SOME HOURS LATER, duded up in his best snakeskin jacket over a torn blue singlet, skinny fit black jeans, Alice cruised past the many homeless camped outside the Oceana Citizen’s Hospital. Even at 3 AM there was plenty of activity in the smoky street. A night market with stalls selling everything from dead cats, rats and dogs, skinned and hanging, to weapons. It was a popular location for vendors due to the proximity of the hospital. It was hellish, rundown, filthy and unhygienic — a contradiction to the antiseptic hospital.
The majority of the vendors were wearing face-masks, some with respirators.
Alice pushed through the plethora of people past a vendor who tried to sell him a hit of oxygen. Some recognized him and called out. He acknowledged them with a sharp wave of a hand. He entered ER
Triage was like a battlefield: there were injured and sick people scattered about. The badly injured, unable to walk, were on gurneys jammed in the corridors. The sound of suffering and frustration was pervasive to Alice. He fell in line at triage,
There were only three nurses on duty, one of them recognised Alice and waved him over.
Rocked by all the distress Alice asked, “Is it always like this?”
The young nurse cracked a smile. “Worse than normal being Saturday night. You’re Black Alice, aren’t you?”
Al nodded, “You guys do one helluver job.”
“Who are you looking for?” she said, flicking the screen of her digital notepad.
A little embarrassed for jumping the queue he said self-consciously, “Um, my girl, Stained Class. She would’ve been admitted an hour or so ago for an overdose. Hey, I’ve got to ask, the paramedics wouldn’t let me ride with her in the ambo, why was that? I couldn’t get…”
The nurse looked up from typing on the notepad, “Oh, protocol. Too much domestic violence.”
Al didn’t get it. “Yeah? How’s that?”
“The meds get attacked, spat on … you name it … it can get pretty ugly out there…” Suddenly her expression changed to sorrowful. “Um, I’m sorry. Stained Class passed away from her injuries.”
Alice was totally rocked and muttered in disbelief, “No, no that can’t be right. Check again please. She, she was okay when they took her…”
There was no point in re-examination, the result was conclusive. With as much sensitivity as she could muster she said warmly, “I’m so sorry.”
Traumatised Alice turned away and then drifted zombie-like along the corridor towards the exit oblivious to the acknowledgements of fans. Suddenly, it all got too much for him, he stumbled, propping himself against the glass entrance door to prevent collapsing. The corridor, the people were shimmering and distorting — vivid images of Stain on the bathroom floor were flashing in his mind; a confusing montage of reflections — the paramedics affirming she was okay — flopping onto the bed with relief as Stain was being stretchered out — watching her being loaded into the rear of the ambulance, the colour back in her lips — the colour back in her lips!
Something weird had come over him. He glared at the people in ER watching him: their mouths were moving but he couldn’t hear what they were saying only a high-pitched whistle. He looked at his hands. He was holding nine-millimetre Glock. He straightened up, took aim and opened fire at the people in the corridor. They were going down like flies, blood spattered painting the walls red.
He wavered, unbalanced. The entire corridor seemed to be shimmering like a mirage. The bloody tiled walls ballooned surreally, closing in. Overcome with dread he stood still in a ghostly void of gun smoke. Suddenly, the smoke was gone and the sound returned to normal. His arms were still outstretched in a firing position. There was no gun in his hands.
The floor and the ceiling distorted in perspective like a Salvador Dali painting. There was a thinning of the veil between dimensions. He grasped his forehead, trying desperately to steady himself. He backed up hard against the wall, unable to process what he’d been told by the burse. She shouldn’t be dead … the colour was back … she was alive when the paramedics took her, I know, I revived her … the colour was... He was losing it. Overcome by shock, his eyes glazed over and he mouthed the word no, no, no over and over, as if stuck in a groove. It was like a bad acid trip, and he was in a fight for self-control. Disturbing images invaded in his mind. He was fighting a terrifying half human, half machine android monster. Then, out of darkness materialised a frightening zombie, her hands clawed, her face a horrible snarling rictus of the living dead. Were these just random images or were they portents of horrors to come?
Then, suddenly overwhelmed by grief, he gave in to it. The mirage dissolved and his fuzzy mind cleared. But everything had changed. He was in a dark place he’d never been before. A veil of dust-covered cobwebs stretched in front of him, through which a strange pair of chrome horns protruded. Then, as if reverberating out of a PA stack behind the cobwebs and all around him, a chilling, demonic voice growled: “The Shine!”
In a flash of white light Alice’s mind cleared for him to realise he was sitting cross-legged on the floor in the netherworld tunnel. En-Ki’s voice startled him.
“That was a shock.”
Staring blankly at the glowing orb, Alice muttered numbly, “I still don’t think I’ve recovered, even now I can’t reconcile her senseless death. All that stuff with Ex and Djard, incredible … I had no idea.”
“Let us see where that led you.”
Ribbons of light descended from cracks in the massively high ceiling into a vast chasm above a pool of water. Five bodies plunged the thirty-metre drop inside a ray of light and splashed into the subterranean lake. The fall would have normally have killed them, but the water was deep enough to cushion their impact.
Djard rose first to the surface of the icy black water, gasping for air and panic-stricken. Ex surfaced beside her, blinded by the water in his eyes and disoriented. Djard seized the moment, and ripped her talisman from around his neck.
Ex yelled, enraged: “Shine!” But his anger changed to shock when Derg, Karn and Chez shot up out of the water around him.
Karn leapt onto Derg’s back and continued the wrestling death-match they had started on the surface. Chez, a big round-faced hulk with a mop of curly brown hair and arms covered in tattoos, was gasping for air, having swallowed more than his fair share of the inky water.
Standing waist deep at the edge of the pool, Ex bellowed loudly at Derg and Karn, “No!” They stopped fighting.
In the dim light, Djard sighted the shore and took off for it. When Ex realised she was getting away, he started after her. Derg and Karn followed, and Chez, after shaking the water out of his ears, went after them.
Being smaller, with less water resistance, Djard reached the shore well ahead of Ex. Once on solid ground she shot off, in a big hurry to escape her pursuers and find an exit.
Ex wasn’t about to be outdone by the girl. Besides, he wanted his Shine back. When he reached the shore he stood still, signalled with his hand for the others to freeze, and listened intently. He could hear her footsteps on the rocks to his right, and immediately set off after them.
Djard came to the base of a long metal ladder that reached up to what could be an exit. Unsure whether to take it or not, her mind was made up for her by the sound of Ex’s running feet clumping over the rocky ground and closing in. Climbing the ladder, holding the Shine in her teeth by its leather thong, she made it to the top and looked down at Ex and the others. She tried to push the ladder down, but found it was fixed solidly to the craggy cliff face. Ex started up after her. Djard took flight.
She entered another cavern, darker than the previous one. She couldn’t see any water, but there were two metal rails stretching along the tunnel floor as far as she could see. The others were nearing the top of the ladder, so she pelted along the tunnel, following the metal rails. Running as fast as she could, she looked back over her shoulder at Ex, tripped on a large piece of timber and fell heavily. As the Shine struck the metal rail it sparked, as though charged with some sort of magical power.
Ex arrived, and ripped the Shine out of her grasp in a flash. He growled, “Shine mine!”
Djard decided not to care about the medallion. Scrambling to her feet, she shot along the parallel tracks at speed, branching off the metal tracks into a long tunnel with a low ceiling. She stopped at the end, trying to regain her breath. To her dismay, she heard the others coming; she’d hoped she’d lost them by ducking off the tracks. She spotted a dark alcove and, thinking they mightn’t follow her in there, slipped inside. A dark, dusty staircase led up. It meant passing through masses of cobwebs that chilled her to the bone. It was dusty, dry, old. The dust welling up with each step made her cough.
At last, Djard came to a landing and entered a large room. Standing in the darkness, she could make out the outlines of gargantuan machines, covered in cobwebs and dust, that looked to her like rusted monsters waiting to come to life. She flinched when she noticed two huge men in a dark corner of the room. But when she looked closer, she could see the bodies of the men were covered in cobwebs. They were faced-off, fists raised, ready to fight. Realizing they weren’t alive, she reached out and tentatively touched a sharp chrome spike attached to one of the boxing gloves they each wore. She moved on in awe, like a kid in a museum, wondering what amazing discovery would come next.
Thin, dust-filled streams of light were shining down through broken skylights way up in the ceiling. There were long chains dangling from a gantry, from which water was cascading, forming puddles on the floor. The splashes echoed around the dark chamber. A sudden crunch of broken glass under foot alerted Djard that Ex and the others had arrived. Hiding in the darkness, she watched Ex move in, holding his sword, ready to strike. Karn prowled cat-like a metre behind, a dagger in his hand. Chez followed close behind, equally watchful, the heavy linked chain over his shoulder tinkling with every step. Derg came last, guarding the rear, sword held at the ready. Now demoted to captives, he and Chez were ranked lower than Ex and his warrior. Lore demanded them to be subservient to their conqueror, and that naturally grated on Derg’s ego. He was also dirty that he’d left his axe at the bottom of the subterranean lake.
As Ex closed in on Djard, she hissed at him like an agitated cat. It spooked him and he snarled at her, with his sword raised threateningly. She knew he wasn’t afraid of her. As she started to move away, Ex caught sight of the boxers with the spiked gloves, staring at him out of the darkness. In a reflex action he raised his sword. The others, behind him, took guard.
With Ex and the others occupied by the statues, Djard took the opportunity to slip into the darkness.
Ex looked them over. They resembled footballers in Grid Iron regalia, but with a major difference: the helmet was spiked, the gloves were spiked, and their uniforms were tight-fitting armour rather than sports apparel.
Ex looked up at a corroding sign just over the heads of the statues. The ten-pointed star logo looked interesting, but the words meant nothing. The sign read:
Technology Exhibit
Prototype RF Series Cyborg Rugby Footballers
Radiated Pellet Powered
courtesy of Zen Corporation
Chez wanted a closer look. Moving around Ex for a better view, he shoved aside a dangling cable, which swung towards the androids. When the cable struck the android’s chest, it let out a loud crack and gave off a massive blue flash and a shower of sparks. There was still power in this labyrinth. Ex, startled, jumped backwards. In his haste to retreat, Chez bumped into Karn. Derg had his back to them, and when Karn staggered back and bumped into him he swung around, ready to strike.
A red light flickered on inside the mask of the android.
Ex had moved on, looking for Djard, but as Chez turned his back on the android it forearmed him on the back of the head and knocked him down. Ex stopped in his tracks, and swung around in time to see the seven-foot android taking a step towards him. With one almighty swipe of his sword he decapitated it. All four warriors made room to get clear of the big monster, as it stumbled round like a headless drunk, sparks flying from the fusing electronics in its neck. It staggered into the other android and they both crashed to the ground.
Ex strode confidently over to the headless monster, twitching on the floor with intermittent sparks coming from its neck. He raised his sword. “Ex!” he yelled, declaring himself the victor.
Karn offered Chez a hand up from the floor.
They moved on to pursue Djard, more cautiously than before. They had no idea where they were or what other hazards awaited them.
Alice was still in the same position facing the orb. “Yeah, that’s all well and good magically playing a movie in my head, but if you’re just a consciousness in a bottle, where the hell are you from? Are you some kind of alien?”
“That will be revealed to you soon enough Alice.”
Alice was becoming tired of hearing the same excuse. “Yeah, so you keep saying,” he grumbled. “How do I get out of—”
En-Ki cut him off. “Risk taking does not seem to trouble you?”
Alice clambered to his feet. “Yeah well, I live by the personal maxim living is harder than dying. Now answer my question, how do I get out of here?”
“Back to you then,” the voice from the orb said totally ignoring Alice’s request. “After Stain’s funeral you finally emerged from self-imposed exile. You had been given notice to attend an interview at Oceana State Security Directorate, but you were in no hurry to get to it…”
A week had passed since Stain’s death. In that time Alice had withdrawn from life, music, The Octagon … he couldn’t summon his former devotion to any cause. Something in the Air was number one in the charts and had been adopted as an anthem by the activists wracking the city with protests, each more violent than its predecessor. As a consequence, Alice had been branded public enemy number one by the Oceana secret police and ordered to attend an interview. Even without his sorely-missed leadership, The Octagon was preparing for revolution. The arrival of the American nuclear submarine, the focus of the protests, was imminent. It was time for action.
On his way to the interview Alice took to the streets, seeking answers to questions he didn’t even know how to ask. A part of him had died with Stain. He was unable to reconcile the fact of her death after he’d got her breathing. When the paramedics had arrived, they’d confirmed she was stabilised and out of danger. The shock he’d received at the Citizens’ Hospital had left him a troubled man. The tragic loss of Stain had spawned a new feeling in Alice, a callous, aggrieved, revengeful feeling. His naturally humble nature had all but faded away. He had opened himself up to Stain, to love, and everything he’d feared would happen because of that had come to fruition. Whatever he loved he would lose. He felt cursed. As a consequence, his stage persona had taken over his offstage psyche … he was a tough guy with an almighty cross to bear. He was no detective, but his objective now was to determine who killed Stain, why, and then avenge her murder.