by Dan Davis
The razor claws raked his neck, the back of his head and across his shoulders. Agony seared through him as the fine blades sliced deep enough to split open his skin and slice at the hardened bone of his skull. Blood gushed out and down his face before the special coagulants in it somewhat stemmed the flow.
As he grappled the hex’s legs, he was hit by disgust for the revolting alien in his hands. It was utterly wrong. The acrid stink and ammonia fumes filled his nose and made his eyes stream.
The claws whipped Ram's back from his neck down past his kidneys to lacerate his buttocks and hamstrings, slicing deeper into him with every moment and the air was filled with the sickly-sweet metallic smell of human blood
He felt the hex start to pull him in towards its maw on the underside of the thorax and he could hear the mandibles already clacking frantically. He was being lacerated and the cuts would join up and go deep enough so his bones would be cut and his organs would be sliced, if he did not collapse from shock first.
Ram's red blood spattered everywhere, smearing the hex's flailing legs while spraying the air with a red mist and splatting shredded skin and gobs of tissue over the shining thorax.
I’m going to die.
He did not know how to win but he knew that trying to break off a leg and use it as a weapon was not going to work now. And he knew that grappling with the hex without that weapon would only end one way.
He released his grip, balled up his intact fist and swung a series of chopping overhand punches against the carapace beside his head. The surface was soapy, slimy, and hard but he sensed the blows hurt the hex. The carapace gave a little with each blow. He punched it again and as the hex grasped at his wrist with one leg and tried to slash at it with another, Ram twisted inside the legs of the hex and kicked his leg in a sweeping motion at the writhing bundle of alien feet. As he did so, he shoved it sharply to make some space, intending to simply start pummeling it. He had a vague notion that if he could get his weight on the thorax he could beat the carapace into a bloody pulp.
But the hex released him all at once, the legs snaking from him so that it could steady itself. Instead, the creature slipped into the shallow pool.
It sprang back out again, legs flailing as if in panic and brought itself back to the dry path where it shook itself, scattering water everywhere.
The toxins burned Ram’s flesh and he could feel them being pumped around his body. It was like a million itches inside his skin that he couldn’t scratch, turning with every second toward a burning sensation that he knew would build until it was like a fire raging in his flesh. Blood poured from his back and now spattered from his hand to the floor, pooling at his feet and running into the water on either side of him.
For all the specially engineered features of his body, from the release of acids into his blood and the thick skin, Ram would not be on his feet, or alive, for much longer.
But his mind raced.
If he didn’t know better, he would swear that the hex was afraid of water. That was how it was acting but how could it be? Then again, what other explanation was there?
“Ram, are you alright?”
Their ships and bases are as dry as ours. The air is humid but there’s no water anywhere. Why would there be?
The hex crouched, as if it was content to watch and wait for him to die.
And Ram stood and bled and swayed. But Ram’s thoughts rushed through his mind in an instant as the insights piled up on one another.
We assumed the hex liked living in water. Assumed they were used to fighting in water. That they were amphibian or in some way semi-aquatic but that was because of the conditions in the Orb Station Alpha arena. They like moist air, they liked the sun and warmth of the equator. Perhaps they evolved as amphibians. Perhaps they evolved in marshlands, wading through with their long legs. But they have never been observed swimming. Perhaps they can’t. And they do not fight in water. We’ve never seen that, not even in the arena, not even when they had the chance. This water is not for them. It doesn’t favor them. It favors us.
Earth is water world.
“Ram? Can you hear me?” R1’s voice in his ear. “You have to act, Ram, your vitals are dropping.”
“It’s for us,” Ram said, his tongue sounding thick in his unfamiliar mouth. “The water is for us.”
“Say again, Ram?”
Taking a deep breath, Ram roared another war cry and charged straight at the alien. It jerked in surprise and rose up, raising its razor legs like a mantis. Before he got into striking range, Ram changed direction and splashed his way into the shallow pool on one side, lifting his long legs high as he ran. It surprised and confused the hex just for a moment and maybe frightened it too because it scuttled back to reposition itself. The momentary hesitation was all he needed to change direction once again and close the distance in just two great strides, spraying water as he did so.
He wrapped his arms around as many of the legs as he could reach and heaved it up. Muscles strained and tendons tore with audible pops and pain racked him but he felt the hex lifting up and over. Its legs flailed and thrashed him and resisted but he bent his knees, relieving the pressure for just a moment before heaving once more with every fiber of his being.
The hex fell and Ram fell with him. They crashed into the deep water and the Hex flailed its legs for the side. It loosened its grip on Ram’s body and used some of its legs to reach of the smooth sides of the pool, while others thrashed below, whipping up the water as it tried to propel itself to the surface. Ram wrapped his legs around those of the Hex and held on.
Moaning and wailing, the hex seemed to be screaming from whatever organ inside the thorax it used for such communication. He could feel it resonating on the carapace as well as through the water, though the sound of his own heartbeat hammering in his ears was just as loud.
Ram had already been exhausted and breathing heavily when they went under and his body demanded he take a breath. His blood would be laden with carbon dioxide and his muscles and brain were screaming for oxygen. How long would it take the hex to drown, Ram wondered.
Which one of them would die first?
Together they continued to sink deeper. It was light enough to see by but the blood and alien ichor in the water was starting to turn it murky and the frantic thrashing of the hex’s sewing needle legs turned it into a sea of tiny white bubbles, swirling all around in a maelstrom.
And then it changed. Instead of trying to throw Ram off and swim for the surface, the hex began pull him in closer. Ram fought back but found himself being fed inward through the tangle of legs and up into the underside of the thorax where the hex’s great maw could slice through his bones. Even with the chaotic submerged sounds, Ram could hear the mandibles clacking. Bracing himself against the carapace, he held on with everything he had while his blood throbbed in his ears and his head ached. His lungs burned and everything in his body now urged him to breathe, to take a breath, to open his mouth and suck in.
It yanked him suddenly and Ram felt one elbow pop as it dislocated and he could not help but exhale half a lungful of air before he stopped himself from sucking in the deadly water. The snapped arm lost its grip and he was fed closer to the clacking mandibles right over his head. With his working arm, he tried to brace himself on the underside but instead the hex sucked him in and he felt his hand slip up inside the razor-sharp teeth and the hex bit down on his forearm with terrific force. There was barely any resistance before it sliced through the bones.
Inside the jaws of the hex, Ram had enough sensation in his half-severed arm to feel some sort of soft, sucking organ inside tugging at his limb. Some sort of wet sphincter muscle pulling him in further and something like an enormous prehensile tongue caressing his flesh at the point of the amputation.
Pain and horror shot through Ram and he instinctively pulled back.
But the hex had him fast now and the sucking maw took a wet gulp and the suction pulled him in deeper, past the elbow and the enormous alien
jaws closed around his arm and sliced through the skin and muscles before clamping on the humerus itself. There, it found resistance in the body’s incredibly dense bone. Thicker than the radius and ulna, it seemed enough to stop the powerful mandibles. But they worked their way back and forth, grinding through the bone like a pipe cutter. In no time, it would be through and then Ram would be swiftly and thoroughly dismembered.
Through all the panic and fear, a single thought struck him.
I’m going to die.
But it was worse than that, he realized.
I’m going to lose.
Ram’s feet kicked against the bottom of the pool and the momentum carried them further down until Ram pushed off instinctively against the floor, shoving with his powerful legs. The hex did the same but not with the same force and their collective effort served to tip them over. Ram was pulled sideways so his legs came up, as did the hex’s flailing bundle of limbs. It was top-heavy, Ram realized, and without the legs having a firm footing was in danger of tipping over, going upside down.
The hex did not want that. Ram did not know why, exactly, but he could sense the hex’s panic at tipping over on the bottom. Perhaps it feared being trapped beneath Ram’s heavy body and unable to right itself and reach the surface or perhaps it was something more fundamental or instinctual but it released Ram’s arm and loosened its grip on the rest of him as its legs whisked at the water and thrashed against the smooth floor.
Ram knew that whatever the hex did not want, was something he should try to make happen. And his vision was growing dark and his legs and arms were weakening. The oxygen in his blood and brain had been almost entirely utilized and the carbon dioxide was saturating his blood. The urge to breathe in could not be resisted any longer. Even if he managed to control it, the Co2 build-up would result in a blackout at which point he would drown anyway.
He pushed off against the underside of the thorax so that he shot upward towards the surface, desperate to take just a single breath. But the legs grabbed him and pulled him back down. He twisted and with his one remaining arm, broken though it was, he struck the maw with his fist. It was hard to punch underwater, and it caused no damage. Striking was no good but leverage still worked so he grasped one of the great mandibles with his hand, placed his feet either side of the maw, and heaved back.
To his astonishment, the mandible snapped immediately and came off in his hand in a cloud of black ichor. The hex screamed and thrashed in panic, the legs whipping against Ram. But he shrugged them off and went for the other mandible, grasping it and heaving up. They worked by slicing inward across each other over the mouth opening but Ram realized now that they had almost no ability to move in any other plane. The second one snapped off as the hex thrashed and rolled through the water. Great bubbles came streaming from its bleeding mouth and Ram stomped a foot down into that sucking hole, causing another stream of bubbles to billow out. He did not know which way was up and how much of his body was working. It was almost impossible to see and Ram knew he was about to die. He would drown and his heart would stop and his brain would degrade as he died.
But the hex was dying too and had been for some time. Only now, when its legs twitched and stopped moving, did he realize that those legs had been slowing and weakening since falling into the water. The agony of his arm and the pain of asphyxiation and his other injuries had stopped him noticing but it was true. Falling from his body, the hex legs floated in the murky water like a bundle of loose cables. Ram shook them from him on his way to the surface.
His head broke through into the air and he heaved in a great, shuddering breath. Water sprayed everywhere and he struggled toward the side, any side, where he could climb out. But he was missing an arm and the other was broken and weak and his body was covered everywhere in lacerations down to the bone. Enormous quantities of toxins had been transported through his blood to his organs and the damage had taken its toll.
He could barely see, nothing more than vague shapes and light and that much only on one side. It was a miracle he was even moving, slow and agonizing as it was. Somehow, Ram reached a shallow section of the pool and reached out with his broken arm. He lacked the strength to pull himself out and so he gave up to lay in the shallows until he couldn’t hold his head up anymore. With great effort, he rolled onto his back. It hurt to breathe but he knew he did not have many breaths left in him.
With his remaining hand, Ram felt his belly and found that his intestines had burst from his abdomen and were trailing in the water. His chest was more lacerations than it was skin and his fingers slid against bone. His face, Henry’s face, was a ruin. It seemed as though one side of that face had been sliced off and certainly one eye was entirely gone. His hand had no strength left and it flopped down with a splash beside him and he felt himself sliding back into the water.
Voices shouted at him. Human voices. Everything was black but he felt hands on him and people calling his name.
As he died, Ram smiled.
Because he had done it.
He had won.
28.
The void, again. Dreams running together in an endless stream. Voices whispering a thousand light years away. Showers of digits fell, zeroes, nines, pouring in a river over him and into his mouth and nose, suffocating him, drowning him. He did not mind. Time passed.
And Rama Seti woke.
“Ram? Can you hear me? Rama Seti, are you conscious?” A woman's voice. He recognized it, certainly. A distant voice, right in his ear. “You can hear me, can’t you, Ram?”
Another voice spoke, a man, a stranger. “He shows every sign of being able to hear us but he’s still not responding.”
“What do you think it means?”
“It may mean nothing at all.”
“Or he may be locked in. What if he’s locked in forever?”
“That would be unfortunate.”
He felt hands on him. Shaking him. “Ram, come on, come back to us.” A sigh. Breath on his face. “Can’t you give him something else?”
“We’ve given him three times the recommended dose.”
The woman scoffed. “The AI-recommended dose, maybe. Give him another.”
“But—
“That’s an order.” She sighed again, only this time it was more of a growl. “It’s on record, you bloody coward, if he dies it’s my responsibility, so just give him the fucking dose.”
People busied themselves around him and he winced and blinked until the form leaning over him came slowly into focus.
Ram recognized her. “Kat?” he tried to say but nothing came out.
Bright white light filled his vision and he moaned, shielding his eyes.
“Ram!” Kat said, grasping his shoulders. “You alright? Do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Turn the light down,” Ram said, mumbling.
It got darker and he heard laughter and when Kat spoke, he heard the smile in her voice. “What do you remember?”
“Showers of digits tumbling. Drowning me.”
“Uh-oh,” the man’s voice said. “Showing signs of confusion.”
“Quiet,” Kat hissed. “He’s bound to be, isn’t he? Now, shut up.” In her normal voice, she spoke to Ram again. “Drowning, right. Do you remember the fight in the arena?”
“Course I do,” Ram muttered. “It was praying. Didn’t like the deep water. Drowned myself.”
Kat laughed. “It worked.”
“What worked?”
“Can you open your eyes?”
“Don’t want to. It hurts.”
“I know. It’s dark now. Come on, open your eyes.”
He was in a medical bay, like so many he had seen before, lying on his back looking up at a white ceiling and faces leaning over, looking down at him. The room was very dim but he could see Kat’s teeth gleaming in the reflected glow of the instrument screens around them.
“My body,” Ram said, trying and failing to move his arms and look down.
“It’s yours,” Kat sai
d, grinning. “Your genes, your clone. They grew a new one from your genome on file and transferred your mind. It’s only ever been done experimentally before but they did it anyway because of everything you’ve done. All you’ve achieved.”
“Am I normal? You can’t keep transferring consciousness, something always gets lost and they become a drooling idiot—”
A new voice spoke and she stepped forward into sight, looking down with a smile.
“R1?”
“Hello, Ram. You did it. I knew you would.”
“Is this real? Or have I gone mad?”
They smiled at each other over him.
R1 spoke. “Brain scans and other tests show it’s been a complete success. And the fact that you even remember your very last moments of consciousness is incredibly encouraging.”
“How?”
“There is something unique about your biology and your mind. There are lots of hypotheses but we aren’t certain exactly why. It seems you’ve done it again. We pulled your mind out of Henry’s brain and it is intact. You’re you, that’s all that matters. You’re you again.”
“Why can’t I move? You paralyzed me?”
“We’ll release the lock now.”
Ram felt his head swim and his body twitched. Raising his hands he looked at them closely. They looked like his hands again. Massive but not gigantic, light brown and not pale, his fingers were strong and straight, not long and gnarled.
One side of the room was a wide, dark window, like the room beyond was in perfect darkness, which turned the window in a mirror, reflecting the large room and all the people in it.
He laughed. “I want to stand.”
His bed hummed beneath him and he rose into an upright, seated position. He wore a loose hospital robe and nothing else. Struggling to get up, they helped him stand and supported him from either side as he took a step forward. They shouldn’t have been strong enough but they seemed able to hold him with ease. His head swam and he felt like he was going to float up to the ceiling.
Turning toward the window, he half-bounced toward it, straightening up and feeling stronger with every step.