Chapter 1: Rusthulk

A loud clang briefly overpowers the drone of the helicopter's blades as my restraints are loosed and I land on the ship's deck. The chopper, a heavy-duty cargo lifter with a double rotor, violently jerks up as my weight is no longer its problem and the pilot struggles briefly to regain control.

I don't look up and instead survey the scene before me: containers are stacked four stories high on the deck and from afar it might have passed as a regular vessel, but up close reveals the tendrils of flesh snaking up, over, around and in between the boxes: the GCV Procyon is infested. My right hand rotates out to reveal a circular saw and with the sound of grinding gears, I lumber over to the closest stack and begin my work. The cargo is worthless to me so I forgo slicing open the bolts and instead cut directly into the steel walls. A careful inspection would take too long and run the risk of flesh parts hiding away between pallets. Instead, I cut a hole large enough to deposit a spray of fuel inside, then rotate my left hand to the torch and ignite it all. Fire still works best and once I reach the ship's own fuel store, I should have plenty to turn each container into a cremation furnace so nothing can escape. I move to the next box and pay no heed to the slithering tendrils retreating towards the hold. Stealth was never the intention, and It already knew I was here the moment I touched down.

-----------

I remember little from the time before I was made into what I am today, and much of that has been supplemented by second-, third-, or even fourth-hand information. And while I can't exactly attest to the accuracy of everything, I am reasonably sure of what I've pieced together because this is exactly how those bastards would've done it.

Anyway.

There was a moment when medical science had made enough of a leap forward that consumer prosthetics were on the verge of becoming the new marketable essentials; like cellphones had been in a bygone age. Hospitals hired specialist staff en masse while celebrities were showing off cybernetic arms, legs, torsos and such on magazine covers worldwide. Fashion designers incorporated them in their shows and brands started plastering themselves directly on the items - still know a guy who has an AlienWare leg.

However, as one can guess, that leap forward was made directly into the arms of corporations. Workers in hard labour sectors were the first to find out that the plan wasn't just to make prosthetics desirable, but mandatory. You wanted a job? Start giving up arms and legs. Armored skulls for construction workers, cyberhands for secretaries, leg upgrades for delivery bikers and don't worry if you can't afford it, the company will set you up with a plan to pay it off to them over the next five decades or so.

And as unions clashed in vain to keep businesses from shackling the collective labour force to a mountain of debt, horror stories started surfacing about how that initial leap was marketed. Fashion models testifying about forced amputations, medical malpractice lawsuits involving rockstar surgeons, musicians having their limbs rendered nonfunctional due to contracts ending,... Then the investigative report about research into full-body replacement and brain digitization came out and suddenly cybernetics were a whole lot less desirable to the upper crust.

But corporations kept pushing them onto their employees, meaning perception shifted prosthetics squarely into the box of "working class technology". To be a part of the elite, you had to be fully biological.

-----------

I've done as much as I could on the Procyon's deck without access to her fuel stores, so I stomp over to the doors leading deeper into the vessel. A lattice of flesh emerges from between the gaps, unfolding itself across and providing the first active resistance so far. My sawblade cuts deep into tendons trying to flow out and gum up my gears but my torch burns away any residue before it can do any harm. The lattice hardens, shifting into dental structures but that is honestly a pitiful attempt against a blade that cuts steel. The advantage of flesh lies in the way it flows and spreads; my mechanical body will always win a direct contest of strength.

It still takes the better part of an hour to slice and burn away the last bits of the lattice and I'm left caked in gore by the end of it. A container explodes close by, likely loaded with dangerous goods that cooked off from one of the fires I've caused, and I take a moment to stand in the blaze and clean off. It might be inert now, but I've seen flesh revive seemingly out of nowhere and I'm not taking any chances.

As the flames lick away the last bits of gunk, I solidify my plan of attack: first work my way through the upper decks to prevent It from cutting me off when I move deeper, then secure and disable the engine room and access the ship's fuel, before first finishing the cleanup of the upper deck and finally move into the cargo hold and eradicate what remains of the infestation there. Despite how little resistance I've encountered so far, my intuition tells me the spread of flesh on the Procyon is severe and It is likely consolidating itself in the deeper sections, strengthening defenses and setting ambushes. None of that will ultimately matter; destroying flesh is, after all, what I was remade for.

I sqeeze my way through the doors the lattice was protecting and lumber towards the crew quarters and bridge. My body is far too small for these corridors but that is no longer an issue once I apply some brute force. The walls and ceiling dent away as I refuse to yield to their confines and while this slows me down even further, it also means that when the inevitable tendril of flesh whips around a blind corner, I am not caught off balance in some awkward position. The tendril slices apart far too easily -only a probing attack- and I burn the remains while noting the direction its remains slither away to. When I reach the crew quarters proper, however, flesh bursts out of the doors around me and surges forward, surronding me with meat and bone on all sides. Tendrils whip out, ossified tips scraping against my armor and I'm annoyed at the sheer gall on display here; for a second time this infestation tries to fight me with force and I'm going to teach It a lesson it won't live long enough to properly regret. I mist out a small amount of propellant I kept in reserve inside this cage and ignite it, the ensuing burst of fire causing the walls and tendrils to writhe in panic as they try in vain to extinguish themselves. Meanwhile, I pin down one section and proceed to follow the thread of its musculature to my actual target. Inside what I assume was once the captain's quarters, I find the pulsing, shifting mass that sprung that little ambush on me. Flesh can operate on great distances from its central body if it wants to, but most prefer to use distributed nodes like these as it allows for greater reactive speeds and their connection to the central nervous system means that should the core mass die off, a secondary node can take over and rebuild. I'd consider this distributed intelligence tactic clever if it wasn't such a pain in my ass to deal with. Anyway, with the node caught defenseless, I quickly bite into it with saw and torch and proceed to reduce it down to a flow of meaty, boiling goo. About halfway through, one of its pustules breaks and a quivering eye stares at me in what could charitably be considered abject horror. Yes, hello, it is me. You might have heard of my exploits from your now-dead friends. And you are next.

-----------

Of course, seeing plain Jays suddenly outperform you, even if the means by which they did so were usually not acquired voluntarily, was something of a slap in the face when you were raised and expected to be better than common trash. And no amount of telling yourself that cybernetics are dirty commoner tools will help alleviate that sting. So I suppose it was inevitable for the elite to shift their gaze to bioengineering.

Unfortunately for them, there is only so much you can do without making invasive changes to the human body, which of course would've ruined their precious "biological purity" aesthetic, meaning the local delivery cyclist, shackled to debt as they were, could still outrun the average CEO without breaking much of a sweat. Turns out money could buy you lots of things but not a body with higher natural limits than machines.

Sources differ on the initial reception to Fitzgerald-Blythe and his serum. Some say he was treated like a charlatan, peddling eternal youth to the gullible wealthy. Others recall he'd already insinuated himself in the inner circles of those in power long before he revealed his work, lending him a small degree of credibility, just enough to attract his first volunteers. But counter to everyone's expectations, the serum... worked. Wrinkles faded, joints stopped aching, hair regained its colour, eyesight improved... Once word got out, the F-B Serum became the hottest commodity among those who could afford its exorbitant asking price and their less fortunate peers silently cursed any who held lifetime positions.

And thus society was suddenly dominated by a bunch of not-actually-20-somethings who had big plans for their newfound immortality and the chumps who were going to pay for everything. This did not go down peacefully at first, but when the Pope's head was blown off by a sniper on live television and he simply regenerated it, the resistance quickly died down. Seeing that the Serum's effectiveness surpassed their wildest dreams, those who'd taken it restyled themselves as living gods and built their little fiefdoms on the backs of cyborg indentureds. Said resistance did not die out, however, and in the underground amateur chemists were already scrambling for Serum samples and some way to analyze and perhaps even counteract it.

Now that I think of it, I never managed to confirm if Fitzgerald-Blythe ever took a taste of his own medicine...

-----------

Unlike the captain's quarters, the bridge is surprisingly clean of the infestation at first sight, but closer inspection reveals plenty of traces. This room was once rife with flesh, likely including another node, but it seems to have made a tactical retreat following the destruction of the first node I encountered. The parting gift it has left me with, however, wrenches a soundless laugh from my steel husk: all of the controls are sabotaged and the ship is adrift, which I had planned to do myself from inside the engine room.

It genuinely thinks it can fight me!

It's such a preposterous thought, like a cyclops being faced with a particularly irate ant.

After that momentary amusement, I shift out the circular saw to a drill bit and start demolishing the ship's consoles properly. Sure enough, I dig up a small flesh network, left there to quietly restart the vessel in case it all goes south. Too bad the situation already went south the moment I crashed into the deck and now you are trapped with me.

Retracing my steps through the quarters is surprisingly uneventful; another lattice has formed over the doors leading outside but it barely puts up a fight. I briefly glance outside and see that fire has spread a little further -not enough to do any additional damage- but I'll give it a boost once I secure the engine room.

The passage down gives me a glimpse of the hold and I do not like what little I see: flesh is everywhere, on every surface and it throbs in that way I've only seen when close to a powerful core. This flesh has been around for a long time, and getting rid of it will take a lot more effort than I'd like. The air grows humid as I trundle further down and there's an almost-palpaple pressure when I finally reach the engine room access, a multilayered lattice shielding the bulkhead. This time, the lattice has a variety of organic structures -dental, bone, scutes at first glance alone- and the layers are plastered thick. Huh, this might actually waste a significant chunk of my time. I approach and the lattice shifts, opening up to shoot out multiple tendrils. I shift my stance to deflect these strikes on my armour, but realize too late that this was not a simplistic series of slices. Instead, teeth find purchase on edges and hard angles and I'm suddenly being pulled into a massive, gaping maw. It closes shut with force, canines like stalactites seeking to pierce, molars the size of boulders seeking to crush.

But they are teeth, and I am steel. My claws rotate in and I grab hold of the upper jaw, pushing it away from me and folding it up over itself with a series of deep, meaty crunches. It tries to flow and reconstitute but my torch is faster, and soon all that's left is the lower jaw I'm holding down with my weight. If I had not reacted when I did and pressed the attack, that lower jaw could've flowed into my gears and cause some serious damage, but one thing I learned fighting flesh it that it cannot help but to create nervous systems in anything that flows from it. This is why my weapons are simple and brutish: pain is a weapon of its own.

You are reading story Rusthulk at novel35.com

It must be in unfathomable agony by now.

But I feel nothing, and so I saw off and burn this remainder of this ill-advised attack. From the center of what's left of the lattice, another eye stares at me, tears flowing freely.

I simply shove my drill into it and start working on the bulkhead itself.

-----------

Again, sources are unclear on what caused this next step, whether it was an accidental flaw, deliberate fault or sabotage by a rogue chemist who cracked the formula. In any case,  after only a few decades of living under god-kings, decades spent being mercilessly exploited and crushed underfoot, several of them suddenly turned ill, with more following as the days passed. Most of them retreated out of the public eye and scrambled to find answers, as it simply would not do for immortals to fall to a simple disease. However, Fitzgerald-Blythe was nowhere to be found and panic started settling in. And then, the CEO of General Motors went on public television to assuage shareholders, only to explode in a mass of pustules and tumors and immediately devour the nearest cameraman.

Things went real fast from there. Apparently plenty of board meetings became scenes of carnage and one could see cancerous masses burst out of the top floors of skyscrapers before the day was over. In less than 24 hours, the large majority of global power structures ceased to exist. Didn't stop the world from turning, though, as middle-management was largely spared unless they happened to be in one of those meetings and they tried to at least keep the lights on, which was briefly tolerated before workers politely, but firmly suggested it was time for some changes. Turns out you can make some convincing arguments when your body is 50% tungsten and the other party is mortal.

The end result was not quite anarchy, as some things did turn out to work a little smoother with some centralized structuring, but still mostly anarchy. Nations broken up into smaller communes, borders erased, capitalism abolished and the use of Serum banned. It's for the most part still the system in place today. But while this was being set up, there was still the issue of all of that rich people meat just growing and oozing about, snatching up unfortunate people who just happened to get too close. Attempts were made to communicate with them but those were entirely unsuccessful and the only thing the mouths they grew ever did was eat. A theory was put out that they are still sapient, but the explosive changes they underwent shattered their minds to the point that we might as well be communicating with alien entities, and that's pretty much the leading theory these days. I can see their point, and I disagree but then again my occupation does make me slightly biased. Talking to the meat did not, however, stop the issue of them slithering around the place and consuming anything organic they could find to add to their biomass, thus letting them spread further. People did clue into the "organic" part eventually, and most communes have their most metallic or plastic members pick up the task of defending against flesh incursions. It's considered an inglorious, but necessary task. Places with particularly large infestations were cordoned off until a proper response could be formulated.

And after about a decade or two, they would end up with me.

-----------

The bulkhead finally hinges open and I'm met with a dismal sight. The engine room is in shambles, piping ripped from its fittings, gauges smashed and more. Alarms blare as I step in and hurry to check the fuel tanks but my fears are justified when I rip them open and see their contents draining into the ocean. I scoop up as much as I can carry in my stores and scatter the rest about the room before setting it ablaze. Time to improvise.

A series of methodical, controlled blazes is no longer going to work. Instead, I'll rely on my knowledge of the manifest and fight my way to every hazardous cargo container I can get my hands on, using them as catalysts if flammable, and hopefully turn the hold into a raging inferno.  Of couse, flammable items are usually kept as far away from the engine room as possible, and also separate from each other in the most inconvenient way, so up to the outside I go. At this point all pretense of preserving the ship has flown out the window, so I start drilling into the surface itself, intending to bring it all down into the hold in the most expedient way possible.

For my troubles, I get a container slammed on top of me when I'm about halfway done drilling. It takes me a few moments to regain my senses, my mechanical brain still reeling from the impact. As I cut my way free of the box' wreckage, I spot the culprit: a massive tentacle currently wrapping itself around a second container,  looking for the double tap. I charge it, wielding saw, torch, and no small amount of annoyance at my current situation. Dodging the next slam is impossible with my bulk so I instead speed up and hope my saw and momentum carry me through while my brain fixes the inevitable impact-misalignment. I come to lodged in the tentacle's side, flesh already flowing to try and compromise my body but they have not gotten far enough yet. A spray of propellant and a blast from the torch and I'm free again to start chopping this thing down like a big, meaty tree. Blood and gore fly in every direction as it struggles and I can't get my saw to bite deep enough to get a solid cut. I step back and rip a panel from one of the smashed containers before flinging it at the tentacle as hard as I can. It lodges itself deep, and I follow up with a few more before stepping back in to finish the job.  It takes a few more pushes and pulls on one of the slabs, eventually I saw through and the tentacle falls on the deck with enough of an impact to finish my work, breaking through and sending me and the cargo crashing down.

Last thing I see is the core mass, and the face forming within.

-----------

I know there's a whole rumor mill and several betting pools out there regarding my identity, but the truth is just not that glamorous. I was a street rat during my youth, abandoned by parents who could never afford me while trying to survive the mounting piles of debt being shoveled onto their backs by the corporations. I do not begrudge them; the world was a living hell during those days and one had to do what was necessary to survive. Eventually I found my way into some resistance groups as a courier, my fully organic body being considered useful to slip past certain checkpoints. When the rich started exploding, I made myself scarce fearing an eventual crackdown by the survivors, but I made the mistake of using a popular squatter's home and got snatched up along with whoever else was sleeping there at the time.

Our captor was an engineer with opinions on the reliance of society on both cybernetics or bioengineering. He was all about analog technology and he was going to put his theory to the test. So for the next 14 years he took each of us into his labs and subjected us to rigorous testing, before ultimately culminating into a full-body replacement procedure that inevitably failed, leaving another corpse for the trash to take away. The reason I'm alive is not because I was special or anything: science is an iterative process, and by the time I was up he'd iterated through enough of us to produce a proper result. As thanks, I killed him.

But yes, my body is fully mechanical and analog, all gears and switches, including my brain. Don't ask me how any of it works, that secret died with him and I'm far too paranoid to let anyone take a look at my inner workings. It does come with some benefits: I don't need food, water, sleep, heat, air or pretty much anything a human needs to survive. Flesh cannot assimilate me as I'm about as digestible as a rock, and hacking attemps might as well not exist. Rust is an issue, but nothing a regular coat of paint can't solve.

And my advantages are what got me added to the candidate list for a strike group that would finally clear up heavily-infested areas. I was more than happy to help as it was basically my current job, but more so, and I considered myself pretty good at my job. Our first target was the Air Force One crash site, where I quickly learned that "pretty good" would not cut it out here. In my defense, everyone was still learning how to fight flesh on a large scale but there were a lot of pointless deaths that could've been avoided in hindsight. But we did end up victorious and I would soon be deployed across the world, my immunity and general hardiness often putting me in some of the worst zones. I was a part of the crews in Hollywood, Tokyo and Vatican City. I was a part of the team sent to hunt down Fitzgerald-Blythe and find his Serum lab. I was in the first wave assaulting the Whitehall Tumor -the only survivor of that wave- and among the first to breach into the inner chambers, although even I won't speak of what we saw there.

Point is, I've been around for a while and I've never seen flesh form a goddamn face.

-----------

Until now, I suppose.

When I come to from my crash-landing, it is staring at me from the ruined remains of the hold. I don't know how much time has passed but I'm guessing enough for it to have flowed into me and killed me if it wanted to. So why hasn't it? I hazard a step sideways, and the face pulses before more lattice flows to block my path. I keep my eyes thrained on the face but I still can't jog enough of a memory to recognize it. A step forward does not result in my path being blocked so I approach, wary of the oozing mass all around me. The face does not react in any other way than to keep staring, and it takes me far longer than I'd like to admit before I realize that staring is all it will ever do. It's not an actual face, just a fascimile of one, designed to make you consider flesh as human, a deadly trap I just almost walked into myself. I start misting out fuel on my own body and set myself ablaze, stomping towards a pile of crashed containers where I can spot a hazard label on one of the doors. Flammable solids, my lucky day. The fire spreads quickly with how the crash scattered the material, and I proceed to tour the hold, setting off whatever I can find. The fire on my body shields me from any attacks for now but I have to move fast as my body can only take this heat for so long. The core again tries to block my path so I switch it up and charge, latching on that face and ripping out whichever chunks I can get my hands on, the fire preventing it from flowing onto me. The core is huge, however, so this attaxk is not doing much but every effort it needs to spend regenerating is effort it can't spare to block me or douse fires. Eventually, I disengage when the flames start to die out and make another beeline for a dangerous goods container and throw its contents at the core when I realize it's filled with drums of acid. An explosion goes off in the distance and the ship tilts, the bow rising out of the water. I spot the remains of another large tentacle and what's left of a container near the hole -it's trying to sink the ship and douse the flames.

Except, on closer inspection, that container is harmless and the edges of the hole face inwards. My suspicion is confirmed when another explosion blasts another hole in the hull and I realize why the team lead insisted this could be done as a solo mission. There have barely been any flesh sightings in the last few years and despite most others getting back into normal lives, I stubbornly stayed on as this is pretty much all I can do. And that fact, that I am designed for violence, has finally sunk in deep enough that they want to retire me in a more insistent manner, even if it means giving this thing a chance to escape.

But I won't let it. Even if I can no longer fully destroy all of it, I'll rend apart as much of it as I can. I spray myself with more fuel and ignite, charging in with twin drills and leaping on top of it. The resulting deluge of blood as I dig threatens to douse the flames but I just apply more fuel whenever possible, the wet, squelching whirrs of the drills the only sound I focus on. Eyes occasionally sprout from the core and I briefly wonder what it sees, and hope that the image is burned into every neuron.

When the rising water sweeps me away, the core's shredded to ribbons, but several of my joints have also locked in place, melted by the heat. I snatch one small patch of flesh as it drifts by me, its eye flicking about wildly before I crush it and let go. Even if it were to reconstitute, it would take decades to regain its mass. As the ship sinks deeper, I try and fail to find any peace with my end. A job half-finished just does not sit well with me but I have to begrudgingly admit that despite all my strength, my body simply isn't capable of trudging along the ocean floor in its current state anymore. For now, I can only sit here and wait for the salt to rust me through. Or for someone to realize what happened and come to retrieve me.

Someone must, right?

You can find story with these keywords: Rusthulk, Read Rusthulk, Rusthulk novel, Rusthulk book, Rusthulk story, Rusthulk full, Rusthulk Latest Chapter