Which Flesh is Your Flesh?

Chapter 6

621 woke with his head pounding and the awful feeling of thousands of tiny legs crawling over his body. He shot bolt upright and tried to knock the bugs off of him, before realizing they were just nanobots. Though he still wasn’t a fan of the feeling of them on his arms, he understood it was best to keep them there so that they could do their jobs.

“Good, you’re awake, 621. I was starting to get worried.” Walter leaned on his cane favoring the burnt side of his body. The scars looked nasty but they also looked old, likely from a childhood injury than one suffered as an adult. 621 was pretty sure Walter was from Titan, maybe he’d been caught in a bombing or something during the war. “You want to tell me where you got those?” he asked, gesturing at his arms. His…arms. 621’s vision went white.

“Raven, I’m sorry. I tried to stop him but there’s only so much I can do.” Ayre apologized.

“621, are you alright?” Walter asked, noticing his shift in posture.

“How long was I out.” Everything looked strange through the sight of his new eye. Blues and yellows all blended together. Iguazu must’ve been color blind. It would explain his shitty paint job.

“Three days.” Ayre and Walter both answered, like echoes of each other. 621 stood up. His body screamed at him to stop but his rage propelled him. He grabbed a small laser cutter from his room bench and before Walter could stop him, he sliced the tattoo from his arm. Then he connected to the base’s intercom.

“I’M GOING TO KILL HIM!” The speakers in his workshop blew out with the force of his roar.

“Hey Tourist, long time no see!” Carla spun around in her swivel chair to face him. She kind of liked this hound, even with the extensive brain damage he had a decent head on his shoulders and a halfway decent sense of humor. Though when she got a good look at him she realized he wasn’t in a joking mood.

He had arms and legs now, that was new, and a single brown eye filled with more rage than she’d ever seen cross his face. There was a patch of skin missing from his arm, not a clean cut and still bleeding. Instantly she switched her demeanor.

“Who did this to you?”

“Gun 5 Iguazu.”

“That little shit? Last I heard he’d landed himself in the ICU, how’d he manage that.”

“My exo locked up my nerves.” He tossed NICHE at Carla’s feet. “I was hoping you could help me fix that.” She gave it a quick once over, light, maneuverable, he’d even added small boosters to the back.

“You want this thing combat ready?”

“Yeah.”

“You mind if I make a few adjustments?”

“Can you add a mini DOUBLE TROUBLE?”

“Now you’re speaking my language, Tourist.”

“Could you also make it compatible with my AC’s systems?”

“I’d have to work on the core itself. Which one do you plan on using?”

“Closed Casket.”

Carla smiled. She’d always thought that was a good name. Very tongue in cheek.

“Because that’s what kind of funeral he’ll need when you’re done with him?”

“Exactly.” The tourist growled. He was good at making that limited voice bank of his sound intimidating. She’d need to have him give Chatty lessons.

Carla lifted the exoskeleton from the floor.

“You got a name in mind for when we’re done modifying it?”

The tourist thought for a second.

“How about Gallows Humor?”

“Gallows Humor it is.”

Michigan was taking a bath when the call from Walter came in. He didn’t get very many luxuries on base, but he’d been able to lobby to get a bathtub installed in his quarters on account of how old and busted up he was. The warm water helped his creaky joints loosen up after a long day crammed into a cockpit. Those things weren’t designed for old ogres like him. Even in his glory days he’d crawl out stiff after hours of hunching down to fit in there. He didn’t feel like getting up so he just kept his camera off and took the call.

“Handler Walter! Been hoping you’d call. Your hound has a lot to answer for.”

“He’s slipped the leash, Michigan!”

“I’ll say he has, did you see what he convinced Iguazu to do? The boy’s just a brain in a heap of scrap!”

“No, I mean he’s loose now! He said something about killing someone and then launched! I don’t know where he is!”

“You know how boys his age are, he’ll turn up eventually. How the hell’d you lose him though? Didn’t he come dismembered?”

“Somebody gave him arms and legs. Somebody with a stag beetle head tattoo.” Oh so that’s what he’d decided to do with them. “I think that’s who he’s after.” Walter leaned on the words a little bit, making sure Michigan knew he knew it was Iguazu even if he wouldn’t come out and say it. “You know how 621 operates. He’s going to wipe that person off the face of Rubicon when he finds him. Probably anyone else with him too.” Michigan got up with a grunt. Looked like he wasn’t going to be able to relax quite yet today.

“Roger that.” He hung up and then dialed Iguazu. “Gun five!”

“Sir! Turn your camera off!”

“No can do Gun Five. You stuck your cyborg dick in crazy and now my private time has been interrupted.”

“What?”

“Just got a call from Walter, seems like Gun Thirteen is out to kill you. You wouldn’t have given him a reason now would you?”

“No, Sir.” His voice was choppy as if he was breaking up on him. So there had been something.

“Well you have a choice here Gun Five, either you get in your AC and you die standing or we toss you out in the snow and you die lying down.” Michigan hung up on him.

Iguazu felt a wave of grief wrack his body, making him curl inwards with a pain so strong it blinded him. He’d bet wrong. Another life ruined by a bad gamble. He hadn’t really changed, he hadn’t shed the nameless Iguazu that had gotten him into this yet.

He- he needed to see Raven again. Raven could cut the old Iguazu out of him, Raven could make him perfect. He could bring Iguazu to the moment when his self was annihilated and only the weapon remained, when the pathetic cringing thing became steel in his master’s hands, when that steel was finally in the hands of the right master.

Iguazu made his way to the hangar. His heavy footsteps felt like a funeral march, but he was not afraid. Raven would fix him. Raven would fix him.

CLOSED CASKET roared into Balam airspace like a falling comet. He didn’t use this build often, because underneath it all, he still privately believed in honor. CLOSED CASKET was not an honorable way to kill.

The twin chain guns were already bad enough, but with the Songbirds and the laser lance at his back it was absolutely filthy. It was less maneuverable than SKY BURIAL, but fuck if it didn’t get results. He had built this thing for Snail, the vesper was the incarnation of everything he hated after all, callous disregard for human life, the gears that reduced humans to nothing but stock for the war machine, subjects for experiments, and corporate interest over all, but Iguazu had pissed him off. Iguazu had pissed him off more than anyone had pissed him off before. He thought he could make him human again by grafting somebody else to him? That wasn’t human, that was Frankenstein’s fucking monster! Having arms and legs didn’t change his status as a gun to be pointed. All Iguazu’s little stunt had done was make him realize he wasn’t yet in control. His body could still be violated and warped without his consent if somebody wanted to. That was his own fault, he’d let Iguazu see that he was vulnerable. He had thought he could trust him, that Iguazu wouldn’t dig his fingers into his wounds the second he knew they were there, but he had been wrong, and now he was even further from what he once was.

CLOSED CASKET checked his scanners. There was a craft waiting outside the base, just Melander parts. CLOSED COFFIN touched down in front of it.

“Raven,” Iguazu’s voice crackled over his comms. “Did everything heal okay?”

CLOSED CASKET switched to his Laser Lance and rammed it into Iguazu’s chest. He didn’t try to run away, he just took it. When the Laser retracted Iguazu still just stood there unmoving. CLOSED CASKET took the opportunity to jam his chain gun into the gash he’d left in his core. Iguazu’s AC went down and GALLOWS HUMOR disengaged from CLOSED CASKET’s systems. He boosted down towards Iguazu’s wrecked AC, the more industrial style exo-skeleton he and Carla built together handled better than he expected. He revved up his chainsaw as he reached the back of HEAD BRINGER and cut through the thick armor plating into his cockpit. Iguazu hadn’t engaged the emergency systems, he just sat in his pilot’s chair staring at the hud.

“Raven.” As much as a machine could, he sounded like he was about to cry. “Something is wrong with me. You can fix it right?” GALLOWS HUMOR tore him out of the chair, not caring if the sudden disconnection did nerve damage. He dragged him out of the cockpit.

“At least put up a good fight.” GALLOWS HUMOR tossed Iguazu into the snow. “If you’re going to make me kill you with my bare hands, at least make it entertaining for me.” He revved his chainsaw again and Iguazu froze up. GALLOWS HUMOR didn’t even bother using it. He grabbed his left wrist, put his foot on Iguazu’s shoulder, and tore his arm off. Iguazu screamed, static and distortion making what he was saying, if anything, impossible to make out. GALLOWS HUMOR just laughed at him. “What’s the problem Iguazu? Just turn your pain sensitivity down, or do you ‘want to feel it’?” He tore Iguazu’s other arm off and the Red Gun sobbed in pain. Then GALLOWS HUMOR noticed a panel slide open at Iguazu’s crotch. A length of silicone began to unfurl from it.

“You’re disgusting.” GALLOWS HUMOR stepped on Iguazu’s cock as he ripped his right leg off. “Is that why you did it? Because you think I’m sick like you? You thought I would enjoy that?” He tore Iguazu’s left leg away. “I’m sick alright but not in the same way you are.” He laid his foot over Iguazu’s face, delighting in feeling him struggle beneath him. Then just as Iguazu was about to say something to him, he shifted his entire weight onto him, crushing his head beneath his foot.

“Now these are my limbs.” He kicked Iguazu’s core, knowing he’d still be able to hear him. “They’re not mine because you gave them to me, they’re mine because I took them from you. I want you to remember that while they’re weighing your heart in the next world.” He could taste blood in his mouth, his gums bleeding from the force of the rictus grin frozen on his face. GALLOWS HUMOR revved his chainsaw and lowered it to Iguazu’s core. That’s where Iguazu’s brain really was now. He just needed to stick the fucking chainsaw in there and it would scramble what was left of him like an egg.

621 turned off the chainsaw. He tried to force himself to turn it back on. To pump his brain so full of adrenaline that the weapon overtook the man again but he couldn’t. He couldn’t. Iguazu hadn’t fought back. This wasn’t revenge, it was nothing but an execution. There was no honor in it. He wasn’t killing the man who had violated him, he was decommissioning a broken machine, a machine he’d broken. Who was the doctor and who was the monster tearing apart the world in search of a companion.

621 tried to open a comms link to the Balam base. Their network was encrypted. He sighed in annoyance and tried to gain access to their local network. Now what would Michigan set as the WiFi password? He tried “L1gerTa1l!” and immediately gained access. They had left their intercom system connected to the local network. It wasn’t the worst system to fall under enemy control, but if one of their ACs connected to it he could probably gain remote access. Awfully sloppy of them. Luckily for them he was in there to send a message.

“Your toy soldier is broken, Michigan.”

His coms crackled to life.

“AND WHOSE FAULT IS THAT GUN 13!” Michigan’s mic was peaking. He could imagine what the room looked like in there. Nile was probably holding him back, trying to convince him that Iguazu wasn’t worth dying for, that even if all of them sortied right now, 621 would probably take out a few of them before he went down.

“I can fix his chassis right here if you want, but we both know it’s the internals that really need the work.”

“QUIT SPEAKING IN METAPHORS GUN 13 I GET THAT ENOUGH FROM YOUR HANDLER.”

“He needs to be retrained, Michigan. I broke him, I’ll take on the responsibility of fixing him.”

“YOU’RE DEAD IF YOU SCREW HIM UP WORSE. YOU HEAR THAT GUN 13! DEAD! DEA-”

621 picked up Iguazu’s core and cut the connection. Iguazu wanted him to fix him. 621 was under no illusions. He couldn’t fix anything, everything he touched withered and died beneath his fingers, but he could break him into a more stable form. 621 surveyed Iguazu’s crushed head, his torn off limbs, and his bleeding core. He would have to make some modifications. First though, he located the microphones on Iguazu’s chassis and tore out every single one. When Iguazu had worked on him, he’d been blind and deaf to everything but the other mercenary’s voice coming over the comms embedded in his brain. It had been awful. Every single bit of him, even his perception had been under someone else’s control. However, he needed Iguazu helpless, with himself as the only thing he could focus on. He couldn’t train him if he wasn’t fully under his control.

Iguazu was still sobbing quietly over his comms. 621 didn’t have to imagine the pain he was in, he’d been through it himself once upon a time.

“Please.” Iguazu crackled over the comms. “Please.” 621 shifted the core in his arms.

“Do you want me to turn down your pain sensitivity?”

“Please destroy me.” He choked out between sobs.

“I will. Don’t worry, I will.”