Machinations Undone
Thrusters powered down, bringing the silver Knight Sabre to a gentle landing in large debris filled room. The machine's head swivelled back and forth, its array of sensors hidden beneath the smooth armour, rendered dull in the particle filled light, scanning for signals.
There were none, which meant Linna was no longer in the room, some thirty square meters in dimension, or that she was dead; the only other alternative. Sylia had tracked Linna's hardsuit into the room five minutes ago, just before a powerful burst of static had stopped her from seeing anything. The static had lasted for three minutes, enough time for Linna to leave, or to be killed. The room was full of drifting particles, a left over sign that the battle had been fought here as well.
"Linna, Linna?" Sylia whispered through her communicator. Her voice stayed low, afraid of bringing forth the demons that had plagued her life and destroyed her family.
She searched the room manually, armoured heels crunching over shattered concrete and fibreboard. Finding a pylon sliced cleanly through the horizontal explained much. Linna had been in a fight. The rest of the chaotic destruction would have been caused by the boomers, or whatever the abominations had become.
For all the destruction Sylia found no trace of casualties, or Linna. She tried the communicator again, without success. The airwaves were blank, not even static of an open channel.
Along the ceiling the lights flickered.
"Dammit, where is she?"
--Keep looking, I'm sure you'll find her sooner or later. Dead.
"Get out of my mind!" Sylia screamed, the articulated hands of her hardsuit pressing on either side of the helmet. "Mock me face to face, Priss, and lets end this now. Boomers destroyed my mother, my father, you, the others. I won't let them exist in this world. I won't stop until I've killed all of them!"
--And Linna? Will you kill her, too?
"Shut up," Sylia spun around, wanting to see her mental tormentor. Her arm, sword, flashed out cutting the empty air. "Linna was. I'll make her whole again."
--You are the only one who is incomplete, Sylia. Traumatised by the past you can't see the future. We are here to stay and will fight for our survival and right to live. You can't take Linna back with out, what you did was irreversible. I can help her, make her feel whole again; part of us.
"I wont let you, Priss. I can sense you, I can fi-"
The connection terminated. Sylia felt nothing in her mind, no contact with the boomers, or humans. There was only the emptiness. What her life had become, an endless void upon the lip of which she stood, ready to fall in, to fall forever.
There was sound behind her, the shifting of rubble. She spun around, sword arm extended. A pair of humanoid boomers, their faces a mockery of humanity to the lone woman, stood at the other end of the room. One held a green helmet - Linna's - and tossed it midway between.
"Take it and leave, to remember her by," the other boomer said without moving its lips.
"No." Sylia whispered hoarsely. "I will bring her back with me. After all of you abominations are dead." She took two steps forward. The boomers remained where they were.
Sylia continued to advance; the boomers stayed where they were, watching her approach. When Sylia reached the green helmet she knelt down and picked it up. There was no blood inside. A trio of black strands of hair slowly fell out; she tried to catch them but they fell through the gaps in her clumsy, machine fingers.
The helmet clattered to the floor and rolled away from them all.
"This will solve nothing," the boomer said.
Sylia leapt and fired her jets. She landed between the boomers before they could create and slashed out with her vibrating blade. The boomer to her left fell apart spilling coolant fluid and oil. The second's arm fell severed, green and black splashing over a wall. The wounded boomer staggered back, face bland to its sufferings. Sylia speared it through and it fell to her feet, dead.
"That's my answer, Priss. I'll hunt you down to the edge of the world if I have to."
All around her the room's windows shattered inwards. Reflexively Sylia covered her face with her arms, shards of glass blowing past her from all directions and bouncing off the hardsuit harmlessly.
Tensing, ready for immediate motion, she looked at her helmets HUD. It was full, overwhelmed, with activity. Dozens of red dots surrounded her in clumps, entering into the room.
Priss had blinded her sensors.
Sylia focused her eyes away from the HUD and through the clear visor. She turned on one foot, hands out in front in guard as the room filled through broken window, doorway, and the hole in the ceiling she had entered from with boomers of all shapes and sizes. What the boomers did have in common was that they all held long pipes or girders in their mutated hands.
The boomers continued to pour in, heavy built construction boomers stripped yellow and black, hospitality boomers still in their uniforms, cleaners, miners, secretaries, prostitutes, the full cross-section of employment humans had given up to the creations of her father.
When a hundred had entered no more came. They surrounded Sylia in three circles. She could feel the malevolence they had towards her in her mind. Likewise, she reciprocated.
Sylia brought both arms up, pointing them to the hidden sky. Then she flashed down, bright metal scraping out four feet from each.
"Come on, then." She said.
The first circle of boomers charged, a mix of heavies and fast. They rushed at the Knight Sabre without coordination; the faster arriving first, to meet destruction at the blades of the silver woman.
Sylia slashed and cut, her feet moving like a dancer through the maze of living metal. Her blades sliced through the boomer skin, veins and flesh parting before, blood spurting in thick jets behind.
The boomers hacked back at her with their improvised weapons but none could touch. She was the devil amongst them, and cast all twelve of them down in a circle around her. The last slipped off the penetration of both her blades driven into and through its torso. The bakery uniform it wore turned black.
Sylia flicked her arms, cleaning them of the blood. As one, the mass of boomers flinched back.
"Who is next?" Sylia asked, wishing they could see the smile she wore.
A lone boomer came screaming out of the pack, holding its length of pipe in two hands and ready for a powerful sweep. Sylia let the boomer come to her, she unmoving, hands down. The boomer drew close, the rectangle eyes burning with orange hate. The pipe began to arc with the speed and force to crush a human into a bloody mass. Sylia merely dropped to one knees and sliced horizontally.
The top half of the boomer rolled over her shoulder in mid air. The legs took two more steps and then fell lifeless beside her.
"Get her!"
The second circle rushed, metallic hollow screams rebounding off the walls. This time Sylia didn't wait for them. She ran at the smallest approaching and barrelled through them, a pair collapsing in their life-spillage in her wake. Half a dozen pipes flew at her wildly. She took two on one forearm, quickly flicking her arm back down cutting the pipes shorter, thrust and speared another through the chest. The humanoid face registered shock and pain before disappearing in the raging mass.
Sylia kept moving, pivoting and using her jets to boost her out of the way of too great a mass of enemies. Her blades were like cobras, lunging out and back and never missing. Despite the odds of a hundred to one, the Knight Sabre was confident, relishing the chance to destroy. This what exactly what she had always wanted, to eliminate the boomer problem once and for all, personally.
A quick leap and strike, another boomer collapsed. The others backed away out of range, a near solid wall of living metal circling warily. The ones behind tried to dart in but Sylia could see them. She kicked, sending them flying back, stabbed another in front as it thought her distracted. They backed away again.
--Cowards, not willing to die for your beliefs? Sylia thought.
--They, like humans would not be here at all, if it weren't for you. You threaten their existence so you are their enemy.
--Or do you think that one of these miserables will be your saviour and stop me from coming for you, Priss?"
--Attack from the left. now the right.
Sylia cursed. Priss had taken control of the boomers tactics and was letting her hear it. At each of Priss' commands four boomers charged and tried to strike. Sylia found that if she responded too heavily her back was exposed to the second group quickly moving in concert after the first. The boomers obeyed Priss unquestionably and with the speed of response only machines could master.
The attacks constricted the space around Sylia until blows knocked against her. The boomers grew more confident. Two more kills pushed them back, but it would only be for a moment. Sylia didn't want to give them enough time so they could perfect their timing and swamp her.
Firing all her jets downward Sylia raced up to the ceiling and smashed through it, and the next level above. The building shook as the boomers rushed after her. The lighter models scurried up through the holes she had just made. She decapitated one as it came onto her new floor; sliced open the head of another. Both fell back streaming fluid.
Impacts smacked all over her hardsuit. Sylia staggered and jetted behind a pylon. Flakes of painted concrete flew off as another barrage of industrial nails flew after her.
A construction boomer had found it's way to her. Half a dozen other boomers clustered behind its protective bulk. The boomer kept up a steady stream of nails at the pylon, pinning Sylia down.
--Sylia? Priss.
"Linna?" Sylia cried out. The contact, brief, was gone. But she had felt a direction. Linna was close by. Then Priss would be close by as well.
She would finish it.
Sylia dropped down onto her stomach, rolled out from behind the pylon and ignited her jets. She raced barely an inch above the floor too fast for the construction boomer to track her. The lethal rain of nails passed over head and behind.
The boomer cried out in pain, the sound of buckling metal, as Sylia cut off one foot from the rest of the leg. As the boomer toppled to the side Sylia stood and dispatched the other boomers who were unable to defend themselves against her ferocity. The last tried to flee, falling down stairs with a gash in its back.
"I'm coming Linna."
Sylia charged down the stairs, surprising three more boomers. She left them in pieces and continued down. Above her the rest of the boomers rumbled after in pursuit. A third of them were gone.
At the second floor landing Sylia smashed through the wall and into the outside air. Landing, debris clattered around, she spotted a sewer covering and ran over to it. The thick metal was easily tossed away and she jumped down. A pair of boomers were waiting and attacked her. In the beam of light she slew them both and left the corpses floating in the murky filth.
She ran down the sewer and into a larger spillway. Towards Linna. And Priss. She continued to run, searching for the presence of the two. On her HUD long streams of boomers ran down parallel tunnels.
The sewer came near an underground line. Sylia kicked open a hatchway and fell down into the tracked laid crevasse. Boomers started to appear on both sides. She was heading in the right direction.
The boomers blocked off all avenues again. More and more of them came, swelling the hundred she had first encountered to a number that was no longer worth counting. There were a lot. A communities worth.
The boomers didn't attack, remaining almost out of sight. The glowing of their eyes visually gave away their innumerable presence. Sylia didn't have to rely on her HUD. Yet she remained where she was. Each group of boomers grew in equal strength. She didn't know which way to go and she didn't want to waste time having to kill her way through her Priss. Her heart burned too much for patience.
Sylia didn't need to have to make the decision. From the right the boomers parted with murmurs of reverence. Through them stepped a figure Sylia knew all too well. In her cradling arms was another.
"Priss," Sylia said, turning to face her comrade cum adversary.
"Sylia." Priss said just as plainly. In her arms was Linna, dressed in her softsuit.
"Give her back," Sylia said.
"And you would leave?" Priss asked.
"No."
"I thought not." Priss said. She looked at the closed-eyed face of Linna, pale and feverish. "I can't believe what you did to her, Sylia. Your hate for boomers. yet to put a core inside her. She trusted you."
"It was the only way." Sylia replied, remembering her decision. If she hadn't done it, Linna would never have been able to help her protect Genom, defeat Phantom, or fight the boomers.
"Did she even know?"
Sylia shrugged. "It doesn't matter. When I take her back I'll remove the core. Her body should be healed now."
Priss scowled. "You haven't changed, Sylia. But you have become worse. Even your father would not have done what you have -."
"My father!" Sylia screamed. "My father put them in my head. He used me to create his monsters." Slowly Sylia regained control of her hate-filled trembling and voice. "It's only fitting that I put an end to his legacy."
"Does that mean killing Linna as well?" Priss asked.
"I already told you I'll take the core out, and crush it." Sylia sneered.
"You know that is a lie. The core has spread and is as much a part of Linna as her heart, as foolish as it was to trust you. You can't take the core out without killing her. She is a boomer now."
"No! That's impossible!"
Priss shook her head from side to side. Gently she put Linna on the ground and stepped around the prostrate body. "It isn't. Because she is like me."
"You?" Sylia laughed. "You're just another shell for my sister. Y'know, I thought find it hard to want to kill you when it came to this, but there is no hesitation in me at all. All I want is to see you dead.
"And to tell the truth Priss, I never really like you anyway."
Sylia readied herself.
"I always thought you were a crazy bitch."
Behind her visor Sylia scowled. She clenched her hand into a fist, the long blade sliding out of its sheath over.
Priss walked to within ten metres of Sylia. She was unarmed and unarmoured and looked like an easy kill. Some boomers had broken from the line behind and pleaded for her to retreat. They said Sylia couldn't defeat all of them. They said they wouldn't know what to do if she were to die.
"Keep struggling to make a world of your own," Priss replied, not taking her eyes off Sylia.
"Ready to die then?" Sylia asked, tensing.
"You could only beat me because you make sure your hardsuit was the best." Priss said.
Sylia charged aided by the thrust of her jets. Priss loomed up and she cut, and was then behind, all happening in a second or less. She landed and skidded to a halt, gravel shooting off down the tunnel.
Sylia turned around. Her eyes opened wide in amazement. Priss was still standing in one piece. Disbelieving Sylia looked at her blade. There was no blood on it. Then pain flared up her side and forced her to bend over double. She coughed and tasted blood on her lips.
Priss watched her impassively. "Go home, Sylia. To whatever home you have left. I don't want to kill you."
"Kill me?" Sylia croaked. Yanking off her helmet she tossed it aside and spat blood. Taking a hand away from her searing flank, it came away glistening red. "I'd like to know how you did that."
Priss sighed. She lifted up one hand and pointed it at Sylia, who watched as the forearm changed colour, becoming silvery and changing shape until it was a sharp blade matching Sylia's own.
"Nice trick," Sylia straightened. "But not enough to stop me." She took a step forward, sagged, picked herself up and continued.
"You don't need to do this,"
"Die!"
Metal rang on metal, sparks flying. At either end of the unrehearsed theatre the crowd of awakened boomers watched as their Creator and Liberator duelled. They watched every stroke, every blow, breathless.
Unnoticed Linna regained consciousness and rolled onto her side. Dimly she was aware of the noise, like ringing in the back of her head. Memory came back, and her eyes blinked wide looking for the boomers that had taken her. Her nerves increased when she saw her surroundings, unrecognised. As the return of sense built up her attention drifted to the motion and sound. All else was still.
Priss and Sylia fought. Blood ran from both of them, long gashes of red and green. They perspired, laboured for breath. Yet continued without pause to end the others life.
"What are you doing? Stop it!" Linna yelled. She was unheard and watched in horror. Why were they fighting? Why was Priss here?
Linna struggled to her feet. The boomers paid her no attention; all hoping that Priss would defeat the murderer of their race. Linna staggered past them towards the combat, still calling out. Still ignored as the tragedy continued.
Sylia blocked a heavy swing, feeling the shock run up her arm. Seeing an opening, with her other she stabbed, the blade thrusting out, her eyes closing in satisfaction as flesh and bone were pierced. A smile came to her lips.
"Linna, no."
Sylia snapped her eyes open. They met Linna's, rimmed with tears. She looked down at saw her blade embedded to her hand. Behind Priss looked with a tremor inflicting her frame as well. The blade had passed through both of them.
"Sylia. Priss." Linna tried to speak, blood run out of the side of her mouth. Large drops fell onto the wide blade.
"Linna. oh my god. oh god. Linna," Sylia cried, all the fusion evaporated leaving just the void and the sensation of nothing beneath her falling feet.
"Why. were you. fighting?" Linna said to her friends as they watched the life flow out of her, paling to ice white.
"Linna!" Priss yelled violently, sliding further up the length of the embedded blade to hold onto Linna. She ignored her own pain. "Don't die, Linna. Stay with me."
Her words fell on deaf ears.
"No, no. it wasn't meant to happen this way." both women cried, holding onto Linna's lifeless body. When they looked up beyond the pale and saw each other the bond that had once been strong between them returned, all the years they had fought together against Genom, wittingly or not against boomers and Galatea.
"I'm so sorry," Sylia said, truly meaning it.
"I know." Priss replied. Unseen to Sylia, or she uncaring, Priss had let go of Linna and her hand grew into a knife.
"I always was my worst enemy."
The last words Sylia said.
The last words Priss ever heard.
Joined together, their souls departed after Linna.
In silent observance the boomers said their prayers and thanks: for life, and for the opportunity to life.
/\/\ss/\/\
That is the end of Machinations and its follow on Origin Of The Species (which wasn't, and likely won't be started although I did do a plot treatise). I completed this sort of because of a request, to give closure to the series that had already grown into something bigger than I had anticipated, and because of this size and other more important commitments would not be able to finish properly. As it stands, Machinations is probably half completed; it has a lot of plot threads to complete and then there was to be Origin Of The Species where in the Tokyo Quarantine Zone, an 'enlightened' Priss became the beacon for the awakened boomers. Galatea's gift to Priss was that of being able to understand/communicate with boomers and to be their conduit to self-liberation in the world. If you have read R.E. Feists riftwar/serpantwar series you would have seen a similarity to the return of dark elves into the good elf community in the awakened boomers - they becoming aware. Sylia, having won the contract rights to redevelop the TQZ as head of Genom, wants to destroy boomers completely, even though Galatea has been killed. Total eradication of her fathers work is what she wants and upon discovering the boomer community, targets them for destruction. This gets her into a fight with Priss, ultimately leading to the tragic ending that has just been read.
Thrusters powered down, bringing the silver Knight Sabre to a gentle landing in large debris filled room. The machine's head swivelled back and forth, its array of sensors hidden beneath the smooth armour, rendered dull in the particle filled light, scanning for signals.
There were none, which meant Linna was no longer in the room, some thirty square meters in dimension, or that she was dead; the only other alternative. Sylia had tracked Linna's hardsuit into the room five minutes ago, just before a powerful burst of static had stopped her from seeing anything. The static had lasted for three minutes, enough time for Linna to leave, or to be killed. The room was full of drifting particles, a left over sign that the battle had been fought here as well.
"Linna, Linna?" Sylia whispered through her communicator. Her voice stayed low, afraid of bringing forth the demons that had plagued her life and destroyed her family.
She searched the room manually, armoured heels crunching over shattered concrete and fibreboard. Finding a pylon sliced cleanly through the horizontal explained much. Linna had been in a fight. The rest of the chaotic destruction would have been caused by the boomers, or whatever the abominations had become.
For all the destruction Sylia found no trace of casualties, or Linna. She tried the communicator again, without success. The airwaves were blank, not even static of an open channel.
Along the ceiling the lights flickered.
"Dammit, where is she?"
--Keep looking, I'm sure you'll find her sooner or later. Dead.
"Get out of my mind!" Sylia screamed, the articulated hands of her hardsuit pressing on either side of the helmet. "Mock me face to face, Priss, and lets end this now. Boomers destroyed my mother, my father, you, the others. I won't let them exist in this world. I won't stop until I've killed all of them!"
--And Linna? Will you kill her, too?
"Shut up," Sylia spun around, wanting to see her mental tormentor. Her arm, sword, flashed out cutting the empty air. "Linna was. I'll make her whole again."
--You are the only one who is incomplete, Sylia. Traumatised by the past you can't see the future. We are here to stay and will fight for our survival and right to live. You can't take Linna back with out, what you did was irreversible. I can help her, make her feel whole again; part of us.
"I wont let you, Priss. I can sense you, I can fi-"
The connection terminated. Sylia felt nothing in her mind, no contact with the boomers, or humans. There was only the emptiness. What her life had become, an endless void upon the lip of which she stood, ready to fall in, to fall forever.
There was sound behind her, the shifting of rubble. She spun around, sword arm extended. A pair of humanoid boomers, their faces a mockery of humanity to the lone woman, stood at the other end of the room. One held a green helmet - Linna's - and tossed it midway between.
"Take it and leave, to remember her by," the other boomer said without moving its lips.
"No." Sylia whispered hoarsely. "I will bring her back with me. After all of you abominations are dead." She took two steps forward. The boomers remained where they were.
Sylia continued to advance; the boomers stayed where they were, watching her approach. When Sylia reached the green helmet she knelt down and picked it up. There was no blood inside. A trio of black strands of hair slowly fell out; she tried to catch them but they fell through the gaps in her clumsy, machine fingers.
The helmet clattered to the floor and rolled away from them all.
"This will solve nothing," the boomer said.
Sylia leapt and fired her jets. She landed between the boomers before they could create and slashed out with her vibrating blade. The boomer to her left fell apart spilling coolant fluid and oil. The second's arm fell severed, green and black splashing over a wall. The wounded boomer staggered back, face bland to its sufferings. Sylia speared it through and it fell to her feet, dead.
"That's my answer, Priss. I'll hunt you down to the edge of the world if I have to."
All around her the room's windows shattered inwards. Reflexively Sylia covered her face with her arms, shards of glass blowing past her from all directions and bouncing off the hardsuit harmlessly.
Tensing, ready for immediate motion, she looked at her helmets HUD. It was full, overwhelmed, with activity. Dozens of red dots surrounded her in clumps, entering into the room.
Priss had blinded her sensors.
Sylia focused her eyes away from the HUD and through the clear visor. She turned on one foot, hands out in front in guard as the room filled through broken window, doorway, and the hole in the ceiling she had entered from with boomers of all shapes and sizes. What the boomers did have in common was that they all held long pipes or girders in their mutated hands.
The boomers continued to pour in, heavy built construction boomers stripped yellow and black, hospitality boomers still in their uniforms, cleaners, miners, secretaries, prostitutes, the full cross-section of employment humans had given up to the creations of her father.
When a hundred had entered no more came. They surrounded Sylia in three circles. She could feel the malevolence they had towards her in her mind. Likewise, she reciprocated.
Sylia brought both arms up, pointing them to the hidden sky. Then she flashed down, bright metal scraping out four feet from each.
"Come on, then." She said.
The first circle of boomers charged, a mix of heavies and fast. They rushed at the Knight Sabre without coordination; the faster arriving first, to meet destruction at the blades of the silver woman.
Sylia slashed and cut, her feet moving like a dancer through the maze of living metal. Her blades sliced through the boomer skin, veins and flesh parting before, blood spurting in thick jets behind.
The boomers hacked back at her with their improvised weapons but none could touch. She was the devil amongst them, and cast all twelve of them down in a circle around her. The last slipped off the penetration of both her blades driven into and through its torso. The bakery uniform it wore turned black.
Sylia flicked her arms, cleaning them of the blood. As one, the mass of boomers flinched back.
"Who is next?" Sylia asked, wishing they could see the smile she wore.
A lone boomer came screaming out of the pack, holding its length of pipe in two hands and ready for a powerful sweep. Sylia let the boomer come to her, she unmoving, hands down. The boomer drew close, the rectangle eyes burning with orange hate. The pipe began to arc with the speed and force to crush a human into a bloody mass. Sylia merely dropped to one knees and sliced horizontally.
The top half of the boomer rolled over her shoulder in mid air. The legs took two more steps and then fell lifeless beside her.
"Get her!"
The second circle rushed, metallic hollow screams rebounding off the walls. This time Sylia didn't wait for them. She ran at the smallest approaching and barrelled through them, a pair collapsing in their life-spillage in her wake. Half a dozen pipes flew at her wildly. She took two on one forearm, quickly flicking her arm back down cutting the pipes shorter, thrust and speared another through the chest. The humanoid face registered shock and pain before disappearing in the raging mass.
Sylia kept moving, pivoting and using her jets to boost her out of the way of too great a mass of enemies. Her blades were like cobras, lunging out and back and never missing. Despite the odds of a hundred to one, the Knight Sabre was confident, relishing the chance to destroy. This what exactly what she had always wanted, to eliminate the boomer problem once and for all, personally.
A quick leap and strike, another boomer collapsed. The others backed away out of range, a near solid wall of living metal circling warily. The ones behind tried to dart in but Sylia could see them. She kicked, sending them flying back, stabbed another in front as it thought her distracted. They backed away again.
--Cowards, not willing to die for your beliefs? Sylia thought.
--They, like humans would not be here at all, if it weren't for you. You threaten their existence so you are their enemy.
--Or do you think that one of these miserables will be your saviour and stop me from coming for you, Priss?"
--Attack from the left. now the right.
Sylia cursed. Priss had taken control of the boomers tactics and was letting her hear it. At each of Priss' commands four boomers charged and tried to strike. Sylia found that if she responded too heavily her back was exposed to the second group quickly moving in concert after the first. The boomers obeyed Priss unquestionably and with the speed of response only machines could master.
The attacks constricted the space around Sylia until blows knocked against her. The boomers grew more confident. Two more kills pushed them back, but it would only be for a moment. Sylia didn't want to give them enough time so they could perfect their timing and swamp her.
Firing all her jets downward Sylia raced up to the ceiling and smashed through it, and the next level above. The building shook as the boomers rushed after her. The lighter models scurried up through the holes she had just made. She decapitated one as it came onto her new floor; sliced open the head of another. Both fell back streaming fluid.
Impacts smacked all over her hardsuit. Sylia staggered and jetted behind a pylon. Flakes of painted concrete flew off as another barrage of industrial nails flew after her.
A construction boomer had found it's way to her. Half a dozen other boomers clustered behind its protective bulk. The boomer kept up a steady stream of nails at the pylon, pinning Sylia down.
--Sylia? Priss.
"Linna?" Sylia cried out. The contact, brief, was gone. But she had felt a direction. Linna was close by. Then Priss would be close by as well.
She would finish it.
Sylia dropped down onto her stomach, rolled out from behind the pylon and ignited her jets. She raced barely an inch above the floor too fast for the construction boomer to track her. The lethal rain of nails passed over head and behind.
The boomer cried out in pain, the sound of buckling metal, as Sylia cut off one foot from the rest of the leg. As the boomer toppled to the side Sylia stood and dispatched the other boomers who were unable to defend themselves against her ferocity. The last tried to flee, falling down stairs with a gash in its back.
"I'm coming Linna."
Sylia charged down the stairs, surprising three more boomers. She left them in pieces and continued down. Above her the rest of the boomers rumbled after in pursuit. A third of them were gone.
At the second floor landing Sylia smashed through the wall and into the outside air. Landing, debris clattered around, she spotted a sewer covering and ran over to it. The thick metal was easily tossed away and she jumped down. A pair of boomers were waiting and attacked her. In the beam of light she slew them both and left the corpses floating in the murky filth.
She ran down the sewer and into a larger spillway. Towards Linna. And Priss. She continued to run, searching for the presence of the two. On her HUD long streams of boomers ran down parallel tunnels.
The sewer came near an underground line. Sylia kicked open a hatchway and fell down into the tracked laid crevasse. Boomers started to appear on both sides. She was heading in the right direction.
The boomers blocked off all avenues again. More and more of them came, swelling the hundred she had first encountered to a number that was no longer worth counting. There were a lot. A communities worth.
The boomers didn't attack, remaining almost out of sight. The glowing of their eyes visually gave away their innumerable presence. Sylia didn't have to rely on her HUD. Yet she remained where she was. Each group of boomers grew in equal strength. She didn't know which way to go and she didn't want to waste time having to kill her way through her Priss. Her heart burned too much for patience.
Sylia didn't need to have to make the decision. From the right the boomers parted with murmurs of reverence. Through them stepped a figure Sylia knew all too well. In her cradling arms was another.
"Priss," Sylia said, turning to face her comrade cum adversary.
"Sylia." Priss said just as plainly. In her arms was Linna, dressed in her softsuit.
"Give her back," Sylia said.
"And you would leave?" Priss asked.
"No."
"I thought not." Priss said. She looked at the closed-eyed face of Linna, pale and feverish. "I can't believe what you did to her, Sylia. Your hate for boomers. yet to put a core inside her. She trusted you."
"It was the only way." Sylia replied, remembering her decision. If she hadn't done it, Linna would never have been able to help her protect Genom, defeat Phantom, or fight the boomers.
"Did she even know?"
Sylia shrugged. "It doesn't matter. When I take her back I'll remove the core. Her body should be healed now."
Priss scowled. "You haven't changed, Sylia. But you have become worse. Even your father would not have done what you have -."
"My father!" Sylia screamed. "My father put them in my head. He used me to create his monsters." Slowly Sylia regained control of her hate-filled trembling and voice. "It's only fitting that I put an end to his legacy."
"Does that mean killing Linna as well?" Priss asked.
"I already told you I'll take the core out, and crush it." Sylia sneered.
"You know that is a lie. The core has spread and is as much a part of Linna as her heart, as foolish as it was to trust you. You can't take the core out without killing her. She is a boomer now."
"No! That's impossible!"
Priss shook her head from side to side. Gently she put Linna on the ground and stepped around the prostrate body. "It isn't. Because she is like me."
"You?" Sylia laughed. "You're just another shell for my sister. Y'know, I thought find it hard to want to kill you when it came to this, but there is no hesitation in me at all. All I want is to see you dead.
"And to tell the truth Priss, I never really like you anyway."
Sylia readied herself.
"I always thought you were a crazy bitch."
Behind her visor Sylia scowled. She clenched her hand into a fist, the long blade sliding out of its sheath over.
Priss walked to within ten metres of Sylia. She was unarmed and unarmoured and looked like an easy kill. Some boomers had broken from the line behind and pleaded for her to retreat. They said Sylia couldn't defeat all of them. They said they wouldn't know what to do if she were to die.
"Keep struggling to make a world of your own," Priss replied, not taking her eyes off Sylia.
"Ready to die then?" Sylia asked, tensing.
"You could only beat me because you make sure your hardsuit was the best." Priss said.
Sylia charged aided by the thrust of her jets. Priss loomed up and she cut, and was then behind, all happening in a second or less. She landed and skidded to a halt, gravel shooting off down the tunnel.
Sylia turned around. Her eyes opened wide in amazement. Priss was still standing in one piece. Disbelieving Sylia looked at her blade. There was no blood on it. Then pain flared up her side and forced her to bend over double. She coughed and tasted blood on her lips.
Priss watched her impassively. "Go home, Sylia. To whatever home you have left. I don't want to kill you."
"Kill me?" Sylia croaked. Yanking off her helmet she tossed it aside and spat blood. Taking a hand away from her searing flank, it came away glistening red. "I'd like to know how you did that."
Priss sighed. She lifted up one hand and pointed it at Sylia, who watched as the forearm changed colour, becoming silvery and changing shape until it was a sharp blade matching Sylia's own.
"Nice trick," Sylia straightened. "But not enough to stop me." She took a step forward, sagged, picked herself up and continued.
"You don't need to do this,"
"Die!"
Metal rang on metal, sparks flying. At either end of the unrehearsed theatre the crowd of awakened boomers watched as their Creator and Liberator duelled. They watched every stroke, every blow, breathless.
Unnoticed Linna regained consciousness and rolled onto her side. Dimly she was aware of the noise, like ringing in the back of her head. Memory came back, and her eyes blinked wide looking for the boomers that had taken her. Her nerves increased when she saw her surroundings, unrecognised. As the return of sense built up her attention drifted to the motion and sound. All else was still.
Priss and Sylia fought. Blood ran from both of them, long gashes of red and green. They perspired, laboured for breath. Yet continued without pause to end the others life.
"What are you doing? Stop it!" Linna yelled. She was unheard and watched in horror. Why were they fighting? Why was Priss here?
Linna struggled to her feet. The boomers paid her no attention; all hoping that Priss would defeat the murderer of their race. Linna staggered past them towards the combat, still calling out. Still ignored as the tragedy continued.
Sylia blocked a heavy swing, feeling the shock run up her arm. Seeing an opening, with her other she stabbed, the blade thrusting out, her eyes closing in satisfaction as flesh and bone were pierced. A smile came to her lips.
"Linna, no."
Sylia snapped her eyes open. They met Linna's, rimmed with tears. She looked down at saw her blade embedded to her hand. Behind Priss looked with a tremor inflicting her frame as well. The blade had passed through both of them.
"Sylia. Priss." Linna tried to speak, blood run out of the side of her mouth. Large drops fell onto the wide blade.
"Linna. oh my god. oh god. Linna," Sylia cried, all the fusion evaporated leaving just the void and the sensation of nothing beneath her falling feet.
"Why. were you. fighting?" Linna said to her friends as they watched the life flow out of her, paling to ice white.
"Linna!" Priss yelled violently, sliding further up the length of the embedded blade to hold onto Linna. She ignored her own pain. "Don't die, Linna. Stay with me."
Her words fell on deaf ears.
"No, no. it wasn't meant to happen this way." both women cried, holding onto Linna's lifeless body. When they looked up beyond the pale and saw each other the bond that had once been strong between them returned, all the years they had fought together against Genom, wittingly or not against boomers and Galatea.
"I'm so sorry," Sylia said, truly meaning it.
"I know." Priss replied. Unseen to Sylia, or she uncaring, Priss had let go of Linna and her hand grew into a knife.
"I always was my worst enemy."
The last words Sylia said.
The last words Priss ever heard.
Joined together, their souls departed after Linna.
In silent observance the boomers said their prayers and thanks: for life, and for the opportunity to life.
/\/\ss/\/\
That is the end of Machinations and its follow on Origin Of The Species (which wasn't, and likely won't be started although I did do a plot treatise). I completed this sort of because of a request, to give closure to the series that had already grown into something bigger than I had anticipated, and because of this size and other more important commitments would not be able to finish properly. As it stands, Machinations is probably half completed; it has a lot of plot threads to complete and then there was to be Origin Of The Species where in the Tokyo Quarantine Zone, an 'enlightened' Priss became the beacon for the awakened boomers. Galatea's gift to Priss was that of being able to understand/communicate with boomers and to be their conduit to self-liberation in the world. If you have read R.E. Feists riftwar/serpantwar series you would have seen a similarity to the return of dark elves into the good elf community in the awakened boomers - they becoming aware. Sylia, having won the contract rights to redevelop the TQZ as head of Genom, wants to destroy boomers completely, even though Galatea has been killed. Total eradication of her fathers work is what she wants and upon discovering the boomer community, targets them for destruction. This gets her into a fight with Priss, ultimately leading to the tragic ending that has just been read.