by Ethan Cooper
BLINK.
A sick gray light beyond the square, beyond the buildings over there. It’s visible in the battle haze, lighting it up like some transparent, mutated flesh, writhing and flowing unnaturally. I can feel them coming.
BLINK.
In the distance, down a narrow street, the largest eoa I’ve seen attempts to trample a young woman and several children. As they huddle, surrendering to the inevitable, a lone figure, hair like metal snakes, dashes in front of them, distracting the eoa. Is that Kiiziiziixii? Moving too fast for me to be sure.
BLINK.
A crowd of rioters, dead at the wirewitches’ feet. Streams of red, red blood flow toward my boots.
BLINK.
Aran is a winged bullet racing over us, with no less than eight ACCU’s clinging to him like he’s giving them flying lessons. The blue-glowing mass of silver, gold and red metal collides with one of the few buildings still intact. It crumbles inward and downward like it was made of wafercloth. The ground shakes. Then, the remains of the building explode upward, a mountain erupting. Aran, soaring high. He appears to be on fire.
BLINK.
JACK wipes blood—not her own—from her circuit-textured cheek.
BLINK.
“How much longer can we do this?” I ask.
(not that you’re)
(doing anything angel)
JACK’s hairstalk brushes against my ankle. “As long as we have to until the Rusted Whale is ready.”
I see 7 stumble, the child limp in his arm, holding on even in unconsciousness. The four eoas are dead around him, four mountains quivering in their death throes. The technomancer falls to his knees, head bowed, looking as if his body could fall apart at any moment.
That’s it. I bolt toward him.
“Syl, what are you—” JACK begins.
2-85 makes a grab for me, but he misses. Don’t know how I can help, but the automatic me doesn’t care. The others will follow.
I reach 7 first, with JACK and 2-85 appearing only a second later. The number on his chest is partially hidden by the young child in his arm. Lubrication fluids are pumping from the point where his arm was severed. Tubes and wires hang loose, shorting together and sparking. He looks up. His mask torn away to reveal his one ruined eye—the sphere cracked and exposed, liquid dripping down his mechaflesh cheek. Optical fiber conduits protrude from the damaged socket, spilling multicolored light beams that are visible in the dust and haze. Gears and wires are sticking out all over his body. He’s missing a foot. I can see it lying over there, partially buried under an eoa’s hulking mass.
“Is she alive?” he asks, shifting his weight and raising the child to me, balanced precariously in that one good arm. The child looks so small compared to him, almost like a humanoid toy made of synthetics. Something stops me from actually reaching out and touching the child, but I see her inhale.
“She’s breathing,” I respond.
I see relief in his face, his body noticeably relaxes. Mission accomplished.
“Don’t do that again,” JACK says. “At least tell me what you want to do first.” Her hairstalks twitch, her eyes are swirling storms. She looks at the child in 7’s hand, then back at me, perhaps even angrier now. Can’t fathom what she’s thinking.
“Sorry. I just acted. Didn’t think. I couldn’t help it. You know what I’m talking about, right?”
JACK looks back at the child, limp and dirty, thin blonde hair matted with eoa blood and black goo. “I…I know.”
7 wobbles. I rush to him, holding out my arms. He nods, allowing me to take the child from him. She can’t be more than three years old. Her simple clothes tattered and torn. She’s warm, her chest expanding and contracting with each long breath. She’s asleep!
I’m sorry this is the world you live in, little one.
It’s a wonder to hold a child—to literally have another person’s life in your arms. “We need to get her to the Rusted Whale. Maybe one of the Pure will watch over her.”
JACK nods.
2-85 steps in front of me. “I’ll take her. I can get her there faster by myself.”
I back up, shaking my head. No, not him. It can’t be him.
“Syl, we don’t have time for this,” JACK says. “We’ve talked about this already.”
The fluid in 2-85’s eyes is churning like a storm-disturbed sea. “I’m not going to witchkiss a youngling. She’s so young, she might not even survive it.”
“JACK did,” I retort.
PIIX, who has been circling us, keeping human interlopers away, says, “Can you decide faster?”
“No, we go together, and I carry her,” I say.
“Glitch, you are stubborn,” JACK says.
7 coughs, shivering, spitting something liquid from deep inside.
“Are you going to be fixable?” I ask.
7 doesn’t answer, dropping to all fours. From within his body comes a harsh grinding sound mixed with something tearing. Cogs and gears inside his chest are out of place, metal slicing through flesh. Bio-melded ligaments have been torn apart somewhere inside him. Fibrous muscle bands now connected to nothing. His body jerks, armor plating falling off. He begins to crawl over to the dead eoa—the one that’s on top of his foot.
He never makes it.
He spasms, flipping onto his back, his body arching. Despite his obvious pain, he’s uttering no sound. Holding the agony in. Just like a good technomancer. Don’t let them know how much you hurt.
I know that every second we’re out here is one more second we’re in direct danger, but I can’t just leave him like this. Still holding the girl, I kneel beside him, placing my hand on top of his. “You saved her.”
The battle around us intensifies. Stray projectiles slam into the eoa bodies around us. The ground moves as somebody sets off something big.
7’s one good hand forms a claw, fingers digging into the dirt. Something inside him is making a high-pitched whine.
BzzzzzZZZZt!!!!! Static rising. Where are the rest of the technomancers? Where’s Aran?
7 goes still. He’s still alive but for how much longer? I can see it in his remaining eye—his life functions are powering down.
I’m blinking away tears. For the technomancer. For the child in my arms. And for the one in my belly.
I sense PIIX near. She kneels down on the other side of 7, her single hairstalk a smooth arc from her forehead to her feet. She brings a circuitstream-etched hand to the side of 7’s face, turning it toward her. “I can save him.”
I can’t even answer. The tears hurt too much. I shake my head.
7 doesn’t move to push her away. Maybe he wants to. Maybe it’s more than he can do right now.
PIIX continues to stare into 7’s eye. “I do not understand your tears, Syl.”
“You mean you don’t remember!”
PIIX doesn’t answer for a second, then, “I…remember, and that is why I will save him for you.”
“No, PIIX,” JACK says. “You will not.”
2-85 moves behind PIIX, the threat of his presence evident. If she does it, she dies.
PIIX doesn’t seem concerned. “And what do you say, technomancer? I don’t think your brothers can save you at this point, but I can. Do you want to pass through into darkness and whatever lies beyond—in the next world, or do you want second chance at this one?”
7 doesn’t respond at first, and I figure it’s too late, that he’s already gone, but then his lips flutter. His words are spoken in a fading, deflated whisper, but the two words he says ring in my ears as if he shouts them:
“Do it.”
It’s quick, but I catch it—PIIX glances at JACK. She must get what she needs because she grabs 7’s head in both hands. Then, in an impressive display of a wirewitch’s strength, she stands, pulling him upright with her. She initiates the witchkiss, pulling him into her embrace, her hairstalk slithering around his waist like a constricting serpent.
In reflex, I reach up to push her away, but she shoves me ba
ck into JACK. The child in my arms doesn’t seem to notice. JACK grabs me gently to hold me back.
“You heard what he said. He wanted this.”
And that is the thing. It was his choice. I don’t get to have a say in that, do I?
“He will live again, as one of us,” JACK says.
Don’t let myself look away. Just like before. Like it was with JACK and Tam—a predator and her prey.
(like lovers in a)
(dark alley)
PIIX’s hairstalk presses 7 tighter, securing him. He’s passive at first. Then. Then he’s moving, struggling. Even through my tear-filled eyes, I can see his eye’s frantic movements. He’s scared.
(in those final moments)
(aren’t we all?)
“You don’t need another warlock,” I choke out, but it feels hollow.
JACK doesn’t reply.
PIIX lowers 7 to the ground, straddling him, pinning his arm down, continuing the witchkiss. He’s stopped resisting.
As with so many situations, I’m just an observer of the world around me. I’m powerless to participate. Powerless to resist.
PIIX breaks off, her task complete, face hovering centimeters away from 7’s. I can see tendrils of her saliva hanging from her lips to his. She’s breathing hard, her body lithe and tensed, resting full against his, her eyes closed, hairstalk squirming across her back, his thigh.
I’m caught up in what happens next, just like I got caught up in the Haven with Tam. I ignore the destructive forces around us, the eoas, the bombs bursting in air. Come what may, the automatic me—I can feel her presence again—wants me to watch this.
PIIX doesn’t move away, even as the change begins to happen. When the first pathways begin to streak through the few patches of bare skin, she hovers over him, watching, physically feeling the transformations in his body. 7’s body jerks up, bucking PIIX, but she shoves him back down, refusing to give him space. His body is rippling with circuitstreams, his armor plating moving over morphing flesh. His leg jerks, and everything below his knee rolls away, the artificial components rejected by the technosites coursing through his body. Wires and tubes stream out of his body, gears and cogs ejecting out onto the ground, rolling and twirling as they go. His head rolls to one side, facing me. The remnants of his damaged eye fall down his cheek, slick and moist. Streams of some foreign goo trickle from his nostrils. For a second, the transformation appears to slow. Then, a perfectly enormous spasm seizes him, causing metal plating to fly from his body, throwing PIIX backward. Armor plates are hurled in all directions. One piece spins, catches the ground, and ends up right at my feet. It’s his chest plating. The bold 7 written there holds my eye, primarily because it hasn’t been completely drenched in eoa blood like much of the rest of his body. A thin trickle of his blood slides down, pooling against my left foot.
(ohgodsavemefromallofthis)
The corpse of one of the eoas stops PIIX’s backward motion. She rolls to her feet, furious, stepping toward the technomancer—who is now almost completely blue—but the next phase of his transformation has begun, something she may not have expected I suppose.
All over 7’s body, bones are emerging from his skin, growing outward.
The sharp fragments jut out from his near-naked body like leaves on a razoroak.
(he has bonespikes just like)
(an eoa)
His skeleton, as unnatural as his other modifications, is cleansed from his body in a violent, resolute purge. 7 jerks and actually manages to get a scream out—more of a roar actually. In mid-roar, his vocal chords start to grate, vibrating at a new frequency. It’s something deep and grinding, technosites infecting his vocal cords. Bone fragments spill from his legs and arms, blood seeping in a thousand rivers down to the blackened ground. One spasm rolls 7 onto his side, allowing me to see his spine sticking out of his back, the vertebrae falling off one by one, his back a red mess of blood and bone fragments. His hair is falling out—shooting out actually—and there are large, curved skull pieces being pushed out of his head.
How can a technomancer survive this? How can his brain still be intact when his entire skeleton is being pushed out through his skin?
There’s something leaking out of his fingertips. Thin and gooey, it’s comprised of barely visible, micro-filament webbing—the rejected strands of his artificial nervous system, spit out onto the earth.
7’s body is completely blue now, his old skeleton broken and on the outside. A thousand fragments of what he once was lie like discarded puzzle pieces around him. He goes limp, rolling on his back. I notice the beginnings of a new arm growing from the stump where his pulse cannon had been. All limbs that had once been replaced with technology are now replaced with wirewitch flesh. The technology might be different, but the result is similar: you lie in the dirt while your humanity gets its throat slit.
“It’s almost over,” JACK says. Her grip on me has relaxed. Probably because I stopped struggling.
I know what’s coming next. I remember.
They sprout from 7’s head in three places, all at the base of his skull. The silver wires stream like liquid, shooting down the length of his body. It only takes a minute for them to reach their full length.
God help him.
And then there were four.
The coven grows.
(who’s going to be)
(the lucky)
(last one?)
58/Course Correction [T-minus 2]
2195.12.30/Morning
BzzzzzZZZZt!!!!!
The static intensity ramps up. Grit my teeth and close my eyes, realizing that I’m squeezing the little girl in my arms too tight. She fidgets but doesn’t open her eyes. I will myself to relax and endure. Static’s so loud, buzzing through my body, it’s like the whole planet is shaking.
Eyes open to see PIIX helping 7 to his feet. He’s completely naked, forcing me to turn away.
“Fuck, I didn’t need to see that right now,” I mutter, realizing that the buzzing in my body isn’t so much from the static, but from the eoas advancing on our position. They were pretty chaotic before, with no evidence that there was any sort of organization. This. This is different. They’ve just about surrounded us, forming a large perimeter that’s shrinking with every second. I don’t see a clear escape route.
Not good.
No matter what happens, I’m not letting go of this kid. If this is the end, then it’s the end, but I’m not going to let her go through it by herself.
“That’s a lot of eoas,” PIIX says. She’s supporting the warlock version of 7 with one arm as he tries to remain upright on his new legs. Even as tall as PIIX is, she looks diminished next to 7.
“Too many to fight at once,” JACK says. “Syl, we’re going to punch a hole. Follow us in.”
2-85’s hairstalk is jerking back and forth like a whip. “I can take her and the youngling.”
What’s he going to do—pick us up and jump over the eoas?
“I’m not letting her out of my sight,” JACK says. “She’s safer with us.”
Considering the number of six-legged, rampaging death beasts headed toward us, JACK’s assertion is debatable.
But there’s no more time for second guessing decisions, as the eoas charge, collapsing their perimeter, trampling every living thing in their way, an onslaught of absolute brutality, people driven to the ground, their bodies bursting, limbs ripped away, final wails cut short.
JACK leads the charge, picking a direction at random as far as I can tell. Have no choice but to follow her and hope she chose well. 2-85 is behind me. Glancing back, I see that PIIX and 7 aren’t following us. Instead, they’re standing back to back as if they’ve decided to make a final stand instead of running. 7’s body is covered in spikes, and PIIX’s arm are long and pointy.
There’s a flash of blue off to one side—2-85 veering off to intercept two eoas that have pulled out ahead of the others. He’s moving faster, slashing at the eoas eyes. Don’t get a chance to watch wha
t happens after that because I’m trying to keep up with JACK, who has been forced to dash ahead. She’s quickly engaged in an intricate, violent dance with four eoas, her size and speed the only thing keeping her alive.
I don’t know why we thought this would work.
There are eoas incoming from all directions, and it only takes a moment for me to get completely cut off from JACK. I lose sight of her, and then I’m running for my life. Staying close to JACK, or any of the wirewitches for that matter, becomes secondary to surviving the next few seconds.
The automatic me is demanding control. I surrender to her without a fight.
I’m spinning, the long tusk of the closest eoa tearing through the space I was a moment before. Barreling forward, ducking, then spinning again, I dart between two eoas who have managed to impale themselves on each other’s tusks. I do my best to shield the girl from the blood shower I get when one of them yanks its head sideways, tearing a deep wound in the other’s torso. I mostly succeed.
The static is an unending monotone in my head that I’m unable to ignore. It pulses with every step, sending bursts of pain from my temples down to the back of my neck.
I navigate a jagged path through the sea of monsters, breaths timed to movements with precision, muscle memory saves our lives over and over—a tusk that brushes by my cheek instead of going through my skull, a bonespike that rips through the point in space that my body just vacated, a foot that stomps the ground instead of my body. Death is only a nanosecond away, but the part of me that’s in control acts as if this is just a casual stroll on the beach. I’m scared—for me and for her—but the automatic me moves my body like this is all a choreographed dance.
(devilgod has a plan)
(for your life just enjoy)
(the ride)
All while holding a little girl whose name I don’t know.
BLINK.
The static grows in intensity until it’s all I can hear. Surrounded by eoas and the fruit of their destruction, I’ve lost sight of JACK and the others. If they were calling for me, I wouldn’t be able to hear them. I’m surviving, and that has to be enough right now. At times, I’m holding the girl with one arm and slashing at the eoas with the other. At some point, she tightens down on me, and I realize that she’s awake. Or, maybe she’s been awake all this time and just didn’t want to open her eyes. Or maybe she wasn’t sleeping. Maybe she’d been knocked out. When I glance at her, I see