by L B Garrison
Mandy landed twenty feet away. Well, this answered Bailey’s question: you can skip while holding something. “Wait! Why can you still skip?”
Mandy tried to form a null field, but the dark energy was still too dispersed. Had Atropos saved energy too or had the Kinderen modified Atropos to function without it? That was definitely cheating.
Atropos dropped the rebar. It rang against the marble floor. “It’s Rin’s body, but when you speak it breaks the illusion.”
To save Demeter, Alex was still the priority. After that, maybe Mandy could double-team Atropos with Trident.
Mandy circled right to put as many rows of seating between them as possible, while moving towards the main hall and Alex. She watched Atropos directly, but searched her peripheral vision for something—anything substantial to use as a weapon or shield. There was nothing.
Atropos watched Mandy’s slow escape with no apparent concern. “As children, Rin and I competed in all things. Now that I’ve won the final victory, she isn’t here. There is no satisfaction. She has denied me even this.”
Rin’s past surged into the present. This wasn’t a crazy redheaded stranger, it was her big sister and it made worms crawl in Mandy’s stomach the way things had turn out. “Rin never meant to come between you and Jazz-mir and I’m sorry for what Walkowski did. You didn’t deserve that. I wish Jazz-mir had found out sooner. So did Rin, but you wouldn’t talk about it. You shut them out.”
Atropos stood silent for several seconds. “The others were designed to be guardians of humanity, while I was stitched together from the minds of sociopaths and murderers to be a weapon of terror. Always alone. Always apart. I don’t want understanding anymore. It’s too late for sympathy. I want you both dead.”
Mandy ran.
A null field blazed around Atropos. She rushed Mandy, grabbing her by the shoulders and carrying her into a wall with crushing force. Splintered stone ground against Mandy’s face. She couldn’t breathe. Panic rose in her chest.
“Despair. You’ve lost everything,” Atropos hissed in Mandy’s ear. “I’ve engaged the fleet, Trident’s defenses are crumbling and humanity is ending. I’ll become a new species. The master of all and I’ll have Jazz-mir’s approval at last.”
Dark energy seeped into the room, still too thin to work with, but there were other options. Mandy thrust her elbow back. Hard.
Air whooshed from Atropos’ lungs. Her grip loosened.
Mandy slipped from Atropos’ hold and kicked. Atropos went flying into the dark. Mandy didn’t bother to watch her land. She sprinted to the door, spreading her awareness beyond the building.
Trident punched through Kinderen shields with her central mass drivers, but the reload time was slow and more machines swarmed her position than she destroyed. Bailey guided her little assassin bugs and Cisco fired on the smaller units. She focused on his face. Determination was there, but no fear.
A hit from behind knocked Mandy off her feet. She plowed into the tile, scattering dust and hunks of marble. Atropos yanked Mandy up and slammed her against a column. Plasma ignited in Atropos’ right hand, sending swirling sapphire light playing among the shadows.
Mandy struggled, off balance and out of breath.
The column cracked. Atropos’s null field burned against Mandy’s skin. Mandy stared into crimson eyes. Atropos had finished playing. She was ready to kill.
“When you become part of the Kinderen, you’ll lose everything that makes you unique,” Mandy rasped.
Atropos leaned closer. “Is that all you’ve got left? The Kinderen is ancient and weary. It keeps the interesting ones autonomous for the experience. I’m already part of it.”
Atropos brought the plasma down.
Mandy caught Atropos’ arm. The null field scorched Mandy’s hand. The plasma was hot on her face. Her skin burned.
Just a little dark energy was all Mandy had to work with. It would have to be enough. She focused. A wavering field formed around her fingers. Her hand melted through Atropos’ null field. Burning agony surged up Mandy’s hand, but she ignored it and grabbed Artopos’ arm.
Blue symbols scrolled across from Mandy’s hands to Atropos. The plasma fizzled. The null field dissolved. Atropos grabbed Mandy by the shoulders, her eyes unfocused. She didn’t speak for an eternity.
“You haven’t won,” Atropos said.
Atropos’ weight fell against Mandy. They slid down the column onto the cold stone together.
Rin’s tears fell from Mandy’s eyes and the room blurred. “You were Jazz-mir’s first child and she loved you.”
“I would have done anything for her,” Atropos whispered. “Even been the good girl she wanted . . . but I wasn’t made for such things and I didn’t know how . . .”
Atropos laid her head on Mandy’s shoulder and shuddered.
Lightning flared and thunder shook the building while Mandy sat on the floor with the cooling weight of Atropos against her. She touched Atropos’ hair and through Rin, remembered a giggling girl from a lifetime ago.
Goosebumps crept across Mandy’s body. So many ways it could have ended and probably only one way it could. It helped to think of this as reversible, but she wasn’t sure that was true. Rin was still dead and Mandy couldn’t go back. The girl in plaid had been an accident, but this time she had killed on purpose.
Mandy slipped from under Atropos and laid her down carefully. Using the column, she pulled herself up and walked through the broken door into the lobby.
Darkness swallowed all of the room, except the center, where the pictures churned and the cage of clustered spikes glowed. The shadows in the cage clotted together to make a shape. A small person was trapped within. Cables stretched from the cage into the darkness. In the images, the Kinderen moved erratically, scattered and disorganized. Building weavers lay strewn about the floor, twitching.
Mandy walked through the floating pictures and around the weavers. The people in the webbing moaned and stirred, as if they shared a nightmare from which they couldn’t escape. Children, teens and adults—every survivor in the city must be here. Mandy shivered.
Alex was wrapped up like a spider’s dinner.
“Sorry, I took so long,” Mandy said. Her voice sounded too loud in the huge room.
The webbing probably linked the suspended humans together. It shouldn’t harm Alex to break contact with the network, should it? If the versions of Atropos fighting the Mobius fleet were linked to the Kinderen too, the battle should be over. There wasn’t much time left.
She jumped, grabbed a fistful of the webbing beside Alex and pulled at the tough threads. Alex jerked and dropped a little. Mandy held onto the web and put her arm around Alex’s waist as she tore free the last of the strands. They fell to the floor together. Mandy lay Alex’s limp body on the marble. Hopefully, some of the others could be saved, but the EC would have to do it. Mandy couldn’t be here when they arrived. None of them could. Everyone involved in the rescue was a fugitive now.
Alex’s body shook and she opened her eyes.
“Alex, do you remember me? Can you tell me who you are?”
Alex’s gaze flickered over Mandy. “You have no understanding. By damaging me, you have destroyed the records of trillions of beings and their cultures.”
“I’m trying to save the present,” Mandy said. What now? She searched the Q-net for non-lethal fighting techniques and basic human anatomy. There was a spot along the jaw-line.
Alex looked towards the displays. “You have lost humanity’s future.”
In the images, the hundreds of remaining manta-ray forms stirred in their cradles, straining against the umbilical cords holding them. Were the unfinished ships not linked to the Kinderen? An armada of star destroying psychopaths readied for escape with no Kinderen or mind phage to keep them in check.
“Great.” Mandy hit Alex, fast and hard. Right in the recommended spot along her jaw. Alex went slack. Hopefully, they could edit out that memory later.
Mandy hefted Alex’s u
nconscious body and slung her over one shoulder. She ran to the cage and scooped up two of the cables. A standing probability wave kept the prisoner trapped, a precaution needed to hold someone with a Jinx engine.
“Stop.” Small fingers reached between the glowing spikes to touch Mandy’s hand. A pair of blue eyes peered out at her. “The Kinderen is still in me. I don’t know what I might do if you let me out.”
There was no time to debate. “I have to destroy the city.”
Razor withdrew into the depths of the cage. “This is for the best.”
The building lurched. A black shadow exploded through the wall above them and struck the wall on the far side. Mandy swept falling chunks of marble aside before they could strike Alex. The black shape shielded them, but an avalanche of debris hammered against the floor on either side, filling the great hall. Mandy sent her awareness out. Atropos had fallen from the elsewhere and into the building, cutting the main supports. The building was collapsing.
Something warm trickled down Mandy’s face. She touched her cheek. The copper smell turned her stomach. Blood. “Oh, God.”
Atropos’ hull blocked her view of the ceiling. Panic squeezed her heart. What could she do? She couldn’t even know how many of them were still alive, or if they could be reclaimed from the Kinderen. There wasn’t enough dark energy to form a large null field or slow time. She couldn’t save them all—but she could save one more.
Mandy yanked the cables loose. “I’ve made my choice. You have to make yours.”
The glow flickered and died. Mandy didn’t wait for Razor to decide.
Mandy ran to the far side of the chamber. The dark room blurred by. Razor didn’t attack. Mandy hunkered down, pulverizing the marble wall with her shoulder and stepped through. The most direct way out was blocked. Debris filled the hall within inches of the ceiling. Walls cracked and a dusty haze filled the air.
Mandy called up the building plans and overlaid them with her sensory data. Blocked. No, too far. No, she could make it, but the speed and direction changes would be too violent for Alex. The dust made her cough. Her heart thumped against her ribs. She turned and sprinted through a passage circling the base of the tower.
The dark energy had reached a useable density. Mandy rotated her ship portion out of the elsewhere and swept around the crumbling structure. She stumbled on the tilted floor and scraped the ship’s underbelly on the roof. The two wildly different perspectives made her dizzy.
A ceramic beam crashed through the ceiling. Mandy dodged around it and focused on her ship part. Settling above a lecture hall, she sent a pulse of possibilities down into the roof. Explosions rocked the building. Fire rolled through the hall towards her.
Mandy surged through the fire and into the blackened cavity she had torn in the middle of the structure. Rain fell through the hole in the roof, sizzling against the wreckage. Lightning flashed in the sky, outlining her hovering hull. Above it all, the golden tower was falling with thunder and fury. Mandy leaped ninety feet up and landed lightly on her deck.
With a roar like whitewater rapids, the tower’s collapse accelerated. Golden shards scattered and glittered in the night air. Mandy banked and accelerated as the tower hit the ground.
She shifted to shield Alex with her body as well as she could. Dust plumed and debris bounced across the deck, thumping against Mandy’s back. She spat out the bitter grit and turned back to the wisp.
Burning hulks of dead Kinderen machines lit the park. Thick black smoke hovered in the air. The perimeter marked by the auto-turrets was an island in a writhing sea of chaos. Flashes of light scattered groups of Kinderen as the Doom Buggies attacked. The large Kinderen machines fled, crushing the flood of hunters beneath their feet.
Mandy picked up Alex’s limp form and jumped. She landed carefully with her unconscious human cargo.
Cisco came running forward and gently slipped his arms under Alex to support her neck and legs. His eyes met Mandy. “Glad you’re okay. I have her.”
Mandy released her into his care. “She needs medical help ASAP, but she has to stay unconscious. Don’t trust her. It’s still in control.”
“We’ve got it.” Bailey caressed Alex’s cheek and followed Cisco up the ramp into the wisp.
The Tridents stood nearby, Jaiden held her shoulder. In the sky above, hunter-green smoke poured from one of the frigates.
Mandy touched Jaiden’s other arm. “Are you okay?”
Jaiden gave a tight-lipped smile. “It’s just a boo-boo. Jinx engines are spinning up everywhere. What do you need me to do?”
Mandy gathered power. Her hair swirled into the air and black lightning hopped across her body. “The Kinderen made a bunch of Atropos copies. Some of them could be ready to launch any minute now. I’m going to take care of them. I need you to get the others out, then set up a line around the city. Not one of them can get away. Call Pillado for help, if you have to.”
The Tridents nodded. “Understood.”
“Mandy?” Cisco’s voice called from behind.
She turned. He stood back, bathed in the crackling light of her fireworks display. His expression blank. Was he afraid of her?
She knitted her fingers together and watched the power arc between them. The power to destroy stars flowed through her. A knot tightened in her throat. She wanted to hold him, to tell him that no matter what she did or could do, it was still her. But how could she be unchanged by what would come next?
“Cisco, you have to go, now,” Mandy said. “Run and don’t look back.”
Mandy didn’t give him time to respond. She jumped onto her upper deck.
Thunder cracked as she accelerated and swept across the city, gathering more dark energy and avoiding sporadic Kinderen attacks. The retreating enemy, hampered by the defensive walls, scrambled over each other. They wouldn’t escape.
To conserve the energy she had collected, she kept her shield down. This had to be done before any of the Kinderen could escape, or it wouldn’t matter. Mandy brought up scrolling catalogs of destruction to pick a method of razing the city that wouldn’t crack the planet’s crust. Sheets of rain poured off her hull. The dark energy capacitor reached its maximum limit. The wisp escaped the city limits. She was ready.
Mandy shifted probabilities across the whole of Demeter. Electrons flowed. Every lightning strike across the planet fell on Artemis, heating the humid air, filling it with sizzling static and the tang of ozone. Fires burned in the streets. Even the direct lightning strikes wouldn’t delay Atropos for long, but a little time was all Mandy needed.
While the storm pummeled the city, Mandy walked forward to the bow, stepping around the ragged holes in the deck that had taken on a rounded appearance as they healed. Her hair flowed and crackled with black lightening that arced to the deck. She concentrated dark energy, packaged it and wrapped it in chains of abstract mathematics. Purple-black orbs of sizzling force followed her down the deck like goslings. She scattered them to strategic points throughout the city.
Footsteps followed her. Mandy spun around and fired.
The plasma bolt splashed across Atropos’ shield. She ran through the puddles towards Mandy.
Mandy engaged her own shield. Shadows whispered. More Atropos clones surged towards her, working like pack hunters. At least there were no ships. Yet.
Mandy needed time to make two more of the orbs to cover the city. She put her hands together and fired a bolt at the nearest Atropos.
Plasma slammed into Mandy from multiple directions, knocking her across the deck. The force crushed her against the turret of one of her main guns. More plasma bolts struck her. Her shield sputtered. No words this time. They came at her like rabid animals, teeth bared.
Mandy blocked a blow with one arm. A fist hit her in the stomach. More of them landed on her deck and fired into the armor. A surge of burning nausea dropped her to her knees. An orb finished.
Her ship portion plunged toward the city. Crumbling buildings and storm clouds tumbled by. Mandy acc
elerated the spin, throwing bodies into the night. She blasted two others from her hull in a flash of lightning and a roar of thunder.
The mob washed over her. Hands swept her legs out from under her and slammed her against her deck. The world froze and crackled with static, like an old television, before returning to normal, breaking the human illusion for the first time. She really was just a machine after all.
They held her arms down. Grim faces surrounded her. Mandy struggled against the weight of multiple bodies. The thumping of her heart rose louder than the rushing air. Explosions rocked the ship and ripped her breath away with the shrieking wind. Her shield dissolved. She tried to bring the shield back, tried to skip away from the horde, but something had broken inside.
Azure light flared, casting harsh shadows on the faces above her. Their eyes were wide and lips pulled back. They laughed like jackals. Plasma burned away Mandy’s shirt and seared her stomach. The smell of burned plastic and hot metal filled the air. The pain tore a scream from Mandy’s throat.
Hands reached inside her. Pulling. Tugging. Ripping. Burgundy gel splattered the deck. Fluids gushed. Prickly cold rushed down Mandy’s legs. She struggled against them, but couldn’t move her lower half. Her vision grayed.
It would have to be enough. Mandy drew a shaky breath and let go.
The last orb flew from her spinning deck. She drove for high orbit. The equation chains solved themselves and dissolved. Black explosions twisted the night. Compression waves of pure space-time blurred the air and crushed atoms together, driving hurricane winds and squashing the city. The rebound transformed the Kinderen survivors and a hundred square miles of Demeter’s surface into plasma. The days would be colder for years to come.
The hypersonic shockwave tossed her like a leaf.
Several Atropos clones dropped lifeless into the burning air. Their ships must have been destroyed. Mandy’s hull pierced the clouds, plunging the world into a glowing orange juice fog.