Mitsuru shrieked as she turned toward them, all reason gone from her red eyes, while Alice Gallow stumbled to her feet, still clutching her head.
“Fuck this,” Chris snarled. “Let Alice Gallow deal with it. Drake, get us out of here. Start stage two, now.”
“About time,” Drake said, raising one tattooed arm. He brought it down like a conductor, and then there was no one where there had been four.
Alice stared at the spot unsteadily for a moment, waiting for her vision to realign, then turned and regarded Mitsuru, advancing on her surrounded by a tempest of black blood filigree, her eyes livid red, her delicate features twisted and feral.
“Mitzi? I mean, Mitsuru?” Alice tried hopefully, wondering if that Leigh bitch had actually killed her, and she was just too dumb to realize it. “You wanna tone it down a bit?”
Alice wasn’t surprised that it didn’t work, but she didn’t think she could be blamed for trying, what with her head in the process of falling off.
“Hey, Xia?” Alice called out to the motionless figure embedded partway in the wall. “Any chance that you’re still alive?”
Still nothing. Mitsuru came forward, the first of the black tendrils splashing against the strip of concrete that separated them, consuming everything it touched.
“Gaul?” Alice tried, not sure if she was talking or thinking. Her head felt sick and fat, like a rotten jack-o-lantern, one side so badly caved in she was afraid to touch it. “Mitzi is about to kill me. Little help?”
Mitsuru froze and howled, caught in a bubble of rainbow-tinted, oil slick light emanating from the front of her brain, where her implant rested.
“Like that, for example,” Alice said gratefully, stumbling over to where Mitsuru lay. Alice had meant to check on her, but all she managed was to fall over in her vicinity. “That will work.”
Gaul was staring. He had been staring since he had arrived here, called to the abandoned bulk of his own Analytics building, the hallways littered with dozens of dead bodies, summoned by perhaps the last person that he would have suspected.
“Be careful,” Eerie said, taking off her headset and putting it down next to the laptop. “When Mitsuru wakes up, she’s going to be able to operate her Black Protocol at will.”
“You are going to have to explain some things to me,” Gaul said, looking quizzically at the girl in front of him, as if she reminded him strongly of someone whose name who could not quite recall. “I think, after all this time, that you owe me an explanation, Eerie. How long have you been able to do these things? Who are you, really?”
“It’s true that I am not myself right now,” she said, nodding gravely. “But I have to go.”
“What do you mean?” Gaul demanded, barely suppressing the urge to shake her. “You activated the most treacherous and forbidden protocol I can imagine in one of my Auditors, over the Etheric Network. Then you turned it off like a light switch. That was the Ecofage Protocol, wasn’t it? Self-replicating nanites that devour the surrounding environment? The last time she used that protocol, the Operator with her died, and Mitsuru was hobbled as a result. I have watched over you since you were a child, and I feel a certain investment in your future. Why have you kept all of this from me?”
“Director, you are right,” Eerie agreed. “You should get an explanation. But another time. I need to be somewhere else, and you have other things to worry about. You have to protect the Source Well. You know that already. They are coming for it. Can’t you feel it? Your old ghosts, Director, coming back to haunt you.”
“What?” Gaul demanded, taking the girl by the shoulders and holding her there, forcing himself to be gentle. “What are you saying?”
Eerie sighed and looked at him as if he was stupid. It was an intensely surreal experience, like watching a video of a friend with an actor overdubbing their voice with a profoundly different one. Gaul had all sorts of nasty ideas occur to him, but he also felt inclined to doubt them; after all, Eerie was the first changeling raised entirely amongst humans, and the Fey themselves were such an unknown commodity that even he hadn’t met one before. No one knew how Eerie would change and evolve as she aged.
“There is someone else who needs my help,” Eerie said patiently. “And you have other things to deal with. They are already inside the Academy, you know?”
“Don’t worry,” Gaul snapped, letting go of her. “It’s being dealt with. What concerns me, Eerie, is you. I’ve never seen you like this before, and I had no idea you could do these things. Are you the same girl who grew up here?”
“Mostly,” Eerie hummed, nodding. “Whoever I am, I still like you, Director. I hope you live through this. If I do, too, you can ask me again. I won’t have the answers you’re looking for, though. I don’t know myself.”
Gaul looked at her for a long time with his faded red eyes.
“Director,” she said softly, urgently. “I have to go. Please.”
“Then go,” Gaul said, shrugging. “But, Eerie — this discussion is in no way finished.”
“Let’s hope not,” Eerie said pleasantly, heading for the door.
24
“I hate your life,” Katya said, crouched down in the brush beside him. “I would like to make that clear.”
“I hear you,” Alex said, nodding.
“I’m not too fond of your attitude this evening, either.”
“Can’t say I blame you,” Alex said, shrugging, watching the road a hundred meters distant; it was empty, for the most part, or rather, nothing was moving. The stone strip was dotted with distant shapes that could only be bodies. He hoped it wasn’t anyone he knew. He tried very hard not to worry about Eerie. “I wouldn’t call this a good mood.”
Katya was silent for a while. Alex enjoyed it as best he could. He wished, he really wished, that he had his headphones.
“Look, I liked Emily, all right? She was fun, and a good cook, and whatever,” Katya said, looking like it embarrassed her. “And you should understand that your indecision played a role in this situation, and that you have some things to own up for. But if you’re holding yourself responsible for what happened to Emily, you need to stop. She was a big girl. She did that shit to herself.”
“I’m trying not to think about that right now.”
“I know — and you’re going to screw everything up because of it. You need to clear your mind, so you can focus on what we are about to do. You can’t do that with the big black cloud you got over your head right now. Let it go, Alex. You aren’t responsible for her actions, and your guilt is gonna get both of us killed.”
“Wow,” Alex muttered. “That’s a sympathetic response.”
“What, I’m supposed to be impressed by your compassion? Alex, she’s just someone you fucked. If you are planning on taking responsibility for the actions of every single person you sleep with, you had better consider celibacy.”
“Look, we have to get the medical wing,” Alex said darkly. “As for the little pep talk, you can skip it. I’m not worrying about Emily at all. I’m worried about finishing this stupid job so that I can go find Eerie. The sooner we get this done, the sooner I can move on to that. So, are we doing this, or what?”
Katya looked away and swore under her breath.
“Fine, tough guy,” she said, finally, shrugging. “Let’s go.”
“Try and hold still, Miss Gallow.”
Alice’s head hurt. It felt like someone had hollowed out her skull and then filled the space left behind with broken glass. She sincerely hoped that she was dying. If she wasn’t, then the pain was too much to bear.
“Please, Miss Gallow. Hold still. I am trying to put you back together again.”
She became aware of her senses slowly, one by one, as if she was repeating infancy in fast forward. First, the smell. Incense, like sandalwood. Then a sound, like a recording of a child’s voice, pitch-shifted, high and unnatural. Finally, there was a light, a light that had all the warm qualities of amber, translucent, tinted with an iridescent rainbow. The more she was aware of the light, the more she paid attention to it, the more the pain receded. So she stared at it intently, not entirely sure her eyes were even open, and listened to the horrifying sounds of her skull realigning, bone grinding against fragments of bone and then fusing, with the patience of one who has become familiar with horror.