“Maybe he did bad stuff,” Vante said, “but he's changed now. He's different. He says he’ll never do it again, and that’s the end of it. Why don't you just leave him alone?”
Ubra shook her head. “He's fish bait. I haven’t come this far to be turned back by someone who doesn’t even need to shave.”
She started to march into the city, her arm wrapped around Nolund Esper’s.
She stopped when she heard his soft footsteps.
“Please,” the boy said.
She turned her head. “Two things: stop following me, and stop trying to convince me. You don't even know the first thing about what this bastard did to me.”
“No, I don't. I just know that if you get your revenge on him, you'll look in the mirror, wondering if you deserve the same. Is that worth it? Is that how you want to spend the rest of your life?”
“Yes,” Ubra said. “A million times yes! Your mouth to God's ears.”
“We need to get out of here,” rasped Nolund. “Zephyr City doesn't have a permanent police force. If there's an incident, the Scimitar divisons deal with it. We need to get out of here before they notice the smoke and decide to investigate.”
“I thought you said Raya had smoothed things over with the magistrate,” Ubra said. “Come on, it's your world, we just live in it.”
“Yes, but I never thought anything like this would happen!” snapped Nolund. “Raya told him we'd be running an op in Zephyr city. It was supposed to be over in moments. Perhaps a few shots fired. A couple of bullet holes to plaster over. Nothing serious at all.”
“I hope Raya Yithras's politial career works out,” Ubra said, still hearing the crackling of flames from the destroyed platform. “She's the world’s worst fortune teller.”
“But that was the plan the magistrate agreed too. There's already going to be a political shitstorm because of this. God only knows how many civilians were killed by stray tracer rounds – those things penetrate steel-framed buildings! If I get caught down here they might see fit to make me a political prisoner, and Raya would probably be just pissed off enough not to barter for my release.”
“Frustrating being a pawn, isn’t it?” Ubra said. “In any case, you forgot something: you're already a prisoner. Never mind what the magistrate thinks. You're going to help me carry out my mission, or I shoot you. Cheer up. Maybe if we neutralize Andrei Kazmer, your psycho bitch boss will look more favorably on this debacle. Come on.”
Vante still wouldn't stop tailing them.
“I can't stop you following,” Ubra said. “But don’t get in my way. I can’t protect you, and I can’t stop a bullet for you.”
“I know. Nobody can.”
“Your name is Yen Zelity,” Wake whispered.
The name smashed into B-31 like a wrecking ball.
In a world that stratified into two classes, those it was allowed to kill and those it wasn't, here was something else. A fact.
Yen Zelity.
YEN ZELITY.
It screamed, the first scream he'd ever uttered since leaving the torture chambers in Valashabad.
It slashed a brutal upper stroke that tore through three inches of solid brick. Wake turned his head to avoid it.
“You were a sergeant,” Wake said, speaking in the calm tones of a man training a pony. “You swore an oath to the Solar Arm Marine Corps. You said it was your dream job.”
B-31 tried to knee the NON-MASTER in the stomach, but Wake writhed out of the danger zone. A spike six inches long pierced through the wall.
“We shook hands just before we boarded the craft,” Wake said. “Just before that mission to Caitanya-9, the one that split us apart with life and death. We got on great. We could have been friends.”
B-31 gibbered and foamed, striking and slashing ambidextrously, first with both arms, then with both legs, then with all four limbs at once, moving not so much as a man but a metal shuriken.
Wake rode out the spinning storm of destruction, then spoke again.
“You did your training on Deimos. Remember there? Remember bootcamp?” Wake said. “All those pranks you played on your commanding officer? Remember how you fudged his call sheet so he thought he had to attend a rally four hours before he actually did, and he spent all that time shivering in the cold?”
Each new memory was like a fossil, bursting free from the hard bedrock of its Razorman neocortex .
Alien thoughts.
Alien emotions.
Memories of what it was like to be a human.
It shrieked at tones that hurt its own ears.
It headbutted Wake, a corkscrewing comb jutting out from its skull. The blade gouged plaster, but no flesh.
“Remember that time you thought you graduated 1st in a class of 12, and how happy you were?” Wake said. “And then you found that higher numbers were better?”
B-31 felt like slashing and rending itself.
It couldn't take this, the way the enemies were all of a sudden gambolling around in the minefield of his brain, instead of alive and reachable in the city in front of it.
“Remember Ubra Zolot, and how when you were on Caitanya-9 you pretended you were the father of her child?” Wake said. “And only I knew the truth?”
It was burning up. It was a meteor of training and brainwashing, burning up as it fell through the atmosphere of truth.
It.
No, I'm not an it! B-31 screamed inside. I'm a he!
He sagged to his feet, rocking back and forth. Wake got to his feet, walked forward, and put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
A fatherly hand.
Was it possible? Could hands really hold things other than greater and lesser extremities of pain and death? Could someone touch another without intent to hurt or control them?
Wake was close.
He could have slashed out and cut him in half in the middle. It would be easy. No way could he be dodged at this range.
He tried to motivate himself to do this very act.
It was what his MASTERs wanted.
But he reached inside, and found that the well of motivation had run dry. And the thought of what his MASTERS wanted was like a leash with nobody to hold it.
It was powerless, unable to influence his actions in any direction.
“The tattoo on your chest says 'pangolins don't give a shit'” Wake said. “It was your life philosophy. Some people prefer 'live each day as if it's your last' and 'don't let the sun set on a fight', but I guess this one's yours, Zelity.”
Tear glands started to reopen, after months of calcified inactivity.
Yen Zelity wept openly.
Tears poured down his face.
“Where are the others?” he sobbed hoarsely.
“Pardon?” Wake looked confused.
Zelity sorted through the fossilized memories emerging by the second. “The people who were with me.”
“Say their names.”
“Emeth. Noritai. Sankoh. Mykor. Haledor. Jagomir. Vilanthus.” He waved his hands. “What happened to them? They were taken prisoner alongside me.”
“I don't think any of them have survived,” Wake said. “I caught sight of Haledor's dead body out there. His mask melted, and I recognised his face. I guess they suffered the same fate as you. They lived as Razormen, and died as Razormen.”
Zelity shuddered. Then anger tensed his body. “You're tricking me, Kazmer. You're lying.”
“You will call me Wake,” he said. “That was the name I woke up to on the space station, and that will be my name forevermore now. I can't undo what was done to me, any more than you can undo what does done to you. Life carries us down a river. But you can either tumble in the eddies until you drown or set your teeth and embrace the inevitability. This is the path I choose.”
Zelity snarled, popped out some blades, and jumped on Wake.
Wake didn't try to run or evade.
Zelity retracted the blades, ashamed of himself, and embraced Wake.
The two men hugged each other. Th
e two victims of Black Shift, fitting together like a puzzle.
“So they wiped out everything from your past?” Wake said. “You don't remember anything?”
“I don't know,” whispered Zelity. “Sometimes I can, sometimes I can’t. I pulled all those names out of my head. And you can say things, and I know they're the truth.”
“As did I, when someone spoke my name for the first time.”
“Will I ever get my memories back?” Zelity said.
“If anyone has them, it's Raya Yithdras,” Wake said.
At the memory of the MASTER'S name, Zelity's steel-augmented body stiffened, as if shocked by electricity.
There was still the old impulse to obey blindly. Raya wasn't just his MASTER, she was the MASTER of the MASTERS.
The UBERMASTER.
But then he realized that at the end of the day, in the halls of falsehood pumped into his brain, that residual ties of such loyalty meant precisely shit.
“I want to meet her. I want revenge. I want to kill her,” Zelity said. “On behalf of all the Defiant.”
“I’ll help you,” Wake said. “Though I confess my resources are limited at the moment.”
Zelity smiled. Such an alien and foreign gesture. The muscles in his face rebelled, protested. They were being made to do calisthenics beyond anything they understood. It was utter oblique strangeness to them.
“A question,” Wake said. “What are those in your body? Metal implants?”
Zelity extended his hand. Sharp tines popped out from each finger, like a cat's claws. “I think so. I haven't given them any thought.”
“Did it hurt when they put them in?”
“Like hell.”
Suddenly, he cocked his head, as if attuned to something.
“Sense something?” Wake asked.
“That woman. What is her name?”
“Ubra Zolot.”
“She approaches. And she has a gun.”
Wake nodded in awe. “How can you sense that?”
“Recently pregnant. Gives you a distinctive gait,” Zelity said. “And she favors the left foot, which means she's ready to draw a weapon from her right.”
“Ah,” Wake nodded.
“What should I do?” Zelity asked.
It was a simple enough question, but the way it was asked broke Wake's heart.
What should I do? This was the question that Zelity would be asking for as long as he continued to live.
The metallic plague that had ruined his body had forever crippled the man he'd once been. The fun loving, playful Zelity was gone, and in its place was a merciless killing machine that no longer had a purpose, or a reason to exist.
Now, every single function that humans normally performed would be accompanied by that question. What should I do?
Then, Ubra rounded the corner, and caught sight of the two of them.
“Take her alive,” Wake said.
Ubra drew Zana's pistol, put a point on Wake, and fired.
The bullet never made it to his body.
In an almost instantaneous flash, a steel-reinforced superbody was standing between her and Wake. The shot thudded uselessly against his bulletproof chest.
Then he moved on her.
A single swipe of his hand tore the gun from her hand. A brutally fast kick to her solar plexus sent her hurtling into a wall. Then he pounced on her, pulled her upright, and pressed her against the hard concrete.
Shakk. A gleaming blade suddenly extended from his fist, its glinting tip an inch from the shelf of her jaw.
“Do. Not. Move.” The metallic monster whispered in her face.
“Idiot,” said Wake. “She can move all she likes. I just don't want her trying to kill me. Put her down, and let’s talk like adults.”
The Razorman let Ubra fall.
Beyond, she looked and saw Vante and Nolund watching them. Two helpless onlookers, each with their own stakes, each unable to do anything to influence the odds.
Aaron Wake sat down in front of her. “Ubra, I raped you. I held you down and raped you. How do you feel about that.”
She didn't dignify that with an answer.
“If I was a person who made excuses, I would tell you the full story of my life. The one I learned under the mountain. The fact that when I was young, I accidentally merged my personality with that of a notorious serial killer. The fact that this personality has been in my life for my entire period since, influencing my behavior, and that it will continue to be with me until I die: which will likely be soon.” Wake said. “I'm trying to control the part of me that is Aaron Wake, but he has a deathgrip on me. He won't even let anyone call me by my birth name of...” he winced “...Andrei Kazmer, and flies into a rage whenever someone tries.”
Wake pointed at Nolund Esper, “you there, you've heard of this, haven't you?”
Nolund groaned in pain. “For god's sake, someone get me medical attention.”
“Answer the question.”
“Yes!” Nolund said. “I was there when Sarkoth Amnon entered Emil's mansion, saying that he had a constabulary member gone rogue on his hands, and that he was trying out a little experiment. Yes, we all knew about it. We didn't know about the serial killer, this was something you did on your own. But there was clearly a schizophrenic aspect to your character, even then.”
“It can't be helped,” Wake said. “I am Wake now, as much as I wish I could become Kazmer again. Does this absolve me of responsibility? No. But is it the reason I did what I did? Yes.”
“If you have no control over your actions, Andrei Kazmer,” Ubra hissed, “then I intend to put you down on that basis, as one would a rabid animal.”
“That is fine,” Wake said. “Most days I want to put myself down. As soon as I left the hospital, the first thing I thought of doing was putting a gun under my chin. As I stepped off the Dravidian from Terrus to Venus, the first thing I thought of doing was stepping off the edge of Zephyr City. When all of this is over, you can render your judgement on me, and I will go uncomplaining. But right now, I think we mutually stand to gain by working together.”
“I suggest you ignore all such 'thoughts', Andrei, because we don't. I would rather gnaw out my own ovaries than work together.”
“Listen to reason. You’re stranded on this planet. I am stranded on this planet. If we work together, we can get offworld.”
Ubra shook her head. “Nolund will get me off this world, and back home. He promised. He's as sick of this planet as I am.”
“Nolund will stick a knife in you as soon as you turn your back to him,” Wake said. “And it wouldn't matter if he was your bosom brother. He's so utterly bungled this mission that it's likely that Raya Yithdras will disavow every single person who went out here, including him, and will not defend them when charges of vandalism, deployment of excessive force, and destruction of property are brought against them. He'll be held in the brig, and so will you. At least until Raya Yithdras finds a way to kill both of you and make it look like an accident. Two loose ends, neatly tied. You will never see Yalin again.”
Ubra sighed in frustrated rage.
She knew it was true, but hadn't been able to admit it to herself.
She needed to get off this world, and a disgraced former Son of the Vanitar who'd utterly erased his career across several unforgettable hours was not a suitable ladder for her footsteps.
“And what do you propose?” Ubra said.
“I will do the same thing to Raya that I’m doing to you. Point out that we stand to gain mutually by trade.”
“You’re delusional. Raya might want me dead in the future, but she wants you dead right now.”
“No she doesn't,” Wake corrected. “You're getting mixed up. The original plan was to retrieve me alive, remember? There's unexplained phenomena happening all across the solar system, as well as a base twelve countdown on Terrus, and Raya thinks that I have something to do with them.”
“And do you?” Ubra asked.
“Maybe, maybe not.
” Wake said. “That's not for you to know, it's for her to know. But Zelity will confirm that this was Raya's intention.”
The Razorman nodded. “Yes. Raya's mission parameters were to retrieve Wake alive, so that she could question him.”
Ubra's mouth fell open, and did not rise back up. “Wait a second. Zelity? ZELITY? You're alive?”
She stared at the Razorman with new eyes, looking beyond his blood-splattered metal spikes. She noticing for the first time the blond hair, and the ridiculous tattoo about pangolins strafing across his skin in yellow ink.
“I wish I was in better spirits,” Zelity said, “But yes, I am alive.”
Ubra launched herself at him, and they hugged.
“When I was on Caitanya-9, I reanimated a junked Dravidian and put all the surviving Defiant on it, save you,” Wake said. “And I'm damned glad I did. As soon as the Dravidian left Mars, it was intercepted by soldiers from the Reformation Confederacy. Evidently there was a scuffle between Zelity's friends and the Sane, and they commandeered the ship and steered it to Mars – riiight as Sybar and Raya signed a mutual non-aggression pact, which Zelity promptly broke without realizing it. This caused the war to flare up again. I presume that all of the imprisoned Defiant were converted into Razormen. If so, Yen Zelity is the only one of Mykor's crew that survived.”
“Damn...” Ubra was struggling to take it in. “Unfortunate timing.”
“Yes. Very unfortunate. I'm inclined to believe that the Solar Arm would have toppled soon anyway if Sybar had made peace with Raya, but still...it was unfortunate.”
“It was not as unfortunate as you might think,” Nolund said. “Raya was well aware that the returning refugees from Caitanya-9 were not soldiers. Many of them – Emeth and Haledor, among others – were former Sons of the Vanitar. She knew that it was not an attack force. It merely gave her a pretext to launch a scorched earth assault on Sybar Rodensis's forces, in a way that he wouldn't expect and wouldn't be able to prepare for.”
“And if that opportunity hadn't come along, she would have found another.”
“I believe so,” Nolund Esper said.
“Well, talk about being a company man,” Wake said. “Why are you so eager to sell out your boss, all of a sudden?”
Foreverlight (The Consilience War Book 4) Page 17