Chapter Fifty-Eight
Stabs of pain shot through Admin Colson's chest as he slunk in the shadows cast by street lights. Celeste had assured him it was just some uncalibrated pain sensors, but each step was a knife between his ribs. Breathing came in gasps that he muffled with one hand. The serrated edges of his fingernails dug into his cheek, but no blood welled up from the cuts.
His other hand was in his pocket, cradling the Commissioner's keycard and an envelope.
A light fog tumbled over empty city streets and made the shadows dance. Dressed in dark gray, Colson danced with them, flowing through the fog, but the twinges of pain made his dance a stilted shuffling of feet, and the fog tumbled him about like a boulder.
The Jubilife building was a squat, stony building with no windows, fronted by a set of thick steel doors. Cameras squatted in the stonework like gargoyles, watching the street below. One by one, Colson erased his presence from them all, and the ones inside. More nooks, with perches inside spacious alcoves, stood empty. A gust of wind blew down a handful of dun, fluffy feathers.
He gritted his teeth, patted the guns concealed at his hips, and walked up to the entrance of the sleek, blank-walled building. He touched the card to the lock, and the doors clicked open.
Inside, two guards leaned against a wall to his right, near the door, and a third sat behind a metal-plated desk and bulletproof glass. The spacious, empty room, with its still fountains, empty rafters, and abandoned kennels, made Colson feel alone in the room. Each step on the gray marble floor bounced off the walls, ringing like funeral bells. Chandeliers cast flickering shadows in a hundred pale imitations behind marble statues of dead Sages.
"Identify yourself," the guard nearest to him called out. His hand was on the pistol at his waist. Colson ignored him and walked up to the counter.
"Uh, excuse me sir?" the guard said from his seat. "You'll have to check in with the guards by the door first. Beads of sweat dotted his brow, and his eyes stared out of darkened, sunken hollows. His gray cap was askew, exposing a damp clump of black hair.
Admin Colson ripped the glass aside with one sweep of his serrated fingernails. Showers of shards clattered onto the floor. He leapt over the desk, landed on top of the guard's lap, and drove the chair downward. With one hand, he smashed his skull into the marble floor. Foaming brain matter gushed between his fingers. The guard shuddered once and fell still. Blood pouring from his neck filled the room with the harsh tang of iron.
Both guards by the door opened fire. Colson crouched behind the desk. Bullets smashed against the desk's metal plates and bit chunks out of the marble walls. A fine spray of sharp stone pieces glanced off his metallic skin. One guard shouted into his radio, but no response came from the other end.
Colson drew his pistols and stood. Each was a high-caliber handgun with a silencer. One bullet slammed into his right shoulder, sending a searing fountain of pain up his neck, but two shots from his left hand caught each guard in the throat. Despite the silencers, each shot rang like boulders crashing into a lake. They fell, gurgling, clutching at the bleeding holes until the strength left their hands.
Colson put his guns away. The bullet in his left shoulder, crushed flat as a wad of chewing gum, peeled off and hit the floor with a soft chink. Colson brushed at the broken fibers of his gray shirt and ran the dull, smooth fingertips of his left hand over his unblemished skin.
Behind the desk stood another metal door, thicker than the one outside and set in a foot of concrete. Out of curiosity, Colson reached out to the door's lock and found nothing. No gentle sloshing of electron current, no warm, inviting rivers of copper, no transistors like diving boards over pools of doped silicone. When he inserted the Commissioner's keycard into the slot, hundreds of tiny pins shot out of the edge, pressing into the lock's delicate tumblers. With a gentle twist of the lock, six deadbolts retracted with a hollow thunk and the door swung open.
The door opened into a small, bare room lit by a single chandelier. Elevator doors rested in the far wall. Four more guards waited in each corner of the room. They reached for their weapons as Colson rushed forward. He slashed the throat of the nearest guard with his right hand. Another charged him with a baton. He punched hard enough to penetrate his ribcage and crush his heart. The remaining guards fired at his chest. Each bullet was a hammer's blow, fiery hot and icy cold at once, but the false skin didn't bruise.
Charging into the gunfire, Colson kicked at one guard's shin, shattering the bone. The gun fell from the crippled man's hands, and his screams bounced off the walls. The remaining guard dropped his gun and fumbled for his radio. Colson's fist drove into the guard's gut. The air went out of him in a high-pitched croak. While the guard squirmed on the floor, Colson set his foot over the man's skull. A shudder ran up his leg as bone broke with a mighty crack.
The Commissioner's keycard opened the elevator and whisked him down to the lowest level. Nets of subterranean wires rushed past him, threatening to ensnare him before they vanished. Colson fell to one knee, gasping, massaging his battered chest. Coolant coursed through his head as an electronic fever overwhelmed him, blotting out the gleaming gray walls and whirring of elevator cables. Panting, he ordered his systems to run a diagnostics check and reroute coolant to his overheating processors. It left his limbs painfully hot, but his senses returned and the pain faded from his back.
The lurching elevator brought him to his feet. The doors slid open, and an empty hallway greeted him. Alcoves stood like silent, blind sentinels on either side, alcoves large enough for hulking brutes and small enough for lithe, springy killers. Some had perches, some gurgling pools of water, or electrical outlets, heating units, patches of sand, pots of soil. All were empty.
The hallway opened onto a circular room with doors along its circumference. At a table in the middle, six guards played cards, using bullets and clips for their wager. Light snacks and bottles of water sat at the elbows of each man. One saw him coming down the hall and shouted. Two scrambled for clips on the table, three pulled out guns, and the last dashed for the farthest door.
Admin Colson shot the runner. The first bullet took him through the calf, and the second went through his temple. Two more bullets took out another two guards before the remaining three flipped the table over and ducked behind it. Colson walked towards them. Bullets ricocheting off of his skin. Each was a scalding iron, digging into his pain receptors and pumping molten lead up his spine.
He kicked the table, knocking over the guards behind it. A stomp crushed the ribcage of one man. His serrated fingernails dug through the eyes of another.
As he approached the final guard, the man raised a pistol and fired a shot. The bullet tore through his right eye, scraping against the steel casing that housed his core processors. Coolant hissed and gurgled out of the wound. His other eye blacked out as pain swallowed his senses. Groping, Colson found the man's neck with his left hand and squeezed. Both men drowned in open, oxygen-rich air, one smothered by a synthetic hand, the other smothered by his synthetic senses. Colson gasped, venting steam through his mouth. In his head, machines stitched together the broken piping and sealed it with lead solder.
When his sight returned, the guard was dead. His shattered neck flopped to one side. Colson's legs trembled as he stood. His hand found the overturned table. Sagging over it, Colson surveyed the room and found the bottles strewn on the floor. Most still had a mouthful of water. Colson crawled across the floor, gulping greedily from each bottle. Every sip dulled the ache in his head as his system pumped the fresh coolant to his overheating systems.
Colson turned towards the farthest door. It was solid steel and fortified with magnetic shields. The room felt like a jagged metal shell to his electric perception.
He knocked twice on the door, hard enough to leave dents. When no one answered, he kicked the door down. It took six blows before the metal parted enough for him to shove his way through. His arms screamed with the metal door, and his sight blurred, but the door broke first.
The Six Sages sat, stunned, pale-faced. Each of them wore robes of white, and though they all had different hair colors and styles, distinct eyes and noses, individual patterns of wrinkles, all six looked like copies of each other, stripped of their individuality until nothing remained but the Sage.
They made no move towards the exit as Colson took the empty chair. He set both his guns on the table with the barrels pointing towards them.
"You were fools to let your guard down," the Admin told them.
The Sages stared at one another. After a moment, Rood said from across the table, "We had an alliance."
"We had a common enemy, nothing more." Colson took the envelope out of his pocket and tossed it at them. "These are Giovanni's terms."
One by one, the Sages read the contract inside the envelope, and one by one, each signed at the bottom.
The last Sage, Gorm, handed him the contract and said, "The people will never accept this. A criminal running the government? How hilarious."
"They will accept it," Colson said. "They have no other choice, just like you."
Zinzolin nodded. "I will inform the press. Giovanni will have his conference at 8 AM, in the Merlon Stadium, open to the public and televised across all channels."
Colson nodded and stepped outside of the room. When he reestablished connection with Rocket headquarters, he said, "Mission successful. Send in the clean-up crew and a backup unit. I'll need repairs immediately."
He touched at the gaping wound where his right eye once was. Shattered lens lined the socket, and further inside, the cracked shutter twitched like a bird that had slammed into a window, sending static signals down the severed fiber optic cable.
With a pop, something tore inside of his chest. Red warning alerts flashed in his head as the floor rushed up towards him. Then everything went black.
He was cold by the time Celeste arrived with the backup crew. A few replacement parts later, Admin Colson reactivated, stared up at the ceiling, and said, "I am ready for my next mission."
Changelog
12/28/18 – minor edits