And the next thing I feel is a rising, murderous fury at Nathan fucking Gould.
Because Gould scanned me, just a couple of hours ago. Sure his rig didn’t come with all the latest bells and whistles but it sure as shit should’ve been able to tell when someone’s dead, you know? It sure as shit should be able to tell you when your goddamn heart is missing.
Gould, you fucker. You slimy, sorry sack of shit. You knew. You knew all along, and you let me do your dirty work, and you never even told me, Gould, you never even—
I swear I’m going to break his scrawny pencil neck but I’m locked down in the cradle. I can’t do anything but listen to the lab rats talking over me like I’m fungus in a petri dish. Gould couldn’t give two shits about my injuries, he just wants to know what the N2’s holding in its deep-layer substrate. The technician tells him they’re uploading it as fast as they can, and they’re all pointedly ignoring the body twitching at the corner of my eye. And that twitching, it doesn’t stop. It actually gets worse over time and its not just the body anymore it’s the things around it, it’s the very air and I’m trying to turn my head for a better look and no dice—I’m still wired into the harness—but that’s okay because that weird shimmery twitchiness is spreading across my visual field like water spilled across the floor, like the ground racing up at you when your stabilizers are down and you’re coming in too fast—
I think it short-circuits me, somehow. The cradle. Knocks me right out of the here-and-now and right into some, some—I don’t know. Some schizophrenic’s nightmare. I can hardly see anything, just shapes and silhouettes stuck in shades of blue and black like I’m in some kind of subterranean grotto. Giant machines everywhere. At least I think they’re machines, judging by their outlines. And there are things all over them, crawling down the walls, slithering along the floor. Coming for me. The monsters are coming and I’m stuck in molasses, I’ve got a gun but I barely even have the strength to bring it up much less defend myself.
Pretty classic nightmare scenario, right? Looking back now I figure maybe some kind of voltage spike when the cradle linked in, maybe it kick-started that part of the brain that lights up when you’re scared shitless. Limbic system, I think they call it. The amygdala. But I’m not thinking about any of that in the moment, I’m just terrified, and then—you’re not gonna believe it, but suddenly, just like that, I’m happy. You know why?
Because I can feel my heart beating again. I can hear my breath, harsh and ragged and fast because I’m scared, man, I’m still so scared but there’s also this huge sense of relief, of joy almost. I’m real again, I’m alive. I feel alive. As if this is the world and I’ve just awakened from the nightmare.
And then this nasty little voice in the back of my head says, No, soldier, that’s not your pulse. That’s not your breath. These aren’t even your eyes, you corpse, you meat sack, you miserable rotting zombie. They’re Prophet’s. Everything’s Prophet’s.
You stole it all.
And then some other voice says It’s spiking and someone else says lookit those fucking delta waves and now the nightmare’s leaking back into the dream, the monsters are fading and real people are yelling in the distance, spoiling everything. The world turns back to shit and I can feel my breath disappearing, my arms and legs turning to dead meat, and all I can think of as I fall back to earth is Prophet, poor ol’ Prophet, and the last thing he said before he blew his brains out: Remember me.
Remember you?
It’s not like I have a fucking choice.
And here I am again, dead, paralyzed, surrounded by lab rats and liars arguing over how best to carve me up for the data in my guts.
Except things seem to be going a lot worse for them than last time I checked in.
The light’s gone longwave. Sparks pop like fireworks. Half the boxes hooked into my cradle are smoking; the other half are alive with machine code. I can see the script scrolling up across techie faces, I can zoom in and see warning icons reflected in their eyes. And those eye are wide, lemme tell you. Those eyes are scared shitless.
Someone shouts “Overload!” and a very calm machine voice answers Uncalibrated nano-routines detected. Alien tissue vector. Thirty-three percent.
“It’s online,” bleats the rat who pronounced me dead. “It’s transmitting . . .”
Gould: “Shut it down!”
“I’m trying . . .”
In the distance, the sound of rotors beating the air. The sound of boots moving with authority. Suddenly someone else is in the room, scaring back the lab rats, grabbing Gould by the scruff of the neck and smashing his face into the wall. Gould goes down like a priest on a choirboy; the intruder turns to me and smiles.
Lockhart.
Suddenly things are very quiet. The rotors outside have spun down. The local hardware has stopped sizzling; one of the techs must have succeeded in shutting it off before Lockhart scared them all into the corner. None of the usual trash talk from the mercs who’ve flooded the room in their master’s wake. The room pulses with dim red emergency lighting, but the alarms have fallen silent.
But there’s Lockhart, with a gun in his hand. Smiling through the glass.
Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.
I try to move; no dice. I’m Christ on the cross in this thing. I can’t even access my tacticals.
Lockhart moseys past the observation port, steps into my cage. His sleeves are rolled halfway up the biceps. The camo pattern on his CELL fatigues is a mesh of hexagons, blue-gray, green-gray, brown-gray. Honeycomb, like Prophet’s tattoo. You notice these things at the weirdest times.
“Nice,” he says.
Just a light pistol, the M12 Nova. You never really appreciate how big it is until you have one jammed in your face.
I’m going to die, I think, and then, No. Gould’s going to die, maybe. Maybe even the lab techs, if Lockhart’s a stickler for loose ends. But not me.
I’m already dead. I’m already dead. I’ve been dead all day.
Lockhart leans in close. “Got men all over the downtown looking for your ass, tin man. And here you are, trussed and tied.”
“Which takes his threat potential down to zero, I’m thinking. Which means that pulling that trigger makes you a murderer. Not to mention a war criminal.”
Tara Strickland, in the flesh and the nick of time. She gestures at the floor: a couple of CELLulites haul Nathan Gould to his feet.
I can’t help noticing that Lockhart’s gun is still in my face. Tara Strickland, no slouch herself, notices, too. “Commander Lockhart. You will stand down.”
He doesn’t want to. He hates this uppity bitch who thinks she can order him around, he hates the fucking Rules of Engagement, he hates me most of all.
But he stands down.
Strickland’s already moved on to other things. “Nathan Gould. Always a pleasure.”
“Jesus, Tara.” Gould shakes his head and sighs. “Working with these assholes? If your father could see you now.”
“My father’s dead, Nathan,” she says mildly, and graces him with a gentle smile: “Now why don’t you shut the fuck up before I change my mind and send you after him?” She nods at one of the goons holding him up. “If he gives you trouble, don’t do too much damage. We’ll need to interrogate him later.” Back to Lockhart: “Power him down.”