The Deep Link (The Ascendancy Trilogy Book 1)
Page 17
Rock by rock, chunk by chunk, the hive collapses.
Behind the falling debris and eddies of razor-sharp ice, Protectors rip the wall open and plummet toward me.
I drop to my knees and sink into the snow. My body's cooling rapidly in the lashing winds and I can barely move. Nitrogen crystals form on my skin and burrow into my flesh.
A ship darts back and forth above me, spitting streams of fire into the bowels of the hive, tearing it open like a gutted beast. I squint through the glistening cold petrifying my eyes, and believe I recognize it.
The horde of Protectors is almost here.
I can't stand up anymore, can't run, can't fight. In less than a minute, I'll be dead.
A sudden blast of air throws me on my back. My head spins and my lungs decompress. My useless mask is almost glazed with ice, but I still catch glimpses of the world around me.
The ship is descending. Its underside ripples and illuminates as it slides over me toward the base of the hive. It breaks into a hailstorm of molten lava and pelts the approaching Protectors into the ground just meters away from my feet. They squirm and writhe, bursting into horrible screams as they burn alive.
The ship spins around and lands on their charred bodies, crunching them into the snow. It opens up on a side and spits out a green lump that comes running toward me through the blizzard. It picks me up, throws me over its shoulder, and carries me into the ship.
Painful convulsions run through my frostbitten body as I'm laid on the floor. Gary crouches next to me and removes the defective mask from my face. I squint past his clawed feet to Amharr's pitch-black stare, and my heart gives out.
22
The memory of the dying Dorylinae keeps me conscious. Their burning bodies hitting the snow, their ashes whipped away by cutting winds. My family is gone. He killed them all.
I don't care whose fault it is that we've reached this point. I don't care if it was me who caused our connection or him. I don't give a damn if he's here to take me back with him or kill me. All I want is to reach into his chest and yank his fucking heart out, just like he did with mine. I want him to suffer.
Gary steps aside. My eyes swim with tears I can't blink away. Amharr is coming toward me.
I cough, and try to push myself up.
He stops just out of my reach.
How can he stand there so impassive and cold, knowing what he just did, knowing how it kills me inside? The smell of burning chitin is still clear in my mind. I'm certain he can feel what I feel. Somewhere inside him there's a mirror of myself. He must know.
Amharr bends over and picks me up by the neck, leaving my feet to dangle above the floor. The tips of his fingers press between my vertebrae in a dozen places. He allows me to breathe, but his grip is so tight that every tiny movement is painful.
I clench my teeth. My hands trail down his chest and rest on his flexible sternum. I can feel his pulse. It has the same rhythm as mine.
One of his fingers wanders up the back of my neck into my hair, making my spine tingle.
"You reckless creature." His voice runs through me like a heatwave. "If you lust for death, you need not look for it with them. I am right here."
My palms press flat against his chest. An electric prickle creeps through my fingers. I press harder against him.
"Why?" I choke.
"You would have been slaughtered."
"I would've made it..."
"You would have died."
"Better me than them."
"You're lying."
"And you're a fucking murderer."
He looks down at my hands against his chest. "I did not hide that from you. You know what I am."
"I never wanted to know you."
"Nor I you."
My palms begin it itch. His palms itch as well. I can feel his muscles contract and his nerves flare up with tension.
He's right. I know exactly what he is, what he does, what he feels right now. I know, because he's mirrored somewhere deep within me as well. I understand him... And I realize he's just as lonely and confused as I am. We're both trapped within each other, and we can't break free.
He's become a part of me. He's swallowed all my demons and spat them back in my face, destroyed my peace and my world, my family, my life. But he forces me to face the truth, to understand myself, as he is forced to understand himself through me.
I dig my thumbs into the soft seam of his chest, and slowly rip him open. My hands throb with heat. My whole body is aglow with hunger.
Hundreds of tendrils snake out of his hands and rush up my neck, crawl over my lips and slide into my mouth. A quivering moan escapes me as he floods my nerves. He invades my mind in a frenzied hunt, devouring my thoughts one by one, consuming my memories and feelings like a starving beast. He's insatiable, savage, driven by a kind of desperation that I can't even begin to comprehend.
This time, it doesn't hurt. Maybe I'm too numb, maybe I'm too close to death, but I don't feel any pain. And I am not afraid.
He's like a flood of heat and energy permeating my whole being, melting my resolve and my grief, dissolving my past and my present, cleansing me. His consciousness mixes with mine, his thoughts connect to mine, and for a powerful and endless moment we are one.
You are a part of me, he makes me understand. And I'm a part of you, until either one of us dies.
I know.
Do you want to die?
No.
Do you want me to die?
...No.
Then we will remain one.
I open my eyes and look at him. He pulls me closer until his forehead touches mine.
Silence grows inside me like an ocean, erasing all my fears and anger and regret, washing me away. His touch—his inescapable nearness—brings me peace. He fills me with a kind of serenity I've never known before.
Then he lets go.
I collapse on the floor. Blood comes rushing back into my prickling limbs. I draw a deep breath, and then another, slowly inhabiting my own body again.
Amharr returns to his console. I can feel every step vibrate through the responsive floor. I can feel him level out, sense his focus return as my own thoughts fall back into place.
There's no way out of this. Ever again.
Gary comes to tend to me. He smears a sticky goo over my face with his clawed hands. It smells awful. The room starts to spin and I have trouble staying awake. He sticks a thin tube into my nose that pumps heated oxygen into my lungs. I grope about and yank it out, scratching my face.
Gary grunts and grabs my hands. "Stop fighting. Let me help."
Tears well up in my eyes again, making my whole face hurt. I nod at him. He shoves the tube back into my nose and I take a few painful breaths until I calm down. All the time I watch Amharr behind his console, focusing on his damn controls as if this never happened. I desperately want to hate him, to summon all my strength and willpower and wish him dead. But I can't.
The humming of the floor and the nauseating goo on my face send me into a shallow sleep. When I come to I'm hanging over Gary's shoulder, his heavy hand pressed down on the small of my back. The Mazan winds nip at me as I'm carried through the storm in long, heavy strides. I stick my fingers into the dark green fluff on Gary's back, and hold on tight.
He stops in the middle of the howling storm, and pounds his fist against bare metal. I push up and peer around his large head, recognizing the hatch of the Transiter opening up before us. I try to smile, but my skin won't budge under the thick goo. It's frozen stiff around the oxygen tube stuck in my nose.
Gary heaves me into the Transiter, then jumps in too. He crouches protectively over me like an alien mama bear with green, living fur. He stops me from clawing at my face again. The hatch snaps shut and the repressurization pumps hiss at full power. A pair of feet shuffles closer.
"Bug-Nut? What the fuck—"
I cough through the goo.
"Get away from her," Jade yells. His shaky voice doesn't sound too menacing.
/> I tap on Gary's ankle and he makes room for me to sit up. I tear the sheath of goo off my face and gasp greedily for the familiar air.
"It's okay, Jade..." My voice is hoarse and weak. "He's with me. It's okay."
Gary straightens up. "You are friend?"
Jade stares at him with his mouth open.
I grab Gary's hand and pull myself up to my feet. "He's a friend, alright. Relax."
"Yeah, friend, I'm all friend, no foe, I'm harmless," Jade babbles, staring at the muscle-packed Kolsamal.
I want to laugh but every single muscle in my face and neck hurts.
"Good," Gary says in his coarse English. Then he turns to me, speaking in his own tongue: "Now you are in this human's care. Stay safe. Do not aggravate the Dominant again."
"I didn't aggravate him. He's not my responsibility."
The Kolsamal grunts at me disapprovingly. "You never learn."
"Okay, fine." I squeeze his hand. "I'll be careful. I promise."
Gary clucks his slimy tongue at me, then stares at Jade for a moment. He kicks the hatch open and jumps out into the storm.
Jade rushes to close the hatch behind him. He leans against it, shivering from head to toe. Lets out a long sigh, and hurries back to his chair without asking me a single thing. I sit too, rubbing my face.
Jade brings up both containment fields and takes off. I can't even look at the projected image inside my milky cocoon as we veer away from the ruins of my home.
When we're safely away and Jade is satisfied we're not going to be fired upon by Tick surveillance drones, he lowers the containment fields and gives me a bewildered look. "Care to explain what just happened? What was that alien doing here? Why did they shoot at the hive? What did you do?"
"Why didn't you leave?"
"I asked you first."
I sigh. "Where do I even start...?"
"Anywhere," he snaps. "Fuck, Taryn! I swear I'll never talk to you again if you don't explain this shit to me right now."
I lean back into the chair and rub my fingers together to get rid of the constant tingle. It's useless, as I expected. Guess that'll be a thing from now on. Just great.
I start with what really happened in that first encounter between me and Amharr, clumsily trying to explain what the Emranti are. I talk about the actual reason he kept me there for almost a month, and the conflicting, mind-twisting way I've been feeling ever since. I work my way to the present, to what happened inside the hive, and what happened aboard Amharr's striker.
Jade listens attentively, and falls into a deep silence.
I hope he understands it somehow, but I don't need him to. Maybe it's better if he doesn't, if he thinks it's some kind of PTSD or Stockholm syndrome. Those would at least give him the illusion that I'll be normal again, one day. An illusion I no longer entertain.
I know I should feel defeated, even hopeless. But I can't help feeling as though I haven't lost something dear to me, so much as gained something completely new and invaluable. Something I have yet to fully understand.
23
On his fifth run, Bray no longer scorns the tediousness of his task. They've all got to do their part, after all.
He navigates the streets carefully, making sure there are no danger zones or surveillance spots he can't trick. His synet overlays traffic signs, street names and house numbers over the visual input from his eyes, and even gives him the images from various traffic cameras in small patches that dance along the top of his vision. He walks with his hands tucked deep in the pockets of his overall, a cap shading his eyes.
It's late afternoon in Erano's thirty-one hour day, and the second work shift has already retreated into their homes and weekday housings. The crowd is getting thinner on the streets, so he doesn't have much time left to reach his target unobserved.
The four Syndicate sleepers he's contacted so far proved to be a disappointment. One was eight years short of retiring—an engineer who didn't want to risk his pension. The next was a mother of five, pregnant with twins. Bray almost laughed in her face as she opened the door, but the dark rings under her eyes held him back. She said she would do her best to provide them with information, but that's all. The other two guys were fairly eager to be part of any radical activity that promised to score off the TMC. James Ratrand and Helmut Krupke. Bray doesn't like them, especially not Helmut. The guy's got a funny glint in his eyes that screams trigger happy. But Bray hasn't come out here to judge them. All he has to do is bring them in.
The dome's halo makes all the colors look off. The concrete on the streets and sidewalks is washed in an oily-yellow hue, the lamps hovering above the street glinting like disco balls, and all the building fronts are a tad too violet.
Bray turns a corner and crosses a river over a fortified bridge. The permafrost-covered acidic river, the Fiume Giallo, flows into the Mare Ocra, the Yellow Sea, further south in D5. It forms a small delta there, enriching the rigid soil with various valuable minerals. The poisonous river cools the air down to negative degrees Celsius along its shores. Bray shivers and hugs his arms to his chest as he crosses the bridge.
The buildings along this street are mostly info-tech development facilities and data analysis centers, completely covered in opaque panels and riddled with surveillance cameras. Bray even sees a couple of observation bots fly overhead like fist-sized bumblebees. He pulls his cap lower and hunches his shoulders, kicking imaginary pebbles as he approaches his target.
A cargo transport rolls soundlessly over the concrete on twenty large, foam-filled tires. It stops further up the street and begins a laborious parking maneuver up the ramp of a storage building. Bray squints up at a nearby surveillance tower with its round observation deck, its own antennae array and a good dozen slots for the observation bots to come back to and recharge. He approaches the intersection and turns right, checking the marks on his virtual map once again.
This is it, his number five. Tactically ideal location for a sleeper. Preston did say he had good connections on Erano.
Bray stops in front of a high-security door, watched closely by two surveillance bots attached farther up the wall. Preston's code sets the door's security array beeping lazily three times, and then the door opens into a large, brightly lit hallway.
"Hello?" Bray asks, scrutinizing the entrance.
There's no sound beyond the rustle of the air conditioning system.
Bray enters cautiously. There are two doors far in the back. The door falls shut behind him with a heavy clunk. He winces.
"I've been expecting you," a metallic voice comes from a speaker on the wall to his left.
How very dramatic. Bray glances at the small com terminal out the corner of his eye, and returns his focus to the doors ahead. "Mr. Nevala?" He takes a step forward. "Crispin Nevala?"
"Mr. Dakins," the speaker says. "I expected you to be older. Please call me Cris."
"Hi Cris. I'm Bray."
"I know."
Bray sighs. A muffled chuckle comes from the speaker beside him. His shoulders sag. "I assume you know why I'm here," he says.
"Yes, Bray." The smugness is audible despite the metallic tinge deforming his tone.
"You some kind of hacker?"
"You could say that."
The guy's starting to piss Bray off. "Look, Cris, I haven't got time for games. Come out so we can share our data, then I'm out of here."
"I'm afraid that's not going to be possible, Bray."
"Which part?" Better not be a threat. He doesn't have time for this shit.
"You'll find all the information you need in that com terminal. Just connect your nacom. We'll swap data and all due pleasantries. Then you can leave."
Bray glares warily at the small terminal. Pulls out a thin wire from its side, and plugs it into his nacom. He uploads the lists Preston gave him and generates an alphanumeric code-name for Crispin Nevala, which he then codes into the report he's supposed to deliver to Preston. A data package is standing by to download into his nacom, waiting
for an OK code.
"What now?" Bray asks. "Preston didn't give me any other code."
"It's ACDC."
Bray snorts. "Like the electric current?"
"The Alpha Centauri Data Core."
Bray frowns.
He enters the code and the package begins to download into his nacom. It's far bigger than he expected. Two minutes later it's still downloading. Bray leans against the wall and stares back at the two doors. This is all too weird for his taste. Maybe the guy's not even here. Maybe he's not a real person. Has Preston gotten desperate enough to use rogue AIs?
"What's with the secrecy?" Bray asks, more to pass time than expecting an answer.
"Let's just say the less you know the better. Both for your little rebel league and myself."
"Won't be easy working with a ghost."
"Oh, we won't work together. I just provide the bits and bytes necessary to keep you guys on the right track."
Bray shrugs indifferently, knowing he's being watched. He's a little envious, admittedly. He'd much rather stay in the shadows too, hacking away into dataspheres like some genius than run stupid errands for Preston.
The data finishes downloading and Bray disconnects from the terminal.
"Thank you," the speaker says. "Have a good evening, Bray."
The front door unlocks.
"Yeah, sayonara."
Bray steps out into Erano's off-color twilight. He pulls his cap lower, shoves his hands back in his pockets, and starts home.
The truck has finished unloading and its ramp has retracted. Bray squints at the distribution platform. No more movement. He peers over his shoulder toward the bridge he passed earlier, but there's nothing. He's alone out here.
A soft whir approaches overhead—an observation bot following him. His synet registers an open ID inquiry and responds with the fake ID Preston gave him. He keeps his gaze on the ground, and picks up the pace.
The bot overtakes him, adapts its speed to fly beside him, and starts scanning him. The radiation cone runs up and down Bray's body, prickling through the nervewires in his left arm. It gives him a light buzz in the back of his head.