Cybernova, page 15
I start to slowly back away from them, desperately trying not to make a sound. I don’t think they’ve noticed us yet.
“Olly, no!” Ash tries to warn me in a desperate whisper, but it’s too late.
A horrifically loud clanging sound echoes throughout the tunnel as I step back into Zeke’s tools, sending them flying. All at once, twenty pairs of faintly glowing, lifeless eyes turn toward me. From the darkness, more and more eyes start to appear. The nearest few, about thirty feet away, start shambling forward. The sounds of shuffling feet, strained motors, and popping tendons fill the air.
I feel sick.
“Chrome Drones! Run!” I shout, fear filling my mind and adrenaline filling my body. I help Zeke pick up Dex, Ash grabs as much of our stuff as she can, and we run.
The sounds of our thundering feet echo through the tunnel, followed by a blood-curdling chorus of screaming, groaning Chrome Drones clanging along the floor right behind us.
My heart is beating faster with every step. Zeke isn’t as fast as me, and I’m starting to lose him. I pause for just a moment, getting a better grip on Dex. As I glance back, I see the horrible sight of this hoard clambering toward us. They’re desperately trampling over each other, running and crawling through the darkness with an animalistic desperation. They’re chasing us like feral dogs with rabies chasing a stray cat.
“Alright, Zeke, let’s pick up the fucking pace!”
I’m running with everything I’ve got, and so is Zeke. Ash is ahead of us by a few feet, navigating. I can barely see her. It’s so damn dark.
“We’re taking a left!” She yells back at us. “This is the other way from the fork!”
Zeke and I follow her into the one tunnel we’ve yet to try. I’d cross my fingers if I wasn’t busy carrying Dex. I take another glance behind me as I run, and the Drones are still only a few yards behind. Sparks fly from their faulty cyber-parts, giving me horrifying glimpses of the rot surrounding the chrome.
We run for what must have been a few minutes straight down this tunnel. It’s strange. Most of the tunnels turn frequently and seemingly at random, but this one hasn’t.
“Do you see any turns or anything?” I yell up to Ash.
“No, nothing! All I see is this damn darkness!” She growls in frustration.
“Well, there better be something soon, I can’t run like this forever, and these freaks are NOT slowing down!” Zeke interjects in between breaths.
They’re a good ten or fifteen feet back, but they definitely haven’t given up on chasing us. If anything, they’re gaining on us. I’m sure we’d have no trouble outpacing them in a straight run, but between carrying Dex, the darkness, and our lack of direction, we’re barely keeping ahead of them.
“I see a dim light over there!” Ash yells, continuing to sprint ahead. After a few more seconds of running, she comes to a sudden stop.
“Fuck! This is a dead end, too!” She yells, pounding her fist on the wall. “I thought the light was something, but it’s just another dead fucking end.”
It won’t be more than a few seconds until we’re devoured by Chrome Drones, and I do NOT want to find out what that feels like.
“Let’s put him down!” I yell back at Zeke, moving toward the wall at the end of the tunnel with the dim, flickering light above it.
“Got it!” He replies. “Now, do something about our hungry little friends there!”
“Ash, here!” I yell, tossing her the arc rifle I picked up from the Retribution soldier earlier.
She catches it, slings the strap over her shoulder, and takes aim without a word.
I turn toward the hoard, pulling both of my swords from their sheathes and switching on the arc units. Only the katana sparks to life. I stare incredulously at the wakizashi for a half second.
Wait, what the…oh duh. It’s broken.
I throw on my VYSR and switch on the night vision, instantly regretting it. Seeing these…creatures in better detail is pure nightmare fuel, and my fear is multiplied tenfold as these half-chrome, half-decomposing abominations descend on us.
To my complete surprise, when the first of the Drones are only a few feet away from me, right at the edge of the flickering overhead light, they stop dead in their tracks. They pause for just a moment, staring at the arc energy of my katana, seemingly entranced. They groan and click, their motors creaking and whining as they move. The rest of the horde crashes into them, confused. Some of them start snarling and biting each other, clawing at wires and bits of flesh like rabid dogs fighting over a scrap of meat. They scream as they tear into each other.
A few excruciatingly long seconds later, one of the Drones, far in the back of the horde, lets out a horrific scream, like the cry of a dying beast. The rest respond in kind, filling the tunnel with the deafening echoes of their shrill, tortured screams. The ones who’ve been attacking each other even clamber back to their feet, staring straight at me. One cocks its head to the side as its jaw dangles loosely. Another shuffles forward a few steps, its left arm swinging limply from a couple of wires and a single tendon. Their glowing eyes, amplified in my night vision, are all trained on me and my friends.
Oh fuck oh shit, what in the absolute hell.
I find my attention drawn to the one in the back, the one that rallied its brethren with a battle cry of pain. I didn’t notice it before since it's so far away, but now that I’m looking at it, it seems different somehow. It’s standing straighter and looks more human than the others, like it hasn’t entirely lost control of itself yet, or maybe…like it’s developed a new kind of intelligence altogether. I stare at it through my VYSR for a second, trying to make out what I’m looking at. Suddenly, its glowing eyes snap to look directly at me, and it lets out another cry.
Fuck that.
The battle cry unleashes the horde. They charge forward again, clambering toward us. The closest one reaches me in seconds, but I manage to take a swing with my katana, slicing its head clean off. Its body continues toward me for a moment, then slumps to the ground as another takes its place. I slash with my wakizashi as the familiar whine of a charging arc rifle cuts through the Chrome Drones’ bone-chilling death chorus.
“Get down!” Ash commands. I instinctively jump back and fall to the ground without a second thought.
Ash opens fire, the air crackling with electricity as she unleashes a torrent of molten death on the horde. The closest line of Drones crumples to the ground, their circuits and skin equally melted. I resist the urge to vomit as the stench reaches my nose. She charges the rifle again as the lifeless, melting corpses are shoved aside by the next group.
These things are definitely not human. They feel nothing, fear nothing.
I jump back to my feet, slashing over and over again to protect Ash from the faster ones.
Holy shit. There are so many of them.
I stab one through the chest with the katana, pulling back as it falls to the ground, convulsing. Ash lets loose another volley from the arc rifle, melting through a sizable group of them. But more keep crawling and scrambling forward, jumping over the growing mound of bodies. There are so many more than I had seen initially.
So. Many. Fucking. More.
Ash charges another round as I continue slashing through them one by one. I cut off the head of one and slash through the legs of another, kicking what’s left of it away from me. One of them gets ahold of my right arm and bites down. Luckily for me, that’s my metal arm. I stab through its head with the wakizashi and push it off of me. Their blood is starting to cover me, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, it’s cold and sticky, like it hasn’t flowed through their veins in quite some time. How they could possibly even move is…
No, focus up, Oliver. You can have an existential breakdown later.
Ash releases her third volley on the crowd, her accuracy increasing with each shot.
She really is incredible.
“It’s overheating. You gotta buy me some time!” She pleads. She lets the rifle hang from its strap and pulls out her pistol, but it’s barely enough to make a dent in the horde.
“Open the vent on the rifle’s left side!” I shout, slicing through two Drones simultaneously.
“I did!”
I move through the crowd of Chrome Drones, dodging their desperate, lunging attacks and responding with precise, deadly strikes of my own. I drop one, two, five, seven of them in a row. But they don’t slow down. They never let up. Their numbers never seem to dwindle. They screech and groan, claw and bite, stumble and crawl toward us.
“Hurry,” I yell in between dropping number eight and nine, “there’s too many!”
The crowd clears for just a moment, giving me a perfect view of the leader, or alpha, or head honcho, or whatever you want to call it. It’s a nightmare monster, and it’s making its way toward me with alarming speed. Before it turned into a cyber-zombie, it must’ve been a defensive lineman or something because it’s probably pushing seven feet tall and built as sturdy as a brick shithouse in an earthquake zone.
The crowds of feral Chrome Drones are still clambering toward us at an alarming rate, and I’m cutting through them as Ash blasts them to molten pieces. But my attention is locked on the leader. It’s barreling through the crowds, shoving the smaller and weaker Drones aside as if they’re made of toothpicks and marshmallows.
Now that I think of it, that’s disturbingly close to how they look…Holy chrome, Oliver, focus.
Suddenly, an explosion rips through a group of Drones to my left, sending me flying onto my back. I get up and scramble backward, glancing to see the source of the explosion. To my surprise, I see none other than Dexter. Not only is he awake, but a concealed rocket launcher has popped up from his left shoulder. To his left is Zeke, holding the expended Neuro-Jolt Stim. A look of shock fills his face.
Dex sends another rocket to hit the group to my right, blowing them into tiny, sparking pieces. I charge forward, slashing through two more drones as I feel a hot, crackling torrent of arc plasma fly past me on my right. Another group of Drones falls to the ground, melted.
Ash must’ve gotten the rifle cooled down.
I jump back to get a better look at the crowd. It looks like they might actually be slowing down, their numbers thinning out.
Maybe we’ll survive after all.
“We can do this!” I shout to the others, running back into the crowd, weaving in between the Drones, and cutting at their weakest points as I go.
Ash responds with a shout of determination and releases another volley from the rifle, this time managing to expertly pick off a crowd of them from around where I’m standing.
Despite the situation, I can’t help but feel alive.
This fusion cell is fantastic. I feel so fast, so powerful.
I slash through three more Drones, then jump back and signal to Dex to launch another rocket. Only one doesn’t come. I look over to see him clutching his chest and kneeling. Zeke is tapped into his analysis port, seemingly running frantic tests.
I guess he did say that stim was dangerous…
While I’m staring in their direction, I temporarily forget about the Drones behind me. They surround me in an instant, grabbing hold of my limbs and biting down on my arms and neck. I’m falling to the ground, and I can’t move my arms to swing my swords. One of them claws at my face, scratching my forehead and knocking my VYSR to the ground. I can hear it being smashed to bits within seconds.
Fucking fuck.
The world plunges into darkness. I struggle desperately to break free, but they’ve swarmed me. All I can see is their glowing eyes surrounding me. All I hear is their screams and the gnashing of their teeth.
I can’t believe it ends like this.
“Olly! Oliver!” Ash’s voice pierces through the air, sending energy through me. I struggle harder to break free, managing to get my right arm free by forcing the motors to their limit. I slash through a few of my assailants with the katana, but more move in and pin my arm back down.
Suddenly, a bright, hot stream of arc plasma melts the drones on top of me. Drops of plasma and molten Drone fall onto my cheek and neck, and it burns like the Sun. “Fuck!”
That really hurts. But I have to take this opportunity.
I shove off the melting corpses of the Chrome Drones, stabbing the one still biting and clawing at me with my wakizashi. It stops moving but remains standing, the cybernetics holding its bones and melting flesh in place. I shove it away from me as a shiver runs down my back.
“Thank you!” I shout to Ash, standing and turning to face the remaining group of Drones. I can’t see as well because my VYSR is somewhere in that pile I just climbed out of, but I won’t let that stop me.
If only my eyes had night vision. At least they’re adapting to the overhead lighting. If Ash can shoot like that in this light, then I can swing some fucking swords in it, too.
“I think there’s another secret door! I’m trying to open it, but it’s fucking stuck!” Zeke shouts, his voice echoing through the tunnels as Ash and I continue to fight the onslaught of Drones.
There are still so many of them.
Just then, Ash’s rifle overheats again. I can tell without looking by the angry scream and pistol shots coming from her direction. Without my VYSR, my reaction time is down. I hold them off as best as I can, but even with the new power cell, it’s a tall order.
I slash through Drone after Drone, forced to slowly back up as they swarm me relentlessly. My hands are getting slippery with sweat, cold blood, and who knows what else. The ground is a tangled mess of corpses. I try not to think about it or to breathe through my nose. Despite that, I throw up a little in my mouth, but I swallow it. To make matters worse, the leader is rapidly closing in on me. It’s only a few seconds away now, based on the pace it’s been running toward me.
I don’t know how much longer I can do this. And I can’t take that freak down, can I?
One of them gets too close to Ash, so she bashes its head in with the rifle. It falls, clawing at her on its way down.
“Ah, shit, that hurts!” She screams, stumbling to the ground for a second.
Without thinking, I jump in front of her and carve through the endless horde. She sets the barrel of the arc rifle on my right shoulder before charging another volley. I stand, without moving, as bright, hot rays of electrified death stream through the room, melting and setting fire to everything it touches. Everything seems to slow down as I take a moment to marvel at the sight of it.
It’s beautiful, in a horrible kind of way.
I snap back to reality as Zeke screams, “Run! The door is open! Fucking run!”
Without a moment of hesitation, Ash and I turn and sprint at full speed through the now-opened wall of the tunnel. I see Dex crouched in the corner, gasping for breath.
“Help me with this damn door!”
“Coming!”
Zeke and I close the massive stone door as quickly as possible, which is not very fast, as Ash holds off the remaining Chrome Drones with the rifle.
“I’ve only got one or two shots left before it overheats again! And what in the ever-living fuck is that thing!?”
“I see you’ve met the big cheese!” I scream, pushing the door closed with all the strength I can muster.
We’ve almost got the door closed. We can do this.
A horribly mangled set of arms reaches through the foot-wide gap, grasping and clawing at my arms and face. I glance through for a second, seeing the Drone whose arms I’m smelling, but my attention is quickly taken by the leader Drone standing right behind it. It’s just standing there, menacingly. It’s staring at me, breathing heavily, smiling with rotten teeth and sparking, red eyes. It reaches out slowly, pointing directly at me, smiling even wider, its rotten face revealing far more teeth than a normal smile would.
Fuck. That. Shit.
I push on the door harder than I’ve ever pushed anything, slamming the door the rest of the way. The rotten, sparking arms of the Chrome Drone drop to the ground as the door locks back into its undetectable state, their feral shrieks dying away as I stumble back into the darkness. It takes all I have not to immediately collapse to the floor and pass out.
CH 9
SEVERAL minutes after stumbling into this hidden room, the sounds of the Chrome Drones are finally starting to fade away.
“I think we’re clear,” I whisper to the others. I turn to face them, barely able to make out their features in the oppressive darkness of this stupid tunnel. The only light is from a mini surgical flashlight that Zeke pulled from his coat pocket. I can see Ash standing guard, facing toward the dark unknown of the room, while Zeke stabilizes Dex, who is conscious but otherwise in rough shape. He’s looked better, but he’s also looked worse, so…I guess that’s a win?
Alright, time to make yourself useful, Olly.
I tap the screen of my Holocomm, and the brightness of the display causes me to squint my eyes for a second before I select the flashlight feature and turn it toward the dark expanse in front of me. I walk past Astra, and she joins me. After a minute or so of walking, she loops her left arm through my right and rests her head on my shoulder. I feel a warm tingle in my stomach. We keep walking, scanning to the left and right of us with our lights, respectively.
“So, what are you looking for?”
“I’m not sure. I guess I just—”
Before I can finish my statement, I stub my toe against something I didn’t see before. I point my wrist down, finding a small box. It looks to be some sort of metal crate, about two by one by one feet, if I had to guess. It’s not very large, but it didn’t budge when I kicked it. I crouch down to examine it closer. There’s some sort of logo on it, but it’s covered in a thick layer of dust.
“Hey Ash, can you shine your light on this?”
“Sure thing, Ol’.” She crouches down next to me, aiming her Holocomm toward the crate.
I turn off my flashlight with a flick of my wrist, then jam my hands in my pockets. I find a scrap of gauze from one of the times Zeke bandaged me up and use the non-bloody part of it to clean the dust from this crate. The CYBR Corp logo quickly becomes apparent as I wipe away the grime.
