Secret Worlds (567 page)

The monsters can hear us,
Thorn says silently.
So, talk to them.

Who are you?
I try to ask them.
Who are you and why did they create you?

For war, for war, for war
they shoot back.

We are you, we are you, we are you
they also insist.

But who do you think we are
? Armonk asks them.
We were not created for war
. Y
ou’re different.

The monsters snap their backs up and down.
How dare you, how dare you!

No different, no different, no different than you
comes the retort from their very own faction.

You are killing machines, killing machines and that’s all!
Blane scolds. His silent proclamation blazes through the warehouse, inspiring a fiercer rally amongst the monsters.

We are you, we are you,
the power, the power, the power of Reds, of the Fireseed, the Fireseed
they insist as they writhe and thump their massive wings against their pods.

You are only part from us, part from us
say our friendly Reds.

If you’re us, then you cannot be war machines
I say without words.

They’re us and they’re not us
our own Reds explain as they soar overhead.
Us and not us.

If you’re made for war
Thorn tells the monsters
you must destroy yourselves.

Destroy yourselves. Destroy yourselves to save the stroma from contamination!
we chant fervently in our heads now that we’ve begun to figure things out. The part that
is
us, NanoPearl stole from Thorn’s mind and from the Reds they captured. The parts that aren’t, well, those are gruesome adaptations designed to wage war, for mass slaughter. God only knows what lethal weaponry they contain. I never want to find out.

We are more than copies, more than copies
the Red beasts insist. There’s a deafening pop and we see that one of them has broken his neck binding. He swings his massive head toward us and roars. We stumble back, shaken. Our Reds are shaken too. They lunge at the great beast’s eyes to taunt him.

Time is running out
I try to convey privately but the beasts hear me too.

Running out! Running out,
the emboldened one roars.
Your time is running out!
He struggles mightily against his remaining leg binds. Raising his snout, he snatches one, then two more of our Reds and clamps his powerful jaw closed, gobbling them whole.

The rest of our Reds shriek but keep their distance.

How dare you!
I scold silently.

The Reds are ours to eat
the monsters insist.

We are not yours
our Reds
eep
back as they careen around the monsters.

These mutants are, in truth split, tortured souls. They must know, in their core, just as the Fireseed does, as Armonk always insisted, that if there is enough emotional turmoil and contamination in their ranks that their sacred duty is to immolate and self destroy.

You must immolate. Self destroy
we chant to them inwardly.

We raise our rallying cry until every part of us vibrates as one. One hive, one solar battery, one mind of the great Fireseed.

Our Reds swarm overhead, squawking in a manner I’ve never heard before now. They’re reprimanding their monstrous counterparts.
You cannibals
,
cannibals, cannibals!
The warlike Reds still trapped in their binds, snap back, their teeth gleaming.

Immolate, immolate, immolate
our little Reds screech while they race in faster and faster circles, as if they’re stirring a boiling pot brimming with healing elixir, designed to fix something irretrievably broken.
Immolate!

Blane steps out of our circle and raises his gun to the monster that has just broken free of its leg bindings. “You’ll pay for killing our Reds,” he growls.

“No, Blane!” I shout. “Come back.”

“This thing will kill us all if I don’t do it first,” he insists.

But he won’t kill the beast with a taser; he’ll only aggravate it. A wave of sheer terror crashes through me when Blane steps closer and fires. The monster unleashes a torrent of infuriated howls as its claws reach out like curled sabers.

And then, its jaw gaping, one of its sharp teeth ejects at Blane.
Made for war
it growls. Its tooth rockets through the air, plunging deep into Blane’s thigh. Blane moans and drops, blood spurting onto the floor.

I want to shoot at the thing so badly. It’s hurt Blane, and killed our Reds. The second taser is tucked in my sock. I could reach down and grab it. But it won’t kill it; only rouse it to further rage. We need to keep working together to raise the energy of the stroma. It’s the only way. My heart batters hard against my ribs.

Armonk, Thorn and I increase the decibel of our silent chant:
Immolate, immolate!

My head pounds as sap and blood press against my ears. My legs shudder under me and threaten to buckle.

From the corner of my vision, I see a flame ignite from one of the monster’s mechanical nostrils. Then a dozen beasts are beating at creeping flames! They wail, plaintively, pathetically
we are you, we are you, do not destroy us.

I sense Armonk’s momentary hesitation.
Don’t listen
I command my friends.
Don’t listen!

We renew our chant. An entire row of monstrous wings light up like dry kindling, and then another three rows.

Armonk and I dash over to Blane and help him stagger back to our circle. We agree not to remove the projectile in his thigh until we’re safely in the glider, if we make it back. The danger of him bleeding out is too acute.

The warehouse rings out with monstrous
eeps
and snarls, the great thrashing of wings and teeth. With this, it’s all we can do to keep our concentration on the message at hand:
The stroma is divided, contaminated by warmongers. Immolate!

We hold to our circle, vibrating, sweating and coughing from the smoke until the whole army of vicious Reds detonates into flames. Our lungs scald with smoldering chemical particles as we struggle back through the hall, plunging right through the holos who still stalk us as they bark out their warlike wares. Our own Reds blanket us, providing a protective layer as we go.

Making our way out of the window, wounded but triumphant, we ride on our own devoted Reds to our glider before the warehouse can explode.

In the vehicle, it takes all three of us to yank the monstrous tooth from Blane’s leg. He moans in pain as I slather on my healing elixir, bind the raw flesh with my jacket and dose him with numbing salve so he’ll sleep through the worst of it.

The Reds are sad, telling us silently that they hated to kill spawn sprung in part from their own genes, no matter how horrifying the beings were.

But we know that we did the right thing, because a harmonious, relieved thrumming stirs in our hearts.

Thank you, beauties, thank you
sing the Fireseed from a thousand miles away.

You’re welcome,
we sing back.

George Axiom’s secretary serves us iced sea-grape mead in goblets, and it flows down our parched throats faster than she can sneak in her next furtive peek at us. We look a fright, with our clothes torn and bloodied and purple bruises galore. Not to mention the four Reds clucking and eeping on Thorn’s shoulders. Thorn insisted on taking these with him if he had to leave most of them in the cargo hold. I don’t argue with my brother. Surely he’s got a good reason for it.

The secretary, in a breezy shell-buttoned dress, looks up from her holo tablet and says, “He’ll see you now.”

As she escorts us to his penthouse office I think about our earlier escape from NanoPearl. We slithered out of the narrow window just as the first guard shook himself from his stupor, and from a mile away we could see the flames engulf the orb, like some mad planet in its death throes. We raced down in the glider to the hovercraft piers and stretched out, exhausted, on a sliver of beach behind the Skye Ride lounge.

We soaked in as much solar food as we dared before it fried our skin. Then we bathed in the brackish surf and combed our hands through our tangled hair until we looked half presentable. I let Blane sleep until the elixir started to heal his flesh. Truth be told, I could’ve slept on that beach too, for hours. But we’re here to take care of unfinished business.

As we enter George’s suite, he rises to greet us, shaking all of our hands and even stretching out a friendly finger to one of the Reds blinking at him in midair with curious eyes. “What brings you Greening students back to our city?” George asks, as he looks us up and down. I sense him almost remark that we’re looking fine but then deciding that between my horribly swollen chin and Blane’s ripped burnsuit and homemade leg bandage we aren’t looking anything of the sort.

We hesitate in front of his plush sofas until he gestures for us to grab a seat. Armonk starts. “We need to report a crime, well actually a slew of criminal activity.” Armonk levels his famously dark, intense look at George.

“A crime at The Greening?” George clears his throat. “That’s not quite my jurisdiction.”

“Then who’s in charge over there?” Blane sends George an equally stony stare to rival Armonk’s.

“I suppose we could stretch to include Skull’s Wrath, since there’s not much of a government over there aside from Marney at the Depot,” George answers with an arch of his brows. So Marney’s larger-than-life persona has filtered all the way to Vegas-by-the-Sea. “Tell me what the problem is.”

I say, “It seems that Stazzi, your judge from the Axiom Contest has not only stolen a student contest creation, but has illegally implanted a phishing device in this student’s head to suck out that concept.” Blane wraps an arm around Thorn, who nods at George.

George’s face contorts into a disturbed grimace, but he says nothing.

Thorn says slowly, “It was me, my project. These Reds,” he murmurs, gesturing to the Reds, now nuzzling his hair.

“Your project? With those … those birds?” Is George’s memory that bad? I distinctly recall talking to him at The Greening before he flew off and confronting him about Thorn not winning. Or is he willing himself to forget?

“They’re not birds,” I remind him. “They’re half Fireseed and half human, as I told you before you left The Greening on finalist pick day. And I said that they deserved to win your contest, hands down.” I pause for this to sink in. “Clearly NanoPearl wanted that concept without paying for it.”

The spark of recognition in George’s eye suggests that maybe he doesn’t think too highly of NanoPearl either; that he may have had his own run-ins with them. Though he snaps, “You’re making some major accusations here. What gives you the right?”

Blane reaches in his latchbag and presents the device he surgically removed from Thorn’s neck. “Ever seen this type of Nanotech?”

George rotates it gingerly between thumb and index finger. Taking a napkin from his desk he places the implant on it as if he’s afraid it may contaminate him. “Can’t say I have. This does have the NanoPearl logo on it but anyone could have implanted this. What exact proof is there that Stazzi from NanoPearl stole your, uh, concept?”

Blane holds up a wing section from the monstrous NanoPearl Red he managed to break off at the warehouse. “As you may recall, I’m an expert at decoding genomes, and this sample from NanoPearl will prove, when decoded, that their formula for this hybrid chimera is a blatant and direct thievery of this young man’s invention.”

George rubs his forehead as if this news has just given him a horrendous, throbbing headache, which I’m sure it has, metaphorically if not physically. “M-my word!” he stammers.

“In addition to the illegal actions of NanoPearl and Stazzi,” Blane says, “A Greening student named Jan should also be arrested for accepting a payoff from Stazzi to put young Thorn in harm’s way.”

“Yeah, and a student named Vesper, for being an accomplice,” I add.

With this, George begins jotting down info on his holo tablet. “I’ll look into these matters.”

“Right away, please,” says Armonk. “These students are tied up and under watch at our school, but we’ll need immediate help removing them before they cause further harm. They are quite dangerous.”

I stare at George. “By the way how did you decide on which judges to use? Did they give you perks or what? Because we all remember the little, um, last minute disagreement with Stazzi over the Axiom prize. I mean, you’re a
governor
of the sector, and as such, you’re not supposed to favor one corporation over another, right?” My brother is furiously shaking his head at me.

“I don’t know what you’re insinuating,” George retorts. He scowls at me and then at Blane. “May I ask, how you happened to get a piece of the NanoPearl hybrid?”

It’s my turn to flush from nerves. My brother isn’t just shaking his head at me; he’s pinching me. I went too far by suggesting that George let Stazzi and NanoPearl buy him off. The chain could totally crack if we unspool all of it now. I suppose everyone has his or her price. It’s a matter of degree.

We need to catch the most poisonous lizard first. I smile. “Let’s just say that we had unexpected and unprecedented access.”

“We have our ways,” says Blane, pointedly flexing his muscles. “There are many underhanded things happening at that, um, NanoPearl warehouse,” Blane shakes his head, “that the head of a big sector like yours would not want to be associated with in any way.”

“Well, no, I have a good name,” he mumbles. “My family’s been here for generations.”

Armonk nods at George. “And I’m sure you’d like to keep it that way. A scandal would do you no good. Ruin your chances of reelection.”

With this, another spark of understanding gleams in George’s eyes. He snorts. “Stazzi
can
be a bit overbearing.” So, it wasn’t my imagination that he was rolling his eyes at Stazzi during that ballroom dispute. By the sound of his snort, he’d love nothing more than to slap a pair of handcuffs on her if he has ample reason. “I’ll get on these claims immediately.” He pauses to really look at each of us, one by one, as if he’s seeing us for the very first time. “I’m so sorry you experienced these difficulties. Is there anything else?”