Broken: A Plague Journal (21 page)

Surprises, more and more: his immunity, his immaculate conception of the silver-proof Alina. Banana Tits could be her vehicle.

Judith’s was the Mind-Essence; she forced universes of analysis into motion. Galactic networks of circuits, planet-sized nano-pathways of bent energetics: a whim, a thought, and it was done, bursts of zeros and ones carved from continental shelves, zero, one, and the spectrum of realities contained between: her mind was forever, and the answer, not a city, a scent, a hair pulled from teeth, was silver, silver, and had always been silver, that ocean of machines, that alien viral agent, that scourge: an answer.

Alina had been born without the sin of risk.

It was extortion, excision, removal, usage. Sticky, honey-sweet, like blades, that union, her host, her hostess, as she’d been for too long, as
take it from me, from me
she’d been forevers. Jud seized at those cycling selves, new bodies and souls (or the precipitous lack thereof) flickering through the spacetime she grasped. That quickening, that shuddering as their bodies entwined; she felt it: silver, reaching, tearing from flesh to flesh. Alina above her, spread, outstretched, tissues stretched, her face: those arched eyebrows could have signaled pain, ecstasy, and they did, her mouth chewing on nothing but air, heated from their exchange. Her breath smelled of Judith.

Bleeding, gushing, neither red nor clear nor viscous: silver, coaxed and urged from her, across the bridge between skins, from every pore, every entry; it crawled into and through Judith, and it was fire, ice, a swift smack on the ass, a kick to the throat, a feather across nipple, and it was silver, tomorrow, everything, agony.

They became one.

Maire laughed.

“Never was?” She slapped her free hand down upon Paul’s, crushed. “Never
was
?” Her face morphed between grin and grimace. A hiss escaped between clenched teeth as her grip forced the author to his knees. They could have been the same age. Weren’t. West heard the crackle and splinter of metacarpal, phalanx. “I’ve always been.”

A flash and he’d swept her legs from beneath her, his hand still locked in an improbable vice. Maire was on the ground; he straddled her from above, his free hand flickering: silver: his eyes now burned. Hers matched his: free hand and eyes.

Strength he’d never suspected: she threw him off, over. He rolled, snapped up to a crouch. She matched his ready stance.

So it would be combat between them.

And it bent, everything, and it was beautiful for a moment, that bend. It wasn’t Seattle, had never been Seattle; the sky was gauze, and above it, something swam, that something black and writhing.

She’d summoned the Enemy.

entry: transgression
function: noun
definition: violation
synonyms: breach, contravention, crime, defiance, disobedience, encroachment, erring, error, fault, infraction, infringement, iniquity, lapse, misbehavior, misdeed, misdemeanor, offense, overstepping, sin, slip, trespass, vice, wrong, wrongdoing

concept: error

Buffer Overrun:

An attack in which a malicious user exploits an unchecked buffer in a program and overwrites the program code with their own data. If the program code is overwritten with new executable code, the effect is to change the program’s operation as dictated by the attacker. If overwritten with other data, the likely effect is to cause the program to

crash cart in here!”

“Hold on. Just fucking hold on!”

He heard, tasted the panic, felt the array of warming steel probes, that copper aftertaste, the scent of smoke displaced somewhere in front of his eyes, the sensation of warm water, warm red water. His fingertips sparked, he thought. He thought, but metal intrusions forced new pathways, new avenues of

and there was the hitching of chest, bubbling of what he assumed was blood from beneath a facemask: citrus, giggle, two or four tears escaped. Fists slammed; ribs broke, and he was

falling from the veil of silk, the upload generator struck the surface of the false city, dug, righted itself. Enemy warships swarmed.

i am silver, weaponized silver, humanized silver. i am

Alina appeared.

Mousy hair, weird knockers, a complexion that wasn’t sallow, wasn’t glowing, but was just intensely
normal
, and her eyes, colorless eyes. Breeder hips, a little beer belly, a connect-the-dots of moles, freckled shoulders, angled nose, big cheeks. She was the kind of girl who wasn’t hot, wasn’t really beautiful to anyone unless maybe they loved her. Cute in a way that felt like home. And there she was, suddenly there, somehow different, suddenly somehow different there.

Maire snarled at her, more animal than human, but then again, she’d never really been a human, had she?

“You again?”

“Us again.” Her voice embodied a confidence Paul had never heard in the girl.

Maire inhaled; lip corner upturned: grin.
Judith
, the realization melted into, swam through her breath. It’d gotten cold.

“Judith?” Paul stood. Confusion.

“Get away from her, Author.” Alina pointed. “Run.”

“You’re not shielded. Not shifted. How can you—”

how can you use that shampoo? the children who saw that it was blue, their dreaded hair beyond repair, ate nectarines on submarines.

“You wrote me.” Al turned away from Paul. A splay of fingers and Maire slammed to the ground. “West?” She didn’t look. “You shifted?”

“Yeah, girl. I’m up.”

“Hold your code.”

A flicker in the line, a snap to grid, and she was above Maire. The silver witch flinched as Alina struck her with a haze of metal. She jumped up, tangled with the girl. Another time, another place, Paul would have expected mud or jello, but there in the non, everything was gray, flares of static, that hum and tug of mercury. Their two bodies merged into a disgusting, flopping mess of limbs, hair, screams.

Maire tore away from Al, the sound of twisting metal.

“Why, Miss Alina, you have a secret.” Maire mimicked fanning herself, southern accent. “Do tell, honeychile.”

Alina swung, her hand silvered, but Maire dodged.

“What’s this about hope?”

Another swing, another easy dodge.

“Or is it— ‘Hope’?” Grin.

“Shut your fucking mouth.” Paul knew that voice: Judith, but it came from Al’s throat.

“What?” Paul. Almost a whisper. His face whitened.

“You didn’t know? She didn’t tell you?” Maire simpered. Giggled. “Oh, now
this
is rich.”

“What about Hope?”

“Don’t.” Alina breathed it as much as consciously said it.

“How long’s it been since our petite soiree in that cave? Days? Years? And you never figured it out? Some author you are.”

Paul shimmered.

“She killed her. Little ugly Allie killed your darling Ms. Benton.”

“It’s not true.”

They circled, the three of them, this slow dance of shimmer and merge. Paul stopped.

“You killed her, Maire. You—”

Flicker and thrash: he flew backwards, landed ungently on the non-ground. Maire didn’t stop. She shifted into and through Alina. Al shattered, dusted, re-formed. One hand to balance, one hand between breasts at the cardiac shield, she gasped for breath.

“Sam above, Allie within. Lots of soldiers to kill my children. Lots of shots. One wide shot. Guess where it went. Give up? Ms. Benton.”

“Paul,” she choked through wheeze, “it’s not true. I swear—”

And the sky opened up: incoming Judith fleet. They slammed into the Enemy horde, strafed the upload generator. Sam dipped down, tipped his nacelles. He swam back into the fray.

“Don’t believe me, Author? Who’ll you trust? Why don’t we ask Hope?”

Maire spun and wasn’t there. Wasn’t there, but she
was
. Not her, but her. The voice was different, the body splintering to a form West had etched behind his eyes long before they’d brought the author in, a form he’d met after re-birth from the Forever Dust: Hope. The body fell, meaty slap on non-pavement, but she wasn’t dead. Couldn’t be dead, because she gasped an inhalation.

Alina: “Don’t touch her! Jesus fuck, it’s not her, it’s—”

Paul, more lips and tongue than sound: “Hope?” He went to her, cradled her head in his lap.

“Paul—” Alina pleaded. Hands to fists to hair: frustration, weeping. “It’s not her. Don’t touch—”

And Benton spoke, if such a ruined form could speak. Paul’s mouth moved over the impossibility of sobs. She spoke.

“You’re letting your hair grow out.” Semblance of a smile. “But I liked it short.”

“Hope—”

“They’re all dead here.” Fingers interlaced with his. Her voice was becoming echoes, static, and “What’d you do to her? Why’d you write? Why...?” Two tears, more blood than water: “You’ve killed us all.”

Such ferocity barely contained in the sky: the upload generator shattered; a thousand vessels carved the earth.

He stroked her hair. “Hope, I—”

“There’s no Hope anymore. No hope. Nothing. But she’s with me.” A smile so bright from assemblages of flesh and muscle: impossible. “She’s saved me.”

“I’ll save you. We’ll save you!”

“Paul...” She pulled him closer, whispered. “The Purpose will be completed.”

He hatcheted an inhalation. Her eyes were silver.

He threw the body to the ground, clambered away and to his feet. The body shattered into blood and silver rivulets, dissipated with haze and static. Where Maire had been, where Hope had been: nothing.

The wind picked up.

Sam appeared above again. He folded from his vessel form, all shivers and digits, landed with a few stumbling steps as his human form.

“Allie? What happened? We got a beacon and…”

She didn’t answer. Wasn’t talking, wasn’t moving, just stood there beside Paul looking at the place where Maire had been.

“Paul?” No answer. “Adam?”

Silversens registered negative. West shifted to normal. “We found Maire. And Hope. And—” He shook his head. “I don’t fucking know.”

       Alina looked up at the author. Caught his gaze down. A small hand grabbed a large hand. Just for a second, West could have sworn he had seen a merge in those hands.

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