Andrea Cort 03: War of the Marionettes

by Castro, Adam-Troy

  vulnerable there wouldn’t have been any reason for her a layman as far as their particular specialty was concerned to hang around at length while the feigns were working she couldn’t have contributed anything and would have found the exacting trial and error process tedious in any event but she would have visited often if only to bask in the beneficence of her own charity and would have experienced the changes in her friends as a series of subtle alterations slow at first but building up momentum how long had it taken before they turned eccentric than peculiar than alien and ultimately something not even close to human how long had it been until they decided to disappear move underground and give their patient the space it needed to communicate its own special vision of the Ballet’s future to the others they lured down or otherwise rescued I peered at the Villani gathered around the subterranean amphitheaters rim the ones learning from this heretic among their kind the ones who would carry its gospel beyond this place to the greater world outside we had to get the hell out of here but Fox blocked my retreat with an outstretched arm no more hints they deeply missed the Porrinyards who knew better than to insist on explanations until I was ready to share them we were using the wrong metaphor a limbless lonny adult is not an egg it’s a cyst what assist scar tissue forming around a potentially dangerous infection I don’t understand it’s so fucked up it’s almost beautiful but it’s the only explanation that fits what we know what the AI source had a major investment in this planet but they had to protect their stake they couldn’t both allow the Villani enough freewill to explore solutions only an organic creature can formulate and at the same time ignore the danger that the whole species so they took precautions to keep that from happening they installed an internal governor a genetic filter that identifies and shuts down the heretics it took Fox several seconds to absorb that by forming cysts there limbless nests at Birth renders them incapable of communication until their potential to advance the overall program can be judged if they’re not quite special enough for the ballet than fine they still develop limbs because they can support the survival of the species by breeding or gathering food or otherwise contributing to their social structure but if they’re outright liabilities capable of steering the ballet in the wrong direction or as in the case of that monster down there destroying it then they get closed off and shut down mute for life unless some well-meaning twit like cheetah Pok comes along and thinks she’s found a poor handicap to charity case her friends are uniquely qualified to help that’s what started this an act of charity the road to hell is paved with good intentions I pushed past her away from the heretics amphitheater I didn’t know the way out any more than I had before figuring out what was happening I just wanted to move anywhere where I might put some distance between us in our future as parts of The Heretic making machine unfortunately I’d forgotten about the boy I don’t know how far away his leap started but it was not a jump that could have been made by an unaltered human being he hit me mid body with a force that drove the breath from my lungs I gasped and hit the metal floor hard my poor abused skull once again taking the brunt of the impact bright lights mingled with darkness as my brain tried to decide whether to switch off or retain consciousness I blinked and made no sense of the focused patchwork of green and black my eyes refuse to resolve into a comprehensible image something that looked like a naked boy in his late teens with slack facial features and slitted eyes surrounded by what looked like a patchwork of snakes Andrea he giggled he was no worse an outline than some of the pilgrims Hammersmith had shown me in that he had no human legs and only one human arm his torso seemed equal parts pale human flesh and implanted artificial chitin his one human arm the right was thin and bony the elbow and knob bisecting a limb emaciated two matchstick proportions it was that which groped again for my breast while the idiot face formed something that could be called a smile the whips protruding from his ribs flailed without particular purpose while the ones that protruded from his hips carried him closer so he could look down on me from a height one as delicate as a length of string snaked up from between his hip stumps and caressed the shaft of his penis which thickened at once he’d endured darkness and abandonment and Jews alone knew what while his parents pursued their alien agenda but any sympathy I might have felt for the child did not extend to the imbalanced thing he’d become I kicked at him get the fuck off me he tilted his head maybe this wasn’t an actual attempt at rape maybe it was just the combination of unfettered teenage hormones and the surface of an already badly damaged mind but he might not have been able to carry out anything that required that much planning and maybe cruelty was part of his new makeup after all his face twisted in a distorted and I could see toothless attempt at a grin as he reached for me again Andrea most people who tackle an enemy cry out in fear or anger or desperation or just the need to fortify their courage with big noises Tyra Fox made no noise at all not even a grunt as she hit Cory with a flying tackle he didn’t seem to see it coming at all his idiot eyes widened in comical amazement he also didn’t move his prosthetics Lonnie whips had reacted faster than any human limbs would have and shifted his weight to absorb the worst of the impact by the time I absorbed what had happened he’d arrested Fox in mid lunge and held her aloft above us with one whip wrapped around her waist and another around her neck his strangulating grip cut off her air and she struggled with the coil around her throat her fingernails clutching at the smooth metallic skin without finding anything to grab the two of us were now held tight in complementary positions one pinned on the floor beneath the Altered boy the other held high above him but our ranking among the array of things that interested him could not have been farther apart she was just some shit he had to deal with in order to avoid being harassed I was the one whose name he’d been told the one whose presence seemed to delight him and so he once again reached for me with his one human hand touching my lower lip with the tip of a filthy index finger and showing genuine fascination as the flesh depressed by his touch resumed shape the instant he let go it was a violation but I’d been violated a number of times before in my life and this one almost felt tender I showed equal tenderness by reaching up to cradle that exploring hand with both of my own my two hands held his one in a tight embrace which may have been the closest he’d come to physical affection from anybody since the nightmare of transformation had befallen him somewhere in that wounded mind he might have harbored the hope that he

  just made his first girlfriend pity for the boy he had once been may have been what slowed me down led me to permit the moment to linger than it needed to maybe maybe it was just that my reflexes and reaction time were shot or maybe I was just enough of a bitch to let him save her that one moment of peace before doing this sickening thing I’d only done to two other people in my life gripping two of his fingers in my left hand and two in my right eye pulled them apart with every ounce of strength available to me the effect was a lot like what happens when somebody plays tug-of-war with the wishbone I’d seen it done once by somebody so strong and so angry and so determined that her opponent’s hand broke into a bloody V I wasn’t nearly that effective and only succeeded in dislocating his fingers that was bad enough he reared back pissed himself and me emitted a high-pitched wail and flung Fox somewhere fortunately away from the amphitheater instead of toward he screamed my name again this time in a voice both lost and betrayed I kicked away as best as I could managing no real distance at all feeling another slash of pain is another wit point drew a line of fire across my forehead are you ready to negotiate now Andrea Court the passage of time seemed to hiccup at the moment the unseen demon spoke to me freezing the mad boys whips in mid spasm the arrested chaos was oddly beautiful like a sculpture of Medusa serpentine hair I told you I have no intention of negotiating with you and yet we note that you have everything to lose by being stubborn you are hurt lost in darkness trapped by overwhelming forces and battling a creature equipped with madness and physical resources you cannot match a rational woman unblinded by hatred would consider a tactical retrea
t at least the hiccup ended another whip point my filthy jacket at the waist ripping open a flap of both cloth and skin the boy wailed and fell back his eyes burning with appalled betrayal it was a second before my traumatized brain recognized the sound coming from his mouth as a cry for his mother I caught a glimpse of a boom carrying the thing that had been Lisl feign swinging toward us from a great distance away in response to the most ancient of all summons time hiccuped again understand we have already won on this world we have sabotaged the ballet and with it minimised the possibility that it will ever produce the results your masters seek and of course it doesn’t bother you at all that you ruined so many lives in the meantime of course it bothers us we feel the suffering of the fani Young who will never know voice or movement because of the various heretical agendas we introduced to them in infancy just as your own kind feels for the suffering of the civilians starving to death in the streets of a city your wars have devastated but like you we operate with the weapons we have not the weapons we wish we had if we can offer any defense it is that we might not have to do these things if we had more willing allies time resumed the broken voice shrank from me a rapist reduced to infant a mind broken to the point where it could no longer process hurt I backed away as best I could afraid to take my eyes off him and knowing it didn’t matter because his mother was almost here the light had intensified enough to afford me my clearest look at her yet a naked torso on a boom defined by flesh that wasn’t really flesh given shape by ribs that weren’t really ribs her eyes were empty her chin moist with drool if there was any soul left in the shell she’d become it commanded the prosthetics not any part of her that had once smiled or made friends or conceived her child in the act of love she passed Fox on the way to me Fox was just rising to a crouch when a thicket of whips came down to seize her by the arms and legs and hold her tight as the boom reversed direction and returned back in the opposite direction at a speed that rendered it impossible to follow true to form Fox didn’t scream but she did struggle as a little good as that did her I wondered about the terror she must have felt inside how cruel that must have been for a woman who could not express it if she thought of her lost daughter Maren who would now likely remain beyond her reach then her despair must have been even worse even locked away as it was

  I screamed at the unseen demons take me instead you bastards there is no point in taking you first when you are the immovable object we wish to persuade you’re not going to persuade me without your intervention we will change her as we have changed it to puck and when we are done with her we will change puck the Linea and we will change potion then and only then if you are still intractable will we concede defeat and change you fuck you you are better than your useless expressions of anger you will be less useful to us with everything special about you destroyed then you would be as a willing ally but we still consider the acquisition of even a limited Andrea Court a fair accomplishment for one day the green light was fading returning me to the darkness where I’d already spent far too much time I stood ignoring the pain and dizziness that made it impossible to know whether I was fully vertical standing seemed important somehow this far from the life I’d managed to put together in the last few years and the one person in - I’d managed to love I was stuck in this dark place with nobody for company but the intelligences whose eternal war with AI source had destroyed my family my community and my own innocence knowing that they were about to destroy even more standing up was all I had left I had never felt more hatred for anything that I now felt for them that’s saying a lot I’m good at hatred I’d come by it honestly and nursed it through decades of life as collateral damage it was as much a part of me as the blood that pumped in my veins but everything I’d felt before was just mild peak compared to this there was more hatred than I could carry either I’d thought out loud or there was no keeping secrets from them we recognized that you will always hate us because of what we once did to your family and so we are asking you to do the hardest thing any human being has ever had to do with the enemy who killed their loved ones in war which is understand what makes that enemy fight this can’t be all about getting me to defect again I can’t possibly be that important to you ask yourself how that first flaw knee you spoke to came up with the phrase unseen demons which was never anything more than your own personal name for us ask yourself again why those lonny at the rear ball embassy stood between you and the forces coming to arrest you ask yourself again why the AI source told you that you are the one with the power to stop all this ask yourself again why the thanes and their son knew your name before you got here ask yourself again what ambassador her path knows and why he was so willing to order puck Selenia into your service ask yourself why the AI source majority wanted you here confronting us ask why you are now thinking so clearly without any obvious medical attention after a head injury that plunged you into delirium ask yourself if you aren’t more important than you think ask yourself if you haven’t been brought to this time and this place to make one specific decision and finally ask yourself whether vengeance for what happened to your family is really more important than saving lives you are not a warrior today Andrea Court you are an offering a concession offered in exchange for a ceasefire but you may only take that step by altering your path of your own free will they had a truly fucked up definition of freewill imprisonments physical threats against me and the allies in my protection even the prospect of a fate worse than death if I refused but it all came together alright the AI source had seen this particular section of chess board about to fall under the control of the enemy projected a cascade of losses to follow and simply turned over the board they had asked the unseen demons what would it take to get you to stop I had been told many times that I was no chosen one that the madness fermented at bulk I had never been about me that the war between the AI source and the unseen demons would likely continue long after I died but I had also been told that the AI source expected me to find a way to lead them to the Oblivion they craved I didn’t understand how these contradictory things could be true at the same time but they seemed to be and I now stood at the center of those claims a living casualty of the impossibility of reconciling them fuck you you miserable bastards I’ll never work for you change your mind quickly Andreea court we will commence amputating Tara Fox’s arms in 30 seconds I ran managing all of 10 paces before I tripped over something I couldn’t see and flew headlong through a landscape inhabited by half-seen nightmares I heard wild screaming on the part of the egg the thanes had equipped with human speech and demented wailing on the part of the creature who had once been a normal human boy and insane sobs from a voice I did not recognize as my own for longer than I could afford I was back on my peaceful village on Bo CAI a place transformed from Paradise to abattoir in one horrid night my mother my father my brother and sister everyone I’d ever loved how could i betray them even if I was forced into betrayal it is your own choice Andrea court it was so fucking unfair

  why should I have choice when so many others had none why was I the one who had to nail her own soul to the cross from somewhere in the darkness ahead of me came the worst of all possible sounds the sound a woman without access to her own emotions makes when confronted with a terror so great that not even her closed box of a mind could cage it it was the sound of Tara Fox screaming.

  CHAPTER 19

  Armageddon Skye

  The air high above Nuria

  was clear but cold chilled by high-altitude winds and rendered heavy by the history gathering below the atmosphere inside the rear gulf skimmer was well insulated by its ionic shields and was by every impartial standard as warm as a heated room at ground level but the chill of the moment persisted suffusing the air and chilling Skye’s bones every breath she allowed herself felt like a wanton reminder of her own mortality in the face of forces beyond her control ten minutes had passed since the meeting on the hilltop the Bombers from the Confederate fleet had descended dozens of them each a flat Crescent with end points that looked sharp enough to cut wound
s in the Skye at an elevation of thousand meters above her paths own flight path they took equidistant positions above the site of the impending massacre and waited prepared to unleash their capacity for killing the instant the situation below moved beyond the current pause for breath her path and pill goth were both on the high-techs furiously negotiating in a dozen