Freedom: Part 2
This story is fan-fiction made in the Grimdark Future universe, by One Page Rules.
Gene Mods were dangerous things. Hart knew this better than most, and he was not one to quickly forget a lesson. A mistake in the synthesis, an error in the gene coding, or even bumping the manipulator arms could result in horrible mutations, diseases, even acidic fog that would fill the lab in seconds. They had been tinkering with the building blocks of both life and death in Research Station Kappa.
The cells were separate from the main building. They were connected by a series of airlocks with extensive decontamination stations at regular intervals. The Monitoring station allowed Hart — and presumably the former lab-techs — to see what was happening in the cells without needing to risk life or limb of any of his soldiers.
Had the Sonic Sensors not picked up a distant noise, they wouldn’t have bothered looking. What could still be alive in the containment cells after so long without food or water?
Hart was disgusted by the answer. It was horrible; a misshapen pillar of flesh that quivered and pulsed like a horrible organic factory. For a moment Hart — who had seen some of the most gruesome and terrible things imaginable — was worried his stomach would betray him.
Then the image of the pillar shifted on the screen, and his disgust turned to horror. He could suddenly see how the musculature looked like twisted arms and legs, how a bulge was like a distorted stomach and a winding tube was unfolding intestine. What had been mere ridges in the flesh were now the teeth of a locked-open jaw, and two pus-filled sores were milky eyes that swiveled about to stare at nothing at all.
Before he even realized what was happening, Schuler was hopelessly tugging on his arm, pleading as Hart flipped the emergency purge switch. Hart tried again and again, but the purge system was obviously broken, either eroded over the years or long since empty of fuel. “Please!” The Commandant was shouting. “Don’t kill him, he’s useful!”
“He?” Hart managed to choke out. He stopped flipping the purge switch, but his finger remained poised.
“Rank-private Torge. Joined the Battle Brother 242nd three years after arriving in the Sirius sector.”
“The 242nd?” Hart’s jaw clenched tighter. “They were one of the deserters. You mean to tell me that’s one of the Havoc Brothers? You’ve had one of them here?” His revulsion slowly ebbed and turned to furious recognition. “You knew? This is what you’ve been doing here?”
“He was captured and brought here for study only a year before the site was shut down. The head-researcher’s records…They just left him here. I thought I’d find a corpse worthy of study, but instead I found him, still alive. I’ve talked with him. He’s been a fascinating source of information.”
“Information?” Hart grabbed Schuler by his throat and shoved him against the wall. “You are under orders to report all contact with Battle Brother deserters to the Protectorate! Why is he still here? Why haven’t you sent him to the Custodians?”
“Deserters like you?” Schuler choked out through his constricted throat. “Oh, I’m sure you’re loyal to the Founder, but what about his successor? Does the Conduit get your loyalty as well? And what would the Custodians say if they saw you here and you explained your mission? Hunt enemies to the Founder wherever they hide…and if they hide among the Custodians?”
Hart dropped Schuler to the ground. For a moment the only sound in the cells was the commandant’s coughing and gasping. Then: “I understand you, Lance-Captain. So far from the Protectorate…sometimes…sometimes procedure — the rules and laws must be bent to do what is best for humanity. Indeed, I bet there are even Battle Brothers who wear that same wolf patch that don’t always agree with you. I do not blame you for thinking differently, I applaud it. It is this willingness to grow and improve that drove me to the sciences…and to speak with Rank-Private Torge.”
When Hart answered, it was with a voice thick with age and exhaustion. “What did you find?”
“These Havoc — an unfortunate homophone; the word means something quite different in their original language — are fascinating beings! They exist somewhere in the between-space, or are perhaps a part of it. They can manifest pieces of themselves in real-space, only each piece appears as a separate entity. These ‘demons’ are all, in fact, part of a few singular beings in between-space, and somehow the over-being currently connected to Rank-Private Torge has managed to partially manifest itself as a collection of real-space bacteria, viruses, and parasites. It has become a kind of disease.”
“The Plague Brothers,” Hart muttered. “I’ve heard of them.”
“Yes, only this disease has a connection to between-space!” Schuler’s voice was getting faster and higher pitched. “Sometimes Torge speaks when no one is around. He answers questions no one has asked, holds conversations with people who aren’t here!”
Hart’s eyes narrowed. “You mean he’s insane?”
“Pah!” Schuler spat, “an unscientific term. When he speaks like this, there are fluctuations in the Psychic field, as well as faint ripples in between-space. I think he is actually communicating through the disease. He is like a dendrite in a massive brain, sending and receiving information as a piece of a…a gestalt mind that is linked in between-space. He is becoming — or has become — a part of this larger Havoc entity.” He looked back into the cell, his eyes wide with wonder. “Can you imagine what we might accomplish if we could communicate with this being directly? How much we could learn, what new technologies could be discovered…why, we might even someday find we ourselves are but fingers of some larger being.” He turned to Hart. “Wouldn’t you one day like to speak with our creator? Think of the answers we could find!”
Hart didn’t answer — he had heard his creator speak many times, and he had come to his own answers. “He can speak?”
“He can,” Schuler glanced back at the tower of flesh. “It’s gotten quite hard for him. He spoke more often in the early days. Before the site closed down, he mostly demanded to return to his unit. Apparently he tried to bribe and convert some of the staff, but we’re loyal to the Conduit here…well, more so than to the Havoc beings, at any rate. Then, one day, he stopped moving. He stopped eating. They thought he was performing a hunger-strike, but his vitals remained stable. He started to swell like that, and became much more…accommodating. Helpful, even. They left him here when the site shut down because, well, no one wanted to move him.”
“What about infection?”
“Oh, they were quite careful; regular health checks, decontamination procedures, psychic scans and profiles…He even promised them everyone was safe from infection, until…” Schuler coughed. “Well…until we agree to join him, but I assure you I have no intention of doing so. I’ve only been speaking to him through the intercom,” Schuler patted the console.
Hart rubbed his chin. It was horrifying to think that this pillar of flesh had once been human. A Battle Brother, no less. Everything in him demanded the abomination’s destruction, but another part of his mind, the part he didn’t like to think about, wondered why?
As if reading his mind, Schuler typed at the console and switched the monitor to a different feed. “Here, let me show you; I’ve recorded most of our sessions. It took some time before he was willing to open up about…certain things, but I finally got him to talk about what caused him to defect. Here…”
The image shifted, bending until the pillar was visibly thinner. The bones and muscles were more pronounced, easier to see. The recorded voice that came through the speakers was haggard, raspy, and raw. Hart could almost feel the words scrape against his ears. He tried not to look at the pillar, tried not to guess where the voice was coming from.
“When we arrived on Planet 5N-BetaXi…food rations had begun to spoil. Broken seal…let decay in. Only hope of survival…eaten away by slime and rot. Some of us….tried to forage for food, edible plants and animals…some died from poison flesh, others…killed each other over a handful of foul-tasting nuts that gave…cramps and muscle spasms…but took away the hunger for a bit. Then…found a shrine. Decorated with ancient bones and rotten flesh…monument to some ancient culture. I don’t know what made Rank-Private Kulyn do it…she killed an animal…hung it over the altar. Desperation? Whatever the reason, something answered…offered each of us different things. It was alone and frightened. It wanted someone to protect it…keep it alive. What were we Battle Brothers for, if not to protect the weak? We agreed, and oh! How it hurt! I could feel it swelling and eating me from the inside…a welcome pain compared to how we had been suffering. It felt good. The smell of our rotting food…suddenly sweet nectar. Burning pangs of poison were a soothing balm. We could walk through lands blasted by radiation without fear. We could run, heal from wounds, and recover from fatigue…faster than ever. It felt like when I had received my first gene-mods…all it cost me was a sore throat and burning joints.”
Hart was feeling dizzy. Schuler was speaking; “I thought…ahem…perhaps his story could prevent future defections, any other losses to the Havoc Gods, but even if not, it…excuse me…the potential information is…is marvelous…”
Hart turned to look at Schuler. He was doubled over, his face contorted in pain. The ill feeling in Hart’s stomach was growing and his limbs were beginning to ache. He fumbled for the intercom before remembering through a dizzying haze that he had his own communicator. He switched it on and shouted; “Full alert, we are under attack!”
The response was swift. “Ambush! Unknown number of assailants! They’re coming out of the vents!”
With thoughts as slow as molasses, Hart considered the situation. It was a trap, obviously. The Plague Brothers had left Torge here as a kind of land-mine, and they’d set it off…no…wait, they weren’t fighting the Plague Brothers, were they? And they hadn’t come into contact with Torge. Was it the rats? But how could they…
It was getting hard to think. Hart Hart grabbed at Schuler, but he wasn’t there. He had collapsed on the ground, writhing and moaning like an injured dog. For a moment — for only one shameful moment — Hart envied the Commandant. Hart would have liked nothing more than to succumb to the primal urge in his chest, the urge to soothe and lick his wounds. He wanted to whine in agony, cry out in pain, fall to the ground until the room stopped spinning…
But he had no choice. He was a Wolf Brother, and a Lance-Captain at that. He did not have the luxury of comfort. The gene-mods that had given him strength, speed, and clarity had dictated his future. He was a soldier, and had no time for human things.
Ignoring his own pain, Hart reached down and lifted Schuler onto his shoulder. Drawing his pistol, he left the room and staggered out into the hall.
Far from the station sat the cells. They had been empty for many years, save for Rank-Private Torge. He had long since closed the eyes he had no longer needed and now sat in stillness. He was not alone, though. Through the billions of miles of space, he had spoken with his God, heard of his brothers and sisters who carried their God with them. He rejoiced with them in their victories, wept with them over their defeats, and shared in everything they did.
Now, for the first time in years, he was not alone in the cells, either.
The pillar that was Torge shifted. He could feel the shift in the psychic field. He hadn’t known he was being watched, but his new companion had suddenly straightened and fallen quiet. After a few moments, she had begun to chant in a strange chittering language he had never heard before. It was beautiful, in a way, and the echoes of her voice reached into the psychic field, stretching out towards the main building of Research Station Kappa.
After a moment longer, she relaxed. “Done,” she said with her heavy accent. Her name was Sharptooth, and she was one of the greatest shaman of her clan. She had been speaking with the pillar for several hours now, struggling with the human’s strange language. She had learned it from her mother, but her mother was a better speaker than she was. She had never seen the value in speaking the horrid tongue. Now, on the other hand, it was proving quite useful.
“What…did you do?” Torge asked.
Sharptooth pulled her lips back in a sneering smile. “Heard their minds sing. Singing with sickness they were, hearing you talk. Joined the singing, made them feel sickly. All of them. My Clan pushing them back now. Station will be ours, soon.”
“You did this…for me?”
The Ratkin thought for only a moment. The pillar didn’t need to know her clan’s other plans. “Heard you singing here, alone. Trapped. We trapped before. Many stories, many songs. Horrible to be trapped. We came to free you.”
For a moment, the pillar was still and silent. Then, it spoke softly: “You must be very proud of your song.”
Sharptooth nodded. “Yes. Soon will become mother, pass my song to my kits. Family will become very strong.”
“Then…perhaps you will understand my pride,” the words came over a ragged tongue buried deep in the folds and blemishes. “I sit here, a pillar of strength. I carry my god with me. I nurture him like a mother. He grows strong in me, and I do not perish. He gives me strength, courage, and hope. Does your family do the same for you?”
“Yes,” Sharptooth nodded. “Family is most important. Freedom to be with family better than anything. We look for those without family, set them free.” There was a beat as the tower of flesh struggled for breath. “You feel free now?”
When they imprisoned me here…" A haggard cough ripped through the cell, suddenly loud next to his rough whisper. “…I begged my god to let me struggle for it. it lives through my sacrifice, as I lived because of it. It brings me word of my brothers, it soothes my pains and honors my gifts. It even listened to me when I prayed for it to stay with me, to not spread its gifts to the others in this base unless they asked for it.” The pillar shifted. “A thought has just struck me. Would you like to carry my god with you?”
“No,” The rat said. “My family has no god. We know who made us.”
“Ah! Such poor luck, to have no freedom to choose your gods.” The pillar seemed to settle. Though it’s eyes were clearly useless, the rat was certain, somehow, that it was looking at something. “I made my choice decades ago. No, friend, the lock on my cell does not hold me. I am as free now as I shall ever be. I will stay.”
The rat nodded once, certain that the pillar would see. Slipping away, she padded her through the other empty cells, checking in each one to be sure; there was no one else here.
Well, no matter. Living beings weren’t the only things that could be freed. Information was locked in these humans’ computers; information about the origins of the ratfolk, and possibly their future. Genetic information. Technology that turned animals into humans, and humans into monsters. When the human soldiers were pushed back, she would give the word and her ratkin would pour over the machines and computers. They would strip the station bare and drag everything home to study. They’d find strange and wonderful things in those databanks, she was certain.
Perhaps, the ratfolk would someday be able to augment themselves the way the humans had, and create their own super warriors to fight the humans’ abominations. She wasn’t certain it was a wise idea, but after fighting the humans for so long, she could see no better option. They were impossibly strong and fast, better trained and better equipped. They needed an edge to survive, to continue their great liberation.
For all their devotion to freedom, Sharptooth was worried her people were trapped, as chained to their future as an immobile pillar of flesh and bone.