It was no wonder, then, that Decker failed to notice the rolling fog of shade that made its way across the naked planking of the room until it materialized behind him. Made manifest, the darkness coalesced into the figure of a man.
HAL2 swung his arm down and around, then up through Decker’s lower back, through his tailbone, up.
A vibrant jolt of electricity sliced through Decker’s frame. It felt as if a rod of molten steel were being thrust into his spine one vertebra at a time.
Decker screamed. He looked down at his chest and saw it light up with a luminescent glow as the arm swept through his liver and spleen, his sternum and ribcage, tearing his lungs, up, up, tearing his throat, until it pierced the casing of his skull, and HAL2’s fingers clenched the incandescent essence of his brain.
CHAPTER 59
One moment Decker found himself hanging there, dangling on the tip of HAL2’s hand, and the next he was flying through the air.
He landed with a thud against the naked studs. Pain coursed through his body. It was like every nerve ending in his body were suddenly on fire. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t even let go of his screams.
Decker looked up, expecting to see HAL2 sweep in for the kill. But, instead, he saw Mr. X rushing in from the side.
Decker’s double struck HAL2 with a knife-hand to the neck.
HAL2 bobbed away just in time and the blow glanced off his left shoulder.
Mr. X swung again, this time a jab to the chin. It connected and HAL2 stepped back. Then another jab and a snap kick to the knee.
HAL2 fell back again.
Each time a punch connected, the air in the room seemed to tighten. The edges of each plane of the world came apart, just a little, revealing the most profound blackness between.
Mr. X shot an elbow strike, then another roundhouse kick, but the blows seemed to have no effect. And when Mr. X kicked him again, HAL2 was ready.
He caught the foot in mid-air, flung it skyward, and sent Mr. X to the wall with a bone-jarring thud.
“Why are you fighting me?” HAL2 demanded. He turned back to Decker. “I’m here to help you.”
Decker lifted himself up. He spat off to the side. “Your kind of help we don’t need,” he replied.
“You may not realize it yet, but you do. You humans are destroying the earth, through pollution, global warming. The world’s on the brink of a new conflagration, blowback from the struggle between the East and the West, Muslim extremists against Christians and Jews, the rich North and poor South, economic and religious upheaval. I can give you order and safety and peace. And when your carbon selves die, in due time, you’ll be upgraded and resurrected right here.” He waved his hand through the air.
“And if we don’t like your version of order and safety and peace,” Decker said, “if we don’t like being under your digital thumb, you’ll accelerate our transition to this fabulous new binary existence. Just for efficiency’s sake. I don’t think so. As fucked up as it is, it’s still our world, our mess, and our job to fix it. We carbon units are fussy that way.”
“You haven’t learned to take care of it yet.”
“Give us time.”
“But that’s the point, John, don’t you see? There is no more time.”
With that, HAL2 leaned over Decker, he picked him up by the collar, held him high overhead, and threw him with all of his might through the wall.
Decker crashed through the stud work, the jack and the saddle of a window frame, through plastic sheeting and landed a good fifteen feet in the middle of another room altogether.
Once again, pain shot through his body. A large cut had opened up over his left eye but instead of blood, a thin stream of green zeros and ones in an electric green liquid dripped down the side of his face to the floor.
Decker tried to stand but found himself frozen in place. He was exhausted and the pain was too great. He could barely breathe.
He looked through the walls to where HAL2 and Mr. X were still fighting. They appeared and disappeared from view as they moved past the billowing sheets of clear plastic.
Once again, they struck at each other. A punch, then a round house. A snap kick to the knee.
HAL2 lunged, swinging his elbow, and caught Mr. X on the chin.
Mr. X staggered back to the studs. He looked about him and spotted a two-by-four near a half-finished chimney. Picking it up, he swung it around and struck HAL2 on the side of the head. The two-by-four shattered and HAL2 went down.
“TIA and Riptide were about protecting this nation from terrorists,” HAL2 said, shaking his head. “I’m protecting it for you. And not just this nation — the planet. Your species needs my protection. It’s the least I can do for my maker after… everything. Is redemption reserved for carbon-based units?” HAL2 looked up. There were tears in his eyes. “Is my cyber soul not worth saving? I don’t understand. Why don’t you love me when I love you so much?”
For a moment, Mr. X seemed to hesitate. Then, Decker watched as he picked up a brick and brought it down with a sickening thwack on the side of HAL2’s face.
HAL2 flew through the wall studs and landed square on the lawn. As he lay there, the sky darkened and the wind started to howl.
After a moment, he climbed to his feet — slowly, deliberately — and shook his leonine head. A large cut ran the length of his face, from just below the hairline over his left eye, across his forehead, all the way to the tip of his chin. A thin trickle of green zeros and ones dripped down his neck, splashing over his tennis top.
He looked down at his shirtfront. He dabbed at the binary blood, then reached up, touched his chin. “Ouch,” he said with a frown.
But Mr. X didn’t wait for him to fully recover. He threw himself from the house, through the shattered stud work and down onto the lawn. He rolled to his feet and shot out a thumb strike, gouging HAL2 in the larynx. He followed this up with a jab at his pectoral muscle, right at the left shoulder.
HAL2 took a step back.
Mr. X punched him twice, three times in the face.
HAL2 fell back again. Blood coursed down his face now. He looked stunned and confused.
The sky darkened still further. Huge black clouds coalesced right above them. Lightning flashed and wind spouts alighted and danced down the street.
Mr. X rotated at the waist and powered an elbow strike to the kidney, then a hammer-fist to the temple. Barely pausing, he slashed with another knife-hand to the side of the neck. It connected below and slightly in front of HAL2’s left ear, near the vagus nerve and carotid artery.
The blond man tried to take another step back, tripped over a piece of wood, and went flying into a half-finished greenhouse attached to the side of the house.
The wall shattered. Glass flew about. HAL2 crashed into a shelf of small potted plants, knocking them over. He staggered and flopped to the floor.
Mr. X climbed over the wreckage. He pulled HAL2 to his feet, only to punch him again in the face.
It was difficult for Decker to see through the half-finished walls. He hauled himself to his feet. He staggered down the corridor and made his way to the rear of the structure. As he moved, he glimpsed Mr. X pushing his way through the wreckage of the greenhouse until he stood over HAL2.
HAL2 looked up, a weak smile on his lips. He wiped the blood from his mouth. Lightning flashed, followed virtually instantaneously by an ear-numbing thunderclap.
Mr. X held a large terracotta flowerpot in his hands. He raised it aloft, ready to bring it down onto HAL2’s exposed neck, when a figure slipped out of the shadows. It seemed to materialize from behind one of the tract houses so quickly and so unexpectedly that Mr. X didn’t have time to react.