by Isaac Hooke
The low oxygen indicator blinked on his faceplate, but Tanner ignored it, and he lay back, accepting his fate, waiting for the eternal sleep.
Through the lifting cloud of dust, he caught fleeting glimpses of the starry sky. It seemed like a good omen, being able to see the stars for the last time before he died. He smiled.
A pincer wrapped around his wrist.
One of the machines had found him.
Well, it hardly mattered now. He was on death's doorstep. There was nothing they could do to him.
He watched Hoodwink's body fade into the dust cloud as the pincer dragged him away.
Goodbye, Hood. I'll be joining you shortly.
He tilted his head up, wanting one last look at his captor and the cold world he was leaving behind.
Through the clearing dust, he saw that it wasn't a machine that held him.
A gloved hand gripped his wrist.
It belonged to a figure in a spacesuit.
Tanner blinked. "Ari?"
CHAPTER FIVE
"Well shit and image," Hoodwink said as he dragged Tanner across the icy surface. "I thought it was you Tanner, I did. Though in truth I was hoping for Ari. Well, what have you gone and done with my daughter now?"
Tanner merely stared up at him. Was the man stunned? Maybe he couldn't hear. Hoodwink thought he'd set up the comm line properly...
"Well, speak up!"
"Hood." Tanner's tinny voice finally whispered inside Hoodwink's helmet. "No air."
"No air? Dammit! Why didn't you say something, man? Mistook me for some arse-raping machine or something?" Hoodwink released him. He noticed that Tanner's faceplate was cracked. Had it sprung a leak? No—Hoodwink would have seen the mist from the escaping oxygen.
He opened the upper band of Tanner's backpack, sealed the isolation valve and slid the rightmost gas cylinder free, dropping it. He then spun Tanner around, knelt, and pointed at his own backpack. "Grab one!"
"What?" Tanner sounded drunk.
"Take one of my cylinders, man!"
Hoodwink felt the backpack shift as Tanner toyed with it. Hoodwink waited, wrinkling his nose. He still hadn't gotten used to the damn smell inside these things—it smelled like sex. He wasn't sure if that was the suit he was smelling or the recycled air. Might even be his own body. Newborns smelled like sex after all.
A message appeared on his faceplate.
Alert: Oxygen Drop. Currently: 85%.
Good. That was expected. Tanner had taken the cylinder.
The message flashed again.
Alert: Oxygen Drop. Currently: 75%.
Not so good.
"Close the valve!" Hoodwink said.
"Sorry." Tanner slurred the word.
Hoodwink felt his backpack shift again. The alert faded.
He turned in time to watch Tanner collapse. Hoodwink pried the gas cylinder from Tanner's gloved fingers and shoved it into the empty slot in the backpack, opened the isolation valve, and locked the upper band in place.
"Breathe, Tanner," Hoodwink said. "That's the way. Breathe." He could hear Tanner's deep inhalations in his helmet.
Hoodwink gripped Tanner by the wrist. "Now up, you! You're more of a man than that. At least you used to be. Come on now. Up, up!"
Tanner stumbled to his feet. He slipped a few times on the ice but Hoodwink steadied him.
"You gotta get yourself some proper moon boots," Hoodwink said. "Something with some grip!"
Tanner shook his head. "You're dead. I just saw you. Over there." Tanner pointed into the dust cloud.
"Your imagination, my friend." Hoodwink said. "You had no air, remember?"
"No, it was real. Hoodwink, what's going on? Where did you come from?"
"Topside," Hoodwink said decidedly. Tanner knew better than to ask more, that all talk related to Topside was forbidden, and would only get him stony silence.
But Tanner plowed on. "Somehow you were on the meteor that fell from the sky just now, weren't you? I thought it was an attack. But it was you. How?"
Hoodwink let a knife's edge slip into his voice. "I'll tell you everything in good time, Tanner. In good time. But I have a question for you that needs answering, and right away, mind. It's kind of a big one. Ari. Where's my beautiful Ari?"
Tanner's spacesuit slumped visibly. You'd have to hunch your shoulders a lot for that effect to be visible outside the bulky suit.
"I don't know how to tell you this," Tanner said.
Hoodwink felt a rising sense of alarm. "Tell me what? I left her in your charge. In your protection. And now you're going to tell me straight: Where's Ari? Where's my daughter?"
"She's..." Tanner couldn't meet his eye. "She's..."
And then Hoodwink knew.
Everything he'd lived for, everything he'd endured, it was all for nothing.
He had no one now.
He might as well go back.
Abandon this place.
Abandon them all.
He hated them.
All of them.
No, that wasn't true. He loved humanity. But still, Ari...
"She died on the Inside," Tanner said. His lips were shaking. "When I came back here, to the Outside, she was dead."
Hoodwink blinked away the stinging blur in his eyes. "Did you get a medikit? Did you try re-oxygenating her blood? Hook her up to the ECMO heart-lung?" It wouldn't have mattered. When you died on the Inside as a gol, the wires from the umbilical cooked your brain. But he wanted to know that Tanner had done everything in his power to save her.
"No. I would've, but the machines, the golems, they smashed her helmet. There was blood everywhere." Tanner sobbed.
My Ari is dead.
"Was there—" Hoodwink had to pause, because his own voice sounded more like a sob than anything else. Maybe if he spoke faster. He tried again. "Was there anything out of the ordinary in the way she died Inside?" Hoodwink said it as fast as he could, but his voice still caught on the last words.
"What do you mean?"
Why was Tanner making this so hard? Hoodwink's chin was quivering, and he clamped his jaw down tight. Didn't really help. "The way she died!" he managed. "Was there anything out of the ordinary in it!"
"No," Tanner said. "She fell. We... we were climbing the Forever Gate. And she fell. She gave her life to save me." Tanner was weeping openly now.
Hoodwink's legs weakened. It was all he could do to sit down on the moon's icy surface. He stared at the huge, dispersing cloud of dust.
Dead. My Ari is dead.
His gaze was drawn to the blue ribbons in the northern sky, the famous auroras he had watched with the children countless times. Seeing those dancing lights had always filled him with awe for the great spectacle that was the universe. Today the sight only made him feel empty, and alone. She never even got to see it.
He bowed his head. "My Ari."
"It was the four-armed Direwalker, Brute." Tanner spoke as if from across a vast gulf.
"The Direwalker?" Hoodwink was only half listening. Ari was dead. And there was nothing he could do to bring her back.
"It chased us up the Gate. Crawled onto her. But she let go. To save me."
Hoodwink closed his eyes.
"There was one thing out of the ordinary, maybe," Tanner said. "The disk. Jeremy wanted Brute to touch her with a small disk."
"A disk?" Hoodwink looked up suddenly. "What did it look like? Was it metal? Did it touch her forehead?"
"Yes, it was metal. Small, and round."
Hoodwink stood. "Did it touch her forehead?"
"I— I don't know. She fell..."
Hoodwink grabbed him by the shoulders. "Think, man! Did the Direwalker touch her head while they were falling?" If so, then she was dead, yes, but her psyche would still be linked to this world by a tenuous thread.
Tanner shook his head. "No. I mean, I didn't see. She and the Direwalker fell into the snowstorm. Vanished."
Hoodwink released him. A sudden sense of purpose filled him. This wasn't over yet.
"There might still be a chance. If we can get that disk." He glanced toward the distant ship that housed the remnants of humanity. It was a long rectangular structure of folded steel and smooth curves, half buried in the icy landscape. "Take me to her body."
Hoodwink and Tanner started the walk back. Though Hoodwink was filled with renewed hope, he couldn't help but feel that this might be the longest walk of his life. He was going to see the dead body of his little girl. Something no father should have to see.
Not ever.
But ahead, what he initially assumed to be rocks, turned out to be three iron golems looming between him and the ship.
CHAPTER SIX
Hoodwink watched those three golems roll over the icy surface. The smaller fragments of ice shattered beneath their weight, while the larger ones swayed the golems to one side or the other. Their approach was inexorable, and those red lights cast baleful beams across the landscape.
"They just keep coming," Tanner said.
"We're garbage to them." Hoodwink remembered the first time he'd ever encountered one of these things. It had tossed him right into the meat grinder. "Less than scum."
"We are," Tanner said. "Yet they fear us."
"Rightly so. I'm in a foul mood today, Tanner. A very foul mood. What say we hunt us some iron golem?" Hoodwink flicked open the holster at his belt. "My colleagues finally designed a weapon these hands can use."
"Your colleagues?" Tanner said.
"Topside." That silenced him appropriately enough. Hoodwink flipped the safety switch and lifted the weapon. It was similar to a hand-crossbow, except it shot concentrated pulses of energy instead of steel bolts, pulses that could tear through metal from half a mile away. Assuming your aim was right, that is.
It took him five shots to hit the first golem. He got it in the chest. Made that golem stop with a gaping arsehole in its breast. If there'd been any air in the atmosphere, a nice plume of fire and smoke would've been coming from that hole. Too bad.
Hoodwink made short work of the other two golems, and it was over all too soon. Blasting those golems had momentarily made him forget Ari and the grim task just ahead. And now she came rushing back in.
Ari.
Sweet Ari.
He should've come back sooner.
He'd tried, damn it, how he'd tried.
The Council had refused.
He gritted his teeth. The Council. A Council of cunts!
But he wouldn't dwell on them.
He was always doing things for other people. It was time to do something for himself. For Ari. Yes. He had to focus his energies on Ari from now on, to the exclusion of all else. She was his mission. And he would do his damnedest to save her.
He owed her, more than anyone else.
Much more.
He would let a world die to save her.
Two worlds, even.
Still, there had to be a way to save this world. He just didn't know what that way was yet.
Because what was the point of saving her if there was no world to bring her back to?
One step at a time, Hoodwink. One step at a time.
***
Hoodwink knelt before Ari's battered body.
Her legs lay at an odd angle, the hips bent at an impossible position to the torso, her back broken. The glass faceplate of her helmet had been smashed many times over, and her brow had caved so that her eyes and forehead were lost in skull fragments and blood.
The anger clawed at his insides, struggling to get out. He stood, gloves clenching and unclenching, then he turned around. There was an iron golem in here, strapped to the opposite desk by one of its treads. The glass disks that formed its eyes had been smashed.
Hoodwink brought his weapon about. Streaks of light tore gaping holes in the golem. Again and again he fired, the weapon soundlessly pummeling the metal. The hilt that formed the head of the golem vanished, obliterated. An arm fell away. One of the cogs that formed the treads collapsed and the golem tilted to one side.
He heard a voice in his ear. He realized that Tanner had been talking for some time, but it only registered with Hoodwink now.
"Hood, you have to stop. Hood. You'll draw others from outside the ship. Hood."
"Good!" Hoodwink spun on Tanner. "Let them come. I want them to. I dare them to. I've a thirst for killing today, and it won't be quenched until I kill them all!"
Tanner raised his hands, eying the weapon that was now pointed at him. He licked his lips nervously. "Then who will repair the ship?"
Hoodwink swiftly lowered the weapon. He had no right to be aiming it at Tanner like that. Tanner wasn't the enemy.
Hoodwink holstered the weapon and went back to Ari. He knelt beside her and wept.
"Ari. My daughter. I'm sorry I abandoned you. I should've stayed. I should've found a way. What a fool I've been. And I promise now, I won't let you down. I'll get you back."
Hoodwink tasted the salt from his tears. Funny how tears didn't taste too different from blood. Both salty. One a tad coppery.
He retrieved the tweezers from the kit he'd found. The tool felt clumsy in those unwieldy gloves, but he managed to get the proper grip. He grabbed a test tube from the kit with his other hand.
"All I ask is that you be patient with me, Ari." He poked those tweezers inside the broken helmet. "The task before me is long, and dangerous. But I'll find a way. You know me, always figuring out how to make things right. But I have to take something from you now, I do. Just a small thing. Forgive me. I know I've taken a lot from you already, but I'm going to give it all back to you. I promise."
He tweezed a hair from her forehead. It came away with a small, bloody chunk of skin, and he dropped the hair, gory lump and all, into the test tube. He had to tell himself that this was someone else, not his daughter. He wouldn't have been able to continue otherwise.
Someone else.
He forced the tweezers past the gore and into the skull, until he felt the spongy resistance of the gray matter, and he pinched away a portion of the brain, dropping that into the test tube as well. He returned the tweezers to the kit and corked the tube.
"I remember the first time she came home with a bloody nose," Hoodwink said. "She told me one of the other girls in class did it, at lunch, when Ari had refused to share her meal. I don't know about you, but I recognize bullying when I see it. I felt so helpless. I wanted to protect her. It was my duty as a father to protect her. I told her I'd go and talk to that little girl's parents. She begged me not to. Said she could take care of herself, and that my going would just make things worse.
"Next day she came home with a black eye. Again it was the bully. And again she begged me not to confront the parents. The next day she came home and her other eye was black. I'd had enough. I couldn't stand to see my daughter hurt like that. I told her I was going to the parents. But unlike the previous days, she wore a smile. I asked her why she was so happy. She said this time when the other girl bullied her, she fought back, and gave her a fat lip. I scolded her of course. Told her that you can't solve all your problems by fighting. But inside I was happy. And proud of her. So damn proud. The bully left her alone after that.
"And so here she lies now, with more than just a bloody nose and a black eye. With her skull caved, her brain crushed, her spine snapped. She gave her life to save you, Tanner. Stood up against the ultimate of bullies. And you know what? I'm more proud of her than ever before."
Tanner was weeping. Rightly so. Hoodwink would've cried again too, but he'd no more tears left. The dead and humiliated body of his little girl was right in front of him. How could he cry, when fury burned in his heart?
He was angry at the machines.
But even more angry at himself.
Hoodwink clenched his fist. "It was my fault. I should've never brought her into this. If I hadn't interfered with her life, she'd still be alive on the Inside today, none-the-wiser."
"But you gave her youth, Hoodwink. A second chance at life. A renewed purpose. That's more than most
people get."
"But she would have been reborn on the Inside anyway if she'd died naturally..."
An uncomfortable silence stretched between the two of them.
"Can you really save her?" Tanner said at last.
Can I? He studied the contents of the tube, and the bloody memento of his daughter it contained. He stashed the glass cylinder in his utility belt, saying nothing.
"I'll do whatever I can to help you," Tanner said. "Whatever it takes. I promise."
Whatever it takes. Easy enough to say. But to actually do, well, that was another story. We'll see if you follow through on that Tanner. If only you knew the potential price...
"Time to find the children." Hoodwink stood. "And maybe get you some food. You must be hungry after starving for the past two days."
Tanner frowned. "I've no appetite at all."
Neither did Hoodwink, at that.
He rested a hand on Ari's helmet.
We will meet again, he promised.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Hoodwink and Tanner returned to the icy surface of the moon and circled the crashed ship, looking for another way in. Hoodwink noted that while the surface of the vessel was heavily dented and blackened in places, with some broken windows and hull breaches, overall the ship seemed structurally sound. Amazing, given the beating it had taken. Kudos to the repair golems.
Hoodwink managed to find a working airlock after shooting down only seven of the iron golems. Just in time too, because Hoodwink's weapon jammed—or the charge ran out, he wasn't sure which—and he and Tanner were forced to barrel inside before another two repair golems could catch them. When the airlock re-pressurized, Hoodwink was the first to take off his helmet. It was getting a bit stuffy in that suit.
Tanner pressed him for the airlock access code, but Hoodwink ignored the question, instead hurrying toward Beta Station. He'd ordered the children to move there a little over two days ago, after the window had shattered in their original station. The children were a group of youngsters fetched from the Inside. Hoodwink's own hand-picked team. He'd trained them how to use the system, using his own rudimentary knowledge gleaned from the archives, and they'd quickly surpassed him. Tanner was the oldest among them at twenty-one.