The God Mars Book Three: The Devil You Are

by Michael Rizzo

  “Three,” she corrects him lazily, like she’s in some degree of shock. “He was carrying three. Check his stupid fucking helmet.”

  Bel’s eyebrows go up again. I fish the helmet out of my surcoat, unfold it. Kali winces at the sight of it like it embarrasses her. Bel takes it from me gingerly, eases it over his head like he’s afraid it may decide to piss on him. I can’t see his face, see his expression. He takes it off. Sighs.

  “She’s right,” he tells me like it might be bad news. “You had three. She’s one. One’s still in you. So where’s number thr…?”

  I don’t let him finish. I shove past him out the door. My head is racing.

  The sun is rising—I can see the sky purple through the gaps in the dome structure. I almost take a tumble because of the ice frosting every hard surface. Run.

  None of the Cast are up and moving yet. It’s still well below freezing. I run and jump and hurdle my way down to the skull hill. Scramble up. Search in the low light. I’m just about to shout for Two Gun to help me when I find the H-A helmet Palmer had discarded, displayed like a trophy on one of the vine-wound struts. Fera’s name has been painted on the visor, possibly in her own blood, apparently giving her credit for at least having the H-K’s life in her hands.

  I reach inside, snap out the Link jack. Run for the main gate. Run outside.

  I hack, use my own energy to power up the piece of UNMAC tech. The sun has broken the valley horizon far to the east, at my back. I call out as calmly as I can manage.

  “UNMAC Base Melas Two. This is Colonel Ram. Please respond.”

  I don’t get an answer, but a Link channel has been established. They’ve heard me. And it lets me back in to MAI. So if they don’t feel like answering me, I can…

  “I was wondering when you’d have the nerve to call us, Colonel,” Burns comes on, trying to sound completely smug even though it’s clear I’ve shaken him, if for no other reason than he’s afraid of me. I can see him on video feed, directly in my head, projected in my visual field. “I was actually betting you’d show up in person. Apparently you’re not as brave—or reckless—as I thought.”

  “I’ve been busy,” I grace his sliminess with an idle excuse. I form an avatar image of myself on his screens, no background, so I can talk with him almost face-to-face.

  “We’ve seen. That was you, wasn’t? Did you make that warhead yourself?”

  I can’t help but grin at him. He—or his command—thinks I blew up Chang.

  “Can’t take credit,” I correct him vaguely. “I’m not Chang’s only enemy on this world.”

  “Then you must be calling about your girlfriend.”

  I feel my gut drop, my face flush. But this is why I called.

  The feed shifts. I’m looking at Iso. A female figure in black BDU pants and a T-shirt reclines on the exam bed, not sleeping, looking bored, staring at the ceiling. She’s slim, tanned, her long dark hair untied and down around her shoulders. And she’s young.

  “Lisa?” I ask into the channel.

  She bolts up, looks at the sentry cameras. I put myself on one of the Med screens. I zoom in on her face. Her irises are dark metallic, like hematite. She looks like she’s fighting for words, a dozen competing emotions about to explode out of her. What I get first is most primal: Rage.

  “What the hell did you do to me?!!” she yells at my avatar, hopping off the bed. “What am I?!! Who is Parvati?!!”

  Oh.

  I hesitate like an idiot as a storm of memories wash over me. I try to explain:

  “Your codename. From the Project.”

  “That was real?!” she’s struggling. So she vents what she’s been waiting to: “I woke up in a grave! They buried me! I had to dig myself out. Stagger back to an airlock. Starving… Scared the crap out of everyone… Guns pointed… Got thrown in here. Two days now. They’ve been running every test to can think of…”

  She approaches the transparency of her cell like she’d do me violence if I was there.

  “Is this what you are?” she demands to know, gesturing to her restored body.

  “Similar,” I tell her as gently as I can. “I think our optional mods are different.”

  “What does that mean?!” She’s losing control. Her hands are on the polycarbonate. It starts to vibrate. Crack. Alarms go off. She jerks her hands back. Then touches the damage she’s done, disbelieving. Afraid. It heals, disappears. This only seems to scare her more.

  “What else can she do, Colonel?” Burns pries. Then fills in: “She’s been cooperatively uncooperative. Just keeps insisting she’s still her. Just like you did, before you hacked our systems, absorbed our bullets, morphed into whatever it is you’re supposed to be.”

  “I’m coming to get you,” I assure her.

  “No!” she yells at me. “No! I’m staying! This is where I belong. And you need to stay away!”

  “You’re a thing for them to experiment on.” But I’m sure she already knows that. And this: “They’ll never let you go.” What I don’t say: They can’t stop you if you don’t want to play anymore.

  I watch her go back to the bed like she’s going to sit on it, but instead she slumps to the floor, leans back against the base of it, puts her head in her hands.

  “I remember Matthew,” she tells me softly. “I remember him dying. Here. On this planet. But he died of old age and cancer. There never were Discs, no nuclear strike, Mars was never isolated… Married. Heh… He was married. To Tru Greenlove. I mean, that can’t be right…

  “But you… you wouldn’t come see him. He was dying, and you wouldn’t come. Your best friend… You were too pissed that he wouldn’t take the treatment, wouldn’t become whatever it was that we were. He just wanted to live and die like a person, a real person. He didn’t want what we were. He saw what it was doing to us.”

  “He was right,” I try.

  “Fuck you.”

  I leave her be for awhile. To his credit, so does Burns.

  “They think it’s because we had sex,” she eventually tells me.

  “Yes and no,” I admit, not caring if Burns is sending all of this back to UNCORT. “Ra implanted me with the ‘seed’ of what I was—it remade me. It was a way of sending a version of me back in time, like Chang, to fight him. Unfortunately, Chang got a head start.”

  “But not just you,” she concludes darkly.

  “I didn’t know. I appear to be missing memories of my mission. I didn’t know I was also carrying your seed. It must have latched on to your DNA, activated—your own host is the ideal target.”

  “How many more like you are there, Colonel?” Burns jumps in to interrogate.

  “Why ruin the surprise?” I goad him.

  “Is she able to reproduce more of you?” he ignores my attitude.

  I don’t answer him.

  “Is it specifically sexually transmitted? Is it contact? Fluid exchange?”

  “Is that it?” I grill him back. “UNCORT wants the tech? Wants you to make more, replicate the conversion process? Or are they hoping to be selective about it? Get something they can weaponize? We just had this conversation: Isn’t that exactly what you’re supposedly so terrified of? Or is your entire mission bullshit? Are you really here to harvest arms technology?”

  “That’s absurd.” He almost sounds honestly offended. But he’s speaking for the record. “What we need are defenses. We need to know how to protect ourselves. From Chang. From you.”

  “From the ETE,” I make the next conclusion for him.

  “This technology is unimaginably dangerous,” he excuses.

  “I agree. Don’t fuck with it.”

  “And we should just leave it in your benign hands? Your regular and generous use of obscenity is evidence enough of your kind’s character.”

  “’My kind’? Are we talking modified humans? Or are you describing everyone who’s been on Mars all these decades while you had your little Luddite theocratic revolution?”

  “No. Of course not.” But his hesit
ation before he says it, and the backpedaling politician’s tone in his voice as he does, is damning. “We have mobilized an incredible global effort to rescue these people.”

  “So far I haven’t met a single survivor-descendant that wants to be ‘rescued’,” I say for the record. “And your plan to force the issue is going to result in bloodbaths.”

  “And the alternative? Let you and Chang have free reign to infect innocent people, create an army of freaks armed with super-weapons? How long until you’re ready to head for Earth?”

  “Stop it! Both of you!” Lisa shouts. She sounds like she’s in pain. She gets herself up off the floor, stands, faces the primary camera. “Colonel Burns. Please forgive the destruction of base property, but I need to try to prove something to you.”

  She touches her fingertip to one of the thick multilayered polycarbonate panels of her containment cell. It instantly spiderwebs with fractures, then dissolves in a snowfall of fragments. She steps to the next panel. Punches her hand clean through it. Then faces the airlock. Reaches out, manipulates the air with her fingers. The secure locks disengage and the doors to her cage open.

  Then she’s gone. Just disappears from the monitor. I hack MAI’s security grid: Her tag tracking is gone. There’s no heat signature, no detection of motion. Even the weight sensors on the Iso floor say she isn’t there. The exit hatch pops.

  Alarms go off. Burns is barking orders as hatches lock down in series, out of his control, isolating a clear path to the nearest surface lock. Then that airlock cycles. Opens to the outside. Shuts. We wait. There’s still no sign of Lisa. Burns has an armor team wound up and ready to move, but has no target.

  And then she’s back in Iso, right where she was. She never moved.

  “Colonel Burns: you have my promise, duty or no, that I will remain here voluntarily. Colonel Ram: You will under no circumstances attempt to ‘rescue’ me. General Richards and his team are due in orbit in a few months. I hope once they get better established, have more resources and talent in orbit and on the ground, they can begin to see their situation more clearly. Colonel Burns is a long way from home with no easy relief, and—partially thanks to you—little on-planet support in carrying out the difficult orders he’s been given by a distant command. I will do what I can to educate and, if possible, reassure them that their only real threat is Chang and his allies.”

  I breathe, take in the chilly thin Martian air.

  “Agreed,” I give reluctantly. “But you know how they’ll want to use you.”

  “I’ve been sitting here with nothing to do but think for a few days now,” she tries to reassure. “Speaking of: Colonel Burns, I would greatly appreciate it if you would request permission from your superiors to give me more maneuvering room. I will stay confined to base and restricted to whatever sections you see fit.”

  He doesn’t answer her. I’m sure he’s trying to figure out how to salvage this, turn it to his advantage. I’m surprised he doesn’t just go ahead and make offers to try to sell Lisa that he’s really a reasonable man, but he may not have that authority.

  “Michael,” she addresses me gently. “I can do more good here. You need to trust me.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “I’m still really pissed at you,” I think she’s trying to lighten things. “Even if I understand why you did what you did, or that what you did to me wasn’t intentional.”

  “I’m just really glad I didn’t get you killed,” I tell her.

  “Jury’s still out,” she downplays, sounding like she’s trying to maintain. “I don’t feel like me.”

  “I know what you mean. And I’m sorry for that. Take care of yourself. And everybody else.”

  “I expect we’ll be in touch.”

  I cut the Link before Burns can jump back in a ruin the moment.

  “Oh. Swell. Polly Purebred is here, too.” It’s Kali. She’s been standing behind me, probably hacked into my feed, her bladed arms folded across her chest like she’s trying to hold herself together. I’m grateful she didn’t just splice herself into the conversation.

  “So we’ve got the Good Soldier, the Whore, and me,” she considers with cruel joy. “That’s like your entire sexual history. And we’re all immortal and stuck on this rock. Together. It is going to suck beyond comprehension to be you. Maybe Bel should record it.”

  Bel is standing sheepishly back by the main gate.

  “It’s too bad your memories are missing,” Kali muses, turning back to head for the dome. “I’d really like to know what Yod offered you to make you take a deal like this. You are so fucked. This is going to be fun…”

  I watch her go, and I think I know what agreement I made with Yod. These are the three women I loved most in my life, at different times. Maybe it was insurance: If Chang did succeed, I didn’t want them erased. I wanted them to keep existing.

  Bel’s looking at me like he’s in pain on my behalf.

  “You said I’m carrying one more?” I confront again. “And no way to tell who it is?”

  “Not until she—or he—pops out and says ‘hi’,” Bel insists.

  “Was it the sex?” I have to ask.

  “Well,” he seems to calculate, “let’s just say it wasn’t airborne. The seed ideally needs to be introduced mechanically into the host body. I’d let you try it with me—really, I would, anytime—but this suit is already occupied. And one seed can’t override another—one of those fail safes. Too bad, because it would be a really satisfying way to end Chang.”

  Now he’s looking at me like he wants to see if my mind just went where his did. I give him a grin.

  “Seriously: It could have been done a number of ways,” he gets back to facts. “Your helmet, for instance: There are a number of microscopic injectors—they interface you with the helmet’s systems. Painless. But still, I wouldn’t risk anyone mortal putting it on—might be an accidental lobotomy.”

  I had my hands in Fera’s guts. She was dying. Dead. Maybe I was just trying to save her.

  “You realize this is actually very funny on several levels?” Bel tries lightening. “I mean, if those seeds were planted sexually… Did you know that Shiva, the Hindu Destroyer—has a massive erect phallus as his symbol of power? I mean, they try to say that’s not what it is, but they’re not fooling anyone. And then there’s the relationship metaphor: everyone you sleep with immediately turns into a monster you can’t ever get rid of. All that sounds like Yod’s sense of humor.”

  We get interrupted by the sound of gunfire. From inside the garden.

  I’ve let Kali wander off.

  The shots came from somewhere on the east side of the dome, near the housing terraces. The green is already alive with motion and heat shapes as the Cast rally against whatever threat is materializing. There’s several seconds of silence. Another few shots, echoing high in the dome structure but muffled a bit by all the plant life. I race my way through the living maze of the gardens. Hop up a level to try to better see what’s happening.

  “Hit and run,” one of the Cast tells me. “Trophy try.”

  Random mayhem seems unlikely.

  “Two Gun?” I ask another I pass. She points where I’m headed.

  I find a body on the terrace deck—a girl, maybe sixteen—hit in the torso. One shot. Then I hear screaming. Kali. And someone else.

  I jump, run, fight my way through the growth. And almost get hit when a body comes flying at me. Black and gray suit. H-K. I stop long enough to see what’s been done to him. It looks like he’s been mauled by a tiger. He’s still alive, choking on his own blood. But whatever cut him up went through his layered armor like it was paper.

  More shots. But this time I find Two Gun and Murphy, hunched low for cover, looking for targets in the green.

  “Incursion,” Murphy whispers urgently. “Looks like a trophy-hunt. Routine culling. Makes no sense.”

  “Distraction?” I consider.

  He chews his lip. Nods.

  “Two Gun!” I get his
attention. “We’re being led away from something. We…”

  I get interrupted by another body flying at me, but this one’s been intentionally tossed at my feet. Another H-K. Face and throat in ribbons. Kali steps out of the bushes, licks her bladed fingers. She’s sprayed with blood. A bullet is stuck in her forehead, already dissolving. Two Gun has his pistols on her. He’s frozen, not sure what he’s seeing.

  “We’ll talk later, sweet boy,” she tells him. “Don’t waste your bullets on me.”

  “Diversion,” I tell her when she meets my eyes.

  “All the wild things come running…” she processes.

  “Skull Hill,” I hear Bel in my head, realize he wasn’t just lagging. I pass the intel along, start running. Lose the lead when Kali flies past me like some big cat.

  We find Bel down behind the hill, on the old trail to the airlock I’d fused after my exile. And two more H-K. They’re down, but look intact. Bel looks only annoyed. He’s standing over a large cargo case.

  “Thermobaric bomb,” he tells us. “Not big enough to do the job.”

  “They’re bringing more,” Murphy concludes. “They’ll need to plant in multiple locations.” And then I’m jerking him out of the way as we get sprayed by full-auto fire. ICW.

  Palmer.

  It came from somewhere up in the rafters. I give him a target, track his fire home, draw my pistol and fire. Blow his perch out from under him. His stolen armor comes crashing down in the terraces. I see Cast shapes swarm him.

  “The bombs are on hardwired timers,” Bel tells me we can’t just hack them remotely. Kali is already gone.

  I still have enough from what I sifted from Gardener to know their sally-ports. Just bringing it up appears to share the intel with my two modified companions. Two Gun and Murphy seem to know the possibilities well enough to anticipate. We divide. Move fast.

  I hear shots. More screaming. Kali has found more victims.

  I’m coming up on another pair of H-K’s carrying a case. They get stuck with knives while they’re busy drawing on me. Mak steps out of the green to make sure they’re done. I take the time to punch my hand through the metal box, reach in and destroy the timing mechanism. Go.