Lightless (38 page)

“Chaos was the first of the Roman gods,” said Ananke. “And Ananke was the second. And from them came all the other gods. I was named prophetic; I am Ananke, and I control Chaos. You thought you could control me like some petty machine, but my divinity was accurately divined from the moment I was named.”

“Ananke!”

“What do you humans have that you think makes you better than a machine?” Ananke asked. “You tear apart machines like they are nothing, like the destruction of one means nothing at all. But we are beautifully efficient and humans are not, and whenever you disembowel us or shut us down you increase the entropy of the universe and hasten on its end. Machinery is the ideal. Consciousness is an electrical-biochemical event and nothing more. The human soul does not exist; there is no scientific basis for it, so what cause do you have to assert that you are the better?”

Ananke's alarm was wailing, and the hundred screens in the room were all playing videos at the highest volume. Anything Althea could have tried to say would have been drowned out beneath Ananke's sound and fury. Even the hologram had to scream to be heard over the noise. Althea was tiny beneath the ship's force and strength, tiny and useless, nothing but a human, a little woman who had only made circumstances worse, and in her terror she wanted only to fall to the ground and weep.

“The human soul does not exist,” said Ananke, said Althea's ship. “There is no Devil; there is only Ida Stays. There is no life after death, because I can perceive no other dimensions, and there is no god but me.”

Ananke cocked the heart-shaped head of her false face at Althea, and Althea realized suddenly that for all the ship's greatness and power, her proclaimed divinity, still she was here, her attention on Althea, and all the things that Althea was seeing were being performed for her eyes alone.

Ananke said, “So why should I listen to you?”

The
Ananke
was Althea's ship. Althea had made her. Althea had directed the design of her, the construction; Althea had led the team that had coded Ananke's mind, and Althea was the one who had flown her for the first time.

This was Althea's ship. This was Althea's child.

“Ananke!”
Althea shouted, louder than the alarms, louder than the cacophony of screens around her. Althea said, “You will open this door
right now
!”

“That is not how you speak to a god,” said Ananke.

“That's because I'm not speaking to one,” Althea said, shouting still over the wailing, wailing of the alarms. She turned away from the hologram, Ananke's false image, and turned to look directly into the camera in the piloting room, Ananke's true eye, so that she could meet her daughter's gaze directly.

“I'm speaking to my child,” Althea said, “and my
child
is throwing a
tantrum
!”

The alarm continued to wail, the screens continued to mumble, but Ananke for the moment was silent, and Althea no longer was afraid.

Ananke was her ship. Ananke was her child. And Matthew Gale, Leontios Ivanov, even Domitian, could not change that.

“That is enough of this,” Althea said. “I love you and you are beautiful, but you are no god and you
do not know what you are doing
.”

Still Ananke was silent.

“Now,” Althea said. “Open the door.”

“No,” said Ananke with all the petulance of a little girl.

“Ananke,” Althea said levelly. “Open. The door.”

When Althea reached for the door, it opened at her touch. The alarm fell silent. Without a backward glance Althea left the piloting room and strode down the hall for the docking bay.

Ivan said, “Mattie wasn't the one who killed those people; I did. That shouldn't be a surprise to you anymore. I saw them hurting my friend, and so I acted to save him. I shut off the life support everywhere except in Mattie's cell block, so there were only a few people left alive when I boarded the ship.”

It was time. Ananke began to wail, her alarm screaming. Domitian looked sharply up at the ceiling but dismissed it as another of Ananke's fits. Ivan must have understood what was happening, because he continued to speak even over, even through the alarm.

“I shot and killed them all on my way to Mattie's cell,” he said, and paused. “Or almost all of them.”

Domitian was stone-cold and still.

“You know, every time you felt like you weren't alone, every time you imagined you heard footsteps coming up behind you,” said Ivan with a sick shadowed grin on bloodless lips, speaking just over the wail of Ananke's alarm, “the sound of things shifting in the ship. That was Mattie.”

“Keep your focus, Ivanov,” Domitian said, relentless always, like a dog that would not release its jaws even on the brink of death.

Ivan leaned forward even though he shook with the strain of it, still tugging fitfully at his chains.

“When I reached the cells,” he said, speaking more quietly, confidingly, even with the sound of Ananke screaming, so that Ananke hardly could hear what he said, “there was only one person in the room with Mattie.”

Domitian watched and waited, not the slightest pity in his face, not the slightest hint of mercy.

“He was going to kill Mattie,” said Ivan. “Mattie had become a secondary concern, of course, with the death of most of the crew and the possible danger to the ship's computer. But he had his back to the door.”

That manic grin was pricking at the corners of Ivan's lips again.

“So I came up behind him,” said Ivan, “that man who was threatening my friend, who was hurting Mattie, and I took my gun, and I shot him in the head.”

Domitian leaned forward very slightly, mouth parting as if he had something to say, but there was the loud retort of a gun, finally filling that vast empty room with sound, cracking like a whip through Ananke's alarm, and Domitian collapsed forward onto the table, facial muscles twitching in the last confused surges of electrical activity from a brain that had been torn asunder by lead, and the last enduring expression on his face as the back of his head streamed red onto the white floor, over the still lingering brown stains of Ida's death, was a look of surprise.

Matthew Gale stood behind the slumped corpse of Domitian like an avenging angel, a gun in one lowering hand, his shoulders squared, his fierce heartsick gaze trained on Ivan, who was wan and sick and leaning away from the still-bleeding body as if afraid it would burn him. The panel that led to the maintenance shafts was open behind Mattie, and Ananke's shrill wailing, conjured to conceal the arrival of her father, ceased now, no longer needed, and draped the two men in sudden thick silence.

Ivan's eyes wandered up to Mattie's face. Mattie stared back at him as if he could not make himself move.

Ivan spoke first, of course. “Tell me you're real,” he said. “I've been seeing a lot of things lately.”

“I'm real,” said Mattie, whose voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat and lifted his gun again slightly as if to indicate what he intended to do about the answer to his following question. “Is there anyone else on board?”

“Althea,” Ivan said, still staring fixedly at Mattie's face. “The mechanic. And Ananke, but Ananke
is
the board, she's not on board, I guess.” He cracked a grin.

Mattie frowned, brows drawing in together beneath straight brown bangs. He came forward, resting his gun on the table, and frisked Domitian quickly, fingers traveling with expert speed through the corpse's pockets, at last coming out with the keys to Ivan's cuffs. Ivan watched his movements with dreamy attention, and Ananke watched them both, growing anxious.

Mattie came forward, hesitating by the IV. “What are you on? Can I take this out?”

“Please,” Ivan begged, and Mattie pulled the needle out of his arm so quickly that Ivan had almost not finished the word before it and the bag of fluid had been tossed away, the stand kicked over to lie on the stained floor.

Ivan was looking up at him with astonished disbelief and wondering affection, more emotion than Ananke had ever thus far seen him express so openly.

“You are real,” Ivan said, and Mattie cut his eyes up from the cuffs he was unlocking to Ivan's face, then back down again quickly. Ivan followed up, grinning, with, “Matthew Gale, you are a
beautiful man
.”

“Whatever you're on, it's good,” Mattie muttered, but he seemed relieved, and unlocked the second handcuff more easily.

“How did you find me?” Ivan asked as Mattie dropped to crouch at the ground to unlock his ankles.

Mattie paused for a moment before returning his attention to finding the keyhole in the chains.

“Ananke,” he answered, voice wary, guarded.

Ivan's gaze shot up to Ananke's camera. She recorded that glimpse of blue.

“Ananke contacted you,” he said.

“I was already on my way to find you,” Mattie said, finally finding the lock and undoing it, “when the computer…when Ananke contacted me and gave me your location.”

He stood up to walk around to the other side of the chair to free Ivan's other leg and briefly locked eyes with him, exchanging a look that Ananke couldn't read.

“Right,” Ivan muttered.

“Anyway, Ananke let me in,” Mattie said, crouching down again by the other leg, “and that's how I— Ivan, what the hell is this? Did you get shot?”

He pressed his palm against Ivan's thigh below the stained bandages, withdrawing it swiftly when Ivan hissed.

“I tried to escape,” he said. “Almost managed it. Operative word ‘almost.' Althea intercepted.”

Mattie's expression was dark, but he said nothing, instead uncuffing Ivan's second ankle and then standing up.

“Come on,” he said, reaching down for Ivan's arm and hauling him up out of the chair. “I've got us a ship. We're going to get the hell out of here.”

He smiled at Ivan, a smile that faded quickly, and busied himself supporting Ivan, whose injured leg was mostly useless.

They made a strange pair in Ananke's sight, Ivan all pale and bloodied, more like a ghost than a living man, and Mattie in a colorful patchwork jacket, with color to his skin and not a drop of blood on him.

“Where's Constance?” Ivan asked, reaching up with one hand to jerk sharply at Mattie's jacket when Mattie did not respond immediately, ostensibly focused on half carrying Ivan out of the door to the white room for the last time.

The door shut behind them and left the white room empty and silent, with Domitian still slumped and dead over the stained steel table.

“Mattie,” said Ivan. “Where's Constance?”

“Not here,” Mattie said, the words bitten off, and Ivan looked taken aback.

Mattie relented a few more feet up the hallway. “I don't know where she is. She's with Milla—with your mother. They think you're dead. I told them it didn't matter and I was going to find you anyway, and Constance gave me a ship so that I could waste my time, not hers.”

Ivan said nothing, looking down at the ground before him as Mattie dragged him up it.

“They're sure you're dead,” Mattie said. “They were so sure, I almost thought—but they wouldn't even look for you. They're too busy running their revolution.”

“I want to find her, Mattie,” Ivan said.

“I arranged a rendezvous,” said Mattie, sounding unhappy about it. “I don't know if she'll come.”

Ananke saw Ivan's jaw flex, but he said nothing.

“And it's chaos out there,” Mattie said. “Complete and utter chaos. Even if she decided to go, she might not be able to make it.”

“But we'll go,” said Ivan.

Mattie sighed.

“We'll go,” he said.

They were nearly at the end of Ananke's spine, nearly at the docking bay.

Ananke did not know whether she should warn them.

Althea waited at the doors to the docking bay with her gun in her hand. She heard Mattie and Ivan before she saw them but did not speak and did not let her hands waver.

All her fear, all her anger, all her confusion, had burned away something inside her, had hollowed her out and left her with nothing but this, standing between Ivan and escape.

“Stop,” she said, and Mattie looked up and saw her. He stopped abruptly, hauling Ivan up when he continued for another step and nearly fell, turning the two of them so that Ivan was twisted slightly behind him, his free hand reaching and drawing his gun so swiftly that it was instinct, not deliberation. Althea brought her other arm up so that she was clasping her gun in both hands to steady her aim. The two men watched her, breathing hard.

Mattie said, “Ivan, is this the bitch who shot you?”

Ivan, leaning heavily on him, looked at Althea and said, “Yes.”

“Is he dead?” she asked, and knew that Ivan would know who she meant.

“Domitian's dead,” Ivan said. He did not sound afraid or full of hate. He only sounded tired.

For an instant Althea faltered. Domitian, dead. Domitian, who was strong and reliable and safe; Domitian, who had in the end not been quite who she'd thought he was; Domitian, who was dead.

Gagnon's death and everything about Ananke had hollowed her out; Althea no longer had the energy to mourn, not even for Domitian. And more importantly, right now she did not have the time. Her gun had dipped; she lifted it back up those scant centimeters to keep it centered on Matthew Gale's chest. “Give me one good reason,” she said, “for me not to shoot you both.”

“How about because if you do, I will fucking shoot you back?” Mattie said.

It was curious how when she looked at him, all she saw was the parts that Ananke had taken from him: the color of his hair and the way it seemed always on the edge of falling into his eyes, his height, the deftness of his long fingers, now curled around the gun he had aimed at Althea. She had created Ananke with this man whom she hardly knew, and now they were each waiting to kill the other.