Haywire (14 page)

No, not human. More than human.

Better.

“
It’s finished,” the Titan said.

His mother soon hovered over him, her hands touching his face and chest. “Shawn, can you hear me? Shawn! Answer me!”

Slowly he opened his eyes. Above him was a length of metal polished to a mirror finish, and in it his eyes shone with an inner light, tiny sparks flickering in his pupils. When he reached up to rub them, his hands and forearms were laced with metal, as though his skeleton was mapped on his skin. Next to him his mother cried.

“
What happened?” he asked. His voice was tiny and dry.

The Titan stepped toward him, but she kept a good distance between them. “You’ve become a Titan. The pain you felt was the infusion process. I’d congratulate you, but I don’t know if we’ll live long enough for it to matter. Welcome to the war, soldier.”

Shawn couldn’t believe what he heard, but he couldn’t deny his own senses. Along with the metal on his skin, his vision was filled with words and numbers and graphs. He tried focusing on them, but they jittered across his eyes like static and faded in and out. When he looked at his mother, he saw her terrified face staring down at him, but he also saw colors overlaid against her, indicating her body heat, respiration rate, and blood pressure. Information flooded his vision until he squeezed his eyes closed and moaned.

His mother caressed his cheek, and more information lit up in his mind – how many pounds per square inch her touch created, that there was a scar on her right index finger he’d never noticed before, that her heart was beating 143 beats per minute.

A quiver filled his mother’s voice. “Shawn, please, are you okay?”

“
His body is adapting, and that takes time.” The Titan’s tone was all too knowing. “He’s experiencing the world in ways you couldn’t begin to understand, and it can be overwhelming. His body is becoming something far greater than it ever was before, but it isn’t easy, and it certainly isn’t pleasant.”

“
Why did you do this?” he asked as he turned to look at the two women beside him. His mind was erratic, a jumble of noise and static, and it took all his effort to focus on a single thought.

His mother reached across him and laid her hand on his chest. Beneath her fingers he could feel a cold burning sensation, as though a lump of ice was buried in his skin. When his mind focused on it, text appeared in his vision – “Internal Damage Assessment” – accompanied by repair estimate graphs. It was a blunt reminder of what had happened.

“
We had to,” his mother said. Her eyes were red and pleading. “You were dying. She said she could save you. I had... I had to do it.”

“
So now I’m one of them?” His voice rose as panic welled up in his chest. “You’ve turned me into a… a machine?”

The Titan frowned at him. “You’re more than that, Shawn. In time, you might become more than you ever dreamed possible. But right now we’ve got more pressing matters to deal with, so suck it up.”

Resentment quickly overpowered the pain filtering through his body. He’d been shot and nearly killed defending the Titan, and instead of thanking him she gave him attitude. Her towering condescension was a big change from a little while ago, and not one he appreciated.

“
Suck it up? Screw you. Last I saw, you were a babbling idiot that had to be led around on a leash. What happened? You finally found your precious nanites and decided to wake the hell up? Not as sick as you thought anymore?”

Even as he spoke, Shawn knew what he said wasn’t entirely true. His eyes saw her as she was, tall and mighty and majestic, but overlaid against her was a shadow that repulsed him, made him want to get as far from her as possible. She was still infected, and his enhanced eyes could see it filling her like a ravenous cancer.

The Titan glared down at him, flexing her hands. “We don’t have time for a situation report. Suffice it to say, those pirates shouldn’t have used all those electric whips on me. They’d hoped to control me with them, but instead they gave my head and heart a much needed kick start. I’m better now, but it’s a temporary solution, so we have to make every second count. There’s still a lot to do.”

“
Like what?” Shawn asked, looking down at his metal-laced arms and hands. “What could be more important than this?”

“
Pirates, for one thing. There are still two standing guard topside, and if my memory is correct there are a lot more on their ships, all of them waiting to hear from their captain. They know about me, and they certainly know about the two of you. And then there’s…”

Shawn’s mother looked up when the Titan’s voice trailed off. “What is it? What’s happening?”

“
Something dreadful,” the Titan replied, her lips barely moving as she stared into a distance they couldn’t see. “Something we never thought possible. I… I don’t know if you’d even understand it.”

His mother leaned against the metal tray Shawn was stretched out on, and the look of worry etched into her face was replaced with her typical scholarly expression of interest and intelligence. “Try me. Let’s start with your name.”

“
My name is Artemis, and I’m the last of the Titans.”

Alicia’s head ached as her pulse pounded blood through her veins like a hammer on an anvil. Too much had happened in too short a span of time. In less than a day she’d seen a man murdered in cold blood, been kidnapped at gunpoint, forced to lie her way into her own museum, walked through hidden hallways, watched a Titan slaughter a room full of pirates, seen her son shot, and then watched him become the very thing she’d spent her entire life studying. It was too much, too fast, and her mind struggled to keep up.

“
What?” she said. “The last? When… how?”

Artemis shook her head and scowled. Her black hair and dark skin blended into the shadows of the room, and her armor turned from amber to ebony, but her bright eyes stood out like stars. “We don’t have time for this. They’ll be here any moment.”

“
They who?” Alicia asked. “The Hezrin?”

The Titan barked out a sharp laugh. “That would be difficult since the Hezrin are extinct. No, this… this is far worse.”

“
Worse than the Hezrin? What could possibly…?”

“
It’s the Titans.”

The spinning sensation Alicia felt whirling through her head got worse. “But you said you were the last.”

“
I am,” Artemis replied, leaning against the wall and sliding down into a sitting position. Her armor became flat black in color, which seemed to match her state of mind. She looked down at her gauntleted hands and squeezed them into fists. “They… we’ve… all been infected by a Hezrin nanovirus. It’s created within us an overwhelming need for destruction, compelling us to destroy the only thing we know still stands – home.”

“
But if you’re infected, then why aren’t…?” Alicia wasn’t sure she wanted to finish the question, yet she had to know the answer.

“
Because I was the last to be infected by it. I was out scouting the outer moons of Crucible when the Hezrin unleashed their final weapon. By then it was too late to stop their extinction, but for them I guess it was the principle of the matter. We were their destroyers, and their parting shot was to make sure we destroyed ourselves, too. There’s a sad poetic symmetry to it. But, because I was the last one to become infected, I had a chance to see what was coming and setup firewalls in the nanites laced through my neural network. After I did what I could to stop the rest of the Titans from leaving Crucible, I made my way here as fast as I could. I know Thanatos, though. I didn’t stop him. He wasn’t our commanding officer for nothing. All I did was delay them.”

When Artemis first mumbled about being infected, and through her actions showed what the infection was doing to her, Alicia had been afraid of what that meant. Titans were strong enough to tear through the hulls of starships, and the weapons they crafted from their armor were the definition of deadly, so a Titan driven insane was something any sensible person would fear. But what about two crazed Titans? What about ten? A hundred? What sort of destruction could a group that powerful and demented be capable of?

As much as those questions needed to be answered, Alicia’s first fear was still the most pressing – what was happening with Artemis? She’d been out of her mind, mentally lost in the woods since Alicia had first seen her, and though she seemed to be holding herself together now, how long would that last? Artemis herself had said her improved condition was temporary. So, could Alicia trust her? For how long? And did she even have a choice? Shawn’s new condition only made her questions more complicated. If Artemis was sick, then Shawn could become infected too.

Alicia wanted to grab her hair and pull it out in fistfuls. It was an impossible situation to get her head around. On one side they had an insane super soldier, and on the other the impending doom of even more. She shook her head and sighed. She had to focus. One problem at a time.

“
If you protected yourself, then what’s happening to you?”

Artemis grimaced and looked away. “The goddamn nanovirus is harder to fight than I thought it’d be. The security software in my nanites has been doing everything it can to fend off the infection, but I’ve been losing ground constantly. When the pirates attacked me with their energy whips, though, the virus took the brunt of the attack. That allowed my neural nanites to push back. For now the firewalls are back in place and holding, but it won’t last long, and the damage done to my neural network was severe, so it’s not a trick I can repeat. I’ve got… a day, maybe two if I’m lucky, before the virus overwhelms me again. Meanwhile, the Titans are still coming.”

Alicia, sick of the endless parade of bad news, wondered if there was any hope to be had. “If you’ve been infected by this… nanovirus, then why come here? What did you hope to find? A cure?”

“
Yes. Or, at the very least, more time. I came here because an infusion of uninfected nanites would more than likely flush my system clean of infection. And, if I found enough, I was hoping I could do the same for the rest of the Titans.”

Shawn shifted around on the metal bed and swung his lower legs down. The look on his face was one of guilt, and Alicia’s heart cried out to him. “Oh.”

“
No,” Artemis said. The Titan reached out to touch him – a perfectly normal response – but Alicia saw it and stepped between them. The Titan looked at her in confusion, then sighed and pulled her hand back as she realized what she’d almost done. “If it helps alleviate unnecessary guilt, Shawn, one canister of nanites wouldn’t have been enough to repair all the damage that’s been done and make me right again.”

“
So then what are you going to do now?” Alicia asked. She stepped over to stand next to her son’s right leg and laid a protective hand on it. The metal laced across it was cold, but his skin was warm, and that quieted the fluttering bird in her heart.

The Titan looked at her and Shawn, but she didn’t answer for several long seconds. When she finally spoke, it was barely above a whisper. “If there aren’t any more nanites to be had, then I need to find a kill switch.”

“
A what?” Shawn asked.

Alicia let out a flat chuckle. “Do you mean Groesbeck designed a failsafe against his own creation?” The idea had never occurred to her, but now that it was in her head she wondered how it couldn’t have. Every weapon could be disarmed, so why not a Titan?

“
He never talked about it,” Artemis replied, “but I can’t imagine the thought wouldn’t have crossed his mind that one day he might have to put us down. He was insane, but he wasn’t stupid. I have to believe a kill switch would have been part of his designs. If I can’t cure us, then I… I have to destroy us. Otherwise, everything we fought for will have been for nothing. But, to do that I’ll need your help.”

“
What can we do?” Alicia asked, blood draining from her face at the thought of continued danger for her and her son. Shawn needed to be in a hospital, not running around with a plague-ridden super soldier. “I’m a museum director, and he’s just a high school student. We aren’t fighters or spies. Go to the authorities and tell them what’s happening.”

Artemis’s expression hardened, and the light in her eyes flared. Spikes rolled across her armor like ruffled feathers. “And tell them what?”

“
The truth, of course,” Alicia replied, her spine stiffening at the condescending tone the Titan took with her.

“
Dr. Campbell, I was there when the Hezrin first arrived. I remember the chaos, the confusion. The public was in a panic, and the governments we looked to for guidance were as stupid and slow as everyone else. By the time someone came up with a plan to approach them, the Hezrin were already sending troops to Charon. You know what happened because you read it from a book. I know because I lived it. I won’t trust that sort of ineptness again.”

“
Maybe,” Shawn replied, “but if anyone would know where more nanites are, wouldn’t it be the Alliance or the Union governments? I mean, hell, Mom, you’re dating a fed. Can’t he help us?”

Alicia shook her head while wiping her sweaty palms against her pants. At the mention of government intervention she envisioned federal agents surrounding her son with guns and shouted orders, of being sequestered in a building she wouldn’t be told the name of, of locks being turned and keys thrown away, and she became numb as the full ramifications of what they’d done settled in her head.