Hardcore - 03 (15 page)

A Hape leapt, snow hissed, and it was spun away, howling. The others leapt and Franco, spinning now in the sucking falling snow, was spared a horrible death at the teeth of the Hapes as they all went over the edge amidst a seething roaring pounding booming fall of deafening tumbling snow chunks and ice blocks and general avalanche...

Franco, arms above his head, wailed for his mother.

Franco's sandalled feet, toes blue, pedalled hopelessly as the snow and ice roared around him and in the melee he jostled and bumped against equally panic-stricken Hapes whose only misfortune in life now was to a possess a hunger that far outweighed their intelligence.

Suddenly, the snow and ice were gone.

Franco swung, his mouth open like a guppy fish, wondering what the hell had happened. Below, he watched the avalanche, replete with snarling, thrashing Hapes, descend into oblivion. Noise diminished, slowly, like thunder from a vanishing storm.

Franco swung, a fish on a hook.

"Huh?"

He glanced back, and saw some kind of Titanium line attached to his pack. He scratched at his beard. He contemplated what had just happened, and the only conclusion he could come to was that someone, or something, had rescued him.

Franco stared down at seven thousand feet of sheer, steep, ice-cliff. Wind slapped him like an irate girlfriend. Franco swung, idly, aware with growing irritation that that was all he could do.

There came a
jerk
on the line.

Slowly, Franco started to ascend.

Sourly, he realised his D5 had gone. "Bugger bugger bugger." With a series of jerks and tugs, he finally broached the edge of the cliff, devoid of its overhanging and very treacherous cornice. His hands gripped claw-like in snow and he dragged himself up a low slope, panting, red in the face, sweat stinging his eyes and tickling through his short ginger goatee beard. And, into view, came...

Sax. Sax the DumbMutt. All v1.2 of it.

"Bollocks," said Franco, not quite believing what he was seeing.

"Borrocks," agreed Sax, and padded forward, panting, a faithful metal hound, a true friend and rescuer for this, its fallen master. The DumbMutt stopped, and a long metal tongue, plated with scales in the manner of a snake, lolled out and licked Franco's face, leaving an oily residue, smelling like old tuna.

"Get the fuck off!" he snapped, slapping the tongue away.

"Ruff," said Sax.

Franco scrambled to his knees, and followed the trail of cable back to the Giga-Buggy. Quickly, his mind worked out the series of events.

"So you stowed away in the Buggy with me?"

"Ruff."

"And kept your head low until we stopped?"

"Ruff."

"Then you saw me in trouble, and launched the Buggy's Compact Cable as I went over the edge, thus stopping me from falling to an untimely but much deserved death?"

"Ruff.
Borrocks."

"Yeah yeah, well." He gritted his teeth. Took a deep breath. It was going to hurt him to do it. Torture his soul. But, he recognised: he must. "OK then. Sax. Thanks. Thanks for saving my life. Good dog. Good boy."

"Ruff." Sax wagged its tail.

"Now, get back in the damn Buggy. Before I catch fleas."

Sax padded off, and clambered into whatever rearward orifice had ejected him like a long slick metal turd.

Franco fought with the cable for a good few minutes, finally managing to disengage himself. He stood, ruffled, pride injured, but alive. Saved by a metal DumbMutt. "The bastard," he muttered, realising that sometimes, possibly, it was better to be dead. He strode back to the sign, looking warily about for more of the Hapes.

What were they? From whence had they come? Were they defending the weird glass building? The REC, whatever that was? Or maybe, yeah, maybe they were mystic guardians defending the treasure within!

Franco nodded to himself and, moving to the Giga-Buggy, re-armed himself with another D5 shotgun, and an MPK machine gun. Might get rough, he thought, and added a few grenades to his belt.

Bravely, Franco strode through the snow, images of Iskander's Crown and the gleam of sub-PlutoniumIII clear in his money-addled mind. He strode with long loping strides towards the REC Centre's entrance far below...

Behind, Sax stood in the snow panting oil-mist. The metal dog shuffled woodenly over to the sign and regarded it for a while, head tilted to one side, unconvincing hair flopping in its eyes.

Sax reached out, and licked the sign. Under its heated oil tongue, a thin film of snow and ice melted.
REC Centre
. Sax licked some more, and below the acronym three words were revealed.

RESEARCH. EXPERIMENTATION. CONFINEMENT.

Sax trotted back to the Giga-Buggy, curled up, farted a sour-oil fart, and promptly went for a recharge.

Wind blew loose snow through the green-tinged night. Franco halted at what he presumed were gates, and reached out, touching their slick, glass-like substance. The whole place looked modern. Too modern. Out of synch with the idea that this place had been abandoned a thousand years previously.

"Hmm." Franco scratched his chin, and stepped forward across the threshold. Winter flowers, white and blue, lay scattered randomly about, the only sign that what was once a kind of exercise yard for patients was now given over to the elements and raw cruelty of nature. No longer was the guiding hand of Sick World's doctors and nurses in charge of ordering chaos.

Franco edged forward, his new D5 weaving a slow figure of eight as he searched for howling Hapes. Reaching the double doors, again of steel and dark glass, there was that sign again.
REC Centre
. Franco pushed open the doors and stepped inside.

It was cool, and dark, but emergency lights picked out silhouettes down a long, wide corridor.
Emergency lights?
Was it feasible they'd been on, and working, since the mass evacuation of the planet a thousand years ago? Franco, despite being quite mad, found it improbable.

So, he mused, that meant somebody was changing the light bulbs. But why? Some kind of mad hermit left behind? Or a family of hermits? A whole clan of hermits? And why the hell did he think it might be hermits?

Striding forward through barely lit gloom, Franco started to hum to himself, a tune that went
de dum de dum de dum de dum, da dumly dum de dum...
and as he gained more confidence, and the corridor stretched off before him, wide, and inviting, long, and seemingly never-ending, so his impending happiness at finding the impending treasure of Iskander's Crown broke through his caution and he burst into song:

The Son of God goes forth to war,

A kingly crown to gain;

His blood red banner streams afar:

Who follows in His train?

Franco's words echoed and bounced down the sterile medical corridor, growing louder, more boisterous with every passing syllable. Will
I
be a king when I find this crown? he thought, eyes wide, gun weaving. Am I, he supposed, the man who would be king?

His song stopped, and so did his sandals. His words boomed ahead, bouncing from wall to wall to wall, then echoing back from the tomb-world-lit gloom like a fish on a piece of elastic.

Franco twitched. He whirled, suddenly, D5 pumping, eyes squinting. "What was that? Who's there? Show yourself!"

Nothing. Nothing moved. Not a whisper of breeze stirred the wide sterile corridor.

A feeling crept over Franco like the repeating chilli remnants of last night's curry. A feeling stirred deep in his bowels, again, the symptoms of a particularly bad vindaloo. It was quietly nauseating.

Distantly, something flickered. A blue sparkle, which reminded Franco of long-gone childhood days on Quad-Gal Bonfire Night, celebrating the attempted detonation of the Quad-Gal UN Parliament, a little ginger Franco with mad afro, eyes wide, nose cold, holding a blue fizzing sparkler in stumpy fingers.

Franco moved forward, silent now, cursing himself for his boisterous singing and acutely aware that during a treasure hunt one shouldn't perhaps be singing about the treasure one was hunting for. Just in case, y'know, you alerted any possible guardians, denizens, or other Bad Monsters.

Franco headed towards the place where he'd seen the blue sparkle. Nothing. Nada. Deserted. Just an abandoned steel trolley, listing slightly because it had a missing wheel. Franco's eyes roved over the walls, ceiling and floor, his unease growing exponentially, but unaware exactly why.

He coughed. Puffed out his chest. "Right then," he said, scratching his beard. "OK then. So, this recce went well, didn't it? Maybe I'll just, y'know, head back to Fizzy and Shazza and Olga, check out that sausage stew they's cooking up, maybe pop back tomorrow to try and find this here treasure."

He stopped. Realisation dawned, and he turned back, staring at the trolley. There were straps. And bare wires. And... electrodes. Patches. Clamps.
Testicle
clamps. The trolley was just like the one they'd used to restrain Franco Haggis at The Mount Pleasant Hilltop Institution, the "nice and caring and friendly home for the mentally challenged". Which could, possibly, mean... Franco's eyes went wide. That
this
REC Centre had in fact once been a mental hospital!

Shivers wracked Franco's body.

Goosebumps wandered liberally over his arms and neck, and, whilst once he would have savoured this faintly sexual experience, here, and now, in this horrible terrible place, the feeling left him nauseated. "Bugger."

Franco started to run, his spine tingling, his hair standing on end, and then a curious thing happened. Static discharged through his beard, crackling and sparking and sending bright stars flashing before his eyes.

"Ow! Ow ow!" he stopped, skidding to a halt, rubbing frantically at his smoking beard. "What was that? What magic is this? What the buggery happened?"

Blue light sparkled at the end of the corridor, and Franco noted it was the place where he had originally entered the REC Centre. Then the light started to grow, a tiny, sparkling ball of blue fire which separated into twin balls of sparkling blue fire as it grew closer and closer and Franco heard a rushing sound and in panic he fired his D5 with quad snarls but the light jigged, down and left, then back on course, and crashed into him with sudden violent ferocity sending a shock through his chest and head which slammed him backwards, D5 skittering away, and delivered a few hundred volts direct to his system -

Franco lay, stunned. He could taste copper. Smell ozone. His fingers tingled.

Groaning, he started to sit up but something landed atop him, pinning him down. His eyes adjusted, past the sparkling blue lights which were... which were
hands
, long-fingered hands filled with sparks of electricity dancing and swirling and discharging constantly. Even now he could hear a faint
hum
of restrained power. Franco coughed. Beyond the lights he saw a man, naked, thin-limbed, taut and muscular, with a huge blobby head and thick electric cables running on and out of the skin on his arms and chest and neck. The man was bald or, at least, what remained of his hair was charred, blackened spider-hair in tiny smoking clumps. His eyes were wild, truly wild, spinning like a scoreboard on a pinball machine. He opened his mouth to smile, and Franco squinted - there was a black box trailing a cable like an umbilical. It took a few moments for Franco to realise it was a battery pack.

Fear slammed Franco. A weird, mind-expanding fear. He bucked, attempting to struggle and the man with the battery pack in his mouth clapped his hands in a shower of fizzing, crackling sparks, and slammed both fists down on Franco's head. Electricity shrieked, Franco went rigid in electric-shock spasm, and all his lights went out.

The pain was intense, even in a pit of unconsciousness. Like a drowning man struggling for the surface, Franco swam from depths and surfaced into darkness. He blinked a few times, mouth full of metal, tongue an electric eel, skin scorched and tingling and burning. "Urgh," he muttered, and turning his head slightly, spat a desert dry spit which achieved nothing. "What hit me?"

"I expect you met one of our Convulsers," said a soft, gentle, female voice. It was a voice filled with caring, a voice filled with understanding, a voice that said to Franco
I am a nice person who will not cause you any pain
and
I belong to a creature who is a beautiful angel and might, if you're really lucky, give you a snog.

Franco forced himself not to turn. He had learned by bitter experience it was far too easy to break his illusions.

"What," he said, experimenting with the shape of his tongue and lips and teeth, which all felt metallic and covered in fur after his savage electrocution, "is a Convulser?"

"They run wild around the REC. They charge themselves up and electrocute anything that crosses their path. We keep stingers to deal with them; sends them squealing and spitting batteries back to whatever hell it is from which they squirm."

"Was I right in thinking it had ECT pads for its hands?"

"Yes," said the sanguine voice that, with each passing second, filled Franco with a growing confidence that he'd been rescued from a fate worse than death. "They've taken the Electro Convulsive Treatment machines that were once used on patients, and absorbed the machine into their flesh; it's quite horrible and bizarre, if you ask me."