“The Eye has been busy,” Violet murmured softly behind them.
“Yeah,” Scalli murmured. Bobbi heard awe in his voice, awe that she shared. “No shit she’s been busy.”
And yet awe was not enough for her, not after standing mind-to-mind with the Mother. “Well, if we’re gonna die, we better get down there and make it happen,” she said. “She’s got to be slowing down at this point. You don’t do…this…and you don’t lose steam. Violet, she bleeds, doesn’t she?”
“She does,” Violet said with a nod. It was rather like admitting God had a glass jaw from the sound of her voice, but there it was. “The same blood as all of them, so we couldn’t tell.”
“So she could be dead in that mess,” Scalli said. “Or in the next room.”
“She’s not dead,” Violet said. “That much I know.” She looked to the doors at the end of the room. “She’s got to have gone that way.”
“Like I said,” Bobbi said, and trudged forward. At this point, as terrible as the scene may have been, it was now just more of the same. “Let’s get on with it.”
It is so very strange how the sight of carnage, which grinds down many a human soul, can conjure up such bravery in others. Or, perhaps it isn’t bravery so much as it is just anger, raw and undistilled, when the prey-animal within is finally beaten into silence by the evils of the world and the lizard brain steps up to take the stick. Twenty minutes ago, Bobbi had woken up after a brain-shredding brush with the queen of all the monsters on Earth, having dragged herself through many meters of ductwork and apparently killed a drone with a sixty-year-old surplus combat knife that she had somehow lost afterward. She was covered with blood, and had a hole in her short-term memory that would otherwise have revealed what had happened to her. Unarmed and without body armor, she could be easily killed.
But she strode through the mangled remains of what had once been nearly a hundred walking dead, across the factory toward yet another black door leading to what could very well be a showdown with a woman who had proven herself more capable in combat than a small force of the most heavily armed human soldiers. She marched toward what would probably be a violent, bloody death, and for the first time she did it without fear. Bobbi the cowgirl, with the wisecracks that hid twenty-odd years of emotional damage and loneliness, had been entirely subsumed; there was only Roberta January, filled with strength that she had always second-guessed, a laser-sharp clarity of purpose, and a pure, righteous anger that burned within her like a white flame. If she did not survive the night, it would not be for lack of trying – and if she did, she would do everything she could to fulfill the promise that she had made to the Yathi matriarch. In this instant she was every badass crusading female of history, Joan of Arc and Golda Meir, Boudicca and Angie Zero. In this moment, armor and weapons did not matter to her. In this moment, she felt invincible.
Bobbi willed the door to open as she approached it, wet to her calves in thickening gore, and she did not look down at the dead as she trod over them. She looked straight ahead as the black slabs of metal slid open and another corridor was revealed stretching onward and down into darkness. Her eyes were immediately drawn to a long smear of white blood running from the dead at the door and down the dark hall, gleaming dully in the light of the green lamp. “I told you she was hurt,” Bobbi said as she stepped over the threshold into the hall. “She must be pretty torn up.”
“If she is bleeding,” came Violet’s voice from behind them, “then she must be very bad off. I’ve never seen her bleed before.”
“Yeah.” Bobbi sighed. “This must be the last corridor going down. You guys watch yourselves.”
“Yes ma’am,” said Scalli. He sounded as if he were addressing a superior officer. “You want to be armed up?”
Bobbi looked back at him. “Not for me, Scalli,” she said. “You’ll need all the firepower you can get, I think. I’ll have to rely on my powers of persuasion.”
“Just make sure you get behind me if that doesn’t work,” Scalli rumbled. “Otherwise she’s gonna kill your brave little ass.”
“She faced the Mother,” Violet said. “And she survived. The Eye has no hope.”
Were Bobbi not so focused on the goal ahead, perhaps she would have been much more disturbed by the manic certainty with which Violet said those words. But that was Violet; she was a believer. It was part of her madness, and just by directly spitting in the face of the Devil, Bobbi had filled the void that Redeye’s absence had made in her. It was better than the alternative. Violet snapping and opening up on them with her assault rifle would be a very short ending to their long and terrible story. On the other hand, as badly as it appeared Redeye had been wounded, the story might be coming to a swift end after all.
They followed the trail of synthetic blood, quickly but carefully, as the corridor twisted ever downward into the lowermost bowels of the complex. The sight of the horrible graying smear gave Bobbi real hope that Redeye was worn down enough that they may be able to stop her, or at the very least talk her into leaving with them to repair and hit the Yathi at another time. Of course, she’d have to figure out how to explain why they wanted to stop her in the first place, and deal with the whole walking nuke thing that the cyborg war-goddess had going on, but she felt oddly unworried about it. Nothing seemed to worry her right now. What would be the point?
And yet as the proceeded, signs began to appear that indicated that the gory trail was in no way an indicator of weakness on Redeye’s part. The stumps of turrets that had been destroyed by her avenging fists, or torn out of their mountings. Bizarre frames girding stretches of the corridor that Bobbi took to be field projectors, smashed dead and spitting only feeble sparks. They passed the ruins of a drone that was as big as Scalli was, an ogre-like thing with multiple arms that was encased in heavy armor. There was a gaping wound in its chest where Redeye had literally torn out its mechanized heart; they found the flabby, bleached organ ten feet down the hall where she had apparently thrown it.
And yet in the face of all of this, the bloody trail still persisted. The three of them followed it hopefully; everything that they had passed, everything that they had witnessed, surely all of this had drained her. If she were entirely human, Bobbi would have said that she was running on massive doses of endorphin analog and military-grade combat stimulants. But as she wasn’t, the blood was only going to affect certain organs. Like her brain, Bobbi realized with a start. She was a full conversion; only her brain was biological. If she’d taken a headshot and was bleeding out, body damage wouldn’t matter. She would doubtless be dropping from oxygen starvation soon.
Past the corpse, they were drawing near the end of the tunnel; strangely enough, there were no more defenses to destroy. As they descended deeper into the bowels of the complex, however, they heard the unmistakable sounds of destruction boiling up from below. Electric whines, the sound of impact and tearing metal. They picked up the pace, jogging down the corridor now, heedless of the sound of their feet upon the flooring. Time was of the essence, now, and they would have to sacrifice stealth for action.
They took a final turn, and found themselves at the end of the corridor. It widened into a kind of lobby, the walls of which were plated in glossy white like it had been at the back door entrance. The walls were scored with blackened furrows, as if someone had gone at them with a laser cutter. At the end of the lobby stood a massive pair of double doors made of the same light-sucking substance as the one that had led into the complex; the two slabs of the door had parted enough that two people could get through, and a strange gray mist boiled through the aperture to hang at nearly chest height in the room. The mist somewhat concealed the remains of ruined machines that littered the floor, what appeared to be still more turrets that had risen from their mounts and had been violently dismantled. A shadowed figure was also wreathed in the gunmetal vapor, and it now rose with some difficulty to stand.
Bobbi, Scalli and Violet froze in their tracks as Redeye rose, stopping thirty feet a
way from the mouth of the lobby. There was no mistaking the thin figure that emerged from the smoke. Her clothes shredded, her hair cut in crazy ways from the near misses of claws and beams, her pale body scorched and crisscrossed with angry black welts from the assault of unknowable weapons, the Fury still stood, victorious and lethal. She gazed upon them all with her mismatched eyes, one dark, the other blazing crimson.
“Well,” said Redeye, and her voice was equal parts defiance and resignation. “You have caught up at last.”
And so they had – but looking at Redeye now, scarred though she may be, Bobbi had little clue how they would survive it.
The four of them stood there in silence. After all that they had seen, it was very difficult for Bobbi or her fellows to come up with a suitable reply to Redeye’s simple statement. They had caught up with her, yes. But now what? Bobbi found herself grasping at mental straws.
In the end, it was Violet who first broke the silence. “The Eye has been exceptional in punishing her enemies,” the feral priestess said, sounding the part once more. “She is as powerful as ever.”
Redeye smiled at that. “Thank you, Violet,” she said. “I apologize for striking off on my own. Once I was sure that you were safe –”
“Not all of us.” Bobbi could not hide the ice in her words as she thought of Mason.
“So I see,” Redeye replied, and nodded. “I did not witness his death, but I am sure that it was no mean sacrifice.”
“Some sacrifice,” Bobbi muttered under the link. This far away, they could mutter to one another unheard. Then she called out, “Well, here we are. What’s next?”
“The nexus is in the next room,” Redeye replied. “I was about to go inside. You will join me, of course.”
“Yeah…” Bobbi squinted at Redeye, gauging. She didn’t like feeling as if she were going to incite a murder, yet incredibly that’s precisely how she felt in this moment. Redeye didn’t seem to suspect anything; she looked pleased, even proud of the progress she’d made through the Yathi defense. And here they were at the last vault.
“You think she’s really going to do this?” Scalli gave Bobbi’s insecurity about the situation voice. “She doesn’t look like she’s expecting anything.”
“The Eye is wiser than she looks,” Violet murmured. “I read suspicion in her way.”
And Violet would be the expert, Bobbi thought to herself. “I’m going to talk to her.”
“I think that’s a bad idea, Bobbi,” Scalli muttered.
“We don’t have much of a choice.” Bobbi took a deep breath. “Just get ready to hose her down if we have to. I’d rather this not turn into a fight.” Before anyone could argue, Bobbi took a few steps forward. “Hold up a moment, Red,” she called back. She made sure that her hands were visible, held slightly outward from her sides. “I want to talk to you about something.”
Redeye tilted her head very slightly. “Very well,” she replied, and folded her hands over her half-bared chest. Her clothes looked as if they had been clawed apart by some angry jungle cat. “Has something happened of which I am not aware?”
Bobbi drew a deep breath. She was going to open her mouth, all right, but the odds were that Redeye would be taking her head off before the wind had fully left her lungs. Here went nothing. “I’ve talked to Cagliostro,” she said. “He told me about what happened when you two were connected.”
There was silence for a moment, then another. Bobbi could feel the tension filling the corridor as if it were a thin halon gas, replacing the oxygen part by part. “I see,” Redeye said, and her tone flattened out immediately. “And what did he tell you?”
“He told me that you attacked him.”
“Did he.” Redeye’s brows arched. “And did he also tell you why?”
Bobbi felt herself shifting slightly on the spot as the angry red implant stared at her from its socket in Redeye’s face. She felt as if it could concentrate into a laser at any moment and take off the top of her skull. “He said that you didn’t want to hear what he had to say,” Bobbi said after a moment. “He said you’re stuck on this thing inside being the colonial nexus. But it’s not, according to him.”
Redeye’s eyes narrowed faintly. “I see. Well, since he’s managed to get you to listen to him, tell me – what does he say it is?”
“He said it was a terraforming laboratory, Red.” Bobbi took a few steps forward, feeling the moment swing her way a bit. “If you destroy this place, it will put billions of nanomachines in the air that will change this planet, and not for the better.”
“I fail to see how my destroying this place will do that.” Redeye tilted her chin back a bit, her tone growing imperious. “I assume he told you how I intended to do it.”
“He told me about your ultimate purpose, yeah,” Bobbi said with a nod. “He told me about the nuke you’ve got inside of you.”
At that, Redeye’s expression hardened. “If he told you that,” she said, “then surely you must know that it would be impossible for the nanomachines – if they in fact exist – to disperse. A thermonuclear explosion would annihilate the entire colony.”
“She’s got you there,” Scalli muttered into the link. “I have to say I didn’t think of that myself.”
“Look,” Bobbi called back, ignoring Scalli. “If that’s the case, fine, all right – but why do you have to destroy yourself? Don’t you know what that’s going to do to a lot of people living out here? You’re going to end up killing thousands of people if you let this happen!”
But Redeye wasn’t going to hear that, it seemed. “How am I going to do that?” she asked, her hands on her hips. “Have you not seen this place, what it is made of? The device inside of me is literally only half of a kiloton in strength; it is a self-destruct mechanism, nothing more. It would destroy the laboratory, not the complex itself.”
Bobbi frowned again. “Violet,” she muttered under her breath. “Is she telling the truth?”
“She certainly seems to think she is.” Violet sounded as confused as she was.
“Well, someone’s feeding us bullshit,” Scalli rumbled.
“There is no reason for us not to proceed,” Redeye said, and frowned. “Whatever he has told you, the thing you call Cagliostro has been steering us all as much as the Mother of Systems has, and now he sends you to stop me? I trust nothing that he tells me, and nor should you. The enemy is here. We must destroy what we can.”
“Fine enough, “ Bobbi replied, “I hear what you’re saying – and yeah, I know, he’s a fucking puppeteer. I don’t trust him either – but on the other hand, how do you know what you’ve got inside of you? You only have specs to go on, right? Specs that he’s fed you in the past? Cagliostro tells me your yield is four kilotons. But what if he’s lying again? You could have enough in you to take out this city and we wouldn’t know. How can we be certain of anything?”
Redeye hesitated before she replied, and it gave Bobbi hope. “You may be correct,” she replied with a faint nod.
“All right,” Bobbi called out, “so let’s say I am. Where do we go from here? I can’t let you do something that might pollute this whole city, Red. You want to strike a blow against the Yathi, great, but we aren’t going to do it just wading through their supply of monsters. So why don’t we save this kamikaze thing for another day? Save your strength for bigger fish and all that.”
Redeye was quiet for a long moment. Bobbi watched her face for signs of what would come next – but the pale features were frozen as their owner stared at them with mismatched eyes. “You don’t understand,” Redeye called out.
“Make me understand, then.” Bobbi began to approach the mouth of the lobby.
Redeye blinked once, then again, and Bobbi froze in place. She watched as a single tear slid down the cyborg’s face, a jewel budded from the crimson eye. “I just want this to be over.”
Again the wave of pity crashed through Bobbi’s heart. How often had she thought of Redeye as a combat machine? How often had Bobbi seen her a
s a weapon, an asset? How often had she thought of her as a human being? Because that was, in the end, precisely what she was; a human being who had been transferred into an unliving body of exotic science and unliving materials. A little girl’s brain that had been forced to mature in strange flesh. Bobbi felt the awful ache of shame in her gut at the lack of consideration she had given this truth; humanity was endangered, certainly, but it was only through its own inherent weaknesses. The true victims in this invisible war, such as it was, were people like the cyborg.
“Red,” Bobbi said, reaching out with one hand, “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what it’s like for you, living like this – I just know that it doesn’t have to be the end. Come on, honey. Fight with us. We’ll put an end to this; full conversions have been returned to clonal bodies in the past, the technology’s out there. Maybe we can help you.”
“There is nothing that can help me now.” Redeye took a few steps forward, emerging from the mist; doing so revealed a horrible injury. A hole the size of a thermos perforated her body, just under her right ribs, revealing the silhouettes of ruptured muscle-bundles and other devices that Bobbi had no name for. A thin trail of white fluid leaked from the wound even as she stood there.
Bobbi stared at the wound for a long moment; from behind her Violet’s soft gasp gave voice to her own surprise. “How long have you got?” she asked in a hushed voice.
“Not very long.” Redeye nodded down at the wound. “My internal reservoir of oxygenated fluorocarbon solution has been breached, and it is draining steadily. I am…bleeding to death, amusingly enough. I am afraid that what was a superficial wound suffered in the factory was made fatal by fighting the shixaur.” She smiled again, bemused. “The drone in the tunnel. I had never fought one before. Very powerful, very smart. It made good use of the vulnerability. Perhaps if I had not been damaged already I might have lived through it, but it has killed me well enough.”
Redeye (The Wonderland Cycle Book 2) Page 43
