“How did you do that?” Kirsten asks, voice rich with wonder.
“Do what?” she responds, confused.
“I can hear again! My God! I can hear!!”
Dakota is saved from having to answer by the loud whoop of an alarm. She looks quickly to the monitors which show the fire, with no androids left to fight it, heading toward them at an alarming rate.
“Come on!” Koda seizes Kirsten’s hand in hers and pulls them both to their feet. “Which way—up or down?”
“Up. There’s less to fall on us that way.”
Koda flashes her a grin, then sobers. Virgilius stands beside the desk, eyes fixed, his limbs frozen. “What about—”
“Not a problem. He turned off along with the rest.”
“Turned off— Okay.” Figure it out later. This is not the time for metaphysical problems or wondering where an apparently sentient android goes when he dies. Koda cracks the door a couple inches, peering out at the wreckage the battle has left. The sprinkler system still operates, spraying water down on broken concrete and twisted rebar, on the limbs and batteries and circuit boards of shattered androids. Through the acrid remnants of gunpowder and plastic explosive, she smells the unmistakable odor of smoke. A thin haze hangs just below the ceiling of the corridor, thicker in the direction of the elevator shaft.
Which is a bit of luck, because the only usable stairway is on the other side of the building. “Okay,” she says again. “Let’s go.”
Still holding firmly to Kirsten’s hand, Dakota steps out into the hall. “Watch where you put your feet,” she says. Testing each step, Koda picks their way across the crater gouged in the floor by the last grenade. Reinforcing steel shows here and there, with water pooling around it. Just as long as we don’t run across a live wire. . ..
She slips twice on their way around the core of the building, once on a loose tile that skates away under her foot, again when Kirsten turns her ankle on a discarded rifle magazine. The door to the stairwell hangs drunkenly from a single hinge, pushed back against the wall. Smoke filters upward through the shaft, still faint, but discernable. Something below them has caught fire, something large, not just the walls on the other side of this floor.
Dropping Kirsten’s hand, Koda rips the rag of one sleeve off and wraps it around her mouth and nose. Kirsten pulls the neck of her T-shirt up; at another moment, Koda might stop to admire the way the wet cotton clings to her body, but there is no time.
She will have to run and admire at the same time. One of the little perks of being alive. . .. She says, “You go first. You know the layout.”
Kirsten squeezes her hand briefly, then sets off up the stairs. The sprinklers have made them slick, too. The safety treads hold, though, and Kirsten takes the steps two at a time, holding firmly to the metal handrail, Koda running behind her. They pass a landing and a right angle turn. At the next landing, a door, clearly marked, gives onto the fifth floor. Two more turns, taken at speed. Fourth floor. The smoke is less thick here, no more than an elusive scent through the stronger odor of blood that washes from her own clothing. Water runs from her hair, from Kirsten’s, to splash on the concrete under their feet. It runs red as it streams from her shirt and jeans, a thin runnel that disappears into the stairwell below.
Another turn, and another. Third floor.
Two more to go.
From somewhere below them comes a muffled rumble like distant thunder. A shudder runs through the walls, a small network of cracks spreading around the jamb of the door that gives onto the corridor that runs around the third story.
“What—”
“I don’t know,” Kirsten pants, swinging around the angle of the staircase. “Something big. Maybe the AC, maybe the elec—”
“—tricity,” Koda finishes for her as darkness suddenly descends on them. “Shit. Hold onto me.”
It takes a precious couple seconds, but Koda locates Kirsten’s left hand ahead of her. Koda extends her own to brush against the wall, Kirsten still holding to the banister. “Don’t run,” she gasps as Kirsten stubs her toe against a riser and topples forward, kept from falling only by Koda’s grasp on her arm. “If one of us falls—”
She does not need to complete the sentence. The flash of fear in Kirsten’s mind—none of it for Kirsten herself—leaps the distance between them like a spark. “It’s gonna be okay,” she says, ” We’re gonna make it.”
Another landing. More stairs. Another landing.
Second floor.
“One more,” Kirsten gasps. “Almost there.”
Almost. Almost . . ..
A second temblor runs through the building, a long, rolling wave like an earthquake. From below comes the sharp, gunshot crack of cement splitting—a wall, stairs further down, there is no way to tell. Koda feels the jerk of Kirsten’s muscles in her own arm, the impulse to run almost overwhelming. But Kirsten’s steady pace takes them onto the next landing, turns them onto the final half-flight of stairs.
The smoke catches them halfway up, a billow of choking fumes that fills Koda’s lungs despite her mask. Beside her, Kirsten coughs, hard, but her pace does not slacken. “Chemicals,” she chokes. “Lots of industrial stuff—”
The floor suddenly levels under their feet, and Kirsten pushes through the door into the first floor hallway, pausing half a second to secure it behind them. A faint haze of light comes through the skylight above, enough to show the empty corridor, inhuman human shapes arrested in mid-motion or collapsed in mechanical rigor mortis to the floor.
Virgilius’ termination had been evidence of Kirsten’s success. This is confirmation. “You did it,” Koda breathes, marveling. “It’s over.”
Kirsten, beside her, glances around at the still forms. Even in the dim illumination, Koda can see that her face is pale, her eyes still wide and dark and stunned. “Over,” she repeats softly. “Over.”
A sprint carries them around the curve of the building, then, across the lobby with its avant-garde German sculpture, all twists and tangles of stainless steel. They hit the panic bars on the main doors at full speed, bursting out into the pale light of dawn. Momentum carries them through the grounds, over the disused parking lot, up the slope of the hill. Asi bounds through the high grasses to greet them, and Kirsten seizes him by the ruff, her feet still flying, while Koda scoops up their gear. “Keep going,” Kirsten pants, “Just keep. . ..”
. . .going. . ..
The shock runs though the earth beneath them as they reach the level ground above the small valley. Thunder rolls along the air, the crash of collapsing concrete and the roar of secondary explosions. Glancing back, Koda half expects to see a mushroom cloud rising behind them, but there is only a cloud of dust and smoke, roiling upward toward the clear sky.
Beside her, Kirsten turns to look. She says softly, “And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived deliciously with her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning, shall say, ‘Alas, alas that great city Babylon,’ for in one hour is her judgement come.’” For a long moment she is silent, and Koda reaches out for her hand. Despite the warmth of the morning, despite their run, Kirsten’s skin remains cold to the touch. She whispers, “Never. Never again. Never, never again.”
Around their ankles the grass stirs as a breeze ghosts over the ground. It lifts the dust along the road, catches the smoke that rises over the remains of the Westerhaus Institute, shredding it, carrying it in thinning coils up into the clean sky. Koda never knows how long they stand watching as it disperses, taking with it the terror and grief of the past nine months. Above them, the sun catches a glint of bronze off a hawk’s wing feathers, and Wiyo’s cry comes floating down to them. It is welcome; it is triumph.