"You're going to have to work for it."
They leapt, and Keenan dropped his gun and lunged, right fist slamming out and snapping Ally's head back. A spray of blood burst from her nose, and Keenan ducked Rachel's blade and smashed his right elbow into her face. She hit the ground, still, breathing ragged. Keenan turned to Ally, but she was stunned, lying on her back, the knife lost beneath the swings.
Keenan uncoiled, releasing a slow breath. He retrieved his gun, and stared in abject curiosity at the matt stock. Then he looked up, suddenly, into a sea of faces.
As the fight had unfurled, so the children had filed out from the Children's Ward. They were no longer screaming, but instead filled the playground with their diseases, their abnormalities, their injuries, their cancers and their amputations. The girl with dark hair and dark eyes stepped forward, and spoke to Keenan.
"Kill them," she said.
"Why?"
"They tried to slaughter you. They deserve to die. They are evil things, they should not be in this place. This is our hospital. This is our ward. This is
our
playground!" Her voice had risen, and spittle flecked her dark lips, her neat teeth, and her eyes were filled with tears of passion.
"No," said Keenan.
"Kill them!" she shrieked, lurching forward, then stopping.
"No," said Keenan, and he lifted his eyes, met the gaze of the dark child. "I cannot. And I will not."
"Then we will murder
you!"
she hissed, and pulled free a long, glinting scalpel. The rest of the children produced weapons, and their eyes were fixed on Keenan, and they smiled dark smiles and their knowledge was infinite, their malevolence a deep dark ancient thing. "We will cut your heart out. And feed."
Keenan threw down his gun, his face bleak, his eyes tired. "So be it," he said, as the MPK clattered.
He closed his eyes, as hundreds surged over him...
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
HARDCORE
Cam limped into the huge domed cavern after a myriad of miniature yet death-defying nighmare encounters he would rather not talk about, withhis twisted scanners only registering at 13%. He tried, again and again, to grab fixes on Keenan, Franco, Pippa, or any of the other members of the squads. And, infuriatingly, the only one he could determine was Sax, the robot dog with the bad wig, asleep and snoring as he recharged back at the Giga-Buggy at the REC Centre, amidst a fresh fall of deep snow.
Cam spun slowly, blue lights flickering. It was very quiet, and very cold.
Above him, the massive dome was smashed through, and the floor below littered with debris. Something had forced its way down here. Something big. And something with devastating firepower. It stunk of Combat K.
Did they leave? Exit by the tunnel?
And, with little other option, Cam had only one set of co-ordinates in his damaged and fizzling memory.
Sax. He would locate Sax.
But then... what was that? Cam detected a huge field of crushed proto-matter; the birthing agent of
Stars.
Hmm, he thought. If Combat-K are in danger, I could add ignition to that huge source of proto-matter... what a source of detonation! I can damn near destroy half the planet. Inside, Cam's Put Down[tm] War Technology twinkled. It would be like an entire World War! Started by him. He coughed. To save his friends, of course.
Cam rotated.
Which way?
Out of the tunnel, towards Sax and the Giga-Buggy? Or down.
Towards the bomb.
Cam whistled a little tune, and made his decision...
Keenan span in the vastness of space, the vastness between worlds, between dreams, the place where nightmares were spun and made real. Slowly, he drifted for a billion years and the pulse of alien blood in his veins beat harder, and faster, and it burned him for he was merely human, his shell not designed to take such substances.
You are the Dark Flame,
said a voice in his mind.
You are special. So very special. This world depends on you.
Keenan opened his eyes, slowly. His eyelids were rigid, almost solid, soiled with a sticky glue. He forced them up and stared at white dust, like flour, which filled his vision. Keenan groaned, and a
puff
inflamed before him, a mini holocaust. Keenan realised he was lying on his belly, and he rolled over to his back, slowly, the dust soft beneath him and covering his WarSuit, his hands, his hair with its fine powder. He coughed, and chemical needs fought for precedence in his system. Cigarettes, or Jataxa? He realised he wanted a smoke more than anything, and crawled onto his knees, the dust sinking beneath him, soft, pliant, almost dragging him under with its instability.
Keenan glanced left, saw Franco emerging from dark dreams. Franco sat up, powdered in the dust, and glared at Keenan. "Nobody said it would be like that! I had a bastard of a time, I did. It was all... urgh!" He shivered, and checked his penis manically, eventually calming down and giving a big sodden sigh. He looked at Keenan. "How about you, Big Man?"
Keenan shrugged, and climbed unsteadily to his feet. "It was a test. We were on our own, facing our own little nightmares, I think. What happened to you?"
"Mad VD clinic," said Franco, face grim. He scratched his groin. "You?"
"Hundreds of diseased and dying children trying to kill me." He refrained from mentioning his own girls; the memory was too painful, like a glowing hot splinter through the centre of his brain, placed there by the tender caress of a sledgehammer.
"Hey, guys!"
It was Pippa, trawling towards them as if wading through fine sand. She was coated in the substance, and appeared from the gloom almost as a ghost. She stopped, and started laughing at their appearances.
"You two look grim," she said.
"It was a grim time," said Franco, scratching again. "Damn that VD clinic. Damn that dodgy alien sexual disease!"
"What happened to you?" said Keenan. He had found his small tin, and rolled a cigarette. He glanced at Franco. "Is this shit explosive? Because if it is, we're all going up in a ball of flame."
Franco wet his finger and tasted it. Shook his head. "No, nothing detonation worthy here. Feel free to cancer yourself out."
Keenan lit, and Pippa shrugged. "It was a... burns unit." Keenan nodded, understanding evident. He knew Pippa's history, knew exactly why she was such a fine example of damaged goods.
"Sounds like a walk in the park compared to
my
experiences," Franco muttered, and pushed his hand down his pants, pulling a funny face as he once again fumbled and fought with his own tackle.
"What the hell are you doing?" said Pippa.
"Rearranging the old meat and two veg," scowled Franco. "Leave me alone, reet? It's a very delicate process."
"We obviously passed the tests," said Keenan, staring around himself at the bleak, endless white desert. It rose on dunes, rolled away like a sea of powder, an addict's wet dream. "But where is Betezh? And Olga?"
Pippa searched, eyes wide. "Are they dead?"
"There's only one way to find out. We need to meet VOLOS. But where do we go?"
"That way," said Franco, confidently, pointing in one direction.
"Why?" said Pippa. "What distinguishing feature of the featureless landscape attracts you?"
"I'm just telling you, it's that way."
"Why?"
"Because it is."
"Yeah, dickweed, but
why?"
"Because my seventh sense tells me so! They don't call me Franco 'Lucky Compass' Haggis for nothing, you know!"
"There is no direction," came the voice of the avatar. It stood, ankle-deep in white powder, watching them with a featureless, translucent face.
Keenan frowned. "You cheated us. You never said we would be split up; we operate as a unit. A squad. We are Combat K." He gave a grim smile. "Until the day we die."
"It was no trick," said the avatar of VOLOS.
"Where's Betezh? And Olga?"
"They did not pass the test," said the avatar, grimly.
"So they are dead?" bleated Franco, fists clenching.
"No. I did not say that. They are merely... somewhere else. In a holding cage. With the one you call Snake. They will not be harmed, but they may not enter this domain. You see, VOLOS has to make sure you are worthy before you enter the inner sanctum. Once inside, he is defenceless against you despite his might, his age, and his vast intelligence. VOLOS needs to know you are not too... twisted, as examples of your species. He needs to make sure your genetics are of the right calibre, shall we say. VOLOS may be old, but he is wary. He doesn't open the door to those he does not trust."
"I like words like
defenceless,
" muttered Franco, and Keenan could see it, could read it in his comrade's eyes.
Get in close and blow the motherfucker away. VOLOS was a scourge, an ancient evil, he had created the junks and now they spread through the Quad-Gal like a pestilence, a horde of insects, destroying everything in their path, toxifying every living planet and species with their vile poison...
Something shimmered in Keenan's mind. He began to comprehend. He began to grasp the strands, and weave them together into a rope of understanding. What made VOLOS evil? Perception. And yet, what did he want with Keenan? With Franco and Pippa? VOLOS was mighty. He could have taken them apart at any point, plucked them from the surface of his planet, his
Sick World
, and done what he liked with their corpses. Why go through this elaborate charade?
"You are beginning to realise," said the avatar, blank face turning towards Keenan. "That is good."
"We are?" said Franco, and puffed out his chest. "Superb!"
"Keenan is," said Pippa, understanding the situation implicitly.
"Is VOLOS coming here?" said Keenan.
"No. This is the Furnace. VOLOS would not venture this far out."
Franco, who was tasting the powder again, scowled. "It's a bit sour, this stuff, so it is, and it ain't going to win you any culinary awards mate," he said. He laughed at his own joke. "Why do you call it the Furnace? A bit damn and bollocks over-dramatic for what is, if I am not mistaken, a huge sugary bowl of white dusty shit!" He grinned, showing his missing tuff.
"You
are
mistaken," said the avatar, no element of emotion in its asexual voice. "You walk upon the powdered remains of a billion dead souls. They are cremated in the Furnace. This place is also known, to some on Sick World, as the Mausoleum."
Franco choked, and started scraping coagulated white paste from his tongue. "You mean to tell me you stood there watching me taste powdered dead people?" Scrape. "Their remains?" Scrape scrape. "Their bloody damn and bloody ashes? You sick sick son-of-a-bitch!" Scrape scrape
scrape.
"Curiosity killed the cat," said Pippa, smugly.
"Shut up, fine words coming from someone who's bloody frigid."
"Frigid! Why, you..."
Pippa's voice tailed off. Keenan gestured, and Franco, too, halted his erratic oral scrapings.
"There is one more test," said the avatar, and seemed to look up at the sky, agitated now by demeanour, if not expression.
"Do we have a choice?" Keenan's voice was little more than a whisper.
"Not this time. You have come too far. You made your choices, many of them, over previous hours, previous days. Now you are here. Now VOLOS
needs
your counsel. But first, you must prove yourselves worthy to enter the inner sanctum. I will take you there, when you are ready."
"What's the next test?" blurted Franco.
"So far," said the avatar, "you have been through the world of the child, the babe, the infant. The world of birth. Then you endured individual experiences - moments from your lives which are there like vivid scars deep within brain tissue; not so much earned, as inherited. And now... now you will face..."
"Death," whispered Franco, eyes wide.
"Yes," nodded the avatar. "You must cross the Morgue. Only then can you enter the core of VOLOS's domain."
"What do we have to do?" said Keenan, grasping his gun tight.
"Absolutely nothing," smiled the avatar, "although so far you have been tested on your intellect, and your mercy." The avatar licked alabaster lips, an opening in the blank, a pink stain, a crimson scar. "Now you will be tested on your savagery." Like a flow of quicksand the world dissolved and Combat-K were falling, spinning down through the powdered remains of a billion doctors and nurses, patients and madmen, through the sterile purified dust of the twisted, the deformed, the injured, the lame, the diseased, the toxic, and ultimately, the dead...
down,
down,
to the Morgue.
The corridor was old. Ancient. Pipes hissed and steamed at ceiling level, a high gothic ceiling filled with stone arches and rusted brackets, swinging chains and rust. Rust dominated, an entropy of corroded, eaten metal.
"I don't like this," muttered Franco.