Mirrored Heavens

he can do. He flexes his wrists, primes his weapons. He hauls himself to the cockpit door. He blows the locks, slides the door open.

And starts his journey into the interior.

The Operative stalks from the control room. Its doors slide shut behind him. He doesn’t know what that dome is. Beyond hinting that it’s some kind of R&D facility, the control room furnishes no information on it whatsoever. Even though it should. This place is clearly a lot more complex than he or Lynx had bargained for.

To the point where he starts to wonder whether Sarmax really is in that dome. Maybe the camera feeds are lying. Or maybe Sarmax managed to get out. He shouldn’t have. Within ten seconds of entering via the comlinks aboard the shuttle, Lynx had gained control of all the unmanned weapons rigged throughout the base, had set them to blast at anything that moved—the only exceptions being those along the Operative’s route. The dome itself is apparently bereft of such guns. The corridors that lead into it aren’t. Meaning that if anyone in that dome exits into one of those passages, they’re going to exit this life in a hurry.

Which doesn’t mean that Sarmax wouldn’t have his options. He might know a way to thwart the guns. Or maybe he’s gotten out by one of the exterior doors—though moving out over the surface is usually seen as a means of last resort. Keep as much as you can between you and the sky: that’s every runner’s rule. That’s every runner’s logic.

But logic isn’t what’s in the Operative’s head right now. Intuition is. And intuition says that Sarmax is waiting in his sanctuary for the interlopers who have penetrated his lair. The Operative has never been so at cross-purposes with himself. He’s done all the things Lynx asked him to do. He’s done the one thing that Lynx would never have asked for in a million years. He’s already made the move that’s about to transform the whole equation.

Now all he has to do is take the consequences.

The Operative reaches one of the dome’s many access chambers. He steps over the bodies of some guards. Looks like they got blasted by their own defenses. The Operative notes the telltale nozzles hanging from the room’s ceilings. He imagines Lynx looking down at him. He’s tempted to wave. He doesn’t.

Instead he moves toward the door that leads to the dome itself. He stands by the side of that door and raises one hand. The door slides open. He goes on through. The door shuts behind him.

Leaving him immersed once more in night. A forest of night. He’s standing in what seems to be a grassy meadow. The branches of huge gnarled trees reach toward him like claws. Lichens climb up trunks. Some of them shine phosphorescent, casting sharply angled shadows onto the forest floor. Through small patches of clearing, stars are visible overhead, preternaturally bright and serene against the blackness. Floating above the highest treetops, grotesque in its surrealism, is the Moon. It can’t be the Moon—but there it is nonetheless, pockmarks of craters and smoke pall of mares smeared vivid across its surface. Three paths lead forward through the high grass. Each one tunnels into the woods, is swallowed by the blackness.

But before he’s gone another step, a timer in his head hits zero. That timer heralds the activation of the jammer he placed on the bottom of the overhang before he lowered himself on the tether into the base. As jammers go, it isn’t subtle. It doesn’t search out specific frequencies. It just bludgeons the entire spectrum. It caterwauls on short-range, hopefully dissipating before it goes too far but almost certainly creating enough interference to make Lynx lose his connection. Its activation is something the Operative has been expecting.

But what happens next he hasn’t.

An explosion rocks a distant part of the base. The whole dome’s shaking. The faux moon and stars overhead are flickering. They’re winking out. And coming back on. The Operative grimaces. Looks like the generators just got detonated. The backups have come on. A measure that must have been prearranged. Rig the generators with something that’s going to blow unless it gets a signal at intervals—a signal that won’t be forthcoming if a hostile razor has seized the comps, thereby ensuring that when the backups come on, any hostile razor will have lost his foothold: the Operative realizes that he’s not the only one with a plan for keeping Lynx out of the action. The lockdown’s probably still on. But Lynx has almost certainly been thrown out. The Operative’s on his own. It’s what he wanted. He fires his thrusters, blasts out over that sylvan cocoon. Halfway toward the dome’s center, forest becomes fungal garden—he swoops over it, crosses over into a moated island in the center that’s a patch of trees. He lands in a clearing at the island’s center, makes his way toward a gazebo at the center of the clearing. Standing under the gazebo’s roof is a figure in a combat suit that looks to be every bit as heavy as the one the Operative is wearing. He’s got his back to the Operative.

Who continues to close. The man remains motionless. The Operative primes his weapons. The man turns around, regards the Operative. Eyes meet through visors. Nothing happens.

But then the Operative hears a voice.

 S traight shot from New York to London, and this train just keeps on eating up these klicks. It streaks supersonic through this hollow. Overhead’s the world’s weight in water. And that seabed suffers from the same thing you do.

Pressure.

Linehan clambers back into the aisle. As he does so, the emergency lighting kicks in, bathes the car in a dim red glow. Linehan looks around. He starts shouting.

“Okay, people. I want everyone on their feet. Hands behind your head. Let’s go. Let’s go.” They’re doing what he tells them. They’re standing up.

“What’s going on?” says one of the nearer ones.

“This,” says Linehan, and fires. The man’s head disintegrates in a burst of gore. Screams are stifled as his body flops. Spencer whirls toward Linehan, sends words skimming on the wireless connection.

“What the fuck are you—”

“Shut up,” says Linehan, cutting Spencer off. “Don’t take your eyes off them.” Then, aloud: “I’ve got a bullet for every fucking question, people. Curiosity’s a shortcut to the grave. As is not doing exactly what I tell you. Oh, what have we here.”

A woman has thrown herself at the dead man’s body. She’s sobbing. Linehan lunges at her. She tries to get away, but he’s too quick. He pushes her up against the nearest seat, starts whispering in her ear. Her struggling intensifies. He pulls her back into the aisle, shoves her away from him. She stumbles toward the front of the car. Her cries fill the cabin.

“Now listen to me,” yells Linehan. “On the count of three, I want everyone to my left to start moving through that door”—he gestures at the one that leads into the train’s rear—“and into the next car. And I want everyone to the right of me to proceed through the other one”—now he points at the door leading forward—“and then keep going. And head for the ends of this train. And don’t stop till you get there. And I strongly suggest that you strongly encourage everyone you meet along the way to do the same. On the count of one…two…you.”

He’s pointing at a man a few meters toward the car’s rear. The man looks normal enough. He’s looking at Linehan with mouth agape.

“Me,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” says Linehan. He advances through the people between him and the man. No one tries anything. No one touches him. He reaches the man, throws him to the floor, tells the man he didn’t like the way he was looking at him. The man’s begging for mercy. Linehan kicks him, tells him that he doesn’t need to worry, that he’s not even worth the bullet. He then moves back to rejoin Spencer. His yelling starts up anew.

“Three, people. Let’s go. Forward, backward. Move.”

And people start to move. Spencer recognizes the look of stunned horror most of them are wearing. It’s the look of those who suddenly find themselves in the middle of the kind of events they’ve never encountered outside the safe confines of a screen. Those at the front and rear work the manual controls of the doors. Spencer and Linehan watch as they start to shuffle through into the next car.

“Let’s pick up the pace a little,” says Linehan.

He fires into the backs of two of the nearest rearward-bound passengers. He turns forward, repeats himself. People start to sprint. The screaming starts up again in earnest, spiking as those in the adjacent cars are engulfed in the onrush. As ever, terror’s infectious. But above the rising consternation echoes the voice of Linehan.