The chamber’s centerpiece, dwarving everything else, was Cif Negelein. He stood on a pedestal of gold, his legs apart, his fists on his hips, his face resolute and noble, his body idealized well past the enhanced muscle tone so prevalent among the indentures of Hammocktown. Every soft line, every imperfection, that rendered the man human had been chiseled away, rubbed out, reimagined, replaced with an aesthetic that went well past the admirable into a realm I could only see as cartoonish. His jaw was an edifice, his forehead a monument. But he was not a man, and not just because he had the dimensions of a god. His eyes were empty, soulless, unloving.
It was impossible not to feel small in the presence of that judgmental gaze.
I circled, facing every mutilated corpse in turn. “Is this what they offered you, for defecting? A canvas? The tools to create what your own talents could not?” My words echoed against the high walls. “Art as a substitute for feeling human?”
The deck here was too spongy for the furious running footfalls to ring out loud. They were audible only as soft, padding thuds. I couldn’t place the exact location, but I knew they came from someplace behind me. But even as I whirled, expecting to see hate-filled eyes staring centimeters from my own, the footfalls faded, disappearing somewhere behind a simulacrum of Mo Lassiter.
I charged into the image, experiencing a queasy flash of blindness at the moment of contact, emerging on the other side to confront a flicker of a human shadow racing along the curved wall. I followed it, not caring about stealth or safety anymore, caring only about seeing this through to the end.
The vague blue light spilling from another hole in the wall flickered, as someone passing through that doorway eclipsed whatever lay on the other side.
I was roaring by the time I charged through it.
But even as I passed through the portal I knew that it had been a mistake, because this time the Heckler was waiting in ambush. This time something hard and blunt and heavy slammed down against the top of my head with enough force to drive me to the deck. The impact came as a burst of light arriving at the same moment as a wave of darkness and a single thought, pure and alone and disconnected from anything else: I’m dead. But then my knees buckled and I started to fall and I knew that if I fell over I would be struck again, so I directed what strength I had to my legs and transformed the forward movement from a fall into an uncontrolled headlong run. I was still blinded by the pain when I collided with the opposite wall, but I had enough mind left to know that to stand even a chance in hell of surviving I had to roll and face whatever had come for me.
Instead I caught a glimpse of a human form dropping out of sight.
The world grayed before I understood what had happened. I was alone, in a narrower chamber with shifting walls and an egg-shaped portal in the floor. The blow to the back of the head had been meant to knock me into it. Rolling with it had driven me over the gap without any suspicion that the gap existed.
I ran a hand over the knot of pain in the back of my head, and brought it back slick with blood. The sight sickened me, but I’d been hurt worse. I staggered over and looked down, into the hole.
Whatever existed down there swallowed all light. A light breeze, blowing upward and cooling my face, felt so similar to the atmospheric conditions on the Uppergrowth that for a moment I paled, thinking that if I dropped on through I’d just pass on through, into the Habitat. The only indication that it wasn’t was another of those soft shuffling noises, just a few feet below…and the conviction, certain as my own name, that once I dropped down into that place, there would no longer be any place for either the Heckler, or me, to retreat.
I reminded myself that the Heckler had a weapon, familiarity with the environment, and enough malice for both of us, and ignored the internal voice that tried to tell me I had nothing.
Because I had more than nothing.
I had a reason to stay alive.
I looked down into the darkness, and thought I saw a dull, diffuse reflection maybe three meters below me. If it was not much farther away than that, it would serve, about as well as anything could, as something to land on. But it was a drop. Even if I didn’t break my legs, I could stun myself long enough to hand myself over to another blow on the head, or two.
But I hadn’t heard a thud when the Heckler went through.
Maybe it was safe.
Maybe not.
But given that there was choice, there was no point in debating it.
I placed my palms against the deck and lowered my legs into the opening, feeling any number of panicky moments between committing to the descent and the eternity I spent hanging on to the edge by my fingertips, trying to make up my mind.
Then I let go.
For less than a heartbeat I knew I’d just made a horrible mistake.
Then the sharp but welcome pain of impact reverberated all the way from the soles of my feet to the vertebrae in my neck. My legs buckled. My knees took the secondary impact, hitting a hard, cool surface unlike any I’d encountered on this station. My outstretched palms landed a second later, feeling a breeze that seemed to blow straight through this floor. I continued to fall, but by the time I felt the last of the impact it arrived as no worse than a slap on the cheek.
Aside from my own involuntary gasps, none of this made any noise.
I slammed the floor with my palm. This impact was silent. The floor was solid enough, even if dotted here and there with the pinprick openings admitting the most odd, upward breeze. But the floor itself made no sound.
A hiss screen of some kind? I risked an experiment. “Hello?”
Loud and clear.
Sound was possible here. I just wouldn’t hear footfalls anymore; not even muffled ones, making this a less than desirable arena for any fight in the dark, let alone one with an opponent who knew the ground well.
The voice of the rogue intelligences whispered in my ear. ((again * join us and we’ll stop this now))
Not wanting to give away my position, I subvocalized my answer. Why would I do that?
((because we are not monsters * we are only fighting for our lives * and now, of all times, you must be able to empathize with the sheer instinct for survival))
I felt my lips curl in a grin.
Not good enough.
Had I just heard someone gasp, a few meters ahead of me?
In this near silence, it was as telltale as an explosion. The Heckler had been hoarding breath. But a minute or two of holding air inside your lungs makes that sudden gasp, at the end of it, just a little more audible. Normal breath is harder to pick up, more difficult to track.
Another sound, not far away: the rustle of the Heckler’s clothes.
((suicide for them is genocide for us))
I don’t have the time to talk to you.
The sounds ahead of me came not with the metronomic regularity of a machine, but with the clear hesitancy of something afraid.
I rose to my feet, hating the audible creak of my knees and downright deafening rustling of my own clothes. The air was cool and clean, and despite my preference for artificial environments, a little too filtered for my tastes. But there was something else in it too: the tang of human perspiration.
My own was part of it. I’d popped a serious sweat since starting this hunt.
But not all of it came from me.
Another rustle: so subliminal that the Heckler must have been very close for me to hear it. I guessed five meters. Within five meters, in some direction: behind me, ahead of me, off to one side, whatever.