The Bleed had no need for subtlety or finesse, no complex tactics for its enemy to deduce and counter, it was a freakish, thuggish motherfucker of a thing that had an endgame; it was base and carnal and only thought to kill and destroy. It would do whatever it needed to win.
The clockwork room showed Jenny and Maddie things but didn’t always tell them why. That was how Maddie had come to learn so much about the god-tech: the machine had offered her an outcome, which she’d reverse engineered to understand. Similarly, searching for explanations and connections was key to Jenny understanding how she fitted into this incredibly complex war between the gods and the Bleed. Right now, they both needed to understand what the Bleed was doing so they could work out how to counter it.
“I just wish for once we could get the upper hand with this thing,” Jenny said, thinking out loud.
“You won’t,” Maddie told her. “You’re human, it’s not. You have feelings. You give a shit. That thing doesn’t.”
“Where’s the brain?” Jenny asked.
“Good question.”
“If there was an obvious brain, some kind of control centre, then maybe we could take it out.”
“Maybe, but I don’t think it works that way.”
“What then? A hive mind, something like that?”
“Yeah, I think it must be some kind of collective. The control comes from everywhere and nowhere. If you split part of it away from the whole, it’ll just keep on killing.”
“I get that. You wouldn’t have a mama Bleed and a baby Bleed, would you?”
“No, you’d just have more Bleed.”
“So that begs the question, can we even attack it? Is it even possible to kill it?”
“Is that on the table?”
“Do you think the clockwork room has weapons?”
“Not that I’ve seen. You might be able to use it as a weapon, though. Or use it to power a weapon.”
“But we still don’t know if that would have any effect.”
“Precisely.”
“One thing we do know, though,” Maddie said, gesturing at the image they were watching, “is that the Bleed can definitely attack us.”
The Bleed was on the move, but it looked like it was pulling back. As they stared at the image, they saw it was beginning to retreat from a section of the orb, moving like some kind of impossible inverse wave, washing back instead of crashing forward. As it withdrew, it grew in height, rising taller the farther it was from the forcefield, and leaving the barren seabed visible in its reverse wake. It was like a slice of the Bleed had been removed, and on either side of the slice, everything remained exactly as it had been, colossal walls of blood standing proud.
But Jenny and Maddie were focusing on the section that was moving away and continuing to grow. It was changing shape now, standing almost as tall as the orb itself, and starting to form something that looked like a rudimentary hammerhead.
And that was exactly what it was.
Without warning, that section of the Bleed was thrown forward with unprecedented speed and force. Jenny and Maddie both braced for impact, even though the actual attack was taking place thousands of miles from the Gold Coast, and the clockwork room itself was shielded by the god-tech.
The hammer struck the outside of the orb and recoiled, bouncing back then immediately flying forward again, striking the dome a second time.
“No damage that I can see,” Maddie said. “Thank god.”
“I wouldn’t bother thanking him.”
The hammer-thing flew forward a third time, pivoting from a base which must have been several hundred miles away from the surface of the orb. But before it had struck, their view was interrupted. The clockwork room needed them to see what was happening around the hotel now, and across the country as a whole.
People were panicking.
It took several seconds, almost a minute, for the shockwave caused by the Bleed hammer’s attack to reach Surfers Paradise, but once it did, its effects were devastating. Buildings shook. Windows were shattered. And the people in the streets, already crowded together through necessity and fear, had nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. They tried to look for cover, but the congestion was so extreme that it was virtually impossible for anyone to move. Fights began breaking out. Small skirmishes at first, which seemed poised to turn into widespread riots.
The panic appeared to subside. People who lived in this part of the world weren’t used to earthquakes or tremors, but they weren’t unheard of, either. Calm had barely begun to be restored when the shockwave from the Bleed’s second strike hit, then the third, then the fourth. Miles out in the ocean, the horrific thing had got itself into an established routine, bizarrely machine-like.
Again and again and again and again and again.
“So that’s the plan,” Jenny said. “It can’t get to us, so it’s going to do what it can to turn us against ourselves.”
“Talk to them. Reassure them. Tell them to calm the hell down.”
The clockwork room opened up a channel for her. Once again, alongside her own face, Jenny could see what was happening outside.
“Listen to me,” she said, and she immediately saw a reaction in the masses, though it wasn’t clear whether her voice was genuinely providing any solace, or if they’d just been startled by her sudden noise. “We’re under attack, but you all knew that already. The Bleed is trying a new tactic, and that’s what you can hear. It’s attacking the forcefield we’re using to protect you all, way out to sea, but it’s not getting through. It won’t get through. The only impact it’s having is on you.”
She paused as another shockwave struck. The room alerted her to a scene in Sydney, some five hundred miles south. The Sydney Tower Eye, one of the tallest observation towers in the Southern hemisphere—now one of the tallest buildings left in the world—was shaking precariously.
“We’re doing everything we can to look after you all,” Jenny continued, “but you’re going to need
