Flight

by J. A. Huss

  Locked in.

  I lie there and laugh as I look up at the purple canopy fluttering in the air conditioning. "HOUSE?"

  "Yes, Junco?"

  "Now, where were we?"

  "We were talking about your new power and my secret body."

  "Right. Let's play Sammie dolls. You wanna play dolls, HOUSE?"

  She appears in front of me and extends her hand out to pull me up off the bed. I grab it and wonder how she can do that if she's just a hologram. But I forget that question as she gives me the answer I'm looking for. "I'd love to play with you, Junco."

  I reach out for Gideon in the flooded drainpipe but find nothing but filthy water rushing past me, entering my mouth and making the urge to vomit resurface. I push it down and realize he's gone. I force my chin up towards the top of the passageway and gulp a breath of air, then go under and claw my way upstream.

  The foul liquid is not water. It reeks of the tank gel from morph, but it's not red and it's not thick. More like–

  The thought drops off and I push it down because it's just too disgusting to think about. I swim and concentrate on holding my breath and not opening my mouth until I am ready to expel the carbon dioxide building up in my blood. I shut down the neural impulses to my diaphragm, then slow my heart and restrict circulation to my core.

  The passageway, while cramped and uncomfortable for Gid, is neither of those for me, especially in water. I swim strong against the current, ignoring the passing floaties that might be remnants of God knows what. I bump into Gideon's feet and stop, holding onto his legs so the water can't push me backwards as I wait for him to remove the grate above his head.

  A flash of light tells me it's open and then he's pulling himself up. I follow and feel his hands grab my armor, pull me out and drag me off to the side of a trench flowing with amniotic fluid pouring out of hundreds of clone tanks.

  The air escapes my lungs slowly and then I inhale. I am in control of my body, not my reflexes, and this makes me powerful.

  "That was excellent, Junco. You've never liked the swimming."

  "No, I never did. But then again, I want to live, so what choice do I have?"

  Crashing glass snaps us back to attention and we turn and look at the same time.

  The clones are not dead.

  "Forty-two minutes, Junco." He swings the plasma weapon around from the tether on his back and points it at the writhing bodies.

  I know what this is.

  Fucking payback time, that's what this is!

  It might've taken its time getting here, but who gives a shit. It's here now. My grin is so wide my cheeks begin to hurt.

  I pull out my SEAR and flick the little imperfection with my thumbs and fire it up and then we move in a coordinated way that defiantly screams we are partners as we turn to face the monsters clawing their way out of the tubes.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  The clones closest to me are all Irin in different stages of life. And they act like her too, with teeth bared and hissing coming from their mouths even as they writhe on the floor with atrophied muscles, slapping around in a pool of metabolic fluid that would make me puke if I had any mapolina left in me.

  I sweep my SEAR across their necks as I pass, making them shrivel up in a fetal position as they melt while Gid keeps his attention on what's ahead. He starts running and I follow, trying my best not to slip on the slick stainless steel floor.

  Everything is stainless steel, the walls, the back half of the tubes, the machines and the giant double doors that we head towards. Gid stops and listens to a commotion on the other side and an Irin slithers over towards me and grabs me by the leg, pulling it towards her mouth to bite.

  I kick her and drag the SEAR across her neck, then point it at the others and they shrink back at my violence.

  Gid turns. "Trouble out there, Junco. I can't tell for sure, but I think it's Soli's clones."

  "How much time do we have, dammit? We need to get to the fucking roof, if that means we have to kill them, then let's just do it."

  "No, there's a lot of them and they are walking, follow me."

  He jogs along the main corridor again, past all the dilapidated Irin clones on the floor. They look up at me, pleading, and then the voices are in my head.

  Don't leave us, Junco. Please, we're your sisters. Junco, don't leave us.

  I shake my head and wait for Gideon to say something to me about their voices, but he's quiet up ahead, concentrating on the path in front of him.

  Hurts, Junco! Oh, it huuuuurts! Help us!

  "Gid?"

  "What?" He doesn't even turn back towards me.

  Another Irin grabs my leg and pulls me hard. I lose my footing on the slick floor, then go down as my SEAR knife flies out of my hand and my head hits a hard surface for the third time in less than thirty minutes.

  Gideon is there, pulsing my sisters with flaming hot plasma. They scream because he doesn't finish the job, then writhe in pain on the floor as blood spills over their charred flesh. He grabs my powered-down SEAR, then pulls me up and hands me back my weapon. My boots scramble around in the pools of blood and then finally the stench of body fluids and SEAR knife overcomes the emptiness of my stomach and I bend over to cough up spit and some leftover bile.

  Gid whacks me on the back a few times, then takes my hand and pulls me along as we make our way down to the end of the long row of Irins.

  He killed her, Junco. Your sister. He killed her. And he'll kill you too! He's taking you to Inanna, not to kill her. He's giving you away. A present, Junco. You're nothing but a present to a goddess who wants to use you to kill the avian. He'll give you up–

  "Shut up!" I snatch my hand away from Gideon and turn on the first clone I can find and cut her head off. I turn to the next one and swipe wildly.

  "Stop!"

  But I don't listen and Gideon can't make me stop because I would kill him if he got in the way, just like I killed Kush.

  He'll sell you, Junco! He's gonna sell you!

  No! Gid's presence is so strong in my head that I hesitate.

  "That's enough, Junco. I've blocked them. Whatever they're telling you, it's all lies."

  I take a deep breath and nod. "Yeah, sorry."

  We get to the end of the long passageway and there's a smaller single door, obviously not as important as the wide double ones in the middle. Gideon stops to listen for what might be on the other side. He pulls it open without consulting me this time and we slip through.

  It's not a stairway or another clone bank.

  It's a morgue.

  I want to hold my breath immediately, that's how bad it smells, and if I had anything left in my stomach I could purge the foulness of it that way, but it's empty. Nothing left in there. No way to get the mutilated dead bodies of Irin out of my head. Gid pulls on me and I follow him past a gurney that holds a pile of body parts sticking out from under a white sheet. I push the vision out of my brain but it returns, and it will return, I know at that moment, forever. Anytime it wants.

  "Junco, pay attention, dammit!" He pulls open another door and we are in a stairwell. He looks up and then down.

  Down? "What's down there?"

  I'm sorry I asked when the inhuman wail drifts up from many stories below.

  Gid looks over to me. "We don't want to know, Junco. Come on."

  The screams follow us up several flights of stairs and the alarms from the core melt-down get louder with each flight of ascension, until finally there are no more vertical levels and we are forced to enter the main facility once again.

  How high is this building? I ask in my head to avoid screaming over the sirens.

  He ignores me, steals a glance through a small window in the door, then pulls it open slowly and peeks into the hallway. The alarms are blaring so loud we wouldn't even be able to hear ourselves scream at this point, but he tugs on me and I follow.

  The hallway is nothing like what we just came from. It's an office. The floors are carpeted and there are g
lass-sided cubes that line one side while the other side is all windows. I look out into the night and there is not much to see. The battle is over, the avian all picked up save me and Gid. Only the swirling spotlights of panic as the entire valley realizes they are about to be smothered in radiation as the core completes the meltdown and all the boiling water evaporates and exposes the fuel rods to the air.

  Do you feel bad about that? Gid asks.

  No. I don't. The only way to clean this place of the evil that lives here is to wipe it out.

  Exactly, Junco. That's why Subjack wiped out the RR, and especially Council 3.

  I get it. But I don't like that part. Call me biased, but I loved Council 3. This place, I have no connection to at all. I've never even been skiing in the MR, so what the hell do I care if their mountains get fucked up? My prairie is gone.

  Gideon's slow stalk comes to a halt as we approach the double doors that will take us to the elevators and the rooftop access.

  Even over the wailing alarms I can hear voices on the other side.

  And they sound a lot like Moju.

  But that's not possible because Moju is on the She's All Mine with Soli and I know for a fact that he wouldn't come back down here to save me when he could be up there saving her. That's a job for Tier, or Ashur, or even Lucan if he could.

  But it is definitely not Moju's job.

  "What's that fucking smell?"

  I sniff the air and only smell my own body covered in amniotic fluid from the Irin tubes. My vision screen is triggered, so Gideon must not be lying.

  Well, well, well. Welcome to the fucking party. Nice of you to drop in.

  It says nothing, just spews out some data at me. Charts, a red line jumping up and down the left field of vision, a generic molecule model floats in space in front of me, and then the mass spec analyzer kicks in and a few seconds later it flashes a spectrum that doesn't ring any bells. Almost all noise. It tallies up the carbons on the 3-D spinning molecule, adds in three oxygen atoms, then a lone nitrogen and blinks a name on-screen while simultaneously asking for permission to stream an antagonist into my blood.

  I give it a green light.

  "Shit," Gid whispers, "it's MEDOXI-V."

  "Never heard of it."

  "Psychotropic."

  I grunt. "Well, I'm pretty sure Moju is psychotic enough on his own, so this looks pretty bad for us. We still winning big here, Gideon?"

  "Shut up, Junco. You agreed, so it's not all on me."

  "You said we were winning, now we have to fight doped-up Mojus to get to the fucking roof and we've got," I check my vision screen for the timer, "twenty-two minutes before the core blows. That doesn't even take into account that radiation is probably already spewing out all over the place and both those bitches are probably gone."

  "So what do you want me to do about it, huh?"

  "How many grenades do you have? I have one."

  He pulls three canisters out of his pockets and I shake my head. "Four? We have four grenades, a 50 cal that we can't fire until we settle, and a couple rifles. That's just fucking wonderful."

  "So what do you want to do, go back? We can't, it's get to the roof or die."

  "Well, stop fucking talking about it and let's go then. Throw your grenade, we'll clamber over bodies, and get as far as we get until they show up and then do it all again. Good enough?"

  He smiles at me. "You're pretty brave all of a sudden."

  "Yeah, well, I know for a fact I won't die here, Gideon. I've got a destiny and it isn't to be slashed to pieces by my brother's clones. So, yeah, I'm good with this, let's go."

  He shakes his head at me. "That's a horrible fucking attitude, Junco. In so many ways. But I'm not gonna kill your battle buzz."

  I shrug and push down a stab of pain as Isten's memories put in another appearance. "On three."

  He opens the door and tosses in the first grenade and we hunker down behind a wall as it blasts the door off the hinges. We go in, plasmas in ready position, and start climbing the stairs, stepping over a few bodies but not nearly enough to account for all the voices we heard a couple minutes ago. My heart beats wildly as I wonder if we've made a mistake and maybe I will die today. I activate my slick silver and push past Gideon. He looks at me in surprise for a moment before he realizes what's happening.

  I round the corner as we ascend and see a foot on the top step one flight above me. I point but don't look back at Gid to see if he caught it. Either he did or he didn't. Either he's paying attention or he isn't.

  I step over another dead Moju and then whirl and fire at the body attached to the foot on the stairs. His armor protects him from the brunt of the blast but he retreats and I chase him, knowing it's a trap, knowing they are waiting above for me to do exactly this.

  I see their feet again on the next level up, more this time, three pairs. But I don't fire, I just run. My boots stomp on the metal stairs, but they are almost inaudible from the wailing sirens.

  They are looking for feet, or the very least a body. What they are not looking for is a floating head – the only thing on me that's visible because I lost my helmet back at the core. I blast them on full stream and their bodies burn and writhe on the landing. I hear more boots going up and I follow at a run, taking two steps at a time, not three like Gideon. He catches up to me and we run as a team. The Moju clones exit the stairwell and make a break for it.

  I go to follow but Gid stops me and shakes his head. We continue to climb. There are no bodies here, our first grenade almost a waste of time with the few it took out, but neither is there resistance.

  I hear a shush of a closing door below, but I don't see anything from the floor we just passed, and the sound is gone before I can determine where it came from. We walk up a little more cautiously and pass another door. I walk up backwards, my instincts taking over, and then stop.

  Even over the intermittent deep-throated buzz of the alarm I can hear them.

  Boots.

  More pairs than I can count and I'm pretty fucking good at counting boots.

  I'm on my back and being dragged through the door and into the ninth-floor hallway before I know what's happening. I see Gideon rush after me, and then a flare of explosives as he is sent flying backwards against the stairs.

  My slick silver flashes and then my whole body is once again visible, out of power for that little trick. Rikan was right, slick silver is only as good as your power pack and I'm not recharging since I have no helmet.

  The is only one set of hands now and I wonder how much of the last scenario I just imagined due to the drugs? Moju's face appears in front of me and I have a hard time being properly afraid of my brother's clone.

  "Junco, we've been looking everywhere for you." He takes my hand and pulls me up. "Shit, where the hell did you go?"

  I kick, then get to my feet and pulse him with my rifle. "You're not Moju, you dirty fucking clone."

  His armor takes most of the damage at first, but I guess his suit is almost out of power as well, because he turns black with the intense heat of my weapon barrage at point-blank range.

  When no other clones appear I have a brief moment of panic that I might have actually killed my brother.

  No, Junco. They would never let one of the Seven come back. It's a clone!

  I run back into the stairwell and find Gid picking himself up off the stairs. "Shit, you OK?"

  He nods and his eyes rage red, not that stupid glow he did before, but hellfire red. Like Lucan's did the night I was looking for orange juice. I raise my eyebrows at him. "Yeah, OK then. I'll add that little display to my list of questions for you." He pushes me in front of him this time and I walk up the stairs with more caution.

  They descend on us from above and below and we have no choice but to use everything we have left and break for the roof. Gid lobs his grenade up and I lob mine down, then we enter the hallway I just came out of. We burst through as the fireballs meet in the middle and are thrown a dozen feet down the corridor and slam into
a wall.

  Moju clones begin pouring through the door, half of them on fire and screaming, the other half filled with the psychotropic rage of a killer who needs no help in that department.

  Gid pulls me to my feet and we haul ass for the central corridor where the elevators are. He smacks his hand on the elevator button, runs back and sends off a stream of plasma fire, and then turns and pushes me through the stairwell just as the elevator doors open.

  The alarms are much louder out here, but my hearing is suffering from the blast noise so it comes through muffled.

  We book it up a few flights before we stop once again at the sound of a voice.

  This time it's Tier.

  Calling for me.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I make to answer him when Gid smacks his hand over my mouth and shakes his head. "Not Tier, Junco. You know this."

  I pry his hand off and whisper back. "It could be Tier. They only got his genetics a couple years ago, how could they've made adult clones already?"

  "Please, he wouldn't be calling your name, Junco. He'd be murdering people."

  That's true. I nod but the voice appears in the stairwell with us, a few flights up.

  "Junco, goddammit! Answer me!"

  I take a deep breath and hold up my index finger to Gideon's face. Then flatten my palm and push it towards his face. Let me handle it, it says. A signal I know he knows because we are partners and we've used that signal since we were children.

  "Tier?"

  "Junco!"

  I hear his boots race down and he comes into sight. I have to admit, they got the uniform dead-on accurate. I let my face flood with relief as he approaches and watch him for a reaction. He smiles, then looks up at Gideon. "I'd kill ya for being stupid enough to get left behind and put her in danger, but right now I just want to get the fuck off this planet before the core blows."