by Fonda Lee
Kevin grimaced, disappointed. “Well, it’s a start. A good start. Taking out exos is the next best thing to taking out shrooms.” He squinted at the jars with idle, nose-wrinkled curiosity, then wandered over and tilted his head toward the monkey cage. “It’s good work you’re doing here, Doc.” He nudged the bottom of the cage with the toe of his boot, sending the horrible monkeys scampering. “If you need more money, more equipment or samples, we’ll try to get them for you. You’re getting close, aren’t you? Getting close to something we can use.”
The doctor smiled uneasily. He seemed to consider how best to frame his answer to balance reality with what Kevin wanted to hear. “We’re still a long way from producing an effective weapon, but yes … perhaps we’re getting closer.”
A weapon. Of course Sapience would want a weapon that could disable exocels, but this was the first evidence Donovan had ever seen that they were actively developing it. This scientist-in-erze turned traitor might actually come up with something. Donovan’s thoughts spun in escalating alarm. SecPac needed to know this.
Max’s hand was still on Donovan’s arm. She took a deep breath, then pressed her lips into a tight line, as if she were bracing herself to jump into ice water. She turned to Nakada. “What about a permanent solution? Could you remove an exocel entirely?”
Donovan froze. He could not have heard correctly. “What?”
The doctor shifted his sober gaze from Max to Donovan, then back again. “Ah,” he said.
Donovan jerked away from his mother in a spasm of visceral horror. “You want to turn me into a squishy?” The word came out unnaturally high and squeaky.
She reached for him, stunned by the strength of his reaction. “To take the alien machine cells out of you. To turn you back into a normal human being.”
A normal human being. So this was why she’d wanted to bring him here. This was what she’d meant by “helping him.” Remove his exocel? He backed away, shaking his head. It was insane. Hideous to even contemplate. Like imagining the removal of one’s spine, or being skinned alive. “You can’t … it’s not possible …”
“It wouldn’t just be the biggest breakthrough in the war. It would save us, Donovan. Without your exocel, you’re not useful to the shrooms, and you’re not a threat to Sapience. You could be free. We could be free.” She turned back to Nakada, eyes swimming with hope. “Is it possible?”
The doctor pursed his lips to one side, considering. “Long-term suppression might be possible. The effect would keep wearing off, though, and he would still be an exo—merely a weak and drug-addled one.” Nakada was stalling. He rubbed the backs of his hands nervously and cleared his throat. “Complete removal of an exocel, however … I would have to say the chances of such a procedure succeeding are exceedingly slim.”
“How slim?” Max asked.
Donovan felt sick. An exocel was as much a part of a person’s body as blood and bones. You couldn’t just … God, what would you be left with? A gory lump of flesh?
Nakada glanced at Donovan before speaking to Max again. “You must understand, the exocel is not an implant. It’s a system-wide augmentation and rewiring. Imagine the body as a computer. An implant would be adding a piece of hardware; Hardening is changing the operating system. Even if I had a team of the best surgeons, it’s extremely unlikely the exocel could be removed without killing its owner. Or at the very least, inflicting permanent brain damage.”
The doctor’s answer was so utterly obvious Donovan felt like screaming. He could have told Max the same thing if she’d bothered to ask instead of bringing him here with her impossible, mad idea.
Max’s face slackened under the weight of disappointment. “Thank you, Doctor.” Her voice was flat. She opened the door. Without another look back, she began to ascend the stairwell, one heavy step at a time.
“Don’t mind her,” Kevin said, clapping a hand to the doctor’s shoulder. “You just keep me posted on how you’re doing with that spray stuff.”
Donovan caught the door with his shoulder before it could close. He took the steps two at a time, chasing his mother as she left the building. He shouted after her. “Even if that traitor scientist could remove my exocel, did you really think I would ever agree?” Roiling fury made it hard to get words out. “I’m not a little kid anymore. You can’t stand what I am, but did it occur to you that I can’t stand what you are either? You didn’t want me to be an exo? Well, I sure as hell didn’t want you to leave to become a scorching sape!”
He flung the words at the back of her head, but she didn’t stop walking. Brett and Anya were talking with Dixon and Reed next to the pickup truck, shifting impatiently and stamping their feet against the chill. All four of them looked over at Max expectantly as she paused, halfway to the truck. She turned back toward Donovan, who shook with anger behind her. He saw her face; it had the saddest, most resigned expression he’d ever seen. It made her seem suddenly old. She said quietly, “I just want you back.”
A sudden blast of gale-force wind hit the ground. Donovan staggered. A wall of air buffeted the others against the truck and slammed through the open door of the building, nearly pushing Kevin back down the stairs. Above the wind came the distinctive thrum that Donovan recognized at once as the sharp vertical descent of a micro-fission engine T15 stealthcopter. Blinding white light slammed down over them like an overturned cup. Donovan threw his arms up over his eyes. His heart skittered into his throat.
“This is SecPac! We have the building surrounded. Hands in the air—don’t move and we won’t shoot!”
The amplified voice echoed down, full of command and dead serious. It was Jet.
Gunshots rang out. It took Donovan a second to realize they were coming not from above him but from behind. Kevin, teeth bared, unloading at the open bay doors of the hovering T15. His bulging eyes, the irises ringed with white, blazed like those of a cornered animal. “It’s a setup!” he bellowed. “We were set up!”
Everyone burst into frantic motion. Dixon and Reed scrambled for the pickup truck, yanking doors open and grabbing for weapons. Anya began to run for the van, but Max caught her by the jacket. “No. Back in the building. There’s an underground escape in the basement, in the doctor’s lab.” She drew a pistol of her own and gave Brett a shove. “Grab Nakada and get him away from here. Go!”
Dixon and Reed emerged from the cover of the pickup’s open doors, assault weapons barking to life in a burst of astounding noise. “Come and get me, you shroom-loving pricks!” Reed screamed up at the harsh light.
“Come on!” Brett shouted, grabbing Anya. He readied himself to make the short run across open asphalt to the building’s entrance, thirty meters away. Gunfire erupted from the stealthcopter, pelting the ground like hailstones. Brett cursed and leapt back, flattening himself against the pickup’s tires. Donovan yanked Anya violently into the shadow of his own body, pinning her against the truck, his bound hands stretched over both their heads. He braced himself, waited to feel the rocking, punching pain of bullets striking his tense body, but remarkably, nothing hit him in the volley.
“Donovan, go with them!” Max shouted into his ear.
“What about you?”
“I’ll be right behind you,” she promised. “Just go! Go!”
Adrenaline poured into Donovan’s veins, not from fear but from an agony of indecision. Jet was up there. They had come: his erze mates, his fellow soldiers. Every bit of Donovan’s training and conditioning told him to run toward them. His hands shook. Get Anya out of here first. “Stay right next to me,” he told her. She drew a short breath and grabbed his arm. They ran.
Donovan matched his strides to hers, running nearly on her heels, ready to throw himself forward over her. A short burst of gunfire followed them. “Hold fire!” Jet shouted from far away. “Everyone hold fire, dammit!”
Anya reached the building’s doorway and flung herself through it, Donovan with her. Brett plowed in right after them. Kevin was planted in the opening, his face twitchin
g, red with rage. He barely seemed to register their arrival, pausing only to let loose a string of curses, adjust his aim, and fire at the blur of movement behind and above them.
Donovan snapped his head around. Ropes dangled from the black shape of the T15. Jet was descending in a straight fall, one armored hand whistling with friction as it slid down the cable like a carabiner on a line. Kevin’s shot missed him, he was falling too fast; he let go and plummeted the remaining ten feet, his exocel shuddering visibly in the harsh spotlight glare as it absorbed the shock of his crouched landing.
Kevin aimed again; Donovan swung his bound hands like a club, knocking the man’s arm aside before he could fire. With a snarl, Kevin whipped the pistol back around toward Donovan’s chest. He pulled the trigger. His gun made an empty clicking noise. “Dammit!”
Brett barreled up to Kevin. “The doctor!” he gasped. “Max says to save him!”
Even in Kevin’s fury, the message registered. The doctor and his work were more important to Sapience than anything else right now. More important than shooting stripes. Kevin hurled a final murderous glare at Donovan. Then he leapt for the stairs. “Move it, Anya!”
Anya had her pistol up, steadied with both hands, aiming out the doorway. She fired in Jet’s direction. The recoil kicked the weapon in her grip—once, twice—before Donovan twisted his hands hard in the cuffs and clamped one of them over the top of the frame, jamming the slide.
“Let go!” She yanked angrily.
“Run. Go with Kevin.” He dropped his hand and shoved her, hard. “Run, Anya.”
Something in his voice or his face—both of them twisted with urgency—made her listen. She stared up at him. Tendrils of hair clung to the sides of her face, framing an expression unutterably bleak. For a moment, Donovan could not breathe; a firestorm of silent regret raged between them. Then Anya turned and raced down the stairs.
More figures dropped from the stealthcopter’s dangling lines. Dixon and Reed greeted them with a wall of firepower. The noise was terrific. Donovan stared, mute with horrified astonishment, at the sight of his mother behind Dixon’s shoulder, reaching into the bed of the truck. She came up with an M4 carbine and brought it up, smooth and practiced. Two SecPac officers went down in a combined hail of lead. One of them, an exo, screamed in pain, rolling on the ground. The other wasn’t Hardened. The gunfire riddled his synthetic armor and a bullet passed through his neck. He went down without a sound.
The other officers opened fire at the truck. Shrill, high-pitched blasts filled the air as E201 pulse rifles perforated the vehicle’s hood and siding. The windshield collapsed in a spray of glass. Dixon, half in and half out of the driver’s seat, let out a roar and stumbled from the wheel. He took two steps before Jet and Vic, standing side by side, each put a round into his chest. The huge man staggered like a tipping boulder but didn’t fall. His blood-flecked vest gleamed gruesomely in the harsh, burn-laced air. The next four shots tore through the dead panotin. Dixon went down with a jerky gurgle.
Reed popped up, emptying his magazine in a burst of guttural rage and sending officers ducking and scrambling for cover. The stealthcopter banked alarmingly, trailing ropes like tentacles, filling the air with a static whining.
Donovan uttered a hoarse noise, unintelligible to himself. His erze mates were out there taking fire—instinct screamed at him to go to them, to help them. But his mother was still behind the truck, a squishy crouched in a cone of flying bullets. He had to get to her before they did. He had to stop this. Run out there, scream, wave his arms, make them all stop.
Donovan strained against the metal binding his hands together. He poured armor over his wrists, thickening them until the panotin bulged against the restraints, widening them a millimeter. He strained his exocel until it felt as if the veins in his head and neck would burst. Then he dropped his armor all at once and pulled again. The handcuffs slipped up to the thickest point of his knuckles and stopped. Donovan gave a choked cry of frustration.
“Wait.” Brett appeared beside him. Donovan hadn’t realized he was still there; hadn’t he followed Kevin and Anya? Brett reached over and unlocked the handcuffs. They fell away from Donovan’s wrists.
Donovan turned his freed hands in confusion. Why—?
A momentary pause in gunfire; Donovan heard the voice of Thaddeus Lowell, his SecPac class captain, hollering, “This is your last chance! Drop your weapons and surrender!”
“You’re not going to take me, you striped bastards!” Reed let off another burst of fire. He shook his weapon over his head. “Do you hear me? You’re not going to—”
Bullets ripped through the man’s arm, nearly severing it. Reed ran toward the officers in a wild, suicidal dash. His right leg exploded above the kneecap and he went down, spurting blood over the asphalt and still screaming defiance. SecPac officers advanced in a rush. From behind the hulk of the destroyed truck, Max looked across the smoke-obscured distance to Donovan. Her clothes and face were smeared with dust, and Reed’s blood flecked her face and clothes. Never had Donovan imagined his mother could look like she did now—grim and scared and murderous.
He ran toward her. He might be caught in a shower of gunfire, but he ran anyway, his heartbeat one long indistinguishable throb in his ears. He was almost there. Max mouthed his name and shook her head. Then she wheeled out from behind the cover of the vehicle and fired a long burst.
Vic spun and went down.
The next part seemed to happen in slow motion. Jet swung his E201 around and squeezed the trigger.
No! The bullet punched into the truck, inches from Max’s head. Donovan changed course in mid-step and tackled Jet before he could fire again. Jet’s eyes flew open in surprise as he and Donovan tumbled to the pavement together. Donovan grabbed the scalding barrel of the rifle and yanked upward, hard, wrenching it from Jet’s fingers. He hurled the weapon aside. Everything felt strange, horribly wrong. He was moving as if in a twisted simulation, none of it real, none of it sensible. “Call it off!” he shouted. Without knowing what he was doing, he clamped his hands over his friend’s throat and shook. “Make them call it off!”
Jet’s exocel surged under Donovan’s steel vise fingers. He slammed his forearms down over Donovan’s. Their exocels sheared against each other, layers of panotin vibrating down both their limbs. Donovan’s grip buckled; Jet rolled him over and hit him in the face. “Donovan! D! It’s me!” Donovan struggled mindlessly and Jet hit him again. The impact knocked the back of his head against the concrete. “Snap out of it!” Jet was yelling at him. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
There was a storm of movement and running. Donovan’s arms were grabbed and pinned by several hands. He was pushed onto his stomach. Jet flattened him with the weight of a knee between his shoulder blades. “Vic!” Jet shouted, worry cracking his voice. “Someone check on Vic!”
“I’m okay,” Vic called.
The muddy logic of the fight drained out of Donovan. He raised his face a few inches from the ground. The gunfire had stopped. Dixon and the non-Hardened officer lay sprawled, padded black lumps in slowly expanding pools of dark liquid. Someone was helping the wounded exo—Atticus—to sit up. Reed, horribly, was still alive, thrashing what remained of his leg and spitting at the officer who tried to get to him. The remaining SecPac officers—Tennyson, Ariadne, Katerina, Lucius—were running toward the building, weapons up, fast and focused, wary of any additional insurgents inside.
He couldn’t see his mother. Had she gotten away? Was she dead? “Where is she?” he wheezed, too quietly for anyone to hear him over the sound and wind of the landing stealthcopter. Bits of churned gravel and grit pelted his face.
Brett stepped forward suddenly from the shadow of the building’s doorway. The barrel of every SecPac rifle zeroed in on him at once. Donovan expected to see him go down in another explosion of gunfire, but Brett fell to his knees with his empty hands raised high over his head. “Wapiti!” he shouted. “Wapiti, for God’s sake! Don’t shoot!”
Tennyson kept his E201 steady but moved his hand from the trigger. “You’re the agent?”
Brett nodded. His face was slightly turned, and his raised hands trembled, as if he were afraid the officers wouldn’t believe him. “The basement,” he said quickly. “Two sapes and the scientist who’s working for them—they were headed for an escape route.” The officers parted around Brett, running into the building.
Donovan’s memory telescoped to a vivid moment: the muzzle of Kevin’s handgun and the man’s voice, demanding, “What is the code word you use with your informers?” He twitched under Jet’s weight.
Brett? Brett is a SecPac agent?
Jet bent his head over Donovan’s. “I’m going to let you up,” he said. “Can you handle it?”
Donovan nodded, though he wasn’t sure it was the honest answer. The pressure came off his back. Donovan rolled over and sat up. He felt light-headed, abuzz with a surreal, delayed panic that was just now hitting him full force. He rocked back and dropped his forehead into trembling hands. It was suddenly hard to breathe; his chest felt shrunken, as if a vacuum hose inserted down his esophagus had sucked the air from his lungs. It wasn’t just the adrenaline crash from the firefight. Turning on your own erze was wrong, abhorrent to any normal exo. He’d attacked Jet. It didn’t seem possible that he’d done it.
Jet knelt in front of him and grabbed him by the upper arms. They stared at each other uncertainly, paralyzed with relief, waiting to see what the other would do. Jet shook Donovan roughly, then crushed him in a fierce hug. “Heaven and erze, what was that all about? Do you have any idea—” He pulled back, holding on to either side of Donovan’s head. “I thought I’d find you in bloody pieces. Command wouldn’t green-light a rescue until tonight. Intel told us this place was some kind of torture lab …” Jet faltered. He searched Donovan’s eyes closely, his own burning with furious confusion and worry. “What did they do to you? Did they hurt you? Brainwash you or something?”
