Metal Deep 2: Something Beautiful (4 page)

BETRAYALS

Maeve’s sidelong glances, her questions about what I saw concerning my appearance, her constant compulsion to keep me out of sight, and the newlywed couple’s reaction toward me all made sense. I had been turned into a monster after all. Though I had just gotten the abridged version of what I was, I couldn’t stand to hear any more about my condition. My appetite had gone, and I kicked the dropped bag of food away.

I was a programmable Amalgam, a cyborg… a machine. None of Dad’s stories prepared me for this. I was something new. Sure, there had been tales about Artificial Intelligence, people who were entirely machine, but I had never heard of anyone being both man and machine. My gut withered into crinkled parchment. I felt my soul turn to dust and fall through the spreading cracks of my breaking heart. I was an unlovable thing who would have no place even among freaks. I was a man no more.

My eyes narrowed. With the falsified information that was being fed into a brain I could only assume was part machine now as well, I could feel the blue irises burn brighter as my hatred intensified. “And so you want me to end the world?” I asked.

“Not for us.” Drake said smugly. “For those weak humans. Yes. Though you are alone now, one day you will be one of many. The species will be mechanized and then used to implement Pure Blood DNA in a new way that does not see the generational degradation that affects most Amalgams today. Warlocks will have full magical range once more. Vampires will be able to go out into the sun. Magic can be done more often without the power of the moon to give boosts to the effects. There are so many possibilities that your ignorance keeps hidden from you. What you have to realize, is that you are changing the world by simply being. The monsters we’ll be able to unleash because of what we learn from your biology… You should be honored.”

It made sense to me. From what I understood, only a handful of humans had the genetic capacity to become a functioning Amalgam, and even then, it was always hit or miss on which dominate trait of a species would manifest itself. If they had discovered a way to remove that uncertainty and unleash a full DNA barrage onto any host they wanted, it would be a free for all by the Puries to replenish their ranks. No telling what would happen then; more than likely, ancient feuds would resume over land and resources, and as a result the world would burn.  However, not before every last man, woman, and child had been turned into monsters like me, at least those not kept in human-farms to be used as food for those who might need them. 

We stood together in silence for some time. For a maniac out to destroy the world, Drake wasn’t such a bad guy. He placed a reaffirming hand on my shoulder. He actually seemed sympathetic toward my distress and genuinely wanted to see me perk up. “You are a child of gods.” He said, “In ways no Amalgam could ever hope to be. You will save the Pure Blood and Amalgam races alike. I know it’s a lot to absorb. I want you to take your time, but we must be going. It’s going to be okay. You have a destiny to fulfill.”

I’m sure his people had their charm about them, but what they were asking of me was too much. I could not be some delivery boy of destruction for the human race. I would not. “It is time to go,” I agreed. “Before we do, do you think I could study that pad. I was serious about wanting to reach my potential.” I pointed to the device he used to turn off my fake sight. I figured it had everything about me I needed to know.

Drake laughed, “Sure.” He handed it to me. His voice was solemn and his face wore worry heavily across his cheeks, “In some ways you remind me of Cade.” A smile turned his lips upward, “You share a certain ruthlessness that is to be admired.”

“I hope I can give you everything you deserve.” I replied in earnest. “You know in some ways you remind me of him as well.”

He smiled in a way only a proud father would as he put his hands in pockets to join me in my walk back toward the truck that held Maeve. “Oh yeah? How so?”

“You both have crushed faces.” I said not holding back the hatred I felt bubbling up.

Realization of what I meant hit him about a second before I did. I hated to use brute violence again, but it was all I had. I just hoped Maeve was right about that Unicorn thing.

I had pieced together what had happened the night before, and what Maeve said about not being strong enough yet, and there was her not being able to use her armor until nightfall. Drake even eluded to it during his Rule the World speech. Most Amalgam magical abilities were contingent upon moonlight. There was the exception of some small things, and for powerful beings like Drake they weren’t that limited. I felt dense for not having picked up on it sooner.

Moonlight was paramount in too many stories to not have been significant. However, with me being something different, my metal arms could still pack a world of hurt into a daytime punch because they were after all mechanical. There must have been a magical element about them as well, because I wasn’t nearly as strong or sensitive as I was the night before.  Still, I unloaded a series of strikes to Drake’s head hoping for the best. I wasn’t as potent as I could have been, but the blood splatter proved I could still get the job done.

I ducked for cover behind one of the Street Viper cars as the men started screaming and unloading gunfire into the vehicle I hid behind. I wasn’t sure what the relationship between my new status and bullets would be, but I did not want to find out. Thankfully I didn’t have to.

The side of the trailer blew out with a shockwave that shook the ground. The blast took out about five guys, and the wave knocked over another three. Maeve had armed herself well during her escape and unleashed hell from dual wielded machine guns onto Drake’s scattering men. She was impressive. She unloaded a torrential bullet storm without so much as having a single red strand of hair fall out of place. I made a run for the GTO, but she called for me to follow her as she jumped into one of the Street Viper’s black rice burners.

I dove into the vehicle as the engine hummed to life, and before you could say “Escape,” we were out of there.

She toyed with the controls of a funny looking box to the right of her steering wheel. I only had one question, “When did you plan on telling me?”

Her face paled a little save her cheeks, which flushed a red to rival the color of her ponytail. “I wanted to figure out why you couldn’t see yourself. I suspected there was some kind of program in place, but I knew you wouldn’t believe me unless I could make you see for yourself. I didn’t have the know-how to do that, so I wanted to take you to some friends of mine who I thought could help. I still think they can, and this car can Skip us there in a matter of moments, so hang tight.”

My foot slid upward in the floorboard to help me brace my head against the seatback, and that’s when I felt my shoe graze the two guns Maeve had used in her escape. She had thrown them down in the passenger floor after jumping into the car.

I knew what Skipping was. Dad prattled on about that one after a sci-fi movie about wormholes. Skipping was essentially the opening of a wormhole from one point to another and traversing great distances within seconds. Also how we ended up in Colorado from Alabama in no time at all.

“Are they the ones that paid you to get me?” I was now cautious of anyone who wanted me. I was no longer just some random Amalgam abductee. I was the key to a master plot of world domination. I had to make sure I didn’t fall into the wrong hands.

She shook her head denying they were. “No, but we essentially have the same boss, and it’s my sincerest hope that they might be able to help clean you up a bit. You’re still a bit raw, you know?”

I knew what she meant. I looked like I was half done, and not just as in I was part flesh, part metal. The new Amalgamated parts looked like they were missing something. What exactly? I couldn’t be sure. I had been dragged away too early. Something had to be done because I was hideous, but I wasn’t ready to find out what her friends had in mind just yet.

I betrayed her again. I picked up one of the guns at my feet, pointed it at Maeve, and pulled the release spring on the side to cock it. (Thank you video games for teaching me that one.) “No. You’re going to Skip this thing to my home, and you’re going to do it now.”

DONE

I was not scoring any brownie points with Maeve, this much was certain. The look she gave me was an entire swarm of daggers flung at my face. Reluctantly, she changed the Skip code in the strange red and white flashing console on the left side of the dash, and the car sped into a puddle of blinding light.  Through a mix of magic and science the car had produced the event-horizon directly in front of us.  The motor hummed away, and after we charged through a temporal formation there was only about a second’s worth of travel, and then we flashed back out to reality. We dropped two feet from the wormhole’s exit with a huge clanking sound, right in the middle of a pasture. The car tossed a mountain of churned sod and mud as we slid sideways to a stop before ramming into an oblivious cow munching away on some grass.

I instantly recognized being near a county road close to where the fairgrounds were. We had just traveled through a wormhole. To simplify the wormhole phenomenon I’ll use this question: Is it quicker for a worm to travel around the outside of the apple, or tunnel straight through the middle of the core? It was a big thing in all the science fiction shows I used to watch. I guess I had to wrap my head around the fact that I was living those sci-fi and fantasy tales as something of a strange and twisted reality.

 Purple and orange rays of dusk stretched from a line of heavy gray clouds as if the hand of God was about to slap us into the face of the Earth. It was what we deserved. I was a monster. Coming to terms with what I had just learned was not going to be easy. It might even be impossible. No wonder so many Amalgams traverse the world on insane death-reaping rampages. I did my best to maintain my composure, but as I looked around at the familiar sights of home, I began to lose it. I didn’t want to have to fight for every single inch of life. I wanted to coast through bored and unnoticed like I used to.

I dropped the gun to the floor. I wasn’t trying to be cool, or emotional, or play on Maeve’s good nature. I simply asked that she please take me home. It was all I wanted, and I swore, once done, I would be willing to go anywhere she wanted to take me. I was giving up. The sight of my hometown was too much. I knew then that I would not be able to stay no matter how much I wanted. She could go where she wanted. I was so close to the apartment, and my dad, but I was giving her permission to take me away if that’s what she chose. Home was supposed to make you stronger, not weaker, right?

She seemed to take pity on me. She rolled her eyes with a huff and asked two simple words, “Which way?”

My head fell back to the headrest atop the seat back; I pointed us homeward like a silent GPS until we arrived at my apartment complex. The sun was all but gone, and I was thankful we had the sweet spot on the bottom floor. It sat at the end of a handful of solo units. We parked and I cautiously shuffled to the door unnoticed. I now shared Maeve’s dread of public with a fervor that even she couldn’t muster. I think it was the screams of the newlywed couple still echoing in my mind which motivated me.

I paused as the sound of my metal hand clanked against the doorknob. My vision shifted from Dad’s truck, sitting in its normal parking space, to a less than amused Maeve who had taken back both confiscated Street Viper weapons. She scanned the parking lot, and looked for trouble with a warrior’s intensity. After a second or two she caught my eyes long enough to bestow a shred of compassion my way, and then she gave me a comforting nod that said everything would be fine.

It was all I needed to summon the courage to turn the knob. It was an odd sensation. I could still feel the metal between my fingers as I gripped it. It felt cool and smooth, but not as cold as it should have. All feeling was somehow muffled. I guess I should have considered myself lucky that I felt anything at all. I promised to explore the thought later as I entered the apartment and called out, “Dad?”

 The first thing I saw was the last thing I had seen when I left, that stupid mirror. I felt deserving of what had happened to me, and I hated myself for allowing this. If I had just stayed home and played cards like he wanted, I would have been at my crappy little job hating my boring life in an unknowingly-blissful state of ignorance instead of sneaking into my home, and hoping I wouldn’t panic the bajeezus out of my own father. Welcome to the more interesting life. I had crossed the fence and found the greener grass only to discover someone had come along and planted a minefield in it.

I stayed glued to the mirror as I walked in, but then I tripped over a stool that was supposed to be beside the door and not in the middle of the walkway. I caught myself before I fell, but not before unleashing a couple bombing runs of profanity. I let another barrage fly as I scanned my home that looked as though it had been ransacked by an entire army of thieves. Nothing was left unturned.

Maeve did her warrior woman thing and cleared each space to make sure no one was lurking. We were alone. Dad was gone. Other than everything being tossed about, the only sign that I could find where anything had happened was from the kitchen. Large dried puddles of blood were everywhere. Some kind of fight went on, and it did not end well for what must have been a
couple
of people. Just to the side of it a cemented corner of a newspaper clipping stuck to the tile. I tore it free to read:

LOCAL FATHER AND SON KILLED IN COLLISION WITH SEMI

Included in the article about my death was a picture of my little brown Honda hatchback. The front end had been crumpled all the way into the back, and the car had burned. The only way I knew it was my car was because I recognized the license plate number. If I had been in it I would certainly have been dead. I almost wished I had been.

I blinked; I fell to the floor and, in that same kitchen where I left my own father to cry alone, I began to shake. My body wretched, but as hard as I tried, I could not produce a single tear. It then occurred to me: I couldn’t cry. I felt the metal pieces around my eyes with my metal hands and I somehow knew there would be no tears to accompany my sorrow. There was nothing else to do, so I leaned over and my body did the only thing left of its own involuntary capacity. I hurled whatever remained of those cheeseburgers all over the floor.

Maeve was tough. Neither the blood nor the vomit seemed to faze her. I sat up wiping my face with the warm steel of my wrist as she came and sat beside me. She leaned against the counter and pulled her knees up to her. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t try to comfort me with wasteful words. She just sat and let me process the possibility that Dad had been killed as part of a quick and sloppy cover up. It had to be the only possibility. There was blood all over the kitchen, his truck was still in the parking lot, and the paper said all it needed to say reporting we
both
had died. He wasn’t home, and he wouldn’t be back.

I shook my head, “What now?”

“We go,” Maeve said softly, but matter-of-factly. “Your life as a Slate is over. It’s time to start a new one away from here.”

My voice was as rough as it had ever been. It sounded as if I had smoked ten packs a day since I was born, “And do what? Go serve tables at some Amalgam restaurant? I’m not good at anything.” 

“Well, that charm isn’t so bad.” She said with a teasingly playful smile, “That is when you’re not punching out women. We could at least get you a job as a bartender. Amalgams love their ale.”

I started to apologize about the whole hitting her thing, but she held up an understanding hand to stop me. I ignored the bartender crack; at least I hoped it was in jest. I mean geez, look at me, the least I could do was some heavy lifting as supernatural construction guy.

Maeve popped up and helped me stand. I collected the photo of my mom and dad, and then went to the kitchen where I collected my coffee pot, Flip. I cradled Flip as I met Maeve at the front door.

“What is that?”

“
Who
is that?” I corrected her. “This is Flip, and he makes the coffee.”

She rolled her eyes, and then cocked her head to the side as if a light of curiosity had been turned on inside her mind. “It occurs to me,” she said, “I know your coffee pot’s name, I read something over there that said your Dad’s name was George, but you have not, in all this time, once volunteered your name.”

“You haven’t asked.” I said, “And I guess I just assumed you had been given it as a part of your super-secret mercenary mission.”

“Well, I’m asking now.”

I looked around at the broken remains of life that I had to leave behind. To the world the person I was had died. My old life was gone. Everything about me was no more. It seemed foolish to hang on to a name that would only be associated with the pain of what was, and could never be. I sighed, looked her in the eye and gave her the best answer I could, “I don’t know what it’s
going to be
, but I promise you’ll be the first I tell when I do.”

She understood.

We climbed back into our stolen Street Viper car, and Maeve played with the Skip controls again. By our emergence into the field and not on a road, it was obvious that such a device was dangerous. I wondered if anyone had ever reemerged from a wormhole in the middle of the ocean or on the inside of a building. Not a comforting thought.  She pulled the car around to the back lot. She said she needed plenty of room to get up to speed. I couldn’t help but to laugh, “So do we have to get this baby up to eighty-eight miles per hour? Because you’ll need one-point-twenty-one jiggawatts.”

Maeve ignored, or didn’t get, the movie reference. “You ready?” She asked.

“To get turned in to your boss?” I replied.

She smiled, “How about to get fixed up.”

“Sure, what else do I have to lose?”

“Then hold on.” She laughed as she barked the tires. Maeve then took my hand feigning a serious question, “What the hell’s a jiggawatt?”