The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  Evan snapped his fingers in front of his face. “Mike, snap out of it.” The giant fell back into the shadows.

  “I shot through my leg,” Glass said. He was groggy, but his own voice surprised him. His long and lazy southern accent was there, but different. Hollow. He remembered the giant grabbing him, tearing him, and he tried to get up, like it was happening again.

  “How am I alive?”

  For sixty years medicine had kept people alive way past their expiration date, and Glass was no exception. His right lung was mutilated, his heart was pierced, his liver destroyed. His lower body had been crushed to the point that his skin held the internal bones and tissue like a haggis.

  Lindo patted Glass’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t let you die.”

  “Where’s the boy?”

  Lindo’s smile waned. “He’s dead. A lot’s happened in the last eight months.”

  “Eight months?” Glass started coughing uncontrollably. It was hard to breathe, and the more he thought about it, the harder it got.

  “What is it?” Lindo asked.

  “I can’t breathe,” Glass said. “My chest.” He coughed and hacked.

  Lindo laughed.

  “It’s not funny!” Glass said. “Get a nurse.”

  “Calm down, Mike. You can’t breathe. You have no lungs.”

  Glass’s coughing fit ebbed as he forced his mind to ignore the impulse. He understood. Not the scope of what had happened—but that Evan was a toymaker.

  “What have you done to me?”

  “First, I saved your life.” Evan paused to drive that point home. “Then I took what was left of you and improved it.”

  “Am I a Tank Major?”

  Evan shook his head. “You’re a precision instrument, Mike. I wouldn’t make you a hammer.”

  “What then?”

  “I developed a semi-organic tissue that contracts in response to current. For power conservation, it’s important that it contract rather than expand—”

  “What am I?”

  Evan’s face turned. He had gotten excited talking about his accomplishments. “We’re not finished yet, Mike. We still have to graft on the skin.”

  “The skin . . .”

  Glass thrashed about. He was restrained. He looked down. His body looked human, but it was encased in a black rubber of some kind. His frame was bigger.

  Evan was irritated; this hadn’t gone how he’d planned. “We’re not done.”

  “I didn’t ask for this,” Glass said. His voice wasn’t that of a friend or a subordinate. It was the voice of a killer.

  “If you’re unhappy with the four-billion-dollar body I gave you, I can always cut you out of it. I’m sure another cripple would be excited to take your place. You can live the rest of your life in a bed.”

  “Show me,” Glass said, quieter.

  That pleased Evan. He picked up a mirror from a table and held it to his chest. “You’re in shock—you don’t understand what I’ve done for you. I was a bit peeved, but I’m okay. Once I graft back the skin and put in your eyes you’ll be good as new. Better.”

  Glass realized his angle of sight was off. It felt a mile from his mouth.

  “I didn’t want you to see my work until it was done, but so be it. I’m looking out for your best interests. Remember that.”

  Lindo turned the mirror. A carbon fiber skull, reinforced with thin plates of depleted uranium, stared back. Wires ran from empty eye sockets to two camera sensors mounted to the headboard. The mouth moved, but it was a speaker that screamed.

  “You are going to be my crowning achievement, Mike. You will make the quiet of night as terrifying as the frontlines of war. World leaders will fear your name, and if vampires existed, they would run from your shadow.”

  = = =

  Glass woke from the memory. An old Tank Major sat thirty feet away from him in a maintenance chair. The dreadlocked black man worked on the giant, sliding huge shoulder magazines into place, and monitors near the giant showed his brain spinning on its y-axis as the software optimized the implant.

  “Sleeping Beauty’s up,” Justin said.

  The others turned. Glass didn’t understand the reference. It wasn’t a part of his memories.

  “I can’t believe that’s a man,” Raimey said. Glass looked even less human than Raimey.

  Glass felt . . . embarrassment? He shied away from their stares.

  “It’d be tragic if he wasn’t such an asshole,” Justin said.

  “He’s the one that kill—” Raimey remembered.

  “Yeah.”

  “Raimey’s kill count is over fifty thousand people,” Cynthia said from above. Raimey’s eyes darkened. “It angers you, John, but there are no stones being thrown. During the civil war, I was responsible for eighty thousand deaths, and my device has contributed to twenty million deaths worldwide. Justin, as a King Sleeper, killed four hundred high-value targets.”

  “I was a kid—I don’t even remember,” Justin said defensively.

  “Neither does Glass,” Cynthia said, her virtual lip curled. “We are all peers. Realize it and get over it, because none of us are going to heaven.”

  Another memory tugged on Glass, and he let it pull him down.

  = = =

  A Sleeper designed to pilot a helicopter flew the chopper twenty stories above the city, guiding it between the tall structures. China Girl hung below it with a sniper rifle pinned to her shoulder.

  Lindo had narrowed the truck’s location to a half-mile radius. Stefan, the unfortunate soul who had helped build Cynthia’s panic room, didn’t know the exact coordinates. Lindo had probed and probed, working through all the man’s memories from top to bottom, combing every brain cell that might hold a clue, leaving mush in his wake. The Pieces had fed on what was left. Stefan never woke up.

  It was in West Loop, though—that much was certain. There could be tire . . .

  “ . . . tracks,” Kove finished through the link. “I see tire tracks—do you register?” Kove was on the ground, fully armored, carrying a minigun that fired 20mm armor-piercing incendiary rounds. He was on the lower level where the helicopter could not go. The crowds of homeless scattered like roaches as he approached them, breathlessly running at thirty miles an hour. This was the underbelly of the city, dank and dark, the trusses rusted and dripping, never seeing the sun. It was the perfect place for a shrew to hide.

  Yes, Lindo said. Those are them.

  “China Girl?”

  Converging on your point.

  At the base, five helicopters on standby fired up, and four Tank Majors and fifteen Minors ran toward them.

  = = =

  Cynthia connected into Raimey’s implant and removed the soft power restrictor. Raimey’s body shuddered, momentarily shut down, then fired back to life. Sabot worked around his body, smearing joints with thick grease. The hydraulshock magazines—each twice the size of a footlocker—gleamed with the clean brass of crimped artillery rounds. Five million foot-pounds of fury at the end of an indestructible fist.

  “You’re doing very well, John,” Cynthia said. “Your mind has no flat spots, your body is healthy for your age, and there’s no sign of toxicity in your blood.”

  “I’m just lucky, I guess,” Raimey said.

  Sabot laughed. “Luckiest guy in the world, right?”

  An alarm sounded.

  “What’s that?” Justin asked.

  “Quiet,” Cynthia said. Her on-screen persona withdrew as if deep in thought. Fear filled her eyes. “They found us. Sabot, finish with John. Justin, put on the body armor in the corner and arm yourself the best you can. I’m going into Glass.”

  She disappeared. Half of her video screen was replaced with surveillance cameras. In one of them, Kove stood above the sinkhole. Then the camera angle changed, and they could see a helicopter landing. Before it did, something fell off of it. It looked like a giant bug. It scrambled toward the Tank Major.

  “How much time do we have?” Raimey asked.

&
nbsp; Sabot continued to work on and around him, but with urgency now. “Ten minutes, maybe less. We have security they won’t detect until they’re close.”

  “Will it kill them?”

  “I doubt it.”

  Justin found a bulletproof vest and put it on. He went to the guns and grabbed an FN90, a tiny bull pup submachine gun. Five-fifty round clips were next to it.

  “Those rounds will penetrate most Tank Minors at close range,” Sabot said. “Just spray—there’s very little recoil.”

  = = =

  Glass sat next to Vanessa while she bathed. He didn’t get in the tub—that would have been silly—but she let him watch. He ran his hands through her long, curly hair, squeezing the soapy water from it. She wasn’t self-conscious; she trusted him.

  Glass saw himself in the mirror. He had fake human skin and lidless green eyes. This was a period when he could only see well at night, before the FLIR sensors. He had requested night vision from Evan. He remembered that. When Tank Major Janis had chased him down and crushed him in the pitch black of the bunker, it had changed his view of the dark. He had wanted never to see shadows again.

  One spot in his vision was oversaturated; it blinked and wavered—a candle. She was bathing by candlelight.

  He was burdened by worry for her. MindCorp had refused the Coalition’s demand that it dismantle. He and the Twins had a mission tomorrow. They were going to infiltrate a Data Core to start the takeover.

  She was speaking to him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “I said, what are you thinking about? You zoned.”

  “I think you should get out of the city for the next few weeks.”

  “Why?”

  What he knew was top secret, so he lied. “I don’t know what’s going to happen with MindCorp.”

  “What could happen? There’ll be a compromise; there always is.” Her wet body rose in front of him. “Towel?”

  He handed her one.

  “Plus, Evan said he needed me,” she said. “We have to tell him about us.”

  “Needed you for what?”

  She dried her hair. “He didn’t say, but he wanted me to be at the Derik Memorial tomorrow at nine a.m. sharp.”

  How did I not see the clues? Glass wondered. Because you’re stupid. Just a hick from Ken-tuck-eh. You trusted Evan because he made you feel important.

  He was in the bedroom lying next to her, running his fingertips along her back.

  “I would like to take two weeks off. But with you,” Vanessa said.

  “I’ve never been on a vacation,” Glass said.

  “Never?”

  “Never.”

  “Where would you want to go?”

  “North Dakota.”

  She squinched up her face. “Really?”

  “I hear you can see forever. There are no buildings. There are even buffalo.”

  “Why there? I was thinking the beach.”

  “I think I could breathe there. I think I would feel.”

  “Feel what?”

  Glass had finished the sentence, but he knew it wasn’t enough. “That life means something.”

  “You don’t now?”

  He kissed her. “Only with you. Evan didn’t tell you what it was about?”

  “I’d think you’d know. You hang out with him all the time.”

  Evan hadn’t uttered a peep.

  Glass sensed that someone else was in the room. Vanessa didn’t notice. Glass turned around and saw Cynthia Revo standing in the doorway.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  “You have to come out now.”

  “I . . . I don’t want to,” he said. He looked back at Vanessa, at her hair, at the smooth line and shape of her back, at his arm around her. “This is the last night, isn’t it?”

  “The last night you felt happiness? Yes. But you’d see her again. You need to come out now. Dr. Lindo is at our doorstep. You, Raimey, and Justin have to leave.”

  Glass turned back to Vanessa. She was talking, undeterred by his change in focus. The memory marched forth even without his direct interaction. “How do I know this is all true?”

  “Go by feel,” Cynthia said. “Each of us sees the world differently, and because of that, manipulated memories feel phony, like a dream, because they’re manufactured without the subject’s cadence and perspective.”

  This is real, Glass thought. He had been in this bedroom. He had held her and worried about the coming days. “I don’t want to leave her.”

  Cynthia smiled. “This memory is yours now. It will always be with you. But this isn’t her. The real Vanessa is out there in the dark, underground, screaming for someone to help her. SAVE HER. This is a mirage of what was, Mike. Nothing more. It’s true, it’s yours, but it’s a siren leading you toward a rocky shore. If you stay here, you will die.”

  = = =

  Cynthia flashed back on the screen.

  “Sabot, untether Glass. I have to welcome our guests.”

  = = =

  China Girl crawled up a building that leaned over the sinkhole. From there, she could see clearly down into the Data Core. Her vision wasn’t on par with Glass’s, but it was still keen: she cycled through visions and saw Raimey’s massive footprints at the bottom.

  There must be an entrance down there, she said, broadcasting her visual information.

  Kove, stay up top. China Girl, head down.

  She scurried over to Kove. A portion of her back opened, and a metal cylinder rose from the compartment. She handed it to him.

  “Protect this,” she said.

  He turned the cylinder over in his hand. “What is it?”

  “Me.”

  Kove shrugged, not sure what that meant, and put it in his ammo pack. China Girl climbed back up to her jump position.

  Going, she said to Lindo. She pushed off the building and fell into the abyss with her legs splayed wide.

  Kove leaned over and watched her disappear into the dark. “Fucking A.” He would have been a puddle.

  They will try to escape. Kove, be ready. Support is on the way.

  China Girl landed, the twenty-story touchdown uneventful, barely stirring up dust. She immediately saw the turrets right themselves. Her speed was incredible. Before they could zero in, she was on the perimeter striking them down. The smart mines were too slow. They would rise, and she would be ten yards clear by the time they exploded. A cacophony of gunfire rose up to the surface.

  China Girl? Kove asked.

  I’m fine. She transmitted a live stream as she followed Raimey’s footsteps to a large metal door. They went through here.

  You are permitted to kill anyone except Justin, Evan said.

  There was no obvious way to open the vault door. She rose on her hind legs and fanned her other legs around the edge of it. On the far right, she found a slight gap between the door and its frame. She jammed four arms in. Then she lifted her body parallel to the ground and folded herself backward in a loop, wedging her back four legs into the same gap, but against the frame. Slowly—and with immense effort—she straightened her spine. The door vibrated and groaned—then broke open. She quickly slipped through.

  At the far end of the hall, turrets dropped from the walls and ceiling and coated the room in lead. But China Girl was quicker than the turrets could track, and she rode around the walls corkscrewing toward them, the tracers vectoring to a point behind her in a tail of fire. She tore down the first turret with two of her right arms. She used it as a shield as she approached the other two and bashed them down.

  The next door was heavier.

  = = =

  Cynthia could not have predicted the evolution of the Tank Minor. She couldn’t even see the shape of the creature that darted down the hallway, avoiding a sheet of fire. And then, just like that, the turrets were destroyed.

  “You must take Glass now,” Cynthia said to Raimey. “You must go.”

  “Here.” Sabot handed Justin a hard case. “There’s a wireless Min
dlink with access to every resource we have. People, places, money, vehicles. Everything. Protect it.”

  “You guys aren’t coming with us?” Justin looked lost.

  Sabot put his hand on Justin’s shoulder. “No.” He walked to Cynthia’s bed.

  “This isn’t like you, Cynthia,” Raimey said.

  On the screen Cynthia laughed. “A lot’s changed since we last saw each other. Get to the Data Sump.”

  “I could make a stand here.”

  “He’ll nuke us. One may already be coming. Get out of here.”

  Raimey picked up Glass with one big hand, and with the other he pushed Justin toward the back entrance that led to the subway. “He’ll wake?”

  “Yes, and he’ll be relentless. Do well, John.”

  Raimey turned to Sabot and the old woman behind the curtain. “You’re a good soldier, Sabot. I wish I had known you.” He looked at Cynthia’s bedridden form. “ . . . Both of you. Goodbye.”

  He left.

  Sabot rolled Cynthia’s knuckles in his hand, gently working his way across them.

  Her soft, watery eyes looked at him from the bed. The side of her mouth slanted down. The wrinkles, the red hair now gray and thin. “I can feel that, Sabot,” she said from above.

  “I know, love. How long?”

  “Minutes. She’s gotten through the last barrier. She’s working on the door.”

  Cynthia looked down, then up again at Sabot. “Will this right what I’ve done to the world?” she asked. Both of her eyes had filled with tears. They rolled down in concert.

  “Babe, what you did was beautiful. Ugly people took it and did ugly things. Are you ready?”

  She nodded.

  Sabot flipped a switch under the bed. He kissed her hand. He kissed her temple and her cheeks. He left with a kiss to her lips. He looked up to her.

  “Don’t watch, babe. Please don’t watch.”

  She reached toward him, and he reached toward her.

  Her screen blinked off for the last time.