The Golden Hope

by Elliot Bowers

Chapter 10

The sleek cyborg huntress in synthetic leather outfit was a bored huntress. Arms crossed, she leaned against the back of the wooden chair. This boredom came about from not being able to do anything fast and exciting for a while—and not going anywhere any time soon. It was also boredom being heated by this passive waiting for Padraig to finally die.

Padraig was still seated over there across the room of this abandoned place. He was still sitting with his head slumped—a mutilated, injured head that was bleeding again. Worse was how he would not shut up. It would become easier if the tall man in the green business suit just went to sleep somehow, hopefully forever. The longer they stayed here, the longer it would take to reach that artifact that Princess Kyrie was so fond of seeking out.

"Hee-hee-hee…!" giggled the dying man. "I like that ceiling. Hard shines are fronting the darkened greenery, too. It is so solid and cozy inside that other side. The breeze blows through and out from machines. Listen to the voice of generations gone and coming. It's the truth surrounding lies… Hee-hee-hee! How's the flavor in the breeze? It'll taste like cinnamon!"

Only that sort of nonsense could come from that sort of person. It took someone with a blow to the head to even dare to talk that way. Gally had the notion that maybe Padraig thought it made sense. To other people, though, it made less than decent sense at this moment. Why talk about spices when nearing death?

Gally turned her head to the right to look at the princess. Princess Kyrie was sitting pert and primly. Knees together, hands placed lightly upon thighs, her back was straight and her eyes were wide open—as if it was possible to see the words as well as hear them. Such was that pose of hers when listening with intensity, probably a pose trained into her when a child.

Thought Gally, What was the use in listening to such foolishness? The rants of somebody not too far from death were just that: chaotic statements from a mind falling into the night. Then again, what was the use of any of this? Gally wondered if she ought to just stand up and walk out on this pathetic mess. The princess could fend for herself eventually—especially with that energy manipulation capability of hers—so long as her abilities were not used to the point of overheating her body. As for Padraig, he was as good as dead…eventually. All that the cyborg huntress had to do was stand up and walk out of that door over there. Out there would be the vast wastelands and scattered, fortified settlements of humans, fallen cities and abandoned anomalies like this research facility. And all the more likely, some of those research facilities could have the way back to her reality.

Just perhaps, there were places with ways that could get her back out of this wrong-headed alternate reality and back to where things made more sense. The princess sometimes mentioned how the fabric of this universe was thin in places. Maybe one of those places was thin enough to walk through, maybe the way back home.

Even then, there was no way in Hell that the way to escape this world would be the way back to her world, her reality. How many other worlds? Gally had no way of knowing. There was also no telling if she would accidentally step into another world where the rules of physics and reality were so crazy and wrong that it could not even support life as she knew it. Just because there were other worlds did not mean that any person from anyplace could actually live in them.

"Hee-hee-hee…!" giggled Padraig. "There are other worlds." he said, cutting into Gally's train of thought. Yes, it really was as if he had actually cut midway into her thoughts—literally so. With his one still-working eyeball, Padraig rolled it forwards to look at Gally. "Won't be too far off from now. That hottie in the dark leather skirt really knows how to cut out a taste of the future. You will know." And he kept with his one good eye, staring at Gally.

Not only that, the one eye seemed to look into her—making her feel especially uncomfortable. Gally's body was made of shaped metal parts—a body of metal. Therefore, she really had no compunctions about being unclothed. But somehow, that eye made Gally feel naked and exposed… No, it was worse than being merely physically naked. That eye could see into her. She suddenly wanted to dash across the room to blast one of her fists into that eye-socket.

Then Gally began to hear things. They were all kinds of sounds. It included running sounds, mixed in with shuffling sounds. Giggling came in, a not-so-nice kind of giggling. Something is coming, went a thought. Now the party of three was no longer alone in this research facility.

Click-clack…! Beyond the door into this room, there was the sound of steel and glass doors opening up. That would be the front entranceway. And whatever it was that came into this building made no attempt in sneaking right on in. No, the bastards just made all the noise they wanted—heavy sounds of rapid shuffling, sloppy breathing and jostling bodies. There was the idea that those bodies were irregular ones, misshapen physiques. They could be nothing but muties.

Came a man's voice from the outside, "We know you're in here! Don't make us come in after you! There ain't any way that you're not here! We've got a whole gang of gray-boys, cyborgs, rejects, freaks, shufflers, bobblers, demp-pempers, and all kinds of shit out here! We're gonna get your asses! So come out of hiding and into our hands…or there'll be all kinds of red-colored trouble. You hear?"

Then added another voice, a similar male one. "Yeah! Stop hiding. It's over. We got a guy on our side who found out where you were going even before you could get there. He's got fancy machines and a great big computerThat's right! He's using machines of sinse."

Yet another voice added to the words of the previous statement. This voice actually sounded more coherent than tht of the other two. "In fact, some of us have been following you for the longest time! Now that we know were you were going before you get there, how about you just making things easier on everybody! Loddy-doddy, every-body! Give up and we'll gently escort the princess back on to her great big comfy house on top of that chopped and flatted mountain. If not… Heh-heh, maybe we'll have a little fun with her tight little ass along the way."

Gally looked quickly around. Across from her, the princess sat passively and looked worried. Padraig giggled quietly, his one good eye staring. Things in this room were very still and quiet. Then the action started.

Thwack-k-k! The doorway to this room burst open with a six-foot, massive man in metal armor shoulder-ramming his way in—a man that was just about as huge as he was wide. In fact, sideways was probably the only way that he could fit through the doors. His momentum carried him several steps into this room, huge steps from a massive figure. It was a physical presence that seemed to fill half the room.

"Oops, we lied!" boomed the gargantuan figure. "We're here to cause trouble anyway! So how about it, Princess Kyrie? You come with me. Then we go take a ride back to the palace for you to get comfortable while I get my reward… our reward."

"Such is an absolutely unacceptable proposition!" shouted Princess Kyrie. "I shall not return to that home of darkness and torturous decadence. The palace is far too steeped in corruption to rule this world. I shall not be until the Golden Hope is secured again!"

The hall outside this room became suddenly crammed full of jostling, malformed beings. They grunted and squealed. Some of them made more or less human noises. Then there were those that were never human in the first place. Even then, there were glimpses of more that had off-color skin or not even skin. They wanted to get into this room, and they wanted to play.

"I'm still in the game!" yelled Padraig, rushing to stand. Even with one eye looking in a totally different direction, his still-good eye looked ahead. "Come on, ye heavy fool in armor! I'll take ye at battle." He reached for his bandolier and drew out the left-hand and right-hand blades. Of course, the third blade was broken in its scabbard and was never drawn—would never be drawn again. "If this is how the party of three ends, then I'll make the best o' things!" He swung the left-hand blade—a flash of that infinitely sharp blade. Even while he attacked, one perfectly clear thought ran through his brain-damaged mind, cannot win forever.

The left-hand blade flashed, but it flashed nowhere near its intended victim. Padraig had missed. He only had one good eye, after all. And his brain was pretty much done in. He looked around as if hearing something else that was not in this room. He was hearing something…and was oblivious to the fight that he had just entered. Princess Kyrie tried shouting something at him to try and get him out of the way as so Gally could attack.

Yet it was far too late. The gigantic beast of a man in powered armor raised a huge metal fist the size of several heads together—a metal wrecking ball of a fist at the end of an arm as thick as a part of construction machinery. When that wrecking-ball of a metal fist slammed through the air, to strike, Padraig was blasted backwards with a sound like sha-bwack. He slammed into into the wall at one end of the room, smacking the back wall and falling dead.

For just a moment, things stopped for Princess Kyrie. It was not just because Padraig was undoubtedly dead. It was because in that moment, the party of three was now broken. It took a minimum of three to establish and maintain a party. Now they were three no more. There was just Gally to be a companion.

While the gigantic figure in the strange powered armor stood leering at the wrecked man across the room, the cyborg huntress made a rapid-fire series of steps forward. There was a dark streak as she leapt with one leg forward. The leap ended with a sound of obliterated metal and too-loud burst of noise as Gally's jumping side-kick made her go blasting through the enemy's powered armor.

The man in the powered suit looked confused for a second. He tried to look down to see what had just happened to him. Trouble was, he could not even see because the armor was just far too bulky. But if he could have seen the damage to himself, he would have been able to see through it. There was now a hole through his armor and body—a hole just about the size of a metal-bodied cyborg-girl. The top of the hole gushed blood. He tried to say something… Yet the man was dead before he could, his head slumped, only the rigidity of the powered armor holding him up.

Sounds of muties came from the open door, more of them out in the hallway. "Orp-orp, donglehump!" cheered something that looked vaguely human, followed by squeals and grunts … There were plenty of sounds because there were plenty of the ugly bastards piling on into here. An awful lot of them were bustling and hustling in—all kinds of them. First there were several dozen. This grew into at least sixty of them, too many of them to fit into this room. They just scrambled, hobbled and galloped around that dead man in the powered armor.

And they were coming right at the princess. "Ga-a-ally-y-y!" cried the princess in seeing a hoard of grotesque, malformed and miscolored creatures coming at her. This was the first time in a very long time in which enemies came directly at her. Almost all times before, her dealings with muties were done at a distance. Close-up in-fighting was usually a task allocated to Gally and Padraig. Padraig was a done deal, of course.

Over where Gally was, fighting in a corner, she may have heard Kyrie's scream. Now, the definition of the word heard—past tense of hear, the infinitive being to hear—is that of vibrating air molecules (known as sound) being successfully interacted with by a auditory sensory organ and the successful processing of such nerve signals as a result. True, the analog auditory inputs that served for her ears did take in the high sound of a certain girl screaming. Yet there was no real sign that the brain to receive the signals actually comprehended that signal. Gally's brain was far too preoccupied with fighting to heed the cry of the princess—the brain too busy putting the body to work in obliterating the grotesque and malformed beings that seemed to want to die, coming over here in groups and waves.

And there was no end to the mutie distractions for Gally's mind, it seemed. Likewise, there was no end to the burning joy that Gally was feeling in crushing and destroying the enemies—fighting the monsters, fighting the monsters, fighting the monsters…! For every lashing blur of her machine-fast legs, at least two deformed bodies were obliterated. Her elbows and hands also went into this destructive wet work, arcing and striking to explode heads everywhere—every-damned-where. There were so many muties that every one of Gally's strikes did some kind of murderous, blood-and-guts damage.

It was very soon getting to the point that the muties were slipping on the spilled blood, the spattered guts, and the chunks of brains on the floor. That made things all the more better: They were unable to move too far as Gally simply ducked down to lift up smaller muties and rip off an occasional limb to use for a bludgeon—or a short spear. Sharpened bone-ends stuck out the ends of limb-stumps… Oh, this was joy.

But it was not joy for Princess Kyrie. Before her mind and fingers could move in gestures to summon energy, too many scaly hands grabbed her legs, distracting her. More hands grabbed her wrists. Some more little ugly bastards in dirty red coveralls went for her long-coat. The princess was unable to move—making her shriek in sudden fear. This was the end of it, then. In closing her eyes, the princess hoped that when they killed her, they would do it quickly. Then all of this would be over without too much pain.

Shouted a male voice, "Get 'er over here!" A pause, then the male voice said, "Opp-opple-port, elkrik!" The accent was off, but it was certainly the sound of that gibberish spoken by the more intelligent muties. That gibberish was a sort of language after all. And if a person could use language with these muties, then they could be controlled—which they were. "No, not that one, you numb-headed blood-machine rejects! The one with moonlight-colored hair! Nesielke-porleporple mobob! Yeah, like that!"

Those rough, hot hands lifted her off of her feet. Gnarled, malformed hands and paws and claws grabbed her ankles and waist. More hands went to her back. Some of those hands were getting to be especially personal—hands touching her where shorts left thighs bare, along with hands going under her buttocks, grabbing her arms as well, of course. Fingers pushed through her hair to also grab her by the back of the neck. The indignity of such actions was enough to make her scream and struggle with the modest amount of strength in the synthetic muscle tissue of her body. Kyrie's synthetic flesh-type body was not equal to the electromechanical strength of Gally's cyborg-huntress body, but it was quite strong. Kyrie actually managed to tear off a few hands and, with some effort, broke the necks of some muties.

Nevertheless, the man in the crowd of muties was succeeding in directing the muties to doing the deed. He chuckled darkly amidst the mad chaos of bustling mutie bodies filling one room. The prize of the moment was being delivered in all of her petite screaming glory—pale and slender body struggling, her head of pale blonde hair with fluttering lengths everywhere.

Damn, the princess was even more beautiful in person. With all of those hands touching her up, he felt himself getting to be a tad bit randy. But if he so much as dared begin satisfy any of those urges, he would likely end up like what was going to happen to those old fogies, Mr. Tibbs and Mr. Pluck. Princess Dahlia would likely not appreciate her sister being groped and molested by hired hands.

…

2

…

After this motley crew of muties and armored humans took the pretty princess outside, some of the the muties eventually began to go into spasms. Those were the unclean muties that actually touched the clean, smooth body of the beautiful princess. Now they were suffering. Their eyes rolled back in their heads, their teeth chattering, and they fell to the hard ground. Apparently, touching the princess was far too much for them—the creatures of darkness. If they were sick and unable to work, then they were useless.

The man in red business clothes drew a thick-looking sort of pistol and shot the nine muties that actually the gir. Each of those muties received a shiny brass bullet apiece—delivered by way of compressed gasses and bursting out of rifled tubing, impacting and penetrating skulls to make brains go splashing out of the back.

Seeing the muties killed by a human was only worth some satisfaction to Princess Kyrie. Her party was broken. And in a party, if the party was broken, then all would fall eventually. Padraig's body was no doubt being ripped apart at this very moment. This while Gally continued to fight in close quarters with what now looked to be hundreds of muties. Even while Princess Kyrie herself was locked into the back of the huge truck, there was still her able to take in the sight of too many muties lining up to pile into the research building. Gally would have hundreds of distractions to deal with while Kyrie was here being taken away.

"Haw, haw, haw…!" laughed one of the big men forcing the princess up the ramp and into the back trailer portion of this huge truck—a huge sort of person in a big red business suit doing the pushing. He was pushing and holding...and was still holding her. Yes, the big man wanted the princess to see what was in store for her ally. "That's right, kiddo! Look at that! Take a nice long gander at what's gonna happen to your sexy little girlfriend back there. The little cyber-bitch has got herself an electromechanical body, but not even that can go up against six hundred muties—or six hundred of anything!"

Kyrie looked wide-eyed at the big man. It was not her intention to reveal any sort of weakness or looks of failure to any of her enemies. Yet in this case, it could not be helped. There easily were over six hundred muties all assembled in front of that building. There were rows and clusters and groups of malformed beings and creatures with grotesque skin-tones usually found on rotten corpses—creatures and entities so biologically compromised that did not even look as if they ought to be alive at all. They were alive. And they were going to all keep going into that building.

No way could anyone or anything stand up to that many muties alone. For all was known, just maybe Gally was being beaten into submission at this moment. If so, then there would be no one left to rely upon. Kyrie's big eyes went to the sight at that door,

The big man in big red business suit spoke up again. "Wa-hey-y-y! Don't get any ideas into that pretty little royal head of yours! I can't read minds like some people, but I can see when a girl is scheming! Yeah, don't I know it… Nothing personal, ya understand."

"Stop it, please," asked Kyrie. "You fail to understand the importance of what is coming to pass. I was to seek out that which would save this land… It was the artifact that would bring about hope…and goodness… This world is dying. All the time, there are ever more muties. This goes while there are fewer and fewer people. Can we continue to exist in this way, forever driving back the mutie hoardes of the wastelands? Only the Golden Hope can save us all now."

"What the Hell…!" exclaimed the man in the red suit. "Look, princess. I ain't totally ignorant of the Golden Hope—the particular item of which you so happen to speak. But I gotta do what I'm told. If not, then I'm gonna end up like two elderly gentlemen who used to serve as part of the king's right hand in the land… Heh, that rhymes. Anyways, we gotta go—artifact or none." He looked over at the research building and that steady crowd going in there, all of those ugly creatures. A far-away sort of look came to his face when he said, "There ain't any sort of hope anymore, anyway."

"Oh, yet there is! There is!" exclaimed Princess Kyrie, hoping that the lost look on the man's face was a hint of him changing opinion and being swayable. "The Golden Hope is capable of brightening the people and reinvigorating all of that which is good and proper. The muties shall flee in terror away from the inhabited territories of people. Then the teams of scientists, researchers, factories and laboratories shall restore the kingdom to its proper glory. We would not have to suffer any more."

The man angrily shook his head. "What the fuck kind of shit is that! Nothin' gonna fix this world, ya hear? This world is deader than dead, the whole…fucking…world. Now you're tellin' me that some kinda shiny bauble or pretty thing is gonna make everything fine? How? By us just starin' at it? No way, toots. That ain't gonna happen." One hand still on the princess's handcuffed wrists, he took her over to one side of the trailer. There, he gave a double slap to the side of the truck—the vibration of his fist resonating throughout the vehicle. Then he shouted upwards, "Yo! Let's go-o-o!"

On that signal, five more men in red suits came out from the sides of this truck. They were out of sight all of this time. But here they were now. Truth was, they were just waiting for the princess to try and make a run for it. The odd pistols they were armed with implied what would have happened to Kyrie if there was an attempt at escape. Namely, they would shoot her—knowing full well that no amount of shooting would kill her. Not kill her permanently, at least. The nanobots within her would simply repair her body and brain.

But in the meanwhile, her body would be useless. Kyrie once knew what it was like to experience the death of her body. It was something that the princess did not ever wish to happen again, that prolonged nightmare period in which nightmarish hallucinations combined with the claustrophobia of not being able to actually move, see, hear or touch. At the least, the last time that happened, there were some friends nearby to watch over her while in that state. Now there were none. There was no one left to stand against the darkening insanity. The huge engine of this truck made thick rumbling sounds when it started up …