>> Mayhem

The Fragment Of The Hand tears apart everything that exists. Reducing priceless relics to Utter Nothingness.

Not dust. Not ash. Not splinters, or char.

Not atoms. Nor energy.

NOTHINGNESS.

As if they never were at all.

And somehow I see it happening. As if those unreal Eyes In The Void see it for me. Painting the surfaces of the world with dark, slick, oils and etching their edges in a BLUE that screams of utter annihilation.

As if The Hand were already ripping at the stuff of Reality around me, eager to consume it.

I turn, and the doorway is scrubbed from reality.

I take a step, and the well of destruction burns all things away. Taking the hallway. Annihilating the dead turret. The lights. The projectors. The walls. Concrete struts burning even as they bend toward me like fake rubber props.

Rubble tumbling down from above. Bending at right angles. Falling into holes in the universe.

Spacetime itself is dying. The laws of Reality, broken apart.

Drained away by the eternal, ravening, void.

Eaten by The Eater Of All Things.

And I just don't care.

Ruin follows my path through the facility. My senses growing with every step. Latching on to beads of life and light, as if I have become the ultimate predator.

Tufty's broken lifeglow hangs in the aching, inviting, expanse of eternity. A candle with two warring halves.

Snuff it out.

I stop at the thought.

"HELL NO." I snarl at the snarling Void. "I control YOU."

Instead I let my focus broaden. Using the eerie new senses to thread my grip through the tower. Hunting. Seeking. Devouring-

No Badger. No Demon. No Zipper. They're gone. Following orders.

Relief floods my cold and aching heart. Which flutters and stops, for just a moment.

But Princess..... Where is she?

WHERE!?

I heave a breath. Cannot.... Cannot sense her. I cannot feel her. She is....

Dead? Really dead?

An AI?

No matter. I'll eradicate this entire tower from existence.

I can find her, now. I feel the flow of energy in this place. The forge at its heart, a bare mimicry of some.....

I frown.

Some.... other Forge?

A nameless thing that exists in.... opposition to The Hands?

The shock is so intense, so primal, that the destruction around me ceases. Instantly. Blinding me once more, as true emptiness return to wipe my vision bare.

Vanishing all sense of the oily nightmare.... Nothingness.... that presses, so tightly, against what is Real.

With stuttering breath, I reach out touch the warped claws of plastic rebar curling toward my head.

No. Not curling at all.

They haven't really moved. Nothing has.

Instead, reality is torn. Ripped. And folded.

As if all the parts of a single drawing were cut from their surface, and twisted together.

A snarl of physical space.

Shit. What if I move, and find myself in two places at once? Will I be cut in half, or-

Does it even matter? Now?

SHE TOOK BADGER.

I smash my left fist into concrete, and that precise fraction of the universe simply.... Ends.

Princess will. PAY. She will PAY.

And, for her, there will be no tomorrow.

"Re- Re- Re-" My SMG stutters. The signal frayed. Bent around right-angles in reality, so words arrive twice or never at all. "-cess- Located. Have. I."

"Shit.... You got Princess??" I heave for breath. Swaying on my feet as grains of the cracked floor pressing up against them. The only sensation I feel, except for the ache in my body. The pain of..... well, everything.

My left hand is..... just numb.

Is it the real Polybius? It must be. I just Ended every bit of enemy tek in this hallway.

"Re- Re- Re-" The gun stutters. "Re- Re- Re-turn."

Oh Hell Yeah. I can do that.

I can do that like an absolute bastard.

The wall beside me meets oncoming Nothingness with TEETH. Burnt by The Void, and ripped from the stuff of Being.

Even so, I feel my first massive, hideous, SCREAM of resistance. Not just from my shard of The Hand, or my own mind, but from reality itself.

The Power of The Hand is unending. Limitless. Bigger than itself, and me, and all that IS.

But It can barely flow. As if forced to drip through a too-narrow hole.

A hole shaped like the fragment.

Worse.... I can feel it eating me as it eats the world. Not just my body, but something far deeper than that. Wicking me away, in drips and droplets, and filling itself into my place.

The more I force it, the more likely it is just to swallow me whole.

But, why would I care about that?

I wipe away walls, and crates, and all that stands in My Way. Humming merry madness as I go.

The journey back is gonna be short. And the more I Devour-

Eyes. Eyes in the Ink. Eyes that do not exist.

-the less actual distance there is between here an there. If I really work it, I know I could make the whole trip in a single step. But there would be a freaking cost to that-

The Dark is not dark. The Dark is The Thing That Does Not Exist.

The Thing In The Void.

-little maneuver. Better to just walk it.

Another hallway, and then I stop. A violent grin cracking lips that lack mercy. "Hey Princess!"

"You.....!?" The voice whispers, thrumming my void-sight. "How are you DOING that!? How are you not..... GONE!?"

"Ya poisoned my lil brother." I say, conversationally. "Ya poisoned me."

"Everyone else who touched it, just-"

"Ain't no point tellin' secrets to the dead." I crick my neck the other way. "Y'never did learn that. Did ya?"

I hear the hitch in her breath. Imagining her eyes go sharp. "Megaxx is eating your brain. You won't last long-"

Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

"Don't need long."

The walls CEASE TO BE, and I step directly out - onto our crystal-covered battleground. The ruins of a metal war splayed out in every pose imaginable. My eyeless sight settling on the fluttering little flame at their heart.

Absolute mayhem thunders at the heart of the factory. A war. A carnage. A thousand-strong army pouring over the edge of the platform. Tufty a blur in its midst. Hopping from head to raggedy-doll head. Leaving nothing but broken bodies in his wake.

Every few seconds, technology simply explodes.

Sundering around him.

And I feel pathways crack the surface of the universe before me. Actual branches in the flow of Time itself, slipping away from me like silvery threads in the stuff of existence.

Not mere choices, but Choices.

Maybe they're real. Maybe the Megaxx has already fried me. I.... so hard to think. To remember. To string one thought to the next.

But who cares anymore.

'Burn the cat.' The Left Hand sings in mine.

'Save the cat.' Echoes a mirrored path.

'Eat The World'.

'Save them all.'

I stagger as the threads explode into fractal patterns, screaming off into the future. The past. Hammering my broken mind with things no moral was ever meant to see. With-

Indescribable beauty, and unfathomable dread.

My head is-

-shattering-

EYES. UNSEEN EYES IN THE VOID.

AND BEYOND IT.

EYES THAT ARE NOT EYES. EYES THAT SEE-

Can't-

I tear that shard of The Left Hand from my own and slam, visor first, into the tile. Holding the squirming.... parasite in my right so it cannot activate. Yet its crystalline feelers grope and grip and try to wrap around my fingers.

Burning my mind with ravening Blackness etched and edged by threads of Blue.

The True Dark of The Void. The Outer Dark. The Dark that Hungers.

The Dark we all feel, clawing at the edges of all things.

Waiting. To. Get. IN.

It's not a matter of 'maybe' or 'if'. It's a matter of 'how soon'.

Flooding all of existence with an ink so deep, and quiet, and cold, and HUNGRY that all things will drown.

Even The Sun, and Stars, if they really exist.

I lie there, for a breathless moment. Fighting the urge to gnaw my own flesh. To rip into it, deep. To eat of that which is me and mine. As if some part of that Outer Dark had slipped its way into me.....

Primordial. Endless. Insatiable.

Filling my body, and burning the me away. Ever so slowly. Licking the flesh of my being with a razor-toothed tongue. Snapping it up, and making it part of that NOTHINGNESS.

What even is that Thing out there? That Thing that is REAL and yet NOT REAL?

Can it be touched? Or felt?

No. I don't think it can even be named.

It is.... everywhere. And yet it is not.

It is Nothing, with teeth.

The very Thing we build our lights, and walls, and windows to keep out. Hunkering there, in our little candle of glowlight, pretending we are brave.... when we are not.

Because we know it's watching us.

Not in our thinking minds, but deeper. Deeper.

Down in The Dark that exists even inside us.

I push myself over onto my front, crawling toward Tufty. Knowing I have to.... do.... something?

What?

Kami.

If she sees. If she sees him.... loose out there it could be.... bad. Yes. Very bad.

Pathways shimmer.

Join him. Kill him. Let him rampage. Let him kill Princess. Or do nothing. As easy as falling flat on my face. Or letting The Left Hand Devour and Consume.... and.....

No. That feels wrong, somehow.

As if the universe is meant to matter. As if I am, and I should protect Tufty. As if-

Armour sparks and screams as I slam a hand into the tile, pushing myself up. Hissing and snarling.

An unsteady step. A faltering arm, grabbing at nothing.

My knees hit the ground. My helmet, right after.

I lie there. The former storm of my raging heart, stilling. If only for a second.

I feel so.... cold. So.... done. So over.....

My claws curl. "Omega..... Protocol..... Spook......"

But nothing happens. My implant is dead, except my hearing. I'm out of battleStim.

Maybe I could just.... stay here and die for a bit. That'd be-

"Spook."

"This.... real?" I stare into The Void. "Is anythin'? Or am I just.... Driftin' in the dark.....?"

One of Zipper's little Guardians arises from the murk of Nothingness. Outlined in Blue. Shining with quantum signals like a star.

"Polybius?"

"The others have found an exit. You must follow."

"No." I shiver. "Shit. You see all this? The......Things in The Void? Things That...." I drop to a whisper. "Do Not Exist?"

"You are hallucinating." It rumbles with undertones of unreality. "The brainHeal will not stabilise you for long. You must follow the orb. The others can save you-"

My neck twists at an unnatural angle. "Liar. Ain't no savin' me now."

"Spook. I have already isolated two methods to-"

"Still lyin'." I ram myself up, onto a shaky elbow. "Shit..... Least I got n' audience now. Wanna see me go out with a bang?"

"It was not a lie."

My heart stutters again, as if it's about to stop, and I hammer a hand into the ground. A ghostly spark of absolute RAGE flickering to life, deep inside me.

Boiling from the primal, hateful, animal inside.

"SAVE IT!" I snap my tail through echoes of The Void. "NOW. Where. Is. PRINCESS!?"

Quantum signals spin up into curlicues of liquid information in The Void. A thousand wordless voices somehow bleeding from cyberspace.

Mingling. Mangling. Merging together.

"Compiling all scans and footage."

"15% of total Factory cabling mapped."

"Extrapolating connections. Estimating power grid layout."

"Estimating data-cable layout. Calculating......"

The signal, the data, it's so beautiful I could- EAT IT-

"Updating battleMap."

"Level Zero - The Factory. Level One - Automated Parts Warehouse. Artefacts. Physical Archive. Level Two - Crew Quarters, Offices, Mess Hall. Level Three - Executive Offices, The 'Glass Balcony' Expo Room-"

"Tracing Likely Mainframe Connections. Eight potential targets determined. Narrowing-"

Could I, though? Without eating the drone? Without eating Polybius?

Do I even care if I consume it all?

I stand on shaky legs. Gnawing my lip bloody inside my mask.

Princess faked the voice of Polybius, but could it fake this?

This war of millions of voices. Echoes of the true Machine Mind, off in the Endless Storm.

I reach out to the aura of signal. My fingers splayed.

"Targets located." States the true voice of Polybius, jerking them back.

"Where-!?" I snarl, slugging a step. Echoes of Tufty flashing in The Void. There and-not there. Quick as a knife. I take another - claws kicking the head of a raggedy doll.

I touch it with the pad of my foot. Sense it. Then, step on it. Over it. Heading directly for the edge.

"Wait!" Princess crackles with electrical fury. "Wait! What are you doing!?"

"Five possible targets identified." Polybius slams over her with unrelenting, unstoppable, force. "Hypothesis: destroy Mainframe Nodes located at cardinal positions to sever factory control. Destroy Primary Mainframe to destroy Princess AI."

I stutter forward too fast, and fall. Armoured elbow cracking tile. "Where!?" I choke. "No! Never mind! TUFTY!"

"The cat will not be fast enough." Whisper the voices, singing in cyberspace. Whirling equations of survival, and death, and destruction.

"Probability slim."

"Running fractalized Battle Simulation. Mapping all possible choices."

"Megaxx will do irreparable damage within-"

"I know!" I scream at it, stumbling back to the floor.

Soft footsteps. A whisper of tail. "Good Boys Come When They Are Called." Says the thing that speaks with Tufty's mouth.

My head thrums as I force myself to focus. To fight my way past the need to simply.... stop hurting him. Stop treating him like a doll. Even if it kills me. "Good Boys Do As They Are Told."

But we need him. We need.... this thing in his body.

"Mummy Says...." I spit, hating every word. "The Bad Girl Is Playing Hide And Seek! But.... Mummy Has Laid A Trail of Breadcrumbs For You To Find Her!!!!"

"I Love Playing Hide And Seek." Tufty chants, without emotion.

"Go Find Her!!"

There's a rush, and he's gone.

"Pol! Tell Kami not to bloody shoot 'im! Give him Breadcrums! He can whack the closest nodes! Tell Kami to blow the rest!" My hand meets broken robot, and I lean on it. "Zipper! Get me t'the Mainframe. Now!"

I will end this. And her.

I feel the massive hand of Mister Tickles close around me, and then I'm flying.

Directly across the Factory, and up. Up.

Directly opposite the place that the Fake directed me to.

That absolute-

"Third Floor." Polybius states. "Dismantle it."

"Right, mate!" Zipper booms over a massive tannoy, and the world is rocked by a rains of crystal glass.

"Nuh-huh! You can't fiiind me!! You aren't even clooose!" Princess stutters in the blind dark as Kami's massive rifle howls in the Void above.

BOOOM!

The first shot screams past my face. Cutting air as I imagine it arcing out across the factory. Diving down-

A second, titanic, clap of impact and a quailing note of dismay pierces the voice of Princess. Genuine, and utterly shaken. "No..... No you can't!"

"I think you'll bloody find." I whisper, as internal walls crash into cubes of ice. "We bloody can."

My mental map of the factory struggles into view. Clinging to existence as my aching head thumps.

It's so obvious, in hindsight.

We ran left, out of the glass-bottomed ballroom. Third floor. Right along the longest edge of the factory.

And Princess got scared.

She saw us headed directly towards her servers.

So she got creative. She trapped us in CEO Central by having her bears punch through the walls. Or ceiling. Or whatever. Then she broke in, and gave us a convenient way out. One that led directly back the way we came.

Everything she's done has been about keeping us away from-

"IT'S THE OTHER END! THE SHORT WALL! AT THE END OF THE FACTORY!" I scream. And Tickles turns ninety degrees. Swaying me.

Massive steps crash beneath me. Above us, I hear Kami's rifle cycling up.

"No!! No!!! It's not in there!" Princess shrieks. "It's not-"

Glass roars. Not a single window shattering, but an icy waterfall exploding in endless torrents.

I wish I could see it.

"Mate!! It's her! It's really her!" Zipper screams, ripping something free of the ground. "It's her!"

"NO!" Princess wails. "NO! NO! I'M SORRY! I-"

But The Left Hand doesn't care about my weakness. Or pity. Or guilt. Or flesh. Or the glitter-stained dreams of Princess.

It bores its threads into my finger, jerking me up like a puppet.

And The Void opens. Painting the room in oily darkness, and violent BLUE. So deep, it seems bottomless. Endless.

Devour. Everything.

It isn't even words. Or want. Or intent. It is simply The Way Things Must Be. And it infects my mind like Megaxx. Biting away at me.

Drinking me dry of my will to resist.

I step off of the hand of the monster - regarding the maze of strange, nodular, pillars beyond it. Things from an time even older, and stranger, than even the factory bellow.

An antique of antiques. Almost originTek.

"No! Please!! It isn't fair! I was only playing!" Princess whispers. "You're just a [Pilot]! You can't control that thing!"

"Yeah." I grin, sharp as knives, as Oblivion itself roils around my Hand. "Yeah, that's what I tell people. Ain't it? Just a dumbass [Pilot]."

My Left Hand rises. A Darkness beyond mere light spilling from within to wipe away us all.

"No! No! Please! Please no! I'm TELLING MUMMY!!!!" She screams. Almost distant, now. As if heard across vast and terrible Nothingness. "I'M TELLING HER YOU'REN BEING BAD! AND SHE'LL KNOW WHERE YOU ARE! AND-"

"You like Games. Princess." I snarl, as True Oblivion roars from me. Burning me away. "Well. I got one for you. It's called 'What Is That Thing In The Dark With All The Teeth?'"

And I know she sees it.

THE EYES IN THE DEAD AND EMPTY DARK.

THE EYES THAT DO NOT EXIST.

THE EYES THAT STARE. THAT HUNGER.

EVER WAITING.

And I am The-

"Spook. Stop. RIGHT NOW."

"No. Princess. You ain't gettin' out that-"

The Guardian Orb slams into the side of my head like a shot from a canon, everything comes tumbling down.

The building, I mean.

"Lookie, lookie, looo!" Tufty sings in a horrible parody of Princess. "I foooound yooou!"

And then, the real mayhem begins.

>>><<<