“I can’t go,” she said. “No, the science fair is next week. I need to get this—no, it’s not stupid, it’s important. It’s important to me.”
“What is this?” Savannah asked.
She slithered at Nessa’s side as they stepped into the bedroom, unseen by the girl arguing on the phone. Nessa pointed to the screen, and to the title of the presentation: Genetic Crop Modification and the Potential for Ending Famine, by S. Cross.
“Is that…” Savannah’s body bent and stretched as she coiled around the girl. “Is that me? Why don’t I remember this?”
“I read up on you, after we first crossed paths,” Nessa said. “This is you, age sixteen. You won the science fair, by the way. Got you scouted by a half dozen colleges.”
“Biochemistry,” Savannah murmured. “I remember an early interest in biochemistry.”
“You were going to feed the world,” Nessa said.
The image unraveled, slid, spun around them like a record before it whipped back into focus. Savannah, age twenty-six, sat on the far side of a mahogany desk. The man’s face was in shadow, lost to memory, but his voice was crystal clear.
“Dr. Cross, you’re a talented young woman—”
“Then why did you deny my grant request?”
He folded his hazy hands.
“Because as admirable as your goals are, there’s no money in giving food away. Can I offer you a word of advice? Learn to be more pragmatic. Use that big brain of yours and join us in the real world.”
Another blur, another lurch forward in time. Just a couple of years, but her eyes were harder, her lips more tightly pursed, as she perched on the edge of a chair in a hotel room. Ezra Talon sat across from her, bracing his cane between his knees.
“As I said,” he told her, “we’re big fans of your research. There’s a place for you on our team. Your own lab space, lots of leeway, and you won’t get a more competitive offer.”
“Talon Worldwide,” Savannah said.
“That’s right.”
“Weapons,” Savannah said. “That’s what you want my research for. You want me to make weapons for you.”
“The Romans salted the earth when they went to war. Denying resources to the enemy is a time-tested tactic, and I think it’s ripe for modernization. Look, I know it might be…distasteful at first, but think about the big picture. You help me, I help you. I’m happy to put funding behind a side hustle or two if I think it’ll bear fruit, pardon the pun. You come on board, show me some solid results I can peddle to the military sector, and we’ll talk about your passion project in a year or two.”
A year or two passed in the blink of an eye, like they so often did.
Savannah perched on a stool and squinted into a microscope, watching bacteria wage war against each other. Her custom-made microorganisms launched a blitzkrieg and tore through the enemy forces.
“The fuck is this, Cross?”
It was Ferguson, head of the division, standing at her shoulder. He rattled a plastic-sheathed binder at her.
“Oh, that’s—that’s my project proposal,” she said, straightening up. “I was hoping Mr. Talon would reconsider—”
“You don’t hope. You don’t think. You do the job I give you.” He waved his hand at the bustling laboratory. “Look around, Cross. Do you notice anything different between you and everybody else here?”
She shook her head. “Well, we come from an array of technical backgrounds and schools, but some commonalities exist. You and Dr. Bloch both received degrees from Rensselaer Polytechnic, while—”
“Jesus, you’re fucking thick.” He leaned in, dropping his voice. “You were a diversity hire, Cross. You’re the team mascot, so we’ve got a nice pair of tits around for photo ops. You’re the Smurfette.”
He dropped the binder onto her lap. It slid onto the floor, pages jolting loose and scattering.
“And we don’t have time for this bleeding-heart crap. Get with the program, toe the line, or you’re going to be out of here and another girl exactly like you will be filling that seat by lunchtime.”
The sun vanished. The moon sprang up on the far side of a plate-glass window. Savannah was alone in the lab, one side of her head shaved down to the scalp, watching herself on a feed from a tripod-mounted camera.
“My work in neuroscience has pointed to methods of…focused behavioral modification,” she said to the camera. “Obviously untested on human subjects, for ethical reasons, but my science is sound. I know it is. And if I’m going to keep this job long enough to replace Ferguson, long enough to force my own agenda through the pipeline, I have to take risks. Make sacrifices.”
The tool in her hand was unique. She’d built it herself. It had a pistol grip and a hair-thin filament mounted on a nozzle, the sleek titanium probe computer-linked for flawless precision.
She squeezed the trigger. The tip of the probe glowed red, hot as a branding iron.
“I’m going to attempt a slight modification of the part of my brain that controls empathy. Just enough to…fit in with my team. To act like they do. I’ve administered a local anesthetic. There shouldn’t be any pain. Shouldn’t be.”
She focused on a screen at her side, a cross-section of her skull in deep blue and neon orange. She raised the probe. It felt like she was putting a gun to her head.
“When I save the world, it’ll all be worth it.”
The probe sizzled as it slid through flesh and bone like a knife through butter. It smelled like roasting pork. The next day she came back to work. She wore a wig. She did her job and built a better plague.
The sun and the moon battled, spinning like the wheel of a slot machine. It landed on the moon. Savannah in the lab, surrounded by surgical tools, more cameras, more monitors.
“Diligence alone is not serving my purposes,” she told the camera. “Ferguson isn’t going anywhere. Promotion is a distant hope. I need to improve my productivity, improve it in a way he can’t dream of equaling. I’ve developed a procedure to eradicate the need for sleep. Imagine it: eight extra hours, every single day, to dedicate to my work.”
She lifted a shining scalpel. It caught the laboratory lights, gleaming.
“I won’t dream anymore,” she mused. “But if you have the power to change the world for the better, you have to do it. I’ve always believed that. No matter what it costs, no matter what you have to sacrifice. And I have that power.”
She made the first cut and used a tiny hissing vacuum to suck down the blood.
The sun and the moon danced again and the brief, scant light died out once more.
“He stole my work,” Savannah seethed into the camera. “He stole my work. Put his own name on it. I now realize drastic measures have to be taken. Ezra will never fund my anti-hunger project, not until I’ve taken control of the research division.”
She drummed her fingers on the arm of her surgical chair. The probe sat out on a swing-arm tray.
“Ferguson has to die. I’m not proud of that. I’m ashamed, just saying it. But he’s standing in the way of saving countless lives. If you could go back in time and kill Hitler, you’d do it, right? Of course you would. But I…I’m not a violent person. I’m afraid I’ll hesitate.”
She picked up the probe and watched as its tip glowed red-hot.
“I can’t risk that. So I have to make a more radical modification. Destroy my capacity for pity, for compassion. Anything that might stay my hand. My work is too important. The funny thing…you know what the funny thing is?” She looked into the camera as she lifted the probe to her shaved scalp. “If this works the way I think it will, I won’t even know it’s gone.”
Ferguson took a fall out a twentieth-floor window. She took the lab. Then Ezra came to her, proposing she join his skunkworks division.
“It’s…special research,” he told her, leaning on his cane. “Secret research. A personal passion project of mine, and it’s on the absolute cutting edge of science. We’re redefining what we know about the universe in
ways I can’t begin to tell you. I’d love to bring you on board; you’ve earned this promotion ten times over. Unless there’s something you’d rather be working on?”
At long last, she’d clawed her way to the top, and now she could ask for anything she wanted. The lamp had been rubbed and her personal genie was waiting, ready to grant her dearest wish.
“I accept,” she said. “I’ll need access to a larger lab and a bigger budget for equipment requisitions. Also, a raise would be appreciated.”
The roulette wheel of time spun and landed on a different night in a different laboratory. Savannah had a visitor.
“We’ve been watching your work for some time,” Adam told her. “We’re impressed. We’d like to recruit you for our team.”
She was mostly annoyed at her research being interrupted. “And I’d be interested, why?”
“A lab that makes this one look like a child’s first chemistry set, and unlimited project funds, subject to my discretion.”
“Unlimited,” she echoed.
“We see great potential in the work you’ve been doing with Carlo Sosa’s blood. The synthesized form, and the psychic-resonance effects it seems to hold. Tell me, do you think you could find a way to spread it to a greater segment of the population?”
Savannah thought about it for a moment and gave a careless shrug.
“Simple. Add a narcotic component and make it addictive. I could do that in a week, and we’ll have a bumper crop of infected junkies by this time next month. Let’s talk more about this lab you’re promising me. And the money.”
Nessa broke the mindwalk. Their connection snapped and the real world lurched back into focus with nauseating speed. The musty smells of the zoo, the warm night wind, and the distant sound of gunfire and screams all snapped back at once.
Savannah stood, frozen. Her oily face rippled, and Nessa realized it was mimicking the flow of a single tear.
“I remember now,” she whispered.
“You made yourself forget,” Nessa said. “It was you. It was always you. One small step at a time, one sacrifice after another…until you forgot what you were making those sacrifices for.”
“I thought I was doing the right thing.”
“You bought into a lie,” Nessa said. “The system was designed to ruin women like you, Dr. Cross. It’s made to take all those idealistic dreams and snuff them out, and turn you into another tool for profit. You played along until you became a part of it.”
Savannah looked down at the ink blobs of her hands. They burbled as they curled and twisted.
“And this is all that’s left of me.”
“Is it?” Nessa asked. “Are you sure?”
Savannah’s oily head lifted. She silently tilted it at Nessa.
“You are the ship of Theseus,” Nessa said. “So tell me…are you the same ship that sailed to war all those years ago? Or are you a brand-new vessel that can plot its own course? Maybe I gave you your memories back. Or maybe you’re a unique form of life, almost a newborn, and I gave you the memories of the dead woman who you patterned yourself after. But now you have to decide: who do you want to be?”
She pointed at Adam’s muscular bulk in the distance, shouting commands from the roof of the lodge.
“Are you his tool, or are you your own woman?” Nessa asked. “You know, it’s not everybody who gets a second shot at freedom. It’s not everybody who gets one at all. Make your choice.”
Forty-Eight
Nessa and Savannah’s mindwalk only took a handful of seconds in the real world. It felt like minutes to Marie, her muscles aching, lungs searing as she struggled to evade blow after blow. She ducked under one of Rosales’s swings and drove one of her batons upward, catching her on the shoulder of her armor. The shock-wave blast sent both of them staggering back, breaking the momentum. It gave Marie a quick second to rally, gulping down air, before Rosales launched herself to deliver a fresh salvo of punches.
“Seriously,” Rosales’s amplified voice said, “why are you doing this? Adam didn’t say I had to kill you, just stop you. So just run away already, not like I’m going to waste effort chasing you down. You don’t have to die here.”
Marie crouched low and drew both arms back, bending her elbows, then thrust. The twin batons connected with the armor’s breastplate and both ignited at once. Rosales blew back off her feet, landing hard in the dirt. Her helmet shook from side to side as the suit’s engines whined and she pushed herself back to her wobbly feet.
“Jesus, that hurt, you fucking psycho. But if that’s the best you got, your best ain’t gonna cut it. Not tonight.”
I can help, Lady Martika hissed in Marie’s ear. Her suit is based on Valkyrie armor. You know everything about that armor, from when you were me. You know how to counter it—
I was never you— Marie didn’t get to finish the thought. Rosales came at her like a jet-propelled battering ram. She thrust the batons and Rosales’s open gauntlets shot out, anticipating the attack.
Runes shuddered and erupted into scarlet and white spark showers as Rosales grabbed hold of the batons. They shook in Marie’s grip and she clung on for dear life as the weight of the powered armor bore down on her.
Then the batons shattered. They flared in twin retina-searing blasts of wild light and then died. The splintered wood tumbled to the pavement, leaving Marie with nothing but two powerless and broken grips.
A sledgehammer punch to the gut sent Marie flying. She hit the ground, tumbling, dropping the grips and coming up empty-handed as she struggled to stand again. Just drawing breath was a losing battle, and she fought for the strength to rise.
“What is it with you?” Rosales said, incredulous. “This would be a real good time to stay down, just saying.”
Marie forced herself to her feet. Her back was burning, and she could barely straighten up. She curled her empty hands into fists.
* * *
Up on the overlook, beyond the outskirts of the fight, Janine and Tony had been left behind with a stern warning to stay put. Janine watched the battle unfold through a pair of post-mounted binoculars, after scrounging for change to open the rusty old lenses. She saw the batons burst in Rosales’s armored grip, and she saw Marie fall. And rise again, unarmed, wobbly, but still determined to fight.
“Tony,” she said.
“I know.”
She held up the cardboard tube in her arms.
“You’re crazy,” he said. “You know that, right?”
“We promised we’d be there when she needed us.” Janine pointed. “She needs us now.”
Tony still had the Glock 19 he’d gotten off Winslow in Vegas. Jessie had scrounged up a fresh pair of magazines for him, traded for the promise that he’d stay put and use them only for self-defense.
He’d apologize for breaking his word later, if they lived through this.
Janine tucked the tube under her arm and led the charge. He was right behind her. Ten feet down the path an insect-eyed, dog-jawed monster pounced from the underbrush, smelling fresh meat. Tony gunned it down with shooting-range precision and they kept on running, deeper into the fight and past the point of no return.
* * *
Lady Martika was insistent in Marie’s ear, inside her brain.
We are one, Marie. Take my hand. Accept it. What is a knight? What is THE Knight? That’s the question you’ve been asking for so long, but you already know the answer.
I’m not you, Marie thought.
Answer this, Martika countered. If we’re so different, how can we both be the Knight? What do we both fight for?
“What do you fight for?” Marie murmured, speaking aloud.
“Me?” Rosales said. “I don’t, if I don’t have to. Way too much work. I like to collect my paychecks with the minimum possible effort.”
“What do you stand for, then?”
Her chuckle rode a tiny wave of electronic distortion. “Principles are another thing that require way too much effort. C’mon, Reinhart. Grow up. Heroe
s only exist in storybooks. Nothing is true, barely anything in this life is worth much effort at all, and none of it is worth dying for. Save your own skin and run away. Last chance. What are you fighting for?”
Then Marie saw it. The answer she’d been looking for.
She heard Janine shout her name. Turned, as her roommate tugged open a fat cardboard tube, but then she kept turning in her mind and sidestepped into the Conversation.
* * *
“You see it now,” Lady Martika said, standing imperious in her midnight armor.
“Truth,” Marie said.
Something so small, so pure, so clear. It fell into her cupped hands like a flawless pearl.
“A knight fights for her truth.”
She remembered. She remembered the nights of fear and hunger and endless squalor, looking up at the distant Miami skyscraper lights in the middle of a summer heat wave. She remembered the night she took slow vengeance on her parents’ killers. The night she vowed that society had to be forced to change, by any means necessary.
She remembered the moment she met Nadia Fields and fell head over heels in love with the woman who shared her dream of a better world. A world of order, of discipline, where no child would ever suffer like she had.
She remembered it, because she was Lady Martika. And she was Mari Renault, and Marie Reinhart, and all the rest, a string of lifetimes and choices and decisions. Her choices. Her decisions. Her nature never changed, but nurture transformed her and she rose to the occasion, molding herself to fit the worlds she walked upon.
“She fights for her truth,” Marie said. “That’s what we all have in common. That’s what it means to be the Knight. The things you—the things I did, we were fighting for the values we believed in our heart to be true.”
“Yes,” Martika said. “And now?”
* * *
“A knight fights for her truth,” Marie told Rosales. “And here’s mine. I believe that people need heroes. I believe that the weak are meant to be protected by the strong, and that dragons are meant to be slain. I believe that love is real, that hope is real, and any battle worth fighting is worth fighting until the end. Because it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. What matters, in the end, is that you fight.”
Bring the Fire (The Wisdom's Grave Trilogy Book 3) Page 36