Johnson shook Caleb like a doll. His head lolled on either side of his shoulders, barely conscious. “Where the hell is Ryder?”

  Johnson threw Caleb to the floor. “You better not tell me you left yet another of my men…” His voice was bold with righteous hatred.

  He looks like he wants to kill me.

  “At least give me a status report,” the sergeant continued to rant. “At least tell me she managed to take down that Progeni-” He stuttered. “That fuckin’ timebomb out there!”

  “I don’t know,” Caleb said, clutching his still bleeding chest. “I don’t know if she stopped it…”

  I’ve got an idea, though. He thought. And it isn’t good news for anyone.

  Johnson looked at Caleb writhing on the floor, regarding him like a piece of shit on his shoe.

  “Get this worm a bandage. I don’t want him bleeding out on this floor.” Cartwright immediately got to work patching Caleb up. “I want him to account for his crimes.”

  Caleb felt a little better beneath the tight embrace of the bandages. They faded into his body and the bloodstains receded.

  “Call the helicopters. We have to leave now.”

  Johnson dismissed him with a wave. “Yeah, we’ve done it already. Don’t you worry your pretty little head about it.”

  Kayleigh and Oliver exchanged worried glances - not wanting to rock the boat either way.

  The walls rumbled.

  The soldiers immediately leapt to attention, sweeping the room. Johnson grunted. “Sounds like our signal to get out of here.”

  Johnson turned to Kayleigh and Oliver. “Can you two carry him out?”

  “No need. No need.” Caleb staggered to both feet. “I’m okay.” He smiled meekly at Johnson. “Thanks for the bandages.”

  “Ahh!” Johnson swatted away the gratitude and headed back out the door.

  “Follow me. We’re headed up.”

  The lights turned off. The group froze.

  Kayleigh whimpered. Caleb and Oliver both went for the same hand, retracting in disgust when they realized what they were both doing.

  Still, a little part of Caleb thought, without any rational reason too: She’s mine.

  The emergency lighting kicked in and bathed the place in crimson.

  So that’s what that was. he thought.

  “It’s just the back-up lights,” Johnson eyed the ceiling carefully.

  “Because the main energy source has failed.” noted Cartwright.

  “Remember the Blenheim Reactor?”

  “Oh fuck!” exclaimed a random soldier.

  Johnson tutted. “This is not like the Blenheim reactor.” he shouted, then just for Cartwright: “What are you, stupid?”

  Cartwright shrugged. “Lost a lot of good men that day,” he muttered.

  “Then do better today.” Johnson said firmly. “Keep it moving.”

  The emergency siren began to blare.

  “Do you think those things are still safe in their jars?” the jumpy soldier asked.

  “Sure.” Cartwright said. “I’m pretty sure they’re just fuck-ups, anyway. Cast-offs. Belker hates weakness. All that extra power’s probably being used to suffocate them as we speak.”

  Johnson nodded in approval.

  “Oh.” the jumpy soldier said. “That’d be a real load off.”

  Caleb wrestled with a harsh adrenaline comedown. His heavy legs felt as if they were about to fall off. The limp made him bob aggressively, making him almost motion sick from his own locomotion.

  “We can carry you, man.” Oliver said, worriedly eying him up.

  “S’all good, S’all good. I can feel the bandage working.”

  Caleb figured Oliver realised the bandage alone wasn’t enough to get him too 100% health. He was pig-headed, sure, but Caleb was quickly realising that Oliver wasn’t entirely stupid.

  “Nearly there,’ assured Kayleigh. She brushed his shoulder with her fingertips.

  “I had to kill her, you know.” He wasn’t really sure why he disclosed it to her. He had only kept the secret for a few minutes, but the weight of it was already boiling him alive.

  Sheer horror flickered over her expression for just a moment before she forced herself to suppress it. “I’m sure you had to.” She pulled away, and suddenly movement was even heavier.

  “Check this out,” he said, imagining he had Ryder’s mutated tooth in hand.

  And then, just like that, he did.

  Equipping things is as easy as that, is it?

  “Jesus Christ,” Kayleigh tried to judge the tooth’s length with her fingers. “That thing’s like, 8 inches long. That was in her mouth?!”

  Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

  Caleb nodded. “It didn’t look like much of a mouth after that…”

  Kayleigh whistled. “You’re lucky to be alive.”

  “I’ve been thinking that more and more lately.”

  “Keep the faith. We’re nearly home free.”

  Johnson stopped at the doors into the testing laboratory to brief the men. The doors were once again shut. “Now, I don’t know what we’re going to find in there, so keep moving. A man falls: keep moving. You lose your way: keep moving. Under any circumstances, what do you do?”

  “KEEP MOVING.” The squad said in unison. Kayleigh, Oliver and Caleb surprised themselves by their willingness to join in with the refrain. They were part of the team now.

  “Cartwright. Lopez. Pry this tin can open.”

  “Sir. Yes, sir.” Lopez removed his backpack. Cartwright helped him to remove a series of metal boxes from the pack, then got to work assembling them. Lopez flipped out a set of wheels while Cartwright twisted together a few massive bolts to fuse the boxes together. They crowned their handiwork with a nozzle end connected with snaking wires. They flicked a few switches and the great machine powered on. It shook with wild, uncaged power.

  Lopez and Cartwright rolled the shaking beast to the door, turned away, pressed a button on the machine and took a few long steps away from it.

  “Look away!” Lopez shouted, and the men all turned back.

  An explosion of blinding white light and a wave of heat came over Caleb. He shrunk back from the heavy-duty laser cutter as the thick white ceramic door began to blacken, bubble and melt.

  The laser cutter hissed and rumbled for a few seconds, then stopped.

  “We’re clear!” shouted Lopez, and the crew turned back to see that the door had been melted into a smoking puddle on the floor.

  “Let’s go!” Johnson commanded with a wave of his hand. “Floor is lava rules here!”

  The door’s remains glowed intensely as the liquified fire raged within. Caleb measured the distance he’d had to clear to not melt his feet down to stubs. Back home, he wouldn’t have thought twice, but here, with this ungainly and injured body, he wasn’t so sure he’d make it.

  He let the soldiers go ahead. Oliver leant down to check in. “Can you do this? You don’t look so mobile out there.”

  “Yeah, yeah. I just need a few moments. You go on. I’ll be fine.”

  It was a lie, but he didn’t need anyone else to worry about him.

  Johnson’s self-preservation pep-talk echoed around his skull.

  Keep moving. It was the one thing that was hardest of all. It felt like a pointed mockery. This whole world was stacked against him.

  When the path was clear, Caleb took a couple steps back.

  Can I run and jump over this? Is there some kind of-

  He lumbered into a staggered run, then leapt over the lava, his arms flailing like a limp cowboy doll.

  A little light blinked on in Caleb’s mind. Between the air vents and the pick-ups, it was clear he had contextual actions.

  “I knew you had it in you.” Johnson growled. “Let’s go.”

  Red light strobed inside the tank room. The alarm was intense here - Caleb could barely hear himself think.

  Johnson beckoned them to the stairs. Caleb inspected each tank carefully as he passed.

  Their initial thoughts had been right. The laboratory no longer had access to the insane amount of power needed to keep the razorpi alive. They floated to the tops of their tanks, starved of whatever was in that gas that made them thrive, their razor-flcked hides peeling off them like banana skins.

  A great mechanism whirred into action, like a robot arm.

  Caleb twisted in its direction - it was a robot arm, and coming his way fast. He collapsed to the ground, just missing it by a hair. Literally. Life unfolded in slow-motion, and Caleb saw the heavy robot arm shave the single loose brown strand from his head.

  I was due a haircut anyway…

  He hit the floor hard, watching as the heavy mech crashed through the tanks of dead razorpi to assault the squad.

  The soldiers opened fire. Caleb withdrew his pistol, but Oliver caught his eye. His gun was drawn, he had a clear line of sight, but he simply stood there frozen.

  Why hesitate now?

  Caleb looked closer at the mech as it fended off the barrage of gunfire. There, atop its broad shoulder of gleaming steel, was a familiar face.

  Dave?

  Kayleigh bundled into Caleb. “Do you see that?!” she screamed. “We’ve got to make them stop.”

  Caleb recognised his coworker’s, but he saw no life behind his eyes.

  That little scavenger bot stole his skull for this… Caleb balled his fists with rage. What has Belker done to him?!

  Dave’s regrown and scarred skin was pink and raw. It was pulled a little too tight over his original skull. Piercing silver-grey pupils sat in the middle of his new eyes. They oversaw the battlefield dispassionately.

  His bald head was shrouded in a metallic cowl. Thick clear tubes filled with god-knows-what snaked through his head and down to the augmentations lumped into his new body.

  Dave effortlessly shrugged off the onslaught of automatic gunfire. The shells tinked off the bullet-proof armor, not even making a divot.

  Dave lurched forward and Caleb, Oliver and Kayleigh ducked behind an untouched tank.

  Metal fingers found a soldier and squeezed. The soldier went bright red in the face, before his eyes exploded and his head popped off like toothpaste. Brains rained over the squad as Dave flung the empty casing of the man through a gas tank.

  Dave stared through the gore - unblinking, unwatching, unliving.

  “He’s not there.” Caleb assured Kayleigh and Oliver. “It’s not him. Belker’s just stolen his face.”

  Kayleigh looked like a bobblehead on a dashboard. “I know. I know. I know.”

  Oliver shook like a wet dog. “I- I can’t shoot him.”

  The decoder.

  The survivor’s voice sounded clean and clear through Caleb’s consciousness.

  “Wait,” he thought about scrambling through his pockets, and the decoder instantly appeared in his hand. “Maybe I can use this.”

  “Where did you get that?” Kayleigh ran her hands over the decoder. “That’s exactly what we need.”

  Too convenient. Caleb realised. But then again, we’re still in the first area…

  A wave of nausea overcame him as he came to terms with the fact that he was still, essentially,

  IN

  THE

  TUTORIAL.

  “Dave’s brain is still the central processing unit for that monster,” Kayleigh said, her clear and assured survivor’s voice a strange contrast to her watery, milk saucer eyes. “But Belker feeds commands through the VDU.”

  Caleb wanted to ask her what VDU stood for, but decided against it for fear of breaking the spell.

  Kayleigh pointed to the behemoth. He was in the middle of grabbing a soldier by the arms and legs. He pulled the man apart, that unfortunate soul’s shrieks of anguish mingling with the decimated platoon’s screams of grief.

  “Keep it together. Focus your fire. Aim for the head.”

  A flurry of shots found their marks right in the middle of Dave’s vulnerable face. A blue hexagon wall shimmered in place, and the shell glanced off.

  “There’s a forcefield, sir.” shouted Cartwright. “This thing’s impenetrable.”

  “We can disrupt the VDU with that coder.” Kayleigh continued.

  “What do we need to do?” Oliver covered his ears with his hands.

  “Follow the cables in the back of its head…” Kayleigh pointed to the back of the Davebot. “... There. That blinking green box.”

  “What happens then?” Caleb asked. “Does he shut down?”

  “Not quite. If you succeed…” Kayleigh spoke coolly, as if she was in this kind of situation all the time. “... then we get to see if Dave can still think for himself.”