“Just do it already!” Jeff shouted at it. In a way, the longer it took to kill him, the more time it allowed Stefani and Carlee to escape. It was as meaningful of a death as he had ever hoped for.
“I regret—” the booming deep voice of the Apostle echoed in his helmet. It was electronic and inhuman, but it wasn’t like the voices of computers or audio interfaces he’d heard before. It was complex and passionate in a way he hadn’t been expecting. It didn’t have a chance to finish as a speeding transport was pressed into their reality and smashed into the Apostle’s side.
The vehicle practically disintegrated, sending shrapnel raining through the air. Jeff pulled away, trying desperately to free himself from the cord of energy wrapped around his human leg. There was only one way to free his leg, so he began to imagine a reality where a force-field sword was falling through the sky toward his leg. The thought of losing another natural limb made him sick, but he had lived through it before. He’d gladly give a limb to save Stefani and Carlee, and because they hadn’t left him like they should have, he needed to free himself.
He didn’t have a chance to finish the press before the cord holding him changed into a swarm of millions of tiny robots. They swarmed over the ground and raced toward the Apostle. Jeff stared after the nanobots, overwhelmed by the moment and the amount of skill it must have taken to press them, until a bright wave of energy exploded from the Apostle and destroyed them. It washed over Jeff’s body, knocking his suit offline.
Jeff tried to move, but his metal limbs no longer responded, and his hood didn’t work. He screamed as the Apostle took another step toward him. He looked over his shoulder and saw that the next two force-field walls had holes in them, but another had already landed behind them. Stefani was flying back through the air toward him, but she wouldn’t make it time.
She needed to leave anyway. She could make it if she left him. He had left her once before, the last time the white Apostle had ambushed them. The thought of Stefani dying trying to save him was intolerable.
“I regret the nature of our introduction,” the Apostle said. Its voice cut through the noise of the fight, piercing straight into his brain. It stepped toward him, its body blocking out the sun, casting a shadow over him.
“That’s close enough,” Carlee shouted. She landed between them, with a long force-field spear in her hands. She twirled it around and locked it behind her back. Her gray vagrant uniform had replaced her flight armor, but some odd-looking engines were strapped around her wrists and ankles. She was a perfect warrior silhouetted against the Apostle’s white frame.
Tears hit his eyes as he heard her voice over and over repeating how they didn’t fight Apostles, but here she stood in front of him, trying to guard him against certain doom. It was a beautiful suicide.
35 SECOND GENERATION
THE APOSTLE TOOK A STEP forward, and Carlee whipped her force-field weapon around, swinging the spear widely in an arc that nearly hit the Apostle’s leg. Stefani appeared in the air above it, pulling up abruptly while her gun twisted into existence from another dimension. She caught it in her hands and unloaded on the Apostle’s face, between its two glowing blue eyes.
The attack burned a brown hole into the Apostle’s shining white armor. The three of them paused as they focused on it. After all their attacks, they had finally managed to scratch the robotic god.
“I only wish to speak with you,” the Apostle said. Its voice echoed inside of Jeff’s head, without coming through his ears, and its face didn’t move. “Please.”
Jeff couldn’t take his eyes off the smoking hole in the Apostle’s face. It was only a few inches wide, but it was the only imperfection on the robot. It wasn’t much, but after everything this Apostle had done to him, it filled Jeff with immeasurable hope. If they could scratch it, perhaps they could kill it.
“You want to talk?” Carlee shouted. She sounded exhausted, confused, and really pissed off. “You want to talk to us?”
The burn mark that Stefani’s gun had left slowly changed colors and deepened to black before it began to fill in. Jeff continued to stare at it as the damage healed itself. It was like watching a cut scab over and heal itself. It filled him with rage once again.
“Yes, I wish to speak with you, Carlee, leader of the vagrants. And you, Stefani, warrior of humanity.” The Apostle’s eyes drifted among their group until it settled on Jeff. “And you, Jeff, whose rage is second to none. I have sought you long and far, across the mountaintops and the holy plains, and now we have met in the flesh.”
The only success from their battle with the Apostle had vanished, replaced with indistinguishable white armor. He didn’t know why, but seeing how easily the Apostle had fixed itself was too much for him to handle.
“We’re going to kill you!” Jeff shouted. He tried to get to his feet, but his metal limbs didn’t work. “I swear it! I am going to dance on your ashes!”
He knew it was impossible, but it didn’t stop him from vowing it anyway. The death it caused so effortlessly was permanent, and now, after their best efforts, they hadn’t even left a scar on its body for two minutes.
“Jeff, shut it,” Stefani said. She landed next to him. Her flight suit was covered in dust and in contrast to the Apostle, it looked like she had been through a thousand battles.
“What? You want to talk to this thing?” Jeff used his flesh arm to push himself up; it was as far as he could make it on his own.
“Just shut up,” Stefani said again. It was an order, and the fact that she didn’t call him Handsome was an indicator of how serious she was. Despite her words, she kept her weapon locked onto the Apostle’s head.
“You can’t be serious!” Jeff couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Carlee’s back was still between him and the Apostle, and Stefani didn’t show any signs of responding or helping him, so he closed his eyes and tried to press himself a new arm and leg, but he wasn’t able to find the right mental state to form a connection with another reality.
“I fear that you have already judged me to be malignant, Jeff, and that is not a fault that lies within you after what you have perceived to have suffered at my impure hands,” the Apostle said. “But I would plead for the relief to lay all of my sins at your feet before you condemn me for what you have observed.”
“There’s no—”
“Jeff,” Carlee turned to him. Her face ordered him to be silent, and his loyalty to her temporarily bridled the rage he felt at standing in the presence of the conspirator in his brother’s murder.
“Who are you? And how do you know who we are?” Carlee shouted, and for the first time, Jeff heard the Apostle’s response through his ears.
“My name is Darwin.”
Hearing that name sent chills through his body. Stefani’s gun wavered as she processed the information.
“The nature of my existence does not limit me to the forms of communication that are traditional to your species, especially at the intimate distances in which we find ourselves now,” Darwin said, no longer projecting words into their brains. It spoke now as a human, its shining flesh moving as naturally as human muscle and skin. “I beg your forgiveness in engaging in that process without your consent. My justification was to use it in order to persuade you to remain.”
“You read our minds?” Carlee asked.
“It would be disingenuous to clarify your words with the logistics of my process because the intent is one and the same. However, I vow that I will never again trespass in that which is most personal.”