Mardock Scramble

Even as he did so, he covered her whole body in a defensive wall.

Balot wrenched her consciousness into action and snarced her own body. Thinking I might try and experience some pain for a change—who was it that had said that?

Balot snarced her feelings in order to erase them. To send them into space. Just like she had always done in the past.

She hadn’t been able to master it at first, all that time ago. With her father. The image of his bearded face flashed up in the back of her mind…the way he undressed her, taking off her school uniform with his hands that had lost half of their fingers. Nauseating.

Erase it all!—I’m going to make it clean! I’m going to clean you up! I’d be better off dead. The bustle of the pleasure quarter. The noises that drifted in through the car windows. Erase the pain—turn the switch on and the giant shredder would get rid of anyone, close family or complete stranger. To be human is—to hurt. I just wanted to be loved. That’s the goal. That’s the trophy. I’m going to fuck you. I’m going to fuck you up. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!

There was the encroaching despair, and there was her heart that struggled tooth and nail to fight it off. Her stomach cramped. Her throat undulated, her mouth was filled with bile, and vomit dribbled down her chin. She cried. She cried as she puked. She didn’t want to die. Such was the desperate cry of one who had never experienced unconditional love. She didn’t want to die.

–Ash, cash, trash, crush…

She didn’t want to die in this sorry state. The acrid taste of smoke was back in her mouth once more.

–Bash, rush, hash, gosh!…

She heard the nonsense rhyme spinning around. Balot’s eyes closed and she was ready to sleep.

–Dish, wash, brush, flush…

She realized that a powerful electric current was passing through Oeufcoque and stimulating her pain receptors on her skin. She grasped the sensation, not as real pain, but as an artificially induced phenomenon.

–Flash, flesh…

The pain grew distant, and she came to her senses. Her fetid past subsided, and only her will to live remained.

–Wish…

Balot’s eyes snapped open.

She realized that she was lying flat. A white defensive wall like an egg protected Balot, taking the bullets meant for her. Less than five seconds had passed since Balot had collapsed.

The pain had disappeared, but now Balot sensed the terrifying reality of her surroundings more keenly than ever. She felt that she could now sense the movement of even the hairs on Boiled’s head as he fired at her from the wall he was standing on.

She gripped both her guns tightly. In an instant it all came flooding back to her: which gun to use and at what time. Which chip would draw out the right cards; which chip would gain that decisive victory. The muzzle on her left gun grew larger, and the caliber of the gun increased.

Balot stood up. That same moment, her protective shell powdered to dust, because Oeufcoque had dissolved the barrier, and because Boiled had fired another shot right into it.

Boiled stood on the wall, virtually an arm’s length away from Balot.

His shot brushed past Balot’s right flank and thundered into the distance.

Pieces of white shock-absorbent material flew in every direction. Balot’s right arm rose up tentatively, shaking like a newly hatched chick who had just pecked its way out of its shell, but when she did manage to raise it her aim was true.

Boiled’s eyes opened wide in surprise and delight.

Balot’s right hand unloaded all ten rounds in her gun in three and a half seconds flat.

At the same time, her left hand had unleashed her snarc’s fangs—she had caught Boiled’s left leg with her snarc and was tearing into it.

The PGF wall that protected Boiled lost integrity, and a number of the bullets unleashed from Balot’s left gun hit home, piercing his arms and shoulders. Blood and sparks gushed out of his left thigh.

Boiled’s body seemed to float in midair. Or so it seemed at first to Balot, but then she realized that he had simply lost the strength to stay attached to the wall, and now his giant frame was falling toward her.

This was her chance. Balot prepared for the exact moment to fire her left-hand gun.

The left sleeve of her bodysuit turned with a squelch into a metal support frame to help her arm withstand the incredible recoil that would come from firing such a massive weapon.

But Boiled wasn’t finished yet. Indeed, it was in just such moments that his true ferocity was revealed.

Even his apparent collapse was a feint. Without warning, he placed both feet on the wall and stood firm. The next instant he hurled the butt of his massive metal gun straight toward Balot’s head with such power the air howled as it parted.

Balot’s head flipped to one side to dodge. The sledgehammer blow grazed her forehead, ripping her skin open. The searing pain should have been immense.

But Balot had decided to stop feeling pain. Even if her skull had caved in at this point, she was moving with such sureness that she felt confident she would still finish her action.

She found the chink in Boiled’s armor and carried out her sequence of attacks.

She threw her invisible fangs, her snarc, at Boiled’s PGF wall to open up a hole.

A small opening, but it was enough. It took only one small card to spell the difference between defeat and decisive victory. Balot’s left hand fired the gun into the opening.

The shock of the recoil caused her metal brace to shudder and fall off. Such was the caliber of the gun. And it was the bullet from this gun that now bored a hole all the way through Boiled.

The bullet pierced his left femur—and with it, the core of one of the four devices implanted in his limbs to generate his PGF.

Boiled’s left leg swelled up from the inside like a balloon—and ruptured. The leg exploded into a mass of flesh and bone and blood, creating a shower of red and white somewhere above Balot’s head.

The very next moment, Boiled had his leg—severed from the thigh down—in his hands and was brandishing it as a weapon.

Then some invisible force kicked Balot in the chest with tremendous power.

She flew from the sidewalk and her back slammed down onto the road. She jumped back up as quickly as she could.

Her body felt no pain. Her senses were clear, her heart calm.

Even so, she was somewhat taken aback at the sight she now faced.

Boiled walked down from the wall onto the sidewalk. His left leg was missing from just above his thigh. But this hadn’t stopped him one iota; he walked on a phantom leg in its place.

Boiled had cranked up his remaining four antigravity devices to the fullest and made a leg-shaped PGF field where his real leg had been. He was barely bleeding, either—Balot could see that his PGF acted as an antigravitational tourniquet to stop the flow of blood from the exposed arteries.

“I won’t be stopped just because I lose a limb or two, you know,” Boiled whispered in a deep voice.

Then he charged.

Balot trembled. She fired quickly with her right-hand gun. Had she been able to use her voice, she would have screamed something between a shriek and a war cry as she fired over and over. Boiled’s PGF was still there and it still deflected the flight paths of the bullets, but only just, and it wasn’t perfect. Small gaps were opening up. Several bullets weaved their way through the openings and managed to skim Boiled’s flesh.

But Boiled wouldn’t stop. He ran straight at her, bringing down his blood-soaked right arm.