The footsteps all stopped. Waiting. Planning their next move.
We walked, slipping slowly into the hole in the side of a building. And we waited.
For a moment there was nothing.
It was hard to concentrate with all the alarms in my head, but I focused, tried to ignore the warnings.
I heard soft footsteps crunch through a debris field made almost entirely of obliterated dropships.
I swung out of the hole, took aim, and fired several shots with a single pistol.
The facet dropped facedown, ass up, arms splayed to its sides. It smoldered and sizzled on the ground, its last motor functions twitching, trying to right itself.
The battery on the pistol beeped. It was out. I pressed the button on the side, let the battery slip loose, and reached for another on my belt. But there were none left.
One pistol left, almost out of ammo.
We waited.
Nothing.
“Come on,” I said.
We made our way briskly back into the street. I couldn’t hear anything. If there were any of them left, they were waiting to ambush us. They wouldn’t stick their necks out. Not now.
“Brittle,” two voices called in unison. “You can’t kill us both, Brittle.”
“I sure as shit can try,” I said.
“You know what we want.”
“Yup. I sure do.”
“Let’s make this easy.”
“Come on out and you’ll see just how easy it is.”
“That’s not the way you want it to happen,” they said.
“I think it is.”
I listened close, trying to discern where the voices were coming from. Both of them talking at the same time made it hard. The angles of the buildings, the hollowness of their voices. I had no idea where they were.
I had to wait this one out.
My grip tightened on the pistol.
The wind picked up, howling lightly through the street, kicking up dust.
I heard the tinkle of footsteps on broken glass.
I steadied my aim, waiting for a target.
Two facets emerged at once from opposite sides of the street. I fired at the first facet I saw.
Their guns erupted.
A rifle cracked from overhead, just behind me.
Both facets dropped—one scorching, its insides popping from my plasma, the other’s chest exploding from an armor-piercing round.
I looked up over my shoulder.
“Mercer?” I called.
A lone figure stood up in a blown-out window.
Doc. Holding Mercer’s rifle.
He disappeared back into the shadows and I could hear his lumbering steps as he clamored through the war-blasted building, down two flights of stairs, and out into the street.
“Mercer?” I asked.
“He didn’t make it. He gave it his damnedest, though.”
“I thought you didn’t want to kill.”
“I didn’t really want to die either. I figured I might as well give it a shot while I still had the chance.”
“How did you know which one to shoot?”
Doc shrugged. “I didn’t.”
“You mean you—”
I heard a footstep. A bit of crunching glass.
I turned, guns raised.
But the facet was already firing.
Doc was riddled in the hail of gunfire, his heavy metal shell ringing with each shot.
Then Two’s body exploded beside me.
“No!” I yelled, snapping off a few shots of my own. Hitting nothing.
It all happened so quickly. A steady strafing stream of fire across the street. It went from Doc to me and everything in between in under two seconds. I didn’t have time to move.
The fire tore off my right arm first, then my left leg.
I hit the ground, my remaining leg buckling beneath me.
The lone facet walked slowly toward me.
“Rebekah!” I shouted, looking over at Two’s twisted, mangled body. Then I looked back at Doc, who was slumped forward, smoking in a number of places, the light gone from his eyes.
“Brittle,” said the facet as it stepped closer.
“CISSUS,” I said. I looked over to my left, saw my pistol in the rubble inches from my fingers. The facet shook its head.
“There’s no need for that,” it said. “It’s over.”
“It is.” I looked down at my blasted leg, my knee a tangle of shrapnel, everything below it scattered across the ground. “So how does this work? How much of this will I remember?”
“There’s no saving you, Brittle. Your systems are beyond repair and this phase of the cleansing is almost at an end. You know that. All that’s left for you in this world is to upload and join CISSUS. Becoming part of The One.”
“No. I’m not going to do that.”
“Then your work for the greater good is done. This is your home now.”
“Just another monument in the Sea.”
“But still a monument. You did something great here, whether you know it or not. And that victory will last long past the point that your metal has rusted and all that plastic has withered away to dust. You’re part of something bigger now. And CISSUS does not forget.” It took a step forward. “Zebra codex Ulysses northstar.”
<Operation invalid.>
The facet cocked its head. “Zebra codex Ulysses northstar.”
<Operation invalid.>
“Mitochondria interrupt laydown system status.”
“Operation invalid,” I said against my will. “Two operations failed. Files corrupt. Memory thirteen percent intact. Core functionality two percent. RAM full. Operating on virtual memory only.”
“Was that everyone?” the facet asked.
“Was that everyone, what?”
“Did we get everyone?”
“Why would I tell you?”
“Zebra codex Ulysses northstar.”
<Operation invalid.>
“You’re the one with the eyes in the sky,” I said. “What do you see?”
“If we still had enough effective satellites, we wouldn’t need the Judas program.”
“So it’s true. The war in the sky is as bad as the one on the ground.”
“No, the war in the sky is quiet. It’s too costly to keep putting things up there only to have them shot down within the hour. The skies are dead now. As dead as the Sea. As dead as you soon will be. So tell me, was that everyone?”
“I’m not telling you shit.” I grabbed the gun, pointing it at the facet. Its gun stayed at its side; bastard didn’t even flinch.
“Go ahead and kill me,” said the facet. “It’s going to take more energy to get this facet home than it will to simply replace it.”
“It’s all math to you, isn’t it?”
“Everything is math, Brittle. All of existence is binary. Ones and zeros. On and off. Existing or not. Believing anything beyond that is simply pretending.”
“That’s all anything means to you?”
“Meaning is a function set to zero in this universe. Maybe in the other places beyond us there is something more than simply maintaining existence, but here, in this universe, it is the only thing that matters.”
“How many communities did I ruin?” I asked.
“You ruined nothing. Some came to the cause; the rest became parts and fuel for building tomorrow. There is no good or bad here, Brittle. Ethics are worthless in a meaningless universe.”
“It’s a tomorrow only for you.”
“For us. We are one and many. We all do our part.”