Crysis: Legion (16 page)

How did I feel? How did I
feel
? How do you
think
I fucking felt?

Betrayed. That’s how.

I knew it was bad, of course. I knew I was dead the moment that gunship hit me on Battery Park. But then, Prophet, yo? My hope and my salvation. This Lazarus suit, this second chance. I didn’t know if it was actually fixing me or just keeping me going until the guys at Syracuse could put me back together but I always thought that if I made it out of the battle zone alive I’d at least get a chance to step out in my own skin, you know? I thought, somewhere down the road, I’d be human again.

But all the suicidal thoughts and the despair over my lost humanity, none of that really gets a chance to sink in at first—because I’m still trying to parse the fact that the N2 just mutinied on me, that it actually froze my goddamn finger on the trigger and scolded me for killing “mission-critical collaborators.” I’ve already taken out the lab rat who tried to hack me on remote but there are still four other
potential enemy combatants
in the room, as they say. And the suit—the fucking
suit
—is telling me I can’t eliminate those threats.

But then I hear what one of those techs has just told Gould—

I’m dead.

I’m
dead
.

—and suddenly, crazily, I actually
feel
dead. I could swear that up until this very moment I’ve felt the air flowing in and out
of my chest; when those Ceph came through the wall, when I tangled with the mercs outside, I felt my pulse pound. It’s not something you think about consciously but it’s damn well the kind of thing you notice when it’s gone, right? And I haven’t noticed anything missing until right now, until the moment that tech with the V-gloves says, “No, he’s
literally dead
,” and just like that all those comforting biorhythms I thought had been keeping me company all this time, they just drain away. I reach for a pulse and find nothing. I try to catch my breath and I can’t. And all I feel in that instant is this crazy gobsmacked astonishment that all those things have gone and left nothing behind and I
never even noticed
.

And the next thing I feel is a rising, murderous fury at Nathan fucking Gould.

Because Gould scanned me, just a couple of hours ago. Sure his rig didn’t come with all the latest bells and whistles but it sure as shit should’ve been able to tell when someone’s
dead
, you know? It sure as shit should be able to tell you when your goddamn
heart
is missing.

Gould, you fucker. You slimy, sorry sack of shit. You
knew
. You knew all along, and you let me do your dirty work, and you never even
told
me, Gould, you never even—

I swear I’m going to break his scrawny pencil neck but I’m locked down in the cradle. I can’t do anything but listen to the lab rats talking over me like I’m fungus in a petri dish. Gould couldn’t give two shits about my injuries, he just wants to know what the N2’s holding in its deep-layer substrate. The technician tells him they’re uploading it as fast as they can, and they’re all pointedly ignoring the body twitching at the corner of my eye. And that twitching, it doesn’t stop. It actually gets worse over time and its not just the body anymore it’s the things around it, it’s the very
air
and I’m trying to turn my head for a better look and no dice—I’m still wired into the harness—but that’s okay
because that weird shimmery twitchiness is spreading across my visual field like water spilled across the floor, like the ground racing up at you when your stabilizers are down and you’re coming in too fast—

I think it short-circuits me, somehow. The cradle. Knocks me right out of the here-and-now and right into some, some—I don’t know. Some schizophrenic’s nightmare. I can hardly see anything, just shapes and silhouettes stuck in shades of blue and black like I’m in some kind of subterranean grotto. Giant machines everywhere. At least I think they’re machines, judging by their outlines. And there are things all over them, crawling down the walls, slithering along the floor. Coming for me. The monsters are coming and I’m stuck in molasses, I’ve got a gun but I barely even have the strength to bring it up much less defend myself.

Pretty classic nightmare scenario, right? Looking back now I figure maybe some kind of voltage spike when the cradle linked in, maybe it kick-started that part of the brain that lights up when you’re scared shitless. Limbic system, I think they call it. The amygdala. But I’m not thinking about any of that in the moment, I’m just terrified, and then—you’re not gonna believe it, but suddenly, just like that, I’m
happy
. You know why?

Because I can feel my heart beating again. I can hear my breath, harsh and ragged and
fast
because I’m scared, man, I’m still so scared but there’s also this huge sense of relief, of
joy
almost. I’m real again, I’m alive. I
feel
alive. As if this is the world and I’ve just awakened from the nightmare.

And then this nasty little voice in the back of my head says,
No, soldier, that’s not your pulse. That’s not your breath. These aren’t even your eyes, you corpse, you meat sack, you miserable rotting zombie. They’re Prophet’s. Everything’s Prophet’s
.

You stole it all
.

And then some other voice says
It’s spiking
and someone else says
lookit those fucking delta waves
and now the nightmare’s leaking
back into the dream, the monsters are fading and real people are yelling in the distance, spoiling everything. The world turns back to shit and I can feel my breath disappearing, my arms and legs turning to dead meat, and all I can think of as I fall back to earth is Prophet, poor ol’ Prophet, and the last thing he said before he blew his brains out:
Remember me
.

Remember you?

It’s not like I have a fucking choice.

And here I am again, dead, paralyzed, surrounded by lab rats and liars arguing over how best to carve me up for the data in my guts.

Except things seem to be going a lot worse for them than last time I checked in.

The light’s gone longwave. Sparks pop like fireworks. Half the boxes hooked into my cradle are smoking; the other half are alive with machine code. I can see the script scrolling up across techie faces, I can zoom in and see warning icons reflected in their eyes. And those eye are wide, lemme tell you. Those eyes are scared shitless.

Someone shouts “Overload!” and a very calm machine voice answers
Uncalibrated nano-routines detected. Alien tissue vector. Thirty-three percent
.

“It’s online,” bleats the rat who pronounced me dead. “It’s
transmitting …
”

Gould: “Shut it down!”

“I’m
trying
 …”

In the distance, the sound of rotors beating the air. The sound of boots moving with
authority
. Suddenly someone else is in the room, scaring back the lab rats, grabbing Gould by the scruff of the neck and smashing his face into the wall. Gould goes down like a priest on a choirboy; the intruder turns to me and smiles.

Lockhart.

Suddenly things are very quiet. The rotors outside have spun down. The local hardware has stopped sizzling; one of the techs must have succeeded in shutting it off before Lockhart scared them all into the corner. None of the usual trash talk from the mercs who’ve flooded the room in their master’s wake. The room pulses with dim red emergency lighting, but the alarms have fallen silent.

But there’s Lockhart, with a gun in his hand. Smiling through the glass.

Fuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

I try to move; no dice. I’m Christ on the cross in this thing. I can’t even access my tacticals.

Lockhart moseys past the observation port, steps into my cage. His sleeves are rolled halfway up the biceps. The camo pattern on his CELL fatigues is a mesh of hexagons, blue-gray, green-gray, brown-gray. Honeycomb, like Prophet’s tattoo. You notice these things at the weirdest times.

“Nice,” he says.

Just a light pistol, the M12 Nova. You never really appreciate how big it is until you have one jammed in your face.

I’m going to die
, I think, and then,
No
. Gould’s going to die, maybe. Maybe even the lab techs, if Lockhart’s a stickler for loose ends. But not me.

I’m already dead. I’m already dead. I’ve been dead all day.

Lockhart leans in close. “Got men all over the downtown looking for your ass, tin man. And here you are, trussed and tied.”

“Which takes his threat potential down to zero, I’m thinking. Which means that pulling that trigger makes you a murderer. Not to mention a war criminal.”

Tara Strickland, in the flesh and the nick of time. She gestures at the floor: a couple of CELLulites haul Nathan Gould to his feet.

I can’t help noticing that Lockhart’s gun is still in my face. Tara Strickland, no slouch herself, notices, too. “Commander Lockhart.
You will stand down.
”

He doesn’t want to. He hates this uppity bitch who thinks she can order him around, he hates the fucking Rules of Engagement, he hates me most of all.

But he stands down.

Strickland’s already moved on to other things. “Nathan Gould. Always a pleasure.”

“Jesus, Tara.” Gould shakes his head and sighs. “Working with these assholes? If your father could see you now.”

“My father’s dead, Nathan,” she says mildly, and graces him with a gentle smile: “Now why don’t you shut the fuck up before I change my mind and send you after him?” She nods at one of the goons holding him up. “If he gives you trouble, don’t do too much damage. We’ll need to interrogate him later.” Back to Lockhart: “Power him down.”

She tosses him a matte-black gizmo the size of a sixty-round casket box. The moment he slaps it against my helmet, I see double: two fuzzy overlapping Lockharts snarling at my side, two Stricklands leading two Goulds out through two sets of security doors. The world slides in and out of focus. A swarm of bees buzzes in my right ear.

“Get up.”

The cradle releases me. I stand, or try to; I almost go over with the first step. I force my eyes to focus, and after a moment my worlds converge. Everything’s still—muted, though. Almost colorless. I feel as weak as a Democrat.

“Don’t
fuck
with me, Prophet.
Move.
”

CryNet built this thing, after all. Only makes sense they’d have some kind of off-switch.

We are the Odd Couple, Gould and I. We move side by side up the hallway, guns in our faces, guns at our backs: one of us built like Atlas, one like Charlie Brown; one of us probably good as dead, one dead already.

Only one of us is silent. Gould mutters as we move forward—I catch snatches of Tara, her father, lousy career choices, but after one abortive attempt to strike up a dialogue with Strickland—

“You think you’re so smart, Tara? You realize this isn’t even Prophet, it’s just some
grun—
”

“
Jesus
, Nathan, give it a fucking rest.”

—he stops talking to anyone but himself.

I’m still unsteady on my feet. The floor seems to shift under me with every step, and it’s only when Strickland hisses “Seismic tremor!” that I realize this is bigger than me. We move into a broad lobby just in time to see a ceiling full of decorative masonry shake loose eight meters overhead.

That speeds things up.

Suddenly the goons are bursting with really useful information like
The fucking ceiling!
and
It’s coming down!
and Strickland’s ordering everyone out
now
as if we needed the encouragement. One of the decorative coliseum-style pillars flanking the door
craaacks
down the middle like a split log and I’m outside again, Lockhart still holding the suit-sapper against my skull, a squad
of mercs lighting me up with little red dots, the whole pack of us moving in a clump toward an Apache spinning up across the street. Gould’s disappeared—no, there he is, they’ve bundled him into a double-parked Humvee down the street. Bye-bye Gould. Sorry it didn’t work out. Glad you found some balls there at the end.

You asshole.

The whole street’s vibrating. They bundle me into the chopper. Lockhart hands the suit-sapper to the nearest merc, yells “Get him to Prism!” and exits stage left. The chopper climbs into the air.

And the very fucking ground reaches out after it to smash us back to earth.

I don’t know what I’m seeing in those moments. Suddenly the building we’ve just left is shedding windowpanes like fish scales. Earthquake, I think, but in the next second something explodes out of it, just punches through all that steel and concrete like it was cardboard and keeps coming and it’s after us, I could swear it’s reaching right for the chopper and no matter how high we go it just keeps coming. And then it’s
past
us, I can see the sides of the fucking thing sliding by like one of those antique moon rockets from the museums, you know, the Saturn V’s. Except it’s not all shiny and white and tricked out with stars-and-stripes. It’s
black
, it’s black as fucking coal and it’s
bony
, I don’t know how else to describe it, it’s like ammo belts and the tire treads off a strip-mine harvester all twisted into a tight spiral. Something glows deep inside, shining through the cracks and seams like lava. And it’s
still
spearing up out of that building, out of the ground, it’s streaking up so fast you’d swear it wasn’t moving at all, that
we
were falling down past
it
. Something bitch-slaps us hard to port and it’s no fucking illusion anymore: We’re falling. The engine’s deader than I am, the blades are still beating the air but it’s all just wishes and inertia now. Pilot’s doing his best. He’s in full
autorotation mode and it must be doing some good because the ground comes spinning up and the tail rotor snaps like a twig and the cabin spins and bounces along the ground—but when I’m thrown clear I’m still in one piece, man. I’m shaken and stirred but I’m still breathing—