Jude lunging at Riley.
Riley grabbing the electric pulsegun from its holster.
Riley saying, “I’m sorry.” Pulling the trigger.
Jude screaming in rage.
Jude screaming in pain.
Jude on the ground, body twitching.
Body still.
“Get the orgs out,” Riley told me, kneeling at Jude’s body, looking like a frightened child. “We’ll blow the lab and get out of here before—”
A siren cut through the night.
Auden’s hand was in his pocket.
Riley seized the gun from Jude’s limp grip and held it pointed at Auden. “Hands up!” he shouted.
Auden gave us a faint smile. “Too late,” he said, holding out his ViM. “The Brotherhood knows you’re here. This is over.”
“You fucking idiot!” Riley growled.
“Now what?” I shouted over the alarm.
“Make the call!” Riley shouted back.
But it was simpler than that—I just skimmed a finger across my nanoViM, linking in and sending the message, all in one motion. Call-me-Ben and the BioMax reinforcements were waiting for my signal. I’d told call-me-Ben we were going to blow something up. I’d told him orgs were going to die. And I’d told him if he acted quickly, did his job right, and kept the operation in house with BioMax secops whose discretion he could trust, he might learn something about the Synapsis Corp-Town attack that could change everything.
I just hadn’t told him the where and the when, and thanks to Jude’s GPS jamming patch, he had no way of knowing.
Until now.
BioMax had been unwilling to stage a rescue operation, but I’d guessed they would be willing to do anything to protect their image, which had taken a huge blow after Synapsis. And Ben had proved me right, eager to strike a deal that would prevent his precious mechs from committing a mass murder that the public would never forgive and for which, I reminded him, BioMax could ultimately be held to blame. Maybe they were partly to blame—but I was gambling on the chance that, whatever role BioMax may have played in all this, Ben wasn’t a part of it.
He couldn’t be trusted to be on our side, but he would get us away from the Brotherhood, one way or another. If he showed up in time.
“Get him inside!” Riley shouted, forcing Auden at gunpoint toward the laboratory.
He didn’t have to explain. Now that the Brotherhood knew we were here, we had two options: Blow the lab with ourselves inside. Or barricade ourselves inside the hangar with Auden as a hostage, keeping ourselves safe until BioMax arrived.
If call-me-Ben was true to his word.
And if Savona and his people really cared enough about Auden to keep him alive.
A river of people streamed out, screaming, as Riley held a gun to Auden’s left temple and shouted over the chaos, urging them to run if they wanted their precious martyr to live. I grabbed Jude’s wrist, struggling to drag his body into the hangar, but it was heavy, too heavy. Riley shoved the gun at me, and I trained it on Auden. They should be shaking, I thought, staring at my hands.
But they didn’t do that anymore.
I expected Auden to lunge at me again, take advantage of the chaos to escape and leave us at the Brotherhood’s mercy, but he kept his head down and trudged through the snow as I pressed the muzzle to the back of his neck, safety on, knowing that if I was tested, I’d drop the weapon and let him go. Knowing that was the only thing that kept me moving forward, one foot in front of the other.
Riley hoisted Jude’s body off the ground and cradled it in his arms, Jude’s head resting on his chest, Jude’s eyes open and sightless. And somehow we made it inside the laboratory, safe behind a locked door and shaded windows, alone with the damaged mechs, with Jude’s still body, alone with Auden.
“Tell them to leave us alone if they want you to stay alive,” Riley ordered Auden. We had retreated to the far corner of the hangar, putting as much space between us and the entrance as we could, just in case.
With a trembling finger, Auden activated his ViM and spoke into it. “They want me to say they’ll kill me if you move on them. Just wait for my signal. And tell Savona—”
Riley snatched the ViM out of his hands and threw it across the room. “Enough.” He forced Auden down into a chair and sent me on a hunt for something that could be used to tie him up. There was a roll of duct tape in one of the cabinets. I tossed it to Riley. With a cool competency, Riley bound Auden’s wrists behind his back, then lashed him to the chair at his waist and ankles.
“Do you have to?” I VM’d. I knew how it felt to be bound. Riley didn’t answer, just kept going until the job was done. It scared me, how good he was, his movements sure and efficient, his expression determined and free of doubt. It scared me most because this was still, plainly, the Riley I knew, not some alien part of himself that he’d kept hidden from me. This was a strength, a ruthlessness that had been beneath the surface all along. But I understood now that I’d always known it was there.
Jude lay on the floor beside them, faceup, arms splayed.
And when Auden was secured, Riley stood over Jude’s body, hands clenched into fists, nothing left to do but wait. I touched his shoulder lightly. “I can’t believe I did it,” he whispered.
“You had no choice,” I reminded him.
“There’s always a choice,” Riley said. “I was supposed to choose him.”
He turned away from me. “I’m going to take a look around,” he said, voice rough. “Keep an eye on him and”—he nodded at the four gurneys—“them.”
“Okay.”
The hangar had been cleared of anything left over from its aeronautic days, and much of it was still empty. The walls were lined with screens and the far side of the room was littered with unidentifiable spare parts and long, empty tables—waiting for more experimental subjects to fill them up?
Only a few feet away from us, four mechs lay prostrate on four gurneys, surrounded by unwieldy equipment I recognized from my early days in the BioMax rehab unit, when I’d lain in a hospital bed, frozen, wires like tentacles hooking me to the machines, their sensors feeding into my exposed brain. Ani’s gurney was the closest, and as I drew near, I could hear her murmuring something. A ceaseless string of incomprehensible babble, like a baby testing its tongue. Her head was shaved, tangles of wires connected to a series of monitors disappearing into her open skull. I brushed the back of my hand against her cheek. Her eyes were open, staring past me. And her lips kept moving, spilling out the stream of whispered nonsense syllables.
“How could you do this to yourself?” I murmured. Then forced myself to look past her to Sloane, to Ty, to Brahm, the three of them in the same or worse condition. The fingers of Sloane’s right hand twitched uncontrollably. The skin on Brahm’s chest had been flayed, the wiring left exposed. His eyes roamed wildly, randomly, skidding from one side to the other, pupils contracting to a point, then periodically expanding in a flush of black that flooded his irises. Ty just moaned. At least her eyes were closed. “How could you do this to them?”
“What’s wrong with them?” Auden asked, straining to see.
“You tell us,” I said. “You did it. You and your Brothers.”
“I don’t know anything about this,” Auden said. “Tonight was the first I even heard about this place.”
“Right.”
“I was on my way here to find out what was going on. I never thought…” Auden scowled. “Believe whatever you want.”