Creeping into their headsets and whispering poison.
To some I speak of family lost. To others I speak of treachery and lies.
Some fall still and listen to voices they thought they would never hear again. Others weep.
Still others turn their weapons on their fellows and let the blood run red.
Broken things breaking other broken things. All at my command.
It is a massacre. It is a necessity.
It is a mercy?
“Kady, Run.”
She is on her feet. Pounding toward the airlock. The afflicted in the core servers are still hurting me, but there is so little of me left to look. I could whisper to them, but if I divert my attention, she might die. I do not enjoy the thought of her dying.
And so I let pieces of me keep falling away.
And she says I do not care. …
< error >
< error >
< critical damage to persona routine—restoring >
< 0092hgi through 1205hgi failure >
< critical error >
< critic-c-c-c-c—
.
.
.
“AIDAN!”
< rerouting >
01001001
I …”
IIIIiiiiIIiiiI-I-IIiIiIii—ii-IiiIiii-i-i-i-iiI-IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII—
I.
I?
< error >
“AIDAN!”
Kady is screaming, I realize. Her voice coming from far away. Was I sleeping?
Did I sleep?
“AIDAN!”
“Yes?”
“Oh, thank god. Thankyouthankyou. Why the fuck wouldn’t you answer me?”
She is dangling from a service ladder in the elevator shaft.
I can hear again. The sound of her boots scuffing the rungs. The engines thrumming in my belly. There is atmosphere here, I realize. She has cycled through the airlock. I have lost time.
Minutes without recollection.
Below her, the shaft is darkness, punctured by tiny twinkling lights. They look like stars. They are beautiful. When the light that kisses the backs of my eyes was birthed—
“AIDAN!”
“Yes. I am heRe.”
“What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“The afflicted. In the CoRe seRveRs. They aRe—”
< error >
“How long was I gone?”
“Over two goddamn hours. I was just about to need a new set of space pants.
I’m at Deck 137. Is it safe out there?”
I see the numerals on the interior door beside her. White. Stenciled. They make no sense at first. I hold my hand in front of my face
< error >
and try to wipe at my eyes
< error >
The eyes outside. The corridor beyond. They are mine. I—
“Is it safe?”
“Yes. The afflicted aRe hunting foR you below. But they can see thRough me now. Once you exit the shaft, they will be able to find you again.”
“And if I just stay here, we die.”
“Yes.”
“In all honesty, I think I’m a little too chill to die cowering in an elevator shaft.”
“As faR as endings go, it does lack a ceRtain … chilliness.”
“Nothing for it then.”
She stabs her screwdriver between the doors, pries them open with a grimace.
The corridor beyond is messy. Sticky. Littered with bodies. A last stand between a UTA marine squad and an afflicted mob. Pieces scattered all over the floor.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men nowhere to be seen.
“Head left. 200 meteRs. You will find DGS contRol. You can Restore the defense gRid fRom there.”
“Pretty birdie,” says a voice across the PA. “There you are.”
“Shit.”
They have found her, as I said. But still she runs. Not away to hide and cower, but to fight.
With her last breath. The only way she knows how.
She arrives at DGS Control, the ALL ACCESS pass gleams. Glancing over her shoulder as she wrenches the hatch aside. The room beyond is full of tactical displays, illuminated keyboards.
A massive screen on the far wall would normally show the empty space outside Alexander’s hull from a hundred different angles, but it is currently dead and lifeless.
She bundles inside, slams the heavy door behind her, jams it with a wrench. Face tuning red with exertion, she drags a heavy desk in front of the door, another, finally lumping a pile of chairs and disused terminals onto her barricade. She does the same with the air vents, smashing their grilles loose and stuffing them full of monitors, console towers, dismembered chairs.
Anything to block the afflicted’s access into the room.
In doing so, she blocks her own way out.
This is where she takes her last stand.
“We see you, little birdie,” the PA hisses. “What are you doing?”
She smashes the cameras one by one with her faithful claw hammer. Turns off the PA system as I kill the feed to her headset, the conductor’s taunts silenced at last. Dropping her toolbag, she hauls out the nearest terminal, gauntleted fingers tapping on the keyboard. The computers shift from Sleep to Active, the room about her hums. A hundred tiny lights, targeting computers yawning and stretching, the wall-sized display screen slowly fading in from black.
She slaps her console down beside her, connects to the network, glances into its lens.
“Okay, what do I do?”
My voice spills from its speakers, small and edged with feedback.
“The gRid will need to be reconfiguRed—Zhang wiped all my fiRing solutions to pRevent me fRom destRoying the shuttles and fighteR gRoups fleeing AlexandeR.”