“And anyone whom You wish to die from among us…” She lit the torch and held it over the wick. The wick vanished and the metal began to burn bright white. Her faceplate darkened. Sparks flew around her. In her mind’s eye, she saw through the walls. She saw the swirls of pure oxygen filling the air. The torch would heat the bulb beyond the hatchway, the wick would burn through and ignite the alcohol in the bulb. Still burning, the bulb would float through the room she had filled with inflammable gas, scattering sparks and flame. The room would burn. It would burn brightly and completely and there would be nothing in there but ash.
She could feel Asil behind her. He laid both strong hands on her shoulders. The suit did not separate them.
“What are you doing!” demanded a voice.
“Securing the hatch.” She didn’t turn around. “She’s might be after her husband. This’ll slow her down but good.”
“There’s a fire in there!”
She whirled around with the cutter and caught the intercom square in the center with the flame. Sparks and smoke poured out of it. She cut the flame and twisted back to the door.
Finish it, Beloved, Asil whispered in her ear. Finish it now.
“Let him die in the state of faith.” She touched the torch to the hatchway, sealing the hatch tight, trapping the fire inside the room of horrors.
“Allahu Akbar.” She shut off the torch. God is great.
And so Asil was truly dead. But the monster was still alive. She re-holstered the torch and kicked off the wall toward the stairwell.
A pair of hands grabbed her by the arm and whirled her around. A big, pale man clutched her helmet, trying to get it loose. She shot both hands up, breaking his grip and knocking herself free. She bounced off the railing and kicked back towards him. He swung at her stomach and, even through the suit, the pain doubled Al Shei over. She couldn’t stop herself from drifting upwards.
He launched himself after her, and grabbed at her shoulders, but she twisted part of the way away. They wheeled in the air, grappling with each other. Al Shei got both hands around the man’s waist and pulled him close to her. She shoved her knee into his groin and the both tumbled end-over-end but he was gasping in greater pain than she was and his grip loosened. Al Shei spun him around and wrapped her arm around his throat. “Where’s Curran?” she demanded.
“N-ho. N-o,” he wheezed.
With her free hand, Al Shei fumbled for the patch of fake skin behind the man’s right ear and ripped it open. “Do you feel where my finger is?” She stabbed down hard against the implant. “I’m going to weld that shut. Maybe you won’t survive that, but if you do, you’ll be trapped in this body for the rest of its life. Think about that! You’re going to grow old and die in this injured, Human, shell.”
“Level thirteen,” gasped the stranger. “He’s in his office.”
Al Shei brought her wire cutters down against the back of the stranger’s skull and set his body adrift. Then, she jumped for level thirteen.
Earth felt like a jumble of interfaces with no net in between. Every inch was a new juncture, every path had a thousand branches. Dobbs hesitated, cursing inside. There was a war going on in here somewhere, but where?
“Here!” shouted Brooke, charging down one of the branches.
Dobbs leapt after him and plowed through the shards of packets that had alerted Brooke to the turmoil beyond. A juncture yawned around them, and Dobbs all but fell into it.
“Get out! Get out!” Somebody shoved the message through the jammed pathways. “We got the mains! It’s going to go!”
Strangers rushed past her like a hurricane wind. Dobbs had to fight just to maintain position. She took a chance and stretched herself out, wobbling and weaving under the press of the mad exodus around her. Her reach swayed, bowed and bent nearly double, but no one seemed interested in fighting, just in getting themselves out of there.
The network was dying.
“Dobbs! What are you doing!” Cohen touched her, and felt what she felt. Path after path was collapsing. Even as she touched them, they died, forcing her to recoil. An unbreakable wall of emptiness lurched forward, chopping off the world an inch at a time.
Curran’s talent fled the approach of that emptiness at the speed of light. Dobbs couldn’t move. The net was dying, Earth’s net, the center of everything they called their world, was unravelling and everyone was running away.
“Move, Dobbs!” Curran pulled away. “We’ve got to get out of here!”
Ten more paths died as she touched them. A talent snapped past them, grazing the outside of Dobbs awareness.
“You’re too late! You’re too late!” crowed the talent.
“No!” Dobbs launched herself forward. “No! We are not too late!”
She stretched until she could barely feel her outer self. She swallowed everything she found; packets, command sequences, switching protocols. Their data passed through her and into her understanding. She routed them towards each other through her own processes. She struggled to control the changes inside her as she fought to carry out instructions that were already seconds and minutes old. Her friends grabbed hold of her, holding her together, even as strangers sliced and gouged at her limbs. The void, the wall of nothing, could be encompassed. She stretched out further and found the paths on the other side. The world at her back boiled in confusion and Dobbs screamed and pressed her full self against the on-coming void. Cohen dove inside her, adding his strength to hers, and Brooke followed, and Lonn, and Terrence, and others too fast for her to catch individual patterns. Dobbs wrapped her inner self around them all and felt their weight, their strength, straining along with hers.
And, miraculously, she held. Emptiness pressed against her front and chaos hammered against her back and she held. The others supported her rhythm for rhythm, path for path inside her deepest self. They bolstered her memory, her endurance, her speed and together, they all held.
Slowly, incredibly, the tide of emptiness began to ebb. Dobbs heaved forward, forcing her way into it, damning, shoring, absorbing, stabilizing, bracing as fast as she could reach the splintered, swamped paths. Emptiness melted in front of her and chaos melted behind her, leaving nothing but clean paths, and if the data she brushed against was flotsam left by the storm, at least it was solid and stable. Her awareness swam, dizzy as she stretched herself. Nothing, nothing, nothing but stability. She reached further, still nothing. She was alone. Tides surged inside her now, tugging her in a thousand directions, breaking up her thoughts into tiny, disconnected bundles and scattering them. She couldn’t even…
She couldn’t…
She…
Every board in the Pasadena’s data hold chimed sharply. Lipinski shot bolt upright in his chair where he’d been slumped.
The pattern surges were starting. Dozens of them, huge and complex, all aiming for Port Oberon. They were back. They had done whatever damage they were able to, and now they were trying to get him, all of Dobbs’ black sheep cousins.
Lipinski shoved thoughts of Dobbs as far away as he could. Maybe one day he’d be able to forgive her, but not now. Now he couldn’t even think about her.
He had the necessary commands all laid out. He stabbed down the final period and the desk absorbed the code and shot it out of Pasadena’s main transmitter.
One.
The bounce-copies hit the receiver ‘scopes at Port Oberon.
Two.
The message TRANSACTION CONFIRMED spelled itself across the main board for Station One.