Enemy or Ally?

By JCRogers

Dr. Toric watched the convoy approaching and hid himself when the four strangers started coming toward his boat. Only one of the four looked normal: The guy with the short, military-style haircut. Clean-shaven, probably six feet or six-one, plain blue jeans, an olive-green T-shirt, muscular—probably military. The other three, though were odd: A black guy whose shaven head was half-covered by chrome, as well as his arm and leg, though he was three or four inches shorter than the first guy, he was just as muscular; a huge man that looked like a refugee from Jurassic Park; and a man wearing a brown robe with the hood thrown back. He’d spent a long time in these woods, moving where they expanded, and he knew a Druid when he saw one.

Toric dropped to the floor and spread himself out thin, taking on the pigment of the floorboards. He’d taken out several people that had been sent to find him, but these didn’t look like any of those. Probably one of the local “clans” he’d heard the Druid’s mention.

The strangers boarded his boat cautiously, the military guy in the front.

“Anything?” he asked.

“No. No scent at all,” the lizard man said.

Toric raised one tendril of himself toward each of them. He kept them as thin as possible, only four or five molecules thick, to avoid the telltale ripples being seen. He formed the tendrils around each of their necks, and then suddenly thickened them, forming them each into scythe-like blades. He said, “Don’t move.”

The one in the robe said, “So, he is real.”

Toric formed himself between them all, though his “body” was hollow, allowing most of the material to remain spread across the floor, and maintain the blades.

“What are you doing on my boat?” he asked. “Is that ferry yours?”

“Yes,” the military guy said. “We’re just passing through. We didn’t know anyone else lived in the area. Thought we’d check it out.”

“Sure, man. Decker send you?” Toric moved the blades closer to their throats.

This time the Druid spoke: “We don’t know anyone named Decker. Mallik is telling the truth. We intend to leave.”

“You’re not going anywhere,” Toric said. He turned to the military guy. “Mallik, huh? Strange name.”

“Yours?” Mallik asked.

“Toric.”

Mallik turned his head to each of his companions. “This is Bo, Raptor, and Thomas.”

“Raptor? I’m guessing that’s not your birth name.”

The one Mallik introduced as Bo jerked suddenly, swiping his right arm at the blade. Instead of knocking the blade aside, his arm pushed into it, and it began to spread over his arm. As it engulfed his arm, Toric said, “You shouldn’t have done that. I know your weaknesses, my friend. In fact, I designed most of those parts.” Toric spread himself over Bo farther up the shoulder, going toward the head. “I know all its cracks, I know just what wires to cut. I know how to shut you down completely.”

Bo staggered back two steps then dropped to one knee, a grimace of pain on his face. He was swatting at the substance with his left hand, but it did nothing.

“Stop,” Mallik said.

“No!” Toric replied, not taking his eyes off Bo. “You’re trespassers. And this one took a swing at me. I’m just defending myself.”

Distracted as he was by Bo, Toric didn’t see the Druid reach under his robe. A glowing sphere spread suddenly from his chest and when it hit Toric he was blinded by agony. He saw Bo’s hardware shutting down and Bo fell over. Then Toric himself blacked out completely.

~ ~ ~

“You coulda warned me,” Bo said. “What the hell was that?” Bo was in the process of rerouting power around his fried circuits.

“If I’d warned you, I’d’ve warned him. I hope I didn’t cause too much damage.”

“I’ll live,” Bo said, “but it could take weeks to repair the damage.”

“Truly sorry,” Thomas said.

“Who was that?” Mallik asked. “You seemed to know him.”

“I knew of him. Legends, myths. He’s supposed to be invisible, a shape-shifter, and any number of other things. Now that I see him, though, it’s obvious what he is. And it explains quite a bit, actually.”

The puddle of quicksilver on the floor was beginning to coalesce again. The form of a man stood before them.

“He’s alleged to sneak into our storage and steal our metal. He never steals food, clothing, anything like that. Just metal.”

The metal man spoke, “Don’t need food anymore. And I make my own clothes.”

“Clearly,” Thomas said. Toric had fully re-formed now, and stood away from Thomas.

“If I’d known you guys had magic like that, I would’ve steered clear.”

“It’s not as common as you might think,” Thomas said. “You just had the bad luck to run into one of the few who had that particular ability.”

“No consolation,” Toric said.

Bo finally got up off the ground, having rerouted enough circuits to power his leg. “Fuckin’ GenTek freak,” he said. “What were they trying to do with you? Perfect assassin? Recon? Or maybe just another mistake.”

Toric scoffed. “Hardly. In my early career, though, I did some work for GenTek. A lot of my research is responsible for the creature behind you.”

“Well, you just have your hand in everything, don’t you?” Bo said. “Me, Raptor, who else? You design Mallik, too?” Bo couldn’t feel the hot breath on the back of his neck, and had apparently ignored Toric’s allusions to someone being behind him. Mallik quickly sidestepped over and took Raptor a step or two away, where they exchanged inaudible whispers.

“No,” Toric responded, “just you two. Raptor is actually the reason I quit GenTek. Well, not him specifically, but I didn’t agree with where they were going with the technology. I moved on to BioBotics, where I designed a lot of your implants and prosthetics. I assume you have the nanobots as well? Probably regenerating your limbs under there.”

Thomas stepped forward and placed his hand under his robe again. Toric froze, wide-eyed. “What? I didn’t do anything.”

“The others may not be able to see you, but I can sense your movement. Stop, or the next one will kill you.”

“You’d probably permanently disable your friend, too,” Toric pointed at Bo.

“Friend? I just met him,” Thomas said.

Bo said, “That’s cold, man.”

“Last warning: Stop.” Thomas took another step toward Toric.

“Alright, fine.” A ripple like a heat-shimmer passed in front of Mallik’s eyes.

Thomas said, “Come with us, if you want to survive the next two weeks.”

“What?” Bo said. “He just tried to kill us!”

“Gather your belongings from your boat and get aboard the ferry if you want to come,” Mallik said.

“Mallik! Come on! You can’t take him with us. Let him stay here. He deserves it after he attacked us like that.”

“Why should I go with you?” Toric asked. “I’ve got everything I need aboard that boat.”

Thomas said, “You won’t survive.”

“Forget it, I can handle myself. I’m staying here.” Toric took a few steps away. “You crazy druids and your end-of-the-world crap.”

Mallik said, “Suit yourself.” All four of them got down off the houseboat and began ushering vehicles aboard the ferry.

Kajok approached Mallik. “What was that? Who was in there?”

“Said his name’s Toric. Never seen anything like him before,” Mallik said.

“What do you mean?”

“He’s... Metallic. Or metal. Something like that. Like... Well, did you ever see Terminator 2? Kinda like that.”

“Well, did you ask him to come along?”

“Thomas did. He tried to attack us, though, so I didn’t really push it. And Bo was downright pissed that Thomas had even offered.”

“Well, he needs to come. He’ll die if we leave him here.”

“He didn’t seem to care too much about that.” Mallik raised the gate as the last vehicle drove aboard, then released the mooring cleats and raised the anchor.

“Should we wait for him?” Kajok asked.

“He’s got a boat. If he wants to follow, he will.”

The ferry starting drifting away from the pier, and Raptor fired up the engines.

“I guess you’ve got a point, Mallik.” Kajok walked to the front of the boat and watched as the boat headed toward the wide river. He saw movement in the woods that closed in around the river.

“Mallik? I think we might have a problem,” Kajok said.

~ ~ ~