Heart of Darkness (Mute)

[Mute]

Sparks leapt like flares and in the stark brilliance stretched shadows in every direction. The boy raised his hand in caution and watched his enemy's demise with morbid relish, daring to step closer. All around, the air cracked and throbbed, and electrical arcs leapt from machine to machine, hissing hungrily. A scream, it struck out at the night like a curse; unearthly, unnatural, and rung in the boy's heart long after the station was plunged into darkness and silence. He was frozen.

"Are you... alive?"

The machine was still. He frowned. No. It was a trick. It's a robot. A thing. He pulled the remaining senbon from his body and slid the katana out of his damaged hand. He would remove its head like Perseus. He was smiling again and closed in with a sluggish shuffle. His legs were heavy. It was difficult to hold the sword upright. Faster. Faster!

Finally, he reached the smoking husk of his enemy, barely making out its shape in the gloom. And with both hands, he lifted the sword over its head, like a guillotine it climbed, and with his last ounce of strength... he collapsed.

[Zero]

I couldn't see.

My arms and legs felt heavy, as if they were cased in steel. Disoriented, I clawed at the ground beneath me, just to anchor myself, to feel out my surroundings, and I felt something loose and granular between my fingers. But it wasn't my fingers doing the feeling. They were wrapped in some sort of mesh, impermeable, so tight it felt like it was grafted onto my skin.

There was a ringing in my ears. No, not a ringing - an electronic drone, like a data stream squealing over a phone line. Shaking, I lifted my hands to my head, hoping to find the source of the noise, shut it down, throw it away -

My mesh gloves encountered a helmet of some sort, solid, hard, smooth, like a polymer cast of a human skull. I searched for the edge, for a clasp, for a seam. There was none.

It covered my face, smooth and featureless, all except a flattened disc set in the center between my eyes -

I touched it, and light flooded my brain, sending spears of pain rebounding through my head. I cried out - there was something wrong with my voice, but I couldn't figure out what it was - and then the light settled, and I could see, indistinct shapes and shadows, and gradually the images resolved. But it was all wrong, colors shifted, like staring through night-vision goggles, or an old 3D movie without the glasses, like I was viewing the same image stacked on top of itself over and over.

"The hell..."

My voice sounded foreign to me. Hollow. Mechanical. I... or that camera thing attached to my brain... looked down to where my body ought to be.

"No."

Armor and mesh. Molded polymers and flexible, overlapping joints. Exomuscular attachments made of bundled nanofiber. It moved when I moved, and I felt it when I pressed on it, when I tried to dig my fingers into the joints, tried to tear the machine off my body. But I couldn't find where it ended and I began.

"No, no, no!"

Something boiled up inside me, a volcano of horror and rage and insanity from the molten core of whatever was left of my humanity. The sound I made was pure, primal emotion, defiant against the universe, borne from the desperation to prove I still existed.

Afterward I listened to the echoes fade from the distant hills and realized there was still enough of my throat left to hurt from the exertion. But there were other sounds on the hilltops - sirens. I saw the treetops light up in flashing blue and red.

Something inside me - animal instinct or mechanical programming, I couldn't tell - filled me with the urge to hide myself. There was destruction all around me, and my skin, or my armor, anyway, looked like I had been through a war. My hand found the hilt of a sword that was lying on the ground, and I surprised myself by slipping it securely into a groove that ran across my back. And then I saw the boy.

He was lying prone and twisted, clothes torn and face and hands bloodied. He had to be dead, but somehow I knew he wasn't. Something echoed in the distant corners of my mind:

There are children in here.

He was the key. He had to be. He could explain all this - what happened here, how we got here, how I turned into this... this thing. Didn't matter that I had no proof we were even connected. My mind was in splinters, and it had to find something to stick in.

I rose to my feet, shutting out the stabbing pain in my right leg, scooped up the boy in my arms, and staggered out of the power station before the first responders arrived. Somehow, it was all going to make sense eventually.

[Mute]

Mute stirred. It was a long and tedious process of slipping in and out of consciousness; he saw himself floating, then buried under rocks, he felt like he was falling and then feared for the life of a person he'd never met, and finally, with a groggy sense of urgency he woke. His heart pounded against the floor and his cheek was cold from the touch of rough concrete, his fingers scratched at a fine layer of something like dust, and he tasted blood on his parched lips. He coughed and it echoed all around, he opened his eyes, in the dark.

A large room stretched out all around him, its walls were made from great sheets of crimped tin which rattled in the wind, and tall columns of shelving lined the walls and ran in rows down the length of the room. It was a warehouse. He struggled upright under the strain of many injuries and rubbed his aching head. His mind drifted and cast its nets into the murky waters of memory but he could dredge up no explanation for his current predicament. Then his weary gaze fell upon the figure of a man sat silently in the corner illuminated by the dim glow of its red watchful eye.

Mute started, and scrambled away on his hands until he backed into a forklift truck with a dull clang. The fog lifted and visions of his violent struggle for survival surfaced with horrifying clarity.

[Zero]

He was afraid of me. That made two of us.

I was crouched on the balls of my feet with my elbows resting on my knees. I felt like I could weather hurricanes in this position. I opened one hand in an unthreatening wave and tried to keep the metallic distortion that was my voice as soft as possible.

"Hi."

[Mute]

That voice sent such a chill through him that he was convinced his spine had turned to ice; he was frozen to the spot. His back pressed harder against the truck as if it would gain him some distance, instead he slid slowly upwards until he was poised stiffly like a cat, watching with wide apprehensive eyes. It was a trick, he knew it, and prepared himself for the machine's next move.

[Zero]

I had the feeling if I moved too quickly, he'd bolt into the night, and I'd never catch him in this condition. I'd figured out I had a broken leg, and even though the suit seemed to be binding it together, I didn't want to test it at a full sprint.

"You look like hell, you know that?"

He didn't respond. I figured I could carry the conversation a little longer. "I guess I don't look much better. Look. Something happened to both of us. I'm trying to figure out what it was."

I thought I saw something change in the boy's face then, but he didn't say a word. "You don't talk much, do you?"

[Mute]

There was something quite obscene and repulsive about what was unfolding before him. While distorted by some sort of mechanical static, the machine's voice seemed so... human. It talked like a man. Mute was trying to think logically: it was wholly possible that, when damaged, it had been programmed to use a subtle, more manipulative, approach to catch its prey. His guard was up but curiosity was a wily thing...

He shook his head with uncertainty and then pressed a finger to the floor. All the while he kept his keen eyes locked on the machine. Slowly, and with unsteady motions, he traced a word into the dirt on the floor: mute.

[Zero]

I looked at the word scratched in the dirt and felt the volcano rumbling inside. All I wanted was answers, and I wanted them the way a starving animal wants meat, the way a drowning man wants just one last gasp of air. I was so desperate I wanted to wring information out of the first person I saw, any information, anything to calm this rage smoldering at the base of my skull. My hand itched for the sword strapped across my back, and it took a dedicated effort to stop it from drawing.

"Okay. If you can't talk, you're going to listen. Something happened to me back there. This suit. This weapon. This damned machine in my head. I don't know where it came from. I don't know what I'm doing here. I don't even know whether I'm a patient man or the kind that kills when he doesn't get what he wants."

There was no hiding the manic edge in my voice, as if the metallic growl wasn't bad enough. But I didn't care.

"I'm going to try to keep this simple. Do you know who I am? Do you have anything to do with me?"

[Mute]

A machine infused with personality was decidely far more unnerving than one without. Except it wasn't a machine. It was a concept Mute was trying to wrap his head around but part of him refused to believe it- didn't want to believe it. The smooth face bobbed as it spoke, a gesture of the hand, a nod; was there really something human behind there? Did he remember nothing?

The stench of gasoline clung to the air, it was nauseating. Mute's eyes stung. He wondered if he'd get away in time if the thing sat opposite made a move. If it lost its temper. He was exhausted and wearily shook his head in response to the question asked.

Then his eyes turned hateful as he simply pointed an accusing finger at the machine, slapped a clenched fist into his open palm, and jerked a thumb at himself. The message was clear enough.

[Zero]

The funny thing was I didn't feel the least bit of remorse for beating on some kid. I spread my arms and looked down at myself - a collection of scars, torn edges, and electrical burns decorated my armor.

"Looks like you gave as good as you got. You're some freak, kid. Not just a poor mute..."

Something snapped in my head - a searing rush of information, too fast for me to process. I could hear the machine roaring in my ears.

"Mute... mutant. Subject 470113."

I flinched, and the warehouse swam before me...

Their faces shine in the flashlight beam, bright and full of fear. "Hold your fire! There are children in here!"

A girl rises to her bare feet. She looks no older than ten, but she's so tiny you can't tell - her eyes are sunken, haunting. You lower your weapon and step toward her, cautiously, as if approaching an injured dog in the street.

You reach out your hand.

"Gaah!"

I pitched forward to the floor, shaking. A seizure, or a software glitch. It couldn't have lasted more than a moment. But it was an epiphany.

"Mutants," I rasped, steel on steel. "Mutants did this to me!" My head snapped up to face the boy, my ocular lens blazing red.

[Mute]

The sudden outburst had Mute standing upright, every muscle and bone cried out in objection but he fought against it, and shuffled backwards. The machine was curled like a newborn in gray light and unleashed a savage howl of pain. First fear, the boy retreated until his back ran flush with a shaft of steel, and then as Zero's crimson glare fell upon him, there was resolve.

In an instant, his mangled hands gripped the metal and pulled. There was a mournful groan of steel and wood as the bracket came loose, sending the towering shelves, and their contents, toppling on top of him. Mute quickly hobbled away.

[Zero]

Damn it!

I dove as far as my injured leg would allow, but several crates struck my armored back and vomited their contents over the floor, nearly burying me. I ignored the throbbing protests from my leg and clawed my way out of the rubble as the last echoes of the boy's footsteps faded.

"Wait! I just..."

I didn't know how I was going to end that sentence. I didn't blame him for running. For all I knew, if he'd stuck around, I'd have killed him eventually anyway.

I staggered to my feet, lost and disoriented. What now? I couldn't be seen like this in daylight. Did this warehouse count as shelter? Did I need to eat? Sleep? Was someone going to come looking for me?

The machine still screamed in my ear. Most of it was digital gibberish, but I could hear two messages stridently and repeatedly:

Critical Processing error. Return to base for repairs.

"Return to base. Where the hell is..."

Groggily, I looked at the warehouse around me and found myself drawn around the corner. Tucked back against a concrete barrier between two rows of shelves was something that looked like a refrigerator crate with one panel torn to pieces, broken from the inside. As I drew nearer, I saw there was something big, cylindrical, and metallic inside coiled with hoses and machinery, like a hot water tank coupled with a diesel engine.

In hindsight, I should have been startled when a seam appeared in the center of the machine's side and opened up, revealing a padded recess in the shape of a man. I never doubted what it was for.

Interface. Shut down. Begin automated repair sequence. Signal base for emergency evacuation and maintenance.

The machine grew louder in my head as I approached, and the noise made it hard to think of anything but the instructions it was pounding into my brain. That was it. Stop thinking. Don't even try. There will be a time of blissful surrender, and then everything will make sense again.

A technical overlay appeared in my vision, labeling the components of what I now knew as my regeneration pod. Data and energy ports. Nutrient tubes. Independent microfission power supply. And there, at the top of the pod, was an ocular lens, and behind it, an artificial intelligence cortex connected to a microwave transmitter - my contact with home base, the source of the machine's instructions.

Human instinct is a funny thing. Sometimes it takes the path of least resistance. Other times, it resists just because it can. If I'd given it any thought at all, I don't know if I'd have been able to do it.

I took two steps forward, freed my sword from its sheath, and drove it upward through that ocular lens, through the computer brain, and through the microwave antenna that linked it all to some unseen authority.

The machine hit a fever pitch. CRITICAL ERROR: Primary contact lost. Alternate contact not found. No signal in range. No instructions found. Processing alternatives. Processing Alternatives. Processing...

"Shut up," I growled. "There are no alternatives. It's just you and me now."

ERROR. Invalid directive. This unit cannot operate without mission parameters.

"Fine. Here they are. We're going to lie low. I need to rest up, recharge, whatever the hell it is I do. Then I need to find some answers. And you're going to help me. We don't trust anyone, understood? Everyone's the enemy until I find out what those mutant bastards did to me."

Processing........................................ ..........
New mission parameters accepted. Now awaiting new directives.

"Good." If I had to have a voice in my head, I was going to make it work for me. I gripped the interior edge of the pod and leaned in to get a better look at its interior workings. "Can this thing still work without contact to home base?"

Affirmative. Power cells sufficient for three months' independent operation.

"All right then." Maybe it was foolhardy. But something like hunger told me my own power cells were running on empty, and even if my mechanical components didn't need to sleep, I was pretty sure my mind still did. I was on the doorstep to insanity. I needed to scrap for anything that could give me a connection with a normal life.

I climbed into the pod, which fit me like a glove, and instinctively hooked a bank of conduits and nutrient tubes into their ports on my arms and legs. "Wake me in eight hours, or if anyone disturbs the pod."

Affirmative.

The pod's hatch slid shut with barely a sound, and my ocular lens winked out, leaving me in darkness and silence.