Crysis: Legion (11 page)

Authors: Peter Watts

BOOK: Crysis: Legion

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And we’re
off
, running on goddamned foot along the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Expressway, doing our best to get to Nathan Gould before Lockhart’s minions get to us.

Early betting favors the CELLulites but the Propheteers have pulled it out of the fire before, ladies and gentlemen, the Propheteers
should be dead a dozen times over but they’re still in there kicking. And don’t we all love cheering for the underdog?

Not so much, apparently. Not when CryNet Enforcement and Local Logistics cuts your paycheck. One of the players on the opposing team puts it pretty succinctly over a channel he doesn’t think I can access: “That piece of shit took out half of Cobalt Section. That piece of shit is toast.”

Which should make me hungry—I haven’t had a bite to eat all day, and even toast sounds like a treat—but for some reason I haven’t felt hungry
or
tired since the N2 took me in its embrace. I don’t know how long I can keep going on adrenaline, or whatever else it’s pumping me full of, but I have to admit: This nanotech miracle goes a long way toward leveling the field.

A couple of other variables may actually tilt things in my favor. For one thing, private industry pays a lot better than the feds—and while this does let them buy the pick of the graduating litter, it also tends to attract folks whose primary interests are money, benefits, and no fucking overtime. There’s a reason they call these guys
mercenaries
. You don’t level up nearly as fast doing nine-to-five as you do pulling twenty-four-seven. So even without the N2 I am a harder dude than 90 percent of these fuckwits, and a lot more experienced.

The other thing is, the upper echelons are bickering again, and the boots on the ground are getting confused.

It starts when Drab Seven helpfully broadcasts the location they expect to take me out at. A familiar voice cuts him off: “This is Tara Strickland on oversight. Our objective for this target is capture and interrogate; I’m placing the kill order on indefinite hold.”

Drab Section is not too happy about this. Seems they had friends in Cobalt and do not like
Special Adviser
Strickland reining them in. She keeps trying, though. She tries when a CELL Apache pins me down just south of Fulton, brings the whole damn freeway down on my head. She tries as Lockhart’s troops
chase me through the sewers under South Street. She tries when Drab tries to take me down with a tame EMP.

That one might have worked, if they’d been smart enough to boost their amps. The N2’s coated in a bleeding-edge Faraday weave, specs say you can throw a Lockheed Circuit-Breaker at it and it’ll keep on ticking. But nothing’s absolutely pulse-proof; the only way to keep all EM
out
is to not let any
in
, and then you’re deaf dumb and blind. So there’s a chink in the armor there. They could have pulled it off if they’d gone all-out.

But they might as well have used a Taser for all the good that sparkler of theirs did. Fuzzed my tacticals for maybe half a second, put a bit of a jitter into the haptics. Barely even noticed.

Drab Section noticed, though. I sent half those assholes off to party with their friends from Cobalt.

But it’s still no night in Reno, let me tell you. It’s one nasty evil-smelling pile of shit after another. They’re throwing everything at me from bricks to bombs, and the Ceph are all over the map; they’re tying up CELL, which is good, but they’re not going out of their way to make my life any easier, either. And through all of this Strickland keeps shouting
Belay that!
And
Shoot to disable!
And Lockhart’s cutting in with
Kill order confirmed
and
Disregard further orders from Special Adviser Strickland
and
Someone kill that tin fuck for me
. I gotta hope that at least they’ve gone their separate ways by now, because I do not envy their pilot if they’re still riding in the same chopper.

And of course I don’t have enough to worry about already so Nathan Gould pops in on his own channel, gives me the breathless breaking news that Lockhart’s people are swarming over the whole Lower East Side looking for me. No shit, Sherlock. And then they’re coming after
him
, I hear them kicking in the door when I’m still six blocks out and somehow Gould gets away, makes it down a fire escape or something, so now Gould’s warehouse is enemy territory and he’s on the run to an ex-girlfriend’s
place where he’s stashed some surplus hardware that might do in a pinch. He sends me the new address and then he realizes that he also left it back at the warehouse—you know, the lab that’s now swarming with CELLulites—and we are totally fucked the moment one of them sits down at the terminal and checks his address book. One guess who gets to storm the warehouse and make sure
that
doesn’t happen.

At least this chapter has a happy ending, though, right? How many of those boys did I take out when the chopper crashed? Beautiful, beautiful sight, man. Came right down through the skylights, all that glass sparkling and tinkling like winter snow before the Meltdown. And you know, at least one of them was still alive on impact. I could see her mouth move through the bubble as she came down. I could see her screaming. Thank the good Lord for grenade launchers, eh Roger?

You should probably tell those guys to keep better tabs on them, though. They can be holy hell in the wrong hands.

Manhattan Triage Preprocessing Transcript, Subject 429–10024-DR

Priority: High (Operation Martyr)

Interviewer: Cpl. Lansing, Analee (CELL HumIntel Acquisition)

Subject: Sweet, Caitlin (Female, Divorced, 38yrs. Term.)

Subject#: 429–10024-DR (biog. database extract appended)

Date of Interview: 23/08/2023 19:25

Date of Report: 24/08/2023 04:45

Subject dosed prior to interview with 130mg chlorpromazine to mitigate onset of Rapture and 65mg GABAbarbitol to ensure compliance. Meds administered via isotonic Glucose IV drip (standard rehydration protocols).

Sweet: Is my daughter all right? Can I see her?

Lansing: Emma’s fine. She’s sleeping.

Sweet: And that—that man, is he—?

Lansing: That’s actually what I’d like to talk to you about, ma’am.

Sweet: Caitlin’s fine.

Lansing: Yes ma—Caitlin. Now—

Sweet: Please, can I just see Emma? Just for a mo—

Lansing: I told you, Caitlin, Emma’s sleeping now. She’s fine.

Sweet: I wouldn’t disturb her, I just want to see—

Lansing: Maybe in a little while. Ma’am, we really need this information.

Sweet: (inaudible)

Lansing: Perhaps you could start by telling me what you were doing in that part of Manhattan.

Sweet: We—we used to live there, you know, before. Last week. We kind of hunkered down when it all started—that’s what they told us to do, right? Stay calm, stay in your homes, let the authorities do their jobs. So that’s what we did, we holed up in the apartment for three days before Mike—that’s my husband—he decided to head out and try to find some food. We were supposed to go grocery shopping, you know, the day it started. We didn’t really have much on hand.
So Mike’s gone for six, seven hours—there’s no cell phone coverage, right, there hasn’t been since everything fell apart, and I start to—is that my … that’s my
daughter
screaming, that’s—
Emma!—

Lansing: No, ma’am, that’s not Emma. I told you, Emma’s sleeping.

MedTel Annotation: IV GABAbarbitol increased to 85 ml/l 19:26

Sweet: But … who is it, who’s
screaming
, who’s—

Lansing: It’s not Emma, Caitlin. I promise. Honestly, it’s nothing to concern you. If we can get back to your story …

Sweet: It’s—it’s a bit bright in here …

Lansing: I can turn down the lights if you like.

Sweet: No, actually the light’s … nice …

Lansing: So your husband’s been gone for six or seven hours …

Sweet: Yes. And the cell phones aren’t working, and there’s this, I don’t know, this muffled
whump
from outside. Like an explosion, but far away. So I go out onto the balcony, you know, just to look around, just to maybe see what’s happening. And about three blocks down along 15th there’s one of those spires, you know. Just sticking up out of the road, four, five stories high, glowing around the base with this banner of thick smoke streaming out the top. The smoke’s blowing my way and before I know it it’s in my eyes. It’s not like regular smoke, it’s—gritty. So I turn my face away, you know, look away in the other direction and—and I see him, down there in the street.

Lansing: Prophet.

Sweet: Who? Oh, you mean—no. Mike. Facedown. He never even got half a block. He …

Lansing: Would you like a moment?

Sweet: No, it’s okay. That screaming’s a bit distracting though, you know? Anyway, that’s when I decided to leave. The neighborhood just wasn’t safe, and Mike was—gone, and Emma and I were on our own. But my folks live in Brooklyn, and MacroNet’s been saying there was this evacuation site downtown, so Emma and I just picked up and left.

Lansing: Just so I understand: A spire’s just detonated three blocks from your apartment. Your husband didn’t make it half a block down the avenue. And you decide to take your child outside.

Sweet: Yes.
What?

Lansing: Nothing. Please go on.

Sweet: So I take Emma down the stairwell and we head out the back way because I don’t want her to see her daddy like that. And I’ve got my iBall out but the realtime updates aren’t working so we’re basically going by memory. And the farther uptown we get, the more dead soldiers we see. Or at least, you know, they had uniforms. Like yours. Not regular army or anything. Are you real soldiers? Armed forces? CSIRA?

Lansing: Yes, ma’am. We’re—for all intents and purposes, we are the armed forces.

Sweet: Well I didn’t see any
regular
army, but there were a
lot
of bodies that looked like you. They were burned, and blown apart—

Lansing: Yes, ma’am.

Sweet: Some of them were in
pieces
, just
scattered around—

Lansing:
Yes
, ma’am. I get the picture.

Sweet: And then we turned a corner and we ran into what was killing them. They were these—machines. These walking machines. Like, you know, that old invaders-from-Mars book they made us read back in high school, Walls or Wells or something. There were soldiers fighting back but they weren’t doing well, I mean, no offense but you guys were getting your asses handed to you—

Lansing: Why did you keep going?

Sweet: What do you mean?

Lansing: You have your eleven-year-old daughter with you, you’re walking through a war zone, and the farther you go the more bodies you see. Why didn’t you turn around, go in another direction?

Sweet: We were trying to find the evacuation site.

Lansing: Uptown.

Sweet: Yes.

Lansing: MacroNet said the evac site was downtown. That’s what you said.

Sweet: Did I?

Lansing: You did.

Sweet: Well, it—it just seemed like the right way to go, I guess.

Lansing: I see.

Sweet: Could we take a break? I could use some fresh air, stretch my legs a little.

Lansing: It’s not really safe outside. Besides, wouldn’t you rather stay close to Emma?

Sweet: She’ll be okay. I don’t think she likes the light as much as I do.

Lansing: I’ll see what I can do. Just as soon as we finish here. It won’t be long.

Sweet: Easy for you to say. You’re not trapped in a glass box.

Lansing: That’s just a precaution, ma’am. Honestly. Now: You had encountered one of our detachments in a combat situation, is that right?

Sweet: Combat situation? Oh, yes. And that was when we ran. Emma was pulling at my hand and I was just standing there, I don’t know, stunned I guess, but my little girl’s screaming and so I snap out of it and we just
run
back the way we came, as fast as we can. And there are things skittering along in the wreckage after us, not like those war machines, not big, but—fast. We could never really get a good look, we were too busy running but you could hear them gaining, they made these little
clattering
sounds as they moved, like, like big spider crabs or something. And Emma was pulling me to the side, she’s going
Mommy, Mommy in here!
because she’s seen this little hidey-hole she thinks we’ll be safe in and I’m not so sure but she breaks away from me and dives into this wrecked
storefront, right through the display window—well it was already shattered of course but there was glass everywhere, it’s amazing she didn’t open an artery—and I go in after her and the whole second floor has come down, there’s concrete and those twisted wires everywhere and some of those collapsed slabs, they’ve formed this little cave. And Emma dives right into it. And I dive after her.
    And I know we’re going to die then, because we’re snug and secure in this little lean-to of collapsed concrete, we’re completely protected except for that open part at the front we came in through, it’s the only way in or out. And there’s something there, something—bloated. And spiky.
    You know what a tick looks like? Mean little front end with needles and teeth for digging into you, and a kind of bulbous inflatable back end that swells up when it feeds? This was like that. Except it had these wavy metal antennae or tentacles or something, like the hoses off one of those old-style vacuum cleaners you had to run yourself. And it was half as big as
Emma
! It made this hungry little
clicking
noise, and its antennae were waving around in our direction and it was climbing over the rubble toward us blocking the only way out and we were dead, I just knew right then that we were both dead.

Except something shifted in the building then, something just
gave way
, and instead of squashing Emma and me it landed on this tick-thing and squashed it instead. This big slab of concrete, and dust everywhere, and these antennae-tentacles sticking out from underneath, whipping back and forth. That’s were I got this cut on my face; those things were
sharp
, like needles.
    And Emma’s screaming even louder now, she’s calling out for help and those little lungs of hers are amazing, if there’s anyone within ten blocks I figure they have to hear her. But I don’t know whether to curse or pray, because that big pile of cement did save us from the tick, but now we’re trapped. There are gaps—there’s about four or five places where you can see into the rest of the store, even all the way onto the street—but there’s no way even skinny little Emma can fit through any of them. And the chittering hasn’t stopped. It’s only getting louder. I can see things moving out there, the shadows of monster ticks and other things too, I think.
    And that’s when he shows up. That
Prophet
you’re interested in.

Lansing: Yes. Tell me about him.

Sweet: I guess he must have heard Emma. He was just
there
, all of a sudden. He dropped down into sight from somewhere overhead, and he was—I thought he was some kind of robot at first, you know? You see those
things on National Geographic and the Discovery Channel, they’ve got those soft-bodied humanoids over in Japan? Acto, actino-something. Soft muscles, almost like ours. That’s what I thought this was at first. Except he wasn’t built like any of those nursemaid robots you see in the retirement homes, he looked like he was built for—heavy construction, or something. And Emma’s shouting
Over here! Over here!
and I’m right there with her, bellowing my lungs out, and this
Prophet
of yours, big as one of those museum statues, he just turns toward us—slow, almost lazy, like he’s got all the time in the world—and without a word he just stares through this visor the color of dried blood. Emma and I both shut right up then and there and he didn’t move for a bit, he just stood there cradling this big gun the size of a fire hydrant, sizing us up like he was deciding whether to rescue us or—I dunno—cook us for dinner.
And Emma says in this very scared quiet voice,
He’s one of them
. And I knew just what she meant, somehow, but you know what? I was okay with that.

Lansing: Excuse me?

Sweet: Weird, isn’t it? It’s hard to explain, he just seemed to—not
look like
, exactly, it was more—almost as if he
smelled
like one of them, if that makes any sense. And it scared the hell out of poor Emma, but to me it was
almost—comforting. I forgot to be afraid for a little while.

Lansing: Mmmm.

Sweet: And he saved us. He started tearing through that concrete as if it were cat litter. And the ticks were all over him, he spent more time blasting those vicious little things than he spent digging us out. A couple of times I thought
This is it, they’re going to tear him apart
but they never did. And he got us out. He rescued us. I told him what we’d seen, where the bodies were, where the machines were fighting, but he seemed—distracted. Put his hand up to his helmet once, you know, as though he was trying to hear a very faint radio station. I wanted to go with him, I almost asked him to take us to the refugee camp, but Emma just didn’t like him at all, Emma never stopped being afraid of him even after he’d saved our lives. So he went on his way, and we went on ours, and that’s when you picked us up. And there’s really nothing more I can tell you so if you don’t mind I’d really like to get out of here now. I’d really like to follow the light.