She nodded at the vat. At her other self. “I think this is another moment like that. Nothing is ever going to be the same after this—but it could be better because of it. I have to hope it will be, even if I’m not around to see it.”
As Gyro fought down choking sobs, Nova rose and looked to Bob. “Will any of me survive the process?”
He frowned. “In all honesty, I have no idea.”
Nova drew Gyro to her feet. “Then at least assure me you’ll look after her if I can’t. Both of you.”.” She looked at Chicken Fingers.
“You have my word. No payment necessary.”
Chicken Fingers turned his face partly away to hide the tears that streamed down his cheeks, but nodded.
Gyro stifled her tears enough to growl, “Don’t need them as no babysitter.”
“Take this.” Nova handed her pistol to Anansi, who held it out as if she’d slapped a wet turd into his palm.
“What the fuck am I supposed to do with this?”
“Point it at the bad guys and pull the trigger.” Nova turned back to Bob. “How do we do this?”
Bob smiled at Gyro, an expression she wanted to tear off his lips and cram down his throat. “She’s got the instruction manual. Time for her to take charge.”
Not caring that everyone saw her tears, Gyro called up Prophet’s file and opened it. The hooded figure appeared in her sight as before but didn’t launch into the previous explanation about the flare or Charon. Instead, a new recording began.
“Based on your geo-location, it is assumed you have reached the transference station and are prepared to begin the biological download. To begin, you will need to authorize shard access using the following routing keys …”
Gyro relayed the steps as the Prophet’s recording dictated. Chicken Fingers and Anansi went first, taking their turns at plugging their TAPs into the control panel. For each, Gyro received a randomized passphrase which, once typed in, activated an auto-download of their portion of the code. The other two shivered a bit during the transfer but otherwise did their jobs and walked away from the terminal without saying a word.
When she called on Bob, he handed over a datastick without explanation. Gyro slotted this into the panel, and it too indicated a successful code transfer. She glanced at the strange man.
“Why a datastick?” she asked. “Why aren’t you plugging in with the rest of us?”
He clasped hands behind his back. “I told you Prophet and I couldn’t be further apart. Prophet didn’t want every aspect of itself left on TAP-accessible platforms. I am without a TAP.” He waved to the other two men. “Chicken Fingers, Anansi, let’s leave these two to their work and see that they’ve enough time to complete it.”
Chicken Fingers swept his jacket out in a farewell bow and headed off.
Anansi paused at the exit. “Good luck.” He said it simply, sincerely.
Bob opened his mouth to speak, but Gyro thrust her middle finger out at him. “Still not talking to you, asshole.”
He nodded once and left without further ado.
Once they were gone, Gyro wired in and let the machine suck the code out of her, leaving nothing but a shell of the file with a few remaining instructions. The datadump washed away, leaving her feeling lighter … emptier, as if she could knock on her head and hear an echo.
Swallowing hard, Gyro made herself face Nova. Her sister stood before one of the empty vats, studying the slab where a body would form and rest.
“I guess this is where I come in,” Nova said.
Gyro pinched her thigh to stop tears from welling. “You’ve already got your piece of the code embedded. The rest just needs to transfer to you and it’ll snap in place.”
Nova laid a pale hand on the casing. The vat hissed open, glass paneling splitting down the middle. Gyro wanted to run to her, to tackle her to the floor and keep her from taking that first step inside.
Nova cast a last look her way, eyes glistening. “Whatever happens next, hon, promise me one thing.”
“I’ll try.”
“You won’t ever give up. You won’t ever lose hope.”
Gyro wiped at the tears. “That’s two things.”
Nova grinned weakly and winked at her sister. “I love you, Little Sis.” Then she stepped inside the vat. It sealed behind her as she put her back to the slab. An instant later, the glass opaqued and a status popped up on the control panel screen.
Transfer initiated …
Chapter Thirty-eight
Chicken Fingers
Chicken Fingers slammed a last magazine of incendiary rounds into one bolter, frag rounds in the other. These guys were fully armored to the nines. He would have to bring his A-game to take them down.
Bob had situated them in a large lab down the corridor from where Gyro and Nova worked. It offered a single entrance through a mag-sealed door and two wide windows so they could see the hall beyond stretching in either direction. It was also the only thing between the main building and Prophet’s incubation lab. The three of them strained to shove an equipment-laden table in front of the door, and then toppled benches and workstations to form defensive positions.
“Why are we staying to fight?” Anansi asked between grunts.
Bob worked on the far window, placing small suctioned devices against it. He hit a button on each of the devices then stepped back behind the barricade they had erected. The devices started audibly humming.
Chicken Fingers squinted one eye at Anansi. “You want out? We get paid to fight, you don’t. No shame in that.”
“Of course I do.” Anansi massaged his shoulder as if it ached him. “It’s like the kid said. We didn’t get any say in this matter. Maybe he did,” he jerked a thumb at Bob, “but me? I’m just a random guy who got picked out of the crowd. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to run.”
He slid the glasses onto his nose and raised his hands. Sweeping gestures followed, and Chicken Fingers realized Anansi was recoding all the emitters around them, trying to give them one more weapon to fight with.
He overturned a monitor array and rounded on Anansi as the clatter died off. “It’s still here because I’m not in control of others, but I am with myself. I guess.”
Anansi’s brow furrowed as he worked on his Hyper Real constructs. “I don’t follow.”
“I’ll try, but I’m not too good with words. We don’t always get to pick our enemies,” said Chicken Fingers. “Sometimes they just pick us and we have to handle the heat.” He waggled his fingers. “Those flashy tricks you pull with the HR, it’s nifty business. You can do it because you dream big about yourself. About the world. You could go lots of places, maybe get nice and rich along the way. But right here? Right now? They don’t make a damn difference to the world at large, do they? You aren’t going to have a chance to show off to anyone else unless you live through this moment here and now. Right now, the only difference you can make is whether that girl gets the time she’s needing. I can help her get that time, because I control me. I can’t control what you’ll do, because I don’t control you.”
The window with the humming devices Bob had placed shattered into powder, softly falling to the ground. Bob walked over to retrieve his gear.
“You really think this Prophet can help us?”
“God. All this deep thinking is hurting my head. I just want to shoot something. You guys all say Prophet can help, so I’m in. Thinking is your job, not mine, you know?”
Anansi studied the room, searching it for answers. He smiled thinly. “I guess I do. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I can—” The bullet took Anansi in the forehead and snapped his head back. The exploding window registered to Chicken Finger’s ears a split second after, and he was already diving for cover on instinct.
He struck the ground behind a table and Anansi’s body flopped to the floor beside him, blood oozing out of a precise hole drilled into his skull.
Chicken Fingers came up to his knees. Bob had done his vanishing act, but in his place, five armored soldiers
dove into the room through the shattered pane, faces hidden behind blank helmets. Gunfire sprayed into the heavy metal table, so much it started shoving the barrier back a few inches. Pinned down, Chicken Fingers hit himself in the side of the head with the butt of one bolter.
“C’mon. C’mon! What did you see? What can you use?” He reached over the table without looking, firing from memory. He heard a satisfying thunk of plastic rupturing, then a liquidy hiss. Now came the luck bit. Someone started screaming. Yup. Lucky they had been standing near an acid barrel. He mentally scanned the room, trying to remember where and what everything else had been.
Scrabbling through his pockets, he came up with his flask. Every day he polished it till it shone … with a grin, he tossed it out from the side of the table, watching, studying … the tiny warped reflections gave him what he needed.
He snapped a shot over the top of the table, not needing to look to know it turned a soldier’s head to slag. Darting out, firing as he ran, he raced toward the near wall, letting their shots kick up at his heels. Whirling, he blasted another soldier back with a frag round. He planted a foot against the wall and shoved himself up and off.
Bullets zipped under his arched side, and he loosed both bolters for the elongated heartbeats he remained midair. He struck sparks of armor plating. Cracked a faceplate. Shredded a soldier’s knee and sent him down, howling.
The maneuver had let him see half a dozen more mercs running into view. One tore a canister off a belt and threw it into the lab with a clank.
Chicken Fingers hit the floor and rolled. He kicked off a workstation as he came out of the roll and somersaulted backwards, staying low, waiting for the grenade to go off. Instead, gray-yellow fog hissed and plumed through the room. The bright lights dimmed in the murk, and the soldiers became obscured blotches. Automatic fans whirred in the ceiling, forcing the smoke to shift, but slowly.
Laser sights sliced the fog. Chicken Fingers’ lungs cramped as he tried not to cough and give away his position.
“Thank you,” came Bob’s voice, off to one side. “I believe it’s my turn.”
A crackle of tendon and bone preceded a cry of agony. A body fell with a meaty thud.
Gunfire spat back, though no longer aimed Chicken Fingers’ way. He waited in a crouch, listening to men and women cry out and be silenced while the smoke thinned.
Bob popped in and out of sight, not using any tech Chicken Fingers could spot, but simply moving in ways that wove him in and out of natural obstacles like a snake gliding through grass. He flung arcs of tiny blades that pierced armored joints, forcing soldiers to stumble or drop their weapons. He struck from plain sight, but somehow he never registered on their helmets’ data feeds.
Chicken Fingers threw himself back into the action. A shot struck him in the shoulder but didn’t penetrate his armored jacket. He grunted through the pain crackling down his arm, weakening his grip on the bolter.
He dodged behind a support column and stuck a bolter out on either side, emptying half his remaining mags. When he ran out for new cover, another hit took him in the thigh—straight through the muscle. Chicken Fingers braced himself on one hand and knee, teeth clenched hard enough he thought they might crack.
The data wavered. Knowledge blurred around the edges … and then realigned. He surged up and soldiers went down. Chicken Fingers followed his own path through the fight, letting the data drive his actions. Prophet was speaking to him and he was listening. People became complicated vectors to be solved. Each shot became the answer to an equation he didn’t comprehend, but was still able to act on.
Two more hits multiplied the pain. A knife slash from Bob divided a soldier’s arm at the elbow. A frag round subtracted another threat factor. Chicken Fingers sought further targets but his gaze swept an empty battlefield.
With a lack of input, the data ran dry. The path erased.
He hesitated. Prophet’s vision was done, gone. This was as far as the AI had been able to see.
The shotgun blast flipped him backwards, bolters flying from his hands. He slammed into a cabinet, denting its steel door and raining glass shards on his head.
He tried to rise and something tore inside him. Blood flowed out of his nose and mouth, warmth trickling from his ears as well. Chicken Fingers tried to laugh but only managed a splutter.
From this position, he could see a single mercenary, a massive figure with shoulders so broad he barely fit through the lab door. The man stalked into the room, smoking shotgun in one hand, bolter in the other. He trod over corpses and rubble alike, shoving obstacles aside like an icebreaker moving through a frozen sea. He was huge.
He stood over Chicken Fingers and pointed the shotgun inches from his face. Chicken Fingers tried to reach up and bat it aside, but all the strength had leaked out of him when he had fallen. That was annoying.
A body rammed into the soldier’s side. The merc staggered and brought his weapons up. Bob twisted and let the shots blow past him, leaving gaping holes in the far wall. A chop at the wrist, a wrench of an arm, and the soldier’s weapons spun away.
The mercenary fell back into a fighting stance. Empty hands curled into fists, and a long, gleaming blade shot out from the armor’s forearm slots.
Bob rolled his shoulders and straightened his tie. “Have a little respect for the dying, Raider.”
Chapter Thirty-nine
Raider
Raider switched his faceplate to translucent mode and fixed Bob with his fiercest glare. “The dead don’t deserve any respect. If they did, they’d still be alive.”
“Au contraire.” Bob stayed just out of range of Raider’s arm blades. “If you refuse to respect them, they will not be welcoming when you join them—as we all shall in the end.”
Raider bared his teeth. “One thing I haven’t missed about working with you … Jenkins, is it now? I was hoping … I couldn’t be sure, but I was hoping that was you in the file. You look … older. All your useless philosophizing has aged you. I have been looking forward to this, though. I figured it had to be your hand at play the moment I learned of the situation.”
Bob smirked. “No, you didn’t. As always, your commanding officers had to tell you it was me. I’m sure they gave you a lovely list to check off. All you did was worry about the effectiveness of your unit and fail to see the bigger picture.”
Raider circled, trying to cut off Bob’s mobility. It always was the man’s greatest strength. Bob matched him step for step, lithely avoiding any trip-ups without taking his eyes off Raider.
“Ever reconsider your desertion? You had a lot of potential.” Raider hoped that he knew his old subordinate well enough to hit his buttons.
“So did you,” said Bob. “Unfortunately, you let your masters stifle it. Has that collar started choking yet? Of course it hasn’t, Raider. Do you even know who you’re really working for these days? You’re just the same man you always were.”
“I work for CHIMERA. That’s enough for me. It never was for you.”
Bob sighed. “As always, you’ve settled for letting others do the thinking for you.”
“I remain loyal. You betrayed everything you believed in.”
“Actually, I simply realized what I really believed in underneath it all. Under the corporate logos and slogans, behind the curtains of espionage and double-dealings, there’s a deeper reality too few ever take the time to consider.”
“And what’s that?”
“You only have one life, Raider. You have to live it in what is real, not in what is fed to you. Though I suspect that truth is wasted on a fool.”
“You’re calling me a fool now?”
“Indeed, I simply endeavor to remedy your lack of comprehension by pointing out what should be obvious.”
Raider sneered and lunged. Time to carve out this traitor’s tongue and show him who the real fool was.
Chapter Forty
Bob
Bob swiveled, weaving in place, as a blade slashed past his face. A second slas
h came at him and he flipped backwards over a swipe that would’ve cleaved him in half. He backpedaled, drawing his opponent away from his downed companion. He knew how Raider thought, and it was all too easy to get him away from the downed Chicken Fingers.
He ducked and weaved away from the mercenary’s relentless assault. Raider fought like a machine, attacks precise, never wasting an ounce of energy despite the obvious gleam of anticipation in his eye. Even in the rush of battle, he remained in control.
Bob sought an opening, any way to crack the soldier’s armor and force the fight to equal footing. With the reinforced joints and an energy pack fueling his motions, Raider would be able to keep up the momentum far longer, and pure exhaustion rather than skill would decide the winner. Bob was unwilling to let technology decide the battle.
Reaching for a knife of his own, Bob found every sheath empty. Every blade he had was now stuck in the bodies littering the room—which he had known, of course—but sometimes the hands work on their own. He smiled to himself. If he had been hoping that fallibility and a mistake would be his salvation, it would mean he had already lost, and he had not lost. Time for a new plan of attack.
He edged toward one downed soldier to retrieve a weapon, dodging Raider’s wide slashes. Raider lunged forward, his powered armor pushing him far faster. Bob moved into the lunge and grabbed the edge of a metal table, flinging it between them, then spun low and swept his leg out. Raider’s powered blade sliced through the table as Bob’s leg smashed into his armored ankle. The giant German mercenary went down hard, and Bob landed in a crouch. He rubbed at his leg where it had impacted the powered armor.
Pushing himself back up, he hopped over a CHIMERA mercenary that had been shot to a second body. One of his knives waited for him, happily sheathed in the downed woman’s neck. He jerked it out and spun to face Raider. The powered armor was doing its job well, and Raider was already coming at him again. Bob ducked another swing and sliced upwards, over his head. The blade caught the crook of Raider’s arm, slicing open the armor’s interior joint.
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