‘It’s no good. They can’t hear us.’
‘What should we do, Ten?’
‘We wait for rescue. Command has our location. For now we bunker down and for the Will’s sake nobody touch anything.’
Pete walked away from them, wandering down the length of the room, circling and inspecting each of the tanks, looking at the star of consciousness that was flickering in each. They weren’t all perfect copies; cloning was never always perfect. There were a couple whose limbs had failed to develop, and a dark tank that had been powered down; it looked like the head had grown so fast it had ruptured.
That one was cold to touch. Each of the other tanks hummed with heating and life-support. Pumps extracted the fluids and recycled them, replenishing the amniotic and pushing the fluids back into the tank.
‘Of course he came to STOC,’ one of the soldiers exclaimed. Pete looked at him, reading the explanation in his mind before it was spoken. Cloning was banned across the WU, verboten. Where else would you go but the leftover Örjians? They were the master splicers.
Peter was standing by one tank that appeared to be empty, though it hummed and was lit to the same bright green murk. He could just make out a darker shape inside and sense that glimmer ... that tiny spark ... Pierre?
He was thrust backward. A shockwave threw him to the ground. His mind careened, lost in a random, epileptic spasm of memories. Nothing matched: visions, smells and sounds repeated themselves discordantly. Black, white, green, those eyes!, dry grass, the ocean pulling back and forth, his bones breaking, blue, green, sinking deeper into the water. Where the light doesn’t go and thoughts go out.
He didn’t see the other clones open their eyes or feel the splitting shriek they stabbed into the soldiers’ minds. The MUs crumpled over and rolled on the floor, clawing at their heads and helmets for it to stop. They began hitting their ears on the ground, harder and harder, desperate to reach unconsciousness.
Power was cut to the room and dark hit like a hammer. In the second before the emergency lighting took over, a lithe mechanical silhouette dove into the room. A blade of light, the length of its arm, carved like a sword through the tanks, before spinning to sweep the other side of the room and slicing through the cloning chambers. Warm fluids burst to the floor and the attacker leapt upon the bodies to make sure the job was done.
The red glow of the backup lights managed to fill the room and the figure drew itself up.
Peter looked up from the ground, his head hot and throbbing.
‘Who are you?’ Pete croaked.
The figure looked down and Pete saw now that it had no face, only a polished metal plate on a silicon scalp. They’d been rescued by a droid.
‘Who sent you?’ Pete asked, his voice nearly a whisper. The droid didn’t answer, perhaps it wasn’t built to speak. ‘Who sent you?’
~ * ~
‘Another blackout today, this time from one of the relocation zones in STOC,’ Phillipe Kinazee read out, updating viewers new to his stream. He was on his second shift, rolling the show to extended time while they were rating so highly.
His producer, Morley, had been tipped off that something was happening near Omskya and, for the first time, they had beaten one of the larger shows to the story. Their source was joining the panel via a link to the neighbouring sector. ‘Franky, what can you tell us about what is happening down there?’
The man the host called Franky, whose full name was written below him as Investigative Reporter Francis Lowell, was a thin forty-year-old with retreating hair. Behind him, a concertina fence was pulled across the footbridge that led to an empty but otherwise normal-looking suburb. In front of that, marauders stood unmoving while drones were flying in their hundreds over their heads.
‘As you can see, Phillipe, Services have established a cordon and no one is going in or out,’ Frank raised his voice, as if he was in a strong wind. ‘This is as close as we are allowed to get.’
‘And has anyone been able to ascertain what the situation is?’
‘Not yet, Phillipe. Services is keeping tight-lipped. As you can see, it looks from here as if Sector 261 is deserted. We haven’t seen any residents since we’ve been here, but we have detected traces of a large gas release. Clearly, there has been an altercation of some sort, but which event caused the other is the question and, at the moment, no one is releasing any information.’
‘And no one will until the hierarchy is re-established,’ a second panellist, Xanthe Ching, spoke without being prompted.
They cut back into the studio. Behind the line-up of speakers was the satellite view of the area ... the frond of 261 was etched out in red.
‘How can something like this be kept hidden? The Primacy is clearly using the cover of a reshuffle to delay releasing information.’ This was from a young blonde woman in a pinstripe jacket. Under her was her title: Sandrina Sibellio, Citizens for Universal Equality.
‘I think there are plenty of simpler explanations before we resort to conspiracy theories,’ Ching said.
‘Such as?’
‘There has always been unrest amongst the rehabilitated Örjians. A violent outbreak between them is the most logical explanation.’
The host was pinged by the on-site investigator that he had more to say. ‘Franky, you have something to add?’
‘Yes. My team has been looking into the blackouts for that particular sector and for the last few months the population there has completely disconnected from the Weave.’
‘You see. It’s a minor rebellion. Services will restore order in no time.’
‘If it was so minor, then why the lockdown on information?’
‘I think, with everything else going on in the world right now, it is natural to be cautious.’
‘Dare we suggest that this is another manifestation like the one in the Dome?’ Phillipe asked. The rest of the panel breathed in sharply. The host laughed. ‘Alright, no one wants to bite on that one. Well, informed or not, this new event is shaking the civic seating chart. This signals the end of Ryu Shima’s time in the hot seat as the Will puts its trust in Colonel Abercrombie Pinter. Isn’t that a blast from the past?’
They chuckled or clucked their tongues.
‘The decline began long before this most recent event,’ Ching said, again without a signal from the host. ‘I think we can map the precise moment that confidence in Ryu Shima was lost, to the Mexica Kronos outbreak.’
‘I think it began earlier. Shima’s rate of growth slowed down immediately after the rebellion was declared,’ Patricia Milling said, who had, until recently, been a Shima supporter.
Each of the speakers presented line charts and statistical analysis to their streams, validating their statements.
‘Three Kronos outbreaks, a rebellion in the Cape and the psi collections ... this must be stretching Services resources quite thinly, mustn’t it? I direct this one to you, Patricia,’ the host said, bringing in the fourth speaker, one of his regular civic commentators.
‘That’s true, Phillipe. It seems at any point now that Services may not be able to cope with another large incident. Colonel Pinter is inheriting quite a queue of problems.’
‘While we all know him from the history books, we’ve never known him as Prime of the World Union. What do you think he’ll do?’
‘Colonel Pinter knows how to command.’
‘In war, yes. We aren’t at war, Ching,’ Sandrina said.
‘Okay, that sounds like a good place to break. There’s plenty to discuss here. Let’s take five minutes to gather questions and come back to talk about what it might mean that the Scorpion has —’
~ * ~
Around the world screens went black.
All connections broke as every node in the network was shut down. The Weave was disconnected.
Manifestations Page 37
