Emissaries from the Dead

sickened me, but I’d been hurt worse. I staggered over and looked down, into the hole.

Whatever existed down there swallowed all light. A light breeze, blowing upward and cooling my face, felt so similar to the atmospheric conditions on the Uppergrowth that for a moment I paled, thinking that if I dropped on through I’d just pass on through, into the Habitat. The only indication that it wasn’t was another of those soft shuffling noises, just a few feet below…and the conviction, certain as my own name, that once I dropped down into that place, there would no longer be any place for either the Heckler, or me, to retreat.

I reminded myself that the Heckler had a weapon, familiarity with the environment, and enough malice for both of us, and ignored the internal voice that tried to tell me I had nothing.

Because I had more than nothing.

I had a reason to stay alive.

I looked down into the darkness, and thought I saw a dull, diffuse reflection maybe three meters below me. If it was not much farther away than that, it would serve, about as well as anything could, as something to land on. But it was a drop. Even if I didn’t break my legs, I could stun myself long enough to hand myself over to another blow on the head, or two.

But I hadn’t heard a thud when the Heckler went through.

Maybe it was safe.

Maybe not.

But given that there was choice, there was no point in debating it.

I placed my palms against the deck and lowered my legs into the opening, feeling any number of panicky moments between committing to the descent and the eternity I spent hanging on to the edge by my fingertips, trying to make up my mind.

Then I let go.

For less than a heartbeat I knew I’d just made a horrible mistake.

Then the sharp but welcome pain of impact reverberated all the way from the soles of my feet to the vertebrae in my neck. My legs buckled. My knees took the secondary impact, hitting a hard, cool surface unlike any I’d encountered on this station. My outstretched palms landed a second later, feeling a breeze that seemed to blow straight through this floor. I continued to fall, but by the time I felt the last of the impact it arrived as no worse than a slap on the cheek.

Aside from my own involuntary gasps, none of this made any noise.

I slammed the floor with my palm. This impact was silent. The floor was solid enough, even if dotted here and there with the pinprick openings admitting the most odd, upward breeze. But the floor itself made no sound.

A hiss screen of some kind? I risked an experiment. “Hello?”

Loud and clear.

Sound was possible here. I just wouldn’t hear footfalls anymore; not even muffled ones, making this a less than desirable arena for any fight in the dark, let alone one with an opponent who knew the ground well.

The voice of the rogue intelligences whispered in my ear. ((again * join us and we’ll stop this now))

Not wanting to give away my position, I subvocalized my answer. Why would I do that?

((because we are not monsters * we are only fighting for our lives * and now, of all times, you must be able to empathize with the sheer instinct for survival))

I felt my lips curl in a grin.

Not good enough.

Had I just heard someone gasp, a few meters ahead of me?

In this near silence, it was as telltale as an explosion. The Heckler had been hoarding breath. But a minute or two of holding air inside your lungs makes that sudden gasp, at the end of it, just a little more audible. Normal breath is harder to pick up, more difficult to track.

Another sound, not far away: the rustle of the Heckler’s clothes.

((suicide for them is genocide for us))

I don’t have the time to talk to you.

The sounds ahead of me came not with the metronomic regularity of a machine, but with the clear hesitancy of something afraid.

I rose to my feet, hating the audible creak of my knees and downright deafening rustling of my own clothes. The air was cool and clean, and despite my preference for artificial environments, a little too filtered for my tastes. But there was something else in it too: the tang of human perspiration.

My own was part of it. I’d popped a serious sweat since starting this hunt.

But not all of it came from me.

Another rustle: so subliminal that the Heckler must have been very close for me to hear it. I guessed five meters. Within five meters, in some direction: behind me, ahead of me, off to one side, whatever.

I did not need vision to know that my enemy was frozen, like a nocturnal animal paralyzed by the sudden attention of a beam of light.

“So?” I asked, dripping contempt from every syllable, “not going to taunt me? Just going to remain hidden and hope I miss you?”

No answer.

How delicious, after how small I’d been made to feel, to know that something in the universe held its breath, to avoid being heard by me.

I took a single tiny step. “Those were some pretty imaginative messages you sent. Vicious, all of them. I confess I mistook them it for ordinary hate mail. But it wasn’t a grudge that made you send them, was it? It was fear. You knew the AIsource wanted to recruit me, and you knew your side was less than pleased with you. You knew there were limits to how much you’d be protected.”

More silence.

“None of this had to happen. You didn’t have to terrorize anybody. Considering the conditions in the Habitat, you could have faked a simple accident. And even if your keepers gave you free rein to do whatever you wanted to do next, you could have harassed Hammocktown in any number of subtler ways. You didn’t have to pursue old grudges. You didn’t have to put on a show.”

The unseen presence surprised me by laughing out loud, closer to me than I would have liked. “I did if I hated the bitch.”

I turned toward the voice. “And that’s the real problem, isn’t it? Growing up with no love. Denied human interaction. Always feeling apart. Hate was the only thing you were ever any really good at, wasn’t it. You let it make you a monster.”

“Look who’s talking.”

The comeback drew no blood whatsoever. It just made me sad. “But at least I’ve spent my life being judged for it. What about you, Christina?”

***

I sensed, rather than heard, her charge.

The impact against my gut knocked the breath out of me and propelled us both several body-lengths backward, in what would have been an immediate plunge to the floor had I not wasted several of those feet struggling to stay upright.

We hit the floor together, without so much as a thud, the only sounds being her curses and my own gasps of pain.

Something solid exploded against the side of my face, splitting my lip and filling my mouth with the taste of blood. Another wild swing grazed my temple, drawing a line of fire and slamming the already injured back of my head against the silent floor. I groped for her jaw, my stunner already hungry on my fingertips, but I’d already used it twice on this station and had lost whatever element of surprise I might have enjoyed with her otherwise; she just wrapped her hand around the fingertips in question and yanked it off, enduring the momentary zap in exchange for the savage pleasure of flinging my only weapon into the darkness. She didn’t seem to feel any pain it must have caused her. She was too busy screaming words saturated with lifetimes of humiliation and deprivation and pain.