by Sara King
Then he caught himself, realizing that the glittering machine walking beside him would say anything to ooze his way into his confidence. He shook off his momentary empathy for the cold facts of reality. Fact: Jersey was alive. Fact: Jersey wouldn’t be alive unless he had committed atrocities to ‘fit in’ because they always sent the ones who refused to cave to the pressure back to the Academy for ‘reconditioning.’
“And you just happened to end up back on Fortune,” Milar snorted. What a load of crap. He was an infiltrator, through and through, and the Coalition probably jumped at the realization he had personal connections to a few of the rebel leaders. His insertion had not been by chance.
The Nephyr frowned at him. “This is my home just as much as yours.”
Milar laughed at the ridiculousness of that. “It stopped being your home when you took the skin to save your own ass.” Snorting, Milar pressed on down the empty hall.
“Hey,” the Nephyr said, grabbing him by the shirt to bodily pull him around. “What—”
The rest of the cyborg’s question was cut off as Milar flipped him over his shoulder—all three hundred pounds—and dropped him like a ton of glass on the linoleum.
“Don’t,” Milar said, leveling his rifle on the Nephyr’s nose, “touch me.”
The Nephyr responded by kicking out and twisting, catching Milar’s legs with his shins and knocking his feet out from underneath him. “Listen!” Jersey snapped, lunging to his own feet as Milar struggled to get off the floor fast enough to put bullets in his brain. “I’m on your fucking side, you goddamn, narrow-minded, Shrieker-screwing asshole.” The floater wrenched Milar’s rifle from his hands as Milar tried to get it pointed at him and snapped it in half, then quarters, then threw it across the hall.
Seeing one of his favorite guns in pieces, Milar lost it. He drew his pistol and fired a barrage of armor-piercers at the cyborg’s face, but the Nephyr twisted and closed his orifices in time for them to miss the eyes and mouth. Milar was shoving his pistol aside and going for his EMP wand when a bullet whizzed down the hall and sliced open his deltoid, inches from his neck.
“Crap!” Jersey said, turning to face their new threat and putting his body between them. “Get that cuttlesilk on and get behind me!”
“Oh fuck that, pretty boy,” Milar snapped, changing his clip, dropping to a knee, and returning fire with a barrage of twelve-year-old Ryan Stakenborghs’s fancy ‘antisphere’ rounds. Upon impact, the explosive rounds swallowed the group of opponents in eerie spheres of total darkness for sixteen seconds at a time, bringing the temperature inside the point of influence to negative seventy degrees Fahrenheit within moments.
“Shit!” someone down the hall screamed, as the light-eating whomphs left them blind. “What are they shooting at us?! Fuck, I can’t see! I’m hit! Holy shit, what is it?! Why’s it so fucking cold?! I can’t see!” Milar heard heavy footsteps scatter from the voidlike blast-area and grinned to himself.
Standing above him, Magali’s pet Nephyr turned to glare at him, blue-green eyes pissed. “I told you to let me take the fire.”
“That you did, Glitter,” Milar said, still watching the void spheres for movement.
“You have any idea what Mag is gonna do to me if you die on my watch?”
“Your watch,” Milar snorted, getting back to his feet. “I’m in charge, here, asshole.” He listened to the sound of retreating fighters, the negative energy-spheres even then beginning to brighten back into normal light levels. He glanced at the Nephyr for the first time since trying to blow his head off. “Get your gun. We can kill each other later.”
Jersey frowned. “I don’t want to kill you. Weren’t you listening to anything I said? They took me because of a painting I did. I’m an artist.”
“An artist who rapes women and kills little kiddies. Yeah, real convincing.” Milar started to push past him.
Jersey caught Milar by the shoulder, and this time, his grip was like cold steel. With the power of a machine, Jersey twisted Milar around, forcing them face-to-face, the retreating soldiers forgotten. “You’re so full of shit.” Rage was powering the cyborg’s sea green eyes. “You think you’re better than me because you escaped. You think I’m the enemy because I couldn’t walk away, when you could.”
“No.” Milar leaned forward, until their faces were almost touching. “I think I’m better than you because you exist.” His body began to heat with rage, and Milar felt his face twist into a sneer. “I know what you had to do to earn that skin. Maybe nobody else does, or maybe they’re just gonna gloss it over and pretend it didn’t happen, but I know.” He jabbed his finger into the Nephyr’s glassy chest for emphasis. “And the moment you cross the line, the moment you slip back into your old habits, you’re mine.”
Jersey’s eyes narrowed in warning only a split second before he shoved him, but it still didn’t prepare Milar for the blow. Miles went flying backwards through the hallway wall, crumbling cinderblocks with his body. The Nephyr was cocking his head as Milar disentangled himself from the rubble. “You mean like that?”
Milar could barely see through his rage. “Do that again,” he whispered, gripping his pistol in a white-knuckled fist.
Jersey grabbed him and hurled him again, this time sending him sliding forty feet backwards down the hallway on his ass. Then the Nephyr stood there, unscathed, glowering down at him like a glass mountain. “Bring it, you fucking hypocrite.”
Milar got up and yanked out his special-made ten-pack magazine of EMP rounds. He’d worked with the blushing fifteen-year-old Janice Booth—daughter of Wellwright Booth, one of Milar’s old chess buddies—to create them, and had hopefully convinced her to keep them on the down-low, even from her other Yolk Baby friends. He slapped the magazine into his gun and took aim at the Nephyr’s head. “Goodbye, floater.”
A sudden, low-pitched roaring sound unexpectedly filled the hall right behind him.
“Unidentified citizens or unincorporated colonials with secondary voting privileges, you are not authorized to access this facility,” a rumbling robotic voice announced behind him. “You will now be terminated in accordance with Edict 15 of the Secret Installations and Sensitive Information Act. Rest assured that your sacrifice will maintain the happiness and security of countless others, as decreed by the Encompate.” Blinking, Milar started to turn.
The Nephyr hit him from the side with a speed that broke ribs, shoving him down and to the left. Less than a millisecond later, a rippling four-and-a-half-foot, blood-holed katana sliced through the air where Milar’s head had been, its blue-black blade shearing off a hank of Milar’s reddish hair.
“You fucking floater!” Milar cried, slamming into the wall with the Nephyr’s body propelling him. They went crashing through the cinderblocks together, landing in what looked like a laboratory on the other side.
“They repaired one of the muskers!” Jersey shouted, at the same time a four-and-a-half-foot sword sliced through the concrete wall and caught the Nephyr in the back, flinging him sideways like a doll.
Jersey got up, facing the glittering nine-foot musker like David facing Goliath. With their energy-barrier skin, they even looked like twins. How cute.
“Run!” Jersey cried, ducking another swing. The musker’s second sword hit him in the neck, knocking him to the side anyway. He screamed and hit the wall, hard, crumbling it and making the building around them shake.
Milar casually got to his feet, checked his broken ribs—considering the Nephyr’s force, he was surprised his spine hadn’t snapped—brushed rubble from his shirt and pants, and checked his weapon for damages. In the background, the Nephyr screamed and lunged at the musker in what looked like an attempt to sumo-wrestle. The robot simply lifted Jersey off the ground with one of its four fists and threw him again, this time back out into the hall.
“Milar, run!” Jersey cried, as he slid with a creepy glass-on-linoleum sound.
The musker, who had forgotten about Milar, raised its swords and began brin
ging them down on its foe, again and again.
“Run, goddamn it!” Jersey cried, as the thing pounded him into the floor, crushing the linoleum and the concrete slab foundation beneath him.
Milar took a moment to bend down and retie his shoe.
Realizing his foe was not succumbing to usual tactics, the musker, in all of its genius, increased its ferocity, the four-and-a-half-foot monomolecular tovlar blades becoming an industrial whir.
“M-M-M-M-I-I-I-I-I-I-I-L-L-L-L-L-L-A-A-A-A-A-A-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R!” the Nephyr screamed, his voice sounding almost like a choppy buzz from the number of blows he was taking from the musker’s blades.
Grinning, Milar took a moment to examine the top-secret lab. He saw hydroponics and petri dishes everywhere. Some sort of plant experiments. Immediately, his face soured. Ugh. Science. Give him a gun and a good knife over a plant any day. Still, with the wall patched up, Steffen Hayes would probably go nuts. The little brat would love all the chemicals filling the shelves, and it would get him out of his and Tatiana’s hair…
In the background, the musker’s assault continued, and Jersey was becoming harder and harder to see in the pit his body was making. Besides. The spray of linoleum and concrete chips was beginning to get distracting. Sighing, Milar checked his rounds, then took a couple steps to the left to get a better view through the remains of the concrete wall.
“Hey buddy.”
The musker stopped and whipped around, all nine feet of deadly glitter coming to focus on him in a moment of total concentration.
Milar raised his gun.
The musker deployed the missile launchers from his head.
Milar fired.
The musker’s whirring blades came to a sudden and devastating halt, momentum slamming them through its own body as the energy field was dismantled by EMP. The missile it had tried to fire went off, exploding its head and torso—and dropping a good chunk of the building on top of it. The enormous robot hit the ground hard enough to make the floor shake and more tiles fall from the ceiling, motionless except for the electrical shorts that were even then hissing and spitting in the dimly-lit corridor.
Jersey lifted his head from the crater it had created in the floor to look at him. He was glaring. “You fuck.”
Milar smirked. “Like I said. We can kill each other later. Let’s go hunt us some coalers first.”
Panting, Jersey climbed out of the hole that his body had beaten into the ground. His glassy skin was just as perfect and whole as it had always been, taking the hits from the tovlar razors as easily as if he’d been attacked with a feather boa. The same, however, could not be said about his clothes or his weapon. The pistol was a chopped and pulverized mess, and of the boots and clothes he’d been wearing, only one half of one pant leg remained relatively intact—the rest hung from his glassy body in shredded tatters. “I wasn’t the one with the attitude problem.”
“You’re right,” Milar said. “You’ve got a breathing problem.”
Jersey gave him a flat look. At the same time, a barrage of bullets hit him from the side, ricocheting off his skin and embedding themselves into the walls of the hall. He narrowed his eyes at Milar. “So, what, you’re gonna shoot me when I turn my back? Leave me skinless for the air to finish off slowly? Stand over me and take a piss as I die?”
“Thought had crossed my mind,” Milar said.
More bullets hit Jersey from behind. The Nephyr didn’t even flinch, continuing to glare across the dead musker at Milar. Then, snorting, he shook his head in disgust, turned, and started down the hall towards whoever was shooting at him. A few moments later, Milar heard screaming, which ended abruptly as bodies hit walls, floors, and ceilings. He limped forward to look down at the altrameter musker, and found himself half tempted to steal one of the sexy, rippling tovlar swords for himself. Tatiana would probably think it was cool…
“Coming, asshole?” Jersey called from down the hall.
Milar grunted and stepped over the massive machine’s body. As he caught up with Jersey, he passed bodies half-buried in concrete, bones ground to a fibrous paste against the faux stone, and realized the Nephyr had been going easy on him earlier. Immediately, he felt another rush of rage that the cyborg had dared to touch him at all, and had to stifle the urge to use the rest of his EMP clip on the two-bit floater.
“I’ll take point,” Milar said, moving to step past the Nephyr.
Jersey held his arm out as he walked, smoothly blocking his path. “You’re staying behind me.”
Milar narrowed his eyes down at the limb. “Move it or lose it, Glitz.”
Jersey ignored him, arm still extended as they moved deeper into the compound. “Just get the damned cuttlesilk on.”
Milar opened his mouth to tell the prick where he could stuff that particular idea, but was forestalled when four Nephyrs came around the corner at a run. Seeing Jersey, they slowed with frowns, looking around. “What the fuck happened, dude?”
Jersey spat. “Fucking musker went apeshit, started killing everybody. Must’ve gotten twitchy from that last attack.”
“Shit,” one of the Nephyrs said, standing there, shaking his head at the scene. “Steele’s gonna be pissed when he finds out about this. That was our last muskie. Dunno what those colonists got hooked up with, but they’re using something that’s dropping our bots like flies.”
“Does it look like this?” Milar asked, pointing his gun at them. He fired four shots, and the Nephyrs fell and started writhing on the floor. Their grunts of startlement, however, quickly morphed into screaming as their energy fields went down and their skinless bodies began rubbing against the linoleum.
Jersey glared at him over a shoulder. “I could’ve handled that.”
“I know,” Milar said, enjoying the meat-puppets’ dance. “I wanted to see them scream.” He looked up at Jersey. “Give you a little taste of what’s to come.”
Jersey narrowed his eyes in disgust. “You’re just as sick as the rest of them.” He went over and unceremoniously put his heel through each of his victims’ heads. Then, without another word, he stalked deeper into the compound.
But Milar couldn’t move, Jersey’s words having hit something raw inside. He stayed where he was as the cyborg strode away, staring down at the corpses. He knew, deep down, that the Nephyrs had done something horrible to him, some irreparable damage that set him apart from other people, but it was the first time someone had said it to his face. The knowledge felt cold in the pit of his stomach, cooling his innards as quickly as the open muscle at his feet, moisture whisked away by the very air that had sustained them. It was every Nephyr’s biggest fear—that somehow, some tiny, inconsequential part in the energy barrier would malfunction and he’d be left to dehydrate like jerky in an oven, and Milar had been there, eleven years ago, lying on that table in that carefully-humidified room…
“Come on, Miles!” Jersey snapped from around the corner. “You can ruminate on your distended asshole later—there’s more Nephyrs ahead.”
Milar quickly donned the cuttlesilk—more because he was too numb to do anything else than to give him protection from the enemy—and stepped around the corner just in time to hear Jersey suck in a sudden breath.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Jersey managed.
A Nephyr wearing the insignia of a colonel and STEELE on his front nametag stood at the head of six other Nephyrs—two more than Milar had EMP bullets for. Behind them, an additional line of non-cybernetic fighters, mainly technicians and clerks by the looks of them, quivered against the wall, holding guns that didn’t fit in their hands, watching the exchange.
It was the lead Nephyr, however, that drew Milar’s full attention. Milar felt an oddness in his gut when looking at him, like he’d seen that face before, and it had been extremely important…
“So where’s your friend?” Steele asked, cocking his head with a grin. “He shy?”
“He’s a chickenshit,” Jersey growled. “Lets me do all the work.”
Steele looked Jersey over casually, cold eyes catching on the strips of cloth still dangling from his shoulders. “Took out a musker on your own?”
“Not sure what the big deal is,” Jersey replied.
“It was previously damaged.” Steele cocked his head. “Still. Impressive.”
“Yeah, well.” Jersey cracked his neck and squared off. “Let’s do this thing.”
As Steele’s five Nephyrs automatically moved forward to attack him, Steele held up a hand to stop them. “Before my men gut you, I’d like to know why you chose to switch sides. You had so much promise. We were thinking of recruiting you to the Division. You would make such a wonderful SuperSquader.” He grinned. “You’ve got all the right contacts.”
Jersey spat. “There’s your fucking Division, Steele. Bring it.”
Steele held up his hand again, stopping the fight. “You caught the attention of Orion himself. You’d just throw that away for what…” he glanced at the Nephyrs behind him. “…a colonist to screw?”
Several of the Nephyrs chuckled.
Jersey’s fists clenched. “This is my home. You floaters took me from it when I was a kid.”
But Milar was stiffening, finally realizing where he’d seen that dossier before. It had been a top-secret file David Landborn had shown him, years ago, on what he had called the ‘AlphaGen elimination project’. Nephyrs…who were outfitted to kill other Nephyrs. Dissenters, defectors, and, most confusing, ‘the very old.’ David had made Milar memorize every face when he and Patrick returned from the Core at twenty.
“If you ever see one of these guys,” David had said, thumping the file, “do not approach him. Leave. Just turn and leave. I don’t care if he’s killing your goddamn twin brother, Miles, you leave him right where he is and come get me. You understand?”
Milar had protested that he couldn’t leave Patrick to die. David had grabbed him by the collar, lifted him easily off his feet with one hand—at twenty, Milar had weighed almost two hundred pounds—and looked him in the eye with irises that suddenly seemed to glow gold inside a face that inexplicably took on both a near-black hue and started to shimmer. “You come get me,” the man had said, as Milar’s heart thundered so hard he couldn’t breathe. “And I will avenge your brother.” He dropped him again. “You don’t…” the glow and light-eating shimmer dissipated instantly, leaving the same David Landborn that Milar had always known. “You die too.” Even as they’d cut off his skin, Milar’s heart hadn’t pounded as hard as it had as he stood there, looking up at David Landborn, knowing that what stood there wasn’t human.
