Breachers

Breachers – Path of Steel

8

I

A Bite to Eat

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His body was ravaged by tremors, and his eyes widened as he tensed up. His blurry vision came and went as he struggled to stay conscious. Fragmented memories showed medical personnel rushing in and out of a room, their actions a blur. He recalled seeing the faint outline of a strange machine strapped to his chest, holding him firmly in place while an odd layer of what appeared to be countless suspended and glowing glass pieces enveloping his body. Within the machine, five pulsating lights dimmed slowly until one of the medical staff replaced them.

 

The machine pulsed on top of him, doing something to him. It felt like it infused every cell of his body in a strangely familiar manner. He caught glimpses of worried faces, some unfamiliar, others vaguely recognizable like his brother and sister, their features distorted by his blurred vision. ‘They look different somehow,’ he thought as his vision faded again, returning a while later and seeing an empty room. A sign on the wall caught his attention, seeing a fancy name on it. ‘A hospital name?’ he pondered, straining to make out the number four etched below it.

 

╔                                                         ╗

[System activation: 100%]

╚                                                         ╝

 

His robotic vision flickered back to life, his consciousness returning in a rush. His steel form suddenly moving according to his will as his gaze settled on his mangled lower right arm, seeing the sharp metal edges protruding and machinery broken at its core. His mind focused on it, feeling a sort of panic again before he snapped out of it. ‘No... focus dammit!’ he thought, remembering the need to start counting again.

 

Numerous thoughts swirled in his mind, some adding to his distress, while others sparked a glimmer of hope. ‘Are those fragmented dreams actual memories?’ he wondered, struggling to both keep count and ponder his fate. ‘I… Shit... I think I’m still alive out there... somewhere,’ he decided, knowing that, at worst, it would provide temporary false hope. Yet, deep within, he ‘felt’ as if the dreams were actually fragmented memories. It felt like what his body was going through in the hospital was bleeding into his mind. ‘I’m alive.’

 

He rose slowly, causing layers of dust to fall from the gray tarp that he had wrapped around him. ‘How much time has passed this time?’ he wondered, watching the fabric drop to the floor, revealing the van’s worsened rusty condition. His left hand moved across his own frame, the dust giving way under its touch. His attention then returned to his destroyed arm, a mix of anger and confusion lingering as he questioned why those fighters had attacked him without reason, despite him displaying himself as nonthreatening. ‘That poor dog had a better grasp of people than those idiots.’ He flexed his left hand, turning it into a tight metal fist. Although he had never used his previous weapon, he still felt vulnerable without the steel pipe. ‘Alright, step one: find a weapon and more protection’ he thought as he slid his way over to the backdoor and opened it up, stepping into a world tinted in light blue shade.

 

 

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Several minutes later, he was tearing off another piece of fabric and tied it around his limbs. Numerous rags were now secured around his body lined with scavenged hard leather and plastic, providing extra padding while hiding a lot of his steel frame. He stole a quick look at himself in a nearby car's side mirror. ‘Well... style wise it’s absolute dogshit,’ he thought, realizing how ridiculous his appearance was. ‘But at least now I resemble a homeless person instead of an evil robot that needs to be shot on sight, not to mention hide most of the graffiti. I suppose that’s an improvement?’ He covered his head with a worn hood, fashioned from a torn-up hoodie. ‘This should buy me at least five seconds until some other prick decides to take my left hand.’

 

Just as Marcus was about to move on in search of more fabric and plastic, a shifting sound reached his ears. He turned around and watched a twisted shape emerging from a pile of garbage. He watched the monster shake off the filth it had been hiding underneath. The creature's appearance was rat-like, but grotesquely oversized, roughly the size of a large dog. Had Marcus the anatomical parts to do so, it would’ve sent shivers down his spine at seeing the monster. A strange green liquid dripped out of the end of the creature’s many tails, hissing when it came in contact with the ground, as if acidic.

 

‘Should I—' The creature shot forward at an unnatural speed, shattering Marcus’s thoughts and his chance at running away. It leaped from one position to the next with a disturbing swiftness until it lunged at Marcus, crashing into him. ‘What the hell are you?’ Marcus exclaimed mentally as the creature sank its crooked teeth into his left arm, tearing through several shreds of fabric and plastic that formed his makeshift armor. The two of them slammed into the ground while the creature continued its relentless assault, biting and scratching.

 

Marcus fought to free himself from the creature's grasp, narrowly evading a swipe of its deadly claws, which threatened to tear into his robotic head. They wrestled and rolled across the dirt in a violent struggle. In a stroke of luck, Marcus managed to land a powerful blow, driving his right arm, and most of its jagged metal remnants, into the creature’s side. Agonized hisses escaped the creature as Marcus pressed the advantage, clutching its throat with his left hand while relentlessly thrusting his weaponized stump into its writhing form. With every stab, the monster became less of a threat and Marcus could almost feel his metallic fingers crushing flesh and obliterating the monster’s windpipe.

 

He just kept squeezing as he witnessed the monster’s convulsive twitches. It eventually stopped thrashing and went limp. Just to make sure it was actually dead, Marcus relentlessly plunged his right arm into the creature’s body, over and over again, until he found himself drenched in blood and gore. He cautiously rose to his feet, swiping his metal hand across his face to rid it of the crimson splatters on his camera while circling the lifeless monster. Uncertain if it would get back up or if others lurked nearby, he released his pent-up aggression by delivering a series of kicks to the corpse. The sound of snapping ribs filled the air as its appearance gradually morphed into a less recognizable shape.

 

‘That was for Oscar,’ Marcus declared, his robotic hand rising to flip off the lifeless monster. With a final kick to its skull, he released his pent-up frustration and accepted that he had actually killed it. The realization struck him, for he had never before taken a life. Surprisingly, he found himself extremely at ease with the death aspect, even now that he had a minute to calm down. A part of him wondered if it was because of his unfeeling, mechanical shell or if his action just now revealed a hidden aspect of his own personality—a part unafraid to delve into deeds that others might shy away from. He turned his attention to his right arm, checking if he had damaged it even more as his robotic fingers tracing over the jagged remnants. He observed the strange intertwining sinewy glowing tendrils ensnaring the shattered pistons and motors, mirroring glowing veins. Nearly losing himself in it, he quickly remembered where he had left off his count and picked it up again, knowing it was wise to know just how long he had left. Just before he wanted to leave, his camera caught sight of the odd object lodged in the back of the monster’s skull, pulsating weakly now and again.

 

‘Those bastards who shot me were collecting these things, right? Why do these monsters have them in their heads?’ he pondered, kneeling beside the mangled creature and clumsily extracting the rock from the back of its skull with one hand. With a determined pull, he freed it, accompanied by a horrible sound and a small amount of brain matter and skull fragments. ‘Alright, that’s just nasty.’ Marcus wiped away the gory residue off on the monster’s fur before examining the object further. ‘It’s sort of pulsating... but it looks somewhat similar to that thing inside me… inside this robot,’ Marcus contemplated as he approached a nearby car mirror. He forcefully detached it before positioning it in a way that allowed him to peer into the hole in his steel torso. There, he spotted the strange blue object. It was coated in a layer of mud and filth, but after scratching at it, he revealed more of the blue core, seeing it attached to hundreds of smaller light blue veins that spread throughout his robot body. As his gaze shifted back to the thing he had pulled out of the monster, he noticed certain similarities.

 

‘That thing inside me is larger and spherical. This... Orb… inside me feels... stronger? It also gives off a constant glow, rather than pulsating,’ he pondered, unsure why he had settled on the term Orb out of the blue. He dropped the mirror so that he could better examine the small bloody object in his hand. He wondered how it had found its way into a monster’s skull and what purpose it served. The strangest part was the nagging familiarity it evoked—an uncanny sense of having encountered it up close before. ‘Monster-Glass,’ he whispered in his mind, the word reverberating through strange, fragmented memories. Though he couldn't quite explain why, he felt certain that it was called that. Just as certain as he was that the thing inside of him was called an Orb. It was difficult to put it into words, but weirdly he thought he recalled people referring to those things as such.

 

Shaking his robotic head, he pondered whether he was gradually losing his sanity. Securing the ‘Glass’ within a layer of fabric, he concealed it carefully. As he turned to leave, the distant echoes of combat and the discharge of automatic weapons reached him, hastening his footsteps.

 

 

- - -

 

 

Huddled behind a nearby car, Marcus caught sight of his van in the distance—a rusty haven that beckoned to him. Though a strong desire to reach it surged within him, he remained crouched behind a vehicle, forced to witness the fight in front of him. In front of him, three men valiantly held their ground against a small horde of monsters similar to the one he had killed earlier. Some of the creatures fell under the barrage of gunfire, while others evaded the shots, launching fierce attacks on the men, even taking down one of them.

 

Marcus was confused when he watched one of the men stop shooting and, with outstretched hands, conjure a sudden wall of fire that formed a protective wall, incinerating three monsters in the process. The two surviving men turned their gaze to their wounded companion, swarmed by an ever-growing horde of creatures. They paused for a few more seconds before they fled the scene, unloading their magazines in bursts of fire as they made their escape, their companion screaming as he was left behind.

 

Marcus observed the wounded man on the ground, desperately fending off the ravenous monsters. With gunfire and frantic kicks, the man fought to repel the creatures that had already torn into his legs and abdomen. The sight stirred an intense urge within Marcus to rise and aid him, but the overwhelming number of monsters kept him crouched. ‘There is nothing I can do. He’s already dead,’ Marcus thought, witnessing chunks of flesh being ripped away from the man’s body while he howled in agony. During the brutal assault, the man managed to switch to his sidearm, dispatching two more monsters while five others closed in. A howl of despair pierced the air before the man turned the pistol on himself, granting himself one last act of mercy. The gunshot reverberated through Marcus’s steel frame, echoing even into his very soul. As he watched the tragic end, his heart ached at the thought of the man's final moments. ‘I don’t blame him,’ Marcus thought as he tried to suppress how sick it all made him feel. Still, he couldn't look away from the gruesome event playing out before his eyes.

 

The monsters tore into the man's remains with an uncontrolled hunger, biting and clawing apart both the equipment and the corpse with reckless abandon. Mentally blocking out the sickening sounds of flesh being torn and bones snapping, Marcus just focused solely on his counting. He observed the monsters squabbling over the remnants, some fleeing with parts of a limb or pulled out organs. The repulsiveness of the sight intensified, but he remained motionless. The area had now become overrun with more of the abominations, and he dreaded the slightest twitch that might betray his presence. Instead, he stayed crouched, unmoving and concealed behind the car, hidden within his grime-laden fabric that shielded his robotic form.

 

Marcus just kept staring ahead while counting the passing seconds. Over time, the two tasks he was juggling gradually drifted further apart in his mind, reaching the point where it started tugging at his mind. The broken heads-up display flickered sporadically, bombarding him with an increasing amount of error messages until it blinked out of existence entirely. In that disconcerting instant, Marcus felt a fracture within his mind, as if something was snapping loose. ‘Wait... no! Did I just break a part of my mind?’ he wondered, nearly teetering backward in a mixture of awe and fear. He sensed a sliver of his mind seeping away from the main part, trickling into something else—a separate version of himself focused solely on the counting.

 

Then, the HUD flickered back into existence, free from error messages this time. A timer appeared in the top right corner of Marcus’s vision, ticking upward, even without him focusing on it. ‘Ok, what the hell did I just do?’ he pondered, feeling the split part of his mind still carrying out its task. Curious, he carefully mentally reached out to it and absorbed the portion again. As he did so, the HUD vanished, and he suddenly recalled having been counting all this time. ‘This isn’t weird at all,’ Marcus thought sarcastically as he reminded himself to keep calm and remain still. He repeated the process, deliberately splitting his thoughts, feeling them separate into distinct parts and experiencing a sliver of himself separate from his core being. A peculiar sensation washed over him, as if he wasn’t complete somehow, yet the separated part was only a mere fraction of his whole, like a few droplets from a full cup of water. ‘Is this a consequence of what I’ve been through, or is this just because of a machine brain?’

 

Marcus continued messing around with the HUD like a child that gained a new toy, experimenting with its functions while observing the monsters gradually lose interest in the carcass. A few of them bickered over the final scraps before eventually dispersing, with one concealing itself amidst a nearby heap of garbage. ‘How many of those things are out there, hidden like violent hungry landmines?’ he wondered, his mind recounting the hectic fight he had a short while ago. His eyes remained fixed on the scene, wondering if more would return while he felt his connection to his robotic frame weakening. ‘Nearing the two-hour mark… I think,’ he concluded, mentally reviewing the seconds he had tallied, even if the count was far from precise.

 

He eyed his surroundings one last time before cautiously making his way toward the van with as much grace as his metal frame could produce. He kept his gaze on the spot where the monster had concealed itself, unsure if it was now asleep or actively waiting in ambush. As he approached the van, he noticed the carcass and the ruined gear. ‘This is stupid,’ Marcus thought, hesitating for a moment before he snuck towards the bloody remains. He grabbed the man’s torn backpack and the discarded pistol the man had used to end his own life. Marcus’s gaze shot towards the rifle in the distance, but he forced himself to turn away, knowing that taking even more risks went beyond mere stupidity.

 

Instead, he made his way over to his hideout as he clambered awkwardly up the rusted cars. He finally threw himself into his van and hastily closed the door behind him. In mere seconds, the sound of rubble shifting echoed outside, accompanied by scurrying creatures. ‘And cue the hissing landmine,’ he thought, praying that they wouldn’t be able to sniff him out from where he was. He cradled his loot in his arms as he hid beneath the grey tarp, his attention fixed on the timer as he ignored the Orb’s blue light pouring out of the holes and cracks in his frame. Despite the threat outside, Marcus was determined to figure out just how much time he had each time he regained consciousness. Mere minutes later, he blacked out once again.

 

 

 

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Copyright: OsiriumWrites