The Uprising

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Drifting back out of my daydream, the tears were running towards the back of my head as I lay there on the cold hard surface. The makeshift chandelier hanging from the ceiling took no interest in my wakening, so I tried to get myself into a sitting position. I let out a groan as my body refused to move from the neck down. My encounter with the Jackhammer may have been pretty severe, and depending on my fall I may have incurred spinal injuries, which would explain my paralysis. Taking a deep breath and mustering all the strength that I could, I lifted my head to see the what I could of the rest of my body, it soon became apparent as to why I couldn’t sit up.
I was tied down.
“Shit.” I said quietly, wondering where the hell I was and finally making use of my fingers, but the hands were securely tied, perhaps even handcuffed to the table.
At least I thought it was a table, the cool metallic surface seemed to me as if it were raised off the ground. I wasn’t exactly sure as to what happened after the Jackhammer struck its blow, but Sapph…
Sapphire!
I remembered the faint images and sounds before I passed out, her screaming warnings to me, moving towards me and then everything went dark. I hoped that she was able to flee the robot before it had a chance to strike again.
“Sapphire…” I groaned, not expecting a reply, and wasn’t surprised when none came.
There was a mechanical noise somewhere near my right hand, and the sound of something being pressurised with gas.
“Ah!” there was a jolting pain in my right arm near the elbow, something jabbed into me, was it an injection of some kind? I didn’t have long to think about it before the world around me grew foggy again, a warm relaxing feeling swept over me like a warm tide, then I was asleep again.
When I awoke the room around me had taken on a different perspective, instead of facing the ceiling I was now stood against one of the walls covered in news papers. Still fastened tightly to the table, the tracks on the floor below told me that it was mechanically operated to move that way.
Purpose built torture table, nice.
There were two other tables similar to mine, empty and both lowered to their floor positions to my left and right. The room also had two doors, one on the left wall and the other was a double, directly opposite where I was. With the glare of the candlelight’s hanging from the ceiling, I couldn’t make out if there was light coming from the door on the opposite side of the room.
I decided to try and escape, at first I thought I was in some sort of friendly medical bay, but the fact that I was now practically standing, my opinions of optimism were beginning to dwindle.
Looking down at my feet, I saw that the contraption that had injected me was still attached to my arm, a small oily digital timer indicated one minute and forty seconds. It was probably timed to give me another shot of the sleep inducing drug. The feeling of alarm was beginning to give me a new lease of life, and I tried to pull my left hand free, thankfully it gave a little, but it had only succeeded in bending my wrist to an awkward and painful right angle in the restraints. After five more attempts, I had an arm loose, the digital time read one minute.
There were two reasons behind my needing to move quickly.
One of them being that when the needle gave out its dose, whoever it was that put me here would return to finish what they had started. That troubled me, because I was oblivious to what was happening around me still. I still couldn’t understand where I was or what I was brought here, it was insane, one minute I’m on the road to my folks house in Teulon, the next, I’m lying down here in the darkness, killing people for survival, fighting with metallic monsters and shooting alligators while falling into pools of blood. All in a days work!
The second reason that I was becoming more and more agitated with my predicament…
I could hear voices.
I looked down at the injection mechanism and the way that it was puncturing my skin, if I were to pull the needle out fully, blood would more than likely begin to pour down my arm without lasting pressure. I didn’t know how much time I had, but I needed to think of something.
Perhaps if I could get free of the restraints…
I tested the belt buckle that had my upper torso secured firmly to the table, I was just able to get my fingers to pull the belt through, after pulling it tighter to get some leeway on the buckle while breathing in. It dropped to the floor in a thunderous clatter, if someone really where closing in, they must have heard that! I had to move quickly, just as the machine beeped its injection signal, I noticed I still hadn’t removed the needle from my arm. Without ceremony I ripped it from my arm, almost choking on my vomit as the sensation ripped through my senses. The needle must have been three inches long at least, blood was indeed dripping from my arm, but not too freely. I tried keeping pressure on it while I managed to get the right hand free.
Moments later, I was completely free from the restraints!
Seconds later, I was on the floor in a heap…
All the strength was gone from my limbs as I flopped to the floor like a rag doll, I felt as if I had no muscle sinew at all, my foot slid forward onto the stone floor and skidded away from me, I hit my head off of one of the metal tracks the bed was attached to. Luckily for me there was no real damage, that I could tell just now at least and soon the strength filtered back into my body. I couldn’t find anything useful and I was dressed in a new t-shirt, with the same filthy combat trousers on. I could tell instantly that my socks had been changed, my feet had a new lease of life!
The voices that were approaching, did just that, from behind the double door now opposite me, I had no other route of escape save for the other door to my left, if that was unlocked of course.
I made for it, staggering along in some weird dance as my limbs slowly got over their atrophy. My right hand clasped the door handle firmly and turned it, it seemed well oiled.
The door was open.
Almost simultaneously, the noise of a key being used on the double door echoed in the distance. I gently closed the door, deciding not to leave it ajar, despite the people knowing that would be my only avenue of escape. It was right then that I was faced with the problem, with my eyes accustomed to the light in the operating/torture room, the light in here was non existent.
Pitch black.
I heard two voices on the other side of the door.
“What do you think about it?” the voice sounded female, I couldn’t quite make out the origin.
“I don’t think down here, we just-“ The male voice was cut short, obviously realising that I was no longer tied down. A few moments silence passed before I felt something brush my arm, stupidly looking in the direction of the sensation, the strong hand clamped over my mouth and pulled me back.
“Don’t say a fucking word, or I’ll break your neck!” The voice sounded serious, so I let my body go limp. I heard the voices continue in the other room, growing louder and more panicked.
“How the fuck could this happen??!? Bennedict is going to kill us!!!” the female voice screeched, sounded British.
“Sound the alarm, I’ll inform Bennedict that the three of them have escaped…”
Three of them?!

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sapphire’s voice was a muffled noise in the hazy darkness as I fell backwards awkwardly into the dark stairwell, my shoulder crunching into the centre railing that creaked under my weight. There was no telling how many floors down there were still, if I were to fall, I wouldn’t survive, my luck couldn’t be that good.
Hydraulics screeched dryly in front of me as the Jackhammer made its death dance, the barbed sphere shot out at me and hit me flush in the chest. The creaking of my ribcage could be heard echoing through the darkness, only muffled by the screams of the marauding robot in front of me.
I was dead…
The pain was overbearing as the world around me spun and faded into a darkness that wasn’t due to the lack of light, my world faded to black.
Then my eyes opened, and I tried to lift myself in shock that I had survived the Jackhammers wrath, the muscles in my chest clearly refused the action and I didn’t move an inch. Pinned to the floor, my eyes began to focus on the ceiling…
I could see the ceiling?
It couldn’t be, I was sure that I was dead, but here I was, laying on my back, the pain pulsing through my limbs and torso. I was very much alive. So where was I? Managing only to raise my head I looked around to see exactly where that was, the room around me appeared to be different from any other I had seen so far.
For one thing, there was a makeshift chandelier hanging from the ceiling, with two old oil lamps dangling from it, the draft making them sway left to right. The four walls around me were covered in newspaper clippings, some of them that I was able to focus on were dating back to before 'The War' started. Some were even optimistic reports that the delegations of the United States and Peoples Republic of China had been successful. How wrong those reports were, as far as I could recall that was reported six days before the first rockets were launched, many of the first reports of the attack stated that it was North Korea that had launched the first ballistic missile towards its northern neighbours Russia.
Then all hell broke loose.
The Son of Star Wars missile defence program was a success, initially, but no one would have forecast the invasion of the countries harbouring those systems.
I recalled a day during the initial attacks, just after TSSW systems had proven successful, the phone call that I made to my friend Derrick in Edinburgh, Scotland at that time, the call would be engraved on my memory forever.
“Well things are a little tense over here, what was the story about London?” I said to Derrick, the static on the line was present right after the first bombs hit Russian soil. He was working for the Lothian and Borders Police force at the time, his wife Nyree was having their first child, everyone – including myself – was pretty emotional about it.
“Apparently Kings Cross Station was obliterated by a dozen suicide bombers, hundreds of people are reported dead. I really can’t believe it, we’ve just come back from there.” His voice was a little strained, Nyree was due in the next fortnight, but with things escalating on all borders, everyone was trying to make arrangements for emergency scenarios, Derrick was on full standby when he wasn’t working.
“What about the flights out of Edinburgh? Toronto have stopped allowing planes to head out, even the short domestic flights.” I knew that because I had just tried hopping on a flight to Winnipeg in Manitoba. All flights from Canada other than military flights were suspended.
“It’s probably a precaution against terrorism, everyone and their aunt is looking to stick it to the States.” He replied over the crackled telephone line, it was likely that this call was being recorded, the keywords traced by word recognition would have the federal service people working overtime listening to calls, because quite simply, there was nothing else on peoples minds these days.
“I guess, but how the hell am I going to get to the folks?” It had been bugging me all morning, if I was to set out now, it would take me two days driving at full speed, on clear road to get to Saskatchewan. Then I’d have to take the long way around to avoid the congestion around Winnipeg, heading north to Teulon, some fifty miles north of there. To top things off I hadn’t heard from either mom or dad since yesterday, to say I was worried was an understatement. I longed to be away from this city before it starts to tear itself apart, signs were already beginning to show that the civility of the local people was freying.
“Kobin, you there?” I had been daydreaming, ignoring my dear friend, his voice sounded slightly different.
“Yeah, sorry I was miles away, what’s wrong?”
“I just got a call on my mobile from headquarters, they want all emergency service workers to report to Dreghorn, immediately.” He sounded alarmed, and that got the hairs to stand up, I got off the sofa and began walking around it.
“Did they say why??!”
“No, it was very abrupt, they said drop everything that I was doing and to get my ass over there now, I’d better go,” there was a beeping in the background, and a few moments of silence on the line, “That’s Nyree just sent me a message, she’s already on her way there now! What the fuck!” he was almost crying the words over the phone to me, my heart began to sink. With Derrick being called over to the Military Barracks next to the Pentland Range, he would have understood that as some sort of preparation for martial law in the countries capital.
But Nyree being whisked over there as well, that made the situation more alarming, my legs began to shake uncontrollably but I didn’t want to sit down, she was a qualified Doctor in the Burns Unit at St.Johns Hospital, some thirty miles west of Edinburgh.
“Maybe it’s just a precaution Derrick, they’ll have her as an adviser if the city goes to shit!?” I tried my best to reassure my friend even though I was unsure of the situation myself.
“What’s that?” I heard him say distantly on the phone, so I tried to repeat what I had just said, this time sounding even more unsure of myself than before. There was a noise on the line, in the background it was loud, like a car going past Derrick, but he was in his apartment.
“Jesus Christ…” Derrick said absentmindedly, a loud noise clattered through my earpiece as he dropped the phone at his end, the noise in the background grew louder and louder, then faded before returning again stronger.
My right ear was burning as I pressed the receiver hard against my head, with the added static on the line it was hard to make out much of what was going on in the background, a few moments later, Derrick came back on the line, the noise continuing in the background in waves.
“Kobin, I have to go… I’ll call you back once I get to the barracks.” Derrick sounded more worried than I had ever heard him before, I was almost in panic.
“What is it? What just happened?”
“There are jets, dozens of them, flying across the Forth.” The Forth River was north of Edinburgh, the famous Forth Road and Rail Bridges, alongside the newly and controversially built Forth Tunnel, opened the gateway from the bustling capital city into the open beauty of its countryside and northern towns. The Rosyth Naval base wasn’t too far away from there, from what Derrick said, the planes were heading in that direction.
“Are they British?!?” the question really surprised me, I wasn’t even thinking of anything other than U.K. Fighter jets flying over the Scottish capital.
Derrick dropped his phone again, and the faint sound of his front door slammed, the noise of the fighter jets in the air faded to the noise of the faint static on the line.

It was the last transatlantic call I’d ever make, or receive…

CHAPTER TWELVE

Looking around the room, standing some ten feet away from a non functioning killing machine, we took in the scene around us. The two candles flickering nearest to us gave the Jackhammer a serene appearance, like a dog sitting by the fire. I blocked out the scene as it immediately began to fill me with sadness. The Jackhammer was no dog, it was four hundred kilo robot designed to search and destroy, I was slightly surprised that it was so easily damaged in the chase. Perhaps it was ‘injured’ by some previous encounter, I was almost positive that this couldn’t have been the same machine that chased me through the corridors above. Unless someone, maybe that Mexican man had hurt it during his encounter. It was a minor distraction to what was really troubling us both, but yet again I was slightly distracted.
In the candlelight I could finally see the woman that I had allied with about twenty minutes ago, she was standing looking around the room for other signs of importance, she eventually settled her eyes on me. Realising that I was staring at her she slowly moved her right hand to my face and used her index finger to gently lift my jaw.
She was beautiful, if somewhat ragged by the recent and whatever previous problems that she had come across in the darkened depths. Her hair was fairly short, but neatly swept back in a ponytail, it looked jet black and back just to the nape of her neck. But that wasn’t what caught my full attention.
The girl in front of me had the most startling blue eyes, really accentuated by her light complexion, she wore a dark red skinny shirt, that showed her athletic figure to its full. She wore red combat trousers and scuffed white shoes.
“You look like shit.”
The comment almost made me burst out laughing, I looked down and saw that the comment was pretty accurate, my shirt beneath the black outfit I acquired was also a brownish red colour, and the blue denim jeans that I had on were a darker shade of purple, strange…
I continued to look at myself for a few moments, and saw that the tail end of my shirt was still damp with the water that I fell into above, I’d lost count of how many flights of stairs we had descended into the darkness.
I rung the edge of my t-shirt out in my hand, and was shocked to see what happened. The droplets of water hit my dirty left palm, although there wasn’t a lot of it left in the drying shirt, the water that I did manage to wring out, was red.
Blood red.
“Holy shit.”
Sapphire edged closer to see what I was groaning about, then recoiled in horror.
“It’s all over you.”
I realised she was right, I was soaked in blood, it had began to dry into my skin and clothing. “Am I hurt??” I couldn’t understand it, it didn’t feel as if I was hurt anywhere, at least serious enough to cover my almost head to toe in my own blood, it was almost as if…
Oh my god.
“The pool…” thoughts began to flicker through my head at the scene covered in near perpetual darkness above.
“What?”
“The pool upstairs that I fell into, I remember that it felt the water was making me sluggish as I waded through it. Maybe it wasn’t water at all, for the most part at least.”
Sapphire stood there for a few moments remembering the scene above, the revelation spread over her face as quick as lightning, she grimaced at the thought.
“You’ve got to be kidding!”
“I wish I was! There’s no other explanation for it, the blood is still damp for Christ’s sake!”
Reflecting on my own statement, I felt the sudden urge to strip naked. The thought was in my head to rinse all of the clothing in the stream, but if it was contaminated then that would prove to be equally problematic. My hands would soon be giving me the answer in around an hours time, if I don’t find a means of washing them before then.
“The candles.” Sapphire timed the question brilliantly, the thoughts of what I was wearing flushed immediately from my mind.
When we both burst into the room moments ago, the sensation of being able to see was almost as overpowering as the Jackhammer that distracted me from it. Now that I was able to reflect on the room, the feeling of being able to focus took a little getting used to. If the light was that of normal daylight, then we would probably have suffered some sort of permanent damage. But the lighting was just at the right level to not cause any discomfort. In different circumstances, I would have said that the feeling was almost romantic.
“Where do you think we are?” Sapphire asked, realising that I wasn’t going to retort to her previous statement.
“I have no idea, I didn’t even know where I was when I started, hell knows where we are now.” The room had no real significance with the exception of the stream running through it. My initial urge was to test how deep that water was, so scanning the room for disposable objects and finding none, I headed back to the robot.
“What are you doing?”
“Just hold on a minute,” I reassured her, stepping quietly over one of the Jackhammers extended forelimbs, it was motionless, with the fluid barely dripping from it now. As I manoeuvred my way over the large metallic monster, I tried to keep an eye on any sudden movements from it.
Even in the flickering candlelight, I didn’t see the movement in my periphery until it was too late, the barbed sphere of the Jackhammers’ main attacking prowess floated through the air without as much as a sound of hydraulics. The shouts of Sapphire echoing behind me didn’t travel quickly enough through the thick musty air as I stumbled backwards…

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The sounds coming from above were almost as surreal as my ability to navigate the stairwell in the pitch black darkness, Sapphire took the lead and it almost seemed to me that she knew where she was going.
I don’t know why, but the scent of her jaded perfume sent my thoughts away from this hell hole.
It wasn’t long before dust and debris began to fall all around us, and the screaming metallic sound of the Jackhammer in pursuit was terrifying. I did feel that the air around us was becoming more stifled the deeper into the ground that we travelled. The musty smell that I filled my senses back in the loading bay seemed like a summer breeze compared to what I was inhaling now. The decaying odour was broken by the gentle pulling of my fellow countrywoman.
“Do you know where we’re going” the musty air escaping tickled the back of my throat and triggered fits of coughing that slowed my progress into the dreary depths.
“Yes” was the blunt answer that I received, the total stranger leading me panted between breaths. I tripped over something, it could have been rubble from the attacks from above ground, or a dead body lying in the small stairwell. Trying not to think about it and concentrating hard on my footing, I followed her obligingly.
The only reason that I was trusting her at this moment in time was that an 800-pound metallic killing machine was working out the quickest way to descend a concrete stairwell.
The two options were simple, down and around the stairs like we were doing, or through the stairs themselves. From the crashing sounds echoing around me I decided that it was the latter of the two options it was going for.
“Well?” I managed so cough out into her ear, my left foot almost gunning into an uncontrollable slide down the dusty steps.
"Running... Down... Stairs, idiot."
Right then, we exploded out into a wide corridor, two candles burned in the distance some twenty yards away with two more by the doorway that we just entered. The sound of running water filled my senses, the thirst stretching the back of my gullet was almost as dry as the stone floor that I was not walking on, still holding Sapphires hand.
“Where are we?” The question was short lived as the sound of metal ground to a halt some twenty feet behind me. The Jackhammer’s hydraulics sounded wheezy in the dim candlelight.
We stood watching it, me pulling the pistol that Sapphire had reconstructed and handed back to me. I was about to raise it before she placed a warm hand on my wrist.
“It’s pointless” Sapphire said calmly as I’d seen her since I met her, that’s not saying a lot, seeing as I met her about five minutes ago.
I followed her gaze towards the Jackhammer, where it was crouched, looking in our direction. There was a whirring noise that came to my ears as it lay there staring at us, and the dripping of fluid from one of its legs. It appeared to be ‘injured’ if such a creation could suffer it. Rightly enough, it wasn’t making any attempts to move for the two of us, we could only stand and stare as the two candles flickered wildly at the draft coming from the water behind us.
Water?
I spun on my heels, forgetting about the injured left one that quickly reminded me of its affliction. The shooting pain made me fall to my knees, the reflexes almost causing me to pull the trigger of the pistol.
There was a river running right to left of me, perhaps five yards away. The light of the candles behind me caused an enlarged monstrous shadow to be cast against the far wall about ten more yards from it, but it wasn’t what caught my eye. There was a doorway on the other side but the river was about two and a half yards across, possibly more. With my foot being injured and not knowing how nimble my newly acquired ally was, the distance was greater than I thought achievable. The river was flowing rapidly enough to know that it would sweep anyone weak enough to the dark depths beyond, and god knew what was further downstream. That is, if the river was deep enough at all. But the noise that it made in this small enclosure made me think that it was pretty deep. Deep enough not to risk it.
The temptation to drink from the running liquid was alarming, before I knew what was happening I had a cup of water in my hand, moving it quickly toward my parched lips.
“NO!!!”
The scream from behind me was echoing loudly in the square room, but the noise didn’t deter the hand from moving closer to my face.
The foot did…
From out of nowhere, BLAM! I fell backwards with my knees still bent, the angle of them made me contort to my left as I felt the ligaments stretch almost to breaking point. Luckily, I survived the acrobatics, albeit with a sore hand, and even more painful upper lip that was swelling by the second.
“What the fuck are you doing?” I shouted at her, almost pointing my pistol at her head before quickly gaining control of myself.
“You drink that, and you may as well put a bullet in your head, idiot!”
I looked at her as if she were insane or speaking in some alien language. After a few moments reflection on the statement my eyes widened.
Jesus…
The water running through here had to be from a natural resource because of its flow, and it didn’t smell like sewer water. It must have run from a natural resource above ground.
Contaminated ground.
The radioactive fallout was saturating the Earths surface for almost every square mile, it was the main reason I was so surprised to see any living animals down here. On the flipside of that, I hoped that I wouldn’t run into any more or at least not in such close quarters.
“Thank you, “ I murmured with a stiffening upper lip, “I don’t know what came over me.”
“Yeah you do, trust me, I’ve been there and almost did it myself. You don’t realise how thirsty you are until you hit water. You didn’t drink any of the sludge upstairs did you??”
Now there was a question, as I plummeted into the darkened depths of that pool where the alligators lived did I actually take a mouthful of that slime in? I didn’t think so, at least my body would be telling me otherwise by now.
“No, luckily I didn’t”
“Luckily for both of us, don’t think I could make it alone any longer down here.”
In the dim light of this underground aqueduct, we both paused for a moment on that statement, then something occurred to us both simultaneously. Turning, we looked back in the direction of the fallen Jackhammer, but not directly at the scrap metal. Something else caught our eye in the scene in front of us, hardly giving it a moments thought until this very second, we looked at each other, our hearts dropping into our stomachs as the realisation came about.
Who lit the candles?