She slid through the bars and hung off the edge of the catwalk; sure enough, the gray line of a tether cable ran down from its magnetic mount to the waiting sub below. Two sets of descender grips were mounted under the mag-pad, and Bobbi took hold of one without delay. Down she went, drawn inexorably to the Jenny’s gray skin; her feet found the alloy with a wet thump a foot away from the dorsal hatch. The portal swung open to meet her with a hiss. Half praying that the VTOLs hadn’t swung around their way yet, Bobbi looked up at Violet’s shadow descending, moments away, before dropping into the dark, glittering cool of the Jenny’s interior.
Jenny in the Middle was little more than a small, sealed cargo pod with a cockpit and magnetic jets welded to it. Mundane technology had gone into putting it together, but Yathi technology filled in the blanks. The sub had already sunk well beneath the surface of the Sound as Bobbi and Violet reached the fore, with Violet taking the single free seat at a console on the right side of a panoramic viewport. Next to her at the helm, a short, spare figure, bald and studded behind one ear with the gleaming lesions of interface ports, sat in a tall-backed throne. The burning wreckage of the yacht cast an aurora of orange and white across his skin. Its image reflected in his lovely, coffee-colored eyes, as did the pale greens and blues of the submarine’s instruments, holograms floating in the air before his console.
“Shaper.” Bobbi grunted as she leaned over the shoulder of the chair.” Was that absolutely necessary?”
“I didn’t know at first, if I’m honest,” Shaper replied in a lilting tenor accented with his native Liverpool. “But it turned out they were going to start sweeping the bridge. Needed to give them a reason to look elsewhere in a hurry.” He reached for one of the controls with a hand made of black steel. Three stubby fingers and a thumb extended from around a metal trunk that grew from his elbow like a club, attached to an upper arm that looked more like a mechanical appliance than any kind of limb. His whole right arm was a Steyr combat appliance, a twelve millimeter cannon with electric fusing and complex recoil reducers. “You definitely looked like you needed a distraction.”
“Might not have needed a distraction if you’d gotten there faster,” Bobbi said with an edge of irritation, but caught herself. “No, I’m sorry, that’s unfair of me. You did great, Shaper.”
The man chuckled. “I’m mature enough to be able to take criticism, chief.” He smirked. “You’re confusing me with that other feller. And…they haven’t spotted us. We’re good.”
The bay around them resembled an infinite black gulf; high above, the wreck and the chasing spots of the police VTOLs seemed like fireflies swarming a distant campfire. The hornets’ nest upon the bridge passed overhead. Jenny’s motion had been so calm, so silent, Bobbi hadn’t even registered her acceleration.
“All right,” Bobbi said, frowning just a tad.” Lay in a course. Can you signal ahead for Sumire to be ready for us?”
“Can do.” Shaper bobbed his head.” What the bloody hell happened up there, chief?”
“Someone was waiting on us,” Violet said, staring into the constellation of holographic displays floating over the systems console in front of her.” Nothing here, though. Interesting.”
“You’re going to have to explain that to me, chief.” Shaper’s expression grew dark and solemn as he guided the Jenny through an ultrasonic image map of the landscape ahead, rendered as a wireframe display on the viewport’s inside surface. “In detail.”
“I will.” Bobbi nodded. “But first, we get home.” She had already had enough surprises for an evening. Anything else, and she might not be willing to push back further assumptions of the worst.
homas Walken woke in the body of a monster.
His eyes opened to walls of skyscrapers stretched overhead, forming an alleyway that from his vantage could have been the Marianas Trench, stretching on into the nighttime sky. He did not blink; he remembered his eyes no longer worked that way. They were like cameras, silver-lensed and staring into the clouds, the occasional flash of greenish light visible in the upper strata. These towers did not exist within the realm of the mind, the night-black cathedrals of the colonial matrix. He gazed upon the real world. Distant voices in German echoed, and his memory recovered itself.
Berne. He had escaped again – and, apparently, failed.
He lay on the concrete, oblivious to the cold, and tried to get up. His body would not yet move; he knew he had been hit with something hard, strong enough to overcome his inbuilt resistance, yet narrow enough in effect to only to kill the lights in the alleyway. Even now, the holographic frames at the mouth of the alley lay dark and buzzing with fading ozone.
The Germans spoke again, or rather voices that spoke the language fluently. Human ears would be fooled into thinking them natives, but to Walken’s ear, the words were flimsy things, cling-film wrappers over something else entirely. Beneath the human language something else, a horrible, clicking rumble, carried real meaning. Insectile speech for insectile people. These were not humans at all, but excellent facsimiles. His jailors, the Yathi, creatures from a different world who had invaded human forms.
Walken had been their prisoner for over six years now.
He strained to move. Nothing but his eyes obeyed, still a positive sign. Voluntary systems were beginning to reset. Walken looked down over himself, a body not his own. Where he had already been lean and broad of chest and shoulder, this body presented an impossibly lean parody of himself: nearly seven feet tall, with arms and legs beyond the human norm, he looked something more like a praying mantis disguised as a human being. He normally had excellent control over his body, of course, but the EM lance had reset his voluntary functions; his feet stretched away from the shirt and pants he had stolen, baring legs and midriff far beyond the pale Caucasian shade the Seattle weather had given him. A far more unusual hide replaced his skin. In truth, little of him remained biologically human, this new body strange and strong enough that his captors had to resort to such measures to bring him down.
At the mouth of the alley, a black van sat idling. Its back doors were open, and two men worked at something Walken could not see inside. They wore ribbed black coats of some leathery material, muttering to one another in not-German. One of them stepped back as the other pulled a gurney out of the van.
“Once again we do this,” the first one said. “The Mother is going to be furious.”
“She’ll be furious with him,” the other replied. The reinforced gurney looked more at home in a torture house than a hospital, with a heavy frame and inch-thick restraints made from a dull gray metal. It did not have wheels; as it cleared the van it simply hung in the air a few feet above the concrete, bobbing slightly as it settled. “We’re the ones who found him.”
“It took us longer to do so, this time, “said the man by the door.
Walken had seen it all before, but not out in the open like this. Vulgar displays of technology were not like the Yathi at all.
“After this, I imagine she will not allow him to leave the confines of a stasis tube again.” A third voice sounded above him, one Walken knew well. His emotional palette, muted and vestigial though it had become, registered the presence of an enemy.
“Do you think so?” The man with the gurney looked over Walken in the direction of the new voice. “She seems very fond of him.”
“The Mother has plans for us all. “Gerald Exley stepped forward and stood off to Walken’s right side, a tower from Walken’s vantage, somehow bigger than the last time he had seen him. A new tide of memory surged up inside of him; his brain flooded with the memories of what Exley was, the monstrosity of what he had done in the past. The dull ice that clad his heart cracked a little, letting out hateful steam.
Exley looked down at him, his broad face impassive. “He’s awake.” He lifted the EM lance in one massive arm, the weapon that had doubtlessly incapacitated Walken in the first place. The weapon looked like a blunt-nosed rifle with a large battery unit where the magazine should have g
one. Exley crouched over him, staring down into Walken’s face; his eyes, with their gleaming silver irises, bore no emotion. “Good. Listen to me, Thomas Walken: Mother shows you mercy yet again. She has instructed us to capture you once more, where the rest of us would surely prefer to kill you. I do not know what plans she has for you, but do not think for an instant we would not murder you if you resist us. Accidents happen, after all. I know.” He smiled, a cruel, awful thing. “I’m with the police.”
Not so long ago, Walken was a fellow agent for the Industrial Security Bureau, keeping bad technology out of the hands of American citizens. Exley revealed himself as an agent of the Yathi race. After six years, Exley probably ran the Seattle office by now, or at least ensured it had been entirely corrupted.
Walken gritted his teeth, and finding he could make that little gesture, dared yet further motion. “You w-were…with the poliiiice.” The voice came out of his mouth a flat facsimile of what he remembered. He’d become flat in general now, even with the anger that managed to escape in thin, hissing jets. Constrained by programming, and worse. “Now…you just…serve.” Said between gritted teeth, Walken made it sound like a curse.
Exley’s broad face went stony again, and he shook his head. “I don’t understand what she sees in you. But she wants to see you anyway.” He gestured for the other men to approach. “Get him into the van. Mother will want to speak with him again through his Seal before we get him to the facility.”
“Back into storage, “the man with the gurney said with a snort.” With the other worthless things.”
Walken squinted at the man as he drew nearer; he finally recognized him as a vessel named Gunter Weishaupt, an officer of the German police. He had helped capture Walken before. The other he did not know, but he smiled in the way of a toady, mingling pleasure and contempt, which made him one of Weishaupt’s subordinates.
“Ah,” Walken struggled to say, “G-Gunter. Getting your…exercise?”
“Yes,” hissed Gunter, his eyes narrowing into silver slits. Like all the other men here, he had the same white skin and pale blonde hair; in the ravaged city, it would be a sign of status to have the so-called ‘Genefex look.’ “Thanks to you, you cursed meat-shell. You perform the worst blasphemies against what Mother has given you!”
“Enough.” Exley frowned at Gunter.” Get him in the van, both of you, and get his Seal online again. I don’t know how he keeps shutting it down.”
“It’s all that human meat in his brain,” the third man said. “It should be replaced with synthetics. He should be made pure.”
“Made into a drone, Adzurghn?” Exley’s lips twisted into a frown.” No consciousness can exist for long in a synthetic brain, you know that. Or has your mania for corpse machines blinded you to the Mother’s vision? Is that not where real purity lies?” The name was strange, guttural as all Yathi names were – always translating to sensations or things, and in this case, A Smile Before Eating. Walken suppressed a shiver and focused on the syllables themselves, not the meaning behind them.
Adzurghn shrank beneath Exley’s words. “Of course I honor Mother’s vision. I only want success for the colony.”
“Then perhaps you should remember that she makes drones of all of us when we die,” Exley snapped. He looked past Adzurghn, who had now completely deflated, to a shrugging Gunter.
“We will see that the meat is restored to the network,” Gunter said. “Is there anything else that you require of us?”
Exley shook his head. “Bring him to the facility. We will discuss my business here in the city after that. But in the meantime…Mother has much to say to him.” He stepped past Walken’s still-numb body and pushed the lance into Gunter’s arms, shaking his head before disappearing into the street beyond.
Walken remained limp as they picked him up and put him on the gurney, still far too numb to move. They slid him into the back of the van and Adzurghn got in with him. He knew he would not return to himself in time to get away again. He closed his eyes and disconnected from his body, retreated inside his mind. He had much to do to prepare himself, he thought as the Yathi’s arm exploded into a mass of tiny insectile tool-arms, because soon she would be with him, that smug creature that brought him to this pass in the first place. He wanted to be at his best, just to spite her.
He did not have long to wait. She came to him like an icicle carefully inserted behind his ear, working its way into his forebrain the long way around. Walken stiffened mentally just feeling the power that radiated from her consciousness.
Her warm laughter bubbled into his senses. Of course it would be. I’m no threat to her. I never was.
Walken shuddered internally. He had been floating in a suspension tank in a laboratory deep under the ruins of Berne. They kept him asleep after his first escape, but somehow his consciousness managed to pick the electronic locks that held him under. After that, just as mysteriously, he managed to deactivate the Seal of Community, the implant in his skull that allowed the Mother to speak to all of her kin. The first time, he nearly killed himself by repeatedly bashing his head against the corner of his containment pod until it finally gave up. This time around, he had managed to hack it somehow.
He did not understand why she had transformed him. He had no idea of what he was rebuilt for, either reason or purpose. She would never tell him.
The spike in his brain trembled with power, and he felt his bravery buckle slightly beneath its force.
She sounded amused.
Walken had been hoping to get a reaction, but the one he did elicit from her was hardly what he expected. The Mother of Systems laughed, long and soft and sweet, cold wine in his senses.
He willed himself back to courage.
If he could move to do it, Walken would’ve gritted his teeth.
She laughed, soft and quiet in his mind.
He could never have forgotten he had done it. Sitting there on a couch in the middle of Seattle, staring out across the city from the top of the Genefex spire, his pistol in his hand. He had intended to eat the one bullet that remained in its chamber, which the Mother of Systems had left him – his ‘decision,’ in her words – but as he lifted the gun to his head, the other had come alive within him. The Yathi being that had slept inside his head had pulled his hand away at the instant he pulled the trigger, and in that moment, had both saved him and severed its hold over him. The bullet pierced his skull, burning through his frontal lobe all the way to the back of him. It should have killed him, but it did not. Instead, they replaced the damaged sections with biosynthetic components.
He had not felt the alien mind inside him since.
he said.
The question had always been asked, but never answered.
Despite his bravado, and the muted emotional capacity the synthetic regions of his brain ‘provided,’ real fear rose to the surface within him.
Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3) Page 4
