The Rhino 6x6 troop transport was a relic from a war long past. The tires spun up rooster-tails of mud as the man in green focused. A whistling sound in the distance marked the first bombs reaching their targets. An strange moment of silence was followed by the sound of metallic whip-cracks.
Karla bounced on the floorboards, the mud making it slick, and her lack of limbs making it difficult to keep still. She slid out from under the man’s boot and towards the back, thumping against the rear hatch. Men and women cursed, but didn’t move to stop her. They were too busy holding on as the vehicle bounced and skidded into the forest. She could now see Ironwood trees outside the truck’s armored glass as they passed deeper into the woods. In the sky above, she saw many small objects drawing close. Appearing like pinpoints of dark stars, small teardrop-shaped objects began raining upon the forest like a storm.
She stared upwards as a bomb landed nearby. The small warhead struck a tree, firing a sphere of energy instead of an explosion. The ironwood tree melted and fused at the heat, its limbs sheering off, leaving its trunk a glowing candle that slowly folded into itself.
She somehow wasn’t afraid, even as another teardrop fell nearby, turning the wall of the vehicle red-hot and searing the back and arms of several clan member harnesses who sat against it. The Rhino whined and squealed as motors overworked themselves, and as bearings began to seize. She somehow was unwilling to die, and yet unafraid of it. She felt numb.
“Into the valley!” The man in green shouted, holding his face that now sported a nasty scarlet burn. “Get us into one of the shafts!”
Repeated silences and cracks of Kite Bombs echoed overhead, but most impacted the upper canopy. By now there was a trail of molten ironwood trees that followed the Rhino through the rough track. The truck slipped down a deep embankment, exposed for just a moment, a moment taken advantage of by a single teardrop.
An explosion ripped into the front of the truck, the sphere of glowing energy grew as it passed through the vehicle. Most of the clanmembers had moved away from that side after receiving burns, but now the energy penetrated the cabin, burning and melting weapons, gear, flesh. The right side of the truck collapsed, the suspension melted, the tires somehow burnt and flat, but functioning. Karla had a good view now into the undercarriage, as several holes had melted through the right-hand side of the vehicle. Ahead, a dark hole in a cliff face grew larger.
“Punch it!” The man in green shouted.
“Aaaah!” the driver shouted back as she urged the vehicle faster.
Karla watched as the suspension collapsed and crumbled in realtime. First the rear wheel was left behind, then the middle wheel folded and tore away, leaving that side to weave and bob unsupported. The truck made it to the entrance of the cave just as the front gave out and dug into the soft soil. The truck spun into the cave, then rolled. Karla slid helplessly through one of the new holes and was flung into the air.
Karla felt gravity leave her, then the earth meet her. She landed heavily at the entrance of the cave, sliding to a stop as the truck kept rolling. There was a moment of quiet as things settled and stopped moving. Karla stared up into the evening sky just outside the cave, just as a small black dot drew close. A single teardrop hammered into the cave entrance above her, shattering the cave entrance as it detonated, and sending a wave of hot energy over her.
She screamed internally.
Despite her body being mostly unfeeling, she still felt pain, somewhere inside of her. She still ached and itched and burned as the Kite Bomb assaulted her.
The cliff face above her cracked and shifted. The extreme heat broke up the rock, sending its mass onto the entrance below. Karla's world thundered with tons of stone and gravel, then lay in silence as everything dimmed to black.
Karla laid there for some time, aching and buried in gravel. She heard sounds of the clan members clambering out, providing first aid, and talking for some time before anyone found her. A hand brushed away gravel off her face.
“Yes!” Delta jumped as he saw her. “She’s here! Though, I think she took a Kite Bomb to the face!”
“Ha! Serves her right!” A voice shouted back. “Let me see.” The man in orange strolled up, bandages on his arms and face. His slight grin widened as he saw her. He let out a long whistle. “Yep. That’ll do it. I told you we should have just left it behind.”
“You know Olivia would still want her. Nobody’s captured one of Stoke’s creations before, not after that bomb goes of in their heads.”
The man stepped uneasily to one side. “And… you’re sure you disabled that?”
Delta nodded and crouched down. “It should be safe… oh! She’s alive!”
Karla turned her head weakly in his direction. Her torso was still buried, but a quick tug from the boy and she was free.
“Are you sure that’s alive?” the man frowned. “I mean, it was a torso before, but now that looks pretty fucked up.”
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Karla looked down. Her ribs were exposed. Plated in steel, they reflected the small lights carried by the surviving clan members. She could see her spine still in its casing, now hanging limply below. She wished to see more, and was rewarded when her field of view expanded. Now she could really see how damaged she was. There really wasn’t much left. She had no skin left, and any important organics she had in her torso must have been replaced with mechanical alternatives. She allowed her head to drop back onto the ground.
How am I okay with this? Why isn’t this freaking me out? She knew this was a terrifying, awful reality, and yet, she couldn’t bring herself to be upset at this. A memory of being frightened surfaced. Of waking up to missing limbs and a broken body. Another memory, this time, more was missing, more was broken. Each memory, she grew more and more numb. She realized she hadn’t been whole in quite some time. Her harnesses kept her moving, but only a small set of devices were required to keep her alive.
[Refit required. Refit required.]
[Oxygen-Hydrox interfaces: 1 remaining functional-40%. Hydrox circulator: functional-85%]
What that meant, she didn’t know. But she held onto the words ‘functional.’
“Haaah, she might not make it.” Delta looked her over. “She has a punctured lung, but I don’t even know what material that’s made out of. Maybe one of the tire patches would work for now.”
“Oh? So you’re playing doctor with the corpse are you?” One of the two female snipers strolled up, gun a melted mess. “Just let it die. Olivia would understand, and the corpse would be worthwhile anyways.”
Delta shook his head. “She told me to bring one back alive. She said it was imperative to have one still operating.”
The other sniper in black stepped close, a twin of the first. She looked over Karla and laughed. “Damn, even burnt her tits off. Are you sure you won’t be doing more harm than good?”
Delta pushed through the small crowd, opened several hatches on the wreck, and came back with a tire repair kit. “Okay Karla,” he said as he crouched down beside her. “I’m going to try and patch you up. Please don’t do anything… abrupt.”
Karla slowly nodded at him.
The sniper twins laughed. One teased him. “Oooh. You even named your pet?”
Delta grunted as he tried to clean off the white fluid that stained the artificial lung. “She said her name was Karla.”
“Really? I thought these things were grown in a lab? All test-tubes and robotics and such.”
“I don’t know. She said that was her name. If we can bring her back to Olivia, we’ll find out more, okay?”
The group watched as Delta worked, his hands growing slick with the white liquid that shimmered under light.
[Oxygen-Hydrox interfaces: 2 remaining functional-75%. Hydrox reserves: 20%]
Karla suddenly took in a deep breath. She hadn’t realized she had been taking smaller, panting breaths this entire time, not that she had any control over it. Her mind seemed to think this was an improvement. She mentally thanked the boy as she laid there.
“Now what?” Delta stood up and wiped his hands on a rag. “Is there a holdfast on this route?”
The man in green stepped up to the group, glared at Karla, then at the rest. “This tunnel leads through several hundred miles of caves and mines. Some of it man-made, but a lot of it isn’t. We should be able to get out of here once we reach the next shaft about ten miles in. We’ll have to work together for now to get through this. The exit should drop us off in the mountains, and then we’ll finally be done with this shit and go our separate ways.”
“Aw, are you tired of us already?” A sniper smiled at the man. “You know, the next time we meet might not be so sweet.”
He grunted and turned away. Delta took some straps and wrapped them around Karla as the group packed up and began to set out. He was about to throw her onto his back when he seemed to remember the display.
“Here, I’d like to ask you a few questions while we walk.” He plugged in a cable directly into his suit. “Is that okay?”
A small screen inside his helmet lit up after a few moments. “Fine, I have questions too.”
“Excellent. We can take turns!” Delta said far too cheerfully as he picked her up and attached the straps to his harness. Once she was cinched tight, he began following the group off through the tunnel. Karla stared at the retreating darkness, unable to look ahead. “First off. You didn’t sound to fond of Stoke, wasn’t he your creator?”
The text box filled with more obscenities. Delta adjusted several dials and the background noise quietened. “He put me into a trance of some kind, a dream. I wake up over two hundred years later and I’m a torso.”
Delta laughed. “You don’t seem too beat up about it.”
“I think I knew, or realized several times. I woke up, but I could never leave the dream.” Karla thought back. She definitely had some scattered memories of waking, finding herself in pieces, finding men in red coats putting her back together. “What happened to the supers?” she asked.
“Supers? What an old term! If my master hadn’t told me about it, I doubt many people would even know what you mean.” Delta huffed as he clambered over a fallen chunk of rock. “Most people refer to them as gifts or bloodlines now. Those in a clan all have one. Mine is a strange offshoot of the Lightning God clan. As you can probably guess, my family all can project lightning, but I was strange. I always could feel the flow of electricity, but got overwhelmed with heavier stuff. That’s probably why Olivia made a deal with my grandfather to take me in as her disciple.”
“Olivia?”
“Oh, you don’t know? She’s like, the non-church version of William Stoke. She kind of jumps between clans when they aren’t fighting, working on anything that excites her. You’ll meet her soon.”
“Shut it!” The man in green hissed. The group crouched down and waited. There was a thick silence around them as they stayed there, only the distant sound of dripping water interrupted it in any way.
Karla could see something drop down into the tunnel. Her vision was good. Even in this darkness she could make out the four legs, the strange shape, the faintly glowing eyes.
“Delta,” she texted. He didn't seem to notice.
The creature grew nearer, its rat-like nose at odds with its long-limbed body. It looked like a large naked man on all fours as it silently moved. It looked dangerous.
“Delta! Behind you! Look behind you you idiot!”
The group huddled and waited. Karla had had enough. She was able to push her head forward a few millimeters, and then swung it back as hard as she could. There was thwack noise, followed quickly by a yelp from the boy.
“Ow! What the hell?” He turned, only to see the creature stepping into the light. “Behind! Behind!”
A pair of submachine guns sprang out of his sleeves and into his hands. He sprayed wildly, but with such a large creature in such a small tunnel, it was hard to miss. The light and sound were enormous in the enclosed space, but Karla couldn’t see the results. All she saw was the other three creatures approaching from the now-unnoticed front.