Moving against prevailing motion, her blood flowed backwards, coating her arm with a slick layer of fluid. It wrapped around her arm like a cocoon, warm and gelatinous; Mitsuru could feel it crawl across her skin, hardening, becoming an exoskeleton. Her body twisted under the pressure of the outside forces, fighting momentum. As she passed by the target in a barely controlled dive, she twisted and lashed out with her knife hand, her damaged arm guided by the stiffened strands of blood like puppet strings. Her heart sang as the blade passed his guard, cutting smoothly through the target’s gun arm, severing it just below the elbow.
Mitsuru forced more power through her body, then, wincing at pain comingled with a base ecstasy, as she forced herself to land on her feet. Her right shoulder complained for a moment, then gave way to momentum, dislocating at a troubling angle. Her right arm hung useless at her side as she found her balance again. She tumbled into the man, her left arm and her legs wrapping around him, dragging him down to the ground with her, pulling his chin up and away from his throat.
And then, reflected in the glass of the shop windows, there was the look. The thing she lived for. His eyes went wide for a moment, with shock, when he realized that he had failed to kill Mitsuru, to defend himself. That he would die. That there was nothing he could do, by force or by pleading, to change the outcome. Mitsuru could see it in his eyes — surprise, fear, outrage, and buried somewhere beneath, a profound regret.
She wondered, in the second before she dragged the knife across his throat, which the regret was for — a lover, a child? It didn’t matter.
The knife was truly a marvelous blade. His throat offered no resistance, a single thread of blood trailing behind the tip, his jugular exploding in a warm spray, drenching Mitsuru’s face and chest in cloying stickiness.
She shook the blood from the blade with a flick of her wrist, and then turned to look behind her. The Isolation Protocol was still active. In the last few seconds, she realized belatedly, she had lost her link to Alistair. Worse, she seemed to have company.
There were at least half a dozen of them, wrapped in concealment protocols so powerful that she had not noticed them until they were within a block of her. They were nothing but grey blurs to her visually, but their Etheric signatures were massive. Her implant crunched numbers, and informed her helpfully that they were very probably hostiles, and that she could do little to defend herself from them.
Blood was pouring from her arm, mangled at the bicep and separated at the shoulder, hanging useless. She’d had reserves of power, but her Black Protocol had cost her more than she had anticipated.
Laughing, Mitsuru assumed the most fundamental of the one-handed fighting stances that Michael had taught her, the tip of the knife pointed toward the rapidly advancing figures, her back foot planted sideways, prepared not to give an inch before dying. Her uplink churned out numbers, scenarios, strategies, but she rejected them all.
There was no way for her to survive. But as she prepared her final protocol, Mitsuru promised herself that they would not, either. After the carnal exultation of the wound and the killing, she felt a strange calm. She reached toward the Black Door in her mind, still warped and complaining from her earlier endeavors. She threw herself at the threads that held the door closed, drawing up power from within, a tidal force, up from her blood, up from inside her. She felt the familiar pinpricks of pain and pleasure as her mind tried to disintegrate under the pressure.
Abort!
The command was delivered so powerfully that she could only obey in shock, her vision blurred and her head filled with cotton. For a moment, she thought the world had gone off kilter, the ground beneath her feet collapsing from the force of the broken protocol.
Then she realized that Alistair had somehow stepped behind her, without her noticing. He swept her up in his arms and ran on. He’d telepathically erased himself from the minds of everyone in the area, doubtless, even her. He held her effortlessly in his arms, his eyes sad and angry and relieved all at the same time as he looked down at her.
“Mitzi,” he said, breathing hard. “We are out.”
It was only then that noticed that not all of the blood was hers, and how drained Alistair actually was. She wondered what had happened.
Alistair dropped to his knees, cradling Mitsuru with one arm, his other hand palm down on the head of the target’s corpse. Then Mitsuru felt the terrible dislocation of an apport, but she had no time to wonder where Alistair found the strength, as they hit the Ether like a wall, and her consciousness disintegrated against it.
Eleven
Alex lay on his bed, exhausted, and tried to wrap his mind around the idea — his bed, his room, his school. That wasn’t really sinking in.
Michael had led him around the campus for hours, but he hadn’t seen anything like the whole campus. He didn’t understand how the Academy could be so big, and yet he’d never heard of it — but then again, why would he? Up until a few days ago, he had only been dimly aware that there was more to the world than rural California.
He’d seen a handful of students — most were home, Michael had explained, finishing out a break that would end tomorrow. He’d been surprised by the range of ages — apparently the Academy taught everything from kindergarten through college, or some approximation of it. Alex still didn’t have a clear idea what was going on.
Only part of what he’d seen looked like a school, and that bothered Alex. Parts of it looked more like a boot camp. There was even a firing range in the basement of the science building, which Michael had proudly described as state of the art, as if to reassure him.
The clothes, too; that had been weird. Michael had taken him by the commissary, and after a few private words with the staff, a flustered young woman had come out to take his measurements. She was both hurried and excessively polite, and that had made Alex tremendously nervous. He’d left the building with a couple new uniforms in his actual size, some workout clothes, and several pairs of fatigues. He was too tired to ask questions by that point, something that Michael must have noticed, as he had led him directly to his dorm.
It was a mixed dorm, Michael explained, with alternating floors of girls and boys. The building was one of the older ones, and therefore close to the center of campus, which would allow him to get to class more easily, while he was still learning his way around the grounds. Michael had led him to the fourth floor, down a silent, brightly lit hallway, and then to his door.
Alex was surprised that he had merited a single room — it was small, but he’d lived in smaller spaces. The room was nice enough, and Alex was surprised to find that the wardrobe had already been filled — someone had apparently returned to the trailer, and collected his clothes and few belongings. When he saw his MP3 player sitting on the old writing desk in the corner, he was so overwhelmed he almost cried. Michael showed him where the bathrooms were, gave him the password for the wireless network, handed him a plastic swipe key for the door, and then left, bidding Alex a good night.
He’d expected to fall asleep immediately, given all that had happened that day, but the moment he lay down he felt restless, unnerved somehow. The dorms were nicer than any he’d ever seen — wood paneled walls, clean beige carpeting, and lots of windows — but it was, in the end, institutional living, and that didn’t have positive associations for Alex.
He tossed aside the covers of his newly acquired double bed, and walked over to the laptop that had been thoughtfully provided. He wasn’t sure what had happened to his old one, back at the trailer, but he wasn’t actually worried — he hadn’t kept anything important on it, because he didn’t have anything important to keep. Anyway this one was obviously quite a bit better than his ancient machine, a silver Sony with an LED lit keyboard. He plugged in the password Michael had given him, and accessed the Internet.