Sooner Dead

by Mel Odom

  Picking at the leads, Ocastya shook her head. "I do not understand what has been done to him. He is trapped in some sort of limbo." She glanced up and looked around the room desperately. "Maybe in one of these computers. Maybe somewhere else."

  "He's in that chair."

  "His physical self is. Not the part of him that makes him who he is." Ocastya turned to Colleen. "What have you done with my mate?"

  Colleen struggled to get away, but Hella held her fast. "The two of you have lived hundreds of years. Several lifetimes. You don't deserve to do that." Tears ran down the woman's face. Mucus dripped from her nose, and her lip trembled in fear, but Hella didn't think the fear was fueled by a survival instinct. "My little Alice has barely lived nine years. It's not fair. She deserves more out of her life. I will not watch her die when I can do something about it."

  "I understand your pain. I have lost people—loved ones—in my life. I would feel pain again if my mate is lost to me." Ocastya stepped toward Colleen. One of the fractoid's hands flowed into a long, sharp blade. "I will not permit you to take him from me. You need to understand this."

  Hella glanced at the sensor monitor array on the wall in front of her. Through the shifting images, she saw that Trazall's mercenaries had broken and were now fleeing for their lives, trying to stay out of the kill zone created by Riley's hardshells. Although they had taken considerable losses, the hardshells were definitely a threat that was closing fast. "Stampede."

  At the doorway, looking massive against the enclosed space of the room, Stampede nodded. "I see them. They'll be on us in minutes."

  "We have an exit strategy."

  "Not if we get caught in this room."

  Ocastya stopped in front of Colleen and raised her weapon. "Tell me what I need to do to save my mate. Otherwise, I will kill you and risk finding an answer on my own."

  "No." Colleen slapped Hella's face and almost succeeded in getting away. "I have almost saved Alice. I can transfer her mind to that body. She doesn't have to die. I can overwrite all the programming that's there."

  Despite the stinging pain from the woman's slap, a cold chill crept through Hella. Was it so simple? Could Scatter just be erased? Overwritten?

  "Mommy?" The child's plaintive cry barely reached them even so short a distance away. The gunfire and explosions from the confrontations on the floors above carried into the lab with ease. "Mommy?"

  Colleen tried to go to her daughter. Hella didn't release her. Colleen closed her hands over Hella's and looked at her desperately. She smiled and the effort looked sick and twisted.

  "Please, Hella. Let me got to her. Alice is scared. She needs me."

  Hella stood frozen, uncertain about what to do, thinking that if she released Colleen, Ocastya would kill her. Images of the dead rat in the dream kept haunting her, changing from rat to child.

  "Mommy!" A coughing fit racked the child on the bed. She convulsed and got sick, throwing up a bit.

  "Please. My daughter needs me." Colleen pushed back from Hella. "She's dying. I don't want her to die alone."

  Numbly Hella released the woman and stepped in front of Ocastya, wondering if the fractoid would simply try to kill her first to get her out of the way.

  On the walls, the computers continued flashing.

  Ocastya regarded the hardware then Scatter's body seated in the chair. "She's stealing him away from me." She focused on Hella. "You know I cannot permit this. Even if she succeeds in overwriting my mate's self with her daughter's, her daughter will not survive. My mate and I are twinned to one another. Both of us must survive. We cannot survive on our own."

  At the child's bed, Colleen took Alice's hands and held them tightly. "Everything's going to be all right. Mommy's here. Just close your eyes, and you'll wake up feeling much better. Listen to Mommy." She leaned over her daughter and kissed her. "You're going to get better."

  Hella crossed to her. "Colleen."

  The woman ignored her.

  "Colleen, you can't do this. It's not going to work."

  "It will work."

  "No. It won't. The factoids are joined. They're two parts of a whole. If one of them dies, the other will too."

  Still holding her daughter's hands, Colleen glared at Hella. "You're lying."

  "I'm not. You've been inside my mind. Take a look for yourself"

  "I won't trust you. You'll lie."

  "Look." Slowly Hella gripped the woman's elbow. "See if I'm lying to you. I would help you if I could, but this way you're only going to watch your daughter die and kill Scatter in the process. Both of them don't have to die."

  Ocastya stood beside Colleen for a moment, and Hella thought the fractoid was going to stab the woman. Instead Ocastya's gaze rested on the feverish girl. "My mate and I wanted to have children. We never had the opportunity." She shitted her attention to Colleen. "I am sorry for your loss, but I will not lose my mate. If you do not free him, you will soon join your daughter in death."

  CHAPTER 33

  Colleen." Hella pulled on the woman, turning her attention from her child and Ocastya. "Trust me. I'm sorry but we're telling you the truth. This isn't going to work. You can't save your daughter by using Scatter that way."

  Colleen wrapped her hand around one of Hella's. Immediately a bright, hot pain slashed through Hella's mind. At first she thought Colleen was mentally attacking her; then she realized that the woman had just blown through her defenses in an effort to get to the truth. The pain subsided slightly, and Hella felt Colleen rifling through her thoughts.

  A moment later Colleen pulled away. "No. No. I was supposed to be able to save Alice. That's why I dreamed about the fractoids. I used my precog power to find a way to save Alice. That's why I saw them entering our world. I saw myself saving her. This can't be true."

  Ocastya grabbed the woman's arm and shook her. "Save my mate. Do it now, and you can still be with your daughter in her final moments."

  The declaration was cold and vicious, but Hella couldn't fault Ocastya. If Stampede's life had hung in the balance, Hella knew she would have been just as focused and driven.

  Angrily Ocastya shook Colleen and pushed her toward the computer. "Do it now."

  Trembling, overcome with pain and sorrow, Colleen tapped commands on the keyboard. Ocastya stood at her side, watching the scrolling numbers, letters, and symbols on the computer monitors.

  Grimly, Hella split her attention among the computer screen, the security monitors, and Scatter. She didn't know how any of it would end. Alice's breathing thickened and became more troubled. Hella hated standing there, knowing she was listening to the little girl's last moments. She'd heard people die before, had held some of them in her arms, but Alice would leave her marked forever.

  "There." Colleen tried to speak more but she couldn't. She pulled away from Ocastya's grip and returned to the hospital bed. She took her daughter's limp hand in hers.

  In the security images, Riley led the hardshells down the stairwell. Others took a nearby elevator that was still working.

  Scatter moved suddenly then reached up and took the wires in one hand to rip them free. He stood and embraced Ocastya.

  Ocastya looked at him. The high-pitched machine language filled the air.

  Scatter wound his fingers in those of his mate. The machine language passed back and forth between them so loud and so piercing that Hella wanted to plug her ears. She concentrated on the security images.

  Riley and his team had reached the fourth-floor landing.

  Hella looked at Stampede as she morphed her hands into weapons. "They're here."

  Stampede's ears twitched as he snorted angrily. "We played this one too close, Red. My fault." He readied his rifle.

  "You can apologize after we get out of here." Hella took a deep breath. "We're still getting out of here, right?"

  An evil grin spread across Stampede's face. "Yeah." He held up the remote control for the satchel charges they'd left in the fourth-floor landing. "Button up."

  Hella p
ulled a face mask from her chest pouch and put it on. The mask filtered out the smoke and pepper gas in the satchel charges.

  "Do you know where Pardot is?"

  A quick check of the security images showed Pardot's location on the third-floor landing. "One floor above. He's in the stairwell."

  Stampede looked at her. "Don't hesitate, Red. Those guys would have killed us if they had the chance."

  "I know."

  "No mercy."

  "I know."

  "And don't make me come after you."

  Hella blew out a breath.

  "Go!" Stampede pressed the remote control. The satchel charges blew immediately, filling the hallway with thunder, screams, and flying body parts.

  Hella whipped around the doorway and ran into the maelstrom of death. The satchels had been packed with flash-bangs that disrupted the hardshells' vid and aud feeds as well. A small EMP explosive detonated on the second wave, flashing a system-killing pulse that threw the hardshells' musculature off.

  The hardshells struggled to stay on their feet, fighting against systems that no longer supported them or moved the way they wanted to. That was the primary reason Stampede didn't embrace technology. In a heartbeat cybernetic infrastructures and smart programs could be disrupted.

  Hella's nanobots shivered, and she feared that she would be affected as well.

  "Concentrate, Hella." Scatter's voice echoed inside her skull. "Your nanobots are not like those systems in the hard-shells. Yours are part of you; they are tied to you in ways those men in those suits will never know. You are stronger, faster, and better than any of them. You know what your body is supposed to be like. This is just like the burn scarring you recovered from."

  Pistols blazing in front of her, bullets punching into and throwing the hardshells, Hella concentrated on the rhythm Scatter had taught her. With every rapid step, even at the speed she was moving, her body grew more controlled. She was a blur, getting faster, getting more sure-footed. And she was death for every hardshell in the hallway who lifted a weapon in her direction.

  The armor-piercing rounds she created for the assault took longer to form, but they were there when she needed them. They ripped through the hardshells.

  In the stairwell, operating at a speed she'd never before reached, she planted her left weapon in the face of a man who managed to intercept her by design or by accident. The bullets ripped him away, and blood misted her vision.

  She leaped over a dead man lying at the bottom of the steps, avoided another man who reached for her, and brought her knee up into the man's crotch. Right before impact, she imagined a protective layer of armor over her knee, and it was there. Instead of injuring herself on the hardshell, her knee caved in the armor and knocked the man away.

  Morphing her left weapon back into a hand, she grabbed another man as she went up the stairs and levered him across her hip into freefall between the stairwells. He fell another floor and lay still. By then she had continued advancing, and her hand was a weapon again.

  She head-butted another man and bulled him back with her speed. Then she whirled out of his embrace, weapons flared out and tracking targets on the stairwell. She ran toward the wall, stepped onto a fallen man, and ran up onto the wall. Hurling herself into the air, she flipped and fired ceaselessly. When she landed on her feet, she was behind Pardot.

  Wrapping her left arm under Pardot's chin and pressing hard against his neck, Hella held the muzzles of her right weapon against Pardot's head.

  In front of and around her, hardshells struggled to get to their feet and level their weapons at her.

  Hella pulled Pardot backward with her till she reached the wall. She shook the small man viciously. "Tell them to put their weapons down, or I'm going to kill you."

  Dazed, shaking in fright, Pardot raised his hands. "Put down your weapons! Put them down!"

  The blank faceplates on the hardshells didn't show any emotions, but Hella read the anger and fear in the men's body language. They wanted her dead, and her life briefly swayed on the shifting emotions. She and Stampede knew if they couldn't get Scatter and get gone without a confrontation, the stairwell was the best hope they had of gaining the upper hand. It had been an all-or-nothing risk, but it was something they had used before. Against a group controlled by someone, it would work, not against a disorganized gang.

  But a group was an animal, every bit as wild and unpredictable as any creature living in the forest. The only law an animal obeyed was one for survival.

  "Put your weapons down! I order you to do as she says!"

  From below, leaking blood down his right side, Riley climbed the stairs and forced his way to the front of the group. He held his rifle in both hands, taking aim at Hella.

  "Are we okay out there?" Stampede's voice was loud enough to carry into the stairwell from the laboratory.

  "Not sure yet." Hella held her fright in check. She wished she had a faceplate like those on the hardshells. Her face grew itchy, and she felt the nanobots stirring beneath her skin. Her reflection showed in Riley's face shield. As she watched, metal plates formed around her face and created a shield the color of her hair. She didn't know if it was bulletproof, but it looked thick enough. Her astonishment numbed her for just an instant; then she focused on survival. "Got a few guys up here who seem to be determined to hang on to their weps."

  "Riley."

  Riley ignored Stampede.

  "Riley."

  "Yeah?"

  "I know you care about Hella. Maybe that's enough for you. If it's not, it's gonna play out like this: if you kill her, I've got a secondary charge in that stairwell that will kill everyone."

  Riley never flickered. His rifle remained unwavering.

  "Did you hear me?"

  "Yeah."

  "That's the deal. The next move is yours."

  Pardot swallowed hard and Hella felt the effort against the inside of her arm. "I told you to put your weapon down."

  "You got my men killed, you pompous little rat." Riley's voice was thick with emotion. He waved one hand at the dead lying around him. Only four hardshells seemed capable of standing. A few others moved on the floor. "I told you not to play with these people. I told you I wanted to take this insertion slowly. But you were in a hurry."

  "Put your weapon down, Captain. You have your instructions." Pardot almost had that commanding sneer back, as if he were the one calling the shots.

  "Yeah. I guess I do." Slowly Riley lowered his rifle to the floor. Then he stepped forward. "Stampede, if we let you go—"

  "You're not letting us go; we're letting you go."

  "Sure. Do you care if Pardot comes out of this in one piece?"

  "No."

  "Okay." Riley popped the blade from his forearm and punched it through Pardot's skull. The exo whirred out of control. Pardot managed one shrill scream. "Hella's fine."

  "Hella?"

  Stepping away from Pardot, Hella let the man fall, not believing what had just happened. "I'm fine." She trained her weapons on Riley, aware of the blood that dripped across her face shield and her blouse.

  "Bring them down."

  The hardshells lined up at her command. They managed to pick up three men who were still alive in the tangle of dead. Then she escorted them down to the lab.

  Riley and the other guards sat against one wall in the lab. The only sounds in the room were the cries of the wounded and the plaintive mewling of Alice Trammell as she succumbed to her disease. Colleen watched helplessly, crying silently as her daughter lost her battle.

  Scatter and Ocastya talked in their language, and Hella sensed they were emotionally affected. They never looked away from Alice. Finally Scatter broke off and approached Colleen. "There is something we might be able to do."

  Colleen looked up at them, her eyes hollow and empty. "What?"

  "Possibly we can save her. Will you allow us to try?"

  "Yes. Whatever you need."

  Scatter stood on one side of the bed. Ocastya stood on the other
. Each of them put one hand on Alices head, and they held hands. "Saving her body is impossible. The disease has taken that from her. But we may be able to save that part of your daughter that makes her the person you know."

  Colleen's tears rolled down her face.

  A lump formed in the back of Hella's throat, and she couldn't swallow it down. Tears slid down her face as well.

  Scatter and Ocastya stood still as statues, their bodies gleaming. Then golden light pulsed along their skins. Alices pain-filled cries silenced, and she seemed to settle into a deeper sleep. For a moment Hella thought the little girl had perished. Then she saw a pulse beating at the hollow of her throat.

  Ocastya and Scatter raised their joined hands over the little girl, and a stream of silver metal gleamed as it spun down and poured over Alice. In the space of a drawn breath, the liquid metal formed a shell over the girl. Then the medical machines screamed alerts as her heart stopped and her struggling respiration ceased.

  "No!" Colleen stepped forward.

  At the same time, Scatter took his hand from Alice's head and held it out. "Alice?"

  Incredibly the girl's hand lifted. Only it wasn't her hand. It was the silver metal shell. She gripped Scatter's hand in her two-dimensional hand and sat up. The silver replica of the girl was perfect in every way, but she rose off her dead body.

  Alice looked down at her torso and ran her free hand along her body. She looked up at Colleen. "Mommy?"

  "Alice." Colleen took her daughter's hand. "Alice? Can you hear me?"

  "I can." Alice smiled and the silvery expression was childlike and innocent. "My stomach doesn't hurt anymore."

  As Hella watched, the girl's body thickened and filled in as the fragments replicated themselves. Ocastya and Scatter kept her hands on the girl's shoulders, and Hella was certain they were adding to Alice's body, giving to her from themselves. Hella wept unashamedly.

  EPILOGUE

  I guess Trazall lit a shuck." Stampede stood outside the mil-plex and glared down over the forest farther down the mountain.