The Needle

The needle scratches, stabs, scrapes. The fucking thing is loose under his vambrace. It bites and claws like a rabid rodent, the feedtube coiled against the tight cling of the body armour, slipped from the groove the years have bitten into his meat. But the topical irritation rendered moot, meaningless by the thick, scarred skin, the true urgency of his claws tugging at the armours clasps, clumsily, frantically is that as long as the needle is not sunk into his vein, the sounds and the colours are bleeding back. His nails scratch and tug at the clasps that seem rooted in place, shredding their snubbed, bitten ends and fraying the hardened tips of his fingers, his teeth bared in a concentrated grimace, lips unheeding to the bloody froth cloying to their dry, chapped curves, even when it spills and draws a slick, viscous strand of red down across his pauldron, defying gravity for a moment before it joins the dirt and grime that soil the scratched, bruised ceramic.

...

"What the hell's taking so long, sarge? We can't get to the guys they have pinned up there without something heavier..."

"I know that, Markins. Now shut the fuck up and get off my face. These fucking Slops they keep sending put me in a foul enough fucking mood as is..."

"But sir, he's been holed up in that Battle Taxi for too bloody long.. you know the fuckers probably shooting up and passed out in his own puke again! Dude, I'm so not hosing that off..."

"Just shut the fuck up and go get those bloody kids further back! I wont have them stealing from the casualties again like last time! The paperwork for Shield's lost Browbeater was enough and they still haven't found his bloody helmet. And they needed a sample from his brains and the eyes too! So don't give me shit, son, or by Mr. Slayer, I'll knock you back to Sleeper Duty..."

...

The Vambrace finally looses and clatters to the filthy floor of the armoured personnel carrier, the smell of sweat, piss and anger inside the troop compartment of the vehicle suddenly boiled over by a rich, sweet aroma of rot and bile. He snorts and grimaces and turns away for a moment from the black, ragged hole the needle and the poisons have eaten into him, swallowing down the Slosh that is trying to climb back up his throat. He stares at the gaping wound with eyes pink from tears struggled back and just groans, pushing his other fist against his face, grinding hard until skin breaks and bruises and the nausea goes away with the familiarity of pain. He pants and spits on the floor even as he begins to peel off the dispenser from his wrist, sniffling and trying not to smell the seeping gash as his fingers stumble over more latches, swearing, mumbling under his hoarse breath.

The latches give and yield the precious parasite from his wrist, hands suddenly still, careful, worshipful as they slip the dispenser from its lodgings, gently easing his thumb and middlefinger from the small loops that guide the small machine in the mix of its chemical coctails and finally slipping it against his right wrist, the muscular, worn flesh already bared to accept the device, his moves and attention like that of a surgeon attempting a heart-transplant, his eyes trying not to see the caverns and canyons dug into his fingers by the dispenser guidewires even as he weds his digits with them on his other hand, fresh to its gentle weight and precious cargo. Finally the central unit secures to his wrist, his fingers tracing the dozen small ampules within before slipping its armoured hood over the inner workings after a quick fondle through the mechanics to see them free and clear of dirt and obstructions.

And then. The needle. He stares at the tip, its touch a promise of pleasure but even as his fingers hunger to pierce his own vein with its sting the wafting stink of his own rot makes his hand pause. A harsh knock on the door of the APC almost makes him stab himself as he turns and kicks at the door from the inside with his armoured boot, scaring off who ever dared to bother him in this moment. But the interruption was enough to break the spell and with a grimace, his hand, suddenly still again as it almost gently, reverently impales the vein bulging from the hard muscles, the skin resisting a moment before yielding and spilling a pearl of dark blood that runs down across the curve of his arm, the skin adhesives on the root of the needle gripping purchase on his flesh, sealing the bond.

His blood sucks up the tube first, burgundy, darker than normal, so warped and soiled by the incessant flood of narcotics, shaded brackish by his own failing systems. The dark brown hue from dissolving liver cells, thick with infections and deteriorating organ-particles. Ten years. He stares down at the end result of ten years of active duty as a company combat-drug addict. Rush first. It made you fast, powerful, numbed you for pain and kept you ticking even when you should be lying face down in the gutter. Then came UV. Ultra Violence. It made you faster still. So fast that muscle pulled and ligament tore. But you didn't feel it. Pain only made you faster. Stronger. Angrier. UV made you angry. And it made the world make sense. It made hurting yourself make sense.

Ten years. Ten years and six organ failures, three heart arrests, twenty nine full blood transfusions, Nuke Tendon implants to replace broken muscle and tissue with something stronger. Ten years and his day didn't even start without a cocktail of painkillers, multi-ranged anticoagulants, analgesics, anaesthetics and stimulants to counter all of their soporific effects. And recreationals just to make it all feel worth it. He hadn't felt a real emotion in ten years, even before that. 16 years old when the talent scouts found him. Already heavily addicted to the street-stuff. Already carving a name for himself in the underground battles of the lesser Frother-clans. They promised the purity of product directly from SLA's medicinal laboratories. He was a precious boysoldier to suckle on the teat of the Soul Institute of Pharmacology.

And he suckled. First a month of Flush that had him screaming and clawing the walls of his cell in Meny to clean his system of the poisons cooked up in little kettles and back-alley labs all over Downtown. To clean his palette they said. So he could savour the pure stuff. He would always remember the first time his body felt the hot kiss of a commercially constructed and custom designed combat narcotic. He had lain with his first girl years earlier but the heat of her body was nothing but a topical, wet, messy suction, not like the pulse after pulse of hot lava flowing, filling his veins, making his mind focused, sharp, fast, his muscles powerful, lean, the world slow and meaningless and yet made him like a center of gravity, everything moving around him, for him. And a for a moment, he knew what it felt like being Mr Slayer. Being god.

They had taught him well. They gave him his first true power claymore. They made him feel worthy of his tartan. They gave him the powered plate beneath that Tartan and like most of his kin, he had spent the majority of his gains on drugs and to modify the armour, shifting its weight to the feet for balance and counter against the broad strokes of the blade and turning the fully enclosed helmet into a half-mask to let his long braids loose, never once cut after his birth beyond the accidents of battle and street, the arms left bare of power assistance to allow better maneuverability when wielding the enormous sword with both hands. The drugs and his training gave him all the power he needed to move the two-handed claymore like it was made of nothing but a smooth extension of his will. They taught, he learned. And they rewarded him with the most luxurious drugs. Finally, they sent him out, out to kill. And he did well. And he killed more. Often, he bled. But there were drugs for that as well. Kickstart when UV failed and he felt weakness from his wounds. He lived hard and fast. When a mission was not there, the drugs always were. His fellow Clan too. His buddies, his mates, his brothers, his blood. They were there with him. Special Pharmaceutical Operatives for the greatest aggressor in the known universe.

His blood, or what was left of it swirls in the tiny, clear agitator against his wrist and with careful shift of his hand, his thumb and middlefinger manipulating, pulling on the dispenser just so, the move unnatural, untrained for his right hand and suddenly the murky tone of the liquid pales to the sound of compressed air detonating and mixing a shot of the pure, liquid rage and fire into his vein. That burning filled his arm with electric, tingling pulse of pure power and immortality that washed away the lingering memories of a Clan long dust, of friends taken by the streets, the drugs, SLA Industries.

His body, no longer a weak, crippled husk slowly filling with power, a sense of relaxation, an escape from pain as he lets his head tip back against the hull of the APC and just feeling his own pulse as it begins to throb, thumping faster, hurting spreading in his chest as it had done for the past years before it too melts away, only the dirty light in the ceiling teasing his gaze through heavy lids, the soft, repetitive thrum of the rain over the steel roof alike the growing beat of his blood inside his head, a moments peace, tranquility of his body coming to life, waking up to violence. A violent, tainted existence, far from the good things of life and consisting of nothing but the worst. Love turning into hate, gentleness boiling down to the bitterness of rage, a touch into a fist, a whisper into a snarl, a kiss into a bite.

He basks in that hurt, in that bliss of familiar possession, what his character is, his own thoughts, his own emotions of flesh and brain bathed in the acid of his chosen venom. They are bleached, purified, altered, a willing sacrifice to feel alive, a cruel race to inhale what kills you only to feel a moment of burning life. His eyes turned to the dirty light, blind to the way the liquid of his heart pumping through small agitator chamber of his dispenser unit begins to clot, shorting, squirting and suddenly going darker still, ragged fragments of dead cells and deteriorating meat clogging even the mechanical spin, the impossibly, unnaturally powerful heartbeat, like a piston of a merciless machine grinding smooth its own gears, his heart pushes the thick clots and viscous fluid through his corrupted veins.

...

The metal hatch slams open with a resounding creak of tortured, rusted steel, alerting the bestial, stylized helmets of the Shivers to turn and face the sullen figure stumbling out of the armoured carrier, his pale, infected flesh visible where his plate has not been strapped back across his arms, his kilt, its once vibrant colours faded, muted, blotted out by mistreatment, locks of his thick hair hanging like dead branches across his hollow, sunken features, another ragged scrape as his shape is followed by the enormous blade of his Claymore, grappled loosely in one blackveined hand, dragging the massive weapon in his deathly wake. His eyes stare hollow across the stunned Shivers, seeing the monstrous grins of their helmets gnashing their teeth, roaring at the harsh lights of their helmet mounted torches, their sensor locks turning into wild, bestial manes, the radiochatter echoing through their speakers melting into insane gibbering of grotesque monsters.

And he laughs for he is with his kin now, one with the demons, the goblins, the horrors of the night. And he has his tartan, he has his plate and he has his sword and now, he has his enemies. The chemical immortality boiling in his blood once more making everything clear and clean. There is no pain, there is no memory. All washes away in a flow of sheer, brutal power and invulnerability. His cracked lips split into a feral grin as he storms through the doorway lit by the Shivers lights, his steps strong, powerful, devouring the stairs as he homes in on the blare and bark of gunshots upstairs. He leaps smoothly past a triage where a Medical Shiver is trying to keep the wounded and the dying alive. He can smell their spilled blood and intestine and it makes his own blood and guts roil with greed. But no such fate for him. He is an immortal, a demigod among the filth, a shining light of vengeance. He is death, not the dying.

He roars at the sweet tang of cordite in the air, unable to hold his voice, his rage within any further. The poison within boils out through his vocal chords in an exhale of pure vengeance. He still screams the murderous dirge as he rounds the corner, past the Shivers cowering there from the hail of whickering rounds as they savage the aged walls and empty doorways, stepping into the heat and smoke of a hallway filled with Shivers laying where the explosive fire has chewed through their simple armour and spilled their blood and flesh across the walls and floor. He stops there, panting and staring with eyes cast ahead, peering through the thick curtain of his locks at the ragged doorway, the gunfire suddenly gone, only the soft clink of spent shells and rolling Browbeater ballbearings being kicked by struggling feet sounding on both ends of the hall as the Shivers evacuate their wounded and dead and the murderers in the other end reload their weapons or just stare in shock at the diseased Frother standing there.

His tongue peeks out to trace the dried, cracked surface of his lips, tasting at the bitter air as his gaze slips and blurs and he staggers a moment, feeling a sudden twinge in his chest and his gut and a rich, potent taste on his lips. Frowning, he looks down at the blood dripping across his front. And there it is again. A squeeze, a vice-like grip on his heart. He turns his head to stare at his left hand, the fingers convulsing, twitching just as a sharp lance of pain strikes through the muscles and tendons. He blinks and gasps. There should be no pain.

No. Not now. Not again. He staggers and gags as his heart thumps desperately, trying to cope with the sudden blockage somewhere deep within him, forcing blood through with the brute force of UV. And at that moment, a poor bastard in the other end of the hall thinks to make his name by plugging a SLA op. A shot rings out and takes a bite into the deep mess of locks, the sheer force of the slug tossing the Frother off his feet in a spray of blood and tissue.

...

An end. Pain. But even more than the pain, there is a rage. An anger building. A chemical frenzy. A response to injury. The UV, he can feel how it tugs and milks his adrenaline glands like a two-uni hooker doing a quickie handjob under his kilt. But instead of that mechanical pull, this is a much more intimate touch. The drug, his lover is whispering sheer, overwhelming heat into his veins, jumpstarting his injured heart even as he can feel his body failing. But his muscles work. They work now. But not for long. And with a ragged gasp, he breathes again. Ultra Violence wont let him die. It resurrects his flesh. Broken pieces grinding together. But this toy has life yet.

No sound. Just the throb of his own blood in his ears. His vision is blurred, unfocused. He can feel the muscles of his left arm slow and lax. A brain injury then. Well, they dont hire Frothers for their thinking anyways. He chuckles and spits blood as he staggers up again, stumbling over unsteady feet, a hot gush of his own blood soaking across his scalp and down his neck. He turns his eyes on the doorway, so very far away. And grins.

He takes a staggering step closer, his right hand twisting minutely, pumping another dose of UV into his vein, feeling the burn as too much of a good thing begins to eat at his system. The pain. It goes away finally. Lightheaded, even the sudden burst of gunfire doesn't hurt so bad as it staccatos across his chestplate and thigh, merely bruising the tight muscle beneath. He chortles a bloody laugh and just lunges into a sudden run, silent, too focused to keep his flesh working to utter a roar. He narrows his eyes to the hot flashes of ejecting gun gases and the thunder he can feel against his mouth and eardrums as they begin firing again. Impact after another bites chunks out of his plate but the extensively modified PP7 Exo is proof to anything but the highest caliber rounds but one after another, the bullets find his exposed flesh as well, a tearing tug all he can feel as his skin punctures and the high velocity rounds enter and exit his flesh.

But he is already among them. Who, makes no purpose, no meaning. Discontents, hungry civilians, gangers, Soft company terrorists, Darknight sympathizers, cannibals, serial killers. With UV singing in his veins, he would carve his way through a kindergarten if he was told to do so. They crowd in close, thinking that the tight quarters of the doorway will curb his blade and having seen him fall and bleed once, know not to fear him. The sudden scream of his Claymore, Kinslayer, powering up, the meter and a half of carbon filament blade making a mockery of the rotten wall as it whispers through cement and plastic smoothly, just as slick and easy as it passes through the first man lunging at him with a knife. The skin, the muscle and the bone beneath part with a wet smack as his knife goes in two with a bright ping, the Frother twisting, his sword close to his body as he moves like liquid silver among the assailants.

A hot spray of arterial blood paints one side of his face, making his dented armour wet as his blade, mewling and heavy with blood and matter shears another from face to crotch, the shock at the ease of such blatant murder driving them back. He pants, saliva mixed with his own dark humours brothing up from his lips and soaking his chin as his heart succumbs again at the moments pause. His feet fail him once more and he slams down, his armoured knees crunching gleaming shells flat beneath his mass as his blade slips and falls from his numb hand. Slowly, with his lungs seizing, he raises his eyes to meet the predatory stares of the men and women, more boys and girls than adults, finally seeing them clearly. Fine clothes, purposefully distressed, Street, faces young, beautiful and scarred, their eyes suddenly arrogant again at his fall, weapons, better than just the usual street trash, likely DN-make. Gangers.

Gangers who were now taking this personally. He had to hold back another chuckle at the sight of them laying down their firearms and pulling out shivs and irons and chains. They wanted to take their sweet time with the Slop. Well. Let them have a go at it. He turned to take the first hit with his grin. And stopped a harsh boot with his codpiece. One of the juves sunk her blade between his chestplate and arm. He sighs soft and bubbly as the tip finds and tugs at a lung. Another boot takes him to the side of the head and finally collapses him to the floor completely. They descend on him like a pack of rodents, first kicking and hitting with the longer weapons and he just lies there, letting the armour bear the brunt of it, waiting for his heart to jumpstart again, but when their bloodlust grows they begin to reach down, crouch, tear and stab and rip with their bare hands, their madness insipid and thick in the air, the pack mentality rising to the fore over human sensibilities.

And they really hurt him. Their digging hands find meat, skin, scoring at him with their nails and knives and shivs, punching and grinding at his face until his skin lies lacerated, torn, parted. But they did not finish him. They are young and stupid. And wont get a day older or an hour wiser. He suddenly turns and grins at them again and spits blood in one girls eye before kicking a boy, no older than twelve at best in the knee. His armour-reinforced and weighted boot goes practically through the tendon and bone, rupturing flesh inside the sleeve of the pantleg, instantly dyeing the designer cloth crimson and now, now he roars as his hands, powerful beyond compare with the double dose of Bass, muscles bulging unnaturally as they grab at another boys chest, ripping him off his feet to meet the brutal, savage and repeated blows of his forehead. The gangers still don't learn and balk from the sudden savagery, just enough to let him up to his knees and hands over the broken kid and allowing him the room to lunge at the next, one that actually puts up a fight, stabbing madly at his face, the knives blade no SLA blade, obvious as it actually jams into the thick bone of his cheek bone inside his eye socket.

The revulsion of feeling his own eye splatter across his cheek makes something break and he twists the kids head back with his hands buried in his hair and sink his only weapons left into his throat. The larynx makes for hard chewing, almost stopping his teeth from catching the punks vein until he barks into muddy, burbling laughter as the hot flush of the kids blood almost gags him with its heart's pump. He gags again as he pries out the knife sticking out of his eye and stares at the remaining gangers with his single, bloodied orb, a slow grin breaking through the gory mess of his face.

There is no finesse left in him. No subtle moves, no fancy kills. Now he just employs the tight quarters and his superior strength over the streetpunks. He overpowers them, crowds them into a corner and... murders them... each and every one of them. They are tough, they are street, not a poser among the lot. But they are not tough enough yet. They are not animals. They are still humans. And so they die. A few attempt to flee into the waiting Shivers but he catches one in the ankle with his Claymore, removing the limb neatly, letting her stagger into the last straggler, a kid, a child, but one with a gun. He had to crawl by then to get over to the little turd. Only his right hand worked anymore. So he had to take his time forcing the by now dead Claymore through the boy, its battery muted in the killing spree.

He sits there, for a long time, straddling the cooling body of the young boy, leaning into the still cruciform of his Claymore, its long blade embedded into the floor through the little ganger, panting raggedly until he grimaces one last time and finally quits. Even the burn of the UV silenced, finally. And the noises and the colours. They go away too.

Brilliant!