Calliope Flax—Alto Do Mundo Penthouse
At the penthouse, I’d followed the signal until I came to a glass door in a long hall where a bunch of bodies sprawled out on the floor. They were decked out in body armor, weapons scattered around them where they fell, along with big chunks of safety glass that had been blown out behind them. The glass panel was gone, and the hall opened right out into open air where shredded drapes flapped in the wind. Snow blew in on a rush of cold air.
Past the bodies, I saw her; I knew that beak nose and bony neck the second I saw them. Her long, red hair blew in the breeze as she stared at some other little twerp with her, some freaky-looking Asian chick with a big head. They didn’t even look like they heard me as I picked up the pace and started toward them.
Halfway there, I heard something behind me. I stopped and spun around in time to see a small figure lunge. It was a spooky-looking girl with black hair and blue eyes. She had a metal baton in each hand.
The bitch was fast. The air chirped and one of the batons hit my gun hand hard. Black blood popped from the back of it as the skin split open. I fired two rounds, but they went wild.
The word flashed as warnings scrolled about the damage to the dead hand. A piece of yellow bone stuck through the skin where she hit it, but there was no pain. Pins and needles ticked down my arm as I squeezed the grip harder and tried to steady the gun. She moved in again.
“I know you,” I said. Her eyes were focused and intense, but there was pain there too. Her shirt was stained with blood, and when I scanned into the meat behind it, I saw a small, bright bullet lodged there. She was hurt.
“You should have done your job on the tanker,” she said. Her pupils opened up, and I felt a little dizzy. “This would all be over.”
It was her. That bitch who stopped me at the train station when I got back from my tour. The one who took my memories. She had me cut open right inside my own apartment and wired a bomb through my guts, then made sure I ended up on that boat so they could blow it up. She’d fixed it so I never knew. I remembered that dizziness now. It was the same as when Singh tried to tweak me back at the roadblock. It was the same every time one of them fucked with my head, but this time the feeling passed.
“What’s the matter?” I said. “Your little ace in the hole not working any—”
She moved fast. At the last second, I leaned back as the baton whipped past my face and I aimed the gun. Something hissed in front of me and I saw a puff of white mist as I squeezed the trigger. The gun boomed, but she’d ducked down again and was gone.
Messages flew past as white mist began to boil from the back of my dead hand. Before I knew what happened, the skin melted away and I was looking at the meat and bone underneath.
Leichenesser. The bitch had a little key-chain canister hidden on her somewhere. She tossed it aside and picked up the baton she’d dropped on the floor as she closed in again.
The bone melted like wax as muscle sprang free and began to dissolve. I tried to fire again, but what was left of the hand wouldn’t respond. The gun fell to the ground, trailing smoke, and she stomped on it with one foot before kicking it back down the hall behind her.
“You fucking—”
She spun around again as the last of the hand sizzled away, leaving a clean stump where the filter and nerve interface was. Pain blasted through my ribs as the baton hit home.
“I won’t let you near her,” she said.
“She’s going to launch the nukes, you stupid bitch,” I gasped.
My right hand wasn’t half as good, but in a straight-up brawl, it wouldn’t matter. I reached back and pulled my field knife out of its sheath. She saw it and came around for another attack, but I closed the distance between us before she could strike.
“You’re dead,” I told her, and swung the knife.
12
ATROPOS
Zoe Ott—Alto Do Mundo Penthouse
Something crashed back out in the hallway, and the dark field scattered. I was back in the hallway with the bodies, and …
Cold air rushed over me from the empty window. Snow blew against the back of my neck as I turned to see Penny and Flax fighting. Both of them were bleeding, and the floor around them was smeared with blood. Penny had one baton still clenched in her fist. Flax was missing one hand, but had a knife in the other one.
“Penny!”
“Go to the roof,” she grunted without looking back. “Get out of here.”
Flax lunged, but Penny ducked under the blade and darted in close, to strike again. Before she could land the blow, Flax grabbed her by the wrist and head-butted her in the face with a loud crack of bone. Blood gushed from Penny’s nostrils as she staggered back.
I started to run toward them, not sure what I’d do when I got there. All I knew what that this woman had killed the first real friend I’d ever had, and she was about to kill the only one I had left. Before Penny could do anything else, Flax swung back around. The edge of her knife slashed Penny’s arm open, and blood splashed onto the floor.
“Penny!”
I ran. One of the batons was on the floor, and I went to scoop it up and fell. I slid across the tiles, then managed to pick myself up and stumble toward them.
Penny turned and saw me at the last minute. I flew past her and brought the baton down on the tattooed woman’s neck, but it didn’t stop her. I lost my footing, and the knife whipped over my head as I fell onto my butt.
Penny stood, rearing back to deliver a strike, when Flax stabbed her in the chest.
It was the most horrible sound I’d ever heard. The blade went in right at the base of her throat, and the hilt struck so hard it forced the air out of her mouth in a spray of blood. She jerked once, and the baton clattered onto the floor.
“No!”
Flax wrenched the knife out, and Penny choked. Blood was pumping out of the gash. Her eyes rolled and she fell to the floor.
“No! Penny, no!”
I scrambled beside her. A pool of blood was growing around her head. I put my hands over the hole, but it kept coming. I couldn’t make it stop.
The room got bright around me as I stared down at her. I looked for her colors, to try to soothe them, to try to
