Falling One by One

by S. A. McAuley

  “There were others—so many of them—but they were there and gone. Shadows in my memory, do you know what I mean?” Athol looked to me and there was a level of discomfort I hadn’t yet seen from this fearless man.

  I felt his terror at a cellular level and could barely scrape together two words to answer him. “I do. I need you to get the PsychHAg medical attention, Armise. I’m taking the twins to the med facilities.”

  Armise gripped Elina tighter. “Don’t kill anyone. Not yet.”

  She gave him a clipped nod and he let her go.

  I escorted the two of them out of the building where Grimshaw was already waiting.

  “Is he still alive?” was the first question out of Grimshaw’s mouth.

  “For now,” I said and motioned for him to go inside. “Armise will bring you up to speed.”

  Grimshaw took the steps two at a time and pushed through the door, followed closely by two other hybrids who carried bags with them that I had to assume contained medical equipment.

  “For future reference,” I said to Elina as we walked away, “if you want to choke a man to death just crush his windpipe. Or even more effective, stab your knife into the back of his neck and pop his cerebellum.”

  “Okay,” she said, shoulders pulling back.

  “Who the fuck did your battle training anyway?”

  Athol and Elina glanced between each other. Athol answered as he opened the door to the entrance to the underground bunker. “We didn’t have any formal fight training. We were set against each other and whoever survived, survived. We only made it through because we were together. She’s my strength.”

  “He’s my spirit,” Elina added.

  I looked at both of them and felt the weight of Chen’s loss settling inside me. “The closest thing I had to a sister was killed today in battle.”

  Elina nodded. “We’ll burn them all to the ground for every loss.”

  I had no doubt. Why Grimshaw had told us that the hybrids were barely controllable was becoming apparent.

  “Let’s wait and see if Tiam lives through today first.” I waved to the stairs leading to the bunker. “Rest up. Recharge. Grimshaw will come see you if we need anything.”

  I left them and headed back toward the building where Tiam was being held, and Armise met me at the front door.

  “He’s alive, Merq.”

  “Tragedy,” I muttered under my breath.

  “Tragedy is the loss of Chen,” Armise said.

  “I’m not talking about…about this, Armise. I…”—can’t—“I won’t.”

  I took my comm strap out of my pocket and secured it around my neck, routing through Revolution analysts to make a call to Priyessa.

  When she answered, I didn’t bother with details. “We have Tiam. I’m in need of your services.”

  There was no delay from the PsychHAg. “I’m sending you transport coordinates now. Bring him to me.”

  Chapter Nine

  DCR—Haiti

  Tiam sat in a shiny new PsychHAg torture chair, likely transported down here by Priyessa for this express purpose because she wouldn’t have trusted DCR equipment. His body was too contorted to fit into the restraints properly, but that hadn’t stopped Priyessa from forcing him into the position anyway. His back was twisted into a sideways V shape, his right leg with knee torqued to the left and foot in the opposite direction. His left leg was straight—in comparison—but bowing in an unnatural angle inward, as if Priyessa had attempted to make it lie flat. Despite the pain he had to be experiencing, Tiam smiled.

  I stood in the corner of a room made entirely of stacked stones, covered with a roof of titanalloy castoffs, and watched her test his restraints. The former PsychHAg leader didn’t have any implements besides her hands, her voice, her mouth and her mind. From personal experience I knew that was all she needed to lay waste to what was left of him. Armise stood behind the chair, a thick hand circled around Tiam’s neck as he secured a strap to keep his chin up so that, according to Priyessa, Tiam wouldn’t suffocate on his own blood.

  I didn’t care if he did.

  “Good morning, Merq,” Tiam said. “Or is it afternoon?”

  For a moment I didn’t think twice about him attempting to goad me through fake pleasantries, but then Armise’s hand tightened on Tiam’s throat and I realized that Tiam had spoken in the Mongol dialect of Armise’s village.

  Priyessa didn’t look up from her work when she said, “Translate.”

  “He’s being hospitable,” I said.

  Priyessa laughed—a sound that was entirely too natural and carefree for this situation. She patted Tiam’s cheek. How she could bear to touch him at all I had no idea.

  Tiam’s eyes didn’t leave mine when he said, still in Mongol, “I’d rather have you touching me, Merq.”

  Armise tightened the strap to the point that it was choking Tiam. Priyessa, like a mother correcting an errant child, reached up and loosened it.

  “No killing him yet.” Priyessa took Tiam’s face in her hands, her thumbs stroking his cheekbones. “You will speak in Continental English.”

  There was a clouding of Tiam’s eyes and then it was gone. It was enough for me to know that Tiam feared what Priyessa could do to him.

  “Maybe I will,” he said in English then smirked. “Maybe I won’t,” he finished in Mongol.

  Priyessa looked to me.

  I shrugged. “You know as well as I do that wasn’t any language spoken in the States.”

  “Then we go for removal of the eyes first. It gives me easy access to his frontal lobe. You already lack inhibitions, PsychHAg Tiam. You won’t miss a thing.”

  Tiam swallowed, the heavy strap barely shifting up and down with the movement of his throat. “You lack the basic tools, PsychHAg Niaz.”

  Priyessa held out her hand and Armise took his knife out of his sheath and gave it to her. Without a second of hesitation she had flipped the knife in her gnarled fingers, swiping the blade across his eye and into his brow, the knife sharp enough to slice into the bone of his forehead.

  Tiam howled. “You haven’t asked anything of me!”

  “That one was just for fun,” Priyessa said, wiping the blade against Tiam’s cheek. “You know how this works, Tiam. Tell me about the memory projector.”

  Blood poured over his cheek and he would never see out of that one eye again. His other pupil was dilated with fear. “It’s the creation of Dr. Calum Blanc.”

  She held the tip of the knife so close to Tiam’s good eye that I couldn’t tell if she was pressing into it or not.

  “As is the kill switch?” she continued.

  “Yes.”

  “To your knowledge, are you the only PsychHAg who has been involved with Ahriman or any other Opposition projects?”

  “Yes.”

  Priyessa turned to me. “Do you want to know why?”

  I couldn’t stop thinking about what we’d lost in the firebombing. How crippled the Revolution would be without the key. How crippled I couldn’t allow myself to be with the loss of another friend. There was too much at stake. “What’s done can’t be undone. Can we believe him on any of these answers anyway?”

  “All of them,” she said with unbridled confidence and focused on him again.

  Then there was only one answer I really needed. “Is there a way to remove the shielding chips without killing the hybrids?”

  Tiam grinned. “No.”

  Over Tiam’s shoulder, Armise caught my eyes. It was the answer both of us had expected.

  “This program, everything you have been working on, is based on Anubis?” Armise asked.

  Tiam craned his neck as much as he could to look at Armise. “Anubis was an Egyptian deity. But Merq wouldn’t know that since we never got to that point in his lessons.”

  Armise yanked the strap taut and didn’t let go until Priyessa chided him. “He needs oxygen in order to speak.”

  I took a step closer to him. Tiam was afraid of Priyessa. Armise had no compunction
about hurting Tiam when he fucked with me. There was nothing that PsychHAg could do to me here.

  “Tell us what you know about—” I stopped myself. I wasn’t asking the right question. “Why children?”

  Tiam lifted his eyes to mine, and all I saw there was viciousness and death. “Because we got the first generation wrong.”

  Behind Tiam, Armise tensed and shook his head at me. Tiam was skating along the edges of what it was Armise knew about me that he said I couldn’t know yet.

  “Trust me, Merq,” Armise said.

  I did.

  “There’s nothing else I need from him, Priyessa.”

  She nodded to me. “There is more I want to know. PsychHAg Tiam, explain why you stayed behind when you knew an attack on the camp was likely imminent.”

  “To deliver a message.”

  “To whom?”

  “Not to—for. A message for whom.”

  “Tiam…” she warned.

  He flinched. “For you, PsychHAg Niaz.”

  “And that message is?”

  “What Ahriman did to Kersch was rudimentary compared to what he has done to your dog and his Mongolian.”

  I froze. Your dog… It was exactly the same phrase my father had used to talk about Armise.

  Priyessa backed up and went to her bag, digging into it. “Is that a message from you or your dog?”

  Tiam smiled. “Both.”

  “I’m unimpressed. You’ve wasted my time.” Priyessa approached him, holding out a palm that looked empty. “Do you remember these?”

  “Don’t,” Tiam begged, his hands balled into fists and lips curled back from his teeth.

  “PsychHAg Tiam, I asked you a question.”

  He cringed. “They are nanos that attack and destroy neurons.”

  Priyessa looked over her shoulder to me. “You know of these, Merq?”

  I shook my head. “It looks like there’s nothing in your hand.”

  “It does. Do you want to know the greatest secret of the PsychHAgs, Colonel Grayson?”

  “Of course.”

  “That our subjects think there is deception involved in our methods is the core of our psychological warfare. But we don’t lie. Other PsychHAgs—those who live the truth of this method—are the fastest to break because they know there is no such thing as an idle or manipulative threat. Inhale, Tiam.”

  He shook his head. “My mind is the only thing I have left.”

  She smashed her hand against his mouth and nose. “Inhale.”

  Tiam’s entire body shook with the effort not to breathe. Priyessa’s hand was steady as she forced the microscopic objects against his face, waiting him out. Tiam’s face turned red, he fought against the restraints, bucking, trying to pull his head away from her hand, but he was clamped down, unable to move, and his skin went from crimson to purple before he couldn’t hold out and sucked in a gigantic breath. His eyes went wide and his mouth remained in a frozen O of surprise and extreme fear.

  Priyessa wiped her hand down Tiam’s shirt, then covered her hand with a glove she pulled from her pocket. She turned to me. “His legs are now the best functioning part of his body.”

  * * * *

  “What could he have done to us?” I asked Priyessa as we sat down to eat—the first real meal I could remember having since Armise and I ate in the AmFed before escorting Wensen’s body to the capital.

  Priyessa wrapped her bent fingers around the handle of her fork and stabbed the piece of pinkish-red genetmod meat on her plate. “There are a litany of psychological tripwires he could have placed in your subconscious.”

  I grimaced. Whether from the supposed food Armise and Priyessa had in front of them or her answer, I wasn’t sure. “Like our chips?” I asked to clarify.

  She spoke around the bite she took. “No, not physical, solely mental.”

  I caught Armise’s eye and he smirked at my reaction to the food as he devoured a piece of the “meat” and hummed as he chewed.

  He wasn’t taking this seriously enough. I ignored him as my anger rose. “Like what you’ve already done to me.”

  Priyessa stopped mid-chew and set down her fork. She finished chewing and wiped at her mouth with her napkin. “I was never allowed to do permanent damage to you.”

  Everything she’d ever done to me had caused lasting damage. Especially mentally. What the hell was she talking about?

  “Why didn’t you ask him more about his supposed message?” Armise cut in.

  “Because they were words coming from someone else, not from him. Ahriman is bright. He may or may not be responsible for the content of what Tiam told us, but either way, he wouldn’t have fully revealed what he did to you to Tiam.”

  “Ahriman knows PsychHAgs don’t lie.”

  Priyessa nodded. “He went through our advanced training courses but couldn’t pass the final tests.”

  “So is there any way for you to know which tripwire it could be or how to fix it?”

  “There may be, but not without significant incursion into your brains. Even then there’s no guarantee I could locate the source.”

  “I don’t know which option is worse,” I grumbled.

  “You also have to consider it may all be a lie,” Priyessa continued, setting her fork aside with a clatter. “A suggestive attack used to set you off course.”

  “You said PsychHAgs don’t lie,” Armise said, a sneer marring his face.

  “Tiam told us the truth of what he heard. That doesn’t mean Ahriman told the truth to Tiam,” Priyessa replied.

  I stared at my plate full of rice and vegetables grown in the rich soil from the mountains above us. This was some of the highest quality food I’d been served in years and I couldn’t stomach it.

  “Tiam called me a dog…” I started, looking to Priyessa. “While I wouldn’t normally give a fuck what name he decided to throw at me, that one stood out because my father said it in your apartment when they came for us. It could be a coincidence, but I think it’s safer to assume that Tiam and or Ahriman got a hand on him and my mother when Ahriman had them.”

  “They are dead,” Armise replied flippantly. “Why would that be of consequence?”

  “Because we don’t know enough to be sure of which pieces are important,” Priyessa answered.

  And that was the crux of our problem.

  “Perhaps,” Armise allowed.

  I tapped my foot against the leg of the table and put my hands behind my head. “On the subject of important intel, before this all fucking blew up, Jegs told me there was something I deserved to know because of my relationship with Wensen Kersch. Something she would tell me if she made it out of Kash alive.” I tipped my chin up in Armise’s direction. “She said that she’d specifically made sure you didn’t know. Something about her reasons for supporting the Mongolian rebellion.”

  “Her reason for being in Singapore at all?” Armise asked.

  “Could be.” I sat forward and pushed aside my plate, laying my forearms on the table. “I kept my side of the bargain with her by keeping her alive through the D3 op, it’s time for her to keep hers.”

  Armise studied me, his demeanor now much more subdued. “She could still be with Neveed.”

  “Or Neveed took her head off for not bringing Chen back alive. Only one way to find out.” I stood and faced Priyessa. “You think they have communication facilities here, or just torture?”

  * * * *

  Armise and I sat in front of a BC5 screen and waited for analysts to locate Jegs and connect her to us. Priyessa had taken her leave for the night, letting us know she was going to clean. I didn’t ask what exactly that activity entailed.

  When Jegs’ face finally popped onto the screen she appeared with her usual indifferent affectation despite what she’d had to deal with solo for the last day.

  “So he didn’t kill you,” I said to her.

  “I didn’t give him time to.” She shifted in her chair. “What do you need, Colonel?”

  Straight to busi
ness. At least I didn’t have to play games with her. “You said that if I got you out of Kash alive that you would tell me what your reasons were for assisting Armise in the rebellion.”

  From her side of the screen she gave a pointed look to Armise, who was sitting next to me. “You trust him enough for him to know too?”

  “Hasn’t been a question for a long time. Shouldn’t be a question now,” I retorted.

  She popped her lips together. “All right then. The reason I’ve spent years more time in Singapore than you have, and why I was embedded with the Mongols, is because I was digging around about Kersch to find out just how loyal he was to either the States or the Revolution.”

  I sat forward. “What? By whose orders?”

  “No one’s. I volunteered for the shit assignments in Singapore because it gave me access.”

  “Your timeline doesn’t add up. The Mongol rebellion was in, what? ’42?”

  “’43,” Jegs and Armise said at the same time.

  I grimaced. “Whatever. The rebellion in ’43, Sarai was abducted in ’48, and as far as we can tell, Ahriman’s influence over Kersch started around ’54. Ahriman had only been in control of Kersch for years, not decades.”

  “It wasn’t Wensen Kersch that first got me started on this.”

  “Sarai?”

  She nodded. “There was always something off with her. I told Neveed years ago that there was something going on with the president’s wife. He didn’t want to believe it. After Sarai’s death—the first one—President Kersch wasn’t the same man. Even Neveed could see it then.”

  I scoffed. “Of course he wasn’t the same man.”

  She tipped her head to the side as if she was granting me that point. Begrudgingly. “I went with my gut. Turns out she was in Singapore for a full decade, alive. And it took until last week to prove I was right about Wensen Kersch, but that doesn’t change that I was.”

  I wondered if that was why she harbored so many questions about my motivations and Armise’s. Maybe her gut was telling her that the same forces that had acted on Wensen were influencing us. But I couldn’t ask her that directly. She didn’t need to know what we’d just heard from Tiam.