by Isaac Hooke
Graol could see the spike clearly beneath him, its tip approaching in deadly greeting. The satoroids had trapped his upper body in their grasps, but left the bottom half of his tentacles, and his lower appendages, free to move. He desperately ran the wispy fingers of his tentacles along the spike's surface, but he couldn't find purchase, and the descent continued unabated. He splayed his starfish-like lower appendages wide, wanting to delay contact for as long as possible.
When the spike's tip was only an inch away, he slammed his lower appendages closed, and squeezed the metal with all his strength. Only the tip was sharp on that spike, and he got a good grip on the engraved surface below. He managed to halt his descent.
For a few seconds.
The whir increased in pitch as the satoroids boosted the power output to their rotors. The iron tentacles tightened around his body. The descent began anew, and when Graol felt the sharp stab of the tip in his flesh he splayed his appendages wide on reflex, releasing the spike.
He slid downward with a sudden jerk, but the satoroids quickly compensated, reversing their rotors. It wouldn't do for him to die faster than the prescribed torturous speed.
The pain was excruciating as that spike dug deeper into the suckers of his lower appendage. He wanted to thrash about, but the satoroids held him tight, and any movement only worsened the pain. He held back a vocalized scream, not wanting to give The Shell that pleasure.
Through the pain, he felt regret, and he wasn't sure which hurt more, the spike, or failure.
For it to end here, like this, when he'd come so close to saving Ari. So damn close. It was a tragedy.
Pain.
The spike had completely pierced his lower appendages now, and in moments the tip would poke through to his gastric cavity. Once that cavity was pierced, the satoroids would pause to allow his stomach acids time to leach into his torso and burn away his insides. The ultimate torture.
Pain.
He remembered the promise he'd made to his human wife. "Destroy the world if you have to," she'd said. "Destroy everything. But you bring her back."
He remembered his answer. "I will. I swear it."
He slammed his lower appendages around the spike once again, and fresh agony sparked through his body as the tip dug into his shifting muscles. He ignored the urge to let go, and squeezed hard.
I will. I swear it.
He pushed down on the spike through the pain, and rose an inch.
The rotors of the satoroids whirred faster. The steel tentacles tightened around his torso. Both machines were trying to drag him back down.
Graol kept two appendages in place so that he wouldn't plunge, and he shifted the grip of the remaining appendages higher. He pushed up again, and climbed another inch along that spike. He sucked more water into his torso, countering the tightening vise of iron tentacles.
I SWEAR IT.
The satoroid engines were droning loudly now, and those tentacles dug trenches into his epidermis.
Graol shifted his grip upward and pushed once again. His body shook from the effort. But he pushed.
He rose another inch.
He'd lifted himself entirely off the spike now. He still felt the throbbing pain, but it was no longer intrusive.
Not letting go of the spike, he shifted his body to the left so that he was clear of the tip. He drew the satoroids with him so that the rightmost hovered just above the spike.
Graol abruptly relaxed his grip.
The robots were still rotoring downward at maximum speed. All three of them plunged. The iron tip rammed into the rightmost satoroid's rotors before the thing could compensate.
A muted CLANG-CLANG filled his auditory organ as the rotor tore apart, and Graol felt the vibrations pass through the steel body into his own.
Its engine now dead, that satoroid no longer offered Graol any resistance. He pulled himself lower down the spike. Sparks flashed in the water as the tip embedded deep inside the satoroid. Its iron tentacles abruptly loosened and the damaged robot dropped away.
The second satoroid squeezed him even harder now.
Graol spun left, then right, trying to shake the thing off. Forget the prescribed death speed, it was crushing him here and now...
Graol jetted out all the water he'd sucked in and whipped his tail, sending himself and the satoroid spinning toward the confinement cell. With his torso deflated, those steel tentacles squeezed precariously close to his quadbrain.
Graol started to black out. His already banded 360-degree vision became an ever shrinking sphere, its edges indistinct.
He neared the cell's verge and immediately accessed the mind interface with his waning consciousness.
The firewall was finally down.
"Override," he projected weakly. "Graol-52-70-32-144. Reactivate."
The energy bars turned on. He was close enough for the beams to slam right into the satoroid. Parts of the robot disintegrated instantly.
Its grip weakened, and Graol sloughed the iron tentacles from his body. His vision snapped back in triumph.
The tailored virus he'd uploaded to The Shell alongside the archival data from the microchip was finally taking effect. It was a little surprise he'd been working on for the past few months. He hadn't been sure he'd actually go through with it even up to the end, when he'd interfaced with the Farm console, but now he was glad that he had.
"What have you done?" The Shell transmitted. "Services system-wide are failing. Graol, you must undo this."
"System-wide?" Graol said. "No, Shell. Only services involving your consciousness are failing. Autonomous ship functions are still running. For now."
He jetted toward the steel-rimmed exit. Yellow blood seeped from the wound in his lower appendages, while the depression marks in his torso bled black ink. Four of his eyes had been crushed.
But he would live.
A stream of stuttered chirps filled his mind as The Shell laughed.
"I know where you go," The Shell said. "But you are too late. My servants will be the last of my consciousness to fail. They are de-braining your precious Species-87A female at this very moment."
Graol ceased all motion.
He'd taken too long.
Ari! Dear maker, no!
He swam through the corridors at full speed.
114
Graol reached the Farm and barreled inside.
He swept past the hulking bodies of the developing Xeviathi, toward the rearmost section where the humans were grown.
A satoroid hovered over Ari's open pod, surrounded by a red cloud.
Graol felt suddenly sick. He slowed, not wanting to provoke any abrupt actions that could cause Ari irreparable harm.
He entered the red cloud near the satoroid, and his gustatory senses detected the tang of blood.
Ari's head came into view.
There was no further harm that could be done to her.
The entire top-half of her head had been sawed off, the brain included. Probes had been stuffed into the exposed gray matter.
The world would never know her sweet smile again. Nor her infectious laugh, her twinkling eyes, her dauntless spirit.
She was dead.
In a fit of rage, Graol wrapped his stinging tentacles and lower appendages around the satoroid. He squeezed. Pain from his wounds shot through his body, but he ignored it, and he just squeezed and squeezed in his madness.
And though his body shook with an angry strength he'd never felt before, he couldn't make a dent in the robot's shell.
He released the satoroid when he realized it wasn't fighting back. Its rotor wasn't even spinning.
The robot had ceased functioning some time ago.
Graol flung the metallic shell away and went to Ari's body. He cradled his tentacles around her.
Ari. My daughter.
The Satori would pay for this.
All of them.
He had promised to destroy a world to save her, and he felt that vow metamorphosing to one of vengeance. A world
would still be destroyed, there was no doubt about that.
He lowered his tentacles so that he could peer into her face one last time.
I'm so sorry Ari, I did my best. I did everything. I crossed worlds for you. I—
Wait.
This wasn't Ari.
He released the body in shock.
The satoroid was lobotomizing the wrong one?
He floated over to the pod just next to it, and saw that Ari remained alive and untouched inside, the viral transformation of her body essentially complete.
If Graol had possessed legs, he would have collapsed. As it was, he just drifted in place, shocked, relieved beyond comprehension.
My daughter. My dear, dearest daughter.
He wrapped his tentacles around the pod and gently squeezed, the closest he could come to a human hug.
Graol topped up the placenta's oxygen supply and then untethered the pod from the mooring. He carried it in his tentacles, holding the pod a small distance from his body so as not to interfere with the undulations of his torso.
Ari was alive. Alive. He could hardly contain his joy. He practically danced through the room, weaving between the other hosts.
But it wasn't over yet.
He left the Farm and emerged into the metallic passageway, making his way back toward Waterlock 21. The Shell was no longer projecting a three-dimensional map into his head at each branch. All Graol received from the A.I. was an incoherent stream of garbage, so he had to proceed from memory.
He passed a satoroid on the way—the thing drifted lifeless in the waters.
Ahead, the outer door of Waterlock 21 remained open.
Good. Graol eagerly jetted through. He was almost there.
Fhavolin waited inside.
115
Graol released Ari's pod and positioned himself protectively in front of it. He'd need all his limbs for this confrontation.
"What have you done, Graol?" Fhavolin transmitted.
He sent nothing back. He flexed his stinging tentacles instead, hoping the threat was clear.
Fhavolin seemed unimpressed. "You will give me the antivirus to the infection you've placed in The Shell."
"There is no antivirus."
Fhavolin floated forward. "Then you will give me the virus source, and help me program an antivirus."
"We don't need The Shell," Graol said. "The ship is still functional. For now."
Fhavolin edged closer still. "For now? The Shell is the embodiment of the Council, and carries out its commands while we sleep. I cannot allow its destruction."
"I no longer have the virus source," Graol said. "The autopilot functions independently of The Shell, and can still take us home."
Fhavolin's tentacles twitched. "You would betray your own race?"
"If it is betrayal," Graol said. "Then why do I feel like a liberator?"
"I know you have the virus source, Graol," Fhavolin said. "Just give it to me. If not for your race, then for me. For the love we once had. Still have." Again, the human word for love.
Graol contracted his torso in the Satori equivalent of a sigh. "You just had me sent for execution. If that's what you call love, you have a strange way of showing it Fhavolin."
Without warning Fhavolin attacked. Graol had only a moment to see the blur of stinging tentacles, and then agony filled his body, worse than anything he had felt from the spike.
Graol swiveled sideways, and unleashed his own barrage of tentacles. It was a satisfying sensation, feeling the slap of his stingers against her epidermis.
Fhavolin flinched, and relaunched her own tentacles.
Graol exhaled the water from his torso, and barely jetted out of range. A few more strikes from those tentacles would leave him adrift—the venom in the nematocysts contained a potent neurotoxin. Her venom was far more powerful than his own, a luxury allowed her because of her position as head of the Council.
His sideways movement proved a mistake, because he'd let Fhavolin get too close to Ari's pod. Before he could stop her, Fhavolin thrust straight for the membrane. Graol managed to sting her a few times, but he was too late, because Fhavolin wrapped her tentacles around the pod and began to squeeze.
Graol raised his tentacles in a gesture of surrender. "Please!"
"Help me or I kill your 87A female," Fhavolin said.
Graol stung her again.
She squeezed tighter. It wouldn't take much to burst Ari's pod. Graol wasn't worried so much about the lack of air—the umbilical would keep her oxygenated—but it was the sudden change in pressure that would kill her.
If he kept stinging Fhavolin, there was a chance he might stop her in time.
There was a greater chance that he would not.
"All right," Graol said. "Stop. I have the antivirus."
Fhavolin studied him with her Upper Lens Eyes. "Give it to me."
"It's in the flyer. Let me transfer it to the outside."
Fhavolin loosened her hold on the pod slightly. "No games."
"None."
Part of his body paralyzed by the attack, Graol floated limply over to the egg-shaped vessel of black steel. He reached the external interface on the far side of the flyer, and initiated access.
The flyer's inner compartment appeared in his head and he steered the internal robotic arms toward the object he sought, and put it in the airlock. He flooded the airlock and released the interface.
He floated over to the opposite side of the flyer and when the outer door spiraled open he retrieved the object, supporting it with one tentacle and wrapping the fingers of another delicately around it.
"Bring it to me," Fhavolin said.
Graol floated over.
Fhavolin's eye-stalks shifted in alarm when she realized what he held. That's not a—
Graol pulled the trigger. An energy bolt tore a hole through Fhavolin's translucent epidermis, cutting through her lowermost radial brain.
Fhavolin remained in place, black liquid oozing from the hole, her tentacles slowly unwrapping from Ari's pod.
Graol himself remained still, too stunned to move. A lucky shot. He'd only meant to warn her off. He had retrieved a spare energy weapon from the flyer's armory, the one designed for the surrogate humans. He hadn't been sure if he'd be able to fire it with his wispy Satori fingers, let alone if the thing would even work underwater.
He was hardly aware as the weapon dropped from his grip. He went to Fhavolin. He still cared for her, despite what he had told her, despite that she was alien to him now.
"I'm so sorry, Fhavolin," he transmitted, even though he knew she couldn't hear him. "It wasn't supposed to end like this. I only needed to disable The Shell. But you threatened Ari. I had to defend her. You understand, don't you?"
But Fhavolin didn't answer. The dead couldn't transmit.
Why did Graol have to be tortured so? Losing everyone who had ever been close to him? And why was it always his fault?
He didn't have time to grieve.
He focused his attention on Ari.
At least he still had his daughter.
He carried Ari's pod over to the flyer and activated the extended airlock. A metal alcove descended from the ceiling, and the corrugated rubber edges formed a seal around the flyer's own airlock. He placed Ari's pod inside, closed the hatch, and initiated the pressure matching. Through the portal he saw the water draining out.
Almost there.
He turned around and began the return trip through the metallic corridors and the artificial sea beyond. Half his body was still paralyzed from Fhavolin's attack, and his movements were slow, halting.
He worried that Fhavolin might have awakened some of the other councilors, but he encountered no one else. She must have been watching his execution from her shipboard den, and would have had to race directly to the flyer to get there before him. She wouldn't have had time to return to the hibernation area, and with The Shell succumbing to the virus there was no way she could have awakened the others remotely.
T
hat was her biggest mistake, he realized—abandoning the others and racing to confront him herself. Then again, she couldn't have known what he planned. Perhaps she thought he had more nefarious ends in mind than merely saving the human daughter he loved. If The Shell had succeeded in lobotomizing his daughter, Fhavolin would have been right.
Finally he reached the upper-class hibernation area and floated among the sleeping Satori. He went to the empty mooring assigned to him, and allowed the fleshy cords to connect.
The three-dimensional interface appeared in his mind, and he began the process of reconnecting to his surrogate.
He paused before completing the final step.
What was he doing? He wasn't human. How could he be human when his real body had tentacles and he breathed acidic water and he communicated with telepathy? The humans were the aliens, not the Satori.
He could still go back on all of this.
He could still introduce the antivirus, restore The Shell, and give up Ari.
Give up Ari?
Graol activated the uplink.
Hoodwink opened his eyes.
Eyes. He had two eyes again. And two arms, and two legs.
He almost couldn't believe it. He flexed his gloved fingers in front of his face. Fingers, not tentacles.
Damn it was good to be human again.
Except that he was freezing.
And his neck and back ached from being slouched against the controls.
And he had a splitting headache.
He lifted his head. He wasn't sure how much time had passed. Satori sensed time differently than human beings. Slower.
His helmet lay on the console beside him. His breath misted, and there were icicles on his mustache. He must have accidentally changed the temperature when The Shell had disconnected him from his surrogate and sent his head crashing into the control pad.
Hoodwink increased the heat and turned around. The airlock's inner door was open. He rose, and stepped inside the extended chamber with some trepidation.
Ari remained asleep inside her pod.
Hoodwink pressed his gloved fingers into the membrane. The pliable surface bent inward, but didn't break. He shoved with both hands now, harder, straining...
