HANNAH COCHRANE

The Deceiver

Hannah Cochrane | Prose

“Watch your backs,” our commanding officer grunted at us moments before we entered the abandoned train station.

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I cursed inwardly. It wouldn’t be enough to watch our backs; the attack would come from every possible angle.

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Fear curled around my heart as I followed two other soldiers into the gaping mouth of the station. Two more soldiers followed. We were the third squadron to be sent in; the base faced radio silence moments after the others entered.

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“Strike team 3, your position —” The comms cut off in a sharp crackle, sending an electric hum whining through my ear. Then, dead silence.

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Devoid of life, the train station floor was littered with rubble and the bodies of our fallen. None of us checked for the life we knew was already extinguished.

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All of us knew what we were walking into; most of us had seen the Fallouts live on TV a mere 18 months ago. And there we were, fighting for mankind’s survival.

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The enemy was designed to outmanoeuvre us — weak humans against the unvanquishable force of AI. All it took was some idiot to ask a computer how it’d improve life on Earth and bam, the best solution is to wipe out the humans. The machines went rogue, taking on lives of their own with the goal of obliterating their creators.

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It was manageable for a handful of months before a couple of bots hacked into the government’s defence system and stumbled across some serious next-gen war tech. They got it up and running in no time, bringing a concept out of its development stage and progressing it all the way to reality.

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A noise above caught our attention, the five of us training our guns to the ceiling — all too trigger-happy.

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It’s just a pigeon. A stupid pigeon.

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“Stay frosty,” Mettle, the team leader, instructed and continued moving forwards through the scattered debris.

Behind me, Fredricks was muttering a prayer, while Lars ran through every swear word in a repeating order. A bead of sweat crawled down my temple. My breath rattled around my chest with every inhale.

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“Something’s off,” Hill whispered to Mettle, the five of us still slowly advancing. “We’ve made it further than the others and we’re still alive. Something’s wrong.”

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Mettle flicked on a flashlight and swung its illuminating beam around the station. Eerie shadows were thrown up against the walls, but there was no sign of the enemy.

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“Mettle to Adrian.” Mettle tried to contact our base of operations, just a few hundred metres from our current location. “Come in, Adrian.”

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Radio silence. It was impossible to tell whether it was a problem on their end, or ours.

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Then Lars saw it first.

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“Incoming — 9 o’clock!”

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On our left, a train had materialised from the forgotten tracks and was ploughing towards us. Harsh steel scraping against cracked ceramic tiles, the sound horrendous, but leaving no marks behind. I frowned, gripped my gun tighter. Lars was right; something’s off.

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“Hold your ground!” Mettle spat at us at the same time I realised what was going on. “It’s a hologram!”

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I steadied my nerve, gritting my teeth as I braced.

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Lars swore at Mettle angrily, dropped and rolled out of the train’s path before he could respond. As she got to her feet, a short spear pierced all the way through her armour with a swift thunk. She crumpled to the floor, lifeless.

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Mettle snapped into action and followed the spear’s trajectory, taking aim and eliminating the machine that dropped Lars. He yelled something inaudible while he sprayed a round of bullets at the train, slicing through the hologram and taking out the machines creating the illusion. They slid to our feet, cylinders of junk metal we’d recover for our own purposes.

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Mettle shouted a formation, one I barely registered yet complied with, nonetheless. Facing outwards in a circle, we backed away from Lars’ body, further into the station. Our number had dropped to four, dwindling our chances of us all making it out of there alive.

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I prayed that the spear-wielding machine was the only one of its kind in the station. As the seconds ticked by, I reckoned that it was, as no one else had died yet. 

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“My 12 o’clock!” I shouted as I saw figures moving towards the station’s opening, through which we had entered.

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Another squadron was approaching, stepping over the bodies the same way we had done.

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“Hold your fire,” Mettle shouted, the four of us facing the new squadron.

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It was far too soon for a fourth squadron to be sent in; we’d hardly been in there for five minutes. I studied their walks, their actions. Then I heard one of them praying, and another one swearing.

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“Mettle, it’s a hologram of us,” I told him, unnerved by the accuracy of the holograms’ replicas.

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“Fire,” a single word, and the four of us emptied our 50-round mags, firing at holograms of ourselves.

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The smoking and battered cylinders clattered to the floor and rolled until stopped by dead bodies, the sound ringing through the hollow station.

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“Surely they’re out of holo-bots now?” Fredricks questioned, his tone incredulous.

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The clanging of metal steps behind us answered his question, and we quickly swiveled to face a small army of robots. Around twenty bots, armed with impossible intellect and, of course, guns.

“Four against twenty hardly seems fair,” I scoffed.

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“Fredricks is right. The holo-bots are down, this is just your bog-standard shoot-out now,” Mettle answered, his eyes never leaving the enemy as he reloaded his gun. The rest of us followed suit.

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Behind us, there was a whirring and grating sound of flesh contorted with metal. We froze to see Lars getting up, her corpse standing once again. She took up her gun and aimed it at her own squadron, at us.

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“No hard feelings.” She shrugged, cold and merciless as she opened fire.

PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED BY SCAN, LANCASTER UNIVERSITY

Hannah Cochrane is a 21-year-old English Literature & Creative Writing student at Lancaster University. She's been writing prose since her mid-teens, and occasionally writes poetry when inspiration strikes. Amongst writing, she also enjoys reading, physical exercise, and spending time outside.