The shooter lurches back. I fire again and then once more, until the shooter falls over.
I start toward Luke. A spark from a blaster flashes out of the darkness.
I drop down into the shadows. Luke is right in front of me. I reach out. I can almost touch him.
“Go,” Luke says.
“No,” I say.
I hear a blaster shot and roll. The round flashes into the space I had occupied an instant before. I return fire.
Cedes, get out of here.
No, I’m staying.
The shot came from the second level. The windows on that level are shrouded in shadows. I plant another round into those shadows. Then I crawl to Luke and pull him into the groundcover.
“Leave me,” Luke hisses. “I’ll give you cover fire.”
“Now that’s gratitude,” I say, firing my blaster up into the adjacent building.
I pull Luke deeper into the shadows, watching for movement. Any movement would be enough to place my shot, but I don’t see anything.
The building we’re crawling along is shaped like a U. I try to get Luke deep into the shadows on the upside of the U. It’s a long way to crawl backward, pulling him behind me.
I’m small, so it takes everything I have. I have to tuck my blaster into my uniform, pull with both hands. Then I remove the weapon and scan the shadows before I do it all again.
A cold wall at my back tells me of my success. I’m exhausted, panting. Luke is cradled in my lap. He’s bleeding. There’s blood everywhere. All I can do is take aim and wait for whoever is out there to come.
I don’t have to wait long. The sound of movement alerts me to what comes.
Surprise is all I have, so I don’t give away our position by discharging my weapon. Instead, I grit my teeth and remain in place.
I don’t hesitate. The next shadow that moves gets a round right where its heart should be.
In some ways, I expect the sky to open up and swallow me in a hail of blaster fire. But that’s not what happens. Stillness happens, like the world’s gone cold.
I hear gasping, strangled gurgling. I fear it’s Luke. It’s not.
Her face is tense, pained—the gold I’ve shot. Her eyes flicker from mine to my blaster.
I know what she wants. Mercy. Death. An end to pain.
Cold encases my heart. A chill runs down my spine. I can’t risk firing another round. It may alert others. Kneeling down, I do a thing it seems I crossed worlds to avoid. I press my hands over her nose and mouth.
She’s at peace with this at first. Toward the end, she struggles, fights, claws at me. At the last though, I see calm in her eyes, acceptance. I wish for that calm, but such quiet abandons me completely. For me, it’s fits of sobs as I make my way to Luke and cradle him in my arms.
Chapter 7
Node: 110
Central is right there, so close I can reach out to it, and yet so far it might as well be a city away. I press back against the wall, using it to hold me up as I pull Luke against me.
As I look down at him, I don’t see the strong man I once knew. I see something frail, fragile, broken.
“No accident,” he says, his voice faint.
At first, I think he’s talking about getting shot, but there’s an urgency to his countenance. I lean closer, putting my ear to his lips.
“Two watchers, an outpost. They were…” He stops, doesn’t continue.
My eyes search his. “They were waiting for us? They were watching Central?”
Luke sputters, coughs blood. “Does it matter? They know.”
“They can’t—” My thoughts spin. My body jolts with nervous energy. “Were they Cogents or Ardents?”
Luke lifts his head. “No sense.”
I don’t understand his response at first, but it comes to me. No sense, he’s trying to tell me it doesn’t matter.
“It does matter,” I say. “If it’s an outpost, they may have equipment, supplies.”
Luke seems to nod, but it’s not a nod. It’s his head lolling to the side.
I pat his face, not hard, but enough to get him to open his eyes. “Stay with me, Luke. Don’t you die on me.”
His eyes won’t stay open. I have to keep patting his face. He tries to say something, but I don’t understand.
“Luke, help me think. If there’s an outpost, there have to be supplies. Where?”
“Up,” he says finally.
I look up to the night sky. The battle between the machines is over, or at least it seems to be. The sky is dark, filled with clouds, smoke or both. I don’t see airships but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.
When I look down, Luke’s eyes are closed and he’s still. I look to see if his chest is rising and falling. “No,” I say, slapping both sides of his face. “You don’t get to die.”
A plan comes together in my mind. I crawl back to the dead gold and rip the sleeves and pants legs off her uniform. She won’t be needing them anymore.
I use the sleeves as bandages. Then I tie the pants legs together and around Luke, covering the wound and holding the bandages in place.
I kiss him as deeply and fully as I dare. “Don’t you die on me. Don’t you dare,” I say, harsher than I mean to. Central doesn’t have medical supplies. If there are any supplies or help to be found, the machines have them.
Luke reaches for my arm, but his hand drops before he touches me. “No time. Central.”
I ignore him. The building the shots came from occupies the block to the southwest. I slip away.
At the street, I sprint. I don’t care that I’m being reckless.
The building has large ground floor windows, but they’re not at a height I can slip into easily. The closest door is off the parking structure.
Outside there’s enough light to navigate, but inside there’s nothing to guide me. I grope along in darkness, stumbling at times. My eyes adjust slowly, until I begin to distinguish shapes in the gloom.
What I think I want is on the second floor, so I make my way to the nearest staircase. At the top of the stairs, I walk out into an empty hall and my heart sinks.
I was sure there would be something to find. Something, anything. I turn on my heel, my hand clenched in a fist. “Luke, you were right,” I whisper.
The something I’m searching for is there, however. It’s in the far corner, barely visible. A type of machine I haven’t seen before. Its shell is black, shaped like an elongated or double pod.
This new machine doesn’t open like other pods. For a frantic moment, I think I can’t get inside, even though I know there must be a way in. Then I find the mechanism that opens the door and I’m staring into what looks like a standing room for two.
When I step in, connectors try to fit themselves to me and I have to fight them off. Pulling on the connectors opens the overhead compartments. Hidden tools and weapons spill out.
The wires above my head hiss and spit fluids as I try to find something that’ll help. There is nothing useful, however. Irritated, I grab at a feeding tube that’s spitting goo at me, intent on ripping it out of the ceiling.
I catch a connector that has been flashing red and white while buzzing around me instead. The connector’s emitting a fine mist and the mist is now showering me.
Everywhere the mist touches, the pain eases. Cuts and scrapes on the back of my left hand and arm are sealed first, followed by the lacerations on my chest. As the wounds seal, the pain dissipates and the absence of this pain only makes all my other hurts ache all the more.
At a run, I dash out the door, down the stairs, and across the street. “Luke, I’m coming,” I say to the night.
Somehow, the distance I travel seems so much greater than before. Entering the verdure, I trip over roots and tangled vines I hadn’t even noticed before.
Finding the wall, I follow it to Luke. He looks worse than when I left him. His face is pale and clammy; his breathing, ragged and shallow.
Being not big enough or strong enough to carry him
doesn’t stop me from trying. Somehow, I manage to get him up and across my shoulders. His feet drag as I stagger into the street.
I plod forward, one foot after the other. “Stay strong,” I say, my words as much for myself as him.
Chapter 8
Node: 110
Luke looks like fresh death. I don’t know how I get him up the stairs, but I do. One exasperating step at a time. “Don’t die, Luke. Don’t you die on me. You die, I’ll never forgive you.”
Inside the standing room, I prop Luke against the wall and hold him up using the weight of my own body. The connectors are buzzing around us like angry birds. I try to keep them away.
I slap Luke’s face twice, three times. “Hang in there. Stay with me. I need you to look at me. Look at me, Luke! Look at me!”
I take hold of the connector with the red and white blinking lights and give Luke a bath in its mists. The mists also find me and we stand in them together.
“Luke, I’m here, here. Luke, it’s just you and me. We have to do this together.”
His cuts, scrapes and lacerations are being bathed in healing mist. I see them sealing over, but he doesn’t look any better.
“Please, Luke, please. Stay with me, Luke. Talk to me.” I can’t say the word die anymore. I can’t. “Don’t you go; don’t you go.”
Looking up, I implore the empty air, as if something out there can save him. Pain stabs through me as everything I am, everything that’s happened, falls away. None of it matters. Nothing matters without Luke.
I blink and I see red. Red so deep it’s scarlet. I blink again, and I feel his hand in mine, rain on my cheeks. I hear his quick laugh and see his ready smile. I hear him telling me what we are, what we’ve become.
It’s not real, but it feels real. Somehow I realize I haven’t exposed the blaster wound on his back, so I push him against the wall and step back. I rip off the makeshift bandage and expose the damaged flesh. Then I douse the wound like I’m drowning a fire.
“Luke, you and me, we’re in this. We’re in this together. You go, I go. You hear me? You listening?”
A low rasp escapes his throat and I know he wants to come back to me. Healing alone won’t save him though, I know this. He’s in shock. His body needs food and water, sustenance, so he can fight and live.
“We can do this, Luke. We can.”
I know how to get him what he needs, but I can’t risk him communicating with the collective—any collective. Clutching one of the primary connectors, I dissect its wire bundle. After removing the eighth, twelfth and twentieth nodes, I ram the connector into the back of his skull. The pod does the rest. It connects tubes to feed, relieve and replenish.
Once Luke is connected in, I find I can barely stand. I stagger and tumble into the wall.
My eyes go to the windows. It’s there. Central is right there, so close my fingers can pinch it, so close I can hear Celeste’s melodic voice and Sierra’s beautiful laugh.
I want to go. I do, but the warm glow of the pod’s interior lulls me. I can’t go; I can’t. I’m spent. There’s nothing left inside me. Nothing left to give. Nothing.
“Forgive me,” I say to Sierra, Celeste and all the others in Central. “Forgive me.”
I twist around, grab at the second primary connector. My arm, my hand, my fingers. They don’t want to move, but I make them. I configure the wire set so that there’s no chance of finding myself in the ether. When I insert the connector, the world careens to black.
Chapter 9
Node: 001
Time passes. I don’t know how much. I enter neither the ether nor the void. Exiting the pod, the world beyond the windows is something I can only gape at because the dim light that greets me is almost like the deep twilight I left.
Luke exits the pod a few steps behind me. The surprise reflected in his expression is palpable. “How?” he asks.
“You were right,” I say, “some type of outpost. The standing room has medical functions.”
He turns his head, his eyes going to the windows. “Day approaching?”
“It would seem so. I’m sorry, I’m so so sorry—”
He turns me to him, embraces me. “Sorry for what, for saving my life?”
“Central,” I say, my gaze darting to the windows. “They’re—”
He puts me at arms’ length. His bright brown eyes seem to drink in my blue eyes. “We don’t know anything. We won’t know until we know. In the state we were in yesterday, we were of no use to anyone.”
I smile, not at what he said, but at what I see. “We’re golden,” I say, noticing the color of our uniforms for the first time. “Is that Cogent technology or Ardent?”
Luke shrugs. “No way of knowing. I didn’t have any sort of connection. It’s like I was just hanging in a void.”
I decide not to say anything about what I did to the connectors. “Your shoulder?” I say.
He turns his shoulder to me. “Honestly? It hurts intensely, but nothing like yesterday.”
Moving around him, I unzip his uniform and peel it back. The injury is directly below his left shoulder, like the shooter was aiming for his heart. It’s angry and pink, but sealed. “Oh my,” I say. “That’s going to hurt for a while.”
Beneath the clear, thin patchwork, I see tiny waves and flashes. Even after leaning in for a closer look, I don’t completely understand what I’m seeing, but I know what I’m looking at. Nanites—thousands and thousands of them.
“Yours?” he says.
I rotate my shoulder, lift my arm. My grin is my response to the question. “Ready to go?”
He shakes his head. After re-entering the pod, he tosses out a pack, blaster rifle and pistol, and then takes one of each for himself. “Now, I’m ready,” he says.
We move in sequence, with him moving to a defensive position and me following, me holding the position and him moving. First, to the stairs and down, then to the door and out into the street.
“Go, go,” Luke says, as he looks back.
The street has enough shadows that we can move confidently and quickly. I stop when I’m standing right in front of my former home. Ignoring Luke’s signal to take cover, I study the broken stones. Seeing those stones is like seeing an old friend.
The main entrance is collapsed and hasn’t been accessible for as long as I’ve known, but that doesn’t stop me from picturing how it once was. “Grand Central,” I say, half to myself. The name fits. It was grand; it is grand.
The doors we use to get into the tunnels under the main structure are on the opposite side. The morning sun illuminates the east flank, leaving nothing for us to slip into for hiding. Luke signals and I follow him toward the west flank.
The deep shadows we find provide good cover. I know from experience the doors will be barred at this time of day. That doesn’t slow my steps. We’ll have to knock and wait at worst.
I know it could be Matthew who responds to our insistent knocking, but I imagine it is Sierra instead. Only the doors aren’t barred. They’re wide open and there’s a thin plume of smoke rising from within.
“Luke?” I say, my voice rising.
We rush in, blaster rifles at the ready. I’m not afraid of what may be waiting to greet us. My only thought is of finding my family, my sisters and brothers.
It’s darker than usual at the bottom of the stairs. There are no fires in the main room, only ash, a few glowing embers and the bits of natural light that filter down.
We pause to let our eyes adjust to the quasi-darkness. “Where is everyone?” I say, quietly.
Luke turns, points to the sleeping rooms. We start into them, moving in sequence through each, sweeping our weapons in wide arcs as we enter and exit.
The dining hall is on the opposite side of the main room. We enter it at a run.
The tables and benches are turned over. Some are scorched. Luke brings a hand with two fingers up to his face. A signal to keep looking around.
“What have I done, what have I done,” I say, h
alf to myself.
“We don’t know anything,” Luke says, squatting behind an overturned table.
Every bit of energy I have pours out of me. I can’t keep my feet and go down on my haunches. “I did this. Luke, this is me. My fault. I killed them.”
“No, you didn’t.” Luke holds up a plate that had been overturned on the floor. “This is from dinner last night, not breakfast this morning.”
I shake my head. I can’t listen. “I killed them. I killed them all.”
When I close my eyes, I see death. I see a copper stiffen, his back arching, blood surging from his wounds as he drops his weapon, falls to his knees and slumps to the side. I see myself firing, my round striking center mass, a copper lying motionless, her arms limp at her sides. I see the gold from last night, but it’s not her eyes that beg for mercy, death. It’s her voice, a voice that mimics Sierra’s. “Kill... me... Kill me,” she pleads, blood and red foam bubbling at her lips.
Luke grabs my shoulders. “Cedes, this is from before we even left the airship. Something or someone interrupted dinner. To find them, we have to find out what happened here. Help me.”
My voice is tiny, like I feel. “How? Tell me what to do.”
“Back through, room by room, until we know.” He stands, directs me with his hands. “We can’t stay here much longer. If the outpost was set up to watch Central, we may already be in danger.”
Chapter 10
Node: 001
Our quarters beneath Central aren’t huge, but there are many rooms. Off the main room, there are sleeping rooms. Off the dining room, there are storage rooms.
There are tunnels too. Some end abruptly, in collapse. Others go off into deeper and deeper darkness. Though we don’t follow the tunnels, we do check them for signs that anyone has passed through them recently.
Just us now, two pairs of footsteps, moving through empty places. Other than rats, we haven’t seen any other living thing. I hold my blaster with both hands, ready to fire at any moment. It’s odd how I never really noticed or minded the rats before. They bother me now though as they squeak and scurry about, sometimes under our feet.
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