Free Borderlands: Unconquered by John Shirley Page A

should know.” She waved a hand dismissively. “Now, you had a demonstration slated?”
    “Hm? Oh, yes, yes.”Vialle walked toward the hulking man on the gurney, rubbing his hands together as he went. The scientist had a curious way of walking when he was bent on a task, leaning forward so far it was odd that gravity didn’t pull him flat on his face.
    Vialle wheeled the gurney toward Gynella. The nude, noseless Bruiser on the wheeled table groaned, and his eyelids fluttered.
    “You have a new formulationof the SusDrug?” Gynella asked, looking the Bruiser over with distaste.
    “Yes indeed. Much more intense—to try to ensure that they don’t fight the effects of the conditioning. After the ActiTone is used, the subject won’t be in this sedated state any longer. You’d better bring your bodyguard in.”
    She nodded, went to the door, and summoned Runch. The ponderous, disfigured bodyguard lurched intothe room and took up a post behind her, looming protectively, his bulging eyes looking this way and that, his pincer hand convulsively opening and closing. In his human hand he carried a spiked steel club; a sheath on his hip helda sawed-off shotgun. He had a strange, vinegary smell about him.
    Vialle charged an air syringe with the new formulation of the drug and immediately injected it intothe Bruiser’s arm.
    The Bruiser gurgled deep in his throat, and his eyes popped open. Runch took a good grip on his spiked club.
    The General Goddess took a step back from Vialle’s human guinea pig; she put a hand on her pendant and twisted the knob, with her other hand pointing at the Bruiser—though that was unnecessary. It was pure habitual stagecraft.
    The ActiTone chimed and vibrated, andthe Bruiser, primed with the new supercharged SusDrug, arched his back and let out a long, pealing shriek of mixed delight and terror. His arms flapped, his fists banged on the gurney, and his sexual organ pointed, very suddenly, with what Smartun could’ve sworn was a twanging sound effect, straight at the ceiling.
    “Whoa,” Gynella said, taking another step back.
    The Bruiser began to claw athimself, giggling. Then he laughed madly, snapping his head back and forth, pummeling his feet on the gurney, until his long-nailed, probing fingers dug deeply into his own skin, and deeper yet, till they burst through, ripping a wound that spurted blood into the air. But he seemed to feel no pain; he kept titteringwith mad laughter, every vein in his taut skin standing up, throbbing, his semenstaining the ceiling even as his liquefying entrails burst like an oil-well geyser from the rent in his belly, his intestines and inner organs whipping up like eager creatures of the deep sea, eels snapping at their prey.
    It didn’t stop there. His outsides buckled and folded under; his insides expressed through the widening wound, muscle, bone, and organs bursting out to declare themselves tothe world.
    Viscera exploded; blood fountained; bones crackled and flew apart . . .
    And the Bruiser turned completely inside out.
    Smartun backed away, gagging, and rushed to the nearest sink and vomited so thoroughly and furiously he was afraid he was heaving his own guts out. Then he thought of his Goddess and turned to see that Gynella was all right. She was standing well out of the way ofthe expanding puddle of shattered entrail matter and blood, shaking her head sadly.
    “Oh, that’s not a good outcome at all, Vialle,” she said, seeming only mildly annoyed. “I don’t like to criticize, but I do think the dosage might’ve been too strong.”
    Vialle nodded mutely.
    A minute passed as the thing on the gurney shuddered, occasionally spouting blood and fecal matter and bile, and at lastsettled down.It quivered a few times more and subsided into mushy inertness.
    There was silence then, except for the drip-drip-drip of blood from the gurney. They stared at the bloody wreckage of the Bruiser.
    “Ah, well,” Vialle said at last, handing Runch a mop.