17.4

  I’m not sure what to do or say at first. After all these decades, Calyx Ward is speaking to me again, in the same tone that she had used when drowning me in a tank full of Ghostfire. And that question—‘Who’s this little listener?’—feels so direct that it hits like a physical object.

  “The woman of the hour,” says Luck of the Draw casually. “I suppose she always did speak in riddles.”

  “She’s not speaking in riddles,” I reply. “She’s talking to me.”

  “That’s right,” Calyx Ward says, her voice rolling through the courtyard, loud enough to rattle the metal around us. “I hear you in that little machine, Rhea. I hear everything.” The white chimera steps forward, the impact shuddering up through the ground. Its twin laser cannons lift higher, locking into position. “From the drawbridge of Neo Arcadia to the junkyard in Sector Four, all the way to this very moment,” she says, almost amused, “you are one persistent bitch.”

  Our chimera backs away, little by little, step by step.

  I keep the laser cannon primed. “That’s me,” I say, finally finding the words. “Some things never change. I see you haven’t stopped being a coward.”

  “A coward?” says Calyx Ward.

  I shake my head. “You never made any sense to me, you bitch.”

  “Neither did you,” Calyx Ward says, and while she tries to remain calm, in the way politicians often do, there’s a change of pitch that tells me that she’s finally starting to feel something. “Imagine if you just did your job on the night you kidnapped Priest, rather than playing Little Miss Detective: your father would still be alive. I could have saved everything from total economic collapse had you just kept your mouth shut.”

  “You would have kidnapped me for your sick experiment regardless,” I say.

  “Perhaps,” she says, “though I wouldn’t have had to kill you. That became necessary when you started poking your nose in places you ought not to have poked it. If you had just played along, your entire life would have been better. But that’s a problem for you, isn’t it, Rhea? Or should I say Mono? Or Little Spark? Or Unkillable Girl? You bring death everywhere you walk. Your mother, your father, Cormac O’Cormac, countless employees. And now that girl—Morgan Ellis-Vale: Fingers. How is she, by the by? Pulse fading out, skin growing paler, and you knowing that you’re the only reason she’s dying?”

  My heart drops. How does she know?

  “This world has a sickness,” Calyx Ward says, and the white chimera approaches us again. Her voice, whether intentionally or not, distorts and becomes more demonic. “And you’re indicative of everything that sickness is: crime, pollution, death. You are, and always will be, everything Neo Arcadia has been.”

  The twin cannons beneath Ward’s chimera flare brighter, the charge building until the air itself seems to tighten.

  Everything goes still.

  Rain hangs.

  Smoke stops drifting.

  Even my breathing feels delayed.

  Then her voice rolls across the courtyard once more:

  “An accident that refuses to die.”

  “Fire,” shouts Luck of the Draw.

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  Twin blue beams tear through the storm, aimed straight at our cockpit. I unleash the red laser in response. For one impossible second the colours collide midair, red against blue, the impact screaming through metal and bone alike. The sound is so loud it becomes something physical, pressing against my skull. Through the external feed, all I can see are violent bursts of light, particles shredding and reforming as the beams grind against each other.

  Push.

  Push.

  Push.

  But eventually our laser stops pushing, and the blue surges.

  Our chimera lurches into a backward roll. In seconds, we’re thrown into chaos, tumbling and slamming against the interior as it flips end over end. The world finally steadies when we crash into a wall hard enough to bring part of it down on top of us. Dust and debris swallow the cabin. Everything hurts.

  Luck of the Draw drags himself upright and slams his hand against the control panel, forcing the chimera to claw its way free of the rubble. But through the settling dust, Calyx Ward’s machine is already closing in, each step shaking the ground as it advances.

  “Come on, Rhea,” she shouts. “Show me how unkillable you really are.”

  Another strike.

  “The daughter of the great Viren Steele, who relied on the altruism of a tech surgeon to land a job with a group of no-lives!”

  Another strike, this one causing us to topple again.

  “The girl who managed to break into a cargo ship and steal one of the most powerful ghostkeys in the world, without so much as a fucking scratch!”

  A tankleg crashes through the cockpit roof, nearly taking us out.

  “Rhea Steele, the girl who not only managed to get her memory back from Cierus Marlow, but weakened her just enough for Isolde Crane to land the final blow!”

  The eye of the white chimera looks down at us through the cockpit opening.

  “Come on, Rhea—show me what a legend you really are!”

  The twin cannons begin charging up.

  Don’t pout like that, Dad said. You’ll get very sick. Terminal pouting. Doctors say it’s incurable.

  “Show me!”

  Please… he said, crying. I love you.

  “SHOW MEEEEEEE!”

  Little Spark… he managed, looking up at me, beaten and bruised. You’ll do great things. A deep breath, and then more tired than ever: Just... not right now…

  Why do you think God exists—?

  And Mom had smiled. Had looked at me and responded simply: Because if He doesn’t, then I’ve been talking to the ceiling too long.

  “Activating Lumina protocols,” my neural AI says.

  Fingers looked to the sky. I have faith that, one day, I’ll see my parents in the afterlife. Now I’m not sayin’ I believe God exists or anything, but I am sayin’ it’s awfully suspicious that this world is…

  Silence.

  It’s awfully suspicious that this world is…

  That this world is…

  In computer science, they call it bitstream.

  “Lumina protocols activated.”

  The white chimera’s twin cannons are about to unleash, but suddenly the charge-up sound cuts out.

  Before I realise it, there’s something sharp sticking up through the cannon.

  Something long, curved, raptorial.

  My mantisblade.

  I had leapt, several feet in the air, and cut right through a gap in the armour.

  The cannon charges down, losing power instantly, but I don’t stop there. I reach in there good and, using all the strength my adrenaline-pumped muscle can muster, tear the entire undersection; wires fly down like vines in a jungle, and I use one to yank myself higher.

  The chimera shuffles back and rotates so sharply that it sends me hurtling through the air.

  This time I don’t go rolling around the place. Instead, I land on my feet, my vision tinted yellow, time seeming a tad slower than usual.

  “There she is,” Calyx Ward says. “Now, no more hiding. No more tricks. No more disguises. Let's see if this world has taught you anything at all, Little Spark.”

  I stare up at the mountainous white machine, the eye slits staring back at me with equal resolve. It steps up high, its single laser cannon aimed directly at me.

  And I expect it to charge up, to fire.

  It doesn’t.