“A surprise. You know I work in the Menagerie, yes? Well, I’ve been training these beasts since they were kittens. They are much smarter than the large cats you have on your Earth. I’ve trained them to avoid the humans—well, retrained. I must admit that wasn’t always the case. We didn’t know you would eventually be on our side.”
Zaka rides on past me with guns in both hands, shooting Citadels and the ARC soldiers cleanly in the head. And if all that didn’t completely blow my mind, the next thing I see makes me actually squeal. There is a screeching bellow from the skies. The Faida are swarming, acting as snipers, but now, there is something else flying with them. Massive birds, with wings outstretched at least six feet. They sort of look like pterodactyls, but they are orange, with red necks and yellow spots. “And the birds?” I shout with wonder.
“Bycheters,” he manages to yell back to me, though it’s obvious he’s distracted. What was once a war between genetically enhanced super soldiers has turned into a circus spectacle. I’d love to be able to watch this Animal Kingdom vs. Aliens thing, but a smart smack to the face with the back end of a Spiradael braid brings my focus once again to the task at hand. A Settiku Hesh has me in his sights. I squat and leap up, a single foot landing on his face. I keep stomping and stomping, grinding my heel into what’s left of his nose until I’m sure he’s dead.
The onslaught is unrelenting. No matter how many I take down, it seems like there are ten more to take his or her place. I can feel my body weaken. I don’t know how much longer any of us can take this. It’s not the physicality of the killing that is beginning to exact its toll, but the sheer volume. The body count is relentless. It is the gentle tapping of a nail on a thin plaster wall. Soon, it will pass all the way through and the wall will crack in spider veins and I will never be smooth again.
And then, as if in slow motion, something else happens. I hadn’t been paying attention to the tanks. I had assumed we gained control of them, but I see one has moved past us, up the street, and is aiming directly at Sugar Skull.
“Vi,” I scream. “You have incoming. Get out of there!” I yell, but my words sound like they have been swallowed up by a crashing wave. I was sure I yelled a warning, but time seems to have been ripped apart as if everything that’s happening has already happened and now I’m living inside a memory, unable to affect the outcome.
The tank fires two missiles in rapid succession. The boom from the weapon echoes in the chaos, bouncing off the walls of the buildings and the mass of soldiers themselves. I watch the smoke billow from the launcher on the hatch. I see the sleek gray balloon of the projectile fire into the restaurant. In my periphery, a human Citadel tries to take aim, but I dodge and shoot her squarely between the eyes. So much for saving our own.
I watch as members of the UFA start to overwhelm the tank, ripping the metal conveyor-belt-like wheels apart and shooting the gunner.
I practically fly back toward the Command Center, stepping on dead bodies, even leaping on an Akshaj’s shoulders so that I can get a higher position to make a cleaner jump, but it’s too late. The missile enters a window and in two or three agonizing seconds before I can get there, the entire place explodes. I wasn’t thinking. I’m too close.
“Shield, Doe!” I yell, though I’m not sure what exactly that will do. The thin metal gloves and breastplate that I had practically forgotten I had been wearing slide forward in a nanosecond and form a rigid plank of silver big enough to protect me from the brunt of the blast. Glass flies all around me and the energy from the explosion itself pushes me entirely backward at least a foot. My ears ring from the proximity of the blast, and everything sounds like my head’s been shoved underwater.
The whole thing must have lasted five seconds, maybe six, but because time skipped out of place and fell apart the moment the tank fired, it felt like both forever and also instantaneous.
“Vi!” I scream, though I can’t really hear my own voice. “Boone!” A Faida runs past me, his wings ablaze. I step into the smoky shell of what was once our Command Center. A few charred beams are still standing, but everything else is a mass of bricks and melted plastic. There are burned bodies flung everywhere, presumably those who were right at the heart of the blast. I walk over the uneven debris, tripping once or twice on a body part or a piece of broken wood from a table. My eye catches what is left of a SenMach. One entire side of her has melted so that she is only half a silver skeleton. The other half has melted into a stew of wires and rods. Then I notice that she is on top of something, a hand. I wade through the rubble and pick up the body and throw it behind me. And there, with just a few burns, is Ezra.
Shit.
I had thought he would have evacuated farther away once the fighting started, but I should have known better. “Ezra!” I say loudly. There is blood pouring from a gash on his forehead and there are burns where his body was exposed after the SenMach’s bio flesh burned off. I bend down and gently touch his face before reaching around to check his pulse. I moan with relief when I find one.
“Ezra, get up,” I say, slapping his face lightly, just enough to wake him. His eyes blink open, but he’s unable to focus.
“Ryn?” he asks hoarsely.
“Yeah, but you have to move. Right now, to the gym . . . the triage center. I can’t take you there. I have to look for Boone and Violet,” I say in a rush as I quickly check his head and neck for serious trauma. “You can move, right? Wiggle your toes and fingers.”
He manages to open and close his hand a few times. “I think Ruth Bader Ginsburg just saved my life,” he tells me groggily as I help him sit up.
“What?”
“I mean, not her. Obviously. But the robot her. She just jumped on top of me when you radioed in that the missile was coming. She didn’t even think. She didn’t even give me time to thank her or say anything.”
Ezra sounds out of it. Or at least I think he does. My eardrums haven’t quite recovered from the blast.
“The SenMachs—their job here is to protect humans. She was literally made to do that very thing. I’ll make sure that Cosmos knows one of her own saved you.” Ezra finally stands, though he is unsteady on his feet. He puts his hands out, palms down as if the air itself can steady him. “I need you to run, Ezra. You have—”
Ezra cuts me off before I can continue. “No,” he says adamantly. “I’m staying here. I can help you look for Violet and Boone. I know you don’t think I can do anything . . .”
I put a thumb over his lips and pat his face, wiping a drop of blood that is about to fall into his eye. “Shhhh,” I say softly. I take both my hands and pull his forehead to mine for just a moment. “You’re hurt and I have so much more to do. You have to be away from here. You have to be safe.” I laugh a little to myself at the idea. “Or at least . . . safer. Please, I am not ordering you. I’m asking you. Just go. Please be one less thing that breaks my heart today.” I think he must see it in my eyes, the desperation, how I’m white knuckling this whole thing. When he met me, I was just an ordinary super soldier girl. He’s seen our misfit escape plan turn into a full-scale war that I’m commanding. But it wasn’t that long ago that I was almost broken, that I wept at his feet and traced his boots because I couldn’t touch him when I found out what they did to me.
“Okay,” he says, taking my hands away. He pulls me close to him and then winces when he realizes that he actually is hurt and that his arm is burned. “Just watch your six.” He smiles. “That’s army talk. I learned how to talk army.” I nod and push him gently away. I watch as he leaves through the open wall, and then I turn around to walk deeper into the restaurant to find my friends.
The smoke intensifies the farther in I get. I hear yelling, someone asking for help, and I know it’s wrong, but since the voice is speaking Roonish, I keep walking. I just need to make sure my friends are okay. I keep yelling their names. I start coughing because the air deeper inside is so thick with smoke that it’s making my eyes water.
“Ryn!”
&nb
sp; It’s Boone. I look up to the sky briefly in relief, though I don’t know why. If God is real, he doesn’t live here. Not in this place of acrid smoke and bodies wrenched apart.
“Where are you? Keep talking so I can get to you!” I tell him.
“Here! Over here!” he says frantically. I follow his voice, picking up pieces of foundation and wood, throwing them behind me as I go. Finally, I get to him. I see that he is on his knees in front of an odd-shaped sack. I bend down, my eyes watering. I wipe the tears away and I see that it is not a sack but a person.
Violet.
At first, I don’t understand why she is lying there. Doesn’t she know there’s an actual war going on and we don’t have time to let an injury keep us from doing our job? I squint my eyes to try and see better, what could be keeping her down? Then I realize that there is only half of her. From the waist down, Vi is gone.
This is okay. This is fine. The SenMachs gave me a new arm, they can give her new legs, a pelvis, it can be done . . .
“Get her up, Boone! Why are you just sitting there? The SenMachs can fix her. Carry her to Triage,” I bellow.
“Ryn,” he says, his voice breaking on my name. “She’s gone. She died the second the missile hit. I was across the room. I . . .”
“Don’t be fucking stupid, Boone. She can’t be dead. It’s Violet . . .” I wipe her long brown hair away from her face. The smoke must be clearing, escaping out of the hole where the roof used to be, because it’s becoming easier to see. Her eyes are looking up and her mouth is open, almost in surprise. This is my best friend’s face, but this is not my best friend. Everything that makes Violet Vi has disappeared, it has been wiped away. There is no compassion or tenderness in her eyes. There’s no sweetness to her lips. And her hair, it’s so messy. Violet’s hair is pristine, either falling with the precision of a straight ruler down her back or up in a perfect ballerina bun atop her head.
Her skin looks a waxen, ashy gray. This is not my Violet. This is just a body.
I harden my stomach muscles to stop myself from collapsing. I clench my molars because I absolutely cannot break down. “Where’s the rest of her?” I demand.
Boone just shakes his head. I want to shake him. I want to smash his head in. I love Boone, I really do. But Violet—Violet is worth a hundred Boones. Why does he get to be alive? I slow my breathing. I realize I’m panting. That is absolutely the wrong thing to think, and if Vi knew, she would punch me in the nose. Boone and Violet have loved each other for years. I can’t imagine that anyone would love her more than I do . . .
Than I did . . .
But I suppose it’s possible that Boone does.
Did.
“Okay,” I say to him as I make my way around her. I realize in that moment, finding the parts of Violet that are missing don’t really matter. She’s gone. “Boone, babe,” I say to him gently, “we need to get out of here. The rest of this building is going to come down any moment.”
Boone doesn’t respond. He doesn’t move. I think he may have even forgotten to breathe. I kneel down beside him, the rubble digging into my uniform uncomfortably. My face is crying. It is the only part of me that seems to accept what has happened. I bend down and kiss Violet’s head. She tastes of metal and ash. My lips imprint whatever is left of my humanity. War is a feral beast. It is death and fire and blood. There will always and forever be before Violet died and after.
And the after, at least for right now, the me after is no one. I am not a person anymore. I am the steel tip of a blade, the hollowed-out place inside a bullet, the crashing atoms colliding inside a laser. I am all punches and kicks and the pull of a trigger.
“Boone!” I yell as I shake him.
He turns his head slowly to look at me. “I don’t know what . . .” Now he looks bewildered, almost drunk. “What am I supposed to do?”
I yank him up by the shoulders. I pull him up so hard his feet dangle in the air for a split second before they touch the earth again.
“Fight,” I tell him coldly. “We fight and we kill them all.”
At first, Boone’s head shakes like he doesn’t understand. And then he looks at me. His face changes. His features harden. His eyes narrow. I give him a smile, not of happiness but in understanding. He returns the sinister grin. Boone is back, or at least a part of him—the deadliest part. We bolt outside the Command Center. I don’t bother to look for him, or Levi or any of the others. What I am about to do next belongs solely to me.
I once again return the sensuit so that I can deal with the Spiradael’s unique hair situation, and after that, I switch off. I empty both guns into the heads of my enemies. When my ammo is gone, I just use my hands. I leap from each one to the next. I tear heads off shoulders. I pitch bodies to throw targets off balance and stab Citadels in the throat and skull and eyes. Since I know their uniform will slow my efforts, I devise a way to rip it off them from the neck down. Once that’s done, it’s easy enough to plunge a fist into a rib cage and pull out a still-beating heart.
And this arm, this beautiful flesh-and-metal hybrid of an arm that was once a compromise, a way to bargain to this very moment, is so much more. It is stronger, faster, deadlier. It is just so . . . extra, as am I. I am more than a mere soldier now. I am a cause. I am a precise instrument of death, and I will not stop unless someone or something can stop me, and that doesn’t look like that is going to happen any time soon.
I don’t know how long this lasts. I am covered in blood of all colors and I have taken my fair share of licks along the way, but I don’t feel the pain. I don’t feel anything. I do notice that my opponents are fewer and fewer. I also notice that if I can get a Settiku Hesh by the feet, I can pick him up and bash his head back and forth on the ground on either side of me—the way the Hulk likes to do.
Eventually, I realize that I am all alone. I look down around me at a pile of bodies. Dozens and dozens of dead Citadels and ARC’s so-called expert black-ops soldiers. I have no idea where I am. Three of Zaka’s cats race by me, drawn by a whistle. A riderless unicorn passes a few seconds later. She gives me a slow, melancholy look with her massive black eyes as she saunters by.
“Morning—status? I’ve taken out every combatant in this area, where are the rest?” I ask.
“Hold,” she tells me immediately.
I wait in the middle of the fleshy wreckage. It doesn’t occur to me to move just yet. The only thing that occurs to me is to do more fighting. I wipe the edge of my knife blade on my uniform and put it back in my belt.
“We have killed all Orsaline, Spiradael, and Settiku Hesh Citadels. We have captured forty-three percent of the human Citadels. They are currently being taken to a holding facility. Boone Castor has overseen the execution of Seelye’s Shadow Citadels-9—three hundred twenty have been killed.”
“And how many casualties on our side?” I ask forcefully. I care. Of course, I care, but now, after Violet, the number feels almost unimportant. It seems like incredibly, miraculously, we’ve won. It doesn’t feel like we’ve won, though, not without Vi.
“Comparatively few. Dead, 14,339. Injured, 22,655.” I repeat the number in my head. It does seem small compared to their losses. “Levi is okay? And Henry?” I ask.
“We’re fine,” Levi’s voice cuts in. “We’re in the triage center. Helping with the injured. Only the critically wounded are here; the rest have been taken into the neighborhoods by other team and unit members. We’re all medics. Seems like that part of the training was universal.”
“Why don’t you meet us here, we can debrief,” Henry adds.
“No,” I say with authority. I step on the bodies that surround me, not bothering to expend the energy it would take to jump over them. “I want an elite integrated team to meet me by the front entrance. At least five hundred troops.”
“Ryn,” Levi says smoothly, “I don’t think you understand. We won. The altered Roones are holed up in the base, we can get to them later.”
“Did any of you think that was a re
quest? Because around here, we call that an order,” I say calmly, though my tone is clipped, bordering on hostile. Right now I don’t have to be nice or accommodating. I have to finish this. “Nine thousand three hundred twenty adult Citadels. There were two hundred more at the base. We haven’t won shit until we get the altered Roones. So let’s go get them.”
“I am in agreement with Ryn Whittaker,” Varesh says boldly in my ear. “These Citadels are merely foot soldiers. This war is not over until every altered Roone is dead.”
I begin to make my way to the entrance of the Village. I eat some gel cubes and drink some water, knowing that I have depleted far more of my energy than my adrenaline will let me realize.
“Fine, we’ll meet you there,” Henry chimes in, albeit grimly.
I stand and wait in the open field. The quiet is unnerving. Birds have fled and the thousands of bodies around me are still. I don’t look down. I have had enough of death. I keep my eye on the horizon and my focus primed on the work we have yet to do.
Eventually, the troops I’ve asked for fall in behind me, and from above, the Faida are circling. This new unit has over two hundred human UFA members, while the Akshaji, Karekins, Roones, SenMachs, and Faida make up the difference in equal numbers. Levi is here. He awkwardly moves forward, perhaps in an attempt to hug me, but I jolt backward. I cannot fathom the thought of tenderness right now. Levi reads my body language instantly and hands me my pack instead.
Varesh, Berj, and Morning have also joined. A good portion of Morning’s face has been melted off, presumably in the explosion that killed Vi. I notice that Iathan also has joined us, and I fight the urge to groan out loud. He was in the Command Center, too, but apart from a slight limp, he managed to escape unscathed. He lived and Vi didn’t. It doesn’t seem fair at all.
The Rift Coda Page 29