Rupture (10 page)

“Didn’t work …”

Her father, brother, and Rigon rushed her into a side room with a sink.

Rigon saw what was on her arm, fear clearly etching itself into his face. She could see the concern, even sensed the fear in eyes hidden behind those horrible shades.
 

“Bastards,” he said.

“Help her!” Buzz yelled, seeing the desperation and concentration in his sister’s face.

She was in a calm place that blanketed out the world around her as she concentrated on her arm.

Arthur said, “Rigon …”

“Don’t you piss on me, Rigon,” she said. “I’ve heard you say how potent your urine is. Don’t you dare …”

“Right.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out an old-fashioned, analog rescue knife. He opened it and stabbed it deep into his left forearm. He poured his healing blood all over her. First her arm, then her torso, then her head.
 

She smiled at him as the blood poured over her. The metallic stink of it was a far away thing—the warm feel of it, something she barely registered. She could tell he was watching a critical blinking meter in his HUD as his blood pressure dropped. He would wait until right before he passed out, wait until she looked like a car-crash victim before he … then he crashed to the floor.

Keila felt the cleansing release as Rigon’s high-end, Consortium-coded and patented invisible blood warriors pushed back the poison that felt like molten lava pouring over her skin. She had almost lost her battle, but her barrier had never broken. She smiled an inside smile of relief. No one saw it. She knew she had not lost—Rigon had saved her, sure, but she’d never relented. She told herself to remember to tell him as she passed out next to him, her arm as pristine as the first day of her life, and now draped across the man she couldn’t stand, but still loved.

“Well, look at that,” Buzz said.

“They had a good run,” Mr. Vaughn said.

“Glad when it ended.”

“Me, too.”

The banging on the door by Principal Smalls increased. They had been ignoring him. “She’s on campus,” he said from behind the door. “She’ll be here any minute.”

They all knew who he meant.

Rigon sat up, one hand on his wound, already healing. “Help me get cleaned up before my mother sees me this way.”

* * *

Later than evening, Simone followed her mother into the clinic like a puppy who knows it’s about to get slapped with rolled-up newspaper. She had changed into another over-sized sweatshirt. She wrapped her arms around herself, even though it wasn’t cold. She also wore some baggy running pants and a pair of flip-flops. She didn’t want to be anywhere near the clinic. But her mother said she needed to be present. She was part of this now.

“I want out of here,” Joss Beckwith was saying to Rigon, whose right forearm was now bandaged but somehow fine. Joss said again, “Hey, I want out of here. Are you listening?”

“I heard you the first time,” Rigon said.

Simone waved at her brother, who smiled back at her, even though he continued to glare at Joss.

Simone’s mother surveyed the room, nodding to the other active Council members, all of whom Simone knew. Mrs. Ogilvey sat in the waiting room by herself. Mr. Arthur Vaughn stood alone, watching, like a concerned patriarch. Simone wondered where Keila was. She had to be around here somewhere. Simone liked Keila because Keila didn’t take bunk from anyone, especially her brother, the cy-warrior himself, who even now looked like some Greek god you’d see in a museum, only clothed for battle, and wearing grafted AR Mirrorshades. But at least Rigon made her laugh, when times were calmer.

 
But her mother, no, nothing was ever calm with her mother. Simone felt small next to her, even the older woman wasn’t much bigger. She just carried herself that way. Her mother wore a silver Consortium Bodyglove that fit her well-shaped natural body. Her mind, though, was something special, as was Simone’s. She wasn’t aesthetically enhanced, but her natural physical gifts were enough for men to stare and sometimes inquire how old she was (which she never told). Plus, she’d had about every possible post-development physical treatment you could buy. Add to that her own removable, titanium AR Mirrorshades and her short black hair, and you had someone who knew how to make an entrance—and knew how to put someone in their place with a turn of the lip.

 When Joss saw her mother, Agent Yancey Wellborn, glare at him, he looked from Rigon to Arthur, then back to Yancey.
 

“Oh, shit,” he mumbled.

Joss looked confused who he should be more worried about. On the one hand, he had her big brother, a Consortium AI Police Agent who had the authority to bag and tank him or, worse, liquidate him at the nearest facility. Simone guessed Rigon hadn’t done that very thing because of the Vaughns’ intervention. Simone’s mother was also dangerous and definitely more of a problem than Joss could handle at the moment. Joss even glanced imploringly at Mr. Vaughn for help. Most people knew Agent Yancey Wellborn was an experienced Consortium intelligence officer. She was an elite Altertranshuman who tracked RAIs in the hopes of one day proving that human consciousness was superior. She was a Wellborn, which made her a zealot. And Joss looked like he feared she’d burn him at the stake, if given a chance. He was right, of course.

Joss now edged toward Rigon, as if Rigon might be his savior. Rigon shoved him back into place at the center of the room. “Where you goin’?”

“Sorry,” he said to Rigon.

Simone’s mother stared at Joss for a few moments, obviously assessing the nature of his deformity. Simone was scared for having contacted him and for having outing herself. Only a few years ago, both of them would have been locked up and executed for her beliefs and his current condition. Simone glanced from her mother to Joss. She was doing something to him by simply staring. Standing under Yancey Wellborn’s gaze clearly agitated the things inside him. It was working, whatever she was doing.

Yancey saw the reaction she obviously wanted. “I suggest everyone step back. That means you, too, Rigon.”

“Goddammit, Mother,” Rigon said, “what are you planning?” And then to Simone, “Hey.”

“Hey,” Simone finally said to her brother. “You look spiffy. Hurt your arm?”

Keila walked in. She was toweling her hair, and she looked like she’d been given a pair of hastily adorned clinic clothes. She wandered over to her father. Mr. Vaughn said, “Yancey is about to do her thing.”

“I guess it’s time then,” Keila said.
 

Simone stayed put at her mother’s side, but everyone else had moved away from Joss, who now stood forlorn in the middle of the lobby. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“You and I are what’s going on,” Yancey said.

Simone mouthed
I’m sorry
to Joss.

“Mother, what’re you doing?” Rigon asked. He stepped forward, as if to stand between them. “If you’re here as a Council member, we have to vote before any action is taken. We should at least talk about it.”

“I know we should,” she said, still as a statue.

“Then what?”

“Just a little encouragement for the Rogues to show themselves.” She raised her arms. To Simone, she said, “Never address the Lords of Unreason, dear, unless you can handle them. And you cannot.” To Joss, she asked, “Are you ready, son?”

Rigon backed away. “Christ, this is going to be ugly. And why do you encourage her to call them the
Lords of Unreason
? That’s so over the top. Dad asked you to stop that.”

Two electrified dirks emerged from the palms of Yancey Wellborn’s hands and proved, in an instant for any doubters, that the world was mysterious. She grasped them by their hafts. Simone smiled, thrilled whenever her mother showed what she was.

Principal Smalls and the students behind the glass doors to the clinic all gasped.

Simone watched Rigon move to block as much of their sight as possible. What her mother was doing defied the best rational arguments her brother and his techno-bosses could make, so they hid such powers away at all costs, or, in today’s world, used them. Simone hated the fact she was both mesmerized and afraid of her mother, who now grasped two weapons that glowed with amber fire. She had always wanted to be like her, to be able to do the things her mother did. The lords granted Simone limited access to their beneficence, but she had never demonstrated such skills as her mother’s in channeling and summoning. Her mother could call
things
into being. She was a psy-sorceress, and a highly paid one.

Simone mumbled her mantra of centering as she watched her mother move in a delicate dance that looked like a dramatic performance.

“I am coming for you,” her mother said. Joss was no longer Joss. His eyes had rolled back in his head, and he stood rigid. “I’ve got you now. Send your messenger, you intemperate void beasts.”

Simone backed up; it was dangerous to be so close … to her mother. Joss roared a deep-bellied roar that sounded as if it echoed up from an abyss. He fell to his knees and his neck snapped back so that he faced the ceiling as would a spigot.

“Come on out,” her mother said, her arms continuing the seductive dance with the weapons. “You little pretenders.”

* * *

Yancey Wellborn considered this the most dangerous moment, when the seduction of madness responded, and you either had the fortitude to resist, or you didn’t. The boy’s brands began to glow, even those under his clothes. One of the chairs nearby toppled over. When it righted itself, a chair leg now stood out from the top of the seat. Yancey continued her psy-kata. Then a framed picture on the wall spun and stopped upside down.

“Seen that before,” she said. “Unoriginal.”

The other members of the Council watched as she demonstrated to them how small-minded they were. Even Rigon didn’t understand what humanity faced.

She strengthened her seductive challenge and her dance. By now Joss’s jaw looked like it might come unhinged. She feared he would need some medical attention when this was over.

Poor boy, she thought. I may even have to kill him.

As if in response, the uniformed square tiles on the floor shifted—each square now slightly off kilter.

“Nice one,” she mumbled, feeling the disorientation for only a second. She glanced at her daughter, who had backed away, and now stood wide-eyed, watching the scene. “Simone, honey, stay centered ... and don’t look at the floor.”

“You’ve proven your point, Mother,” Rigon said. “That’s enough.”

“Not quite,” she said. “Just a little more.”

The keening coming from Joss could be heard outside. The students had all backed away from the clinic, some running down the hall away from the horrible sounds. Principal Smalls hurried the rest of them away as well.

Yancey Wellborn cared little about the boy’s life. She knew she would have to kill him, probably horribly, if she couldn’t save him right now in this critical moment, before he exploded and infected the entire school. She was forcing the Rogues to show what they intended. She had seen what happened to Rogueslaves branded like him. Either complete self-destruction of his phenotype into a horrible mess, or he became a host and the pestilence spread. Human nano-bombs. That was the worst-case scenario. There was a small chance he might be just a communication device, maybe for a bigger conflict they had planned.

Either way, it would be ugly.

The dirks were symbols, of course, of a much greater power she had at her disposal.

“He’s going critical,” Rigon said.

Rigon’s team emerged from the back rooms, where he’d made them wait. They were dressed in black Consortium riot gear. Each carried foam guns and began spraying the walls and ceiling of the place.

A gelatinous brown liquid poured out of Joss’s mouth. It was thick, and moved under some unknown guidance. It congealed near him into a twisted form like an ice-cream swirl. Joss toppled. Two team members grabbed him and ferreted him to a back room.

“Keep the foam off it,” Yancey yelled, even shoving one team member out of the way. She stared at the object that was the size of a small trashcan.

All the Council members, except for Mrs. Ogilvey who’d accidentally been thoroughly splashed with the protective foam, and now wiped her glasses, stood around it. Inside the hardening material was a bas-relief of a man curled into a serpent-like form, his head stuck up his ass, his arms and legs splayed like an insect.

Yancey was relieved that Joss wasn’t a nano-bomb. They’d been given a reprieve.

She had worked for the last twenty years as a Consortium intelligence officer tracking these fabricators and obliterating what came out of them. She knew from experience that the objects they fabricated weren’t pretty. They could turn an entire neighborhood block into a twisted picture of insanity: houses with doors on upside down; trees that grew utensils from their branches; and, worse of all, people malformed into monsters. They were their own type of weapon, but they were also used for what she now guessed the Rogues intended: an announcement of a contest between the RAIs and human beings. And then, an incursion of Rogues into Realspace.

“There, we have it now, don’t we?” Yancey said. She turned to her daughter. “Come here Simone and see your first Rogue Maker—”

“That’s enough,” Rigon said, stepping in. “It’s under control.”

“You’ve seen one like this before, Rigon?” Arthur asked.

Yancey nodded. “He has. Haven’t you?”

“Of course,” Rigon said. “Head up your ass is an insult. They’re calling us stupid, inferior. Bastards. That thing is stuck in the floor, if it’s like the others, probably has spikes down into the foundation by now.” His team had stopped, and he signaled for them to head out and make sure no one tried to get in. The foam had stopped dripping. They looked like they were in a big, white bubble. “When you’re all ready we’ll call the Council president. Then I have to make my recommendations to law enforcement. I have a feeling they won’t like what they hear.”

“Why is that, Rigon?” Yancey asked. She already knew the answer but wanted to hear him admit it. “You know that thing’s an egg, son. And what it hatches won’t be pretty. You know that. They know that.” Everyone stared at Rigon. Yancey said, “Why don’t you tell them why your bosses are going to ignore this?”