by Isaac Hooke
Hoodwink made short work of the other two golems, and it was over all too soon. Blasting those golems had momentarily made him forget Ari and the grim task just ahead. And now she came rushing back in.
Ari.
Sweet Ari.
He should've come back sooner.
He'd tried, damn it, how he'd tried.
The Council had refused.
He gritted his teeth. The Council. A Council of cunts!
But he wouldn't dwell on them.
He was always doing things for other people. It was time to do something for himself. For Ari. Yes. He had to focus his energies on Ari from now on, to the exclusion of all else. She was his mission. And he would do his damnedest to save her.
He owed her, more than anyone else.
Much more.
He would let a world die to save her.
Two worlds, even.
Still, there had to be a way to save this world. He just didn't know what that way was yet.
Because what was the point of saving her if there was no world to bring her back to?
One step at a time, Hoodwink. One step at a time.
Hoodwink knelt before Ari's battered body.
Her legs lay at an odd angle, the hips bent at an impossible position to the torso, her back broken. The glass faceplate of her helmet had been smashed many times over, and her brow had caved so that her eyes and forehead were lost in skull fragments and blood.
The anger clawed at his insides, struggling to get out. He stood, gloves clenching and unclenching, then he turned around. There was an iron golem in here, strapped to the opposite desk by one of its treads. The glass disks that formed its eyes had been smashed.
Hoodwink brought his weapon about. Streaks of light tore gaping holes in the golem. Again and again he fired, the weapon soundlessly pummeling the metal. The hilt that formed the head of the golem vanished, obliterated. An arm fell away. One of the cogs that formed the treads collapsed and the golem tilted to one side.
He heard a voice in his ear. He realized that Tanner had been talking for some time, but it only registered with Hoodwink now.
"Hood, you have to stop. Hood. You'll draw others from outside the ship. Hood."
"Good!" Hoodwink spun on Tanner. "Let them come. I want them to. I dare them to. I've a thirst for killing today, and it won't be quenched until I kill them all!"
Tanner raised his hands, eying the weapon that was now pointed at him. He licked his lips nervously. "Then who will repair the ship?"
Hoodwink swiftly lowered the weapon. He had no right to be aiming it at Tanner like that. Tanner wasn't the enemy.
Hoodwink holstered the weapon and went back to Ari. He knelt beside her and wept.
"Ari. My daughter. I'm sorry I abandoned you. I should've stayed. I should've found a way. What a fool I've been. And I promise now, I won't let you down. I'll get you back."
Hoodwink tasted the salt from his tears. Funny how tears didn't taste too different from blood. Both salty. One a tad coppery.
He retrieved the tweezers from the kit he'd found. The tool felt clumsy in those unwieldy gloves, but he managed to get the proper grip. He grabbed a test tube from the kit with his other hand.
"All I ask is that you be patient with me, Ari." He poked those tweezers inside the broken helmet. "The task before me is long, and dangerous. But I'll find a way. You know me, always figuring out how to make things right. But I have to take something from you now, I do. Just a small thing. Forgive me. I know I've taken a lot from you already, but I'm going to give it all back to you. I promise."
He tweezed a hair from her forehead. It came away with a small, bloody chunk of skin, and he dropped the hair, gory lump and all, into the test tube. He had to tell himself that this was someone else, not his daughter. He wouldn't have been able to continue otherwise.
Someone else.
He forced the tweezers past the gore and into the skull, until he felt the spongy resistance of the gray matter, and he pinched away a portion of the brain, dropping that into the test tube as well. He returned the tweezers to the kit and corked the tube.
"I remember the first time she came home with a bloody nose," Hoodwink said. "She told me one of the other girls in class did it, at lunch, when Ari had refused to share her meal. I don't know about you, but I recognize bullying when I see it. I felt so helpless. I wanted to protect her. It was my duty as a father to protect her. I told her I'd go and talk to that little girl's parents. She begged me not to. Said she could take care of herself, and that my going would just make things worse.
"Next day she came home with a black eye. Again it was the bully. And again she begged me not to confront the parents. The next day she came home and her other eye was black. I'd had enough. I couldn't stand to see my daughter hurt like that. I told her I was going to the parents. But unlike the previous days, she wore a smile. I asked her why she was so happy. She said this time when the other girl bullied her, she fought back, and gave her a fat lip. I scolded her of course. Told her that you can't solve all your problems by fighting. But inside I was happy. And proud of her. So damn proud. The bully left her alone after that.
"And so here she lies now, with more than just a bloody nose and a black eye. With her skull caved, her brain crushed, her spine snapped. She gave her life to save you, Tanner. Stood up against the ultimate of bullies. And you know what? I'm more proud of her than ever before."
Tanner was weeping. Rightly so. Hoodwink would've cried again too, but he'd no more tears left. The dead and humiliated body of his little girl was right in front of him. How could he cry, when fury burned in his heart?
He was angry at the machines.
But even more angry at himself.
Hoodwink clenched his fist. "It was my fault. I should've never brought her into this. If I hadn't interfered with her life, she'd still be alive on the Inside today, none-the-wiser."
"But you gave her youth, Hoodwink. A second chance at life. A renewed purpose. That's more than most people get."
"But she would have been reborn on the Inside anyway if she'd died naturally..."
An uncomfortable silence stretched between the two of them.
"Can you really save her?" Tanner said at last.
Can I? He studied the contents of the tube, and the bloody memento of his daughter it contained. He stashed the glass cylinder in his utility belt, saying nothing.
"I'll do whatever I can to help you," Tanner said. "Whatever it takes. I promise."
Whatever it takes. Easy enough to say. But to actually do, well, that was another story. We'll see if you follow through on that Tanner. If only you knew the potential price...
"Time to find the children." Hoodwink stood. "And maybe get you some food. You must be hungry after starving for the past two days."
Tanner frowned. "I've no appetite at all."
Neither did Hoodwink, at that.
He rested a hand on Ari's helmet.
We will meet again, he promised.
78
Hoodwink and Tanner returned to the icy surface of the moon and circled the crashed ship, looking for another way in. Hoodwink noted that while the surface of the vessel was heavily dented and blackened in places, with some broken windows and hull breaches, overall the ship seemed structurally sound. Amazing, given the beating it had taken. Kudos to the repair golems.
Hoodwink managed to find a working airlock after shooting down only seven of the iron golems. Just in time too, because Hoodwink's weapon jammed—or the charge ran out, he wasn't sure which—and he and Tanner were forced to barrel inside before another two repair golems could catch them. When the airlock re-pressurized, Hoodwink was the first to take off his helmet. It was getting a bit stuffy in that suit.
Tanner pressed him for the airlock access code, but Hoodwink ignored the question, instead hurrying toward Beta Station. He'd ordered the children to move there a little over two days ago, after the window had shattered in their original station. The children were a group
of youngsters fetched from the Inside. Hoodwink's own hand-picked team. He'd trained them how to use the system, using his own rudimentary knowledge gleaned from the archives, and they'd quickly surpassed him. Tanner was the oldest among them at twenty-one.
Translucent pods lined the walkway. Human bodies floated inside each one, blanketed in a green goo, sleepers living in the world of the Inside. One of the pods was completely black, so Hoodwink picked up the pace—the golems would be swinging by to retrieve the dead man within.
He and Tanner had to stop long before reaching Beta Station, however, because the entire section was sealed off.
Hoodwink bent forward and read the display beside the airtight doors.
Sector Depressurized.
Hoodwink gave the overlapping slabs of metal a good sideways kick, and the door rang grumpily. He glanced at Tanner. "You think the children are trapped inside?"
Tanner worked with the keypad on the display. "No. This section was sealed off four days ago. The children would've never gotten in. Which explains why my messages to Beta Station went unanswered."
"Where are you, little ones?" Hoodwink tapped his chin.
He and Tanner made for the next closest station. Hoodwink had explored the ship thoroughly in the eight months he'd spent here, and he knew where almost all the stations were by memory.
While they walked, Tanner quietly related the events of the past two days to him. Hoodwink only half-listened, though certain key parts drew his full attention, mostly those involving Ari and Jeremy.
Even though he wasn't hungry, Hoodwink stopped at hydroponics along the way to grab some gel packets. At hydroponics, urine and feces absorbed from the pods of the sleepers provided water and fertilizer for the plants. Golems affixed to the floor processed the fruits and vegetables into the thick gel that was eventually distributed back to the sleepers. It wasn't hard to sneak out a packet or two.
After hydroponics, Hoodwink and Tanner passed the butchery, where grinders disposed of the dead sleepers and formed a grisly pâté that was also fed back to the denizens of the pod world. It was a sordid reminder that everything was reused on this ship. Everything. Hoodwink and Tanner hurried past that place.
They were forced to scale a ladder down to the next level to avoid a patrol of two iron golems. When the patrol passed, Hoodwink and Tanner climbed backed up, and finally reached the next closest station, Zeta.
Hoodwink was disappointed to find the station empty. Still, it was as good a place as any to set up a new operations base. Zeta Station had five rows of desks laid out on its metallic floor, with seven terminals in each row. Various storage cupboards lined the walls. Its long ceiling lights glowed white, some of them flickering. A window offered a view-port onto the barren moon.
Hoodwink wanted to broadcast a message to all the other stations on the ship, but Tanner urged against it, because apparently that's how the golems tracked Tanner and Ari down the last time. The safest way to contact the children was through the Control Room on the Inside, Tanner argued. Hoodwink reluctantly agreed.
Hunched over one of the stations, Tanner reported that the Control Room Box still dangled from a rope on the Forever Gate. He gave three possible destinations where he might move the Box. Number one—send it to the Black Den, the criminal heart of the city, using the coordinates of the tracker that was embedded in the Dwarf's collar. Number two—send it to the headquarters of the New Users, deep within the labyrinth of the abandoned sewage system, where Ari had left another tracker. Number three—send it to Ari's old shack of a house in Luckdown District, were Hoodwink had placed a tracker.
Because of the disk, Jeremy would know the location of the New User headquarters by now, and he'd probably strike there first. Ari's house was undefended, so that wasn't really an option. Hoodwink decided on the Black Den. Tanner explained that Ari had chosen the Den to harbor the Dwarf because it was way more fortified than the New User headquarters. She'd sent six of her New Users to guard the Dwarf, leaving a man named Jacob in charge. Jeremy would know all that too of course, thanks to the disk, and if it came down to it Hoodwink and Tanner could always move the Box again, just as long as the tracker remained attached.
"You know," Tanner said, after he'd moved the Control Room to the Den. "I almost thought you weren't going to come back, Hood. That you really were dead. Especially when I saw your body. And then you showed up a minute later."
Hoodwink didn't know what to say to that, so he squeezed more gel from the metallic packet he'd purloined from hydroponics. He still didn't have an appetite, but he forced himself to eat, knowing he'd need energy in the hours to come. The gel was bland. Tasteless. Even so, it served its purpose. Nutrients were nutrients, no matter how you looked at it. And the acid in your belly turned everything into gel anyway. Shit looked the same no matter if you ate cuts of prime meat or worm-ridden bread.
"The fact you came back gives me hope that Ari can, too," Tanner said. "Is she like you, in that sense?"
Hoodwink sighed. Ari. How he wished she were here. "No. Ari's not like me. She can't come back the same way. But there may be another path for her. It's a slim hope, and a risky one, but I have to try. I wouldn't be doing my duty if I didn't." Hoodwink offered the packet to Tanner, who refused. "You really should eat, Tanner."
"Not hungry." Tanner gazed at the window and the starry sky beyond. "I'm just glad that you care enough about Ari to save her."
"Of course I bloody care. She's my daughter!" And I owe her for what I did to her.
Tanner gave him a strange look. "You know that genetically she's nothing like you, right? Born from the ovum and ejaculate of parents long dead..."
"Yes yes," Hoodwink snapped. "I'm familiar with all that. But you know exactly what I meant. I raised her. Raised her. You try bringing up a child, wiping its arse, cleaning its snot, calming it down when it's yelling its brains out—see if you don't get attached."
"That doesn't sound very attaching to me. Cleaning its snot?"
Hoodwink cleared his throat. "Er, yes, well. Look. What I meant was, there's both good and bad when you raise a child. When you put the time in, and I mean really put the time in, you bond with her. Through the good times. Through the bad times. You bond. And it's the bond that makes the father, regardless of genetics. I'll tell you this once, and once only: She's my daughter through and through."
"I hear you, Hoodwink. I won't bring it up again."
"Good," Hoodwink said. "Now eat." He tossed a packet to Tanner.
Tanner shoved the meal aside. He really wasn't going to eat then. "What was she like, before the revising?"
Hoodwink paused.
Tanner must have noticed the guilt in his face, because he said, "I'm sorry. I didn't mean anything by it."
"No, it's all right," Hoodwink said. "It's a good question." Though it would hurt to tell it. But if anyone deserved to know her history, it was Tanner. "She was smart, the top of her class. Extremely shy. A quiet girl. Always musing, and reading. She thought long and hard before acting on anything. Sometimes when you asked her something, she'd pause for as long as a minute to answer you, while she thought the question over."
"That's a far cry from the Ari I knew," Tanner said. "The brash, reckless Ari who'd rather act first and think later. And the Ari I knew definitely wasn't shy."
Hoodwink inclined his head. "Might be the revising that changed that. Jeremy promised he'd touch only her memories, but memory makes personality doesn't it? Still, it might've been the ten years since I last saw her that changed her too. Who can say? When you're leader of an outfit like the New Users you're bound to change one way or another. Though brash and reckless definitely doesn't sound like the girl I knew, nor the actions of a good leader. Did you ever consider that maybe, just maybe, she was trying to show off to someone by the name of Tanner?"
Tanner smiled. "Ari." He had a faraway look in his eyes. "I was the one who was always trying to impress her. Trying to show her how smart I was. How I had everything planned out. Thoug
h I suppose it's possible she was trying to show off to me as well.
"Not that I blame her, Hoodwink. You have to try holding those fire swords sometime. The sense of power you get is just mind-blowing. You feel like you can do anything. I really can't blame her for wanting to just rush-in and confront Jeremy that first time. If only it hadn't ended in disaster. She never forgave herself for the death of Marks. It's why she sacrificed herself for me, I think, in the end. The guilt was killing her inside. I just wish I could've saved her. We had a thing going, Ari and I. A good thing."
Hoodwink sympathized, although he wasn't all that happy to learn Ari and Tanner had a "thing" going. Hoodwink squeezed the last of the gel from the packet and slurped it perhaps a little too loudly. Tanner didn't seem to notice.
"Set up the motion detectors to pull us out," Hoodwink said. "I don't want any uninvited guests taking a dump on our parade."
"Neither do I," Tanner said. "Me and Ari learned that the hard way last time."
Hoodwink ordered Tanner to close the blast shield as well, since there'd be no one to revive them if the room depressurized. All it would take was an unlucky shot from the attackers above, or a couple of iron golems working in concert outside, and that window would crack right open, leaving Hoodwink and Tanner to wake up dead.
He watched the metal shield close over the window, forming a snug fit over the glass. He supposed he could've put his helmet back on before going Inside if he really wanted to guarantee his safety, but that seemed like a waste of suit oxygen, and he had need of the spacesuit yet.
Hoodwink strode to a terminal a good distance from Tanner and plugged the tether into the access port on his suit.
"To the Black Den," Hoodwink said. "And the Control Room. Once there, we need to contact the children, get a fix on Brute, and find that disk."
"To the Black Den," Tanner said. His fingers paused above the terminal. "One last thing, Hoodwink. Did you really sell Ari to Jeremy all those years ago? Did you really accept money for her revision?"
