The Dungeon of Deus ex Sapiens

Secret ingredients(don't tell anyone): Guns, swearing, gore.

Bullets pounded the wall where Arthas had been. He blind fired from what little cover the lift offered as the doors threatened to close.

“Is it too late to surrender?” Detective Jacques asked. He was a long way from Mars. Of all the ways the Martian had imagined dying, being turned into Swiss cheese by assault rifles had to be one of the worst.

“Far too late, Mister Jacques,” said the taunting voice of Lord Banks. The aristocratic puppet master spoke through the public address system. Combined with the cameras in every dark corner of the ceilings, the speakers gave Lord Banks a godly quality.

“Since you’ve already won, care to share your evil plan? That’s the classic villain move.” Arthas shot the camera in the lift.

“Then they usually make a fatal mistake. No thanks, detective. I’m secure in my victory. Don’t drag it out though, good sport. If you make it quick, I’ll make it painless.”

Using the black glossy barrel of his gun as a mirror, the detective poked it out of cover. The warped reflections of four droids stood behind riot shields, reloading.

“Shoot him!” Murderous glee and rage combined in the boarding school Scottish accent which suggested Lord Banks had been shipped off early in life.

Recalling the tale of the charge of the Light Brigade, Arthas leapt from cover and dived low as four magazines of armour piercing rounds clicked into place within the handles of four rifles. He pencil rolled across the floor as four guns aimed down. Trusting what was left of his life to a filing cabinet, he ignored his wounds pushing it towards the enemy with his back to it.

Bullets chewed through metal and paper like a birthday boy with his cake.

Fear was Arthas’ greatest strength against the droids. They felt nothing. They weren’t going to die. Adrenaline coursed through him, forcing him to dive when it would risk pain to stave off death. He’d learned the weak point the elite droids had at the elbows of their gun arms. That was enough. If they couldn’t shoot him, he might live.

With desperation those machines would never know, he ducked in and out of cover, taking shots that ate away at the enemy’s ability to shoot back. All attacks ceased when the forearms hung limp on wires and joints.

They could adapt, they would attack him with the stumps, kick him to death if they could. Arthas’ black metal hand was the answer to that. Limping away from their lunges, he made Achilles of them all, crushing metal ankles in the inhuman vice of his prosthetic. He went down on his good leg to grab beneath their flailing arms. One by one they went down, writhing. Thinking of his own droid made him pity them. They were slaves for a cruel master. Lord Banks had to pay.

Overwhelming exhaustion hung over him. It waited for the adrenaline to fade. Arthas shook himself. Slapped his face with his flesh and bone left hand. Feeling faint from blood loss, he wrapped a scrap of his shirt around the wound in his leg. It was soaked red before he’d finished tying the knot.

Time was against him. His skin was pale. Everything was heavy. His breath came rapidly but air never seemed enough. Jacques was cold.

Someone slammed into the roof of the lift behind him. He turned, rifle shaking in his weary hand. He aimed for the open door. Belle or Cain? He wondered. Either way he was screwed.

A black droid fell through the service hatch at the top of the lift. Its eyes flickered amethyst.

“Purple,” Arthas said in disbelieving wonder. 

“You look worse than I do. I told you that woman was nothing but trouble. If you ever listened to me you’d live longer.”

“Yeah, but what’s the fun in that?”

The Spectrum droid tripped on nothing and fell hard. It rose again with the grace of a drunk ice skater. The eyes flashed through every colour. The head snapped back in a move that would have been fatal for a human.

“If we’re both going to die, why don’t we do it together?” The droid’s Newcastle accent had the distortion of a radio with poor reception.

“Bonnie and Clyde?”

“I was thinking more like Butch and Sundance,” it said, grabbing a gun from the floor.

“Thelma and Louise feels more appropriate in our state right now.”

“Then I’m the good looking one,” said the droid.

“No arguing with that.” Arthas smiled. Grinning was a bad idea. Everything was a bad idea with so many wounds.

“You know the odds of our survival are astronomically low?” said the droid, its eyes turning ruby red. It spoke with the Parisian accent of the blood work analyst program. “You need to seal your wounds. You need a blood infusion.”

“If you’re offering,” said Arthas to the droid, turning up his wrist for a needle. His shoulders sagged. Keeping his eyelids open was a Herculean effort. It was possible that the lights were dimming. Common sense told him he was drifting into unconsciousness. “If I die. Run away.”

The Spectrum droid caught Arthas as he collapsed. The six programs within the droid consulted each other on the best aid to give the detective. Red knew the statistical probability of Jacques death based on his wounds, using evidence from millions of murder cases and hospitalisations dating back centuries. Orange, the finance and law program, knew next to nothing relevant so kept its peace. Yellow, the behavioral profiling expert, likewise wished the programs who knew better the best of luck saving a rare human that respected droids as more than property.

Green, the technology expertise program, scanned networks for the nearest hospitals. It searched for reference to the nearest first aid kit in the building. One network was only available within the basement levels. There were references to equipment befitting a hospital, or a slaughterhouse. Green downloaded surgery protocols relevant to the detective’s wounds.

Blue, the scene documentation program, told Purple to do everything in its power to keep Arthas alive. Purple agreed, knowing battlefield surgery techniques from dozens of wars. It would carry their friend down, not to fulfill the mission, but to save him.

Turning a four legged table into a stretcher was the work of moments for the mighty droid even in its weakened state. Securing the detective in place with electrical cables took a minute. A ligature around his upper thigh above the gunshot wound slowed the bleeding.

Crawling on its hands and knees, the droid dragged the man behind it. Progress was painfully slow. The legless table screeched along the tiles of the floor. The Spectrum unit’s battery was low and draining faster than it should. Once in a while it was frozen, twitching uncontrollably.

Then came more droids. As Arthas had, Purple disabled their arms. Armour piercing bullets from their own guns tore through the joints. As much as the instincts from human memories within Purple begged it to dive out of the way of the wave of bullets, it had to shield the detective. Paintwork scratches were irrelevant. Rounds that hit its head damaged one of its lenses. One amethyst eye flickered out as the connection between the light and the power source was severed.

“Fuck you,” it whined. What should have been a deafening roar was a crackling whisper.

Even without the ability to shoot, they were in better shape. They came forwards, aiming kicks at it. It would have been stronger, before.

Seeing a grenade with its surviving lens, Purple pulled the pin and threw the kicking robots back together in a tangle. They danced, limbs flying this way and that. When they stopped moving the droid checked Arthas’ pulse, then kept moving.

“Earth made trash,” said the droid, repeating what Jacques had said dismissively of the robots made on humanity's home world. Martians needed droids for everything they did, just to survive on the red rock they called home. Their machines were crafted to last. Every one had redundancies, thicker plating of better alloys.

Sliding the stretcher down metal stairs that clanged with each drop, the faithful companion brought the detective into a surgical theater. X-rays and tissue scans plastered the walls. Pristine metal tables gleamed in rows. Labeled drawers of equipment were in columns beneath every table. Freezers and refrigerators of medical supplies lined the walls.

Resting Arthas on a table, Purple cleaned the man’s wounds with shaking hands. He stitched the hole in the detective’s thigh. He pulled an IV drip from a cabinet and inserted the needle in Jacques’ wrist.

A critical battery warning flashed. Purple worked on, wiping all of the cuts on the man’s skin with a saline solution. Every cut was stitched lovingly. It plugged itself into the wall only when it had done everything possible for the detective.

“Wake up, prick. We’re not done yet,” said Purple’s fading Newcastle growl. Holding a fully loaded rifle, it sat on the table next to the detective. It aimed at the door.

An hour passed. Battery warning signs stopped bugging the droid. Charged from less than one percent, it had gone up to five. Acceptable.

Green watched ahead and behind using the cameras on the network. It performed rudimentary repairs using surgical equipment and wires ripped from computers. Strength returned in its legs as the necessary current flowed through the conductors. Standing beneath a dome camera, it used the external sight to reattach its own lens.

“Konnie?” Arthas tried to rise. Dizziness kept him down. He tried to rub his head, lack of coordination meant the hand swung limply over his stomach.

“Not that one,” said Purple. “You need to get over her. Not that your latest infatuation is a better prospect.”

“Belle?” The detective screwed up his eyes as if pressing his brows together might clear his head. “We need to catch Lord Banks.”

“You need to slow down. Either he’s trapped downstairs, or he’s long gone. Rushing now won't affect either outcome.”

“Ever the optimist,” said Arthas. He smiled weakly. His blue eyes disappeared in creases.

“My glass is half full, of shit.”

“Bon appetit.” The detective inched a leg towards the edge of the table. The other followed reluctantly. Raising himself slowly, Jacques moved to drop onto his feet.

Purple caught the detective as the man’s legs failed him. “Give the blood time to flow back to where it needs to be.”

“I need a gun.”

“There are plenty of those. What are you going to use it for? A crutch?”

“Please.” The blue eyes looked into the amethyst eye that still glowed on the droid’s face. “Wow. We both look like crap.” He thanked the droid with a nod as it handed him a rifle and a belt of ammunition.

The Spectrum droid carried a gun in each hand and walked before him. “If Lord Banks takes a few bullets to the brain, it was an accident.”

“A tragedy.” Arthas agreed. He hobbled forwards. The droid had wrapped his thigh in a brace to minimise movement that might open the wound again. “Tis but a scratch,” he said to himself.

Further into the cavernous basement, they found no sign of activity. Lights were off. Computers were idle. Isolation tanks lay in rows along a wall.

“There’s no network down here,” said Green in its Dublin accent.

“I doubt anyone working for Lord Banks wants people outside knowing what they get up to,” said Arthas, peering into one of the glass tanks. Thick restraints lay open inside. “Download anything you can from the computers. We can use it as evidence.”

“Yes, boss,” said Green.

A metal shutter barred the way to the level below. Purple pressed at the joins by the wall until they crumpled with a crushing scream. It pulled the shutter away lethargically. The barrier clattered to the concrete at Arthas’ feet.

Down the stairs was a treasure trove of nightmares. Rows of what seemed to be cadavers were hooked into life sign monitors. Several were headless. They had designations, D.e.S, then a number. The Deus ex Sapiens project was revealed in abject horror.

People treated as meat were tattooed with marks and measurements. Hardened as Jacques had been by war and his career dealing with murder and mutilation among the stars, nothing could have prepared him for what he saw. Every test of impossible survival had been undertaken.

A machine scored a deep wound in one man continuously. The scalpel traveled in a circle. The wound healed at the same pace, chasing the blade in vain. The detective pulled the blade away. He unplugged the machines that belittled the human dignity of those nameless victims.

“Bullets might not be enough to kill Lord Banks,” said the detective after vomiting into a sink stained with human suffering.

“Holy water and a stake?” Purple suggested.

“Sounds more like it. Come on, down we go, into the next circle of Hell.”

“After me, Dante.”

“Yes, Virgil.”

Another door fell away to Purple’s strength. Another scene of horror greeted them at the base of the stairs. Vertical medical harnesses held dozens of men and women plugged into life sign monitors. They were giants. Spasming in their sleep, they had muscle tone a Greek God would have envied.

“Welcome, Detective Jacques. I’m so glad you could join me. What do you think of the future of humanity?”

“I think you’re sick, Banks.”

“That’s Lord Banks to you, boy. I would love to chat, but I have places to be. I’ll need the merchandise as well. Jack will take care of you. You remember Jack, don’t you?”

A man Arthas recognised from one of Lord Banks' off world demonstrations stepped out from among the muscled demigods. He looked healthier than before to say the least. When Jacques had last seen him, the man Bank’s droid had called out of a box had been lean, malnourished. He was a vision of heroic prowess. Mindless.

No sign of thought twinkled in Jack’s eyes. He stood, towering over even the mighty Spectrum unit. He wore custom made bulletproof armour. His rectangular shield doubtless weighed more than Arthas.

“This is the future of humanity,” said the mocking voice of Jack’s aristocratic puppeteer. “Appreciating that might be the last thing you do. Such a pity. I would have enjoyed adding you to my collection.”

Jack charged at the man and his droid, the thick shield deflecting the bullets they peppered him with. Simultaneously, the other Deus ex Sapiens patients awoke. They walked away. Arthas suspected they were heading for the lift that he had not disabled on his way down.

Jack threw his shield at Jacques and Purple, it hit them both. Feeling ribs break, the detective went down. He gasped for air.

The droid was up in a moment, grappling with the superhuman. Deus ex Sapiens had given the man strength enough to go toe to toe with the mechanical power of one of Mars’ finest creations.

Jack reached for a machete at his side. The blade was the length of Arthas’ leg. Purple reached for a grenade. It crammed the explosive into the man’s mouth.

Closing his eyes and shielding his face, the detective braced himself.

BANG.

Keeping his eyes on the newly red walls, the detective stood shakily. “Purple, are you alright?”

“Tis but a scratch,” said the droid. Holding one wrist in the other hand, it waved the limp digits. “But a scratch.”