17.3

  Over the next week, Dance produces enough Lumina to fill several bulletproof tanks. Luck of the Draw’s plan is simple: strap the tanks to our backs and feed the Lumina straight into our bloodstream through thin, translucent tubes. I won’t pretend I’m comfortable with it, even if it’s only meant to ‘heighten our senses.’ But considering the scale of what we’re about to face, comfort feels like a luxury we can’t afford.

  When Lucian tells us he’s managed to relocate several police units across Paxson, we return to the church and start preparing. Merrin Holyfield steps in once again, offering us military-grade armour she acquired through trades with a few officers. I can’t pass up an opportunity like that, so I throw it on. It’s the same cold, institutional blue, complete with spiked shoulder plates. The helmet is thick and dark, the visor impossible to see through from the outside, and it fits me like it was made for my head. The only thing I need to change is the right sleeve. I tear it off, for obvious reasons. When it’s all settled and I catch my reflection, I’m reminded of my days as a cop in The Scrubs. Back then the uniform was darker, almost pitch black, and it carried a kind of emptiness with it. This one is different. There’s something sharper about it. Something that actually looks… heroic.

  That feeling lasts right up until Merrin Holyfield’s tech surgeons secure the Lumina barrel to my back and slide the tube into the nape of my neck. It’s a strange kind of pressure, not quite pain, just the awareness that something foreign now has a direct line to my nervous system. A microchip sits in the connector, synced to my neural, giving me control over the flow. Dance tells me not to push it past seventy per cent output. He says dosages higher than that tend to have some wonky effects, and wonky isn’t a risk any of us are willing to take.

  When that’s done, I give one last look at Fingers, who’s still hanging on life support, kiss her on the forehead, and then join the others outside. We ride the jeeps east to the rail station, where the chimera is perched outside the warehouse, fully locked and loaded. It’s the most powerful-looking piece of military technology I’ve ever seen, a spider that can laser through steel on a whim. I’m still not entirely sure how Luck of the Draw managed to secure the parts necessary to build something this gargantuan, but it’s damn impressive nonetheless.

  Luck of the Draw climbs up, pops the hatch at the top, and waves me over as I step out of the jeep. Then he tells me to get in. He wants me as co-pilot, at least for the systems that need a netrunner. I’m fine with that. Over the past few days he’s run me through drills: how to fire the laser cannon, how to line up a shot, how to keep the feedback from cooking my brain when the pressure spikes. He’ll handle movement. I’ll handle everything else.

  So if we end up wedged under a collapsing barrier, I suppose we’ll know whose steering to question.

  When we stand inside the cockpit, looking out at the midnight sky looming above the crusty scrubland brush, he turns to me and asks the question:

  “Are you ready?”

  I check my armour, my mantisblade, my visor, the holo room, my Lumina tank, my vitals, the others standing outside, ready to drive off with us. Dance is there, his brickie attached to his forearm, looking at me quite solemnly. Vander, who I’ve never seen crack a real smile, rubs a stick of robin-blue along his lips, his launcher-augmented arms fully loaded. And Riven… she’s the one I can’t stop worrying about. She sits in the driver’s seat of the second jeep, swallowed by armour that looks a size too big, holding a standard rifle like it’s something borrowed. I’m not even sure she knows how to sight it properly. But she saved my girlfriend’s life. And I gave her my word. She rides with us to the end.

  The other men are there too, all armoured, all ready to give this their all.

  Finally, and inevitably, I answer his question: “Time to face the fire, I guess.”

  I reach into the centre console, bring out the netrunner cable, and attach it to my neural.

  “Suspicious data identified,” the AI voice in my head says. “Are you sure you wish to allow this access to your primary neural system?”

  Options for ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ pop up on my neural display.

  I take a deep breath, let it settle, and then select ‘Yes’.

  Just like that, the chimera begins to rise.

  And Calyx Ward waits just beyond the horizon.

  The chimera cuts west towards the city centre, and the stars seem to drag behind us, swallowed by the growing storm.

  Dark clouds gather over the skyline, bringing rain that crashes down without warning, hammering rooftops, flooding gutters, turning neon into smeared rivers of colour. The people, who are probably used to seeing military convoys roll through the streets, aren’t so used to something of this calibre. Many of them scream, back away into corner shops, under awnings, as the chimera and the jeeps pave the path forward. I make a note to Luck of the Draw to avoid hurting anyone in the process, and he promises me that he’ll do his absolute best. Which he does quite well, but not well enough to avoid stomping over a couple of unoccupied police cruisers along the way.

  Something tells me that was intentional, though.

  I don’t really care either way.

  Because before long, sirens go off in the distance. Calyx Ward knows we’re coming whether we like it or not, and she'll be ready.

  She always is.

  Lucian taps into the holo room a couple minutes later to confirm it: “Security’s surrounding the perimeter,” he says. “I’ll do my best to deactivate any of the mechanical defenses while they’re distracted, but I can’t make any promises.”

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  “That’s alright,” I say, looking farther into the city centre. The Core Manufacturing Node is there, a supermassive building that looks as if it’s been taken from another planet entirely and bolted down in fear of it fleeing from the crust. It’s almost like her facility back in the 2050s, the one my father worked in, only it’s more sophisticated now. The outer shell is a horrible white metal pockmarked with rivets and lined with various truck-entry points. It’s even larger than it appeared from the video Merrin Holyfield gave me, far larger, and all the industrial buildings are connected to it like arteries to a beating heart, only this doesn’t beat. It just stands there like an overgrown weed of flesh, something that should have been cut long ago. No one ever stopped to ask how it got so big. No one cared enough to deal with it when it was still small. It was easier to look away, to pretend it belonged there, and carry on.

  But I’m not here to look away. I’m here with the blade.

  “You’ve helped more than you can possibly imagine,” I tell Lucian, watching the chimera slow down on approach to the Core Manufacturing Node’s turnpike. I wait for the employees to rush out of the booths, and when the coast is clear, activate the chimera’s primary weapon.

  The front rises up like the snout of a dragon, charging up little by little.

  “Just be…” says Lucian. “... careful.”

  For a moment, everything feels quiet, frozen in time.

  The words my father had used before I went into the facility, before Cierus tricked me: I can’t promise more than that, he said. Just… be careful.

  And when the silence ends, I don’t answer with ‘I will’ this time; I simply let go and watch, with cold, calculated nothingness, as the chimera unleashes a violent red laser into the turnpike.

  It’s so powerful that the beam completely slices through it; the sound is almost deafening, and still I don’t flinch. When the smoke clears and the laser thins out, there’s nothing but flame.

  The chimera stomps through it.

  Officers open fire immediately, taking cover behind trucks, cruisers, outbuildings, anything they think can save them from this unholy machine.

  The chimera stomps through it.

  I use the secondary fire as Luck of the Draw guides us through the courtyard, launching missiles to clear the path forward. We can’t just crash into any old section of wall, because everything might collapse down on top of us. No, everything is mapped out, and Luck of the Draw knows the perfect path to take.

  The rest of the crew are following behind, shooting the flankers. Soon an officer shows up with a large missile launcher and fires it from the rooftop. The chimera tanks it without any problem at all, though I am flung widely to the side.

  The cable slips out, and I lose control of the laser. “Shit,” I shout, picking myself up off the floor. “Launcher on the roof!”

  “Wer ahead of yer,” says Vander, and before I know it a grenade is shot up to the roof, taking the officer, along with the outbuilding, down in an instant.

  I connect up to the laser again, watching the chimera storm through endless security, endless bullets, endless back-up.

  And yet, I don’t feel any bit of adrenaline whatsoever.

  For the first time in my life, I feel calm.

  This goes on for some time. This side of the Core Manufacturing Node is a little like a city in and of itself. There are large alleyways, twists, turns, rising platforms, skywalks, androids out on the floor carrying goods, unaffected by everything. I tear through them with the laser anyway, just in case they climb on top of us and tear through the hatch with their pinpointed claws.

  That doesn't happen.

  Instead, the officers and androids back off, realising they stand no chance. The bullets thin out, and soon all that’s left is a straight path to the centre building within the Core Manufacturing Node, past all the rising platforms, past all the massive industrial storage tanks, past all corpses and android bodies, past all the fire.

  It’s there, and the crew is marching along with us.

  “Straight shot to the end, mate,” says Dance, though his voice is quite staticky. “Make it—” Now the static is really bad, and I hear another voice in there.

  “Zkttt—Rhea—fall—zktttt—back—” His voice is familiar.

  “What?” I say, as Luck of the Draw rides the chimera closer to the central building. “Lucian, is that you?”

  More static, and then: “It’s—zkttt—a trap—”

  My eyes widen. A trap. I look towards the central building, not seeing any threat in sight. There’s no blockade. No artillery. No anything.

  Yet, still, I feel it.

  Something about this doesn’t seem right.

  “Fall back,” I tell Luck of the Draw. “We need to take a different route.”

  But Luck of the Draw keeps going.

  “Did you hear me?” I shout. “I said move back!”

  “Nah,” says Luck of the Draw. “I know exactly what’s comin’.”

  I have no idea what he’s talking about, but it seems way too damn risky. I try to tell him to move back again, but he just won’t listen.

  Then, I hear it. A low thrum, growing louder, coming from the sky.

  Then I see the light passing over the concrete, over the corpses and broken android parts.

  Before I have time to point the chimera camera up, the rain shifts. It’s subtle at first. The drops stop falling straight. They curve, dragged sideways by something massive displacing the air above us. The stormlight flickers. The courtyard darkens.

  Then, without any warning at all, something enormous strikes the ground in front of us, guarding the centre of the Core Manufacturing Node. The impact is so strong it shakes the very earth and tilts me off balance. When my vision steadies and I get a clearer view, I realise that the object is a machine, and not just any machine: another chimera: bigger, with thicker legs, two cockpit heads, and two laser cannons. It’s also completely white in contrast to our chimera’s black exterior.

  It rises, the servos whirring like some ancient creature, and the eyeslits glow a horrifying red.

  And no longer do I feel calm.

  Shit.

  For a second, neither machine moves.

  Above, the aerodynes that dropped the chimera off peel away, as if they’d been expecting this and are merely following routine.

  The white chimera takes one step towards us, and the black chimera takes one step back.

  More static bursts out, only this time it’s not coming from my holo. The signal, as it turns out, has completely died out, possibly due to the storm, possibly due to the fact that it just felt like dying out at the worst possible time.

  The static comes from the speakers spread across the Core Manufacturing Node, and when it clears, a voice speaks very clearly:

  “Who’s this little listener?”