‘Listen, if you—’
Something screamed.
The Renouncer’s construct rendering was good – I felt the minute prickle across my palms as the Eishundo sleeve’s gekko reflexes got ready to grab rock and climb. Out of peripheral vision suddenly amped up, I saw Brasil tense – and behind him I saw the wall shudder.
‘Move,’ I yelled.
At first, it seemed to be a product of the doorkeeper tapestries, a bulging extrusion from the same fabric. Then I saw it was the stonework behind the cloth that was bulging inward, warped under forces the real world would not have permitted. The screaming might have been some construct analogue of the colossal strain the structure was under, or it might simply have been the voice of the thing that was trying to get in. There wasn’t time to know. Split seconds later the wall erupted inward with a sound like a huge melon cracking, the tapestry tore down the centre and an impossible ten-metre-tall figure stepped down into the hall.
It was as if a Renouncer monk had been pumped so full of high-grade lubricant that his body had ruptured at every joint to let the oil out. A grey-coveralled human form was vaguely recognisable at the centre of the mess, but all around it iridescent black liquid boiled out and hung on the air in viscous, reaching tendrils. The face of the thing was gone, eyes and nose and mouth ripped apart by the pressure of the extruding oil. The stuff that had done the damage pulsed out of every orifice and juncture of limb as if the heart within was still beating. The screaming emanated from the whole figure in time with each pulse, never quite dying away before the next blast of sound.
I found I’d dropped to a combat crouch that I knew was going to be worse than useless. All we could do now was run.
‘Norikae-san, Norikae-san. Please leave the area now.’
It was a chorus of cries, perfectly cadenced, as from the opposite wall a phalanx of doorkeepers threaded themselves out of the tapestries and arced gracefully over our heads towards the intruder, wielding curious, spiked clubs and lances. Their freshly assembled bodies were laced with an extrusion of their own that glowed with soft, cross-hatched golden light.
‘Please lead your guests to the exit immediately. We will deal with this.’
The structured gold threads touched the ruptured figure, and it recoiled. The screaming splintered and mounted in volume and pitch, stabbing at my eardrums. Natsume turned to us, shouting above the noise.
‘You heard them. There’s nothing you can do about this. Get out of here.’
‘Yeah, how do we do that?’ I shouted back.
‘Go back to—’ His words faded out as if he’d been turned down. Over his head, something punched a massive hole in the roof of the hall. Blocks of stone rained down, and the doorkeepers flinched about in the air, lashing out with golden light that disintegrated the debris before it could hit us. It cost two of them their existence as the black threaded intruder capitalised on their distraction, reached out with thick new tentacles, and tore them apart. I saw them bleed pale light as they died. Through the roof—
‘Oh, fuck.’
It was another oil-exploded figure, this one double the size of the previous arrival, reaching in with human arms that had sprouted huge liquid talons from out of the knuckles and under the nails of each hand. A ruptured head squeezed through and grinned blankly down at us. Globules of the black stuff cascaded down like drool from the thing’s torn mouth, splattering the floor and corroding it through to a fine silver filigree underlay. A droplet caught my cheek and scorched the skin. The splintered shrieking intensified.
‘Through the waterfall,’ Natsume bellowed in my ear. ‘Throw yourself into it. Go.’
Then the second intruder stamped down and the whole of the hall ceiling fell inward. I grabbed at Brasil, who was staring upward with numb awe, and dragged him in the direction of the wedged-open door. Around us, doorkeeper figures rallied and flung themselves upward to meet the new threat. I saw a fresh wave come out of the remaining tapestries, but half of them were grabbed up and shredded by the thing on the roof before they could finish assembling themselves. Light bled like rain onto the stone floor. Musical chords rang through the space of the hall and fractured apart on disharmonies. The black shredded things flailed about them.
We made it to the door with a couple more minor burns and I shoved Brasil through ahead of me. I turned back for a moment and wished I hadn’t. I saw Natsume touched by a misshapen tendril of black and somehow heard him scream across the general shrieking. For a scant second it was a human voice, then it was twisted out of pitch as if by an impatient hand on a set of sound controls, and Natsume seemed to somehow swim away from his own solidity, thrashing back and forth like a fish trapped between compressing sheets of glass, all the time melting and shrieking in eerie harmony with the swooping rage of the two intruders.
I got out.
We sprinted for the waterfall. One more backflung glance showed me the whole side of the monastery punched apart behind us and the two black tentacled figures growing in stature as they lashed at the doorkeepers swarming around them. The sky overhead was darkening as if for a storm and the air had turned suddenly chilled. An indescribable hissing ran through the grass on either side of the path, like torrential rain, like leaking highpressure gas. As we skidded down the winding path beside the waterfall, I saw savage interference patterns rip through the curtain of water and once, as we arrived on the platform behind the fall, the flow staggered altogether into a sudden bleakness of naked rock and open air, spluttered, then restarted.
I met Brasil’s eye. He didn’t look any happier than I felt.
‘You go first,’ I told him.
‘No, it’s okay. You—’
A shrill, pealing howl from up the path. I shoved him in the small of the back and, as he disappeared through the thundering veil of water, I dived after him. I felt the water pour down onto my arms and shoulders, felt myself tip and—
—Jerked upright on the battered couch.
It was an emergency transition. For a couple of seconds, I still felt wet from the waterfall, could have sworn my clothes were drenched and my hair plastered down around my face. I drew one soggy breath, and then real-world perception caught up. I was dry. I was safe. I was tearing off hypnophones and trodes, rolling off the couch, staring around me, heartbeat ripping belatedly upward as my physical body responded to signals from a consciousness that had only just slipped back into the adrenal driving seat.
Across the transfer chamber, Brasil was already on his feet, talking hastily to a grim-faced Sierra Tres who’d somehow reacquired both her own blaster and my Rapsodia. The room was full of a dusty-throated whoop from emergency sirens that hadn’t seen use in decades. Lights flickered uncertainly. I met the female receptionist halfway across the chamber, where she’d just abandoned an instrument panel gone colourfully insane. Even on the poorly muscled face of the Fabrikon sleeve, shocked anger glared out at me.
‘Did you bring it in?’ she shouted. ‘Did you contaminate us?’
‘No, of course not. Check your fucking instruments. Those things are still in there.’
‘What the fuck was that?’ asked Brasil.
‘At a guess, I’d say a sleeper virus.’ Absently, I took the Rapsodia from Tres and checked the load. ‘You saw the shape of it – part of those things used to be a monk, digitised human disguise wrapped around the offensive systems while they were dormant. Just waiting for the right trigger. The cover personality might not even have been aware what it was carrying until it blew.’