Jak Koke - Clockwork asylum

Grind made an effort to stand. "If you're staying, then I'm staying."

From the corner of his eye, Ryan caught movement. So fast it was a blur, streaked by rain. He turned, pulling his Ingram, but even as he raised the weapon, he knew it was too late.

A hulking form disappeared into the darkness. Burnout, but he was carrying something. The shaman. Burnout had stole the shaman's body out from under their noses.

Grind was already down the ramp, running.

"Dhin! Get Miranda and Axler to the clinic." Then Ryan was running as well.

He and Grind came barreling around the grove of pines, and found themselves running along the second cliff face. A steep slope of loose shale. Utterly impossible to traverse because the rock was so slippery, and small landslides of shale sheets continued to slip down the mountain.

They careened around an outcropping of rock to find Burnout in front of them. The cyberzombie had jammed his now useless third arm around the dead man's waist, and was using him as a shield of sorts. He fired his Predators at Grind, catching the dwarf in the shoulder. Knocking Grind back.

Lightning flashed, close. The thunderclap completely drowned out the barrage of fire from Ryan's Ingram as he opened up.

The shaman's body absorbed the bulk of the burst, but Burnout took two rounds to the thigh and staggered backward.

Then Burnout's Predator barked again, and Ryan dodged to the side. He hit the ground, and came to a rolling crouch, his Ingram spraying the space where Burnout had stood a moment before.

The cyberzombie was gone. Disappeared again, and for a moment Ryan wondered if Lethe had hidden him. But after the crash of thunder faded from Ryan's ears, he heard the distinct sound of a rock slide. Burnout thrashing as he plummeted down the cliff face.

Ryan jumped to his feet and ran the few meters to the cliff's edge. When he looked down, there was nothing but a steep shale cliff, reaching all the way down to a small dark lake, hundreds of meters below. A wash of stones fell all across the face of the mountain, but the thick rain made it hard to see Burnout, if he was even down there.

Frag, he thought. Not again.

Inside Burnout's body, Lethe fell. The slippery flat shale was like a jagged slide beneath them as they plummeted. The rain-slick stones formed an avalanche wave in front of them, rippling out on either side to bring down tons of rock.

Burnout used the Kodiak's body as a cushion of sorts, trying to maintain an edge of control as they fell. The cold brittle air was chilling and wet around them. The wind like a wall of ice needles. Lethe felt everything Burnout felt with absolute clarity. His spirit was ensconced now. Irretrievably tied to Burnout.

For now, it is perhaps for the best, he thought.

Burnout's mind was full of anger, hate toward Ryan Mercury for the death of the Kodiak. Lethe could taste the emotion like a palpable scent. He could feel Burnout's thoughts and emotions almost like they were his own. In fact, he found them harder and harder to ignore.

The anger filled him, and brought with it an image. An elf with a painted face, lounging in a French garden. Walls of ancient masonry surrounded the courtyard. Salt air and the dull roar of the sea. Blue sky and water of cobalt.

Anger and frustration boiled inside, overwhelming.

The elf smiled, but his eyes glared. "This is an unexpected visit," he said.

Angry, heated words were exchanged. A conversation that blended into an emotional collage.

Then the scene faded from Lethe's mind, and he could not recall anymore.

"What was that?" Burnout asked, digging his heels as he tried to slow their fall.

"You saw that, too?"

"Yes."

"I don't know," Lethe said. "I think it was a memory."

"A memory of what?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's one of mine."

Burnout said nothing.

The lake came up like a black wall, like an impenetrable slab of the darkest asphalt. But Burnout had dug in with his heels and his claws in an effort to slow them down. The dark water slammed into them. Shaking their body to the metal core. Then the chill came as they drifted to the bottom, swallowed whole by the icy liquid.

Ryan stood in the pouring rain, looking down at the black-hole surface of the lake three hundred meters below. Burnout planned this escape, he thought. He left himself a way out.

Ryan knew that spoke volumes about the cyber-zombie's psyche. It meant Burnout valued his own life, and that was unusual.

Cyberzombies held a fragile and tenuous grip on life. Sometimes the cybermantic blood magic that tricked the spirit into staying with the body simply failed. Many early attempts had died spontaneously. For Burnout to have developed a sense of self-preservation meant he was thinking as an individual. It must be the influence of the Dragon Heart, Ryan thought. Or perhaps Lethe.

Ryan spoke into the tacticom mike attached to his throat. "Dhin, you airborne yet?"

"Firing up now."

"Wait ten seconds. Grind and I are coming with you."

Grind was standing three meters away, and he looked over. "You don't want to search for him?"

"I want to see this thing through," Ryan said. "But everything in due time. Right now, we need to take care of Miranda and Axler." He turned and ran back to the clearing and climbed into the Phoenix II.

Grind was just behind him. "I'm in," the dwarf said. "Go! Go!"

The jets screamed, and the LAV lifted into the boiling black sky. "I've contacted DocWagon in Poison," came Jane's voice. "They'll rendezvous with you in five minutes."

"Excellent," said Ryan, kneeling beside Miranda. He held the scarred flesh of her burned arm.

She woke then, her eyes defocused from the drug-induced sleep. Her voice was a whisper. "I was… dreaming."

Ryan's voice dried in the back of his throat.

"I dreamed that you… that you got to me in time, Travis. I mean Quicksilver."

Ryan squeezed her hand gently.

Miranda smiled. "You get him?"

Again, Ryan wanted to lie, wanted to tell her that Burnout was a twisted mass of charred chrome. He looked into her eyes, saw the agony and couldn't deceive her. He shook his head. "We lost him. He used the shale rock slide to escape."

Miranda laid her head back into the folded tarp that Dhin had given her for a pillow.

"But we'll get him," Ryan said. "You and me. We'll get him together, and we'll make him pay for this."

Miranda smiled, making her cracked lips bleed. "No lies, Quicksilver, not… for you and me. I'm not gonna make it." A wracking cough got hold of her then, and blood came out of her mouth in a fine mist.

Ryan stroked her head gently, feeling the blistered skin under his hand. "You rest now. Save your strength. You've come this far, and we're going to patch you up better than new."

"Even if I… stay alive. I'm not gonna be… in any condition to…"-Miranda's breath came in hacking gasps-"fight Burnout," she finished.

"Shh," Ryan said. "Burnout and I are tied together by the Dragon Heart; we'll meet again."

Her eyes clouded. "Travis," she said. She was becoming delirious. "Travis, thanks for… helping me get out."

"Ssh, Miranda."

"It was because of you that I… left Fuchi. I have you to… thank."

Miranda smiled again, and the blood from her mouth ran down her cheeks. "It's been quite a ride period." She laughed, a choking rattling sound that started another coughing fit.

"Try not to talk." Ryan felt cold anger swelling inside him.

She sighed, the sound bubbling in her chest. "Promise me… one… thing."

Ryan's vision blurred from his anger. "Anything."

She motioned him closer, and as he leaned in, she whispered, "Promise that it won't… have been for nothing." Miranda collapsed into unconsciousness.