Humanity, 2.0
YEAR 055, DAY 301
I consider there to have been three phases to my life after meeting 15226. I am writing this now, of course, in the third phase, but the bulk of this journal consists of the first and second. Without better terms to describe them, I label each phase by the part of my body that saw the most use in it. Phase one—well, phase one was all about my dick. My first task was to make hominus girls out of human girls, which, in hindsight, I may have dragged my feet on.
The second phase was all about having to actually use my brain. I stepped into a position of leadership—never formally, just sort of a de-facto leader of our kind, especially after Project Elysium got rolling and devoured a colossal amount of everyone’s time and energy. Entire days went by without me having sex!
Well, not that many, but there were a few.
The third phase, which began a few decades after our exodus from the Vault, is defined by my heart. My people no longer really need me as a leader; in fact, I think it’s best I not lead. Emily filled in for a while, but she, too, handed power off to later generations, those who didn’t grow up in the old world. We have a somewhat different way of seeing things, one that’s… dated.
As everyone knows, we did pick our site for Elysium—not far from Lake Baikal, in what was once—in my youth—Siberia. Our best guesses said that the number one hardest thing to come by in a sun-scorched world with molten polar caps, insane weather, low oxygen, and an almost-extinct biosphere would be lots of fresh water—and Baikal was sitting on twenty percent of the world’s supply, and far above sea level where it might be overrun.
I glanced over at some of the floating schematics that were always running in between the three workstations in the den—constantly monitoring the whole project, along with the location and task of every automated constructor. They were mostly still working on the foundations and framework—the skeleton—that would ultimately become the Elysium superstructure. So much had to be done before a single person could live there; power, water, sewer, transportation, all of it had to be planned decades in advance if the place was to be livable centuries later.
Late at night, even in the summer months, it grew cold in Siberia. Even I, who generally didn’t mind the cold air, right then was wearing a thick black sweater and heavy pants and boots. I leaned forward, against the railing on the outer observation deck of the Foxtrot. The night sky here was always a sight to see; the auroras were one thing, but just the clarity of the stars themselves was always incredible. The closer you looked, the more you saw.
I couldn’t believe that I was more than seventy-five years old already. Had I not met 15226, would the time have passed more slowly? Would I have taken things at a different pace—or did normal humans wake up one day and realize fifty years had passed, and wonder where the time went? Would a hominus’ centuries-long lifespan be no different, in the end, from a human’s, with it all coming down to perception?
Well, no matter how often I drifted into its territory, I was never much of one for the higher levels of philosophy. Too easy to get caught up in ideas so abstract that language is useless to describe them, and no two people talking about it ever actually understand each other. The language of sex and fucking was my specialty, one that none of the old species truly spoke… but plenty of my girls—more than fluent in it—were close at hand.
Chilled air swept by, but I ignored it, taking another sip of my coffee. On the horizon to the south, I could see the occasional flash and even hear a distant thundering noise once in a while… I tried not to think too much about them. The Chinese civil wars were a whole new kind of horror. With the way biochemical and neutron weapons were being deployed by all five players involved, it wouldn’t be long until huge swathes of the Middle Kingdom became uninhabitable—some of them even now.
Above and about the horizon, I could see a handful of circling, blinking lights; that would be Sasha’s drone fleet, filling the air with the jamming signals that kept foreign drones from spying—or worse, attacking. That and Wren’s maser batteries—um, I guess we don’t build many large-scale weapons like that, so think of a laser except made of microwaves—were enough to keep us safe… so far, anyway.
The Foxtrot was perched atop the highest completed floor of the west tower, where we had line-of-sight command access to all of the orbiting drones—and, in turn, the whole AC fleet. The bulky habitat’s six legs each attached with both magnetic and hydraulic clamps to standing girders, and it had numerous defenses as well as a limited autonomous intelligence that could react far faster than any human—or hominus, for that matter.
The tower we were occupying was one of three independent units that would comprise the bulk of Elysium’s above-ground component; one mostly above ground and towering above the land around it, one a sprawling complex over several square miles and protected by a canopy, and the third one completely underground. They would be connected, but each would be capable of independently sustaining itself on an oxygen-less, lifeless Earth for the four hundred years we’d set as the goal for a maximum-populated unit.
Right now, though, it was all just a mess of standing metal, crawling with faceless mechanical ACs building the basic structure. Elysium wasn’t habitable yet, and wouldn’t be for years. We had to build it to weather incredible punishment; not only did it have to be sustainable for centuries with no outside resources, but it had to be able to withstand earthquakes, radiation, super-canes, atmospheric poisoning—the list went on. For the next decade or so, Wren, Sasha, and I would be lost in the endless details of building the place. The rest of the girls were involved at many points, but it was we three who lived it day and night.
There was still plenty of work to be done, and tonight was another late night. I glanced over my shoulder, seeing Wren and Sasha tangled together on the bed—likely having clung together for warmth when the cool air blasted them as I stepped outside. I’d been sleeping in between them, but I wouldn’t be able to again unless I manhandled one or both. Strange—asleep, they seemed like a perfect, loving girl-couple.
Wren’s tattoos—still as sharply defined as seventeen years ago, how she did that I had no idea—and her pure white hair were the only distinguishing feature between the two from this angle; they were nearly identical in their shades of skin and virtually every other aspect. They’d passed for twins on more than one occasion, and when Wren dyed her hair and they were dressed from head to toe, they’d fooled even me—if for only a few moments.
The two would rest for a few hours, like me, then get back to their workstations—probably arguing again. I sometimes felt like I was only there to keep the two of them from killing each other sometimes, but they made love to one another with the same passion only an hour ago.
Neither had punched out any children in the past few years; they’d decided to make Elysium their baby. I was as wrapped up in it as they were, of course, but it wasn’t stopping me from pumping big, virile loads into fertile pussies that availed themselves… Rain and Nadine would both be swelling up pregnant again soon, and I’d sunk my cock into Naomi’s tight, defenseless snatch the night before last to make our newest recruit pregnant as well. That was only my own work—my sons were, in turn, each busy with their own generations of girls, producing even more of us.
Naomi, my gorgeous half-Chinese, half-Canadian math-whiz princess was off to the Vault now, probably still en route—it would be her first time seeing the place. I hadn’t been back in nine years; I was told Melody and Hannah’s work to spruce it up and make it seem more like a home and less like a dim, cavernous realm of echoes and silence had been successful… to everyone’s surprise. I hadn’t thought it possible either.
A month ago, I’d become a grandfather… for the twenty-sixth time. Blake and Zoe’s second, Chalcedony. You’re probably wondering why you never heard of her—it’s because you all know her as Francesca or just Franna. She’s gone to some length to make sure everyone calls her by one of those two names. The little fad for naming the third-generation girls after gemstones started to get a bit weird after they ran out of the more commonly known examples.
Fortunately, her grandfather swooped in hours later to wisely give her the middle name that she now goes by. That ended up becoming a hominus tradition, on our side, now; the mother picks the first name, the father the middle… or, more accurately, backup… name in case the mother was having a ‘special moment’ when she picked the first one.
A few more images from the previous night floated through my head; my cock was half-erect in my pants soon, bulging along my thigh where my heavy pants confined it. Sasha and Wren make the most beautiful sixty-nines, really; it’s hard to tell where one begins and the other ends. Two pairs of smallish breasts squashed against each other’s stomachs as they clung together tightly, noses and mouths buried lovingly in each other’s most intimate places.
I saw a group of three ACs group together to do something—oh, right, the tertiary network hub was going to be installed, so they were putting in the mounting brackets and housing. Two of the bulky, four-limbed monsters clamped themselves to nearby girders, suspended perilously twenty stories above ground, and held the main housing mount in place perfectly still as the third set to work with his welding beams.
Their yellow-and-black striped bodies were only decorated with panels and a few green lenses for their eyes, but when the flashing light of the welders glinted just right, sometimes it looked like they were staring at me. A bit creepy, really. Wren told me that the eyes on them were nearly an afterthought. The ACs worked almost completely off ultrasonic sonar, and the eyes were more to provide the operators with a camera feed than because the machines needed them.
I saw the approaching lights on the horizon, and waited the few more minutes it took for Nina’s angular hyperfan to come up alongside the Foxtrot. She’d told me she would be in soon, and I’d recognize her bright yellow paint job anywhere. I supposed it might have been camouflage—had she been flying directly out of the sun.
Its three ducted jets blew out wide columns of blue-white thrust, keeping it just above the makeshift tarmac next to us—not much more than a simple metal slab we had the ACs bolt down wherever we had the Foxtrot mounted that week. I went inside, crossing the kitchen and going downstairs through the storage room to the western access, and opened it just in time for Nina to leap into my arms.
We kissed immediately, and held it for a while. Nina’s a bit taller than most of the others, so it’s slightly less awkward with her; I guess she took that as license for extra kissing. Still, it didn’t help if I reached down and gave her a little pickup to keep her closer to my face… and grabbing a free handful of her taut, round ass while I was at it.
“It’s been, what, two years?” She sounded breathy when we finally broke the kiss, though she gave me another two quick pecks on each cheek for good measure.
“Hey, your idea, not mine.” I shrugged.
“Funny, I could say the same to you.” She peered up at me. “I have my project, you have yours. Elysium is like your a new girlfriend… she’s totally monopolizing you. Some of the girls even complained to me about it. They want me to convince you to come to Alaska and fuck each and every one of them the way they know only you can.”
“Can’t leave here. Too much to do.” I shook my head—then grinned. “And… well, I have it on good authority—Blake is no slouch in the bedroom. He and I were on the comm the other day, and he actually had five girls lined up outside his office, waiting to be his one o’clock fuck, his one-fifteen fuck, his one-thirty fuck. I thought he was kidding at first, but it’s just another day on the job for him.” I grinned. “Even I never had it like that. I mean, he obviously gets it from me, but still.”
“Oh?” Nina gave me a mocking glare. “My son learned more about sex from me than anyone else, I’ll have you know.”
“Our son.” I chuckled. “It’s good to see you again. Let’s go upstairs.”
She nodded, and we went back up into the living room. It was laid out in the Boston Foundry style, mostly pearl-ceramic white with some glossy, obsidian black accents. The floor was dominated by a large, ten-foot-diameter depressed circle, about two feet deep, lined all along its edges by a thick and plush couch.
Only the stairs near the entrance broke the round circumference of fabric. The center was a round black table, wired right in to the Foxtrot’s network, giving direct net access and constant video feeds, troovies—and, of course, no shortage of the porn that Wren and Sasha loved to watch.
They don’t do it to get themselves aroused or jill off, mind you—oddly, porn from the old world is considered high comedy by no small number of us, and it was those two who began that… odd… tradition. I’ve never really understood it either, but the times they were watching it was one of the few times they didn’t argue, so I didn’t complain. It still broke up my rhythm when one or both of them made incredibly fake orgasm noises in the middle of sex, then immediately both burst out laughing.
Nina and I did some catching up, mostly on the little details that never seem to come up over the comm. Her Tibetan monastery idea had seemed kind of silly at first, but I had to admit I was more tempted to visit the more I heard. They were discovering things there, the inner secrets of ourselves—our minds and bodies, as well as our electrophoridae abilities and how they might let us communicate with one another in wholly new ways.
Nina wanted to know now—well, last night, Wren and I had had a brief spell in the shower after Sasha dozed off; she washed my cock clean, then groaned as I let my desire for her slim form take over. I pinned her against the wall of the shower and fucked her pussy hard and fast, letting the hot water wash over us the whole time. It had been only two minutes, at most, before she came, then I did moments later—flooding her with another thick load of come that dripped out after I withdrew. We’d dried off and joined Sasha in bed for a few hours’ rest.
I smiled to myself, taking the last sip of coffee in my cup. I’d have gotten up to make more, but there was a sexy Nina in my lap. Instead, I sat back and just thought for a while as Nina looked through her emails. I needed to sit down with her sometime before she left to get her to look at the budget and timetables. She always saw something the rest of us didn’t.
I could see the first hints of light forming on the clouds to the east, heralding sunrise. Over the horizon, probably somewhere to the south, Miller was out there. We knew he’d come out to oversee his para-military offensive in person. He knew I was here, but things weren’t like before. He couldn’t just send in a pack of goons to ambush me; they’d never get to me. He’d need an army… or what he’d brought instead, a few squads of elite, state-of-the-art ghilmen. In many ways, that was a worse scenario than him bringing two whole regiments of soldiers.
Miller was getting old; last I’d seen him was two years ago, in South Africa. I don’t think he expected to see me at a big dinner party hosted by some philanthropist or another he knew; I knew he’d been tempted to call in the cavalry, even in as public a place as that. He hadn’t—but he didn’t take my invitation to sit down for a drink either.
Prick.
I went into the office, putting more coffee on the machine as Nina went to take a brief nap in the spare bedroom after her six-hour solo flight from Tibet. Sitting on one of the chairs by the kitchen, I opened the folder I’d had in my other hand, revealing my pad. It was in these days that I had begun taking the notes that would later, when we were in the Vault, become this very journal.
I took down daily house-keeping information for myself—section 2-N finally completed, behind schedule by two years; power supplies for AC recharging insufficient; stray missile strike on the south corridor obliterated twelve percent of incoming raw materials for eastern tower foundation, must place new order. Nina arrived to visit and see the progress of Elysium; looking forward to her input. Claudia left Perth HQ today for a year-long shift in the Vault, along with Naomi, Rain, Sheldon, Ava, and Ivy. Sheldon was about to become a very busy man, but I had no doubt my son was up to the job.
Most of the journal was technical at the time, the product of my own need of assistance for keeping track of the numberless variables, decisions, and design changes that inevitably came along with such a huge project as Elysium. Still, I occasionally scribbled to myself in the margins notes about how I was feeling, which girls I was with on any given day, who visited, tracking information on the corporate pseudo-states that worked both for and against us, days on which children were born where, and so on.
An hour later, I was inside, back at my workstation. It seemed always a little strange to me; when idle, it looked like any other simple black table, round and elegant—if simplistic. It was only when I approached it that it became active, filling the air before its comfortable seat—sized even to fit my own tremendous body—with information and options, all far more easily activated than the point-and-click interfaces I’d grown up with, and my brain—on some level—still expected.
The bulk of our work was rote; artificial intelligence, despite the best of Wren’s efforts, was still a pipe dream. They were starting to say it was logically impossible. Wren’s brilliantly designed control cores, riding around in Sasha’s drones, made brilliantly stupid decisions on a daily basis… someone had to babysit the things constantly. There were messages awaiting a response, mostly from my children, asking for advice or instructions on one matter or another—mostly pertaining to the Elysium enterprise or one of our other ventures.
Sasha padded out lightly from the bedroom, wearing only the shirt I’d discarded late last night. Her hair was a complete mess, and she had an expression like she couldn’t decide if she was hung over or simply pissed off. She found the kitchen and looked through the fridge briefly; I lost myself again in numbers and decisions, until she abruptly plopped herself down on my lap, freshly peeled banana in hand.
I paused for a few moments, welcoming anew the visit of a warm female body against mine. Sasha’s short, curly black hair was the most immediate distinction from Wren that she had; their eyes were nearly the same deep blue color, their faces the same chiseled, angular, and lovely shape, and they were the same height to within a half-inch. I didn’t even go shopping for a particular match to Wren; it just happened that Sasha was strikingly similar to her arch-nemesis-lover.
She said nothing, only tapping up an unused section of the desk’s screens for her own work. She nibbled on the banana quietly, facing to the side and focusing on her work as she sat on my lap. I returned my attention to my work as well, save for having to reach around her body. It was a bit awkward, but not unwelcome.
There was no way, of course, she wouldn’t notice my erection increasing again—it was just under her ass. I was easily big enough to make a noticeable change in the shape of her seat, and I could see her giving me a sidelong, smoky glance from time to time as she just let my desire simmer. We’d fuck, of course; it might be in the next few minutes, or maybe in a couple hours. The nearly-as-fun part was how exactly we got there.
This kind of sexual tension always made the work day interesting, especially when Wren and Sasha were both present—they liked to one-up each other on ways to tease me before I finally just grabbed one or both and fucked them senseless before we went back to work.
The sun was up, and my cock still mostly hard, when Wren stumbled out of the bedroom as well. She wore only lacy black panties, her long white hair falling over half her face and loaning her the cycloptic look—which she used to glare at Sasha for a few moments before she shambled over to the second console and plopped herself down in the chair. Her tattoos were almost entrancing, her pale skin shifting ever so slightly and making them change and shift as she tapped points in the air, calling up her e-mails then checking the progress of her elements in the enterprise.
Sasha spoke aloud, to the air, but obviously to Wren. “Coming out with your tits flopping around is cheating, you know.”
Wren didn’t respond, at least not with words—there was just one middle finger held aloft over her shoulder, remaining there for a few moments without even a glance at either of us before she returned to using it for her work. There was nothing floppy about either’s tits, in the slightest, of course—Sasha just… says mean things to Wren sometimes. Wren says meaner things back. It’s how they show that they love each other. Or that they hate each other. Still not sure. By then, I’d discarded the idea that the two were mutually exclusive.
“Hey, bitch, you check your own damn intel feeds lately?” Wren spoke aloud, to the air, but- well, you get it.
“Sure did, you—oh.” Her voice suddenly seemed concerned. “Hmm. This wasn’t there before.”
I glanced over, still not entirely sure how to read the odd formatting she used for her drones’ intel reports. A bunch of Cyrillic gibberish—I confess I still hadn’t learned her native Slovak. I kept telling myself I’d do it later. The various characters and symbols weren’t even arranged or color-coded in any way that I recognized. All that I could make sense of was the single image at the center, floating in the air—some kind of heavy-looking mechanical structure, maybe a bunker or hangar. It was impossible to tell.
“What the hell’s that?” I shrugged, causing Sasha to shift a little in my lap. I was still much too conscious of how sexy that tight frame of hers was. She seemed a little bitchy this morning, so maybe I’d make her watch as I fucked Wren first.
“No idea.”
I frowned. Sasha’s response was a bit worrying; an engineering genius like her could recognize virtually any piece of hardware—be it archaic, modern, or experimental, from the whole world over.
“Well, it’s in Miller’s camp.” I folded my arms together, or attempted to—bringing Sasha close to me in an oddly protective gesture. “That’s… a bit worrying.”
“Probably some kind of maintenance facility for his ghilmen, or a fancy powerplant. Look at all the cables feeding into it. Thing’s connected to the entire rest of his camp.” Sasha shrugged. Miller’s former shipping empire was peanuts compared to his current stranglehold on ghilmen weapons technology. It still drives me into a fit of simmering rage to think that the reason he’d acquired what he had was almost certainly from what he gleaned when he had me in captivity for so long.
Sasha had her arms folded under her small breasts, tapping one finger on her elbow as she considered the image—then shrugged. “Machines, cyborgs too, make stuff that looks really weird when they let them design things on their own. I’ll task a spy drone on it and let’s not worry quite yet.” She shrugged, tapping a few more symbols in the air to assign one of the little spy jobbies she kept well above the cloud layer.
Miller’s camp—we called it that because that was how it started out, though it was really a full-blown base by now—was in a largely unoccupied section of Siberia, where we, too, were, only a few dozen miles south of us. Nova-Russia might not have given us much trouble after the first few years, but unfortunately, Miller’s inexhaustible checkbook also tended to keep them from asking any questions of him either.
It didn’t appear to be going anywhere, so I let the odd structure be for the moment—and, taking Sasha off my lap momentarily, set her down on the tabletop as I went into the kitchen to make us a more proper breakfast than Sasha’s banana.
I had the skillet out and was making pancakes en masse, watching news feeds out of the corner of my eye. Same old. Syrian Alliance making more noise at NATO, no shots fired—yet. Links found between a popular sweetener and two kinds of stomach cancer. More semi-panic about the West Antarctic ice shelf slipping off; it slid another quarter-mile in the past three months. The fun never ends.
I set out the table with a pitcher of orange juice, then rang the old-school small brass bell I had mounted in the kitchen. Both girls were right there in the room, but it was an affectation I had. Soon the three of us were at the table, eating breakfast together—talking only briefly about the project, but mostly about different things we’d heard from the kids.
When Sasha and I had finished, we sat around the table briefly, waiting for Wren—always the slowest eater. Wren still couldn’t be bothered to get dressed, and occasionally spilled syrup onto her bare chest—then giving the two of us an exaggerated frown. Sasha rolled her eyes and got up to go put something on. Wren still was enticingly wiggling her small boobs at me, making a show of how much she wanted me to come clean her up.
Five minutes later, we were on the couch, my shirt unbuttoned but Wren’s panties still on—she was sitting on my lap and I was slowly treating her breasts to a magnificent display of pleasure. Knowing each of them as intimately as I did, I knew Wren wasn’t quite one of those who had sensitive enough breasts to reach orgasm from that alone—but she was close, and I could spend hours licking, nibbling, and suckling at those smallish bumps on her chest.
My cock had been hard for a while now, but there was no rush. Sasha emerged, wearing one of the skin-tight bodysuits they used when they were going to pilot one of the aug shells—the top still unfastened, giving us an enticing view of her chest. She smiled at us, walking over to kiss first me, then Wren, who shot her a nasty glare before returning it.
“When are you two going to get over this thing?” I sighed.
“Meh.” Sasha stood up, stretching—and completely ignoring the question. I don’t think even they remembered how it started. I sure didn’t. “I was going to go out and take another look at the wiring on the ground levels… but it can wait.” She grinned, and the top of her bodysuit was tossed away.
Another five minutes had passed, and my cock was buried inside Sasha, who was laying out on her back on the love seat, sideways. I was plunging in and out of her from one end, and on the other, Wren had perched herself directly above Sasha’s face, where she was receiving a similar loving treatment to her pussy than I had given her breasts not long ago.
Sasha was tight and wet, and as always, a very responsive and verbal lover. She’s always had a foul mouth, and I knew just enough of her native language to know that she was even more so when she reverted to it as she approached the height of pleasure.
“Fuck me! FUCK ME!” She was outright yelling now, long since having gotten used to the whole ‘we’re the only people for several miles’ thing we had going. Some of the girls weren’t loud despite that, and some others were doubly so. Unfortunately—or fortunately, depending how you look at it, I suppose—many of them didn’t unlearn the habit when we were all living together in the Vault. With as horny as our kind are, it made for some very noisy neighbors… but at least we all knew we could walk over and join in if it was that bothersome.
As always, I didn’t respond. I wasn’t very vocal myself, never have been. Wren, similarly, was more interested in grinding her pussy against Sasha’s face than making noises about it. I pumped my big cock in and out of Sasha repeatedly, knowing I didn’t have to focus too much to make her come; I simply thrust away.
I could sense from the trembling of her thighs and abdomen—and yes, even the miniscule motions inside the walls of her pussy—that Sasha was rapidly coming. She was insatiable, even for one of us… and she called Wren a slut. I grinned.
The familiar boiling in my balls was welcome, and I didn’t make any attempt to slow down or hold back for now. Roaring aloud, I redoubled my thrusting as I approached the climax—then erupted, loosing massive amounts of come inside her.
I plopped back on the opposite couch, letting my softening cock rest on my thigh as I watched the girls re-settle themselves into a sixty-nine. Funny; their enmity was gone, at least for now. One would never know, looking at them in that moment, that they were anything other than a loving, perfect lesbian pair, each eating the other out without hesitation.
I could see Wren trembling as well after a few minutes, her ass giving the tell-tale quiver that she always shows just before she comes. We both watched her ascent carefully, seeing the genius devolve and melt away to the same animal we all were—primal, passionate, and very sexual. For all her intellect, she didn’t deny the basic creature she was inside. Wren bit her lip hard and her knuckles went white where she was gripping Sasha’s fine ass, and she came, still occasionally tonguing her lover’s folds even when she was being blasted with waves of pleasure.
Sasha had to go down below, and finished suiting herself up then went outside. The aug shell rose up next to the Foxtrot, a imposing, blue and black semi-humanoid figure with an odd empty spot in its figurative chest where Sasha soon was firmly ensconced. Wren was left there on the couch, nude and with her legs still spread wide shamelessly, while I absently tabbed through different reports back at my desk. Mostly boring technical stuff, but a few tidbits of useful information.
The comm sounded in the corner of my desk’s field of vision, indicating a priority item that the AI had flagged. It was from Sasha’s feed; she’d let it go the requisite amount of time without responding, so it defaulted to the rest of it. I tapped it. It opened up to a feed that it took me a few moments to recognize—the serial number at the bottom was the same drone that Sasha had tasked to monitor the new structure…
… except said structure was gone.
“Uh, Wren?”
“Yeah…?” I heard her call from behind the couch. I glanced over my shoulder; she had her screens floating above her nude form, her bare pussy on careless display as she laid with her legs spread wide. She wasn’t even trying to be sexy; she just was relaxing. Somehow, that made it sexier. I couldn’t help but let my eyes linger on her body for a few extra moments before remembering why I’d called her attention.
“Take a look at thaa…” Abruptly, the lights went out in the room, and I felt my hair standing on end as even I, with my less sensitive electrophoridae, sensed a wave of powerfl electromagnetic force wash over us. I blinked. “… what the fu—”
The first rail shot hit the nearby reactor’s access tower. We didn’t know they were using a mass driver then, of course; it was just a big explosion at the time. Why they chose that target was something it took us even longer to figure out—Nina and Rain became fairly convinced later on that they’d guessed it was some kind of control center.
It bore a vague resemblance to a communications tower, and it wasn’t even intentional on our part. Its heroic, if unintended, sacrifice may well be what saved our asses; if they’d targeted the Foxtrot directly with that kind of firepower, we’d have all been dead instantly—hominus or not.
The world flashed brightly and I threw myself atop Wren an instant before the shockwave hit, cracking the windows and causing the Foxtrot to shudder. Debris smacked into the hull, clanging and leaving long, sinuous cracks in the compound glass. Alarms and klaxons went off immediately, the lighting changing to deep orange and the clamps disengaging. I felt the whole thing lurch and a queasiness in my stomach as, for a moment, we went into free-fall.
The Foxtrot had only shut down for a half-second from the EMP; it had already fired up its secondary, EMP-hardened core and was in emergency-escape mode. It would seek out the nearest place to hole up and ascertain our safety. With another hard jerk, it took hold of girders a few floors down from where we’d been—then clambered rapidly to the west, taking a semi-randomized path through the thick metal jungle.
All around, through brief glimpses I could see of the outside as we bolted through Elysium’s skeleton, were more flashes and explosions. The lights of Elysium were all dark now, and the only illumination was the detonations of billions of dollars’ worth of resources. They were targeting the perimeter—oh hell, the maser batteries. I remembered now where they were all positioned, and that had been at least three we lost right then. Probably a safe bet the others were already dust too, or about to be.
The Foxtrot turned to take a path through a towering column of smoke that was rising from the closest maser battery, masking its visual and IR signatures… but also obscuring my own perception outwards. It would be navigating on the same sonar the ACs used now.
Just before then, I could see as we passed several ACs in their hunkered-down cover mode, when they folded their legs tightly to their bodies and became effectively a solid metal block. All of them did that that because it was expected for the batteries to hold off attackers; the ACs didn’t even have combat programming, all they knew how to do was either run away or do their best turtle impression, as then.
The Foxtrot leapt straight out the side of the building, immediately giving me a lurch in my stomach as we entered free-fall; emergency-escape mode wasn’t exactly designed with the passengers’ comfort in mind. If we survived the escape, that was good enough for the program—and that was with hominus tolerances in mind.
It might still have been a halfway decent ride, if the damn AI—ever not quite intelligent—chose a path toward its selected cover site that crossed directly above one of the remaining maser batteries as it leapt. The rail strike obliterated it in an instant, fired from miles outside its effective range; it never had a chance. The power cells inside detonated, blasting out and upward, enveloping the Foxtrot and sending us tumbling through the air as it attempted—to varying degrees of success—to protect its occupants.
The computer’s hominus-designed tolerances had no problem with slamming Wren and myself into the wall—very hard, enough to probably give a human multiple compound fractures—when we landed, and the walls around us buckled and screeched as the whole hull of the Foxtrot wailed in agony. It had landed end-on, like a torpedo shot into the earth, and even from where I was, I could tell this would be its last day of service to us.
Our view through the shattered windows was bad, but I could tell we’d landed inside the tower’s lower levels. The skeleton was finished, but none of the floors, ceilings, walls… it was simply an endless array of heavy, dull reddish ceramic-steel girders, engineered to last a millenia… or longer.
There was a choking cough, and I realized Wren—whom I was still mostly cradling—was waking up. “Ben.”
“Wren. Don’t move.” I knelt down on the buckled wall I was kneeling on, and held her head up. Externally, she had only cuts and bruises, but something had felt… wrong, when I moved her even slightly. It was her back, or her ribs… I didn’t have time to figure it out. Neither did she.
“Fuck… I think I broke every bone ever…” She coughed again, then opened her eyes, gazing at me through drying blood running down from a cut on her forehead.
Nina emerged from the sideways door to her cabin. She had a bathrobe on, and her hair was soaking wet; she must have been showering. Her bare feet rested atop the recessed door, and she held the opposite side of the doorway with her hands, squatting in midair. The fact that it gave us both a clear and wonderful view of her bare pussy wasn’t important to us at the time—well, maybe a little important to me, but you know how I am.
“What the hell is going on?” Nina’s demanding voice always brought me out of my… stupors.
I shook my head. “It’s Miller. We’ve got to move, now. Let him take some ground if he wants it that bad. We’ll get it back.” I turned to Wren. “Where’s Sasha?” I froze, my blood going cold. “Don’t tell me—”
“She wasn’t at the reactor. I checked that much right af—” Wren hacked and coughed, and this time, I was sure I caught her hiding a few spots of blood on her hand before she whisked it off to her side. Shaking her head, she continued. “Her aug suit still took that blast head-on, but she was far enough away… I saw her vitals were still good. Her suit may be shot to hell, though.”
Nina was approaching us, gingerly stepping over the shattered glass and rubble about the new floor. “We have some cover, at least, but Miller will be sending in ghilmen any time now.”
I blinked; I hadn’t even looked at where we landed. The Foxtrot had dragged itself into the foundation of what would later be one of the support towers—and only a half-finished example. It was three stories deep, with a dizzying array of reinforced concrete rooms and walls all about. It gave us cover from anything save for a strike from directly above, and we would be able to hole up here for a while.
“I need a second…” Wren frowned, then scooted backward slightly. “The network… it wasn’t ready for this. It could have sustained the EMP a few months from now when the core housings were finished—he must have known right when to hit us. Ninety percent of the cores have to be fried… or worse. All the drones we had up are shot, too, but the backups in the hangars might still work—if they get the launch command.” She paused, then looked up again. “I have partial radar. He’s bringing in five… no, eight hyperfans. And… oh, fuck me, that thing is huge.” She tapped a flickering radar screen, enlarging and turning it toward us.
The thing, whatever it was, was indeed enormous—easily larger than the rest of Miller’s aircraft combined. I didn’t think they even made bombers and fuel planes that big; what could it be? We all knew the answer for now—we didn’t have time to figure it out, and it would be arriving well before we could speculate up a half-decent theory.
Wren was calling up diagnostics, all abstract diagrams and code figures that only she and perhaps Sasha truly understood. The underlying computer science of Elysium I’d left to her and Sasha—my own expertise didn’t go beyond video games and installing swank new headphones.
“Wren.” I waved a hand in front of her screens, breaking her attention briefly. “Can you stop him, or at least slow him down? We need to shore up a defensive position, buy time until the others can come—and bring all Hell with them.” I paused. “What about the ghilman-jammer idea? It wasn’t ready in Bangladesh, but maybe now…”
“Maybe. I’d need everything online to try it, though.” She tapped a few icons, bringing them up. “There’s another option. Miller blew out all the active drone control towers, but they probably didn’t know that two were half-finished. If I can get in close to one of them, I can control the aerial drones—and the whole AC fleet.”
“The ACs? They aren’t programmed for combat.” I shook my head. “They only know how to run away and do their turtle thing.”
“I know. Doesn’t mean they won’t do damage if you override everything and command them directly to chop some fucker in half.” Wren gave half a grin. “Don’t know how many I can control directly, but—”
“Wait, directly?” Nina paused. “You mean direct neural interface? With that big a system? Wren, you aren’t ready. Hell, I don’t think even Rain is, and she’s the best there is.”
“Well, I’m going to have to be ready, aren’t I?” Wren glared at Nina. “Neither of you can do it, and I’m the one that wrote the kernel these things use. That has to count for something. Just get me to the closest offline control tower. There’s one four hundred meters from here, to the north.” She nodded in a direction, indicating—through rubble and twisted, half-molten steel—a squat, boxy structure that would later have the massive antennas mounted on it for a drone control tower.
“She’s right. There’s no time.” I shook my head at Nina, then looked at Wren. “No stupid heroic bullshit—that goes for all of us. Wren, control as many ACs as you can control, and no more. If you can’t get the whole four thousand of them, remember, we only need to use them to cover us until we can hole up somewhere. I’m thinking nuke fuel storage. Even Miller will be reluctant to follow us into there.
“If you get there and you can’t do it, you can’t do it. Don’t force yourself. You’re too valuable to lose here.” I turned to Nina. “Get her to the tower. I’m going to head to the reactor access and try to find Sasha. With luck, there’ll be too much radiation for them to follow me.” I gave a wry smile. “Time to test Bethany’s theory about our DNA.”
“Like you said, Ben… no heroic bullshit.” Nina turned to me, leveling her gaze—somehow, even from a foot and a half below my face. “If it goes south, you just run. Miller’s shown over and over again that he wants to capture us more than kill us—so you can come for us later.”
“After he’s done God knows what. Don’t get captured.” I turned, walking over to the emergency exit hatch—partly bent, but still usable if someone applied enough force. I braced both hands against the railings next to it, and pulled one foot up. “Ready? I’ll go first, then you two out the bottom hatch five or ten seconds later.”
Nina nodded, and took up Wren—carrying her down the ruined staircase toward the lower level. I waited another thirty seconds for them to get ready, and then leapt upward, bracing myself with both hands—and kicking the emergency hatch full-force with both feet.
It sailed outward, hinges shattering, and I flung myself out right behind—finding myself in a smoky, hot mess that smelled of burning… something. The smoke, as annoying as it was and how it made my eyes burn, was a good thing—it meant their infrared tracking would be useless, and optical sensors not much better. Ultrasound maybe, but those things were harder than hell to use—and with the chaos of all those nice big explosions they’d made, that would probably also be useless. I had to stay inside the smoke, pick off targets when I could, but otherwise keep moving toward reactor three access. Sasha had to be alive.
I was glad 15226 had cribbed the magnetic sense of direction from migratory birds and wolves and given it to us—it was something it took a while to figure out that we even had. The knowledge of which way was north was so natural that it seemed bizarre I’d ever not known it off the top of my head. I still had home-ground advantage too, having walked these same unfinished grounds countless times in the past decade; I knew even before I saw obstacles when to jump over or bypass them.
My first enemy was front and center. He made no attempt to use cover; he was walking right down the middle of what would later be a main corridor, his wicked rifle at the ready on his hip. Ghilmen had made firing from the shoulder obsolete, when Miller’s guys figured out how to wire smart-weapon technology directly into the ghilman brain—they could kill a man half a mile away with a shot from the hip, or even over the shoulder.
As I leapt over the small stack of still-wrapped wall plating, a sleek ovoid helmet turned to face me. The ghilmen was painted in solid, matte black, covered with polymer armor plates that warped with his movements. As usual, he bore no insignia, or even serial numbers. They were uniformly nearly seven feet tall, built of raw power and death; their bodies were something like our own, but imperfect copies—their deficiencies supplemented with technology built directly into them.
The ghilmens’ hominus-derived nervous systems allowed them to integrate fully with the machines they were half-built from, melding flesh and technology together into a seamless whole… yet also something totally inhuman. They were much like living weapons, the distinction between their bodies and their weapons they carried not entirely clear.
A thrown mass of concrete the size of a football forced him to dodge just long enough for me to reach close quarters, pushing his rifle aside and going for the knife I knew was either on his side or just underneath the shoulder. The carbon-steel knives they carried were able to pierce their own armor, that much I knew by accident—don’t ask—but actually taking one off a live, resisting ghilman was another matter.
After over fifty years of fighting opponents much slower than me, I felt the thrill of fear as the ghilman responded in turn—just as quickly. He caught my forearm, palming it aside with his free hand, and immediately dropped his rifle to form a brutal, armored fist—poised to strike my head. I sensed the winding of powerful electrical currents building up in the augmented muscles of his arm, fixing to deliver a blow that could shatter my skull instantly.
Dodging would have meant giving him the range to bring out his sidearm. I had to put him off-balance. A knee to the solar plexus, one I didn’t expect to even wind him with his armor and lack of a pain reflex, brought his head low enough for an immediate elbow strike on his ovoid helmet.
In the past, we’d found something barely recognizable as human underneath their helmets. Eyes with the eyelids surgically removed, permanently staring at the datafeeds before them; tubes feeding through the mouth and nose directly into the stomach and lungs for sustenance from external systems. Their scalps and spinal columns usually had pesky skin removed to fit more neural interfaces—and sometimes much of the braincase itself was removed in favor of replacement by a solid armor plate.
Disoriented for a moment, I went for the knife again, this time fishing it out of his holster and immediately spinning around, using both hands to drive it directly through his neck. Blood mixed with… something… spewed, and I tore the knife out to the left, keeping it in hand as I kept moving.
Too much conscious, tactical thought now would be an obstacle, slowing me down. Raw animal reflex was the fastest and strongest, and was best when only guided by tactical insight—not controlled. He hadn’t even hit the ground yet and I was gone. Grabbing his rifle would have been useless, it was keyed to his nervous system.
The biggest mystery about the ghilmen was how Miller controlled them so well. Everyone else who tried to build cyborgs so advanced and deeply integrated invariably had them go berserk or catatonic—or just up and die. His, however, always moved in perfect coordination and fought as a unit. He’d a made a mountain of cash selling their services in the world’s great variety of wars raging at the moment. We hadn’t figured it out either, and both Wren and Sasha openly admitted they had no good ideas as to how it was done.
It would be naive to think that the one kill I’d already made had gone unreported. Ghilmen didn’t just work as a unit, they thought as one; we didn’t know the specifics, just that it was obvious that what one knew, the others near-instantly also knew. They knew they were being hunted, surely, and where their fallen companion had been. Had to keep moving. I slid under a low-hanging wall frame, curved around a heavy plumbing shaft leading to the upper levels, then past a heavy HVAC u-
I hadn’t expected such a simple attack—who would have thought a ghilmen would have just clotheslined me with his rifle?—and was choking for air even as my fighter-mind attempted to recover. A weapon was nearly level with my chest, and a brief roll at the final instant dodged it—and caused shattered concrete to pelt the side of my face, forcing me to close one eye. I grabbed one leg and drove home my fist as hard as I could at the side of his knee joint.
I recalled thinking something was off right then; the leg I was holding seemed a bit light and thin for an assault-class ghilman. My hammer fist didn’t quite make it to the exposed knee—I let out an involuntary howl as my shoulder erupted in blood, spattering my face and chest as the ghilman put a round straight past the joint, putting every muscle in my arm immediately into shock.
Looking up through red-ringed eyes, blinking away the blood, I saw something—something I’d never known was possible. It wasn’t an ovoid-helmed, towering monster of technology and death that had brought me down. This ghilman was female. She wore no helmet, and her skin was pale, almost bluish—and her eyes jet black, possibly cybernetic, with only the dimmest hint of reddish glow for pupils. Her lips were nearly the same frigid color as her skin; she looked like she’d died of hypothermia, yet lived still.
Her hair was solid black and hung in a close-cropped mess around her head, and her face might have once been beautiful—had she cared to put in the effort. Now, though, she was eerie, something only formerly human; her expression had the same empty blankness we’d seen even on captured and dying ghilmen. They were like aliens in human shells, incomprehensible; I wondered if they had emotions at all.
The noises of a rampant aug suit weren’t difficult to make out; we both turned toward it, despite being unable to see in the smoky, ruined foundation. I heard shouting, another female voice, then was being hauled bodily by a tremendous metallic claw—and behind me, I heard an enormous cacophony erupt as a dozen heavy construction machines threw themselves into combat with the ghilmen. They wouldn’t last long—even their three-ton reinforced bodies couldn’t fight ghilmen—but they would buy time.
“Ben? Ben?” I could hear Sasha’s voice, asking me something, and I blinked.
“We need to get back to the others and evac.” I blinked. “The whole situation is wrong here. They brought something new. Even Miller doesn’t have balls like this.” I turned toward Sasha, seeing her through the face plate of the massive aug suit—mostly focused on the controls, but still occasionally sparing me a glance as I rode like a bride in her groom’s arms. I tried to bear with the image as I thought for another few moments.
“What?” Sasha frowned, still focusing on bolting through Elysium’s foundation at blinding speed. “Save it. We’re almost to Nina and Wren.”
What we saw as soon as we emerged from the smoke brought us to an immediate halt. My arm hanging limply at my side, I still nonetheless dismounted from the aug suit’s enormous hands and stood up, presenting myself to Miller and his cadre.
I suppose the odd, enormous rumbling as we approached Wren’s tower should have been our cue. That enormous thing on the radar was still, until that moment, unaccounted for. I’d been hoping it was a ruse, or some kind of bug or spoof they’d introduced into our radar system—meant to distract us.
Things that big and solid didn’t fly, they had to be built like airliners or orbital transfer scrams. Not… simple, almost hemispherical masses of steel and firepower. It was the size of a three-story building, blocking out the sunlight and looming over us like some monstrous alien spacecraft in one of those old movies.
It looked like no aircraft I’d seen before. It was clearly based on a hyperfan; it had the same characteristic ducted fans jetting blue-white exhaust, keeping it aloft—though with an eerie smoothness that was impossible for a human pilot. Its sinister black exterior, like the foot soldiers below, was almost featureless save for an array of half-hidden pipes and stacked plating, all surrouding one central object, mounted front and center—a small collection of sensors, glowing red. I could see the sensors shifting, moving… focusing. On me. There was more than simply a machine algorithm behind that. It was looking back at me.
At least a dozen weapons were mounted all over its underside; it was meant to serve as a gunship, obviously, though I suspected with such an enormous airframe it had to fill some other purpose. Still, it had enough firepower to bring the entire structure down around our heads. The battle was over... but not the war. They still wanted us alive, and the rest of my kin were doubtlessly already pooling every resource they had to hit Miller with the fist of an angry god.
“Ben!” Miller’s voice, as unwelcome as ever. “Glad you made it. I was just checking in on… was this one Sasha or Wren?” He glanced at Wren, seeming a bit confused for a moment.
“Wren.” I growled. I resisted the temptation to bolt toward her; the blood around her nose was one thing, but the fact that her eyes were shut yet swollen and her hands showed black and red burn marks meant that she’d overstressed her electrophoridae very badly—despite my instructions. It must have taken everything she had to hold off that squad behind us, long enough for Sasha to get me away.
“So that one’s Sasha then.” He glanced toward Sasha. “You know, in the intel briefings, I always got them confused. Not super important though. Let’s make sure both are out of the equation.” He glanced toward one of the ghilmen next to her, nodding.
In total silence, one of the ghilmen jammed—something long and sharp, like a metallic stake—inside the heavy back shell of the aug suit Sasha had on, where its battery was. It suddenly went limp, falling face-flat, and I heard muffled noises, likely cursing at the top of her lungs in Slovak, as she fought to free herself from her new prison.
I fought down the urge again to check on Wren; she had to be all right. She had to. I could tell that Sasha, at least, was safe for the time being—but Wren was another issue. Wren, for a small woman not much good in an out and out fight, was one of the toughest, most resilient women I’d ever known. She’d recovered from the horrific pain of her phosphorus burns decades ago—this would be a cakewalk after that… right?
Two ghilmen were already flanking me. Five were surrounding Sasha as well. They were the same huge male models as the first today; the female who’d had me dead to rights was unaccounted for. I knew not to make any sudden moves or any troovie bullshit. These ghilmen were focused entirely on me, and armed to the teeth—those close to me were backed up by twice as many at range, their weapons at the ready, and then who knew how many snipers already undoubtedly in position.
The two ghilmen from either side grabbed me, jarring me out of some snide comment I’d been about to voice—and carried me up the staircase, quickly. We went faster than I knew a human team could have possibly carried me, and I didn’t bother trying to fight them just then—instead following along. As I reached the top, I was surprised—and oddly, it seemed Miller was a bit too—when they released Nina, pushing her toward me. Nina immediately grasped Wren from the other ghilman, who released her as well, then pulled her back toward me.
I knelt next to Nina, cradling Wren in my arms and keeping her head up as Nina examined her. I had to keep Miller talking, for Wren’s sake if nothing else. The more time they wanted to spend talking and parlaying, the more time we had. I glanced over at the cluster of approaching ghilmen—and sure enough, Miller was approaching, cane in hand.
My adversary looked even older now. His salt and pepper hair was thinning, and he had pock marks and spots all over his aging skin. There was a cool and casual grace in his stride, but even I could tell he wasn’t walking so slowly because he thought it made him look more suave. He was almost seventy now, and didn’t have a perfectly steady gait. Still, one thing hadn’t gotten weaker—when our eyes met, I sensed he was just as much the calculating opponent who had once had me completely at his mercy.
“Hi, Ben.” He walked up, stopping about ten feet away from us. “You met Zee, I guess.” He gestured idly toward—there she was, emerging from the smoke. It was the woman ghilman from earlier, and she was holding something—a bloody mass, supported by a thin framework of metal or plastic, drilling into… I suppressed the retching reflex when I realized what it was.
She was carrying someone’s brain.
I scowled at her, but she returned only an empty gaze—and Miller gestured upward, to the hulking mass above us all.
“I don’t think you met my newest friend, though. Ben, I want you to meet the Naglfar.” He chuckled. “Lab toadies dreamed up the name. I’m told it’s from some kind of mythology. Greek, I think? A boat made out of dead people, I believe. It fits.”
The machine hovered in place, numerous weapons mounted on trained on us—mostly the smaller, anti-personnel stuff. I could see, along its figurative keel, the massive railgun that they’d likely used to wipe out our defenses—retracted into the hull now. How they’d crammed that kind of energy into a flying hull I had no idea—Wren later said it would take a capacitor the size of a small house to power a single shot from that gauge of mass driver—but I guess Miller was just full of surprises today.
“It was made from the fingernails of the dead.” I corrected him. “And it was Norse mythology, not Greek.”
“Well, mythology wasn’t my big thing, so I’ll defer to you on that.” He gave a long sigh, then looked at me. “Zee here’s cute, isn’t she? She even talks sometimes. Say hi to Ben, Zee.” Miller gestured from her to me.
Zee gave Miller the same empty, soulless gaze she’d given me before. Something was off here. I was thinking we were getting a glimpse of how exactly it was that Miller had such advanced ghilmen at his command—but also that there was something even he didn’t understand at work.
“Well, she’s not real social. Him either.” Miller shrugged, gesturing upward to the hovering mass above. “You know, even you wouldn’t believe what we found once we really started to crack open your DNA. Females were the key; Naglfar here’s core block is cobbled out of the brains of the first mixed-gender ghilman unit.”
Miller continued on, but I was more focused on Zee. She was still holding the brain, which as she came closer I realized had several metallic-looking components wired into it; was it the brain of the ghilman I’d killed? There was no telling. She held it aloft, and a small, snake-like metallic arm shot down out of underneath the hovering mass—and grasped it by the framework, immediately snatching the brain and bringing it within the greater body.
“That unit was real good in the field, even if half of them went down in a heavy firefight in Hungary… but that’s when it only really began for them. The lab guys didn’t want to lose out on some of the intel they’d gathered—so they stick a few of their brains on life support then wire them up into a network hub to try and recover it. One thing leads to another, and… bam.” He looked up at the hovering monstrosity, then back at me.
“You’ve given me the power I need, Ben… the power to stop any army dead in its tracks, and force any government’s hand. A few thousand ghilmen, controlled through Naglfar, are next to invincible—and even if you kill them, they recover the brain, add it to their bio-net, and the next generation is that much smarter. They’re unbeatable in the long run. I can finally get started on imposing something like order on this fucked-up planet.”
I growled, still not having quite grasped the enormity—the evil—of Miller’s creation. “It looks to me like you already have everything you wanted.” I waved one open hand widely. “You’ve taken everything you need to conquer the world—you had it years ago. Forget about us. We’re history.”
He shook his head, already knowing the answer. “Conquer, yes… it’s on the horizon. Maybe even before I die. Hold it? Not so much. That’s where you come in—you can change the equation. You have the secret to making people think straight, and you just sit on it.
“You’re a slippery bastard, I’ll give you that, Ben. It’s taken me this long to finally corner you, and even an idiot can tell I don’t have long for this world—but I’ll be damned if I let an opportunity like what you have just pass me by. I have four kids, Ben. I want better for my children than what people like you would leave them.”
I knew better than to put much stock in whatever rationalization he’d been rehearsing in his mind for the past decade. “Yeah, okay. It’s all for the sake of the world. You’re such a wonderful guy, going to all this length to blow shit up for world peace.” I glared right back at him. “Drop it, Miller. This is you being an even greedier son of a bitch than ever.”
He shrugged, giving me a wide smile. “Them’s the breaks, though.” He shook his head. “I never expected you to see eye to eye with me, Ben. You see, it takes a certain kind of hubris to change the world; you would never really understand. Who do you think made more of a mark—Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Napoleon… or clowns like Plato and Confucius? It’s damn galling that someone as idealistic as you managed to go toe to toe with me so long, but this is the end of the game. This is where things really start to happen.”
He nodded to the formation of ghilmen surrounding us, who fell in closer. One ghilman’s hand had a set of wicked and razor-sharp claws, the other held some kind of contraption with—oh hell, whatever it was was sharp enough to be a needle, but far, far too wide. It was nearly as thick around as one of the girls’ pinkies… and if I recognized the hardware, that was a semi-autonomous control unit on the side—what the hell was the thing meant to do?
They had me on my knees in an instant, and before I knew it, I was in agonizing, terrible pain. Fire ripped open of my neck and blasted my body to pieces, and soon I couldn’t even think of anything than the horrible pain. Something was inside my spine, inside my… oh fuck, inside my brain. What were they doing, I had no idea, and couldn’t even think enough to speculate. I had to get it out, get it out, get it out -
I knew my body was struggling, trying to escape, but they were even stronger than me individually—and there were two, maybe three, holding me. They had my joints locked, all in a perfect formation to prevent even small motions from interfering with their work. Nina, who I could see now was being held, and even Wren, unconscious and bleeding from her nose, were also being held back by ghilmen, who held them fast—unable to help me.
The searing pain began to subside after an eternity or two. I had no idea how long it had been, and had never experienced pain like I had just then. The word alone is insufficient; I couldn’t begin to truly describe what it was. Even now, I can’t sleep when I think of it too much. My thoughts were utterly scrambled, and much like waking up when one is deathly ill, I couldn’t even remember where I was or why I was there… only that I felt awful.
Through the haze of pain, I could hear the girls shouting my name over and over. Their warm bodies soon were on my bare skin; the ghilmen must have released the girls from their holds. Weird. Why would they do that? The odd thought drifted through my head, along with other, equally important speculation such as who would win this year’s World Cup and why that particular cloud had chosen to look like a hippopotamus. Didn’t he know hippos were assholes?
The ghilmen were standing around me in a formation again as my thoughts gathered again. When I could realize the concept of focusing, I did it, drawing myself together and bringing me back to the here and now—a decision that immediately seemed terrible. I must have been unconsciously shutting out the residual pain from my ordeal by retreating to la-la-land, and now I was experiencing it in incredible detail. I felt like I had to be screaming louder than anything, but the girls tell me I didn’t make a sound the whole time—I just fell to the ground afterward, trembling and soon covered with the mud covering the earth.
“Good, good… finally… wait.” I heard Miller’s voice. Miller. The fucker hadn’t had enough of hurting me? I turned my head—oh fucking hell my neck—and glared upward at him, spitting out half a mouthful of mud in the process.
He was now holding out a hand toward the ghilman who held the hated pain-machine—it had a small canister which was now likely full of… whatever they’d taken. The bloody needle, far thicker than any I’d seen used for medicine before, was still dripping. The ghilman turned toward Miller, impassive.
“The docs said we needed a sample from the brain—hippocampus?—not the spine. Check your orders. Do it again.” He was sounding impatient, and gestured toward me.
The ghilman remained impassive. Zee, who had been looking at me before, was now focused on him… and had a subtly different expression. I sensed something… wrong, even through the pain. An almost imperceptible shift, yet profound. My immediate instinct blared over every mental loudspeaker I had. Get the hell out of here. Now.
Miller must not have gotten the memo. From the way Nina was trying to lift me by my arm, maybe she had. Miller was saying something else now, practically shouting at his ghilmen.
The double-tap that ended Miller’s life rang out, twice in quick succession, a tiny sliver of an instant after his chest erupted with blood. I tried to see where it came from, eyes training around before I finally spotted the flashing muzzle—one of Naglfar’s guns wasn’t aimed at us. Miller collapsed forward onto his knees, then was caught by two ghilmen on either side of him.
Our eyes met right then—and I think that was the only time I ever saw him afraid. I hate to admit—I’d always wanted it to be fear of me, when I finally beat him head-on in some scenario that never quite happened… that, just then, felt hollow. The ghilmen he’d helped create were something totally different than he or anyone else ever imagined, and he’d seen that only too late. His tool had been using him for years, and he’d outlived his usefulness.
The horrible noises involved in a man having his brain and spinal column removed with bladed weapons is, like the pain I experienced, indescribable. It was a gruesome thing, and I suppose I’m blessed that I was too focused on trying to regain my bearings and get away than I saw all but the barest hints through the corner of my eye—but it was still enough to give me nightmares for years to come.
They did it with brutal, yet practiced and surgical precision—severing the head and spinal column with a series of powerful motions with their combat knives. The woman had something, some kind of complex mechanical contraption that unfolded like a daddy-longlegs—and approached the two as they did… something horrible, cleaning the intervening flesh and bone from what was once Miller’s head.
The thing Zee held fastened itself to Miller’s brain and began digging long, sinuous filaments of itself within the flesh, still dripping blood. It looked much like the framework that she’d had before, that held the fallen ghilman’s brain, but this was different… more brutal. Maybe the ghilman’s skull already was designed to be recovered this way?
A hatch opened, and a similar cable-like arm gripped the daddy-longlegs-thing with a claw—then quickly retracted the severed brain into the massive hull of the Naglfar unit… for some undoubtedly even more horrible fate within.
It wasn’t clear, even then, what kind of monster Naglfar was. It was something almost beyond the concept of evil itself—it understood us, what made us tick, down to the last thought… but not a hint of that ever made it feel anything for us, or made it want to try and live with us. It was, however, soon abundantly clear that the thing now knew everything Miller ever knew; it even impersonated him, though mostly through his corporate attorneys.
For some reason, Naglfar—even in the later years when its technology was well beyond our understanding—seemed reluctant to impersonate humans and hominus directly. Was it that it hated us that much, that it couldn’t even stand to pretend being human or hominus even for a few minutes—or was it simply incapable of that, perhaps only able to absorb the raw information in the brains it… added, to itself?
The ghilmen around us fell into formation and began to walk away, almost silently. I was confused for a few moments—why leave now? They have us right where they wanted us. I’d half-expected to be the next brain Naglfar… ate, or whatever it did. It was unnerving to think that the giant hull above was filled with who knew how many formerly human brains, converted into something else. Maybe the girls could have gotten away, at least. I’d have physically thrown them if I needed to—or had even been able to.
The whole time, the Naglfar itself hovered in the hair, its single red sensor cluster focused on me. Zee, too, only stared at me briefly, then backed away with the rest of the ghilmen. I spat out a glob of thickening blood, and looked back up at it. “What do you want?”
It never responded—then, or ever. Naglfar never spared a single word for me or anyone else among the living. To this day, I can only speculate as to why it left us all alive that day; maybe it thought we might be useful in the future, or maybe it didn’t want to throw away whatever biological resources it might find in our DNA for future integration into itself.
Those are two of the more popular theories, anyhow. I myself sometimes suspect that the reason may not truly be comprehensible to we who still largely think in human and hominus terms. Naglfar may have understood us—but it was mostly certainly not… us.
The hulking shell that contained who knew how many half-dead human brains rose up on its hyperfans, its unblinking red eye never breaking the gaze I locked with it until it was no longer visible. It turned, and sped away over the horizon, leaving us in the cold morning air of Siberia—beaten yet alive.
Nina finally spoke, an unconscious Wren resting her head on Nina’s lap. “What the hell just happened?”
I had no response; we could only exchange glances. There was no telling what it would do next. It was long gone by the time we sent more surveillance drones over Miller’s abandoned camp—its small army of state-of-the-art ghilmen having vanished as well. I kept expecting the monster to reappear soon, to tip the balance of power in the many wars raging at the time—but a full decade passed without a single hint of it. When it did come back, though…
We resumed building Elysium, more because we couldn’t think of anything else to do. Our naivete was quickly done away with; every hominus facility we ran was soon armed to the teeth. In time, I recovered as well—the damage was more mental than physical, Bethany said. I knew I lost something—but what? Before 15226 changed me, she’d given me something… maybe she’d told me about it, maybe not—but it was gone now.
If only I knew what it was…