COUSIN STROLLED ACROSS THE
floor tossing the bomb from hand to hand. He looked at the blood smeared across the floor and the bodies strewn about, their clothes flapping in the engine’s wake. The veined old man in the bed, staring at the ceiling. The little boy was dumbstruck by the sudden arrival of a slim, hairless figure surrounded by white-masked Purifiers.
The Purifiers all held EMD sticks, humming with power. They all scratched at their uniforms, at their masks, at their skin. Liam wondered what they’d been told, if they were even aware they were serving a man who intended to let them all die.
“My my my,” Cousin clucked. He stopped in the center of the room and cracked his neck. “And . . . how is everybody feeling today?”
Liam shifted his feet, prepared to throw himself at Cousin or tackle Syd out of the way, whichever seemed necessary. He had a terrible feeling one of them would be.
Marie had her weapon pointed straight at Cousin.
“Young lady, do you really think that’s a good idea?” Cousin cupped the explosive in both hands, presenting it to her as if it were an injured bird. “You wouldn’t want me to drop this by accident, would you? Do you know what it feels like to have the air inside your lungs set on fire?”
Marie stared him down. She didn’t lower her weapon.
“Nor do I.” Cousin laughed. “I’d hate to find out. But please, keep pointing that thing if it makes you feel better.” He turned his back on her. “Now, Syd. I think it’s time we cleared up a few things.” He waved his hand in the air and brought up a holo projection. Cheyenne gasped. The little boy went slack jawed. No one in Mountain City had seen a real holo in months.
This one showed the Nigerian doctor, Dr. Adaeze Khan. She was hard at work, then turned to look out of the projection. “My name is Dr. Adaeze Khan,” she said. Though the projection wobbled, it did not cut off like it had the night Cousin had first showed it to Liam. “And if you are receiving this message, it is most likely I am dead. I served as the chief medical specialist for the Reconciliation’s immunology project. While I was able to develop organic cures for a variety of resurgent ailments, from malaria to TB, the emergent hematic pathology that has rendered the Guardians nonoperative has resisted all treatment. Survival factors are unclear, yet evidence suggests physiological collapse is a symptom of biodata deletion.”
“We know all this,” Liam said. “If you’re just trying to waste our time—”
“Shh.” Cousin didn’t even bother to look at Liam, just kept his eyes fixed on Syd through the holo floating in the air between them. “This is the good part.”
“I have come to the conclusion,” Dr. Khan continued, “that the only possible cure would be a reconstruction of the network linkages and a universal reinstallation of all biodata software in every previously networked individual. While this is not ideologically consistent with the stated goals of the Reconciliation, it is the only way to prevent the nonoperatives’ pathology from continuing its course through society at large. I regret to say, however, that any method for reestablishing a network at this point is completely theoretical. I would need at least twelve to eighteen months to develop a system of relays, transmitters, processors, and the manpower for a large-scale medical intervention on the entire population. My requests to the Advisory Council for the necessary resources have been denied. I only hope my successor in this role fares better.”
Cousin shut off the holo. “Understand?” he asked Syd.
“There’s no such thing as the Machine,” said Syd. “We don’t even have a way to build one.”
“That’s right,” Cousin said.
Cheyenne approached Cousin slowly, her eyes fixed on the tiny projector on his belt. “No Machine?” she said.
He looked at her curiously. “You’re one of those cultists, aren’t you? Oh, I’ve heard about you. Fascinating what people can convince themselves of when they’re desperate, no?”
“No Machine,” Cheyenne repeated. “This . . . was for nothing?”
Cousin shrugged. “Looks like you’ll need a new religion.”
Cheyenne clenched her fists and ran at him.
“Don’t!” Liam shouted, but it was too late. Cousin didn’t even flinch as one of his Purifiers sent an EMD pulse straight at her. She collapsed in a seizure mid-stride.
“Did you really think it would be so simple?” Cousin yelled at the twitching girl on the floor. “Just a machine to get back what you’d lost?” He turned to Syd, pointed his long finger. “You could flip a switch and undo all your mistakes?”
“There was one machine that destroyed the networks,” said Syd. “One could’ve restored them.”
One of Cousin’s Purifiers moved forward with the EMD to give Cheyenne the killing tap, but Marie turned her bolt gun on him. He stopped moving, looked to Cousin for guidance.
Cousin shrugged and the Purifier backed away. Cheyenne stopped twitching and lay on the floor, her eyelids fluttering, her chest rising and falling with rapid breaths.
“It really is too bad you’re learning such important life lessons at the end, my boy.” Cousin sighed. “It is so much simpler to destroy than to create. Did you
really
imagine a bunch of teenagers could rebuild a complex system developed over generations out of a some spare parts in a ruined skyscraper? There is no reset button on history. It only goes in one direction.”
Syd stayed quiet.
“I’ve seen that journal you’ve been carrying around,” Cousin continued. “It’s just her notes, you know? Passing ideas. They’ve no more substance than a fart. But it was sweet of young Liam to steal it for you, even if he had no idea how cruel a gift it was. I suppose it’s reasonable. He gives you false hope; you give him false hope. A fair transaction. You know how he came to possess the journal, don’t you?”
“I know,” said Syd.
“And you forgave him?” Cousin looked at Liam and winked. “Maybe he’s got a chance, eh? His hope not so false? I almost feel bad interrupting young romance.”
“Shut it,” Liam said.
“You made him kill Dr. Khan,” said Syd. “She
could
have stopped this.”
“Don’t be so naive. I didn’t make Liam do anything. He
chose
to kill Dr. Khan. And she wasn’t the first. Not by far! She’s one on a long list of corpses that your lovelorn friend made with his own hands. Or, rather . . . hand.”
“Shut it!” Liam yelled.
Syd addressed the Purifiers directly. “He’ll let you all die.” He wished he had better powers of persuasion over a crowd. His head felt cloudy. He couldn’t think of the right words to say. “Whatever he’s told you is a lie. You saw that holo.”
The soldiers scratched at themselves, shifted nervously on their feet, but they held their ground. Cousin smiled at them.
“Everyone makes their choices, Syd, and they make them for their own reasons.” He rolled the explosive around in his hands. “That’s all life is, really. A collection of choices. My boys have made theirs. Little Marie here”—he pointed at Marie, still aiming her weapon at him—“she can believe all the high-minded dogma of the Reconciliation she wants, but she made her choices too. Coming here, betraying the Purifiers, betraying her oaths and her revolution in a futile attempt to save her parents. That’s who she is. All her talk about equality and unity, yet she loves her parents more than she loves her ideals. Her intentions don’t mean a thing. Just her actions. My boys value their oaths.”
He smiled at his Purifiers. Through the mouth holes in their masks, none smiled back. Maybe he could peel away their loyalty, thought Syd. Word by word, maybe he could take away Cousin’s army.
“What do
your
actions mean?” Syd asked.
“I am the end of action,” Cousin told him. “With this little ball here, I can do what you can’t, Syd. I can undo the past. I can erase your mistakes. Just say the word, and I’ll drop this little guy at your feet. It won’t hurt much and then, all is truly forgotten. Oblivion is the purest forgiveness, don’t you think?”
Liam watched Syd. Marie watched too. The hovercraft churned the air that howled through the open window high above the city and time seemed to whip away on the wind. None of the Purifiers moved.
Syd closed his eyes.
There was no Machine. There was no way to stop this sickness. There was no way to undo what he had done.
Knox’s face hovered in the dark behind his eyelids.
It’s your future. Choose.
He opened his eyes. He saw that everyone was watching, everyone was waiting for him, for Syd, to choose.
He looked at Cousin’s smooth face, lit by the glow of the bomb, patient as death. His blood burned. He saw Knox there, in the daylight, standing beside Cousin, and he saw the assassin Liam had killed; he saw Finch too. He saw Nine, even as Nine lay dead on the floor just a few feet away.
He felt sick to his stomach. His heartbeat screamed his pulse. His eyes ached. He could end it all right now, end his suffering, end everyone’s suffering. He shook his head, and Knox was gone, all of them gone. His vision wobbled.
Syd had had enough.
He swung with his left, swatting Cousin’s hand and sending the incendiary orb in a high arc out of his grip straight toward the window. Toward the hovercraft.
At the same time, Syd shoved little Krystof Maes in front of himself and rushed toward the stairwell door in the opposite direction.
Liam and Marie turned after him. Cousin’s Purifiers, taken by surprise, didn’t even discharge their weapons. They watched the arc of the bomb through the air, then dove for cover where they could find it.
Cousin dove after the bomb, trying to catch it.
He had been bluffing after all. Cousin wasn’t ready to die.
He might have caught the bomb too, had the old man, the decaying gang lord, Kaspar Maes, not rolled himself off the bed and tripped Cousin as he dove.
The orb bounced once and rolled right up the ramp of the hovercraft.
The explosion lit the sky over Mountain City for miles.
AS SYD JUMPED TO
the landing below, the door to the stairwell burst inward; debris smashed into the wall just above him. The boy crumpled under Syd like a doll. Marie was right beside them and Liam, larger than all three, covered the trio with his back.
Sizzling chunks of metal clanked down the half flight of stairs, and from above they heard the sound of the wrecked hovercraft crashing down the side of the building. They were too high up to hear its impact with the concrete below.
In the quiet after the blast, Liam told them to stay where they were. He stood.
“What are you doing?” Syd asked him, which wasn’t really what Syd was asking. He was really asking Liam not to go.
“I have to check,” Liam said. “I have to know.”
He took the cracked stairs two at a time. His shirt had been shredded and burned by tiny flaming shrapnel. He’d kept it from hitting Syd, but the burns on his skin looked painful and the cuts oozed. Liam might not be getting sick, but he was getting the hell beaten out of him.
When he reached the top of the stairs, Liam peeked around the hole in the wall where the door had been and he saw the wreckage. The wall that had separated the office they were in from the rest of the floor was blown away. The exterior wall had been mostly window to begin with, but now the entire thing was open to the elements. Wires, cables, and insulation dangled from above the newly exposed steel beams. The building creaked, swayed, and threatened collapse.
And there, on the floor, in a tangle of burned and broken bodies, was the withered old figure of Kaspar Maes. He lifted his head to Liam and their eyes met. He was no longer the zombie in the bed, but a man with some vitality in him. The veins on his body were blue, not black, and his eyes were clear. He opened his mouth to speak, but a piece of metal had sliced into his neck. His eyes moved sideways, bulged, and his head slumped back to the floor, still. His finger was pointing.
It took Liam another fraction of a second to realize why.
Cousin’s dead body wasn’t there.
Cousin’s living body was right beside Liam, raising an EMD stick.
Liam ducked and punched with his metal fist. The stick swept over his head and his hand connected with Cousin’s knee.
The thin man stumbled and Liam headbutted him, breaking the shining smooth nose.
Cousin slumped to the floor. He didn’t fight back. His clothes were shreds and he was speckled with cuts, but the old mobster had blocked most of the blast from him. He was hurt, but alive. Cousin was a survivor.
Not this time though. Liam raised his fist to deliver a killing blow. He’d done it so many times to so many people who’d deserved it so much less than this man. But still, he hesitated.
Through bloody teeth, Cousin grinned at Liam. “You never change, my boy. You’re still fighting for no reason. They’re all going to die anyway. You’re just fighting for the love of violence. You know that, right? You’ll be nothing without other people’s blood to spill.”
“I am fighting for something,” Liam said, his fist hanging in the air.
“He doesn’t want you to fight for him.”
“I choose my own fights. And
I
want to fight for him.”
“You’re a romantic, Liam.” Cousin coughed. “I suppose everyone your age is a romantic. You should thank me. I’m sparing you a world where you’ll have to grow out of that. Once they’re all gone it’ll just be you and your memories. You can mourn your whole life away. That’s what you want, isn’t it? Oh, I know you so well, Liam. You love the longing.”
Liam didn’t answer. His hand wavered.
“The silences.” Cousin sighed. “I always enjoyed your silences.”
A flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. One of the Purifiers was up, peeking from behind the overturned bed in the center of the room, a bolt gun aimed.
Liam dove just as a bolt smacked into the wall above him. Another hit the floor at his feet. He scrambled toward the doorway. He saw Cheyenne, on her feet again, kick the gun from the first Purifier’s hand.
“Go!” she shouted at Liam, as three more Purifiers emerged from where they’d taken cover and tackled her. She fought back hard, and Liam was tempted to stay and help her, but he had to get back to Syd. As Liam dove into the stairwell, he saw Cousin stand again, pick up his EMD stick, and come after him, ignoring Cheyenne fighting with his soldiers.
Why did Liam let Cousin talk? It was
always
a delay tactic. Was Liam really so desperate for someone to know him?
He had been.
He would not be anymore.
He burst into the stairwell and jumped down three steps at a time to the landing where the others were waiting. “Up,” he ordered as he jumped down the stairs. “We have to get out of here.”
Syd had his hand on Marie’s back. She was doubled over, scratching at her neck. When she looked up, the lines all over her face told the story. She was in bad shape. Syd was too, not as bad, but still, Liam understood.
He’d have to be well enough for all of them.
“Where’s my grandpapa?” little Krystof Maes demanded.
“Dead,” Liam told him. “Just like the rest of us if you don’t help me.”
Argument flitted across the boy’s face. He was not used to being ordered around and threatened, but he understood the rules of violence well enough. Liam was bigger and stronger.
Together, they guided Syd and Marie down the stairs, just as Cousin and his Purifiers came after them through the doorway above. Cousin moved slowly, leaning heavily on the broken wall, wounded. His Purifiers flanked him. They were still quick.
They raced down the stairs and Liam turned, braced himself to fight. He was woefully outnumbered and they were coming down on him fast.
And then they were running right past him, down the stairs without a second glance his way.
Liam looked back up at Cousin. The bald man shook his head and spat on the ground.
“Fair-weather friends,” Cousin said. He still had five Purifiers flanking him. Those five were still armed and still intended to kill Liam. They moved down more cautiously. One of them limped and one of his eyes was swollen nearly shut. At least Cheyenne had gotten her licks in.
Liam couldn’t outrun Cousin’s five, so he shoved Syd and Marie and the little boy through the door to the 107th floor to hide.
Liam didn’t know how to save Syd from this sickness, but he had one set of skills that would be useful right now. Under cover of darkness on the 107th floor, he would put his hand to work, one last time.