Here's the first chapter of a just-for-fun project. I have no intention of querying it anywhere, or even re-drafting it, it's just an exercise to keep cogs turning.
Chapter One
Victor looked out into the blood-red dawn and smiled.
The colours weren’t quite right, of course. The duraglass warped them slightly, brightening the pinks and yellows outrageously. Victor had seen plenty of sunrises and sunsets in his life, either on the observation deck or over a monitor, and he knew that they couldn’t be nearly as ostentatious if viewed with the naked eye.
The duraglass also did a fantastic job of muting the sound of the DNA cannons. What should have been an eardrum-shattering series of booms, even at this distance, was reduced to something no louder than a heavy heart-beat.
“You are right to smile,” said General Sao, stepping up beside him. “The cannons do magnificent work. You should be proud.”
Victor turned his head to look at the General. A proud man, tall, square jawed and broad shouldered. A nasty shrapnel injury on the left side of his head had left scar-trenches through his clipped greying hair. It only added to his masculine appearance, however. Funny, Victor thought, how some scars were ugly and others were appealing.
Sao wore his uniform in a state of utter crispness with several medals gleaming on his breast. “Are you ready for the meeting, Victor?” the General asked.
Victor merely nodded. Much as it was nice to stand on the observation deck for a brief spell and enjoy the fruits of his labours, he had important work to be getting on with in his lab. Truth be told, he hated these meetings. The Council made him nervous, despite the praise they heaped upon him for the creation of the DNA cannons. He always thought as though they might suddenly strip him of his funding and leave him no avenue to continue his work. The notion wasn’t entirely irrational either; he was fully aware their Head Scientific Advisor, Johann Wexler, would love nothing more than to do precisely that.
He curled his lip unconsciously. Wexler was a simpering little snake who had weaseled his way into the Head Scientific Advisor position on the strength of his family name and his father’s research. His experiments with the witchborn down beneath The Hole were unethical, clumsy and had yielded no useful results. Ever since the Academy, Wexler had always been jealous of Victor’s superior mental ability despite his poor lineage.
“Let’s go,” said the General. “They’re calling us in.”
Victor took a deep breath and counselled himself.
Your results speak for themselves. Your research has been instrumental in keeping this city safe. Wexler has nothing on you.
Still his heart hammered as the General lead him to the Council Chamber.
The Council of the City Glorious ruled with an iron fist in a velvet glove.
The Council Chamber was house in the North Bastion, the greatest military installation in the City Glorious. Part stronghold, part training ground, part command centre and all constructed as part of the largest gateway through the Wall. With the thousands of soldiers, medikars, technikars and ancillary staff housed there, it had actually larger population than the Hub.
While most of the North Bastion was Spartan and regimental, designed for function over form and with a minimum of pomp or fuss, the Council Chamber itself was a very different story.
The carpet with thick, the long curtains either side of the great windows were almost equally so, and the chairs the councilmen sat were ornate and comfortable. The colour scheme was deep burgundy, mahogany and gold.
Twelve old men squinted down at them from their chairs, needle-eyes beneath bushy brows. Here, thought Victor, was the wealth and power of the City Glorious. Between these twelve individuals, the entire industry of the city was balanced. Even, he suspected, the illegal side.
General Sao had been talking for some time now and the councilmen paid him the attention a hero was due. Certainly, it seemed to Victor, there was respect there. It was Sao Chang, after all, who had returned as the lone survivor of the Second Expedition. It was Sao Chang who had held the West Gate during the blackout of 804. Sao Chang’s medals, gleaming under the lights of the council chamber, had been earned for valor and dedication to duty. He had more than any serving officer.
“And what of the current Expedition, General,” said one of the councilmen - Barghast, a ruthless old tyrant who owned the City Security Force and presided over its only prison, The Hole. “Do you have a report for us?”
Victor’s ears pricked up at this and he felt a stab of nerves. Much depended on this report.
“I do,” the General nodded. “Our forces are roughly one hundred miles north currently. There has been some minor engagement with the enemy which has been swiftly handled. It seems the estimations we’ve drawn from drone scouting have been correct – the size of the horde has decreased dramatically within the last hundred years or so. Where once we were plagued by billions of the undead, now there are a few hundred thousand.”
“Do you have any theories on this, Victor?” asked another councilman - Milbington, a withered soft fool of a man coasting on the money of his family waste disposal business. One of the richest men in the room.
“Starvation,” said Victor, clearing his throat. “We believe the dead still need to feed, which is why they show such a determination to devour the flesh of the living. Indeed, they show no other drives at all and, as we know, will not even act in self-preservation. Quite simply, they will mindlessly walk through any amount of danger in search of food. It’s a simple leap to assume they do this because they need to eat. With the majority of the human population behind walls, they don’t have the resources to sustain a population of their size so, like any population in this situation, they begin to die off.”
From his position at the side of the room, Wexler scoffed.
“Something to add, Head Advisor?” asked Barghast, un-steepling his knotted old fingers to turn and look at Wexler.
Wexler stood, with a brief smirk in Victor’s direction. He was waifishly-thin, as ever, a contrast to Victor’s gut (which was expanding faster than he would like), and his head had been shaved clean. He viewed the room from behind a pair of small, round dark glasses and was dressed, as always in his official lab-coat of office, a pristine white garment which buttoned up at the left side of the chest. Victor suspected Wexler slept in the lab-coat.
“My learned colleague seems to have forgotten that these creatures are dead,” said Wexler. “They cannot simply starve. Deprive them of air and they do not die. Riddle them with holes and they are not defeated. The complete removal of the stomach does not hinder them so why should a lack of nutrition?”
“I’m sure that those with damage to their digestive system will perish far faster than those still able to eat-” Victor started.
“Oh you’re sure, are you? I understood that your field was robotics and engineering rather than biology?”
“Well, actually I have qualifications in several scientific disciplines-”
“My own extensive research has shown that these beings, which we can all agree are no longer human, are instead sustained by some other form of energy and their drive to devour living tissue is merely a result of degradation of the brain.”
“We know they are no longer human but that is not a result of some mysterious energy. They are altered at a genetic level by the virus that created them. Councilmen, this is the basis of the DNA cannons I created and their results are unquestionable.”
“No one is debating the effectiveness of your big guns, Victor,” Wexler smirked again. “Nor that the creatures are altered at a genetic level. But it if is a virus, tell me, how does it spread so quickly? Even the most hostile and virulent pathogens take time.”
“If the hunger is the result of breakdown in the brain,” Victor countered. “Why do we not see the same symptoms in those suffering degenerative neurological diseases which cause similar breakdown, such a Barlington’s?”
“That’s enough,” said Barghast, visibly displeased. “We did not come here to watch you two squabble.”
“Agreed,” said another – this one was Messino, the white haired and olive-skinned captain of the entertainment industry. There wasn’t a bar, theatre or casino in all of the City Glorious that didn’t pay him somewhere along the line. “The real question is this, how is Victor’s latest invention performing in the field?”
General Sao cleared his throat.
“I’ve been informed we can bring up a live feed,” he said, indicating the large black monitors that dominated one wall of the room.
Victor felt a cold sweat come over him. Since they had moved out of range of his instruments, he had been unable to receive data directly from the suits and access to their video feeds was denied to him as a matter of military security. He had no way of knowing if anything had gone wrong and, if it had, he was about to find out in front of the whole council and Wexler.
Barghast nodded his approval which, usually, stood for the approval of the whole council.
A technikar in the corner, highly visible in the red coat of his order, briefly tapped away at his computer and the monitors flicked into life.
Eight separate viewpoints filled the screen from cameras mounted in eight separate Aegis battlesuits. For a moment, Victor forgot the room, as his gaze flew about the screens, taking in readings as quickly as possible from each suit’s heads-up display. Radiation levels were perfectly fine – the containment shielding around the reactors was steady. Suit temperature, pilot life-signs and energy levels were all within acceptable ranges. He couldn’t tell much more without a full internal diagnostic reading but this was promising.
He let himself breathe a little.
“There’s no communications,” General Sao explained. “They’re at the very edge of our range.”
“All Aegis units appear to be functioning perfectly,” Victor reported. “Judging by the movement on the cameras, suit motion is steady and stable. For the next models I’d like to increase agility. A walking tank is good for taking on waves of the undead – they can’t penetrate the Aegis, nor do they have enough strength to hinder its movement, even with weight of numbers – but other threats may be faster.”
“I’m sure your designs will continue to impress, Victor,” said Messino, with a lazy wave of the hand indicating he had little patience for jargon.
“Impressive,” nodded Barghast. “I should like to see similar suits implemented within the CSF.”
Victor suppressed a grimace. The CSF were already a group of drugged up thugs, no better than the criminals they attempted to apprehend. He dreaded to think the chaos they’d cause in an Aegis unit of his design.
“The suits are currently too bulky to be used effectively in an urban environment,” he said. Barghast grimaced, a flicker of his downturned mouth, but nodded.
“What are they armed with?” asked Councilman Aruda – a large man given to gaudy jewelry and dying his hair black to look young. His industry was food production and his farms and factories were some of the most heavily armed places in the city. He had his own private security there and they were authorize to kill trespassers on sight.
“Each Aegis unit has a pair of 20mm auto-cannons mounted to the left wrist,” Victor said, feeling a natural calm begin to come over him as he fell into the mantra of reciting the suit specs. He knew them like the back of his hand, having spent over a decade working on them. Technically they’d been complete for longer than that now but the Council had been resistant to their use without extremely thorough testing.
“The left arm is, therefore, bulkier than the right,” he continued. “As it has recoil support and aim-assistant technology built in – supported by the pilot’s HUD targeting system. The right arm, meanwhile, is outfitted with a retractable blade on the forearm intended for close combat use as well as clearing foliage, etc. There are also a series of utility features of the suit, which keep the pilot warm and protected, monitor their vitals, feed them information about their environment and keep them in communication with each other. The suit has night-vision but, more importantly, it runs the same datascan for genetic anomaly that the DNA cannons use, making spotting the undead incredibly easy.”
“Very impressive,” sneered Wexler, half under his breath. “If only they were more effective against the witchborn…”
Victor scowled. Wexler’s obsession with the witchborn was irritating in the extreme.
“As I understand it,” Victor seethed. “The hundreds of thousands of undead outside are walls are currently deemed a greater threat than a few dozen genetic anomalies of questionable ability and unconfirmed danger.”
“That will do,” grunted Barghast. “We are impressed with your work so far, Victor. We will continue to provide you the funding and materials you need. You may go. General Sao, please remain for the moment. Let us make contact with Sergeant Amberlan for her report.”
Wexler’s brow furrowed above his round black lenses but he kept his mouth shut. Victor gave a quick bow to the Council before turning and leaving the room. He couldn’t help but wonder what they wanted Sao for but he supposed it could be anything – it might not even be related to him or his work.
Victor wasn’t truly at ease again until he reached his lab.
It had been constructed in an old nuclear power plant, which had been reluctantly included within the city limits as part of the 23rd Expansion. The City Glorious was an ever-growing thing, teeming with the human life it protected within its walls and always hungry for more – more resources, more power, more space. Expansions had become so commonplace, so necessary now, that a plans for a new one began almost as soon as the last one was completed.
Many had initially feared the possibility of meltdown from the old plant, which was part of the reason for the cheap price of the building. Only the desperate would dare live near it but the City Glorious had plenty of the desperate out in the Scab, so live near it people did. Where others had seen disaster, however, Victor had seen the opportunity for relatively untapped power. It had been the best decision of his life. The siphoning of the nuclear reactor was key the powering his Aegis technology, amongst other projects.
The lab itself might seem a mess to an outsider (not that outsiders were allowed in) but for Victor it was an organized chaos. Desk after desk of computers, equipment, tools and parts took up his engineering workshop, with a large assembly floor beyond. There were several racks there, on which the Aegis suits had been constructed, and various factory equipment for lifting their heavy parts into place.
Through the blast doors at the other end of this space was what he thought of as his ‘nuclear lab’, where he worked on his reactor technology.
There was also the chemical lab and a biological lab, in different parts of the building, although his experiments along those lines had never been as successful and they had become more of a hobby than anything.
Victor had no other home. He’d sold his property to buy the lab, before he’d earned the funding of the Council. Even if he did have somewhere else, he’d never spend time there. This was his true sanctum, the only place he really felt comfortable.
He made his way upstairs to what had probably once been an office overseeing the workspace below through glass windows. Here had had made a ramshackle bedroom. An old mattress above atop an older bedframe. Some dusty books gathered together for comfort on a slightly wonky shelf. A battered armchair and a musty blanket, in which he often fell asleep while reading back over his notes. There was a desk in the corner with a small personal computer he used to journal his thoughts and contact the few people he needed to make contact with.
And a secret door.
Victor hesitated, as always, before using the hidden finger-print scanner to the door. He knew he was alone but still, he felt obliged to check over his shoulder, paranoia whispering just out of sight. Then he opened the door and stepped inside.
The room beyond was far smaller than any other in the building, a few small workbenches were presided over by the room’s dominant feature: a huge tube of liquid, casting a blue glow over all. Within the tube a young woman was suspended.
Her dark hair wreathed about her head like seaweed as she floated, weightless in the blue stasis fluid. On her left arm, bandaged, was the wound that would kill her within seconds if she left the system…and then raise her again as a monster. The bite.
Victor observed her for a short time, sorrow deepening the lines of his face.
He shook himself after a moment or two and moved to the workbench, pulling away the cover to reveal the work beneath.
His masterpiece.
He’d been working on her for years now. Refining, testing, sculpting. The designs of the Aegis suits had been born from this project though they were crude in comparison – rushed out due to demand and out of a need to secure more funding.
She was his true work. All else was unimportant by comparison.
He looked again at the woman in stasis, then back to the one on the slab, stroking a finger down an identical cheek. Cold metal, not flesh. But the best he could do.
She was nearly finished. He had worked hard in the ten year testing process the Aegis units had gone through. Already she was far superior to them. Soon enough he would need to test her.
It was almost time.
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