Rolleston turned to us, smiling, confident, smug again.
‘I made them like me,’ he said in what I’m sure he thought was a sinister manner.
‘Frightened?’ I asked.
His eyes narrowed. He was going to kill us or worse. Might as well try and aggravate him so we can get it over and done with quickly.
‘You taught them how to hate, completely, and then you gave them God-like power. Pagan and God became a virus designed to do one thing, remind them of that. They developed separately with separate experiences. They are individuals now. What would you do if there was more than one of you vying for power?’ I asked.
The first arcs of black light began between the black suns as they attacked each other. I watched Rolleston’s eyes widen. Hate consumed hate in a rage of mutually assured destruction.
‘You’re all alone now,’ I told him, but then he always had been, I suspected.
I watched his features start to change again as the rage spilled out onto his flesh. Good. I don’t fancy spending the rest of my life as some sadist’s plaything again. I hope the hackers are right — I hope there’s another world — and I hope that Jakob and Ambassador are there and maybe the three of us can have a chance at a life free of hatred, pain and madness. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. I closed my eyes. Let’s just get this over and done with.
‘What…?’ Rolleston’s voice sounded small, shocked. I opened my eyes. The dagger, the one that Jakob had been carrying, the one that Rolleston had taken from him and thrown away, was sticking out of his chest. Where his heart should be. Rolleston was staring at Bran. Bran was gazing back. Emotionless. Rolleston collapsed to the ground. Crom Dhu, Black Crom, had done its job — killed the bio-nanites that now made up Rolleston’s form.
The black suns had gone. Then every single computer connected to the net crashed. Dead ships hung in space. Gravity and life support went offline momentarily. Every cyborg, myself included, went blind. Those who needed their systems to live started to die. I was desperately trying to reboot. Pagan/God’s last little trick. I wondered how many thousands of people we’d killed.
The net rebooted. The plain of glass was gone. The sea of fire had gone. The black suns had gone. Pagan/God had gone having saved us all. Pagan had accomplished what Rolleston had failed to do.
The Grey Lady was climbing to her feet. Our gravity hadn’t gone off. We weren’t on a technological ship. This was a living creature now. It was wired differently. I remained sitting. My body felt like a big bruise with added cuts, breaks and burns. My nose was broken and my ribs were cracked — at best. I laughed. MacFarlane wouldn’t have wanted me working for him now. Mudge and Rannu turned to look at me.
Of course there was still the little problem of the Grey Lady and the Black Squadron things surrounding us. As much as I would have liked to beat the shit out of the wee bitch, I knew we didn’t stand a chance. I was willing her to die. She might yet if I got on the net and she stood too close to any automated weapon system, or there were other accidents that could happen to her. Make my man think I was dead and sleep with him, would you?
‘What now?’ I asked her, as willing her dead hadn’t seemed to work.
She was staring at Rolleston’s body. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected — contortions, mutations, something loud and flashy — but he’d just keeled over. He looked really surprised. She looked at me, startled that I’d spoken.
‘I’ve ordered the Black Squadrons to stand down. I’ve told them that Rolleston’s dead. We won’t attack unless we are fired on. I think you should go now.’
‘We’re taking our dead and we’ll need a shuttle to come and get us,’ I said. She glanced over at the monstrosity Cat had become and nodded.
I stood up and limped over to her. She ignored me, just staring down at Rolleston.
‘Why?’ I asked.
‘Because he didn’t know enough to be afraid any more,’ she said. She was wrong: all Rolleston had had was fear.
‘That’s not what I mean.’
She turned to look into my eyes. I’d been told that she never looked anyone in the eyes. Hers were grey. She wasn’t as ugly as I thought she’d be. I thought back to Dundee, when the orbital weapons platform had hit the rigs. She could have killed us then. I suspect she’d had many opportunities to kill us.
‘I don’t know. Out of all of them he was just so… human.’
I looked at her for a while and she held my gaze. I nodded and turned away. Mudge had managed to crawl to Merle and was holding him, trying not to hurt his arms. I hugged Mudge fiercely.
‘Ow!’ But he hugged me back.
I could never tell him the truth. I was sure he would kill me if he knew what I’d done. If he knew that Jakob had died in Maw City four months ago, would it make it easier or worse for him?
‘Why didn’t the virus kill you when I stabbed you?’ Rannu asked. The Grey Lady didn’t look at him but there was a ghost of a smile on her face.
‘There’s no biotech in me; I’m just really good.’
Rannu’s eyes widened.
Epilogue
Only I knew. I knew because I had made contact with Them. Through Ambassador, the soft warm whisper in the back of my head, I had managed to communicate with Them. Rannu, Pagan, Mudge and Jakob had been separated and were being kept under guard. This was in itself a novel concept for Them.
They were not sure what to do with us. As a race they moved in concert, They were one. There was no common ground for Them to understand the madness of individuality. They barely understood death. When They told me that one of us had malfunctioned They certainly didn’t understand grief. Or at least I thought They didn’t until Ambassador started to sing. It was beautiful. The others had joined in.
No body could have survived the abuses that Jakob’s had received. Mudge’s chemical cocktail had kept him alive just long enough to do the job. He had finally succumbed to the radiation poisoning he’d fought against for most of his life. On the streets of Fintry growing up, then Them, then the Cabal’s henchmen and finally Gregor, his best friend turned into a monster. It had taken a nasty little Nazi punk to kill him.
I finally got to see the body. Ambassador had managed to convey my pain to Them. I think they thought I was suffering the way They had when They’d first been attacked by the Cabal. They were trying to fix him. They had dissected him. They knew the metal and plastic components were mostly working and had stripped them out. There had been so much metal and plastic and so little flesh. They had burrowed deep into what remained, tasted his dead flesh, sampled it, figured out how it worked so they could replicate it and grow it around the metal and plastic.
I threw up and became hysterical. I think I lost it, maybe for a few days, but we were still being kept separate so the others never knew.
I meant to tell the others. I really did. I meant to ask Them to destroy the copy but I couldn’t. I rationalised it to myself. We’d need him if we were serious about trying to stop Rolleston. In the end I think it was just the fantasy of a lonely girl whose boyfriend had died. Selfish wee bitch.
I had wanted him. I had needed him. It hadn’t worked out very well. Probably because at some level I knew it wasn’t him.
I was pretty sure that Pagan suspected. Mudge must’ve known at some level, they were so close. Rannu would never have suspected. For all the deceit in their world, people like that trust each other, they have to.
I think that Jakob started to suspect after the Citadel.
I’m sorry, Jakob. You didn’t deserve that.
Millions had died in the bombardment, then thousands more in the fleet engagement, the battle on the net and as a result of the net crashing.