A savior? Vosch asked me. Is that what I am?
Across the aisle, Sullivan is watching me. She looks so small in that oversized uniform, like a little kid playing dress-up. How odd we ended up together like this. She disliked me from the moment she laid eyes on me. About her, I just thought there wasn’t much there there. I’d known a lot of girls like Cassie Sullivan, shy but arrogant, timid but impulsive, na?ve but serious, sensitive but flippant. Feelings matter to her more than facts, particularly the fact that her mission is a futile one.
Mine is hopeless. Both are suicidal. And neither is avoidable.
My headset crackles. It’s Bob. “We’ve got company.”
“How many?”
“Um. Six.”
“I’m coming up.”
Sullivan starts when I unbuckle. I pat her shoulder on my way to the copilot’s seat. It’s okay. We were expecting this.
Up front, Bob points out the incoming choppers on his screen.
“Orders, boss?” With only a hint of sarcasm. “Engage or evade, or you want me to set her down?”
“Hold course. They’re going to hail—”
“Wait. They’re hailing us.” He listens. I have a visual on them now, dead ahead, flying in attack formation. “Okay,” he says, turning to me. “Three guesses. First two don’t count.”
“They’re ordering us to land.”
“Now it’s my turn: ‘Up yours.’ Right?”
I shake my head. “Say nothing. Keep flying.”
“You do realize they’ll shoot us down, right?”
“Just let me know when they’re in range.”
“Oh, so that’s the plan. We’re shooting them down. All six of them.”
“My bad, Bob. I meant let me know when we’re in range. What’s our speed?”
“A hundred and forty knots. Why?”
“Double it.”
“I can’t double it. Max is one-ninety.”
“Then max it. Same heading.” Right down your throats, here we come.
We leap forward; a shiver ripples down the chopper’s skin; the engines howl; the wind screams in the hold. After a couple of minutes, even Bob’s unenhanced eye can see the lead chopper coming straight at us.
“Ordering us down again,” Bob yells. “In range in thirty!”
“What’s going on?” Sullivan’s head pokes between us. Her mouth drops open when she focuses on what’s bearing down.
“Twenty!” Bob calls.
“Twenty what?” she shouts.
They’ll pull up, I’m sure of it. Pull up or break formation to let us pass. They won’t shoot us down, either. Because of the risk. The risk is the key, Vosch told me. By now he knows about the dead strike team and the commandeered chopper. Constance wouldn’t have done that and Walker’s been captured. That leaves just one person who could have pulled off something like this: his creation.
“Ten seconds!”
I close my eyes. The hub, my ever-faithful companion, shuts down my senses, plunging me into that space without sound, without light.
I’m coming, you son of a bitch. You wanted to create a human without humanity. Now you’re going to get one.
63
EVAN WALKER
THE ROOM into which they threw him was small, bare, and very cold. When they pulled off the hood covering his head, the severity of the light blinded him. Instinctively, he covered his eyes.
One of his captors demanded his clothes. He stripped down to his briefs. No, those too. He dropped the shorts and kicked them toward the doorway, where the two boys wearing camouflage stood. One of them—the younger one—giggled.
They stepped out of the room. The door clanged shut. The cold and the silence and the blaring light were intense. He looked down and saw a large drain in the center of the tiled floor. He looked up, and as if looking up was the signal, water burst from the overhead sprayers.
He staggered back against the wall and covered his head with his hands. The cold bored into him, through skin to muscle to bone to marrow, until his knees buckled and he sank to the floor, head balanced on his upraised knees, arms wrapped around his legs. A disembodied voice boomed in the tiny space. “STAND. UP.” He ignored it.
Instantly, the water changed from freezing cold to scalding hot, and Evan leapt to his feet, mouth hanging open in shock and pain. The blazing light cut through the steaming mist and splintered into countless rainbows that bobbed and spun, radiant against the colorless tile. The spray turned cold again, then abruptly stopped.
He leaned against the wall, gasping, and the voice boomed, “DON’T TOUCH THE WALL. STAND WITH YOUR FEET TOGETHER AND YOUR HANDS AT YOUR SIDES.”
He pushed off from the wall. Never, not even on the bitterest winter day on the farm when the wind roared across the fields and tree branches broke under the weight of ice, never had he been this cold. This cold was a living thing, a beast with his body clamped between its jaws, and those jaws were slowly crushing him. Every instinct told him to move; physical exertion would increase his blood pressure, raise his heart rate, speed warmth to his extremities.