It’s a pretty big price to pay.
A woman arrives in the doorway next to Commander Astoria with such speed that the flooring mist swirls into an inverted waterfall up the wall. It’s Kallias, and her petite, barely-dressed bodyform is a riot of writhing black tendrils.
My alarm steps up two levels.
“What’s our status?” Commander Astoria asks quickly.
“The transmissions are reaching Orion.” Kallias gestures toward Delphina in the chair. “The signal was momentarily interrupted. My associates shielded the transmission once again. I don’t think—”
The holo matrix light flickers then comes back to full strength—it freezes everyone in the room.
“What is happening?” Commander Astoria hisses to Kallias.
Her eyelids flutter, which means she’s in contact with Orion. Or someone. “The holo chair has an independent power backup—”
An explosion crashes through her words. Gray smoke fills the hall.
Commander Astoria yells at Kallias, “Protect them!” Then she draws a narrow-barreled weapon from a holster on her thigh and sprints straight into the burgeoning smoke.
Caleb and Ayala raise their weapons but hold their positions—Ayala in front of the holo chair with Delphina, Caleb with me, Kamali, and Lenora.
Kallias appears in front of us. “Guard the door!” she says to Lenora, taking my arm in one hand and Kamali’s in the other. Lenora looks torn for a moment, then disappears in a blur towards the door. Caleb covers us, edging backward as Kallias hauls me and Kamali all the way to the back wall. She takes a protective stance next to Caleb, who’s sweeping looks between her and the door. Delphina is still in the chair, gesturing wildly with her short arms and spewing angry words I can’t hear. Kamali’s eyes are wide with the same fear that’s running racetracks around my body.
Something crashes through the apartment. Human screams and ripping metal and electric gunfire echo through the door like a bad horror virtual is playing down the hall. A second blast hits. The concussive force knocks everyone down. The holo matrix shorts out. Delphina’s angry words echo after the blast. I’m flat on my back and can’t see anything but whiteness. Flash bomb, my brain tells me. But a rushing sound fills my ears, like an avalanche at my back…
The fugue state. No, no, no!
I’ve got to stay here, in reality, not floating off in a hallucinogenic state while my body lies unconscious on the floor. I do not want to die under the mechanical crush of police-bot feet. I grope through the white-out blizzard caused by my burned-out retinas. My hands find Kallias’s bodyform twitching on the floor, but the fugue is rushing to capture my brain—
The room shifts, the whiteness fades, and now I can see everyone: Kallias under my hands, thrashing against invisible bonds. Only she’s not wearing her bodyform. She’s six inches taller, lanky, with wild red hair and spindly fingers fighting against her unseen enemy. Kamali is next to me on the floor, tucked behind Caleb, who is back up on his feet but seems disoriented, swinging his weapon all over the room. Ayala has one hand holding Delphina down, covering her while the other has her gun targeting the doorway.
But they’re dressed all wrong.
Kamali’s in that sheer, nude leotard, the first one I saw her in. Ayala is wrapped in purple silks, and Caleb’s homespun tunic has patches and holes—and their augmented limbs are back to being flesh. Only Delphina is still in black, but it’s skin-tight on her small form. Lenora guards the door, but her body is no longer ascender tech… it’s delicate-boned and human-fleshed… thin with rapturous curves and a cascade of blonde hair…
My eyes blink away the whiteness, and the real world fades back in. Kallias is back in her bodyform. The humans wear black body armor again. I cough on the smoke filling the room and edge toward Kamali. Kallias grabs me, holding me back. I don’t know what she’s thinking… but a screech of metal-on-metal whips my attention to the door.
Lenora is grappling with six feet of killing machine. She and the military-grade sentry are moving so fast, I can’t tell who’s winning. My body shudders with the need to help, but there’s nothing I can do. Not without getting killed.
My frail human body is massively outclassed.
I turn to Kallias. “Do something!” I yell over the rending metal. I watch, horrified, as the sentry rips an arm off Lenora’s bodyform.
Kallias yanks me behind her and crouches in front of me. “I am.”
I want to protest—she should join the fight—but before I can get the words out, the sentry pulls Lenora close and drives its metal hand into her side. She’s one-armed. She can’t fight it off. Tears jump to my eyes. I know she’s disconnected from Orion. I know she doesn’t have a backup. Her one and only consciousness resides in a body being turned into scrap metal by the ascenders’ own killing machine.
A crack that sounds like death rips the air, and Lenora’s body goes limp. The sentry tosses her into the hall. Most of its humanoid shape bristles with weaponry—black and silver dispensers of death that are now pointing at the huddled humans in the room.
Ayala fires first, but Caleb quickly joins her. Twin blue-green bolts arc across the room and rivet the sentry’s body. The thing convulses and collapses, but there’s another one behind it in the hall. Twin red beams lance from it, simultaneously aimed at both augments. Caleb’s gun arm is clipped, but the other beam goes straight through Ayala. She doesn’t even scream. She just crumples to the floor with a saucer-sized hole in her mid-section.
I gape, horrified. Delphina drops to the floor, scrambling for Ayala’s weapon. Caleb’s gun clatters down as his arm hangs useless. He scrambles after it with his other hand.
Kallias moves with ascender speed to tackle the sentry in the hall. They go down together. Just beyond them, Grayson materializes out of thin air, just from the waist up, the rest of his body still invisible. He hurls a small metallic ball to the floor, and a blue pulse of energy ripples through everything—walls, bots, ascenders, and humans. It’s like a thousand volts of electricity coursing through my body, and it knocks me to the floor. I spasm in the mist, but the charge passes quickly. Somehow I’m still alive. I roll over and crawl on twitching hands and knees toward Kamali, who is likewise down and shaking, but she’s alive. Grayson floats over the bodies in the hall—the bots, Kallias, Lenora.
None of them are moving.
Grayson’s legs are still invisible—which must be why they’re working at all. The suit must have protected them from the bomb. He reaches us and gives a hand up to Caleb.
“Let’s go! Let’s go!” Grayson shouts. Caleb helps up Kamali then me. We’re both still shaking. Grayson lurches over to help Delphina but freezes when he sees Ayala. Pain ripples across his face, but he doesn’t kneel down to check her. Instead, he quickly reaches to grasp Delphina’s arm and haul her up from the floor.
“Move!” he demands of all of us, his voice graveled by emotion and smoke. Like a punch to the gut, I realize we’re going to leave Ayala’s body behind.
We all scramble toward the hall, but I only make it to the door before my legs lock up.
Lenora is in pieces on the floor. Kallias was taken out by the bomb, but she was still undercover. She has to have a backup somewhere. But not Lenora.
“We have to bring her,” I say to Grayson.
“My orders are to get you out, sir.” He lets go of Delphina like he’s going to grab me and force me into the thick haze of the hallway. There are bodies everywhere. Mostly human, some sentries. All in pieces. “The fighter transport is waiting.”
“She has no backup.” My voice is choked. I can’t just walk away. Delphina’s lips press tight. Kamali’s eyes squint in judgment. Caleb is aghast. I don’t care.
I drop to the floor next to Lenora’s body. There’s no life in her eyes, which are staring at the ceiling. I try to lift her head, but her ascender body is far too heavy for me to carry alone. Between the five of us, maybe. I blink back the tears and beseech Delphina with my eyes. The rest will
follow her lead.
My throat is thick. “She has valuable information.” It’s true, but that’s not what transforms Delphina’s face from a scowl to fiery determination. I’m wasting valuable seconds. Time that might get us all killed.
Delphina crouches down to take one of Lenora’s legs. Grayson shoves me off from holding her head and heaves up Lenora’s torso around the middle. His still invisible ascender-tech legs take the brunt of her weight. I grab Lenora’s other leg, and the three of us crab-walk through the smoke-filled hallway, navigating over fallen bodies, weapons, and broken sentries. Caleb lurches behind us, his ascender-tech arm hanging uselessly at his side and his non-mechanical hand gripping his shoulder wound. Kamali brings up the rear.
It’s not until we reach the transport that I realize Kamali has brought Lenora’s detached arm along. As the ship lurches into the air, Kamali drops it to the gray cargo floor next to Lenora’s body.
She refuses to look at me for the entire ride back to base.
Our march down the transport ramp is a dirge—silent and tense.
Delphina and Kamali lead the way. I should be up front with them, showing that all three of us survived, especially given the cost to make that happen. Instead, I’m bringing up the rear, lumbering behind the dozen bedraggled survivors, slowly guiding Lenora’s maglev stretcher down the ramp. I want to sprint to the basecamp’s med bay and find someone who can resurrect her. Or at least see if it’s possible. But this is more a funeral than a homecoming—hurrying doesn’t seem right. Especially when Lenora is probably as dead as the others, the ones we had to leave behind.
They all gave their lives for a few words. A message. One that came from my mouth.
My body hums with a strange lightness. I think I’m in shock. I don’t feel anything but the cool metal of the stretcher under my palm and the heat of Oregon’s bright summer sun as we come out of the shadow of the ship.
Word has already reached the camp, with the roster of the dead racing ahead on the secure comm the rebel ascenders use. The camp is a sprawling collection of canvas barracks, gleaming silver pods, and an inflated module made with glowing-white tech-fabric for the ascenders. The domed ascender-tech shield overhead is one-way—it lets in the sun and the deep purple shadow of the mountains’ edge, but keeps out the elements and the prying satellite eyes of Orion.
An anxious crowd scans our faces. The steady beat of our boots on the metal ramp almost drowns out the sobs. A willowy blond woman pushes through to meet Delphina just as she reaches the grassy ground at the end of the ramp. The woman pulls Delphina into a desperate hug, bringing the whole entourage to a halt.
I can’t hear Delphina’s words, but they’re soft and French and dropped between tender kisses on the woman’s trembling lips. I should have known Delphina would have a second—I’m not really surprised, just relieved it’s not Kamali. As we wait for Delphina and her second to clear the way, another figure pushes to the front: Tristan. He’s the medic who took care of Cyrus’s concussion after the Resistance’s bomb-blast rescue—something that freed us, but also managed to bash my best friend’s head against a wall.
Tristan stumbles up to Kamali, chest heaving. He hesitates for a fraction of a second then sweeps her into a hug. Her hold on him is fierce in return, and it’s clear he’s the one comforting her, not the other way around. Tristan loosens his hold, gently tugging her to the side of the ramp. We start moving again. He brushes Kamali’s cheeks with the back of his fingers, speaking softly to her. I think she’s crying.
I stare at them. The non-feeling of my leftover shock breaks into a tingling sensation, the kind you get when your numbed-out hand is coming back to life and stabbing you with small splinters of pain.
I tell myself that of course Kamali has friends in the Resistance—she was a key part of their plans to disrupt the Olympics. Just a few days ago, Tristan translated some of Commander Astoria’s French for me. He’s clearly been in the Resistance for a while, probably one of the original crew that came out of Paris—
He’s kissing her.
I drop my gaze. The splinters stab their pointy little daggers deep into my chest. I tell myself Tristan’s a good guy. Kamali deserves someone good. This is a good thing.
My stomach feels like it’s going to heave out its contents.
I’m nearly at the end of the ramp, and even though I’m staring at my feet to avoid looking at Kamali and Tristan, I almost stumble when my boots meet the grass. The maglev gurney helps keep me upright. I wonder how quickly I can push it through the crowd without making a scene. I don’t notice Cyrus at my side until he grabs me by the shoulders.
“Eli!” He’s out of breath. “Man, I’m really glad you’re not dead.”
“Yeah,” I say. The buzzing light-headed feeling is back. “Me too.”
He looks at Lenora on the gurney, lifeless and broken. Her midsection is ripped, exposing the twisted organic tubing, actuators, and electronics that comprise her bodyform. I’ve never seen the inside of a bodyform before, but it’s something I could have lived my whole life without. It’s the kind of damage that intrinsically spells death.
Cyrus’s face contorts as he checks out her detached arm. “Oh man.” He drops his hands from my shoulders. “Is she…?”
“I don’t know.” My throat is thick.
A blur of something comes around the edge of the crowd. By the time I turn to look, Leopold has appeared at Lenora’s stretcher. He’s the rebel ascender who posed as an intake officer at the Olympics, but more importantly, Lenora saved his life. Leopold was a Tibetan monk before the Singularity, but ascendance wasn’t the nirvana he was looking for. Lenora stopped him from committing suicide in order to reincarnate. And all that was before they worked together on the genetic experiments that created me. In other words, he’s the only person in camp who wants to keep Lenora alive as much as I do.
His hands flit over Lenora’s body, probing the ripped out components and hovering over her lifeless eyes with some kind of scan. “What happened?” he asks in a rush, not looking at me.
“A sentry. I don’t know what kind of weapon he used on her, or if he just tore her bodyform apart.” It’s getting hard to force the words out. “Leopold, can you bring her back?”
He pauses his flurried motion and fixes his gaze on me. “If you mean bring her back from the dead, the answer to that is no. Even ascenders, once our neural activity stops, we’re—” He cuts off at the look on my face. “Let’s just say if she’s ceased all function, her time here, on this earthly plane with us, will have come to an end. In the final moments, we’re still as mortal as you, Eli.”
“I thought, maybe…” I’m choking up. “I thought you could…” I can’t even articulate my hopes—that somehow she’s just shut down, not dead.
Leopold eases the stretcher out of my white-knuckled grip. “I’ll have to diagnose the damage in the med bay. Let me take her and see, all right? If there’s anything to restore, I promise you, I will find it.”
I nod, too quickly. I know she doesn’t have a backup—the tech is built into Orion, and Lenora’s been off-grid for a while. Backups aren’t like simply storing data. It’s an alternate mind, kept alive but dormant, and securely locked away with an ascender’s personal key. The backup triggers automatically—wakes up and downloads—when their current bodyform is destroyed. But the rebels can’t bring a backup with them, and disconnecting from Orion is necessary for security.
I know all this.
I just have a desperate, stupid hope that Lenora’s bodyform only looks dead—that her mind is still alive, even though I know the chances are abysmally small. Even if the sentry left some part of her living, Grayson’s bomb probably destroyed it.
Pain twists in my chest as Leopold whisks the gurney away with ascender speed. The sun catches on the stretcher’s metal trim, creating a blur of sunshine as he speeds toward the silver med pod. The door slides open, and a moment later, closes again.
Cyrus shakes his head. “That s
till freaks me out, every time I see it. Makes me wonder what the ascenders are thinking, you know, when they have to walk slow like the rest of us.”
I don’t answer. There’s so much I need to discuss with Cyrus—not least that a flash bomb set off some new kind of fugue state for me—but I can’t wrap my head around that right now. My mind is frozen, trying to wish Lenora back to life. I need answers from her. And the giant vise squeezing my chest makes it hard to pretend I don’t want more than that.
Cyrus frowns at my lack of response then scowls more at something over my shoulder. I don’t turn—there’s nothing there I want to see. Grayson breaks from the crowd, striding purposefully toward the command pod. Caleb stumbles after him, his injured arm in a sling. Now that the survivors are back in the embrace of the camp, the crowd starts to disperse.
My best friend claps a hand on my shoulder and eases me into walking toward the med pod. “I’m sure Leopold’s got some kind of magic ascender tech up his sleeve.”
“Yeah.” I nod, but the sick feeling in my stomach isn’t even close to convinced.
Cyrus has always been a tech head, even before he worked in Riley’s black-market cybernetic shop in Seattle, but he’s been drooling over the basecamp’s tech ever since we arrived. Ascender-grade weapons. The camp’s shield and Grayson’s invisibility suit. Even the med tech is ridiculously advanced, and not just the gen tech for my mom—normal illnesses and injuries that kill legacies every day back in Seattle are a mere rest stop in the gleaming silver med pod. Anyone walking away from the op today will soon be as good as new. But, as Leopold says, we’re still mortal. If we die before the advanced medicines reach us, we’re still dead.
The Duality Bridge (Singularity #2) (Singularity Series) Page 2
