A pulse. She had a pulse.
Bye Jerry. Bye Pat. Bye again…
There were voices. There was light, somewhere. Everywhere.
Bye, Alyx. Oh God, I'm so sorry. Alyx.
"…bye, world."
But that voice had come from outside her head.
She opened her eyes.
"You know I'm serious," Desjardins was saying.
Somehow Ken Lubin was still on his feet, listing to port. He stood just beyond the pool of light. Achilles Desjardins stood within it. They confronted each other from opposite sides of a waist-high workstation.
Lubin must have pulled her out of the neuroinduction field. He'd saved her life again. Not bad for a blind psychopath.Now he stood staring sightlessly into the face of his enemy, his hand extended. Probably feeling out the edge of the field.
"Dedicated little bitch, I have to admit," Desjardins said. "Willing to sacrifice a handful of people she actually knows for a planetful of people she doesn't. I thought she was way too human to be so rational." He shook his head. "But the whole point is kind of lost if the world blows up anyway, no? I mean, all those runaways on the Ridge are about to die in—oh, sorry, who've just died—and for what? The only thing that'll give their deaths any meaning at all is if you turn around and walk away."
They're gone, Clarke thought. I killed them all…
"You know how many battellites are still wobbling around up there, Ken. And you know I'm good enough to have got into at least a few of 'em. Not to mention all the repositories of chemical and biological weapons kicking around groundside after a hundred years of R&D. All those tripwires run right through my left ventricle, buddy. Lenie should thank the spirit of motherfucking entropy that she didn't kill me, or the heavens would be raining fire and brimstone by now."
Clarke tried to move. Her muscles buzzed, hung over. She could barely lift her arm. Not the usual med-cubby field by a long shot. This one had been cranked to quell riots. This one was industrial.
Still Lubin didn't speak. He managed a controlled stagger to the left, his arm still extended.
"Channels seven through nineteen," Desjardins told him. "Look for yourself. See the kill switches? See where they lead? I've had five years to set this up, Ken. You kill me, you kill billions."
"I— expect you'll find a number of those tripwires are no longer connected." Lubin's voice was thin and strained.
"What, your pack-hunting Lenies? They can't get into the lines until the lines open. And even then, so what? They're her, Ken. They're concentrated essence of Lenie Clarke at the absolute peak of her game. They get their teeth into a tripwire, you think for a second they won't pull it themselves?"
Lubin cocked his head slightly, as if taking note of some interesting sound.
"It's still a good deal, Ken. Take it. You'd have a hard time killing me anyway. I mean, I know what a tough hombre you are, but your motor nerves short out just the same as anyone else's. And not to put too fine a point on it, but you're blind."
Realization stabbed Clarke like an icicle: Achilles, you idiot, don't you know what you're doing? Haven't you read his file?
Lubin was speaking: "So why deal in the first place?"
"Because you are a tough hombre. You could probably hunt me down by smell if it came to that, and even though you're having a really off day I'd just as soon not take the chance."
You're talking to Ken Lubin, she raged silently, trapped in her own dead flesh. Do you actually think you're threateninghim?
"So we disappear, you disappear, the world relaxes." Lubin wavered in and out of focus. "Until someone else kills you."
Clarke tried to speak. All she could force out was a moan, barely audible even to herself.
It's not a threat at all—
"You disappear," Desjardins said. "Lenie's mine. Saved her special."
It's an inducement…
"You're proceeding from a false premise," Lubin pointed out.
"Yeah? What premise is that?"
"That I give a shit."
Clarke caught a glimpse of muscles bunching in Lubin's left leg, of a sudden sodden pulse of fresh blood coursing down his right. Suddenly he was airborne, hurtling through the field and overtop the barrier from an impossible standing start. He rammed into Desjardins like an avalanche, pure inertia; they toppled out of sight behind the console, to the sound of bodies and plastic in collision.
A moment's silence.
She lay there, tingling and paralyzed, and wondered who to root for. If Lubin's momentum hadn't carried him completely through the field he'd be dying now, with no one to pull him to safety. Even if he'd made it across, he'd still be helpless for a while. Desjardins might have a chance, if the collision hadn't stunned him.
Achilles, you murderer. You psychopath, you genocidal maniac. You foul vicious monster. You're worse than I am. There's no hell deep enough for you.
Get out of there. Please. Before he kills you.
Something gurgled. Clarke heard the faint scratching of fingernails on plastic or metal. A meaty thud, like someone slinging a dead fish against the deck—or the flopping of a limb, stunned in transit, struggling back to life. A brief scuffling sound.
Ken. Don't do it.
She gathered all her strength into a single, desperate cry: "No." It came out barely whispered.
On the far side of the barricade, a wet snapping pop. Then nothing at all.
Oh God, Ken. Don't you know what you've done?
Of course you know. You've always known. We could've saved it, we could have made things right, but they were right about you. Pat was right. Alyx was right. You monster. You monster. You wasted it all.
God damn you.
She stared up at the ceiling, tears leaking around her eyecaps, and waited for the world to end.
She could almost move again, if only she could think of a reason to. She rolled onto her side. He sat cross-legged on the floor beside her, his bloody face impenetrable. He looked like some carved and primitive idol, awash in human sacrifice.
"How long?" she rasped.
"Long?"
"Or has it started already? Are the claves on fire? Are the bombs falling? Is it enough for you, are you fucking hard yet?"
"Oh. That." Lubin shrugged. "He was bluffing."
"What?" She struggled up on her elbows. "But—the tripwires, the kill-switches—he showed you…"
"Props."
"You saw through them?"
"No. They were quite convincing."
"Then how—"
"It didn't make sense that he'd do it."
"Ken, he destroyed Atlant—" A sudden, impossible ray of hope: "Unless that was a bluff too?…"
"No," Lubin said quietly.
She sank back. Let me wake up from this, she prayed.
"He destroyed Atlantis because he had another deterrent to fall back on. Making good on the smaller threat increased the credibility of the larger one." The man without a conscience shrugged. "But once you're dead, deterrence has already failed. There's no point in acting on a threat when it can't possibly achieve your goal."
"He could have, easily. I would have."
"You're vindictive. Desjardins wasn't. He was mainly interested in self-gratification." Lubin smiled faintly. "That was unusually enlightened of him, actually. Most people are hardwired for revenge. Perhaps Spartacus freed him of that too."
"But he could have done it."
"It wouldn't have been a credible threat otherwise."