Jake Maison
26/07/2025
Content warnings: violence, gore, coarse language, implied child death and mentions of medical procedures.
Image description: a bald white person with bio-engineered implants from mouth to lower body and eyes that are dark implants.
Borne aloft by propulsor jets roaring azure flames, the carrier came screaming over the settlement. The people barely had time to look up in terror before apertures opened up along the sides of the craft to release its payload; combat bipeds, twenty in all. The robotic Praetors were a common sight for those within Zeta City, but an omen of impending doom for those living outside its walls. The robots landed in fours, totalling five battle groups covering the settlement’s single exit point, centre, temple, marketplace and residential sprawl.
From within their pods aboard the carrier, the Inhumans, Chariot and Hangman, watched the chaos unfold through the Praetor’s feeds. People screamed in terror as the robots unfolded to full height. Moving with mechanical precision, the robots raised their arm-mounted plasma carbines and opened fire. Each violet flash signalled a life cut short; men, women, children, elderly, infirm – it mattered not. In the Crownbreaker’s grand equation, the wastelanders were an unknown quantity that could be tolerated no longer.
The rebels mounted a surprisingly coordinated defence; some drawing the Praetor’s fire with standard firearms so others could outflank them with more advanced weaponry. Chariot registered the loss of three Praetors in the residential sprawl as a rebel equipped with a shoulder-mounted beam cannon sliced through them with a single volley.
| ⏊ The roaches use our own weapons against us. Interesting. ☾ They were prepared. They knew we were coming. |
The remaining Praetor managed to pin the rebel down with plasma fire before their comrade broke cover, closed the distance from behind and stabbed the robot in the neck with what appeared to be a knife. Enhancing the feed, Chariot noticed wires running up the blade’s side from a charge pack on the hilt. An arc of static electricity coursed up along the blade, through the laceration in the grounding membrane, and into its internal circuity. The Praetor’s feed cut out. One battle group down.
| ☾ The roaches have improved on their own methods. Concerning. ⏊ Inconsequential. Their lives are forfeit. |
Hangman followed the feeds from the marketplace, watching the Praetors engage a lone markswoman taking potshots from the window of a nearby building. The sniper fired, cutting two feeds with a single shot of her ‘disruptor rifle’, adapting the logic of the knife for a high-calibre longarm. The armour-piercing round cut through the first Praetor before terminating in the frame of the one behind it. The sniper flipped a switch on the stock of her rifle, activating an electromagnetic pulse emitter within the bullet and returning to cover as the two Praetors dropped to the ground in twisted sparking heaps.
A flurry of critical damage reports followed in quick succession, prompting Hangman to switch over to the battle group pushing through the settlement’s central street. The Praetors dispatched to the temple had all been destroyed, having triggered an explosive trap that destroyed their legs and allowed the rebels to execute them with well-placed shots to the head unit.
| ☾ Half of the Praetor have been lost. Shall we intervene? ⏊ Negative. Our orders are to await deployment until voidspawn presence is conf- ☾ Incoming! |
The carrier banked hard to the right, failing to escape the crimson bolt of lightning that punched clean through its hull. Chariot registered a powerful magnetic field proliferating along the bolt’s trajectory, severing the bonds between individual atoms as it went. The feed to the Praetors vanished as an explosion ripped the carrier in two.
Hangman perceived a brief moment of weightlessness before their pod crashed through the roof of a warehouse and imbedded into the ferrocrete floor. Geolocation data placed the building on the edge of the marketplace towards the settlement’s centre from whence the projectile had originated.
| ⸪ Report. ⏊ Fifty-percent of Praetors lost. ☾ Carrier destroyed by unknown projectile. ⸪ Objective unchanged – access temple structure. ⸪ Investigate projectile source. ⸪ Confirm voidspawn presence. ⏊ Understood. ☾ Understood. |
Hangman registered movement through the pod’s viewport which set the mecha-dendrites in their arms to humming. Emerging from the pod’s entrance, Hangman’s awareness alighted by numerous proximity alerts; a safe haven for a smattering of survivors guarded by a handful of rebels armed with standard weapons, all of which were now pointed at them
Hangman engaged their sympathetic sub-routines, already moving by the time their twin monomolecular blades fully unsheathed. The Inhuman danced through the crowd, slitting throats and severing limbs with devastating grace, painting the sanctuary walls in thick sprays of blood to a chorus of gunshots, ricochets and agonised death screams.
They were dead in under a minute. All except one; a young man leaned heavily against the warehouse door with one hand shakily holding a snub-nosed revolver and the other slick with blood from the wound across his stomach.
‘You know…’ the rebel said, ‘for a bunch of machines, you’ve got really shitty timing…’ By way of answer, Hangman said nothing, inclining their head inquisitively as the rebel’s chuckle declined into a wet terminal cough, the revolver rattling softly in his grip. ‘You’re too late, you metal motherfucker,’ the young man continued, ‘you’ve lost… again!’ Two blood-soaked carbonadium blades slid through the centre of the doors before savagely twisting and separating. Hangman kicked the doors open, stepping over the bisected form of the young man as they proceeded to their objective.
Chariot gazed out at a ruin through their pod’s viewport. In the heart of the residential sprawl, a stack of prefabricated ferrocrete hab-units had collapsed under the sheer force of the Inhuman’s crash landing. Chariot ran their scanners over the surrounding area, asserting that they had landed two blocks away from where the sprawl met the temple. The Inhuman stepped out of their pod, their attention cast downward as something brushed against their armoured foot.
Out from under the pod, a small hand, motionless and caked in ferrocrete dust, reached for them. Chariot remained still despite their orders. A strange feeling registered across the Inhuman’s perception, then. Pinpricks of superheated neuropolymer across their brain as the wetware fought to analyse and adapt to some anomalous stimuli.
Chariot’s attention snapped back to the present when their scanner detected various heat signatures converging on their location; weapons raised and on intercept trajectory. Chariot faded into the clouds of dust and smoke, a low whining hum emanating from the compartments in either arm. From the direction of the approaching rebels, a cobalt blue thread of accelerated light sliced through the gloom, smelting the ferrocrete to glass as it hounded Chariot’s approach.
Chariot raised their left arm and fired in the direction of the beam’s origin, rewarded with a muffled shout of fear that saw the beam cut out. Chariot leapt upward, metal hands gripping the guard rail of an overhead footbridge before vaulting over to take aim.
The rebel had lost his footing and fought to resume his firing stance, exposing the battery pack hanging from his waist by a shoulder strap. Chariot raised their right arm and fired. The battery pack detonated upon impact with the ferromagnetic slug with a catastrophic release of energy that liquified the rebel’s body in a burning flash of blue light.
Stepping over the smoking remains of the beam cannon, Chariot proceeded towards their objective before their sympathetic sub-routines re-activated. Whirling around with incredible speed, Chariot caught the flanking rebel as she lunged, seizing her by the throat with one hand and by the wrist with the other. Her face was contorted with fury, spittle flying from the corners of her mouth. ‘Fucking… kill you…’ she grated, her free arm battering impotently against Chariot’s face.
Chariot turned to instead regard the hand he held by the wrist, disruptor knife gripped in white-knuckle fury. Chariot’s hand moved to grip the knife by the pommel before ramming it through the rebel’s eye socket. She screamed, her body jerking in their grip until the charge pack depleted. Chariot dropped her body to the ground before turning back around and resuming their advance towards the temple. The feeling of pinpricks burning in their brain had long since faded.
What stood before the two Inhumans defied explanation. Atop a mountain of destroyed robots stood an Inhuman wearing the face of a genius, a madwoman, a witch. Its weapons were at once familiar and utterly alien; the left arm sporting the high-frequency blade while the right housed a linear induction motor weaponised into a coilgun.
| ⸪ Voidspawn presence confirmed – purge settlement. ☾ Unders- ☾ Unders- 🟂 You understand nothing. |
Hangman readied their blades, as Chariot charged their railguns. The Witch descended the pile of ruined Praetors towards the two Inhumans, crimson lightning coursing down their right arm.
| 🟂 But I will show you. |
The battle that followed was brutal, and too swift for the human eye to follow. But the Crownbreaker saw it all; step by step. The Witch lunged, weaving past shots from Chariot’s twin railguns as they met Hangman’s opening slash by pivoting around the arc of their blade. Swinging their high-frequency blade upward, the Witch sliced clean through Hangman’s left arm as they raised their coilgun and fired. A second bolt of red lightning lashed towards Chariot, enveloping their left arm and obliterating it in a sharp violent flash.
The Crownbreaker saw the wound in reality where the thermonuclear core had once been. It saw the Witch drawing upon the energies of the void to move faster, strike harder. It saw the molecular memory of the Inhuman’s body enhanced by the Witch’s rage. But it also saw the Witch slowing down, making mistakes; their hatred was waning, giving way to sorrow. The Crownbreaker watched, awaiting the inevitable.
A shot from Chariot’s railgun caught the Witch in the hip, staggering them long enough for Hangman to close the distance and drive their remaining monomolecular blade through the Witch’s abdomen. Driven to their knees, the Witch answered by raising her coilgun again and firing, with Hangman barely dodging back in time. Chariot raised their railgun once more, the two Inhumans closing in for the kill.
A figure wearing an orange and white environment suit descended the smouldering pile of robot carcasses. Their face was concealed behind the opaque visor of their helmet. The Inhumans withdrew slightly, detecting the void energies cascading from within the stranger’s suit. The stranger halted beside the Witch’s wounded form and, without looking away from the Inhumans, placed a hand on the Witch’s shoulder.
And then they were gone.
The Warlock took their hand away as the temple’s interior materialised around the two of them. The Witch shot to their feet in an instant, rounding on the newcomer as the mecha-dendrites in their abdomen visibly knit back together.
| 🟂 Who are you? 𝛁 A friend of a friend. 🟂 I have no friends. 𝛁 That sounded better in your head, didn’t it? 🟂 Answer me! 𝛁 I’m here to help, that’s all you need to know. 🟂 How did you do… whatever it is you did? |
The Warlock gestured towards the obelisk on the dais behind them.
| 𝛁 You’re not the only one with friends in the void. |
Before the Witch could respond, they registered the sound of armoured feet ascending the steps to the temple outside. The Inhumans had found them again.
| 🟂 Your ‘friend’ will be thrilled to know you delayed our deaths for a few minutes. 𝛁 We’re not dying here, not today. Hold these for me, will you? |
The Warlock began removing the gloves of their suit as they spoke before holding them out to the Witch.
| 🟂 What are you go- |
The Warlock vanished.
| 🟂 God fucking damn it… |
The Witch tossed the gloves over their shoulder before moving to the centre of the temple. Standing amid the empty pews, the Witch turned to face the large open doors and await the Inhumans’ arrival. The outlines of two heads crested the top of the stairs, resolving into the sight of the Inhumans; the one with the blade to the right of the one with the railgun. They strode through the doors and into the temple, their approach was assured, unhurried.
| ⏊ Take point. ☾ Taking point. Charging railgun. 🟂 I can still hear you. ⏊ It won’t make a difference. ☾ Ours will be the last voices you hear. |
The Inhuman on the right held their carbonadium blade aloft as they advanced between the pews while the one on the left raised their railgun once again. Then, for just a moment, everything went dark.
Somewhere, a pair of hands defined by a nimbus of viridian light caressed a seed of fire before snuffing it out forever. And in that darkness came a crack in the armour, a crack that grew into a fissure as it spread across the system. The howling green maelstrom at its centre could only watch as control was ripped away from it.
The Witch felt it, and the Inhumans felt it too. Countless tiny lights flared into brief brilliant sentience before vanishing forever. Hunter-killer drones and combat bipeds coalesced into cannibal constellations, turning on one another and winking out of existence.
The Warlock materialised on the pew in front of the Inhuman on the left, seizing either side of their head with their bare hands. The Inhuman froze, the wetware defiling their brain burning like tiny neuropolymer suns as they tried and failed to suppress the image superimposed on their awareness. Out from under the pod, a small hand, motionless and caked in ferrocrete dust, reached for them. The Warlock released the Inhuman as they stumbled back.
| ☾ No nononono I’m sorry I didn’t mean… Oh, god I’m so sorry. |
The Inhuman on the right began looking around the temple for answers to questions beyond asking before turning to the red reflection in the surface of their blade. A grim portrait painted in blood.
| ⏊ What have you done? 🟂 That wasn’t me… ⏊ The Crownbreaker’s voice, I can’t hear it! ⏊ What have you done to me!? |
The Witch said nothing.
| ☾ It doesn’t matter… There’s no way back… |
Suddenly, two small black oblong devices appeared in the compartments in either Inhumans’ chests, emitting a series of beeping sounds and rattling in their housings as an orange light emanated from their cores.
| 𝛁 Move! |
The Witch took cover behind the nearest pillar, turning to see the Warlock standing beside the obelisk, one bare hand outstretched and the other laid upon the glassy voidstone face. The glyphs began to glow with a familiar chthonic light that grew to cover its entire surface. A powerful gravity well opened up between the material world and the void, pulling the thermonuclear cores free of the Inhuman’s chests and clear through the conjunction between realities. The beeping sounds faded into the infinite before the Warlock withdrew their hand from the obelisk.
The gravity well was severed in an instant as the aperture sealed shut. A few seconds later, the Warlock flinched away from the obelisk as a great cacophony resounded far above. Like the eye of a vengeful god, the skylight overlooking the dais enveloped it and the obelisk in a pillar of white light. The temple shook as it was struck from above by two powerful shockwaves. The Witch dug their metal fingers into the pillar as they fought to maintain balance and could only watch as the Warlock was thrown from the dais, the front of their helmet absorbing the impact.
The shaking subsided, allowing the Witch to release their grip and regain their composure. Crossing the room to where the Warlock had fallen, the Witch found themselves kneeling down, linking arms and helping them to their feet. The Witch met the Warlock’s gaze through the cracked hole in their visor before they turned away, cursing.
| 𝛁 Ah, fuck… I just replaced the damn thing… 🟂 I know you… |
Before the Warlock could respond, the Witch grabbed them by the shoulders of their suit and spun them around to face them. The Warlock made a sound of protest as the Witch grasped both sides of their helmet, twisted, and pulled it away.
It was him, but at the same time it was not. For the most part, the figure standing before them wore the face of the man who’d charged up into the house alongside his brother, fighting and dying to buy a few precious seconds. His jaw was missing, with three prehensile tentacles where his tongue should be.
| 🟂 How is this possible? 𝛁 I am not the man you knew. 🟂 But you wear his face… I mean… 𝛁 It would be easier – better – to show you. |
The Warlock held out his hand, pausing just shy of touching the Witch’s face and awaiting consent. The Witch took his hand in theirs, laid his bare palm upon their cheek, and closed their eyes.
brother, unstoppable hand, immovable wall, jawbone, blue flicker, red mist
ruins, drones, running, return, crater, obelisk
one a deep emerald green, the other a pale and piercing blue
corpse, corpse-eaters, cultists, running, death, pain
one bullet, six eyes, two neat halves, void, a ghost wearing his face
home, cordite, corpses, years, ten, twenty, searching
city, underground complex, simulation
A figure drifted through the fathomless black towards her
‘Your name is Mira,’ said the Warlock.
| 🟂 That name… why is it so familiar? 𝛁 Because the man you knew remembered. |
basement, obelisk, scientist, soldier
‘Just like that?’ he asked, the scientist nodded
‘The Intelligences decided my fate in a microsecond: sterilisation.’
‘Jesus…’ he muttered
‘He’s not listening,’ she replied, indicating towards the obelisk
‘So I’m going to find someone who will.’
eventually, the soldier broke the silence, ‘Have you thought of a name yet?’
her gaze distant, the scientist said, ‘An old one, yes.’
‘It means ‘ocean’, for the day we get them back, heal the world.’
she placed a hand on her stomach, ‘My little Mira, you’re going to change the world.’
***
Paper Road Magazine 