Fragments (43 page)

“Your faction is fighting itself?” asked Marcus. The implications frightened him—he
remembered the riots in East Meadow when the fight between the Senate and the Voice
finally came to a head. He remembered how vicious it became when friends suddenly
turned on one another, incensed by ideological differences. “The battlefront that’s
coming,” he said, “that’s a revolution? Soldiers from your company who now support
Morgan? This city’s going to tear itself apart.”

“We should be safe in here,” said Vinci, then hesitated. “We might be safe in here.
Everyone in this building is a loyal to General Trimble.”

Woolf frowned. “Why? Even if you disagree with Morgan . . . Trimble’s useless.”

“We’re loyal because that’s how they made us,” said Vinci. “Because it’s who we are.”

The building rumbled from another explosion, and Vinci and the guard both fell into
a ready posture Marcus had come to recognize as communication: They were scanning
the link for news of what had happened. Marcus heard distant pops of gunfire.

“The fighting’s getting close,” said Vinci. “Get back to your men, I need to talk
to the building’s defensive force.”

They hurried back down the spartan hall. “We can help,” said Woolf. “I have ten trained
soldiers in there—”

“Please,” said Vinci, “this is a Partial battle. You’d only get in the way.”

He led them back through the double doors to the waiting area and left them there,
racing deeper into the complex. Trimble’s guard closed the doors behind them, locking
the doors tightly. Only one of Woolf’s soldiers was in the waiting area, standing
by the door of their sleeping quarters; when he saw them he waved them over, shouting
urgently. “Hurry, Commander, you’ve got to see this.” Woolf and Marcus ran toward
him and he led them inside; the other soldiers were clustered around the outer window
like children, watching the city in awed silence.

“Get away from there,” said Woolf, “there’s a battle going on. . . .” His voice drifted
off as the soldiers cleared a spot for him, and he saw what they’d been watching.
Thousands of Partials, seemingly with no battle line, running and shooting and killing
one another in the city below—in the streets, on the rooftops. Their window was fifteen
stories up, well above the majority of the fighting, which gave them a terrifying
sense of the scale of the battle: Literally as far as they could discern through the
city, battle was raging.

More frightening than the size of the battle, though, was the nature of it. Even the
smallest, wounded, most ill-equipped Partial soldier was performing feats that would
make any human the unquestioned hero of the Grid. Marcus watched in shock as an infantryman
ran lightly along the roof of the building beyond, firing his rifle one-handed as
he did and picking off snipers on the next roof over. When he reached the edge he
leapt to another building, clearing the thirty-foot gap and landing in a machine-gun
nest that was firing in another direction. More impressive still were the people he
was shooting at, who despite his unerring accuracy were able to step to the side with
inhuman speed, dodging the bullets by millimeters and returning fire almost casually.
The machine-gun nest where the runner had landed became a swirling cauldron of knives
and bayonets, each wielded with a controlled fury that made Marcus pale at the sight
of it, and each blow turned aside with almost contemptuous ease. It was a war of supermen,
every one of them too accurate to miss, and too fast to be hit.

Marcus pointed at the fliers that hovered and darted through the city, single-pilot
fighters and five-man gunships, swarming like angry bees. “They have Rotors?” He hadn’t
seen a flying vehicle since before the Break.

“This city is just one horrible revelation after another,” said Woolf. As if to prove
his point, another Rotor hovered into view around a tall building, much bigger than
the others. “That one’s a transport,” he said, backing away from the window. “It’s
coming this way—they must be coming for General Trimble.” The soldiers dropped out
of the window’s field of view and backed away. A stray bullet cracked a hole in the
window and shattered the wall above Marcus’s head, and he threw himself prone on the
floor. “Up and out,” said Woolf. “We’ve got to get to the center of the building—into
the waiting room.” The soldiers ran through the door in practiced formation, staying
low and finding cover with a trained fluidity that used to make Marcus feel safe,
but now only seemed like a pale imitation of the Partials’ superior precision. He
followed them through, staying close to Woolf, wishing he had a gun and knowing it
wouldn’t do him any good.

A small Rotor darted over the skylight, machine guns firing, and Marcus heard an explosion
as either it or its target went down. He had no idea which, or even which team was
which. The coloring on the vehicles all seemed the same to him. He heard another explosion,
from a different part of the city, and the sounds of gun and artillery fire ebbed
and flowed in the background. It made Marcus feel blind and helpless, crouching behind
a low bench, knowing that something was happening, without knowing who was shooting
at what, or why, or where any of them were.

Another light Rotor flew past the skylight. A gunship followed moments later, in a
perpendicular path. A dark shadow fell over the waiting room, and a deep thrum above
them vibrated powerfully through the building.

“We don’t want to be here,” said Woolf.

The big transport Rotor hovered into view, filling the skylight, and too late Marcus
realized that it was coming down, hard and fast through the center of it. The metal
hull shattered the skylight in the same instant that the far doors flew open and the
building’s defenders flooded in. A turret gun on the transport unleashed a hail of
fire on the defenders, but they had already moved to the side half a second earlier.
Gull ports in the sides of the transport swung open before the hull even touched the
floor, and armored Partials leapt out, guns blazing.

“Get down!” Woolf shouted, and the soldiers dove to the floor behind couches and tables,
trying to make it back to the room they’d just exited. Marcus saw a moment of confusion
in the attackers, a brief pause as they took stock of the new situation, and somehow,
for some reason, they seemed to identify the fleeing humans as threats. A half second
later they turned on the humans, gunning them down with cold ferocity. The humans
shook and screamed as the attack ripped through their ranks, and Marcus closed his
eyes as his companions’ bodies fell to the ground around him.

More reinforcements arrived from deeper in the building, and Partials poured out of
the transport in a seemingly endless wave. Marcus peeked up at the raging battle,
quailed at the sight of it, and hid his head again, hoping he could just lie still
and play dead until the fighting was over. The noise in the room was deafening, dozens
of automatic weapons all firing at once, and he worried that he might lose his hearing
permanently. A hand grabbed his leg, and he couldn’t help the scream of terror that
leapt from his lips. He rolled over in a flurry to see who it was, and recognized
Commander Woolf. The man was talking, but Marcus couldn’t hear it. Behind him were
two more human soldiers, all crouched low behind the dubious cover of a waiting room
couch. Woolf said something else, then gestured for Marcus to follow him and started
crawling for the nearest door. The soldiers went after him, and Marcus started to
follow. A bullet struck the soldier in front of him, dropping the soldier like a bag
of meat, and Marcus scrambled forward in reckless fear, desperate to reach the open
door. He felt a sharp sting in his arm, and then he was through, gasping and panting
as Woolf and the last soldier threw the door shut behind them.

Woolf said something else, inaudible through the ringing in Marcus’s ears. They kept
low to the ground and crouched against a wall, hoping to put as many barriers between
them and the gunfight as possible. Marcus couldn’t use his right arm, and when he
examined it he found a long groove in the meat of his triceps—a gunshot wound that
had scraped the surface, shredding the muscle but too shallow to damage the bone.
He stood up in a daze, headed to look for a first aid kit, but Woolf pulled him back
down, yelling something Marcus could almost hear. Marcus shook his head, pointing
at his ears to let Woolf know he couldn’t hear anything; the commander frowned, puzzled,
then shouted something obviously angry and dug in his breast pocket, pulling out a
pair of orange foam earplugs and pressing them into Marcus’s hand. Woolf and the last
remaining soldier, a man named Galen, conferred with each other over something, and
Marcus pushed the plugs into his ears.

We’re going to die,
he thought.
There’s no way out of here—it doesn’t matter who wins the fight in the waiting room,
the entire city is a war zone.
Marcus considered again what they were up against: an army of the perfect soldiers.
Humans are less agile, they have slower reaction times, they’re less coordinated,
they’re not on the link—

“We’re not on the link!” Marcus shouted, grabbing Woolf’s arm. Woolf looked at him,
confused, and Marcus explained his realization; his own voice sounded distant and
muted through his ringing ears. “The link—the pheromonal system they use to communicate—they’re
all reading each other’s minds. One guy picks up his gun to shoot, and on a battlefield
he just shoots and the other guy dies, but in these tight quarters, the other guy’s
close enough to pick up the first guy’s link data, so he knows he’s going to shoot,
and he gets out of the way. That’s why none of them can hit each other.”

Woolf said something in response, but Marcus still couldn’t hear it. He pushed on
anyway. “The Partials use the link to track each other, so when they want to hide,
they wear gas masks. If you can’t link with them, you can’t defend against them. In
the land of the Partials, we’re like . . . stealth fighters.”

Realization dawned in Woolf’s eyes, and he turned back to Galen, speaking rapidly.
Marcus couldn’t hear him, but he could tell that at least some of his hearing was
returning; the dull roar that had previously sounded like white noise had resolved
into a chorus of gunfire, echoes from the battle in the other room. He hunkered down,
trying to think of some way to use the lack of link to their advantage and escape.
Samm had said that the link was so ingrained in the Partials that they’d forgotten,
after twelve years, how to fight an enemy that didn’t have it.
There has to be a way. . . .

Woolf grabbed Marcus by his undamaged arm and gestured toward the equipment on the
other side of the room. Marcus leaned toward, offering his ear, and Woolf shouted
in it. “We have some shovels in our survival gear—we’re going to try to hack through
the side wall.”

“What’s on the other side?” asked Marcus.

Woolf sketched on the carpet with his finger, making an impression that looked vaguely
like the waiting room and the surrounding doors. “If I’ve calculated it right, we’re
only two rooms away from Trimble’s hallway. Cutting through is the quickest way out
of the building.”

Marcus nodded. “What if the walls are reinforced?”

“Then we think of something else.”

The three men ran in a low crouch to their gear. The small survival shovels were some
of the only gear they’d been allowed to keep; they couldn’t hurt Partials with them,
but they could certainly do some damage to the walls. The battle continued to rage
in the room beyond, and Woolf used its cacophony to hide his assault on the wall.

“Here goes nothing.” He slammed the shovel into the wall . . .

. . . and it cleaved through easily.

“It’s just Sheetrock,” said Woolf. He pulled his shovel back out, aimed another strike,
and hacked out a chunk of the wall. Inside was a layer of pink insulation, and beyond
that another Sheetrock wall. Woolf said something Marcus couldn’t hear, presumably
triumphant and vulgar, and handed spare shovels to Galen and Marcus. No one was coming
through the door to stop them; the Partials were too preoccupied to follow them, and
without the link to give them away, they could work with impunity. Marcus got to work
on the wall, and soon the three men had opened a man-size hole they could squirm through
into the next room.

The new room was empty, untouched except for a chaotic series of bullet holes in the
wall where the Partials’ battle had punched through. They ran to the far side and
went to work on that wall, opening a ragged gap that Woolf peered through. He grinned.
“It’s the hallway, and it’s empty. Move!” They tore into the wall with everything
they had, Marcus hacking awkwardly with his left hand, his right still hanging uselessly—and
painfully—at his side. He wanted to stop and patch it up, to at least give himself
a shot of painkillers, but there was no time. He chopped at the wall as if he were
escaping from hell itself, with all the devils behind him.

They crawled into the hallway and ran toward Trimble’s room, gripping their shovels
like axes. The noise of the battle was loud behind them. Vinci stood at the end of
the hall, tucked behind an armored corner, and called out as they approached.

“Where are you headed?”

“Somebody landed a transport in the waiting—”

“I know,” said Vinci. The double doors into the battle hall burst open and Vinci motioned
them forward, dropping his questions and handing them some spare handguns. “There’s
no time!” he shouted. “Fall back into Trimble’s room and lock the door!”

Woolf grabbed Marcus by his wounded arm. The pain was excruciating, and he couldn’t
stop the commander from dragging him through into Trimble’s room. Woolf turned back
to close the door, and Vinci slipped through, slinging his gun over his shoulder.
They slammed the door shut and locked it tightly. They heard pounding on the other
side almost immediately. “These doors will hold for a few minutes, but we need another
way out.”