Great North Road (135 page)

Bartram’s door swung right back. A humanoid monster was standing there. Time halted as she stared at the impossibility. It was her own height, though considerably bulkier, with a skin she would always recall as resembling leather turned to stone. Behind it, revealed in the faint wash of light from the lounge, she saw the bodies of Mariangela, Coi, and Bartram. Butchered by the same blades that were now rising up in front of her, the hands of the monster. That motion broke the spell.

She assumed a combat crouch, just as some long-forgotten instructor had taught her and Shasta decades ago during one of their foolish fads. Studying the monster’s movements, waiting for the telltale shift that would illustrate its attack.

For some reason it didn’t attempt a lunge or swipe with those horrific blades that were poised ready to administer her death. Instead, its head tilted to one side, and it issued the wistful sigh of a thwarted lover, as if it was surprised and gladdened to see her.

Angela jumped, turning sideways as she went, assuming a Soaring Leopard posture. Ducking under the raised arm to unexpectedly jab both sets of fingers into its torso. And trigger—

The cy-tech that had been implanted in New Tokyo, and stimulated by the activants behind Maslen’s café, had spent the intervening weeks growing inside her, its quasi-life cells enveloping her ulnae in a sheath of synthetic cells that had been faithfully copied from electric eels. Semi-organic conductor threads had sprouted from them into her hands up to the talon buds in each fingertip.

Five thousand volts slammed into the monster with a blinding violet-white flash. It went flying backward along the seventh floor’s wide central corridor, landing in the long grisly slick of blood and skidding farther until it smacked into the wall.

Angela didn’t even see the final impact; she was already sprinting for the stairs. The world had gone mad, imploded on her. But that didn’t matter, the transfer had gone through. Rebka would get the genetic treatment. Nothing else mattered. A hysterical laugh bubbled out of her rigid throat.
Not even alien killer monsters.

All she had to do was keep alive, stay ahead of the authorities. Nobody was going to believe her when it came to tonight’s events. She couldn’t explain them fully unless she told them why she was really here—and that could never happen. Nothing could risk Rebka’s treatment. Nothing at all. Her own life was expendable at this point.

She took the stairs three at a time. Couldn’t hear anything moving behind her. Not yet. Maybe the charge had killed it? Somehow she knew she hadn’t.

There was a bag in her room, one she casually kept packed, one that had items to help any emergency dash to safety. She reached the sixth floor and had a millisecond debate with herself—if she could afford the time to retrieve it. The monster would be after her, she never doubted that for an instant. But she needed the things in that bag if she was to stand any chance of getting away clean.

Angela went for the bag.

*

Inside the biolab’s door chamber, Angela ordered her e-i to switch on the identity code in her solid memory cache. She put the little block on a shelf and deactivated her bodymesh’s link to the convoy’s net. Not that the net was much use in the bedlam of the lightning storm.

She stepped out into the turmoil of the blizzard. Sirius in its weakened state still hadn’t penetrated the cloud, leaving the canyon immersed in a thick gloaming. Gravel-sized snowflakes assailed her parka and quilted trousers, crackling against her helmet. As she looked around she could see the white headlight beams pointing ineffectually into the storm, blurring into a haze just a few meters outside the pathetic protective ring the vehicles had once again contracted into.

Atyeo and Garrick still lay on the ground beside biolab-1, with the snow already starting to accumulate along one side of their corpses where the wind blew unceasingly. Most of the hose was already submerged under small ripple-like drifts, while the frozen extinguisher foam looked like another serrated ice ridge—just one more piece of the tormented landscape. None of the remote guns were moving now, leaving the convoy effectively defenseless against the monster. Though in truth, they always had been, she thought.

Angela set off between Tropics-3 and -2. The side windows on both vehicles were covered with pale sheets of ice, fluorescing slightly from the inside lights. Their windshield wipers were still churning away in pained judders, but all they cleared now was ever-smaller triangles. At this rate the windshields would be covered in another half hour.

Nobody saw her, not even when another crazy lightning ball streaked through the turgid clouds far above, throwing down a brighter illumination. She walked unchallenged into the canyon’s arctic emptiness where the monster awaited. The solitude was almost refreshing, as was the lack of worry. Her decision had been made, the demon would be faced.

She trudged around the convoy slowly, turning a complete circle every couple of paces so she could see it when it came for her. Ball lightning swooped above her sporadically, revealing the stark ground of broken folds, meandering fissures, and entombed rock. She had to walk; anyone stationary out here would freeze soon enough. The glow of the headlights revealed the vehicles easily enough. An icon in her smartcell grid showed her the net fading in and out as if it were nothing more sophisticated than a shortwave radio signal.

Angela had completed a half circuit of the vehicles when she saw something moving through the churning snow. A bulky humanoid figure leaning into the wind and abrasive snow. It was heading straight for her. Angela hurriedly pulled off her outer gauntlets.

When it was five meters away, another lightning ball darted above the canyon wall. The figure was coated in a slick black skin, obscuring its features. Snow slithered down it, unable to gain any kind of hold. Several slippery bulges flared out from around the waist, two of them with pistol grips protruding.

“Rebka?”

A secure link quested out from the blank figure. “Mother, what the hell are you doing out here?”

Angela started stuffing her hands back into the gauntlets. Just a few seconds’ exposure had sent the acute cold slithering through the fabric of her inner layers to nip at her fingers. “Protecting you. It’ll come for me. I can deal with it.”

Rebka came right up to her until their faces were centimeters apart, Angela covered by a balaclava wrapped in a scarf, Rebka clad in smooth metamolecule armor.

“I really don’t think you can,” Rebka said. “Come on, come back in.”

“To sit in a biolab until it rips a door off and stabs us while we sleep? Not my style.”

“The biolabs are tough. We can sit out the blizzard in them.”

“It will go for the comm rockets. We need them just as much as the bioil.”

“Mother! Please, I can deal with it.”

“I am not letting you face that thing. I can’t. Not after everything we’ve done to make sure you live.”

“Why won’t you trust me? These systems are quite capab—Aye hell.”

“What?” Angela turned to scour the blizzard, fearful what her daughter’s sensors had detected.

“You must have two micro tracers on you. The second one just got triggered.”

“That son-of-a-bitch Elston never did really trust me.”

Rebka slapped her shoulder. “Can’t think why. He’ll be out here soon. That’s all we need, a Gospel Warrior screwing things up.”

As soon as Vance gave the order for everyone to take shelter in the biolabs he found that Angela was missing. Her identity icon showed she was in biolab-2 where he’d left her, but Paresh had tried to link to her, to check she’d made it back to the Tropic okay.

Vance didn’t know what she was doing, but with his command under deadly assault from the monster, he was long past giving her the benefit of the doubt. He ordered his e-i to trigger the smartmicrobe bug that Antrinell had tagged Angela with.

Even the convoy’s decaying, glitching net could still perform a triangulation function. Her location popped up immediately in Vance’s iris smartcell grid. Angela was standing twenty-five meters outside the ring of vehicles. At least, he assumed she was standing—there was no medical data to confirm it, just the smartmicrobe’s weak ping.

Antrinell and Jay watched him closely as he slipped the pistol into its rubbery heated sheath. His e-i quested a link to the magazine and gave the bullets their arming code. “I’m going out there,” he said.

“Keep a link open,” Antrinell said. “We need to know what’s happening.”

“And be careful,” Jay said. “She’s either the murderer or she’s helping that thing. There’s no other reason for her to be out there.”

“I know,” Vance said. The knowledge came with a heavy heart. Despite their differences, he had come to rely on Angela. And if she was part of whatever conspiracy they were caught up in, why had she brought Ravi back? Was Ravi part of this, too? He hated the fear his paranoia was generating. “Sweet Jesus, protect me, please,” he whispered.

Ball lightning struck the floor of the canyon several hundred meters away, detonating into a morass of belligerent lightning strands. The vehicles were briefly highlighted in the stark flickering light. He saw Garrick climbing up into biolab-2’s door chamber, and his e-i quested a link. “Did everyone get across okay?” he asked.

“Lulu and Darwin are inside,” Garrick said. “Madeleine went back for something. I couldn’t stop her.”

Vance studied his grid, but Madeleine Hoque’s identity icon was missing. “It’s back,” he growled. “Get inside, now,” he told Garrick.

The lightning rampage died away, leaving Vance alone in the gloom of the savage blizzard. He bent into the wind, and hurried forward as fast as he could go. Angela’s tracer hadn’t moved. His e-i activated his iris smartcells’ infrared function, shifting his vision to a seething blur-cloud of sapphire and cyan. A slim glimmer of pink fluctuated in and out of existence up in front as the harsh flurries of snow marched across it.

Elston gripped the pistol tightly and slogged forward over the hellish wasteland of the broken ice river. Nothing was going to stop him now, not weather, not monsters. Angela Tramelo was finally going to tell him the truth no matter what. The Good Lord would understand and forgive extreme measures on this day.

As he drew closer the red glimmer strengthened, widening, resolving out of smeared chaos. Another lightning ball plummeted into the ground behind him. White light flooded out, revealing the canyon. It was two figures up ahead!

Angela was easy enough to identify: She was in a parka with one of those thick scarves she knitted wrapped around her head. The monster was standing beside her. Its skin was sleeker than the images had shown him, and it wasn’t as large as he’d expected. “I have looked upon you,” Vance snarled into the storm. “And I have seen the devil.” He raised his pistol and walked forward. He fired. Once. Twice.

The monster bent and ducked. Just as it had been with Ravi, the bullets had no effect.
I have to get closer. Have to get a clean eye shot.
Then Vance realized it didn’t have blades for hands. In fact it looked remarkably human, despite being featureless.
There must be different types
.

“Stop stop,” Angela yelled. She was racing forward, waving her arms frantically. “Elston, for fuck’s sake. Stop shooting!”

“You are allied,” he cried in consternation. His pistol swung around, lining up on the traitor woman who had persecuted his dreams for too long. Satan’s whore. The archdeceiver.

“She’s my daughter,” Angela bellowed.

Vance wouldn’t have believed anything could have stopped him from pulling the trigger. Yet his finger now refused to move. “What?” To know … to finally know!

“Madeleine, she’s my daughter. That’s why I was in the mansion.”

“This is—I don’t—” Vance was stricken with doubt. His e-i reported a quest ping emanating from the dark figure. It carried Madeleine Hoque’s identity code. “You can’t be—” he blurted.

“I am,” Madeleine said. “I’m an undercover operative. My real name’s Rebka DeVoyal, and Angela is my mother.”

“You’re the monster?”

“Crap no. This is metamolecule armor. Constantine North sent me. Jupiter wants to know what’s going on.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Vance moaned. But … a daughter. “How?” he pleaded.

“I needed money to save her,” Angela said. “I was scamming the Norths.”

“You really didn’t kill them.” The revelation was almost spiritual. Despite where he was he felt like laughing for the sheer joy of finally understanding.

“Of course I fucking didn’t, you cretin,” Angela spat.

Vance grinned. That was Angela. The one and true—

Something moved behind Rebka. “Look out,” he yelled, and brought the pistol up again.

An arm with five fingerblades slammed into Rebka’s side.

Rebka guessed it didn’t matter anymore that her cover was blown. She couldn’t see how it compromised her now. And it had certainly stopped that fool of a colonel from shooting at her. He was left begging Angela to explain. While Angela of course was just angry.

Rebka frowned as the two ancient adversaries barked at each other. Her infrared receptors showed her that the pistol Elston was carrying was positively hot compared with the rest of him. Then he was yelling directly at her, and his pistol was coming up—

Something smashed against her. Even the armor’s amplified muscle functions couldn’t keep her upright from such an blow. Rebka toppled over and skidded along the rock-hard ice. Red icons flared in her grid, detailing the damage her net gun had received. It was effectively ruined. That was deliberate. The monster had sliced at it in the holster.
Why that?

Combat analysis routines slipped up into her optic nerves, analyzing every byte of external sensor data, predicting and forecasting options—hers and her opponent’s. She spun hard along the ground, using her momentum to give her extra speed, coming around into a crouch. Not quite fast enough.

The monster had followed her. Its hand swung down again, striking against her neck before she was properly balanced again. The metamolecules protected her from the blade edges, but the blow
hurt
. Amber caution icons blinked up. The metamolecules were actually straining to maintain integrity against such impacts.