Broken: A Plague Journal (41 page)

Sat back down, his back to the window. He could hear the birds. The cat glared at him. There was room for three other people at his table. She could choose any of them. He’d give her his chair. She could use his lap. He could feel her weight against him. She had been so small. He had felt so much smaller.

Such thought shunts the mind down recollections that break. Remembered the feel of her legs around him, in a chair, on a couch. In bed. His name, whispered.
Oh, Paul Hughes. I love you, Paul Hughes.

Reached for the cup, and his hand shook enough to spill the bottom two thirds. Brown plastic clattered to brown china. Coffee rivuleted out to the place the newspaper should have been.

His hand shook more than usual. He held it in front of his face, looked, knew. Wondered if his hand could still bend to the curves of her by sense memory alone. Wondered if he could remember her textures and tastes and scents. The architecture of her laugh. A face framed by sculptures of plastic and metal. The way, as she looked down at him, her tears had skated across her glasses, and how once, in the dark, one of those tears had fallen to his face and broken his heart as he held her tiny, shaking form closer.

He slumped out of the chair and fell to the kitchen floor. His head bounced from linoleum he’d glued down. The cat looked on, mildly amused.

A line of silver snaked lazily from the holes in his face.

“Midsagittal plane breached.”

“It’s spread into—”

“Ready lesioning probe on my—”

“Physiologic confirmation of the target location.”

“Initial pass in three... two...”

Alina ran after him, just barely getting through the door into the construct before it slammed shut.

He spun, made to say something, didn’t know what to say.

“It wasn’t her, Paul.” Alina walked closer, remembered holding a hand and what had seemed something deeper. “Just Maire. Hope’s—”

“Merged. Maire took her.” He slumped into a chair that flashed to existence just before his behind made contact. “And now—If Maire’s merged with Hope, she knows everything that Hope knew.”

Alina stood a distance.

“If Maire has Hope’s code...”

“It’s bad.”

“More than bad. Hope had calculated the A/O line to almost perfect half. Now Maire has the modular calculus. The bleed—It’s going to get a shitload more than bad.”

Alina didn’t know what to say. She thought about the rough plain of his hand.

“And you—Jud, you there?”

“She’s here.”

Paul nodded. Something flickered behind his eyes. “I take it she needed mobility.”

“Something like that.”

“And you’re okay with that?”

“If it helps.”

He scoffed, tugged at his whiter hair. “I need to get back to the pool. I can find an answer in there, I know it. If Maire has Hope’s code...” He studied his hands on the table’s top. “I need to get back into the silver.”

He stood to walk past her, and she shoved him to the wall. His look was disbelief and confusion. His eyes were a foot above hers, and looking down was like falling. She bridged the gap and kissed him, standing on toes to do so. He bent to make it easier.

Frantic, grasping, they went to the floor, knees and elbows, rolling, combat for position.

He pushed her away and from the distance tried to see behind her eyes. “We can’t. I’ve been in the silver. You’re not—”

“Shut up.” She pulled him back down and cut off the possibility of further uncertainty with her tongue and lips.

They collided.

She felt him smile against her thighs. Enveloping, bounding, penetrating her sex. She shuddered and gasped

“Don’t let go,” hitched out through sobs. Adam held her tighter, the stubs of once fingers smearing against his chest.

“It’s spreading.” Reynald fingertipped the glass, dragged a new plan into place. “Hank, reverse the phase.”

He shifted. Nodded once. “Target locked.”

Reynald’s claw hesitated. Sweat blossomed across his brow. “Probe ready. Pass in three... Two...”

To fail to hit, reach, catch, meet, or otherwise make contact with.

To fail to perceive, understand, or experience.

To fail to accomplish, achieve, or attain (a goal).

To fail to attend or perform.

To leave out.

To omit.

To let go by

To let slip.

To escape or avoid.

To discover the absence or loss of.

To feel the lack or loss of.

To be unsuccessful.

To misfire.

To fail.

A young woman.

Miss.

Something’s wrong.

“Jim?”

shut up.

“Jimbo?”

shut UP.

“Come on, pardner. You gotta talk to me sometime.”

no i don’t.

“You just did.” Hank grinned from his command chamber. ”Anyhow, what’s it look like out there?”

whiter than jo’s inner thigh.

“That white, huh? That must be pretty white. You know, one time I was at a saloon in—”

for the love of all things holy, shut UP.

Crawl, crackle.

“You feel that?”

certainly did. initiating full sensor sweep.

“Looks like we ain’t alone out here, buddy.”

indeed.

“Think it’s Hunter and Lily?”

...

“Jim?”

secure your tether to the ME.

“What in—”

do it, hank. now.

The cowboy was disconcerted by Whistler’s tone, urgent, honest. Afraid. “Show me.”

The command display sparked to life as Whistler fed the exterior view of the Timestream to Hank.

His gasp was audible. “That ain’t... Hunter. Or Lily.”

secure your tether, hank.

His knobby hands skittered over the controls on his cardiac shield. He felt the tug of his constituent particles locking back into place on the Judith line. In an instant, he could be downloaded back into the thought ocean made possible by the author and shaped by the wounded god.

Following them through the Timeline was a nightmare armada.

“What is—”

enemy.

“Jesus fuck.” Hank instinctively stroked his handlebars. “You runnin’?”

varying phase to lose them.

“S’it workin’?”

no.

“Shit.”

There were hundreds, thousands, an incomprehensible number of vessels reaching toward them, an undulating mass of black edges flashing with silver, a school of embodied hate and desire. At its center, something horrific and laughing. They could feel the reach of fury.

Whistler dug deeper into Hank, tapping the pattern for something, anything that would throw the Enemy off their trail. His nacelles glowed with the effort, leaving a veil of desiccated lifetimes in his wake. The howling fleet lurched closer, smashing the fragile fabrics of reality, clawing toward the soul cache hidden away in Hank’s marble.

“Uh, Jim?”

quiet, hank.

“We ain’t getting out of this, are we?”

The vessel dived and shattered as an Enemy gained hold. Hank fell to the floor of the command chamber, his cardiac shield sputtering an alarm.

you are, old friend.

“Jim, don’t—”

Hank flashed from the Timeline in a burst of static and dust.

come now, maire. show yourself.

The Black tendriled over his surface, piercing and stroking, merging and solidifying. Absorbing. Whistler felt a scrape across his pattern, dislodge, reformation. He found himself shifted back into human form, alone in an echoing cavern of burnt mercury, a blinding light lasering down to scan his image.

“Bravo, Whistler. Bra
vo
.” The ruined child walked from the shadows.

He smoothed his cloak and stood defiant.

“You,” she poked his thigh with one taloned, tiny finger, “were supposed to be on my side. Our side.”

“He made a better offer.”

She snarled. “I could have given you everything, James. The universe. History.”

He scoffed. “What possible use could I have for all that, poppet?”

“I trusted you.”

“You’ve a lot to learn, child.” He adjusted the tips of his gloves.

“Why’d you do it?”

“I’m tired.” He bent to her level, put his hands on her shoulders. “I was meant to be gone a thousand years ago. To be with Jo again, wherever that might be. When you tore me from that slumber, you ruined my heaven. Paul offered me a chance to sleep again.”

“Tired of bouncing around in his head, huh?”

“Your head, too.”

She nodded a smile. “You were good to me, bringing Lilith in. I can forgive this transgression. I’ll let you rest.”

“Dear child,” his eyes glinted, “thank you.”

“Just one more thing.” She took his hand, gently, tenderly. “Who does his maths?”

“Hmm?” Whistler frowned.

“You can tell me, or I’ll just take it from you. Who’s calculating the bleed? Who’s zeroing in on me? He’s no good with numbers. Can’t be his brawn, West. Is it Benton?”

Whistler’s lips opened over clenched teeth.

Maire’s tiny fist punched through his chest and closed over his silver projector. He gurgled with blood and shattered bone as silver laced through the mash of his heart and lungs. She yanked her arm out, leaving his dusted form to fall in a flop of grit and glitter to the floor.