Emergence (A DRMR Novel Book 2)

by Michael Patrick Hicks

  He blinked reflexively, his hand coming up too late. He took a swift step back.

  Her one good leg shaky beneath her, Mesa sprung off her uninjured foot and threw herself at him. After having her shoulder blown apart, she’d lost the gun. At least she still had her knife.

  Already off-balance and trying to step back, he toppled under Mesa’s sudden collision, and she landed on him hard, striking him in the solar plexus with her elbow and driving all the wind out of his lungs.

  After getting his arms up in front of himself, he sent a sharp palm strike to the underside of Mesa’s chin. Her teeth clacked together, and her head snapped back. He kept his hand there, twisting her face up and away from him.

  Her blade sliced across his throat, making a shallow cut. His hands flew to his throat in reflex, but he didn’t have time to panic before she stabbed through the balaclava and punched the knife through his cheekbone.

  She wrenched the blade free, jerking it slightly left to right. It had gone down hard and at an angle. He opened his mouth to cough out blood, eyes already going glassy. She stabbed down again, at his hands, then sliced through his fingers to get at the meat and gristle.

  He reared up, the knife embedded in the hollow of his throat, three fingers sheared away, and jabbed those gruesome stubs into the ruined socket of her shoulder and twisted. She bellowed, her arm hanging limp and useless. She used her good hand to rip the blade out of his neck, opening a wide swath across the side of his throat.

  Gore splashed against her chest and face as he fell back, his lifeblood a torrential geyser shooting forth from the neck wound. Dual waves of instant relief flashed through her as his hand fell away from her shoulder, but the pain lingered. She could nearly feel the sigh of relief from Alice, a breeze against the inside of her brain. The world around her had been reduced to a thin, foggy sliver, and her eyes grew heavy.

  No, Alice said. Not yet. You have more to do.

  She fell off her attacker and lay in the scrub beside him. Lazily, she reached toward his face and peeled away the ruined balaclava.

  Samuel Kaften, Alice said.

  Even though Mesa had never heard the name before, it carried an unsettling ring of familiarity.

  You know what to do, Alice said.

  She ignored the pain as she unshouldered the backpack and knelt before him. Tiny stones jabbed into her aching knee, which was already swollen. It and her ankle both strained against the fabric of her pants. She dug around in the backpack and found an antistatic bag, a bundle of chips already inside.

  Despite the blood, in spite of all the fighting and death, she felt a gorge rise in her belly as she reached toward Kaften and turned his face. She found the data port behind his ear.

  I can’t do this.

  You can, Alice said. I can help you.

  Fingers trembling, Mesa probed at his scalp. It’d been a few days since he’d taken a razor to the skin, and his skull was covered in rough stubble. She traced the wires running just beneath the surface of that thin layer of skin, following them north along the curvature of bone, feeling for the familiar change as the tips of her fingers stumbled across the metal cap.

  She swallowed the vomit, saying again, I can’t do this.

  Alice gave no reply, but a firm mental push compelled her forward. The mental image and too-real sensation of her hand on Mesa’s shoulder offered both comfort and strength.

  Knife in hand, Mesa flipped the grip and drew the blade across Kaften’s scalp. She cut deeper then, using the point of the blade, cut away at the muscle joining flesh and bone, peeling away a long strip of tissue.

  Fused to the bone was a small metal cap. She pried it loose with the tip of her knife and reached into the core. She plucked loose the memory chip. She held the central repository of Samuel Kaften’s entire life in the palm of her hand. An icy thrill ripped through her at the thought, alongside an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu. That sense of familiarity couldn’t possibly belong to her, though, and she knew it was another ripple of Alice’s memories invading her mind.

  Mesa picked up on an unspoken thought—four simple words that Alice had not guarded from her. Like father, like daughter.

  What does that mean?

  Alice offered nothing more than a false smile.

  Mesa was too exhausted to push her. She dropped the mem chip into the antistatic bag. Then she turned her head and threw up before she spent a few more minutes coughing up loose phlegm. She’d never felt so weak and bone-tired in her entire life. Alice gave Mesa the few minutes’ rest that she desperately needed before she began needling her to move.

  Unable to stand, Mesa scooted back to the Humvee, pushing her butt across the desert with the aid of one arm. The behemoth was still idling, washing the corpses of the men who had come to kill her in a bath of brilliant white light.

  Mesa smelled smoke in the air, but the flames were still some distance away. She pushed herself back, her palms and knuckles scraped raw, her behind aching. Finally, she reached the driver’s-side door and realized she may as well have been at the base of Mount Everest for all the good it would have done her. To get into the Humvee meant enduring an insurmountable climb.

  Do it or die, Alice chided her.

  Mesa knew Alice was right, and that made her hate the foreign invader inside her skull with an even deeper passion. She got her good arm up onto the lower step and forced herself up, suddenly thankful for the years of endurance training, triceps dips, and squat thrusts. She was able to hook her butt up onto the edge of the foot well and bring her good leg up, then used her heel to push herself up and in.

  She fell onto the seat with a shriek of agony as her ruined arm crashed sideways into the back of the seat then the center console. Panting heavily, she manhandled her crippled leg into the foot well, letting gravity bend her leg at the knee, scraping bone against bone. When her heel touched the ground, a lightning bolt of pain shot through her ankle.

  Finally, she got settled in the seat, grateful that her right leg was OK and could operate the pedals. She took long, deep breaths, trying—and failing—to control the pain. Her whole body was on fire.

  With her left arm, she reached across her body to uncomfortably pull the shifter into drive. The H6 lurched forward, and she spent another minute acclimating herself to the sensitivity of the pedals, as well as the sensitivity of her own limbs, which didn’t seem capable of enduring much more.

  Alice was behind her, though, sending encouraging thoughts, pushing her forward, pulling her strings, and manipulating her limbs. She refused to give up on her, even when Mesa was well and truly beyond wanting to give up. She wanted—and needed—sleep. But Alice refused to let her eyes close.

  We’ll rest soon, she promised. But we need to put distance between us, these bodies, and that fire. You can do this. You have to do this.

  Again, Mesa hated how right that bitch was. OK, fine. Let’s do this.

  She pressed down on the gas, more smoothly this time, the massive vehicle more firmly under her control. Slowly, she built up speed, and moments later, Samuel Kaften was finally behind her.

  After a while, Alice began to slip away. The night grew darker, and the world shrank and shrank. Then that, too, fell away.

  Chapter 13

  Schaeffer’s fingers curled around the cold tumbler. He shot back the whiskey, trying to soothe ragged nerves. Booze wasn’t helping.

  He rolled his head from shoulder to shoulder, stretching out the trapezius muscles where all the stress and tension were knotting together.

  When that, too, failed, he tried to look at the bright side. At least we don’t have to invest any more money in Korgan, that psychotic little cunt. Her loyalties had been too easily bought, but at least that situation had remedied itself.

  Given his climb up the ladder at Daedalus, Schaeffer knew not t
o trust those who straddled both sides of the fence. He’d played that game himself in his younger years, and he knew ambition was a thirst that could never be slaked.

  Losing three operators, though… that was a blow. The girl would disappear. She was smart. Most of that intelligence, he had no doubt, was because of Alice Xie.

  Another psychotic bitch.

  He poured off another two fingers of whiskey. Why me?

  No matter. That was the job.

  He gazed out the clear Dura-Plast window of his ship, Alabaster, at the city lights below, watching the trails of movement. White headlights came, and red taillights went. Bright office windows filled the spaces between darkened panes, like broken teeth in a gaping mouth.

  He slung back the drink then pushed away from his desk. The heels of his loafers click-clacked across the marble floor to the entrance.

  Alabaster was his pride and joy, the culmination of his success. When he’d bought the ancient sky freighter and had it restored, he’d known that he had truly made his mark. He conducted all of his business from what had once been the captain’s quarters. Obviously, he’d had it gutted and expanded, but it was still thematically sound. It only made sense that a captain of industry would operate from the captain’s quarters.

  He boarded the lift, straightening his tie, and rode the small metal platform into the bowels of the ship. He was grateful that a large complement of crew was not necessary to the daily functions of Alabaster, and he rarely saw the twenty people he had hired to pilot and maintain the vessel. He did not generally enjoy dealing with people, unless it was to grind them beneath his heels. Once, purely by accident, he’d stumbled across the engine master, who was covered in black grime, but after switching him to the midnight shift, Schaeffer had not seen him again.

  The panels and wall coverings had been removed to expose the maze of pipes, wires, and circuits. Schaeffer appreciated its old-world appearance and the sense of industry. Such an aesthetic was rare in the modern age.

  At the end of the corridor, he ran his index finger across the security pad, making a complex squiggle and a wave of zig-zags. Recognizing the authorization code, the door popped open with a slight whoompf as air escaped.

  Inside the white room, an old woman lay prone beneath the white blankets of a hospital service bed. A thick data cable ran from the port behind her ear and split off to a series of machines engulfing her body. Because the bedframe was slightly arched upward, she was able to follow Schaeffer with her eyes, but she said nothing.

  Even if she did have something to say, speaking was impossible. A breathing tube was shoved down her throat, her respiration conducted by machine. When Schaeffer questioned her, the woman’s answers were supplied via the cable to a thought-to-speech processor and a small bookshelf speaker.

  Jade was next to her, holding the woman’s hand. Schaeffer sat down in his usual chair, across from the women.

  “Hello, Jade.”

  “You’re a fucking monster,” she said, staring at him.

  Schaeffer clucked his tongue at her. “Tsk-tsk, now.”

  Jade rolled her eyes at him. Not for the first time, he recognized how happy he would be once they were finished with her. He was more than eager to begin human trials.

  He ignored the insubordination and turned his attention to the old woman.

  “Hello, Alice.”

  Jade held the old woman’s limp hand in her own. Her skin was soft and thin, like crinkled tissue paper. She knew nothing of the shell that housed the mind of her old friend and mentor, Alice Xie, but the ramifications chilled her. Fear, sorrow, and anger all combated for superiority, exhausting her. She stared across the bed at Schaeffer.

  “What did you do to her?” Jade asked.

  “Nothing she wasn’t already intent on doing to herself. Although, it did take some time to convince the higher-ups to proceed. Then, all we needed to do was simply find a suitable donor.”

  “She’s supposed to be dead.”

  “And yet she’s not. The miracles of modern science.”

  “I don’t understand any of this,” Jade said, her voice taking on a high-pitched whine of flustered annoyance.

  “There’s no need for you to.”

  “You brought me here!”

  Schaeffer nodded, his hands folded in his lap. He leaned back in the chair, his eyes sliding over Alice’s decrepit form. “Yes, to say goodbye.”

  Again, Jade glared at him, feeling lost in the woods.

  “You see, Alice,” he said, turning his attention to the old woman.

  A surprising amount of strength and clarity dwelled in her eyes, and she locked onto his with no trouble.

  “Your intel has been very valuable. We were able to find your friend here.” He nodded toward Jade. “More importantly, we were able to find Mesa Everitt, which allowed us to learn some very unique things.

  “The body-shifting protocols you stole, that you released into the wild—they work. And they work wonderfully. Unfortunately, it appears you’ve also made yourself a bit redundant. Daedalus has no need for two Alice Xies. Sadly for you, there’s a younger, sexier model running about, and we’re planning on trading up.”

  He flashed Jade a sly grin. “And that, my dear, is where you come in.”

  “I’m not bringing Mesa to you,” she said, appalled.

  He laughed. “No, no, I wouldn’t expect you to. But that perky little body of yours? Yeah, I think that’ll get us close enough to her to take care of the rest.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He sat back, a cunning gleam in his eyes. She felt trapped by his predatory fox-like gaze.

  “Alice here,”—he squeezed the old woman’s breast roughly—“stole a bit of old tech from us and set about trying to replicate it. It didn’t quite work out for her, or at least not as she’d hoped. Before Alice died, she sent out packets of information to several memorialists and a last bit of marching orders.”

  A faint glimmer of recognition hit Jade.

  “You, of course, were told to find Mesa Everitt, if you could. And thankfully you did! Our med-sci division was responsible for helping Mesa’s damaged brain regroup and move forward. We knew, thanks to Alice here, that a remnant of the original Alice Xie was hiding somewhere in that young girl’s mind. We weren’t able to repair the damage, but we at least were able to help her get back on her feet and take steps toward living a normal life. We were also able to put some small implements in her, simply for tracking and observational purposes.”

  Schaeffer regarded the old woman lying helplessly on the bed. “We were very eager to learn more about what had happened, but even with Mesa’s brain fried, we had one avenue left. We mined the DRMR unit on the corpse of Alice Xie and plumbed her for information. When we learned that she had attempted body-shifting, we reopened old research files.

  “The war in LA disrupted a lot of our work, knocked us back twenty years in R&D projects, cost us a shitload of money. There was a lot of administrative changeover, and a lot of people got sacked while Daedalus was sinking. We needed to rescue the ship, you see. It was a very tumultuous time for us, but science and warfare are nothing if not mutually compatible. Body-shifting was a high-concept idea that we’d tabled once the PRC invaded.

  “Again, thanks to Alice, we recognized the potential in this pursuit once again. She’d gotten very, very close to actually doing it, all based on our own theoretical frameworks. So we reopened our work, and decided to go whole hog. And thankfully, we had what was arguably a very willing test subject.”

  “You threw Alice Xie into this old woman’s body, just to see if you could?”

  Schaeffer smiled. “Basically. Yeah.”

  He stood and stretched his legs. “It took multiple trials to perfect and observe. We didn’t start off immediately with
this crone. There were other practicalities to consider.”

  “Such as?” Jade’s mouth had run dry, and the aches of her earlier tortures heated her face.

  “Being plunked down into an unfamiliar body takes a traumatic toll on a human mind. We ran into several… complications, let’s say.”

  A shiver went up Jade’s arm, sending goose pimples along her skin. Slowly, she said, “What kind of complications?”

  “The first subject ripped her own throat out with her bare hands and bled to death.”

  “The first? How many were there?”

  “Twenty-seven. This Alice is number twenty-eight. This shell she is in, the previous owner suffered a severe stroke and became catatonic. Wiping her mind was child’s play, and we plugged Alice in. Because she can’t use her limbs and this body is kept alive by machines, transferal was much simpler. The psychological trauma is still present, mostly, but with a steady stream of injections and therapy, we seem to be making some remarkable breakthroughs.”

  “This is your idea of success?” Jade asked, making her disgust apparent.

  “No, actually. Now, your friend Mesa, she’s a win for sure.”

  “And you’ve been monitoring her for three years?”

  Schaeffer nodded. “Her and several other memorialists.”

  “Alice’s distress packet,” Jade said, piecing it together. “That’s why those other memorialists were killed.”

  Schaeffer nodded, smiling slightly. “We began noticing a revivification of secondary brain activity, a secondary stream of consciousness, in your friend Mesa. After downloading the scans, it became apparent we had a match. Alice is still alive, or at least a part of her is, inside your friend’s skull.”

  “And you thought she might have gotten into other people’s heads, too. So you decided to start killing everybody.”