“I… my squad… is everyone okay?” The last words rise in volume, calling to the room, and he walks out into the corridor. The door opens and a head peeks out.
“Barty’s gone. The rest of us are still alive. Do you have any ammo?”
They file out into a clump around the lieutenant, babbling questions, gesturing at their rifles, blocking my firing lane. I draw in a breath to yell at them to take cover, we still don’t know if this level is clear or not, when a flicker of motion appears through the forest of legs. Metal clinks on metal, once, twice.
“Grenade!”
I roll behind the doorframe wall in time with my words, and a thunderclap of sound punches me in the ears again, squeezing my temples in a vise. All I can hear is ringing, a tin harmony to the hot orchestra of pain throbbing my perforated ear. Push my way up to a sitting position, back against the wall, trying to put myself together yet again, rifle resting on my lap. Quickly glance out to survey, an all too familiar move at this point. Dripping chunks of flesh paint the walls, dark smears under dead ruby light.
“Slend? You still here?”
Coughing, then an answer.
“Yeah.”
Something tickles my nose, an acrid, scorched scent, different from the grenade’s explosive residue, different from the usual scent of gunfire. I look over to check on Jase and Wind, both slumped against the wall, still breathing, and notice a slight haze in the air. Great. I call out to Slend again.
“Rig’s on fire. We gotta find Sawyer. Still at least one hostile out there.”
“Plan?”
“Quick and dirty. I’ll take point. Sawyer’s office is to the left at the end of the hall. Cover fire on my go, bounce up and clear.”
“Got it.”
A sudden burst of gunfire nearby, sharp rifle cracks interspersed with the heavier boom of a high-caliber pistol. Sounds like it came from… around the hallway to the left. I rise to a kneeling position.
“Go.”
I move out into the hallway, rifle snugged to my shoulder, sights steady, Slend suppressing from the right. Nothing moves except for the slow trickles of blood down the wall and my cheek. My boots pull with every step, the floor sticky and grasping. Kick in a door, gory bootprint staining the thin plastic, hating to waste the time, but an uncleared room is a potential bullet in the back.
“Clear.”
I post up in the doorway, covering Slend’s advance. She enters the next room on the right, the last before the hallway’s T-junction terminus.
“Clear.”
“Jase, move up to Slend.”
Jase scampers past, dragging Wind by an arm. She giggles as they slip past Slend into the just-cleared room. Still nonfunctional. I move out, hugging the left wall, Slend joining me on the right. Halt before the junction. Pop my head around for a quick look, then back into cover. Nothing except a wall of twisted debris twenty meters down. Look at Slend. She shakes her head—same. Hold up a hand with three extended fingers.
Two.
One.
Swing around the corner, Slend walking backward behind me, covering the other direction, dirty red light our only illumination. Nothing but distant gunfire, steadily growing fainter. Stop next to an open entrance, the last before the mass of tangled wreckage, one hand reaching back to halt Slend. A layer of smoke gently drifts along the ceiling, and flickering shadows reach out from the doorway.
“Sawyer?”
“Ashley…”
The voice is low, thready, barely reaching my battered ears, a far cry from Sawyer’s usual clipped precision. I risk a quick look into the room, but it’s impossible to see anything other than a chaotic mess, one lone failing light flickering intermittently in strobing pulses.
“Sawyer, is the room clear?”
“…clear… Ashley… need…”
He trails off again. I tap Slend’s shoulder twice, pause, then once more. Going in. Stay here and cover. She taps back once—understood. I take a deep breath, then spin into the room, trying to see everything at once.
Flashes of red light, shadows looming from floor to ceiling, corners clear, a shape crumpled in front of me, unmoving, half its head missing underneath a shattered hood, another sprawled behind a desk, hand twitching, pistol nearby. I sight in, inhale, focus. It’s the unpattern of standard gummie camouflage. Let my finger relax, then exhale.
“Clear.”
I kneel down next to Sawyer, trying not to wince at the girder lying atop his crushed legs or the blood pooling from his stomach, sodden hands futilely attempting to stanch the upwelling. A broken picture frame lies near his head, three figures from the past trapped in a shattered web. His eyes flutter behind his glasses, and he coughs liquidly, a thin trickle leaking from his mouth.
“Ashley. Glasses… open. Take. Data. Plan… op.”
My fingers clench against the rifle’s knobby grip.
“No… no. You can’t ask this. We’ve done enough. This isn’t our fight.”
“Have to. Only one… trust. To succeed. To stop. War.”
“Why? Why, damn you? Why me? Why me?”
“Like… mother… like… daughter. Do what… needs… doing. No matter… cost. Please.”
Goddammit, Sawyer. You fucking asshole.
“Jase! Get in here.”
Sawyer coughs again, a harsher spasm this time, more blood seeping around his fingers, lips pulling back in a snarl of pain. Jase hurries in, then stops, shocked.
“Is—is that…?”
“Yes,” I respond tonelessly. “Scrape everything you can off his glasses.”
“But… he’s, shouldn’t we—”
“Just do it! Quickly, while his biometrics are still active.”
Jase flinches, then squats down next to me, fingers twitching inside his gloves. Seconds pass, the only sounds Sawyer’s pained breaths and the ongoing background destruction of the rig, Wind babbling nonsense words in the hallway. A million thoughts chase each other through my mind, a million scraps of emptiness, void of meaning or form. I stare at the picture frame, trying not to see the smiling faces of Mom, Johnny, Sawyer, arms draped around each other’s shoulders, unit insignia visible over their fatigues.
“…done. I made a full backup.”
Sawyer groans again, his breathing changing to sharp pants.
“Thank… you. Minisub… escape. Wish… tell… Naomi…”
A sound disappears from the discordant medley surrounding us, a small sound, hardly worth noticing, there one instant, then gone, an absence aching like a missing tooth. I reach down and slide Sawyer’s eyes shut.
Just another encounter.
“Is… is he…?”
I stand up, turning back to the door.
“Yes, Jase. He’s dead. Look through his data, see where that sub’s hidden and where we’re at.”
“It’s… a couple levels down. Through some hidden passages. We’re a couple kilometers south of Ditchtown. Ash…”
The voice fades away to inconsequentiality. I glide out into the hallway, rifle at my cheek, hoping someone fills its hungry sights. Smoke trails wave their grasping tendrils above, harbingers of what will soon be a funeral pyre.
“Let’s go.”
Just another encounter.
19
[Sounds of Home]
Liquid waves embrace splintered wooden pilings, their starlight surfaces vanishing beneath the shadows of the pier. A darker shape, rounded and snub, vanishes with them, air bubbles trailing from its open hatch. All around us, the towering spires of Ditchtown rise like blazing spears piercing the night sky, a forest of dirty life. The creak of windfarms drifts in on the mild ocean breeze.
Home.
I set off along the dock, a ramshackle structure crudely attached to the shattered windows of this towering megaspire’s lower floor, unfinished skeleton girders clawing up to the distant moon. The Rust. Rotting wood crunches beneath my weight, Wind, Slend, and Jase’s footsteps trailing. My hands feel curiously empty without a weapon, my hip lighter than I’m comfortable with, blade lost on the rig, rifle lost beneath the waves. Too many surveillance spheres inside to carry firearms openly, and even though we have Sawyer’s data, we’ve lost his protection. My stomach growls, counterpoint to my throbbing ear.