Infinity Reborn (The Infinity Trilogy Book 3)

by S. Harrison

  “Infinity! Wake up!” I scream as I hurriedly and desperately pull myself along the tendril toward the fading view of Infinity’s eyes. I’m close, but not close enough. With one last thudding punch from Gazelle, Infinity’s vision flickers and then goes completely black. Grunting with effort I pull hard on the tether, but it suddenly evaporates in my hands, and I’m left sailing weightlessly through the darkness, panting in panic, waving my arms in every direction for a hold on something, anything. But there’s nothing there. All the writhing lines and tethers are gone.

  Suddenly I slam into something solid, and the blackness gives way as shapes and colors begin streaming into my eyes. Dazed, I blink my vision into focus and see Gazelle’s foot right beside my face, crushing my hand to the ground. My head is aching, and a sharp, spearing pain is skewering me in my back. I’ve regained control of my body, but it means nothing, because I have no control over this situation at all. I’m still at Gazelle’s mercy, and any second now she’s going to end this. Panic surges through me. I don’t know what to do.

  Out of nowhere I hear the sound of hissing, followed by a loud and guttural war cry. To my utter surprise and relief, Gazelle’s foot quickly lifts away from my hand. I groan as her weight releases from me, pulling the spike out of my shoulder blade. The yelling and the hissing noise are coming from above, and I roll over onto my back to see an angrily shouting Brody stepping over me, the can of spray-on bandages clutched in his hand, spewing a stream of white liquid onto the robotic eyes of a backward-stumbling Gazelle.

  My broken ribs begin moving back into place and knitting together as, gingerly, I sit up and take it all in. Gazelle flails blindly, her Lobot helmet plastered with spray-on bandage. The can sputters empty in Brody’s left hand. He tosses it aside. As Gazelle claws at the air and throws wild punches, Brody quickly steps in, and, with a determined grunt, he swings his arm in a swift right hook to catch Gazelle solidly across the jaw with a pair of binoculars. Her head jars with the impact, and she teeters before dropping heavily onto the pavement, unconscious.

  The spikes and blades on Gazelle’s legs and feet instantly retract, and Brody watches her for a second to make sure she doesn’t move again. He looks over at me, throws the busted binoculars onto the grass, and rushes to my side. “Infinity. Are you OK?” he says, kneeling down beside me.

  “It’s Finn, Brody. I’m back, and yeah, I’ll be fine,” I reply as I feel the hole in my shoulder and the cut in my neck sealing closed.

  “Finn. OK,” Brody says with a slightly puzzled expression. “You and Infinity should wear name tags or something.”

  I chuckle as the broken skin on the back of my hand heals together. I wiggle my fingers and clench my fist to test it. It’s working fine, and as I open my palm, Brody immediately grabs it and pulls me to my feet.

  “Thanks, Brody.”

  He smiles and nods. “What should we do with her?” he asks, looking over at Gazelle.

  I tap the bulging satchel at his waist. “You got a rope in there?” I ask, knowing full well that he does. With both of us winding and tying knots, it only takes a few minutes to securely bind Gazelle’s ankles and wrists, both of us making sure to use the bulk of the rope on those dangerous legs of hers. There’s no way she’s getting free.

  After I grab my satchel from the ground, Brody and I carry her into the corridor in the hillside and prop her against the wall. Gazelle groans, and a startled Brody jumps back as she begins to come to.

  Her possessed legs immediately spasm and twitch, and her hands feverishly open and close, but she’s tightly hog-tied and isn’t going anywhere. “Please . . . help . . . me,” she whimpers, and my heart goes out to her.

  I crouch down near her, being careful to stay out of range of her involuntarily bucking legs. “Don’t worry, Caitlin,” I say as soothingly as I can. “We’ll find a way to get that thing off your head.”

  “Please,” she begs. “I know you’re there. I can’t . . . stand . . . the pain.”

  She doesn’t seem to be able to hear me at all.

  “We have to take it off!” barks Brody.

  “I . . . I can hear you,” Caitlin whimpers. “Please, if you’re there . . . please. Help . . . me.”

  “Finn. She needs our help!”

  “We can’t remove it. It might kill her!” I shout.

  “Kill,” Caitlin whispers. “Yes . . . kill me . . . pleeease.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying!” I yell at her. “We’ll bring help. You’re gonna be alright!” I have no idea if what I just said is true or not. Honestly, I don’t really believe it is.

  “Please, someone,” Caitlin pleads again. “I want . . . to die.”

  “C’mon, Brody. Bit needs us,” I say as I painfully and grudgingly get to my feet and turn to walk down the corridor.

  But Brody doesn’t budge.

  “Finn! We can’t just leave her like that!”

  “What choice do we have?!” I shout at him.

  “Kill . . . me,” Caitlin whimpers.

  “We are not killing you!” I shout at her.

  Brody glares at me angrily, then he opens his satchel, rummages through it, and pulls out one of the scalpels from Dr. Pierce’s lab. “We have to do this for her. I’ll make it quick,” Brody says shakily, and I can hardly believe my ears.

  My heart jumps into my throat as Brody steps toward Caitlin with the blade clutched in his trembling hand.

  “Hold her legs down, Finn.”

  “I am not helping you kill her!” I yell.

  “Please,” Caitlin begs again.

  “She’s moving too much,” Brody says with a quiver in his voice as he looks over at me. “Hold her legs, or I might not be able to end it fast.”

  “I’m not doing it. I’m not,” I say as my pulse starts racing.

  “I don’t want to do it, either!” Brody grunts.

  “Have you ever killed anything before?”

  “No, but . . . just look at her,” says Brody. “She’s in pain.”

  “So . . . much . . . pain,” Caitlin sobs again as tears stream down her face.

  “I can’t,” I say, turning away and pacing down the corridor. “I just can’t, Brody.”

  “Fine,” he says blankly.

  I grudgingly watch as Brody takes a deep breath, walks over, and straddles Caitlin’s waist, forcing her scrambling fingers down with his forearm as her legs buck and kick behind him.

  Brody gingerly raises the blade of the scalpel and presses it to Caitlin’s neck.

  “WAIT!”

  Brody shudders with fright and almost drops the scalpel.

  I quickly walk to Caitlin’s side and hold my hand out to Brody. “Give it here.”

  He glowers up at me and pulls the scalpel to his chest. “No. You’ll snap it or throw it away. She’s suffering, Finn. You won’t stop me doing this. I don’t want to, but . . . you know it’s the right thing to do.”

  I stare at him unflinchingly. “You’re heavier than me. You hold her legs. Give me the blade.”

  He studies my face, no doubt searching for any signs of deception or insincerity.

  “Brody, I know what I’m doing. Hand it over.”

  With a quiet sigh of relief that the gruesome task has been taken out of his hands, Brody stands up and places the scalpel in my open palm.

  I nod at him. “OK, now hold her legs down the best you can.” I take Brody’s place on Caitlin’s lap. Brody moves to her legs and puts all his weight on them. The robotic limbs are powerful, but at least he does succeed in lessening their movement.

  “Thank you. Thank you,” Caitlin whispers again.

  “You can thank me if you survive what I’m about to do,” I say as I grip the scalpel tightly, like a dagger, in a double-handed grip.

  “What . . . what are you gonna do?!” Brody asks in alarm from behind me.

  “This,” I say as I tilt the scalpel diagonally upward, and with one hard push, I plunge the scalpel blade into the small gap between the L
obot’s body and its four spray-on-bandage-splattered eyes.

  There’s a loud bang and a bright blue spark, and Caitlin’s whole body instantly goes limp as the black cables around her neck disintegrate into dark-gray powder. Brody and I immediately leap off her as she slides sideways along the wall and flumps onto the cold concrete floor.

  “What did you do?” Brody asks, gaping down at her.

  “I took a chance,” I mutter as I hand the scalpel back to him. “Either you were gonna slit her throat and definitely kill her, or I could try to get that thing off her head and probably kill her. I went with probably.”

  “I guess either way it turned out the same,” Brody says, looking down at Caitlin sadly.

  “Yeah. I’m afraid so,” I murmur as I kneel down beside her. “I’m so sorry, Caitlin,” I whisper. “I wish none of this had ever hap—”

  With a loud, gasping breath, Caitlin sits bolt upright. I almost jump out of my skin, and Brody lets out a grunting man scream beside me as the Lobot falls away from her head and clatters to the concrete floor.

  With half her face plastered with dried bandage, Caitlin blinks rapidly as she looks up at us in bewildered shock. Apart from one black eye, a few cuts and scrapes, and a graze on her chin where Brody hit her with the binoculars, she looks relatively OK.

  She quickly raises her hands to her head and claws her fingers through her short brown pixie-cut hair. Then she immediately bursts into loud, sobbing tears.

  “Hey, hey, hey, you’re OK,” I say, leaning in and patting her on the shoulder.

  Suddenly she lunges at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and squeezing me in a tight embrace as she cries and wails. “Thank you! Thank you!”

  “You’re welcome,” I say as I loosely hold her and pat her on the back.

  Caitlin releases me, and with a loud, wet snuffle, she wipes her nose on the back of her sleeve. “I apologize for my behavior, Commander,” she says, averting her eyes. “I . . . I didn’t mean to hug you; it’s just that . . .”

  “I know, I know,” I whisper consolingly. “It’s OK.”

  I remember Caitlin calling Infinity “Commander” in the transport a few hours ago. It sounds weird to be addressed by the same title, but I pretend not to notice as I help Caitlin to her feet. Brody, on the other hand, decides to make a definite point of it.

  “Commander? Why did you call her Commander?” he asks, frowning at Caitlin.

  “Because that’s her rank,” Caitlin replies as she gruffly wipes the tears from her face and frowns back at Brody, like he should know and show the proper respect. “Lieutenant Commander, code name Infinity One, lead agent of the Zee-Tol Shadow Division and Vermillion-Class operative, level ten. I’ve read everything about you that my security-clearance level will allow.”

  Brody looks at me with raised eyebrows.

  “Not me,” I say, looking at him. “The other me.”

  “Oh, OK,” Brody says, nodding with a little frown of his own. “Yeah that makes sense, I guess.”

  Caitlin looks a little confused, but then she suddenly gasps. “Oh my god! It grew back?!” she says, staring down at my left hand. “We’d all heard the stories about you around the barracks, but no one actually believed them. You really are invincible, aren’t you?” she says, gawking at me in wonder.

  At first I can’t think of what to say, so I give her my best attempt at a stern expression and a military-sounding response. “That’s classified.”

  Caitlin mirrors my expression and nods without hesitation. “Of course, Commander.”

  “You can call me Finn if you like,” I say, and Caitlin immediately shakes her head.

  “Oh no. I couldn’t do that, Commander.”

  “Suit yourself,” I say with a shrug and a bemused smile. “How do you feel?” I ask.

  Caitlin lets out a huge sigh. “Free. That thing made me relive all my fears and worst nightmares over and over in a never-ending loop. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing, and every second was agony, like my body was on fire. I felt like I was in a living hell.”

  “You couldn’t see anything that you did?”

  She shakes her head again. “Sometimes there were shapes and colors, but I couldn’t see anything clearly at all. I could hear you when you shouted, but . . . apart from that it was just . . . noise.”

  I decide it’s best not to tell her that she murdered an innocent civilian and very nearly killed me as well. Right now, it won’t help the situation at all.

  “Well, that’s over now,” I say. “Where are the rest of the Saviors?”

  “I’m not sure,” Caitlin says sadly. “The last time I saw them, they were holed up in a building in Sector B. We were safe for a couple of hours while Jack tended to everyone’s injuries the best he could. But we knew we couldn’t stay there forever. Commander Zero instructed me to make a break for it and carry him to a warehouse he knew of in Sector C that might contain something that could take out the R.A.M.s.”

  “Warehouse eighteen,” I say.

  “Yes,” replies Caitlin. “We barely made it past the R.A.M.s, but we got to the warehouse and broke in. Commander Zero took a few items, and then we headed back to the others in Sector B. We were halfway there when we were ambushed by a whole bunch of those goddamned things.” Caitlin points at the deactivated Lobot lying on the floor. “They swarmed all over us, and . . . that’s the last thing I remember,” she says as she peels flecks of dried bandage from her face.

  “So they took Zero as well,” I murmur.

  Caitlin nods. “I’m afraid so. They were all over him,” she says with an angry sigh. “What’s your plan of action, Commander?”

  I have to admit that being treated like I’m important is quite a confidence booster, and I’m almost embarrassed when I hear the authority in my voice as I suddenly begin barking orders.

  “Brody. Get on the radio and contact Bit. Tell her we’re on the way, and let Jonah know about our situation.”

  He nods and immediately does what I say, pulling the walkie-talkie from his satchel and pacing away toward a corner in the corridor.

  I like this new feeling so much I even decide to use Caitlin’s code name.

  “Gazelle, I need you to go back out there. Are you up to it?”

  “Yes, Commander. What do you need me to do?”

  “Find the rest of the Saviors. Start at the building where you last saw them; hopefully they’re still there. We could use their help to—”

  “Finn!” Brody shouts from behind me. “Something’s wrong.”

  “What is it?” I ask, looking over at him.

  “Bit isn’t answering,” he replies.

  “Well keep trying. She’s probably just preoccupied, trying to find Dr. Pierce and—”

  “No, Finn, Bit isn’t answering, but . . .”

  “But what?” I ask, frowning at him.

  Brody strides across the corridor, holding the radio toward me in his outstretched hand. “Someone else did.”

  “Who?” I ask as he hands the walkie-talkie to me. I squeeze the “Talk” button. “Dr. Pierce?”

  “Yes, it is Dr. Pierce,” Nanny Theresa’s graveled voice croaks from the speaker. “But I’m probably not the one you were expecting . . . am I, child?”

  I stare at the radio in wide-eyed horror as a mix of fear and sickening worry grips my stomach like a clawed fist. Nanny Theresa’s digital ghost has returned to torment me yet again. First she infected the pirate construct and nearly choked me to death in Dome One, then she brutally murdered my classmates and my teacher Miss Cole, tearing them apart with that R.A.M.’s hellish weapons in Dome Two. She possessed those Drones in the clean room and almost tore my head from my body, and now she’s holding Bit hostage, waiting for me to walk right into her spider’s web and willingly sacrifice my life.

  “Your little friend is safe . . . for now,” says Nanny Theresa. “But if you are not standing before me inside this dome soon, you will spend the rest of your days in the knowledge that yo
u, and you alone, were responsible for what I will ensure is her very slow and painful death.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  “Don’t hurt her!” I plead.

  “I make the demands, child, not you,” seethes Nanny Theresa.

  “Theresa?” Jonah’s voice barks from the speaker.

  “Hello, Major,” she replies coldly.

  “But . . . how?” Jonah stammers, searching for the words.

  Nanny Theresa finishes his sentence for him. “How am I here? Come now. You didn’t think Onix was strong enough to hold me captive forever, did you? And now, thanks to Richard’s quantum grains, I have a body, complete with two hands that I will gladly use to take everything away from you. Just like you took everything away from me.”

  “What’s she talking about, Jonah?” I ask.

  “Your Nanny Theresa didn’t move away like I told you.” Jonah grunts angrily. “She’s been dead for two years. The woman you’re talking to isn’t real; she’s a digital copy, nothing but code and corrupted files.”

  “Now, now, Major. I may be dead, but I still have feelings,” Nanny Theresa says mockingly.

  “I know what she is,” I mutter into the radio. “I was there when she downloaded her mind after she died. That much I do remember.”

  “You . . . remember?” asks Jonah.

  “I know that you tried to erase that memory from me.” I feel anger beginning to simmer in my gut. “You invaded my mind, Jonah. You stole days of my life from me over and over again, but worst of all, you tried to make me forget what she did to Carlo. How could you?” My voice trembles with sorrow and rage.

  “Finn, please listen,” Jonah murmurs gently. “I was only trying to—”

  “What? Protect me? Is that your excuse? Is that how you justify violating my mind?”

  “Finn, I can explain. I never meant to—”

  “Shut up,” I bark. “I don’t want to hear it. You’ve been lying to me my whole life. Why the hell should I listen to you now?”