The Machinery of Light

“You’re not alone in that.”

“Goddamn it, I’m not Sinclair!”

“It doesn’t matter”—and as Control says this, Morat sidles toward Linehan, who backs away from the oncoming suit.

“What the fuck is this?”

“We need what’s in your brain.”

“I don’t know anything!”

“You don’t have to,” says Control. “Not when you’ve still got the files that Autumn Rain stashed on you back in Hong Kong.”

“Bullshit,” says Carson.

“Those were cleaned out of me a long time back,” says Linehan.

“The surface ones, sure. They thought they’d given you the fake ones. Thought they were just a decoy. And everyone who busted you open thought they’d gotten to the bottom of it. Turns out they just weren’t going far enough. Because the only way to the bottom of what’s planted in your mind is via surgery.”

“You guys are crazy,” says Linehan.

“That’s the least of your problems,” says Morat—a buzzsaw emanates from his glove. Linehan keeps on backing up, backs into a corner—finds himself staring at Morat’s implacable visor even as he wonders what the fuck’s really going on, even as he realizes he’s never going to find out—but now Morat suddenly staggers back—

“We’re under attack,” says Control—turns to Spencer—

Give me what you’ve got or you are dead.”

“Ask Sarmax.”

“Man doesn’t care if he’s alive. You do. Two seconds—”

“Fine,” says Spencer—beams it all over. Morat and Marlowe’s suits are starting to smoke while they look around wildly—

“Not looking good,” says Carson.

“Out of your suit,” Control snarls at Marlowe. He leaps down to Morat, grabs him by the head—

“What are you doing?” yells Morat.

“Can’t have you turned against me.”

“For the love of God,” says Morat—but Control’s already tearing at Morat’s head, ripping it off, tossing it past Haskell. What’s left of Morat’s smoking chassis flares out. Marlowe is climbing out of his suit, wearing the look of a man who’s glad he still has a body. He grabs a weapon from a rack on his suit’s leg—an automatic rifle—and points it at the others arrayed about.

“Everyone stay where you are,” he yells.

Control leaps past him, lands in front of Spencer—who’s wondering how he’s going to get out of this one. The razor looks up into that visor-that’s-no-visor, sees no mercy.

“Don’t do it,” he says anyway.

“Got to narrow it down,” says Control—fires—

—everything winking out in one flashing photonegative of this moment superimposed against all he’s ever known, all he ever might have, all memories bound up in a single moment and past that moment is the Room itself receding from him at relentless speeds, collapsing away to reveal itself as a single fragment of a woman’s face—

—Spencer’s head explodes in a shower of brain; Control’s already whirling toward Linehan, who starts to dive to the right—but Jarvin’s leaping in at Control—flinging his body across several meters in less than a second—a move Linehan’s never seen a human make outside of armor—and now Jarvin is clinging to the back of Control, screaming at him and tearing at him while Control struggles to shake him off. Sparks are flying everywhere. Marlowe moves in, trying to get a shot off—trying to line Jarvin up with the rifle—and then Marlowe grunts and topples, a dart sticking from his back—line of sight in the direction of—

“Leo?” says Carson.

“Watch out!” yells Sarmax—

—as Control’s suit goes crazy, gyros propelling it against a wall and then bouncing back toward the Operative, who hurls himself aside, hearing Jarvin cursing Control for traitor and ingrate and Control begging Jarvin not to absorb his mind, and the Operative realizes in that moment that Control hasn’t a chance—that none of them do— and the blood of Spencer drips down past Haskell’s face and the body of Marlowe floats above them and the man who isn’t really Alek Jarvin smashes Control against another wall with a force that sends parts flying, some kind of machine howl filling all their heads as the consciousness of a full-fledged quantum computer starts getting absorbed by something else altogether—

“Let’s get out of here,” says Lynx.

“Nowhere to run,” says Sarmax.

Jarvin tosses what’s left of Control aside.

And looks at them like he’s sizing up his prey—

“Easy,” says Carson. Linehan’s jaw drops open as Jarvin’s face just—shimmers, the molded software that covers it switching off, peeling back to reveal another face—a smile that he recognizes from newsvid—

“Welcome to the endgame,” says Matthew Sinclair.

Fuck,” says the Operative.

Sinclair’s smile broadens. “Good to see you too.”

“You fucking bastard.”

“I’ll be the first to admit it’s been a long, strange trip.”

“What the fuck have you become, Matthew?”

“Ask him,” says Sinclair—gestures at Linehan.

And now they’re all looking at him again; one in particular, and it’s all Linehan can do not to wilt before the gaze of the thing that’s not even vaguely human …

“You … ate Control,” he says.

Sinclair shrugs. “In point of fact, I’m still doing that.”

“Fucking digesting him,” mutters Lynx.

“It’ll take a few minutes,” says Sinclair. He looks around. “Thanks for the assist, Leo.”

“Not like I knew who I was assisting,” says Sarmax.

“Not like it really matters. And the rest of you can forget about whatever dick-ass weaponry you’ve still got.”

“When did you replace Jarvin?” asks Lynx.

“Long before he could do any damage.”

So there was a Jarvin?” says the Operative.

“Yes,” says Sinclair. “And he really did steal my files.”

“That’s why he died,” says Lynx.

Sinclair looks amused. “Raise your thinking,” he says. “There is no why. There just is.”

“That’s what Control was just saying,” says Sarmax.

“My only student worth the name.”

“Other than Claire,” says Lynx.