The fear hardened along its edges.
Would she really disassemble him, leave his brain to float in a nutrient bath? He thought of those other organs in the basement of Orleans Hospital, all those years ago – were they minds that had been bottled for future use? If so, no doubt they had been put out of their misery. The panic’s hard edge faltered as he imagined the fate she had outlined for him. No, he would not let her take him. He would not be made a victim of that woman again, and he would not allow himself to be further experimented upon in order to bring forth whomever it was the bitch had put inside of him!
Walken looked down at his strange body, its functions and purpose yet another mystery, and willed himself to move. Still nothing. It was as if he had already been disconnected from it; yet this was the problem with taking such a powerful electromagnetic blast– everything took so damned long to regenerate, whole systems of subatomic switches had to depolarize, software had to reboot, the works. Only his brain, riddled with biosynthetic parts, resisted, no doubt only because Exley had aimed low. If he wanted to kill Walken, he probably could have done it with a shot to the head.
So he lay there, bolted down and secure, while he tried to make his body move again. He focused on his feet, recalling some old movie where the heroine focused on making her toe move before the rest would follow – a supreme act of will, one he could carry through on, though unfortunately, an abundance of will was not the only thing he needed. The goddamned systems had to be online.
Meanwhile, between attempts, he watched the landscape of postwar Berne unfold through the van’s only window, in the back. On this side of the Aarne, the city looked sleek, new, ultra-modern – much like the New City of Seattle, which of course was the problem. Only thirty years ago, Berne had been a beautiful old city, studded in places with modern skyscrapers where the hotels and banking centers had existed, but the War gutted it all. Berne served as a major battleground; the forces of five different private military companies had clashed there, erasing centuries of history through constant warfare. The air remained fouled by the plumes of combat ships that clashed overhead, while platoons of soldiers fought bitterly among the ancient streets. Berne had been a veritable museum, but through waves of repeated bombardment – first from field artillery, and then later, when the battle had gotten desperate for the attackers, from orbit – most of the city’s old buildings had long since been pounded into dust. Reconstruction rendered it a sterile financial center, divesting it of its soul.
So it was for much of Europe now.
He hated what the world had become, though it changed long before he was born. He hated the state of the society. He hated that he had once been a part of it – and yet he also knew this hatred both unfounded and unfair. Humans had always had their weaknesses, but Yathi had engineered their transformation, molding them into their present state. Or at the very least, they had held open the door and put up big neon welcome signs. Endless, carefree consumption, total comfort, all you can eat, and only at the low, low cost of your human soul – and who believed in that anymore?
His brooding so distracted him that he almost missed his feet beginning to twitch. Almost.
Walken’s attention snapped back to the real world. Spurred on by this stab of victory, he worked at it in earnest, and in minutes, the turning of an ankle rewarded his efforts. An ankle! It would not be long at all, now. He looked out through the back of the van; they proceeded down the Papiermühlestrasse, nearing the Clock Tower. There, under the forest of financial towers, lay Enrichment Center 03. Like everything Yathi, these sterile names hid so very much; to the Yathi, ‘enrichment’ meant the total impregnation of human bodies taken over by their kind with the bewildering array of implant systems that made them what they were. He had been rebuilt there, as well as imprisoned.
He could move his hands. They flexed and pivoted in impossible ways. His arms flexed next, and began to retract to proportions more akin to those of a human being beneath his loose sleeves. His legs came next. And then a voice.
said a voice, flat like a cheap servitor android or primitive AI, faraway and quiet – and not Mother.
He couldn’t place ever having heard it before. At once, he became aware of another presence in his mind, not an icicle, but something softer, though equally massive. Like a rod of stone. He suppressed a groan as he tried to reply.
the voice replied.
Walken gripped the sides of the gurney and prepared for the world to explode. Politely enough, it obliged.
Whatever hit them had to have been really moving when it made contact. Walken had the distinct sensation of weightlessness and timelessness that follows – made all the more so thanks to the lifter unit in the gurney – before the bellow of thunder and the scream of tearing metal boiled into his ears. The van lurched to the left for a faction of a second before it spun in place. The bulletproof screen between him and the cab screeched from the strain, and the gurney slammed into the wall with such force that even his powerful body rattled. Thunder again, and further screech of steel; the world lifted and flipped, slow-motion perfect, before it smashed onto the street.
Were his body still made of flesh, he would have died.
For a long moment, he lay there in the gurney, cradled by shock and silence. Though his vision blurred before the stabilizers kicked in, he found himself frozen with surprise. His brain, after all, was only partly synthetic. In seconds, the meat caught up with the information the machine screamed to him, that the window of escape had opened, that he was free – and looking down, he saw that indeed the heavy restraining sleeve on one arm had popped loose, and though the fabric of his shirtsleeve had been shredded, the white skin beneath remained unharmed. Nearly indestructible. He reached for his other sleeve. As he knew it would, the thick metal resisted as he took it in his grip and squeezed – resisted, screeched dully like the skin of the van moments before, and gave just the same. He knew his strength very well, at least. The sleeve popped open, leaving him to work quickly and do the same with the ones securing his legs. In two quick rips, Walken freed himself. He did not look back. Instead, he planted his feet against the back of the van with a kangaroo kick strong enough to burst the lock and sent the double doors swinging open with a crash.
Outside, a street full of onlookers glowed with the light of a thousand holographic signs, all pulsing down at him from the towers above. Somewhere in the night, the sirens of scrambled emergency vehicles sounded – the crowd stared on in silence, focused on him as he swayed unsteadily on his waking legs. He looked behind him and witnessed the destruction: the van was an unholy tangle, and from the front right quarter, sprang a once-sleek sedan as if it had grown from there, so impacted that the accordioned steel and plastic seemed to flow into the van’s hull. Not far from the wreckage, another van had buried itself into a nearby shopfront. He blinked, staring at the horrific mess he had climbed out of. He seemed unhurt – something that had not been missed by the crowd, as more people directed their attention toward him.
Walken did the only thing he could: he ran. His new legs carried him forward, turning him from a pitiful figure in ravaged clothes to a pale bullet dashing down an alley. He kept going, tilting himself forward, the backstreets a highway for him, their denizens no obstacle as he left them gaping in his wake. As he moved, time seemed to slo
w, that magnificent trick of motion coupled with processors that took in sensory information as quickly as it came. He moved slightly out of phase with the world, as if it ran on a spool of old celluloid a few frames per second slower than his own personal movie.
He had moved like that when running from Exley, when they found him trying to secure secret passage from the city. Some mundane cyborgs could move as fast as he, but one did not see them on the street. Civilians would have pictures; they would tag him as a military model. Perhaps the Yathi would crack down on the information before it could get out. As undisputed masters of the network, they could do that. Perhaps they would bury him as a footnote. But then again, they might choose to make him an example. Either way, he’d gotten used to being a fugitive. Barring any other issues, he would survive.
But who had spoken to him in the seconds before the crash? The presence was gone – and yet as if summoned by his very wondering, it returned, socketing into his brain, his synthetic muscles giving way from the sensation. He pinwheeled onto the concrete behind a nightclub and lay there, quite still, a tangle of limbs in a pile of stinking garbage bags and plastic bins.
It was no lie. The systems within him would tell him if he were damaged.
Walken sat up. The smell of old beer, rot, and urine filled his nostrils, analyzed by type, brand, concentration.
He didn’t bother to ask questions with the reminder of Yathi on his heels.
the voice replied, as patient as Death.
Walken stared at the sign, searching out the power connection – and found it, a cable as thick as his thumb running up the projector frame and into the side of the building.
When the presence replied, something like appreciation carried in its tone.
His eyes adjusted to the gloom. The cable hung in his hand, like a snake made ghostly by his enhanced vision.
In response, a number appeared in his brain – a network address.
That surprised him.
The stone rod withdrew from his brain, leaving him with the smell of ozone, the darkness, and the soft buzzing of high-energy current coming from the cable. He took a deep breath – unnecessary, save for his own mental focus – and pressed the sparking end of the severed cable to the back of his skull.
Like a busted video panel, the world snowed with static, without pain, and winked out.
he Jenny headed south, the chaos of the bridge well behind it.
The four of them sat in silence as the Jenny plumbed the cold waters of the Sound. Bobbi told Shaper what happened to them that evening; he listened quietly and did not offer his opinion until the end - rather unhelpful, Bobbi felt.
“Bollocks,” he muttered while shaking his head. “Still, it doesn’t mean that they’re on to us.”
Given the stealthed machines they knew sometimes lurked in the dark water had not hunted and tagged them, Bobbi had to admit that it might not be quite as likely as they had thought. But on the other hand, Jenny in the Middle had been retrofitted with EM screens and other devices that would render all but the most sensitive Yathi instruments blind and deaf to her presence. The Jenny also had methods to detect said machines long before stumbling upon them in the first place.
“Maybe not,” she said. “Might be a case of mistaken identity. But are you going to put stock in that?”
Shaper snorted. “Me? No. I’d be brickin’ it. But before that happens, why don’t we have Sumire run the numbers on the situation and see what she can make out of it?”
Bobbi had long since realized the stakes were too high to trust only her own instincts and knowledge, or those of Cagliostro, to do the job. She had collected many strategic personnel in the day, she and Scalli anyway, but that time had long passed. Now she had Sumire, and Sumire would help her figure out the score. No omnipresent digital ghosts, not her own paranoia. Sumire and her brain, and the experiences of everyone else.
This jolly club she ran had a lot of advisors.
The Jenny went on her way, down through the Colvos Passage and The Narrows, past Tacoma and Sunset Beach – until finally they reached the rocky mass of McNeil Island. A prison had stood there for centuries, the last island prison in the United States, until a corporation purchased the whole thing and converted it into a solid fuel storage site. No traces of history anymore, just a flat bulldozed plane with a few concrete bunkers and rows of storage tanks. That corporation had long since gone under, but Cagliostro quietly arranged for its resurrection on paper.
But it wasn’t the surface that drew the Jenny and her crew toward the bastion of black rock, they sought what lay beneath the waterline, inside the heart of the island itself. It had taken them a year to construct, and Violet had wryly christened the result Plato’s Cave. They’d hollowed other facilities out of the island, a system of bunkers and a sub pen cut out of the stone by Yathi-designed nanomachines and construction robots collected from misdirected shipments. The Cave resembled a Bond villain’s lair, its existence possible only thanks to the far-flung science of the enemy.
Shaper guided the Jenny toward the entrance, a narrow passage cut into the base of the island. The door to the sub pen was tiny, as it only had to accommodate the Jenny and her two sister craft, Torch and Sampuguinta. The wireframe image of the slab doors slid open, and the autonav indicator kicked on, a blotch of red shivering amongst the glowing blue lines.
“Right, then.” Shaper leaned back in his seat and tapped the forest of plugs behind his ear. “I’ve signaled ahead, they’re waiting on us.”
“Yeah, all right.” Bobbi looked at Violet, who stared at the crew console in front of her as if it would tell her the future. Could she see something in the holographic display, something secret and hidden away in the ordered photons that none else could? Bobbi thought of the look in Anderson’s eyes as she put her pistol in his face―she had seen something there, in the last moments of his life, in the horrible explosion of gore that had been t
wo lives taken with a single explosive bullet. Two lives gone, and a fraction of her humanity. She knew something that she would never say out loud.
She was starting to wear.
The submarine slid through the pen doors, through a dull, sparingly lit tunnel of concrete, and surfaced in a moon pool that dominated the majority of a subterranean chamber. A rough cathedral rose over them, bristling with supports and utility conduits, a flat deck reaching out to its borders studded with crates and diagnostic machines. The soft glow of exterior lights shined through the forward canopy and filled the Jenny’s spare interior with ghostly light as she shut down and the displays winked out of existence.
“And we are clear,” Shaper announced.
He stood, metal fingers flexing as he led Bobbi and Violet up the ladder to the dorsal hatch. The three emerged onto the Jenny’s back, and stopped. A throng of bodies stood around the pool watching them, most pale and platinum blonde. Their largely blank faces held clear expectation. Bobbi knew this ritual. Every time she came back from a mission, they would be there, waiting to make sure she was alive, waiting for the words to come from her lips. Those eyes weighed on her, forty-seven pairs crowding the sub bay, all waiting for her to speak. It was always incredibly disconcerting, and after the night’s events, she could barely suppress the shudder that clawed beneath her skin.
“I’m all right, “she announced.
The tide of eyes drew back in an instant. She was alive, and all was right with the world; her charges returned to their duties.
Only one approached, a startlingly beautiful Asian woman who would have been the queen of plus-sized models were she allowed to live in the light of day; her shapeless worker’s togs would not deny her curves , her dark hair a mass of deepest, blackest space tamed into an ornate braid that spilled down her back. She wore none of the outward traces of the alien being over whom she had regained her humanity, nor did her wry smile suggest Bobbi’s return had been anything but routine.
Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3) Page 5
