by P. R. Adams
The parking area where our car had been hidden passed by, then another tree I recognized from its strange, almost slumbering repose against another trunk. It wasn’t much farther.
Rotor wash battered treetops overhead, raining pinecones all around me. The helicopter team was searching, getting desperate.
Or getting close.
The ground sloped away, this time not caused by the aftereffects of the explosion. Not even a hundred feet! The area was open—saplings, bushes, dark soil covered here and there by patches of loam.
I sprinted as best I could and dove face first at the spot where the rocket launcher was buried. Rocks scraped away the flesh of my chest as I skidded, reminding me I had nothing protecting the soft and vulnerable parts of me. I dug fire-blackened fingers into the soil, gripped plywood, and levered it up and away. Dirt slid down into the hole where the dark green case—unlabeled, like the helicopter—waited.
The rotor noise became a roar, drew closer. Debris took to the air all around me.
I tugged the case out and flung it toward the closest trees. Cover.
Machine gun fire—staccato, deafening to my tender ears—bellowed in the open space. Bullets dug fist-sized holes in the soil. Close. Far too close.
I rolled away, got to my feet, and sprinted, zigging, zagging, then flopping on top of the case and tumbling deeper into the woods. The clasps were like ancient, rusted iron—fused, refusing to release. I snapped them off and popped the lid open.
The helicopter was overhead, its nose slowly rotating, the pilot searching, close enough that I could make out pale flesh, a feminine nose, soft cheeks.
I loaded the rocket, brought the launcher up.
She must have spotted me. The helicopter was too close to launch its own missile, so she twisted around to get the machine gun on me.
I fired and dove away.
The blast caught me in the air, threw me a good ten feet, parking me hard against a tree trunk. I twisted around in time to see the flaming hulk dip its nose and plunge straight into a clump of trees, where it came to an abrupt stop with the sound of tortured machinery and splintering wood. Then the helicopter came to rest with a shuddering thump.
I ran to the case, reloaded, and searched around. No other threats dropped from the sky.
I set the launcher down. I needed to be sure. I ran into the clearing, reaching for my pistol in case the pilot had somehow survived.
But the pistol was gone. Fallen out while I was running through the woods.
And Maribel stood at the edge of the tree line, dressed in a dull wood camouflage bodysuit similar to Ichi’s. Watching. Smiling.
How far away? Thirty feet? Forty? Could I run back to a weapon? To the rocket launcher?
Maribel dashed forward and leapt at me. Planted a booted foot in my chest. Knocked me back.
No running away.
I got to my feet, once again sluggish. Aching.
Maribel strolled to the fiery wreckage and braced against the fuselage, then tore away a piece of smoldering, blackened metal. A section of one of the runners.
Why?
She spun it around. Like a staff. Like Jacinto had used in the VR.
“Jacinto? Are you running her?” I backpedaled. Maribel would have killed me. Jacinto wouldn’t be content with simple murder. “Is this about Chan? All of this?”
Maribel closed. “It is about all of you, Stefan. It is about finishing the job. Chan will be a part of me when this is complete. You—”
She swung, and I barely caught the blow with a forearm. The force knocked me back.
I rolled away, favoring that arm, staggering to my feet and backpedaling. “Is that really you, Jacinto? Or are you just a bad copy, a tool for Stovall?”
Maribel-Jacinto charged me, flipping at the last second and bringing the staff down on the shoulder I was favoring. My cybernetics held up, but the flesh around the limb screamed.
I went to a knee, got up, stumbled back until the trees were at my rear. “Is all this your choosing? Is it, Jacinto? Are you going after Chan because you want to defeat the only person better than you, or are you—?”
Maribel-Jacinto didn’t let me finish, hopping forward, leaping, once again kicking me in the chest. Not great. Not particularly skillful. But I was an easy target.
I bounced off a tree, felt the wind burst from my lungs, and fell to the ground. It certainly felt like Jacinto was running the android. There was ego behind the actions, emotion. Simulated or real, it didn’t feel like Maribel.
Maribel-Jacinto spun the staff around and sneered. “Where is Chan?”
I got up, sucked in air, then fell back to my knees, gasping. “Is—”
The android drove the staff into the ground, like a spear. “Where?”
I got up again, steadied against a tree. “Can I…” Once again, I lost my balance and fell back. The android seemed to be licking it up. Bitch. I stood. “Can I make a deal?”
“I can find her on my own.”
“You haven’t even heard my terms. Maybe…” I dropped to a knee, put both hands on the ground. “Maybe you’ll like them.”
Maribel-Jacinto pulled the staff from the ground and spun it around again. A ridiculous amount of flare and ego. Jacinto, definitely. “There are no good terms. No deal.”
I pulled up the rocket launcher I’d been maneuvering toward.
And fired.
The rocket raced through the air and detonated against the android’s armored chest. It was hurled back, then skipped across the ground for several feet before coming to a rest. I found the arm that had been holding the metal staff and wrenched it free.
Maribel-Jacinto pushed its upper body up on the remaining elbow as I approached. The body was torn apart at the waist, exposing the same skeletal frame as before. Its charred and twisted lips moved.
I straddled the ruptured chest. “You should’ve listened to my terms.”
It shook its head.
“No?” I drove the staff through its head. “What about fuck off and die?”
It twitched, then went still.
“Seems like a fair deal to me.” I staggered a few steps, stopped. “Chan?”
“Stefan?” Chan’s voice. Relieved.
“She’s dead. I’m not much better.” I listened. No more rotors. No more explosions. “Where are the others? Danny? Ichi?”
Silence.
“Chan?”
More silence. My legs gave out. The sky grew darker, the breeze colder.
“Ichi?” My voice slipped into something so ephemeral and weak, not even the wind could carry it.
Chapter 25
Smoke rose from charred tree trunks, white against the black of the scarred woods. My throat and sinuses burned. It felt like I was baking, like someone had chopped me up, basted me with misery sauce, and tossed me into the oven. My steps snuffed embers and splintered twigs with whispered pops.
Chan stayed close behind me on the ash-covered trail, clutching the computing device that had probably saved our lives.
No. Chan had saved our lives using that device. Big difference.
We stopped at the car we’d parked off the trail. Fire-blasted but still functional. It would get us out, whoever us was now.
“Try again,” Chan said, computing device held high.
I planted my ass against the car trunk, coughed, spat out what I hoped was just ash-darkened mucus, and reconnected to our private network. “Danny? Ichi? Huiyin? Talk to me.”
Nothing.
Chan’s right cheek twitched. Magenta hair spilled over eyes that seemed ready to tear up. “Changing.”
“The network?”
“The attacks. One time, one approach, the next, another.” A jagged breath, then Chan brushed the hair back and slumped against the trunk next to me. The computing device thudded against the soot-darkened metal. “I need something. Too much.”
“Chan.” I twisted around and took the Gridhound’s soft shoulders in my cybernetic hands. It was such an odd feelin
g to know that my mechanical hands, the product of a life lived too hard, were holding flesh that had been put through so little. Chan’s exertions were mental, psychological, and there had apparently never been any consideration of the other demands a body had. “You’re not going back. You’ve gotten free of the drugs. You don’t need them, remember? What you did—”
Chan tried to pull away.
“Listen! You want to go back to what you were? Losing track of the world around you? Putting the rest of us at risk just because you couldn’t deal with some bad memories?”
The tears came, flowing around a snarl that twisted Chan’s round face. “Bad memories?”
“I know what Jacinto did to—”
Chan swung at me. It was unexpected, too quick to stop. Not powerful, but it left my jaw tender. “Don’t know anything! Don’t know what it feels like!” Chan grabbed at the breasts covered by a black T-shirt I now saw had flickering designs embedded in it. “Don’t know what’s desired, don’t know what’s feared and hated!”
Black-metallic nails clawed at me, at first I thought for my eyes, but then I realized they merely sought a jacket or shirt I wasn’t wearing. Chan clutched at my flesh, pulled me close, squeezed me with an intensity I wasn’t ready for.
I waited until I was sure this was what Chan wanted—needed—then I returned the hug, patted the bony back that had carried us through deadly encounters with Stovall’s creation, and let the sobbing go without interruption for as long as I could.
Chan suddenly went silent and pulled away, turned. “Sorry. Got snot all over you.”
“I’ve had worse.” I brushed ash from my hair. Singed. Probably a total mess. “Those other three cars. Are they still out there?”
“I-I’ll check.”
They would’ve been on us by now if they were going to attack, but maybe Lilly Duvreau was waiting, hoping we might be spent. We were, actually, but she apparently didn’t know it. I wandered back to the path, took a gun from one of the dead, and found a fingerprint that worked. There was plenty of ammo to be had. I took four magazines, then inspected their cars for any potential valuable information.
Nothing. Empty glove compartments and trunks. Even the corpses had nothing on them other than the occasional dedicated data device that wouldn’t have provided anything if it weren’t a warped, cracked ruin.
They weren’t about to repeat the same mistake.
An engine coughed, distant, but loud. Approaching.
“Chan—” Coughing shook me. I spat out more of the dark saliva and ash mixture. “Chan!”
Chan ran into view, then crouched behind a tree. “Hear it.”
I got in between two of the cars that hadn’t collided, dropped to my belly, and slithered forward on my arms until I was halfway under the rearmost vehicle. The few spots on my belly that hadn’t previously been scraped were now.
The engine growl grew closer. Its refined bass rumbling was familiar, but I had learned long ago not to rely on familiarity. Whatever came up the trail to us, I was ready to put a tight burst center mass.
A motorcycle came into view—flat black, rugged. The driver was hunched low over the gas tank. It was a slender person in all black, wearing a black helmet.
The bike slowed, then stopped about thirty feet back of the rear car.
The driver straightened, drew a pistol, and scanned the woods on either side of the trail before flipping the helmet’s faceplate up. Danny called out, “Stefan? Anyone else out there besides you and Chan?”
“No hiding from you,” I grumbled as I pushed out from under the car.
Danny holstered his pistol. “Lucky guess, actually. First place I thought I saw you was a corpse. It, um… It looked better than you. Shit. What happened?”
“A little misunderstanding.”
He glanced back down the trail. “You caught about half of them, looks like?”
“Yeah, about half.” I brushed pine needles from tender wounds.
“Problems getting to the detonator?”
“Yeah. One of those air limos got up here undetected.”
Danny glanced over at Chan and whispered, “Losing control again or something?”
“Or something. Our network’s down. We don’t know who’s out there. Huiyin was hit hard by a rocket blast.”
“I thought she was…hardened. Like you.”
“She’s still human. Ichi carried her northwest. I want to go looking for them, but…”
Danny nodded. “Chan’s safe. They’re gone now. High-tailed it out after I hit one with a rocket. They’ve got a couple drones up still, but I can bring them down, if you want.”
The drones. I hadn’t thought about it, but they could be facilitating Jacinto’s attack. “Yeah. Drop them. We’ll need a clear way out of here, anyway.”
I dug around the corpses, found one that wasn’t too gory who had been about my size and took his armored jacket. It was stiff and rubbed hard against my flesh, but it provided enough protection that I wouldn’t be an easy kill if I ran across some rogue contractor.
About fifty yards into my search, I heard Danny’s rifle crack. Twice.
Then Chan’s voice was in my ear. “Network’s up.”
Of course. They had brought their own hardware, same as us. The drones had been attacking our network while monitoring. I cleared my throat, spat, then said, “Ichi? Huiyin?”
“Stefan?” Ichi’s voice shook—exertion, maybe relief?
“Where are you? Chan, get me—”
Chan said, “Display sliver.”
Even after all I’d been through, the display sliver was still in place. Only half of it was working, but that was enough. Ichi’s location popped up. Nearly three hundred yards away, far outside the burn area. There would be fresh air.
I picked up my pace, which meant I could maybe outrun a sloth. That was fine. We were remote. We had time before anyone reached us.
“The attacks.” Chan sounded a little less confused. “Looking at them. Tear them apart later. But…” A sigh. “Chimera. Constantly changing.”
Danny whistled. “Um. It sounds tough, but a chimera isn’t constantly changing.”
I rolled my eyes. “Chan, what’s this chimera like? Are you sure it’s Jacinto’s work?”
Chan didn’t respond immediately. I could imagine a pouty face aimed at Danny, maybe a little back and forth. Then Chan’s voice was there again, stronger. “Jacinto had his own. Based on what we’d seen others do before. Constantly changing attack patterns.” That last was insistent.
“Okay, but, um, that’s not a chimera.” Danny was being argumentative, digging his heels in. “I mean, a chimera is just something made up of a whole bunch of different parts. Like a dragon and a snake and maybe a goat. Or a lion. It depends.”
“Jacinto called it chimera. The snowcrash, too.” Chan wasn’t backing down. Good.
I just needed to know what it meant for our dealings with Cytek and Stovall. “So, Chan, did you ever come up with—”
Danny cut in. “But a chimera doesn’t change. That’s important. It’s, um, it’s always the same, but it just has a bunch of different parts.”
“Danny, we’re talking about terminology used by Jacinto.” I was trying not to shut him up, but I couldn’t afford to have Chan shut down after opening up.
“I get it. But, well…” Danny sighed. “What if Jacinto was right using that term?”
“Not now.” I stopped where the ground sloped up. There were a few big trees, a small scarp. “Ichi?”
“Here!” She limped from behind the scarp and waved. She looked almost as bad as me—bleeding from scrapes, a few red welts, dark spots that would probably bruise up nicely. I pulled the jacket off and ran it up to her.
She pushed the jacket back toward me. “You are hurt!”
“Yeah, and you’re damned near naked. Put it on.”
Danny coughed. “You need me to come help, Stefan? Chan’s safe here.”
Ichi frowned and yanked the jacket from my ha
nds. “You walk around with no shirt on, and it is fine.”
I sighed. “It’s different, obviously. Huiyin?”
Ichi nodded back to the scarp. “She threw up.”
I could smell it, even over the gunk clogging my sinuses. She was on her side, her face close to chunks of food—all that remained of what she’d spit up. The decent thing to do would have been to move her away, but I was getting the feeling Ichi wasn’t up to being decent at the moment. I checked Huiyin for any obvious sign of internal injuries, then gently placed her over a shoulder.
Ichi watched, arms crossed. “No jacket for her?”
“I didn’t think about it.”
“Because you already saw everything.” Ichi rushed down the slope, moving not with grace but a recklessness that could have been dangerous.
Let it go.
I followed at a slower pace, wondering how often jealousy had gotten good people killed. Ichi and her jealousy of me sleeping with Huiyin, Danny and his jealousy of Chan for all the technical knowledge and—
I almost stumbled at the realization.
Was I getting the jealousy angle wrong? Was there more to it than petty argument?
“Danny? Chan?” I picked up the pace, trying not to lose Ichi in the black ruin of the fire-damaged woods. “What if you’re both right?”
Danny jumped in first. “I know I’m right. I fought a chimera. I looked it up.”
Fought a chimera? “What the—”
“In a game. A video game. It was Greek mythology.” He sounded defensive. “Sort of. And it was definitely a bunch of different parts, just like mythology.”
“All right, but what if it’s both?”
“Just saying what we called it.” Chan sounded sullen. “What Jacinto said.”
“And maybe he was right. Like I said, both of you might be right.” I could make out the cars ahead of me, the trail. I hurried.
Danny waved at me and stuck his hands out. “I’ll carry her.”
I handed Huiyin over, caught my breath. “This thing that’s hitting us. It’s Jacinto, right?” I scanned around, saw Chan leaning against a tree, arms crossed, head bowed slightly. “Chan? This AI, it’s Jacinto, right?”
“Not an AI. Not logical. It acts weird. But it’s Jacinto.”
