Wired Bone: Chapter Eleven (Patreon)

Chapter Eleven

After a while, John, Chris and Moss got bored of playing futbol and came over to fetch Luke and retry their attempts at making him feel better.

They found him sitting next to Sawyer, eagerly talking her ear off about an article he’d read about genetically-modified pets becoming more common in lower-income households, now that they’d become passéwith rich people. Sawyer seemed a bit lost, but was smiling a bit while Luke talked. He would have to ask his friends later if they thought it was a polite smile or a genuine one later.

“… and there was a picture of this big dog with ram horns and hooves, I’m not sure what the point was but the interview said the owners loved it so I guess they just liked it. I think I’d want some kind of cat, but maybe a normal one? Although a flying one could be fun too. I hear cats are mischievous, so maybe a flying cat would be a bad idea, but it could be really cute. What kind of pet would you like?”

“Um… I’ve already got a dog?”

“No, but if you had a modified one, I mean.”

“Oh. Um… a fish with legs?”

Lucas blinked, before he smiled widely, “That’s genius! I wish I’d thought of it.”

Sawyer seemed to preen a bit, even if she was eyeing his friends nervously as they got closer.

“I guess it’d have to be able to breathe air. Could be kind of fun to have a fish that lives in a tank but you can take for walks. Would a small one or a big one be better? Grandpa Walt has a bunch of fishes at his place — he lives at the proto-arc, dunno if you know him, he invited us over for tea once and showed us his pets, they’re these really colorful little things, I had to take care of them for a while when he was busy doing something or other and—”

Moss came up behind him and covered Luke’s mouth, which didn’t stop his talking but did muffle it, while John said to Sawyer, “Sorry if he talked your ear off, we were doing something else.”

“I-I didn’t mind,” said Sawyer, smiling a bit.

“Good!” said Chris, sitting next to Sawyer and wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “If you said he was annoying we were going to beat you up.”

It was hard to tell with all the fur in the way, but Lucas thought Sawyer paled a bit.

He bit Moss’ hand, making him yelp and let go, then explained, “They’re joking.”

“Oh.”

“Probably,” he added, before turning to them while Moss grabbed his head and shook it forward and back, “You guys done playing?”

“Yeah,” said Chris. “Diego tripped, hurt his knee, started crying and ran off with the ball.”

“I thought it was Mickey’s ball?”

“Yeah, Mick’s real mad about that.”

“Mm,” Luke stretched his hands forward, letting Chris and John pull him to his feet and dragging Moss up as he grabbed to the back of his hoodie. They would probably want to do something else, and he wasn’t sure about dragging Sawyer with them, so he waved at her and said, “Bye, Saw.”

“U-Um…” the chimera hesitated, also standing up and fiddling with her parasol. “Y-Yeah. See you around?”

“See you ‘round.”

She waved at him as they walked away, then hurried inside.

For some reason, John was smiling at him with a stupid look on his face.

“What?”

“Nothing,” shrugged John, “Just didn’t expect you to get a girlfriend.”

Lucas rolled his eyes and shoved John lightly, walking faster to pull ahead.

John caught up and kept talking, “And a chimera, too. Didn’t take you for the type.”

“I’m not any type,” Luke snapped. “And I was just making a friend.”

“She seemed to really like you, though,” said Chris.

“Because everyone else is a jerk to her.”

“Yeah, you’re a real knight in shining armor.”

“Ugh,” Lucas rolled his eyes. “Puberty was a mistake. It’s turning you two into idiots.”

“Hey!”

“Promise me you won’t be like this, Moss.”

“Nah,” said Mohsen, who was ten. “I’m gonna be swimming in pussy as soon as I can.”

“… I need to stop letting you hang out with Crane’s employees,” muttered Luke.

He didn’t really get the appeal of relationships and sex, honestly. He was fairly certain that he was at that age, but he never really felt a pressing need to see someone naked that all the older kids and some of his peers seemed to be feeling.

Before, Chris and John had been just as uninterested as Luke had felt when Will or Joel talked about their girlfriends and bases, whatever those were supposed to represent. Now it was like there was some sort of parasite in their brains, and the constant feeling that Lucas was missing out on something had only increased.

Victoria had suggested he might be gay when he brought this up to her, but stealing a couple magazines that catered to that audience hadn’t awakened anything. Crane suggested he might just be a late bloomer, but Luke was starting to think this was just another way he was odd.

He sighed a little through the nose and looked at the others, tuning back in. They were talking about eating somewhere, and discussing who would pay. When Lucas made to suggest he pay for everyone, John shushed him and went back to talking, so he just smiled a bit and looked around.

The street was mostly empty. There were still houses around, and a few people were brushing trash off the sidewalk in front of their houses, throwing buckets of water with a carelessness that rankled Lucas. As they walked past a deli, the radio spoke in a crackling voice that said that “… the impromptu meeting of the Hypercognitive Council has just let out, and our reporters on the scene tell us that there is a lot of movement going on despite a persistent lack of communications. One particular secretary assured the public that a statement would be delivered by the end of the week at the latest, leaving people wondering if…” over the sound of things being bagged and the customer taking their order.

The sensory input was starting to turn overwhelming, and the only thing Luke could think of was that he deserved this and worse. His breathing turned ragged.

Everything pulled at his attention.

The radio from the deli they were leaving behind.

An awful noise of the iron manhole cover scraping against concrete.

The omnipresent smell of something rotting in the garbage in the nearest alley.

The heat of the sun.

The taste of the vaguely sour milk from breakfast that lingered in his mouth.

The smell of his own sweat.

The feeling of the tank top, still moist, against his overheated body.

The others talking, occasionally getting louder or laughing.

The manhole cover pushing out of the manhole out of the corner of his eye.

Out of curiosity, he focused on that last one. It’d been a while since someone did maintenance in this area.

He expected to see a jumpsuit, rubber sealed to keep any homebrewed germs and viruses out of the body. Gas masks, perhaps.

Something human.

What he saw had probably been, once, but no longer.

His face had been completely warped by steel, plastic and glass.

Everything from his forehead down to the bridge of what had been his nose was covered in small circles of black mirrors, glinting under the summer sun. Said nose had been replaced with a small vent that inhaled air and exhaled a coppery red mist. His cheeks were simply gone, leaving his drooling mouth and hanging jaw as the last recognizably human parts of his head.

The back of his head was hidden under a mass of emergent wires, black and green alike, which fell back like a mockery of hair.

The rest of his body was worse.

His ribcage stuck out against his clammy pale skin, pulled tight against his skeleton by malnourished musculature and disturbed by foreign objects. Wires were evident all over, and his belly was pulled so far back that Lucas had to wonder if there were any organs filling it at all.

His back was pulled open, skin torn and leaking pus as strange pulsating and pendulating metallic bags hung down from where they had been attached to his frame. Tubes connected to them, through his shoulders and wrapping around his arms until they went into his hands.

Everything from the elbow down was covered in interlocking black metal plates, and the fingers appeared to be nothing but tubes that could bend in half.

As he pulled itself out of the hole, Luke could see eight spider-like metallic limbs climbing out and discreetly putting the cover back in place.

Due to the speed, casualness and ease of its action, and the relative emptiness of the street, Lucas seemed to be the only person to be watching it at that moment. The others were still talking, the radio was still going, and this creature was looking around with those gleaming black camera eyes.

It was not designed to last past the day, Luke realized.

The thought seemed to form itself without any willing deduction, but he could not find any flaw in its logic.

Nothing about this thing looked sustainable. What skin remained was red and inflamed with pus, most certainly infected. Fixing it would probably take twice the effort it took to make it.

This wasn’t a being, this was a weapon.

This was Dark Technology, exactly as it had been described to him over the last twelve years.

Lucas stopped walking.

John bumped into his back and started to ask what was going on, before he spotted the creature. The others followed suit.

More and more people — there were twelve other people besides them standing around the block; eight adults, three teens, one kid younger than Moss — noticed it.

The radio was still playing, talking about recent events that might be the cause of the impromptu Council meeting. Perhaps an issue with the centenary festival?

Seemingly satisfied that people were looking at it, the monster focused on one member of the audience.

A small girl, probably younger than Mohsen. Staring at the monster.

It aimed its fingers at her.

Luke’s body was running before his mind even managed to issue the command. In later years he would embellish and claim to have felt no fear, but the only actual thought in his mind had been the certainty that he was about to die like an idiot.

Nevertheless, just as one of the sacs on the monster’s back shrunk slightly and the tube on the arm expanded proportionally, Lucas reached the little girl and in a burst of adrenaline picked her up on the way forward.

The heat from the blast of fire that came through those tube fingers bit into his back, and looking over his shoulder he could see the monster slowly moving his hand after them.

He ran around it, staying a few steps ahead of the stream, before ducking into an alley where the angle would keep the fire from reaching them. Lucas was afraid, but he seemed to have gotten so terrified of being charred to death that he went full circle and came around to a bizarre sort of focused calm that let him stay on task.

Once inside the alley, he felt slightly less terrified, which put him back in the positive terror value and let him almost shit his britches. His breathing turned ragged and he leaned on a wall for support, he could barely hear screaming and the monster continuing to shoot fire over his heart thundering in his ears.

He looked down at the girl he was still holding by the back of her shirt, which had gotten stretched out in all the running. She was pale and had her jaw hanging, eyes wide with terror.

Luke kneeled down in front of her — not that it was really needed to get on eye level with her — and grabbed her face, forcing her and himself to look each other in the eyes.

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Her mouth worked a bit, not making any noise. He slapped her slightly, and she shook her head.

“Okay,” said Lucas.

He looked over her shoulder and saw that the alley had a dead end.

Damn.

“Do you know where your parents are?”

This time she nodded immediately.

“Is the monster in the way?”

She nodded again.

Damn again.

Lucas licked his lips a bit, then nodded. “Okay. I need you to stay here for a second.”

She was starting to cry and sniffle. Before he could react, her hands shot out and grabbed onto Luke’s hoodie, and in a blubbery voice she said, “Please don’t leave me alone.”

Crap. Okay, think, what did his mom use to do when he was afraid and lonely?

Sic John on him and give him a treat.

Not really applicable, unless…

Luke reached forward and picked up the girl. Without adrenaline pumping in his veins, she felt heavier, but he still managed to drag her closer to the mouth of the alley now that fire wasn’t enveloping the walls.

He leaned over the corner. The monster was focused on burning down some other buildings, apparently having lost interest after they ran. He wasn’t facing directly away from them, but he was starting to turn in that direction.

Risking a look away, Lucas scanned the street until he spotted his friends. Like him, they were huddled in an alley, peeking out at the monster with wary eyes. Mohsen spotted him first, and quickly called their attention over to him.

John and Moss smiled with relief, but Chris was a soldier, and her eyes focused on the little girl first.

She tried to make eye contact with Luke across the street and made a finger gun.

Luke shook his head. Had she forgotten? They talked about this.

Her lips formed a hushed cuss, then she nodded. She pointed at him, then gestured further back, then around, and then behind herself.

Lucas shook his head again and tried to gesticulate a wall with his arms full of child.

Chris seemed to understand, because she hissed another cuss.

She leaned out just a bit to look at the monster again, which Lucas mimicked. It still wasn’t fully facing away, but it didn’t seem to spot them.

It had stopped firing for now, but its spider-like legs cracked pavement as it spun around. His head swung from side to side, seeking targets among the adults that had run away and spilling drool down its hanging, skinless chin.

Lucas and Chris looked back to each other. She gestured for him to wait.

Luke frowned, but before he could figure out what gesture would communicate that she shouldn’t be an idiot, Chris had turned around and headed deeper into the alley. Luke barely saw her grabbing something out of a dumpster, drawing looks from John and Mohsen, before she left his field of vision.

Lucas started to chew his lip and adjusted his grip on the girl. He really wished he’d had the brains to ask Crane for a new gun, even if the thought of shooting again made him vaguely nauseous. He should have known it was better to be safe than sorry in Santo Ataúd.

… Even if he would have never expected to see this thing in his life.

Seriously, was he cursed or something?

Luke shook his head and focused again. John was gesturing at him to rush over, to which he shook his head, but Mohsen was inspecting the monster with meticulous interest.

Great, maybe he’d be able to figure out how they could get rid of the freaking thing without a gun. It’s wasn’t like the police would get there in time to stop it before it set half the neighborhood on fire.

His thoughts turned back to his lack of gun.

Stupid, he wanted to yell at himself, there’s a monster attacking you and your friends, and the best you have is a switchblade. Would that even kill it? It was probably full of weird metal things, like the plating around its arms.

… his arms.

The thought started to take shape as he took another look at the monster, and then promptly came to a stop when Lucas spotted Chris peeking out of a different alley, having walked around the block and come up on the opposite side of the monster. She was stepping out of it, and into its field of vision.

Lucas almost shouted, stopped only by fear’s vice grip around his throat. John was not similarly indisposed, and that made the monster turn in his direction, raising a hand to fire again.

This gave Chris the opening she needed to fully step out, raise a half-rotten, barely-bitten apple over her head and lob it with all her strength.

It struck the wires on the back of its head with force, actually making its head lurch forward, and it turned around in a snap, already firing. Chris had already made for the alley when it aimed its hand in her direction, but she still screamed as the stream of fire bit into the opening of her hiding spot.

Luke did not allow himself to stare or worry. He ran for John and Moss’ alley as fast as he could.

The half-formed thought lingered in the back of his head, barely out of reach. The run seemed to stretch endlessly. Fear and panic warped space and made the run take a small eternity. The girl was heavy in his arms. His damn short legs weren’t helping, either. Something about the arms? And his switchblade?

He chanced a look at it, almost tripped, and the fear of dying because he hadn’t tied his shoelaces tight enough seemed to snap something in place as the plan formed in his head.

He almost didn’t realize when he made it to the alley, almost crashing into John who caught Lucas with choked scream.

“We have to help Chris,” was the first thing John said, frantic and wide-eyed.

Chris was still screaming a bit. She didn’t sound terrified anymore.

She was trying to call the monster’s attention.

Lucas looked out, then he forcefully pried the girl off of his body, where she was grabbing onto his torso with all her toddler grip strength. He handed her to John, who seemed a little calmer.

“You have an idea?” he asked, covering the girl’s mouth when she started to cry again.

Lucas made a so-so gesture and knelt down to tie his shoes triple knot before snapping his fingers and calling Moss over.

“What can I do?” he immediately asked, the usual jovial shine missing from his eyes.

“Th-The tubes,” the words almost caught in his throat like taffy. It was hard not to go non-verbal in situations like this. “In its arms. The tubes.”

“What about them?” asked John, struggling to hold the little girl in place.

“W-What are they made of?”

Moss frowned, then he looked over the edge of the alley. He turned back to Lucas and said, “Looks like plastic? I think it’s the same stuff that the rain tap from the proto-arc uses.”

Luke nodded, then stood up. He walked up to the mouth of the alley, hesitated, then turned back around.

He took off his hoodie and walked up to the little girl, who slowed her tantrum at seeing him.

He tried for a smile and handed her his hoodie, saying, “They’ll take care of you, okay?”

Still tearful, she grabbed it and wiped her snotty nose with it, promptly ruining any notions of getting it back in Luke’s head, before nodding.

Lucas looked to John and Moss, who seemed concerned.

“Take her out of here,” he said, as he reached into a pocket and walked backwards out of the alley. “Take her to… someone, I dunno. Just go that way.”

“Wait—” said Mohsen.

“Lucas, wait!” said John.

Luke did not listen. He turned around, pulling the switchblade out of his pocket, and ran for the street.

The monster had approached Chris’ hiding spot slowly, consuming more and more of it in flames as he got a better angle. Chris’ distracting screams were slowly turning more genuine and distant as she was forced to give up territory. The bulbous bags on its back had barely shrunken despite constant firing.

Luke wanted to scream. He wanted to run away. He wanted someone he trusted to take care of this for him.

You can’t always get what you want.

He tried to run forward as silently as possible, but Lucas could barely hear anything through the haze of adrenaline, Chris’ screaming, the screaming of people inside the buildings which were catching fire, the crackling of the loose trash on the street that caught light, the—

Focus.

He took as deep of a breath as he could with the thickening smoke in the air and his running. A couple meters until he reached the monster.

With a snap, the switchblade opened in his grip, making a ka-click sound.

He didn’t think it had been loud.

The monster disagreed, and its head turned around almost independent of its body, its black glass eyes glimmering with reflected fire. Now that he was closer, Luke could see that it moved in an odder way than he expected. Like every joint of his body had to be told what to do, independent of each other.

But when they moved, they were fast. His shoulder, then his elbow, and finally its wrist all moved to track Luke.

The young boy started to move forward and to his right side, trying to stay ahead of the monster’s turning. His palms were sweaty and his lungs ached, possibly from smoke inhalation. His eyes were teary from the haze, the fear and the sweat running down his face, making his vision blurry.

A stream of fire shot from the hand heading his way. Convection slammed heat into Luke’s side, and it was only getting worse. He was dead, no two ways around it.

Better die with the fucking monster’s throat between his teeth, then.

He allowed himself to scream, even if it made running harder, as he charged. The stream was closer. He moved further to the side.

The stream was closer. Any further to the side and he would be too far away from it to hurt it. He could only go forward.

The stream was closer. His entire side was starting to feel burnt and pained.

The stream—

Got interrupted when a trash can lid cut through the air like a frisbee and, through random chance, slammed into the firing hand’s front, interrupting the stream for long enough that Luke bought himself some space.

He didn’t need to look over his shoulder to know that John was standing behind him, looking terrified but still willing to help.

He was almost right next to the monster. Its spider-like legs occupied a space wider than its body, and the way they lashed out as he approached made it hard to get right up to him.

But he wasn’t looking to get right up to him.

The monster’s left arm twitched suddenly, making slight popping sounds as it turned behind its back to aim its fingers at Lucas.

Just like he wanted.

Grandpa Walt was a friendly older man who taught boxing to the kids at Gibson Heights on the cheap. Luke’s technique wasn’t the best, and he usually got away with just being hard to knock down.

But he knew enough to duck under a swipe and come out the other side.

The fingers started spewing fire as soon as they headed for Luke, but he was already ducking out of the way and stepping to the side, hands up as defense out of habit. The arm froze its movement just over Luke’s head, but he turned and took a desperate stab with the switchblade.

He almost missed.

But, just at the edge of the plastic tube, the knife went in before bouncing off a plate, making a small spurt of clear liquid start spewing out.

It would have to be enough. Lucas didn’t bother to watch to see if his desperate gamble worked, he started running directly away from the monster as it turned again and aimed both flaming hands in his direction.

The streams of fire caught the liquid in the air, and ignited the stream. All the way into its back.

At the time, Lucas was slightly away from the explosion. But not enough.

The explosion was unlike anything he’d ever been caught in. His eardrums burst immediately, the air was crushed out of his lungs, his entire skeleton creaked as his body was launched forward, through a bodega’s glass pane, covering his body in cuts on the front and burns on his back.

It was total agony, and it only got worse when he ended his flight by slamming into a metal shelving unit, which rocked back then fell forward, on top of Lucas.

He could barely keep his eyes open. Every breath, every expansion of his lungs, felt like having shards of glass wrapped around them. He couldn’t move the arm on the side that had crashed against the shelves, the blood pouring from his nose was going down into his mouth and filling it with a coppery taste.

There was a sharp ringing in his ears, which paired horribly with the crushing weight on his body. His vision was clouded and dark at the edges, but he could barely spot the bodega’s shattered ceiling lights through the tears in his eyes.

Between every overwhelming sensation, it was impossible to parse anything. He could only feel confused, or perhaps concussed. White noise, like a radio tuned to a dead station, filled his neurons and burned his synapses.

He couldn’t breathe.

He couldn’t breathe!

HE COULDN’T BREATHE!

Fear gripped his racing heart. He swallowed thick saliva that might be tainted with blood or bile, coughed, then set about surviving.

He hadn’t killed that fucking monster just to drown in dry land on his own blood.

The one arm that wasn’t crushed down by a shelf wiped at his eyes and he looked around desperately. There was no lever within reach that he could use.

What he did see was fire consuming the store.

Fine. He hadn’t exploded the monster just to burn alive, either.

His arm was being crushed, but if he pulled hard enough…

His arm failed to bend or move, causing Luke to grunt with pain and frustration. He slammed his free hand into his arm, screaming with frustration like an animal, before pulling at it.

His skin started to tear and bleed, but his arm was going back.

If he could free it, then… something. It would be one more hand to work with, at least.

The heat was rising, more of the store was getting burnt down. Sweat soaked his body again. The smoke was getting thicker.

He pulled harder at his arm, tearing another wet scream from his throat until he started coughing, which caused only a brief pause in his pulling and screaming.

Distantly, as if coming from a thousand kilometers away, he barely heard Chris’ voice call out, “He’s in there!”

The shelves were the kind with holes in the bottom. Lifting his head, relative to the wall, he was able to peek through them and see something he would never forget.

He saw John, Chris and Mohsen enter the burning building. Heedless of the fire, of the shattered glass, of anything that might stop lesser friends. They jumped through where the pane had been and started looking around for Lucas, teary eyes wide with desperation as they started to cough from the smoke.

Touched as he was by their efforts, Lucas would much rather his friends stayed away from burning buildings, and he tried to scream for them to run off.

Instead, all he could manage was a racking cough that brought their attention to his crash site.

“Fuck, that looks heavy,” John panted. “Luke, can you move?”

Another attempt to scream for them to go, resulting only in coughing and writhing in pain.

“Guess not,” John muttered, swallowing nervously. Fear was thick in his voice, but he wasn’t running. “Okay… Chris, help me lift it. Moss, you think you can help Luke?”

“Yeah!” screamed Mohsen, in a very controlled sort of panicked manner.

John and Chris took their place in front of the rapidly-heating shelving unit, hooking their fingers through the holes in the top shelf.

“Lift with your knees,” advised Chris, smiling shakily like she was trying to make a joke.

John humored her with a slight smile back then took position. “On three. One, two… three!”

Grunting, they managed to barely lift the heavy unit a few centimeters.

Moss did not wait. He threw himself under and crawled on all four over his belly, as fast as he could while brushing away products and a few glass shards from broken bottles to make it to Lucas. He grabbed onto the shoulders of his torn-up tank top and pulled desperately.

Figuring that telling them to leave him and run would be useless, Luke tried to help by kicking against shelves and trying to crawl towards where Moss pulled him.

John and Chris grunted with effort as they tried to lift a little more to make it easier on them, if just a bit.

He had to tear his pant legs free of where they were pinned, but eventually he wasn’t being crushed any more. Turning in Moss’ grip, he dragged himself forward with the one arm that was answering. The part of him that wasn’t consumed by the instincts of a caged animal found itself amazed at the stupidity of wasting time trying to free a paralyzed arm.

As soon as he was mostly free from the shelving unit’s shadow, he curled up to let John and Chris let it go. They did so, took half a second to shake their tired arms, then proceeded to pick him up and try to drag him out through the space the window had previously occupied, since the door was very much on fire.

It took some work, especially since he could barely see straight, but soon enough they were on the street.

It looked like a scene out of hell.

The liquid in the monster’s back had spread with the explosion, coating everything nearby, and the fire had greedily spread to consume more and more. People were pouring out of buildings now that the fire wasn’t being spread on purpose, rushing to spread around buckets of water as they waited for firefighters to help.

Distantly, very distantly, sirens rang out through the humid summer air.