Girl in the Glass Planet by Cartledge S.T

Author:Cartledge , S.T. [Cartledge , S.T.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: QuarkXPress, ebook, epub
ISBN: 9781945373770
Publisher: JournalStone - Bizarro Pulp Press
Published: 2017-09-24T04:00:00+00:00

PART THREE:

A SILICON SYSTEM,

DISRUPTED

There were six surviving Shinkai here.

Thank you, I said.

The Shinkai turned back and headed into the dark of the tunnel.

Wait, Jiro called out. I need to do something before we continue.

We waited for him. The Shinkai didn’t.

He knelt by Irie’s destroyed body and held her hand now cold. He kissed her blood-soaked forehead. You don’t have to suffer any more. Jiro closed her eyelids and squeezed her hand one last time for strength.

He followed us as we chased down the Shinkai.

The sound was still ever-haunting. Although it felt like I was numbing to its pain, I knew this feeling was temporary. This thing was taunting us, teasing. The full effect of its madness would come back on, stronger again. It would remind us of all the death and damage it had caused. It had already broken Irie. It would try to break us all.

The thought plagued all of us now: who would be the next to snap and sprint head-first into suicide?

We came out into a giant crystal cavern which became illuminated with countless centipede eyes.

They were sleeping here in their hive, stirring awake in our presence. This place looked like it had been here for hundreds of years. There were sculpted out of this space these intricately crafted ladders and bridges, columns and tunnels in the cavern, through which the cyborites could move.

This place was a complex maze of translucent glass, crafted to make nests for themselves, to breed more silicon lifeforms. They clawed away at the cavern to increase its size, swelling over time.

The grinding, pulsing noises which Zatoichi made gave an aural beauty to the shape of all the hollow spaces, the bridges and the columns. The sound bent and modulated across the surface of the cavern, making the space seem much bigger than it really was. Distortions refracting both the light and the sound.

The illuminated eyes were real. All these silicon centipedes were real. Their number was an uncounted form we couldn’t figure. They moved through the cavern, navigating the tunnels and bridges, knowing every portion of this vast space intimately. All these lifeforms awakened, sent a shiver of light cascading through the glass, projecting the light shimmering into the great wild space.

Everything here was so exact, we couldn’t imagine Zatoichi existing here without breaking these sculptures wide apart. This cavern was a fragile thing, and now it was alive with centipedes moving as a unified cyborite hive-mind.

The Shinkai had already entered into the cavern, holding their diamond sledgehammers ready to swing, and they ran straight into the massive silicon swarm. They smashed the cyborites, their sledgehammers lighting up on contact, casting out a burst of frenetic colour, a majestic light.

The centipedes broke off, bursting apart, pieces of their flesh raining down around us. The Shinkai sure were masters of destruction. Made the auto-guards look like newborn human babes.

We charged in to help them, blades slashing and plasma torches firing. We aimed at any creature of the hive-mind which came too close to us.

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