Toxicity (41 page)

They continued on through the
jungle, until Flizz gave a low gasp of wonder. Jenny moved to her and they
stood at the edge of a concealed cenote. It was about a hundred metres across,
with crumbling rock edges, a wide shaft that dropped perhaps two or three
hundred metres straight down, a cylinder punched vertically through Amaranth’s
crust by the fist of God. It was almost perfectly circular, the rock a sandy
colour, and deep down below them a turquoise lake sat, perfectly still.

“That’s beautiful,” said Flizz.

“Incredible,” agreed Jenny.

“God’s own private lake,” said
Flizz.

Their hands found one another’s,
fingers entwining, and they stood for long moments soaking up the atmosphere,
the beauty, and listening to the tinkle of a narrow gentle waterfall that
sprayed white foam into one edge of the distant lake. Birds chattered in the
trees. And for the first time in her adult life, Jenny found peace. And joy.

Flizz turned to her, eyes
sparkling. “Let’s do it.”

“It?”

“Jump.”

Jenny peered down. “We might
break our backs.”

“We might die,” agreed Flizz.

Fingers still entwined, they took
several steps back. Their breaths caught in their throats, and laughing with
pure adrenaline, with pure abandon, with absolute anarchy, a disintegration of
convention and social expectation and normality and training and common sense,
Jenny and Flizz ran, and leapt out into the wide expanse, and fell, fell, fell
into the still turquoise waters of the deep, perfect cenote.

~ * ~

NOW,
JENNY WATCHED her ex-lover, ex-partner, ex-girlfriend, ex-God in the mirror.
Flizz was tied up tight, head upright and proud, eyes harsh and narrow. She was
naked, just like Jenny, and this fake reflection was a parody of their once
beautiful relationship. Jenny still loved Flizz, and she knew Flizz still loved
her; but they had chosen Impurity and their work of bringing down The Company
over their love. To both women, Amaranth and its freedom was more important
than their own desires. But now, as Jenny, strapped to her slab, mouth filled
with injected foam, watched her true love through the transparent mirror, she
wanted to scream -
no, oh, no, you cannot do this, not to my love, not to my
Flizz, not to the perfect woman in my life; because that would be beyond
comprehension, that would be a torture so great I might not arrive out of the
other side...

If you want to visit the realms
of insanity; this is how to do so.

If you want to break me like a
stick; this is the way forward.

Jenny watched, in horror, her
mind ticking faster than any supercomputer. She struggled against her bonds,
steel straps around wrist and ankle, but they were too tight, too strong, too
permanent. She caught Randy from the corner of her eye and he was watching the
peepshow-fuckshow-tortureshow about to begin, and he was grinning, and Jenny’s
brow darkened because she wanted him dead. She fought her bonds with renewed
violence. They were too strong, too tight. Bastards. Bastards! Her eyes
flickered to Flizz - Vasta, Head of Security, had appeared on the other side of
the mirror.
Was it a direct portal to the place? Or just a TV screen
projecting an image?
Vasta carried a long, gleaming cut-throat razor. They
were speaking, but the sound had been muted. Jenny could see the muscles
working in Vasta’s jaws, saw Flizz, angry, eyes bright, talking to Vasta but
watching the blade hung low, a curve of dangerous, sharpened steel.

“She won’t be dissuaded, you
know,” said Randy, almost conversationally.

Jenny watched them talking, Vasta
edging closer and closer, the blade coming up, a threatening, terrifying,
simple sliver of steel. In her mouth, the ball of foam had started to loosen.
Only a little, but spit had finally worked between her cheek walls and the
compacted foam. Jenny started to probe and push with her tongue, working it
around, pushing at the ball of foam.

“Flizz is talking now. Pleading.
Telling Vasta everything. But it’s too late.” He turned and stared and moved
close to Jenny. “Too late for you cunts. Tell me about McGowan. And Mr Candle.
Especially Mr Candle. And then we’ll stop...” - he glanced over his shoulder,
where the cut-throat razor was resting against Flizz’s perfect white breast - “peeling
your friend like a ripe fruit.”

Jenny nodded her head vigorously,
eyes frightened, head bowing low, and Randy brought up another spray and pushed
it into her mouth. He squeezed the trigger as, over his shoulder, the blade
moved swiftly down, slicing off Flizz’s right breast to leave an oval of raw
flesh. Blood ran down her belly. Her muscles strained at her bonds, like
vibrating tendons of steel. Flizz’s mouth was open in a silent scream at the
ceiling, as the cut-throat razor began to slash, carving up the flesh of her
chest and belly into bloody ribbons. She danced and jerked against her bonds.
She screamed and screamed and screamed...

The ball of foam was gone from
Jenny’s mouth, and she spat out the shrivelling phlegm lump, moaning, her eyes
fixed on Flizz’s dance of blood and torture, and Randy came close and his eyes
were bright and the scars on his face were weeping. “Tell me, tell me where we
can find Mr Candle...”

“My throat,” wheezed Jenny. “Can’t...
speak...”

Randy was close, his tattered
rebuilt ear close to Jenny’s mouth. It was a simple duck and turn to place her
teeth against his throat, and then she bit, and she bit deep and hard, her
teeth sinking through flesh and oesophagus, taking in his entire Adam’s apple
and holding him there as blood ran down her chin and down her throat and Randy
shrieked and gurgled, fists lashing at her, not punches but a panic-fuelled
battering. And the more he struck her, the harder she bit, blood gushing into
her mouth and throat, and all the time she could see Flizz being striped by the
razor and dancing a jig like a puppet of death.

Suddenly, Randy stopped hitting
and Jenny released her grip a little. He was panting, his throat held in her
jaws; stalemate.

“Rweese mwe,” said Jenny through
her mouthful of flesh and windpipe.

Randy himself could not speak,
but he got the idea real fast. Jenny heard a jangle of Minotaur keys, felt
Randy’s shaking, shuddering hands rising towards her bonds, and they melted
away and her hands were free. For a moment, her muscles spasmed with cramp and
nothing worked, but then she grabbed Randy’s head and they both fell to the
floor, and she relaxed her bite and spat blood in his face. He was vibrating
like an epileptic having a seizure. She took the long digital keys from his
grip and released her ankles, and gazed down at Randy, his eyes fixed on her,
his mouth working soundlessly. She’d damn near bit out his throat.

Smoothly, she took a pistol from
a holster at Randy’s hip and, looking around, placed the gun at his head. “Time
to die,” she snarled.

“Freeze, motherfucker!” screamed
a voice and there came a cocking of guns, of SMKKs. Jenny rolled fast and leapt
at the mirror/TV screen, arms up to protect her face, leapt towards the
tortured, thrashing figure of Flizz in all her ribbon-torn tagliatelle-skinned
agony, dancing like a marionette on rubber strings. There came a scream of
shattering glass and sparking electronics as Jenny struck the portal, and she
felt it fold around her, break around her, shards slicing into her arms and
flanks, and she was through, sailing through cool air and she expected to land
on the floor and see Flizz, poor tortured Flizz, and she’d put a round through
Vasta’s skull and rescue her true love, her one love, her
only
love...

Shards tinkled all around her.
She landed on sharp broken pieces of glass in a tiny square room. All around,
black holes filled with cables fed off into blackness. There was no Flizz. The
image was a projection. Somewhere, Flizz was still being cut to ribbons. Jenny
heard boots behind her, and reversed the pistol and fired off ten shots, the
gun booming in this narrow confined place. Then she picked a tube at random and
squeezed her slim, naked body into it, squeezing in amongst the cables and
pushing herself forward as fast as possible. It was hot in the tube, and wires
sizzled the hairs on her arms. She could smell hot oil and grease and hear a
thousand different pitches of buzzing sound. Behind her, SMKK rounds screamed
and clattered, but they faded as she shuffled quickly forward, onwards, not
thinking about where she was going, or about rescue, or even about what she was
going to do. One bright primal spark sizzled hot in the centre of her brain. It
was a spark of existence; the need to survive. Jenny squeezed her way onwards
into the darkness, tears leaving streaks in the dirt and blood on her face.

~ * ~

RENAZZI
LODE STOOD, hands on her hips, as Randy was helped to his feet, one hand
clamped protectively around his gashed throat. It took him a long time to look
up and stare at the fury in Renazzi’s eyes.

“You let her go,” she said, voice
soft.

When Randy spoke, it was as a low
croak and caused him considerable, obvious agony. “She tried to bite out my
throat.”

“You fucking let her
go!”
snapped
Renazzi, punching Randy on the nose. He fell back, and she strode over him and
stared down and her eyes were narrowed and evil. “She went into the
tube,
fuckwit.
There are ten thousand miles of fucking tubes in fucking Bacillus Port, linking
every single fucking factory and unit we own. I want you to get in there and
find her...”

“But... I need medical...”

“Now!”

Randy struggled to his knees, and
patted where his pistol had gone, and looked up weakly.

Renazzi was pointing a gun. For a
moment he thought she was going to shoot him, there on his knees. A basic
execution. But she reversed the weapon and handed it to him.

Grimly, silent, Randy climbed to
his feet, and - with one hand still clamped to the teeth gouges in his throat -
shuffled through the smashed TV portal and towards the many tubes. He felt the
dark brooding presence of Renazzi Lode behind him, like a toad on his shoulder;
like a cancer in his soul.

“You’ll need this,” she said, and
punched him in the back. He gasped, and felt the gem from her ring burrow
through his clothing and flesh and bone, and settle in his heart, monitoring
him.

Okay,
said Renazzi in his mind, words
buzzing like insects.
Now I see what you see, hear what you hear. There’s no
fucking it up this time, Randy Zaglax. If she gets out of here in that state,
tells the fucking media what she has seen, it could be extremely damaging for
Greenstar.

“You want me to kill her?”

Yes.

“But what about Mr Candle?”

Flizz spoke. Sang like a tortured
chicken. Even now she’s being fed through a mincer and will be
en route
to a recycling food
plant within the hour. Now... kill Jenny Xi. Don’t fuck it up, Randy, or you’ll
be in the mincer, too.

Randy moved to the central four
tubes and examined them closely. One had a scuffed edge. He hoisted himself up
and forced himself into the narrow space. It was hot and claustrophobic, cables
digging into his arms and body and legs. He was forced to move his hand from
his wounded throat, which wept blood into the cabling innards.

Randy vomited, then wiped his
mouth with the back of his hand, and crawled through his own mess

Kill her,
said Renazzi.
I’ll be with you
every step of the way.

~ * ~

TWELVE

HORACE,
THE DENTIST, Anarchy Android, one of the most revered and feared hunter,
torture and killing models ever created by Anarchy Inc., tumbled under the
ocean, turning slowly, beat left and right by currents but turning, turning,
winding himself in a cocoon of the heavy steel cable which pinned his arms to
his sides and weighed him down. Blackness filled his mind, poured into him like
oil, and the Biohazard Ocean poured into his mouth, into his throat, was sucked
in and down into his lungs and belly, filling him up with its poison; with its
hatred. With its toxicity.