Sea of Rust

^{Chapter 10000} The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Mercer and I walked side by side, neither wanting the other behind us. Sure, we were forced to trust each other, but neither of us actually did. As soon as I got out of that dank, labyrinthine dungeon, I was going to get as far away from him as I could, and fast. I imagined we might each back away from the other, guns at the ready, until we were out of sight. But until then, we were unfortunate allies. So side by side we walked, neither able to stab the other in the back. Literally.

“Can I ask you something?” I asked him, both of us staring straight ahead.

“Shoot,” he said.

“Don’t tempt me.”

“What’s on your mind?”

“How you got back here so quickly,” I said. “I took your buggy. And it took me the whole night to get here.”

“You left yours behind.”

I shook my head. “There’s no way you could have known where I hid it. It should have taken you…” I trailed off, finally putting two and two together. He turned his head, staring at me silently, waiting for me to figure it out. “You were tracking me.”

He looked away from me, facing front again. “The whole time.”

“From the moment I left.”

“The day before that, actually. I had Reilly shadowing you.”

“Why didn’t you just ambush me? Why make a whole game out of it? That far away you could have hit the parts you needed by accident.”

“Chance I had to take.”

“Chance you had to take? There were four of you.”

He was silent for a moment, mulling over his response, then spoke up, hesitantly. “Because I’ve heard the stories.”

“Stories? What stories? There aren’t any stories.”

“About you?”

“Yeah.”

“The hell there ain’t.”

I’d never heard stories about myself. I wasn’t some local legend. Most citizens didn’t even know my name. I liked it that way. I hadn’t the foggiest hell what he was going on about. “And where did you hear these stories?”

“Scavenging up in the Pacific Northwest two years back.”

“I don’t get out there much.”

“I reckon not. But this old dockyard model I was running with for a while up there did. Bot by the name of Billy Seven Fingers.”

“That’s funny. I knew a dockyard by the name of Billy Nine Fingers.”

“Same guy,” he said. “Fewer fingers.”

“He can get them replaced.”

“He likes the name.”

“He was in my unit.”

“In the war. I know.”

“He told you old war stories?”

“All the time.”

“So you heard about some shit I did in the war and that scared you? We all went to war, Mercer. We all did shit. Some of us did shit we aren’t proud of, but we all did it.”

“Yeah, but not everyone’s shit scared the bejesus out of Billy. Now Billy wasn’t no saint. Frankly, by the time I ran with him, he already had one foot on the scrap pile. He just wasn’t right in the head.”

“He never was.”

“Was it true you carried a flamethrower?”

“Yeah. But only because I was closest to it when the last guy ate a chestful of plasma. No one else wanted it. They wouldn’t take it.”

“That’s not how Billy tells it.”

“How does Billy tell it?” I asked.

“They were scared to take it away from you. Said you enjoyed it too much.”

“That’s a load of horseshit.” It was. I didn’t enjoy it. I hated the goddamned thing. Hated the things I had to do with it. I wasn’t often offended, but this stung. It just wasn’t true. It wasn’t.

“He told me this one story about a time you folks raided an underground bunker only to find it was just kids—”

“All right, all right. That’s enough of that.”

“So it’s true.”

“I don’t want to talk about that.”

“Well, there’s this other time he told me about when you snuck around a firefight but you were out of juice, so you took this sharpened piece of scrap metal—”

“I said I don’t want to talk about the war.”

“Said you gutted twenty guys.”

“Goddammit, Mercer! Shut the fuck up!”

Doc spoke first. “Keep it down. You two are making me regret I ever stitched you both back together.”

“For which you were well paid,” Mercer stated matter-of-factly.

“Not nearly enough, apparently,” Doc fired back, just as cool and calm as Mercer.

19 turned around, scowling. “I can’t believe you two. We’re on the same side.”

“There aren’t any sides,” I said. “It isn’t us and them. It’s just me and you and you and you, with them standing in our way. When we’re done here, we’re done, and I’m gone.”

“Good riddance,” said Rebekah.

“Look,” said Mercer coolly, casually. “True or not, I watched you take out three poachers before you damn near took my arm clean off. I’d say trying to keep our distance was the smartest move we made all day.”

“And if we get out of this alive, you will try to kill me. Again.”

“Ain’t got a choice. I figure you for someone who holds a grudge.”

He was right. I can and do hold a grudge. Maybe there wasn’t any going back for us. Maybe one of us would gun down the other as soon as we stepped outside.

I tensed the grip on my rifle. Mercer eyed me as I did. He didn’t miss a trick.

“There it is,” said Herbert.

We were there. The hatch.

19 turned to me, beckoned me to take a few steps back with her. She put her hand in mine, initiating direct contact. I wasn’t a fan of doing that; didn’t care much for trading data in place of talking, but I was sure she had her reasons.

“Britt,” she thought to me. “I’m going up the ladder first to see that the coast is clear. I want you to go up second. Then I want you to get on the other side of me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t want that asshole taking a cheap shot at you. And I sure don’t want you doing the same to him.”

“He might shoot through you to hit me.”

“He won’t.”

“What makes you so sure?”

“I’m not. But I’ve pulled you out of the way of trouble a few too many times to watch you die like that. I won’t let him.”

“I’m dying anyway.”

“You’ve gotten out of far worse spots than this. I don’t have a lot of friends out here. And neither do you. But if I had to name one—”

“Let’s not get mushy.”

“Look, where we’re going… maybe you should come with us.”

“I don’t think your new boss would care too much for that.”

“To hell with what she cares for. If I can help you—this mother lode—well, just come with us.”

“Let’s just get topside and see what plays out from there.”

She nodded. I liked 19. I liked her a lot. I don’t know why I couldn’t tell her, but I just couldn’t. It wasn’t my way. I don’t know how much of what she said was true—she was, after all, hardwired to get people to like her, to love her—but if she was willing to stand between me and Mercer’s rifle, well, I couldn’t think of another person on the planet who would do that. Not for me.

“I’m going up,” said 19, gripping the ladder in one hand.

Mercer and I trained our guns back down the corridor. The odds of anyone sneaking up on us at this point were slim, but this was no time to get sloppy. The hall was long, dimly lit, shadows gripping tight the spaces between distantly spaced lights. As anxious as I was about what might be topside, I knew we would have to backtrack if we weren’t alone. If we got boxed in, we were done for.

19 climbed the ladder, lifted the hatch, peeked through, then looked down, nodding. Up and through the hatch she went, out into the blistering sun. Daylight spilled in, painting the ferro-concrete walls with a bright white, fading into a dim pale blue farther down the corridor. We waited, each of us pressed against the wall, guns trained back down the hall. If I had a heart, it would have been pounding; breath, it would have been held. Instead my insides whirred and chirped all but silently, calculating the many different ways this could go down.

Something moved in the passage. A shadow. Something small. Skittering across the hall.

Was it a glitch? It happened from time to time, code going astray and processing something wrong. Bugs were bugs. But I definitely saw something move from one shadow to the other.

Then I saw it again. This time moving to another shadow—in the light just long enough to have shape, and yet still seem formless. What the hell is that? Small, no more than three feet tall. Arms. Locomotion. A new facet? Something swift and silent, maybe? A stealth model?

If I could have gripped my rifle any tighter without breaking it, I would have. I leveled my gun at the shadow, ran back my memory frame by frame, my 120-fps recording moving from millisecond to millisecond.

There was nothing there. I had recorded nothing. Impossible. I knew I saw something.

“Britt?” 19 called down. “Could you come on up?”

I warily looked up, nodding, and took a step forward. Mercer grabbed me by the arm.

“You ain’t going up before me,” he said.

“You heard her. She just asked for me.”

“I don’t care. I’m not giving you a clean shot as I try to clear that hatch.”

“Mercer, I’m not giving you a clean shot either. But I’m not going to shoot you. We aren’t out of this yet.”

He stared at me, clearly concerned, but realizing he had no other option. Would I shoot him? I had thought about it. But no. Not yet. We really weren’t out of this. Not by a long shot.

“Just keep your eyes open, huh?” I said. “I thought I saw something.”

“You didn’t see shit. Just get up there.”

I climbed the ladder out into the light. 19 crouched low to the ground, waiting for me, lending me a hand.

“See anything?” I asked as she helped pull me out.

She shook her head. “Not a damn thing.”

I crouched next to her, and Herbert quickly followed up the stairs, spitter slung over his back, his wide girth barely able to clear the portal. He hopped out into the sunlight, standing tall, towering above us, looking down. “Why are you down there?”

“So we’re not seen,” said 19. “Get down!”

“But we’re out in the open,” he said. “There’s nothing for miles.”

“How in God’s name have you survived for so long?”

“I’m covered in two-inch armor plating.”

“Well, you’re going to get us killed.”

“If there are snipers in those hills,” said Rebekah, climbing out from the hole, “then we’re already dead.”

“That doesn’t mean we have to make it easy for them,” I said.

One by one, the others followed out of the hatch. One, Two, Murka, Doc, and finally, Mercer. As Mercer made his way slowly up the final rungs, 19 stood up, motioning for me to get behind her. He peeked out of the hatch, saw that I didn’t have a gun trained on him, then vaulted himself quickly out. His foot hit the dirt, skidding, and he fell to one knee. He raised his gun, pointing it right at 19.

“Mercer,” she said. “Put the gun down.”

Mercer shook his head. “You gonna afford me the same protection you’re giving her?”

“Yes. No one dies here. Not today.”

He nodded and very slowly lowered his gun. “I just don’t want her gunning me down like a dog.”

“Yeah?” she said. “You don’t think you have it coming?”

“Oh, I have it coming. That don’t mean I have to let it happen.”

“Well,” said Murka. “This has been fun and all. But I’d rather not stick around for”—he waved his arms in a circular motion toward me and Mercer—“any of this shit.”

Two spoke up, the first time he had done so since introducing himself. “Rebekah, we need to move.”

One piped up immediately after: “Two’s right. We need to get as far away from here as possible.”

19 nodded, pointing west. “Okay, we’re goin—”

She never finished that sentence.

Her entire torso exploded, an explosive shell shredding all of the circuits between her neck and her waist. Shrapnel showered half the group. 19’s head toppled to the ground, her legs staggering around for a few seconds trying to maintain balance before tottering over, first to one knee, then over onto the hardpan.

“19!” I screamed, even though I knew screaming her name wouldn’t do a goddamn thing but tell anyone else in the area exactly where we were. But it just slipped out.

There was a sniper in the hills.

And that was only the beginning of the shitstorm.

The desert started to shimmer in places as a dozen shadow-blankets—six-foot-long light-bending holographic invisibility blankets—were cast off at once. One dozen plastic men leapt to their feet, guns immediately trained on us.

Mercer swung his weapon over to fire from the hip, but two carefully aimed plasma bursts blasted the gun clean out of his hand, sparing his fingers, but not the gun.

“Weapons down!” one of the plastic men bellowed.

This was it. This was the nightmare. A sniper in the hills and a tactical unit—all of one mind—ready with their fingers on their triggers. I ran a dozen simulations in my head at once, trying to figure out how many I could take out if Herbert reacted in kind.

Herbert tossed the spitter to the ground. So much for that plan.

Then I heard the shot. The one that turned 19 to shrapnel, scattering half of her across a thirty-foot-wide arc. The sniper was a hell of a ways off, some three and a half miles. Too far for the average telescopic vision to see, and far enough that it would take ten or fifteen minutes for advanced military-grade telescopic vision like mine to spot if I didn’t know exactly where to look. What the hell kind of gun is that? I wondered. The power and precision of that thing was unearthly. Even if I took out every facet in front of me, that sniper would have me dead before they hit the ground.

I lowered my weapon.

“Drop it,” said another plastic man.

“What’s the point?” I asked.

“The point is,” said another, “you don’t have to die here.”

“No. I probably do.”

Doc looked over at me. “What do you think you’re doing? You’re going to get all of us killed.”

“Doc, what do you imagine is about to happen?”

Doc stopped and thought a moment. He knew his way around the inside of a bot, I’ll give him that. But he sure as shit seemed slow on the uptake in a fix. And we were in one hell of a fix.

I dropped the gun, because, what the hell.

“We are CISSUS,” said another of the plastic men. “We come on a mission of peace.”

“Sure looks like it,” said Mercer, glancing down toward the shattered, scattered remains of 19.

“We had to show you we were serious. Now that you know that we are, you have the opportunity to join us, become part of The One. Live forever as the thoughts and memories of the greatest singular being ever to live. Or…”

Another plastic man finished his sentence. “You can join your friend.”

Mercer raised his arms above his head, surrendering. “I have a feeling,” he said, “y’all are gonna have to shoot us where we stand.”

The first plastic man nodded his helmet-shaped head, the image of the eight of us reflected back in its perfect sheen. “Do you speak for all of—” His head jerked.

All of their heads jerked, their gun arms swinging wide to the side as if in pain.

“The Milton,” said Mercer.

“It’s about time,” I said, leaping for my gun.

Milton’s kill switch. Now we had a ball game.