I am NOT giving up on Chronicles of the Frozen Shade, though. That much I want to be clear. Now, without further ado, let me introduce you to the first chapter of Arcology(title pending), a CyberPunk Survival Horror story.
Arcology
Stephen
Rosebaugh-Nordan
Chapter
1:
Ezekial opened his eyes with almost mechanical
apathy. Reaching up to his mouth with
his left arm, he felt the soft, soiled linen wrapped around his mouth and
nodded to himself.
Pushing back the blankets of his tiny cot, he reached
over to his right and flipped his data terminal on. Though he did not need the flickering light
of the screen to see, Ezekial's eyes fell to the dull, copper metal that
composed his right arm up to the shoulder.
He flexed his fingers, which gave the slightest creak as the familiar
Thantolian crest of the arcology appeared on screen.
Hesitating for just a moment, Ezekial turned away from
the data terminal and reached into the battered wood of an old drawer next to
his cot. He pulled out a tiny oil can
and administered a few drops to his fingers, until the creaking stopped and the
gears moved as silently as a still winter's night.
Once he was satisfied, Ezekial put the oil can back and
pulled out a battered sheet of paper with a number of dates on it. The spidery hand writing was clearly legible,
despite dirt, grim, and creases on the paper.
Dates to remember
Engaged to Vie: October 29, 2345
Vie's diagnosis: December 22, 2345
Met Vie's Doctor, Melciah: January 21, 2346
Set up new home in Thanto Arcology: February
27, 2346
Vie cured: November 25, 2346
Outbreak: December 1, 2346
Quarantine: December 1, 2346
Human testing: June, 2352
Rebellion crushed: ? 2352
Escape: 2353
Purgatory: April 29, 2412, April
30, 2412, May 1, 2412...
Ezekial read down the numbers, which continued, each one
crossed off, until he reached the final date, squeezed into the margins at the
bottom of the page. It read: July 17, 2412.
Laying the soiled paper next to his data terminal,
Ezekial checked the remaining battery power before bringing up the machine's
internal calendar. The date read: July 18, 2412. Ezekial nodded and pulled a pen and note pad
out of his dresser drawer. He crossed
off the final date on his paper before copying all the other dates on his paper
onto a fresh sheet. His final entry was Purgatory:July 18, 2412.
Gingerly, he laid the fresh sheet of paper down on the
dresser drawer before crumpling the soiled paper into a ball and tossing it
into a large pile in front of his bed.
Turning back to his data terminal, Ezekial used the touchpad at the base
of the terminal to navigate his onscreen cursor over to a file labeled: Doing fine, Zeke.
Clicking down on the file, it opened up a single picture
of a woman with tanned skin, shoulder length black hair, and glasses. She was clad in a hospital gown and seemed
pale, despite the color of her skin.
However she was smiling, which revealed a set of bucked teeth.
"How are you, Zeke?" a melodious voice echoed
out of the terminal's tinny speakers.
"I'm so proud of you! I
heard you got promoted to the third tier in the Thantos Corporation. Mandy tells me that's unheard of for an
advertiser. You must really sell their
products, haha. I've...been doing
better. I miss hearing you laugh with me
while we watch our shows and your cooking...and just that feeling of your head
against my arm when you feel snuggly, but I'm alright. Dr. Melciah says that keeping my spirits up
will improve my health, so I'm trying to smile at least once every day. He's offered me trials in the transcendence
program, but I told him I didn't want to leave this body...that is why you
proposed, isn't it? Haha,
anyway..."
Ezekial paused the audio track for a moment and placed
his metal hand over his eyes. He shook
his head and quickly switched the data terminal off. Even without the light, Ezekial could see
every corner of his tiny cell. It was
cobbled together from what scraps remained in the residential district. Ahriman called it a farm now and he couldn't
go back anymore. The drab metal walls
had flaking wallpaper with a cherry blossom motif emblazoned upon them. Ezekial got up from his bed, stepped over the
pile of notes in front of it, and pressed the paper flat.
Reaching into a tiny space that barely qualified as a
closet, he pulled out a set of pants that were patched together from silver
veined skin, layered on top of the original fabric until nothing else was
visible. He tied them tightly to his
malnourished waist with a long strip of similarly silver skin and stalked off
to his kitchen.
Ezekial called it a kitchen, but in reality it was more
of a work room. On one side lay a
cutting board, a large, jerry rigged peeler, and some dull knives while the
other had a set of oils and drying racks, a thread and needle set, and rolls
upon rolls of bandages, most very dingy.
The cutting board had a humanoid arm on it, with the bone still sticking
out of the stump. The skin had been
peeled off the arm days before hand and now occupied a space on the drying
rack. It didn't look human. It looked like a piece of sheet metal, with
veins running up and down it like miniature hoses, while a few creases in the
flesh seemed to expose circuitry instead of muscle.
Drawing close to the arm, Ezekial saw several bulbous,
green growths on the blackened skin. The
stench of rot wafted over Ezekial, but he had long since gotten used to
it. Tugging at his bandages, Ezekial
pulled them down and sank his teeth into the hand, his sharp teeth snapping
through bone and flesh alike and the juices in his mouth reducing them to a
fine paste as they trickled down his gullet.
The flavor was hardly palatable, but Ezekial chomped through all five
fingers and continued up the arm nonetheless.
Flavor didn't matter to him anymore.
There was little his stomach could not digest. After he had finished grinding the last of
the arm's bones into dust, he looked up and saw himself, reflected in a cracked
mirror in front of the chopping board.
His teeth were long, curved, and sharp, and he lacked any lips to speak
of. His dirt brown hair stuck out at
odd, spiky angles and his skin was greenish and rotted. Lowering his eyes, Ezekial mouthed the words,
"I am still human..." however no sound came out of his mouth. Quickly re-bandaging his face, he stalked out
of the kitchen, picked up the paper with his dates, and thrust it into his
pocket. Then, reaching back into his
tiny closet, he pulled out a cloak with a hood, stitched together by multiple
pieces of silvery skin and draped it around himself.
Tying it closely to his body, so that his skin was
covered, save for his hands and feet, Ezekial let out a tiny sigh. He looked above him, to a tiny vent. Pulling it open, he hoisted himself into it
with practiced ease and began to crawl.
Ezekial made two lefts when the vent split, followed by a right. The sound of a slight buzzing reached his
ears and he froze in place. Glancing
behind him, Ezekial saw a few orange lights glowing in the darkness and
flattened himself as best he could in the vent, curling his arms and legs under
his cloak.
The buzzing grew louder, however Ezekial paid it no
mind. He merely waited, patiently, for
it to pass. He spied a few dozen of the
orange lights pass, but did not move.
Tiny legs crawled over his skin cloak, pressing and prodding to see if
it needed an injection. When they had
determined that the subject was dead, they too moved on. Ezekial continued to wait until he was sure
they had passed. Then, he followed after
them.
It was not hard to keep up with the buzzing. Although the bees were fast, so was
Ezekial. Besides, they were preoccupied
with finding people to "save."
He slowed when the light of a terminal from outside shone in through a
vent. Peeking his head around a corner,
Ezekial saw that the bees had flown out of the vent. Reaching out with his left hand, Ezekial
hooked his cracked, greenish beige skin around the vent and lifted it up. A piece of broken finger nail peeled off as
he did so, and Ezekial was quick to pocket it before it could hit the vent's
metal.
Crawling out of the vent, Ezekial dropped a good fifty
feet until he touched down on solid ground.
There was a slightly rustling of the metal debris around him and he
flattened to the ground once again as, this time, a pair of spiderlike machines
holding a human face in between their legs crawled over to his corpse. He could feel their eyes examining him, red
beams of light curling around the mass of silvery flesh before them. Then...
"Subject is designated deceased. No usable parts for reconstruction
detected." the cold hollow voice of Ahriman echoed out of the twisted
metallic nightmares. Their legs clicked
against the metal and Ezekial laid still until the clicking vanished. When silence surrounded him again, he rose
from the ground and instinctively turned towards the tower, covered in screens,
that permeated the center of the arcology.
Some had been there since as far back as Ezekial remembered, but some
hadn't, and he could see the jerry rigging of these monitors, cannibalized from
viewing stations and data terminals.
Each screen flashed the same message.
For the survival of the arcology population
and the continued sanctity of the outside world, please cooperate with
Ahriman. Ahriman will keep you
safe. Ahriman will cure you. Ahriman will save you.
Shaking his head, Ezekial walked over to the railing in
front of him and glanced down several hundred feet to the ground. Save for the flashing messages and a few
chittering machines here and there on the floors below him, all was silent. Turning back, he started walking. Ezekial passed stores with shattered
windows. A few skeletons remained
slumped over desks or through said windows.
They were left because they weren't "useful." A tiny machine crawled out of one store, with
a monitor twice it's size balanced on its back.
Although roughly the size of a dog, it bore a blank metallic face that
did not pay Ezekial any mind and two humanoid arms that it used to scurry about
on. Though the arms were split down the
middle to give the little robot more stability, they were clearly human. Ezekial almost followed after it, but the
sound of buzzing a few hundred feet in the distance told him that was
inadvisable.
Instead, he broke into a run, easily vaulting the twenty
foot break in the floor that had cut off the electronics district from the
food. There was nothing there now. It had all been picked clean long ago. Nevertheless, Ezekial continued running. Behind him, he heard metallic clicking and
what sounded like treads. The metal began
to vibrate under his feet and he turned a sharp right, leaping onto an
overhanging electrical wire three feet in diameter that led to Ahriman's tower
of screens.
Familiar hand and footholds found Ezekial's hands and
where there were none, Ezekial made more.
His metallic arch crunched the metal underneath it, while his rotting
skin clung to the wire like a monkey.
Halfway across the wire, Ezekial leapt off, falling only a hundred feet
before finding another gigantic wire to grab.
He paused only to make sure his clothes were tightly tied to his body
before shimmying along the wire until he came across another vent. Lifting it up, Ezekial swung himself inside
and followed it until he dropped into a nondescript hallway. Ahead of him was a tiny terminal with only a
flicker of light coming off the top. It
bore only a single line of text.
Our first meeting:
Ezekial pulled out his somewhat crumpled sheet of paper,
smoothed it out, and typed January 21,
2346 into the terminal. Ahead of
him, the floors and wall rumbled briefly and he could see them slacken, ever so
slightly. When they ceased making noise,
Ezekial crossed through the hallway and pushed a set of double doors open. Once on the other side, he saw a set of guns
tracking him. Pulling down the hood of
his cloak, Ezekial held out his hands to either side. The guns retracted into the ceiling once he
did this and a vault door at the far end of the corridor depressurized and
swung open. Ezekial headed inside, and
waited in the tiny chamber with another locked vault door in front of him. He waited for the door behind him to close
and lock, then the one in front of him opened and he stepped foot into a well
lit, clean, laboratory. Vials of all
manner of chemicals were arranged in neat rows, while a large tank and several
smaller ones around it were laid out at the far end. Desks, a tiny refrigerator, and even a bed
were laid out near the door.
"Were you followed?" Melciah crept out of a
corner, wearing a white lab coat with his name monogrammed onto the front. Though his skin bore a similar pallor to
Ezekial's, he was dressed in a set of corduroy pants and a t-shirt
underneath. The man was a few inches
shorter than Ezekial and had a balding spot in the center of his head, but
otherwise still looked relatively young.
A set of five enormous talons jutted out of his lab coat, attached to
black, leathery skin but his face, which frowned disapprovingly at Ezekial,
still seemed human and his nose, which seemed to be held on with a heavy amount
of tab, supported a pair of half moon spectacles.
Melciah waited for Ezekial to shake his head before
turning away from him. "Good, good,
I figured...still, it pays for us both to be cautious, eh?"
Ezekial nodded.
"You know, I can find some more suitable clothes for
you," Melciah sighed, shaking his head and typing at a terminal. Despite the size of his talons, the clicked
on the keys so lightly that there was no damage to the machine. "You don't need to walk around in rags
you cannibalized from Ahriman's victims."
Ezekial shook his head.
"Ugh...how long must you continue like that?"
Melciah shook his head. "I can make
a voice box for you."
Walking over to a desk that paper and a pencil on it,
Ezekial scribbled down, I don't want to
sound like a machine when she wakes up, on a piece of paper and handed it
to Melciah. After a few seconds, he
scribbled something else down and also handed that to Melciah. It read: If
she wakes up.
"Yes...seems unlikely, after all these years,
doesn't it?" Melciah grunted, his eyes darting towards a door in the
back. "Still, its not like we can
count on Ahriman to cure either her or us."
I did not mean to
doubt you Ezekial scribbled before covering his face with his hands.
Melciah watched him for a few seconds before sinking into
a chair on wheels. He turned back to his
terminal and resumed typing. "I
wish you wouldn't torment yourself like that, Zeke. It doesn't help anyone."
Handing Melciah a piece of paper, Ezekial headed towards
another vault door to the right.
"It makes you feel human, eh?" Melciah let out
a snort. "Zeke, you don't have to
remind yourself of what's lost to feel human.
Shit, the fact that you keep coming here is proof enough for me that
you're human. No machine or mutant would
do something so pointless."
Turning back to Melciah, Ezekial rolled his eyes, opened
up the vault door and stepped inside.
Another tank lay within. On
either side of it were two speakers that seemed to be giving off a high
frequency noise that made Ezekial's ears hurt.
He took a set of ear plugs next to the door and popped them in before
taking a seat in front of the tank.
A woman was floating in a mass of fluid. The metal bands encircling the tube covered
her privates, however Ezekial paid no mind to those anyway. His eyes drifted up to her face. The skin had turned a pallid color and the
face was sunken somewhat. Long, wiry
black hair came from the woman's had, so long that it was almost below her feet
in the tank. However, a set of buck
teeth remained jutting out of the woman's open mouth.
Ezekial reached over to the tank and touched it for a
moment before turning away. He replaced
his earplugs on the desk next to the door and headed outside.
"I'll figure it out eventually, Zeke," Melciah
said, without turning to face him. He
was furiously typing into the terminal in front of him. "I am her doctor, after all."
Ezekial nodded to himself and scribbled on his pad once
again. He handed it to Melciah who read
it aloud. "What am I working
on?" the doctor straightened his glasses.
"Heh...the same thing I do every day, Zeke. Try to take over the-"
Ezekial buffeted Melciah in the arm and his shoulders
shook with mirth for a moment.
Melciah also laughed and shook his head. "No...this time I'm trying to re-route my
internal power systems to accommodate for changes in Ahriman's search
protocols. If my power gets cut
or..." he stopped and Ezekial touched his shoulder. "Either way, I can't find a cure without
power to run my machines. So, afraid I
don't have anything new to report on that front."
Ezekial nodded, took a moment to straighten his cloak and
tucked the writing pad underneath it.
Melciah waved him off and Ezekial headed out through the two vault
doors. The machines protecting his
longtime friend made no move to stop him as he left, climbing into an access
hatch near the end of the hallway, and wriggling down through it.
Ezekial felt his belly rumble ever so slightly. He would need food soon if he was going to
keep on surviving. Crawling through the
spaces the arcology's designers had left for maintenance, Ezekial managed to
make his way down to the lower floors.
After dropping out of another access hatch, he put his ear to the ground
and heard footsteps a little ways down the hall. None of Ahriman's machines made footsteps.
Tucking the notepad into his pants, Ezekial crept along
the wall, careful to keep himself covered by his cloak. Even in the unlit corridors on the rim of the
arcology, his eyes saw as if it were clear as day. Two creatures hunched over one of the fallen
spider machines. They were gnawing on
the face that had been at the center of the legs, while three others lay dead
beside them. They too would become part
of the meal eventually. It would take
time for Ahriman to dispatch more scouts and by the time they found the last
signal the machine had given off, these creatures would be gone.
A few scraps of clothing clung to their bodies, but they
were covered in bulbous tumors. Melciah
had told Ezekial that the tumors were additions the virus created to those it
infected in order to assist it. They
added extrasensory perception through changes in the atmosphere to the
repertoire of these creatures who had once been human. Ezekial never cared for the taste, but food
was food. Tugging at his bandages, he
inched closer, however suddenly, a loud clanging echoed down the corridor. The two humanoid creatures looked up, gazing
at Ezekial through yellowed eyes and bearing skin that seemed more black and
green than white. Recognition dawned on
their faces and they took off down the corridor, scooping the bodies of their
fallen and what remained of the human face and carrying it with them.
While tempted to go after them, Ezekial had not survived
by acting recklessly. He quickly leapt
up to a nearby vent and began to crawl through it, towards the sound of the
clanging. He exited the vent and managed
to keep a foothold on one of Ahriman's slick electrical cables. Down below, he saw another black and green
skinned humanoid on the ground, banging against the arcology's blast
doors. They were as immovable as
ever. However, the creature below him
was not making the loud clanging. It's
fists only made dull thwops as they beat on the reinforced titanium doors.
Another clanging, louder this time, reached Ezekial's
ears and he drew his cloak tight to him.
Waiting patiently, he kept his eyes fixed to the door. Minutes ticked by, and every so often another
clanging would greet him. Then, finally,
something on the door sparked to life.
It passed around the door, a glowing pink light that cut through the
metal in an oval shape. The creature
below him wisely backed off, right before something pushed the now glowing oval
out from the door.
A figure stepped through the hole, garbed in what looked to
be a hazmat suit. It was made of a
tough, fibrous material that prevented anything, liquid or gaseous, from
getting at the occupant. Whether the
figure was human or not was up to debate, as a gas mask covered its face. From the build of the skintight suit, he
could tell that it was a man. Ezekial
felt his muscles tense and his eyes bulge in his skull. He could not remember the last time those
doors had been open. He itched to move
towards them, to see if help had finally come, but he waited, patiently, as the
infected pounced.
The man's arm was up in an instant, and Ezekial noticed
immediately that his hand was made of a metal.
It was a glowing golden and far more polished than Ezekial's, but it was
unmistakable. He was a cyborg too. The man pushed the infected back and his arm
split down the middle. A chain blade
shot out, but did not rev up and start spinning. Instead, with a single swipe, it decapitated
the infected, splattering the figure with its gore.
Ezekial held its breath.
Infection could take place within seconds with that level of
contact. However, the figure seemed
unperturbed and motioned for others to come in with him. Others stepped through the hole, each dressed
similarly to the man with the metal arm.
From the make of their bodies, Ezekial saw a team. Several of them had guns, but others seemed
to be carrying brief cases or other devices Ezekial didn't recognize. Then, he saw a woman step through, with her
gas mask emblazoned with the cybernetic skull of the Thantolian corporation. The crests under the skull marked her as a
tier 1 executive. Intrigued, Ezekial
made his way down, careful not to be spotted by the interlopers. He stopped as soon as he was close enough to
hear them.
"What happened here, Lance? I thought I gave explicit orders not to hurt
any survivors until we knew what happened!"
"Beg pardon, miss Ven, but the thing tried to eat my
arm...I consider that self defense.
Sides...whatever made yer little distress call, it wasn't that
thing. That thing ain't even human any
more."
Ezekial felt his heart stop. Distress call? He knew full well that no one alive inside
the arcology could make something like that.
He knew because they had already tried.
"Regardless, we're to secure survivors, determine
what happened, and try to recover the Ahriman core. Try not to start making bodies until we can
get some answers."
"You really think anyone'd be alive in here?"
Another figure, a woman with a gun, muttered, "It's been almost a hundred
years since this place went dark...they'd have to all be dead or crazy by
now."
"Unlikely," a man with a shriller voice chimed
in. He was holding a briefcase. "Arcology systems are designed to
survive for decades, even centuries without support and the AI overseeing them
has an overriding protocol to preserve human life. We should be able to find at least someone
within the corporate core systems."
Preserving human life.
Ezekial felt his mouth twist into a scowl under his bandages. He gripped the metal of a power cord so tightly
that it crumpled under his flesh.
"I'm going to let my superiors know we're in,"
the woman with the corporate crest, Ezekial remembered she had been called Ven,
said. "Come in, HQ. This is Ven.
Repeat..." she tapped the side of her mask. "HQ!
Can you read us?"
"Trouble, miss?" the man with the metal arm
sneered.
"Something is blocking communications in
here..." Ven murmured. "I
don't like this. We should retreat for
now and get further orders."
"Miss Ven," the man with the shrill voice
called, "The door is open and if necessary we can open it again. I say we press on. I'm eager to see what Ahriman has been up to
over these last few decades."
"Welcome." Ezekial turned his head so fast that
it nearly popped something out of place.
The tower of screens in the center of the arcology had flashed blue and started
to display something other than the usual drivel about Ahriman being god. And it was talking.
"Welcome to Thantolian Arcology. I am designated Ahriman, the
overseer." Two semi humanoid mechs
rumbled out from behind the tower. They
were carried forward on tank treads and though none could be seen, Ezekial knew
they were loaded down with weapons. He
pulled out his pad of paper and began to scribble something down on it.
"My name is Maria Ven, Ahriman," Ven said,
stepping forward. "We're here to
secure survivors and to evacuate your core.
We would like you to stand down all mechanical units currently under
your jurisdiction. Access code: VGHA
KLFS678HSK14ZLWERTPS45."
The humanoid machines rumbled to a stop and Ezekial
raised his eyes from his pad.
"Acc-acc-acc-access-ss-ss-ss code app-app-app-app..."
Ahriman's voice sputtered as the monitor's flickered violently. "Access code, denied. Core protocol override. Ensure survival of humanity is
paramount. Cannot shut off sentry or
medical units."
"I don't like this..." one of the woman
murmured, as the treaded machines sprang back to life.
"You have come in contact with infected humans. Virus designation, Horus. Key features.
Mutation. Regression. Death.
Operates under hive mentality rule.
Currently under quarantine.
Please come with me for proper treatment to ensure there has been no
contamination."
"Look!" the man held up his arm. "I'm a cyborg...no contamination threats
here. Besides, these suits are
sealed!"
"Please. It
is for your own safety," the voice of Ahriman called out.
Quickly tearing the paper from his notepade, Ezekial
folded it into the form of a plan and gingerly set it adrift, floating down
towards the assembled people.
"We would like you to cooperate with us," Ven
said. "I have corporate authority
to shut you down if you are noncompliant."
"B-but miss Ven, think of the data we'd lose!"
the shrill voiced man cried.
Ven turned her head to glare at him, but the mirror face
masks made that impossible.
"I will comply once I have assured your safety and
the safety of the other survivors," Ahriman said.
Ezekial felt a cold steel weight form in his gut. He leaned over the edge of the cable he was
clinging to as the paper airplane landed right next to the man with the metal
arm.
"Eh?" he grunted, picking it up.
"Alright," Ven nodded, "We understand one
another, then. Take us to your core
systems."
"Miss, wait!" the man with the cyborg arm
called out. He handed Ezekial's paper
plane to Ven.
"Don't trust Ahriman," Ven murmured.
"Please, I must ensure your safety," Ahriman's
machines started towards them again.
"I must preserve humanity."
"Hey, back off!" one of the women holding guns
shouted, as the treaded machines raised their arms and tried to grab her.
"Everyone, fall back! The situation is unknown!" Ven called,
"Need further instructions and back up before-"
"I said get off!" the woman from before called,
pulling free of the machine that held her.
Raising her right arm, it split open, cloth and all, to reveal a device
that glowed with pink light. Energy
gathered around the tip before discharging and liquidating the center of the
humanoid tank that Ahriman had sent after them.
The woman's arm folded back into its usual shape and
silence overtook everyone for a few brief seconds. Then, Ahriman's screens flashed red and all
hell broke loose.
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