by P. R. Adams
At first he did well, each step a rolling echo in the stairwell. He advanced a flight before having to stop, sweat salty on his lips. He blinked and gasped, desperately sucking in the mask’s oxygen, which burned his throat. His legs were jelly, his knees throbbing nubs of pain drained of elasticity and strength. The carbine felt like a stone slab. Below, the door banged in its frame, and he realized it wouldn’t keep the dogs out.
He moved on, legs weakening with each step.
It was worse in the darkness, a blackness that was near absolute. Small slivers of light trickled down from the upper levels.
Emergency lighting. Somehow survived the fire.
More banging came from below, and he understood the dogs were using their own primitive programming to overwhelm the door. It was warped already, and with each blow it bounced in its frame. It would warp more and eventually leave a gap big enough for a snout or a paw to get in, and then the wicked beasts would be in, coming for him as they had for Gwambe and Yama.
The heat pummeled him, squeezing him like a python. He was dripping, his armor working desperately to bring his core temperature down. An advanced suit like he was used to wouldn’t be up to the task. The basic model he’d gotten from Fort Benning was failing miserably. Rimes gained the fifth floor before sensing he was going to collapse.
He stopped.
Banging echoed again, then stopped, replaced by a braying that sent shivers down his back. He slung the carbine over a shoulder and leaned against a wall for support, wincing at the heat. His hands were slabs of meat—huge, graceless, formless. The braying echoed up the stairwell ahead of the sound of paws.
They’re in. They found the stairs.
Finally, his thick brain reminded his hands they were seeking something, a grenade. He gripped one and returned to the climb.
The claws clattered, and he knew they were scrambling into the entryway, working as a pack. He stopped long enough to pull the pin and toss the grenade below.
They were tightly packed. Wherever it had detonated it would touch something.
He climbed, accelerating, then stumbling. The grenade exploded, and the yelps came. Glorious, musical, magical yelps. Yelps of pain and collapse and ruin. He laughed, or at least he tried to. One more grenade. He would wait until he knew where they were.
Ninth floor, and he heard them. He’d opened a lead. The grenade had scared them. No. Confused them. They were damaged, lesser.
Rebuilding their tactics to match the remaining pack.
Slowly he twisted, looking up and down the deep stairwell shaft. He was closer to the top than the bottom. He leaned forward to cradle his head. He wanted to push up his headgear, wanted desperately to massage his temples. He labored to breathe. Even through the mask he could smell the chemicals, just as Barlowe had warned.
He cursed his decision to wear the same headgear as the team.
Live as a team, die as a team. No special treatment.
He’d made a concession with his armor, something hidden, something that didn’t quite set him apart as much as the helmet would have.
Another deception, another secret, and not enough to save me from the heat. I can’t hate them for their secrets. I have my own.
Something sounded above him, louder than the night’s thunder. Loud enough to shatter the planet’s crust, to turn the building to dust, but he couldn’t be sure what it was. Not at first.
Then it came to him: a door.
His left hand hooked the weapon by its strap, his right gripped the handrail. Grunting quietly, he began the ascent again. Up, the target, the enemy, the goal.
Paws. Barking. The pack had found itself. They were closing again. He fished for the last grenade. Struggling, fighting. Finally, the pin came free. Movement below.
He dropped the grenade and pressed back against the wall.
Another explosion, more yelping. They were only androids. Fake. They regrouped. He took the stairs again.
No need to wait. They’ll come for me soon enough.
Heat. Fire. It was destroying his chances. He needed a break. He needed something. He pushed himself forward, rising in the stairwell, separating from the depths and the damned nightmarish beasts that pursued him.
He stopped, blinked. Something was moving below. The clatter of paws echoing in the stairwell. Again they had regrouped. They were coming for him.
He looked up. The stairs seemed to rise forever. He hefted the carbine, clumsy in his hands, hands that refused to behave as they once had. He set his jaw, clenched his teeth.
The footsteps were closing, but he still had a lead. Air, blood pumping—he needed to move, to rejuvenate himself with the purity of action. Another flight of stairs, stumbling, recovering, jamming his fingers and banging his shins against the heated concrete steps. The pain was fresh, alive, invigorating.
He reached the next landing.
A second to listen, no more. He heard the echoes—click-clack, click-clack—coming closer. Too close to escape. Running would be suicide.
A glance down the flight he’d just left. The light was dim and only touched certain areas. The shadows were uncaring, no ally, no servant. They—the sounds were distinct, and the numbers of those sounds seemed to be too great to count—would come from the darkness. They would cross the landing as he was doing now. He would see them in the light, or he would miss them in the darkness in between.
He climbed the stairs, stopping four steps up, pressing against the wall. Green and black images, intensity varying, one area bright, the next plunged into near absolute darkness. The landing was small, not even two meters. They would be across it in no time. The light was imperfect, but it would have to do.
He checked the carbine, looked back down the stairs. Sounds from below. They were closing, accelerating, aware that their prey had slowed or stopped again. He steadied his breathing, drove out the jitters and shakes.
If they survived the burst, how many do they have above? Am I too late? Can this even be done?
A slap of exposed metal on cement, and he drove the thought from his mind. He sighted down the barrel, eyes on the shadow-light pattern of the stairs beneath the landing. He exhaled gently, relaxed, fell back on training so deeply ingrained that it was instinctive.
The first one came into sight. Glowing eyes, bright green in the goggle’s vision. It leapt, possibly sensing him, possibly mad with pain. It was fashioned after a canine he couldn’t place, broad at the shoulders, thick in the chest, but it was definitely synthetic.
He fired a short burst and watched its head explode, the fine machinery released to bounce and roll and finally skid to a stop on the landing. Battery destroyed, its eyes darkened, then winked out.
Others came. They were the same model, but they were even more damaged. The second was missing the entire left side of its face, the third and fourth limped slightly, their forelimbs bereft of flesh, synthetic bone and sinew exposed. Grenades and gunfire, but they had survived.
He fired again, and they fell, the last of them collapsing with its shattered head millimeters from his feet, eyes winking out, jaws working weakly.
He listened, heard nothing.
Done. The last of them.
He reloaded and began the climb again. If there were more…
No, there were no more. They had nearly eliminated the entire security apparatus. He was sure of that now. They had done so much, surprised even him with their effectiveness. He was nearing the end.
He groaned. There had been a time he might have slept a few days and it would’ve all come back to him—the strength, the hunger, the desire. That had been an eternity ago, a time when he had known honor and decency, and the world had been safer. Now, sleep was something final, waiting for him once the mission was complete.
At the next landing, he stopped and glanced up. Three more flights of stairs, then the ceiling. Three more flights, and he would…he would be where someone could have survived.
Somewhere in all the fighting and destruction there ha
d been a transition, a change in the order of things. He’d found a balance, a peace, an acceptance, but it had momentarily been stolen from him. Thunder boomed outside, penetrating even the impervious concrete that held him, held it.
The balance had returned. The transition had completed.
The throbbing in his head relented; his breathing eased. He lifted the mask from his face and jogged the next flight of stairs with surprising ease, stopping to check the carbine, to flex his hands. His vitality was returning.
An explosion—throaty, angry—roared from the depths. Flame and heat jetted up. He crouched, leaned against the wall, let the heat wash over him.
He stood and jogged again. The last flight of stairs. Emergency lighting burned like stars, its casing warped and twisted from the flames. The lights were blinding, summoning, awakening.
He stopped at the door and sensed. No heat, no flames. They were beyond the door, though, enemy and objective.
He clenched his fist, saw it shake, felt his body failing him. He clasped his hand to his chest to steady it.
So close now, only to see everything risked by this frailty. Just another few minutes, that’s all I ask of you. Kwon, can you hear me? Just another few minutes, and you’ll be free. We’ll be free.
He looked along the cement wall, saw the metal rungs rising. The storm raged outside. They were waiting for him. He threw the carbine strap over his shoulder, twisting it until the weapon was on his back. A grunt, and he took to the rungs.
His legs protested, his arms even more so. He ignored them and pulled himself to the top rung. A final grunt, and he set his shoulder against the roof hatch, knocking it open, warping the hinges.
The outside air hit his face. He closed his eyes, breathing in the coolness, tasting the pure rain, letting it wash over and cleanse him, reinvigorate him. He climbed and scrambled to the roof. It was as black as the deepest abyss, the darkness only broken by the occasional flash of lightning. Wind buffeted him, threatened to tear him from the rooftop.
He searched the sky, saw the shuttle’s flickering lights, nearly drowned by the rain. Blinking, sucking in the sweet life-giving air, shaking away the last doubts and fears, he waved them away. He descended again, ready.
Images came to him, and he embraced them. Death. Destruction. Desolation. Violation. All-consuming, purifying flame, the lightning and thunder of the heavens.
Mine. All mine.
The night had ended. It was a new day. He pulled the carbine from his back, set his shoulder against the door, and shoved.
47
17 June, 2174. Kennesaw, Georgia.
* * *
The door opened onto an area that was designed for offices. Glassed-in spaces ran the length of the opposite wall, continuing down the left wall. White emergency lights reflected from every surface, giving the room a subdued, lazy brilliance. The air was cool against his wet skin. The offices offered little protection should a gunfight break out.
Rimes didn’t expect protection.
There were ten of them, arrayed in a semicircle a few meters from the door. They wore armor, but it wasn’t that of the SunCorps’ security team. It was midnight blue, with pale gray striping. He hadn’t seen that type of armor before, but he knew it just the same. They wore no headgear.
Engineered immunity to bioweapons and the thing’s influence.
There were four men, four women, and two creatures Rimes couldn’t be sure of. The creatures were fashioned after animals—a wolf and a hyena—but were still human enough. They were athletic, muscles rippling beneath skin-tight armor. And they were young; the oldest couldn’t have been thirty.
Rimes felt ancient, fearless.
They came at him almost immediately, surging with nearly the same sort of speed Yama had exhibited and even greater power.
[Images. Memories. Cleo in his home, jelly jar in hand, cancer taking him.]
“You ain’t nothin' like your brothers. Never have been.”
[Image: Alejandra angrily standing at her sink.]
“You were always the special one. We all expected so much from you.”
He fired at the nearest, one of the young men, shattering his face. Rimes pivoted, deflected a hand reaching for the gun, and drove the buttstock into a young woman’s face. He felt the stock collapse and the face also. He hurled the ruined gun at the hyena, then leapt, clearing the line of them before the carbine shattered the hyena’s head and snapped its neck.
[Another image: Credence cradling him after he’d dreamed about Jared and Calvin.]
The memories I have now, what I dream of, what I remember, it’s mostly positive.
Before his feet touched the ground, the wolf was on him, punching, slashing. Rimes backpedaled, taking the blows as well as he could, feeling them even through his armor. A man—dark, towering—closed, planted his leg, prepared for a kick that would shatter Rimes’s neck. Rimes struck first, kicking through the planted leg, snapping the fibula and tibia and dislocating the ankle. The wolf pressed the momentary opening, knocking Rimes to the ground.
[Another image flashed through his mind: Credence sitting in the Drake's galley, explaining to them how she and Scott had managed to get the Drake job.]
“About four years ago, he finally buckled and began his studies. In the end he caved to my pressure.”
Rimes rolled with the blow, used its energy to gain distance from the rest. He came to his feet and pivoted as the wolf closed again. Rimes ducked a blow that would have shattered his trachea. He came up behind the wolf, grabbed its chin, and twisted. He bit into the exposed throat, tearing through the flimsy armor and the flesh and muscle and artery. He tasted the flesh and shivered excitedly, remembering the times in Seoul and Tokyo. Kwon’s times, not Rimes’s.
[Another image, Credence in the Drake's galley again.]
“I mean, I had the mod early on. It’s a wonderful thing. Who wouldn't want to be closer to our genie cousins?”
Two more closed, a woman attacking high, a man going for Rimes’s feet. Rimes avoided the high swing but couldn’t avoid the low kick. Bones shattered, and his foot went numb.
He fell.
[An image. The dream of Molly leaving him, waking in the physics lab next to Credence.]
The dream was different. A different time, a different pain. So real and yet not.
The woman drove a heel into his sternum, and Rimes nearly blacked out. He grabbed her foot, yanked and twisted, relishing the sound of breaking bone and tearing flesh. He tossed the foot aside. The man kicked again, this time shattering the kneecap on Rimes’s leg with the broken foot. Rimes snarled.
[Another image, he and Credence in the alley, fighting the SunCorps agents, him trying to snap her out of the dream.]
We came up with MetaConceptual. Remember? We are MetaConceptual.
The rest rushed him then, raining a flurry of blows on him. Bones cracked. Muscles tore. Teeth shattered. Three times Rimes felt darkness threatening. Three times he refused it, pushing it back, promising that its time would come soon enough.
[Duke in the alien depths of the prison on Sahara.]
“Our people have all been tools used by a greater power.”
[Imogen’s speech in the galley flashed through his mind.]
“The mind can be manipulated through subtle changes over time so that the victim will never even suspect they had been affected. We can craft an illusion within its illusion.”
Rimes roared.
Molly, Jared, Calvin. Taken from him. Lies. Betrayal. Manipulation. Duty. Service. Honor.
Taken from him.
Innocent blood spilled in the name of money. So much pain, so much horror.
[Credence in the galley again. Explaining what had happened on the Drake.]
“Scott touched it. He couldn’t help himself. He was drawn to it.”
Rimes thought of the trinity: Perditori, Sansin, Shiva.
Lightning leapt from the walls. It arced, touching each of his attackers. It danced along their powerfu
l arms, chests, and legs. It froze them in place. It boiled their blood and cooked their skin. It fried their synthetic brains. When it stopped, the room stank of charred flesh. They collapsed, all of them. Destroyed, obliterated.
He had called, and the storm had come.
[His first meeting with Imogen on Bermuda.]
“Tell me about Perditori, Imogen. You know him?”
“As much as anyone can know him, yes. I’m very close to him.”
Rimes gasped. He had never conceived of the sort of pain he was feeling. He had never even considered so much pain possible. It was, in its own way, a new awakening, a new portal to awareness. He tried to sit and failed. He tried again and by force of will managed it.
[Meeting Dr. Hwang Sung-il in the LoDu tower.]
“Now they have been transcended by their own creation. And they fear Shiva.”
Blood bubbled from his lips. What he could see of the room was distorted, blurry. His breathing was a wet wheeze. Simply thinking of standing made his body spasm in protest. He silenced the protesting and rose, somehow managing to stagger forward on one broken leg, the ruined one dragging behind him.
We are MetaConceptual.
Through his blurry vision, he could see two doors exiting the room. One was to his right, the other to his left. He staggered toward the left door, stopping when he saw Imogen in the stairwell doorway. She was drenched, shaking.
“You can’t do this alone.” Rain dripped from her hair into her eyes, presenting the illusion of tears. She wiped at them futilely.
I can. I will.
Imogen stepped toward him, hand extended. “Jack…Kwon…”
Shiva. Sansin. Perditori. Go, Imogen. Quickly. Before it’s too late. They've awakened me—us—fully. There will be a reckoning.
Rimes looked at the door he had chosen, sensed the power beyond it.
There will be a reckoning.
Imogen turned, stopped. She couldn’t face him. “Our people. What was done to you, to yours? It wasn’t right.”