by Alex Kirko
“Engage restoration procedures,” he commanded. “No anesthesia.”
At this point, the liquid poured into his lungs, making him choke, gasp, and thrash until his body realized that it didn’t need to breathe with oxygen being added directly to the blood.
The building shook again, stronger this time, and some of the power cable indicators flashed red. He could see them through the glass panel at face level, even if the regeneration liquid made it impossible to make out the details. The healing nanites inside him reacted, and it felt like a thousand angry termites eating through his flesh. Luckily, somebody soon restored the power supply.
“Commencing regeneration. Five minutes.”
It felt longer than that. A man was supposed to contemplate the meaning of life and mysteries of the universe at moments like these, but all Blake could think about was whether his father had grown a beard near the end. He couldn’t remember.
“Blake, do you hear me? If you can hear me, then get out. This is goodbye.”
It was Tara’s voice. She had always been a bit on the dim side. Where would he go?
“One minute.”
The building shook, but it came from the inside this time. The first explosion made the red lights switch on, and the second one made them go out.
“Thirty seconds. Warning. Insufficient power. Switching to reserves.”
Blake could see his suit through the glass. The machine took a step toward the capsule, popped off its right hand and thrust its power plug into a socket on the side of the chamber. Aileen, you brilliant woman, he thought. The coolant pipes on the front of the mech began to fade from blue to black.
“Regeneration complete.”
He fell out of the chamber and onto the quaking floor and had a moment to examine the patterns in the steel before him. Then the ceiling caved in.
Blake watched the falling block of concrete without emotion. His body had just been rebuilt from scratch—he couldn’t dodge. His suit moved sluggishly to protect him, but he could see that its batteries were almost gone. He saw three scientists’ arms poking out of a pile of rubble near a wall, and the grey-haired lady was helping Reeves limp out the door. He closed his eyes.
There was a loud bang of stone hitting metal. He wasn’t dead. He opened one eye.
He recognized her from the images: Katherine Lind, the Federation’s chief scientist. She looked more like she came out of a twenty-hour shift in the mines. He had never been happier to see a woman covered in grime and sweat in his life.
The construction exoskeleton she was in tossed away the slab that had nearly crushed him. She grabbed the regeneration chamber, but it was stuck to the floor and the metal screeched from her attempt.
“Stop,” he said. “Shove me into my mech.”
She blinked but obeyed. As soon as he was inside Aileen, he redirected the flow of energy and siphoned off some of the remaining power from the city grid. Then it was only a matter of technique to disengage the locks that secured the chamber to the floor.
“Your friend Mary? She killed the mayor,” said Kate. “Killed my friend. Nearly killed my husband.”
Another explosion rocked the facility, and Blake could see the second floor caving in. The regeneration chamber locks popped open with a soft clank that was almost lost in the chaos.
He said, “Grab the capsule, I’m cutting us a way out of here.”
Epilogue
“Well, this is awkward,” said Blake, looking into the grave.
Katherine Lind hit him in the shin, “Shut up. I didn’t vouch for you so that you could get killed.”
They were standing by a hole in the ground at the outskirts of Seind, and the rest of people were on the other side of the coffin. Blake crouched, picked up a clump of earth, and brought it to his nose. It smelled like lavender—a lot of herbs grew around here.
He glanced at the Count’s retinue. It seemed like the coffin was the only thing that kept the women from lunging at Blake’s throat, and he again wondered whether coming here without Aileen had been the right choice. Assassin mechs were black which, he felt, was suitably mournful, and they had let Nat in. Not that she could take off her suit.
Yvonne was speaking. “Moira was the best of us. She never forgot how to care, and she never lost her fighting spirit. She would grow angry at how complacent we had gotten over the centuries. When the former Count would take his walks, she would talk to us. I remember her consoling Laura and yelling at her in the space of five minutes. We have learned so much from her.”
Kyle said. “If only I had paid more attention to what she was saying.”
Yvonne laid a hand on his shoulder, and Kyle nodded. A crane lowered the coffin into the grave. The Count came up to Blake. “You are a resource, Mister Drummond, and Katherine has vouched for you, but this . . . one misstep, Mister Drummond, and you are done. Between the data your AI had gleaned during your regeneration and what remains of the device, we have enough to improve our Ascension process. Too bad the soldiers we captured in the fight have all self-destructed. It still wouldn’t have been worth it, but it would have been something.” For a moment, Blake could see in Kyle’s eyes the exhaustion he often saw in the mirror. “Congratulations, Lieutenant. One day you might even repay us for not turning in Tara Linheld. And now that you are a member of our military, if you ever pull something like this, I will turn you over to the girls. You’ll be lucky if they kill you before they skin and eat you.”
Something clicked in Blake’s head at that point. He said. “Understandable, sir. Something has been bugging me though, and I hoped you would answer. Has anyone ever seen the previous Count feed?”
Kyle cocked his head to the left. “You know, I don’t think so. Have a good day.”
Blake threw over the coffin the dirt he had been holding. He hadn’t known Moira Heatsworth, but she sounded like a decent woman from what Katherine had told him.
A miniature blond stepped up to him with a snarl, but Nat got between them in her suit. “Calm down, Sister,” she said. “It was not his fault.”
Laura growled before stretching her mouth into the most horrifying smile he had ever seen. “I don’t care what Kyle says. If I ever meet you without witnesses, you are dead, Drummond.”
Blake swallowed the lump in his throat. “I wouldn’t want that.”
“Then bring me Linheld so I can kill the bitch and maybe there won’t be enough rage left for you.”
The girl stormed off, and Blake let himself breathe. “I promised myself a drink. I’ll catch up with you two later. Nat, Katherine.”
The walk to Will’s took him an hour, which let him clear his head. Aileen stood in the corner of the bar, the suit dark and silent.
Blake clinked a glass of whiskey against a shot of vodka he had ordered for her. It was early morning and ruby sunlight shone through the wide-open doors. He picked up his drink and watched the sun dance in his glass. He downed it.
“We did it,” he said. “We got in.”
He missed her already. It had been easier to ignore that she was a person during his Republic days. When the suit was off most of the time, he could forget Aileen for a while. After spending a month tied to her, he realized how little things had changed. For that matter, he missed Tara too, and the feeling now came with guilt.
The holographic display switched on in a corner.
A Crawler anchor was on the screen.
“The Federation takes inclusion to the next level,” said Will behind the bar counter. “God, is she ugly.”
She said, “The following is a broadcast from the Republic territory.”
The image switched to Davis Connelly—Chancellor of the Council. Blake dimly remembered him from an orientation video he had seen once.
“Citizens of the Republic,” he said. “I am sad to announce that our attempt to liberate the occupied city of Seind has failed. It was our mistake to underestimate the depravity of our enemies who brought mutated beasts of the jungle to devour our brave troops. As if
it weren’t enough that they were warping their own people. Because of advances made by our scientists, we are opening a volunteer program that will allow any of you to join the mechanized military forces in less than a month. Benefits include—”
The Council and the leaders of the military stood behind the Chancellor, and what looked like all the Delmor’s nobility stood behind them. Blake spotted her in the corner. One of her arms was paler than the other, but Tara looked fine otherwise. Blake took the remote from the bar and shut the video off.
“Bullshit,” he said. “They failed the first time, so now they will throw more people at us and try to bend the AI regulations until everyone on both sides gets killed.” He paid the tab and added a twenty-percent tip. He saw the Will’s brows go up into his blond hairline. “For getting me drunk back when I was stuck in the suit,” he explained. “Take care, Will.”
He entered the mech and waited for everything to start up.
“Only four hours?” asked Aileen. “Blake, this wasn’t a bender. It barely counts as going out.”
“The pleasure district got hit pretty bad. There is nothing to do.”
He and Aileen walked the city until they saw a forty-foot-long lizard with six legs help pulverize the remains of a mall while construction mechs carried away the rubble. A Freefolk Ascended was sitting on top. It was Mei. She looked up to the sky, saw how high the sun was, frowned and steered the beast away from the ruins and out of the city. The mechs floundered for a second and readjusted to work on their own.
He said, “I think they are already here.”
“It’s too early, Blake. We should still have a couple years.”
Blake shook his head. “It’s only a suspicion, but the previous Count of Lankershire had been active for almost a thousand years, he was a fan of all things Old Earth, and nobody saw him feed even once.”
Aileen was silent for long enough for him to start to worry. Then she said, “Sloppy. I would have expected better.”
“The man must have gone insane from being away from home for so long. It’s the only explanation how Heatsworth could beat him in combat.”
Aileen sighed. “Why do I suspect that he isn’t as dead as everybody thinks?”
The city shields were waning, and the world of red was slowly turning to normal. He had no doubt that in a month Seind would be ignoring the war again and he told her so.
“Not if we have anything to say about it,” said Aileen.
Acknowledgments
There are many without whom this book would never have been written.
I’d like to thank Dmitriy Chebotarev for dragging me out on a trip to the Alps back in 2015. It took most of my money, but it was one of the best vacations in my life, and I somehow came up with this story one day after lunch.
I’d like to thank Maria Senichkina who, years later (and completely by accident), terrified me into getting off my butt and turning the beginnings of the outline into what you are holding now.
I’d like to thank my first readers: Kathryn Guare, Evgeniy Moiseev, and Andrey Tkhorikov for taking upon themselves the pain of reviewing first drafts so that the book could become what it is. I thank Andy Meisenheimer, my editor, for pulling me out whenever I got lost in my words. I thank Alisha Moore for the book cover she created.
I’d like to thank every reader who has ever liked or reviewed my work anywhere on the Internet. Special thanks go to folks at the Edge of Darkness website who first introduced me to creative writing in a dark realistic setting.
Kinoko Nasu, though we have never met, has been a huge influence on me with his Fate/Stay Night and Shingetsutan Tsukihime visual novels. This was way before urban fantasy became popular, and his stories have taught me what a beautiful warped world should be like.
I thank my family and friends who bear with me spending most of my time writing. Why they put up with me, I don’t understand, but I am grateful every day.
Finally, I thank you, dear reader, for finishing this book. You are the reason for everything.
Afterword
I can’t stand About the Author pages at the back of books. They are written in third-person, which makes them pompous, and are filled with weird details that try to humanize the man or woman behind the curtain. There is no need: we are all equally human.
My full name is Alexander Kirko, I live in Moscow, and I write English sci-fi and fantasy.
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Stay shiny and may you always have a new world to visit.
