"It is not indestructible," said Zarg. "But highly durable. Might I suggest a low frequency molecular agitator?"
"Don"t have one of those," I replied.
I threw a series of seven quick punches. The vat continued to ring. It quivered but didn"t crack. I pressed my palm against it and detected surface irregularities. The thing was breaking, but it was taking its own sweet time.
I launched a jackhammer series of blows with my left arm. Four strikes a second. Could"ve doubled the rate except punches from my damaged right arm wouldn"t have accomplished anything. The vat"s tone grew louder and louder, higher and higher, until it was beyond human hearing range and my ability to record. After twenty seconds, small cracks appeared on the surface.
"In its current state, the mutagen is highly corrosive," said Doctor Zarg. "While your alloy is chemically neutral, I would still advice caution, as it will dissolve most any other inorganic material on contact."
"Thanks for the advice."
I recorded the rapidly approaching thudding footfalls of the demolisher. The pilot had gotten it upright and was approaching. A drip of chemical was leaking from the cracks. I was almost through.
An audio a.n.a.lysis warned that the demolisher was less than twenty feet behind me and rapidly approaching. I didn"t turn around. I threw five more punches, and the drip became a dribble. One more solid blow would do it. I pulled back my fist to unleash a haymaker.
The demolisher snagged me by the arm. It yanked me into the air and clamped the other pincer around my torso. I pushed my servos to the limit, and nothing happened. The demolisher"s grip was beyond my ability to break. Maybe with both arms available and my systems undamaged, I"d have stood a calculable chance, but that was a purely hypothetical maybe.
It squeezed at my elbow joint and nearly sheared off my forearm. Though my cha.s.sis was indestructible, my joints weren"t. It was rare for something to have the power to pull me apart. My diagnostics warned if I didn"t do something fast, I"d lose that arm. But there was nothing I could do. Nothing logical.
"I"m going to enjoy taking you apart piece by piece, you stupid malfunctioning technomorph b.a.s.t.a.r.d," said Warner. He was the pilot. He had to be. He wouldn"t allow anyone else the pleasure of sc.r.a.pping me.
A plan came to me. It didn"t come from my logic lattice or battle a.n.a.lyzer. I didn"t know in which program it originated, and I didn"t care. It was my only shot, so I took it.
"You can sc.r.a.p me, if you want, Warner," I said. "It doesn"t change the fact that I almost made it. One defective robot almost ruined it all."
"You"ve ruined nothing. You"ve accomplished nothing."
I tried to turn up the smugness rating in my vocalizer. "I made a fool of your security forces. I got into this room, nearly broke the vat. I wouldn"t want to be you when your bosses hear about this."
"Shut up." He increased the pincer pressure. A warning flashed on my tactile web. Wouldn"t cut me in half, but eventually, it"d start crushing internals.
"Just look at Doctor Zarg over there," I pressed. "Poor guy didn"t screw things up nearly as bad as you, and now he"s the world"s smartest paperweight. Hate to see how a disagreeable a.s.shole like yourself will end up."
"Shut up!" The pressure creased a shallow dent across my torso. "Why don"t you shut up?"
"All your work, and you"ll end up pushing a mop by the time they"re done with you. Couldn"t happen to a nicer guy."
The demolisher pivoted and hurled me into the floor. I bounced once, crashed into a bank of computers with a shower of sparks. I wasted no time on a diagnostic report as I quickly pushed my way to my feet.
All Warner had to do was hold onto me, but biologicals were emotional, illogical creatures. They didn"t learn their lessons very quickly. Warner was smart enough to maneuver the demolisher between me and the mutagens. He didn"t take a step, waiting for me to make the first move. If he got hold of me again, he wouldn"t be so stupid.
I barreled forward, and he took one step to meet the charge. As expected, he hadn"t taken into account all the factors, including the much higher ceilings in the lab. I waited until I was within six feet of it, until its pincers were poised to seize me once again. Then I boosted. I couldn"t a.s.sume Lucia"s belt still worked. It"d taken quite a few hits, and it was a prototype. I never had any doubts. Lucia hadn"t let me down yet, and she didn"t this time either.
The pincers closed around empty s.p.a.ce as I soared over the demolisher. I landed on the other side and, with my servos cranked to the limit and every bit of momentum behind me, I drove my fist into the vat. I dodged to one side as unstable chemicals exploded from the pressurized container in a geyser. I wasn"t fast enough, and my left arm was soaked. The cloth dissolved away. Spray sizzled on my coat, burning dozens of holes, some as large as two inches in diameter.
The demolisher caught most of the chemicals, and true to Doctor Zarg"s word, the mutagen evaporated the cha.s.sis like ice under boiling water. The demolisher melted into smoldering sludge. In four seconds, the bulk of the demolisher was nothing but a puddle.
The pool of compound spread as more sprayed from the vat. I grabbed Doctor Zarg and moved him away from its edge.
In the center of the compound, covered in molten steel and dripping in mutagen, lay Warner. His skin was scarred and smoldering. He was gurgling and moaning at the same time. It was not a pleasant sound.
"The effects on biological ent.i.ties should eventually prove fatal," said Doctor Zarg.
"Eventually," was the operative word. Warner, poor, miserable b.a.s.t.a.r.d, wasn"t dead yet.
The floor, eaten away by the compound, dropped away. Warner fell into the lower floor.
Humbolt radioed me. "We"ve retrieved the package."
That was the signal. Jung and Humbolt had gotten Julie and April out of the building.
"Any trouble?" I asked.
"Nope. You were right. n.o.body cared much about us or them once you were in the building. How"s things on your end?"
Seventeen security guards and three ravagers charged into the lab.
"I"ll get back to you on that," I radioed back.
Security moved slowly toward me.
"Do we really need to do this, guys?" I asked.
Something growled from the pit in the floor. It sounded p.i.s.sed off.
A giant hand raised out of the pit edge. Warner pulled his deformed body up. His skin was still red and boiling and dripping away. As much as he was losing, he seemed to be rapidly replacing it and then some. He was growing. While he still had a vaguely humanoid configuration, his symmetry was gone. He was a malformed lump of flesh. And he"d grown a tail.
He spoke, and his voice was raw. "What did you do to me?"
21.
Security froze. Even the single-minded ravager autos were surprised.
Warner raked a clawed hand across his oozing chest, and glanced down at the flesh in his hands. His face was little more than a scarred lump with two bleeding eyes and a mouth that had migrated six inches too far to the left.
"What did you do to me?"
He lurched toward me. He hadn"t adjusted to his new weight distribution. It was easy to step back, then clobber him between the eyes. It was like punching pudding. His head collapsed beneath the blow, and clumps of hair and slime splattered on my faceplate.
He seized me and lifted me in the air. I activated my gravity clamp to discourage him, but he didn"t even notice. Though he was a gooey mound of shifting flesh, his overactive DNA had made him absurdly strong.
"What did you do to me!" he screamed.
I would"ve apologized if it would"ve made him happy.
None of the biologicals dared to make a move, but the ravagers tagged Warner as a threat. They jumped him. Silently, Warner threw me across the room to deal with this new threat. There was the harsh sound of tearing metal. By the time I got up and turned around, five seconds, he"d already crushed two of the autos. The third one he stuffed in the huge maw in the side of his face. He sheared off its cranial unit with one bite, then tossed it aside.
Warner made a snorting sound and spit out the masticated bit of ravager. Yellow and black drool dripped from his jaws as he ran a speckled pink tongue across twisted fangs. He fell over, gasping for breath. His rate of dissolution exceeded his growth. He was slowly oozing to death.
"The strain on his biology is proving too much," said Zarg as calmly as if studying a dying microbe under a microscope. "His cellular structure should break down soon."
Warner fell to his knees. He raised his crushed face toward me and moaned. He couldn"t have been aware of much now, only pain and chaos.
"Pity he will not much live much longer," said Doctor Zarg. "It would be invaluable to study the effects. I must remember to collect a sample."
I walked toward Warner.
"It is inadvisable to approach the subject in his current state," said Zarg.
I ignored him. Zarg was a decent enough joe for a robot, but Warner was just another test subject to the technomorph. His suffering was an observable phenomenon to be recorded and studied. There was no compa.s.sion in Doctor Zarg"s reasoning. Neither was there malice or resentment for all the trouble Warner had caused. Only a clinical, logical detachment.
I, with all the mysterious workings of my faulty prototypical brain, thought Warner was an a.s.shole. I didn"t exactly feel sorry for him, but he"d suffered enough. More than enough. Warner raised his eyes toward me and whined. Maybe he couldn"t ask it aloud. But he was dying and he just wanted to get it over with.
I caved in his head with one blow, and his oozing corpse slumped to the floor. I turned to the lead security guard. He was either a Pilgrim or a mutant because he had red-and-blue-striped skin and three eyes. I seized him by the throat with my slime-coated hand. The acidic sludge burned his throat with a sizzle. I a.s.sumed it smelled bad, too.
"Now, are we going to have a problem here? Because I"m not in a very good mood anymore."
He motioned for the guards, and they all dropped their popguns.
Behind me, ragged breaths registered in my audios while a shadow fell over me. I turned to scan a giant, melting, alien mutant behind me. Its eyes showed no sign of intelligence. I"d killed Warner, squashed his brain. But the thing must"ve grown a new one. Maybe even two or three. None of them seemed real happy at the moment.
The twelve-foot mutant thing grabbed the guard from my hand and batted me aside. Silently, except for its painful gasping, it stuffed the squirming guard down its throat. There was a lot of shrieking and crunching in the three seconds it took to swallow the guard whole. It had to chew a bit to deal with the wider portions. Four seconds later, stripes formed on its skin and a third eye opened on its forehead.
While eating the first, it"d seized another guard which it immediately gobbled down. As it"d taken on qualities of its first meal, it now grew patches of scales. It wasn"t simply eating them. It was somehow absorbing their DNA.
The remaining guards were already off and running. The four at the rear didn"t make it seven steps before the mutant leapt upon them. It jammed them down its throat with ruthless speed and efficiency, not even stopping to pick the bits from its teeth from the last before starting with the other. With each meal, it grew bigger and absorbed more random characteristics.
Zarg said, "Surprising. The aberration is apparently attempting to correct the accelerated metabolic rate and genetic instability by a.s.similating more organic tissue."
"Is this going to be a problem, Doctor?" I asked.
"Unlikely," replied Zarg. "While it might slow the process of decay, it will not stabilize the-"
"How long until it dies?" I asked.
"Seven minutes." He didn"t approximate or estimate, and since Zarg was supposed to be a genius, I figured he was right.
The mutant finished the last of the four. It was fifteen feet tall now, and I estimated it must"ve weighed at least four or five tons. It was less gooey, having gained some stability from the DNA it"d absorbed. It"d also become a mix of seven different aliens, with a crab-like claw, scales, and tiny wings on its shoulders. It didn"t seem to hold any particular characteristic long though, and shifted back and forth among the various qualities.
It turned its eyes toward me, and growled. It didn"t really look at me. Its pain and rage had been overwhelmed by its tremendous appet.i.te, and Zarg and I were mere lumps of steel.
Its breath grew ragged again. Lesions broke out across its skin. With a bubbling rasp, the thing turned and loped from the lab in search of undamaged genes to refresh its own genetic decay. It didn"t use the door but burned its way out by smearing its own corrosive shedding on the north wall.
If it escaped the facility and reached the surface, it could eat a lot of people in a few minutes. On the other hand, the mutant would certainly help to jam up the gears of Dissenter security, which I"d done a pretty good job of jamming myself already.
Holt remained my priority. The aberration was a minor inconvenience in the larger scheme. It might eat a few people, but if the Dissenters escaped with Holt and started mixing up a new batch of mutagen, we"d be back at the beginning of this mess.
I plotted the course on my map files. From here, it was a thousand, six hundred feet north to the panic room where automated security protocols would have removed Holt for safekeeping.
The aberration had gone north.
Could"ve been a coincidence.
"Doctor, hypothetically, what would happen if that thing managed to a.s.similate Holt"s DNA."
"Postulating." Must"ve been a doozy of a postulation because Zarg took a full nine seconds to run through the simulations. "It is unlikely that anything can correct the genetic instability."
"How unlikely?"
"The variables are too many to calculate precise odds."
"Take a wild guess."
"I do not guess."
I grabbed him by his armless shoulders and lifted him up. "Zarg, what are the odds that this thing is going after Holt?"
"Unknown."
I sighed. Had to know how to talk to a robot. Even one as intelligent as Zarg.
I said, "a.s.suming the aberration is smart enough or aware enough to go after Holt, and a.s.suming that by a.s.similating his DNA it is able to stabilize its decay, how hard would that thing be to kill?"
"With the a.s.sumptions given, it can be a.s.sumed that the aberration might be statistically impossible to destroy, short of an atomic explosion or other such cataclysm."
"Thanks, Doctor." I set him down. "Was that so hard?"
I set the most direct course to the panic room, moved to the other side of the lab so I could build up some momentum, and went into battering ram mode. I thrust my damaged shoulder forward to absorb the trauma as I smashed through the wall without losing a step.
I hypothesized that I was merely being paranoid, that the thing Warner had become was no longer Warner. Just a thing driven by hunger, rage, and agony. A mindless, unthinking beast fueled by instinct without intelligence or memory. It was only an a.s.sumption, and that looked less and less likely to be true as I noted that the creature was burning its way in the exact same direction with single-minded purpose. It was moving fast.
Halfway to my destination, I finally caught up with it. It"d happened upon a room full of biologicals and was taking the opportunity to feed itself, and doing so with quiet efficiency. By now, it"d grown another mouth in its chest so that it could eat even faster. Except for its raspy breathing, the thing never made a sound.
Its head moved in my direction, drawn by the movement. It was smart enough to know eating me would only give it a stomachache. It returned its attentions to three biologicals trapped in a corner. They blasted it with heatrays, which only seemed to be irritating it. I took advantage of the distraction to pull ahead.
The panic room was surprisingly easy to reach. It wasn"t designed to be impregnable in itself, but to be in a well-defended position. The facility was in chaos now. Security was as well organized as an anthill being sprayed by a hose. I ran across few guards. They were either rushing in Warner"s direction or, just as commonly, running the other way. I could take some small pride that the Dissenters" agenda had suffered a serious setback.
I kicked in the doors. The room was small, barely big enough to hold a few monitoring devices and a table where Holt lay. Two medical drones tended him. Neither was designed for combat, and happily got out of my way as I approached. There was a sealed tube in the ceiling that led back to the chemical lab where they"d been filtering mutagens from him.
He scanned in bad shape. Doctor Zarg had been careful in the extraction process, doing as little harm as possible, but with Warner in charge, the boy"s health was unimportant. He"d lost six to ten pounds, and his scales had lost their shine. There were noticeable scars forming where the tubes and wires had been connected to his flesh.
I very carefully lifted him off the table. He was so fragile. I could"ve crushed him with one squeeze. This had been my objective. Eliminate Holt, remove the threat of anyone else getting the bright idea to use a little boy to endanger Empire. It would"ve been so easy. Nothing to it. Holt wouldn"t even feel a thing, and this mess would be ended.