Trinity's Fall

by P A Vasey

  I reached out with my mind, trying to get a feel for which direction to go. Trying to sense … anything. I got a vague hit on the left, a feeling of anxiety, far away but definite.

  Then I felt it. Her.

  Colleen Stillman. Her mind, her emotions.

  She was frightened, drifting in and out of consciousness. She seemed to be relatively unhurt, but I couldn’t be sure. There were others with her. Maybe Hamilton, but as I didn’t know him very well it could be anyone. I thought I could sense a half dozen minds all grouped together, perhaps in one location or room. I concentrated harder, trying to see if Hubert was there, but I just couldn’t make the connection.

  I decided to be direct.

  Colleen? I’m here. I waited and tried again. Are you alright? It’s me, Kate. Don’t be afraid. Pause, then, I’m coming.

  There was no feedback, no sense of her having received my message, so I started to walk toward where I had sensed her.

  My footsteps echoed quietly and my olfactory sensors indicated that the air was musty and stagnant. There were no air-conditioning units on the walls or in the ceilings and the corridor appeared to be quite old. The map in my head informed me that construction of the Pentagon started in 1942 during WWII, so I wondered if maybe this was a legacy from the early years of the complex. Perhaps an air raid or a secret government shelter to allow government to continue after a Russian nuclear strike on the USA.

  I considered switching to infrared, but the visibility wasn’t bad enough. The corridor was semicircular and almost uniformly dull in appearance. There was nothing to indicate where it was leading and no doors or other connecting corridors appeared.

  But then I felt it.

  The ants crawling around inside my head.

  The latent primordial fear again, the unbidden urge to look behind, the sensation of being alone in the dark with evil.

  I rounded the corridor and jerked to a halt.

  A man waited for me.

  He was tall, dressed in a black suit with a white shirt and black tie. His hair was crew cut and his cheekbones as angular as always. He stared at me and his eyes flashed fluorescent green. His lips pulled back into a feral grin as he stepped out and blocked the corridor.

  Kate Morgan, we assumed you were dead

  The Vu-Hak’s voice permeated around my head, dripping malevolence. I ramped up my neurological defenses and the anxiety I was feeling subsided, but not completely.

  Not even close.

  I was facing one of the Adam Benedict machines.

  Controlled by a Vu-Hak.

  THIRTY-THREE

  All I could think of was Cain’s warning – if the Vu-Hak found the machines, then it would all be over. They’d be too powerful to fight and it would be curtains for everyone.

  But something didn’t feel right.

  The Vu-Hak was just standing there looking at me, making no moves.

  I wasn’t sure what it could do to me, given that we were both in fairly indestructible machines, but I knew I couldn’t use the full extent of my machine’s capabilities because of the missing AI interface. I had speed and strength, but none of the other stuff which I would probably need in order to hold off an attack from a fully functional machine – the ability to manipulate gravity would be a start.

  On the other hand, the Vu-Hak hadn’t attacked me, and I wasn’t sure why.

  I decided to stretch out with my mind and try and communicate with it.

  Let my friends go. You’ve got me now.

  I was stalling of course, trying to ascertain what the ground rules were going to be.

  “We do not need you. Where is Adam Benedict?”

  The Vu-Hak had replied out loud, which was interesting in itself. A minute ago it had spoken to me telepathically, but now …? Was it messing with me? I decided to keep replying non-verbally, while keeping my distance.

  Why do you need Adam?

  There was a pause, and I could sense the Vu-Hak deciding what to tell me. It moved a little, shuffling from foot to foot as if unsteady. “Adam Benedict has information we need.”

  Bingo.

  Maybe they really didn’t have the wormhole technology, which would be the best news I’d heard so far. I decided to push on, try a little switch and bait.

  It’s the machines you’re looking for, isn’t it? You’re nothing without them.

  The Vu-Hak laughed, a low rumbling sound. “The Electromechs are ancient technology.”

  Electromechs?

  At least I knew now what they called the machines. But you’re completely reliant on these Electromechs, aren’t you?

  I was goading, to see where this would lead. Here, in this universe, your floaty “higher consciousness” forms just don’t get things done. You need to be physical beings again.

  And with a flash of insight I thought I understood why it’d kept the Adam Benedict Electromech form: I remembered Cain saying this was the default setting and the construct requiring the least energy and neurological organization to maintain. Maybe, like me, it too was restricted in its ability. Maybe it had no AI either. Maybe that was also limiting its telepathy.

  Lots of maybes there.

  I decided to keep up with the insults. That tin can is a real backward step in your evolution.

  “A single Electromech can destroy this whole planet,” it said, and did I detect anger?

  Then why haven’t you? And why do you need to destroy the planet anyway?

  The Vu-Hak took a step toward me. I widened my stance and let my hands hang loose at my sides.

  “How little you understand. Growth is the push for expanding beyond a species’ origin, and if the push to expansion becomes the dominant force, it will trample any other life in its way. The Vu-Hak are thousands of years more evolved than you. You are just in the way.”

  You would never have gotten here if it weren’t for the wormhole. That was humanity’s discovery. Are you sure about your superiority?

  The Vu-Hak took a step closer and I tensed, feeling an involuntary power surge through my torso. It was as if the machine version of adrenaline was being released and I was being readied for action.

  “Your species was doomed before the wormhole was forged,” it continued.

  Here we go, that “bottleneck” bullshit again. What do you mean?

  The alien snorted contemptuously. “Your species is already well along the path of self-destruction. You are deluding yourself if you think you have a special place in the universe. Since your earliest ancestor first picked up a bone and used it to kill another human over a petty squabble, you have demonstrated your self-destructive nature.”

  It was still fidgeting, shuffling, probably not with nervousness but perhaps due to sub-optimal control of the Electromech. I pressed on … at least we were having a conversation, not trying to kick the shit out of each other.

  Yet.

  What gives you the right to decide our fate?

  “There can only be one apex predator, one alpha species in every galaxy. The Vu-Hak are here now. Humanity will be eradicated.”

  And the Vu-Hak lowered its head and charged at me.

  But I was ready.

  Being the only child in a military family, my father had ensured I’d been given self-defense lessons outside of school hours. Not formal martial arts, of course, but ways in which the body could best be used against an attack. As an adult I’d done some Brazilian ju-jitsu and also some boxing, although the latter had been mainly confined to fitness classes rather than actual fighting. I’d enjoyed the rough and tumble of the classes and actually had been quite good at it.

  I stepped left, leading with my shoulder, drifting toward the machine as it surged in a straight line. I rotated savagely and slammed a roundhouse right just under its chest, dead where the solar plexus would have been. The Vu-Hak stopped in its tracks, which gave me plenty of time to ram a knee into its groin, followed by a right knee into its face. Physics won, and it crumpled to the floor in front of me.

  As
I stepped back it rolled over and seized my wrist. Its eyes appeared wild; its teeth were bared. I tried to jerk away, but I might as well have been a child. It was like an irresistible force meeting an immovable object. It snarled and started to reel me in by the wrist.

  I dropped onto my ass and planted both my feet against the side of its face and pulled with all my might. Power flowed through my arms and I broke its grip. I rolled away and came to my feet at the same instant it did. Bellowing something unintelligible it charged me again, ungainly, like a Sumo wrestler, and I barely managed to slip by this time. Its speed and co-ordination were slightly off, and it took an unsteady step toward me, and then another and I circled back toward the door from where it’d emerged. It kept coming, arms stretched out in front as though sleepwalking, and then it charged again. I feinted left and as it passed me I leaped onto its back and got it into a headlock. I pulled with all my strength, squeezing tighter and tighter as it started spinning in circles to fling me off. It went faster and gave my arms a shove and I lost my grip and flew into the wall, concrete and plasterboard spraying into the corridor.

  I hustled to my feet as it ran toward me. I stepped in, meeting its velocity with my own, and blasted it across the front and right side of the neck with my right forearm, in the same instant gripping its right arm with my left hand. I nailed it again with my forearm and some of the rigidity seemed to leak out of its body, so I slipped my arm to the back of its neck and yanked the head down and slammed my knee into its face. The head bounced like one of those bobblehead dolls and I kneed it in the face again, and again. I kicked its feet out from under it and swept it onto its back. It slammed into the floor, hard, denting the shiny concrete and producing a shockwave that seemed to reverberate in the air around us. Its face was flattened, the nose squashed and bent, one of the eyes pushed in and glowing green. I stomped on its exposed throat and felt the metallic carapace give a little. I raised my foot to stomp again but it grabbed my foot and pushed and I lost balance and was sent crashing back into the wall, debris raining down around me. Before I could recover it was on me and launched a straight fist to my chest.

  It felt like I’d run into a tree. It punched me twice more in the abdomen so I twisted hard and grabbed both its wrists with my hands. It rotated its body to try and break free, and we danced and struggled, slamming into the wall over and over. As I turned away it snapped a knee into my groin, and the sensation of pain rocketed through my abdomen. In my visual fields, red lettering flickered up and down and tiny dots danced before my eyes. I assumed these were damage reports, but I couldn’t interpret them. I only hoped that I was inflicting more damage in return.

  I took a step back and blasted a desperate sidekick into its knee. It jerked back and toppled over onto its side, the knee joint folded ninety degrees the wrong way. Seizing the moment, I darted in, skirting its grasping arms and embracing it around the neck again, wrapping both arms around as tightly as I could.

  And I squeezed, channeling everything, diverting all power reserves and energy through my body into my arms. Red numbers increased in my HUD but I hung on and, remorselessly, continued to squeeze. The Vu-Hak’s arms flailed at my head, connecting wildly but not causing any damage. It was not able to rise due to its ruined knee, and my legs were spread out and my stance was solid as a rock. It was going nowhere.

  I gritted my teeth and let out a primal yell. There was a squeaking, crunching noise, and the Vu-Hak’s head came away from its torso. It span and bounced down the corridor, and I fell backward into the wall in a sitting position, facing the alien’s body. It was trying to get up, a nightmarish vision of a headless, bloodless corpse, twitching and jerking. There was a high-pitched wailing and what sounded awfully like servos and gears crunching as it tried to get upright. Its neck was crushed and warped, blue and green lights flickering and winking from snapped and twisted cables or whatever these machines used for arteries and veins. The head had rolled to a stop just by the door, facing me, green eyes blazing out of Adam Benedict’s mangled face.

  The fucking thing was still alive. I knew that the hardware running the machine – onto which the Vu-Hak consciousness was mapped – was located in the head, so I needed to destroy that. I scuttled to my feet and leaped over the thrashing torso, sliding on the tiles and stopping in front of the head. The mouth moved, spasmodically opening and closing, trying to speak. It wasn’t Adam’s voice anymore, but an approximation of human speech, more machine-like and robotic.

  I raised a fist to try and crush it, but its whispered words sent a chill through me.

  “You fool … You have killed us all.”

  I paused. “What’re you talking about?”

  The skull bared its teeth and snarled. “The containment field has been breached. The singularity will be fully exposed in a few minutes.”

  This didn’t sound good.

  My mind accessed the internet, and a brief search provided enough information to scare the pants off me. A black hole of only a millimeter diameter would have a mass of approximately one tenth of the Earth. If this were to suddenly appear on the surface, the overall gravity of the planet would increase and the moon’s orbit would alter. All matter within a third of the Earth’s radius would feel a pull toward the black hole and be consumed. The destruction of the Earth’s crust and most of its mantle would occur. Within a few hours the entire planet would be an uninhabitable mess of collapsing crust, lava and hot gases.

  Life would be unsustainable.

  I batted the Vu-Hak’s head away and watched it ricochet down the corridor like a bowling ball down an alley. I slumped back against the wall and closed my eyes. A siren was coming from the floors above, increasing in volume. The machine’s torso was now lying prone and unmoving and its clothes were dissolving away revealing grey and mottled flesh. Ulcers were appearing and the blue-silver carapace was looking worn and dull. Rather than the shiny underlay on Adam and myself, this was a matte grey shade associated with some sports cars.

  I got to my feet and brushed the paint and dust off my hands. The corridor stretched out around another corner, past where I’d punted the skull. The noise of the siren was increasing, and I phase switched my auditory receptors to suppress it. The warning lights in my HUD were now all green and winking out one at a time as my machine continued to repair the damage from the fight. I stretched: all my limbs and joints flexed normally, and the neural feedback seemed healthy enough.

  I concentrated and pushed out a thought.

  Colleen? Where are you?

  THIRTY-FOUR

  The corridor curved to the left, dimly lit and uninviting. It felt like there was a breeze blowing gently in my face, grasping me with its chilly touch. I knew there had to be more Vu-Hak here, somewhere.

  A door appeared ahead, left ajar, throwing an amber stripe across the floor. My mind held me back, but my body dragged me forward like a moth to a flame. My fingertips drifted along the walls, sensing nothing but cold and neglect.

  The room confirmed the impression. Office furniture from the 70s, dusty and old, looking as if it would crumble if touched. Mold ate away at the walls and floor coverings, and cobwebs laced the corners and draped around the bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling.

  Then I felt it. The familiarity of Colleen’s mind.

  She was really close.

  I ran outside and closed my eyes to focus. Something was jamming my sensors, but I was definitely getting something. The sirens were continuing in the background, muted but subtly getting louder. I picked up the pace and continued up the corridor.

  Another door came into view. This one was closed, unlabeled and windowless, with a knob for a handle and old-fashioned lock.

  Behind it were seven life forms.

  Enough is enough, I thought.

  I took hold of the edges of the frame and pulled the door off its hinges. An explosion of noise erupted. Muzzle flashes lit up from every corner and I was hit by a hailstorm of bullets that impacted my face and chest. They felt l
ike pinpricks.

  Four soldiers were crouched in the corners of a room the size of a small garage, firing up at me. Behind them, strapped into chairs by leather belts and zip-ties, were the unconscious forms of Stillman, Hubert and Hamilton.

  I sensed no Vu-Hak presence and so I entered the soldiers’ nervous systems and disrupted the synaptic neurotransmission in their brains. Instantly, and as one, they fell to the ground out cold. I hoped it would be temporary, like a general anesthetic, but I wasn’t sure. I also wasn’t sure I cared anymore.

  I was angry.

  I rushed over to Stillman and saw she was breathing easily and had a regular pulse. Her pupils were large and equal, and her eyes moved normally when I turned her head. She didn’t wake up, though, so my sensors got to work and detected levels of benzodiazepines, a sedative, in her bloodstream. I manipulated the chemicals in her brain controlling cognitive functions and brought her back from sleep, carefully and gently.

  Waking up can be harsh, especially if your dreams are better than what reality is likely to bring. Certainly this particular awakening wasn’t going to bring her any pleasure. The fleeting moment of being whole and human again was going to evaporate faster than summer rain off a flattop in Nevada. The clock was ticking. I didn’t know how long before the black hole was released from behind the Electromech’s shield protection and our planet imploded. Bringing her back to life only to have it snatched away in a few minutes’ time was truly cruel, wasn’t it?

  The siren was now a couple of notches lower in tone but louder and more intense. Diffuse red lights had begun to flash and I could hear a distant speaker intoning something about …

  “… radiation detected in sub-levels; evacuate, evacuate …”

  I broke the ties and straps around Stillman’s arms and legs and she sat forward and absently rubbed her wrists. I glanced at Hamilton, who was in the middle chair, still sleeping. I decided to keep him asleep. Likewise, Hubert was slouched back in his chair, head pointing at the ceiling, making snoring noises.