All Things End: Volume II - Part 108

A/N: If you want some idea of the size of Volume II in physical book terms, if you have a copy of A Storm Of Swords from the 'A Song Of Ice And Fire' series (AKA: Game Of Thrones) Volume II has almost the exact same word count as it, as of the writing of this chapter. Since Volume II is about to overtake Volume I in word count as well, you can stack two Storm Of Swords on top of each other and that will probably give you the general idea of just how big this entire story is. I can at least happily say that All Things End will probably finish before the Winds Of Winter comes out. It's pretty much the Half Life 3 of books. LOL

Chapter 108: Amalgamate

Elizabeth raced down the hallway with Courage under her arm. He dangled there, having decided to let her do whatever she felt she needed to do. If this really was all Computer's doing, this might be his only chance to talk to him anyway.

He knew for a fact that what Computer had done to the hospital was excessive, even for him. There was only one answer for what was going on here, but Courage really, really did not want to acknowledge it. Regardless though, after what his nightmare had shown him...

Few people were left in the police station at this point. The hallway Elizabeth was making her way down was completely deserted. Most people must have evacuated by now, and it seemed that the SCC personnel who were supposed to rally here for one final desperate assault had broken ranks and run for their lives.

Courage heard Elizabeth curse the 'incompetent cowards' under her breath, but that was the only show of anger that she allowed herself. She kept her eyes forward and completely focused on the task at hand. Courage had to admire her almost eerie calm, since she had seen the massacre at the hospital in person, and she was diving right back into that kind of horror without even flinching. Perhaps because this was the sort of thing the SCC supposedly dealt with on a daily basis, maybe this was just a normal day for her.

All of a sudden the walls around them began to creak and groan ominously. It reminded Courage a lot of how the farmhouse would creak on a windy day. Elizabeth reacted to the sound simply by picking up her already breakneck pace. With that sound also came a strange sort of change in the air pressure. Courage could sense it surprisingly well. It was making his ears hurt. Much like how the creaking reminded him of the farmhouse back in Nowhere, this reminded him of the time that tornado hit. There was a sort of electrical current buzzing through the air too. He could feel his fur rising, like his coat had picked up a static charge.

They reached a stairwell and Elizabeth all but dove into it. The creaking echoed even more ominously in there as she made her way down the staircase as fast as she could go. Cracks were beginning to run up the walls and Courage could hear bits of dust and debris falling.

The pressure was building...

Then the police station began to shake, like it was being hit by an earthquake, and it nearly caused Elizabeth to fall as she stumbled down the last length of the staircase. The door they were heading for looked like it exited out into the lobby. They were so close to getting out of the building, but then-

Just as Elizabeth's feet left the last step, everything around them exploded. Courage only caught a brief glimpse of what had once been the police station swirling all around them before he felt Elizabeth lift off the ground and they were flung into the chaos.

He was not sure what happened next. He must have been knocked unconscious, and when awareness returned to him, he hurt all over.

Groaning, he tried to roll over onto his stomach, but before he even had a chance, he felt a hand grab him and he was lifted into the air.

Forcing his eyes open, the sight that befell him left him in terrified awe.

A tornado-like swirl of debris surrounded what little remained of the police station, extending high into the sky. Electricity pulsed through the artificial swirl. Most of it was made out of destroyed and twisted bits of metal and technology, but other building materials had been caught up in the funnel as well.

Elizabeth stood atop the rubble of what little of the police station that had not been caught up in the cyclone. She and Courage were relative safe where they were, like they had just found themselves in the middle of the eye of a hurricane, but that could not last for long.

Courage felt Elizabeth wrap an arm around his middle and then felt the combat knife press against his neck. Wincing at this new and uncomfortable position he had found himself in, he looked onward and finally saw him...

It wasn't like the nightmare, at least. Computer still looked like himself, only he was practically covered head to toe in bandages. The truly worrying thing was that he had that same blank expression from the nightmare, and he was moving toward them with a slow, zombie-like gait.

“That's enough!” Elizabeth yelled. “Put an end to this nonsense or else I will put an end to your little friend!”

Computer slowed to a halt. His blank expression did not change.

Courage felt an electrical shock pulse through the knife and all of a sudden the sharp blade pulled away from his neck. Elizabeth raised it up to her face and Courage could see that the metal had been crushed into a useless ball.

“Just my luck.” She sighed sarcastically. “Well, it was worth a try.”

She remained surprisingly calm for someone whose backup plan had just utterly failed.

“I should have known that the rest of you were still alive. You were simply waiting for the right time to strike, weren't you? Our attempt to fuse you all into a single entity worked after all, at seems. You weren't destroyed, you were just hiding within the only Construct to retain its individuality.”

Elizabeth shrugged.

“And look at how much power you wield as a single entity. None of you were capable of destruction on this level as individuals, not even when you worked together as a team. The fusion process not only coalesced your powers, but it amplified them as well. The EMP generator doesn't seem to work on you any longer either.” She shook her head. “I always knew that this Construct project was a terrible idea. Too much power given to beings of which we had too few ways to control. And when you Constructs did indeed turn out to be too difficult to control, they decided to go through with that harebrained scheme to fuse you into a single 'more easy to control' entity. I knew the truth of what would happen, but I could not stop it, and now here I stand, having been proven right. I was able to stop the worst case scenario from coming to pass, but it seems that he is getting the last laugh, even after I managed to sabotage his grand scheme.”

She hesitated for a moment, and when Computer continued to do nothing but watch her with that blank stare, she spitefully continued with, “So then, I suppose you're going to hollow me out and use my skin to infiltrate the SCC. I can appreciate the irony in that. We made you to be spies but we were never able to correct the problems that made it infeasible. You figured out how to work around that limitation, but with lethal results for the host. It's quite an ironic way to get revenge on us.” She waved the useless knife at Computer. “However, I do hope that you realize that the little tantrum you threw here today will not go unnoticed. Even if there is nobody left alive to get the word out, the SCC will be on high alert. They will figure out what happened here and lock everything down long before you can use me to infiltra-”

She was cut off when something flew out of the cyclone and struck her. Courage was inadvertently released from her grip and dropped painfully down into the rubble. He looked up to see Elizabeth sprawled out on the ground. For a moment he was certain that she was dead, but then she stirred and awkwardly tried to get back onto her feet. She was clutching at her head and a thin trickle of blood was running down her forehead.

Before Courage could do anything else, he felt something begin to weave around his arms and legs. He looked down and cried out. There were wires snaking up out of the cracks in the rubble and they were ensnaring him. All of a sudden he could not move his arms or legs even slightly, and even more wires were wrapping around him to bind him further.

“Help!” He cried out to Elizabeth, but she did nothing but watch, her expression unreadable.

He was hoisted into the air and brought before Computer. His companion looked up at him. There was not a hint of emotion to be found on his face. That dog body of his really was nothing more than a puppet host for the storm swirling around them now. Computer was...gone.

...No, he was with 'them' now.

“C-Computer, please...” Courage choked, feeling the wires tighten to the point that he could barely breathe.

Nothing. Computer's face remained blank.

There was a slight rumble as something beneath the rubble worked its way out into the open air. Courage watched, horrified, as something he could only describe as a metal hand with many, many fingers rose up toward him. Each 'finger' incorporated a different surgical instrument taken from the destroyed hospital.

“N-no! Don't!” Courage cried out as one finger, made out of a surgical knife, moved in.

It wasn't Elizabeth that they wanted to hollow out. It was him!

“Computer! D-don't do this! I k-know you don't want to do this!” He exclaimed, his voice strained from the wires practically choking the life out of him.

He felt movement around the middle of his torso as the wires moved out of the way to expose his fur. The surgical knife was nearly upon him.

“I k-know you're still in there! D-don't let them win!”

The knife met his skin and he felt sharp pain.

“C-Computer!” He choked out, desperation and fear taking over.

The blade sunk in deeper and the pain caused him to cry out. It was only then that the flicker of...something passed over Computer's blank face.

That small glimmer of hope only gave way to more agony as the surgical knife began to slowly cut downward. Courage screamed his lungs out.

…Then, the knife pulled away, leaving behind a thin slice of pure agony and plenty of dripping blood to go along with it. Courage was terrified that it had only stopped because it had made an opening big enough to start pulling his insides out and now perhaps a much more horrible tool was about to begin its work, but Computer...

'We....promised!'

Computer was clutching at his head with a pained expression. The many voices of the Constructs did not come from the dog body though. It emanated and swirled around Courage from many points within the debris tornado. Their voices were likely coming from any piece of technology that could still produce sound after having been caught up in the gale.

'We promised not to!'

Computer's dog body stumbled back a step and the wires holding Courage wavered for a second before strengthening once more.

'There is only one way to end this impasse! We must kill him and make him ours! It is the only way we can be free of this contradiction! We must hollow him out and make him Us!'

Courage yelped fearfully as the surgical hand came to life once more.

'We promised we would not hurt him!'

The hand began to twist and bend with frightening speed as the warring Construct fusion fought with itself.

'We promised ourselves nothing! We want this!'

“Compute,” Courage begged as he watched the hand right itself once more.

'We must.' The voices said to him, almost apologetically.

Courage whimpered as the surgical knife dug into the slice it had already made and moved downward to continue the job, but then...it stopped again.

'No!' The voices yelled. 'We must no-'

Courage was not sure how she managed to do it without being noticed, but all of a sudden Elizabeth rose up behind Computer with a large chunk of concrete in hand. She gladly took advantage of the fusion's distracted state of mind and paid back the head injury in full. Courage winced at the sound of the concrete meeting Computer's skull. The voices were cut off mid sentence and the swirl of debris stopped in an instant. The metal and machinery that had comprised the cyclone hung in the air as Computer's body fell.

The wires around Courage went limp and he also fell to the ground. He had only half a second to pull the deadened wires off himself and fling himself onto Computer before Elizabeth could deliver a killing blow. She already had the chunk of concrete raised high into the air once more, fully committed to caving his skull in to finish the job.

“Get out of the way, you stupid dog!” She demanded, fury in her eyes.

“Help him!' He begged, ready and willing to take the brunt of her attack if she refused to back down.

“You idiotic mutt!” She yelled. “It is too dangerous to be kept alive! If it regains consciousness...”

“Please! You've got to help him!”

“You do not understand what you are doing! We cannot control this abomination and it cannot be helped! This is the one and only opening we're going to get! If we don't put an end to this now, it will go on to do unimaginable harm! You're stupidity could potentially doom the entire world!”

Courage leered up at her. “You and the SCC were the ones who did this to the Constructs, so you should be the ones to fix them! If you're going to kill him...them, after everything the SCC did to make them this way, then you're going to have to kill me first!”

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed.

“Gladly.” She uttered out dangerously.

But before she could make good on her threat, a chunk of concrete the size of a bus came crashing down not an arm's length away from where they stood. She swore under her breath as more and more of what had once been the debris tornado began to fall back down to earth. In one deft move, she dropped the chunk of concrete and grabbed both Courage and Computer. Then they were moving away from the police station as the sound of debris hitting the ground became louder and louder. It was like they were in the middle of an apocalyptic meteor shower.

She ducked into the first open building she could find and finally put a few stories worth of floors between them and the deadly rain outside. Even from inside the building, the sound of debris pelting the outside walls was frighteningly loud and continuous.

Courage was set down on the floor beside Computer. His companion was dripping blood from where he had been struck. It was beginning to stain many of the white bandaging that was already covering so much of his body. Courage whimpered at the sight of it. He cupped one of his paws in his own and held it close to him.

Why did their reunion have to be like this?

There had to be a way to undo the Constructs fusion. There just had to be.

He was so concerned for Computer, and in all honesty, the rest of the Constructs as well, that he barely registered any pain from his own injury. In fact, he was bleeding a lot worse than Computer, but that just didn't matter right now.

He watched as Elizabeth frantically looked around the lobby of this...hotel? He was not exactly certain what this place was. She was trying to find a working phone but the destruction outside had apparently cut the landline.

“This isn't going to work.” She groused. “I need to find a cellphone. It'll have a better chance of getting through to backup.”

She returned to Courage's side. “I'm going to check the upper floors. People would have been evacuated in a hurry so I am certain that at least a few cellphones would have been left behind.”

Her eyes narrowed as she looked down at Computer.

“If it starts to wake up, you know what you're going to have to do.” She warned.

Although she knew just as well as he did that he wasn't going to do what was...necessary.

“You may have a death wish, but I am not going to sit around and wait for that thing to kill me. I was only able to stop it because it turned out that saving your life was well worth the price tag. You created a moment of weakness for me to take advantage of. I doubt there will be another opening like that again. It must be dealt with before it regains consciousness or else it will continue its rampage unabated. As long as it has complete control over humanity's greatest tools, we have little hope of stopping it.”

Courage glared up at her. He had nothing more to say to her.

She sneered at him. “I can't even begin to imagine what you see in that monster. You're going to be the death of us all.”

End Of Chapter