The Far Shores (The Central Series) (67 page)

Song Li nodded, her
right ear, which had been hanging by a thread of rotting flesh, plopping to the
ground with the gesture. Alistair had gotten used to the vile necessities of
Song Li’s presence, but that was still nearly too much for him. Talia ignored
it with a professionalism Alistair couldn’t help but admire, busy sending coded
retreat orders via their encrypted radio gear, while Alistair relayed the same
orders on a wideband telepathic broadcast. Lady Samnang watched the enterprise
with no evident concern.

Drake flickered into
existence a moment later, the front of his shirt covered in blood that
continued to drip from his throat. He looked bad, and Alistair hurried over to
support him before he fell.

“Drake, what the hell?”

He winced and waved his
hand in front of his throat – slashed wide open, Alistair could see, now the he
was close, and so recently that it was still in the process of knitting.

Auditors. Alexander
Warner and Katya Zharova. That little bitch punctured my trachea with needles.
They left me for dead. I had to cut my own throat to get them out.

Alistair shook his head
in sympathetic distress. Even for a fully transformed Anathema, that was a dire
solution.

What about Michelle?

Dead. Warner froze
her head solid – didn’t even bother with freezing the blood in her brain, just
did the whole damn thing. Shattered when she hit the ground. Beyond recovery.

He accepted the
information with a grimace and resignation. Michelle had not yet accepted her
opportunity for transformation, which left her vulnerable to mortal injury. She
had known the risks, but had not yet overcome her private resignations as to
the transformation.

It was not a unique
issue.

Despite the abundance of
nanites that John Parson had procured during the raid on Central, less than
half of Alistair’s forces were fully transformed. Parson was persuasive, and
all of the Anathema had seen their comrades burned, gassed, buried alive, and
drowned, only to reemerge stronger, but doubts and fears lingered. A little
telepathic prying had identified the most common reason – a number of those who
still resisted the idea feared that the death that was a necessary component of
the transformation was final, and that the fully transformed were not, in fact,
the same people they were before they had undergone the process. Even the
doubtful acknowledged that they possessed the memories and personality of who
they had been previously, but doubts lingered as to the continuity of
consciousness, and, in some extreme cases, even worries regarding some nebulous
concept of the “soul.”

While he did not share
their concerns, Alistair could not entirely dismiss them, either. He remembered
his own death, burned on a pyre of nanite-infused wood, and it was not a
pleasant memory. He had no specific memory of the moment his consciousness had
dissipated – there were simply the final seconds of agony, as his eyes went out
and his blood boiled inside his head, and then he had been whole again, rising
from the embers, rebuilding his burned body from the ashes of his previous
form. He could not say for sure that he was not another being who had simply
inherited the memories and experiences of the man who had died in the fire. He
did not believe in a soul, immortal or otherwise, so he could not attest to its
continued existence. Frankly, Alistair found all such concerns vaguely
ridiculous. He felt strongly that those who lived in the perpetually starless
night of the Outer Dark, beyond the furthest extent of the Ether, should be
beyond such petty concerns, and the allure of an effectively immortal body far
exceeded any vague promises of an eternal soul, but he knew that to argue the
point with those who doubted would be fruitless. They would come to terms with
the decision themselves, or they would eventually die, thanks to their
allegiance to their own fragile mortality. It meant nothing to him either way,
except for the strategic import.

No matter. Michelle was
lost, and Alexander Warner and Katya Zharova remained unaccounted for. Those
were the facts, and all other concerns were extraneous.

“I have heard from Nick
Marsh,” Talia reported, still absorbed in her tablet. “He is presently engaged
with the Auditors Michael Lacroix and Xia, and unable to fall back at this
time.”

“You mean he wants to
kill them himself,” Alistair said. “Very well. What of Martin Cole?”

“Nothing. He must be
incapacitated.”

Alistair had no more
luck raising him telepathically, and no more time to wait. Martin would have to
pull himself together on his own. He gave Talia orders for Martin, to be
broadcast repeatedly on the encrypted channel, waiting for him whenever he
resumed consciousness.

He surveyed the forces that
had assembled. It was less than a third of what he had begun the encounter
with, but he judged it to be sufficient for the work that remained. It would
have to be. Alistair made a quick evaluation, and then allocated his forces
accordingly.

“Song Li, along with
Leigh Feld, when she returns, will hold the portal. Nick Marsh and Martin Cole
will engage the Auditors at a distance. The rest of you come with me,
technicians included. We will need you on the other side. I assume that you
will accompany us, Lady Samnang?”

She nodded at him.

“I have no interest in
your conflict with the Auditors. I wish only to secure our interests.”

“And you will,” he
assured her, eager to be done with the Yaojing. “I believe that what you want
is already in our possession.”

“We shall see.”

He passed Drake over to
one of his men. The rest were occupied in readying weapons or steeling
themselves for the untested transit properties of the World Tree. Alistair
realized that he would have to go first, in order to sooth their fears, and
mentally cursed the timidity of his followers. When he returned to the Outer
Dark – as a hero – he would demand the services of some of the older, more
powerful Anathema that John Parson kept as a personal guard, rather than this
motley collection of renegade Operators and recently transformed Anathema.

“We have had contact
with Emily Muir at the Far Shores, and we expect our destination to be safe.
Nonetheless, I want everyone prepared for potential resistance. Protect the
technicians, neutralize any hostiles, secure and seal any entrances. We need to
align their World Tree with the Outer Dark, and then secure it for transport.
We are almost done, people...”

Alistair became aware of
hostile thoughts with just enough time to move out of the way of the spray of
gunfire intended for him. The technician beside him was struck down instead.
Emerging from the wreckage that surrounded their machinery, Mitsuru Aoki
staggered forward, the submachine gun in her hand blazing. Behind her, Alistair
sensed the thoughts of Alexander Warner and Katya Zharova.

“Screw it. We don’t have
time for this. They’re yours, Song.”

Alistair grabbed Talia
Banks and motioned for his troops to follow, thrusting the struggling
technician into the shimmering field that surrounded the World Tree, before
following himself. He did not bother to see who followed.

It made no difference,
after all. Even if Alistair alone survived, he would still see the mission
through.

***

Surprising himself, Alex wished that
he had a gun. Not that he could have hit anything with it, probably, but he
would have felt a bit less exposed, charging the Anathema with something in his
hands. He kept pace with Katya, secretly glad that Mitsuru had commanded them
to stay behind her.

The Anathema did not
react the way he expected. There was no hail of gunfire in response to their
attack. Alistair threw one of the technicians into the energy field that
surrounded the World Tree, before leaping through himself. After a moment’s
hesitation, the remainder of the personnel scrambled to follow. Mitsuru fired
until her magazine was depleted, her lip pulled back into a snarl, felling two
or three of them. Only a woman with tattoos beneath her eyes and a short, pudgy
man remained, and he looked in bad shape. In fact, as they moved closer, Alex
would have sworn that he looked
dead
.

How Mitsuru remained
standing was a mystery to Alex. Her leg was so badly mutilated that it was
hardly there at all, dragging behind her as she shuffled forward, dropping one
clip and struggling to shove another into the magazine well. Katya clutched needles
in either hand. Alex held the Black Door almost open and tried to keep his head
down, in case the remaining Anathema started shooting.

Katya yelled out, in
pain or fear, but Mitsuru disregarded it, continuing her mangled charge and
opening fire on the Anathema. Alex stopped to find Katya kicking frantically at
a corpse which grasped her ankle with one rigid hand.

“Get off me!” Katya
yelled, stomping at a head that was already terminally damaged by falling
debris from the ceiling collapse. “Let go!”

“What the hell?” Alex
dropped down on his knees, attempting to peel the cold fingers from her ankle.
“Zombie hand?”

She cried out, and Alex
saw how deeply the fingers pressed into her skin, tearing through the
reinforced fabric of her fatigues and digging into the muscle. The fingers were
white and bloodless, but completely rigid. Alex struggled to peel the index
finger from her ankle with both hands, succeeding only in pulling it briefly
back from Katya, before he lost his grip and stumbled, the finger returning to
its initial position. Searching about on the ground around him, Alex found a
piece of steel rebar that had come free of the fractured concrete, a
hands-width thick and sharp at one end, and proceeded to batter the corpse’s
arm with all of his strength. It took three swings before the arm tore free at
the shoulder socket, trailing tendons like wet rope, blood seeping from either
severed end. Katya fell over, clutching at her ankle as the hand continued to
tighten its grip.

“Alex,” Katya yelled,
face white with pain. “Do something!”

He glanced about him on
the ground, but there was neither a gun nor a knife nearby. With nothing else
at hand, Alex pointed the sharp end of the steel down and raised the bar above
the detached hand. Katya saw what he intended to do and yelled wordlessly,
shutting her eyes tight.

Alex slammed the steel
rebar point first into the hand, jabbing into the flesh and shattering the
thumb, so that it hung to the side, dragging along the ground, but the fingers
were relentless. He took aim carefully, aware that a slight error would lead to
impaling Katya’s leg instead, took a deep breath, and brought the rebar down
hard. Bone splintered, and another finger was mangled, releasing some of the
pressure on Katya’s leg. It took another two strikes before the hand was
disabled enough to peel it away, the little finger snapping as he pulled. Katya
curled into a ball, hugging her leg close.

“Katya? Are you okay?”

Alex glanced over to see
Mitsuru had tossed aside her submachine gun, and instead grappled with the male
Anathema directly, the bodies of the technicians she had killed earlier
crawling across the factory floor toward her. He yelled to Mitsuru, tried to
warn her, but his voice was lost in the tremendous throbbing sound of the World
Tree.

“C’mon, Katya, we have
to...”

Alex took a step forward
and felt a hand on his shoulder. He spun on his heel, dislodging the grip and
reaching for a gun that was no longer in its holster. Alex found himself face
to face with the woman.

She had skin the color
of cafe au lait, glossy black hair, eyes that burned like twin stars, and a
column of intricate and foreign script descending neatly down either cheek. Her
face was composed, the edge of her mouth turned up in a slight indication of a
smile. Her hair was long, tied back in a glossy, braided ponytail, and she wore
a sea-green robe that extended to mid-calf over loose white clothes in a style
that struck him as antiquated. She carried no weapons that he could see, and evidenced
no hostility.

“Alexander Warner,” she
said, her voice perfectly audible despite the omnipresence and infuriating hum
of the World Tree, with a slight accent he could not place. “It is early yet
for us to meet, though I am pleased nonetheless.”

“What are you talking
about?” Alex took a careful step away, poising himself to avoid the attack he
assumed was inevitable. “Who the hell are you?”

“I am talking about
things that will happen shortly. My name is Samnang Banh, though you may prefer
to call me Samantha. Either is fine with me. I do hope that we can get along.”

Alex took another step
back, glancing around for Katya, and not finding her. He returned his attention
to the woman in front of him, debating opening the Black Door and ending their
conversation.

“I don’t understand. Do
we know each other?”

“Yes, but not quite
yet.”

“You’re confusing me.
Are you a precognitive?”

“No,” she said calmly.
“Nothing of the sort.”

The Black Door loomed
large in his mind, the cold on the other side permeating his being and causing
him to shiver.