DISCLAIMER: This work has not been edited beyond what was done in the video. The goal is to capture a story in a short amount of time and keep it as raw as possible.
The Story
Ninety beats per minute. Jett counted every tap on the back of his neck where his helmet strap was tied too tight.
“You hear that?” he asked.
Grim didn’t respond other than the constant swallowing, apparent by the bobbing of his neck guard.
Hands sweating in gloves gripping guns. M-something, dot something, dash something. Serial numbers weren’t Jett’s thing. He worked by touch, by grip. That’s what told him this was the right one, the right place. Keep a grip. Gotta keep a grip.
Jett kept his grip while crouching outside a door with another number: 299. The building was non-descript, repurposed, refitted, reused, like everything anymore, so no way to tell where the hell they were or what they were up against. He and Grim, that is, who sat on the other side of the door due to bad knees, rifle aimed.
One-twenty beats per minute. Above him now. Standard paneling with a vent every ten feet before the corridor turned, which wasn’t far. Should have checked. But time. That’s one thing they didn’t have. Grab the body and get out.
One-eighty beats per minute. Frantic. Something trying to escape.
“You have to fucking hear that,” Jett said.
Grim shook his head, eyes behind the dark glass of his helmet, which jutted out comically, sized for cartoon eyes.
Jett snorted a laugh.
Two hundred beats per minute. His fingers tapping on the rifle’s stock couldn’t keep up. Driving him mad, Grim’s stagnant pose driving him madder.
“Fuck it,” Jett said and kicked the door in.
He scanned the room, Grim’s presence palpable behind him. Rifles painted the room with laser scribbles, calculating, calculating, calculating, far slower than the overwhelming tempo that crescendoed when he’d opened the door.
Computer screens striated in green formed the room’s perimeter, splashing light onto keyboards, coffee mugs, crumpled papers, and . . . what the hell was that? A fan of red fogging an alcove near the back of the room. Twitching in time to the nailgun in his head.
He shot Grim a glance. “You–”
Grim was gone. The distance to the door clear but for a small jittering figure. A small man. A boy, maybe. The spot at the top of his jet-black hair smeared with a white reflection. He was almost a blur. Then Jett’s mind caught up, caught up to the now two-hundred and twenty beats per minute. That was this bot’s twitch rate, because it had to be a bot.
Jett readied his EMP round. Just one. But it would be enough for this little guy. Could be a maintenance bot malfunctioning, doing the rounds of cleanup, and this place was in need of it. It had nothing in its hands, though, except a vibration that made him dizzy.
Two-hundred and fifty beats per minute. Music lessons at the synth flashed, Jett’s hands slapped for not keeping in time, always off, always slow. Keep up. Gotta keep up. What the bot had told him, its safety guard overridden by Dad, hence the hand slapping. Smarter than us, Dad would say. Bigger than us. That last statement always emphasized by a soundless scream, which both scared and puzzled Jett when he was about the size of this thing wading through the puddle of light toward him.
“Woah,” he said, eyes flicking toward the green EMP light.
“It’s not a fucking horse,” Grim said from behind.
Jett seized at the shock, from head to toe.
To finger.
The EMP round ejected right over the head of the rogue bot-boy, carrying with it a glow to illuminate its face for a fraction of the now two-hundred and eighty beats per minute. And that face made Jett stumble back into Grim.
A scalp of implants growing cables reaching into shadow. Left eye a hollow socket, right eye monacled in blackness, but not as black as the mouth opened wide in a silent scream.
Grim shot off a burst that cut across the bot’s torso. From those wounds quicksilver filament erupted, and Jett brought up his guard, but the ropes turned back on the bot and snaked around its torso and arms, glowing, then tearing. The bot doubled in size, crawling out of its carcass, the same gaping expression aimed right at Jett. He fired off a few more rounds into the abyss to no effect.
Grim was on his side in the doorway, thrown by the transformation. He hopped to his feet, his visor not looking so funny anymore as it flicked around the room, searching for what Jett hoped was a way to get him out of this mess. Then he dashed through the door.
Two-hundred and ninety-nine beats per minute barraged Jett. Caught in a glitch of gravity and his own body malfunctioning to the cacophony, he wanted nothing more than an even number. Instead, he landed a few more rounds, which was all he could do. To that beat.
Another doubling. A chain reaction that didn’t need a catalyst anymore. The void-mouth exhausted a pressure that threw him against the wall. Monitors shattered, and glass was taken up into a cyclone stripping the walls clean.
Jett smelled that oh-so-familiar funk of the outside, a split second before the wall exploded and he was sucked out into it, propelled by the snarling giant’s scream that was not silent.
His helmet snapped off his head, so he held his breath, cycling through every projectile his M-whatever-it-was had. Muzzle flashes of every color spattered the giant bot’s face, which was so large even the room couldn’t contain it. Its body, stories tall, burst free into the highway rift, as Jett continued to fly backward, inches away from its bite.
A trail of exhaust marked Grim below, weaving through debris passing and impacting his K-whatever cycle as he headed toward him.
Jett fell. The tempo slowed. Too slow to save him from the giant? From being torn to shreds by the twisted pipes behind him? For Grim to catch him?
Jett gave into the tempo, and counted.
Leave a Reply