by Ben Wolf
Etya’s left arm raised, palm open, and the pulses smacked against a teal barrier of some sort. They hadn’t affected her at all.
Justin fired again, but the same thing happened. Shit.
Etya’s mouth opened, but aside from that, it didn’t move to form any words. Her voice melded with Mark’s and said, “We’re going to kill you all.”
She stalked toward them.
“You two hold her off,” Shannon said. “If I can get past her, I can work on shutting down the turbines.”
Justin went left with Shannon, and Carl went right. Justin fired more pulses, but like the others, they dissipated in Etya’s barrier.
Carl picked up a blue stone and hurled it at Etya from the other side, but she knocked it away with her prosthetic arm and bolted toward him.
“Go now!” Justin ushered Shannon over to the terminal, and she began to work the console.
He fired his repeater again, but the pulses failed to penetrate her barrier. The readout on the repeater dwindled to three percent.
Etya dove for Carl, grabbed ahold of him, and tried to lift him off of the ground, but he jammed his elbow into the side of her head, and she let him go.
Carl hit the ground and rolled away from a yellow laser blast from her fist. When he recovered, he sprang toward her. His arms wrapped around her legs, and he took her down.
Her laser stopped. She grabbed Carl with her prosthetic hand, peeled him off of her, and hurled him toward the edge.
Carl tumbled end-over-end, clawing and scratching for purchase, but he managed to stay on the platform.
Justin fired several more pulses and then gave up. He’d never penetrate her barrier that way. Instead, he shifted the repeater to his left hand, extended his energy blade, and started toward her.
As he approached, she stood and faced him. The metal on her face glinted orange from his blade, and green glowed in her robotic eye.
Etya lunged toward him.
Justin swung his blade, but she caught his wrist in her metal fingers and halted his progress. As he slammed the butt of the repeater into her fleshy shoulder, a burst of energy pulsed into his robotic arm and into his chest.
The force launched him backward, and he landed on his back only a few feet from Shannon and the terminal. Justin’s heart quaked in his chest, and he gasped repeatedly. He couldn’t move, and he couldn’t breathe.
His convulsions slowed, and he wiggled the fingers of his robotic hand. It still worked. He managed to raise his head next. Etya was stalking Carl Andridge again.
His repeater lay a foot beyond his left hand. Atop it, the Nebrandt plant began to open.
Justin blinked. Was he imagining things? Why was it opening now? Had the jolt from Etya to his prosthetic arm transferred energy to it?
Green light flickered in front of him. When he blinked again, a form materialized, radiating with Mark’s telltale green light.
But it wasn’t Mark who stood before him.
It was Keontae.
37
“Keontae?” Justin couldn’t believe his eyes. “Is it really you?”
Keontae nodded. “Yes.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Neither do I, frankly,” Keontae said. “But I’m back.”
Justin stood, recovered his repeater, and stared into Keontae’s formerly dark eyes, now vibrant green. “I—I don’t understand. I thought you were gone forever.”
“In a sense, I suppose I am. But this part of me is still here.”
“How…?”
“Something happened when my mech suit took me down into the copalion reserve. I died, but I also became this, as well,” Keontae said. “When I woke up, I saw a path. I followed it, and it led me to the other guy—Mark. I’ve been in the network, waiting. Hiding. Concealing myself. Watching. I couldn’t show myself because the other guy had so much control. But I learned a lot, and I knew it was time.”
Justin’s eyes widened. “And when he finally left the network, you were able to show up.”
“This is my world now, baby.” Keontae looked around. “Damn, JB. You got yourself into deeper shit than usual, didn’t you?”
Beyond Keontae, Carl pushed past Etya, who swiped at him and missed. Carl ran toward the terminal but stopped short of Keontae.
“What the hell?” Carl stared at Justin. “There are two of them now?”
Justin said, “This is Keontae.”
Shannon turned back from the terminal and gawked at them.
“He’s with us.” Justin refocused on Keontae. “Right?”
“Of course.”
“Then tell him to turn off the damned turbines so we can get out of here,” Carl snapped.
“Can you do that?” Justin asked.
Keontae nodded his ethereal head. “Simple as flipping a switch.”
“It’s our only way out.”
“I’m on it.”
“Stop!” Etya called from behind Carl, but this time she sounded more like Mark. “This mine belongs to me. Stay out of it!”
Keontae looked her up and down. “Blow me.”
Then he disappeared. Atop Justin’s repeater, the Nebrandt plant closed. The familiar clank of the turbines shutting off sounded, and they whirred slower with each passing second.
“No!” Etya-Mark roared and rushed over to the terminal.
“Now’s our chance!” Carl yelled. He bolted for the catwalk leading to the turbines.
But Etya pointed her fist at the catwalk, and a beam of hot yellow light carved through the metal grating. The front of the catwalk separated from the platform and dropped out of sight. Only the rail and a thin sliver of metal framing on the left side remained intact.
Carl skidded to a stop and turned back, and Justin and Shannon joined him. The void between the platform and the catwalk was far—at least ten feet. If they got a running start, maybe they could make the jump, but probably not.
“You will not escape. This mine is still under my control,” Mark said through Etya. Her body staggered, and she braced herself against the terminal with her metal arm, and then leaned her robotic side against it. Her eyes focused on Carl. “And now you will pay for your transgressions, once and for all.”
Etya raised her prosthetic fist.
The Nebrandt plant bloomed again.
Keontae appeared in a flash of green from within the mainframe terminal.
Etya’s fist glowed bright yellow.
Keontae lunged out of the terminal and disappeared into Etya’s robotic half.
The Nebrandt plant closed atop Justin’s repeater.
The yellow light in her fist receded, and her robotic half froze. Her human right eye twitched and scanned them, and her right arm and right leg moved sluggishly, as if uncertain what to do. Her mouth opened, crooked, with her metal jaw all the way down, and her human jaw halfway up.
Keontae was fighting Mark for control of Etya’s robotic systems.
“Release her!” Mark roared.
The yellow glow in Etya’s fist returned, then it faded again.
“Damn you!” Mark’s voice thundered from within Etya.
Etya’s robotic leg took a step forward, away from the terminal, but her human leg stayed put. She nearly toppled over, but she caught herself and straightened her posture again.
“I’ll hold ‘em off. Go now!” Keontae’s voice emanated from her mouth.
Carl was already moving. He backed up, ran, and leaped at the railing that still remained on the left side of the destroyed catwalk.
His fingers gripped the bar, and his feet hit what remained of the metal frame. His left foot slipped off at first, but his grip held true, and he pulled himself up and traversed the remainder of the frame.
“You next,” Justin said to Shannon.
She complied, but instead of a running start, she started where the frame met the platform and stepped along the frame, also clenching the railing.
Carl helped her onto the other side of the catwalk, and she waved to Justin.
“Throw me the repeater!” Carl yelled.
Justin hesitated, but Carl could cover him if needed. The repeater was down to one percent anyway.
He tossed it across. Carl caught it, and Justin reached for the railing with his left hand.
A war raged within Etya’s mind. Green blasts of energy sizzled behind her eyes, and electricity crackled throughout her prosthesis. Her teeth rattled. Her nerves seized, then released, then seized again, then released again.
Her human half wanted to collapse from the strain, but her prosthesis’s disjointed, random movements, kept her fighting to avoid falling and injuring herself. So she forced her body to fight through the pain, as she had done many, many times before, and she stayed upright.
Voices shouted within her. Mark’s voice—familiar, yet raging. And the newcomer, Keontae’s voice—desperate, yet filled with resolve.
What could she do to fend them off? She’d given Mark access to her prosthesis, but Keontae had broken in and merged with them without permission.
Could she expel him?
She focused on the concept, but nothing happened.
She felt her prosthetic arm rise toward Justin Barclay. Mark had isolated it and regained control of it.
Her fist opened, and her purdonic cannon ignited with yellow light.
And the battle raged on.
“Watch out!” Shannon yelled.
Justin turned back in time to see Etya’s glowing, yellow fist pointed at him. He released his grip on the railing and dropped to the platform.
A yellow beam streamed overhead, then it lowered toward him. He rolled away from it, and it dug into the platform, carving a deep, narrow trench.
Then it stopped, and Etya froze again.
The platform under Justin quaked.
“Get off of that!” Shannon shouted.
He scrambled to his feet as the edge of the platform buckled beneath him. The weightlessness of vertigo seized his chest, but his legs and arms kept moving, and he leaped clear of the broken edge and landed on the platform once again on his stomach.
Justin looked up at Etya, who now stood five feet away from him. She stared down at him with strain etched into the human half of her face and slowly pointed her robotic fist at his head.
It began to glow again.
Etya commanded her prosthesis to fire, but Keontae blocked her from doing so. Mark and Etya battled him together, struggling for control. They were so close.
Her human eye looked up, across the chasm, and saw Carl Andridge standing on what remained of the catwalk. He held a repeater in his hand, pointed at her.
It flashed orange.
The human half of Etya’s head exploded in a burst of orange light, steaming red flesh, and white bone. Her human half collapsed, and her robotic half followed.
Justin staggered back, away from her, and hurried to his feet. Keontae’s intervention must’ve lowered her barrier.
“NOOOOO!!!” Mark’s voice modulated from her prosthesis.
“Get outta here!” Keontae’s voice came out next. “I got him restrained!”
“Justin, run!” Shannon yelled.
Justin’s jaw tightened. He whirled away from Etya, ran with all the strength he had left in his body, and hurled himself across the chasm. The instant his feet left the platform, he knew he wasn’t going to make it.
As he hurtled through the stale cavern air, he extended his arms.
All ten of his fingers grabbed the edge of the catwalk.
Then his left hand wrenched free, and he dangled over hell once more, suspended only by his robotic arm.
“Justin!” Shannon cried from somewhere above him.
“Leave him!” Carl shouted. “We have to go!”
Justin groaned and looked up. He saw nothing but the cavern ceiling.
Then Shannon’s face came into view, and she reached down for him. He raised his left arm, and she grabbed it. Justin’s robotic arm pulled, Shannon pulled, and he managed to get onto the catwalk.
He recovered and found himself face-to-face with Carl Andridge.
“Fuck you, too, Carl.” Justin pushed past him and led them toward the turbine that had killed Stecker and Dirk.
Someone screamed—Keontae. Justin recognized his voice.
Then a heavy clank sounded, and the turbine blades slowly started to spin.
Justin looked back. Mark had materialized on the platform in his green ghost form again, watching them. He’d retaken control of the mine’s network.
And Justin had lost Keontae all over again.
“We have to go now before it speeds up!” Justin yelled.
He ran and jumped into the turbine, between two of its six slowly rotating blades. His boots slipped on Dirk’s and Stecker’s blood, which streaked twenty feet into the turbine, but he managed to jam his right arm against one of the blades and held the whole apparatus in place.
Though the turbine motor screeched, Justin didn’t relinquish his grip.
“Hurry!” he called to Shannon and Carl. “I can’t hold this for long!”
Carl came through next, still holding Justin’s repeater. He made it past Justin, and the turbine fan in Justin’s hand bent almost ninety degrees. His shoulder burned with the strain.
Justin clenched it tighter in his grip as Shannon came through, and then he released it. The turbine whirred to life again, still slow, but picking up speed.
“Let’s go.” Carl hurried down the turbine shaft and toward the ventilation network, leaving footprints in the blood now streaked along the floor.
With Carl in the lead, they maneuvered through the ventilation network. All the while, Mark’s voice shouted at them from behind them, all around them, and ahead of them. But with minimal active machinery in these metal vents, he couldn’t harm them anymore.
The journey through the ventilation system lasted close to two hours of maneuvering through about two miles of tight spaces toward the surface.
They took a rest in a maintenance room of some sort, and Shannon found five oxygen packs stashed in a row of equipment lockers, but no safety suits. They each took one and continued their crawl toward the surface.
Minutes later, Carl led them to an overhead access hatch, the old-fashioned kind with a valve wheel. They donned their oxygen packs. Then, together with Carl, Justin cranked the wheel and pushed the hatch open.
Dust and frigid wind whipped into the ventilation shaft, nearly drowning out Mark’s voice, and pale light shined from the burnt orange skies above. They climbed out and stood on the blue ground, and Carl closed the hatch behind them, shutting Mark’s voice inside with it.
Aside from the hatch, a box-shaped terminal of some sort sat nearby with one of its doors open and squeaking as it rocked back and forth in the wind.
Justin shivered, and so did the others. Despite the dull orange light permeating the skies, this was considered the beginning of nighttime on Ketarus-4, and that meant the temperature would eventually drop to thirty below zero.
He turned back to Carl. “Can you call your ride?”
“Yes.” Carl pulled a device from his back pocket and activated it. “A remote transport is on its way to take us back to the ship.”
Totally worn out, Justin leaned against the terminal box and slumped to a sitting position. He’d made it.
Whether Keontae had survived Mark’s attacks or not, Justin had still left him down in the mine, probably forever, now. But Keontae had sacrificed himself to save Justin and the others. Maybe it was what he had wanted.
Shannon joined him, and Carl stood ten feet away from them, still holding Justin’s repeater.
A green light flickered between them, and Mark materialized again, his image distorted and wobbly.
“You deserve to die, Carl.” His voice garbled with high and low tones as he spoke.
“But I didn’t. And now I’m out here, where you can’t touch me.”
“This isn’t over,” Mark fired back. “You’ve taken everything from me.
I will find a way to claim my revenge.”
“No, you won’t. This entire facility is overrun with monsters and malfunctioning equipment. A total loss. Billions of credits gone.” Carl smirked. “And I’m going to drop enough ordnance on it to take out an S-Class Star Cruiser. No one will ever hear from you again.”
Mark’s image flickered, and Carl raised the repeater toward the terminal.
Justin and Shannon scrambled to move out of the way. As Justin pushed away from the terminal’s console with his robotic arm, an electric shock hit his metal fingertips and ran up the length of his arm.
Carl fired three quick pulses into the terminal, and Mark’s image disappeared entirely.
Then Carl pointed the repeater at Justin next. “End of the slipstream for you two.”
Justin tensed and backed up a step. Instinctively, he found Shannon at his side and stepped in front of her. She didn’t fight him on it. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“No.” Carl shook his head and tore the Nebrandt plant from the top of the repeater. He dropped it to the ground and stomped on it. “You’re both liabilities. Like the rest of this mine. Everything here is a total loss. Billions of credits wasted, when you account for the terraforming we did on the planet even before we started mining. All gone.”
“After what we just survived, you’re going to leave us here to die?” Shannon snapped, shivering.
In the distant sky, the hum of a ship drew nearer to their location. It emerged from clouds, a dark blob still miles away, but closing in fast.
“No. I’m going to shoot you and leave your bodies here. Then, when I blow up the mine, you’ll be erased along with it.” Carl sneered. “It’ll be like it never happened. I don’t have a choice. I’ve already given the order. As soon as the ship clears the blast site, this mine will be destroyed, and you with it.”
The remote-piloted transport closed in and landed behind Carl, kicking up a whirlwind of blue dust. Justin and Shannon shielded their eyes as it touched down.
The back hatch opened, beckoning them to claim their freedom, but Carl kept the repeater trained on them.