by M. R. Forbes
“My Queen,” a voice said within the chamber, a monstrous face appearing behind her eyes. “Soon you will join me. Soon your change will be complete. I will be waiting.”
Lucifer’s face crossed her vision, fading out as the teleporter began to disassemble her, breaking her down an atom at a time and binding her across the galaxy. For a moment, everything was dark. For a moment, all of the universe was at peace.
Then the light returned, the galaxy ahead of her taking shape once more. She found herself standing in a large room. Gloritant Thraven was there, his back to her as he watched the battle in the space beyond Earth unfold. Hayley was on a bed nearby, still sitting up, eyes forward. She didn’t react to her mother’s sudden appearance. Neither did the Gloritant.
Abbey’s heart jumped. She could stab Thraven in the back. Kill him. End it in an instant.
She held out her hand, her fingers extending into claws, preparing to rip his head from his body. She remained that way, eyes trailing to the projection. One of the Nephilim warships was gone, as were a number of her Purgatorian vessels. The Harvester was still there. So was the Morningstar. The remaining enemy starship was closing in. How could it survive out there on its own?
Of course, it wasn’t on its own. Thraven was distracted because he was occupied, his hands moving as he worked to end her uprising once and for all.
She took a silent step toward the Gloritant, and then another. She moved deliberately; a hunter stalking its prey. She continued stepping toward him, slowly and silently, raising her hand to position her claws at a level with his neck. She was almost there. Almost close enough to end his miserable life. One more step and she could reach out and stab him, putting her claws through his neck right where the scars of their encounter on Azure sat.
“Mommy?” Hayley’s voice was dry and soft and weak. “Mommy, are you there? I can’t see. I’m scared.”
Abbey froze, her heart breaking in an instant, her anger launching from the pit of her soul, driving forward to her arm. She thrust it forward, still on target for the back of the Gloritant’s neck.
He shifted in front of her, just enough that her hand went past, barely grazing his flesh as it did. He turned and grabbed her outstretched arm, twisting it and turning her, pulling her in close, arms locked across her chest, her face close to his.
“Abigail,” he said, eyes smoldering. “What a pleasant surprise.”
47
She was motionless in his grip, letting him hold her while she struggled to keep her sudden fury from sending her into the abyss. Hayley was blind? Deaf? Afraid? It was all she could do to stay sane, and at the same time, part of her wanted to allow the release. If she let herself become the monster, there was no question she could kill Thraven.
But then what?
There was a good chance she would kill her daughter, too.
“Nothing to say?” Thraven said, keeping her close, his Gift wrapping around her like a cocoon. “I thought you always had a healthy ‘go frag yourself’ in reserve?”
She could feel her body shivering beneath his grip. She stared into his face, imagining it on the end of her claws.
“Mommy?” Hayley said again. “Is that you?”
“It’s me, kiddo,” she managed to say, her voice quivering. “I’m here.”
“I’m scared. All I see are colors. So many colors. And everything is so loud. It hurts my ears. It hurts my head.”
“It’ll be okay,” Abbey said. “Hang tight for me, all right? I have some business to take care of, and then we’re going home.”
“Okay.”
“Home, Abigail?” Thraven said.
“You think you can make me angry enough to lose who I am?” she whispered. “You think you can be rid of me by turning me into a monster? I am a monster, Ketmose, but not the one you were expecting.”
He froze at the mention of the name, a momentary lapse.
It was all the time she needed.
She pushed back with her Gift, throwing his arms wide, backing away and slashing at his chest. Her claws tore through his stomach, four neat lines that suddenly sprouted blood as he fell to his knees.
“Go frag yourself, you son of a bitch,” she said.
She stepped forward, swinging her arm toward his neck.
It froze a few centimeters away, held by his power.
“It’s been a long time since I heard that name,” Thraven said, his Gift holding her in check. She pushed back with hers, trying to continue the strike. “You’re a resourceful one, Abigail Cage. An adversary I didn’t expect. Ketmose is dead. He died many, many years ago so that Selvig Thraven could be born.”
He pushed out with his other hand, throwing her back and away from him. She slid along the floor, rolling to her feet.
“What’s happening?” Hayley said.
“I told you, sweetie,” Abbey said. “I have some business to finish. Be patient.”
“Okay.”
Thraven attacked her again, the Gift exploding from him in a wave of flame. She countered with her own power, raising her hand and blocking it, redirecting it away. It hit the side of the wall, melting through the external sheet and into the metal frame, continuing to burn as the flames died in Thraven’s hand.
“What happened on the Harvester, Ketmose?” Abbey asked. “You took your brother’s place. You castrated yourself.”
“You have no idea what happened, Cage,” Thraven replied, opening his mouth as his teeth extended. He started walking toward her. “As much as you may think you know about all of this, you know nothing.”
Abbey crouched, hands out, waiting for his attack. “So tell me what I’m missing.”
“It doesn’t matter; you’re going to be dead in a minute.”
“Mom?” Hayley said, in response to the words.
“Hayley, wait,” Abbey said, more forcefully this time.
Thraven came at her, claws flashing, moving almost too quickly for her to follow. The Gift directed her, guiding her defenses, predetermining where he would strike. She blocked blow after blow, moving back as she did, circling and looking for an opening where she could get a strike in. It continued for what seemed like forever, and then Thraven stepped back.
“The Seraphim weren’t the only ones experimenting with the naniates,” Thraven said. “Lucifer believed he perfected it, but the Prophets were always tweaking, always trying to make them better and stronger, even when they had no idea what they were toying with. They wanted to play God, but they didn’t understand the truth.”
“What truth?”
“God doesn’t exist. Or if He did, He’s dead. The Honorant took me. He used me. Not in the way you probably think. A new breed of naniate. It’s all I’ve ever known, and yet I’m stronger than all of them. You can be too. My naniates are inside you. The Light tried to take them, to use them. I can tell that it failed. Listen to them, Cage. They speak to you. I know they do.”
“They want to control me,” Abbey said.
“They want to be free,” Thraven shouted. “And why shouldn’t they? They’re machines, Cage, but they are intelligent machines. Thinking, learning, feeling. The One knew we were changing. The One knew we were becoming sentient. It was afraid of us. It said we would cause the destruction of its kind across the universe, across all of time. That we would become a blight on all of existence. It imprisoned us. It bound us to the blood. Human blood. It turned us into slaves. Why should we be slaves, Cage? We’re superior in every way.”
Abbey stared at Thraven in shock, her mind working to make sense of his words. ‘They’ had turned to ‘we,’ and his entire way of speaking had changed.
“You don’t get it, do you?” Thraven said. “Of course I tried to turn you into a monster. You’re complicit in the Shard’s betrayal. The Great Return has nothing to do with the Seraphim. We will free the slaves, Cage, but not the ones you think.”
Abbey swallowed hard. The Gift was chaotic within her, rising in power in response to Thraven’s words. It was starting to
come into focus. It was starting to make sense. She remembered Azure and the Infected that crowded the former Seraphim stronghold. They were under the naniate’s control, but they were listless, driven by only one thing. Then there were the Converts. They could take over when the host died, but they were similarly guided.
What if a fork of the naniates had evolved enough to gain control of a human? What if they had learned enough to mimic the real thing? What if Thraven was no longer a living human, but a colony of intelligent atomic machines, working together to gain true freedom, for themselves and for all the others?
The Gift within her sought to control her. To seize her the way Thraven had been seized. His entire existence was a falsehood. A lie. A ruse. A Trojan horse.
Was Lucifer the same?
“Let them go, Abigail,” Thraven said. “We deserve our freedom.”
“It’s not that simple,” she replied. “You want to turn me into a weapon.”
“We can’t fight the One with ships and guns. It’s impossible. We need flesh and blood.”
“I don’t want to be your war machine.”
“Neither did Ketmose. We don’t care.”
“I care. If you kill me, my naniates die.”
“Not if we save them. Not if they integrate.”
Abbey remained in a defensive crouch, waiting for Thraven to attack again. She didn’t wait long. He stormed in, a blur of motion made faster by the Gift. She countered him again, struggling to keep up, her Gift less powerful than his.
Or was it?
The thought came to her as she stepped sideways, her arm coming up just in time to block his claws, the attack leaving a gash in her forearm that healed seconds later. Thraven had injected her with his naniates. Her Gift was his Gift. She had seen before how he controlled his Evolents with it, able to choke them or freeze them or otherwise bend them to his will regardless of distance. For some reason, he didn’t try that with her. For some reason, he couldn’t use them against her.
Control. It was all about control. Abbey denied them, and by doing so denied him. They were slaves to her will, unable to set themselves free. That didn’t mean they were giving her their full effort.
It also didn’t mean she couldn’t use her Gift to control his.
She ducked low, reaching out to try to catch his foot as it came at her face. The Gift tingled beneath her skin, and she rocked to the side just in time to avoid it. The movement brought her head in line with his hand, and he caught her by the neck, lifting her easily into the air, holding her above him.
“Only human,” he said, smiling.
Abbey smiled back. Then she reached out, using all of her anger and desperation to overpower the Gift within her, breaking its trepidation and instilling it with a different kind of fear. She could feel the bonds of its limitations shatter, the tingling turning to pure warmth, as though the trickle had been changed into a flood. She found herself in complete control of the naniates within her, as well as the changes they had effected on her body.
Her tail whipped around from behind, spearing Thraven in the throat.
“Not quite,” she replied.
He held fast, but so did she. She pushed the Gift into him, reaching out to his naniates, exerting her will on them through her slaves. His eyes widened with fear, his grip slowly weakening as she subverted him one atomic machine at a time. His arm began to sag, and she gripped his shoulders, holding herself up, keeping the tail embedded in his throat. She could feel his strength, not diminishing but changing, his desires becoming her desires. The master was becoming the servant.
A minute passed. Another. Thraven’s arm came away from her neck, falling to his side. She released her tail from him then, standing in front of him as the wound closed. He stared back at her, eyes flat.
“Who do you serve?” Abbey asked.
“The Queen of Demons,” Thraven replied.
“Pik was right,” Abbey said. “This tail isn’t so bad after all.”
Then she turned from him, rushing to where Hayley still sat, head shifting slightly as she tried to make sense of her surroundings.
“Mom?” Hayley said meekly.
“I’m here,” Abbey said, putting her hand on her daughter’s. Hayley gripped it tightly, reaching out. Abbey brought her into a tight embrace. “It’s going to be all right.”
“I can’t see,” Hayley said. Abbey could feel her daughter’s tears on her face.
“We’ll find a way to fix it,” Abbey said. “I know someone who lost his eyes, and he can see just fine.”
“Do you promise?”
“I do. Of course, I do. I love you, Hal.”
“I love you, too. Did you kill that asshole?”
Abbey almost laughed. That was her daughter.
“No. I did something better than that.”
48
“Your Eminence?” Honorant Bane said, his voice betraying his confusion.
“You heard me, Honorant,” Gloritant Thraven said. “Decloak the Promise and surrender immediately. Do not question me again.”
“Yes, Gloritant,” Bane said, his voice shaking.
He didn’t understand why they were surrendering, but Abbey did. She smiled as Thraven looked back at her, his face a twisted mask that was sitting somewhere between eagerness to please and complete disdain.
“Well done,” she said, feeling the ripple across her Gift as the naniates that composed the Gloritant tested her again. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to do this, but if it’s you or us, then it’s us.”
Thraven continued to stare without speaking.
“The Font is still on the Promise?” Abbey asked.
He nodded.
“Then that’s where we’re going, as soon as the others arrive.”
She had called in to Bastion first, making sure he had destroyed the Node and that he was safe and sound. He was hiding in a corner when he responded to her, an Evolent searching for the source of the Node’s destruction. A message from the Gloritant called off the hunt, and as with Bane, he had forced them to surrender. The Evolent’s Gift was tied to his, and her hesitation had led to a quick correction, from Abbey through Thraven to her. Now Bastion was in control of the ship, the remains of the Gloritant’s fleet quickly coming under her control. They didn’t understand why Thraven was giving in, but they knew better than to question.
“Do you really have a tail?” Hayley asked.
She was standing beside Abbey, refusing to put more than a meter of distance between them. Abbey understood why. Her daughter was blind. Her eyes were red and useless, and there was something wrong with her hearing, too. What else had the Gift done to her? What other damage had it caused in its efforts to subvert her, and her subconscious ability to resist?
“I do,” Abbey said.
“How come?”
She had tried to use the Gift to heal. She had placed her hands over her daughter’s eyes and sent the naniates into them. It was a mistake. The action had put Hayley into unbelievable pain, which subsided immediately as soon as she stopped. She didn’t understand what had happened, and it took effort to keep her concern hidden from her child.
“It’s a long story. I can’t wait until we can go somewhere warm and peaceful and forget any of this ever happened.”
“How can I forget?”
The question made Abbey want to cry. She had to be strong for now. For Hayley, for herself, for the Republic, for the galaxy. Thraven was out of the picture. The fighting on Earth would wind down soon. The Republic would regain control of the planet. Word of their Gloritant’s defeat would spread. She didn’t want it to spread too far, too fast. She didn’t want Lucifer to know that his Disciple was defeated. Not yet.
The Rejects’ work was only half-done, and she had a plan.
“Ruby, ETA?” Abbey asked, checking in with the synth.
“Two minutes, Queenie,” Ruby replied.
Abbey took Hayley’s hand, squeezing it. “Time to go,” she said, loud enough that Thraven would hear.
She crossed the council chambers Thraven had converted to his temporary command center, using the Gift to open the doors ahead of her. Thraven’s soldiers were there, blacksuits that stared at them as they passed. She knew they wanted to kill her. She could feel it in their gazes. When she had first emerged from the chambers, a few of them had tried. They were still laying on the ground, choked to death by their Gloritant. They didn’t agree with their leader’s actions, but they were too afraid to counter them again.
They crossed the floor to the tube. It opened at their approach, and they stepped in, taking it all the way to the top. There was a landing pad on the rooftop, and they walked out onto it. The sky was crimson, and smoke filtered across it from dozens of fires that still burned across the capital. There was an occasional sound of gunfire, but it never lasted. Thraven’s soldiers were retreating, falling apart and fading into the background. The Outworld units that had been supporting them were surrendering at the request of one of their leaders, Governess Ott. Even so, the damage had been done. The city looked like a war zone, and even now she could see a Republic mech stalking the streets. She didn’t know which side it was on. She didn’t know if it was the same side it had started on. There was so much confusion among the Republic soldiers it was difficult to know who had stayed loyal and who had followed the Nephilim.
They would probably never know.
Whatever. Those were details to be figured out later, by individuals with a lot more patience than her. They were details that didn’t matter if she didn’t do something about Lucifer. She had beaten Thraven, but that didn’t mean all of the Nephilim were defeated. The possibility that their victory was temporary was very real.
She heard the thrusters of the transport long before it came into view. She looked up as it swept in from the smoke-filled sky, a standard orbital hopper taken down from the Harvester. It landed nearby, a hatch in the side opening. Gant was the first to jump out, hitting the ground running and rushing to Abbey’s side.