Defy

CRACK. The air around Heydrich parted and the Black Death shot upwards, slamming into one Siegfried, four, ten. He flew at Viktor, an unstoppable force, but an instant later more armours smashed into him from the sides and behind and dragged the man to earth with a shattering thud. The Black Death roared, tearing the machines from his limbs as Mentok rocketed backwards, away from the melee as more Siegfrieds sped down, grabbing hold of every piece of Heydrich they could latch onto, stabbing with metal blades and tearing with metal hands. The Black Death’s body shone and in an instant their attacks met diamond, his wounds closing – but a second later the robots’ eyes glowed and their voices shrieked with piercing sound, deafening overlapping frequencies which rippled the air and drove cracks through Heydrich’s form. The Black Death screamed and his flesh turned intangible, slipping ghost‑like through the armours’ talons and flying towards Mentok at impossible speeds. With a wordless snarl his hands turned to claws, rending apart Siegfried’s chest – but Mentok was already out, already thrown backwards, already ejected into the waiting arms of another armour which wrapped around him even as his original wrapped around Heydrich and trapped him inside.

The Black Death screamed as the synthetic skin scalded him, and with a rending screech grabbed either side and tore it apart-

But in the moment it took to tear free himself from the metal casing Mentok flew backwards, took aim at Heydrich and fired.

All throughout the air the Siegfrieds deployed flare bombs, and the sky around Heydrich shone blindingly, shatteringly bright. The Black Death bellowed, recoiling from the sudden onslaught, but before he could move a thousand micro-missiles tore from Mentok’s suit and from the armours around him, erupting from their wrists and shoulders, racing across the battlefield, slamming into Heydrich from every angle with cracking, cascading thuds. The Black Death staggered back, consumed in flames, parts blowing off his body as he turned desperately to steel which cracked and melted beneath the assault. There was a rapid rush of sulphur and suddenly Heydrich was a hundred feet behind, out from the rocket deluge, teeth locked in snarling fury as chunks regrew in his broken flesh. In seconds, he had repaired himself.

But in seconds, Mentok was ready.

The right arm of his suit of armour snapped opened, bristling with what looked to be blackened spines, and from his hand and from the hands of the Siegfrieds all around him rained a hail of synthetic spikes, each the length of an arrow, striking the Black Death and sinking into his flesh as he stumbled, as he roared, as his eyes rolled up in the back of his head and he prepared to teleport-

But he didn’t vanish. Heydrich’s eyes snapped forward and with dawning horror his gaze dropped to the black needles embedded in his body, his chest and back and sides, at their familiar ringed striations and slight, imperceptible tremor. His hands moved frantically to tear the Disruptance spears from his flesh – but in that moment, the Seigfrieds flew down.

Ten descended, twenty, each one a flying war machine of precision, metal and death. Again their hands closed around Heydrich and again they enclosed him, piling atop one another, tearing, stabbing, smothering, burning with fire and lightning and lasers and sound, all focused inwards, at cauterising the Black Death’s infection, at ripping it to pieces faster than it could regrow. Their bodies closed, interlocking in a metal dome and unable to phase or teleport the Black Death disappeared beneath their fists.

Then a beam of blinding green light sliced out from within the armours, carving a hole out and through them, and in an instant later it was joined by a dozen more. Thirteen Heydrichs, thirteen replicas, launched themselves through the robotic wall, their arms connected, bodies locked in a circle, and their eyes burned uniformly aflame with blazing green energy that cut like a circular saw through their attackers’ lines. They flew free, a whirling mass of destruction, and then in an instant recombined, the spikes ripping telekinetically free from Heydrich’s body as he raced upwards towards where the Mindtaker flew. Faster than sound he reached him, the air parting with a thunderous boom, and forty feet above the ground he plunged his bladed hands through Siegfried’s chest-

Mentok’s thoughts screamed and he ejected out the back of the armour, tumbling unprotected towards the valley floor below.

Time seemed to slow. The world around Mentok crystallised, and he saw at that moment everything in perfect clarity. Every raindrop tumbling beside him. The forks of lightning, cracking wild and shining overhead. The raw, animalistic fury on the Black Death’s face, pale and dripping in the rain. His black eyes following him, already rippling with laser-green light. The dark embrace of merciless stone, rising slowly, steadily up.

Then a suit of armour flew underneath Mentok and closed around his body and he rocketed back to safety, mere inches from the ground. Heydrich let out a roar, and an instant too late his eyes poured green fire and death at the spot where Mentok had been, where he was falling no longer, cutting a burning column as the Mindtaker strafed-

-as he spun-

-as he skidded to a halt beside a dozen waiting armours, who poured their power into him as he looked up and raised his hands.

BLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

Pure, burning energy, a white-hot beam of annihilation flew from Mentok’s suit, his arms fused together into a single cannon as on his back flared ports and conduits into which the Siegfrieds channelled, a wedge of shining war machines directing the power of their fusion reactors into a single, devastating blast. The beam flew upwards, slamming into Heydrich who screamed and fell, blasted from the sky, the left side of his body just gone, yet even as he fell he turned as the beam chased him, the muscle and bone re-growing, the top of his uniform fluttering forgotten and away. He flew down, dropping like a stone, circling around the searing ray as within Mentok’s helmet warning signs flared, screaming of cracking frames and depleting power cores – then abruptly the Black Death turned, shooting back towards Mentok, low to the ground, the flesh of his left arm regrowing, drawing back, preparing for a-

BAM. Heydrich’s fist slammed into the second-left Siegfried and the power beam faltered and died. Mentok stumbled, ordering his thrusters to fire as the Black Death tore through the armours around him, their sacrifice buying mere seconds. More Siegfrieds descended, launching bullets, blades, flash bombs, anything they had at their disposal, but the Black Death tore through them, a hurricane of diamond and steel and acid, ripping their limbs from their sockets, rending apart their hollow shells. Mentok’s thoughts flew wild, and for one final time his creations reached for Heydrich, trying to plunge Disruptance spikes into his body while at the same time their chests began to glow. Their lifeless arms wrapped around his neck, and the Mindtaker detonated their fusion cores.

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BUUUBUUUBUUUBUUUBUUUBUUUMMMMMMMM

A dozen explosions, two dozen, bloomed in the broken valley as Mentok flew back, in his sole remaining armour, away from the consuming fire. Even beneath his visor the old man shielded his eyes, his body shaken a moment later by titanic, thudding booms. He locked Siegfried to brace and threw up the dampeners, feeling his chest reverberate with sound.

And then for a moment, all was quiet.

The wind swept past. The rain continued to fall. On the land beyond the battlefield, fires raged from the untold destruction and in the sky above white lightning crackled through the black. There was no movement amongst the devastation, and for a brief, delirious instant, Mentok allowed himself to believe the impossible.

Then a rapidly growing shape exploded from the ground beneath his feet and vice-like claws grabbed Siegfried’s wrists in either hand.

“You will burn a thousand lifetimes,” the Black Death hissed, as he rose from the parting stone, as Mentok struggled, helpless to break free. The monster rose, growing as tall as the old man in his armour – his face twisted and inhuman, his mouth melted and half-gone, a plate‑sized gap burning beside a single, bulging eye. Yet even as Mentok watched, his wounds kept healing. “Before I finally let you die.”

Mentok snapped his head forward and Siegfried’s metal face smashed into Heydrich’s nose. The Black Death barely flinched.

Override, eject, detonate.

Viktor shot out behind Siegfried. The fusion reactor began glowing, but Heydrich sliced free his hands and hurled the armour imperiously away. It detonated a moment later, fifty feet away, pathing the pair in burning light.

“PATHETIC!” the Black Death screamed. His eyes bored into Mentok, burning wild, unblinking, furious. “All this, ALL OF THIS for nothing, so you could die bleeding in the mud!”

He took a step forward as Mentok stumbled backwards. Alone now, in the darkness. Unarmed. Unarmoured.

“You should have stayed in your cell!” the Black Death roared. Teeth bared, shoulders hunched, his flesh returned, swallowed in pulses by the storm’s shadows. The sky flashed black then white and the man loomed ever closer. Sparks crackled over pale and healing skin. “Should have stayed fed and warm and soiling yourself! You should have stood aside and died! LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!”

The sky blazed with unnatural lightning. Mentok’s neural connections were gone. His tongue tingled with the taste of ions.

The Black Death shook his head, throwing up his hands in savage rage as he stalked forward, seething at the world around them. His eyes seemed to slide from the bare, desperate figure of Mentok before him, almost as if they physically could not stay focused on the ignominy of a single man. “It will take years to rebuild this damage. Decades! The entire slate of civilisation wiped clean because one stupid, arrogant Russian refused to get one thing through his filthy head. YOU. CANNOT. KILL ME!” The words lashed out through the driving rain and hit Viktor physically and mentally. Mentok stumbled; then he pulled himself back upright and raised his hands in fists. The Black Death almost staggered.

“Really?” he shouted, advancing forward, “REALLY?! What, what is this idiocy, this LUNACY, this delusion that you can keep up? Sit down! Lie down! You verdammt Communist FILTH!”

Mentok lunged. His left fist hooked towards Heydrich’s face, his right fist struck at his guts. The Black Death sidestepped both, easily.

“This is pathetic!” he roared, “PATHETIC! What are you trying to accomplish?! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’LL ACHIEVE?!”

Mentok growled, and the implants along his neck glowed. From amongst the battlefield debris, a jagged piece of armour rocketed off the ground and flew into Heydrich’s back. The Black Death stumbled.

“Argh!” he screamed, instinctively reaching behind him, turning his head to look for more threats-

-and forgetting the one in front of him.

With perfect, chemically-enhanced precision, Viktor Mentok lunged towards Klaus Heydrich, drove a syringe into his neck, and pressed the plunger.

“Ouch,” scowled the Black Death. In a single fluid movement he turned and before Mentok could move an invisible vice wrapped around his throat and lifted him off his feet, choking, helpless, dangling a foot in the air. The Black Death sneered and immediately there were two of him, one Heydrich holding its arm out towards Mentok, the other touching, indignant, at the pinprick on its neck.

“Come on. What the hell is it now? What pathetic game, what final trick?”

“No… trick…” Viktor spluttered. For a moment he clawed, fruitless, against his invisible bonds – but there was no relief coming. He forced his lungs to breathe, his teeth to bare. Raw, fatal defiance. “You… lose…”

“Oh really?” Heydrich scoffed. He glanced at the injured copy, then dissolved it with a wave. His remaining body bore no mark. “And how do you suppose that happens? You’ve no Legion, no army. I’ve burned your precious network. This is what, a virus? Uranium? Nanotechnology? I’m sure whatever it is was, Mindtaker, it was ingenious and incomprehensibly dangerous, and now it’s lost forever in that clone.”

“No…” Mentok choked, “Too… late…”

“You must have hit your head, old fool,” the Black Death sneered, “Whatever it was, I isolated it. Your final poison is coursing through the veins of a body that doesn’t exist.”

“Only needed… a moment… to absorb it…” the old man gasped. The edges of his vision began to darken.

“Absorb what?”

“H… h… human…”

“What? Speak louder.”

“…human blood.”

For a moment, the Black Death just stared at him. His arm remained outstretched, and for endless, agonising seconds Mentok continued to dangle in the air.

“Human blood,” Heydrich said flatly. He stared at the Mindtaker hanging there with unveiled contempt. “And what, you think I absorbed it? And that will somehow, what, make me human? Please. Idiot. It was in me for all of one second. And I immediately isolated it in the clone.”

“Doesn’t… matter…” Mentok whispered, “Already… processing… change… taking… place…”

The Black Death’s eyes narrowed, burning into Viktor’s, his face a mask of condescension. Mentok felt tendrils of thought stretching out towards his mind – but they struck his Psy-Block and went nowhere. “I feel nothing, so-called saviour,” Heydrich said with a scowl, “This is a stupid, petty trick. Frankly, it is beneath you.”

“Nothing… yet…” Viktor forced his tongue to move. “But give it… days… weeks… years…” He pushed his lips into a weak and savage grin. “It’s… coming…”

For the longest time, Heydrich said nothing – just stood there, unmoving, the rain washing over his sleek hair and pale face, his bare chest, what remained of his uniform. He said nothing and showed nothing; even his eyes seemed barely to move. Lightning rippled through the sky. Thunder cracked overhead. And eventually, as spots danced before Viktor’s gaze, as his thoughts screamed and as darkness circled around the edges of his vision, the Black Death finally shook his head.

“This is stupidity,” he said. Heydrich shifted his gaze, staring around at the crater-soaked battlefield. “I’ve changed my mind Viktor,” he continued with a curt, disappointed sigh, “Your company wearies me. I had looked forward to an eternity of seeing you suffer, but suddenly the prospect seems… unappealing. I’ve had enough of you.” He shook his head and spat on the ground. “Go join your precious Legion.”

This is it, knew Mentok. All around him, thoughts eddied and swirled. But they were only thoughts, at the end of things, and could do nothing trapped inside his mind. Caitlyn, he whispered, I’m sorry. All of you, everyone. I… I failed you. I was never enough. Never enough.

The blood had not been human. It had been a syringe of regular pig’s blood. Like he’d told Rakowski all that time ago, the human genome was a fairy tale – and not something he could inflict on Heydrich by force. All it had been, then, his ultimate act, was a final, desperate play – a tiny slither of worry buried deep into Heydrich’s soul that maybe one day his powers would run out. A final uncertainty. One last seed of doubt.

The pressure around his neck mounted. The Black Death stared at him and raised both hands. I’m coming Mother, Father, Viktor whispered. I’ll see you in distant starlight.

The pain came, and he closed his eyes.

Oblivion.