What is Death?

SELF LIFE

The metal blades of the bike cut through the grass like a jet ski on the surface of the sea.

Menide and Rhea sped away from the city, cloaked in the shadow cast by the black sky. Menide had decided to reach the secret base of the Vivere by staying far from any street, as to not let themselves be known, and had for this reason decided to get a bike, as a normal car would’ve had many problems hovering over rocks and mounds. A bike was the best option, especially since the magnets made it impossible to lose balance, and the easy maneuverability of this specific model gave them the possibility to weave around trees like a skier around slalom poles. There were rubber sleeves attached to its sides, made to fit the driver’s feet and ease steering of the bike.
This model did not allow for two passengers, since the driver had to almost lie down on the bike to properly steer it. Menide had promptly tried to use this fact as an excuse to keep Rhea from coming, but, thanks to Rhea’s hard-headedness and Menide’s little patience, this only resulted in Menide having an XXL-size baby holder strapped around their back with Rhea fitted inside of it.

“By the way,” Rhea shouted as to not let his voice drown in the noise of the brushing wind, “Where did you get this bike?”

“In a parking lot.”

“You stole it?!”

“Don’t worry about it! Whoever has the money to buy this kind of bike must have the money to buy a second one.”

“But you’re still causing a lot of trouble for the owner!”

“And that is what we call killing two birds with one stone!”

“Is that why I’m the only one with a helmet? Was it the only one inside the bike?”

“I am quite literally built different. A small fall is not going to hurt me. Don’t worry about those things! More importantly, put your disguise on.”

Rhea looked in his peripheral view for the icon that prompted the main menu of the eyedeas. In the clothes section was a set of AR clothes resembling a kitsune that would mask Rhea’s face and identity. Their plan consisted in reaching Kirk’s secret base, where he conducted unethical experiments using the bodies of the dead, and find the tech. Kirk Katabashis was a workaholic, with a sickly obsession for the taboo, and also a genius. Gedis was easily able to find information about him, but it wasn't thanks to her talent. Kirk was fully aware of his privileged position inside the Vivere, and he knew that his dark secrets weren’t enough to depose him from it.

“Let me remind you,” Menide warned him, “You’re not going to fight! Stay behind me, don’t shoot, and remain hidden. Gedis said that the tech is either in a vault, or Kirk’s got it with him. This Vivere base is on a small island, so we can’t run away easily.”

“Wait, how are we going to reach it if it’s on an island?”

“Have you never been on a bike?” Menide smiled.

“Not that I remember. Why? …Menide?”

Menide began going faster and faster until the bike sped out of a thicket and off a cliff. Menide’s hoodie couldn’t withstand the wind pressure and their hair was harshly blown out of it. Rhea kept on screaming as the bike fell horizontally over the sea. The landing was gentler than one would expect, thanks to the strong magnetic propellers of the bike, but still it brought about a wall of water that almost encased them. Trying to lose as little momentum as possible, Menide accelerated over the water as the island rapidly emerged from the horizon.

“Give me a warning at least! I almost had a heart attack!” Rhea shouted desperately.

“It wasn’t that big of a fall, c’mon!”

“There was no need for it!”

“That’s just how it is with me. Maybe next time you’ll want to stay home!” Menide answered with a mischievous grin.

Having reached the shore, the bike jumped out of the water and onto the sand. The complex, hidden by fake trees, was void of windows throughout all of its buildings, which were connected to the main tower in the middle of the island.
Following Gedis’s plan, they snuck around the premises searching for the exit of the sewers and, to their surprise, found it guarded by two men with guns.

“She wasn’t kidding when she said security would be high.” Menide said before piercing the pin in their chest and transforming into their bestial form.

“I feel sorry for them, having to stand in such a smelly place this late at night.” said Rhea.

“If it makes you feel better, I’m about to end their suffering.” answered Menide, ready to jump on them.

“Wait!” Rhea grabbed on to Menide’s feline leg, “Couldn't this be one of those cases where if you kill one the other is going to alert everyone?”

“…Could be.”

“Then let’s do a coordinated attack! You take the one on the right and I take the one on the left.”

“You lost your memories, but you still remember clichés? What part of “you’re not going to fight” do you not understand?"

“I’m going to do it anyway.” Rhea smiled in excitement.

“Argh! Fine! But you’re not leaving my side. Get ready!”

Menide picked up the kid and jumped into the air. As they were about to land on one of the guards, Rhea charged his beam, lighting up their bodies in purple and orange lights.
Menide fell fists first on the guard, destroying their head, while Rhea shot the other in the chest, pushing them to the ground.

“You can’t,” Menide put Rhea down, “You need to shoot the guard in the head to make sure they're dead.”

“I know. I was thinking that we don’t need to kill everyone who–”

The guard raised their now hollow chest and aimed the gun at Rhea. There was no expression on their face and their eyes, one blue, one brown, were soulless. They shot at Rhea, but the projectile ended up on Menide’s arm, which was rapidly put in front of him. Holding themselves with their fist, Menide jumped and grabbed the guard’s head with their talons, crushing it between its claws and smashing it into the ground. Between the two dead guards, there wasn’t a single drop of blood in sight.

“This is why I didn’t want you here.” Menide said without moving from the spot. “I’m going to quickly explain what a necrobomancer is, and you will listen in silence. After that you will follow everything that I say with no remarks. Understand?”

Rhea looked at the beast in front of him and slowly nodded.

“Kirk is one of the best, if not the best, necrobomancers in the world. Unsurprising, considering the fact that he’s the second in command of the Vivere, the corporation of Health, which owns every hospital and cemetery of the nation, giving him access to all sorts of body parts.”

This was the macabre hobby of a necrobomancer: using technology and advanced AIs to make mechanical Frankensteins called “phizos” that would answer all of their master's pleas. They lacked sentience and free will, which made them perfect minions. Although such a practice was both illegal and unethical, many governments secretly researched it.

“And that’s Kirk’s job. Both Vivere and the Custody want him to find a way to make strong and easily replaceable soldiers without a free will, but they haven’t reached that level yet. The piece of tech that Kirk was given might be the key to achieving it, but we don’t care about that. We need it because it can thoroughly scan every part of your brain.”

Rhea listened, and his body slowly became cold.

“These guards didn’t have any blood,” Rhea said looking back at the two corpses next to him “Were they… phizos?”

“Sadly, yes. And I say sadly because this means that Kirk might know two of his phizos died. If you can call it dying. Anyway, we need to hurry.”

The two rushed inside the sewers.

“This is horrifying! How could someone… do this?”

“It’s actually not that different to how I have animal parts in this form. Gedis put together her necrobomancer knowledge with the secret knowledge we stole from the Custody to make this form.”

Rhea stopped and turned to look at Menide in the eyes, but all he could see was the red-tinted sheen of their visor.

“You have to do what you have to do.”

***

The wall crumbled before Menide’s fists, who jumped through the hole they made and rushed down the greenish halls of the tower. Rhea, tightly held by Menide’s human pair of arms, was shooting left and right at the horde of phizos chasing them with guns.

“We underestimated him! Our cover was blown the moment the first phizo died. Kirk must’ve put some kind of chip inside all of them that warns him when the phizo dies.” Menide told Rhea as they punched their way through a group of undead. “I hope he didn’t warn the Custody.”

“We’re not making any progress! I’m starting to doubt the vault is in this tower.” Rhea answered. “Isn’t there a map somewhere?”

“I know a place that could have it.”

Menide stopped to turn around and jumped on the mass of phizos behind them. Landing on their heads, they jumped again, ripping the head off one of them with their claws. They passed it on to Rhea and went back to running.

“There is a program somewhere in your eyedeas that can let you hack his, see if you can find a map in this guy’s files.”

Red cables hung from the phizo’s neck, and their pale skin created an uncanny contrast with the shiny metal parts used to reconstruct the missing parts of their face. Rhea gulped down the urge to vomit and grabbed the disembodied head. After some tinkering with his own eyedeas, he eventually found a way to hack into the phizo’s eyedeas. He saw that there was a preset path that the phizo's AI could take to walk around the premises. Putting together the path didn’t give him a map, but Rhea noticed that it formed a familiar shape.

“It’s a skull!” said Rhea, having realized something. “This whole place is built to resemble a skull! This tower is the left eye, and the exit of the sewers was the neck. I’m willing to bet that something as important as the vault must be where the brain is, behind the tower!”

“There is no building behind the tower!”

“Underground!”

Menide punches through a door to try and run away from the horde, but another one was waiting for them behind it. A number of phizos so big it barely fit the halls surrounding them.

“I really need you to be right on this one!”

Menide tossed Rhea on their back and strapped him in the baby holder. They then ran towards a wall, destroyed it, and jumped off the tower. Tens of meters in the air, Menide morphed their hands into a cannon and began charging it up. A few moments before reaching the pavement, the gun fired a blast multiple times Menide’s size. The mass of crackling energy beamed out of the cannon like fire propelled out a rocket, slowing their fall and burning a hole through the cement and making them descend under the pavement. The ground around the hole collapsed onto them, but they had reached the vault. The room they found themselves in was dark and gelid. A thin mist rose from their warm bodies. The place was filled with all sorts of parts and components, from both computers and humans. Drawers, showcases, boxes, there was no difference between metal and flesh, all were stored as cold units of a bigger product.

“I’m gonna need you to look around on your own,” Menide huffed, lying on the ground. “Using this cannon takes a lot of energy out of me.”

Rhea still hadn’t fully recovered from the grisly sight of the room, but pushed himself to try and ignore it, and began the search.

“Good boy," said Menide, their body spread on the floor. "It should be an external piece, something that you put on your head.”

Rhea pushed around everything that wasn’t made of flesh, until he found one piece of headwear encased inside of reinforced glass. He fired a beam onto it, the purple and orange twirled on the glass for some seconds and cracked it open.

“I think I found it! How can we make sure it’s the right one?”

“Don’t worry, we can–”

“I’m sorry to inform you that this is not the tech you’re looking for!” A voice interrupted them as the door of the vault slowly opened. Surrounded by a white light that broke the darkness of the room, a short man wearing flamboyant clothes appeared, dangling a thin chain of golden, rectangular pipes, with one side covered in hundreds of needles.

“Although you could use it to make a cheap phizo. If you had the talent, that is.” He smirked.

“You must be Kirk Katabashis.” Menide growled at him as they got up.

“And you’re the chimera. I honestly don’t care about the little boy, let’s just skip the pleasantries and get right to the killing.”

Behind him, dozens upon dozens of phizos came into sight and began jumping on them with feral strength. Menide was still tired from the cannon shot, but they couldn’t back down from the fight. Rhea climbed atop the drawers and began taking shots at the creatures below him, which struggled to reach him.
Rhea had also tried shooting Kirk but each time, a phizo would jump between their leader and the projectile. Kirk simply stood on the spot with a look of haughty arrogance.

“If only you could see the potential behind my phizos,” He argued, “You should give yourself to me voluntarily! That body of yours could make for the perfect minion. Then, phizos would reach a new age. They’re empty husks for now, but they’ll be self-sufficient soon enough.” He smiled and continued with a deeper tone, “Just like us.”

Ignoring his ranting, Menide kept on fighting, taking down phizo after phizo, but their fatigue was starting to get the better of them. Rhea kept on trying to ease Menide's struggle by shooting the ones next to them, but in doing so he ignored the phizos that were clawing at him from below. The drawer he stood on was turned over and he fell into the mob.

“Rhea!”

The reborn creatures piled on him and engulfed him in a ball of iron and flesh. Menide tried to make their way to him but the constantly increasing number of phizos created a sea of bodies between them.

“Don’t worry about the kid, you’ll see him again. Though he might be a bit different than how you remember.” Kirk mocked them.

But the sea began to turn rough. The phizos were pushed up and down by an unknown force, some were even launched in the air and disintegrated on the nearby walls. Popping out of the mob like a dolphin out of water, Rhea was surrounded by a semitransparent aura washed in magenta, as he jumped on the phizos’ heads.

“I just remembered something!” He screamed as he bumped on the phizos.
His movements pushed the mechanical zombies to the ground without even touching them, while he bounced in the opposite direction. Jumping and sliding like a magnet repulsing from metal, he rapidly made his way towards Kirk. His hand was a few centimeters from the golden tech that hung from his hand, when a burly arm jumped in from the side and launched Rhea away with a fist.

“Rhea!” Screamed Menide.

“I’m fine! This magnetic field shielded me from the hit.”

“Oh, thank you Mikey!” Kirk interrupted them, “That brat gave me quite the scare. Come here, I have a special reward for you.”
The gargantuan monster slowly wobbled closer to Kirk, dragging his feet around. A faint but constant rumble hung around his gaping mouth, which had all teeth replaced with sharp canines.
“If you’re so curious about this device," Kirk gently patted the big man's bold head, "Why don’t you experience it yourself!” He took the tech and placed it on top of Mike's head.

The monster roared. “Attack!” Kirk screamed and the monster was gone. Running through the other phizos like a carp upstream, it made a beeline for Rhea with an unnatural speed for his size. His arms, ready to strangle, were stopped by Menide’s gorilla ones, which rivaled them in size. The two pushed, desperately trying to bring the other down, but Mike’s strength was powered by the new tech it wore. The monster raised its arms, lifting Menide off the ground, but Menide pushed their legs behind and, arching their back, reached over to Mike's head to stab it with their talons.

“Careful, you don’t want to break his headgear!” Kirk screamed at Menide with a scornful tone. But he was right, and in the moment it took Menide to realize they had to be careful, the monster slammed his body on the ground, placing Menide between him and the pavement.
Rhea jumped at the monster using the phizos around him as a launching platform, and with a tackle pushed the huge monster out of the way.

“Menide are you alright?!”

“I think I broke something…” Menide laid on the ground with their visor smashed in half.

A long talon loomed from the gigantic phizo’s eye, while another carved into the side of his head, far away from their original foot. The monster began walking towards them, unfazed by the damage it had sustained.

“Launch me at him!” Rhea climbed into Menide’s gorilla hand.

“What? The main thing here is leaving alive! I can’t throw you at the threat!”

“You can’t fight properly anymore, you’re too hurt! Don’t worry, I’m confident I can take him down.”

The faint light that came from the vault’s door reflected on Rhea’s determined eyes. Menide couldn’t help staring at them.
Up on one leg, Menide swung their arm at Mike and launched Rhea, who had activated his shield to propel itself even faster. As he flew towards the monster, the two-toned beam began charging in front of his raised arm and wrapped his hand. Pushed by Rhea's speed, the colored lights of the beam punched through the monster’s neck and sent his head flying.
Rhea went to grab it, but the remaining phizos grouped around the head and brought it to Kirk.

“How dare you destroy my husband’s body!” He screamed in rage as he grabbed the head. “Don’t worry sweety,” his tone shifted to a gentler one while taking the talons out of Mike’s head, “I’ll get rid of these two pests and fix you back up. Then we’ll make our empire.”

“Please,” Menide got back up, “You’re just the egotistical pawn of a company!”

“Shut it you shoddy terrorists! You know nothing of my world. I bet you think this is all a big game, that you’re doing this just because you’ve got nothing better to do.”

“We’re going to find the humans and destroy the custody!” Rhea screamed at him.

“The Custody?!” Kirk let out an angered laughter, “Now that’s the real pawn! As for the humans, well, your search is over! There are none!”

“That’s not possible!” Menide cried, “Someone must have made us!”

“They did! And then they abandoned us! The Custody hasn’t heard from them in more than a century!” Kirk screamed.

Rhea didn’t want to believe his words but, looking back at Menide, he found them stunned. Suddenly, the entire room began to rumble. The walls started shaking as parts of the floor were lifted and rotated. Kirk now stood on a small platform surrounded by buttons.

“I honestly wouldn’t blame them,” He continued, “If they got bored of us and left us to rot on this murky world.” The room kept on shifting, pushing phizos into dark crawl spaces as it rose outside the ground. Rhea had to wake up Menide from their daze and move away as to not get crushed by the rotating walls.

“But I’ll make them regret it.” Kirk took the headgear off of Mike’s head and got onto a chair covered in wires. “I’ll show everyone my potential!” The room ended its shifting. The vault was now a laboratory with tall, tinted windows that faced the black sea.

Menide had come back from the shock and, furious, jumped at Kirk, but an outburst of electricity erupted from the chair and pushed them back.
Kirk plunged the golden tech onto his head. Thin streaks of blood flowed past his eyes, but his mouth was open in joy. He got up the chair and slowly began raising from the ground, as slender streams of lightning connected his feet with the ground.
Rhea approached Menide and helped them get back up, looking at them with a resolved smile.

“We can beat him if we’re together.”

Kirk was about to unleash his full power onto them, when he noticed a bright green light pressed on the window next to him. The black line of a reptilian pupil stared at him from the green eye, surrounded by sharp, scarlet scales.

“There should be an ad blocker on the premises.” Murmured Kirk, confused.

The draconic eye burst through the window. The wall was blown away together with most of the roof. An azure smoke filled the room. The walls kept on falling, the ground crumbled. Nothing was left of Kirk or the headgear.
Slowly landing on what remained of the room, the gigantic lizard with wings for forelimbs let out a thick steam from its snout.

“W-what is this?” Rhea stuttered in terror, “How is this possible!?”

“Every animal is fake." Menide said quietly, trying their best to keep calm, "If the humans could make copies of real animals, I don’t see why they couldn’t make copies of fake ones too… the Custody must’ve sent it here for us.”

The flaps of its bat-like wings extended down to the tail, long and pale, and had multiple ridges that ended with thick claws. Coarse silver teeth poked out of its lips, the same color as the long claws that its feet stabbed in the floor. The wyvern reared up its head and flapped its wings.

“Run!!”

Menide grabbed Rhea and tried to get off the raised room, but a fiery stream of blue mist singed their arm before they could jump off. The deadly breath of the monster swept the platform, slowly melting any body that was left on it. The same destiny would have awaited Menide, if Rhea hadn’t pushed his shield in front of them. The two forces combined and powerfully launched them in the air. They flew over the base and landed in the water.

“Damn it all!” Menide raised out of the sea holding a blacked-out Rhea. Kirk had been obliterated by the creature, and the golden tech with him. In the distance, the wyvern jumped back into the air and flew around the coast, searching for its targets.

Menide made their way onto the shore. Placing Rhea on the sand, they noticed a bright orange liquid dripping on the sand together with the water. The fire of the beast had completely melted away the metal of their right gorilla arm. They ejected the pin and turned back into a human form. A wave of pain washed their body and forced Menide to their knees. Their cape was torn in half, their foot missed pieces, and their long hair had turned short. Picking themselves back up, they grabbed Rhea and reached the bike.

Hidden from the wyvern’s sight, Menide drove back to the mainland, defeated.