XCOM 2- Resurrection
Page 13
He didn’t want to hurt her, so much so that he was tempted to lie. But that wouldn’t help anyone, least of all Lily Shen.
“No,” he said, “I can’t. Do I really believe you would betray us? No. But I have to consider the possibility. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be doing my job. I wouldn’t be faithful to the mission. When it comes to you, my judgment is suspect, because I’m so …”
He stopped himself there.
“So what?” she asked softly.
“You know,” he murmured.
“I’m not sure I do,” she said. “Maybe I don’t know anything. But I need you to have faith in me. Please.”
It hung there between them, and everything seemed to turn on that pause. But he knew what he had to do.
“Lena, you can’t go,” he said. “That’s my final word.”
He saw the hurt in her eyes, and he wanted to take her in his arms. But this wasn’t the time for that. He had to focus.
He tried not to watch her walk away.
CHAPTER 14
AS MESSY, PERSONAL, and idiosyncratic as the settlements were, the New Cities were all the same. The ADVENT administration liked to claim that their carefully planned communities had sprung from the ashes of the old—that their foundations were New York, Mexico City, Mumbai, Beijing, but there were a couple of things wrong with this assertion. The first was that only a fraction of Earth’s cities had been reduced to rubble in the conquest—most of the world’s governments had capitulated after the first few were trashed. Instead, Earth’s urban centers had been meticulously deconstructed and replaced after hostilities ceased. So in most cases, there had been no ashes to spring from.
The second fact of the New Cities was that they preserved nothing of the old within them. One could stand where Paris or München or New Orleans had once stood and not know the difference between one and the other. No Notre-Dame Cathedral, no Hofbräuhaus or Jackson Square. ADVENT propaganda maintained that in this sameness was equality—that it dissipated the sort of national, regional, and ethnic pride that had once led to bigotry, war, and pogroms. This was another way of saying that the human race was being cut off from its history and what it had accomplished—good and bad—in the millennia of civilization before the aliens came. The cities were not built by humans, but for them, like the habitats in a zoo, but on a far grander scale.
During the day, New Kochi was a city of glass and steel, air and light. There was no mixture of architectural styles; instead, the same modular elements repeated themselves in different combinations and at varying scales. Green space and water features like fountains were evenly distributed throughout the city, but none of those fountains featured tritons or swans or little boys peeing. They were simply jets of water that went up and came down. There were statues, however, portraying humanlike aliens and alienlike humans while avoiding the nasty reality of, say, the Chryssalid that had killed Thomas. The most striking sculpture was that of a tall, lean alien with a bulbous head and huge eyes. It held hands with a reclining human, and it was supposed to look like the alien was helping the human back on his feet. Amar always thought it looked more like the alien was leaving a pleading human behind. In every New City Amar had ever entered, some variant of that statue could be found in the public squares.
The cars that wandered the wide street grids were as difficult to tell apart as the buildings, and they moved at highly controlled speeds. ADVENT claimed to have reduced traffic fatalities to nearly zero, which was probably true, since they didn’t consider or even gather any statistics beyond the city limits.
Billboards like the ones in the settlements recounted the “news,” but were much, much larger.
They made their way into New Kochi at night, using the remains of an old sewer system the resistance had tied into the shiny, highly efficient new one.
At night, New Kochi appeared more sinister. There was plenty of light, but light like one might find in a prison camp—high beams shone down from tall buildings, the dull red glow of scanners that citizens were required to submit to now and then. But the presence of troopers was slight, and they interacted with people in an almost friendly sort of way. It accounted for the very different ways in which Lena and Amar saw them, at least initially. Growing up, he had been afraid whenever ADVENT troopers came into Kuantan. They did rough searches, beat people, took them away. Lena had grown up thinking of them as protectors, and even felt relieved when she saw them. They indicated that she was safe from the dangerous dissidents.
That was another reason she shouldn’t come along, he told himself. But the look on her face when he had last seen her haunted him.
They split into two groups immediately upon arrival. One was led by Abraham, one of Valodi’s lieutenants. He had a motley squad of six, armored head-to-toe and bristling with weapons. Then there was Amar’s group. They were dressed in New City street clothing purloined over the years by the local Natives. They each had a handgun concealed beneath light rain jackets. Dux and Amar had colorful duffel bags thrown over their shoulders, as if they were possibly off to play a cricket match.
Valodi had charted them a path to Processing that avoided scanners, and they didn’t have much trouble staying clear of troopers. As they had hoped, they blended in on the crowded streets—no one gave them a second glance.
There were certain inevitabilities about how a police station was organized, but the ADVENT administration had neatly dissected the task of dealing with those who broke a law of some sort from that of “processing” anyone they thought might be a security threat. There were therefore no police desks where statements could be taken, or anything of the sort. Instead there was a series of holding and interrogation rooms around a central hub.
The building itself was round—a clean, modern structure of a single story surrounded by an immaculate lawn. The one thing that set it apart was its lack of windows. Instead it had glowing panels that suggested the interior was aquamarine, then pastel pink, then ecru, viridian, and so on.
“Okay,” Amar said. “Now we just have to wait.”
He watched the stream of humanity around him, wondering which ones had been born here and which lured in. Most of what he knew about their lives came from Lena, but it was still hard for him to imagine. He knew some of them worked for the ADVENT, and knew also that didn’t make them evil any more than Lena was. Misguided and misinformed, perhaps, but not evil.
He desperately hoped they had the good sense to clear when things started. The last thing he wanted was any sort of collateral damage.
The wait ended with a muffled explosion in the distance as Abraham and his group began their diversion—an attack on a gene therapy lab. Amar heard a few screams, and the people around them picked up their pace, moving away from the area until they were almost alone on the street—just what he had hoped for. Perfect.
“Let’s go,” Amar said.
They opened the duffel bags, where their weapons were waiting. Full armor was a luxury they could not afford for this mission.
“Dux,” Amar said.
“Yep,” he replied, settling the rocket launcher on his shoulder.
The few remaining people on the street cleared off, fast.
The rocket blew the door in, and they all quick-timed it across the street. Although humans worked for the ADVENT, intelligence suggested that they were never employed in processing centers. Amar prayed that was true. Of course there would be prisoners inside, but they should be well away from the blast. He knew all of this, but his breath drew cleaner when they came through the door to find only the ADVENT troops picking themselves up from the rubble.
One of them was a captain. Nishimura went at him with her sword. Amar and the rest turned their attention—and their weapons—to the others.
The surprise and the explosion turned out to be a huge advantage, and they shortly had the room cleared. Amar put Chitto at the front door to deal with reinforcements coming from outside. Then they began searching for Lily, one corridor at a time.
They didn’t encounter any resistance until they tried the third corridor, where they were greeted by magnetic rifle fire.
“No grenades or rockets,” Amar said. “Shen may be in there.”
He leaned in and took a shot. He missed, but he saw there was a pair of troopers on either side of a door that led into the next room. They were about six meters away.
They answered him with by shooting through the wall. If he’d been standing an inch nearer the door, he would have been hit.
“Okay,” he said. “High-low. Nishimura, you stay low.”
“Got it, Chief,” she said.
Chief? It took him an moment to realize that she was talking to him. But Lena had called him that, too, hadn’t she? In a joking way, yes, but …
“Go,” he said.
He and Chakyar leaned around their respective walls and began firing at the troopers, head-high. Nishimura dropped to all fours and scrambled up the corridor.
When they stopped shooting, one of the jabbers stepped out to return fire. Nishimura cut his arm off. Then she dropped to the floor as the second trooper began shooting at her, stepping from cover as he did so.
Amar and Chakyar opened up again, riddling the armored figure with bullets.
Out in the central room, Chitto’s rifle spoke out.
“Okay,” she said. “Any time you guys are ready. Things are getting a little interesting out here.”
Nishimura stood back up and took a quick look into the room. She jerked back, raising her weapon, but then stood strangely still.
“Nishimura?” Amar said. What was wrong with her?
She turned, and he saw. Her eyes were blank, dead-looking, and faintly phosphorescent. She raised her sword and charged.
Chakyar shrieked in terror and opened fire. Nishimura ignored the bullets and cut toward his head. He got his arm up, and his scream turned to one of pain as the sharp blade bit through his armor.
Amar dropped his weapon and grabbed Nishimura’s blade arm, twisting it so that she dropped the weapon. He punched her in the chin and sent her sprawling.
“Dux!” he yelled. “Sit on her.”
Then he picked up his assault rifle, took a deep breath, and ran down the hall. Before he reached the end of it, something was trying to get into his brain.
It started like pins and needles at the base of his skull, and then began quickly creeping around toward his face, like a foot falling asleep. His thoughts went soft and strange, like words in a foreign language he almost understood and, if he paid attention for a moment, probably would understand….
He blinked. He’d missed some time. How much?
He was in the room. He saw someone he thought he recognized, and there was something else, tall and lean and gray, with huge eyes …
A Sectoid …
What was he supposed to be doing? He needed to know what to do.
And the voice began to tell him—was telling him—when something hard and cold rose up from deep inside of him, clotting behind his eyes, forming an image. A picture, a snapshot. Rider, lying on the ground, her lifeless eyes staring up at him. Her cold lips twitching.
“Shoot it, dumbass,” she said.
It was like a rubber band snapping inside of his head. He pulled the trigger and felt the recoil of the weapon, saw green tracks walk up the alien’s body, felt it pull out of his mind like a snail from a shell.
He vomited, and the colors behind his eyes faded to black and gray. The muscles of his ribs and chest knotted into spasms, and he fell to the floor.
Then someone was standing over him.
“You’ll be okay,” she said. “It will pass. I know.”
It was Lily Shen.
“It was a Sectoid,” she said. “Modified. Bigger and stronger.”
She helped him stand.
* * *
Nishimura was propped against the wall, her hand over a hole in her armor, red leaking from between her fingers. Her pupils were huge and her breathing ragged.
“Chief,” she said. “Don’t know what happened. Jesus. What happened?”
“Never mind that now,” he said. “Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get you out of here.”
“I think I can walk,” she said.
“Just stay here,” he said. “Keep pressure on your wound.”
Chakyar had been cut to the bone, but fortunately Nishimura missed the joint of his arm, or else the whole thing would probably be off. Still, he’d bled enough to fill a bucket.
Amar moved up to where Chitto was taking aim.
“Four of ’em out there,” she said. “Probably be a lot more, soon.”
“Yeah,” Amar said. “Dux, get those two on the right, then we’ll run for it. Chitto, you cover our backs. I’ll carry Nishimura.”
He heaved her up over his shoulder and couched his weapon under his arm. Chakyar couldn’t hold his rifle up, so he slung it and took out his pistol.
“Go!” Amar said.
Dux fired, and a car went up in a fireball, taking out the two jabbers hiding behind it. Then everybody ran but Chitto. Mag rounds screamed by him, tearing into the street, spattering against buildings. Then, he heard the bark of Chitto’s rifle—once, twice, three times. He risked a quick look back and saw she was now following them.
After that it was all blurry, a nightmare dash through the city streets, civilians screaming, the whine of aerial patrols and floodlights searching through the night. He knew they were being followed when red streaks smacked into the building ahead of them, but there was nothing for it now but to try to stay ahead of them, reach the sewer, and get out.
They came around a corner and found themselves face-to-face with Abraham and his men.
“Keep going,” Abraham said. “It’s just down that way. We’ll be along soon.”
“Thanks,” was all he could manage.
* * *
What seemed like an hour later, they emerged outside of the city, where Valodi and more of his men were waiting for them. Someone took Nishimura from him, and in a daze, he followed Valodi back to the settlement. Nishimura and Chakyar were carted off to the infirmary, or what passed for one.
Amar sat outside, breathing, trying to forget what had just happened, the thing in his head. He felt like a tunnel spider had walked into his mouth and built a nest there, like it was still in him and always would be. He had heard plenty from old-timers like Thomas about the aliens with psi-powers, but somehow he hadn’t quite believed it and had thought that, even if it was true, only the weak-minded would succumb to such an intangible weapon.
If so, then he now knew he was weak-minded. If it hadn’t been for Rider …
But Rider was dead. He didn’t believe in ghosts. And yet something had broken the contact, if only for an instant. Something had stepped up, if not from outside, then from within him.
“Hey,” Valodi said. He’d been in a hushed conference with some of his men. “You look like you could use some of this.” He proffered a bottle of clear liquid, which he knew from experience contained hooch fermented from palm sugar.
Amar did very much want a drink, but he feared it would make things worse, not better. He didn’t want anything else messing with his brain.
“No thanks,” he said. His mind was sluggishly starting to piece together the last awful moments of their flight from New Kochi. “Abraham. Did he make it back?”
Valodi shook his head. “I fear not,” he said grimly.
“What about the others?”
Valodi squatted down and put a hand on his shoulder. “Their orders were to make certain you got back. That they did. I am proud of them.”
Amar took that in. He wanted to cry, but he was too tired.
CHAPTER 15
WHEN VALODI WAS gone, Lily Shen joined him. She had never seemed very emotional, but now she had a sort of cons
tant frown. He wanted to rail at her, tell her how stupid she’d been, how her actions had led to good people being killed. But she wasn’t really stupid. She knew all of that already and didn’t need him to sort it out for her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, her voice flat. “Lena tried to tell me—”
“Listen,” he said wearily. “Forget all of that for now. What I need you to tell me is what they did. Did they implant a chip in you?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t think so. And Valodi’s men tested me just now. Unless they’ve developed something new, no.”
“Okay, good,” he said. “Here’s the main thing: Did you tell them anything? Is the mission compromised?”
Her face contorted a bit.
“You felt it,” she said. “You had it in your head, too.”
“That’s exactly why I’m asking.”
She put her head in her hands. “I told it everything,” she whispered. “The mission, the Avenger, the Elpis, my father. I gave it all up. Everything.”
Of course she had. How could she not?
“When?” he asked, as gently as he could.
She shook her head. “I don’t know. It was in my head, and then there was gunfire, and you were there …”
He felt a faint glimmer of hope.
“So maybe we got there in time,” he said. “Maybe we killed it before it could fill out a report or send a brain fax or whatever it is they do.”
“Maybe,” she said. “I hope so.”
“Well,” he said, “we’ll find out, won’t we? I’ll send word to your father and Captain Laaksonen that we might be compromised. And hope.”
She sat down and gathered her knees to her chest with her arms, rocking back and forth.
“Yes,” she said. “Hope.”
“Listen,” he said, “it’s been a rough couple of days. I can have you escorted back to the Elpis if you want.”
She shook her head. “No. You’ll need me to assess the target.”
“If you’re sure.”
She nodded.
“If I’ve screwed this all up,” she said, “I want to be there if it falls apart. To see the consequences of what I’ve done and deal with them.”