Warhead (63 page)

SONIA J:
Many of the Nex are turning against Durell. Many are sick of his promises. He calls it evolution—but the Nex say the insects speak in your mind, they torture you with threats and promises. What happens when your thoughts are not your own? What happens when your thoughts are those of the insects with which you were genetically blended? You become unhuman. You become nonhuman. You become something less than human, something less than insect, I think. The sum of your parts becomes an inferior. Yes, you have improved physical strength and immunity, but you take on a savage inner battle. You inherit an inner war. We need to put an end to this farce. We need to put an end to this war... before Durell puts an end to our race. Once and for all.

CAM12:

Textscroll [1/r]: Unreleased SmashVID footage ...

1] Nex slaughtering innocent protesters in the streets, Steyr guns firing as bullets chew meat and bone from faces and flesh chunks slap at the cold cobbles of the roadway ...

2] JT8s kicking a pregnant woman to death while a crowd of people stand around, faces averted, trying hard not to look at the savagery unfolding before them ...

3] A screaming Mig998 swooping low over the streets of Dublin, missiles detaching on glowing trails of blue energy, flames roaring and engulfing the peaceful march of five hundred placard-bearing innocents...

SONIA J:
We’re all so frightened. We need to change.

CAM2: fades to black and white

EARMIC:
That’s all gone out, Sonia. Globally ... and you fucking
know
I’m going to get fucking sacked, right? Yeah, a
great job.
How to cause a fucking
world riot.
Now, can somebody please take this sub-machine gun out of my ear? Hey ... hey, I did what you asked, right? What do you mean, I’ve been perpetuating a hate campaign against humankind? I
am
humankind! What do you mean, I’m a stupid motherfucker? Hey, if all stupid motherfuckers received the death penalty, then we’d have a serious population decline on our hands, now wouldn’t we? Wouldn’t we? Oww, that hurts, hey, get that fuc—
[cut earmic]

CAM4: [drops to the floor and zooms out without music/fade to black]

AIRTIME: BREAK

CAMS-CUT

Throughout oppressed cities all over the world, men and women and children started to rise from their mental and physical slumber. Those who had not witnessed the broadcast soon learned of its savage contents. In many countries, the Nex made pre-emptive strikes—attacking known dissidents, suspected REBS, even people who had been involved only in peaceful protests and marches: they murdered them in their beds, leaving trails of splattered blood as evidence of rough justice for all to see. But this time it did not eliminate the problem: within hours these hundreds, maybe thousands of murders fuelled a further and sustained belief in the rightness of Sonia’s revealing global media broadcast.

Units were quickly formed, schools and churches and supermarkets turned into centres of command from which to hit the Nex, the NEP Nex Production Plants, the WarFactories and the Sentinel Corporation Tower blocks. The world was rising up against the Sentinel Corporation, against
Durell,
against oppression. Every day people were taking up arms and fighting their way out of tyranny and subjugation, with only the truth as a guiding light propelling them onwards; with only their human hearts driving them forwards to a necessary and violent confrontation ...

There were battles in the streets. Helicopters dived from dark skies, mowing down charging civilians. Stolen tanks hammered shells into WarFacs, detonating the stores of ammunition and igniting hundreds of tonnes of HighJ and plastic explosives. Soldiers fought hand to hand, JT8s were slaughtered by orphaned children throwing rocks, Nex were gunned down by women with pistols, and machine guns were mounted on the back seats of battered family saloon cars that had had their roofs removed.

Anarchy had arrived.

Chaos had risen.

Carter stood on a plateau, a flat section of black rock, with a towering black mountain above him. Beyond stretched a world of dark graphite sand. The sky spun away for infinity, streaked with trails of purple and yellow.

Carter blinked.

There was a fire burning in a ring of rocks, and Carter looked around him. But he was alone. There was no Kade. There were no enemies. Carter was trapped in the prison of Kade’s holding cell. Carter was locked in Kade’s AI. Carter was incarcerated within his own brain.

‘You little fucker,’ he snarled.

He spun round once more, boots kicking up dark sand on jagged rocks. He ran to the edge of the plateau. Its slope fell away for a long, long way until it levelled out and stretched off over undulating dunes. Carter breathed deeply, then closed his eyes.

‘Come back to me,’ he said.

A cold wind mourned from the mountains, hollow and desolate.

‘Come back to me!’ he screamed.

But Kade had gone.

Carter moved to the fire, glancing down into the flames. They were flickering between states of orange-red and glistening black. Carter sat down on the rock that Kade had always used as a seat, and stared into the fire.

What game is this? he thought.

And how do I drag the fucker back? How do
I
get back?

Years earlier, he had argued with Kade in this very place. One day I will find you, Carter had said. One day I will find you and we will fight and I will kill you.

Carter frowned.

How to summon the devil?

How to summon the AI who had taken over his body?

Carter grinned then, leant forward, and plunged his left hand into the flames ... Pain screamed through him as the fire scorched his skin, which peeled back, black and blistering, the stench of burning flesh rising up as an element of the smoke from the fire—which now burned a steady glassy solid black.

‘Fuck you!’ screamed Kade.

Carter withdrew his hand, a crisp and blackened claw, and stared up at Kade standing rigid before the fire. Carter stood, slowly, cradling the scorched limb to his chest as he looked deep into Kade’s dark eyes.

‘Welcome to my fire.’

‘Fuck you, Carter. That was a cheap trick.’

‘You have something I want.’

‘What, the power and the glory? Or maybe you want to suckle on that Alexis, taste her fine Nex insect cunt. That’s my destiny now—you are just a dream in my fucking head. Stand back and let me through, or I swear—’

‘You swear, Kade?’ Carter smiled. ‘What will you do? What
can
you do? Once, I stood here and I said I would fight you, and kill you. You said that it would be interesting ... that you would welcome the day. Well, that day is here.’ Carter unfolded his scorched hand with crackles of burnt flesh. Pain pounded at him in waves as Kade looked down, eyes wide, horrified.

‘Not now, Carter. This is the
wrong
time ...’

‘There will never be a right time,’ snarled Carter. ‘This needs to be done. A score I should have settled a long fucking time ago.’

Carter charged through the fire, flames licking up at his boots as he leapt at Kade. Kade stumbled back, throwing out a series of punches that Carter blocked easily against his forearms.

‘No, Carter, no!’

With a hiss, Carter hammered a right straight into Kade’s face, followed by a right hook which shook his dark twin. Carter powered a right kick that connected with Kade’s chest, sending him stumbling back once more. Carter stalked forward, and Kade grimaced and counter-attacked, throwing a blur of punches, hooks and straights, jabs and double-fisted smashes. Carter blocked them all, ducking and sidestepping, his face serene, his stare locked on Kade ... and suddenly Carter grabbed his nemesis, pulling him in close so that their eyes were only inches apart.

‘I want my
body
back!’ he spat.

‘Come and take it,’ said Kade darkly.

Carter slammed his forehead into Kade’s nose, and Kade howled like a haunting banshee. Again Carter head-butted his demon twin, again and again. Then he lifted Kade’s head up by both ears, released it and, before it could fall back, smashed both his fists down against his adversary’s temple with one terrible bull-hammer blow that slammed Kade straight down onto the rocky ground, where he groaned, curled up like a foetus.

Carter moved forward, stamping first on Kade’s groin, then on his chest, then on his nose.

‘That’s for the people I didn’t want to kill.’

He took a step back, then made a short run and delivered a massive kick to Kade’s head. Kade rocked under the impact, blood spraying from shattered teeth.

‘And that’s for the fucking Alsatians in Egypt. You fucking
know
how I love dogs.’

Kade had curled further into his foetal ball as Carter stooped, pulling out a long, slick dagger. He moved to stand over Kade, and the dark demon looked up then, eyes glittering with black gloss tears.

‘Don’t kill me, Carter,’ he whispered.

‘Why not?’

‘I am you.’

‘You are a fucking AI. Which means that your tears are not real. Just numbers on a static digital disk.’

‘Don’t kill me, Carter. I can help you.’

‘How?’

‘I have information.’

‘About?’

‘About your past. I can give you back your past. All those moments you have forgotten ... the time with Durell and Feuchter and the others, when you were in the Nex DemolSquad.
The first Nex squad.
I can give that back to you. I can supply your history. Your memories. Your
life
.’

Carter smiled then, and stooped, sheathing the knife. He stared down hard at Kade, who whimpered, rolling in pain and spitting out tiny pieces of broken tooth.

‘Always the fucking negotiator, eh, Kade? Don’t you
ever
take my body without my permission,’ he said, voice low, tone dangerous. ‘You will never get a second chance. I will never let you live again. You understand me?’

Kade nodded, submissive.

‘Now stay down, little doggie.’

Carter blinked, and the dark mountain plateau shrank and swirled, dissolving like sand sucked down the neck of an hourglass. He opened his eyes to sunlight and the worried face of Alexis. He breathed deeply, and looked down at his left hand ...

There were no burns.

Carter flexed his fingers thankfully. Below he could hear machine guns firing and tank guns booming.

Aircraft screamed overhead while missiles detonated with deafening roars. War was raging.

Armageddon was here.

Carter turned to Alexis. ‘Take me to the QIV,’ he said.

They moved down a ramp and through a wide corridor lined with computers and cables. Beneath their feet rattled metal grilles that revealed another level, and levels beyond that as they fell and dropped away for many metres below. Carter stared down, entranced. He could see perhaps forty floors, and it made him feel giddy.

‘This is the control room.’

They entered a huge chamber, full of the highest-grade products of computing technology; many large black control screens lined the walls and stood on independent pedestals. Several of the screens showed flickering bright images; one displayed a representation of the Evolution Class Warhead.

It was hammering low over an ocean, and the vision panned out to display a thousand newly birthed missiles following like children. All were laden with the high-grade military anti-human poison called EDEN. These were the ECW’s brood. Its molecular creations. Its offspring.

‘It has replicated?’ asked Carter slowly.

‘Yes. It has created its own army of warheads. That is why this machine is so intrinsically dangerous. It’s not just a simple bomb that hits a target and detonates. This is a machine created to wreak death and destruction on a truly global scale.’

Carter moved to a small alloy case on a desk. There sat a dark cube which glistened with frost. Carter stared at the QIV processor—it was identical to its previous incarnation, the QIII. The processor that he had destroyed. That he had
killed.

‘Well, well, well. Can you tell it to halt the ECW?’

‘You are in control,’ said Alexis softly. ‘You may tell it yourself.’

Carter stared at the processor. ‘I am Carter,’ he said. ‘I want you to halt the Evolution Class Warhead.’

The QIV hissed softly.

On the screen, the army of missiles slowed their incredible speeds and finally halted. They hung, suspended over the sea, rotating slowly. The camera panned round, then withdrew, zooming out to show the vast glittering army of missiles—finally
stopped.

Carter looked around at Alexis.

‘I want the Nex to stop their battles, to halt their war,’ said Carter. ‘I want all Nex to withdraw. No more people are to be killed. We are cancelling the plans to evacuate the planet. You can do that?’

‘We are in the command centre,’ said Alexis. ‘We can do anything.’