“Fine,” New Caleb tapped his toes on the floor. “I can wait. Step back on the portal.”
Caleb braced for the perspective shift.
The closest thing you can get to teleportation. he thought. Not that I should discount that as a possibility here.
Johnson was already deep inside his memory. He crouched under a bed, his eyes fixed on the ajar door. Heavy black boots stomped past. The walls of the room were laced with bullet holes.
Not a childhood memory, Caleb noted.
The soldier outside barked in a language Caleb did not recognise. Johnson caught the odd word here or there, but until he thought it aloud, Caleb wasn’t privy to the translation.
He’s not thinking at all…
The silence inside Johnson’s head was deafening. He had no interior monologue, no stray observations, no hint of a plan.
Military discipline in action.
Johnson reached into his boot to grab the serrated combat knife. He studied the shadow on the wall; a soldier patrolled the door. The soldier’s silhouette grew until he appeared at the doorway, then shrank again as he headed down the corridor. Johnson watched him for a few repetitions, counting under his breath. The soldier always passed the door after exactly 8 seconds.
1… The soldier was at the furthest point. Johnson readied the knife, gripping it in his right hand with the blade oriented downwards.
2… Johnson pulled himself from the bed, laying flat on the floor.
3… He pulled himself upwards into a crouch and crept towards the door frame.
4… The soldier coughed, muttering some plosive and unintelligible expletive. Johnson froze, lifting the knife upwards.
5… with his secrecy still secure, Johnson reached the wall next to the right of the doorframe. He spread himself across it, laying as flat as he could.
6… Johnson watched as the shadow grew. Poised and ready to strike…
7... Every muscle coiled… Johnson stared at the bullet-pocked wall, waiting for the first sliver of camouflage to enter his sightline.
8… He saw the soldier’s boot first. Johnson threw himself into the side of the oblivious soldier, driving the knife deep into his neck with his whole body weight.
The man collapsed like a sandcastle in the tide. Johnson felt the tip of the blade dig into the wall behind them and kept pushing. Pressure swelled up around the man’s neck as the blood flowed with nowhere to go, the knife acting as a cork for the man’s life fluids. It dribbled from the wound in a dark gelatinous mulch as the soldier’s immune system tried to stem the flow.
The soldier stopped spasming, and Johnson relented. The man was stuck to the wall like a pin on a corkboard.
Johnson left him attached to the wall, taking a new knife from the leather pouch at his thigh and robbing the man of his assault rifle and handgun.
Johnson cocked his head, admiring his handiwork like a silver screen serial killer. He shook the bloodlust off and headed out.
Turning the corner, he ran headfirst into the next soldier. Still ready, Johnson swiftly delivered three sharp shocks to the bridge of his nose - then shot him three times in the gut with the handgun.
Johnson left the soldier gasping like a fish out of water in the corridor. He aimed the handgun down the stairwell. Alert to the sound of shuffling feet, Johnson twisted to catch the bleeding soldier before he could tackle him. Johnson turned the man’s own body weight against him and heaved him over the stairwell to the ground floor. He hit the floor in a sickening medley of broken bones and hemorrhaged soft tissue.
“How the fuck did you get up from that?” Johnson said to himself. He inspected the broken body at the bottom of the long staircase. Must have been a 40 foot drop at least. It still twitched.
More movement at the end of the corridor. Another soldier shambled towards Johnson, the knife stuck out from the side of his head like a demented unicorn horn.
“Hell no.” Johnson shouted, unsheathing his assault rifle and raining fire. All semblance of espionage had been thrown in the garbage. Johnson was here to survive.
The Unicorn danced as hundreds of bullets punched holes across his body. He fell to one knee.
CLICK.
No more ammo.
Johnson lifted the empty rifle and charged the fallen Unicorn. He let loose a war cry and drove the solid steel butt right into the protruding knife. It hammered into the Unicorn’s skull like a nail into cheap wood, splitting the skull until liquefied brains started to leak from the widening cracks. Johnson gritted his teeth, closed his eyes and kept hammering until he felt the Unicorn’s skull come apart entirely. He opened his eyes to see a mulched brain, with two cords leading up to the Unicorn’s eyes, on a bed of broken skull.
And still the body moved.
Johnson screamed, staggering back as the Unicorn scrambled at his feet, nothing but a tattered body and a squashed brain.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
Although he still wasn’t thinking, Johnson recognized the impulse running through his head.
Run.
Slipping in brain juices, Johnson stampeded back down the stairwell. He leapt from the fourth step from the ground floor and stomped hard with both feet into the second quivering soldier.
He knew he couldn’t stop them. He just had to slow them down for long enough.
In the great hallway of the mansion, a vast portrait of Belker beamed with pride.
“What the hell were you doing in here?”
The soldier at the bottom of the stairwell was gaining on Johnson. Slowly, but steadily.
A speaker behind the painting crackled into life. “Making progress, you simpleton.” Belker’s voice was distorted, like a dusty old record.
“Where are you?” Johnson drew his handgun.
“Safe and sound, far away from you thugs. I brought you into my community because you were worthy, Johnson. This is how you repay me?”
“What you’ve done to my men, it’s blasphemy.”
“You can’t blaspheme when you are God!” Belker’s voice devolved into an inhuman roar of static, before returning to the icy and dispassionate tone he tried so desperately to maintain at all times.
“Better run, little Johnson. Before your old friends catch up to you…”
When Johnson opened his eyes, he was in a Save Room. He sat at the typewriter, as still as a gargoyle watching over the city below.
Pistons whirred and gears shifted outside. The walls shook with the force of whatever creature waited behind the sanctuary of the Save Room.
What is your adversary? Thought Caleb. I need to see it.
Johnson retreated to his inventory.
What the fuck is this?
Caleb had expected a wall of empty squares. Instead he saw the stock rooms for a hospital, an armory and an antique store all jumbled up together.
Is that a fucking bazooka?!
Johnson reloaded his weapons. He topped up his health. He lit a cigarette and took a deep drag from it.
“Delicious.”
Why did Johnson play the victim like the rest of us? He could have blown us out of here in ten seconds! He should have blown us out of here in ten seconds.
But he didn’t.
Johnson thundered over to the door, trying to make as much noise as possible.
“I’m coming!” he wrenched open the door to see a shining ogre turn the corner and lumber out of sight, the sound of gears and servos fading as it disappeared. “And you know only one of us can leave!”
Johnson equipped the rocket launcher and followed the ogre. A rusted fist, already caked in gore, flew around the corner and hit Johnson square in the jaw. He scrambled back to both feet and stood face-to-face with Dave.
Wait. They’re both in the same labyrinth?
“Don’t fight me, Johnson.” Dave said, his dispassionate, disconnected tone at odds with the crazed Sergeant.
“The portal won’t open for two!” He tried to only look at Dave through the ironsights of his bazooka. It was a dishumanization technique he’d learnt on the field.
“See only through the eyes of the soldier and you’ll only see the enemy.” he murmured to himself.
Johnson noticed that Dave’s eyes were zooming in and out of focus. The mechanical man stuttered and stalled as he walked and talked. Bare wiring sparked, fans struggled to spin and a few panels ran red hot. He was strong, but he was damaged.
Most importantly, he doesn’t actually want to kill you, Johnson.
“Lower the missile launcher. I have calculated the blast intensity and I am confident that you will eliminate us both in such close quarters.”
“I am well aware of that, robot.”
“Then lower the missile launcher.”
Johnson’s trigger finger quivered. He dropped the missile launcher to the floor and equipped an assault rifle, as quick as a flash.
“Those rounds aren’t enough to penetrate my armor.”
“I don’t know Dave.” Johnson pointed to the glowing armor panels. “I feel like your coolant system is broken. Feel that liquid trickle down the back of your leg?”
Dave peered down to see a pool of bright blue fluid at his feet.
“Of course you can’t feel it.” Johnson opened fire, illuminating the black marble labyrinth with blinding flashes. Johnson saw stars, and Dave took advantage. Automatically filtering out the disruption, Dave grabbed Johnson by the throat and hoisted him in the air.
“Grk!’ Panic raced across Johnson’s expression. Sweat pouring from his brow, he struggled for air as Dave effortlessly pressured his ribcage. Johnson knew the tolerance levels of the human body, and he was aware that his bones would soon be crushed.
“Plea-please.” he squealed, as he reached into his pocket for something.
Dave’s targeting system lit up red. It helpfully labelled the small olive-coloured cylinder in Johnson’s hand.
Dave squeezed until Johnson’s eyes bled and the fingernails shot from his fingers. He squeezed harder, ramping the pressure up until the blood left by every means necessary. The grenade fell from Johnson’s lifeless body and Dave threw him to the wall like a wet rag.
A small chime rang as Dave plundered Johnson’s inventory.
Dave stood up and ran from the room, seemingly on autopilot. His robotic legs moved, but his eyes were closed.
Did he pass out? Was he asleep? There’s still so much of Dave’s new body we don’t know.
Kayleigh and Oliver stood to attention as he appeared at the foot of the labyrinth. As the door sealed and disappeared back into the shining marble walls, Caleb had one thought:
I feel sick.
Back in control of his own body, he threw up. New Caleb rubbed him gently on the back. “Who made it?”
“Dave did.” Caleb choked out. “Johnson’s dead. Very dead.” he shuddered.
Caleb looked up with bleary eyes. “What next?”
“Well,” New Caleb scratched his head. “When Johnson and Dave ended up in the same abyrinth, they had to fight…”
New Caleb let the awkward reality sink in for his older brother.
“You can’t leave. Not without a supply of Progenitor Liquid”
New Caleb leant in and whispered into Caleb’s ear. “And now, neither can you.”
Caleb reeled back. “You’re a slave to the Belker brothers, just like me.”
“You’re my challenge for the labyrinth, aren’t you?”
New Caleb dusted off his shoulders and shook his hands like a magician at the climax of his finest magic trick. “I am, indeed.”
New Caleb equipped two wide, serrated combat knives. He threw one to Caleb. Caleb fumbled, and the knife embedded itself a hair’s breadth away from his toes.
“Ouch.” New Caleb said. “That wouldn’t have been a good start.” He winked. “I try not to stab myself in knife fights. It’s kind of counter-productive.”
Caleb scowled and ripped the knife out of the floor. It was razor-sharp, its point so thin as to be barely visible.
“Fine.” Caleb held the knife aloft. “Let’s get this over with.”