Jack spotted 2 more loose war drones. Firing 2 quick shots, he turned and fired a third shot, clipping the last one and jarring it off the wall. He dropped the drones almost in unison. Another round from down the hall hit the wall, peppering them with debris.
“Not us, you fucking drone, the hairy one!” Evil Dee said in her head, unable to connect with it as it went rogue and regained its sentience, firing back. She opened one of the lockers and pulled out an OMG50, checking the magazine, slapping the clip in and racking the bolt. She tucked her shoulder and rotated around the corner, firing 5 shots in quick session. One of them hit the head and dropped it. Jack looked impressed and baffled.
“When did you get good with firearms?”
“I, uh, downloaded a few combat games in case I needed to run a mission.”
“Hell yes, you just keep getting hotter by the minute.” He smirked.
“You’re goddamn right I do.” She said grabbing his shirt and yanking him in for an aggressive kiss. Pushing him back and waving him on as if leading the mission now.
“We should split up, cover more ground.”
“Okay, you may have some software upgrades, but you have no combat experience. Knowledge and real world combat are very different.”
“Trust me Jack, I’m not the distressed damsel we left on Delmar. Take the east hall, eject the drones from the bridge, I’ll check on Vinn.” She said confidently. “Or do you not trust me?” she asked, playing sad and offended.
“I trust you. Just be safe, don’t do anything stupid trying to be a hero or prove anything.”
...
Nicole marveled at the horror and the scale of the white stone temple’s interior, fountains and pools of bloody, watered down wine flowing like a theme park, dozens of skinless people having sex in the fountains and eating from trays of raw meat and fruit. On the central throne sat a massive figure, 30 feet high or taller. Swirls and spirals covered its lanky body. It had no distinct male or female characteristics. It was inhuman and disproportionately thin, with more ribs showing than there should be.
As they approached, she could see that the elaborate swirls and skin painting was made from a patchwork of differently colored skin, sewn and scarred together from presumably dozens of victims. The thing tilted its head, too many neck vertebrae hinging. With milky dead eyes it stared back at them. A band of braided dark flesh, dyed different shades of black, wrapped around and through the skin behind Its head and met where the mouth was, securing a ring of gold teeth like an elaborate bondage mask woven through it’s facial tissue. The creature’s real teeth behind it in shadow like a viewport. No lips, no eyelids, and only a nose adorned with at least 8 gold piercings with barbed tips to mark its face.
“Thyjus the woven demands a sacrifice for his presence, before you may speak.” It said, extending a tongue and licking the teeth, retracting it and extending it through the nostril to provoke further disgust.
“That’s why I brought the abomination.” She said. "The old man’s not the offering, he’s for sale. What I really came here for is an alliance.”
“Gods of the flesh united as friends. What enemy do we share that you fear so much more than me?”
“I fear nothing. I simply do not have the time or the patience to whittle down my enemy through tedious war and bloodshed. You, however, are trapped here whittling yourself down for fun. Are you a god of masochism or a sadist lord as well?”
“They never tread far from one another, lovers of the suffering, in one's self or one’s peers. Uniting the suffering of the self and the sacrificed is the truest beauty of the flesh. Why then should I trust you and not simply consume you all? The truth is always revealed in the removal of the flesh and the promise of release.”
“Trust me?” Gizzy chuckled. “Why should I trust you? Slovenly god of self indulgence there on your throne made of your own loneliness and isolation. Kill me and my people and I will return the favor with a fleet and scorch the planet to ash, wasting such a potential ally. All I want is to understand if YOU are enough for me. Should I bother releasing you and letting you spread to worlds to consume or am I better off just burning them to dust? But I want my enemies to suffer a fate worse than death, and that is your specialty. So… in return for all the flesh you can desire, I get to see my enemies become your playthings, rather than a quick painless death.”
“Oh you tempting little beast. Will you be on the menu?”
“You’ll be my pet, below me, nothing more. But a well fed pet with unlimited power and rewards, rather than a starving dog stuck on a dry wasteland, chewing at its own leg to survive, even if you do love that feeling. So, which enemy do you lust for the most, the one you fear to snip at, who you most want to blend into your little tapestry here?”
“Oh, there are so many to choose from, I simply could not narrow it to one.”
“Then narrow it to ten.” Gizzy said firmly. He chuckled, the ripple of 40 thin ribs moving in unison as he alternated how every many sets of lungs he was grafted with. He nodded discreetly, a muscular shitless man with pale skin stood between them, kneeling to the arrogant skin and bones as it reached out with a needle-like fingertip and began carving names into his back. With a delicate touch like calligraphy, he finished with 4 clean swipes, severing the skin of his back and letting it fall to the ground before him. Gizzy nudged the old man, who gave her a look.
“Go retrieve my scroll, you worm. Obey your master.” She smirked.
“My attraction for you is diminishing very quickly.” He huffed, going to get the list.
“What is the price for the old man?”
“Your soul.” Gizzy yawned.
“HA, surely you jest?” he paused, waiting for her reply and growing impatient. “You really think one old man is worth my soul? Take him, you insult my presence with his offer. However, if you release me unto these enemies, I will bow before your glory and feed like a king among my most hated.”
“Then it is settled. And as a gesture of good faith, the abomination will remain at your feet until my return. He will not be touched, as a gesture of your patience. 33 days.” She said, turning and yanking the old man by the beard.
“In 33 days, the universe will weep.” The unholy creature smiled as they left the temple. There was silence for about 20 seconds as they hiked for the shuttle craft.
...
Dee strutted down the hall, pulling back and returning fire as one of the drones approached.
“What the hell are you doing, I’M not the target!” she barked.
“You are death and violence.” It replied.
“You don’t know the half of it.” she snarled, rushing towards it and dodging a return shot. She ran up the wall and got enough height to fire 3 rounds into the head and neck, dropping it and landing casually, then brushing her hair back out of her eyes. She grabbed a combat knife off of it then let her hair down with a forward fling, slicing it into shorter bangs so she could see better. She stabbed the heavy oversized knife into the drone's back and checked her ammo.
She noticed Vinn down the hall, pinned down and sending out grenades as the group of the drones approached. She charged in and began cutting them down with quick double taps to ensure a head shot, switching to the grenade mode and dumping the magazine until nothing was moving. She lowered her aim to Vinn, placing the red dot on the back of his head and pulling the trigger. The nearly silent clink of the empty chamber sent a wave of frustration up her spine as she felt the ship rock slightly, the robot crates opening and venting to space. She patted herself for another reload as Vinn gave her a hug.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.
“Thanks, Dee. I don’t know when you became a badass but shooting a 30mm on one leg is a bitch and I was not handling it. Saved my hairy ass.”
“Yeah, don’t mention it.” she sighed, realizing her opportunity had passed.
...
“You wanna tell me what in the vivid blue fuck that was and what just happened in there?” the old man asked.
“True evil can sense evil. You can’t trick a liar by being anything shy of a villain. It’s all they know. There’s no fleet, no deal, no plan, no army. Thyjus will never leave this planet. But he let his guard down for a moment and I understand his kind of evil now.”
“So what does that accomplish?” the old man asked.
“Several things. We have a list of who he hates the most. Evil that pure only hates something more evil that it can’t be. We just got a list of the ten most monstrous evils in the universe and we’re gonna make a statement to them real shortly.”
“We’re here to kill that thing, not toy with it. You don’t understand how dangerous-”
“No, YOU don’t know how dangerous that thing is. You have to be a little bit evil, a little bit insane and a little bit sadomasochistic to understand what that thing is. All you know is fear and that it needs to die. No missile gets past the orbital defenses, no weapons of mass destruction land on this planet. You don’t get close to that thing with a cannon or a nuke, you get close to it with temptation. Flesh, a gift.”
“The abomination is a bomb. An ABOMBination?” Nicole asked. “How did that get past security scans?”
"Because it wasn’t looking for something small, it was scanning for a weapon capable of blowing up a planet. If we blew up that temple, they would rebuilt it, and him, stronger and meaner. You don’t get it. Those drones are not just extensions of himself, they’re still alive.”
“What?” Nicole asked, looking mortified.
“Those people are still alive. He’s not a god who enjoys only hurting himself, he loves hurting others and sharing it. They can feel everything, they are fully conscious and aware as they skin themselves and move under his spell. Killing them all is a mercy. I wanna know when I genocide an entire planet if I’m killing innocent or enemies. They would long for death and there’s no fixing them. You wanna know how I can kill an entire planet and still sleep at night? Like this…” she said, pressing a button on her phone. The abomination smiled and laughed, lifting up a middle finger with glowing blue eyes as it pulled open the stitches in it’s chest to reveal a glowing blue bomb, studded like a claymore mine with 8 soul bullets. Thyjus leaned closer to inspect it. The temple behind them shook with a very subtle blast and then a moment of total silence washed over the land as every living thing dropped dead on the spot.
“Did you just kill him and everyone on this planet?” the old man asked.
“I told you we needed more bullets, and I promised we wouldn’t use your soul to do it. Look around you. That’s 8 million plus souls released and free now, no longer in limbo, unable to die or live, in agony. Now we know exactly how they work. I know more about your bullets than you do now. I know they kill everything connected to a hive mind, and since I’m still standing, I know they only kill everything actively connected to it, not independent clones or offspring. I needed to know if they kill the host, or all the drones, or if they kill copies that no longer belong to the hive.”
“So if you were wrong, you would have just died when the abomination did… why the hell would you risk your life for that knowledge?” the old man asked.
“Because of this.” She said holding up the list and pointing to the name on the top of the list. Nicole squinted through the smeared blood and read the word PITCH, in all capitol letters.
“The thing that killed Vicki?” asked Nicole. “We killed it already.”
“No we didn’t. Evil Vicki is not dead. We killed the main host and the backup drones woke up. We killed the queen and the hive grew another one.”
“How do you know that?” she asked.
“Because I think like a hive mind too, and I would have done that. You think I don’t have copies of me all over the universe, connected, disconnected, shielded, modified, ready to wake up if they detect a fallen Gizzy? I suspected she might do the same thing. The Pitch has dozens of hive drones, maybe thousands, and now we know one bullet kills all of them, and not the Vicki back home lying in bed with Jack. It kills the host, and all the infected, not the original DNA sample. I needed to know because if we killed every Pitch and every Vicki, we take her from every Jack, and I can't sleep at night knowing that back home on Delmar, Jack and Vicki that are happy and doing great, married and unaware of our mission, will feel the ripple effect when we kill the pitch. I can't live with knowingly putting a bullet in that queen means Jack wakes up to a dead wife… again, because of me. That’s how I sleep at night. I test my theories, I make sure whatever I kill deserves it. So let’s put a fancy bullet in that Pitch Bitch and make sure she stays dead, and the original Jack and Vicki will never know it happened. By my calculations, she should be catching up to us in about a week or two.”
“And you didn’t tell anyone anything?” Nicole barked. “You didn’t tell us we were being hunted?”
“Would it have made you sleep better or allowed you to prepare? Would Jack feel better knowing his dead wife is coming to find us and if we kill her it MIGHT ill the one the other Jack back home loves and make him his own enemy? Now we know, now we have a plan, now you can sleep better knowing we have the weapon, the testing, and the preparation to handle it. Why worry people until there is a plan of action to worry about?”
“And how do you know 1 or 2 weeks is how long we have?”
“Because I’ve been tracking a ship that’s been following us.”
“How do you know it’s her?”
“She’s flying the damn thark ship.” Gizzy said as Nicole froze and realized nobody else would even know where it was, let alone be able to take over and control it without a hive of slaves. She was right.
“So Jack isn’t hallucinating, he’s sensing her.”
“Exactly. She’s been somehow telepathically signaling him, trying to contact him, because she has no idea we wiped his memory. There’s nothing left of her in Jack to manipulate. She’s probably been trying to hack the ships firewall, which is why I took the external systems offline and let the book do the driving. No external navigation, no way in. She can’t even hack Dee because Dee has her wireless receiver removed. She’s unhackable. We got the bitch blocked.”
“What about the other 12 robots on the ship that haven’t had their wireless receivers manually removed?” Nicole asked. The ones that snuck onto ship.” She added as Gizzy stopped in her tracks, looking like things just changed.
“Son… of an actual bitch.” She annunciated, walking faster to the ship.
...
Vinn and Jack sat at the game table, battered and filthy, Vinn’s leg in a brace. The new Dee sat down and rolled her eyes at the sight of Vinn, still alive before returning her gaze to Jack.
“So how you holding up after your first combat scenario?”
"Honestly, with the upgraded combat downloads it felt like a game I’ve played before. And just having you around made me feel safe.Tell me you love me, Jack."
“You know I love you.”
“Of course you do. Feels like you always have and always will.” She said with a strange grin before dipping her head shyly. “I’m going to go check on the lab, make sure it’s still in one piece after all of that.” She said before making her way down the hall as the small group sat there and opened a beer or two.
“Dude. She’s kind of a badass.” Vinn said.
“Weird, right? She was always on the fence about killing anyone and especially the robots, but when shit hit the fan she Sarah Connored their asses like it was her job. Can I tell you something personal?”
“Sure.”
“Dating someone that can upgrade and change so quickly is both a blessing and a bit of a fear of mine. She evolves so fast that sometimes I wonder if she’s going to either pass me up and not need me, or become something dangerous. I love her, all 5 of the hers floating around in that head of Dee’s, but she’s so damn strong and unpredictable, she reminds me of someone I can’t quite place… and that scares me, because I think it might be someone I didn’t want to remember.”
“I thought you were doing great together?” Vinn sighed.
“We are, but she keeps surprising me with new things I never expected. They’re always wonderful, but if she can just keep surprising me forever, what happens if one day it’s not wonderful?”
“Bro, Imma level with you. Me and Nicole have changed a ton since we first met, and all couples do, but we still love each other, maybe more than ever. I think you’re just feeling flashback paranoia because the last time someone you loved went through a lot of weird changes, body and mind, she went evil and insane. That’s something your subconscious might still remember as a red flag. You just gotta remember that she’s not Vicki. What happened with her was a rare one in a million fluke that doesn’t happen with people. You may grow together or apart, you may change over time, her more quickly than you, but the odds of someone else ending that badly is astronomical. Just ride it out, if it’s meant to be, it will be, just don’t compare her to that monster. We all have that one ex that makes us jittery. Granted, yours was phenomenally worse than 99.9 percent of ours. Just remember that she’s going through some shit too. Be there for her.”
"I’ve just never seen someone go that quickly from never firing a gun to killing as efficiently as me and with less hesitation.”
“Your life was on the line and she knew it. Love is weird and it does weird shit, especially in space.”
“I’ll drink to that.” He sighed before clinking glasses with the injured Vinn.
...
Evil Dee stared at the syringe of blood, almost salivating even knowing it was Gizzy’s and full of some horrible zombie toxin. The very basic instinct was there. She wrapped up the vials in a hand towel and tucked it under her arm to discreetly transport it before turning the light out and climbing the ladder. The dim glow of the organ tubes bubbling and staying warm was all that remained behind.