Binary Cycle - (Part 1: Disruption) by WJ Davies Page B

passage would lead, fearful of what new horrors might be waiting for him on the other side.
    He tossed aside a few more rocks and realized there was something buried underneath a giant boulder. His flashlight shone against a smooth, reflective surface. Anchoring his legs against the wall, he used it as a ballast and heaved against the enormous stone. With one great push, the rock gave out and tumbled away.
    Panting, Jonathas brushed aside some of the smaller bits and realized the trapped object was a robotic mining droid. It didn’t appear to be damaged. After all, these things were designed to navigate rough, sketchy tunnels of rock hundreds of kilometers below the surface. There was almost no amount of beating these machines couldn’t handle—ironic considering how many of them he'd repaired down in maintenance.
    Jonathas rolled the hefty drone out of its rocky prison and pushed it down the slope. It was as large as an oil-drum, and as it tumbled down, the activation switch must have been compressed because it bloomed to life. Red and blue lights blinked across its spherical surface and a faint humming sound emanated from deep within. As a long-time repair technician, Jonathas was no stranger to this type of thermal droid. He could tell at a glance that it was operational.
    He rolled it over to inspect the underside and as he did so, felt a very curious sensation, like that of temporarily losing his balance. When the droid settled on its side, the sensation dissipated. Jonathas shook himself and knelt down, hoping to access the manual controls located behind a panel on the bottom side. 
    He found the panel open, and the manual controls destroyed.
Damn
. 
    Jonathas grabbed a screwdriver from his pocket and moved his hand toward the drone, but as he did so, the robot skidded away from him.
    That’s strange
, Jonathas frowned.
    He ran over and forcibly grabbed the bot with both hands. He felt a surge, not of electricity, more like a pulsing sensation that shot up his arms and made the dark lines running through his skin tingle like ice. He suddenly felt faint, and dark shapes clouded his vision. Again he thought he could see dozens of drones churning beneath him, spinning through the planet’s insides. Shadows danced on the walls, though no shadows were cast by the dim lights.
    Dark figures pressed against him, suffocating him. He swung his arms, trying to fight back against the pressurized tension, but his muscles were too weak. He crumpled onto his side, eyes wide with terror, though he could no longer see what was in front of him. That wasn’t true, he could see the drone, but not with his eyes. He knew the robot was there, could
feel
it in the room with him.
    The taste in his mouth was bitter, metallic. A buzzing filled his ears, though he knew the room was silent. His thoughts swirled. He had trouble remembering who he was, why he was here. 
    The corporeal presence of the robotic drone lying next to him taunted him from the shadows. He scratched at the dark veins covering his arms; cursed out at unnamed demons.
    A sharp pain flashed through his body, reminding him of where he was. He needed water, realized he hadn’t eaten for hours, felt weak and exposed.
    Was there something wrong with the nano-DNA? Perhaps it was a new strain that hadn’t been tested, and now it was killing him. Jonathas didn’t want to die down here, torn apart by the very nano-bots that were supposed to grant him a better life. 
     Gradually, the pain subsided. His vision returned. The throbbing abated. He blinked a few times as the room came back into focus. Fighting the urge to sleep, he lay on the grimy floor and closed his eyes. He desperately wanted to drift into unconsciousness, use oblivion as a weapon to ward off the monsters which crawled through his blood, to silence the ghosts that encroached upon him. His mind sank back into a deeper darkness, one that comes after a fit of exhaustion. He saw her porcelain face, that