The Infinite Hands of Hammond

Over the grass they ran like fugitives in the grey dawn. A fine rain fell and their suits were slick with it. There was a building across the field, stately and silent and looming to which they ran. One of them stopped briefly to look back at the woods where the bodies lay crumpled and bloody. He cursed them silently and then continued on.

When they reached the door they burned through the ancient lock, three of them averting their eyes while the fourth focused his plasma torch on it, looking like some deep sea welder forcing his way into a sunken ship. They watched the wind and the rain in the tall grass, the thoughts of all were the thoughts of each: what would it be like walk among it with skin exposed, breathing the unfiltered scent of it, turning your face up to the clouds to feel the rain fall there and as if these thoughts had worked some will upon her, she strode out and looked up, simply breathing, simply feeling. Her helmet sat in the woods next to the bodies of their enemies and if the door had not been breached right then she may have stripped to the naked core of her and languished in the rain until the little machines had wrought their work upon her.

They rushed inside with the lockworks still smoking and the hall soon darkened around them. They turned on suit lights, shadows of the frontmost three bobbing crazily along the walls and floor as they ran, like dancers of an age not so long dead, but long forgotten. Helmet and wrist displays guided them to their target among the inner workings of the prison.

When they found the chair it was covered in a large sheet that flowed to the ground and approaching it almost reverently one of the four pulled away the cloth like one revealing a body or some secret treasure. She stood there looking at the chair, so much like a throne she thought, and unlocked her wrist seals, letting the gloves fall to the floor. Likewise with the rest of the suit until it all lay in a pile. She stood clad only in the thin coveralls of standard issue underwear and climbed into the chair. She leaned forward and took a chain from around her neck.

Vincent, she said.

He stood before her and she took his hand and piled the delicate chain into the palm of his glove.

It was my grandmother's, she said. Vincent looked down at the oxidized silver of the heart-shaped locket, paused long enough to wonder who's portrait was inside and what the eyes would look like staring out at him from an age so lost. Then he slipped the locket into one of the pockets of his suit, the one just below his own heart, not a clean and pretty symbol he thought, but a twisted fist of muscle and blood.

They fixed the padded restraints to her arms and legs and across her chest and from a drawer in a cabinet one of them drew out the rubber mouth piece, one of many, enclosed in a thin plastic medical seal and she opened her mouth to receive it, clamping down on it as they ran the last strap across her forehead and brought down the cap. She tried to mumble something through the mouth guard and Vincent took it out so she could speak.

I'm not sure what I'm more scared of, that the battery will be dead, the cells broken and the chair not working, or that everything will go as planned.

We'll see you on the other side, he said. He took her head in his hands and looked her in the eyes, then said: It's going to work. You're going to be fine. And you're going to stay you. Okay?

Okay.

Okay. Ready?

She nodded her head as much as the restraint would allow which wasn't much and opened her mouth. Her eyes turned glassy and she inhaled a shuddering breath. The mouthguard was replaced and after a moment she shut her eyes and was still.

One of the other two was standing in the corner of the room, the grey of his suit blending with the grey of the wall. Two switches glowed orange under their plastic housings. He opened the first and threw the switch and the hum began deep and smooth. He opened the second and she opened her eyes and they looked at eachother with brief hesitation. In that moment she wondered how many people had died where she sat, how many deserved it and how many did not. He threw the second switch, her eyes flew shut and her muscles spasmed.

Afterwards they laid her out on the floor and tried to revive her, but all remained still. One of the three put a gloved hand on the shallow wound in her neck and scanned her blood. A moment passed and the pale blue light glowed, the pale blue light of zero enemy activity.

They buried her in the field beyond the prison grounds with little ceremony, only pausing for a short time after the dirt had been smoothed flat. One of them had used the torch to burn her name in a rock and this was placed as headstone for her, a flower picked and placed on top, a flower none of them had ever smelled. They reassembled her suit, carrying it off with them looking like a limp and broken ragdoll for reuse in their neverending war.