Rennin remains silent while training his scope on the screaming man who doesn’t seem wounded at the throat after all. His face doesn’t even appear scared. It’s a peculiarly vacant expression.
He begins running a few metres one way crying for help then runs a few metres in another direction calling for help again. He keeps doing this, again and again, running then stopping and screaming. Wayne asks what’s wrong with him. Rennin and Carla are silently transfixed by the strange man. There’s no one else on the streets.
What’s he yelling for?
After a minute of this, another man comes running up to the screamer. Judging by his body language, he’s just trying to provide aid. Despite clearly not being hostile, the wounded screamer continues yelling for help, almost like he doesn’t even see him.
Out of nowhere, four others are on the streets, hunched over and running straight for the man who’s trying to comfort the screamer. Rennin manages a curse as the four grab the Samaritan, carrying him off down the alleyway next to the Perseverance pub across the street.
Rennin drops his rifle, switches the courtyard lights up to maximum, and makes a move for the door, “Wayne, keep her here,” and he’s on his way down the tower stair.
As he runs across the courtyard, he curses again realising he has to crank the gate open by hand. Relying on his combat chassis left leg he springs off the ground and manages to grip the crossbar at the top of the gate to hoist himself over. He lands hard onto the footpath, draws Killjoy and runs towards the alley following the pained, horrified screams.
Once he get to the mouth of the alley, silence descends from within.
It’s as dark as anything Rennin has ever seen. He doesn’t have a torch and doesn’t even know what he’s doing or what to expect. His android eye can see far enough to make his way up the alley without too much trouble, but his visual range is a few metres at best.
Occasionally some shadows dance about from the street as the screamer runs back and forth. The further up the alley he goes the more blood he finds, until finally he reaches a dead end. Wads of flesh are flung all over the walls and ground.
No sign of the people who dragged the poor guy in here to be killed but upon looking at the stone walls on either side there are fresh scratches in the stonework, always four parallel at a time, leading up the wall. So they can climb walls, Rennin thinks grimly.
Rennin heads back to the road slowly, frowning when he sees the screamer still running in random directions yelling for help. Rennin watches him closely for a few moments. He has wide white eyes with no pupils and thick, black protruding veins snaking up the back of his neck to the base of his skull. Something terrible dawns on Rennin as he watches this man.
“An ambush,” he whispers to himself, shooting the screamer in the face to leave an uncomfortably thick silence all around him.
It is then that Rennin notices a couple of people up the street just within sight range before complete blackness. Rennin’s instinct demands him to flee so he turns, finding another two up the other end of the street. He looks left back to the first two that are still stationary but they look closer. He turns back to the right and the others are closer too.
Dinner time…
He feels panic making a desperate push to overwhelm him as he turns left, finding the pair closer again, this time close enough to see their white, dead eyes. The sound of wet footsteps running from the alley behind him freezes his blood, prompting him to run for the lab gates. He throws Killjoy over then leaps up, grabbing the crossbar in an effort to throw himself over. He cries out in surprise as something grabs at his left boot. Kicking himself free, he finishes his climb and drops down on the other side.
He lands a little unsteadily, straightening up to see a pair of white eyes. They stare out of a dead face, looking back at him from no more than a foot away. Rennin swears in shock as a hand comes reaching through the bars. He dodges its grasp, stumbling away from the gate only to trip on his own feet, falling flat on his back next to Killjoy. He grabs the gun and gets to his feet, finding all four infected staring through the bars at him from various places on the road. Not moving, just staring. The silence envelops him again.
The watchman turns his back, intentionally looking away but he can feel their eyes on him as he walks back to the clock tower and up the stairs. When he gets back in the tower room Carla half leaps out of her seat. “Are you alright? Why did you shoot that man?”
Rennin nods distantly, “That was no man.” He looks down and can see the four infected looking at the clock tower. There’s also a less human-looking fifth one at the mouth of the alleyway. He shivers.
Carla sees his left hand shaking but before she can take it he moves for his rifle, “Rennin?”
“One sec.”
He brings the glass shield down and takes aim, forcing himself not to acknowledge the contaminants all looking right at him in unison. The first one he takes out is at the mouth of the alley, the one who gave him the biggest scare. The next is the one at the gate, then the others. He brings the glass shield up and slumps down in his chair, his left hand still shaking.
Carla takes the rifle and leans it against the desk, then takes his hand. “What happened?”
“Those mongrels set a trap. The screamer was the bait. Infected but not hostile, didn’t even seem to know anyone was there.”
“Did you find the guy they carried off?” asks Wayne.
“Some of him,” says Rennin noticing the early makings of a shiner on Wayne’s right eye. “What the hell happened to you?”
Wayne glances at Carla. “When you went into the alley, she went to stop you, I grabbed her and she belted me.”
Carla can’t suppress a smirk, “Take the compliment, Rennin, I guess I like you.”
Rennin smiles then looks at his co-worker, “Thanks, Wank,” he coughs, “Wayne, I owe you one.”
Over the next hour, some of the Horizon Military are called to secure the lab area whilst the Godyssey team from below decks bag the bodies and take them inside the lab compound to be incinerated in the basement.
Caufmann hasn’t bothered showing his face upstairs. He is with Del, who is now seated in the Chair, the upper back section of his skull removed to run further diagnostics. Caufmann has been examining some system designs from the past that have developed serious coding problems in the programming. He didn’t even hear Doctor Roths enter and start talking to him.
She shakes him, “William.”
Caufmann blinks a couple of times then looks at her. “Something wrong?”
“We had a shooting outside. The watchman killed six people.”
“Yes I know, but they are not people,” he amends.
“How are we going to present this?”
Caufmann exhales. “Presentation is not the concern anymore. Tomorrow there will be hundreds of attacks like that.”
“What do we do?” asks Roths.
“We wait and respond where we can.”
Roths bites her lip briefly. “What kind of losses are we talking about?”
“About eighty percent of the city populace.”
She blinks slowly letting that sink in. “That’s nothing short of a catastrophe. That’s millions of people.”
“That estimate is with both Del and Adrenin active.”
“And if they’re not?”
Caufmann hesitates. “Best leave tonight.”
“How far away is Del from being completed?”
Caufmann slumps in his seat slightly. “Further than I had hoped. Simulated Instinctual Clusters never work, I knew that and I tried one anyway. Even with the modifications to it, it’s still a mess even though some things have started working.”
Roths frowns, “What modifications?”