Seed (42 page)

“Army’s here,” Pollo said. “Time to go.” He took the advocate’s hand delicately in his own, and she smiled. The wall stretched open for them. Together they stepped through. Brood stared for a moment at the empty cavity, then picked up the shotgun and followed.

“Came to get you out of here,
hermanito
,” Brood told Pollo’s back as they moved upwards along a broad passage. He marveled at how broad Pollo’s shoulders had become, how he swung them as he walked hand in hand with the advocate.

“Don’t want to go back out there, Carlos,” Pollo called without looking back. “Everything’s dead. Everything in here’s living.” He extended the stump of his left arm, trailed it delicately along the wall. Satori’s skin reached out to it, caressing it. Tried, it seemed to Brood, to join with it.

The light from the walls shifted color as they got higher. Violet, then shimmering turquoise that made Brood feel like he was drowning. After some time the passage ended: A massive door composed of bone slabs, framed by a black stone archway, barred their way. Juxtaposed with Satori’s flesh, the stones seemed foreign, like dirt in a wound. Pollo nodded at the door.

“He got bad bitches in there.” Beside him the advocate hissed. Her black tongue flicked over her teeth.

“
Por qué no salimos
?” Brood stuck an ardent finger back the way they had come.

“I got to be in there.”

“Why?”

Pollo faced him. His eyes held Brood’s.

“Bacilio…” Brood pleaded. “
Por favor
.”

Pollo started to say something, then shook his head. He smiled, his face resigned, awash with sympathy. An adult’s face, fleshed with muscle around the jaws, an angularity that hadn’t been there before.

“You been in love, Carlos. You know what it is.” The muted crack of small arms sounded through Satori’s walls. Pollo glanced back the way they had come. “We waiting.”

He moved to the wall and plopped down onto his rump. It reminded Brood of the way Pollo had been, the way he no longer was.

He placed the stump of his arm to the wall. The wall’s skin bent, flowed like liquid up his arm. The two melded. The advocate looked on. Her hands came together over her heart, as though something about this touched her deeply. She sank to her haunches, her gaze never leaving Pollo.

“
Sale vale
.” Brood sat with his back to the wall and tucked the Mossberg between his knees. He lay a hand on his brother’s shoulder and listened to the drum roll sound of gunfire.

….

“You are the woman who hunted down Pihadassa.” Satori’s voice, staid and apparently omnipresent, emanated from the walls.

Doss didn’t respond. A loose titanium panel clanged somewhere on her suit as she ran. Power ebbed from her right leg, a hydraulic leak. The wound in her chest throbbed. Her burns felt like they were on fire again.

Gunfire had almost completely eclipsed the voices of Jake’s Rangers from her earpiece. The beefy thud of a concussion grenade crushed the frequency momentarily to static. When it cleared, she heard someone screaming.

“Pihadassa was my wife,” Satori said. “My Other, when I was Sumedha. Sumedha still feels pain at her loss. He is, at root, Hominoidea. Though he was designed with the capacity to master his urges, he nonetheless experiences them.”

The passage ahead sphinctered suddenly shut. A separate passage appeared to the right. Doss stopped. Gomez drew to a halt beside her.

“Sergeant?”

“They’re herding us.” As Gomez spoke, the passage they’d just travelled flexed closed behind them. Nothing there now but a wall, an expanse of opaline skin, blank as an ice flow in the East Siberian Sea.

“Thoughts?” Doss asked. Gomez’s face went chill as a viper’s.

“Let’s see what they got.”

“Agreed.” Doss turned, aimed her suit up the open passage.

“The desire for retribution, for example.” Satori’s voice stroked the air around them. “It is a powerful survival trait among the more neurologically complex mammals, particularly the higher primates. Retribution is a fundamental piece of the social metabolism. It defines boundaries, keeps balance.”

The passage fed them into a wide chamber the shape of an egg, the size of one of Fort Riley’s auto bays. Illumination spread along its smooth walls. Doss’ suit sank past its ankles in black fur. The entrance behind them flexed shut. There were no exits.

“Stay close,” she told Gomez. Over coms came the sounds of fierce battle. Her young Rangers, fighting to live. She toggled her display to infrared. The chamber glowed, hot as blood. A dozen passages connected to it like tendrils, all blocked by smooth, mutable wall.

“Retribution,” Satori’s voice mused. “I want to show you something.”

The curve of one nearby wall rippled in the infrared. Doss toggled down her display, swiveled the breach gun. The wall flexed. Its skin drew back and stretched taut, thinner and thinner until it grew transparent.

A window. Beyond it, the city. Satori’s flesh and skin and bone Frankensteined together with old-world concrete, steel and plexi.

“Below, on the street,” Satori directed. Doss stepped forward.

Five burly landraces stood on the snakeskin boulevard running adjacent to Satori Tower. They’d gathered around a pile of six twisted drop suits—the Rangers who had crashed through the dome. As Doss watched, they began pulling at the seams and broken places of one drop suit. The landraces worked methodically, without malice, simply performing a task. Soon, they’d worked free the body and set it, pale and broken, to one side. They moved on to the next drop suit.

In her gut, Doss felt the cold emptiness of the prison pit. Satori made a satisfied sound, like it tasted something good.

“I show you this because I know it hurts you. It gains me nothing, except that you are my enemy. And hurting you pleases me.”

“Boss,” Gomez said.

Doss turned, followed Gomez’s eyes to where a section of wall on the far end of the chamber had begun to warp. An opening appeared. Five advocates, slim and dark, swiveled out of it. For a moment, Doss took them in. The predators’ jaws, the slick pates, the knife-blade slit of their irises. The hyperkinetic vibe of their quick-twitch bodies. A creature free of superfluities, made for speed and rage and destruction. Some hard piece of her decided they were beautiful. She chinned on the suit’s external speaker.

“Your bitches are pretty,” she told Satori.

“Thank you. They are my favorite child—”

Doss moved. The joints of her suit ground, compressed, launched. Gaining speed, creating momentum. Away from the cold void growing inside her, towards death. The advocates bared teeth, leapt for her, screaming their glee. Doss screamed back.

They met in the middle, airborne. Fingers raked Doss’ visor. Teeth cracked against her armor. She fired the breach gun. It jumped in her hands, too loud to hear. Advocates flew to pieces before her.

Momentum carried her through the blast, through the snarling tangle. Pieces of her suit tore free. An advocate clung to her. She drove a titanium elbow through its face—

Hit the ground, rolled, stood. The advocate came at her, its maw bloody and toothless. Doss brought the gun’s barrel down on its head with all her suit’s hydraulic strength. The thing shuddered, then settled, twitching, into the chamber’s thick fur.

Doss swiveled, wielding the spent breach gun like a club, ready for the next advocate. But there were no more. They all lay in pieces around her.

“Damn.” Gomez gaped through his broken visor. Doss raised the M-8 slung across her chest. Toggled her visor to infrared, fired a long burst into the wall in front of the largest connecting passage. She moved to it, kicked her armored heel through the chewed up flesh until she’d made an opening large enough to fit through.

“Let’s go.”

They moved side by side, rifles tucked tight to their shoulders in the pale light. Sweat poured down Doss’ skin. Every step brought a sibilant whine from the suit’s joints. Its battery pack seared her back.

“This thing’s not going to make it much further,” she said, and sipped water from a tube protruding from the suit’s neck.

“Stay with it until it quits,” Gomez told her. “Can’t get naked in here.”

The wall beside him opened. Hands shot forth, gripped his suit, yanked him off his feet. Doss glimpsed the advocate’s face, black tongue extended through wild grin. The opening flexed shut. Gomez was gone. The wall muffled his scream.

A savage sound came from Doss. Her suit moaned as she hurled herself against the wall. The flesh shuddered with a rubbery sound, remained intact. A welt rose in its skin. Doss raised the M-8, sprayed a long burst. Rammed her shoulder into the wall again. This time she crashed through, landing prone.

The advocate straddled Gomez. Its arms windmilled as it tore at his drop suit. Doss aimed, fired. The thing convulsed as explosive ceramics detonated inside its body.

Doss rose, grabbed its twitching form and hurled it back through the ruptured wall. A shriek sounded out there. And another. More advocates in the passage. Doss turned to Gomez.

Her mind froze. Gomez’s suit had been ripped open—looked like the back side of a beer can that had been used for target practice. Inside, Doss saw blood, ribs, organs. Gomez looked down at himself. His eyes went wide. The web of scars on his cheek twisted in a way Doss had never before seen.

Fear.

Another shriek issued from the passage. Doss fired three short bursts back through the opening, just to make any bitches think twice. Then surveyed the little ovular chamber, barely larger than a broom closet. Its purpose was unclear, its skin walls blank. She dragged Gomez to its back wall, which set itself aglow with shifting colors as they drew near.

She settled her back against it, pulled Gomez close. Unsnapped levers on his helmet, twisted it free and tossed it aside. His head settled onto her armored lap. He mumbled in Spanish. Prayers. Shock setting in.

“On task!” Doss snapped. She took his hand, moved it to an arbitrary place on his abdomen. Pressed it emphatically, as though he might staunch all that blood with a little pressure. His eyes focused. The diamond in his tooth glinted through blood as he laughed at her.

“Mean ass bitch.”

Doss saw a flicker of movement. Something came in low through the opening, quick as a fish under water. She fired a burst. The advocate squealed, and lay kicking. She fired another burst and it went still. She ejected the mag, slapped home another.

Gomez lifted his damaged arm. With great effort, he began punching code into the keypad he’d taped to his wrist.

“Fuck’s that?” Doss asked. An advocate’s face appeared at the hole’s edge, lit with savage glee. Doss fired the M-8. The face disappeared. Maybe hit, maybe not.

“Something you taught me a long time ago.” Gomez’s breath came ragged now. “When all else fails, blow some shit up.”

His body trembled in Doss’ lap. There was nothing she could do for him, so she kissed the top of his head. The bristles of his crew cut sanded her lips. She figured it was the last good thing she’d ever feel, so she kept doing it. Firing the gun, kissing the top of Gomez’ head. Over coms came the sounds of her Rangers dying.

“Know what you look like with those skin grafts, Boss?” His smile was weak. “Look like one of those old black and white cows. A dairy cow. Call you Patches.” He chuckled. Then pressed the code’s last digit with finality. “OSEMs,” he said. Offensive Structure Elimination Mines. His hand fell and he exhaled, like he’d just finished some heavy lifting. An advocate peered through the torn wall, showed a length of black tongue, disappeared.

The beats began a second later. A steady bass thump, muffled through Satori’s walls but unmistakable: a string of big detonations somewhere outside.

Out in the passage, advocates began to hiss. First one, then another, and another. Many of them, a sibilant chorus. Then abruptly the sound ceased, and they came. Doss knew nothing then but the roar of her M-8.

CHAPTER 29

he killing thrilled Satori. Deep under the city, its heart pounded. Whole square miles of skin tingled with adrenaline. A natural reaction to battle—the Sumedha mind turned to Satori’s helix, puzzling through latent animal matrices—but nonetheless surprising. Satori basked in deepening morning sunlight, reveled in the geysering sensation of photosynthesis, the warm rush of adrenaline. It felt alive. Inside his amniotic pod, Sumedha laughed.

Several hundred landraces on the airfield sensed Satori’s exhilaration. Pheromones rolled off them. They pressed, hooting, against the wall of bodies behind which the few remaining human soldiers hid. Sporadic bursts of gunfire met them, ineffective beyond stoking their mania.

Perhaps it was the pain. When the soldiers had crashed through the dome, when they had penetrated Satori Tower, and fired their heavy gun into its walls…It had hurt.

The two soldiers inside its tower had gone to ground now, pinned down. Wounded, near death, if the advocates’ frenzy was any indication. The advocates would toy with them—a fact Satori relished. Its attention lingered for a moment on the hallway outside the little domicile where the two soldiers huddled. It drank in the advocates’ fury. It wanted to stay, to feel the killing inside its body.