True closes her eyes, tips her head back. Be still, she thinks as grief floods in again, a fresh tide, but she is proud, too. So proud. And horrified.
We’re gonna make them kill us.
A warrior’s resolve, when there’s no way out.
Shaw clears his throat. She opens her eyes. He’s looking away, looking into the past when he says, “So now you’ve heard it all, True. I hope it was worth the visit.”
She presses her fist over her racing heart, feeling used up, flushed and dizzy. She nods to cover the seconds it takes for her to remember how to speak. Then she tells him, “It was worth it.”
Guiying clutches the arms of her chair so tightly her hands look almost skeletal. “I am sorry,” she says. “I am sorry for the blood on my hands. I have tried to make up for it in the years since. I’ve tried to do good things. Then last night two more men died. That wasn’t necessary. It needs to stop.”
Shaw leans forward. “You triggered that when you hired them.” His words come at a fast, aggressive pace. “That was an autonomous response. It worked exactly the way it was supposed to. Not like that night in the forest. You fucked up. You fielded your swarm too early. The algorithms weren’t reliable. And another mistake—your swarm was too damn small. If you’d had sixty mechs out there, or a hundred, you could have taken care of us with no problem, no questions, no drama. No consequences. No need to be here today.”
She stares at him in shock, looking as if her courage has deserted her. Is she on the verge of panic? Will she try to run? No. She recovers herself, retreating into formal academic speech, even as tears swim in her eyes. “I believe you are correct in your evaluations. The swarm had been tested. We believed it to be combat-ready, but it was too small.”
“Why did you come here?” True asks her.
Guiying sounds plaintive when she says, “I thought it was over. I am here to ensure it is over”—her delicate fingers slide into an angled pocket on the front of her tailored jacket and the hair on the back of True’s neck stands up—“for the protection of my government, my country.”
True lunges to her feet, sure they’ve made a fatal mistake, that beneath that stiff, tailored jacket, or maybe in her shoulder bag, Li Guiying carries explosives that she means to detonate, eliminating all of them and burying this tragedy in the past.
Shaw leans in. He has taken off the centipede bracelet. It’s quiescent as he lays it on the little table.
Guiying’s fingers pull a tissue out of her pocket. She dabs at her eyes with it, even as she casts a wary gaze at the centipede. “A biomimetic. Meant for me?”
Shaw answers, “Your choice.”
“Don’t touch it,” True warns her. “It’s toxic.”
Shaw says, “Painless justice. Doesn’t take long. Less time than Diego was screaming.”
True’s stern self-control breaks in the face of this image. The video restarts in her head. Her breathing picks up and nausea burns in her belly as she sees again the flames licking Diego’s wounded body.
Guiying says softly, “I still see it too.”
True’s anger flares. Her response is a vindictive whisper: “Good.”
But a memory rushes up as if in opposition. She finds herself recalling the sense of consolation she felt as Miles walked free from his cell. That moment eased the dark gravity of the past. In contrast this… this moment… the weight of her hostility, the burden of her resentment, is crushing her heart.
Years ago, True used to fantasize revenge… but those fantasies never wore the face of this brilliant, remorseful woman—as scarred by war as any of them—who even now reaches for the centipede.
Before Guiying’s small fingers can touch it, True is there.
“No,” she says. An isolated word, swiftly repeated. “No! Get back! That is not how this is going to play.”
To ensure it, she stomps the edge of the table. The table flips. Guiying snatches her hand away, scrambles from the bench. The centipede spills to the courtyard’s tiled floor, where True crushes it under her boot.
She lifts her chin, turns to face Shaw, and finds herself staring down the barrel of his Triple-Y. He’s moved back several steps to get clear of the chairs. His back is to a pillar. A twitch of his finger is all that’s needed to end her life and Guiying’s, too. True forces herself to look up past the weapon, to meet his eyes, veiled by the screen of his visor. Oh yes, he’s pissed off. But he hasn’t pulled the trigger yet.
She draws a shaky breath and turns to Guiying. “No deal, no promises. Just get out. Go now.”
“That’s all?” Shaw demands in a voice vibrant with locked-in rage. “After what she did to Diego?”
Guiying hasn’t moved. She stares at Shaw. A mouse caught in the cobra’s gaze.
“Her death won’t balance his,” True says heavily. “And I want no part of a murder. I know Diego would have stepped up. Stopped this. So—”
She interrupts herself as a huge, winged shadow, faint and fast, sweeps the length of the courtyard. “Are they here?” she asks anxiously, looking up, squinting against the sun’s blinding light, turning in a dizzying circle to survey the sky.
“I don’t know.” Shaw sounds worried. “I’ve got no reports. I don’t know what that was. It’s got to be stealthed. Get under cover.”
Good advice.
True lowers her sun-dazzled gaze to Guiying, who still hasn’t moved. “Get out of sight,” True tells her. It’s not a request. True grabs her daypack and Guiying’s arm, hauling her under the shelter of the balcony.
The nearness of death has left Guiying shivering and pale. “What is it?” she whispers. “What’s happened? What’s going on?”
“You must have known you’d be followed here.”
“Yes. But I believed I would have time. True, please. I need to make it right.”
“You can’t,” True tells her coldly. “Don’t ever again look to me for comfort or for absolution. I’ve got nothing to offer you. Just live with it. Live with what happened. Like I do.”
She looks across the corner of the courtyard to Shaw, who stands in shadow, his daypack on his shoulder, his assault rifle in the crook of his arm, his data glove working as he studies the display on his visor, “Shaw, what have you got?”
“Nothing. Streets are quiet.”
Something cast that shadow. “We need to move out before ground troops show.”
He looks up. “You’re holding on to unfinished business.”
True’s grip on Guiying tightens as he moves through the shade of the balcony, closing the distance between them in his quick silent way. She puts Guiying behind her. The slight shake of his head reads as a judgment on the futility of this move. She argues anyway. “You said this was for me to take care of. I’ve done that. It’s over.”
The mission’s over. There are no further steps to take, no more mysteries to unravel, no more guilty parties to uncover. It’s done. But it’s left her hollow. There’s no sense of closure, no release. The old scars remain, and they have not faded.
As he looms close, she adds, unsure if she’s speaking to herself or to him, “I thought if I knew what happened, if I understood it…”
What? What had she expected? Had she hoped to make peace with what had happened? “Nothing has changed,” she says, looking up at him. Bitter words.
“Nothing ever changes,” he tells her. “It can’t. Because we all died in that forest. Even you, True.” His gaze shifts to look past her shoulder to Guiying. “Even her. Even if you never set foot in the place.”