Self-Destruction
"Nano-technology?"
The syllables were vaguely familiar to Tails, darting around a head alive with half-formed scientific wonders, ghosts of tomorrow proclaimed by various bearded authorities to herald the dawn of a new age. Sonic, on the other hand, had no time for such complications.
"What the hell's that?"
Tails allowed himself a sigh. Nano-tech and all the labyrinthine sciences it implied were clearly lost in their complex beauty on Sonic. Porker re-iterated.
"Nano-technology Sonic, think of it! Last I heard it was only an experimental field, billions of dollars worth of research going into just a few select laboratories sampling this stuff, and now Robotnik was cultivating it? This is decades, centuries ahead of current tech…."
Growing impatient, Sonic let one foot fall heavily against the metal floor, the clang resonating with all the premonitions of a painful kick in the thigh.
"Whatever Porker, but you still haven't told me what it is you're gibbering about. What is nano-technology, and how does it relate to what we were dealing with down there?"
Porker drew a single, large breath, steeling himself for a lengthy lecture. On such occasions Sonic was needed more as a restraining influence than anything else, but even as he divulged he was hard pressed to keep the school-boy enthusiasm out of his voice, which broke into an excited squeal on more than one occasion.
"In layman's terms, nano-technology is basically machinery that's operated on a microscopic level, complex circuitry and interior mechanics shrunk down, sometimes to sub-atomic sizes. Like I said, it's a pretty new field, and any nano-tech R&D conducted in the current political and financial climate is extremely costly and only on a small scale at this stage. But the benefits of having refined machinery of that size…."
Sonic couldn't help but roll his eyes as Porker's own glazed over with mystified speculation.
"Machines of that size could be inserted straight into the blood by doctors, it could supercharge a person's immune system or their ability to heal! Think of it; an army of tiny machines cleaning up any infection in your body, ensuring you never get ill again! Or they could augment the growth of muscle tissue, make a person stronger, faster…. Who knows, if they reached the brain they could even…."
"Sounds dangerous to me." Sonic cut in, with typical cynicism in the face of such technological witchcraft, "I can think of a fair few psychopaths out there who'd like nothing better than skin that repairs itself no matter how many bullets it takes."
Porker shuddered, coming at last to the dreaded hole in his argument.
"I admit, in the wrong hands nano-tech could cultivate a fighter few could match. The technology also has some value as a chemical weapon of sorts."
Makes sense, Sonic thought, imagining the cloud of metallic spores, programmed to the edges with the instinct to kill, descending on the pores of a helpless populace, destroying them from the inside…. It was just the kind of process Robotnik would so dearly like to adapt his badnik processing technology into; then he wouldn't need to build plants any more, just rain the builders onto the victims and watch the tiny terrors get to work.
"But still, that's why the technology is so heavily controlled and sanctioned at the moment! The powers that be want to keep it out of irresponsible hands…."
"Hmmm," Sonic grunted, idly checking his knuckles, "I'd better watch my back, or the pencil pushers could put me out of a job."
"So, where does this tie in with Cryax?" Tails pried, attempting to bring Porker back to the point.
"Aaah….."
Porker sheepishly rolled the point of one foot on the floor in front of him and turned to the computer terminal before him.
"I'm afraid that's about as ready an example I can think of where this technology could be deadly in the wrong hands…"
"Robotnik." Sonic finished. Porker looked uncharacteristically solemn.
"I'm afraid so. He was researching heavily into this stuff in the months before his committal, it seems it ran concurrent with his endeavours with the Chaos Monster."
"So there's a link?" Tails asked, suddenly alert. Chaos was still a name that conjured bad memories for all the Freedom Fighters. Across from him he saw Sonic close his eyes sharply, as images of a friend's broken body, coated in residue from the monster's cold fist, shivered briefly in the gutter and lay still.
"Only a slight one. According to some of the logs I uncovered while going through the base Robotnik relied on nano-tech to power a project called the 'Chaos Nullifier', a device meant to implant a microscopic anti-body program of sorts in Chaos' body as a means of bringing him under control. Unfortunately for him, the Nullifier was a failure. Nano-robots just dissolved on contact with Chaos' body. But it looks like our old pal Grimer Wormtongue managed to find another use for the technology."
"Cryax?"
By now Porker's fingers were a blur over the keyboard in front of him as statistics and data flashed snake-like across the screen. Amid the blur of winding text Sonic made out vivid glimpses of assorted mechanical nightmares, spider-like creatures smaller than a pinhead, that bore with them the mark of a malice so great it had once brought a planet to the brink of destruction.
"Bingo. Cryax's internal structure is supplemented heavily with nano-technology, most of his insides are covered in nano-bots. For what I can gather Robotnik was aiming to pioneer a form of machine that mimicked organic tissue, but enhanced far beyond the abilities of any ordinary flesh. The nano-bots in Cryax's body are meant to augment his speed and power, like millions of tiny motors providing him with energy, and they can also heal great damage over time in much the same way as organic skin can."
Behind a veil of disinterest Sonic cursed viciously. All the horrific wounds that he had dealt to the android in the course of their titanic battle, the slashes, dents, the rip in his right shoulder where a protective pad had been sheared cleanly off, even the right eye he had obliterated after head-butting the cave floor…. They would all repair themselves given enough time, and then Cryax would be on top form again.
But then again, Sonic reminded himself as he examined his newly medicated and bandaged limbs, so would he.
"So Cryax can heal himself?" Tails repeated.
"Slowly, but still at a much greater speed than we could heal naturally. Based on the reports Amy sent me of the thrashing you guys gave him, I would give him about a fortnight before he's back in peak condition."
"Two weeks?" Tails looked as if his eyes were going to explode from their orbits.
"It's fast, I know," Porker admitted, shaking his head, "but that doesn't mean he's indestructible. The nano-bots operate from some kind of nerve centre in his body where all the available information is collected. Damage that and the rest of his bodily systems would just shut down automatically."
"Just a wild guess," Sonic drawled, "but isn't that usually the head?"
More incomprehensible patterns flashed across the screen, wire-frames of Cryax's square-jawed visage scrawling into place.
"I think you're right Sonic, most of the calculative activity in Cryax's body takes place in the head, but I'm picking up… other signals…. it's strange…"
"How strange?" Sonic queried, the merest hint of concern edging into his voice as discreet, winking lights began to materialise across Cryax's limbs.
"There are other pockets of intelligent nano-cells lining the hydraulic workings in his arms and legs…. It's like having extra brains in your limbs, working to adapt and vary your fighting style. Which would explain why he was able to give you guys such a thorough pounding. His limbs are practically fighting for him!"
"I could have taken him…" Sonic mused, admiring the scars now lining his torn gloves. Porker ignored him, sparing only a cursory nod and a roll of his eyes, before returning to his computer. Tails had joined him by now, leaning intently into the data sweeping over the screen.
"That doesn't sound right to me," Tails observed, his eyes hovering over the small, shifting pockets of nano-cells embedded in Cryax's artificial muscles, "I'm guessing biology wasn't Robotnik's strong point."
"What're you getting at?" Porker asked, "It sounds like perfect design to me. Cryax's limbs have their own degree of independent thought, it allows them a limited degree of control over their own areas on his body. His limbs can actually record data on the fighting styles of his opponents and adapt to it, his body almost does all the physical work for him automatically!"
"That's what I mean," Tails continued, "I can think of several very good reasons why organic beings don't have spare brains all over their bodies. In order for Cryax to function properly all of those nano-cells would need to be in perfect sync with each other, and if they're all adapting individually to their own needs…."
By now the realisation of Tails' suggestion was beginning to dawn on Porker, who was looking increasingly anxious as the data of Cryax's nano-cells spooled out onto the emerald glass in front of him.
"Yes… yes, I think I understand. Organic creatures like us only need one brain to coordinate our actions, but Cryax has got spare ones developing virtually all the way through his bodily systems. In nature that kind of process would be disastrous; potentially all of the brains could start working against one another, the body wouldn't be able to take it…."
"….eventually it would just shut down totally," Tails finished, coming to his point with, Sonic couldn't help but notice, a distinct flourish, "By my reckoning Cryax will be totally immobile in just a few days! All of the nano-cells will be trying to reject each other, it could totally paralyse him while his body just tears itself apart!"
Sonic couldn't help but grin, letting out a groan of mock-disappointment.
"Awwwww, I was looking forward to beating that creep senseless once I got back to fighting him! So he'll just run out of steam as the cells develop?"
"It certainly seems likely," Porker invented, "but I have a hunch that it could be more dangerous than that…. After seeing Cryax in that cave…"
Sonic raised an eyebrow and waited for Porker to continue.
"Cryax was definitely changing towards the end of that fight, when you guys were starting to get the upper hand. Before he'd been totally in control, but his technique seemed to get sloppier the more the fight dragged on. That's an unusual trait in itself… machines aren't meant to suffer from fatigue or tiredness…."
"He seemed a little distracted if you ask me," Tails observed, "the way he kept getting angrier and angrier…. And all those times where it looked like… like he was in pain..."
Memories crept back of Cryax shuddering and dry-retching under an apparent avalanche of phantom spasms, wracking his flawless body from top to tip, apparently doing frantic battle with his own mind… with his body.
"You think perhaps the nano-cells were already starting to reject each other?"
"Probably. It looked like his mind was ripping itself apart. All those instructions, all those programs and organic instincts, conflicting with each other…."
"Even in a computer," Sonic finished, "that would be enough to drive it mad."
Stony silence followed this last remark. From the experience of virtually all the Freedom Fighters, insanity would be the catalyst that sent normality and safety for the people of Mobius plunging over the brink at long last. Peace simply couldn't hold while some madmen, from Robotnik to the Metallix Brotherhood, from Brutus to the Drakons, had the planet as their playground and a thirst to wreak havoc. Sonic was the first to break the tension, raising a face that had grown slowly more serious and stoic over the course of the last few minutes. Both fists were now clenched, the muscles of his arms relaxed as if for a flurry of strikes. This was a posture that made itself ready to go to war again.
"Great. So now we've got one of Robotnik's clunkers stomping around Mobius somewhere rapidly going out of its mind and wanting nothing more than to rebuild from where Walrus-Guts left off."
The proclamation washed over Tails and Porker like an arctic ocean, setting the knowledge of this new power deep into their heads, forming it for a new challenge.
"Sounds like an incentive for us to get our butts in gear. Porker, think you can track this thing from the data we have?"
Porker turned back to the computer terminal, grateful to at last have a task to immerse himself in.
"I can run a trace program through the badnik patrol network, I found the codes back in that cave there. It's going to be tricky though, Cryax's nano-technology is a constantly changing structure, so it'll be difficult for me to pinpoint his signal."
"I guess that means we'd better start getting hands-on," Sonic declared, turning to Tails as he made for the door, "so you'd better get the word out to the Mobian authorities that this guy is loose. Get in touch with the Metropolitan Guard, put them on alert, okay buddy?"
"On it, Sonic."
Tails exchanged a brief smile with his friend, a sign that he was rallying to the fresh cause, before easing himself into the air with a sweep of his double-Tails and jetting out of the nearest open window. Sonic himself pivoted on one heel and, taking a last glance at Porker frantically running his fingers over the keyboard behind him, disappeared behind the metal shutters.
Not more than a couple of paces down the corridor that would lead him back out into the open, the sound of a rapid, repeated sequences of grunts and pants reached Sonic's ears, stabbing at the otherwise silent air around the tower. As Sonic dulled the sound of his own tread to try and pin down the noise, he also became aware of methodical, steadily planted footsteps and, closer still to the brink of silence, the sound of the air being rent apart under the weight of blows. And this faded chorus of what sounded like sparring was coming from the other side of the storeroom doors at the other end of the passage. A smile crept over Sonic's muzzle as images of a certain angry echidna, desperately trading punches and kicks with thin air in some vain attempt at exercise, stole across his mind. And sure enough, as he leant easily against the door control panel and watched the metal sheets slide aside, Knuckles was there, fists blazing at empty space, his features already beginning to crawl with rivulets of sweat and the muscles beneath his skin heaving and flexing like the breakers on an angry shore. He turned a nonplussed scowl to Sonic as he took a few casual steps into the room and sniggered.
"Working hard, red? Can't say I blame you after the thrashing you took back there, you looked like you were getting pretty flabby lately anyway…"
"I could say the same thing about you," Knuckles coughed humourlessly, but still managing to effect a sly flash of his prominent teeth, "you had to be carried out of that cave after Cryax had his way with you."
Sonic shrugged, putting on the show of a few quick muscles stretches.
"Nothing a few laps of South Island couldn't fix. So what, you're hoping to square some honest punches with that bag of bolts when you meet him next, is that what this is about? Honestly," Sonic chuckled, shaking his head in mock disappointment, "I don't know why you bother. We already know how to beat that creep, just mob him and make sure he doesn't have a way out next time we…"
"That's just it," Knuckles cut in, suddenly becoming serious, "it took all three of us giving it everything we had just to give Cryax a few nasty scars. We practically killed ourselves just getting that far."
Knuckles turned his back to Sonic at this point, settling back into a combat stance as he faced the emotionless air, but kept talking through gritted teeth.
"What if next time one of us runs into Cryax we won't have any backup with us? Supposing it's just one-on-one, straight fist fight. Can't rely on being able to mob him there Sonic."
A blizzard of straight-arm punches hacked at the space just before Knuckle's face, his eyes narrowed to razors of concentration. He followed up with a series of blazing piston kicks, still talking as the blows hammered against non-existent flesh.
"It's obvious by now Sonic, even though I hate to admit it, that Cryax is physically superior to all of us. Individually we're just no match for him. At least not at the moment. We've all got to work hard from here on, push ourselves, make ourselves ready for the next time we step into the ring with that monster. I figured I'd get some training in while I could, get a competitive edge, make sure I can at least fight on equal terms with him the next time I have to face him…."
In an explosion of sudden energy, Knuckles took a dive at the opposite wall, one leg snapping outwards into a scissor-kick that would have decapitated any waiting target. The kick struck the wall of the storeroom with a clang like the first peal of a thunderstorm, sending Knuckles rebounding back through the air. He was totally in control as he plunged back to the floor, fist crashing like an anvil into the helpless steel, and then followed up with a series of backflips that sent him cartwheeling clean across the space, skipping between imaginary bullets, putting some distance between himself and his invisible opponent. Then at last, with a roar that seemed to split the very atoms of the air around him, he righted himself and blazed forward with an almighty shoulder-first charge that, Sonic speculated, could have thrown a juggernaut clean from a highway in a single devastating smash. He finished his barrage of lethality with a sharp uppercut, leaning the last of his weight and energy into a blow that could be seen, in the fighter's hatred of his purple eyes, to cleave Cryax's phantom jaw from his face. He turned back to Sonic, his chest shuddering with burning breaths, his biceps flexing and relaxing in repeated motion.
"…. I'm training, and I'd advise you to do the same."
If Sonic had been paying any attention to Knuckles' activity, he didn't show it. He shot one last despairing grin at Knuckles from under the shadows of his closed eyes, then turned where he stood and began strolling out of the room. He finished the conversation as he made a beeline for the door, signalling with one gloved hand over his shoulder.
"Do what you want with your free time Knux, for all the good it'll do ya. Meanwhile the coolest hedgehog on the planet has some running to do. Catch you later!"
As the doors eased themselves shut, Knuckles allowed himself a growl of displeasure. But Sonic's sheer arrogance was water off his back by now, melting against the volcanic heat and perspiration burning off his skin. He launched a final volley, a blasting punch that ripped a sheet of carbon steel clean from the wall in front of him, drowning the clunk of the closing doors.
As Sonic traipsed casually down the breezy corridors, following the familiar scent of the wind into the open air, he felt himself laugh through his bones at Knuckles' uptightness, the familiar stoic discipline he had known when he had first encountered that manic echidna years before, dogging Robotnik's heels on the Floating Island. It was small wonder they gelled so badly; Sonic was as free as an ocean wind, and Knuckles had lived the countless years of his life shackled to the Chaos Emeralds, doomed to oversee the decaying legacy of those that had left the Floating Island behind aeons ago. If he couldn't free himself from the bonds of Guardianship, the nearest he could manage was to try and drag Sonic back from the wild abandon of total freedom, into some vestige of the duty he so resented. Sonic laughed aloud as he strode into the open grasslands of the Emerald Hill Zone, now tinged with the ribboning light of sunset, flecked off the ocean that ringed the edge of the world. It was just like Knuckles to suddenly adopt this military routine, this urge to torture his body and push his power to snapping point, just because he felt rallied to the cause of the Freedom Fighters. He would probably train endlessly now, slowly dying in that storeroom while he traded punches and kicks with ghosts.
But what ate at Sonic's usual fearlessness as he gathered speed into the burning horizon was that, in the arrow-sharp sliver of common sense embedded at the back of his brain, he knew that Knuckles was right.
Several miles underground, a machine is losing the final battles for its mind.
Hunched like a wizened tree, skin alive with roasting scars and cracks, bleeding neon and power into the cold rock beneath it, a lone android is sobbing into the uncaring earth around it, attacked on all sides by an invisible onslaught of life. Sobbing is the closest thing that comes to describing the vile, vomiting outburst of electronic gurgles and gasps currently streaming from the maddened set of jaws, pouring into the outside world in a torrent of renewed hate. Cryax buried both massive hands against the dome of his skull, which itself now seemed to be tearing itself open a hundred times a second. Another horrid mechanical shriek escaped his grinding voicebox. The awful, horrifying realisation of life that had paralysed his mind earlier when battling with the heroes seemed to have leaked into the rest of his body. His arms and legs were wrenching themselves free of the body that held them prisoner, protocols and instructions collided like tidal waves against newly forming intellects, ideas, blasphemous presences in a mind designed from the circuit boards up to lord wires and metal over invading flesh. Cryax's mind was coming to life, dying and being resurrected over and over again, prising his head apart in a wretched, perpetual cycle….. life blossoming and dying hundreds of times over in a mind that was built to reject life itself.
Insanity could only come to a mechanical being like this. When nature tried to insert itself into the workings. A spanner tossed into a carefully oiled, fragile creation.
Reeling under the sheer weight of his own mental onslaught, Cryax staggered back into the enveloping darkness, neon flaring like burst blood vessels in his eyes, and roared at the blackness. The life was coming at him again, confusing him, ordering its acceptance and rejection at the same time. The whines and moans coming from the android's larynx were becoming ever more pained and pitiful, weak like the failing resistance, weak like his slackening grip on his own bodily control. As his inner workings battled savagely against each other, he put one giant hand out to steady himself on an outcrop of convenient granite. His chest heaved with the effort of keeping upright. Like breaths. The notion stole into Cryax's mind with another knife-like stab of pain, pain that didn't belong. Didn't belong like the breath now coursing through his dead chest. He felt the minerals in the rock, the insects swarming in the soil all around him, pulse through the touch receptors at his fingertips.
He had been made to build an empire, to dominate organic life. Life that he was now starting to feel.
The phantom agony tore at the robot's body in another violent spasm. Barely a second later the rock in Cryax's grip was powder, crushed by the clenching of his fists. He buried his balled hands at his rebelling head once again, sinking to his knees as the wounds of his battle wormed over his body, nano-cells crawling through the metallic tissue to repair the damage. Machines behaving like living beings. Cryax was caught in the limbo now, the mid-point between life and death, flesh and metal. And both were flaring like supernovas in his psyche, shredding everything around them, cutting his mind and body in two, plunging the stricken, screaming robot into the void….
In an instant, the heat of madness and pain cooled. The world snapped back into clear, sharp focus. The screaming darkness hushed at last, returning to the graveyard thrum of the life around it. Cryax himself got steadily to his feet, setting them with deliberate motion, flexing each hydraulic muscle repeatedly, firmly, like a father restraining a nervous child.
His mind had been torn to shreds, he was well aware of that by now. It had simply torn itself asunder under the weight of its indecision, its mad blundering between life, death and conflicting programs. Cryax's mind, that intricate, evolving thing that Robotnik had spent years crafting to adapt into the perfect instrument of death and conquest, was beyond salvaging.
Then again, madness presented fewer problems for Cryax. On the contrary, his purpose was now clearer to him than it had ever been before. Freed from the bonds of his protocols, the chains of reasoning that held that struggling brain together now totally obliterated, everything suddenly made sense. Cryax allowed a smile to work itself over the square of his jaw. The motion was smooth, controlled, and betrayed more insanity than fits of giggling and gibbering ever could. Fresh steam gurgled from the pits of his chest, flowed from between the metal teeth, curled lovingly around the wounds in his body that were now in the process of repairing themselves. Cryax touched one hand to his most recent trophy, the jagged rip in one shoulderm plate courtesy of Sonic.
Sonic. The Freedom Fighters. Anybody who stood for the hideous, polluting process that was sex, death, feeding and breathing that was being alive. Cryax knew now what would set his burning mind to rest at last. The hand over his wound clenched, and dropped to his side.
Life. It would have to go.
All of it.
The End….. for now. Stay tuned for more episodes from Neon Hades and the Fleetway Universe as the battle against Cryax lurches into life….
