Double Or Nothing: A Coin Flip Away

Not Good Enough for Death

Ten years ago...

The mangled pile of trash and garbage tumbled down into the tight shaft of the dark disposal system, plummeting through hundreds of tubes and frames before being ejected out into a landfill unit with the muddied gray shores of a large lake frozen in static radiation. As the scraps of food, broken glass and wrought metal tumbled down and settled on the edge of the radioactive beach apocalypse, something shuffled in the darkness. Buried in the large clusters of metal and sparking, broken technology, a large, unsettling pile of globbed goo sat, twisting and writhing in its filth.

The puddle dissolved slowly, breaking down until the black, inky texture had begun to deteriorate, sliding away and becoming absorbed into the trash, leaving only a crumpled, shattered outline of a man in the dusty, rusting darkness. The man lay very still for hours, the darkness of the iron gray clouds above washing over the abandoned area until something unthinkable began to occur: the man's fingertips, one by one, began to twitch and jolt, snapping back and forth without joints or articulation to bind them. They flexed and groped at the coarse ground beneath them, worming through this new world with very little to accompany them.

After crawling over a texture they recognized, the flaps of a tattered, ruined red trench coat, they began to crawl through the pockets of the man before stopping, jerking back as if shackled to something. Upon closer realization after many minutes of trial and error, the fingertips concluded that they were attached to this man in some way, perhaps by its arms. Although the first set of fingertips, supported by a firm grasp of steel pistons and wired veins, was unable to break free, the second set of fingers, having seen worse damage to its chains, was able to worm through the remains of the old arm, prying the crumpled gears and pieces apart with sickening cracks and snaps.

Once this mangled excuse for an arm was broken apart, forced open by its own fingertips, the hand set to work rummaging through its pockets, finding grooves cut into a blackened, dented steel plate. Working with the former set of fingertips to move back to the plate, their hands slowly tore the plate out of its frame, unbuttoning the kevlar-vest exterior and working through layers of hydraulic pistons and an astonishingly decent interior. Most of the severe damage of the broken machinery was to the outer limbs, whose parts had been built around organic bone and crippled flesh. In short time the freed hand had found the wires for the core of this artificial man, and began tugging on its strings.

Something inside the broken man surged to life, as if by sheer accident. It seemed that not even Death wanted this abomination of life, although that answer is the only one that, to other's perspectives, could have made any sense. The hands slipped away as the man staggered, snapping upright with a jolt of blinding speed. Snapping limbs and wires back into place as the hum of an electric generator powered online, the dark red man slung backward on his knees, its shoulders limp and its shattered mask tilted back to the lights of the trash chute above. A chipped and fractured lens of a mechanical green retina flashed in the darkness of its surrounding wires and tubes holding the facial structure together.

After drawing oxygen, an unnecessary supply, into its system for a handful of minutes, the man slumped forward, its disheveled mind unable to process information. Clicks and beeps formed in its head, vague images of conflict and a chaotic slashing that ripped its body apart bit by excruciating bit until everything went black. The man shuffled its sleeves to its eye level, curving over the hands that snapped and twisted to life before it. But only one hand rose with its broken sleeve, shredded into fine red strips of leather. Turning to the muddied floor, the man sought its left hand and the devastated ruins of its arm prior.

Finding its hand jumping and snapping with the wrinkled flaps of a splintered glove waving to it for attention, the man turned with its right hand, ripping the broken socket of its left arm out from the joint. A loud crackle of energy shook the fatigued, emotionless man as the left arm, tattered and splintered from its hand's dirty work, the broken left arm was thrown into the dark, trashy abyss beyond the small clearing. There was no use for things that could not keep pace with the rest of the body. The man walked toward a scrap heap nearby, dragging its rusted, fatigued muscles in the prosthetic legs along until their joints began to click, shuffling like legs again.

Resting its hand on an old machine buried in the dark, the man pushed through the rubble until it found a small disk, roughly similar size to the empty socket on its left shoulder plate. Sliding the disk under its armpit, the man continued digging into the trash, the stains of filth and an intoxicating wash of vile plague filled the man's sensory protocols. At last, the man, buried face deep in the trash, reached its hand upward, revealing a coiled blue cable in the dark. The cable pulsed with blue light, crackling with faint traces of energy. Digging out of the trash heap, the man slid down the shaft, tumbling into a loud, sickening splurch at the bottom of the mound.

Sliding on the slickened, oil-embedded ground, the artificial man righted itself, dragging the pieces of cable and the large, magnetic disk toward the bouncing hand on the opposite side of the ravine. Resting beside the hand, the man set to work on its shoulder plate. Not a word was said while the man worked, unscrewing bolts from a long dead machine across the gap from the man and fastening the magnetic plate on its shoulder socket with said screws. Using the flamethrower arm of another dead machine a few feet above the man, the magnetic plate was welded into place using some mud and silver solder nearby.

The flames burned and licked across the artificial man's chest, but the mechanical components of the man's featureless red mask gave no indication of pain inhibiting its actions. With the patchwork magnet scraped and screwed into place on the man's shoulder socket, the left hand crawled forward through the rubble and wreckage, dragging a frayed and chipped item with it, large, red and dirtied with the mud from the fall. Using the cable from that other machine, the artificial man tied the cables into its exposed stomach, connecting the cable to the shoulder for the left hand to reconnect.

Magnetic energy began to glow as the hand attached itself to the sparking, sputtering end of the cable, clicking into place with a rush of electric adrenaline. Connected by a cable, controlled by magnetism, the hand lifted itself from the floor to seat the very worn outline of a scarlet fedora atop the mechanical monster's head. The flaps of a dark red trench coat unfurled, revealing the ripped pant legs and exposed machinery of the man's inner workings. With the chipped red fedora sitting on the man's head, the mechanical green eye, peering out through a broken frame of the red mask, turned its head to the lights of the large tunnel shafts above the disposal zone.

The Sin Hunter was always very clever; no amount of artificiality could dream of replicating such a vengeful, savage fighting style as that detective. But for Diamond Jack, replica and rifle-armed assassin, its own mechanical mind would have to do. A voice in its head rang out through a broken earpiece, "O-object-t-tive opera-a-a-ational. Kill. The. Si-in Hunt-t-ter."