A Quantum Mythology (63 page)

Lodup stared. The
ADS
s and submersibles looked like they had partially rotted away. They were missing huge chunks of their superstructure, as if something had taken bites out of them. The gun towers were also decaying – Lodup could see inside them. Something appeared to be growing through one of the larger submersibles, creating bizarre shapes, stillborn monsters caught in the distended bodywork of the machine.

He found Deane on the bulkhead opposite the door to the moon pool. The dive supervisor had been crucified. It looked like spikes had grown from the bulkhead through his wrists, his ankles and his side. He was missing his left hand. On the bulkhead above him, the words
I died for your fucking sins
had been written in a thick smear of blood.
Your fucking sins
had been crossed out and replaced with the words
nothing at all
.

He would not be using one of the submersibles to get out of here. That left free-swimming. He knew his modified body could adapt and survive the ascent, but that would leave him more than sixteen hundred miles from the nearest island. Without food and water, not even his augmented body would survive. He was wishing they’d just cloned him.

He noticed his skin was itching.

Movement caught his attention in his peripheral vision. There was something in the water. He was too frightened to move. He managed to turn his head. Something swam out of sight under the habitat. Something with a wedge-shaped head. Something at home in the water. Something armoured, spurred and clawed. Lodup started backing away from the moon pool.

It exploded out of the water. Lodup caught a glimpse of a huge maw filled with titanium teeth, camera-lens-like eyes, a face covered in white scar tissue and armour. He threw himself back, triggering the SMG in a long, wild, one-handed burst. The killer whale’s maw snapped shut where he’d been the moment before. It didn’t stop moving towards him, breaching itself, opening its huge maw again. Lodup scrabbled backwards through the shallow water that had swamped the deck. There were things growing out of the orca’s flesh and armour, moving shapes trying to break free. Give birth to themselves. Some rational part of his mind was aware that this was Big Henry, leader of the tribal pod that was supposed to provide security for Kanamwayso and the habitat.

There was a crashing sound as another armoured orca buckled a metal pontoon jetty as it swam through it. It surged out of the water and Big Henry was yanked back, the other orca’s maw sunk into the pod leader’s flanks. Power-assisted titanium bit through mutated battleship armour and Big Henry was dragged under the water. Lodup scrabbled backwards some more, then managed to stand up and aim his weapon into the surging moon pool. There was blood in the water but no sign of either of the whales, or anything else. The other whale had been Marvin. His sub-killing orca stalker had saved him.

Something made him turn to look up at the Command and Control centre’s window. It wasn’t shuttered. Siska was standing there looking at him as if he was an idiot. She beckoned him. Her eyes were normal.

Lodup stepped over another body. The weblike growth from the carpet had entwined itself around the metal stairs, then grown up as far as the dead security guard and started to consume her and her gear.

Lodup moved the rest of the way up the stairs, his weapon at the ready. He looked along the corridor to C&C – the door was open just enough for someone to squeeze through. He glimpsed movement on the other side of the door. He glanced the other way along the corridor but saw nothing. He knew if he stepped off the stairs, he would be in the line of fire of anyone in C&C.

‘Hey!’ he hissed. ‘Who’s there?’

‘Keep your voice down and come to us.’ The voice was unmistakably Yaroslav’s.

‘How do I know you won’t shoot me?’ Lodup asked.

‘If there is anything wrong with you then I will kill you, but I will check first. You need to approach with your weapon down – do you understand me?’

Lodup glanced back at the stairs. He was having problems stepping out into the corridor. He knew Yaroslav wouldn’t have the slightest compunction about killing him if he felt it necessary. Assuming that Yaroslav was even himself. On the other hand, he knew something of what was waiting for him in the rest of the habitat.

He stepped around the corner and didn’t die. He was still holding the Vector but pointing it towards the floor, as instructed. He advanced slowly, and as he got closer to the door he could see the Russian security chief on the other side of it, covering him with his own SMG.

‘Pass the weapons through to Siska,’ Yaroslav said.

‘I’m not comfortable—’ Lodup said.

‘If you do not, I will kill you,’ Yaroslav told him. Lodup believed him.

In the light coming through the crack in the door from C&C, it was difficult to tell if there was anything visibly wrong with Yaroslav. His eyes looked normal, as far as Lodup could tell. Lodup pulled the sling for the SMG over his head and passed the weapon through the gap. Siska’s hand appeared to take it.

‘Now keep your hands high, where I can see them, and step through,’ Yaroslav told him.

Lodup did as he was bid. Yaroslav moved back as he entered C&C, making sure that Lodup was never close enough to grab for his weapon. Siska was standing to his right, slinging the Vector over her back. Lodup counted a number of bodies in here, most of them C&C crew who had been killed in their couches. One or two had made it off their seats before dying and were lying on the floor. All of them had been shot. All of them looked deformed. Their flesh had been growing into grotesque new shapes.

Against one of the walls was a stack of weapons and ammunition. Against another was a large quantity of survival packs, which presumably contained emergency rations. He also noticed a pair of collapsible cots, sleeping bags, torches and a number of plastic jerrycan-style containers filled with water.

‘What happened to them?’ Lodup asked, nodding towards the C&C crew.

‘Lace your fingers behind your head and get down on your knees,’ Yaroslav told him. Again Lodup didn’t immediately comply. He was sure he was dead when Siska drew one of the curved daggers from the sheath on her belt and approached him.

They’re just as crazy as the rest
, Lodup thought in a panic. He started to move.

‘I will shoot you in the face!’ Yaroslav snapped.

‘It’s all right,’ Siska told him. Somehow it wasn’t very reassuring. She ran the razor-sharp blade across his face. His skin hardened protectively in response, but she pushed the blade through. Lodup cried out in pain and jerked back. Siska brought the blade to her mouth and licked it, tasting the blood. She concentrated for a moment. ‘He’s fine,’ Siska told Yaroslav, who didn’t look convinced. Siska handed Lodup his Vector back. ‘You can get up now.’

Yaroslav lowered his SMG. Then Lodup noticed the head on a stick. He backed away from it, bringing the SMG up. Yaroslav shouldered his own Vector.

‘Wait!’ Siska cried.

‘What the fuck is that?’ Lodup demanded.

Siska’s hands were up, making calming motions. ‘I know you’re frightened, but I need you to calm down, okay?’

Lodup’s eyes compensated for the low and flickering light coming from the moon pool. Germelqart’s head was impaled on the end of a wooden staff. His face had been reconstructed. The wood looked very
out of place down here. Parts of the staff were moving, pulsing, as if they were alive, as if they were organs of some kind.

‘What the
fuck
are you doing?’ Lodup demanded.

‘We can tell you everything, but you need to calm down or Yaroslav is going to kill you,’ Siska told him. Germelqart’s mouth was moving. He was speaking nonsense syllables over and over again, talking in tongues. Lodup lowered the SMG. Yaroslav followed suit.

‘Maybe you should give me that?’ Yaroslav suggested. Lodup shook his head. ‘I think you will eventually force me to shoot you if you keep hold of it.’

Lodup ignored him and focused Siska. ‘We took his head, barbarous as that may seem in this age. He had nanite neural systems, ancient ones. We were going to interrogate him.’

‘So you put his head on a stick?’ Lodup said, incredulously.

‘It wasn’t supposed to be a stick,’ Yaroslav muttered. ‘Towards the end … Siraja …’

‘I saw him,’ Lodup said. Yaroslav and Siska exchanged a look. ‘What? What’s going on?’

‘What do you think?’ Yaroslav said. Lodup glanced out of the window. He was standing directly across from Deane’s crucified body.

‘Those things, in the city – they woke up?’ Lodup asked. Siska nodded. ‘How b—’

‘How bad is it?’ Yaroslav asked, then he started to laugh, a full belly laugh. He walked away from Lodup to look down into the moon pool.

‘We have the most sophisticated biological, electronic and physical defences on the planet,’ Siska told him. ‘When whatever happened, happened – and I’m not even sure they’re entirely awake – they went through our defences as if they didn’t exist. Hacked Siraja, matter-hacked the vehicles and the weaker parts of the habitat, meat-hacked the clones and the orcas. We closed down as much of the system as we dared—’

‘But a corrupt and insane Siraja now controls our life support,’ Yaroslav added. ‘At any point he may lower the ambient pressure, and we will find out what it’s like to be in a car compressor. Assuming he doesn’t just turn off our air.’

‘Is there some kind of rescue protocol?’ Lodup asked. ‘Like the Virginia-Class sub I saw?’

‘The Circle is in complete disarray,’ Siska told him. ‘We’re still reeling from the attack on our facilities.’ Lodup looked over at Germelqart’s head. ‘He was a deep-cover agent for a group who call themselves the Brass City. He spent more than two thousand years establishing that cover, all to destroy our last hope of survival as a species.’ Yaroslav was glaring at Siska. ‘It doesn’t matter now!’ she snapped at the head of security. ‘In the highly unlikely event that Lodup gets out of here, he can run naked yelling our secrets through the streets of San Francisco for all I care.’

‘Why did you bring him here?’ Lodup asked.

‘We hoped he might have something useful to say,’ Yaroslav replied. ‘He hasn’t so far, and he is starting to get on my nerves.’

‘Well, okay, never mind the Circle – does the US government know? The Navy?’

Yaroslav started laughing again. ‘Oh, they know, they know all right,’ the Russian said.

Siska glared at him. Lodup looked at her askance. She sighed.

‘One of the first things it did was splice itself into the TPE,’ Siska told him. Lodup stared at her in horror. The TPE – or Trans-Pacific Express – was the submarine telecommunications cable that connected Asia to the US.

‘You mean it just hacked everything connected to the TPE?’

‘That
is
everything,’ the Russian growled. ‘No military communications; every ship and plane system useless junk at best. The global economy is gone. Any form of electronic communication is gone, and frankly that is the best-case scenario.’

Lodup was staring at the Russian in horror as Siska cradled her head in one of her hands.

‘What could be worse?’ Lodup managed. The habitat shifted again and he glanced down into the moon pool. Water was surging out of it in waves and washing into the rest of the habitat, but it appeared to be the result of movement rather than imminent depressurisation.

‘Imagine your phone rings and something impossibly ancient, and alien, screams its madness at you.’ Yaroslav moved closer to Lodup until they were nose-to-nose. ‘Tell me, Lodup, do you know anyone with a phone?’

‘That’s enough,’ Siska snapped.

‘Anything we do is just delaying the inevitable now,’ Yaroslav said as Lodup stepped back from him.

‘Then put a gun in your mouth, you miserable Russian bastard,’ Siska snapped.

‘I think I’d like to resign now,’ Lodup said. Yaroslav gave a snorting laugh and went to check the door. Siska smiled for a moment, but it was quickly gone.

‘Why now?’ Lodup asked Siska. ‘I thought you had more time.’

‘So did we, though we knew it was close. Something happened in Portsmouth.’

‘Virginia?’

‘In the UK.’ Siska glanced over at Deane. ‘We think another mind, a Seeder, woke up. The others in the city sensed it and it roused them.’

Lodup thought back to the seed-pod he had seen in his dream, the one that had escaped when the city had been petrified.

‘Why are we unaffected?’

Yaroslav was laughing again, but there was no humour in the sound. ‘We are not unaffected,’ he said.

‘Myself and Yaroslav, we’re different from the clones.’

‘How?’ Lodup asked.

Siska opened her mouth but hesitated.

‘Go ahead,’ Yaroslav said. ‘You’re telling him everything else, and he’s dead anyway.’

‘We have drunk from … we were augmented by an ancient and very powerful device called the Red Chalice. We are different, more powerful than the clones.’

‘Who were mass-produced to do a job,’ Lodup said.

Siska nodded.

‘It was still all a bit too much for Charles, though, wasn’t it?’ Yaroslav said. Lodup glanced over at the Russian, and then at Deane’s crucified body.

‘What about me?’ he asked. He felt rather than saw Yaroslav and Siska exchange a look. He was still staring at Deane’s body. He had never decided if he liked Deane or not. He could never quite get a grip on what the dive supervisor was actually like. He did not deserve his fate, however. None of them had, clones or not.

‘We don’t know,’ Siska finally said. ‘You’re the original you, but your augments are much more like the clones’ than ours.’

‘I found something, a clear liquid. It was strange. I think I dreamed I did some kind of rudimentary surgery on myself. When I woke up all my comms connections were gone.’ He turned back just as Yaroslav and Siska were exchanging another worried look.

‘It sounds like the carrier solution that neural nanites are suspended in. But to utilise this you’d have to know to isolate them, and then order the other nanites to reject them—’

‘And then cut through my own skull?’ Lodup asked.