by James Axler
J.B. scratched at his chin. “That’s possible,” he said. “But when would Ryan have been hypnotized, and why? We’ve all been together for as far back as the last mat-trans jump.”
“Could it have been during Ryan’s surgery when we were in Progress?” Ricky suggested.
“Or during recovery?” Krysty added.
“He was in that fixing tank for over a week,” J.B. recalled. “Plenty of time to plant a hypnotic suggestion.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” Mildred said. “Firstly, we were allowed to check on Ryan anytime we wanted to. Secondly, even if that was the case, what was the trigger? No word came, no instruction. From what I saw, Ryan just flipped out in the middle of the firefight.”
J.B. nodded. “Which puts us squarely back at the starting line while the race carries on ahead of us. Let’s take a little time to think about this, and see where we go from here. Millie, can you keep Ryan quiet?”
Mildred glanced at the supplies she carried in her satchel. “For a few days, yes.”
So, the companions went about their usual business, all the while pondering Ryan’s condition.
J.B. took it upon himself to fieldstrip, oil and reload his blasters and those of his companions, including Ryan’s Steyr Scout and SIG Sauer in a kind of rustic therapy.
Jak wandered the streets of Heartsville alone, emotionlessly taking in the damage that had been wrought by the bikers’ attack. He had seen worse than this, cruelty magnified to almost-impossible proportions. Death held no fear for him, and he showed no hint of disgust as he stepped over the fallen bodies of allies and foes.
Ricky sat with Doc on the curb outside the sec house where Ryan was held, while Mildred went inside to ensure Ryan was comfortable. Ryan shook as he sat bound in the chair, not conscious but something more than simply unconscious. Mildred had seen this kind of behavior before, the restless struggles of a disturbed mind.
Outside, Doc was content to watch the world go by, and so Ricky kept quiet. The ville was in ruins, whole buildings burned to the ground, leaving the stench of smoke in the air. People had not even begun to tidy up yet. First they needed to patch up the ruined walls, tend to the wounded and bury the dead. Once all of those things were done, perhaps they could start again on the life they had created here in the Californian hellscape.
Krysty meanwhile found a quiet room where she could lie down and try to gather her strength.
Chapter Thirty-One
“I’m going to talk to him,” Krysty insisted as the others discussed Ryan’s fate. She had found them—Doc, Mildred and Ricky—with J.B. in the workshop he had occupied to check over their weaponry. The Armorer’s face was smeared with oil.
“Krysty, dear, I do not think you ought—” Doc began, but J.B. indicated he say no more. Their discussion had been going around in circles for over an hour. Perhaps Krysty could provide some insight into Ryan’s condition that had eluded them.
Nodding once, Doc continued. “That is to say, I do not think that you should be with Ryan alone just now. If I may accompany you mayhap—?”
Krysty flashed a look at Doc, enough to show she would agree to his recommendation.
* * *
OUTSIDE, THE MORNING sun was nudging slowly into the sky. All around, ville folk were trying to clear away the mess of the night battle. Many of the helpers looked to be in worse condition than the buildings they were patching up, with crutches, splints and bloody bandages the norm.
Doc kept a tight grip on his sword stick as he strode with Krysty toward the sec house where Ryan was held. The people of Heartsville had proved welcoming initially, but Doc had seen these kinds of traumas before and knew they could effect trust between parties. All too often he had witnessed locals turn on strangers, casting them as scapegoats when tragedy befell their community.
The shedlike law office was unguarded, but the door had been locked. Doc flipped back the bolt and gestured for Krysty to step inside.
Ryan remained tied in the chair, his ankles held up and tied to the second chair. His head was lolling, a glistening sheen of sweat clear on the skin of his forehead, and he muttered angrily to himself. Krysty gasped when she saw him, then bit down on her surprise.
“Ryan?” she asked.
In the chair, Ryan continued to mutter, head lolling on his neck like an abandoned ship cast adrift.
“Ryan, do you hear me?”
The lolling head stopped its incessant movement as if trying to focus. In that instant, Krysty dashed closer to Ryan, the heels of her cowboy boots clattering on the tiled and dirt-streaked floor. A moment later, she was standing just a foot away from her lover, reaching out as though to touch him. Standing at the door, Doc sucked at his teeth and warned her not to.
“Mildred has dosed Ryan with sufficient medication to quieten him and keep him comfortable,” Doc explained, “but I warn you he’s very much not himself.”
Krysty turned back to Ryan, leaning very close to his face. “Ryan,” she whispered. “Lover. Do you hear me? Do you know I am here?”
Ryan grumbled something, and his head drew back slowly until Krysty could see his face. His hair had become stuck to his sweaty forehead, and a few rogue strands brushed the top of his nose. Behind those strands, Krysty could see that Ryan’s eyes were open—the real one looked unfocused, gazing off into infinity, while the left-hand eye—the artificial one—showed a tint of red as if it had been dipped in blood. There was a crust of sleep around the artificial eye too, a thick line of yellow-gold scabbing at the inside edge and flaking in Ryan’s black eyelashes.
“Lover, please,” Krysty continued. “We need you. Come back to us. Wherever you are, come back.”
Ryan murmured something but neither Krysty nor Doc could make sense of it.
* * *
IN HIS HEAD, Ryan could hear Krysty’s voice. He could not pick out where exactly it was coming from, but he knew she had to be close.
There was the other voice too. The one that sounded like his own but bullied at him to do the awful things, to chill people: innocents; his friends. Ryan could not be sure it wasn’t himself, his own thoughts, that demanded he do these awful things.
He focused on Krysty’s voice, letting it wash through him like water through a man’s hair. The words were ones of compassion, of love.
Weak words. Human words. Worthless human emotions, the other voice insisted, spitting out the statement as fact.
No, Ryan thought, fighting back at his own voice, his own words. Not weak. Love is many things but never weak. He knew that for a fact. His son had been taken from him—not once but twice—and the drive within him, the love for the boy, had been so powerful that it was all he could do to force himself to take another step without him. If breathing had taken conscious thought, Ryan was sure he would have stopped breathing after that first time, when Dean had been taken away by Sharona. He had bottled the feelings inside, but they had been there nonetheless.
Krysty loved him, and he loved her. That was the one thing that made life bearable as they trekked from the endless highway of life, encountering atrocities that no one should ever have to see.
You lie to yourself, Ryan. Human love is a burden, a failure, the other voice said. Where was love when the world was blown out, when the nukecaust set fire to everything humanity had cherished?
“Krysty...” Ryan replied, clinging to the name like a drowning man to driftwood.
* * *
“HE SAID MY NAME,” Krysty said. She was standing with Doc at the doorway to the sec house. They had been about to leave, Ryan’s plight a seeming hopeless cause.
Doc turned back to observe the bound man in the chair, tilting his head to hear. “I confess I did not hear clearly,” he admitted.
“He whispered it,” Krysty said, pacing back across the room to where Ryan was held. She cr
ouched before him, bending her knees and resting on her haunches, bringing her head almost level with Ryan’s. “Ryan? I’m here, lover. I’m here for you. Tell me what happened. Speak to me.”
* * *
RYAN HEARD KRYSTY’S words but he struggled to make meaning from them. They were like the first autumn leaves falling from the trees, dropping one by one, withering and lifeless as they turned on the wind. You could no more make sense of those words than make a tree from those leaves.
“Krysty,” Ryan said again. His tongue felt thick in his mouth, as if it were too wide to allow him to speak.
A mutie and a human, the other voice said. The worst of all possible types. Eradication is too good for an abomination like Krysty Wroth. Purge everything she ever touched, every human who meant anything to her. Chill them all and cleanse the Earth.
Ryan tried to ignore the voice, but it was his own voice, the words his own words. Something played across his brain then, a clear visual in his mind’s eye as if he was reading from a sheet of paper. It read:
HATE LIST
03. Harvey Cawdor.
02. Krysty Wroth.
“What’s 01?” Ryan asked.
You know what’s number one on the hate list, Ryan. Think back. Who do you hate the most of all?
Sharona? Ryan asked, but he knew that was not right. The Magus?
No, neither of them. Try harder.
Ryan saw the people he had chilled, hundreds of them in a life of brutality and survival. Hundreds, perhaps thousands.
“People,” Ryan said. “Humans. I hate humans.”
Yes, the voice replied slickly. You’ve chilled enough to know you have the taste for it. You’ve known all along.
Krysty’s voice interrupted the dialogue. “Please say something, Ryan. If you can hear me, please...just say something.”
“Krysty,” Ryan said.
* * *
KRYSTY ALMOST JUMPED as Ryan lifted his head and opened his eyes, staring right at her.
“Ryan,” Krysty said, slapping her palm against the floor to keep from toppling.
But Ryan’s eyes were still blank, unfocused, as if he were looking through her.
“Ryan, please,” Krysty said, not knowing what else she could say or do.
“Krysty, that’s enough,” J.B. said from the doorway. He had been waiting just outside, had entered when he heard her cry out. “The man’s on tranqs, he can’t hear you.”
“He spoke to me,” Krysty replied without taking her eyes off Ryan, “said my name.”
J.B. shook his head. “Even if he could hear you he couldn’t answer. Not with the way Mildred’s doped him up.”
* * *
BUT RYAN COULD hear Krysty, although it was a struggle to make sense of her words. However, he could not see her. When he opened his eyes all he saw was a schematic of the room he was in, made up of gridlines and fed to him by the artificial eye.
Let me see Krysty, Ryan shouted at the voice in his head. I know she’s there. Let me see her.
You can’t chill her like this, the voice replied smoothly. You need to get out of this trap, and then you can chill her.
I don’t want to chill her, Ryan growled.
You need a plan. Otherwise, you’ll never feel her blood running through your fingers, never see her take her last breath.
I don’t want to... Ryan said, but this time it seemed to take more effort. He was arguing with himself, and—dammit all!—he was losing.
Let me see Krysty, Ryan pleaded.
See her dead? the voice replied, and an image flashed across Ryan’s brain of Krysty hanging naked and upside down from a tree, her once flawless skin turned ghostly pale, the blood draining from her body into a pool below, the way a hunter drained an animal of its blood.
No, Ryan said. I don’t want that.
Don’t want what? The perfect future, free from the mutie-human invasion? All life eradicated to ensure a cleansing of this nation that humankind tried to ruin? You’ll only be finishing what man himself started. You must see that.
Ryan forced his eyes open wider, like how one might try to open one’s eyes in a dream, willing with all his strength. The gridlines waited in their static positions, showing Ryan where he was in relation to everything in the room.
The next time you see her, she’ll be dead. And you’ll smile for the joy that death will bring, his voice assured him.
No, Ryan muttered to himself, remembering something as he tried to peer through the simulation of the artificial eye. He had taken a snapshot of Krysty beside the river when they were in Progress. He had taken that picture and he had stored it right here, in the artificial eye—the one feeding him the room schematic. He closed his eyes and called upon the memory function of the eye.
The first image that came forth was from the battle in Heartsville, when he had glanced swiftly at the attacking bikers and lodged the scene in his eye so that he could examine it at his leisure without getting shot. Ryan filed past it.
The next image was of the burned baby after the rains, an image he had not meant to take but had somehow been focused on for too long and ended up with it seared in the artificial memory of the eye.
Yes, the voice inside whispered. Chill them at birth, before they can fight back and pose a threat.
Ryan ignored the voice, clicking through to the next image. It showed the burning farmhouse and the attack by the bike gang as they tried to corner Ricky.
After that, came the image of Krysty, standing by the Klamath River, close to the hydroelectric dam, the wind catching her hair. She looked beautiful.
Chill her, chill her, chill her, the voice chanted.
No, Ryan told the voice.
Chill her, the voice repeated, but Ryan ignored it, focusing instead on the digitized image he had kept inside the mechanism of his new eye.
Chill her.
* * *
RYAN HAD SAID nothing for almost five minutes as Krysty continued to crouch at his side. Eventually, Doc stepped in and helped her up, prompting her to reluctantly leave Ryan.
“No one is happy about this situation, my dear,” Doc insisted. “And no one here thinks any less of you for trying to aid Ryan.”
“We all know what he means to you, Krysty,” J.B. added solemnly from where he waited in the open doorway. “We’ve all been friends a long time.”
“Then what are we going to do?” Krysty asked. “Just leave him?”
J.B. shook his head uncertainly. “Ryan’s been like a brother to me for a long as I care to go back,” he admitted. “There’s no man I’d sooner have at my side in a blasterfight. Ryan made the worst shit bearable.”
“But—?” Krysty prompted.
“If there’s nothing we can do,” J.B. said, “and that’s still an ‘if’ just now, then we’ll have to consider letting him go.”
“You’d chill him?” Krysty asked, incensed.
“I flat-out don’t want to do that. Mebbe he can be kept in a prison somewhere. You didn’t see him when he attacked me,” J.B. replied. “There was chilling in his eyes.”
“His eye,” Krysty corrected automatically. “Ryan has one eye. The other is a...a thing.”
J.B. nodded. “As you said.”
Krysty looked from J.B. to Doc to Ryan, as if an answer would present itself. “We can’t just abandon him. I won’t let you.”
“We won’t,” Mildred said, appearing in the open door behind J.B.. “One time Ryan stuck his neck out for me when he had no reason to,” Mildred said, recalling the time she had been infected by a cannie virus. “I’ll bet you can each tell a similar story too.”
The others nodded, thinking of how much they owed Ryan Cawdor.
“So we find a way,” Mildred said. “The same as Ryan always did for us. We f
ind a way and we stick to it and we work it out. We’re not losing Ryan, even if I have to keep the tough bastard tranqed up for the rest of his life until we find a way to fix this.”
J.B. nodded in grim agreement. “If we can fix it.”
* * *
WEARY FROM BATTLE, Jak paced the length of Heartsville alone. The biker he had fought had had metal parts, like a machine. Jak had seen machines before, chilling machines designed to exterminate humans. But these were different—the biker had bled real blood, and her movements had displayed that unpredictability of a human.
Jak peered at the wreckage of the ville. There were people stretched out on the ground, some alive, some dead, all of them streaked with blood and grit and soot. One of the war wags protruded through the east wall, blackened from where it had been set alight, its front end dented and scraped where it had impacted with the wall as the driver finally lost control.
Beside the war wag lay a motorcycle and rider. The rider was a woman, her head shaved to leave just a topknot that wended to midway down her back in a scorpion tail. Jak looked at her, saw that her leg had become caught under the bike when it had toppled. The bike’s front wheel was bent on its rims, and the shocks and gas tank showed dark rings where a barrage of bullets had struck.
The rider was dead, Jak could see. But he could see something else too—a thin line of metal glinting beneath her left pinkie finger and running up the length of her hand.
Jak bent and took the woman’s hand, examining it closely. The line of metal was the width of a pencil, and at its edges the skin was frayed. The fraying was unnatural, and it reminded Jak of the way plastic peeled and curled as it burned.
Running his fingernail along the rent, Jak picked at it until he could pull it back, exposing more of the metal beneath. The skin tore with an unnerving shushing sound, and after a few moments Jak saw blood forming at the edges as he reached muscle and flesh. The line of metal was just a bar, he saw, running from elbow to wrist and working what appeared to be an artificial hand.
Part human, part machine. Just like Ryan had become.
