Mardock Scramble

Rare gripped his knife tightly and meandered down the corridor.

–I’ll see you downstairs in the basement, Boss. Could you beam me through the floor plans, please?

Rare’s eyes glinted red. Tears fell, blood-red under the reflection of the colored light.

He followed the route toward the basement, wobbling from side to side, all the strength drained from his arms.

–Head into the room to your left, Rare. There’s a shortcut.

Rare did as Welldone said, opening the door on the left-hand side. He descended the stairs and entered the room.

–Lock the door behind you.

Rare was about to do so, then came to with a jolt.

“What did you say?”

Rare looked around, grinding his teeth.

A large number of lockers lined the wall. Evidently some sort of storage room for corpses—and no sign of anything that could resemble a shortcut.

Gripping the hilt of his knife even tighter, Rare glared at his new surroundings.

The electronic lock on the door behind him shut automatically.

Rare snapped back to look at what had happened, and he saw a ridiculously long release code flash up on the display of the electronic lock.

He tried the numbers several times, but there was no trace of a response. He kicked the door with a high-pitched whine.

“How dare you, you piece of shit! Where the hell am I? Flesh! Flesh!” He carried on kicking at the door, apparently not even noticing that he was now yelling out loud.

–You’re in the Archaeozoic Era.

Well’s voice—no, a voice identical to Well’s—from deep inside his own ear.

–And now you’re in the Proterozoic Era. And now Paleozoic, Cambrian, Mesozoan, and finally the Diluvial Epoch.

Rare spun around in surprise.

–You’re in a sea of fossils.

Countless numbers of spirals flashed before his eyes.

Ancient shells that had become one with stone were now appearing here and there and everywhere—all around the mortuary, buried in the lockers—giving the distinct impression that they were in some sort of prehistoric deep sea graveyard.

Rare jumped into action, bringing the knife in his right hand down on the nearest wall.

The metal melted where the blade touched it, and part of the locker slid to the floor with a thud.

The spiral shells kept on appearing and disappearing as before. Proof that there was a projector somewhere, sending the images around the room.

“You and your fancy tricks! Come on out, you pig! I’m going to rip you to shreds and fuck the pieces!” Screaming, Rare raised his right hand, now balled into a fist.

The unusually thick bracelet that he wore on his left wrist started jangling. Without warning it fired strands of metal in every direction.

A crackling noise, and blue-white sparks followed.

Thin strands wound back into the bracelet, and the pieces of metal clinked and subsided.

In a few moments the lockers in Rare’s vicinity had been reduced to pieces, collapsing into heaps on the floor.

“Wire whips.” A voice from the shadows of the lockers. “Wires that emit charged particles. What a brutal weapon.”

Rare turned toward the voice and without any hesitation pointed the bracelet in its exact direction and fired his weapon again.

A blue-white flash tore through the room, and with the sound of a dozen screaming whips, the fossils were ripped to shreds over and over.

For a second he saw a white figure caught in the wires, but it disappeared back into the darkness.

A hit, a palpable hit…

But Rare’s facial expression tensed. The bracelet’s rewinding function failed.

The display on the bracelet was going haywire, flashing randomly, and it wouldn’t respond to Rare’s instructions.

“Electromagnetic waves causing interference? Shit…” Rare tut-tutted, and was ready to throw the bracelet away as useless when, without warning, it started moving of its own accord.

“Remote control?” Rare stood there, astonished, and could only watch as the wires snaked across his left hand and wove an intricate path toward his body.

Rare shivered in terror, his face suddenly pale.

The very next moment the wires returned to the bracelet at breakneck speed, and Rare’s left arm—from the elbow joint down—was diced like a steak, shredded into small pieces that dropped into a pile on the floor.

A scream—neither quite from a man or a little girl—gushed forth from Rare’s mouth.

Rare tumbled into a heap, watching as the wires flew into the air once more before igniting in a mass of sparks and disintegrating along with the bracelet.

Blood oozed slowly from the stump where Rare’s arm used to be before its amputation.

“I’m going to kill you…” Rare’s voice was full of venom but was masked by the sound of gunfire.

A bullet pierced Rare’s shoulder with pinpoint accuracy.