The telekinetic with the Eastern European accent, for example, or the young Korean barrier technician.
Even the girl telepath in a pinch.
At least they would not stink of rotting meat the way this shell did.
However she framed it, the debate was binary. Stay or go. Power weighed against stench.
One of the many advantages of inhabiting a dead body, in Song Li’s assessment, was the exceptionally acute hearing. A living body makes an awful lot of racket, and without the distraction of a pulse and a pair of lungs and a body-wide hydraulic system working around the clock, holding still in a way that no living thing could ever manage, Song Li often heard things that no one else did.
That was why, a moment before the back door opened, she heard a male voice impatiently exclaim, “I’m not waiting anymore. This bitch has been standing perfectly still for an hour, and I want to get back to Central.”
There was a brief feminine objection, and then a very unusual pair walked into the room, the boy wrinkling his nose in disgust at the smell, while the girl behind him coughed and gagged.
Alexander Warner, an Auditor and another M-Class protocol user, pinched his nose and looked at her shell with an expression of horrified disbelief. Song Li felt an immediate surge of desire, giving his body a covetous look. Behind him, Emily Muir, Anathema like herself, regained her composure.
“What is this?” Song Li asked, her shell’s voice hoarse with disuse. “What are you doing here?”
Alex shrugged and gave her a sullen look.
According to her telepathic briefing on the new crop of Auditors, that was sort of his thing.
What luck, Song Li thought, licking her shell’s cold lips. A second M-Class protocol user falling into her lap was unprecedented good fortune. If she had been the type to pray, she would have felt that her prayer was answered.
“This is a rescue mission, Song Li,” Emily said. “That’s apparently my favorite new hobby.”
“A rescue?” Song Li was puzzled. “What are you talking about?”
“It isn’t you that we are here to rescue, I’m afraid,” Emily said, tying her hair into a quick ponytail. “Do forgive us.”
“You can’t mean this thing,” Song Li said, gesturing at her rotting shell. “Mitsuru Aoki is long gone, killed by an Auditor’s bullet. There is no possibility of a rescue. I assure you that I am quite alone in here.”
Emily nodded at Alex, who drew the pistol at his hip.
“That may be true of the head,” Emily said. “But that neural implant, on the other hand…well, let’s just say, those things really are quite miraculous. Whatever else he may be, Gaul Thule is a genius, and those implants are his finest work.”
“The implant is dead, just like your friend,” Song Li croaked in disbelief. “What can you possibly hope to do?”
“We are here to rescue Ms. Aoki,” Emily said, closing her eyes. “But I told you that already.”
***
Are you ready, Alex dear?
Yes.
Like we planned. Remember?
We didn’t plan. You told me what to do.
That’s fine, dear. Do you remember my plan?
I distract her while you hijack that implant. I’m an Auditor these days, you know? We studied stuff like this in the Program.
I’m glad to hear it. I’m going to start, then.
Okay.
I feel like you want to ask me something, Alex.
I…no. Not really. I just wondered…
Yes?
Can you really bring her back?
Of course not. Dead people don’t come back. All I can do is activate the backup stored within the implant and hope for the best.
Got it.
Ready?
Alex took aim with his pistol. The Kimber was light and responsive, the trigger pull crisp as he snapped off a couple rounds at Mitsuru, aiming center mass and mentally apologizing. The first round struck home, while the second went wide.
The Anathema scrambled, expressing no pain and bleeding only sluggishly.
He fired three more times in rapid succession, pushing her back. The bullets struck with a dull slap, doing little more than jerking her torso to the side.
She lunged at him with remarkable speed. Alex grappled with her, his eyes watering at the sweet-putrid smell of decaying tissue. The face was the same, he thought, just avoiding her attempt to bite him in the neck, but her eyes were different somehow, displaying an entirely different intelligence.
She broke his hold easily, and Alex only countered a hip toss with difficulty.
Alex activated his protocol, opening a minute breach to the Ether, and Song Li flash froze, even the nanites within her circulatory system forced into stasis.
A thin layer of frost formed across Mitsuru’s slack and distended features, yellow fluid crystallizing at the corner of one of her rotting eyes.
Alex grimaced and looked away, not sure whether he wanted to vomit or cry.
Black blood erupted from a hundred different wounds across Mitsuru’s body, showering the room with caustic liquid. Alex cried out and ducked, instinctively opening a thousand tiny punctures to the Ether. The black blood froze solid in midair. The temperature dropped drastically, the air making his throat and lungs ache when he inhaled.
Song Li staggered forward and knocked the gun from Alex’s hand.
She grabbed him by the throat and pressed her rigid thumbs into his windpipe. Alex put his hand on her chest and activated his protocol, rotting innards and caustic blood spraying into the Ether, a grotesque geyser of half-rotten tissue disappearing into the grey.
***
Emily found herself within an empty space, black as a starless night. Ahead of her, there was the translucent image of a woman, like an anatomical model, a luminous object embedded inside of her head, barbed like a treble hook. A giant crab was attached to the translucent woman like a spider feeding on its prey, its fraying shell made up of layers of rotting cloth.
So that’s how you see yourself, Song Li. How awful. I wondered about all that ‘shell’ talk, Emily said. Or is this how I see you? This space is rather indefinite.
You see whatever you see, the crab retorted. I see a little girl who betrayed the Anathema for her boyfriend.
This is so tiresome, Emily said, heading for the translucent woman. I refuse to have my existence defined by my ex-boyfriend. I did betray the Anathema, I’ll give you that, but I did it for my own reasons.
I already tried to access the implant, the crab informed her. I found it unresponsive. Why should you be able to do any better?
I’m smart enough to consult its creator, Emily thought, looking at the many folds of the decaying crab. I made myself useful to Gaul Thule, and in return, he taught me a few tricks.
I can imagine just what sort of use that old man had for you.
No wonder you visualize yourself as a scavenger. You are a nasty, dead woman, Emily said, looking at the crab fearlessly. And I fully intend to be rid of you.
Emily reached for the translucent woman, passing through the crab to put her fingers on the forehead, not far from the barbed implant. There was a brief tension and resistance, like popping a grape, before her fingers burst through into the clear tissue of the brain.
You are a fool, and will make an unpleasant shell, the crab said, reaching its massive claws for Emily with unexpected delicacy. I will occupy you only temporarily. I suppose I do owe you a debt, though, for bringing Mr. Warner along. He will make an exceptional shell.
The crab’s mandibles snapped shut on Emily’s head.
The claws shattered, chitin bursting into a shower of multicolored rags.
Your protocol is a rather unique blend of psychokinesis and telepathy, Emily thought, not a single hair on her head mussed. Your telepathy is very rudimentary, however. I’d suggest that you stay out of my way.
The crab retreated to the back of the translucent woman’s head, sprouting extra legs as it scuttled. The needle-sharp
appendages sank deep into the gelatinous tissue of the translucent woman, skewering her brain with a dozen talons.
How is this possible? The crab demanded. We are in my head!
Not exactly, Emily said, manipulating the implant. We are in an empty space that was formerly Mitsuru Aoki. This doesn’t belong to you any more than reading a book makes you the author.
The crab swelled and deformed, legs bursting from within its cloth exterior to impale Emily’s hands as they touched the translucent woman’s brain.
You are a parasite, Song Li, Emily thought, her fingers shattering the crab’s legs at a touch. Nothing more.
Emily’s touched the implant, the barbs slicing her fingers.
The implant lit up like the Shanghai skyline.
The crab hollowed and scuttled from the translucent woman onto Emily, pointed legs digging into her hair.
***
Mitsuru was not sure if her eyes were open.
It was as if she floated in the primordial dark before the first light, the outermost dark that exists outside of all things.
She tried to remember how she had gotten there and came up blank. She remembered doing the groundwork for an operation in the Ukraine, the preparations and disagreements, and the complaints of her unsettled stomach the night before. She recalled sour yogurt and dry granola the morning of the operation, the smell of freshly oiled guns and nervous sweat as the Auditors gathered for the apport. She remembered arriving and fanning out across acres of dreary industrial park.
Mitsuru remembered nervous quiet, and then blood and cordite…
Then nothing. Hard stop, no credits, no closing music.
Time might have passed. There was no way to tell, and no desire for certainty. She felt no anxiety whatsoever, and that realization woke within her an awareness of exactly how nervous she had always been, previously, the constant tension that hung over her days like a dreadful yellow moon, even before Central, her Introduction, and the Academy.
She wondered why that was, feeling that she would have frowned, if such a thing were possible.
There was no specific answer, she told herself, and as she did so, there was something within her, and that was different, because before that, she could not have told the difference between inside and outside, Mitsuru and everything else.
This was inside her, her nervous system lighting up like a pinball table.
Something black, that should have been blue, or red on exposure to the open air.
Blacker, somehow, than any other darkness, or perhaps just a more personal shade of pitch.
Mitsuru wondered what it was that was wrong with her, the question appearing unbidden in her mind, without context or provocation. She was worried, and that felt natural, like coming home to an abusive partner, awful and familiar.
There was a passage of time before she saw it, Mitsuru was certain. She could not hope to apply seconds or hours, years or days to the interim, before she saw a thin red line in the darkness, but there was a ‘before’ and a ‘now’, she was certain of it.
She would have blinked, would have been certain that her eyes were playing tricks on her, when she first noticed it, but Mitsuru was not entirely certain that she had eyes to blink or distrust. That meant that the red string was exactly as real as the darkness around her, Mitsuru supposed.
Which is to say, there was no way to tell.
Or…
Mitsuru considered it. Maybe there was a way?
She remembered what they had taught her, back at the Academy, dimly recalling a round woman with tight braids instructing her to imagine a silken red thread unspooling behind her, stretching across the perfect grey of the Ether, her personal trail of breadcrumbs. It was a beginner’s technique, a trick that new apport technicians used until confidence and competency rendered it unnecessary, but Mitsuru was no technician. Her ability to apport came from her implant, and the practice would always be foreign and nerve-wracking, so she relied on the red string trick.
The red string was a lifeline, Mitsuru remembered her teacher instructing her, a certain path back home.
Mitsuru reached for the string, not certain if she had arms with which to reach.
The string was not coarse, but rather thin and flossy between her fingers, cool to the touch. When she took hold of it, she felt a strange tingle down to her toes, as if she had picked up a live wire.
Which meant, not entirely incidentally, that she had fingers and toes, and more where that come from.
A body.
Mitsuru touched the red string and remembered her way home.
***
Alex smashed Mitsuru in the face with a hammer-fist, his stomach turning as the tumescent flesh deformed, everything beneath the skin pillow soft and purple-grey. He pried one of her thumbs out of his windpipe and bent it back until the bone snapped.
Song Li continued to squeeze with her other hand. The thing looking out from behind Mitsuru’s eyes was hateful and desirous, Alex thought, the air whining through his obstructed throat, or maybe that was just his imagination.
Alex remembered the first night, when Mitsuru had saved him from the Weir, and wondered why it had been so long since he last thought about it.
He brought his elbow down on her forearm, buying himself enough space to snatch a breath. He struck her arm again and freed himself, immediately pressing the advantage. He hit Song Li in the nose with a jab, and then knocked her over with a right cross. Alex leapt on top of her, raining down fists and elbows.
Song Li smiled with Mitsuru’s lips, and then opened her mouth.
He managed to get his arms up in time to keep her from spitting corrosive blood into his face, but wetness splattered across his arms and chest, followed a fraction of a second later by searing pain.
Alex tumbled back, tearing the gloves from his hands. The black blood ate through his clothing with the hiss of butter on a hot grill. He screamed as it bubbled through his sleeves and the ballistic plating on his chest, his skin burning as he tugged frantically on his harness straps. The buckle finally snapped, and he flung the armor into the far wall, pulling his shirt off quickly after.
He ran his fingers across his torso. His upper body was speckled with pink burns, ranging from the size of a cigarette burn all the way up to the quarter-sized wound on his right forearm. Alex caught a glimpse of the yellow fat glistening at the center of the burn and thought that he might pass out.
He shot a panicked look at Mitsuru’s battered body, wondering why Song Li had not used his distraction to kill him. She was sprawled across the floor with what looked like a broken jaw, neither blinking nor breathing. Alex took a careful step toward her.
“Is that it?”
No response. Alex edged closer.
“Ms. Aoki? Are we done fighting?”
Nothing.
He stood above Mitsuru’s body, inky blood splashed across her chin and throat. The smell of rotten meat was outrageous, stinging his nose and bringing bile to the back of his throat. He crouched down beside the body, reaching out slowly, ready to pull his hand back at the slightest movement. When nothing happened, he slowly pried open her right eyelid.
A still black pupil in a sea of red.
No movement.
“Okay, I think we are…Alex, why did you take your shirt off?”
Alex stood hurriedly, not sure why he was embarrassed. Emily was watching and choking back laughter.
“Not that I mind all that much,” Emily teased. “I reactivated Ms. Aoki’s implant, and booted the most recent backup. The process should take just a few minutes, if what I’ve been told was accurate. Gaul claimed to have done it to the poor girl before, several times, to test the implant. The process sounded rather cruel.”
“What about Song Li?” Alex asked. “Won’t she just…?”
“She tried to possess me without killing me first,” Emily said, with a bit of a shrug. “It did not go well for either us, but particularly not for her.”
Emily stepped forward to c
heck on Mitsuru. In the darkened room, Alex could just make out the blood streaked across Emily’s face, watery smears across her cheeks and under her nose.
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Thanks for your help,” Emily said. “How are you?”
“A little burnt,” Alex said, inspecting his arm, which was starting to hurt. “Nothing too bad.”
Emily knelt beside Mitsuru, and then took a syringe and a rubber cord from her purse.
“My God,” Alex said. “What else do you have in there?”
“Drugs and guns,” Emily said. “I already told you that. Can you turn the lights on, please?”
Alex slapped at the walls next to the front door until he found the panel. The track lighting activated all at once when he hit the second switch. Alex shaded his eyes and grimaced. Emily was unbothered, taking Mitsuru’s arm and laying it across her lap.
He stayed quiet while she hunted for a vein, impressed by how deftly she worked. She slid the needle into the vein, and then slowly depressed the plunger, emptying the contents into Mitsuru’s defunct circulatory system.
“What’s that?”
“Nanites, courtesy of the now-defunct Source Well, modified and supplemented with some blood extracted from poor Leigh. The girl has been a bit of a pin-cushion, just lately,” Emily said, capping the used syringe and returning it to her purse. “In a powerful organic acid solution, the kind of thing that liquifies tissue, but just gives metals a nice polish.”
“What?” Alex was horrified. “Why would you do that?”
“Mitsuru Aoki is still dead, backup or no,” Emily explained, looking a bit melancholy. “If we were to reboot her into a dead body, that would be awful!”
“So? Emily, what did you do?”
“The nanites have been programmed to store an image of Ms. Aoki’s body, and to reconstruct it as they consume the organic tissue, cell by cell. I’ve had the labs working on this since we took the Far Shores, based on some work Vivik did.” Emily took a step back as Mitsuru’s body started to bubble and hiss. “This is a modification of the process by which a new Anathema is produced, if you’re curious. I’m hoping that it works the same way, without any of the considerable drawbacks.”
The Church of Sleep (Central Series Book 5) Page 31
