Enemy (41 page)

     Her face held no answers. Her breathing was strained, and it hurt him deeply to hear her in pain. Simon knelt and held her. Her eyes remained closed.

     “I hope this is the right thing to do. I hope…”

     A tear slid down his face. He buried his face against the unmoving, cold mask that her face had become. He shuddered with the grief flowing through him.

     He kissed her cold, cold lips one last time.

     “I hope our deaths aren’t for nothing.”

     He closed his eyes and knew it was time. He left the room and left humanity behind. His life was forsaken; his love was forsaken.

     Simon Hayes became Judas Simon. Maggie Flynn became Judas Magdalene.

     “What do you mean, ‘transfer’ her? Where?”

     “If she stays in her present form, she’ll die. There’s nothing we can do for her. Her signal was almost lost in this transfer, and I’m surprised she came through at all.”

     “What does it involve?”

     “She’ll be transferred into a Judas vessel. Her body’s pattern will corrupt soon. If that goes, then there’s nothing we can do to retrieve her, but if we transfer her to the pattern cache within a Judas, we can at least save her essence, and she can be emulated by the program.”

     “Why can’t you just put her pattern into the—the things you—”

     “The download generators.”

     “Why can’t you put her pattern into one of your generators and make a full emulation of her, like you?”

     “Her signal’s too weak as is. She wouldn’t last as a full emulation. The only hope is to put her into a shadow.”

     “Please save her.”

     “We’ll do everything we can, but I can’t promise—”

     “How long until my pattern breaks down?”

     Richter looked away, down at the floor, back at Simon. “Your signal isn’t degrading as fast as Maggie’s, but it’ll break down soon enough. The transfer was pretty hard on your pattern.”

     “Upload me too. I’ll do it. I’ll be one of your Judas. I can’t live here without her. I have to go with you, and if that means becoming a Judas, then I’ll do it.”

     “But there’s no turning back. Once the pattern is uploaded, the physical is wiped from the registry. You can’t—”

     “Do it, Richter. For me. For Maggie.”

     Richter smiled. “I could feel it before. You really do love her, don’t you?”

     Simon said nothing, but his mind reached out and Richter knew all.

     “I can’t live without her, Richter. Upload us.”

     Richter nodded slowly, knowingly. “I’ll do it. Go see her.”

     Screaming. Confusion. Agony.

     (WHERE AM I?)

     “Please, please, calm yourself. You’re safe, and everything’s going to be all right. If you’ll just—”

     (WHAT AM I?)

     “…”

     (WHAT AM I!?)

     “You’re a Judas vessel.”

     (a—a what?)

     “You’re an emulation of Maggie Flynn. Your body was dying. Your mind was uploaded into a compressed black hole, a Shadow. All of your memories, all of your experiences, everything that you were has been transferred. You’re a Judas now. Your body died, and your soul was saved.”

     (where—where’s simon?)

     ((i’m here, maggie.))

     The sensation was unlike any other. More than physical. More than mental. The words he spoke to her were fire in her mind. His soul touched hers in a way it never possibly could have before, a sensation even more intimate, more powerful than when they had shifted together in front of a campfire countless aeons ago. Everything that was Simon was for an instant Maggie. Everything that was Maggie became Simon.

     They had never been closer, but they had never been such an eternity apart. The physical was dead; the echoes of the electrical impulses that had comprised their souls was all that remained. There was a palpable mechanical chill in the interaction between them. They were machines now, and never again could they hold each other.

     Only ever really one story: a boy, a girl, and the end of the world.

     Their minds touched, and each tried to console the other as they realized the extent of the sacrifice they had made. Their souls touched, and it was almost like they were together again. Almost.

     They were Judas.

     They had abandoned the planet, left it to the dying masses and their fading patterns. They had escaped before the upload and the fury and the terror of heaven.

     They had become Judas.

     They had begun this insane chase through time, struggling to prevent the machinations of the damned, determined to destroy those that would be gods.

     They had forsaken their humanity to prevent the Purpose.           

     “Damn it, Simon, reweb. For Richter’s sake!”

     The monitor before him remained blank except for the navigational screen, which displayed a dark field of unknown stars, spiraling around them as they pirouetted in the void.

     Zero-Four nervously ran his fingers through his hair, or what little there was left of it. He sensed eyes upon him and spun around.

     Jennings and his daughter stood in the doorway. Behind them, West. Of course. Simon had downloaded and printed them all. But why?

     “What happened?” The look on Zero-Four’s face was one that Jennings had not yet seen. Jennings’ brow furrowed with anxiety.

     “Simon initiated an emergency Shadow break. The tether snapped. We were torn out of the Stream. I don’t know why, and now he’s silent, and he won’t reweb.”

     “Where are we?”

     “Sensors are dead, but we’re close to the coordinates sent from Malachi. We might be there already. We won’t be able to tell until Simon rewebs.”

     “But why would he break from the Stream with such force—”

     “I don’t know.” Zero-Four glared at Jennings. “Unless there’d been something in the Stream... Enemy forces, an accident, a new strain of virus code, I just don’t know.”

     Patra’s eyes snapped upward.

     “What is it, Patty?”

     “I... I thought it was a dream. A nightmare. In the stasis—I heard a voice. Faint. Whispers.”

     “A voice? What did it say?”

     “Something about troops. Ready for departure... And I felt them drawing near. Something terrible. Something black—”

     “Of course.” Zero-Four’s eyes lit up. “Of course. She was webbed. You’re part of the Enemy program, so you share part of the mind-essence. You picked up their thoughts. The Enemy codes must be migrating Upwhen, and they caught Simon off-guard—”

     “So does Judas Command know? Should we contact them?”

     “Our codes might have been compromised. If Shiva really—”

     “The voice.”

     “What?” Zero-Four turned to Patra. “What about it?”

     “The voice in my head. Their voice. I know who it was.”

     Zero-Four visibly flinched. “How would you—You couldn’t possibly—”

     “Richter. It was Richter.”

     Zero-Four looked as if he had been slapped. His face turned an ashen gray, and he grabbed Patra roughly by the shoulders, looked her hard in the eyes.

     “How do you know that name?”

     Patra was startled, searched for words. “He—He was the dark man, at Diablo. The man who jumped into the light—”

     “What light?” His grip on Patra’s shoulders tightened.

     And suddenly West was upon Zero-Four, tearing him from Patra, slamming him to the wall, hard. He poised, one arm drawn back, ready to strike.

     Zero-Four’s face was bathed in the flickering glow of West’s shifted arm. He looked oddly shocked in the aura.

     “I think we all have some explaining to do, but you can go first, once you calm down. You can begin by explaining why you murdered two innocent people—”

     “Wh—What?”

     “Flynn and Hayes. I saw your eyes. You could have pulled them up, but instead, you let go and let them die. Their blood’s on your hands.”

     “I... They—”

     “They’re humans, aren’t they? They aren’t aliens. The people who destroyed our planet were god damned humans. How are we supposed to trust you? How the hell do we know that you aren’t the Enemy? You and these Judas? I had dreams in the stasis, too. Nightmares. But I’m not sure that they were dreams. Machines… Screaming, raging people... A war. And Richter... You have a lot to tell us. Get started.” West shifted down, backed away from Zero-Four.

     “How do you know that the Judas aren’t the Enemy?”

     West stood in silence.

     “How do you know that I’m not the Enemy?”

     Silence.

     “This is how.”

     Michael Zero-Four raised his forearms, which began to radiate a faint glow. The flickering aura of shifting emerged. Zero-Four looked at them with cold silver eyes.

     Patra walked into the light. “He’s a Styx. Jesus, he’s a Styx.”

     “I’m a Judas.”

     “My time wasn’t like yours.”

     He spoke quietly, unassumingly, even though they could all see the pain in his eyes as he told them the history of a future now long dead. The rage of just moments ago was nowhere to be found on his countenance.

     Simon was still silent, and the vessel floated adrift in an unknown universe. Within, they sat in the control chamber, the viewscreens black and dead and hopeless. Each sound fell flatly into the strange gravity of the spherical room.

     “I don’t know where to even begin.”

     “You could tell us your name. And where we are. And how the hell President Jennings got on to your spaceship.” West looked over to where Jennings was sitting on the black floor, his arms draped around his daughter. She did not appear to care how her father had been rescued; she was simply content that he was there.

     Zero-Four smiled weakly, nodded.

     “My name’s Michael. Michael Zero-Four.”

     “What kind of a name is Zero-Four?”

     “What kind of a name is Adam West?”

     West frowned. “It’s a human name. A real name. What does the Zero-Four mean? And how’d you know my name? I never told you my god-damned name.”

     “That’s not all I know about you, Adam.”

     “What else do you know about me?”

     “Well, I know that you hate something called the ‘Batman.’ I know you cheated on your fifth grade geography test that you had to take a week late because you were in the hospital with a temperature of one-hundred six degrees and they placed you in a bathtub full of ice water and you couldn’t for the life of you remember the capitals of all fifty-seven states. I know you first made love to Abigail on the night of your high school graduation and when you woke up the next morning it was raining and you could hear the raindrops hitting the roof above you and she was there next to you, warm and sleeping and entangled in your arms, and you’ve never felt that content again. And I know that the suspicions David has about you and his daughter are unfounded. You’re a gentleman. I know everything that you were, and everything that you will be, Adam.”