Chapter Eight
Twisted Minds
The craft disappeared as we stepped away from it. I reached out to make sure it was still there. It was.
“Guess you have to be careful where you leave this thing. Let’s see, we’re in Lot C row 4.”
Flicker just rolled her eyes and I chuckled.
I followed after her, as she approached the deserted looking building that lay ahead of us. It really was cold and I was looking forward to getting inside, even if I wasn’t looking forward to what I might find.
It hadn’t been so cold on the flight here, which had been heated in more than one way. I already missed the feel of Flicker’s soft lips, even though I’d been kissing her for hours. She looked back at me and gave me a rich smile.
I shook my head, so help me I was going to pry these discs off my head with a knife if I had to!
Flicker’s disposition changed the closer we got to the buildings and I began to feel the anxiety levels of her thoughts rise sharply. I couldn’t decipher what she thought like she could me, but I could tell how she was feeling and it wasn’t good.
“I love you.” I said softly.
She stopped and gave me a tremulous smile that had heartfelt gratitude in it.
“Hey, if this place is bothering you so much how about we stop and pray about it?” I volunteered.
Flicker gave the buildings a long look and then nodded her head. I pulled her head down to my shoulder and I spoke into her glorious hair near her ear. “Lord please make our mission a success. Whatever fears or threats this place may yet hold I pray that you would release us from them and strengthen us to do the task at hand in Jesus’s name amen.”
Flicker pulled back crying from me, but she was smiling. She kissed me sweetly and then said, “You just saved me!”
“How did I do that?” I asked puzzled.
“Your walk with God. All your memories are available to me and I confess that I’ve been pillaging through them. Over and over I’ve seen how much God means to you and how your specialness and confidence is a direct result of your faith. I want that. So I asked your Jesus to do that for me and now I’m His too! It’s wonderful!”
I hugged her to me, “Yes it is!”
We stayed like that for a long moment, until I knew we had to get going, but I hated to end this special time. “Alright my dear, time to invade hell.”
Flicker mumbled something.
“What was that?” I asked.
“I said you don’t appreciate how much this place means exactly that to me.”
“You have Jesus now honey. You’re not going down there alone.”
Flicker nodded, but I could still feel her reservations about the task at hand.
The buildings on the surface were ghostly still and devoid of any life. It was as if everything had been left in a hurry. They hadn’t even bothered to conceal the entrance to the underground laboratories. The blast doors to it were clearly visible from behind an opened false fronted wall.
The blast doors themselves were slightly ajar. Flicker and I glanced at each other and then together we approached the doors.
The scene within the laboratory was still lit by emergency lighting running off some backup power supply, even after a year and a half had gone by. It was eerie to say the least with the blue and yellow lights and the red flashing ones here and there going off and on repeatedly.
Whatever power the lights were on must’ve been separate from the rest of the facility, because all the equipment and the many screens and displays were all dead. The only sound was that of the tick tick of the lights, as they flicked from one color to the next. Perhaps the ticking wasn’t the lights, but instead a bomb. The place was supposedly rigged to explode. So why hadn’t it?
We didn’t talk into the silence, but we kept our conversation confined to our thoughts, as we sought to remain as quiet as the space around us was.
“So what do you suppose happened?” I asked.
Flicker shook her head, “The Code had fallen, but that would’ve been no reason to leave this place so suddenly.”
I followed her through a maze like array of corridors, until we came to a closed door.
“What’s behind here?”
“Where I was made.” Flicker said bitterly.
I touched her shoulder, “Correction, the place where someone messed around with someone who was simply already perfect and still is.”
She gave me a look and I could feel her in my mind seeing whether I was sincere or not. “You still doubt me?” I said somewhat hurt.
Her gaze fell and she said, “I’m sorry.”
I shrugged it aside and asked, “What we need, do you think it could be behind these doors?”
“Yes, if not in this room beyond, than in some of the chambers further on for sure.”
The door was a bulkhead of sorts and it was locked from our side. I started to undo the lock mechanism, when I noticed the dents in the door. A little frisson of alarm went through me at the finding of such dents in a door of such sturdy construction.
I heard a slight sizzling noise and I turned to see Flicker transforming. The metal parts of her hands and forearms seemed to melt out of form, only to reemerge into the form of wickedly sharp serrated blades that stretched out further than her arms had in a lethal display of hidden capability. At times I forgot just how lethal Flicker could really be.
“You’ve got to tell me how you do that?” I exclaimed in awe.
She shrugged, “It is very complex, but suffice it to say that I control the metal much the same as I do my armor suit.”
“Okay, that really doesn’t explain it at all.”
“I know.” She said, as she positioned herself in preparation to hack anything apart that came through the door.
I clutched one machine pistol in my hand, as with a loud protesting creak I pulled the hatch door open.
It was an utter scene of chaos inside the other room. Most of the alarm lights looked as if they’d been smashed. Only a few still glowed or flashed weakly.
I started to move forward, but one of Flicker’s bladed arms tapped me slightly, “Sorry for the hit to your pride, but I go first.”
I glanced back inside and said, “Ladies first.” It was with reluctance that I followed her inside the room, as there was little I could do to offset whatever Flicker got it in her mind to do, which rankled me deeply.
Flicker stopped and turned to me, “I know Utah. I promise to work on that, when this is all done.”
“Respect is an important thing for a man.” I acknowledged in response.
She nodded quickly.
To lighten the mood I shrugged and said, “Respect aside I’m glad you’re along to go in first Saber Girl.”
She didn’t say anything, but she moved forward again and I sensed a willingness to change in her that gave me hope that I wasn’t always going to be overruled by her, when she decided on a course of action different than my own.
It was hard to be silent, because the floor was strewn with a jumbled array of stuff. Computers, file cabinets, chairs, desktop knickknacks, and bones. Just bits and pieces of the bones for the most part. I reached down and picked something up and held it so Flicker could see.
It was a robotic arm like Flickers, only it had been mauled off where bone and metal alloy met. I saw a shudder pass through Flicker. I felt much the same, as I looked at the remaining small knob of chewed bone next to the robotic arm unit.
The robotic people like Flicker were beyond formidable, but looking around I saw bits and pieces of them strewn about almost everywhere. What monster had the Code created that could have done all this?
I looked to Flicker, but she shrugged, as if to say that she had no idea either.
Apparently sometime after Flicker’s transformation into robotic form; version 2.0 had been put in the works, only it had bitten back. Worse than that was the thought that it might still be alive.
It had been a year and a half since the collapse of the Code. It was a long time for anything to be still alive shut up in here, but looking around I had to acknowledge that there had been plenty for it to eat. If it was still alive it would be very hungry by now.
I was as bad as a kid freaking himself out by watching scary movies that his parents had forbidden him to, but I couldn’t shake the sense of foreboding that seemed to overwhelm me.
Stop it, I told myself mentally. Get what we came for and get out and make sure to lock the door on the way out.
Closing the door would not be the only thing that took place on our exodus from the facility. I’d make sure that this place blew sky high from the explosives that I had brought along with me. There was no way I was leaving this place for anyone else to find.
First we had to find the device, which was going to be hard given what a jumbled mess the place was. Where was Flicker?
She wasn’t in the room with me any longer!
I quickly moved over to another room and with relief I saw her. I was about to tie into her mentally for leaving me without notice, when something about her stillness gave me pause.
I stepped up beside her. She stood in front of an elevated table that had operation room written all over it. I stayed silent waiting.
“The very worst nightmares aren’t the ones that you can imagine, but they’re the ones that have actually happened.” Flicker said.
“What happened here on this table?” I asked softly wanting to provide her with an outlet for what she needed to share with somebody else, even though hearing of her torture was the last thing I ever wanted to hear about in life.
Her face quivered, as tears dripped off her chin to land in the grime of the floor, “I was asleep and then I woke up, but I couldn’t move. I tried, even struggled to get up and then I realized that I had no arms or legs. I screamed and screamed. I can still hear the sound in my head. I saw them then, the scientist and their assistants all gathered about me. They were laughing! Two of them even picked up my own severed arms and started slapping each other with them! I can see it all as if it was yesterday.”
I felt on the verge of throwing up, but I didn’t stop her.
“Then came the real pain. They flipped me over and strapped me down fully conscious and started cutting into my back. I screamed, oh God did I scream, but it did me no good. I screamed so hard I blew my eardrums out and hurt my voice. Thankfully I passed out when they started to take off the back part of my skull. When I woke up I was under mind control and am what you see now, a freak.”
“You mean the woman that I love.”
Flicker looked away from the table to me and said, “You help make all this better somehow.”
“Glad to hear that!”
She studied me reflectively, “I did have one miracle happen in this twisted horror of what’s become of me.”
“What was that?”
She came close then and leaned into me, “I’m still a completely functional woman and one day I will bear your children proudly.”
We both kissed each other then with passion. Pulling apart we both knew what we wanted, but this certainly wasn’t the time or the place.
“Okay let’s get this thingy-ma-jiggy that we need and get the heck out of here!” I said with meaning.
We both started to look through the shattered debris of the room for the device that we had come for. Curiously, as we searched, I asked, “Why is it a miracle that you’re still a functional woman as you put it? You’re different from the other robot people?”
“Yes. They castrate the men and remove the woman’s ovaries. They do it to get rid of the hormones attached to passionate instincts that interfere with mind control. Beyond that they basically lobotomize them as well. The other robot people are basically walking vegetables. Without input they collapse to the ground without any motor or cognitive ability. Sever their link at the back of the neck and their helpless.”
“Why did they do it differently with you?”
“The main researcher liked my pre-existing cognitive abilities and thought it would be interesting to compare the composite analysis between those without a mind and someone with a mind to see if there was a noticeable difference in terms of performance.”
“Was there?” I asked already knowing the answer.
“A huge difference, but the higher-ups wouldn’t give her the go-ahead to make more like me, because they feared what would happen if the control link was severed. They’d lose control of their army and perhaps have them turn on them, which is exactly what I’ve done so their fears weren’t without cause after all.”
“If you were a threat to them why did they let you remain as you were then?”
“My creator had another idea. She was going to have me bred so they could run analysis on my babies to see if they inherited any advanced technological function. Thankfully your Agency took the Code out before that hellish experiment could get started.”
“I’d like to very much meet your research creator.” I thought with grimness and ill will of mind.
“You already have.”
I stopped and glanced up from my search in startlement at Flicker.
She explained, “Jane Sola, you know her as Jane Worthy.”
“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I swear I’ll put a bullet in her brain when I get back!”
“No don’t do that. Not just yet anyway. Right now she’s being useful, but when she’s done I’ll deal with her myself.”
I shook my head, as I marveled at Flicker’s restraint. “It’s hard to imagine how after suffering as you have that you can hold off from administering justice richly deserved!”
“I have my reasons.” Was Flicker’s unhelpful response.
“You want to protect the Agency that bad huh? Or is it because you want to protect your brothers?”
Flicker glanced at me startled, “You know?”
“It’s not hard to recognize the similarities. When are you going to tell them?”
“I don’t know.”
“If you don’t I will.” I thought with firmness of purpose.
“Utah……”
“There is nothing for you to be ashamed of or hide from! You have family that loves you and you should be in contact with them and not coasting around the edges primarily focused on just keeping them safe from a distance, as your one only contact with them.”
Flicker’s gaze grew accusing, “You have family and yet you don’t have anything to do with them!”
“That’s because as you well know they don’t love me. On a different topic I would really appreciate it if you would stop dissecting every corner of my mind!
She glanced down, “I’m sorry!”
“You’re forgiven. Now let’s get back to work so we can get out of here.”
She nodded and we both went back to searching.
Cautiously we made our way into other rooms in search of the device we had come for. I found bits and pieces of several, but none that were intact. It was beginning to look very grim for us in terms of our chances of coming out of here successful.
Always throughout our search into the outlying rooms we encountered the same destruction, as we had in the first room behind the bulkhead door. There had to of been a hundred or more people still in this part of the facility when it had been compromised and the bulkhead door slammed shut and locked from the outside.
They’d shut the door and locked all these people in with the unknown monster of their own creation. Somehow I guessed that was fitting in a way.
Flicker and I had spread out into different rooms to cover ground more quickly, but I was beginning to feel that it would do us no good. There simply wasn’t anything left whole in this place!
I kicked at a can in frustration and it clattered loudly along the floor in the stillness of the laboratory.
There was a heavy grunt from a darkened corner of the room behind me and in cold dread I half turned and was in time to see two huge red eyes open and stare right at me out of the darkness.
“What did you do?” Came Flicker’s instant response to my horror filled moment of reality.
“I woke up hell! Run!!!” I screamed out in my natural voice.
My scream of warning was drowned out by a bone chilling shriek of unbridled intensity that erupted from the darkness at the end of the room. Both of my machine pistols were in my hands chattering, as they spewed hot lead into the bulk of the beast I now saw dimly outlined in the corner.
The beast came at me then howling like a demented loon. I dropped down as a massive arm swiped through the air where I had just been standing. I dropped both spent pistols, as they would do me no good for I had seen the beast, as it had come for me and no pistol round would take it down.
In that horror filled moment, as it had raced toward me out of the shadows I’d seen it for the monster that it was even as I had watched the rounds of my pistols deflect off of its metallic laced hide. The beast was the horrifying product of deranged minds at play and I’d never been so terrified in my life by the sight of an animal, if that was what it could still be called.
They had taken what looked like the body of an adult male gorilla and twisted it into a fabrication that one would expect of hell. It was obscene to behold and a terror to the soul, as if it was possessed.
Its arms and legs were gone replaced with massive robotic replacements. It seemed that it’s hide shifted in a sort of plate-like armor, even as its head was encased in a metallic skullcap that only its red eyes glowed out of, as its slavering jaw was reared wide open to display metallic teeth of unnatural proportion. When I had ducked under the swipe at my head I had never stopped moving.
We had to get to the portal and lock it before this demented creation of man broke free to the surface!
I ran the sprint of my life then. If I’d run straight I would never have made it, but instead I ducked left and right, as if I was evading phantom linebackers. I dodged through doorways and around corners, as the beast in wild anguish to taste my flesh roared shrilly in hot pursuit smashing through doorways and walls alike.
I wasn’t going to make it!
The monster pounded through yet another wall right on my heels and the exploding outward debris of the wall knocked me off my feet and across the room to wham up against the opposing wall. He would have had me then, but for the flashing blades that bit into his armor clad body and caused blood to spurt.
The monster roared and turned on Flicker, who backed away trying to lead the beast away from me. It was encouraging to see that the monster could bleed, but do a few axe strikes cause a large tree to fall?
Something changed then and a whole level of foulness previously unrecorded was revealed about the creature, as its nostrils flared wide in appreciation that Flicker was a female. Apparently all respect of species had been stripped away in the Code language that governed the beast’s actions.
It was an atrocity of human creation to inspire the great ape to become flagrantly erect in an unnatural desire for an individual not of his own kind. Not that the ape had a kind anymore.
Worse than that was how twistingly the ape had been modified from the natural. Its phallus wasn’t flesh, but instead it was formed into a speared shaft of unnatural proportion made of the same metallic compound as Flicker’s arms and legs.
This demented creation of foolish minds had been created with a purpose, which was to terrorize mankind and feed upon him, even as it gored females to a grisly death in a display of devilish significance in regard to the age-old enmity between the god of this world and the seed of a woman.
Flicker stood in paralyzed horror at the sight before her and I screamed out, “Get out of here!!!”
She snapped out of her trance, as the beast came down on all four legs and started to spring for her.
“I love you!!!” She screamed and then she was gone.
The beast crashed into the wall where Flicker had just been. It recovered and scrambled after her, while roaring its desire to do the unnatural.
I heard the crashing of the beast’s movement quickly dissipate and I was left alone, helpless to help the one that I loved.
That was a lie. I wasn’t helpless.
I crawled forward onto my knees and began to beseech God like I never had before, but the only thing that came out over and over was Jesus’s Name and yet my meaning ran far deeper. In a way saying the Name encapsulated my raw need for help in a way that couldn’t be said in any other way.
Flicker’s heart beat a mile a minute, as she cleared the bulkhead door. She had the time to close it, but there was no way she was going to lock that thing in there alone with Utah. She raced on as with a shout of triumph, odd for an animal to utter, the monster squeezed through the door after her, free from its dungeon at long last.
Flicker didn’t look back. She cleared the blast door and was out of the building and on the ground level within moments and speeding out across the surface headed for the aircraft. She’d blow this aberration of nature to kingdom come from the safety of airspace. That was unless it caught her. Surely it wouldn’t though?
She glanced back and screamed in horror. The monster was but twenty feet behind her and it was gaining ground fast, with only one intent in its glowing red eyes that were fixed on her like lasers.
She’d never reach the aircraft in time let alone have a chance to get it into the air!
She was going to have to fight this thing somehow. God give her strength!
Flicker dodged to the side unexpectedly and swung out with a sword arm down low. She caught the surprised beast on a robotic arm and sent it tumbling, but it was back up and at her within a second. One taloned finger raked across her cheek slightly, but a fisted punch slammed into her middle and sent her flying backwards through the air.
Flicker landed flat on her back thirty feet away gasping for air, without the conscious ability to move. It was too late anyway. The beast thing sprang upon her and anchored both of her sword arms to the ground with its robotic forearms. It growled out in fiendish delight, as it prepared to gore her.
Flicker cried out in her newfound faith in desperation, “Oh Jesus help me!”
Something massive and white slammed into the gorilla tearing it off of Flicker. It was a massive male polar bear. It sank its teeth into the back of the gorilla’s armored neck beneath the scull cap and pulled it upright, as it hugged it with its massive paws from behind.
The gorilla reacted with savagery by reaching up and slicing its talons into the backs of the bear’s front shoulders. The bear groaned in pain but held on.
In a cry of relief Flicker surged up to her feet and seeing her chance she took it. She swept forward and lopped off the straining unnatural aberration of a reproductive part and then she stepped in close and slammed both sworded arms into the gorilla’s gut to the hilt and twisted hard.
The gorilla roared in agony and threw the polar bear that was over three times its size up and overtop of Flicker’s head. It came for her then savagely and she backpedaled away slicing at its attacks on her. So intent on Flicker was the gorilla that it didn’t notice the recovered polar bear, who surged back ready for the fight.
Slam!
The gorilla dropped to the ground under the force of the paw strike to its head that would have killed any normal animal on the planet in its tracks, but the gorilla surged up off the ground and sprang at the bear. It tried to get at the bear’s neck with its huge glistening canines, but the bear, the champion of many a scuffle, dodged the attempt and succeeded in claiming the gorilla’s throat instead.
The polar bear fell over backward gripping the gorilla with both ponderous arms, as it held on to the throat of the gorilla for dear life. Flicker catapulted upward and after a talon entrenched landing on the back of the gorilla she slammed both sworded arms down through the gorilla’s back penetrating the thick armor once again.
The gorilla roared its rage and in a quick move Flicker’s left-hand re-materialized from a sword to a clawed apparatus of a hand, with which she reached forward and grasped the beast’s mouth over the top of its head, her talons curling over its metallic canines. She yanked back with all her strength to the point of snapping the beast’s jaw, as the bear continued to hold its neck and lower jaw in an unyielding grasp.
Flicker’s right arm still in the form of a sword flashed up and then down, as she gored the bladed arm down the beast’s throat, twisting viciously back-and-forth with it. The gorilla bucked in the bear’s grasp, as it choked on its own blood.
It was over quickly and Flicker removed her arm, as the beast’s red glowing eyes faded from color. Flickered jumped away from the carcass eager to be away from the slain monster.
The polar bear released its hold and shoved the offending twisted form of nature off to the side. The bear lumbered up to its feet appearing none the worse for wear despite the intenseness of the fight. Briefly it snuffled at Flicker’s hair before giving her cheek a big scratchy lick coated in slobber.
Smiling, but completely grossed out Flicker patted the bear’s massive neck and he gave a gapped mouth sigh of pleasure. The scene of companionship was perhaps reminiscent of the bond that perhaps once was between man and beast in the beginning of time, but was later corrupted from its original starting point of harmony and peace in the years leading up to the great flood.
The bear pulled back then and lumbered off, its assigned duty by its Creator complete.
Flicker watched the bear go with a tear in her eye, even as her heart was filled with gratitude for the Divine intervention that she’d received in her moment of gravest need.
“Who’s your friend?”
Flicker turned and launched her arms around me.
“Whoa! Put those things away sister!” I exclaimed.
Flicker grinned, as her talon-sword combo re-materialized into a hand structure that didn’t look quite so menacing. She hugged me then and I her.
She drew back slightly and said with a throaty purr, “I most definitely am not your sister!”
“Thank God for that!” I managed to get out before her lips claimed mine in a celebration of both life and the fact that we were both still together to enjoy it.
Flicker glanced over to the fallen aberration of nature and shook her head smiling, “Pretty crazy huh?”
I lifted one of her arms up slightly, “Announcing the new monster slayer champion of the world.”
She ducked her head down bashfully and said, “It really wasn’t me. I didn’t get very far on my own. All the credit goes to God for sending me a wrestling buddy.”
I nodded my head understanding, “This is a thing I know, but you have to admit you looked pretty cool in you’re part of killing the savage beast.”
“Liked that did you.” She said with a bashful smirk.
“Very kick butt chickish of you, but please don’t use your mad moves on me!” I said holding my hands up in mock surrender.
She chuckled loudly and I couldn’t refrain from mentioning what I thought of her voice. “You have such a sexy voice!”
She looked at me in surprise, “Isn’t it kind of rough sounding?”
“Yeah you sound like a power ballad singer from the 1980s.”
“I’m guessing that’s a good thing?” She asked hesitantly.
“You betcha!”
She shook her head at me like she thought I was silly.
I turned back to the buildings beyond us growing fainter, because of the snow beginning to fall. “I guess we go back and dig around some more, as unappealing as that sounds.”
“Why do that when we have what we need right here.” Flicker said.
I turned back puzzled by her words. She was at the fallen beast’s head. I watched as she reached down and gripped the beast’s metallic skullcap at the back edge and then with a crumple of metal bending force she peeled it up and over exposing the brain cavity of the mixed up ape.
“A bit gruesome don’t you think?” I said, as I was a little sickened by the sight.
The gore didn’t seem to bother Flicker, as she rooted around with one hand pulling first one i