Authors: Paul Hughes
“Do it. You know you want to.”
Lilith slumped in his arms. Silver ran from her eyes.
“You know you have to.”
Hunter cried out in frustration, in grief. He pulled Lilith’s limp form closer, keeping his weapon trained on Maire.
“If I don’t—”
“Do it.” She took a step closer to the tip of the weapon. “End it now.”
He closed his eyes, saw the image of her face burned into that perfect darkness.
“End it.”
Hunter Windham pulled the trigger.
“Did you actually think it would work?”
The interior of the cell was neither dim nor cold, as she had supposed it would be. If anything, it was the brightest and most welcoming room she’d seen in
in
how long?
She cleared her throat but gave no indication that she desired to communicate with her interrogator. The way he stood on the other side of the shield, hands clasped behind his back, chin up, staring proudly down aquiline nose... He embodied every reason she had carried out her plan. He was a symbol of that which she had struggled so valiantly for years to destroy.
“Don’t answer, then. Might be the best thing for you.”
She slumped into one well-lit corner of her prison, wrapped arms around knees, stared back at the man with a gaze that was beyond cold, beyond emotionless. He didn’t flinch.
“Do you have any questions before I leave?”
She brushed the unruly curl from her forehead, reflexively tucking it behind her left ear. “When is the trial?”
“No trial. Just sentencing. That will come soon enough.”
She exhaled slowly, audibly. “Goodnight.”
He was concerned. “Are you sure there isn’t anything I—”
“Goodnight.”
He turned and walked, gazing at floor and nothing else. “Goodnight, Maire.”
It would be a night without sleep.
“Orders coming through.”
Task swam over to join his co-pilot at the controls. The screen flickered with distortion for a moment, resolving into a static-filled image of Hannon.
“Find anything else today, boys?”
“Nothing. No survivors so far.”
“The sentencing is at the end of the week. Gather as much feed as you can, focusing on the major cities.”
“There’s not much to see there, sir. The most physical damage was done at the poles.”
“I don’t care about geology, Task. Get me footage of people.”
Off-screen, Co-Pilot L shook its head. Task smirked and nodded.
“There’s not much left of the people, Commandant. Just the silver.”
“Just get me some evidence. You know what I need.”
“Yes, sir.”
Elle broke the connection, flew the vessel back above the clouds. “What exactly do they expect us to find?”
Task lit a smoker. “Evidence of the catalyst.”
Elle’s plastic face attempted a smile. “You sure you want to be in this atmosphere, fleshbag?”
Task smiled and blew smoke in Elle’s non-face. “You bet your metal ass, hon.”
They flew.
“Did you see the report?”
“Which one?”
“Biological.”
Berlin
leaned back in his chair, fingertips touching the bridge of his nose, eyes closed. He’d not slept since the attack, and now, eyes closed and heartbeats pounding in his throat, he truly did not care to look over any more reports on the criminal. His world was an ache not isolated to behind his eyes.
Exhale. “What does it say?”
“Just take a look at it.”
“I really don’t—”
“Berlin.” Hannon pushed the viewer closer. “Look at it.”
He lifted the thin pane of optic from the desktop, looked nonchalantly over the flickering screen until it snapped into his line of focus. His eyes widened and he sat upright.
“Is this a joke?”
“Sir.” Hannon’s gaze was all the assurance he needed.
“Why didn’t the filters pick this up?”
“She never underwent a full scan before. There was no need until she—”
“Understood.”
“Do you know what this means?”
“Are there any other abnormalities?”
“The resonance.”
“One heart. We never would have known.”
“She could have slipped through all of her life.”
“She should have been filtered years ago.”
Hannon motioned toward the viewer on the wall, which swirled into focus. Maire was curled into a fetal position on the floor of her cell, eyes wide, staring into nothing. Her hands were clasped before her mouth as if in prayer. Berlin highly doubted that that was what she was doing.
“Any readings on the silver yet?”
“She’s clean. The room’s clean.”
“Where did it go?”
Hannon shrugged his shoulders. “It’s not on the vessel. We’re at highest alert, but I don’t think we’ll see an outbreak.”
Berlin
stood, walked to the viewer. “Orbital.” The shot changed to that of the planet below them. “Highlight Task position.” A white targeting reticule revealed the position of the advance vehicle. “Has he reported?”
“Northern continent is clear. Drones on recon in the south.”
“Anything at all?”
“Nothing.”
“Still hot?”
“Hazard science is analyzing core samples. Doesn’t look good.”
“Orbital zoom. Northern continent, city seven.”
The viewer re-aligned, swept in through cloud cover and the suffocating silver cloud of the attack, paused just miles above the city.
“Closer.”
Past science drones, past a war platform, through a line of black smoke coming from several miles of unchecked wildfire. The viewer held position under the ceiling of metallic dust, focused.
“Closer.”
The viewer beeped a negative.
“Closer.”
Negative.
“I think that’s the signal cutoff. The atmosphere is creating too much interference to transmit below that line.”
Berlin
turned from the image of burned buildings; that mercurial reflection only heightened the ache behind his eyes, and the aches in his chest.
“How soon before we can get some recovery teams down there?”
“Sir, we won’t—”
“How soon?”
Hannon cleared his throat. “We have to study the silver. Right now, there’s no way to tell how long the planet will be hot.”
“As soon as we can… As soon as it’s safe, I’m going down.”
“Sir?”
Fingertips to bridge of nose, pausing ever so slightly to wipe moisture from eyes.
“My family’s down there. My wife and children.”
Hannon looked everywhere but Berlin’s eyes. “Sir, I’m so sorry. No one told me—”
“As soon as we can, I’m going down there to get my family. Understood?”
“Yes, sir. Understood.”
Berlin
walked out of the room. It would be a long night in space.
It would be a long night in the cell.
She couldn’t sleep. Hadn’t been able to sleep in years. No bed in that room. At least it wasn’t cold. At least it wasn’t comfortable.
She felt the scan, that subtle tug of her molecules as the room made note of her irregularities. She knew that they’d try to find the silver. She’d buried it deep. She slowed the beat of her heart, slowed her respiration, closed her eyes. The sleep would never come again.
She felt them watch her, the polished circle at the center of the ceiling reaching down and scraping her flesh, tearing away photons to be reassembled in that heavily-shielded bunker on the surface of the vessel where the men who made war would decide her fate.
She felt the dead. There were voices from within, faded echoes of families who looked into the sky from picnics in the park, mothers whose final vision was the deployment vehicle and whose final thought was to throw themselves over their children, as if a foot of their flesh could ever have shielded their offspring from the silver. She heard the sobs of men who had never known that they could cry. She heard that final, startling crackle as the atmosphere solidified for one beautiful moment.
Tug.
She rolled on to her back, sat upright, looking at the tip of the viewer on the ceiling. If she had conserved any of her strength, she could have easily escaped this vessel. She could have shattered that viewer, could have reached through the microglass passages and torn the souls from those men. She could have, if she were not dying from her last exertion.
Maire pulled her knees up to her chest, stared at the wall. They had captured her, but it was not over yet. She would finish them.
She closed her eyes.
The exhaled line of gray was confused in zero-grav.
Task hovered before the observation bubble. It was supposed to be sleep time, or so the meaningless timer informed him. Elle was on the bridge, immersed in flashing recharge mist. He lit another smoker, considered waking his androgyn artificial companion, but decided to let the machine rest in peace. This vessel was one of the only places that silence and solitude abounded in these uncertain times.
A streak of light from outside of the bubble as another war platform descended. Task extended his right index finger and a zoom reticle surrounded the black-on-black of several million tons of metal and slumbering biologic that was the platform. They were sending platforms to secure the northern continent now; the scientists were reasonably certain that the catalyst had dissipated enough to send in the near-living ground troops.
A war against one woman… A terrorist act that could never truly be avenged. Task felt fortunate that he had no family on the surface below him, encased in silver dust. That’s probably why they picked him to do the dismal job of documenting the kill zones. Never a man for emotion; never a man with attachments to his species.
It was cold.
Heat from his fingertips but no surprise when the smoker self-immolated in a final suicide of smoke. No ash to clog the systems. Task felt a radical spin out of place and collide with several healthy breather cells, beginning the process of cellular mutation. He isolated and contained the cells in a reflex gesture. Right lung, right underneath his heart.