“No! NO!” Justin yelled, and struggled again. One of the Minors slapped him in the stomach, and all the air left him.
He heard a helicopter—no, two.
“They’re almost here,” one of the Minors said. They pulled him down to the main platform where four more Minors and a giant stood watch, and they escorted him to the side.
= = =
Glass moved through the heat sink field, pausing every two seconds to gauge his surroundings. The thousands of slats were ten feet tall and three feet wide, and their staggered pattern made it difficult to see more than six feet in any direction. He was deep within them when he heard Minors yelling at Justin to wake up. The dish blocked his view. But he couldn’t go there now. The Spider Minor was the primary—she had to die first. If she wasn’t handled, he’d never make it back to Justin. She was a peer.
Electricity arced between the slats, crackling Glass’s vision with interference. He held one carbine forward and tucked the other to his side. He heard the helicopters approach, one with a deep thump, something that pushed a lot of air. He walked slowly, soaking up every sense that could root her out.
He stepped into a pile of dead birds, and it erupted into metal talons like a bear trap. He jumped and twisted free, firing down to where she had been. He spun, scanning the sinks, guns committed, smoke curling from their muzzle tips. He heard the rolling tap of her feet as she fled toward the edge, and now that he knew the sound, he could isolate it, like a bloodhound smelling a fugitive’s old shirt.
He worked his way toward the edge, and as he did the wind picked up, thrumming the heat sinks like a tuning fork. He filtered out their chorus, but the tack-tack of her feet had disappeared. He circled the bird piles—that trick was done. But even without his memories, he was uncertain how to proceed. He had never fought something like this, something that had evolved so far beyond him. It was as alien to him as he himself had been to every victim he’d ushered into the inky black.
He saw a flicker of movement ahead. He could see a part of her behind a heat sink. He circled it slowly, never taking his eyes from it. She was as still as a statue, lying in wait.
He rushed her position, guns drawn. But it wasn’t her. It was a young Asian male, strung from the heat sink by his guts. Lacking any memory of Yoshi, Glass walked by the boy without a second glance.
With the second trap having failed, China Girl slithered out from underneath the platform as he passed and quietly closed the distance. When she pounced, Glass sensed her—he turned and fired, but she was already upon him. Two arms grabbed each of his own, tore the carbines away, and tossed them over the side.
Blades were pointless for both of them—hers snapped across his face and his rammed against her rigid body, neither to any effect. Glass tried to flip over her, but her back whipped up into him like a silverfish. Her rear limbs grabbed his legs, and with her middle four limbs on the ground, she stretched him like a guitar string.
Then she tottered to the edge and threw him over the side.
= = =
Glass landed on his feet ten stories below just as Raimey approached the base. Instead of running over to him, Glass ran off into the bush.
“What the fuck is going on?” Raimey asked.
Glass reappeared reloading the two carbines and holstering one to his back. He recognized the giant as a friendly. He scrambled onto Raimey’s fist, knelt down, and pointed up.
“Throw me,” Glass said with the cadence of a Speak & Spell.
= = =
The gunship covered the transport helicopter as it settled down near the platform to evacuate Justin. China Girl had regrouped with the others when she saw Glass fly back up onto the platform.
How?
He ran along the slats, one carbine locked to his cheek, firing at her eyes. Two shattered, and she spun low, away from the scattering Minors. He chased after her, using the heat sinks like stilts, keeping to the high ground so that anywhere she scurried to, he would see.
His rounds found home. The .50 BMG rounds couldn’t penetrate her shell, but they still punched her around, tumbling her through the brittle slats. She tried to evade with her lightning speed, but even though no one else could see her, her visual trickery didn’t work on Glass. He traced her with his rounds, reloading in a blur when a magazine went dry.
Glass kept one gun on China Girl and pulled the other out and aimed at a helicopter hovering on the side. The armor-piercing rounds tore through it, and smoke erupted from underneath its rotors. The helicopter pulled away.
The Tank Major and six Minors had regained their wits and were closing in on Glass.
BOOM!
A corner of the platform exploded upward, and Raimey pulled himself onto the surface. He was taller than the heat sinks and could see everything; he immediately charged the Tank Major ten yards away.
WHA-WHAM!
The Tank Major exploded into shrapnel and his arms spun out like boomerangs, toppling a swath of heat sinks before skipping over the side.
The Minors fled from Raimey’s path. One was too close. Raimey ran over the sinks like a combine thresher, picked the Minor up, and tossed him into the path of the Data Sump transmission. The Minor ignited like a match head when he crossed into the microwave beam.
China Girl scampered over the side. Glass followed her to the edge, still hopping across the sinks like stilts, but he didn’t fully commit. He turned and shot a Minor flanking Raimey. The other three continued to fire, distancing themselves from the giant.
The gunship approached the deck and began raining lead from its minigun cannons as it docked to pick up Justin and the remaining Minors. Its guns were independently controlled by the Sleeper pilot. One followed Glass as he circled away, using the data dish as a blind; the other fired on Raimey, who braced himself against the onslaught but didn’t hide. His body lit up like a sparkler and he slowly trudged forward. Glass popped up on the other side and shot the three Minors down, leaving Justin unattended.
Get Justin and leave on foot, Evan said to China Girl. She hung underneath the platform.
The helicopter altered its angle, aborting the pickup to focus its entire arsenal on Raimey. It trimmed fore, aiming the 40mm cannon—a tank buster. The platform exploded in ruins as it chased the giant.
Raimey took a direct hit and then two more that threw him end over end. All around him the platform was being obliterated by the explosive rounds. His vision doubled, blood dripped from his nose and mouth, and he shook his head to stay alert.
With the helicopter focused on Raimey, Glass was free to sprint toward it. It was ten yards off the deck, an easy leap, but the gunship’s sensors picked him up. It canted over, momentarily taking the cannon off Raimey, and the miniguns spilled lead in torrential tears, attempting to cut Glass down before he stowed onboard. Raimey took advantage of that brief reprieve by running straight at the bird. His vision was blurry, but he felt the heavy shells against his chest and he sensed the general motion of the helicopter rolling fore again to train its most potent weapon on him. When he got to the edge, he jumped and raked his hands out like claws. They found the nose.
His hands dug through the front of the hull like it was foil, and immediately the helicopter dropped nose-first into the Sump.
For a moment the pilot and Raimey were eye to eye. Then the helicopter—still firing its cannon point blank into the platform—rolled off the side as if in slow motion. John fell with it. When it landed, it collapsed like an accordion under Raimey’s weight and detonated in a ball of fire.
The old giant pulled himself from the wreckage and ran to get back up to the platform.
= = =
The battle was over. No more reinforcements came by helicopter. No more shots rang underneath the grinding sound of the Sump.
Searching, Raimey found Yoshi.
“Dammit.” He gently plucked his body off the heat sink. The gore below Yoshi’s chest was gruesome, but above it was just a boy with his eyes closed.
Yoshi was h
olding something in his hand. Raimey’s hands were too big to pluck it, so he gave the hand a gentle shake. It was some kind of memory card.
Glass approached.
“Why are you holding the dead boy?” Glass asked.
“What are you talking about?” Raimey replied. “We have to bury him.”
“Leave him. We have a mission.”
“What the fuck’s wro—” Raimey looked down at the card, then to Glass. “Do you know this boy’s name?” he asked Glass.
“No. You are John Raimey. I need to find my weapons.”
Raimey nodded to the memory card. “You need that.”
Glass picked it up and turned it in his hand.
“What does it hold?”
Raimey almost told him the truth, but he realized it would mean nothing. “Information about the mission.”
Glass inserted the card. The memories flooded back. The dead boy in front of him morphed into his friend. With sudden awareness, he swept Yoshi away from Raimey. “You shouldn’t have been the one to die,” he said to the ever-sleeping boy.
“Where’s Justin?” Raimey said.
“The spider Minor took him away on foot.”
Raimey pounded the ground with his fist. “NO! What are we going to do? We don’t know where to go!”
“Yes we do,” Glass said. “My tracking device is still on him.”
Chapter 11
Justin’s eyes were closed, but he could feel his body swaying back and forth as if he were floating on a raft. He felt metal rods beneath his body, and he cracked his eyes open.
China Girl glanced down at the human she was carrying through the forest. “Don’t move,” she said. She tore through the forest, galloping faster than a thoroughbred, leaping over and ducking under the trees and brush.
The remaining soldiers on base consisted of ten Minors and one Tank Major that had a broken hydraulshock. They were in a caravan of four armored trucks coming to meet her five miles from the Sump. She was less than a mile away from the rendezvous. They would go back to the base, and then she and Justin-01 would get on the plane and head to the wasteland, and the Northern Star.
You’ve done well, Lindo said. She appreciated his approval.
Is Kove dead? She had felt his link blip out during the battle.
Yes. Raimey was too powerful.
China Girl asked no more questions, and her concern over Kove, Raimey, and Glass washed away like a sandcastle in high tide. She had completed her mission. She held the trophy that Lindo prized. It was time to go home. Back to the reason she was built, back to her only purpose in life. She saw the lights of the caravan ahead.
= = =
Glass and Raimey fled on foot, their ears tuned for the sound barrier boom of a nuclear warhead entering the atmosphere.
“They’re heading to the base,” Glass said.
They had quickly buried Yoshi in an unmarked grave, and John felt the bitter sin of leaving a soldier behind. If they won, he would come back.
“How far does your tracking system go?”
“It’s global. They’ll take him by plane.”
“What should we do?” Glass asked.
“See where they take him and go there.”
= = =
The caravan got to base and pulled up to the plane.
“Can you walk?” China Girl asked Justin.
“Yes.”
“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said. She walked behind him, and they climbed into the plane. The Sleeper at the controls closed the door and the jet taxied to the runway.
She strapped Justin into a seat and curled up in the corner like a mutated dog.
“If you need to use the restroom, there’s one toward the front,” she said. “Don’t try anything. Lindo wants your brain. He doesn’t care about the rest.”
“What’s your name?” Justin asked.
“China Girl.”
Justin smiled. “Like the song?”
“Yes.”
“Was she a part of this the whole time?”
“Who?”
“Vanessa Raimey.”
“I don’t know who that is.”
“The Consciousness Module.”
“The Consciousness Module is a part of the Northern Star, thus a part of Lindo. It acts according to his will.”
Of course. Lindo’s puppet. The man with a billion strings. Justin felt the homing device in his pocket and wondered if Glass and Raimey would find him. He wondered if they were even alive.
It was a three-hour flight. Justin was unbound, and for the first hour he glanced around, looking for something to end it. There were items that could do the job. One section of the plane was an open compartment that contained replacement parts for China Girl. A dozen retractable blades were affixed to the wall, and they looked like they could pop off easily. He pictured himself taking one and jabbing it into his neck, the red spilling out of him, the spider trying to stop the bloodletting with her scissory hands.
It didn’t matter. China Girl didn’t sleep, and no matter where she was on the plane, her crucifix of unblinking black stones were always watching. Two hours into the trip, she left the compartment. To test her awareness, he stood up—and she was immediately present, filing the aisle with her feet.
“What are you doing?”
“I have to take a leak.”
She didn’t understand.
“I have to pee.”
The spider stood motionless. Then: “We are ten minutes from descent. It can wait. Please sit down and fasten your seatbelt.”
He sat in a jump seat near a window. They plane descended into a carpet of dark gray clouds just as the sun crested the horizon. The gray turned toxic green before Justin’s eyes.
“What’s with the clouds?” he asked.
“Washington, D.C. is in nuclear winter.”
“But that happened twenty-five years ago.” When the Northern Star took over, Lindo had nuked Washington, D.C. as an example of what he would do to the rest of the world if they didn’t fall in line. By killing his own son, he had shown how easily he would kill another’s. But fallout didn’t stay in the air indefinitely.
“Lindo maintains the radiation levels as a deterrent,” China Girl replied.
“He still nukes Washington?”
“Yes. There have been assaults on the Northern Star before you.”
Justin looked back out into the gangrened sky. “Don’t the nukes affect other regions around here where people live?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t think that’s fucked up?” Justin said. China Girl didn’t reply. When the plane touched down she disappeared for a moment, and when she came back she was carrying a radiation suit in her front limbs.
“Put this on.”
He did as he was told. The plane taxied to a stop and China Girl opened the door.
“Come,” she said. Justin heard a chittering outside; he hesitated. She grabbed his arm and pulled him out with her.
Justin was greeted by an army of Lindos. “Hello, Justin,” they said. Some were ancient corpses of soldiers from the civil war. Others were newer, designed without a compartment to house the guts of a man. They were all a pure extension of Lindo, and they suffered none of the ill effects that plagued other Lindos around the world. If cyberspace was the Northern Star’s home, the wasteland was its breach into the physical realm. Evan watched Justin-01 walk off the plane with four thousand eyes.
Justin couldn’t place where they were in Washington, D.C. Had he not known where they were going, he would have never guessed that this was D.C. The runway bordered the Potomac River; west, the land looked like a desert on Mars: muted hills and blowing red sand. Across the river were the skeletal remains of a city—a twisted, burnt ruin. When the bomb went off, tens of millions must have died. Washington, D.C. had been one of the mega-cities.
Justin shivered in his suit. What has he done? He couldn’t wrap his head around the notion that someone would turn a metropolitan area into an atomi
c desert. Twenty-five years of nuclear war, a voice in his head whispered. Twenty-five years of nuclear war.
The ground shook, but neither China Girl nor the Lindos paid any attention. They flowed around Justin like a school of fish as China Girl escorted him to a waiting truck. A bullhorn filled the air, and Justin looked across the river just as a building toppled. Behind it, at first, he thought was another building. But then it moved. His eyes widened. Big Brother. Cynthia had mentioned the Colossals, but nothing had prepared him for what he saw.
Big Brother was a battleship centaur, one hundred and fifty feet tall and nearly four hundred feet long; to it, the river was a mere stream, and it slogged across. Ten legs as thick as redwoods carried it forward, and four long arms were tucked tightly against its torso. Massive guns stuck out of its side like broken ribs, and on its back was a vertical launching system of thirty missile tubes that housed cluster bombs, poisonous gas, and nuclear warheads. Its armor was a composite of osmium and depleted uranium—the same as Raimey. In place of a head was a radar dish, and beneath the dish, centered in the chest, was an opaque dome that was a light channel to four chambers housing a quadruplet of sisters, each suspended in gel and unaware that they were four separate entities. Two controlled the weapons, one controlled the legs, and the other controlled the upper body and arms. They were melded into one consciousness.
The idea of Big Brother had come to Evan in a dream, but he’d needed like minds to link up and become one. He had found the quadruplets in Russia. The reality was better than he had ever hoped.
Big Brother was one of eight Colossals that Lindo had built after becoming the Northern Star. They were walking war machines designed to defeat armies. Five were deployed in other parts of the world, while three had been kept in Washington, D.C. Two of those had since fallen—when Israel and Russia had attempted to destroy the Northern Star at the source. It had been an epic war, but Evan held no ill will for the men who had confronted him. He understood a million times over why they had done what they had done: they were obtuse and didn’t realize that the era of government had come to an end. They hadn’t understood the futility of their effort as wave after wave of soldiers airdropped into D.C. And they hadn’t understood why Evan called Washington, D.C. the wasteland . . . until he scorched the earth with so many nuclear weapons that most of the city was pounded into irradiated dunes of concrete and steel.
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