For King & Country (part 11)

by Miss K

"Within the hillside, The Red Fist of Justice had created something..." The plot is finally revealed as Jane learns the hideous secret of Room 497.

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CHAPTER 4: Tsuruga, Fukui Pref., Japan... Red Fist of Justice Complex ("The House")... and Kamchatka, Eastern Siberia

"THE PROBLEM IS," said the voice, "YOU HAVE NO FRAME OF REFERENCE FOR THIS EXPERIENCE, DO YOU?"

"No," I replied. "It's just that this is so insane that I can't fucking believe any of it."

***

I was still sitting on the floor.

I was sitting on the floor of an enormous, natural cavern, within the hillside.

Within the hillside, The Red Fist of Justice had created something.

***

The fabric of the rock surrounding me had been interlaced with circuitry. The cavern had been converted into a huge computer. It was, to borrow a cliche, as if the circuitry in the walls had somehow been "grown" rather than built. But that was impossible, surely?

I'd been in Westminster Abbey a couple of times. This space felt as big as that. All over the rock walls was a delicate tracery of integrated circuitry. In certain areas, the filigree was concentrated into nodes of greater complexity, like ganglia, which glowed a brighter blue. The circuitry disappeared into the distance and into the vaulted ceiling above me. It pulsed softly in the floor beneath me. The gentle, blue light made me feel sick, powerless. It was as though it was inside my head. I remembered the first time I had experienced the blue glow and trembled.

I'd learnt during my degree that it was theoretically possible to build an AI large enough to simulate all the synaptic junctions of the human brain. That in the end, we were after all reducible to the level of machinery.

I'd believed then that it would be insane to even attempt such an enterprise.

I looked down at my hands, on which I leant my weight. I noticed that one of my prettily buffed and painted nails was broken. The gentle blue pulse of the integrated circuitry surged around my fingers. The cavern was alive with the pulse of intelligence. I looked up. I was terribly afraid.

The weirdest thing was that my gun had fallen right by my hand, but I found it impossible to bring myself to grab it or do anything except just look dumbly at it lying on the floor. Something had my mind in a vice like grip. I realised that every time I'd been near this part of the House, my thoughts hadn't entirely been mine. Perhaps that explained my inability to act decisively earlier as Sato had first revealed himself in the anteroom.

Sato was standing to my right, that hateful smile on his pretty face. I looked past his leather-clad legs to where the blue light was most concentrated.

In the haze, I could make out two small figures. The twins. They moved out of the miasma towards me and my heart jolted as I recalled my desire to take them away from here. I knew too well now how false those wishes had been.

I felt an uncomfortable itch in the back of my head as the boys opened their mouths to speak. The voice, with its curious multiple timbre, made my teeth jar as the boys walked forward. Inexplicably, my mouth filled with the sharp tang of battery acid.

The boys said, "HELLO, COMMANDER PIERCE. WE ARE AKAGUCHI. WE ARE THE RED FIST OF JUSTICE." Smiling, they put their small arms under my shoulders, raised me up. Together, we walked forward into the light.

***

The blue glow enveloped me.

As my eyes acclimatised, I could see that we were in an alcove in the cavern wall, about the size of my bedroom in the House. The blue glow was so intense that I could hardly keep my eyes open. An intense electrical buzz filled the inside of my brain in time with the pulsing of the blue light. I felt sick. Dizzy.

The boys stepped away.

I looked up. In front of me was a shape. I squinted to try and cut out the blue glare that was emanating from it.

It was a large, cylindrical tank, about twice my height and the width of two telephone boxes. It was filled with a viscous blue liquid. The whole thing was so blue that I felt my mind caving in from the intensity of the colour.

In the middle of the blue tank floated a figure. A slight, nondescript looking, Japanese man with a wispy beard and long hair, which floated around his serene face like a halo. He was totally naked. His body was impaled by electrical cables, which penetrated all parts of his body and face. His eyes were open, but unseeing. Pale, faintly luminous globes. Frightening in their blankness. The boys were standing to either side of the tank, looking expectantly up at me.

"Akaguchi," I breathed.

The boys smiled, in unison. They spoke, but I knew that the voice really came from the figure in the tank.

"YES. WE ARE AKAGUCHI."

Suddenly, I felt absurd, standing in my skimpy bikini. I wrapped my arms around my chest.

How ironic. In the kind of superspy moment that hardly ever happens, I was playing the wrong part. The dolly bird. I turned and saw Sato behind me, that faint smile on his face, as ever. I wanted to hit him, but I couldn't move a muscle. Everything was screwed up.

I swallowed and tried to focus my thoughts.

"This AI..." I said slowly. "You've dispersed your consciousness into a computer."

The boys nodded.

"Why?" I whispered.

The hollow chorus of a voice rang out again, shaking me to my bones.

"WE WERE DYING. CANCERS CAUSED BY MUTAGENS RELEASED BY CIA IRREGULARS DURING THE KOREAN 3-DAY CONFLICT OF 2010. 1KM AIRBURST OVER THE VILLAGE IN WHICH WE HAD SETTLED OUR JRA CELL..."

The voice paused. Sato had come to stand beside me as the Akaguchi went on.

"WE RETURNED TO JAPAN AND FOUNDED THIS ENCLAVE WITH OUR LOVER, BEAUTIFUL SATO. ALL WAS WONDERFUL... WE BROUGHT THE POWER AND PRINCIPLE OF ANARCHY TO A LAWLESS PART OF JAPAN. WE MADE OUR PLANS. WE PREPARED TO DIE, TO BEQUEATH OUR LEGACY TO SATO. OUR CANCER WAS UNTREATABLE. MULTIPLE METASTATIC SECONDARIES. SATO HELPED US CLONE THE TWINS. HIS IDEA, TO PERPETUATE US. BUT THE TRANSFERAL OF OUR CONSCIOUSNESS WAS NOT PLANNED. NOT THEN..."

Again, Akaguchi paused. Sato had moved to the tank, and had taken the boys' hands. He was looking at the wasted figure of his lover with the tenderest expression I'd seen on his cruel face. The lights flared again and I winced.

"THEN, WE HEARD ABOUT YOUR SCIENTIST, LIME. WE HYPOTHESISED A WAY IN WHICH WE COULD PERPETUATE NOT JUST OUR PHYSICAL BUT OUR SPIRITUAL SELF, USING HIS KNOWLEDGE OF MOLECULAR MECHANICS AND BIOMACHINERY. ACQUISITION OF LIME AND HIS KNOWLEDGE BECAME OVERRIDING PRIORITY. YOU DELIVERED HIM TO US. OUR THANKS, PRETTY AGENT PIERCE."

"AFTER YOUR ESCAPE, LIME WAS ABLE TO ASSIST US. HIS NANOMACHINES BUILT THIS COMPUTER. THE NANITES MAINTAIN A MOLECULAR LEVEL PSEUDO-PSIONIC LINK BETWEEN OUR BRAIN AND THE CIRCUITRY. WITH OUR CLONE BODIES TOO."

The boys gestured to themselves.

"SOON WE WILL BE ABLE TO VACATE DYING BODY AND ENTER NEW VESSELS. ALL THE FEMALE RECRUITS TO THE FIST, INCLUDING YOURSELF, ARE NOW INFECTED WITH THE PSEUDO-PSI LINKS IN THE FORM OF A SEXUALLY TRANSMISSIBLE VIRUS, WHICH WILL ENABLE US TO EXCERSISE TOTAL CONTROL OVER YOU. ALL MEN YOU SLEEP WITH, ALL THEIR LOVERS, SOON, ALL HUMANITY, WILL BE OURS TO CONTROL."

"I don't believe it." I whispered.

I heard Sato at my side. "Why do you think this room hurts your brain so much? The nanite virus is already converting your mind into a remote node for the master to manipulate. Soon, you'll have no free will left. The same with all the men and women who work here."

Sato put his hand on my arm. I flinched. "Why," he went on, do you think we hired the most beautiful women in the world to work here? When they go out to spread our seed in the world, no one will resist. Our projections suggest that we'll have control of the whole world within three months."

"THREE MONTHS," said the voice of Akaguchi, from the mouths of the twins, and from all round me. I felt the loss of self starting from deep within my mind, and bit my lip.

"WE ARE BECOMING THE FUTURE OF THE EARTH. EVERY HUMAN WILL BE AKAGUCHI."

"What you say is impossible," I said. "It's insane. I don't believe it."

"NO," said Akaguchi, chuckling softly. The sound was like ice crystals shattering in my mind. "WE ARE INSANE. BUT THE PLAN IS NOT INSANE."

"I don't believe it," I repeated.

"Believe it," said a quiet, ragged, weary voice from my right. I turned slowly.

Someone I hadn't noticed before was watching me from the darkened part of the wall on my right. The gaunt face and shaved skull didn't prevent me from recognizing the wasted figure of Professor Adrian Lime.

***

Apart from his face, Lime was barely recognizable. His torso and head projected from the mass of circuitry embedded in the wall. It was difficult to see whether the rest of his body still existed or not. His shaven head was studded with cables and tubing through which pinkly glowing liquids and electrical signals pulsed and throbbed.

His arms disappeared into a mass of tangled circuits, which seemed to grow straight from the bone and muscle.

Most horrifying, a row of four pairs of small breasts had grown on his chest, with engorged nipples upon which suction cups and tubes were attached. Glowing colourless fluid leached constantly from his new mammaries into the tubes, to be collected out of sight in the walls.

"Oh, Lime..." I whispered.

Incredibly, he smiled. "The cash cow," he whispered, before wincing in pain.

"LIME IS OUR SANTA CLAUS MACHINE," said Akaguchi.

I blinked. "What?"

"What he means," whispered Lime through gritted teeth, "is that... I can bring him anything he asks for. When he captured me, he did a very clever thing... Instead... of going to the effort of having me constantly work on solutions for him under duress, he made me do one thing only... develop a nanite serum that would turn me... into a nanite factory. A molecular machine that could produce any nano-solution he wanted..."

"From there to here," he looked around the cavern, "was a short step. It's quite brilliant. In less than a year... I've become... the mother and father of a whole family of new technologies. And the means of production..." his quiet voice and patient eyes were suffused with an unknowable pain.

I found that I was sitting down again. It was brilliant. Akaguchi had won...

Or had he?

"So," I said quietly, "Lime can produce any nanite serum to order?"

"YES."

"Even to make me into a man again?"

"OF COURSE. IS THAT WHAT YOU DESIRE, LITTLE JEWEL?"

"It'll hurt," said Lime.

"It's what I want. You've beaten me, Akaguchi. Please let me lose the battle as Anthony Pierce. Not as," I gestured at my bikini-clad body, "this."

There was a pause. I was conscious of Sato's eyes on me. But he made no move to intervene.

"VERY WELL."

Lime looked up at me, pain in his eyes. "The top left nipple", he whispered, grimacing.

I stepped forward till I was a few inches from Lime's face. His blue eyes were fixed on mine. The blue itch in my mind was almost unbearable. It was almost like a voice. I reached up to pull the tube from the swollen nipple. It came away with a quiet pop. A few drops of colourless liquid collected at the tip of the erect nipple.

Then I realised that there was a very faint voice in my head, like the whisper of a dying man lying at the bottom of a deep well...

"Not... man...... change... serum... sorry." Lime's eyes pleaded with mine. It was his voice, in my head. "Aka... guchi.... virus.... antidote... get back... to west... inoculate...." he tailed off.

I nodded, then glanced up at the cables and nutrient pipes in his body. I raised an eyebrow. Imperceptibly, Lime nodded. "do.... it...." his voice scratched in my head, "so... tired..."

I bent to suck at Lime's engorged nipple. Lime gasped. As I swallowed the tasteless fluid, I felt the blue light fade from my mind. I could move and think, quite clearly.

I reached up and grasped a handful of cables from Lime and wrenched them out. Sparks flew across the cavern wall as microcircuitry fused and shorted.

Lime gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes.

"WHAT IS HAPPENING?? STOP NOW!!!" screamed Akaguchi.

A bank of circuitry next to his tank blew and knocked Sato to the floor. Before he could rise, I turned and kicked him in the ribs and ran out of the alcove.

The gun was still on the floor where I had left it. I rolled and scooped it up, before turning and firing a volley at the tank.

A row of holes appeared in the glass.

The twins screamed. Their own, shrill voices.

For a moment, nothing happened.

Then the twins dropped to the floor, lifeless, like a couple of puppets whose strings had been severed.

A hideous moaning filled the air. Akaguchi was screaming now too, as a tracery of fine cracks appeared in the walls of his tank.

The glass bowed outwards, as if in slow motion.

Then with an explosive crack, it shattered.

The blue suspension fluid flooded into the cavern. There was a shower of sparks and all of the lights went out.

The moaning stopped, abruptly.

Illuminated by the flickering orange light from the burning circuitry, I could just see the still body of Akaguchi, bloody in the debris of his tank, the small shapes of the twins, his future vessels, lying next to him.

I don't know why, but I pointed the gun at him. I was weeping, uncontrollably. I could feel the dull thump of explosions going off in the rest of the complex as the House's control systems gave in without the moderating influence of Akaguchi in his cavern. I went to check the little bodies of the two boys for a pulse. They were quite dead.

Then suddenly I heard running footsteps and saw the door to the far end of the cavern slamming shut.

Sato.

***

I ran out of Room 497 to see Sato disappearing around the corner.

Out in the main corridor, there were frightened figures milling about as the complex began to shake itself to pieces. Sato was agonizingly out of reach and I didn't want to shoot as I would have killed a lot of people in the busy passageway.

I chased him up two flights of emergency stairs and almost stopped him as a deep rumble shook the stairwell and he staggered back on his heels. With a snarl, he lashed out with his booted foot and almost connected as I swayed back to avoid him. I half lost my footing and he got away again and I saw his lithe, catsuited form disappearing into the connecting door to the main Level 7 corridor.

I sprinted up the remaining stairs and yanked open the door, looking to either side to try and locate my quarry in the press of white coats and catsuits. No sign. Stay calm. Think.

Level 7.

Airstrip.

Feeling in my bikini cup to retrieve the smartcard that Trish had given me, I sprinted down the passage towards the hangar deck, shoving bodies aside.

***

At the door to the flight deck, I paused to check my gun. I was again acutely aware that I was dressed in a skimpy Gucci swimsuit and tarty make-up and nothing else.

Taking a breath, I swiped the card in the doorsystem and pushed it open. I passed though a deserted anteroom with changing facilities and a row of flight suits hanging on hooks on the wall. No sign of Sato. I pushed open the connecting door to the main hangar.

I saw him immediately. He was taxiing one of two variable geometry DornierSystem jump jets towards the open hangar doors. His canopy was still open and he was about to put his flight helmet over his spiky black hair. His cockpit canopy started to fold shut as the jet taxied towards the exit, its airfoils sliding into STOL configuration.

"SATO!!!!" I shouted, unleashing a volley of flechettes. He turned just as the canopy closed. The darts detonated against the bulletproof glass and I caught a faint smile tracing across his lipsticked mouth.

"SHIT!" My shout echoed across the deserted flight deck. I turned and legged it back to the locker room and yanked down a flight suit, pulling myself into it. Behind me, I heard a roar as Sato's jet took off. I turned round to see it disappearing into the early evening sky.

Grabbing a helmet, I ran back into the hangar towards the second jump jet. All the other aircraft had evac'd the hangar already. There was a shout to my left and I turned to see another pilot coming out of the men's toilet and running towards me.

"Fuck off!" I yelled, pointing my gun at him. He ducked back into the toilet.

The canopy of the jet was invitingly open, I leapt up the recessed footholds in the black hull and sat myself back in the crash harness, snapping the webbing shut over my snug fitting bodysuit. Luckily, the pilot must have been caught short after performing his preflight checks, so I was able to taxi out and start the launch sequence immediately. I must have been barely thirty seconds behind Sato.

The thrusters fired and I was creamed back into the G-harness as my canopy snapped shut over my head.

The small, black, bug-like jump-jet leapt out of the hangar onto the short airstrip ramp and shot into the orange sky. I activated the pursuit guidance system and picked up Sato's trajectory. I punched a sequence into the computer. The air around the jet gave way with a crack as I thumbed the burners and left the exploding Red Fist House far behind me.

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to be concluded...