“We can’t leave her.”
“You’re not thinking what I am thinking, are you?” asked Gomez. Orlov’s lips parted, a strand of pale hair across her mouth lifting with her breath.
“I don’t know what you’re thinking.”
“Nothing. I wasn’t thinking about anything.” Gomez winced as he straightened. As bad as it was, his ribs were not broken. The back of his head throbbed.
He fished around in one of his pockets and pulled out a gelatin tab. He popped it between his teeth and clamped down. A cold wash of liquid leaked over his teeth and tongue, and with it came a numbness that spread from his mouth to the rest of him.
“Help me get her on my back,” said Gomez.
“I’ll carry her.”
“She’s my crew. I got her into this. I carry her out.”
Thirty-Four
THE DISTANT EXPLOSION vibrated through Adams’s feet. The walls shuddered. He wondered if the colony was under attack but then the trembling was gone as quickly as it came.
“What the hell was that?” said Finn. He pointed his gun back down the hallway. A bead of sweat clung to his brow and his face was flushed, darkening the freckles on his cheek. “We should turn back. We should go back to Gomez. Someone is letting loose some heavy firepower. We’re safer when we’re together. It’s like one of those low budget movies. We shouldn’t have split up. Things are going to get bad.”
“Bad? Can it get any worse?” Adams covered laughter with his fist. “What difference does it make? An explosion and a quick death would be merciful.
“We need to keep moving,” said Patch. “There will be more of them. Coming out of the walls. Every day his domain stretches. Every day he eats more.” She lumbered forward. The servos of her exoskeleton whined with each stride. Blood and a viscous green fluid seeped from her neck.
“We should turn back,” argued Finn. He took a few steps down the hall.
“We need to get to Ragnar,” said Adams. “Bring Penelope to him. He can copy her into a partition, maybe even extract the corrupting code.”
“Where’s Ragnar been in all this?” asked Finn. “Shouldn’t he have closed down systems and taken control of the colony? He’s an AI and Rom’s only a human. I would’ve sealed some doors and turned off the air. End of uprising.”
“Rom was one step ahead,” said Patch stopping and turning back. “Ragnar never knew what was coming.”
“Can he help Penelope?” asked Adams. He staggered beneath the weight of the metal box. He wanted to rest but he knew he could not stop. He was afraid that if he did he would not be able to keep going.
Patch bobbed her head and rolled her remaining eye. “Rom was one step ahead.”
“What do mean?” asked Adams. “What did Rom do?”
“Ragnar is infected.” Her one good eye extended. “He is resilient but the code is corrupting.”
“So he’s lost, too?” Adams sagged against the wall. “Why are we even going there if he can’t save Penelope?” He fell to his knees, the weight on his back suddenly too much to bear.
“Rom is hidden,” said Patch. “If we can revive Ragnar, we’ll be able to locate Rom. Without his maps, we will wander the tunnels of the colony forever and never chance upon him. Ragnar holds the key to finding Rom.”
“I’m done,” said Adams. His heart fluttered. He wasn’t sure he could stand again. “I don’t care. Go. Without Penelope, it doesn’t matter anymore.”
“Get up.” Finn grabbed him by the hands and dragged him to his feet. “Those fucking spiders will find you. You saw what they did to Hendo. It’s not safe. We need to keep moving.”
Adams shook his head. “Better to die.”
“I hear them,” said Patch tilting her head. “Behind us. Spiders.”
“Let’s go, let’s go,” said Finn pulling him along.
Adams tore his arm free. Patch had already loped down the hall and around a corner. Finn followed then paused. “Come on, man. Don’t give up! Fuck! I hear them!”
Then Finn vanished around the corner.
Adams stared down the hall. The light flickered, his own shadow stretching long one moment and then merging with the blackness the next. He touched the grenade at his side. Better to go out in fire and fury.
He heard the scrabbling of the metal feet against the walls and floor. They were coming. Dark shapes bunched in the distance and then scattered as if a stone had been thrown among them. The spiders were coming.
He unclipped the grenade and placed his thumb on the safety. He would not wait. The only thing that mattered was that he would be blown into nonexistence at the same time as Penelope. Nothing else mattered.
Then Penelope spoke.
“Run,” she said. “Run and save me.”
Thirty-Five
“WHY ARE YOU stopping?” asked Marley. The acrid smell of smoke from the explosion lingered. Her eyes had finally stopped burning.
“I need to rest.” Gomez leaned one hand against the wall. Orlov, limbless, was strapped to his back. He panted, lips parted. She stared past him, down the corridor. They were not far enough away. The explosion would draw more spiders. She needed them to keep moving.
“Give me Orlov, and we can continue,” said Marley. “I’m stronger than you are.”
“Five minutes. Give me five to rest. Then I’ll be good.”
“You got three.”
After looking down the hall in both directions, Marley brought up the map of the colony on her VR goggles. They were not far from the room where Ragnar was. In a short while, they would be reunited with Finn and Adams. Maybe Patch could do something for Orlov.
The map flickered. Blacked out.
“The map.”
Gomez nodded. “Mine faded out ten minutes ago. We don’t know where we’re going.”
“I can get us there. That’s not the problem. We’re not going to be able to see if anything’s coming for us. Spiders could be around the next corner.”
“Fucking technology.”
Marley thought Rom might have had something to do with the decay of the map. They had accessed it through the colony network and it would not take much for him to corrupt that code. She wondered what else he could do through the network.
“Let’s get out of the hallway.”
She tested a few doors. They were all locked. Marley used her nanotorch to quickly cut a hole in one of the doors, enough for her to squeeze a hand through to trigger the release.
She hustled Gomez inside and helped him slip free of the knotted sleeves and pant legs and lower Orlov to the lone bed in the room.
Marley surveyed the room. It was cramped and utilitarian, a bed that folded down from the wall, an entertainment and comms module that swiveled out, several recessed shelves and cabinets, and a closet that served as a toilet and shower.
Marley could hardly imagine what it must be like to call this place home for the five-year tours of duty that the miners signed up for. They were primed for Rom to incite towards rebellion from the corporation.
While Gomez adjusted a pillow and blankets for Orlov, Marley closed the door and turned to the shelves. Books, a thumb-sized Buddha figurine, a digital album.
Orlov screamed. Marley spun about, gun leveled. Orlov’s eyes were wide, bloodshot. She bucked beneath the struggling hands of Gomez.
“Help me!” he pleaded.
Orlov’s curses filled the room. Her eyes jumped wildly as she looked around the room trying to orient herself, and then she stared at her body flopping, and her eyes widened as she saw she had no limbs.
Marley ripped open her trauma pack and slapped a sedative patch on Orlov’s neck. Half a minute later, she ceased struggling.
“Maybe we shouldn’t let her wake again,” said Gomez laying a palm on Orlov’s forehead.
“We don’t have that much sedative.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He pulled strands of hair away from her face and tucked them behind her ears.
Marley shook her head.
Gomez chewed his lips before finally speaking. “You really think she wants to wake? To this nightmare? She’s as good as dead.”
“Limbs can be replaced.”
“Her humanity can’t be.”
“Is that how you see me? Not a human anymore?”
He laughed. “You gave up on being human long ago. You’re a fucking machine! Look at yourself! Those EMP blasts knocked you out. How much hardware is in your head?”
Marley felt suddenly dizzy. She backed away until she pressed against the door. “It shouldn’t happen. I shouldn’t black out. I know that. I think he might have done something to me. Something…something I never would have agreed to.”
“But somehow it happened?”
“You think I was always like this or wanted to be like this?” Her lips quivered
“I’ve seen your type.” Gomez growled. “The soldiers who rush in blindly, fools to the danger. It didn’t used to be that way. My generation was smarter. We used our wits and survived. But now soldiers don’t care. Kick down a door, get an arm blown off, and a week later a shiny new one, and not only a new arm but you get bumped up in pay. Then you’re part of the Augmented army, thinking you’re something special when you’re nothing more than chattel, a better killing machine but in the end one with replaceable parts. I’ve seen that, you know. They number the parts. I’ve seen the same arm on two different people in a three week period.”
“I’m not that.”
“What are you then? Some innocent?”
“Never claimed to be that,” Marley said. “I served like you. And survived intact. Then I got tangled up with Prime. I became a fixer. I went in where his robots could not. I did the jobs that only humans could. He wanted to make it personal. He wanted a human to send a message to other humans. What better way to frighten people into submission?
“But then I was done. I didn’t want any more of his madness. I wanted out. Hsu worked for a nano tech firm, an old one, firmly established before the AIs, and he said he would take care of me, that I could give up the life.
“We had it planned out. I would go with him and never return to Huang Di Prime.”
Marley picked up the digital album from the shelf.
“We were coming back from the mainland, after a weekend of cool breezes and tangled sheets. I felt a quickening in my belly. We were to embark on a new chapter. We were going to start a family.
“I remember the scream of the tires on the road and my body flung away from his, my fingers reaching out for him, almost touching. To have touched each other one last time. What I would give up for that now.
“I woke to Huang Di Prime and a body kept alive by tubes and wires. All was lost. Everything has been taken from me. He said a rival AI had done this to me. They had launched an attack on agents of the corporation. I was dying. I had been torn apart. He offered me a way back. And I took it.”
“I would have chosen to die,” said Gomez. He sat on the bed next to Orlov, his fingers brushing her hair away from her lips.
“Not me,” said Marley. “I wanted revenge.”
Thirty-Six
ADAMS SQUATTED AGAINST the wall, the weight of Penelope so heavy that his legs trembled. He wanted to collapse, but they were close to Ragnar.
“We lost them,” said Finn. He stood at the intersection of two long corridors, gun cradled in one arm. The flickering overhead lights flashed across the dark glass of his VR goggles. “You don’t hear the spiders anymore, do you?”
“I heard her,” Adams said. “She told me to run.”
“You gotta run on your own,” said Finn. “Common sense, my man. Worry about all that other shit later.” He called past Adams to where Patch’s exoskeleton filled the corridor. “What about you? You hear anything?”
“Not a thing.”
“That’s good then. We lost them.”
“No,” she said. “That’s not a good thing. We heard the spiders right behind us. They were close enough to run us down. Why would they give up? It makes not sense. I don’t like it.”
“Well like it or not,” said Finn shifting the gun in his arms, “it looks like they’re off our tail and we got a free pass to Ragnar’s.”
“They’re smarter than that.” Her neck whirred and ticked and she glanced up and down the hall.
“Maybe they got called off,” said Adams. He pushed off the wall, steadying himself with both palms until he had the weight of the metal box squarely beneath his feet. “Let’s get Penelope to Ragnar.”
“We are almost there,” said Patch. She flagged with her hand. “Enough talking. Let’s get somewhere safe.”
As Finn hurried past Adams to reclaim the lead from Patch, he muttered. “Only safe place is off the god-forsaken radioactive rock.”
Adams’s first few steps were stumbling lurches before he corrected his angle so that Penelope’s weight drove his movement rather than sending him reeling. Each step shuddered through his legs, his knees tightening, the small of his aching back on the edge of a sudden spasm. After only a few paces, his breath went wild. He wanted to take a slow deep breath but the straps cut into his shoulders. The box on his back had seemed to grow heavier with each passing hour. His fingers tingled. Sweat poured from his brow.
Finn and Patch were outpacing him. At each intersection, they would wait, and he would almost catch up before they would race off again.
When Finn reached the next intersection, he leapt back and flattened against the wall. “Shit! A whole fucking cluster of them.”
Adams peeked around the corner. Rotten corpses in orange jump suits and the twisted remains of security robots filled a scorched and bullet-riddled hall.
Past the litter of bodies, a half-dozen spiders swarmed around a battered door. One of them clung to the ceiling, its metallic legs trying to pry a recessed lens from the ceiling. They argued about something but he could not make out their words beneath the scraping of their legs.
“There’s too many of them,” whispered Adams.
Finn bent over his EMP device. “The charge is wavering between yellow and red.” He tapped it with his finger. It went full red. “Fuck me! We need to retreat.”
“You can’t use that again. You might kill Penelope.”
Finn toggled the power switch of the EMP bomb with his thumb. “I hate to be an ass but right now I’m more worried about me getting killed than Penelope.”
“That’s Ragnar’s hold,” said Patch pointing to the door the spiders crowded around. The servos in her hands clicked as she folded them into two fists. “They must have climbed through the air vents or taken some other short cut. I knew it was too quiet.”
“Damn!” said Finn. “Why didn’t you take us through one of these short cuts? Now we’re screwed!”
“Did they see you?” asked Adams. “We can backtrack and find another way to Ragnar.”
“There is no other way,” said Patch.
“How can there be no other way?” asked Finn. “Ragnar’s an AI. Since when can you lock an AI into a room?”
“We need to get in there,” said Adams.
Penelope spoke. “Don’t risk yourself for me, my love. Run. Hide. Wait until someone comes to save you.”
She materialized through his interface. Her long arms stretched away from the dented box. He could see her dark eyes and lips behind the veil. Then she disappeared, replaced by sweat-stained straps and dull metal.
“We can’t turn back,” he said.
“We’d be fools to go forward,” said Finn. “We can find another way in, can’t we, Patch?”
Patch shrugged. “I don’t know what we’ll find anymore.”
“Then we need to go straight down this hallway,” said Adams.
Finn shook his head. “In case you didn’t notice, Cap, those spiders are in our way. And we’re outnumbered and outgunned. Can’t just stroll past them.”
“Then I guess we’ll have to move them.” Adams stepped past Finn and into the corridor. Holding his rifle at hip level,
he fired into the spiders. The gun, more powerful than he thought, jumped in his hands, the bullets painting a line from one of the spiders up towards the ceiling. He tried to level his gun but Finn had grabbed him by the straps and jerked him back behind the corner.
A moment later the wall exploded.
Heat washed across Adams’s face and he flew off his feet and landed hard. The back of his head cracked against the metal box. He blacked out for a second. The lights flickered. His skin burned where fragments of metal and concrete had tore into his flesh. He tried to get up, but the weight of Penelope’s box pinned him like a bug upturned on its shell. Finn’s voice came at him as if muted and over a great distance.
“Idiot!” screamed Finn. “Bad fucking idea! Really bad!”
Adams shook his head. The room spun. Finn was shouting even louder now. Adams winced as a few gunshots cracked loudly. Immediately after, he heard the scrabbling of metal feet, dozens of them at first on the walls and ceiling and floors, and then something worse: the scream of metal being ripped open.
The spiders were swarming and trying to pry Penelope from him.
“Stop! Leave her be!” Adams flailed his arms. Cold metal struck him hard across the face. His mouth flooded with a coppery wash of blood. A sharp edge tore at his shoulders and the heat of pain raced down his chest. The bugs swarmed around him, lifted him, and flung him so hard against the wall that he could not breath for several moments. The light faded. His ears filled with a bubbling static.
He struggled with each breath, the ribs along his back sending shearing pain with each inhalation. That was when he noticed his back pressing against the wall. Penelope was gone. They had taken her.
A sudden terror swept over him.
“Penelope!” he shouted.
He turned over to his hands and knees. Two of the spiders dragged Penelope across the floor, the bloodied straps trailing, the grating metal rising like a scream.
Into Darkness Page 15
