Green lights pulsed in response to each, and something thumped in the floor. The hum of electricity filled the room.
Another screen blinked on and began cascading messages faster than I could read. A percentage appeared in one corner and began to creep up from 0 toward 100.
The door crashed open behind me and I turned in time to see a figure in a suit step through. The man leaned heavily on a crutch and held a pistol out in one hand. When he limped into the light, I recognized him immediately.
“Ang—”
He fired, and the bullet struck me in the left shoulder. Air from inside the suit began to leak through the hole as I staggered and fell back onto my side. Two more shots went off and struck the floor near my head as I kicked away, pushing myself behind one of the consoles.
Blood began to run down my arm as air blew through the hole in the suit. As soon as the pressure let up, air from the outside would make its way in.
As I heard Ang limp toward the console to shut down the sequence, I turned my gun on the window that overlooked the dish and fired. The glass stopped some, but not all, of the rounds.
I grabbed the nearest chair and gripped it by one metal leg. Pushing myself up off the floor, I spun it around and struck the broken glass.
Two more bullets struck me from behind as a spiderweb of cracks gave way in the observatory window and the chair sailed out into the dark in a shower of glass. Wind and snow shrieked through the jagged opening as I turned and aimed the gun at Ang.
He tried to dart away, but his injured leg gave out from underneath him. As he fell, the bullet punched through the wall behind him. I pulled the trigger again, but the hammer just clicked.
Something behind the row of consoles crashed, and I saw him get back to his feet, a vein bulging in his neck and his face red. He fired again as I began to barrel toward him. There was no way to know if the air was safe, but the seal on the suit was already broken.
I triggered the bayonet, and it sliced through the palm of the glove as I closed the gap between us.
Zoe Ott—Alto Do Mundo
As I focused on Ai, the halo appeared around her head like a thin laser and tried to push me back. She had turned all of her energy onto me, but I wasn’t afraid. Suddenly the air was as cold as ice and everything was crystal clear. Something warm ran from one of my nostrils and tickled my upper lip before dripping off the end of my chin.
“Zoe …” Ai gasped, and the halo warped. I pushed my way closer, and her eyes widened.
“Zoe, stop.”
Something slammed down the hall, and Penny turned. Behind her, I saw one of the smoked-glass doors open, and a woman in uniform stalked through. Her black hair was short, and there were tattoos on her neck. As her boots tromped down the hall, I could feel the anger radiate from her.
Penny flicked out both batons, extending them as she marched down the hall to meet her. She was strong, but she was in pain, and I could see her limp just a little as she walked. Behind her, she left a trail of dots on the tile.
I felt Ai worm her way into my brain and I turned back to her, struggling to push her back as I remembered the dead woman’s words in my last vision. The words she’d said when she showed me that woman marching toward Penny with death in her eyes.
“Penny, wait!” Ai was overwhelming me. I could feel her beginning to take control. Penny was going to die. She was going to die right in front of me.
“Stop!”
I turned on Ai, and everything, all the fear and the hate and the desperation, came out at once. I smashed through the barrier she’d thrown up, and emerged on the other side like a missile entering the atmosphere. The fragments of color below were like a work of art, an intricate field of stained glass that contained more knowledge than I would ever know in my lifetime. They floated above a storm of emotion that no one ever saw; the loss of everything she ever cared about, the knowledge that she would never reach old age, fear for the future that would unfold when she was gone …and throughout it all, guilt. Deep inside, buried under layers and layers of duty and discipline and justification, was a remorse so intense it was almost blinding.
I saw remorse for everything she had done—every person she had killed or allowed to die, every life she’d destroyed or allowed to be destroyed. She carried it all deep within, even a truth that Penny had known all along: she’d let Karen be taken away, because she knew that without her I would find solace in them. She knew. She knew everything and she did it anyway.
The only thing I hadn’t expected was the remorse, made all the worse by the one, childlike fear that she kept as a secret in her heart of hearts.
“You don’t kill me,” I heard her whisper as I reached for the white band from which all the other light sprang. “I die from—”
Something in her brain burst. The halo disappeared and she twitched in shock. One hand desperately reached out at nothing, and the tiny fingers closed around a fistful of air.
“Don’t …”
Her colors didn’t disappear, but they shifted suddenly. The stained glass of her mind melted and skewed. All the beauty went out of it. In an instant, it turned to something jumbled and meaningless.
One of her eyelids drooped. Her eyes rolled back, and then the colors faded and scattered.
She fell, and her large head struck the tile with a heavy thud.
I swayed on my feet, smearing something wet from under my nose and across my cheek. Ai’s little body lay on the floor, her clothes fluttering in the wind as it blew down the hall. A little speck of hot blue that reminded me of a pilot light fluttered above her head. I stared at it, pawing at the inside of my jacket until I found the flask there. I took off the cap and dropped it on the floor as I took a long swallow. The last splash ran down the side of my mouth; then it was empty.
I looked at the big Z monogram etched in the smoked glass and felt my throat burn. Ai had given that to me. Tears blurred in my eyes as that little pilot light went out, and Ai was gone.
I tossed the flask and heard it smash on the floor. It didn’t matter. There wouldn’t be any tomorrow. Not for me, or any of us.
Reaching back out into the night, I found Vaggot again as my last vision began to seep into my mind. For a minute I was in the dark, and a rolling field began to form: dark hills covered in wet grass and fog. Wind rushed over me, moaning through trees somewhere far away, where there were no buildings and you could see the stars and the moon. The ground began to move, and I saw that the field in front of me was crowded with figures. A mob of misshapen heads bobbed and swayed against the moonlit sky like boiling, black water, and thousands of eyes stared back at me.
Five minutes. In five minutes, it would all be over.
