Chapter 71: Kill Them All (Patreon)

The Operator started to push herself up, the drunkenness still dragging at her. When she put a hand down to lift herself, what she felt wasn’t the floor. It was alive.

Bodies.

She looked around. The whole floor of level thirteen was covered in them, end to end, a field of dead weight stretching out under the lights, and not one of them was human. Monsters. Hundreds of them dropped where they stood, limbs folded under limbs, mouths open, the deformed shapes that had been people an hour ago. The smell came up off them, rot and something sour underneath, and she was kneeling in the middle of all of it.

Shit. Mental note. Never run a mutation evolution in the middle of somethin’ that can get me killed.

“Tera. This can’t happen ‘gain.”

That was when she felt something sting and slam into her, and she knew the sound the second it reached her. Gunfire. Then she felt dozens of them, all of it hitting her together, rounds smacking into her arms and her chest. On reflex, she threw her arms up and covered her face.

“See? M’drunk as hell. Can’t see straight,” the Operator said.

I’m sorry, Operator. This is on us.

“S’not the time for that. We gotta figure out how to fix this.”

An explosion went off somewhere across the level, and the blast threw the men who’d been on the second floor through the air. Then something landed on her shoulder, then shifted down to her back.

“Sorry for the delay, Operator,” Napoleon said. “I had no rounds. I was reloading. Three left.”

The Operator nodded. “Okay. Sixteen in the pack. Stay on my back, I’ve got you.”

Napoleon set himself behind her, and she kept her arms up while the rounds kept coming in, punching into the monster bodies around her, kicking up pieces of grey flesh, one after another.

She looked down at what was left of them hanging off her. “Shit. They’re wreckin’ my clothes.

“Napoleon. Report.”

“Fifteen men with mutation traits on the first floor,” Napoleon said from behind her back. “They’re organized, and they’re firing.”

She tried to focus her eyes. Everything was still a blur.

“Their armor covers most of the body, around seventy percent.”

“Why aren’t they movin’ on me?” the Operator said, the slur easing as she forced herself to focus.

It’s the bodies on the floor, Operator. The soldiers can’t move through them quickly. The creatures are still sedated, you’re standing on them and they aren’t reacting. I don’t know how long that holds.

The gunfire kept hammering around her, one round after another, never letting up.

“On the second target I fired again, into the face. Took the head off,” Napoleon said, still reporting. He paused. “On another I hit the armpit. Disabled. Can’t confirm a kill.”

“Get rid of the creatures,” someone shouted.

The gunfire stopped. The rounds had done nothing, and they knew it now.

“Non-humanoid just identified at the entrance we came in through,” Napoleon said.

One soldier on the third floor threw himself down toward her. He hit the floor hard, came up among the sleeping creatures, and started kicking them, hurling them aside to clear room around his boots.

They’re strong, she thought, her head clearing by the second now.

But he didn’t attack. He pulled off his helmet, and underneath it the face was halfway to something else, the bone of the skull grown out past the skin, one side of it pulled tight and shining, the eye on that side sitting too low. He came toward her slowly, not in a threatening way, just clumsy, dragging steps.

“They told us whoever we took here would make the pain go away. Please, mercy, miss. Help us. This hurts. Not just the body. The grief is the worst of it…”

Something took the soldier by the neck and cut the words.

A tongue. Yards of it, grey and slick. The Operator traced it back, her vision still blurred, to one of the creatures he’d kicked. It hauled him off his feet and dragged him across the floor toward its mouth, and once he was in front of it and alone, it opened up and emptied a stream of venom over his head. The skin came off where it touched. He kept screaming the whole time, his hands up against his own face, until the screaming choked off and stopped.

The Operator watched it, and the adrenaline came up in her, sharpening her, though the floor still pulled sideways under her. The damn things are waking up.

But when the creature’s eyes found her, it sank back down into the pile and went still.

The sedative’s still holding. But it looks like they can still wake.

Then machinery started up somewhere off to her right, heavy, the teeth grinding, and crates came open.

“Everything’s still a blur,” the Operator said. “Napoleon, report.”

“Operator, they’re powering up two rotary saws, military-grade. A thick disc, ringed with teeth, spinning fast enough to blur.”

No, she thought. Weren’t they supposed to want me alive? That’ll tear me apart.

The saws came alive with a shriek, and a voice shouted over the top of it. “Cut a path, now. Destroy the test subjects before they wake. And don’t harm the woman. Just hold her.”

Her vision was starting to clear at the edges.

The nanos are pulling the pain medication out of you, the effect will fade, a little at a time.

Let’s hope it fades before those saws reach me, she thought, and felt her sight keep sharpening.

“Napoleon, cut their feet fast,” the Operator said.

Napoleon dropped onto a monster, took his launch off its back, and shot toward one soldier carrying a saw. He hit the joint between foot and leg and bounced off in a spray of sparks. The armor held. The soldier kept walking, head down, as if the screaming and the saws weren’t reaching him at all.

Napoleon ran a circle up the body to the head, found nothing, and sprang back to her.

“Full armor, Operator. Not like the others. These two are sealed. I can’t find a weak point.”

Ahead of them, the saws went to work. They came down into the sleeping monsters and threw the bodies apart, grey meat and black fluid spraying off the discs, the floor going slick in front of the soldiers as they carved a clean lane straight toward her. The howling started where the blades only caught part of a creature and left the rest of it moving.

My sight’s coming back, she thought.

She drew her revolver. Five rounds left. The sights went to the soldiers first, then she changed her mind, moving them onto the saws. The blur was thinning. She could pick out who was coming.

Now, Operator, or you give the soldiers their path.

She fired at the spot she figured fed power to the saw, into the soldier holding it. The energy core blew, the saw died in his hands and dropped to the floor. The force of the round threw him back off his feet.

Four bullets left.

The other soldier saw it, saw her sights come around to him, and threw himself at her, the saw out in front.

“Aaaaaah,” he screamed, and it didn’t come out human. It came out low and torn, an animal sound.

“Don’t harm her, you idiot,” shouted the man giving the orders. But the soldier didn’t listen. He came on, boots crushing through the bodies, the saw screaming in front of him.

“Napoleon, do nothing. Stay on my back.”

She had the metal bar ready in her left hand. The man closed the distance, slowed by the weight of the armor and the saw.

This piece of metal won’t do a thing to him.

Throwing the bar aside, she dove past his side when he was almost on her, going down onto the lane the saws had cut, sliding through it, through the blood and the split pieces of the creatures, until she came up against the rotary saw she’d shot loose. She grabbed it. Big and solid, and it didn’t run anymore, but it had weight, and that was all she needed. The soldier who’d owned it lunged at her. She swung the thing into his chest like a bat and knocked him back down the lane, into the half-cut monsters lining it, the ones still alive, still dragging their cut bodies across the floor.

“Tera, I’ve got my sight back, I can see better now,” the Operator said.

The dizziness was down to something she could work around, and for the first time she could see the whole of it. A floor the size of a field, wall to wall in bodies, and a line of men in armor coming through it to take her back to Eron.

She heard the steps of the second saw closing on her. She turned and caught his blade against the broken saw in her hands, and with more strength than him she forced it down and out of line, brought the revolver up in her other hand, and fired into his saw. The blast threw him back off his feet, and he came down on top of the creatures. He lay there staring at his hands, as if he couldn’t understand what had happened, and the impact had woken the creatures under him. They took hold of him where he lay.

Operator, kill him. Drop their numbers, or we don’t make it out. He’s one of only two in full armor.

She watched the creatures get their hands on him, and she turned to Napoleon. “Anything that grabs me, you cut it. Cut their fucking hands, whatever it takes, just don’t let them stop me. Same if any of them tries to puke on me.”

“Yes, Operator,” Napoleon said.

She started across the bodies toward the downed soldier. The creatures reached for her as she went, half-awake, hands closing on her boots, and Napoleon dropped to the floor and sheared them off at the wrist one by one.

Running steps came up behind her. When she turned, it was the rest of them, the fifteen, coming up the lane the saws had cut.

She reached the man on the ground and raised the dead saw over his head.

“No,” he screamed. “I just want the pain to stop.”

The Operator hesitated because she knew that pain. And the grief under it.

From somewhere on him the soldier pulled a knife and drove it into her stomach. She froze, the old reflex kicking in before she caught it. Then she remembered nothing could cut her now. The blade snapped against her skin and fell away, and she didn’t take a scratch.

“I’m sorry,” the soldier said. “I’m sorry for the knife. I didn’t…”

She didn’t hesitate again. She brought the saw down on him over and over. It didn’t run, but it was heavy, and the helmet caved under it, again and again, until what was inside it was pulp, pushed out through the gaps and spread across the bodies under him.

Operator, stop hesitating.

“Sorry, Tera,” she said out loud. “I almost blew it back there, with the begging. I swear it won’t happen again. That’s what I swore.”

Behind her, voices came up the cleared lane. The Operator turned. The fifteen were walking toward her, in formation, three ranks spaced and even.

“Shit,” she said. “It was true, what was happening to those men. Their bodies are coming apart.”

They were all big, every one past six feet, maybe the serum having stretched them taller than they were meant to be, the armor straining to hold them. But the serum hadn’t taken the way it was supposed to. The damage showed through all of them. One on the end had a tremor he kept fighting, setting his stance and resetting it. Another’s head drifted to one side before he pulled it straight. A third murmured under his helmet without stopping, his eyes fixed on the Operator the whole time. Half-finished, every one of them, the best Eron could get out of a formula that didn’t work on anyone but her.

The three in front dropped to a knee and fired three nets, one after the other, straight at her.

Napoleon launched off his legs and threw himself in front of her, fast, and cut the nets apart in the air so they fell open to the floor. They came down to the sides, over the monsters, and the charge running through them hit the creatures, stiffening them, jerking them where the net touched.

Two of the front soldiers broke into a run at her.

The first one to reach her swung in close, and she met him with the saw. She brought it around with everything she had, the full weight of the mutation behind it, and the flat of it caught him across the chest and took him off his feet. He didn’t stumble back. He flew, the armored bulk of him crossing the air until he hit the wall, and the wall was what killed him. The plate caved against the concrete, the body inside it crushed in on itself, and he came down the face of the wall and dropped to the floor and didn’t move again.

“Nothing,” she said, low, watching the rest of them come. “Nothing on this whole rotten place is going to lay a hand on me. I finish my mission, and I’m gone.”

The second was already on her.

She brought her other hand up and fired point-blank. The round went in under his chin, and the explosive charge did the rest, the front of his face opening up around it, and the force threw what was left of him back into the bodies behind him.

Two rounds left.

Down at her feet, the creatures kept reaching, half-awake hands closing on her boots, her shins, and Napoleon worked through them without stopping, shearing the hands off at the wrist, the arms off at the joint, keeping the floor around her clear while she stood her ground.

“Operator, I can attack,” Napoleon said.

She kept giving ground, watching the rest of them come. “No. Don’t let any of those creatures grab me and pin me down. Clear?”

“Yes, Operator.”

On the far side of the floor, the last full-armor soldier, the one still standing, bent down and grabbed one of the monsters off the ground. He hauled it over his head and threw it at the Operator. Napoleon shot off the floor and cut it down before it reached her.

Then the thing she’d been dreading started.

It began under her own boots. A body she was standing on shifted, then pulled itself out from under her weight. A few feet away, a head came up off the floor, then another, the long necks unfolding, the deformed mouths working. All down the level, across the whole field of them, the creatures were lifting, the sedative finally thinning out of them. Hundreds of bodies that had been dead weight a minute ago were starting to move at once, and the sound of it rose with them, the groans and the snapping of jaws spreading wall to wall.

“Napoleon, shoot those bastards now. The face, don’t stop.”

Napoleon dropped to the floor, brought his cannons online, and fired. The round took the closest man under the helmet and tore his head off, and the force behind it threw the two men beside him off their feet, down into the bodies that were starting to move.

A monster grabbed her legs from the floor. She kicked out with everything the mutation gave her, and the thing tore loose and flew across the level.

“Napoleon, keep cutting. Don’t let them get a hold on me.”

Napoleon went to work, shearing off the hands and arms that reached for her, the blades moving so fast she couldn’t track them, dropping pieces of the creatures around her boots while their bodies kept crawling.

“Tera. The one giving the orders.” She brought her revolver up. “He’s just standing there. He’s not doing a damn thing for them.”

No. He isn’t.

She fired her last two rounds at the soldiers. They knew her weapon now, and they threw themselves to the sides. One of the men in the back caught a round anyway, and his head came apart. The other two who’d dived for cover came up into the part of the floor that was awake now, and the creatures had them before they got back to their feet.

It wasn’t fast. The creatures were still half-drugged, slow with it, and that only made it worse for the two men. Three of them took the first soldier down at once, their hands forcing into the seams of his armor, working the plates apart to reach what was under.

“Not like this,” he screamed. “No, please. Damn winged ones.”

He was still screaming when they opened his belly and started drawing it out of him. The second man they caught by the arms and the legs, four of them pulling at once in different directions, until the shoulder gave and tore, and even then he was alive, dragging himself a foot across the floor with the arm he had left before they came down on him.

The Operator stood in the middle of it. Then the screaming stopped, and there was only the sound of the creatures feeding all across the floor.

The last full-armor soldier was still standing, and he came at her now, throwing himself forward with everything he had, all that armored weight behind it. She set her feet and brought the saw around to meet him, the same swing that had thrown men into walls.

It hit him across the chest and threw him back, but the blade broke off the body of the saw on the impact and spun away across the floor, and without it the blow didn’t carry him far. He went down a few feet away, rolled, and started getting back up, and now she had nothing in her hands.

“We only wanted to be cured,” the soldier said, his voice gone low. “We only needed your mercy. But you’re just another monster. Like the winged ones.”

He got back to his feet and came at her again, and this time he reached her. He set his fists and swung at her face. The Operator took it. She didn’t move.

I don’t owe a thing to anyone. Not to this whole rotten world.

She paid him back a kick to put space between them. “Shit, that hurt,” she shouted. “Shut up, Tera. I don’t want you to say anything.”

I wasn’t going to.

“Operator, help.” Napoleon’s voice, down on the floor, caught in a run of slime one of the creatures had thrown over him, his legs locked under it, unable to launch.

The soldier saw it. He changed direction and charged the small machine instead of her. “This one looks important.” He raised his boot over Napoleon. “Feel what it is to suffer, the way we suffer.”

The instant the armored boot started down on Napoleon, the Operator threw herself onto the soldier and started swinging, one fist after another.

“NOBODY takes someone I love from me,” she screamed. “NOBODY. I’ll kill them all. I’ll kill whoever took them from me.”

Her fists came down on the helmet, one after the other, the full weight of the mutation going straight through her own hands into the steel. The helmet caved on the third blow. She didn’t stop. She kept going, the metal folding in on what was inside, until there was nothing under her hands holding any shape at all.

Operator, he’s already dead. Stop. Look at your hands.

“I’ll kill them all, Tera.”

Who, Operator? Please. Stop.

The Operator looked down at her hands. There was no strength left in them. The bones inside were shattered, the way Tera had warned her they would be. A voice came over the intercom. “Mordran. Take her now and bring her in. She’s ours. Do it now.”

She tried to stand. The bone in her leg gave. Her hands were useless. She went back down among the bodies.

The creatures took the last of the soldiers across the floor, the ones she hadn't reached, until none were left standing. Mordran lifted a radio and spoke into it. “Our congratulations, Eron. You were right. She’s everything we were after. And more.” He switched the radio to another channel. “Strip Eron of every security access. His command rights and his surveillance control are revoked.”

“Mordran, she’s mine. I found her,” Eron shouted through it.

Then the line went dead.

The creatures around them were all rising now, all across the floor. Mordran came on through them in a silver robe cut for ceremony, and he didn’t spare them a look. “Allow me to introduce myself. My name is…”

“I don’t give a shit about your name,” the Operator said.

“There it is. The defiance.” He came on toward her, in no hurry, stepping over the bodies without looking down at them. “It’s rare. Most of the ones we put through the serum break long before this. You haven’t broken at all.”

He stopped a few feet from her and lifted a hand toward his own eye.

“Did you know there was a perfect mutation once? Near-perfect, anyway. Long before you. Nothing close to what you are.” His finger rested just under the eye. “What it gave us was a sight beyond seeing. And the ability to move through shadows, into places no one should be able to reach.”

The color drained out of everything at once, the floor and the bodies and the walls going grey, and the whole level fell still. The creatures stopped mid-step. Napoleon hung caught under the slime. A thread of blood that had been falling held in the air and didn’t land. They were somewhere else now, in the shadows he’d spoken of, where nothing moved at all.

She was part of it. Grey, locked in place with everything around her, unable to move so much as a finger.

Mordran walked through the stillness, the one thing in it that moved. He reached her, and he set a hand against her face, and the hold broke just for her. She could move again, and nothing else could.

“And now,” he said, “in the shadows, let’s see what you’re hiding.”