Salvation

by Caryn Lix

  Rune smiled. “Now … you just plunge in. Touch the tablet and merge.”

  Okay. Merge. No problem.

  I drew a deep breath and laid my hands on the tablet. It was warm and buzzing, more alive than any tech I’d ever touched before. That was Rune’s power, I rationalized. It must be. It couldn’t be anything else. Something in me revolted at the sensation, at the idea of merging my own consciousness with a machine—and not just any machine, but one powered by aliens. Rune, maybe sensing my hesitation, squeezed my hand. Trust me, her face seemed to say.

  Everyone was staring at me.

  I closed my eyes.

  And I fell.

  Intrusion. Welcome and open and whole.

  A presence that is and is not and is wholly unexpected but at the same time a threat.

  It shifts its focus. These worlds align.

  This creature is a danger.

  But the wholeness waits and the wholeness embraces and they will draw, it will draw, and power will surge, and victory is never in doubt.

  They wait.

  And they open their arms to catch the creature that falls.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  ELECTRICAL ARMS EMBRACED ME AS I plummeted into darkness, my mouth open in a silent scream. Something caught at my throat and tore into me, like tendrils and claws and fear and rage, and it was inside, ripping me apart, and there were voices, but not voices, only things, assaulting me and battering me and dragging me into a thousand million pieces.

  The memory of Cage’s mouth on mine surfaced. I focused on him: on the touch of his hands, the warm solidity of his muscles beneath my grasp.

  Slowly the world re-formed.

  The pain relented, but it remained a presence at the back of my mind, threatening with every breath to break free. And there was something else there too, something I didn’t want to examine too closely.

  But I had to examine it, didn’t I? I blinked in the darkness. A shudder ran through me. I’d only been in this kind of blackness once before: on the alien ship when Cage left me. Alone. Surrounded by death and decay and despair and …

  I forced myself to breathe, but that only made me realize I didn’t have a body to breathe through. I was in the system.

  Near panic overwhelmed me. I was thinking more clearly now, but I still didn’t know where or what I was. Rune hadn’t been able to explain the sensation of melding with an electronic system, but somehow, I didn’t think this was it. This system was too alien. There were symbols and lights flickering in the darkness now, none of them immediately recognizable. I’d wondered earlier if I could use two powers simultaneously. Time to find out.

  Maybe because my linguistic ability was innate, because it was mine, the alien language was coming back to me. But none of the symbols made sense in isolation, and my brain struggled to associate them with words or concepts. I understood them, sort of, but I couldn’t make them work with my human mind.

  I became aware of my body again, my feet standing on seemingly solid, if unstable, ground. I took a hesitant step forward, and the surface shifted. It was like walking on a pool of Jell-O, something I’d always secretly wanted to try until I got a bit older and grasped the improbability of what I had in mind. Of course, this Jell-O was black and cloaked in darkness, which wasn’t quite what I’d imagined in my childhood dreams.

  I took another unsteady step, and another. The world shifted around me but remained in shadows of black and flashes of light. Something tugged at the corner of my mind, something alien and primal and aggressive, and I recoiled against it. My body jerked too, and I found myself once more in the shadowed room, the ground solid, the world a sea of ink.

  This was no good. A shudder went through me. When Rune said she bonded with the system, she meant she immersed herself in it. If I wanted to get anywhere, I had to do the same thing. But that meant opening myself to something corrupt and more terrifying than anything I’d ever encountered.

  I hesitated a moment there in the dark, wishing I had Cage by my side, or anyone, really. Wishing I had Alexei back with me. Wishing for my parents. If only I’d managed to help Liam on the ship, I could have used his power now to save us all. But that was impossible, and berating myself wasn’t going to solve anything, only delay the inevitable—which, I confessed to myself, was probably the idea.

  I didn’t know how much time I had. I drew another breath in my nonbody and closed my eyes against the black. I took another wobbly step. Once again, the alien presence lurked at the edge of my mind. I struggled for my strength, settling as always on Robo Mecha Dream Girl. If I could just have a fraction of her energy, her courage …

  The alien presence tugged more strongly, an encroaching shadow lurking around my temples. I had to resist the urge to fight it. It wasn’t aggressive as I’d initially assumed, though. As it reached in further, I realized it was more exploratory—or not even that. It was like an amoeba enveloping its prey. It didn’t have the edges of anger or attack; it was merely consuming whatever happened to be in its space. And right now, well … right now, that was me.

  I took another step and found myself teetering on a precipice, my eyes closed, my physical and mental selves disjointed. The alien presence lodged in my mind like a foreign slug. If I took another step forward, gave it another inch, it would overwhelm me, swallow me, consume me. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. The lump in my mind had the same mental feeling as the alien limbs: cold and slimy and harsh. If I let it take over, it would devour me whole.

  But there was no choice. I remembered Alexei, his arms spread wide, bracing the door.

  And I took the step.

  * * *

  Chaos.

  Power and drift and consume and dull and devour.

  The scream goes out. The source rises. A thousand splinters within the whole, fragments of sharp and dead and cold.

  The source screams.

  Rise and fall and die and sacrifice.

  Heat and pain.

  Agony tearing through the limbs of a thousand souls of a hundred thousand hunt and kill and revenge, find them, find revenge. Find and seek.

  It rises. They rise.

  We rise.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  IT STARTS IN DARKNESS.

  The consciousness awakens, slowly, unfurling in its tank. The creatures surround it. Small and fragile and weak, and its every instinct tells it to attack, devour. It lunges for them but encounters the clear glass lid of its tank, and its mouth opens in a hideous snarl, its teeth aching with the need to rend.

  “We did it,” says one of the creatures, the frail human meat, regarding it with wide eyes. “If this thing doesn’t win the war, nothing can.”

  Cheers erupt, and the sound grates on its nerves, creating a frenzy of anger and despair. It has been created to destroy, to consume, and here it is trapped, isolated, writhing in impotent rage. It knows only one thing: if it escapes, the creature with the shiny reflective lenses over its eyes will be the first to die. It does not like the way this creature looks at it, examining it with proprietary pride.

  The reflective creature presses a button, and the liquid around it shifts. It opens its mouth to scream, but before it can, darkness overtakes it.

  And now it drifts.

  Hovering. Sometimes aware. Sometimes not. Understanding bits of the creatures’ conversation, more and more as time goes on.

  “… wasn’t sure the alien DNA would thrive in these conditions …”

  “… by the time Pangea realizes what hit them, this thing will have destroyed half their army …”

  “… sure we can control it? If it escapes …”

  “… not intelligent. Sentient, but not aware.”

  This last is wrong.

  * * *

  With greater time comes greater awareness. The consciousness becomes secure in itself. Its body, huge and powerful and designed to kill. It understands limited glimpses of the creatures around it. That they have created it. That they plan to use it. That signs of aggression will
be met with darkness and pain.

  And so it slumbers and bides its time and is idle. Or so it seems.

  But this is not the only mind the creatures have awakened. They think they have failed. But there are glimmers on the edge of the consciousness, other beings, other failed children thrashing in their tanks. The consciousness reaches out. It absorbs them. And, unbeknownst to the creatures who created it, the tanks reactivate.

  The consciousness expands. It begins to grow.

  * * *

  We wake in darkness.

  We are isolated but not alone. We are one. United by the driving anger and force and rage and attack, attack, attack, destroy the creatures, tear them to shreds.

  * * *

  Soon the facility is empty. The consciousness is freed, mind and body. But it is not enough. It is too small. Too simple. It connects to the frail tissue it has snapped and bent and it breathes and it absorbs and it understands.

  The creature touches the system and it absorbs the system and it is the system. Some of this is familiar. A genetic memory, long since forgotten. Abandoned, somewhere in the depths of its DNA. It does not know where it came from. Only that the creatures, these humans, they discovered it. They grew it. They thought they were creating a weapon.

  They were right.

  * * *

  We emerge from the depths. The sunlight burns. The heat is painful. We retreat and try again. We find ways to move beneath the surface. We are few, but we are powerful. We can spread. We can create. Our limbs are not nimble, but our minds are connected. The more we connect, the more we expand. Like a thousand arms blossoming from within. We have drive: To survive. To live. To regrow ourselves.

  We move, and we breathe, and we find tears in the reality. We shift between worlds. We connect to more of the humans’ machines. We incorporate them into ourselves. We find other places, but none with creatures like us.

  We are not enough.

  We are never enough.

  * * *

  It takes years.

  But the time doesn’t matter. The consciousness does not know if it will age. It only knows it needs more, and more, and more. It must expand. It must destroy. But its mind is not human, its limbs are not human. It cannot clone itself.

  It needs a base DNA.

  Something close to its own.

  True to its word, it finds the creature with the reflective lenses first. It drags it into the dark and the limbs set to work, examining, prodding, hoping, destroying. The creature screams long into the night and the days and the weeks and the months. More come and join his cries. And it stokes the pain, twists the limbs, watches with interest as the creatures collapse.

  But it finds what it needs. And soon the creatures are not screaming. Soon the creatures are twisting and turning, and their consciousness fading, and now there are new limbs. New arms. New claws.

  The purpose becomes apparent.

  * * *

  We do not know what we are. But we are one. We are unity. We are power. We are strength. We spread, and spread, and spread, and spread, and it cannot stop us. We become smarter. Stronger. With each creature we absorb, we gain its power. Our whole grows. Before long we will all be one and there will be only us, and there will be no more frail human creatures, not in this space, not in any space, because we will have absorbed them all.

  * * *

  And then, finally, it can rest.

  * * *

  Our pull is strong. We are not alone. We are never alone. We are absorption. We will swallow. We will devour. There is no escape from us because there is no desire to escape. We, alone, are whole. We alone are pure.

  * * *

  “Kenzie!”

  * * *

  The shout is distraction. It is not needed, not wanted. It is noise and chaos and cold.

  Wrapped in the whole, cloaked in the drive, the heart of us tearing to the surface now, ready to rise and claim what remains.

  There can be nothing else.

  * * *

  “Kenzie, goddamn it! Rune, get her out of there!”

  “I’m trying! She’s not responding!”

  “Cut your bloody power!”

  “What do you think I’m trying to do? She’s holding on to it!”

  * * *

  It cannot be permitted. There can be no other. No fear. No pain. Only the consumption, the hunt, the pursuit. We can only grow. Only consume. There is no malice, no rage. Intelligence and power and the primal drive for survival.

  * * *

  “Cage, she’s seizing! I can’t keep her going much longer.”

  “Rune!”

  “What do you want me to do? I’ve already cut power to the tablet! She’s somewhere else. I don’t know where, and I don’t know how to stop it!”

  “Someone better do something, or we’re going to lose her.”

  * * *

  The arms are open. The heart exposed. A beacon of light and drift and warm and cold and calling, calling forward, calling home. Away from loneliness and fear. Here there is no such thing. Only the sharp cold certainty of an eternal mission. The darkness washes away the emotions clinging to the shell. We are one. We are strong. We are …

  * * *

  “Kenzie!”

  * * *

  We are …

  * * *

  “Kenzie, damn it, listen to me. I am not letting you go without a fight. We’ve come too far and lost too much for you to give up now. I have to believe you can hear me. Kenzie, I love you. I love you so much. And more than that, I believe in you.”

  * * *

  The words penetrate. The darkness recedes. With the light comes pain and they flinch away, their claws lashing in rage against the danger, the unfamiliar sensation.

  * * *

  “I believe in your strength and your heart and your soul. You’ve reached out to every single person you’ve met, no matter how badly they’ve treated you. You’ve stayed strong and helped me lead us through every obstacle we’ve faced. We’ve always taken care of each other, but right now no one can help you but you, Kenz. And that’s okay, because I trust you. You’ve got this.”

  * * *

  Sensation. Physical. Unwelcome. Unknown.

  * * *

  “You’ve got this, Kenzie.”

  * * *

  Spiraling. Uncontrolled. Unleashed. Primal.

  * * *

  “You’ve got this.”

  * * *

  Recoil. Withdraw.

  * * *

  “And no matter what, I’ve got you.”

  * * *

  With a jolt I shot straight up. A thousand volts of pure electricity seemed to ignite my spine. The world swam in front of me, too bright, too hot, too sterile and plain and alone, horribly, horribly alone. I couldn’t distinguish faces or voices, only sensations: prickles of pain and discomfort along my skin, throughout my body, a too-warm rush originating in my arm and surging through me.

  I lurched forward, seeking escape, seeking the thousands of minds I’d just left.

  I landed in Cage’s arms. Instantly some of the disorientation vanished. His skin, the feel of his muscles cording under mine, that was familiar. I risked raising my eyes to his chest, to his throat. To his face. Pure terror and worry reflected down at me …

  And just like that, I was back.

  I rushed into myself like water coursing into a hole dug on the beach, flowing and filling empty crevices as my breath came in a longer, steadier rhythm. “Cage,” I said. The word rolled awkwardly on my tongue, as if I hadn’t spoken in … how long had it been? Hours? Weeks? Years? “Cage,” I repeated, testing the unfamiliar cadence of lips and teeth and tongue.

  A smile spread across his face, banishing the last of the darkness. “Hey,” he said softly. “Welcome home.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  WARM HANDS CAUGHT MY SHOULDERS again, and healing energy flowed. I recognized it this time, relaxed into Cage’s grasp and closed my eyes as Reed and Imani, working together, healed me yet again. It seemed
they were always pulling me back from the brink of death.

  A sensation of warm contentment settled over me, and I allowed Cage to hold me as I hovered on the verge of sleep. If I never moved again, everything would be okay. But a presence slithered in my mind, and I realized I was clinging to it—to the last of a connection that, while dark and evil and cold, was also powerful in its completeness. It, as much as anything else, was responsible for the sense of warmth and safety, deceptive in its power.

  So I forced my eyes open and let reality flood in.

  Cage was cradling me like a child. Reed and Imani withdrew, their hands still extended. The others surrounded me like I was a particularly intriguing art exhibit: Matt and Priya and Hallam and Rune and Jasper and even Mia, all of them gawking at me.

  Blood shot through my face, and I managed to extricate myself from Cage’s arms, even though he was extremely reluctant to release me. “Sorry,” I managed. My voice lost its dull, rasping quality, but speaking still felt strange. I shook my head, trying to fully emerge from the depths. This was definitely not something Robo Mecha Dream Girl ever encountered. If nothing else, I had fanfiction material for decades. I almost giggled at the thought but choked it off, knowing it would come out semihysterical.