Crysis: Legion (12 page)

Corporal Analee Lansing,
24/08/2023 04:45

Motherhood issues. That’s what you guys live for, isn’t it?

Shrinks, of course. Neuromechanics. Psychiatrists. Therapists. What, you thought I didn’t know? You thought I didn’t have you pegged the moment you opened your mouth? I don’t care how many stripes you’re wearing, Roger; you ain’t no soldier. And who else would they send in to talk to a suit full of bad wiring?

Anyway, it’s what you guys live for. That and sexual dysfunction. They haven’t outfitted the N2 with a hydraulic dick, more’s the pity. I do have this rubberized nozzle rammed up my ass so I don’t soil the suit; I suppose that might come in handy for giggles as well as shits if you swing that way, which I don’t.

But yeah, I’ve racked up such a rep for killing things that it actually makes you
suspicious
when I take a moment to help out a
mom and her little girl. Maybe you think there’s a bit of a weird vibe there and that’s all you need to go to town, right? Shrinks and mommy issues.

Okay, then. Let me tell you about my mother.

She was a cunt.

Not always, mind you. Not at first. She was never Parent of the Year material—bit on the judgmental side, that just goes with the whole Bible Belt mind-set—but at least she wasn’t a drunk or a methhead. Never hit me. Never forgot me on the luggage carousel. Perfectly decent woman, you know? No complaints, all while I was growing up.

Then the dementia hit, and holy fucking Christ.

She’d turn into a monster. Not full-time, not in the early stages anyway, but sometimes she’d just—snap. Turn into this rabid snarling animal. ’Course she was getting on by then, and times weren’t great generally. My folks lost most of their savings in the Double Dip, which meant they couldn’t replace those fancy antique plates we had after she threw them at me during one of her
episodes
. All we had left was that cheap plastic shit that would barely dent if you dropped it from orbit. And I wasn’t around much by then, for obvious reasons, so she started whaling on Dad instead. Poor bastard never fought back—some TwenCen bullshit about
not supposed to hit a lady
, he wouldn’t last a day in today’s armed forces let me tell you. I came home on furlough one weekend and he’d locked himself in the bathroom and she was stabbing at the door with a goddamn screwdriver. He was one big fucking bruise, all purple and yellow, this gentle old fart who never hurt anyone. I mean, he was seventy-five years old! And that was when I decided,
enough
. I gave the old cunt a choice between the police station and the psych ward. I never saw her again after I got her institutionalized. Not once.

But what really pissed me off was the way people kept making
excuses
for her.

Nobody saw a monster. All anybody saw was a victim of the disease. That’s why Dad never hit back,
It’s not her fault, it’s the dementia
. People would visit her in the home and she’d rant and spit and say all these vile things about Dad and everyone would just sadly shake their heads and say, “It’s the Alzheimer’s speaking, how can you cut her off like that, she’s your
mother.
”

But the thing was, they couldn’t have it both ways. If this
was
the disease, then it wasn’t my mother at all; my mother had died years ago, she died when the dementia undid all the circuits that made her what she was and rewired her into this vicious twisted body-snatcher thing made out of recycled meat. In which case I owed it nothing. And if she
was
my mother, well, then my mother was a rabid dog that needed to be put down if you ask me, and I didn’t owe
that
thing any special breaks, either.

No matter how you looked at it, I was off the hook. Switch the wiring, pimp the neurotransmitters, and
mother
turns into
other
. There’s nothing fixed about who or what we are, Roger. Even if it looks the same, it’s
not
. It’s all just wetware to be wiped, rewritten, rebooted. I learned that when I was just a kid, I learned that without any of your fancy degrees or candy-colored MRI readouts.

And that’s why I have to laugh every time you sneak a peek at your reader, there. Because you’re a
mechanic
, dude. You should know this shit better than I do. You fumble around using words and drugs when you really should be getting in there with a very tiny soldering gun, but when it comes right down to it you’ve spent your whole damn career trying to change the circuitry in people’s heads. So why do you keep looking for answers in my
file
, Roger? I’m not that person anymore. I’m something new.

And believe me. The thing that’s talking to you now has no mommy issues whatsoever.

The elevator slides open on a man in combat fatigues who obviously never pulled a day of combat in his life. Glasses, salt-and-pepper goatee, middle-aged paunch pushing out over his belt. Stupid little ponytail, probably meant as some kind of diversionary tactic to draw attention from his hairline. I’ve never seen him before, of course; but the sight of me lights his face up with such obvious joy I wonder for a second if he’s going to kiss me.

“Dude,”
he says. “You made it.”

Nathan Gould is a slob with a paper fetish. The apartment is piled floor-to-ceiling with all manner of shit: filing cabinets, drawers hanging half open like extruded tongues, piles of newspapers (where the hell did he get
newspapers
in Manhattan?), stacks of old optical ROM. Old paper maps spread out across one of those tilted architect’s tables you see in TwenCen movies, you know, before computers. Topographic, geological, architectural. It’s like Gould’s hardcopied every overlay anyone’s ever dumped into the Manhattan database. I don’t know what he’s using them for, other than to mop up coffee spills and snort the occasional line of grimwire (I can see the crystal residue from across the room; the eyes in this suit don’t miss a thing).

“Man, you wouldn’t believe the shit that’s gone down in the last twenty-four hours. Barclay’s guys are getting creamed uptown.
CryNet are falling the fuck apart everywhere else. Chaos, man.”

The walls—those bits of them that peek through between the mountains of dead trees, anyway—are a mix of smart paint, cork-board, and old 2-D monitors. One wall’s three layers deep in pushpins and pictures, everything from false-color satcam shots to coupons for 20 percent off tampons at PharMart. An ancient mini fridge squats in one corner; it doesn’t even have an online connection but someone called
Angie
has scribbled
Nate
, When
are you going to get your shit out of my place?! I’m back for good on the 28th
on the dry-erase board stuck to the door.

Gould leads me through all this chaos like a guide through the jungle, talking nonstop: “That shit you absorbed at the crash site, it’s lit up the suit systems like a pinball, man,” and “Definitely viral, same base structure as the nano-weave,” and “Hargreave must be nuts, playing with that shit like it was Kevlar.” I’m not really paying attention. I’ve just caught sight of an aquarium behind a stack of old hardcovers, a big hundred-gallon job, and something’s
squirming
in it: something with arms and suckers. For a moment I think Gould’s caught himself a baby Ceph, but no; it’s just an octopus. Looks as alien as anything else I’ve run into these past few hours, but at least it’s from around here.

Somehow that makes all the difference. I almost feel, I don’t know,
affection
for the spineless crawly thing. We’re all in the same tank now, right?

Gould leads me down the hall—“Right down here, same basic setup as back on the island, just not as many bells and whistles”—into a room that’s at least empty enough to really appreciate how dingy the wallpaper is. Backed up against the far wall is a cross between a recliner and a crucifix. Or maybe a crucifix and a dentist’s chair. Definitely a crucifixion subtext, though: It’s a molded recliner with outstretched arms, a socket for the suit. You sit back and—judging by those circular little receptacles along the arms
and legs and spine—it plugs right into you. A loose coil of black umbilicals connects it to a server stack in the corner.

“So come on, let’s get you checked out.”

I lower myself into the cradle, and
whump
I’m stuck in stone. I don’t know if it’s the damn suit or Gould’s setup but here I am again, paralyzed while this middle-aged geek rolls around on his desk chair and fiddles with controls I can’t understand.

“Some fucked-up shit, right?” He ends up at an old scuffed desk against the wall, playing with the laptop there. “And Hargreave, well, who knows what’s going on in
his
head … So let’s see what we—

“Wait a second, that’s odd—”

And suddenly, whatever welcome I saw in Nathan Gould’s face is nowhere to be seen. What I see instead is shock, and anger, and fear. I see the beginnings of a killing rage; I know what those look like.

I see the gun in Gould’s hand, pointed at my face.

“You’re not Prophet,”
he hisses.

I still can’t move.

“Who are you? What did you do to him?”
He leans in close. “Hargreave, right? Just another loose end. Hargreave sent you to kill me.”

I wonder how much this suit can take, immobilized. I wonder what kinds of tools Gould has at his disposal. I wonder how long it’ll take him to crack me open like a clam, get at the soft squishy parts inside. Just calm down, Nathan. You have the upper hand. No need to panic, no need to be hasty. Just—

That’s right. Back to your keyboard. Access the black box. There’s gotta be one in here somewhere. Play back the log. Get the facts.

He gets them. Seems to sink into himself a little. After a few moments he remembers me, and frees me with the flip of a switch. He turns without a word and disappears up the hallway.

I find him back in the living room. Somehow, against all odds, he’s found a chair that isn’t half a meter deep in ancient hardcopy. He sits with his head in his hands.