by Ran Vant
And then Maren knew that Jack was not joking. Whatever Jack was saying, he believed it to be true. The earlier smile of disbelief disappeared from Maren's face. She still didn't believe it, but Jack did. For some reason. “How are you so certain?” she asked.
“I wasn't. Until the genbot didn't do a thing to you when it tried to escape. The only reason that a genbot would hesitate to kill you is if it was programmed not to. The only thing genbots don't kill is gens. And somehow it could tell you are one of them. Or partly one, anyway.”
“That's thin... This is ridiculous.”
“So after he was murdered, I broke into Doctor Psycho's office and reviewed his notes. But I wasn't just looking for anything. I was looking for information on the genbot and why he didn't hurt you after he killed or tried to kill every other person he met in that hallway. And why did the genbot talk with you and not to another living soul down here? So I went looking for some answers. I've gotten pretty good at digging up stuff people want hidden. I found Doctor Psycho's files. As suspected, they were protected, and if Doctor Psycho could come back from the dead he'd know exactly what I'd done. But he's gone forever, I got the files before anyone else, and that's where I found the scans.”
Jack paused, but Maren said nothing.
“The images from your scans allowed Doctor Psycho to reconstruct a picture of a man,” Jack continued. “It’s a picture of a man firmly etched into your memory forever. I also had a picture of that man, but despite all of my research, I wasn't able to connect him to you definitively until I saw the scans. In the scans I found the answer. That man was your father. And in the Doctor's notes, something he found out from Red, I discovered who that man married: a gen who tired of being a gen and decided she would become a traditional human again. She gave up her eternal life and whatever she had become to be one of us again. But she still took something with her, something in her genes perhaps, perhaps in some other way, something important. Something that might have been passed on to you.”
Jack grimaced. “I couldn't figure out what information that body of yours contains, but somewhere hidden in you is something a lot of people want.”
Maren didn't know what to say. It seemed so impossible.
“Here is a picture of her. And here is a picture of the man who loved her.” Jack held out both pictures, pictures of the people Maren knew from long ago, from deep in the wells of her memory. And from those wells, the truth bubbled up. Those were her parents. Those were the people who loved her.
Maren took the pictures from Jack's hands. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she cried.
“So you didn't know.”
It made sense now. Why they killed her mother. Why they hunted her father. Why they searched for her. Why her father told her to never speak of certain things, certain things that now seemed to emerge from the fog of her childhood memories. Why she always lied about her name. Why she was Clara, then Katherine, then Maren. Why Michael didn't kill her. And why she felt a connection to him.
“Get whatever stuff you want to take with you,” Jack said. “We're getting out of here.”
102.
Battle Sky
He had walked several blocks when he heard the first crashing sound. First, there was a sound like breaking glass followed by a low base hum in the air. Michael wasn’t quite sure what it was. Then Lightbringer heard it again, but this time it was closer. People on the streets started to look up with confused expressions.
Soon glass came raining down from directly above Michael. Shortly thereafter, Michael heard the rapid thumping of a skip drive and looked up. Men and women were jumping from the windows and jetpacking up into the sky: first one, then another. They fell for a split second before their skip drives thumped to life, and they flew upwards, straight for… Fortress Magritte!
There appeared to be dozens of the jet packers, jumping from a few scattered buildings, and amazingly from the one directly next to Michael. He counted the floors instantaneously. Lightbringer knew he had to act.
Michael charged into the lobby of the building and sped towards the stairs. He could hear truds running in the stairwells above him. Perhaps he would not be too late. With gen-like speed, he bounded up the twenty flights of stairs to the tenth floor and slammed through the stairway door.
He arrived just in time to see another jetpacker leap out of the blown-out windows and rocket upward out of sight. Two more men were still on the floor, one helping another put on a pack. Michael charged them; with their backs toward him, they didn’t stand a chance. Michael rammed into the one with only one arm through the pack’s straps, knocking him out of the window. The other one was so shocked that Michael realized he needn’t do anything. Instead, the man turned and ran. Lightbringer let him go, grabbed the pack at the man’s feet, slung it over his shoulders, buckled the straps around his chest, waist, and legs, and grabbed the massive RG-27 rail gun that was also on the floor.
Michael stepped to the ledge of the building and looked up. Dozens of jetpackers flew towards Magritte. Dozens of truds were attacking the fortress, and he would stop them all. For he was a Guardian of the West, blood still coursed through his veins, air still filled his lungs, the sun was at its zenith, and Michael was ready to play with death.
The Ancients would be protected.
Michael leapt from the building and rocketed like a bullet towards the rock that had always defied gravity. Until now.
**
As Michael rocketed upward, he saw Fortress Miyazaki in the distance, the castle in the sky crashing to the earth. Farther to the west, like a paint smudge on the horizon, he saw Fortress Monet, still hovering above it all, though little dabs of black seemed to swirl above it. He turned his attention to his home, Fortress Magritte, and the assault underway. Though he didn’t have his wings or the benefit of being linked into Magritte, Michael Lightbringer was still a Guardian of the West. And that made him a being to be feared.
The skip drive’s thumps increased in speed and frequency until they became a single vibrant hum. Michael continued to push the pack to its limit. Even moving at speed, which was faster than a Guardian could climb in wings, Michael aimed the RG-27 and hit an ascending jetpacker square in the back. He squeezed off one more seemingly impossible shot, dispatching yet another trud, before the other jetpackers were aware of what was happening. But by that point, Michael, at the trailing end of the stream of jetpackers, was almost upon the Fortress. And now he could see the raging battle in earnest.
For once, the truds had some advantages: they had surprise and networked communications, while the Guardians had no communication and no assistance from Magritte’s myriad weapon systems. Still, ten truds could not equal the prowess of a single guardian. Lightbringer saw the battle team of Guardians fighting on the surface of Magritte and in the air immediately surrounding it. Talongrip and Eaglestrike tore attackers from the sky.
Michael could only assume the cloaked team of Shui, Xue, Shulin, and Rang was somewhere nearby, dispatching truds in anonymity. As for his own team, he could not yet see it.
He landed on the Fortress’s ledge, and took aim at another trud, but an energy blast slammed into the side of his pack, sending him spinning sideways and causing him to lose his grip on the rail gun. The pack was now useless, so he ripped it off. As he did so, he saw a slight glint and bending of light, and Michael dived and rolled to the right.
“It’s me, Lightbringer!” he called out. Again he saw the glint and light bend and again he dove and rolled to avoid it. “Shui!” he called, “It’s me!”
The air shimmered for a second, and then the dark blue armored body of Shui came into view. “Michael, is that really you? What happened to your-” Shui began, before a kinetic round removed Shui’s head.
Michael dove for an energy rifle formerly belonging to a trud who had been sliced in two by Shui. He rolled up and rapidly fired blasts at two assaulting troopers; they took multiple rounds before falling.
Overhead, Eaglestrike roared by. She
cut down two mid-flight, before succumbing to a hail of energy blasts that came from a dozen different truds. The truds were gaining a foothold and beginning to concentrate their fire. Michael knew he needed more powerful weapons. He sprinted for the hall and his wings.
Just inside the Fortress, he saw two armored trud bodies, and just beyond, Martha lay wounded on the floor. Michael ran to her and knelt down, more to learn if hostiles had penetrated to the interior than to see if she was okay; she could be regenerated after all. Martha Suncatcher tried to speak to Michael, but had no breath to do so. She waved him on. Suncatcher was not in pain, for she was not really capable of feeling it, and she could still drop any trud who came through the door. So Michael continued to the suiting chamber.
He did not see the body of Rex lying beyond the download chairs, nor did he see that the computer brain was more than half dead. He was too focused on the mission to notice those things. Instead, he stepped in the arched recess. If nothing else worked, the suiting chamber still did. The latches clicked, liquid metal flowed over, and Michael Lightbringer was once again a dark angel of death. As he left the recess, he looked at the stand that would normally hold his helmet. Not having time to question its absence, he flew out of the room and launched himself through one of the corridor’s blasted-out observatory windows and into the sky beyond.
Each gauntleted fist sent forth their deadly invisible beams, melting one trud and then another. Michael rolled low to the surface of Magritte and cut down four more truds. He rolled again and saw his old friend Dante emerge from another corridor, crushing the nearest truds with his bare hands. Raptorscream continued with his slashing technique, and Michael even thought he caught a glimmer of green as truds fell from seeming nothingness.
The Guardians were now gaining the advantage as the trud ranks thinned. A few more minutes, and it was over.
Michael looked towards the horizon. Fortress Miyazaki was clearly destroyed in its entirely, but it was obvious that a battle still raged on Fortress Monet.
“Aren’t you coming?” Dante asked Michael.
“What?” Michael asked, confused that they weren’t all immediately flying to Monet’s relief.
“The brief and reassemble,” Dante replied, confused himself at Michael’s response.
Perhaps only Michael’s communications were down, he didn't have his helmet after all, and the other Guardians had received the order directly. Michael assumed that Rex had new orders or intel for the Guardians to act on. Michael turned towards the suiting chamber and ran. His mission once more raced to the forefront of his mind. Now that the immediate threat of the jetpackers seemed to have subsided, Michael needed to see Rex. He had to tell them of the terrible new weapon that would be unleashed in the midst of the chaos. It was imperative that Michael communicate to Rex what he had learned, that there was likely going to be a second attack, and that they use his knowledge to counterattack the trud’s base as soon as possible, to forestall this new weapon before they could release it.
Michael ran down the corridor behind Dante. They passed Suncatcher’s body without so much as a second glance, knowing it would only be a short period of time before she was regenerated and better than ever. Running around the final corner to the suiting chamber, he saw Gabriella, radiant in her silver armor, and stopped dead in his tracks. For just beyond her, in one of the download chairs, he suddenly saw the headless body with a large scar on its right forearm. And on the floor to the side of the headless body, was Rex Skyguard.
Rex was shaking, but not dead. Michael had never seen Rex in a moment of weakness. To see him convulsing on the floor was an unknown experience... it was... uncertainty. Rex had always been there to command, to direct, and now...
Talongrip was talking, “Suncatcher, Eaglestrike, Shui, and Xue are fallen.”
Lightbringer walked over past Stormcaller and knelt down next to Skyguard as Talongrip continued, “Razorwing and Raptorscream are still outside, guarding against any stragglers or a second assault. The maintenance bays are still working: switch out your armor if necessary. Lightbringer, you called us to assemble. What do you have to say?”
Michael looked up, startled. He had no recollection of calling the assembly and no communications to do so. But before he could reply, the response came from a black figure in the doorway.
“I managed to tap into what’s left of Magritte, the weapon system-” the figure said, removing his helmet.
When he heard his own voice, Michael Lightbringer looked up from the side of Rex and saw that it was a copy of himself who stood across the threshold.
103.
Visions
Damien checked the nova bombs one last time, crawled into the combat sled, and toggled the switches on. Everything looked good. He was almost ready. But Damien Musashi couldn't attack just yet. He needed to wait for the order. It would take some of the other teams longer to get in place, but they would need to all attack together if it was to work. He couldn't destroy them all himself. And besides, there was one more thing for Damien to do.
He slid back out and stood from the sled. Damien walked to the robots with biocircuits, the robots animated in part by the Greendust. The biobots. Damien knew what to do; he had seen it in one of the minds, when for a brief moment he was part of the Network itself. He wondered if it was the original design, or whether Niles had customized it this way just to fulfill the dreams of Damien’s childhood mind. Was Damien being manipulated by some crude effort to play off his name, his desire for a connection to the past, some echo of want? Or was this merely a sign of what he was always destined to be? Had Niles read his mind, his almost forgotten fantasies, or was it merely practical and how it was always done? Damien decided it did not matter. He did as he saw in the mind and took the tenugui from where it rested on the shoulder of one of the biobots. Damien held the headband between his face and the “face” of the organic robot. The fibers looked like ordinary cloth to Damien's eyes, but Damien's mind knew it was much more. What looked like Japanese silk was in fact a sophisticated headband woven with sensors and circuitry. Damien looked once more at the face of the biobot before tying the tenugui around his head. And then, as if emerging from the fog, the images came to Damien's mind. Damien saw what the biobot saw: the face of Damien staring back at himself.
Soon, one by one, Damien saw what the other biobots in the room saw also. The multiple views were not remotely as overwhelming as when he saw into the minds of the Network. Damien was not experiencing the biobots' being; he was merely seeing. Yet there was one thing beyond seeing that Damien could do.
Damien thought the thought, and the four biobots raised their Gatling-style cannons above their shoulders accordingly.
“Who wants to join me in crashing a floater?” Damien asked aloud.
The four biobots stepped forward in unison.
104.
Dead End Corridors
Steve Greylox strode down the corridor. The corridors were very empty now. Most of the inhabitants were occupied with the assault, and this section of the tunnels didn't have much of a role to play in that. He didn't see a single person as he made his way to the corridors formerly used by Doctor Psycho for his various experiments and where they had held the Guardian. He hadn’t been down here in a long time. The last time was when he stole Eve’s personnel file and assessments. The assessments had not been wrong, and he had used them to good effect. The young could be like putty.
He brushed aside the gray lock that always fell across his forehead. He would have preferred to do it cleaner: gas, a bomb, a proxy would have been best of all. But many of his tools had been exhausted. He had used Eve as best he could, and now only time would tell whether her destiny was to join him forever or to die. Once she had become known, Flora had become a dangerous traceable link, and her skills with all manner of poisonous compounds were buried in the dirt, probably providing fertilizer for some flower or tree. And the Organization's security meant carrying an area-effect weapon into the facility himself was
too dangerous. So, it had come down to him, his wits, and a ballistic slinger. It would be dirty, but it would be done. And when he succeeded, he would finally get his payment. The Organization’s unfolding assault would fail. He knew all along it would fail. What he was about to take care of was more important by far.
These people had seen all too much. They knew things about gen technology, things that were dangerous to the gens. He had convinced Blue that they were dangerous to natural humans, too. That might have been true, but Greylox could not care less. It was merely necessary to convince Blue so that he could do what he had always done. Once again, he would set back the truds. Once again, he would destroy those who had the most power to hurt the gens before they even realized the power of the knowledge they possessed. His eternal life would be wages well earned.
This one had been harder than most, but he was systematically closing the noose. Soon, Red would have no friends left. The trud attack would fail, they always did, and then he would finally have the prize.
And now in the chaos of the battles raging or soon to be raging above, he would eliminate those who had the knowledge and those that might protect Red.
Assassination was quite easy if the quarry wasn't expecting it. And Greylox knew that these truds still had no clue. Blue told him where to find them. He’d probably have to kill her, too, in the end.
When he opened the door, they didn't even have time to look surprised. Sergeants Krantz and Stern fell dead to the floor.
“Now, my dead friends, if only you could tell me where I might find Jack and Maren,” Greylox said to the corpses, as he stepped over the bodies to check two more interior rooms. Satisfied that they weren't there, he left as quickly as he had arrived.
