So he turns at bay: flicks his wrists, sends micromissiles streaking upward from both arms and back even as his gun-rack fires on auto spray. He lets rip with his flamers too. What’s left of night vanishes. The Operative doesn’t wait to assess the damage—he dives back into the fungus. And makes haste through the water while the fires roar overhead. Most of his view’s blotted out by smoke. He wonders for a second if Sarmax has been caught within the blasts. He wonders if he’s going to have to try to recover the necessary software from what’s left of a charred skull. Maybe he’s going to have to tell Lynx he got a little too eager. He stands there on the island, looks out into the conflagration, sights his scopes, waits for something to move into one of a thousand crosshairs. But nothing does.
The ground starts to shake.
At first the Operative thinks it’s more explosions going off on the other side of the dome. But it’s not. Because the fires out there don’t seem to be rising. They seem to be sinking. It’s as though the dirt itself is getting burned away. What’s left of the tangled mass of vegetation is disappearing from view. The Operative feels the shaking beneath his feet intensify. The ground upon which he’s standing is very definitely tilting. He watches as the fungus garden starts to slope away from him. He can see exactly what’s happening. The floor of the place is collapsing. The foundations must have been burned or blasted away. But the blueprints show nothing beneath the dome save rock.
Which is beside the point right now. The Operative starts making for the other side of the island. Water sloshes beneath his feet, runs through channels where his and Sarmax’s boots carved trenches in the ground. There’s water pouring from the ceiling too. Sprinklers are going all out. The Operative stumbles toward the gazebo. It’s leaning to one side. But it’s still standing. The Operative pulls himself past it.
Which is when Sarmax strikes once more.
Tracers whip through the air. Rocket-propelled grenades streak in. The Operative hits his jets, shoots upward. Explosions tear at him from every side. He can hear Sarmax broadcasting to him. He’s not hearing anything coherent. He returns fire with everything he’s got.
For about a moment. But then something strikes him on the head. Hard. Concussion sweeps against him. He feels himself being shoved downward. He realizes that what’s left of the dome’s inner roof is collapsing. That the outer roof might be coming with it. He hears Sarmax laughing. The ground’s folding up beneath the Operative. He feels everything above him bearing him down like an avalanche. He’s riding that debris, running downward over it, fighting for consciousness all the while. And now he’s through into more space—charging through underground corridors that undulate as the landslide that contains the garden’s contents piles down into them. Somehow he keeps moving. Somehow he’s not crushed.
And at last those vibrations die away behind him. He figures that he’s chosen the right way by virtue of the fact that he’s still breathing. He figures that Sarmax is one step ahead of him—figures, too, that the man has more defenses down here. He reaches a fork. One passage slopes up, the other down. He chooses the latter, starts along it.
As he does so, he hears a rumbling. A large section of rock is descending behind him. What’s driving it is clearly mechanical. He almost hits the jets on reverse to try to beat it. But he doesn’t. Instead he charges forward, racing down the tunnel, using his hands and feet at intervals to push himself off the walls, floors, ceiling. He’s trying to stay unpredictable. He’s scanning every centimeter of those surfaces. When he starts to notice nozzles here and there, he isn’t surprised. They could be sensors. They could be weapons. Either way, he’s starting to feel like he’s getting warm.
And when he hears the voice of Leo Sarmax, he knows it for certain.
“Carson, Carson, Carson,” says the voice. “Did you miss me?”
It’s broadcast from the nozzles. It echoes in the Operative’s head. He doesn’t speak. Just listens. Just keeps rushing forward. Just keeps watching every centimeter of the walls…
“That’s good,” says the voice. “Real good, Carson. Had to ask, you understand. Even though you won’t answer. Let me assume, though, that answer’s the same as it was before: no and yes.”
The Operative just stares. He’s beyond blinking now. He’s gotten to the point where reflex and intuition blur. He reaches another fork. He doesn’t slow. He makes his choice, accelerates.
“Yes and no,” continues Sarmax, “no and yes. Can’t say I blame you. It was bad enough when I got here. It’s much worse now.”
Half fall, half dive: the Operative tumbles down a stairway in one motion. He vaults off the last step, roars down the new corridor like some avenging angel. He pours fire in his wake. He gets ready to pour fire out before him.
“Because the truth,” says Sarmax, “is that this whole game is going up for grabs. This whole scene is getting out of hand. And we, old friend, are right in the middle of it.”
Now the Operative comes shooting out into a wider space. It’s still a corridor but it’s twice as wide and twice as deep as any of its predecessors. It harbors far more choices, too: openings of every size and shape hewn into every one of its surfaces. The Operative feels like he’s been here before, like he’s in a dream.
But he isn’t.
“So we got to change it up,” says Sarmax. “We got to take you off the fucking board.”
All the nozzles in the space open up on the Operative. He’s getting it from all sides. Lasers sear against him. Bullets are right behind, albeit a little slower. Too slow: for now he’s charging down a side corridor, smoke churning off his armor, his own weapons flinging countermeasures back into the passage he just exited. But this new passage has its own defenses too. They open up on him. They flail against him at almost point-blank range. They carve deep into his armor, sending screens into static, comps into overload, fail-safes into action—and all the while the man who’s killing him keeps on telling him all about it.
“I think you can see where this is going to go,” says Sarmax. “Assuming your eyes haven’t melted yet. These are the last sounds you’ll ever hear, Carson. These are the final words your brain will ever process. Lynx never bargained on my real base being buried so far beneath the surface. He never counted on my sowing the black markets with false maps. All the inner enclaves of all my major residences, Carson: they’re all red herrings. The real ones are all off the charts. But that’s the way it always is with the truth. It’s always beyond the pale. Though it pales in comparison with the lies that surround it. Wouldn’t you agree, Carson?”
But the Operative’s not listening. He’s just flicking his wrists—letting grenades slot into his hands, flinging explosives in both his path and wake. It’s not an act of suicide. These grenades aren’t ordinary. Wavelengths of every size and hue rush over him. His sensors are being blotted out. He hits the dirt. He crawls on down that corridor while the lasers fire randomly. They’re blinded too. They’re trying to filter out the disrupters. They’re not succeeding.
Which gives the Operative some respite. Even as his mind’s frantically working to extrapolate what he knows against what he doesn’t. He takes a chance, shoots off down one of the adjacent passages, ignoring the guns that blast against him as he blasts downward through a suddenly larger space. Something strikes him in the back. He sees stars. He thinks he sees things below him—catches glimpses here and there: platforms hanging in the dark, vast ramps leaning through the gloom. He figures he’s already dead. He figures this is one demented Hades. He resolves to start the afterlife in style. He wafts in toward one platform in particular, throws his feet forward. He hits. He runs along that platform, then slows to a walk and finally stops.