait, were you controlling the…”

“We woke up when the alarms went off,” he said quickly. “The whole system is automated, we’re here to monitor it and to make sure that the traps are emptied daily.”

“Traps?” I asked, glancing at one wall of the main office, then shaking my head in disbelief. There were dozens of capture traps along the lower sections on screens, and a handful of them were flashing as ‘full’ with a machine like the ones we’d fought earlier moving between them, firing on the helpless specters that were caught in a pit, before dragging them out with a tentacle and locking them down onto its back.

I shook my head in disgust as the screens showed more being captured, while still other machines loaded them into frames, attaching them to the lower levels.

“What the absolute fuckery is going on here?” I whispered in disbelief.

“How long have you got?” one of the researchers asked, biting his lower lip and looking from one of us to the next. “Look, I’m sorry you were fired on, but you broke in here, and…”

“In an abandoned section of the Undercity,” I pointed out. “We’re specter hunters.”

“Hunters?” one of them piped up. “Why?”

“Because they’re fucking dangerous?” I replied, non-plussed. “You know, the whole ‘rip your mods out and eat your face’ thing?”

“That’s a myth,” the speaker snapped, moving forwards, dressed in long pants, a black floor length lab coat and a bright red top that read ‘ask me about my…’ and was then crossed out as he glared at us. “You people are only adding to the problems faced by the Ambulatory Confused! With the problems they face already? You spreading misinformation about them so you can be paid for murder disgusts me!”

“Murder?” I muttered, stunned, as Reign started to laugh.

“The fucking ‘Ambulatory Confused’…” she barked out, before shaking her head. “Are you for fucking real?”

“Jared, we’ve discussed this…” one of the others said and the idiot cut them off.

“Yes, we have and your bigotry disgusts me! They’re confused, that’s all, they’re only dangerous if you startle them, who knows what still lives inside there, and these… these jack-booted thugs have been executing them as if they were rabid animals!”

“You need a fucking reality check, my son,” I said.

“You mind if I get up off the floor?” the security guard asked calmly, and I looked to Gessh and nodded towards him.

“Up you get friend.” Gessh said cheerfully, checking him over and making sure he had no other weapons on him, before collecting his up and she went to sit on a seat in the corner, killing the alarms as he passed the main console.

“So, okay, you’re doing research on specters,” I said, dismissing the foaming idiot as unimportant, and speaking to the first of the researchers to talk. “You look like you’re a bright lad with a sensible head on his shoulders, care to fill me in?”

“It’s classified!” Jared snapped.

“It’s an NDA,” a woman said with a sigh, rubbing at the bridge of her nose as she removed a pair of goggles. “Look, you don’t seem like you’re murderers and rapists, which is great, because I had neither of those on my to-do list for today. Can we assume you’re civilized and this can be written off to a misunderstanding?”

“We were shot,” Reign pointed out. “Repeatedly.”

“You broke in,” she countered.

“We’re working for the city of Artem, conducting a licensed sweep of the area, searching for specters,” Reign fired back. “We’re supposed to be here, are you?”

“We’re registered,” she replied, then winced. “But I think the project was supposed to be a lot smaller than it grew to, and yeah, it’s under an NDA, so it’s not on the public servers, so whoever sent you probably didn’t know about it.”

She bit her lip, then nodded.

“How about this, we’ve got a load of specters that are deemed too damaged to be of use, they’re stunned and sealed in the vault, we didn’t want to kill them, but we can’t use them either. How about a compromise?”

“We’re listening,” I said, leaning against the wall.

“You clean them out, do… you know. What you do,” she said, wincing as Jared drew a deep breath, only to go quiet as Luna drew her pistol and inserted it into his mouth.

“Oh, I’m sorry, did you have something you wanted to say?” she asked, glaring at him.

“-Gno-“ He choked on the barrel.

“Good boy. Remember that feeling, next time there’ll be more, and you’re already running a serious risk of heavy metal poisoning.”

He frowned as she removed the gun and Gessh helpfully added in the details.

“She means you keep your fucking mouth shut while the adults are talking, or she’s going to shoot you.”

“Ummmm.” Jared closed his eyes and nodded, shaking a little.

“And no pissing on the floor,” I snapped. “I hate it when people do that.” I shook my head, sighing, then pulled my helmet off, setting it down on the table nearby as I took a seat. “Alright, explain the vault and what the fuck is going on down here, do that, and maybe some coffee, and we’ll see.”

‎