Zoe Ott—Alto Do Mundo
As I focused on Ai, the halo appeared around her head like a thin laser and tried to push me back. She had turned all of her energy onto me, but I wasn’t afraid. Suddenly the air was as cold as ice and everything was crystal clear. Something warm ran from one of my nostrils and tickled my upper lip before dripping off the end of my chin.
“Zoe …” Ai gasped, and the halo warped. I pushed my way closer, and her eyes widened.
“Zoe, stop.”
Something slammed down the hall, and Penny turned. Behind her, I saw one of the smoked-glass doors open, and a woman in uniform stalked through. Her black hair was short, and there were tattoos on her neck. As her boots tromped down the hall, I could feel the anger radiate from her.
You. It was Flax, the one who’d killed Karen.
Penny flicked out both batons, extending them as she marched down the hall to meet her. She was strong, but she was in pain, and I could see her limp just a little as she walked. Behind her, she left a trail of dots on the tile.
I felt Ai worm her way into my brain and I turned back to her, struggling to push her back as I remembered the dead woman’s words in my last vision. The words she’d said when she showed me that woman marching toward Penny with death in her eyes.
“She will take away the last thing that is dear to you.”
“Penny, wait!” Ai was overwhelming me. I could feel her beginning to take control. Penny was going to die. She was going to die right in front of me.
“Stop!”
I turned on Ai, and everything, all the fear and the hate and the desperation, came out at once. I smashed through the barrier she’d thrown up, and emerged on the other side like a missile entering the atmosphere. The fragments of color below were like a work of art, an intricate field of stained glass that contained more knowledge than I would ever know in my lifetime. They floated above a storm of emotion that no one ever saw; the loss of everything she ever cared about, the knowledge that she would never reach old age, fear for the future that would unfold when she was gone …and throughout it all, guilt. Deep inside, buried under layers and layers of duty and discipline and justification, was a remorse so intense it was almost blinding.
I saw remorse for everything she had done—every person she had killed or allowed to die, every life she’d destroyed or allowed to be destroyed. She carried it all deep within, even a truth that Penny had known all along: she’d let Karen be taken away, because she knew that without her I would find solace in them. She knew. She knew everything and she did it anyway.
The only thing I hadn’t expected was the remorse, made all the worse by the one, childlike fear that she kept as a secret in her heart of hearts.
I don’t think I can stop it.
“You don’t kill me,” I heard her whisper as I reached for the white band from which all the other light sprang. “I die from—”
Something in her brain burst. The halo disappeared and she twitched in shock. One hand desperately reached out at nothing, and the tiny fingers closed around a fistful of air.
“Don’t …”
Her colors didn’t disappear, but they shifted suddenly. The stained glass of her mind melted and skewed. All the beauty went out of it. In an instant, it turned to something jumbled and meaningless.
One of her eyelids drooped. Her eyes rolled back, and then the colors faded and scattered.
She fell, and her large head struck the tile with a heavy thud.
I swayed on my feet, smearing something wet from under my nose and across my cheek. Ai’s little body lay on the floor, her clothes fluttering in the wind as it blew down the hall. A little speck of hot blue that reminded me of a pilot light fluttered above her head. I stared at it, pawing at the inside of my jacket until I found the flask there. I took off the cap and dropped it on the floor as I took a long swallow. The last splash ran down the side of my mouth; then it was empty.
I looked at the big Z monogram etched in the smoked glass and felt my throat burn. Ai had given that to me. Tears blurred in my eyes as that little pilot light went out, and Ai was gone.
I tossed the flask and heard it smash on the floor. It didn’t matter. There wouldn’t be any tomorrow. Not for me, or any of us.
Reaching back out into the night, I found Vaggot again as my last vision began to seep into my mind. For a minute I was in the dark, and a rolling field began to form: dark hills covered in wet grass and fog. Wind rushed over me, moaning through trees somewhere far away, where there were no buildings and you could see the stars and the moon. The ground began to move, and I saw that the field in front of me was crowded with figures. A mob of misshapen heads bobbed and swayed against the moonlit sky like boiling, black water, and thousands of eyes stared back at me.
Mr. Vaggot, how soon?
Less than five minutes.
Five minutes. In five minutes, it would all be over.
I don’t want to die. That was the last thing I sensed from him.
I’ve seen your future, I assured him. Believe me, you don’t want it.
Calliope Flax—Alto Do Mundo Penthouse
At the penthouse, I’d followed the signal until I came to a glass door in a long hall where a bunch of bodies sprawled out on the floor. They were decked out in body armor, weapons scattered around them where they fell, along with big chunks of safety glass that had been blown out behind them. The glass panel was gone, and the hall opened right out into open air where shredded drapes flapped in the wind. Snow blew in on a rush of cold air.
Past the bodies, I saw her; I knew that beak nose and bony neck the second I saw them. Her long, red hair blew in the breeze as she stared at some other little twerp with her, some freaky-looking Asian chick with a big head. They didn’t even look like they heard me as I picked up the pace and started toward them.
Halfway there, I heard something behind me. I stopped and spun around in time to see a small figure lunge. It was a spooky-looking girl with black hair and blue eyes. She had a metal baton in each hand.
You …
The bitch was fast. The air chirped and one of the batons hit my gun hand hard. Black blood popped from the back of it as the skin split open. I fired two rounds, but they went wild.
Error.
The word flashed as warnings scrolled about the damage to the dead hand. A piece of yellow bone stuck through the skin where she hit it, but there was no pain. Pins and needles ticked down my arm as I squeezed the grip harder and tried to steady the gun. She moved in again.
“I know you,” I said. Her eyes were focused and intense, but there was pain there too. Her shirt was stained with blood, and when I scanned into the meat behind it, I saw a small, bright bullet lodged there. She was hurt.
“You should have done your job on the tanker,” she said. Her pupils opened up, and I felt a little dizzy. “This would all be over.”
It was her. That bitch who stopped me at the train station when I got back from my tour. The one who took my memories. She had me cut open right inside my own apartment and wired a bomb through my guts, then made sure I ended up on that boat so they could blow it up. She’d fixed it so I never knew. I remembered that dizziness now. It was the same as when Singh tried to tweak me back at the roadblock. It was the same every time one of them fucked with my head, but this time the feeling passed.
“What’s the matter?” I said. “Your little ace in the hole not working any—”
She moved fast. At the last second, I leaned back as the baton whipped past my face and I aimed the gun. Something hissed in front of me and I saw a puff of white mist as I squeezed the trigger. The gun boomed, but she’d ducked down again and was gone.