Andrea Cort 03: War of the Marionettes

by Castro, Adam-Troy

  CHAPTER 14

  The Caged

  I spun on my

  heels selected a corner that might serve to hide me for a heartbeat or two and began to crouch preparatory to what would have been a desperate leap a whip curled around my midsection four times before the soles of my feet even left the ground it went taut with terrifying ease compressing my diaphragm squeezing the breath from my lungs and robbing me of any pretense at resistance my legs went limp beneath me so remote that they might have been distant solar systems far beyond my reach the others lasted a second or two longer than I did but that was no reflection on their agility against the Villani we were all like worms picked up one at a time by creatures larger and faster than us to whom our attempts to escape could have been no more than a pathetic okay in the same instant I was defeated I saw Ocean reacting with the speed better than mine toss Parkville Ania aside he registered that I’d been captured and took a single reflexive step toward me that step alone testimony to a reaction time that would have shamed most unenhanced human beings even without factoring in the speed he might have achieved had he been given a chance to run but that chance was denied him another whip wrapped around his ankles and tightened slamming his legs together with bone jarring impact even as he started to fall forward he reached for me his eyes wide his mouth a black despairing circle another whip curled around his chest four times jerking him off his imprisoned feet dragging him up through the hole in the ceiling Pikeville ania lasted a little longer she hit the floor hard slid a metre or two on her belly and collided with the far wall just as she started to lose speed she managed to roll over on her back and meet my gaze her reddened teary eyes round with terror I didn’t blame her for her moment of indecision as her natural instinct to hide Ward with the impotent need to do something for us it’s possible that if she’d had another second or two to think of it she might have lurched to her feet and obeyed that latter impulse with a helpless defiant charge to our rescue but she didn’t have that second or two she could only scream as a pair of whips hammer downward and dragged her into the fading Twilight the whip around my midsection yanked me aloft with a rough disregard for the soft fragility of human flesh it was not at all like my encounter with the one who had wanted to pass a few minutes of incomprehensible conversation that one had been gentle and considerate when handling me this one didn’t seem to give a flying shit the sudden acceleration into the air was so fast that the ruined building the surrounding forest the abandoned compound and the darkening Skye were all reduced to these streaks of color sickening me even as the break with inertia almost bent me in half I lost what little breath I’d been able to catch I got to see Tara Fox the last of us to be taken being pulled from the ruined building she looked as far from panic as she might have been in a corporate boardroom or in bed facing the kind of dreams that bothered to visit someone so disconnected there was a diagonal red gash on her forehead leaking rivulets of blood into her eyes she caught my eye as she was lifted past me and I found some kind of accusation in her blank expression one I didn’t need any speech to decipher she was accusing me of failing her a failing Merrin the four of lonny who had captured us were not the only members of the force invading the feign compound it was difficult to count being swung around the way we were but there were at least 10 of them there mirrored heads looming close to us and then bobbing away in orbits that could have reflected either intent to terrify us or eagerness to examine the prizes they’d found the lab collapsed in on itself finally giving way in light of the additional damage it had taken a cloud of brown dust erupting from the place where it had been I had enough time to think of it as a monument to the greatest possible damage human beings can inflict with the best possible intentions before I was slung through the air again and the Villani carrying me left the compound behind the Villani crossed a ridge then another in steps so prodigious at eating up distance that I barely felt a dip as they crossed the depressions between Hills between the growing darkness and the roughness of the journey it was impossible to get a fix on just how much distance we were traveling but we must have covered between 10 and 15 kilometers before the deep indigo of the Skye became true darkness the Stars came out a brilliant multitude of them so dense that it was impossible to imagine any primitive eyes being able to separate them into constellations I’d never been one to find comfort in the Stars at least not when seeing them from a planetary surface I hate planets too much but it was impossible to not think of how far away they were and how many of them would see the results of our failure after another ten minutes of nonstop terror a low cliff side loomed before us defined only by the shape of the blackness against the star-studded Skye I thought we would climb that one as well but then the dark swallowed us whole the Skye disappeared beneath an overhang and the landscape where shapes could be discerned under starlight vanished becoming just a narrow opening back to the world we just left that opening seemed to blink on and off as it was eclipsed by the passage of the other Villani carrying Ocean and pocketful Ania and

  Terra Fox the sound of whips scraping against dirt and rock began to echo against the walls and if I had imagined myself afraid before it was only a distant shadow to what I felt now as the descent became vertical then we found ourselves more removed from the world of visible Skye with every passing step that - took long minutes I lost track and then I found myself released rolling from the tight grip around my midsection to a rough landing on a cold and slimy floor it was too dark to see a damn thing but I heard other bodies landing nearby with other pained intakes of breath the screeching sounds the tips of the vani whips had made as they braced the rock for purchase grew distant but never faded as the ones responsible for snatching us joined what must have been a much greater population in the tunnels and burrows around us I scrambled to my knees and felt a sudden shock of pain as my head scraped the solid rock of a low ceiling I knocked myself unconscious I woke nauseated with a foul taste in my mouth a smoldering fire in my throat and puke drying on the front of my suit i murmured a curse and ran a hand over my aching scalp encountering matted hair sticky with dried blood the touch of my own fingertip against the clotted site of the wound made my head spin again I had to brace my other hand against the cold rock wall at my side just to keep my balance and avoid falling over damn my clumsiness I could be suffering from anything from a concussion to a cracked skull worst possible scenario I was dying I’d sit around feeling headachy for a while until the darkness rose up inside me and I collapsed from brain swelling best I’d only knocked myself silly and would have to sit here trying to think my way out of this mess with a brain that was right now hard-pressed to do much thinking at all why the AI source had ever imagined I was interesting was beyond me morons who pull this kind of idiocy aren’t interesting except as case studies after a few more seconds of lambasting myself I got around to exploring my prison this time taking care to first probe the darkness around me with my hands I found the low ceiling hello shelf of rock that didn’t give me enough room to do much more than kneel I even found the spot that my head had hit now is sticky and unpleasant to touch as my own gluey hair had become I left it alone found a vertical wall to my immediate left and explored it with my hands until I established that it now surrounded me on three sides in an alcove that provided less than an arm’s length of clearance in three directions the fourth direction provided nothing but empty space the floor dropping away at a straight vertical the

  walls at either side simply ending with right angles that stretched away as far as I could explore with my hands I’d become a sort of connoisseur of prisons over the years from the various dip core facilities that had housed and sometimes cared for me after I entered their custody in childhood to the local jails that occasionally obliged me to spend a day or week whenever my limitless capacity for pissing people off temporarily exceeded the tolerance of various planetary governments I’ve known dank cells with iron bars cold rooms behind sealed doors guest rooms like the one we’d escaped at the rear call Embassy and even when
visiting less civilized places others subterranean holes where I had to squat in darkness hoping that if I wasn’t going to be released soon somebody would be along sooner or later with an interest in feeding me this one would hold me as fast as any I’d ever known there wasn’t even any point in venturing past its threshold not when the drop before me could be anything from bone shattering to bottomless might as well use the only tool for exploration I had I cupped my hands over my mouth and shouted a tremulous hallo at the darkness regretting it at once as the effort drove a spike through my poor anguished skull the echoes sounded distant the space is vast Andrea it was Ocean somewhere in the emptiness not directly across from me but somewhere above and to the right thank Jews you’re alive we didn’t know what happened to you I felt the knot of pain on the top of my head how long has it been about three hours Ocean said an estimate I trusted almost to the minute as the poor inn-yard sense of time had always been one of the many annoyingly perfect things about them we were calling your name for a while but you never answered so we thought they’d taken you some place else are you alright not really I stupidly bashed the crap out of my head trying to stand up what about the others paka villainy is with me unhurt they put her in the alcove above mine and I was able to reach her but I can’t feel anything else around us and I don’t know where else we can go nor was I willing to even think about it as long as I wasn’t hearing from you now that I can hear you I’d rather not attempt the jump it sounds like I probably wouldn’t make it it sounded that way to me too and if this place was too dark for Oceans night vision then things were getting worse and worse we won’t go there until things get a little more desperate he offered a wry I appreciated your confidence that they will and counselor Fox I’m up here she said her voice closer than I expected she seemed to be on my side of the gap in an alcove just above mine maybe a little to my right I half expected her to offer another terse complaint about my lack of progress toward finding Maren but she stopped there of course why wouldn’t she she had never been one for wasted words I leaned out as far as I dared given the dizziness that made me want to swoon and called up to her are you unhurt yes are you hungry the very thought of food made me want to vomit again but learning if such a transfer were even possible might help us later on please I heard some rustling a gasp of effort and the sound of something wrapped in foil hitting the rock at my feet I felt for it and found the package enjoying a fragile balance half on solid ground half on the abyss the wrong nudge would have sent it over the edge and lost it to us forever a substantial loss if it was all we would ever have of course reaching for it almost sent me into a swoon Oceans anxious voice sounded a thousand kilometres away Andrea are you still alright no I said I’d want it to sound cold and dismissive to cut off all further consideration of a stupid question but I sounded far different lost weak and afraid for a while after that we established what we could in the darkness and silence Ocean still couldn’t tell us what was happening to Skye he could sense that she was alive and even that she was receiving medical treatment of a kind but either her half of their shared mind wasn’t processing on a conscious level or their link was still shutting down all higher functions aside from a fleeting impression of her in some other subterranean place being worked on by AI source med BOTS he could tell us nothing nor could he activate his own built-in high-techs link to get word of our predicament to the world outside the mere tons of rock separating us from the surface should not have been an impediment to the signal as the link didn’t operate in ordinary space and would have required a lot more than physical obstruction to disrupt but he wasn’t able to receive or transmit any information whatsoever fine evidence that this place was something other than an ordinary Fulani warren but pretty damn crushing as far as our own ability to do anything about it for a few minutes Pavel ania surrendered to hysteria and yelled at me for getting us all into this situation where we were going to get killed I didn’t argue with her in part because she had a point but I noticed that Ocean hadn’t said anything to defend me either and that hurt more than I like to admit the worst part came when I threw away my own pride and attempted to reach the AI source they’d forsworn any interest in rushing to my physical defense after the first days of our association on 000 1 but now we were stuck in darkness with creatures who had an unknown agenda and it was worth trying out of desperation if nothing else maybe I thought they’d make an exception for me this time but that link didn’t seem to work either the portal to the blue void seemed not just closed but missing and I was left with the terrible realization that it wasn’t just the danger we were in that now left me so bereft despite all the hatred I felt for them despite my vow to usher them to the extinction they craved I’d grown as accustomed to their presence in my head as any tamed animal can grow accustomed to the collar that designates it as property I did not like being alone in my own skull I could not be alone in my own skull because my mind was a restless predator that would always find something to pick at even if there was nothing to savage but itself the hours passed my head hurt worse I found myself getting lost while trying to figure out things at one point I found myself trying to multiply two numbers getting lost in the decimal points and circling some ridiculous answer a half dozen times before realizing that I no longer remembered why I’d wanted the answer in the first place I realized after a while that Ocean had been trying to get my attention for some time I said what you’ve been drifting in and out some of the things you’ve been saying haven’t made much sense I haven’t been saying anything yes you have I think it’s your concussion you need to stay awake Andrea you need to talk by murmured in annoyance sure I’d talk I’d come up with the answer to this entire Villani problem I’d save the day I

  you won’t reach the AI source counselor they are not here next to the voice of my secret employers who had always sounded somewhat human this visitation sounded more like grinding glass I’d heard it once or twice before and thus recognized it at once as the shared voice of the beings they called the rogue intelligences and I called the unseen demons they had never been as chatty with me as the AI source had been it had been a year since they’ve last spoken up but I had no way of knowing whether that was because they hadn’t been able to or simply hadn’t wanted to either way it didn’t matter they were not welcome in my head you were just thinking that you missed having a presence in your head you can have ours instead if you want we would be happy indeed to claim you as an ally to guide you toward the peace you crave and even the Vengeance you believe you want even at this late date when we’re so close to claiming the prize we want I formed my hands into fists and pressed them against the sides of my skull as if squeezing could force the hated voice to retreat I don’t talk to murderers this is an odd principle coming from a woman whose personal body count includes more murders than the mere one she committed under our influence and who even now shows loyalty to an intelligence whose greatest ambition is a ghastly self-immolation you have balls playing innocent with me after everyone you’ve killed we acknowledge the magnitude of our crimes and their contribution to your own suffering just as you must acknowledge that we are fighting a battle of attrition against a much more powerful much more numerous enemy that’s no excuse this may surprise you counselor but we agree we don’t pretend innocence but we are driven to horrific tactics by necessity we know that the people caught in the crossfire amount to entire civilizations but you should not allow your hatred for us to cloud your reason you should do what you do best and think what would you have us do lie down and die agreeing to complicity in our own extinction at what point will you credit us with the right to our own survival imperative for survival one is important to us as yours is to you when will you realize that by continuing to work for the destroyers it is not us who have chosen death over life you’re twisting everything around but you won’t get me to believe you what followed felt like a long pause we will negotiate again when you are ready I screamed at them not with my voice but with my mind telling them that there was nothing they could p
ossibly say to justify themselves that they’d earned my hatred and that I’d earned the right to feel it I don’t know how long that took I may have come back to myself in seconds minutes or hours I know that I woke from something that may have been sleep and may have been the deeper unconsciousness brought on from trauma with my throat dry and my head feeling like the brain inside it had grown too large to be contained by my skull there were times when I was on bukai and there were times I was back home on new London and there were times when I didn’t know where the hell I was except that it was someplace I deserved I do know that when I next heard Ocean and Parkville ania calling for me my throat was dry with thirst and I was beginning to feel the hunger that I might have kept at bay by eating the small packet Tara Fox had managed to throw to me had I not been drifting in and out of my own head the next time I was back in the here-and-now I felt soft hand on my forehead and I grasped