Jake Maison
26/07/2025
Content warnings: violence, gore and coarse language
Image description: a scarred white male with dark facial hair and a black visor-like implant covering where his eyes should be that is faintly glowing green.
A dark shape crawled through the predawn street, its pace measured but quick. Had anyone been awake to see it, they would have witnessed the passage of an armoured car. They would have seen jet-black panes of armaglass concealing the occupants from view. They would have noticed the image of a split crown painted on the armour plates on either door. They would have noticed the headlights were switched off to draw as little attention as possible. They would have seen the kind of car you looked away from and prayed it wasn’t there for you.
But anyone unfortunate enough to be awake at that hour had the good sense to stay indoors, waiting for the low growl of the engine to fade into the distance before relief carried them back to sweet oblivion. The sky above the city shone with polluting light, framing the machine-cult vehicle in a coronal gloom.
Carver scanned the street from the passenger seat, the thermal overlay of his visor rig painting the urban slum in clashing shades of blue and green. The downzone was a beautiful sight to Carver; as cold and still as the grave. Glancing down at his own body, Carver felt a coiling sense of revulsion as he beheld the biological filth of his own body.
The skin wet with putrid glandular fluids and coarse hairs from yawning follicles. The bones wrapped in frayed nerve-bundles and veins thrumming with low-yield blood. The original sin of his carbon-based shell was his to atone for – every life taken in the Crownbreaker’s name saw him rewarded with sacred implants with which to shed his humanity and ascend to the rank of Inhuman.
What few dreams remained in Carver’s mind were of becoming an avenging angel of death in battle against the great enemy and their hordes of voidspawn abominations. It was everything to Carver; his entire reason for being.
Turning to regard his companion in the driver’s seat, Carver felt his revulsion cool into resentment. Crusher was as loyal to the great work as any other machine-cultist, but his intelligence left something to be desired.
Having taken a few shots to the head, Crusher’s skull was held together mostly with grafted superdermal armour plating. As a result, Crusher now favoured a stockless, pistol-sized shotgun fitted with a semiautomatic burst limiter to minimise the risk of friendly fire.
Crusher compensated for this smaller weapon by having two strength-enhancing cybernetic arms with built-in recoil dampeners. Inspired by footage of the Inhuman’s attack on the heretic house a decade ago, Crusher had earned his name through his habit of using those arms to crush the skulls of his enemies in a rather gory display. He was not deterred in the slightest from his bloodlust. Perhaps it was even more omnipresent- a single-minded focus he could not, would not, shake.
Crusher was a walking contradiction; at once an asset and a liability to the great work. That made him unpredictable in Carver’s eyes, a fact that stirred scorn in him as he recalled the fourth tenet of the machine-cult’s teachings. A rogue variable perverts the equation. Carver made sure to return his gaze to the passing sprawl, Crusher’s silence assuring him that if he’d noticed the glance, he wasn’t about to bring it up.
The armoured car rolled to a stop at the designated location just as dawn arrived. A decrepit three-story resiplex building crowned in pink eastward light. Surveillance data had confirmed that no more than ten hostiles were present within the building at any given time and the next shift was not due to arrive for an hour. Carver and Crusher were to strike while the heretics were operating at suboptimal capacity, fatigue only further addling their mutation-riddled bodies and corrupted minds.
‘You remember the plan?’ Crusher asked, breaking the silence and Carver out of his reverie. Despite not technically having eyes to do so, Carver gave his best approximation of blinking at his companion before responding. ‘Of course. I cut off their communications. You go in through the lobby, I go in through the fire escape.’
Crusher huffed. ‘You mean you’ll slip in and eliminate the target while I soak up a platoon’s worth of bullets.’ Carver frowned at this, the edge of tension in Crusher’s voice giving him pause. ‘Technically, it’s closer to a squad’s wor-’ Carver abandoned the sentence when Crusher closed his eyes to sigh. Carver got the feeling that his internal chronometer needed tuning because the next few seconds passed by with agonising slowness. ‘Look,’ he finally said, ‘we have our orders. Let’s just get this done.’
Crusher opened his eyes but kept them trained on the target building as he spoke. ‘Funny how our “orders” always throw me into the meat grinder… Wonder why that is.’ Impatience welled up in Carver’s chest at that. ‘You know why,’ he said before he could think better of it. Crusher turned to look at him, his organic eyes oddly out of place behind his implanted faceplate. ‘Yeah…’ he replied, his voice still thick with tension, ‘suppose I do.’
They got out of the car at the same time, synching their subvox implants to an encrypted channel so the heretics couldn’t listen in. Carver waited before diverging from Crusher towards the abandoned lot behind the resiplex. Unkind though his words might have been, Carver knew them to be necessary. The third tenet of the machine-cult’s teachings re-affirmed his conviction: Truth is binary – lies corrupt the data. If the Crownbreaker themselves had ordained Crusher to die in the name of the great work, then what sense was there in dancing around it?
| Λ Net-link console located, moving to disable. Ω Acknowledged. Lobby entrance is lightly guarded. Λ Be ready for my signal. They’ll know we’re here soon enough. Ω Understood. Crusher out. |
Carver fought to suppress a shiver as a chilling wind blew in from the wasteland beyond the city walls, his hardshell jacket worn more for protection than comfort. The weathered console protruded from the outer wall of the resiplex, a small lateral window affording a view of its internal lights flashing rhythmically. Mindful of the security cameras mounted on the building’s outer corners, Carver worked quickly; metal fingers crunching the release lever to swing the console’s door wide open as he reached into his jacket pocket to produce a dataspike.
Slotting the connector into the nearest vacant port, Carver turned on his heel and strode away from the console, his free hand moving to the holster underneath his jacket. The barrel of the flare gun had barely faced upward before Carver pulled the trigger. A brilliant streak of purple against the waking sky, a lone phosphorous projectile arcing ever upward as a signal for Crusher and a herald of doom for the heretics within. Carver doubled back, his visor locking onto the rusted fire escape snaking up along the building’s side as a cacophony of confused shouts and scrambling movement emanated from within. Reciting a wordless prayer for the Crownbreaker to guide his hand, Carver began to climb.
Crusher’s feet pounded against the walkway as he sprinted towards the lobby doors, the weight of his reinforced skeleton crushing the ferrocrete pavement underfoot. The first heretic died occupying the doorway, pointlessly sweeping their machine pistol out in front of them. Crusher registered the kinetic resistance of the two bullets that managed to connect with their target before he made contact with his.
The hooded barrel of Crusher’s shotgun swung low before resting level with the heretic’s midsection. Crusher savoured the widening of their eyes before pulling the trigger, the twelve-gauge spreadshot cutting them in half at point-blank range. Crusher felt his face become wet with aerosolised blood, grinning savagely towards the next heretic as they came bounding down the stairwell to his left. Pivoting as he moved, Crusher fired two shells at medium-range before pausing to see if the heretic got back up. He didn’t.
Crusher began his ascent, shrugging off shots as they sank into his hardshell jacket from the railing above. Pressing forward, heedless of the stray shots that left shallow carbon-fibre gashes across his neck and face, Crusher swept through the heretics like a twelve-gauge tempest as the second tenet of the machine-cult’s teachings occurred to him: The scythe pities not the wheat.
Upon reaching the second floor, a heretic with seven eyes charged at him with a machete in hand, only to vanish back through the doorway she’d come through with a shot to the chest. Crusher snapped toward the railing above to his left, olfactory booster picking up on the smell of ammonium nitrate. A heretic with tusks appeared over the railing before Crusher aimed and fired, taking their arm off at the elbow. The mutant barely had time to scream before the pipe bomb clutched in their severed hand detonated, evaporating their body in a cloud of shrapnel and fine red mist.
Above, Crusher could make out the sound of clashing metal, of death-blows struck against flesh coupled with the pained screams of the dying. But no voices screaming down communicators, Crusher realised. The malware on the dataspike must have done its job, cutting the resiplex off from the citynet. Theirs was the silence of despair, of knowing that no one was coming to save them, and that those who came to relieve them would find only corpses. Crusher chuckled at the thought as he reached the top of the stairwell where Carver stood waiting for him.
Three heretics lay at Carver’s feet, each having been sliced to bloody ribbons mere moments before by his namesake weapon. The twenty-five inch spool of monofilament wire ran from a port mounted to his wrist, coiling around his feet like a gore-slick serpent. Stepping over the top half of a horned woman’s corpse, Crusher gestured to the aftermath around them with the barrel of his shotgun. ‘I counted five on my way up,’ he declared, his grin waning to a smirk, ‘and only three up here.’
Despite the clear challenge in his tone, Carver’s expression remained impassive. His visor rig glared at him with something like bemusement with a barely perceptible tilt of his head. ‘Weren’t you complaining about being “thrown to the meat-grinder” on the way here?’ Carver replied. Crusher felt his expression drop at that, replaced by the usual scowl. The burst-limiter on his shotgun only limited the threat of friendly fire, he reminded himself.
‘The target’s back there.’ Carver continued, indicating towards the door behind him. The display light was red; locked. ‘We have our orders. Let’s get it done.’ Crusher clenched his jaw at the repetition; the reminder that no matter how hard he fought, how many heretics he flatlined, it would never be enough. ‘Lead the way, then,’ he grated, making a show of swapping out the scattershot for a slug magazine.
Carver coiled his slicewhip around his metal fingers in a garrotte fashion after taking cover by the door. Crusher took point in front of the door before raising his shotgun and firing a single slug. The display buckled under the force of the heavy projectile as it passed through rusted metal and faded circuitry before Carver forced it open along its rails. Answering gunfire came from within, coursing through the open doorway. Crusher weathered the storm as always, absorbing enemy fire while Carver used his visor to trace the trajectories back to the heretics’ positions.
Carver gestured two left to Crusher just as both shooters paused to reload. Carver was first through the door, releasing the grip of his metal arm to unfurl his slicewhip in a powerful arc. The whisper-thin wire glinted in the morning light as it cut through the veil of gun smoke. Crusher heard a man scream as he charged in after Carver, a dark spray of blood accompanied by a severed hand spinning through the air between them. The man fell to his knees, dropping his machine-pistol, and gripped the clean-cut stump of his wrist as it pumped dark blood in time with his heartbeat.
Crusher put the poor fucker out of his misery with a single well-placed slug to the head, just as Carver swung his slicewhip again, taking the second shooter’s head clean off their shoulders. The smoke thinned enough for Crusher to realise that he was standing in a dilapidated hotel room where the two heretics had made their last stand. Between the two corpses, a muffled clattering sound emanated from behind the door opposite the entrance.
Carver and Crusher exchanged a glance before advancing towards the door with their weapons poised. The display was blank, inactive, forcing Crusher to holster his gun and grip the edges of the door with his metal hands. The door groaned in protest as it was forced along its rails before finally giving way. The child sat shaking and sobbing in the shower stall, arms huddled around her knees. Crusher moved forward, hand reaching for his shotgun as he felt Carver fall in step behind him. The child looked up at Crusher with wide tear-streaked eyes, one a deep emerald green, the other a pale and piercing blue.
Crusher paused, the first tenet of the machine-cult’s teachings appearing unbidden in his mind: Loyalty eternal to the Crownbreaker. ‘Fuck you,’ Crusher growled before closing the distance in a single stride, seizing Carver’s head in both hands. Crusher’s metal thumbs cracked the armaglass of Carver’s visor before punching through and sinking into the soft tissue beneath. Carver screamed in agony, his hands reaching up to grab his companion’s arms as Crusher engaged their muscle-fibre servos. With one final exertion of pressure, Crusher’s hands connected in a gout of exploded viscera and carbon-fibre fragments. The scream cut out, the hands fell away, and Crusher dropped the corpse at his feet.
Crusher exhaled slowly as he regarded what remained of his former companion before returning his attention to the child. Without a word, Crusher raised his arm towards the child, a port opening to reveal a small barrel from within his wrist. The child flinched just as the hypo-dart bit into her neck. She stirred before going limp, allowing Crusher to pick her up and carry her with ease out of the bathroom, out of the hotel room, past the bisected bodies, down the stairwell, back through the lobby and back to the armoured car.
Judas awoke from within their pod, orders streaming through the neuropolymer clusters entwined in their brain stem. Once a systems diagnostic had been run, the entrance to Judas’ pod opened to reveal the city hurtling by below. The aerodyne sliced through the night air, its chassis camouflaged from view by a photoreflective cloak. Rising from their pod, Judas regarded the abandoned power station, their optical scanner outlining the facility concealed just below the surface.
The orders came again – this time punctuated with binary gospel as they scrawled across Judas’ artificial retinas:
| ⸪ Communications traced to underground complex. ⸪ A rogue variable perverts the equation ⸪ Energy anomalies suggest voidspawn presence. ⸪ Truth is binary – lies corrupt the data ⸪ Access underground complex with lethal force. ⸪ The scythe pities not the wheat ⸪ Locate and eliminate primary target. ⸪ Loyalty eternal to the Crownbreaker |
Poised on the edge of the entrance to their pod, Judas leaned forward and fell. Hurtling downward with devastating speed, Judas shifted their trajectory to intercept an unmarked vehicle as it rolled slowly towards the entrance to the power station. The occupants died quickly, but not painlessly. Judas landed on the roof of the car with enough force to crush them between the roof and the dashboard.
Judas unfolded themselves from the wreckage before turning to the ruptured bodies within and seizing the nearest intact hand. Using their monomolecular blade with surgical precision, Judas extracted a small black neuropolymer chip from its palm.
| Ω Biometric access key acquired. ⸪ Proceed. Leave nothing alive. Ω Understood. |
Judas quickly learned that the complex-wide alert was not on their account. The security personnel they encountered seemed genuinely shocked by their presence before dying. Intercepting the energy signature, they found their target remarkably quickly.
Judas charged, slamming into the young woman with enough force to throw her bodily into the mirror-glass wall behind her. The woman fought to regain her footing as Judas’ railgun began powering up. She wore an oversized grey-on black suit, shoulders damp from her wet locks of raven black hair. The Abhuman met Judas’ gaze, her right eye aglow with emerald light.
| ⸪ ANNIHILATE Ω Understood. |
Judas raised their left arm and fired, the ferromagnetic slug missing by a hair’s breadth as the Abhuman launched herself to the left. Judas advanced, rounding the corner in time to see the Abhuman draw a pistol from her waistband and take aim. Four shots glanced harmlessly off Judas’ microplating before they closed the distance, eliciting a scream from the Abhuman as they crushed the barrel of the pistol in their grip.
Judas swung their monomolecular blade just as the Abhuman withdrew, leaving a shallow cut across her tie, shirt and sternum beneath. Judas raised their left arm and fired again, pausing to see if the slug connected. It didn’t.
It hung suspended in the rippling air inches from the Abhuman’s face. Judas barely had time to register this new variable before the slug tore through their left shoulder.
| ⸪ Running system diagnostic… ⸪ Titanite-fibre actuators: destroyed ⸪ Mecha-dendrite connection: lost ⸪ Remove damaged component immediately. Ω Understood. |
Regaining their footing, Judas tore the arm free and tossed it aside before continuing their advance.
The Abhuman dodged the thrust, but not the kick to the ribs which sent her crumpling to the floor. After freeing their blade from the wall, Judas pinned the Abhuman underfoot before raising the blade once more and driving it home. Judas didn’t stop… they were stopped. The energy from the Abhuman’s eye became a roiling eldritch mass rippling from her hands, coursing up Judas’ endoskeleton.
Everyone Judas had been – everything they could ever be – was snuffed out, until nothing remained except the words:
| Λ Fuck you. |
***
Paper Road Magazine 