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Walker stepped inside the command centre and instantly regretted his decision to enter alone. He was in a large hexagonal room crammed with computers and monitors, with a darkened annex tailing off from the rear of the chamber. A set of three office desks, complete with high back leather chairs and large flat screen terminals, formed an arrowhead facing two angled walls of screens. The two huge banks of monitors drenched the gloomy area in a pale, ghostly glow. It reminded Walker of an odd shaped television gallery, only the relayed feeds here showed dozens of different views of Folly and the surrounding desert. The screens’ images changed, cascading left to right every few seconds, as they switched inputs to accommodate views from all the remote cameras scattered across Folly and the surrounding area. Walker’s eyes roamed the across the hive of screens, searching the pictures on display for any telltale sign of the Machine, but the multiple, toggling angles revealed nothing.
Then his eyes were drawn to an image in the corner of the video wall. A feed there showed the armoury and he saw Alvin and Marlowe within the frame, stuffing more weapons into rucksacks. He smiled for a moment, reassured by their virtual presence. Then his eyes drifted to the next monitor and found Lynch. The ex-grunt was being tracked by a high angled view, as he wandered down another white corridor. Lynch paused every few feet to kick in doors and cover each unseen room with the shotgun. Walker watched him work his way along the passage, evidently not finding the Machine or any survivors. It was then that a cold and unwelcome feeling pulled his eyes to the last monitor, and he saw himself on the screen there, being viewed from the annex at the back of the hexagonal gallery of the command centre. He instinctively whirled around to look, but there was nothing to see there, only darkness. He returned his gaze to the monitor, fascinated and uncomfortable that he could see himself being voyeuristically filmed.
But something else was bothering him too. He then realised that although there appeared to be many remote cameras throughout the facility and surrounding desert, the only interior views showing in the gallery were of him and Alvin, Marlowe and Lynch. It was as if they, and only they, were under surveillance from afar, whilst all the other internal facility cameras did ‘t appear to be feeding their images. Images that might reveal the whereabouts of the Machine.
Walker checked the three screens tracking him and his companions again. He saw Lynch reach the intersection of the corridor and turn into the passage that branched off to his left. He then disappeared from sight, but moments later reappeared when the monitor switched to another high angle shot of him approaching the camera position in the new passageway. Walker felt a cold, slippery sensation worm its way quickly up his spine. The camera switch could have been a coincidence, the result of a random rotation through the feeds by whatever software default was controlling the sources, but he didn’t think so. It didn’t feel random.
It felt like they were being watched.
Unlike the rest of the monitors on display in the command centre, these three screens showing Walker and his colleagues didn’t cut away to other sources. Even Lynch’s screen, having switched once to follow him down the adjacent corridor, now held on the ex-soldier, following him.
Walker looked again at the screen showing the rear view from the command centre; of him. He stared at his own body silhouetted against the banks of glowing screens. He focused his eyes on the same screen showing the same scene within the monitor’s image, but it was too small for him to detect himself shrinking into infinity. As he stared into the scene he felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise, as if something large and malevolent stepped out of the shadows behind him.
It was then that his ears tuned into a light rasping sound coming from the shadows behind him. He felt his muscles tighten, as he held himself rigid and continued to listen. The sound was rhythmic, but delicate, frail. And now that he’d picked upon it, he wasn’t sure that the sound hadn’t been with him from the moment he’d entered the room. A faint series of dry, straining breaths, buried beneath the accumulated hum of server fans and monitors. His eyes watched the image on the screen in front of him as he remained perfectly still. There was no nightmarish figure to be seen, advancing on him from the darkness, just his own terrified statue, alone and inert against the eyes of the desert.
He took a deep breath and held it as he turned to face the shadows. He could see nothing in the darkened recess behind the command centre. He couldn’t even tell how deep it was, or if it opened out into a whole other chamber at the gallery’s rear. His wide eyes looked longingly at the door, then picked out a small panel of light switches set into the wall just outside the edge of the adjacent darkness. He left his crutch leaning against one of the desks and slowly edged forwards towards both the light switch and the darkness. He felt like that little boy who in years gone by would creep upstairs at bedtime and search his room for monsters, never finding them, but always certain that they lay in wait for him in the darkness night after night.
He hovered at the dark threshold and reached slowly for the light switch. Halfway through the movement, a bolt of courage, or perhaps foolishness, made his fingers shoot forwards and snap the light on, as if some subconscious part of him was eager to be done with this game of hide and seek. The rear annex was instantly exposed. It was a rectangular room lined with uniform racks of blinking, black servers, all bathed in a deep red-light bleeding from the halogens above. This red glare distracted his eyes for a moment, making the unveiled scene before him seem at first abstract and impossible to decipher, but as he continued to stare at the awful thing stretched out in front of him, he realised his mind wasn’t playing tricks on him after all.
The man was hanging above him, his outstretched arms and legs splayed in the shape of an X, just like the unfortunate soldiers up on the mountain. But that was where the similarities ended. This victim of modern crucifixion had suffered a much worse fate. The man was held upright by bonds around his wrists; thick looms of cables and computer wires lashing them to the exposed metal framework of the tileless ceiling above. His ankles were secured with more cables to the server racks below in the same way. Walker saw that there was something very wrong with the man’s bright and glistening body, its surface rippled and moist. Under the red glare of the annex lights, it took him a moment to decide what exactly it was about the figure, but as he moved closer, it became obvious.
The man had been completely skinned.
The exposed flesh was thick and meaty with a wet lustre to it. Taught lines of stripped, skinless muscle travelled the body and a darker network of sprawling veins mapped out its flow of blood. Numerous IV tubes punctured the man’s neck, abdomen and limbs, trailing off to an adjacent crash cart and several metal stands, feeding bags of saline and plasma hanging there. Walker traced more tubing back to multiple plump sacks of clear, yellow fluid suspended in mid-air next to the man, like the transparent workings of a huge floating jellyfish, feeding him life through a plethora of tendril drips. A cardiac monitor and defibrillator sat on the crash cart, and to Walker’s surprise, the digital display there showed regular rises in the green line mapping the man’s weak, but continuing pulse.
Walker drew closer to the skinless man, both repelled, but intrigued at the same time. Surely this was all that was left of Shelly, the head scientist? Marlowe had said the Machine originally appeared in Folly wearing the man’s stolen skin, and so they’d naturally assumed the doctor was dead. Not so, it appeared. Apparently the Machine wasn’t finished with its creator, not by a long shot. Walker looked up at the stretched figure again, truly amazed that the man could have lasted so long. He stepped forwards and craned his head to try and see what was left of his features. The scientist’s head hung slack and bowed, so Walker had to edge uncomfortably close to his sticky torso in order to see his “face”.
Shelly’s fleshless head suddenly snapped upright and wheezed at Walker, making the Englishman stumble backwards into the crash cart, where he had to juggle the tubing to prevent the plasma bags from breaking. Shelly writhed against his bonds, screaming and flailing in a vain attempt to escape. Walker watched in horror as the cadaverous scientist spent the last of his energy, then moaned and sagged back against his restraints. Two cloudy eyes rolled up from the fleshy mask and looked at Walker. Shelly muttered a pathetic groan.
“What took you?” he croaked.
Walker straightened up and limped closer.
“Are you Doctor Shelly?”
The glistening red skull nodded slowly, its sick, bulging eyes never leaving his. Walker tried to concentrate, to think what he could do for the man. He couldn’t free him. It was obvious that the IV feeds were keeping him alive, but he couldn’t leave him there either, in pain, waiting for the Machine to return and do God knows what to him.
“Where’s the Machine?” he asked.
“Machine?” asked Shelly.
“The C19,” said Walker. “Is it close?”
“Ah...it’ll be out now,” said Shelly, those bulbous eyes trying to focus on the cardio monitor’s digital display. “It is night, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” said Walker.
“Then it’ll be out hunting. Probably for you.”
The scientist tried to stifle a slight giggle that rapidly grew into a throaty coughing fit making his whole raw body spasm and shake. Walker looked away as the wet man gagged and fetched up gobs of dark blood that drooled from a lipless mouth and pooled on the floor below him. Shelly eventually managed to clear his throat and the convulsions ceased. He raised his moist, fleshy features to stare at Walker again, as an insane grin spread where his face used to be.
“It won’t stop until it’s taken you all, you know,” said Shelly.
“Why is it doing this?” asked Walker.
“Retribution,” said Shelly. “And I can’t blame it either. You know it creeps in here all the time. It creeps in here and it shows me things, whispers things. It likes to show me all the terrible things it’s done. It adores parading my own face in front of me as it makes me look at these obscene images. I think it likes to see my expression...if I still have one.”
Walker waited, not knowing what to say. The dying man still spoke in a clipped, authoritative, almost arrogant manner, but his words were jumbled and nonsensical. He had clearly been driven mad by the suffering he had endured, but Walker thought it better to let the man babble. After all, there might be some useful truths hiding in amongst the ramblings.
“It loathes us,” said Shelly. “You may find that strange for a machine, but it hates us with a passion that far surpasses any man’s. It hates me most of all. And why shouldn’t it? We created something perfect, then we drove it insane.”
Out of the corner of his eye, Walker saw harsh, white light spill into the gallery as the door opened behind him. He turned to see Alvin and Marlowe heavily laden with the spoils of the armoury, standing in the doorway, staring in horror at the skinned scientist. They slowly drew closer, unable to take their eyes off Shelly.
“Oh my God...” said Marlowe quietly.
“Uh oh,” said Shelly, “Three grunts in Operations without an escort. Somebody’s going to get it...”
Then the scientist lowered his rasping voice to a whisper.
“He’s going to do terrible things to you when he finds out you were in here with me.”
Marlowe stepped forwards, unable to hide the disgust on his face.
“Doctor Shelly?”
“Yes, yes, keep up,” said Shelly.
“What happened?” said Marlowe.
“Well,” giggled Shelly. “We fucked it, now it’s fucking us.”
Shelly then lowered his voice to a grave and conspiratorial tone.
“All that bad code pumped straight into its fresh, young, naive brain,” he said. “It can’t handle your nightmares, your memories, your trauma. All that accumulated horror now swimming around inside its head. It’s driving it mad. What did we expect?”
“What’s he talking about?” said Marlowe.
“Us,” said Alvin, drawing closer. “He’s talking about us.”
“It blames you for damning it with your war experiences. And it blames me for putting them inside its head.”
“It thinks killing us will stop it going mad?” said Alvin.
“Maybe,” said Shelly. “Maybe it’s just torturing because it makes it feel better.”
“Can we kill it?”
The men turned to see Lynch clunking in behind them, weighed down by his own private arsenal.
“No,” said Shelly.
Walker felt the scientist was suppressing a snigger, but he couldn’t be sure. Lynch pushed past them and stared up at the peeled man who was all bright and wet and grinning.
“Why not?”
“You just can’t,” grinned Shelly. “It’s faster, stronger, smarter. I made it, and look what it did to me.”
The scientist craned his neck to reach his shoulder and his tongue slipped out and tasted the glistening, sticky flesh there. Shelly then rolled his eyes back to his disgusted audience to savour their reaction.
“There must be something we can do,” said Marlowe.
“No,” said Shelly. “It’s virtually indestructible. You can’t stop it. It’s perfect.”
Lynch seethed and surged forwards, close to Shelly. He grabbed one of the drips and yanked it out of his belly. The scientist flinched and groaned, as viscous yellow liquid spurted from his red gut and ran over the floor. Marlowe moved forwards to stop Lynch, but Alvin held him steady.
“You still sure there’s nothing we can do?” said Lynch.
Shelly took a quick succession of rasping breaths and then fixed his eyes on his torturer.
“I’m sure,” he said. “I created it to kill men, not the other way around. You’re all dead.”
“No, there must be something,” said Lynch, his hand closing around another IV tube. “Here, let me help you remember.”
“Go on,” said Shelly, the grin now gone. “It’s a blessing.”
Lynch ripped out the tube and the scientist bucked against his restraints; his already naked teeth bared further in a grimace.
“That’s enough,” said Marlowe.
Walker pushed past Lynch and looked up at Shelly. The scientist flagged and sank back against his bonds, his quivering body trailing precious, escaping fluids.
“Please, Doctor,” he said. “There must be some way of shutting it down.”
Shelly stared in silent confusion at Walker. Lynch began to barge forwards again to continue his interrogation, but Marlowe and Alvin caught his arms and held him fast.
“There were fail-safe remotes designed to disable it,” said Shelly. “But it found them and brought them here to show me. It crushed them to dust in my...its hands whilst it made me watch. I told you; it takes a lot of pleasure from gestures like that. It made me watch as it did the same thing to some of my team too.”
Marlowe turned away from the scientist and drew Alvin in close. Walker turned to face them too, but kept his distance, so as not to make Lynch any more paranoid than he already was.
“We’re wasting time,” said Marlowe. “Let’s see if we can contact anybody before...”
Suddenly a deafening burst of automatic gunfire filled the command centre. The men spun around to see Lynch turning the assault rifle on Shelly’s writhing corpse. The ex-sergeant emptied the entire clip into Shelly, making the scientist jerk and dance against his restraints, until he finally slumped and hung in the red air; a dead weight spilling trails of blood and plasma, suspended by wires like a meat-filled marionette.
Marlowe started forwards to tackle Lynch, but Alvin grabbed him again and hung on this time, anchoring both of them.
“Do you see what he did?” said Marlowe. “He’s crazy.”
Marlowe wrestled with Alvin, seemingly teetering on the edge of a breakdown himself.
“Listen, listen.” said Alvin. “He did Shelly a favour. Now forget it. Let’s try and find a working phone or something. Marlowe, we’ve got to stick to the plan.”
Alvin held on to Marlowe and stared him down until the captain’s emotions finally subsided and his reason returned. He then released his grip and steered him over to the terminals at the front of the gallery, away from Shelly’s smoking corpse and Lynch’s mocking smile.
Walker waited and stared into Lynch’s vacant, smiling eyes.
“No wonder that thing out there’s a psychopath.”