“You believe your natural instinct is to destroy yourself and take them with you? Like you're a walking explosion waiting to happen?”
“It would explain why the facts are so difficult to identify. Some part of my mind might be protecting me from the truth of my nature.”
She threw a glance at Ondo, asking him with a raised eyebrow if he had any inkling that the entity was correct. From the way Ondo shook his head, she could see he simply didn't know.
“That's pretty fucked up,” said Selene.
“It is a troubling notion,” said Surtr. “Waiting for this lifeform is central to my being, but I also deeply, urgently, want to go on living.”
“Sure. Of course.”
“These alarming images you describe,” said Ondo, “can you describe them?”
“They are too confused to easily reduce to words. Mostly I perceive a barrage of harrowing emotions that cause me anguish to dwell upon.”
“It might help us if we know what it is you see.”
“I do not have the words. I could convey the impressions directly into your minds, but I advise you against it. They are upsetting.”
Ondo glanced at her and she knew what he was going to say. “I would like to see, if that is possible.”
Now there was a clear look of distress in Surtr's eyes. It resembled some cornered animal awaiting its end. “You are sure?”
“Both of us,” said Selene. “Show both of us.”
Surtr hesitated for a moment, then reached down to place one hand onto each of their heads. “Cry out if you wish me to stop,” it said.
Selene closed her eyes.
She stood alone upon an unfamiliar world, among tall buildings winding into the sky. Beyond them, the sky raged with darkness: a megastorm was rolling in off an angry ocean, water and sky merging into one formless mass. It was moving impossibly quickly, unrolling as it approached, like the jaws of some vast entity leaping to devour the city.
The images became more vivid as her mind adjusted to them, and sound came to her: people around her screaming, the thunder of many footsteps. Alarms clanged their urgency to the city. Selene found herself swept along, suddenly running blindly while the onrushing storm exploded behind her. Some individuals – the very young and the old – stumbled and fell in the stampede, but no one stopped to help them rise. She caught glimpses of faces around her, each a blur of wide-eyed terror. Panic surged through her, too. She had to flee, a primal instinct to escape the pursing horror seizing control of her limbs.
Cries of anguish filled the air. Some of them might have been hers. The sky had become alive and was falling upon the people, swarming around their heads, rushing among them like a cloud of furious insects. It was a blur of darkness finding its way into people's mouths, their ears, their eyes. Filling their brains, too: she felt its vast hunger within her thoughts, filling her with an overwhelming sense of revulsion and dread as the cloud found each victim and fed.
She couldn't fight it or outrun it. Sickness heaved in her stomach. Everyone around her was dying, their end a horror as the unstoppable tide raged and grew, becoming stronger with each fresh victim. She knew she would do anything to get away from it, but knew, also, that she could not.
She caught a glimpse of movement within the storm, seeing the component elements that made it up. Blurring, flickering figures moved within it, visible only to her enhanced vision: X-shaped devices like headless, four-legged insectoids but shifting side-to-side, combining and breaking apart impossibly quickly. They were devoid of all colour. They connected and clustered around her head to drain her, and there was nothing she could do. She felt her thoughts, her emotions, her self being sucked from her brain, the horror of it unbearable.
She fell to the ground, writhing, her screams a bestial sound without words. She clutched her hands to her head in a futile attempt to keep the fury from her, but flesh and bone were no barrier. The devices were inside her mind, consuming her…
Slowly, she emerged from the ocean of dread in which she'd been drowning. She was curled up on her side, with no recollection of how she'd ended up there. Ondo was next to her, also in a foetal position. Surtr crouched beside them both, its hands now removed from their heads.
“I am sorry,” it said.
A bitter taste filled Selene's mouth as she spoke again. “What was that?”
“I do not know. It is an anathema, something to be feared and hated at all cost.”
“Ondo?”
Ondo's voice was shaky as he uncoiled and replied. “I don't know what it was.” He looked at her, and the horror in his eyes was raw. “But I believe I have read a description of a similar attack. I have never witnessed any such thing directly; I suspect no one could and survive to tell the tale.”
The sense of utter despair, of having all her hope sucked out of her, remained vivid. “Did you see them?” Selene asked.
“See who?”
“The devices swarming in the cloud.”
“I saw only darkness,” said Ondo, “but I could feel its fury. People hid inside buildings, underground, but it made no difference. The cloud passed through anything solid as if it were no obstacle.”
“There were things moving in it,” said Selene. “Some sort of weapon of mass destruction. There were so many of them, communicating and cooperating.”
“Can you show me?”
She sent him images of what she'd seen, slowed down enough for his perception to handle. He studied them for a moment, wincing as if something were physically attacking him.
Selene said, “We've seen an individual device before, at the Depository. It was still active, trying to escape.”
“Yes. I still have no idea how that's possible.”
“Do you think Concordance have this weapon at their disposal?”
“We can only hope not,” said Ondo
