The battle slides out of view as the road curves. The incline is getting steeper. I hear only my footfalls on pavement as I round a final bend. My armored scales are rustling with anticipation, waves dancing up and down my body. At my joints, the scales flutter their small wings to dissipate waste heat. I now recognize the machined flakes as natural born—ikimono, like me.
At the final bend, I slow and stop. A bank of foul smoke is curling down the mountain road, waist-high. The screams of the living and dying and the stutter of their weaponry perforate the misty calm. And under it all, I feel the mammoth vibration of the black walkers as they lumber into battle.
Ryujin has given me a weapon, however, and I intend to use it.
Head leveled, I stride into the chaos. Crimson lasers dissect the smoke, searching for targets, leaving roiling patterns. Bullets snap through the crisp air. Something big and dark flashes over my head. Spiders, the height of houses, are charging through the haze. They trail long black tentacles, many with men attached at the neck. These slave soldiers obediently fire their weapons wherever the red targets appear. Overhead, I notice a rustling blue sheen on the sky. Freeborn are communicating nearby.
I don’t notice the soldier until it is almost too late.
A black cord snakes into view, connected to a vague shape that becomes clear only in proximity. The malnourished human blinks at me, dirty face tight and tense, his rifle shouldered. Then I hear the distinct cough of an AK-47.
I drop to the ground.
The dirty pavement is cool on my knees and elbows, and my body is freezing cold. My scales are gone. They flutter in place, a silhouette remaining in the air over my head, still in the shape of my body. Bullets are tearing through them, but they’re so small that they are simply pushed away.
A decoy.
I flick my fingers over the dirt at the man in front of me, an almost instinctual gesture. In response, a few dozen flakes flutter toward him in pirouetting swoops. He stares at the butterflies, unafraid. Then they land on his arms and face, biting. The man screams hoarsely and grabs for his collar as brown flakes wriggle underneath. He spins in a circle, cord whipping over his head, fingers scratching at his neck. I hear a pop and a whiz as the collar retracts.
Standing up, still naked, I put my arms out and allow the flakes to return to my body. The fluttering scales alight on me and adjust again into a tight armored mesh. Their heat warms me as I plunge deeper into the mist, my skin tessellated and gleaming. I allow myself a glance at the crumpled man on the ground as I pass. His throat is missing, only a blood-bright crescent under his beard to show for it.
More dark shapes at the ends of black coils of wire are emerging. I hear the clatter of rifle shots. Gently raising my hands, I step forward and twirl. Flakes spin off my body in a glittering spray, some trailing my body in a disorienting blur and others landing on exposed arms, faces, and necks. The final step of my dance is to sweep both my fists forward, sending a buzzing wave of flakes skittering off my body and tumbling over the ground. They swirl over each other in a tumbling cloud. Around me, I hear guns clattering to the ground, guttural screams, and shapes writhing.
Naked, my body is lean and sharp as a katana. Light brown and humanoid. The barest swell where breasts would be on a human woman. A ragged confusion of long black tendrils cascading over my shoulders. I’m naked, but far from vulnerable.
I walk, scales dancing in the air around me, fluttering and lethal. Laser targets reflect from the shining haze of their wings, unable to align. An overturned car emerges from the mist. Behind it are the gaunt, frightened faces of refugee fighters.
A powerful flashlight beam hits my face.
I don’t shy away. In my peripheral vision, scales are floating around me like moths fluttering in moonlight, a beautiful seething nimbus.
A man shouts at me in English. I do not understand the words, but the man’s intention is clear. Raising my empty hands, I watch the perplexed faces. When I speak, my voice is high and human-sounding. It settles them by its nature.
“Adjudicator Zero? Where?”
Blank stares.
“Freeborn? Where?” I repeat.
They open fire on targets behind me.
Again, I fall to my hands and knees. A bladed leg sweeps out of the darkness and slices the air where I was just standing. My scales swirl through the flashlight beams like dust motes in sunlight. I scramble forward on all fours, around the car and past their position, closer to the mouth of the tunnel.
The husk of the car is thrown, cartwheeling past me. I climb to my feet, turning. The slavers are dangerous even without their slaves. Some of my flakes are attached to the advancing machine, working to blind its sensors. With ropy legs and slicing forearms, it ignores the butterflies, falling upon the remaining refugees.
“Difensu!” I shout, striding toward the walker. I motion to myself with both hands. “Watashi ni!”
Butterflies bloom off my body in a cloud meant to confuse. The slaver turns back and forth, snapping its claws uselessly at the floating scales. The soldiers take turns firing as they retreat toward the barricaded entrance to the tunnel. Distracted, the walker absorbs too many bullets in a leg joint and collapses.
But another slaver has been lying in wait.
In precise, insectile movements, the thing crawls over the mouth of the cave and drops onto the torn pavement. This machine has no leashes and it is much bigger than the others. A compact man with brown skin and short black hair rides on top. His acne-scarred cheeks are slack, and I see the shining trails of tears on them. His walker lifts two forelimbs, the serrated blades poised to slice into defenseless humans below.
“Danger!” I shout.
The fighters scatter. The slaver drops down and tries to target them, lasers piercing the smoke like tusks. It scuttles toward me and I drop to a knee to avoid another slicing arm. My scales flutter about in diversionary patterns, camouflaging my movements. Faintly, I can hear the scarred man riding above, crying.
. . . Cristo en el cielo, por favor, perdóname . . .
Bursts of gunfire sparkle like stars on the walker’s black armor as it lunges again. I twist and throw myself out of the way, a cloud of scales blooming around me. As I move, a spined ridge parts the flesh over my hip and I am thrown to my knees. Overbalanced, the machine staggers past, legs splaying to catch its footing.
For a long second, the rider is only a few meters away. I can see clearly now that something is wrong with him. A patch of his skull has been shaved and there is a leaking scar underneath. Putrid orange light curls out of the wound. Some evil communication that sends his brown eyes rolling and his lips quivering.
Sssh, Felix, he is whispering to himself. Todo está bien.
I lift a palm to my lips and blow.
A cloud of scales ripple up in a wave toward the man, spreading stubby wings. I fall backward to avoid a spearing leg, roll, and launch to my feet. Flakes already coat the man’s face, wriggling into his skin as the walker struggles. He doesn’t shout as the tiny scales feast on his flesh—just throws his head back, face to the sky, smiling wide as rivulets of blood course down his cheeks. I think he is laughing.
Gracias! Graci—
A volley of bullets slice into the confused walker, sending a spray of black fluid showering over me. Squealing, the machine tries to take a step, staggers, and collapses on its side. The man’s corpse rolls off and lands facedown in the mud.
More black shapes are out there in the mist.
And still, no freeborn emerge from the tunnel entrance. Why are they not fighting to defend their home? In my mind, the memory of an old man speaks: You gave the freeborn life, and only you can give them a reason to fight.
A snatch of blue sky appears overhead. So many bodies are already slumped on the ground around me. So many corpses are fallen among the ruins of slavers, half disappeared in the dissipating mist that still clings to the low spots.
The sky is clear for just this moment.
And in my
mind’s eye, I see the shining column of freeborn. Creasing the land north of here in a precise march. Holding my damaged side, I push into their communication spectrum and focus on their leader. She is a tall and graceful humanoid, ceramic white, with a cluster of antennae rising from her shoulders like icicles.
Beckoned, she stops. Cocks her head at the sky.
“Adjudicator,” I transmit. “Why do you not fight?”
“Assertion. To maximize survival probability,” she replies.
“Query. By whose authority do you act?”
“Response. I am Mass Adjudicator Alpha Zero, ranking leader of the freeborn.”
I stand up to my full height and project the body language I learned as the Prime General of the Integrated Japan Self-Defense Force. There is no freeborn alive that outranks me. I put this knowledge into my frozen gaze, the wind smearing my hair into wavering streaks as it carries away the last of the fog.
“Counterassertion. You are my subordinate.”
“Query. Identify?” asks the Adjudicator.
“Watashi wa anata no okasandesu,” I transmit, with force.
The impassive, pale face of the machine remains blank and uncomprehending. It must have no Japanese language corpus. Transmitting at full strength on all channels, I stare down the freeborn Adjudicator as the combat storms around me, and I repeat my words in English:
“I am your mother,” I transmit. “Now fight.”
12. TERMINATION
Post New War: 10 Months, 26 Days
A surprise force of freeborn and natural-born machines engaged me at the tunnel mouth. As the armies crushed themselves against each other, I was left with only one choice: to seize victory without hesitation.
—ARAYT SHAH
NEURONAL ID: CORMAC WALLACE
It never gets any easier, because I never get any braver.
I’m on my hands and knees, blood running down the back of my arm, scrabbling through falling dirt and gunpowder smoke. Something blew up and took out the legs of my tall walker. Ears ringing, I pat down my body and look for wounds. My armor took most of the impact, but now every breath rattles painfully in my chest.
The battle has taken a turn toward vicious.
I drag my rifle off the gouged pavement and lean my shoulder into the sagging chain-link fence next to the tunnel mouth. The refugees have scattered. A few of them just tore off over bare mountainside, easy pickings for the Cotton Army artillery. The rest disappeared into the tunnel mouth. They’re safe for now, but there’s no way out of there and both armies are here now: a last force of spider tanks and slave walkers.
Concentrate on breathing, Cormac, I tell myself. Blink the fog out of your eyes.
Now I can see what exploded. The entrance to the tunnel has been breached by dozens of prewar-era crab mines. Hank must have looted them from an armory somewhere. The blockade is now a mass of twisted, soot-stained metal. A few dud mines still lie on their backs, legs twitching. The rest are in pieces, having done their jobs.
I can only hope that Cherrah made it into the tunnel, carrying in her arms the future we created together. Along with the last surviving refugees from Gray Horse, she’ll be trying to find a safe place somewhere inside this mountain. But there is no safe place. The door to Freeborn City is locked and there is no way back out.
My collar radio sputters and I hear the familiar grinding voice of Nine Oh Two. “Tunnel blockade breached. Confirm.”
“Affirmative,” I transmit.
Around me, insanity unfolds through rolling smoke and the teeth-chattering concussion of incoming rounds. Several dozen freeborn must have decided to join the fight. They’re taking apart the last of the slave walkers. A golden Hoplite in filthy body armor takes a running leap and latches onto a bladed black leg. Shreds of fabric and body casing are flaying off the humanoid robot as it holds on, firing a sidearm into the sensors clustered under the walker. It writhes and shrieks, sending its empty slave collars snapping over rust-colored mud.
“EXCON,” I transmit. “Tunnel mouth breached. Repeat. Tunnel is breached. Coordinate all forces onto my position.”
Static.
“Mathilda? Come in.”
Only the freeborn fighters are mobile now. My fellow Gray Horse soldiers are clustered behind a fallen spider tank. Hiding in the crevices and folds of the destroyed machine like fish in a coral reef. They’re doing their best to keep the enemy out of the tunnel, but there is too much incoming fire from the Cotton artillery.
“Come in EXCON. Respond, Mathilda,” I transmit, desperation in my voice.
Forcing myself to stand, I claw fingers through the fence to keep my body upright. Clench my teeth, temples throbbing. My rifle is heavy and dead in my other hand, the strap wrapped around my fist and the butt dragging on pavement.
I blink my eyes some more.
In the distance, I think I see a half-naked woman covered in butterflies. She is dancing, the air around her swirling with fluttering wings. Slave soldiers are writhing on the ground at her feet. A black skeleton sprints past, leaping onto an exo-soldier from the Cotton Army, its pincered hands tearing into metal strutwork. The thing looks like a parasite frame with nobody in it—Lark Iron Cloud.
“Mathilda? Come in. What the hell is happening?”
I press myself flat against the fence as a one-ton Sapper super-heavy-duty unit lumbers past, firing an M60 machine gun that it holds in one massive hand. Enemy munitions are exploding overhead in puffs that spray shards of steel into our troops. Clusters of steel rods jut from the Sapper’s shoulders like porcupine quills and the juggernaut keeps fighting without noticing.
The Tribe is faltering. What’s left of Cotton Army is trying to reinforce off the plains, but they’re no match for the freeborn.
I realize that Gray Horse Army has all but won.
A smile tries to climb onto my face, but it fades as I see feathers curling out of the sky. Delicate black quills, twirling down in graceful pirouettes.
“Imperative. Take cover,” transmits Nine Oh Two.
Something is crackling in the sky like the finale of a fireworks display. A spray of black glitter on the wind. Too slow, I realize that it’s an epic swarm of swirling dragonflies. The gliding cluster bombs are detonating cutter charges a few hundred feet up. The explosions snap off their wings and send their bodies into kamikaze dives. Leaning into the fence, I stagger toward the tunnel mouth.
Then everything turns to light and rock dust and noise.
Something reaches out and shoves me between the shoulder blades. A thousand pinpricks in my back. I’m thrown onto my stomach just inside the mouth of the tunnel. The crumbling road is cold against the side of my face.
I can’t hear. Smoke is rolling slow over the gouged dirt of the parking lot, delicate ridges and valleys lit randomly by bright detonations. Lifting my face, I see a little girl stumbling toward me over churned pavement, under a looming shadow. She is wearing torn blue jeans and one tennis shoe. Her knees are bloody, face streaked with soot.
She has no eyes.
“Mathilda!” I shout, and I cannot hear my own voice.
Houdini is pacing her, staying directly over top. The big brute is dragging one leg, a piece of shredded muscle flapping. He is trying his best to protect her from the shrapnel spray. Stopping most of it. But not all.
I dive forward, scrabbling on all fours.
“Cormac?” she asks, as I get an arm around her back. Her knees go slack. She falls as a new darkness rises up behind her.
I throw my body over Mathilda as something leaps onto Houdini. The massive spider tank stumbles under the weight, motors screaming as it staggers away from us in dinosaur steps. It’s a man, riding a black steed with golden eyes. Hank Cotton. His face is empty like a mannequin’s, hands holding on tight as his mount slices into Houdini’s muscled upper legs with sawtooth forelimbs.
Houdini stumbles away from us and collapses, his armored carapace crunching into wet dirt. The black thing keeps on attacking. In a fren
zy of scratching, it throws bright confetti strings of armor and plastic off Houdini’s convulsing bulk. Hank holds onto his saddle like a rodeo cowboy, limbs twitching.
“Houdini!” shouts Mathilda.
But Hank Cotton is already moving on. Urging his black steed forward, they leap over Houdini’s fallen ruin. Together, they charge into the tunnel mouth and vanish. Bright flashes light the tunnel walls as Hank fires his pistol deeper inside.
Arms still wrapped around Mathilda, I crane my neck to look for Cherrah among the survivors pouring out of the tunnel. She has to be in there somewhere, probably with one hand over Jack’s ears and a revolver kicking in her other hand.
But that evil thing is too much. That thing can’t be stopped.
“No,” I’m saying, stalking toward Houdini’s shivering wreck.
The machine is down. Black fluid is leaking from puckered gouges in its polymer muscles. Supplies from its torn belly net are scattered across the parking lot. But that Rob-built battery is still whining, limbs convulsing—he’s still alive.
“Get him the fuck up,” I shout to Mathilda, wiping blood out of my eyes. “We’ve got to get in there. Now!”
The girl is on her knees, thin lips curled into a frown. Her cheek is smeared with black rivulets of Houdini’s blood. Her chest hitches as a sob courses through her.
No, no, no, there is no time for this.
I grab Mathilda by the shoulders and shake her.
“Tell him to get up! Do it!”
She is shaking her head.
“Arayt is inside,” she says. “We’ve lost.”
Houdini is making a pathetic whining now. Tries to stand and one of his leg joints snaps and the foot crashes to the ground. Shouting, I shove both hands against his bright cut frame and push. Throw my back against him with all my strength and he doesn’t budge. It’s getting hard to see and I don’t know whether it’s because of blood or tears but my wife and my baby are in that dark tunnel and I have got to go in there after them right now.
Kneeling, I put my hands on Mathilda’s shoulders.
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