Navya, we obliterated one entire creature, but it was becoming obvious we only had the firepower to take out a small fraction of what we faced. Navya was knocked to the ground, her weapon skidding across the blood-slicked floor. One of the people-bug’s legs lifted to stomp her into a paste but a diving Nigel managed to knock her out of the way and the leg slammed the decking with a sickening wet slap of pulped bodies. Another people-bug pounded its way toward Nigel and Navya. I held up my hands in surrender. “You win! I give up.” I shouted at one of the cameras mounted on the wall. The bug stopped with one leg hovering over my friends. “Put the weapons down,” said the doctor over the intercom, “and get back upstairs and lie down on one of the gurneys. The botsie too.” <Smith, what should we do?> <I don’t know, Denver. None of my simulations are showing a way out that doesn’t end with all of you in body bags. I suggest cooperating.> I dropped Smith to the floor. “I promise I’ll make it quick,” said the doctor. “After I drill the first hole into your skulls, you won’t feel much at all.” We headed for the stairs. One of the people-bugs blocked the Now she was a robot. A zombified corpse of living flesh. With a startling clank, the glass walls separating us from them lifted. Navya, Nigel and I backed up. I didn’t want to shoot any of them. They were all so, so young, but I’d do what I had to do to protect myself and my friends. They gathered into groups, their overall number seemingly doubling, then tripling before I noticed many more were feeding up a staircase near the back of the formerly glassed-in area. “What are they doing?” asked Navya, her voice registering yet another new level of shock as some of the refugees laid down or sat and interlocked arms and legs. Muscles flexed and squeezed, and I swear I heard bones snap as they hugged themselves into a tightly packed column. Speedily, they piled themselves into several more stacks, and then these stacks bent as if jointed, and they merged with others. More refugees climbed up, using their fellow victims as ladder rungs and formed a segmented body atop its legs. Frozen in shock, we stared at a six-legged bug-like creature made of an unthinkable tangle of dozens of living human bodies. It moved, legs tensing like a spring, and it leapt in our direction. We ran, and though we had nowhere to go, we sped away from the monster. The creature turned. The people forming its feet were already crushed and bloody, yet they still clamped on tight. I fired. The pulse blasted one of the legs apart, but the other five legs were pumping in our direction. Navya fired, too, but already the bodies that were detached by my blast were regenerating. Gods, more people-bugs were forming. At least a half dozen of them. “The staircase!” I shouted. We sprinted through gurneys, dodging low-hanging equipment, and hustled down the stairs into another vast space where another half-dozen giant people-bugs awaited. Behind, the upstairs people-bugs disassembled to come down the stairs and snappily reassembled. I took more shots as I ran, none of them hitting their mark. Smith lobbed a few more to make up for my misses. Combined with Nigel and No. 106 staircase, and we had to pick our way between its legs. I saw the people close up, their faces wrenched in agony. Squeezed so tight together they struggled for air, their skin discolored with oxygen deprivation. Many, it was obvious, had died. Their bones broken, their lungs and hearts pressed to death, yet their limbs and muscles were still controlled by the probes inserted in their heads. Held together by fingers dug deep like meat hooks into twitching flesh, the people-bug moved in coordinated fashion to unblock the staircase. The doctor was deluding himself if he thought he’d successfully cracked the human mind. This was body control. Not mind control. Whatever he was doing to their brains was destroying everything these people were. They were empty. The doctor might’ve finally beaten me, but I took heart in the fact that once again, the doctor was a failure. His kind could kill every last one of us, but they’d never own us. Never. We marched up the stairs and we each chose a gurney. “Hand straps,” said the doctor, who stepped out of the shadows cast by the bug-people. “Denver, I want you to secure everybody’s hands.” He was this close, but I couldn’t do a thing about it. His mind-slave goons were all around him, ready to strike at any moment. I went to Navya. “I don’t want to die,” she said, her eyes pooling with tears. I clutched at my own heart which was strangled with guilt as deep and dark as the ocean bottom. I pressed my forehead against hers. Tears streaming down my cheeks. “I know. You’ve been such a good friend. I’m so sorry I brought you here.” “I knew what I was getting into,” she said. She tried to smile but the grin was instantly swallowed up by fear. Nigel was next. I strapped in one wrist then the next. “I didn’t think it would end like this,” I said. “Others live on,” he said. “It may only be a flicker, but hope survives.” “This is all my fault for bringing you here.” “Don’t worry yourself with that, love. We’re all mates and this is what mates do for each other.” “Thank you,” I told him. I bit my lip and took a deep breath before subvocalizing to Smith. <Smith, I don’t know if you can hear me, but I’m so sorry. I failed.> He didn’t respond. Too far out of range, probably. I sure hoped that AARON LOVETT
35 Publizr Home