I hadn’t imagined them that way.
Beyond simple words or concepts, the Enemy spidered along the cave walls, tens, dozens, fifteens of them, a flickering, sub-screaming mass of writhing silverblack silverthought.
Each of West’s shiver blasts, accompanied along its trajectory with a stream of profanity that only he could seem to muster with such aplomb during combat situations, struck home on its intended Enemy target. The intruding Judas timeline patterns shattered and were re-absorbed into the Enemy mind-essence.
More came.
Bent physics fucked my mind for an instant before realization, but I tore myself from the big picture and focused on smelling the roses instead: I lifted Hope from her crumple on the ground and snapped the emergency exit pin on my chestplate. I did the same to Hope’s. I reached down to grab hold of Task’s arm.
“West! We’re out!”
A few more kills, a dozen more new arrivals, the cave ceiling cracking and collapsing into dust and chunks. He walked backward, dodging silver tendrils, almost to us—
He tripped.
The uneven ground met his bottom and back with a rough slap, but still he fired, the shiver blasts echoing and rupturing rogue code from the ME. He slid back, kicking with his feet, trying to get as close to us as he could before the jog jerked us back into nowhere.
He’d almost reached us when a shot went wide, an Enemy got too close, a silver tendril snaked and severed his right arm from the elbow down.
The shiver fired once upon impact with the ground, taking out the Enemy’s legs. It snapped to grid.
West dropped his other shiver and tore the emergency exit release from his chest. When he was within reach, I helped him into what was supposed to be our exit bubble.
It wasn’t there.
I knew something was wrong. There was no tickle, no copper anticipation of jog or exit, no visible shimmer.
I was covered in other people’s blood.
The Enemy patterns stopped their advance. Silver snakes paused.
A fuzz of static, a shared mind, orders from beyond. I could seetastehear them speak as one: that horrible One, the Enemy mind-essence, that which had kept me awake for years as I’d attempted to unravel its intricacies, its secrets and horrors.
It spoke.
The voice was ancient. The magenta bib overalls looked brand-new.
Click.
She walked lazily around the still Enemy patterns, each leg she passed a veritable tree trunk in comparison to her five-year-old form. As she passed each pattern, the silverblack rippled, reached, retreated from her purity.
Maire wasn’t smiling.
“Ah, Author. You think too much.” She sat on the floor before the four where their exit bubble should have been. Her raven curls bounced and settled. “Let’s talk.”
The Enemy didn’t move.
Paul ignored the child for a moment, checked Benton’s vitals from her plate. She was stable. West held his cauterized stump with his good arm. “I’m fine,” to the silent question in Paul’s gaze.
“I’ve been watching you, Paulywog.” Her voice was playful, singsong. “Nice job with the bear. I never would have guessed that he was under the couch.”
“Thanks. It was a shining moment in literature.”
“So what should we do now? I could have my shiny dead soldiers back there kill all of you right now. That’d be the easiest solution.”
“I die, you die.”
“Unfortunate, that. You shouldn’t have written me so well.”
“You weren’t meant to be a main character.”
“Good thing I was, though. Brought credibility to an otherwise-sappy space soap.”
“I should’ve deleted you.”
“You never did like kids.” Her finger dragged through the slush of mixed blood on the floor. She stuck the tip in her mouth and smiled. Dimples. “How’s Judith?”
“You won’t find her.”
“I will.” She sculpted the child’s face into a scowl. “We will.” An adult gesture, that: the slight tilt backward of her head, indicating the Enemy patterns.
“A simple keystroke. You would never have happened.”
“Too late. I’m coming. I’m here. We’re here, and we’ll find her.” Maire’s eyes sparked silver.
Paul’s eyes sparked nothing in the mud of his gaze.
“This concept of ‘Delta Point’ as you so lovingly call it.. It’s—”
The space where her hearts had once been erupted with white
and I saw the Enemy patterns shatter one by one. All was fire and scream and shiver as
Alina shifted her weapon from where the girl had been and started taking out the Black. The cave crawled. Her troops surged forward, confident with the courage that new-Awake gives them. The Black patterns destabilized, crumbled, sunk into the rock of the ground, but the Judith forces didn’t let them get far; Alina tight-beamed orders up to Samayel, and he doused the hotzone with phased tethers, securing their codes in that When.
Alina charged through the still-dissembling patterns, throwing a few fuck-you shots into a few black skulls as they melted. She saw the author and his glorified bodyguard West scramble to their feet as they realized what was going on, that they were being rescued.
Alina’s kids cleaned up the cave in no time.
Benton wasn’t moving. Next to her, Task lay dying. West tried to hold his blood in.
“Alina!”
It was the first time Paul had said her name. She felt something.
“Judith ME picked up your exit request before the Enemy blocked the signal. They sent us in. Sam’s waiting above to take you back.”
“Good. We have serious wounded. Task’s critical, Benton—”
“Paul?”
He turned to meet West’s gaze.
“She’s—Hope’s—”
“No” and he fell to the floor, pulled off the girl’s helmet, placed his hand over her chestplate. He frantically tried to revive her, activating the shield suit’s recharge system, and when that didn’t work, he leaned over her and fisted his weight down into her chest. He stopped to check her breath, her pulse.
West gently placed his remaining hand on Paul’s shoulder. It fell, rose to the rhythm of the attempt to start her heart.
“Stop it, Paul.”
He kept going.
“Paul—”
The author threw West back and almost succeeded in tumbling the man over. West reached forward and one-armed Paul off of Benton.
“She’s dead.”
These systems of desire and ritual, silver lies and betrayaclass="underline" what love could breathe in a world of such uncertainty and echo, what morning whisper or crawling dawn could ever replace that scent, that taste, that perfect moment in which we look into eyes not our own and realize that they are?
Paul again shrugged off West’s hand, walked past Alina and her troops as he studied the ground in front of him. As he passed Alina, he looked up, and in those eyes, she knew the fragments of him.
Alina thought she felt something in that moment.
WIND[S]WEPT
Flatline.
affliction had been isolated and the source identified, it was far too late for the forward combat crews, who had been exposed to fatal levels of the alien metal as they
Do you know of blood? Of wind? Of loss, of ruin?
to the waft of black, bitter coffee and she followed them into the empty streets, finally moon-lit, finally casting aside the day’s embrace of mist and fog, the earlier downpour retreating into the
sound of their footsteps, his ancient black boots, her new black boots, a drift of laughter and conversation. She had hesitated before the cafe, finally allowing the door to swing shut to the bell’s call. The jingle brought the proprietress’s thin gaze from an emptying pack of Marlboros to the door. The jangle brought her customer’s thin gaze to his wife’s. Eyes locked as the bell settled; they would make love that