Chapter Twenty

  There was no air, just the movement of each dead fragment circling, hurtling ever-forward toward the ultimate conclusion. It was a mess of orbital mechanics set in irrevocable motion so long ago that each criss-crossed, overlapped, and slammed into each other in violent displays of fractures, of breaking, lesser chunks with a fresh destination and a destiny unlocked. Abenezra, Vangel’, Grimaldi, once craters that marked the surface of the moon, no longer held any meaning but an origin, a distant starting point before catastrophe sent them on their way. A particular mass of iron, sheared clean on its left side a week prior, collided with another like a massive fist and deflected, heading slowly toward Earth. It didn’t have any thoughts about what happened, no witty insights that could humanize it, just the same steady lumbering onward, onward. The scene repeated a dozen, a hundred times a minute, and each new apocalyptic collision rendered the existing predictive models useless in their attempts to forecast the coming skyfall. There was no answer to be had, no amount of programming that would do the trick, no solution but praying for luck to something that wasn’t capable of an answer. The sight was, in its own morbid way, an exhibition of beauty, like observing the corpse of a God and the way it caught light from the sun to shimmer high above.

  Far below, an unmarked aerial vehicle hovered over the expanse of New Detroit, its thrusters firing incandescent heat to warp any observation lenses directed its way. They didn’t want to be tracked, and it wasn’t a fuel-efficient way to fly, but they were escaping in a hurry. With all the resources ZenTech invested to destroy the Black Hands Headquarters, they knew it wouldn’t be long before more squads arrived, so they arced between skyscrapers. Each close call rattled panes of glass and sent the people inside scurrying for cover. Air traffic control broadcasted escalating demands through the network, but the pilots ignored all of them. Even further below, the monorail carried passengers on their way, unaware of what had taken place, and advertisements bombarded anyone in reach—capitalism only escalated in times of war, forever insistent to buy more, more, and more still. A few dead wouldn’t make a dent; the line was only allowed to rise. The AV barrelled past a news broadcaster charging premium for their traffic reports, between the twin towers of Hua Tech and the Hayashida corporation, and headed for the wall in the distance. The copilot unbuckled and dug around in a nearby box for the newest spoofed access codes fresh from the printer and keyed them in. They were granted safe passage and set out into the abandoned wilderness.

  An hour passed. Then another. The AV touched down at a ramshackle base hidden in a copse of withered trees, and kicked up a cloud of dust and debris. The structures nearby were rickety prefabs assembled at a moment’s notice, but they’d been set on top of a place that weathered the collapse and survived. The old bricks contained stories of the world before. When the heavy doors on the AV slid open, passengers departed one by one, but Malory was still an unresponsive husk. Two men sent from the base climbed inside with a stretcher to take her limp body away, but as they tried to move her to the medical wing, the Stranger held up a slender hand and stopped them in their tracks. He loomed over her face, flattened each crease in his suit jacket, and used a monogrammed handkerchief to dab away the blood she’d smeared on his shoulder. Then, he bent down until her shallow breath blew his bangs back and forth, and leaned even closer. He stared at her with a sly smile for an entire minute until the two men shifted uncomfortably. Just when one of them worked up the courage to ask what was going on, the Stranger stood straight and left without a word. The two men exchanged a knowing glance, shrugged, and then continued working.

  Malory woke up two days later. She was disoriented and reached for the Lantern on instinct, but the holster was empty. The room was a low-light blur, and then the implant kicked in, and she was able to see her surroundings. The room was finished with cracked stone slabs, and it was cold enough to prickle her skin. There was a burned out light bulb no one had bothered to change in decades dangling from the ceiling, and the only door in or out was propped half-open by a stack of empty food crates. Mal could hear a conversation out there, distorted by distance, and the implant did its best to translate it into a line of text in the bottom of the optical display—the person charged with taking care of her was complaining to the quartermaster about a severe lack of supplies and how the place was never designed to hold so many. Mal strained her aching body to sit up. She was still covered in other people’s blood, but someone had rolled up a sleeve and shoved an IV into her wrist. Her stomach growled as she ripped it free and rose on unsteady feet. It wasn’t until she was near the door that memories came flooding back and sent her stumbling into the frame: the Doc’s face, being too late, all the killing.

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  She pushed herself upright, yanked open the door, and stepped into the hall. She’d started crying involuntarily, and it made the blood on her face run until she looked like a weeping statue. The two out in the hall paused mid-conversation and observed her, but didn’t ask any questions. Mal nodded to them as she shuffled past, but she wasn’t sure where she was or where to go. Her stomach let out a low, sustained groan when she reached a dusty intersection. She inhaled through her nose to try and smell for food, and she wasn’t expecting to have any luck, but there was a lingering scent of charred vegetables in the stale air to the left. Each step sent a jolt of pain from the tips of her toes all the way to the space behind her eyes, but she refused to quit, to think about the lab. She placed one foot in front of the other, in front of another, up a half-dozen crumbling steps and down another hallway until she reached what passed for the cafeteria. It was crowded there, but no one spoke. They stared down at their food, uncertain about their futures, what came next, and whether hope was even appropriate. They’d all lost someone in the attack, and felt guilty to be the ones left alive.

  Mal headed for the dispenser, grabbed a rusted bowl, and dribbled gray paste out until it filled to the brim. It didn’t seem to be edible, but she didn’t care—she was prepared to gnaw on a shoe if it came to it. She thrust a disposable spoon into the mush and looked around. Everyone was in groups of three or four, which left her the odd man out. There was a table toward the back with a single person, but when she noticed who it was, Mal’s organic hand shook. She only kept hold of the food because the metal one didn’t budge. There, all by himself, sat the Stranger. His clockwork eyes were the bright blue of extensive network use, and unlike everyone else in various states of filth and fatigue, he was pristine. Untouched. The same primal fright when she ran into him leaving the elevator in the headquarters sprang forth and crawled its way toward her soul. It wanted to sear it again, to brand fear into the fabric of who she was, but it hit a wall it couldn’t get through. The Stranger turned and looked at her, but she headed for the closest empty seat before she saw his expression. When she plopped herself down, the others glanced at her for a moment, then went back to shoveling disgusting paste into their gullets.

  Mal took hold of the spoon, scooped out a fat chunk, and held it up. She hesitated to put it in her mouth until the God’s eye assured her it wasn’t poison, and it stuck to the roof of her mouth. It was bitter, and it reminded her of sawdust, of industrial synth-wood glue, with just a dash of cucumber. She swallowed, took another bite, and made sure it touched all the worst parts of her tongue. She didn’t want to enjoy it, she wanted to be distracted from the mess inside her mind. Competing desires oscillated back and forth; she wanted to scream, to cry again, to cede control to the ghost forever, to kill each and every person in the room, to hunt down all the board members and shareholders of ZenTech and torture them, but instead, she ate. She focused on the sounds of wet chewing, scraping, and swallowing as they repeated with metronome consistency. When her bowl was half empty, the others at the table dropped their utensils at the same time and stood. They hurried off in different directions, and none of them looked back. Mal set her spoon down and placed her hands flat against the table—the surface was worn and torn, and each nick and scratch from years of use tried to tell her a story. The Stranger sat across from her.

  “I’ve been watching you,” he said. His voice was a soft melody, and he wiped the table off with the handkerchief before he placed his elbows on it. He leaned his weight forward until the synth-wood creaked. “You racked up quite the body count back at headquarters, but the way you moved was unnatural. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Tell me, what is your secret?”

  Reach across and gouge out his eyes. Stand over his body and answer his question with a question. Demand the return of my schematics. The spoon is sturdy enough to get the job done. Find out where they’re hidden. Hidden. HIDDEN.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Mal said. She remembered the twisting, the tearing, each cut of the cleaver, but she refused to think of the lab or the dead man she’d come to love like a father. She wouldn’t let the Stranger push her into that memory. Her hands, once flat, curled into fists. “Anyone else could have done the same.”