by Ben Wolf
Her body ached, particularly where her prosthesis fused to her flesh and bones, but she pushed herself up to her hands and knees. A glowing green boot appeared on the platform floor in front of her.
She looked up. Mark stood before her with his hands outstretched.
“We will soon be one, my love,” Mark said. “But first, you must end this.”
Etya stood and faced the mainframe terminal and Shannon, who worked the console with her back to Etya. She raised her fist and aimed her cannon at Shannon’s back.
“Goodbye, Shannon,” she said.
Shannon turned toward her, wide-eyed.
Etya activated her laser.
35
Etya’s laser didn’t fire. An energy warning flashed across her augmented vision, and she swore.
Shannon barreled toward her and smashed her fist into the side of Etya’s head—the metal side. The blow jarred Etya and knocked her to her knees, but Shannon recoiled, clutching her hand and moaning.
Etya recovered to find Shannon on her knees as well, her right hand squeezed between her thighs. “I may not have wanted to be a cyborg, but it is not without its benefits.”
Shannon held up her good hand, palm out. “You can’t do this, Etya. He’s killed so many people. Please, stop. I don’t want to die.”
“We are far beyond that point now.” Etya stalked toward her. She had never disliked Shannon, but she couldn’t allow Shannon to stop her, either. Nor could she allow Shannon to live to tell what had happened. “You must die.”
“The hell I will,” Shannon growled. She forced herself to her feet. She flexed her right hand a few times and backed away from Etya’s approach.
The energy alert in Etya’s vision field reset to normal, and she stopped her advance. As she raised her fist again, Shannon also stopped. Then she charged forward.
Etya fired her laser, but Shannon ducked underneath it and collided with her knees. The laser knifed high, carving fresh scars into the cavern ceiling.
But this time, Etya anchored her prosthetic leg, and Shannon’s blow barely knocked her back. She hooked her prosthetic arm under Shannon’s waist and flung her to the side.
Shannon tumbled and skidded until she collided with the base of the mainframe terminal, and she moaned.
Etya shook her head. Why did she think she could win? “It is pointless to fight me. I outmatch you in every way.”
Shannon pushed herself to her feet again and glowered at Etya. “Say whatever you want. I’m not giving up.”
Etya started toward her once more.
Justin pushed himself up to his feet, clutching the left side of his ribcage, and hobbled after Dirk and Stecker onto the narrower catwalk.
Try as he might, Dirk couldn’t land any significant blows on Stecker. Worse yet, Stecker had delivered significant damage to Dirk in the process.
The three turbines embedded in the wall whirled at full-blast, inhaling cavern air at an extreme velocity. As Justin stepped onto the catwalk, their force pulled at him, and he had to brace himself on the rail to steady his footing. Then he pursued Stecker and Dirk.
Stecker dropped Dirk with a body shot, and he turned back to face Justin.
Justin raised his palm, hoping the stun would work this time, but Stecker was already there. He batted Justin’s arm away, and the stun blast fired into the cavern wall.
Stecker kicked Justin square in his chest and sent him flying back. He hit the grating hard, and it knocked the wind out of him, but he scrambled up to his feet.
Justin took a painful right hook from Stecker to his left shoulder, and then his robotic right arm managed to connect with Stecker’s chest. The blow sent Stecker staggering backward, and he doubled over, holding his chest with his right hand and the catwalk rail with his left.
Justin clenched his right fist, and his energy blade materialized, now functioning again. He rushed forward and swung it down at Stecker, but Stecker sidestepped, and the blade sliced through the catwalk rail in front of the first turbine.
Stecker returned with a hard right uppercut that leveled Justin. He landed on his back again, stunned.
But Stecker didn’t follow up with another hit.
Somewhere, in the distance, Justin heard Dirk cursing and calling Stecker a “little bitch.” Dazed, Justin rolled onto his side and spat a globule of blood and saliva into the chasm below.
Then he spotted something glowing nearby, just below the catwalk. Something orange.
Orange?
Justin blinked hard, and his vision sharpened. He saw a plasma repeater—his plasma repeater, lying on a ledge near the beginning of the catwalk, just beyond the edge of the platform.
It hadn’t fallen all the way down after all.
Even with his arm’s energy sword and stun gun, he didn’t stand a chance against Stecker in hand-to-hand combat. Hell, Stecker was alternating between beating the shit out of him and Dirk virtually at the same time.
But that repeater could even the odds. He had to get it.
Justin pushed up to his hands and knees, grabbed the catwalk rail, pulled himself to his feet, and trudged toward it.
Carl Andridge gasped. The dark blue ceiling of Sector 6 loomed above him, and the back of his head pulsed with pain.
But he was alive.
He sat up too quickly, and the ache sharpened, so he lay back down with his eyes closed, breathing to recalibrate his body, to calm his ratcheting nerves.
He should’ve been dead. Etya’s blast would’ve killed anyone else. He trembled at the idea that he’d been given a second chance.
It had been a day of many second chances, considering all they’d endured.
Sounds of skirmishes, fighting—something—reached his ears. He didn’t know what was happening. But he remembered how he’d gotten there.
Carl opened his eyes and looked down at his chest. His dress shirt bore a fist-sized hole, singed black around the edges. Beneath that, his usually gray exo-armor had blackened over his sternum.
He dabbed at it with his fingers and felt crisped edges instead of the usual smooth material. The exo-armor had done its job well. Unquestionably worth every credit he’d paid for it.
Another deep breath kept him from totally freaking out, and a few more calmed him to where he could think again. He needed to survive, and to survive, he needed to think.
Carl attempted to sit up again, this time slower. His head still throbbed. He touched the back of his head and found blood on his fingers. He must’ve smacked it against the catwalk.
No matter. He was alive, and that meant he could still escape this waking nightmare. He resolved then and there that he would survive this, one way or another. He would reclaim his company and continue to lead it toward its ever brighter, ever more prosperous future.
Ahead of him, on the platform, Shannon and Etya struggled. To his left, on the smaller catwalk, Stecker and Dirk exchanged punches while Justin Barclay limped toward the platform.
Carl had no weapons, nor could his exo-armor take another hit like that, nor could he get out of the mine on his own. But if he could help, they might stand a chance. And when he got out, he would obliterate the entire mine from the safety of his ship and be rid of all of this—Mark included—for good.
He pushed himself up to his feet and started toward Etya and Shannon.
Justin reached over the edge of the catwalk, careful not to let the turbines’ wind pull him to his demise below, but the repeater still lay just beyond his grasp. His right shoulder—specifically the connection between his robotic right arm and the rest of his torso—burned with strain, and he pulled back.
He couldn’t reach it.
He glanced up at Dirk and Stecker, still brawling and grunting only twenty feet down the catwalk from his position. Dirk was still losing.
Justin had to reach that repeater, or they were both dead.
It was a stupid idea, but if he was going to die either way, he figured getting beaten to death by Stecker was worse than falling to
his death. So he hooked his left boot around the bar supporting from the catwalk’s safety rail, braced his right foot against the wall of blue rock supporting the platform, and lowered himself toward the repeater.
He scooped it into his left hand and tried to pull himself back up, but his ribs spiked with fresh pain, a reminder of the beating he’d already taken from Stecker, and he faltered.
Then his right foot slipped from the rock. Justin swung inward, away from the platform and toward the underside of the catwalk, suspended only by the toes of his left boot still hooked around the bar.
The ground seventy-five feet below him swarmed with mutations, and his vision spun from the familiar drag of vertigo. Justin wanted to vomit, wanted to pass out. The repeater began to slip from his grasp.
No. You can’t give in to this. He clenched his eyes shut and re-secured his grip on the repeater. You didn’t make it this far only to fall to your death like an idiot.
He opened his eyes, and everything below him churned into a frenzy of death and shadows, so he looked up instead. The cavern ceiling swirled, too, but not as badly.
His toes and his ankle started to burn. He couldn’t keep them flexed for much longer.
You’ve got one chance at this. The priest’s call returned to him. Courage. Have courage.
Justin bent away from his bruised left ribs, pushed through the pain, and curled up toward the catwalk with his robotic hand extended. His left foot slipped free of the bar, but his metal fingers hooked into the catwalk’s grated surface and held fast.
Justin’s robotic arm, with its augmented strength, pulled him up easily. He crawled onto the catwalk, exhaling quick breaths to quell the dizziness racking his head, and looked ahead.
Stecker slammed his fist into Dirk’s gut and doubled him over. Then Stecker moved behind him.
Justin struggled up to his feet, fighting his fatigue and the strong pull from the turbines. He braced himself on the catwalk rail, then he raised the repeater.
Stecker hooked his left arm around Dirk’s throat, wrenched him upright, grabbed his own opposite bicep, and tightened his grip. Dirk dug his fingers under Stecker’s forearm, but he wouldn’t be able to get free.
Ten feet from Justin, Dirk’s huge frame shielded most of Stecker. And Justin was no sort of a marksman, let alone with a plasma repeater he’d just learned to use a few hours earlier.
“Throw the repeater away, Justin,” Stecker yelled over the whirring turbines.
Justin didn’t move. He tried to line up the repeater with Stecker’s head, but with the Nebrandt plant still secured to the top of it, he had no hope of accuracy.
“Throw it over the edge, or I’ll kill him.”
“You think I care?” Justin shouted back. “I never liked him anyway.”
Blood oozed from Dirk’s nose and a few cuts on his bruised face. It tainted his white undershirt around the opening for his head and where Stecker had shot him. But in spite of all of that, Dirk continued to resist.
He yanked on Stecker’s forearm to no avail but managed to say, “Just… shoot!”
Justin hesitated. He hadn’t ever liked Dirk, but at long last, they were solidly on the same side. They’d fought mutations, androids, and now Stecker together.
For all the times Justin would’ve loved to shoot Dirk, at that moment, he really didn’t want to.
“Last chance,” Stecker yelled. “Throw that repeater away, or he dies.”
Maybe he could try to stun them. But he didn’t know for sure that it would work on both of them, especially at that range, Stecker had plenty of time to just wrench Dirk out of the way.
Dirk’s eyes glanced to his left, narrowed, then he looked back at Justin.
Justin tried to follow his gaze, but he couldn’t tell what Dirk was looking at.
“Fine. You made your choice.” Stecker pulled Dirk closer and squeezed his arms.
Dirk flailed, and his face scrunched up, red as a tomato.
Etya shoved Shannon against the mainframe console with her human hand and raised her prosthetic fist to finish her off, but something latched onto her wrist from behind.
She turned back, expecting to find Stecker there.
Instead, she found Carl Andridge staring at her face-to-face.
Her eyes widened. “How did—”
Carl slammed his other fist into the human part of her jaw. Her vision flashed white, then black, and she went down.
“Wait!” Justin held out his hand. He set the repeater down on the catwalk in front of him. “Wait. Let him go.”
Stecker’s grip loosened a bit, and Dirk gasped and coughed and resumed his tugging on Stecker’s forearm, but Stecker still didn’t let go.
Stecker shouted, “I said over the edge.”
Justin swallowed. With the repeater gone, Stecker would probably kill Dirk anyway. He’d killed Captain Mitchell and Noby readily enough. Even with his arm mods, Justin couldn’t beat Stecker alone.
“Why did you help me at the nightclub?” Justin asked.
Stecker’s eyebrows arched down. “Kick the repeater over the edge.”
“Tell me why,” Justin insisted. “What you’re doing now makes no sense after what you did for me then.”
Stecker paused. “You needed help. It was one-sided. This bastard was going to beat the piss out of you, and I don’t like bullies.”
“Then why are you trying to kill me now?”
“Because—” Stecker hesitated. “—family changes things.”
Dirk glanced to his left again, and Justin knew it had to be a message of some sort, but he didn’t know what to make of it. Something about the turbines? The break in the catwalk rail from Justin’s energy blade? Nothing at all?
“Because I need to do right by my daughter.” Stecker nodded at Justin. “Now kick the repeater off the catwalk, Justin.”
Dirk yanked on Stecker’s forearm again, but it held fast.
“You’re not going anywhere, prick,” Stecker said.
Dirk said something, glaring at Justin, but Justin couldn’t make it out.
“What was that?” Stecker asked.
Dirk’s fingers adjusted, and he pulled on Stecker’s forearm enough to say, “You always were a pussy, Barclay.”
Justin’s tongue turned to stone in his mouth.
Then Dirk’s limp legs hardened and found purchase on the catwalk.
Stecker tightened his grip, and Dirk leaned forward, lifting Stecker off of his feet.
Dirk’s legs propelled him hard to his left, taking Stecker with him.
Justin’s eyes widened. “No!”
They barreled through the break in the catwalk rail and toward the roaring turbine, which sucked them in.
Stecker screamed. Then the turbine reduced them into chunks of mangled flesh, shattered bones, and splatters of red.
36
“Etya.”
The word flowed through her subconscious, drawing her out of her sleep. Her human eye didn’t open, but her cybernetic eye saw Mark’s face staring down at her.
Her jaw hurt. And Carl Andridge was supposed to be dead.
“Etya, we must continue.”
“I cannot. I am too weak,” she whispered.
“Then we must become one. Together, we can overcome them.”
Etya hesitated. “How?”
“Touch the terminal’s console again. Now that you have entered the override code, I can merge my consciousness with your prosthesis, and we will destroy them.”
She cracked open her human eye and looked around. Carl and Shannon had headed over to the catwalk near Justin, leaving Etya alone near the mainframe terminal. Stecker was nowhere in sight, nor was Dirk. Had they fallen?
“Etya, hurry,” Mark urged.
She battled her malaise and the pain racking her jaw and stood. Her human leg wobbled, but her prosthesis compensated. The console radiated green light, beckoning her forward. She reached out and touched it.
Energy surged into her metal fingertips. It spiraled
through her prosthetic’s circuitry, spreading from the top of her head down to the sole of her left foot. Then it spread into her bones, her flesh, her arteries and veins, and it tingled under her skin.
Her human eye shut, and her fleshy lips curled into a smile.
It was thrilling.
“Now we are one,” Mark’s voice resonated inside her head.
Yes, my love. We are one.
She turned to face the three remaining survivors.
Her human eye opened.
Justin slumped to his knees, and his mouth hung open. The turbine still whirred, now slick with gore. His stomach backflipped, and he vomited, but nothing came out. He turned away from the horror and burrowed his face into his metal forearm. Nothing made sense anymore.
Footfalls clattered on the grating behind him. Justin turned and saw Shannon approaching, followed by a man.
It was Carl Andridge. Confusion besieged Justin yet again.
But Justin stood and faced them. He took in the bruise on Shannon’s right cheek, her messy blonde hair, and her sullen green eyes. Then he turned to Carl. “How did you—”
“Body armor,” Carl replied. “Very expensive body armor.”
“Dirk?” Shannon asked.
Justin glanced at the reddened turbine and shook his head. “He died with Stecker.”
“Can we get out of here or not?” Carl asked.
“I haven’t exactly had time to work on shutting down the turbines.” Shannon held her side, hunched over, and winced.
“Then let’s try it now.” Carl led them back toward the terminal.
Justin hated Carl more than probably anyone in the galaxy, but they still needed to work together if they wanted to get out of this alive. So he resigned himself to that reality and followed Carl.
But as they approached, Etya rose to her feet, completely rigid, and stared vacantly at them with a green glint in her human eye.
Justin raised the repeater at her. The Nebrandt plant on top of it remained closed, and he squeezed off several pulses.