"You made me too human, I suppose."
"Do my failures know no bounds?"
"No," Ash said. Her silver eyes shifted hue, dark clouds over a moonlit sky. Electricity pulsed through her veins, trickling down the strands of hair falling over her face. "They don't."
Her words were punctuated by the crack of a whip. Dispelled energy shimmered off her in billowing waves of heat as if she'd caught fire. The temperature spiked. She breathed the heat and energy back into her like a supercharging battery.
Adam didn't move.
The hairs on the back of my neck were rigid antennae attuned to the atmospheric shifts of my surroundings. Malcolm's interest turned from the Mobius Cube on the Beacon to the confrontation. His face showed something I hadn't expected to see...concern.
It was uncharacteristic that he would care what would happen to either Eve or Adam in the coming moments, but his face didn't lie.
For an instant, I'd caught a glimpse of the man I'd been born alongside. The man who had lost himself to an anger that blackened his heart and pervaded his mind.
"Eve, you don't want to do this," Adam said; his arms hung loose at his sides, hands tensing and relaxing like a cat stretching its claws.
Ash answered with a smile.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Allegiance Is A Fluid Concept
Ash sprinted towards Adam in a blur of motion and leaped with her foot aimed at his feet. Adam sidestepped faster than seemed possible, which explained the vanishing act he'd pulled on me earlier—the man simply moved faster than my brain could process. He threw out an arm and clotheslined Ash as her foot skimmed past. Her upper body stopped abruptly while the momentum of her lower half continued forward.
The little girl didn't fight the inertia. She tucked her knees into her chest, flipped backwards in the air, and skidded across the floor on one knee. She spun to meet Adam as his fist slammed down on her.
Ash barely blocked with the underside of her forearm in time. The force of the strike drove Ash into the ground. The floor fractured, splintering out in all directions from the pressure.
Ash lunged backwards and kicked out with her legs. A tiny foot crashed into Adam's shin, swiping the leg out from under him. Off balance, he lurched, dropping to his knee. Ash anticipated the trajectory of his fall and thrust one foot towards the sky. It clipped Adam's chin as she rolled backwards and onto her feet.
The world paused while both combatants took a respite from the flurry of activity.
Adam, still on one knee, let out a single puff of air through his nostrils. "These bodies are so limiting," he said, rising slowly.
"You're the one that wanted to be human," Ash said.
"That I did." Adam rolled his neck. A series of vertebrae popped like bubble wrap down the length of his spine. Adam unbuttoned his suit jacket and removed it with methodical precision. He smiled and let the jacket flutter to the ground. "But we're not human, Eve. We're far better than that."
Adam winked and tightened his jaw. The muscles in his cheek balled up and bulged. Something screeched in my mind like nails clawing through metal. The sound tore through me, severing thoughts, and ripping through whatever control I might have had over my faculties.
My hands shot up to plug my ears, but before they could, an invisible wall slammed into my chest. I dropped to my knees and gasped.
The air tasted thin, as if somebody had pulled all the oxygen from the room. It was thick and syrupy. My chest heaved, struggling to pull enough of that precious element from the atmosphere.
Dizziness settled inside me. The room spun. My mind fluttered, flitting between thoughts. I watched Raines writhing on her back through tear-blurred eyes. Small solace to know I wasn't alone in my suffering.
The room filled with the high-pitched buzz of electronics, a pervasive white noise emanating from sources unseen. A breeze brushed past, raising the hairs on my arm.
Ash remained standing, leaning forward slightly as if resisting a strong headwind. Her silver hair fluttered around her head, the dancing flames of a dying fire. Her small body was tense with focus, locked in a staring match with Adam.
Something tugged at my mind, touched my nanocomp.
I blinked into the Stream and saw the wind, a maelstrom of lights blitzing through the space between Adam and Ash. Trillions of tiny green lights swirled and sparkled around Adam. It took me a moment to realize those green lights were not data packets, but nanobots.
Adam and Eve had pulled a small army of nanites from the atmosphere, coalesced them, and were using them as extensions of their bodies. Lashing out and whipping at one another, probing for weaknesses in the protective bubble of nanites they'd surrounded themselves with.
That explained the difficult breathing. They'd overfilled the air with nanites.
I'd never considered the possibility of hijacking the nanites directly, but it made sense. They were linked to the Stream, and therefore within the realm of control for two super-Intuits like Adam and Eve.
Even so, Ash was obviously outmatched. Adam controlled his nanites with crisp, precise movements, pulling together enormous hordes of the microscopic machines and launching them at Ash in a relentless assault.
I took a step, determined to help in whatever way I could, even if that meant jumping on Adam's back long enough to distract him. I eyed the pistol I'd dropped on the floor near Ash. I had a destination, but the next step wouldn't come. My body locked up.
My feet were frozen to the ground, arms pinned to my sides. I grunted. Nothing responded. My muscles were dead, nerves refused to fire. I tried speaking, but nothing came out.
The voice of God boomed in my head. Stay there. You'll get your turn.
Adam wasn't only manipulating the nanites in the air, but also the ones in my body. He'd turned them off somehow. Panic took root, my stomach knotted. I realized just how powerless I was to stop him.
Adam pushed a palm towards Ash; in response, an avalanche of nanites fell upon the small girl from all direction. They pelted her thinning wall of protection, throwing themselves without thought for self-preservation against her swirling nanite shield.
Thousands of tiny explosions flickered and sputtered around Ash as the nanites collided into one another. Kamikaze attacks ensuring mutual destruction. A losing tactic for Ash, who controlled a decidedly smaller number of nanites than Adam. She couldn't sustain losses in those numbers.
And then the first wave got through. The nearly invisible machines crashed into Ash. They burst against her skin, a flicker of light the proof of their demise. Streaks of blood dribbled from unseen wounds along the exposed skin of her arms and cheeks.
Ash gritted her teeth and balled her fists tighter. She scrambled for the crumbling remains of her defenses, trying desperately to pull them back into something to slow Adam's attack.
It didn't matter.
Adam's nanite army swirled, a legion of fireflies. An irrepressible force that could not be exhausted. They moved so quickly. Faint afterglows trailed each nanite; a wall of light surrounded Ash.
I struggled against my bonds, but the grip on my nanocomp was too strong. Adam was too strong. I squirmed, trying to wriggle free of his control until finally a sliver of me escaped his grasp. Barely anything, but it opened me up enough to feel a digital hand reaching out to me.
Eve.
I grabbed it and Eve rushed into my mind. A billion lights, images, and sounds flooded through me. Foreign thoughts informed my own. Memories merged with mine.
I sipped shallow breaths, inhaling the noxious fumes of too many machines whirling about in too small an area. Ash buried her fingers in my mind and cupped my nanocomp. She wrestled Adam for control of me.
They clashed inside me, bashing against one another on the fragile battlefield of my mind. I struggled harder against Adam's control, adding my marginal strength to the vast ocean of Eve's.
Bit by bit Eve took control, pushing Adam, too distracted with his nanite army, out of my body.
I
understood her goal. Our minds were linked. I didn't resist, I let her take control.
She redirected all my cognitive power to herself. My pounding heart slowed to a trudge. Breathing stopped almost entirely. Vital organs and basic functions shut down one by one. I died slowly as she overloaded my brain. Blackness crept in. My vision faltered.
Thoughts came sluggishly. No energy for panic.
My legs buckled and I dropped.
Eve was killing me. It was the only way she could match Adam's strength. She screamed from exertion, pushing back against our creator with our combined might. A surge of energy exploded out of her. It pulsed, an unseen shockwave that tore through the nanobots.
Billions of flickering lights filled the air as nanite after nanite overloaded and exploded. The air sparkled with a blanket of light, crackling and popping all around me. The acrid tang of smoke fouled the air rushing back into the room.
Ash collapsed, panting from the exertion. Her eyes rolled in their sockets, unfocused. Control of my mind and body returned. Pain, starting in the spot directly behind my eyeballs, spiraled out in all directions.
Nerves spasmed in disapproval. Somebody tried dragging my soul out of my body through my nose. I gasped, but my lungs rebuked the effort with a glitch of pain that forked through my throat and out my mouth in a series of guttural sounds.
Adam walked deliberately towards Ash, who grunted and pushed herself to hands and knees; determined, she moved slow even by human standards. He towered over her and locked eyes with me. I could do nothing. That truth twisted like a worm in my gut, gnawing its way through the threads and seams holding me together.
Then he brought his forearm down on the small of Ash's back. She buckled. Her face smacked the floor. A pinkish-red bubble oozed from her lips. Arms scrabbled ineffectually for purchase on the smooth surface slick with her own blood.
Adam looked up, hand resting between Ash's shoulder blades. He started to stand when a gunshot shattered the moment. The deafening boom caused my eardrums to bow inward. My heart stuttered. Shock seized me.
I watched a bullet pass through Adam's shoulder. The shot burned flesh and clothing, filling the room with the stink of scorched meat, a sickly sweet smell that made my stomach shrivel.
Adam's face contorted, registering pain and surprise in equal measure, before he fell.
I traced the line of cooling heat vapor back to its source: a rifle clutched to Raines' shoulder, wisps of superheated air snaking towards the ceiling like the ethereal middle finger of a ghost.
Raines flashed a grin as if she'd shot the moon. Shit, maybe she had.
"Good shot," I croaked.
"I was aiming for his head," she said, crossing the room in a handful of steps and kneeling beside me.
"Close enough."
"What happened?" Raines asked.
"You couldn't see?"
"Saw you getting your ass kicked by nothing."
"That about sums it up," I said, turning to check on Adam's body.
My heart dropped out of my chest as Adam sat up and brushed the dust from his shirt.
"I would have let you live," he said, looking through Raines with a calculated anger. "For a bit longer, at least."
Oh, God.
I heard the beep. Raines stared at her forearm, confused. Her numbers disappeared. All that remained was a single, tiny, blinking bar.
Another beep.
Understanding settled upon her. Her gaze turned to resignation.
No.
I grabbed Raines’ hand; her gaze held mine, fearless in a way I never would be.
I trembled. She didn't.
"Alaina—"
The final beep cut my words short. Raines smiled, and it broke my heart.
I heard the whine of a small electric charge. She shuddered once. A massive convulsion seized her. Her head swiveled towards the ceiling. Her neck snapped softly.
The silent crack of the breaking dawn. The whisper of a moment disproportionate to its importance.
The world pulsed with an unsteady heartbeat, ebbing in and out of focus. I lowered my ear to her mouth.
Nothing.
A fire ignited in my brain. Blood boiled in my cheeks. I stroked Raines' hair, tucking it gently behind her ear.
"Don't do this, Alaina. Please, you can't. It's not your time. It's mine."
I kept talking, not because it would bring her back to me, but because it was something I could do. It was the only thing I could do.
Somehow that would have to be enough.
"Come back, Raines," I pleaded, hoping she could hear me. Hoping she'd listen for once. "Please." I supported her head on my arm in the way her body refused to do.
I stared past her motionless body and into the past. To a time and place before life had shattered my will to live and left me with only the desire to survive.
My eyes and fists clenched tight. White spots appeared behind my eyelids while my fingernails dug half-moon circles into my palm.
Blood trickled from my palm and down my wrist. Crushed beneath the weight of the moment, I numbly followed the river of red on its journey up the isthmus of my forearm.
A chime gently tolled in the back of my skull. A warning from my own Tracker, only ten minutes left.
I stared blankly at the bar blinking on my arm, and listened. The sound of a dinner bell ringing, calling kids home after a long day of play. A mother's kind reminder that there would always be a tomorrow.
Frozen in place, I struggled with the reality my brain now faced—there were no more tomorrows.
Adam stooped and picked up the gun I'd dropped early when Malcolm had pistol-whipped me. It seemed insignificant by comparison to him.
I tried to stand. The blood throbbing through age-worn veins reminded me of the damage I'd sustained. Everything hurt. My heart worst of all.
The memory of Diana, lying not far from where Raines now slept, surfaced, bringing with it the reminder that Raines was not Diana. Diana's consciousness hadn't disappeared into the void. It'd transferred to a Mobius Cube where it waited patiently for the day I would find it a new body.There would be none of that for Raines. No place to go but beyond.
What awaited her on the other side of the line marking life from death I couldn't say. I suspected there would be nothing, though. Surely there could be no god cruel enough to sit idly by and watch the pain we inflict on one another.
"This is all very underwhelming," Adam said, pointing at me with the barrel of the weapon in his hands. "I was expecting you to be...more."
Static hissed through my thoughts. "Sorry to disappoint."
"Do you even know why you're doing this?" Adam continued. "Why you're fighting me?"
"Not sure preventing xenocide needs justification."
"Try."
"Suppose I just don't like bullies. People taking more than they deserve at the expense of those too weak to stop them."
"Why should you care about them?"
"Life is too hard to go it alone," I said, glancing at Raines on the floor. "Took me a long time to learn that."
"So the strong must stoop for the weak?"
"We're all weak, sometimes," I whispered.
"A decidedly human trait, I think." Adam extended the pistol. Ash, still on her knees, stared up into the barrel of the weapon. Her eyes were struggling to focus. "There will be no place for the weak in the world I create," Adam said.
His thumb twitched, disengaging the safety with a hair-raising click. The tendon in his finger pulled taut against the trigger.
Time froze.
I rose above. Saw the vectors and the players. I traced the imaginary path of the bullet and I dove.
The gun bellowed as I tackled Adam.
The bullet shredded my stomach as if every pointy object ever imagined had been simultaneously plunged into my abdomen. An uncountable number of cauterizing stab wounds.
The floor was a sheet of ice beneath me. Every heartbeat was a molten iron fist rooting through tender entrails and
scorching everything between.
Does jumping in front of a bullet make me a hero, or just stupid? Maybe there's not a difference.
"That was needless," Adam said. "I have more bullets."
My only response was a series of groans and wet burbling gasps coated with blood and stomach acid. Adam said something, articulating his words with the gun in his hand, but the white-hot dagger using my intestinal tract as a sheath made it hard to focus. My hand filled with blood from the hole in my gut.
"Do you feel better about yourself now?" Adam nudged my foot with his own. "You're trying to save her as if somehow that will make up for all the others you've failed."
"Why?" I asked, barely able to choke out the word through a locked jaw.
"Why am I doing this?" Adam knelt, face floating inches above mine. "Every father wants to leave his children with a world better than the one given to him."
"They'll hate you," a small voice said. I glimpsed Ash through a slurry of tears and blood, swaying slightly. She propped herself up on an elbow.
"An unfortunate consequence,” Adam said. “Our mistakes as parents become the burden of our children."
"You don't understand," Ash said. "You're robbing your children of the world, the people they love. It won't matter that they were born in the Stream. They've been raised human. They feel like humans. Hurt like humans."
Adam paused to consider Ash's words, tasting them and knowing them to be filled with truth. Wiping out half the world's population, and revealing to the other half that they are not human, would have far-reaching consequences.
"It's an unavoidable fact," Adam said, resting the barrel of his pistol on Ash's forehead. "We hurt the ones we love."
"Some more than others," a disembodied voice said. A nanite pistol, clutched tightly between snow white knuckles, appeared behind Adam.
The twitch of a finger. A small explosion.
Blood and brain matter sprayed from the needle-sized hole where the bullet exited Adam's orbital socket.
His face, a hollow mask, fell away. And then he collapsed.
Time Heist Page 27
