‘You okay?’ asked Echo.

  ‘I am getting a psychic signal from nearby,’ explained Rogue.

  The others all stopped and looked at the man in the black robe.

  ‘What does that mean?’ Hex glanced up and down the street.

  ‘It means that someone else is here.’

  ‘Where are they?’ The question came from Breaker.

  Rogue cocked his head to one side, listening to the voice within his mind and pointed to a large building towards the centre of town. The dome of the structure remained mostly intact apart from a forty foot purple tree had grown through a section of the roof. Nature was doing its best to reclaim these ancient ruins. The High Priest led the way forward, not showing the slightest sign of fear or discomfort. The others all shared a quick glance as if having a silent debate if it was truly a good idea to follow the man who could unlock the mind of the dead. Reluctantly, they all began to move forward when suddenly the radio crackled into life with a garbled signal.

  ‘...coming... epeat... e... ave... in.. ing...’ it was Babylon.

  ‘Incoming?’ asked Joker.

  The four marines looked back towards the stone bridge they had crossed. A moment later they heard the rumbling sound of drop ship engines concealed by the mist in the air above them. ‘Let’s get to cover,’ ordered Echo, turning to face Rogue, but the High Priest was nowhere to be seen.

  ‘That isn’t fucking good,’ growled Breaker.

  The four marines split into pairs and headed into the nearest building, as the belly of a dropship came down through the mist. Echo glanced up just in time to see the green coat of arms of the Cyber House. He could feel his stomach twist as he disappeared into the shadows of the abandoned building. What was the Cyber House doing here? In some ways, these science-loving bastards were scarier than the dead. The worst part of it all they were enemies of Pegasus House.

  ***

  The scent of flesh awoke the monster from its millennia of slumber. One eye located in the centre of the beast's forehead blinked several times, revealing a piercing red pupil. Different colours floated in the air in front of the creature. Each colour represented the unique scent of the living beings nearby. Bones cracked and clicked as the six-legged beast raised itself up, shifting the rubble, debris and moss that had grown over its silky black skin. Pinchers clacked together, as a serpent-like tongue licked at the air. The beast let out a low growl. The sound was something that shouldn’t have existed in this realm. It was multiple voices growling as one. The dead monster was forty foot in length from pinchers to scorpion tail tip and stood twenty foot high from paw to head. Light poured down into the underground cavern, revealing an incline that would lead up towards the surface.

  ***

  In the centre of the dome was a beautiful fountain that sprayed water up into the air, out of the mouth of a strange one-eyed beast that looked like a mythical dragon. Faded murals covered the walls of the great dome. Collapsed benches could be seen in rows, all facing towards an alter that lay beneath a fallen wall. The voice of his father whispered instructions into Rogue’s ear. The High Priest crossed the room, aware of the rumbling sound of drop ship engines in the street outside. He had no time to deal with something like that. The rest of the team were more than capable of dealing with whatever was happening outside. Rogue headed down a long spiral staircase into the shadows below. A torch strapped to his shotgun forced back the darkness, offering him limited light, as he followed the stone staircase around and around, going deeper and deeper underground. Every inch of the wall, not covered in purple moss, had beautiful paintings of alien angels reaching down from the clouds. Rogue made the quick assumption that this must have once been a church for the people that lived here, but still, he saw no signs of advanced technology. The bottom of the stairwell opened into a long stone corridor. The clicking of his boots echoed off into the shadows, as Rogue made the long walk down the corridor, stopping at the end of the corridor due to two thick wooden doors. He listened to the voice, slung his shotgun over his shoulder and forced the doors open with the palm of his hands. A bright light shone from within the centre of the room, momentarily blinding him. Rogue held up a hand, as he stepped forward into the room. In the centre of the room was a wormhole. It wasn’t like the enormous anomalies in deep space. This wormhole was about eight foot high and eight foot wide. Slowly, Rogue walked around the circular room, but the mouth of the wormhole appeared to follow him like the eyes in one of those old paintings. It didn’t matter what angle he stood at the mouth of the wormhole turned to follow him. Never had he seen something like this. Never had he heard of a wormhole like this. Beneath the wormhole, sitting on the floor, was a silver egg-shaped device with flashing blue lights. It was the first sign of technology he had seen since landing on the planet.

  ***

  Echo pressed his back against the stone cold wall, concealing himself within the shadows of the decaying building, as he looked out onto the street. Breaker was positioned on the other side of the window. They both watched, silently. The dropship had landed in the middle of the stone road. Computer controlled weapons covered the hull, allowing for complete coverage in all directions. Echo gulped as the men from Cyber House marched down the ramp. There were twelve of them. His mind drifted back to his days at the academy. All children were taught about the fate of Mother Earth and the creation of the five houses. Cyber House had always scared him the most. They were not zombies. They were not conscious dead people awoken from wherever their soul should have been resting. No. These people, if they could be called people, were human. Well, they were once human. They were human no more. The twelve figures in the street outside stood nine foot tall. They had no skin. They were silver humanoid skeletons fixed with an eternal grin across their silver skulls. The androids carried large assault rifles in their hands, but Echo knew they also had multiple weapons built into hidden compartments in their body. The main torso was encased completely in silver armour, concealing the internal organs within. The strange hybrid human-robotic brain still remained within the reinforced armoured skull. These things could see, hear and sense things better than any human or living zombie. They were stronger, faster and smarter than any human or living zombie. The men of Cyber House were practically indestructible. They had thrown away their humanity to become the ultimate fighting weapons in the war against the dead. Echo never understood why they were enemies of Pegasus House, but perhaps they were jealous of the only real humans left in the universe. What he did know was that this was a bad turn of events.

  The twelve android soldiers stood in the centre of the road.

  Suddenly, one of the androids at the front turned to the right and opened fire on the building where Hex and Joker were positioned. The armour piercing bullets blew chunks out of the wall, sending dust and debris flying into the air. None of the other androids opened fire. Echo went to open fire, but Breaker reached out and grabbed the barrel of his gun, shaking his head profusely.

  ‘What are you doing?’ he barked in a hushed whisper.

  ‘We are here to save humanity,’ reminded Breaker, ‘if you do this you will give away our position. This mission will be over before it has even begun.’ Echo wanted to rifle butt this bastard for being able to say those words out loud, but he knew he was right. If they opened fire now, then this mission was over. The androids would wipe them out in a matter of mere seconds.

  The thudding of machine gun fire ended.

  Coughing and groaning could be heard coming from within the house on the other side of the street.

  Two of the androids marched through the cloud of dust and disappeared out of sight.

  ‘You bunch of fucking cunts. Twisted metallic fucks,’ shouted Hex, as he was manhandled out into the street, still clasping his deactivated chainsaw. A moment later the second android marched out, holding Joker by the back of the neck, holding him in the air, so that his feet dangled aimlessly. Blood was pouring from his abdomen. Joker spat blood, raised his head and looked at the crowd of androids. Hex was thrown down to the floor at the feet of the android that opened fire on him. The other one held Joker up in the air, his arm at full stretch as if he wanted the stench of humanity as far away from him as possible.

  ***

  Babylon changed the setting on his scope, compensating for wind speed and distance. The crosshairs were aimed directly at the android holding Joker. From this distance, he couldn’t tell if his friend was dead or alive. Joker just hung aimlessly in the air. Hex was out of sight, concealed by trees that had grown through the centre of the old town. Babylon took in a long deep breath and slowly began to apply pressure to the trigger.

  ***

  ‘Who are you?’ Rogue asked the voice, as he stared into the glow of the wormhole.

  ‘I am a survivor.’

  ‘You are a survivor of what?’ he asked, circling the room.

  ‘I am the sole survivor of a race once deemed the most powerful in the universe.’

  ‘That is a bold claim to make.’

  ‘Is is fact. My people ruled the universe.’

  ‘What happened to your people?’

  ‘Ego,’ replied the voice.

  ‘Ego?’

  ‘Yes. We thought we were better than others. We thought we were special. We thought we were Gods.’ Rogue said nothing, waiting for the voice to continue. ‘My people were capable of incredible things, truly incredible things. Whatever idea you can possibly conceive we have already invented it. We were masters of technology. We could end all life in a blink of an eye, but we also had the power to give life. We were top of the food chain. We were the greatest race that ever was and will ever be.’

  ‘If this is true, how are you the sole survivor?’

  ‘Ego,’ repeated the voice.

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘We thought we were Gods. We searched out the real ones... we found them.’

  ‘Are you talking about the dead?’

  ‘Ha,’ the voice laughed, ‘mere playthings. The Gods are so much more. They are incredible.’

  ‘You sound as if you admire them.’

  ‘I do,’ said the voice, disappointedly. ‘They destroyed my people. We knew that there was no one capable of harming us in the mortal realm, but in their realm, we are nothing but insects to be stepped on. They are incredible. They are beyond our wildest imagination. We the greatest race in the history of creation was wiped out. Our empire was crushed by the Gods themselves.’

  ‘Then what am I doing here, why did you lead me here?’

  ‘They are incredible,’ spoke the voice, ‘but the war isn’t over whilst I still breathe. I will give you all the information that I have on the Gods.’

  ‘I am not fighting the Gods. I am fighting the dead.’

  ‘Ha,’ the voice laughed, ‘you don’t even know who or what you are fighting. I will give you everything you need to know to fight them. I will give you the location of the weapons we used to fight them. I will give you the means to cause the Gods enough problems for a thousand years.’

  ‘I want to know about the wormholes.’

  ‘We invented them,’ said the voice.

  ‘I want to know how to control them.’

  ‘You cannot change time,’ said the voice, as if reading his mind. ‘What has happened, has happened and will always be what happened.’

  ‘The wormholes are points in place and time. If we can open them, we can go back to a time, drop a nuclear warhead and stop this all from happening.’

  ‘No. It will not work.’

  ‘It will.’

  ‘I will give you this technology. You could then use it to open a wormhole to my homeworld the day before we opened the wormhole into the other realm. You could send this nuclear weapon and destroy my world, but do you know what would happen?’ Rogue said nothing. ‘Things will continue to happen as they have.’

  ‘How would that happen if your world is destroyed?’

  ‘The moment you destroy my world you will cease to exist. The technology you used to destroy my world came from my world. How can you send a nuclear bomb back in time if you have no knowledge of the wormhole technology? You would never have the wormhole technology. The moment you send it back in time is the moment you cease to be. You cannot destroy my world because by destroying it you lose the very technology you used to send this weapon back in time. My world will never have been destroyed, and the next day we will open the doorway into the realm of Gods and time will continue on as normal.’

  ‘We will have created a new timeline,’ said Rogue, weakly.

  ‘There is only one timeline. There is only one time. What has happened, has happened, what has happened has always happened and will always happen. You cannot change the past, but I can give you the weapons to allow you to change the future.’

  ‘Show me.’

  ***

  How had he allowed himself to be caught so easily? Hex cursed himself as he knelt on the stone road, his right hand still gripping the chainsaw, his thumb mere millimetres away from the on switch. Hex had been eyeing up the chest armour. Could his chainsaw cut through it? He didn’t see why not. There wasn’t much his sonic chainsaw couldn’t cut through. Hex glanced at the other androids around him. He would be a dead man as soon as he attempted this, but he would rather go out on his feet with his chainsaw in hand than on his knees in an alien street. Hex didn’t dare look towards Breaker and Echo’s position. He didn’t want to give them away. He just hoped the two of them remained hidden and didn’t dare a rescue of any kind. A dozen androids verse the two of them was a short-lived battle. Hex glanced back at Joker’s dangling form. Blood was dripping from the tips of his boots to the floor below. The swordsman opened an eye, smiled a bloody-toothed smile and winked. A frown creased Hex’s brow, as he looked at Joker. It was then that he spotted it. Joker was holding a grenade in each hand, his thumbs already pressing down on the activation switch, as soon as he let go there would be a three-second delay and a god almighty explosion. Hex allowed a brief smile to creep up the side of his face. At least he was going to go out with a bang.

  ‘I am sensing movement,’ said one of the androids.

  ‘It is large,’ said another.

  ‘Where is it coming from?’

  The androids looked left and right, high and low. If they could make a facial expression, it would be one of complete confusion. And then they all looked down beneath their feet. ‘There is something beneath us.’

  Hex made his move.

  His thumb flicked the trigger, and the chainsaw roared into life. The large medic forced the tip of the chainsaw forward, driving it into the android’s chest plate, causing dramatic sparks to scatter into the air all around him. The android flicked its head to face him. The eternal grin inches from Hex’s face. One metallic hand gripped Hex by the throat, lifting him high into the air, as sparks continued to dance off the android’s armour. ‘FUCK YOU!’ Hex gagged, as the android allowed it’s assault rifle to fall away and stick to its own body as if it were a magnet on a fridge. The android raised its free hand, the index finger twisted and turned, transforming into a drill point. Hex’s scream echoed through the air, as the drill tore through his forehead and churned up his brain.

  A single gunshot rang out.

  The android holding Joker was blown sideways through the air, its head shattered into a million pieces.

  Joker dropped to the floor and groaned.

  All of the other androids turned as one, searching for the hidden shooter.

  A second gunshot decapitated another android, but that was all the other androids needed, as their hybrid brains calculated trajectories for possible locations of where the sniper could be. As one they raised their weapons to return fire. ‘Goodnight, fuckers,’ laughed Joker, as the grenades rolled beneath the android's feet. The street was engulfed by a mighty explosion, spraying android limbs in several directions.

  ***

  ‘Shit...’ cursed Echo, looking down at the street as the dust and debris began to settle. Joker and Hex were gone. Lifeless androids were slumped against walls or lying here and there in the street. Four of them remained active. One had lost an arm at the left elbow. One had lost everything from the waist down and was dragging itself across the stone floor to the nearest assault rifle. The other two looked dented and charred but in perfect working order. Echo clicked the safety off his assault rifle.

  ‘We can’t do anything,’ whispered Breaker.

  ‘There are four of them left.’

  ‘What about the dropship?’

  Echo hadn’t thought about that. As if on command several more androids came marching down the ramp of the Cyber House dropship. ‘Wait,’ ordered the android in charge of the ground party. It shuffled from side to side, looking at the ground. ‘Pull back,’ said the robotic voice, ‘pull...’ that was the last word the android managed to get out of its voice box before the road cracked like the shell of an egg and the gaping mouth of a zombie beast burst through the stone like a great white shark bursting up from the ocean to get a bloody carcass dangling from the crane of a boat. Teeth the length of a full grown man wrapped themselves around the dropship, biting through the armour as if it were the flesh of a cooked chicken. Assault rifles thundered loudly, as the androids opened fire on the grand monster. The high calibre bullets punctured deep holes into the alien's body, spraying green blood in every direction like some kind of paintball match, but the dead don’t feel pain. The beast dragged the dropship down beneath the street, biting it to piece and tearing it apart. A moment later a loud explosion shook the alien town, and a fireball roared through the hole now left in the centre of the street. Only four androids from the original ground party were left.

  ‘I can sense movement,’ said one of the androids.

  ‘It is coming back,’ replied the leader of the party.

  There was a moment’s silence. It was broken by the sound of Babylon’s sniper rifle. One of the androids was lifted off his feet and propelled backwards through the air, as an armour piercing bullet shattered his chest armour and turned every single into organ into pulp. The street cracked a second time, as the alien monster burst through the ground. The android leader leapt into the air with superhuman like ability, landing upon a rooftop opposite. This time the alien beast thrashed it’s powerful head, as it clambered out of the hole. One of its massive feet crushed the legless android into the ground. The one-armed android opened fire with its assault rifle, whilst the Android leader pulled a silver rod from a compartment in its thigh, twisted the top like a bottle of pop and tossed it down into the monster’s mouth as it roared. Razor sharp claws cut the one-armed android into three separate pieces. Echo watched the android leader sprint away across the rooftops and decided that it was best to follow suit. Echo slapped Breaker on the shoulder and sprinted through the back of the ancient house. An ear-shattering explosion boomed through the town, the shock wave was so powerful that it threw Echo and Breaker into the air, blowing them out of the back door to the building. Echo bounced once, twice and thrice and looked back at the building, as it collapsed in on itself.

 

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