Scavenger: A.I.: (Sand Divers, Book Two)

by Timothy C. Ward

  Rush ran over a green bridge traversing the hole his earlier actions had created, connecting the hallway to the middle of the Twin Suns room. It, too, glowed in his dive view with abundance of energy. He slowed near its end and walked toward Star, imagining her face in the picture of euphoria her relaxed pose suggested. “Star, we can’t do this.” He didn’t know where he was going but, in his frustration of enduring this run around, he couldn’t help removing the filter between his heart and his lips. “W. The Twin Suns. The soul throbbing rejuvenation the plasma provides. All of it and none of it. We have to choose none if we want to have freedom to be what we dreamed we could be. What we dreamed before Fish. What we dreamed we’d be for him. What I dreamed would make my life complete. It was only you at first. And it didn’t require power. We can do this without the lure of this ancient technology I wish we never let loose.”

  “Isn’t this touching,” W said.

  Star remained in her floating, possibly sleeping pose, ten meters ahead and five meters under the floor. If she hadn’t heard him, he hoped he’d have the strength to repeat himself when she could.

  “You’re more than welcome to take your wife and leave,” W said. “I’ll give your wife a pack of plasma to help lessen the addiction, and you can hope her weaning process won’t require the medical facilities this base has to offer.”

  “I don’t think so, W,” Star said into his earpiece. “Rush, I understand your nostalgic longings. I have them, too. In fact, I have a surprise I think will make you change your mind. First though, this house needs swept. W, if you hold anything back, you’ll regret it.”

  31 - Star

  Oh Rush… Star missed that romantic, tender side of her husband. She hoped some of it could join her in the future she was preparing for their family.

  “You think you’re ready?” W asked into her earpiece. “You aren’t even connected to ten percent of your nanos.”

  But in his connection, he didn’t realize his weakness. Action would prove more effective than words. Star pictured a contained explosion of fire, fueled by all the anger she’d felt toward those who hurt her. She grabbed their attacks—such as the absence of Rush in the years after Fish, the rejection of Stone, Colorado’s blessing them with a child only to see him die before he could call her mother, this…computer for thinking it can beat me—and ripped them off like branches from a dead tree, throwing them into the smoking pyre.

  She punched a fist into the air from inside the heat, caught the attack limbs and slammed them into the ground at the fire’s white hot center. Each slam blew air into the billows of whooshing red, lifting the flames higher and wider. She screamed at those who’d defied her, who’d underestimated her ability to enact revenge like a broken back over her knee. The fire grew through the rumble in her chest. When its light eclipsed the boundaries of her mind, she whirled her arms back and threw it into the heart of the Twin Suns.

  The energy surge barely passed the spinning edge of the reactor before it was flung back in a blinding slash of hot metal. A gash split her straight up from her crotch and erupted in beams of fire from her eyes.

  Even as she fell into an abyss too thick with dark for thought or pain, she held onto the merit of her plan. She’d push through to be the one to climb up from the surface on the other side.

  Scavenger #5 – Falling Star

  32 - Rush (10:20 pm, Friday) / Star

  A pinprick of maddening light blinked open in the center of the Twin Suns. Its brightness flashed high and wide, like a giant book opened to contain a star. Its blinding light became heat, smacking Rush off his feet, backward, toward the bridge. His back hit an edge and spun him face first toward LL5. His visor dash had shut off, Singer and his suit without power to weaken the blow he was about to—hmph! The ground hit hard, shaking his brain and driving ache into his lower spine.

  He lay for a few breaths, tasting dust on his bloodied lips. Star? Was that you? W? She better be okay.

  No response.

  He forced his arm out from under him, his wrist sore, but not too bad to keep him from lowering Singer’s helmet and visor over his temples and eye line. He managed onto his back. The Twin Suns’ light remained, though he had fallen into a portion of shadow under the bridge.

  A dot of glowing blue appeared center dash. His suit had reset after what just happened. Singer must have protected him from some of the EM. He reached in his collar and pulled out a tube to suck some water from his suit’s internal pouch. He gasped and sat up, his head wobbling for something to right his balance. The only sound was his hand scraping over the dust on the ground.

  “Star.” He pressed his lungs to force his voice louder, but his intake capacity was too weak. “Star,” he whispered.

  RUSH, I’M BACK.

  “Singer, thank God. What happened?”

  STAR USED THE TWIN SUNS TO RELEASE A MASSIVE EMP. THE LOCK ON MY BASE ACCESS IS GONE, BUT THE SYSTEMS ARE EITHER FRIED OR NEED RESET. MY SHIELDING DRAINED OUR POWER. I FOUND A PLASMA STORAGE NEARBY. HEAD HERE.

  Rush’s visor turned to dive view. The room, once alive in green roots now only had the white glow of the Twin Suns and the blueprint outline of the surfaces around him. A yellow arrow pointing west on his dash inclined him to turn and see a yellow dot two floors above, on LL2.

  “Okay, but first, Star.”

  He powered his dive button, gave the suit a second to charge, and then hobbled into a run toward the wall between him and his wife. He cast an EM burst and dove. His hands hit the wall and bent back at the wrists, forcing him to focus a stronger surge of EM. He entered the thick surface before hitting his head on the wall and had to kick hard to regain his speed and balance.

  ARE YOU OKAY?

  “Worn out. I’ll be okay.”

  He spotted Star’s motionless form sinking below Twin Suns and kicked toward her.

  IF WE NEED TO AVOID DIVING—

  “No. I’m good.”

  Her life glow was dim but not out. She couldn’t afford for him to give in to his tired body.

  He caught her and kept kicking until they broke the surface of LL4 and he could roll onto his back with her resting in his arms. He bumped his dive button off, opened his helmet, and laid her on her back.

  She wasn’t breathing.

  He lifted her chin, cupped his lips over hers and blew a lung full of air into hers. No response. Please Star. Again. Again. Again. Again. Star…this couldn’t be it. Not yet. Again. Again. He punched the ground, ripped his visor off, and let it dangle on the cord connecting it to his suit’s collar.

  Air. Again. Again. “Star. Wake up!” Again. Sobs broke through his exhale, weakening his push and wetting his cheeks. He sucked in a breath and broke again before he could reach her lips. Stop it. Stop being weak. If Star did this, it was because she didn’t trust you to take care of her. You’re responsible for this.

  He forced a deep inhale and bent down to exhale into his wife’s mouth. The wind parted smooth and strong. He inhaled through his nose and repeated, clenching his sore stomach.

  Star coughed phlegm into his mouth and snot onto his face.

  He laughed and smeared his face clean.

  She let out a raspy cough, curling onto her side as she shook.

  He rubbed her back. “I’m here, Star.”

  *

  Star woke to the other side, her insides on fire from brain to toes.

  Someone spoke. A male. “Drink, Sweets.”

  Her foggy vision and a red light allowed sight of an open tube near her mouth. She sucked in some water, calming her throat and soothing the throbbing in her forehead. She took another and rested on her back.

  “Fish.” She tried to sit up but rock edges scraping inside her skull convinced her to give up. “We have to find Fish.”

  Hard hands slid under her legs and back. Someone in a Poseidon with its helmet down lifted her and gently draped her over their shoulder.

  “Star.” The voice held a familiar tone, but its source was too far to grasp. “R
ight now we need to find you, but we can’t do it here. I will do everything you need to find safety. Fish will wait for us there.”

  He walked her…somewhere. Where was she? Fish will be there? What did he mean? Where they in Springston?

  Somehow she knew that wasn’t right. Something had happened to make that life impossible.

  “Just rest. Whatever you did. I think it worked.”

  What I did?

  She clawed at the sand in her mind. The dirty treasure she retrieved, the memory, told her it was a gamble. She clawed deeper. The man in the Poseidon—Rush!—kept walking. Back to her gamble…it might have killed her…but she had no choice. Whom it was against, and how it might lead her to Fish, was a small stone hidden deep below her current progress.

  33 - Rush (10:27 pm, Friday)

  Star wrestled in Rush’s arms. He held her tighter to his chest and kept walking for the corridor beyond the dismantled elevator shaft. Dive view showed the blueprint of LL4 and the yellow dot above, representing where Singer wanted him to go. It was located on the main level, near the northwest corner, a good two hundred meters from his position.

  Still no word from W. His visor was on and working. The view of the network of hallways and blocked walls was as clear from M-MANs as ever.

  Star clawed at his neck, scratching a burning line under his jaw. He caught her hand and stuffed it between her body and his as he hugged her tight. “Star, stop.” He dipped his chin to see her closed eyes moving franticly under their eyelids.

  She mumbled. I’ll find you, Fish?

  Oh, love. What am I going to do with you? Fish is dead.

  The blinking yellow dot urged him to move, but there were also the six wasps.

  And where Nedzad and Avery had disappeared to. He scanned the hallways north where W had him open the case with the wasps. No movement. The walls once alive with moving masses of green were a calm blue representing the building’s design. If this was a reprieve from W’s oversight, he should check out the wasps and acquire them before W could.

  The silence of the base made his footsteps louder as he crossed the Twin Suns room. A hallway veered right and the wasps’ room was close by on the left. He opened the door. The case and the wasps were gone. He looked up, increased his viewpoint to fifty square meters. Seventy. Eighty. A figure was running down a hallway leading out of Fort Pope. Denver Ave, he suspected. And as tall as Nedzad. Rush tried looking up the last ID Nedzad had used to contact him. A slash mark went through the JU8V7 ID. Crap. How’d he get out? Rush had melded the door shut after he let Viky and her group through. He didn’t have time to chase Nedzad. Not yet. First, he needed plasma for his suit and Poseidon.

  His body sagged with fatigue, but he managed out of the room, with Star over his shoulder, unable to muster much speed to his jog down the hallway toward the stairs. How long since he’d slept? Now would be great. The stairs were going to be rough, especially on his back and the pain that cut through from ribs to the muscle under his left shoulder.

  In the stairwell a half dozen steps from the LL3, a hole the size of a canine’s head exposed a two-foot depth into the wall, high enough for the dog to have tried climbing and then inserting its head. Now, all that remained was a small dune of metal dust. “Looks like you took care of our dog problem too, hon.”

  “I know,” Star mumbled.

  “How are you feeling?” He took a breather, then mounted the steps and ascended around past the door and toward LL2.

  “Head hurts. Getting better.”

  “Can you walk?”

  “Not very fast. Where are we going?”

  Rush kept climbing. He didn’t want to tell her about the plasma. “To fix Singer.”

  “I need to get my network back. W is still out there. I need plasma.”

  Even though his dive view found no living green, she was probably right that W was still a threat, however hidden at the time.

  “And Fish,” she said.

  Rush rounded the stairs to a new flight. “Starlight…Fish is gone.”

  “He was, but Warren died, too.”

  Rush slowed under the weight of her implication. “Warren is dead. W isn’t the same thing. It was some blend of what my mind created and wanted to see, and if you believe it, Warren’s memories.”

  “Put me down.”

  Rush set her on the landing before the door to LL2.

  She straightened her back with an elderly stiffness. “Memories. That’s what it wanted from me after I blacked out. I woke connected to a computer with my visor down.”

  Rush stepped around her to open the door. He readjusted to dock view. Their path was clear of M-MANs.

  Star caught his hand and he looked back at her. “I saw Fish, as old as he would be if he hadn’t died, and just as real. He called me Mommy.” Her voice gave out to a gulp in her throat. “I don’t know what’s going on, what kind of technology the Old World had, what happens when we die—if Colos are right that our minds leave on a clear night to join the stars, or something else. Who’s to say Fish’s mind hasn’t remained, living on in our memories?”

  Rush thought back to the strange vision he had of Fish floating away in the dust over the collapsed wreckage of the courthouse. “Come on.”

  Star followed. “Listen to me, Rush. I think about him every day. Maybe we’ve kept him alive that way and now Colorado’s blessed us with a way—no, I know he has—because I heard Fish call me. He’s alive!”

  Rush faced down the hall and evened his stride. “You—we’ve—been through a lot. You haven’t slept in over a day, and I feel like I’ve been swimming for a week.”

  “I’m fine. I took a blow overpowering W, but I had to before he grew too strong and while I had a connection to the Twin Suns.” She hooked his arm and forced him to stop and look at her. “With plasma, I can bring Fish back.”

  34 - Rush (10:32 pm, Friday) / Star

  Star stared Rush down with patience he might not have for long. Who was he to say she was wrong? His gut said she was—Fish is dead, memories or not—but his head had been seriously dumped on for the last twenty-four hours. He wasn’t sure what he thought any more, and he couldn’t imagine Star being fully aware either, especially with what the plasma and nanos had done to her.

  “Star, you know there isn’t much I could ask for more than to hold Fish and feel his beating heart.”

  “Isn’t much?”

  Frustration moved his feet. They were close to the door at the end of the hall with the Singer’s power resupply. “I want you. You and Fish, of course, if that were any way possible, but this idea of bringing him back is ridiculous. What kind of life are you talking about?”

  “One with our son!”

  He glanced over his shoulder as she jogged to keep up with his and Singer’s stride. “If I thought that were possible, and safe, don’t you think I’d want that too?”

  “I don’t care what you think is possible or safe,” she said. “I’m getting him back.”

  A six digit set of numbers glowed on his visor. He entered them into the keypad and the door opened. Inside was a large office with a long wooden desk, a book shelf lined with glass-framed medals and photos, and in the far corner, a wooden box glowing with Singer’s yellow highlight. Before he entered, he turned to Star. “My biggest concern right now is losing you.” He stopped himself from saying, we’ve already lost Fish. “The plasma and our addiction has changed you.”

  She folded her arms. Her posture suggested fatigue, but the resolve in her eyes said she was not to be concerned about. “You think I’ve changed because I want my son back? I’ve changed, but not in a way you have to worry about.” She pointed at the box and brushed past him. “Is there plasma in there?”

  “No.” Rush walked over with her. “Stop—”

  “You can have new technology but I can’t?”

  It was true he didn’t understand all the ways Singer integrated with his visor, and in turn, his brain. If his visor allowed Singer to read his thoughts, how
ever accurately, there were dangerous possibilities such as if W somehow gained control of his Poseidon. He stopped between her and the box. “Okay. I’ll give up Singer.”

  “No. That’s stupid. You don’t take rocks to a gunfight because you’re afraid to shoot an ally. You take your guns and make sure you’re the best shot.”

  “Gun or not,” Rush said, “you don’t show if you know it’s a trap. All I’m asking is that we research or test what we can to ensure our next step doesn’t sink. Singer can help.”

  “What exactly do you plan to test?”

  He didn’t know. What he did know was Star was going to have to see for herself whether her plan was wrong. “I’ll help you bring Fish back.”

  Her resistant posture melted into appreciation, then back again. “But…”

  “But not here.” Rush scanned the rooms outside, spotted one with outlines of machines. “There’s a room down there I’d like to check.”

  The base had Rtix in case he had to put down whatever version of Fish she conjured. It wouldn’t be pretty, and he hoped beyond hope not to have to, but he saw no other way. Would he be able to if it came to that? He wanted Fish back just as much as she did.

  *

  Star could accept Rush’s plan knowing he didn’t just pick the nanolabs for their computers. Those could be helpful for her, too. She could look into the different coding between her nanos and or W’s. Rush wanted her to waken Fish where he had Rtix in case what she built wasn’t exactly Fish.

  Rush held the box she assumed contained plasma pellets. “I love you, Star. No matter what decisions I have to make, please don’t forget you’re my reason why.”

  “So you’re doing this for me?” She snatched for the box, but he turned to block her.