Post-Human 05 - Inhuman (32 page)

4

Jules was the first to grab a handhold, clutching the side of a replicator pod just one level lower than the rapidly disintegrating catwalk. She looked down to see Old-timer’s tendrils wrapping around the wrists of both Samantha and Djanet, while a third tendril burrowed into the side of a pod one level farther below Jules.

“Daniella!” he shouted out as he realized neither of the two people he saved was his wife and he searched desperately with his eyes for her, darting his eyes in every direction. Almost immediately, he saw her, a level below him, Colonel Paine having dropped his weapon to grab the wrist of the ghost that haunted him deeply, saving her, while clutching one of the pods with his other hand.

“Got her!” Paine called up as he looked down into Daniella’s astonished eyes. “But the weight’s getting tough—V-SINN must be getting closer! If that hull doesn’t breach soon—”

“It won’t save you!” Neirbo shouted down to them from his perch, his feet planted on the side of a replicator pod above them. “I have the high ground! None of you is leaving here!” His eyes fell on Old-timer. “Especially not
him
.”

“Craig, what the hell did you do to that guy to piss him off so much?” Paine shouted up to Old-timer, exasperated.

Old-timer didn’t answer the question, realizing their time was too short, and instead looked up at Neirbo pleadingly. “Neirbo! Goddamnit! We can still get out of here! All of us!”

Neirbo shook his head. “You’re too dangerous to be left alive! This is the only way for me to finally destroy you, Craig Emilson.”

He knows my name?
Old-timer thought to himself, surprised.

“Your orders were to take him alive!” Jules shouted out to Neirbo.

Neirbo looked at her before, extremely uncharacteristically, laughing. “My orders?” He gestured with his gun to the destruction around them. “None of us is going to survive this. I think the time for following orders has ended.”

“Where’s your loyalty?” Jules shot back. “The orders came from
1
herself!”

Old-timer’s eyebrows knitted furiously as he made a realization.

“Loyalty?” Neirbo replied, astonished by the concept’s sudden and total absurdity. “In the final moments of my life, you know what I say to 1?” His voice became colder than it had ever been in the hundreds of years he’d lived. “I say go to He—”

Neirbo’s sentence suddenly ended abruptly, his final thought never able to be spoken, as the hand that held his weapon suddenly began moving the gun, its muzzle pointing toward Neirbo’s own temple. His disbelieving eyes darted to Jules as he finally made the same realization Old-timer had just moments earlier.

The muzzle flashed, and Neirbo’s head was cut in half, circuitry and metal suddenly scattering before being abruptly sucked down as though a vacuum cleaner were drawing them toward it. His headless body collapsed a second later, slipping from its perch on the side of the replicator pod and falling past Paine and Daniella, narrowly missing them as it fell at an astonishing rate of descent.

Old-timer looked up at Jules, his face painted with fury, his teeth gritted so hard that he couldn’t squeeze out the words.

“That’s right,” Jules confirmed, answering the unspoken question. “
1
’s still alive.”

“Is that…” Djanet began to ask, as she tried to make sense out of what she’d seen, “…did 1 make him do that? How? Has she been monitoring us the whole time?”

“She’s not just monitoring us,” Old-timer replied, his eyes fixed on those of Jules. “
She’s with us.
”

“What?” Djanet asked, her brow furrowing.

“Jules
is
1,” Old-timer revealed. “She led us into this trap.”

“And now I’m going to lead you out of it,” she called down to them as she swung her body like a mountain climber across the front of the pod to which she clung and pried the door open, tossing out the not-yet-activated android occupant, his body falling rapidly into the approaching black hole. “The decompression will occur in seconds. Unlock the pods from the pillars, get inside a pod, close the door, and hang on. It’s your only hope.”

Old-timer and Djanet exchanged astounded glances before Old-timer quickly used his powerful appendages to rip off the locks that held the pod they clung to into place before he slid back its door. Luckily, it was unoccupied, and he was able to bring himself, along with Samantha on his right and Djanet on his left, inside. The fit, however was extraordinarily snug, both of the women’s bodies squishing onto his hips, each of them tucking their shoulders to allow for the door to close. The last thing Old-timer saw before he closed the door was Daniella and Paine just below on the pillar to their opposite side, also sharing a pod, their eyes locked on one another, Daniella appearing confused and frightened, while Paine’s eyes expressed a gentleness that Old-timer had never seen from the professional killer.

Then he sensed eyes on him to his right and caught Samantha looking up at him, her eyes carrying their own hurt and confusion, and he looked away when he couldn’t take it anymore.

“What do you think our chances are?” Djanet asked, her focus on surviving, as it should’ve been.

“Better than you might think,” Old-timer replied. “
1
could’ve killed us if she’d really wanted to. There’s a reason we’re still alive. I suggest we follow her lead for now, as ridiculous as that notion might have sounded five minutes ago.”

“So we’re being manipulated—again,” Djanet said, summing up the situation.

“Yeah,” Old-timer sighed. “What else is new?”

Suddenly, there was a shudder, then a shockwave that was far more powerful than anything they’d felt so far. Through the dark, tinted window of the pod, they saw the hull breach, a sudden exit forming in the side of the ship that was so huge, the pressure being released so massive, that the pillars, each one of them dozens of times taller than the tallest structures ever built by humans on Earth, began crumbling like a sandcastle, breaking free from their moorings like matchsticks, being sucked toward the hole.

The pods were sucked in too, the acceleration so instant and extreme that it would’ve killed them if they’d still been in their post-human bodies.

“This is it,” Old-timer grunted. “Hold on!”

5

“Thel! What’s happening?” James shouted as he heard her last, panicked shouts.

“I’m out of control!” Thel shouted back as she was forced out the door again, her magnetic field cocooning her and the unconscious Alejandra and Lieutenant Commander Patrick—she hadn’t been able to save anyone else. “They’re all dead! Aldous killed them—he murdered them! The Purist complex is flooding—he brought down the ceiling!”

“Oh my God,” James whispered before his mind quickly snapped into action. “Thel, find a bottleneck point. Throw up a magnetic field and seal in the water before the entire complex is flooded!”

“Uhn!” she grunted in reply as she struggled to turn, the torrent of water propelling her through a long hallway. She managed to turn and saw the end, an opening that led back into the main hub of the complex. “I got it—hang on!” she shouted as she prepared herself, timing her next maneuver. She’d have to relinquish her cocoon, lowering her own protection and the protection that had saved Alejandra and the lieutenant commander so that she could seal in the flood, as the walls were the bottle neck she needed. Just before she reached them, she lowered her field, falling into the whitewater rapids, the water warm like that in a bathtub. She was swept away and then fired up a new magnetic field, closing in the torrent of water behind her as she slid across the soaked, concrete floor of the main hub of the new Purist complex. Alejandra’s and Lieutenant Commander Patrick’s unconscious bodies limply hydroplaned until the water dispersed enough beneath them and they came to violent halts several meters behind Thel, but her eyes remained on the wall of water that, within seconds, had completely filled the hallway from the floor to the ceiling.

“Are you okay, Thel?” James asked, feeling utterly helpless as he waited for an update. “Did it work?”

“It worked,” Thel gasped, “but, James, I was only able to save two of them. I lost all the rest—including Governor Wong. He drowned.”

“Focus on who you still have a chance to save,” the A.I. interjected. “Your field will protect the Purists for now, but they need to evacuate.”

“I understand,” Thel nodded, turning to see as hundreds of Purists entered the main hub, alarms blaring and red lights signaling an emergency. “You need to evacuate the complex!” Thel screamed out at them! “Quickly!”

Several Purists joined forces to retrieve both Alejandra and Lieutenant Commander Patrick, dragging the two unconscious bodies away toward the strangely designed vehicles that populated the main hub. Thel wasn’t sure if they were air- or water-vehicles, but knowing that James had designed them, she knew they’d do the job either way.

“The evacuation is underway,” Thel relayed, slightly relieved. “But what happened to the hard drive? Is Rich okay?”

6

“We’re trying to figure that out,” James returned “Hang on. Rich? Do you copy?”

“Where the hell am I?” Rich shouted as, all around him, he appeared to be surrounded by a wall of white. “I don’t see anything! I don’t even know what direction I’m facing!”

“Thank God you’re okay, pal,” James breathed a sigh of relief. “Listen, Thel’s helping the Purists evacuate, and Aldous doesn’t seem to be able to get to you through your magnetic field. He’s trying to buy time—he must think there’s still a way he can prevent us from assuming control of Trans-human.”

“What about the Purists in the command center?” Rich asked as he was suddenly interrupted, the interruption causing him to scream out in a brief call of terror. As if in answer to his question, Governor Wong’s dead body was thrust against the side of his magnetic field. “Jesus!”

“Rich! Are you okay?”

Rich was panting as he tried to regain some semblance of control over his rapid breathing as the governor’s body was swept away in the torrent. “Relatively,” he replied, “but James, the Governor’s dead. I just saw him. Oh Christ.”

James shut his eyes. “That blood’s on Aldous’s hands. Goddamn it, I never thought he’d betray us like this. Not in a million years.”

“Nor did I,” the A.I. echoed. “Aldous has clearly been using his privileged position as the chief of the A.I. governing council to keep a great many secrets, perhaps for several decades.”

“What do I do here, guys?” Rich asked, panicked. “I can’t see. It’s just a wall of white all around me. Just frothing water, man.”

“Where’s Aldous?” James asked. “You should be able to detect his position if you’re in such close proximity.”

“That’s the thing,” Rich replied, “I can’t. His position isn’t coming up on my mind’s eye. Guys, he’s not playing by the rules here.”

“He’s right,” the A.I. concurred with Rich’s assessment as he conferred with James, the candidate standing nearby, transfixed by the drama, yet remaining a silent bystander. “Rich can’t get a position, he doesn’t know which way is up or down, left or right. This is right where Aldous wants him. If Aldous can’t lower Rich’s magnetic field, then at least he can keep him trapped in one place.”

“And if he’s trapped in one place, he can’t reach a signal booster,” James added.

“It also provides a possible answer as to what Aldous is buying time for,” the A.I. said, his brow furrowed as he thought deeply, unraveling the puzzle. “If Aldous can’t lower Rich’s magnetic field, yet he claimed to have been the one who developed the prototype—”

“Then someone has to have given it to Aldous,” James said, finishing the A.I.’s thought for him. “And our top suspect is 1, once again. She’d be in the best position to know how to beat her own collective’s technology, but she wouldn’t trust Aldous enough to give him the key.”

“Indeed, it’s now all but certain that Aldous and 1 struck a deal,” the A.I. agreed.

“But their deal hasn’t gone according to plan, and now Aldous is waiting for the other shoe to drop,” James realized.

“Uh, guys,” Rich interrupted, “I love detective time as much as the next guy, I really do, but I’m sorta trapped here. What the hell do I do?”

James turned to the A.I. and they, without a word, seemed to agree on the only course of action available. “Look, Rich...” James began.

“Okay, already I don’t like this,” Rich replied. “Why did I know your tone was going to be foreboding? Why can’t it ever start with, ‘It’s super easy, Rich! No worries! Have a beer! Chill out!’”

“I wish it was that simple, but it’s gonna be a risk, bud,” James said. “I know you don’t know where you are in the room, but we need you to give us some sort of visual cue so that we can direct you to a signal booster. That means we need to get you out of that room.”

“And how do we do that?” Rich replied, his face stricken with dread.

“The command center juts out, right at the front of the waterfall, and it’s the most westward-facing point in the complex,” James replied. Because it juts out, that means if you head up, you’ll break free from the room and the water above and escape. If you head down, you’ll crash through into the waterfall, but eventually you’ll make it to the seabed and, again, be able to escape. The same goes for if you go left or right. The only truly bad direction is if you go east and crash into the rest of the complex, which wouldn’t be optimal.”

“Optimal? What happens if I crash into the rest of the complex?”

“You might bring the ceiling down on Thel and spread the flooding and kill the rest of the Purists. So, this is going to be like Russian roulette. Same odds. Five directions save you, one direction doesn’t.”

“But instead of playing with
my
life, I’m playing with Thel’s life and the lives of all the Purists!” Rich fired back.

“Rich,” Thel suddenly cut in as she remained in the center hub of the complex, still holding back the tidal wave of water that threatened them. “James is right. You’ve got a five-in-six chance of getting out of there, but even if you do come east and flood the rest of the complex, it’ll be okay.”

“What? Thel, I can’t be responsible for—”

“Think about it, Rich,” Thel cut him off. “It won’t matter if we die if you’re able to get James and the A.I. out of the sim and into Trans-human. They can turn the solar system back in time again, and that’s all that matters. We can still save Governor Wong and the others that we’ve already lost.”

Rich’s mind immediately went to Djanet, before turning to his family. In all likelihood, they’d been assimilated, and James and the A.I. were his only hope of undoing that damage and bringing back the Purist lives that had already been lost. “Okay, okay. I’ll do it. Damn it. How do I pick a direction? Eenie-meenie-miney-mo?”

“That’ll work,” James conceded, “but hurry, Rich. If Aldous is buying time, it means he thinks there’s a strong chance that the person who can get through your magnetic field is on her way as we speak, and we all know who that is. Every second counts.”

“Djanet you were right,” Rich whispered to himself as he nodded. “I’ve gotta retire from the saving the world business.” He closed his eyes and then flew forward as fast as he could, not knowing what direction “forward” was.