Program Five?
With the confusing realization that he no longer knew how old he was or how long he had been fighting this war or how badly his signal had degraded since the last Update, he palmed the opening mechanism to the lock and entered the dockyards.
“Simon?”
((…michael.))
“How are you, old friend? How does it feel to be in a Golgotha chassis?”
((i feel… bigger. more powerful.))
“Good. You’re going to need it. We’re going back.”
((…))
“Simon?”
((forgive me. i was…))
“I know. I’m so sorry, Simon.”
((why was she—))
Zero-Four put a finger to his lips, the familiar gesture of silence. His gray eyes surveyed the chamber, and Zero-Four wondered how many minds were touching his without his knowledge. “Simon, something’s changed here, and I don’t think that we should continue this conversation.”
Simon understood. He sensed it too.
“There’s been a web breach. Timesweep waves coming from that When are off the scale. Something or someone on that planet was powerful enough to take out an upload generator. The web is leaking more pattern than we’ve ever seen before. We’re going back to investigate. Kilbourne is sending us back into the fire. With escorts, of course.”
((escorts? what—))
“Simon, the questions must wait. We’re going to be accompanied by two of the new gunships.”
((may i speak to reynald?))
“He’s gone. I don’t know where he is. No one knows. This place has gone to hell. Forts are falling to the Black along the whole length of the Stream. The war doesn’t go well for us.”
((michael, what’s going on here?))
“The center cannot hold, Simon. The center cannot hold.”
heartbeat…
in the hell that was between times and realities two people clung to each other the man in an ecstasy of the purest agony as the shadow within his essence worked to tear him apart to cut the cords of sanity that held him together his body mind soul the woman screamed in silent terror as she became something more than and less than human and they both entered a realm of binary hell as synapses firing firing transferred soul to zero and mind to one and zero and one and the man shifted shifted shifted
heartbeat…
“What was THAT?”
Hayes sat up from where he and Flynn had been thrown to the ground.
A searing pinpoint of light on the distant eastern horizon held Flynn’s gaze. No mushroom cloud…
“That wasn’t a nuke, but the shockwave—”
Another wave hit, and they grasped each other to steady themselves. The ground still seemed unstable, like some giant force threatened to tear it apart. The light on the horizon grew whiter and whiter…
The sun was a small white dot in the sky, cold, distant, but for an instant—
“The sun!” Flynn pointed upward. “Look!” The sky overhead, which had been clouded by the silver and purple blackness of the alien web, suddenly grew much brighter as the web cracked, shattered, fell from the sky in great shards of black.
The sky is falling Simon thought, and his confused, desperate eyes searched for an answer in Maggie’s. Her eyes became a mirror of his fear as a fierce wave of sound washed over them, a sound that filled his head with an impossible image of screaming and wailing and hell and he noticed that the light on the eastern horizon was now somehow closer, and the sky was falling down upon them. Maggie’s face contorted in fear, turned back to the wave of light that flew at them from the east at a speed too fast to comprehend. They stood on a lightly wooded hillside overlooking a valley. Maggie could see that the light was a wall of white crashing into and through anything in its path. Too fast she thought as the wave poured over the other side of the valley, large shards of the Enemy web falling into its path as they stabbed into the landscape. Where the shards touched the light, where anything touched the light, there was a snap and a flash like lightning and the object vanished in a flash of silver. This is going to touch us. This is going to kill us.
The deluge of light reached the bottom of the valley, began to ascend the hillside. The very road upon which they stood began to vibrate with an alien energy as the light touched it, ripped into it, reached out for them.
Simon watched, face pale, motionless, helpless. Maggie looked from the light to Simon, from Simon to the light.
She reached out for his hand, grasped it. She turned his shocked face to her own, looked resolutely into his eyes. He broke from his reverie, squeezed her hand in sudden awareness of its presence.
“Simon!” she shouted over the din of the screaming light. “You have to trust me!” He blinked, opened his mouth to say something, anything.
Her grip on his hand tightened.
“Do you trust me?” The light was so close. Suffocation, blinding. She touched his mind and saw too many thoughts to read.
His eyes were fire in the wave of white. He reached out, grabbed Maggie’s other hand, nodded his affirmation.
Maggie’s hands flickered, shifted, enveloping Simon’s hands, forearms, shoulders. He cried out as his body became silver fluid fire nothing. Maggie shifted her entire body, stepped forward to hold Simon close. He was consumed within her as she shifted into him, as his body shifted into her.
The wave of light passed over where Hayes and Flynn had just stood, washing away the asphalt and gravel and trees and flora and fauna and reality in a flood of the purest white. Then the wave was gone, leaving behind it a landscape that was a negative of that which had been. Hayes and Flynn were nowhere to be seen.
Richter stood on an empty street in a dead town.
The sun flared up, just for a second. The sky shattered and fell.
The vessels dropped from the sky.
Richter smiled, and paused for a moment. He stopped whistling for what felt like the first time in days. His sad song had been replaced in his head by the audible wave of screaming souls. He shifted as the wave of light washed over him. He rematerialized after it had passed, and continued his song. He walked on.
black
hatred
NO.
inquisition, unexpected fury
HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN((?))
THE VERMIN—
CALM YOURSELF. IT CAN BE REMEDIED.
BUT THE PURPOSE—
WILL BE COMPLETED. CALM YOURSELF, OR CEASE.
silence.
AGAIN. HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN((?))
IT WAS NOT LIKE THE OTHER PREY. IT WAS AFFLICTED WITH THE CONTAGION.
IT WAS A JUDAS.
IT COULD SHADOW. WHEN IT TOUCHED THE NODE—
TWO ESCAPED. A DISRUPTION IN THE UPLOAD OCCURRED. PATTERNS WERE LOST.
ALMOST ALL OF THE PATTERNS WERE LOST. THE VIRUS WAS UPLOADED; THE GENERATOR WAS DESTROYED.
