Infinity Reborn (The Infinity Trilogy Book 3) (19 page)

“Please,” she begs. “I know you’re there. I can’t . . . stand . . . the pain.”

She doesn’t seem to be able to hear me at all.

“We have to take it off!” barks Brody.

“I . . . I can hear you,” Caitlin whimpers. “Please, if you’re there . . . please. Help . . . me.”

“Finn. She needs our help!”

“We can’t remove it. It might kill her!” I shout.

“Kill,” Caitlin whispers. “Yes . . . kill me . . . pleeease.”

“You don’t know what you’re saying!” I yell at her. “We’ll bring help. You’re gonna be alright!” I have no idea if what I just said is true or not. Honestly, I don’t really believe it is.

“Please, someone,” Caitlin pleads again. “I want . . . to die.”

“C’mon, Brody. Bit needs us,” I say as I painfully and grudgingly get to my feet and turn to walk down the corridor.

But Brody doesn’t budge.

“Finn! We can’t just leave her like that!”

“What choice do we have?!” I shout at him.

“Kill . . . me,” Caitlin whimpers.

“We are not killing you!” I shout at her.

Brody glares at me angrily, then he opens his satchel, rummages through it, and pulls out one of the scalpels from Dr. Pierce’s lab. “We have to do this for her. I’ll make it quick,” Brody says shakily, and I can hardly believe my ears.

My heart jumps into my throat as Brody steps toward Caitlin with the blade clutched in his trembling hand.

“Hold her legs down, Finn.”

“I am not helping you kill her!” I yell.

“Please,” Caitlin begs again.

“She’s moving too much,” Brody says with a quiver in his voice as he looks over at me. “Hold her legs, or I might not be able to end it fast.”

“I’m not doing it. I’m not,” I say as my pulse starts racing.

“I don’t want to do it, either!” Brody grunts.

“Have you ever killed anything before?”

“No, but . . . just look at her,” says Brody. “She’s in pain.”

“So . . . much . . . pain,” Caitlin sobs again as tears stream down her face.

“I can’t,” I say, turning away and pacing down the corridor. “I just can’t, Brody.”

“Fine,” he says blankly.

I grudgingly watch as Brody takes a deep breath, walks over, and straddles Caitlin’s waist, forcing her scrambling fingers down with his forearm as her legs buck and kick behind him.

Brody gingerly raises the blade of the scalpel and presses it to Caitlin’s neck.

“WAIT!”

Brody shudders with fright and almost drops the scalpel.

I quickly walk to Caitlin’s side and hold my hand out to Brody. “Give it here.”

He glowers up at me and pulls the scalpel to his chest. “No. You’ll snap it or throw it away. She’s suffering, Finn. You won’t stop me doing this. I don’t want to, but . . . you know it’s the right thing to do.”

I stare at him unflinchingly. “You’re heavier than me. You hold her legs. Give me the blade.”

He studies my face, no doubt searching for any signs of deception or insincerity.

“Brody, I know what I’m doing. Hand it over.”

With a quiet sigh of relief that the gruesome task has been taken out of his hands, Brody stands up and places the scalpel in my open palm.

I nod at him. “OK, now hold her legs down the best you can.” I take Brody’s place on Caitlin’s lap. Brody moves to her legs and puts all his weight on them. The robotic limbs are powerful, but at least he does succeed in lessening their movement.

“Thank you. Thank you,” Caitlin whispers again.

“You can thank me if you survive what I’m about to do,” I say as I grip the scalpel tightly, like a dagger, in a double-handed grip.

“What . . . what are you gonna do?!” Brody asks in alarm from behind me.

“This,” I say as I tilt the scalpel diagonally upward, and with one hard push, I plunge the scalpel blade into the small gap between the Lobot’s body and its four spray-on-bandage-splattered eyes.

There’s a loud bang and a bright blue spark, and Caitlin’s whole body instantly goes limp as the black cables around her neck disintegrate into dark-gray powder. Brody and I immediately leap off her as she slides sideways along the wall and flumps onto the cold concrete floor.

“What did you do?” Brody asks, gaping down at her.

“I took a chance,” I mutter as I hand the scalpel back to him. “Either you were gonna slit her throat and definitely kill her, or I could try to get that thing off her head and probably kill her. I went with probably.”

“I guess either way it turned out the same,” Brody says, looking down at Caitlin sadly.

“Yeah. I’m afraid so,” I murmur as I kneel down beside her. “I’m so sorry, Caitlin,” I whisper. “I wish none of this had ever hap—”

With a loud, gasping breath, Caitlin sits bolt upright. I almost jump out of my skin, and Brody lets out a grunting man scream beside me as the Lobot falls away from her head and clatters to the concrete floor.

With half her face plastered with dried bandage, Caitlin blinks rapidly as she looks up at us in bewildered shock. Apart from one black eye, a few cuts and scrapes, and a graze on her chin where Brody hit her with the binoculars, she looks relatively OK.

She quickly raises her hands to her head and claws her fingers through her short brown pixie-cut hair. Then she immediately bursts into loud, sobbing tears.

“Hey, hey, hey, you’re OK,” I say, leaning in and patting her on the shoulder.

Suddenly she lunges at me, wrapping her arms around my neck and squeezing me in a tight embrace as she cries and wails. “Thank you! Thank you!”

“You’re welcome,” I say as I loosely hold her and pat her on the back.

Caitlin releases me, and with a loud, wet snuffle, she wipes her nose on the back of her sleeve. “I apologize for my behavior, Commander,” she says, averting her eyes. “I . . . I didn’t mean to hug you; it’s just that . . .”

“I know, I know,” I whisper consolingly. “It’s OK.”

I remember Caitlin calling Infinity “Commander” in the transport a few hours ago. It sounds weird to be addressed by the same title, but I pretend not to notice as I help Caitlin to her feet. Brody, on the other hand, decides to make a definite point of it.

“Commander? Why did you call her Commander?” he asks, frowning at Caitlin.

“Because that’s her rank,” Caitlin replies as she gruffly wipes the tears from her face and frowns back at Brody, like he should know and show the proper respect. “Lieutenant Commander, code name Infinity One, lead agent of the Zee-Tol Shadow Division and Vermillion-Class operative, level ten. I’ve read everything about you that my security-clearance level will allow.”

Brody looks at me with raised eyebrows.

“Not me,” I say, looking at him. “The other me.”

“Oh, OK,” Brody says, nodding with a little frown of his own. “Yeah that makes sense, I guess.”

Caitlin looks a little confused, but then she suddenly gasps. “Oh my god! It grew back?!” she says, staring down at my left hand. “We’d all heard the stories about you around the barracks, but no one actually
believed
them. You really are invincible, aren’t you?” she says, gawking at me in wonder.

At first I can’t think of what to say, so I give her my best attempt at a stern expression and a military-sounding response. “That’s classified.”

Caitlin mirrors my expression and nods without hesitation. “Of course, Commander.”

“You can call me Finn if you like,” I say, and Caitlin immediately shakes her head.

“Oh no. I couldn’t do that, Commander.”

“Suit yourself,” I say with a shrug and a bemused smile. “How do you feel?” I ask.

Caitlin lets out a huge sigh. “Free. That thing made me relive all my fears and worst nightmares over and over in a never-ending loop. I didn’t know where I was or what I was doing, and every second was agony, like my body was on fire. I felt like I was in a living hell.”

“You couldn’t see anything that you did?”

She shakes her head again. “Sometimes there were shapes and colors, but I couldn’t see anything clearly at all. I could hear you when you shouted, but . . . apart from that it was just . . . noise.”

I decide it’s best not to tell her that she murdered an innocent civilian and very nearly killed me as well. Right now, it won’t help the situation at all.

“Well, that’s over now,” I say. “Where are the rest of the Saviors?”

“I’m not sure,” Caitlin says sadly. “The last time I saw them, they were holed up in a building in Sector B. We were safe for a couple of hours while Jack tended to everyone’s injuries the best he could. But we knew we couldn’t stay there forever. Commander Zero instructed me to make a break for it and carry him to a warehouse he knew of in Sector C that might contain something that could take out the R.A.M.s.”

“Warehouse eighteen,” I say.

“Yes,” replies Caitlin. “We barely made it past the R.A.M.s, but we got to the warehouse and broke in. Commander Zero took a few items, and then we headed back to the others in Sector B. We were halfway there when we were ambushed by a whole bunch of those goddamned things.” Caitlin points at the deactivated Lobot lying on the floor. “They swarmed all over us, and . . . that’s the last thing I remember,” she says as she peels flecks of dried bandage from her face.

“So they took Zero as well,” I murmur.

Caitlin nods. “I’m afraid so. They were all over him,” she says with an angry sigh. “What’s your plan of action, Commander?”

I have to admit that being treated like I’m important is quite a confidence booster, and I’m almost embarrassed when I hear the authority in my voice as I suddenly begin barking orders.

“Brody. Get on the radio and contact Bit. Tell her we’re on the way, and let Jonah know about our situation.”

He nods and immediately does what I say, pulling the walkie-talkie from his satchel and pacing away toward a corner in the corridor.

I like this new feeling so much I even decide to use Caitlin’s code name.

“Gazelle, I need you to go back out there. Are you up to it?”

“Yes, Commander. What do you need me to do?”

“Find the rest of the Saviors. Start at the building where you last saw them; hopefully they’re still there. We could use their help to—”

“Finn!” Brody shouts from behind me. “Something’s wrong.”

“What is it?” I ask, looking over at him.

“Bit isn’t answering,” he replies.

“Well keep trying. She’s probably just preoccupied, trying to find Dr. Pierce and—”

“No, Finn, Bit isn’t answering, but . . .”

“But what?” I ask, frowning at him.

Brody strides across the corridor, holding the radio toward me in his outstretched hand. “Someone else did.”

“Who?” I ask as he hands the walkie-talkie to me. I squeeze the “Talk” button. “Dr. Pierce?”

“Yes, it is Dr. Pierce,” Nanny Theresa’s graveled voice croaks from the speaker. “But I’m probably not the one you were expecting . . . am I, child?”

I stare at the radio in wide-eyed horror as a mix of fear and sickening worry grips my stomach like a clawed fist. Nanny Theresa’s digital ghost has returned to torment me yet again. First she infected the pirate construct and nearly choked me to death in Dome One, then she brutally murdered my classmates and my teacher Miss Cole, tearing them apart with that R.A.M.’s hellish weapons in Dome Two. She possessed those Drones in the clean room and almost tore my head from my body, and now she’s holding Bit hostage, waiting for me to walk right into her spider’s web and willingly sacrifice my life.

“Your little friend is safe . . . for now,” says Nanny Theresa. “But if you are not standing before me inside this dome soon, you will spend the rest of your days in the knowledge that you, and you alone, were responsible for what I will ensure is her very slow and painful death.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“Don’t hurt her!” I plead.

“I make the demands, child, not you,” seethes Nanny Theresa.

“Theresa?” Jonah’s voice barks from the speaker.

“Hello, Major,” she replies coldly.

“But . . . how?” Jonah stammers, searching for the words.

Nanny Theresa finishes his sentence for him. “How am I here? Come now. You didn’t think Onix was strong enough to hold me captive forever, did you? And now, thanks to Richard’s quantum grains, I have a body, complete with two hands that I will gladly use to take everything away from you. Just like you took everything away from me.”

“What’s she talking about, Jonah?” I ask.

“Your Nanny Theresa didn’t move away like I told you.” Jonah grunts angrily. “She’s been dead for two years. The woman you’re talking to isn’t real; she’s a digital copy, nothing but code and corrupted files.”

“Now, now, Major. I may be dead, but I still have feelings,” Nanny Theresa says mockingly.

“I know what she is,” I mutter into the radio. “I was there when she downloaded her mind after she died. That much I do remember.”

“You . . . remember?” asks Jonah.

“I know that you tried to erase that memory from me.” I feel anger beginning to simmer in my gut. “You invaded my mind, Jonah. You stole days of my life from me over and over again, but worst of all, you tried to make me forget what she did to Carlo. How could you?” My voice trembles with sorrow and rage.

“Finn, please listen,” Jonah murmurs gently. “I was only trying to—”

“What? Protect me? Is that your excuse? Is that how you justify violating my mind?”

“Finn, I can explain. I never meant to—”

“Shut up,” I bark. “I don’t want to hear it. You’ve been lying to me my whole life. Why the hell should I listen to you now?”

“Well, well,” Nanny Theresa says with a smile in her voice. “It seems that your sins are finally coming home to roost, Major. But as much as I’m enjoying this little stroll down memory lane, my patience is wearing very thin, and your little friend’s time is growing shorter by the minute.”

I hear a rustle of movement, and the sound of short, quiet breaths is followed by Bit’s frightened voice. “Finn? I’m . . . I’m scared, Finn.”

“Bettina!” I shout into the radio. “Please, don’t hurt her.”

“Bettina? Is that the girl’s name?” says Nanny Theresa. “I will let her go, Infinity, but not until I see you first.”

“Don’t do it, Finn,” says Jonah. “Theresa’s construct can’t exist outside the boundary of Dome Two; if you go inside, she’ll kill you!”

“This is between Infinity and me, Major,” barks Nanny Theresa. “If I hear your voice again, I will hurt Bettina, and if Infinity refuses to face me, I will do far worse.”

“I’ll get there as soon as I can, I swear,” I say into the walkie-talkie.

“Finn! No!” shouts Jonah.

“It seems you weren’t listening to a word I just said, Major Brogan,” says Nanny Theresa. “Perhaps you’ll listen to this?” I hear a muffled snap, and Bit’s wailing scream vibrates loudly from the speaker.

“Bettina!” Brody shouts, his face contorted with anguish.

“I’ve just broken her arm,” says Nanny Theresa. “Another word from you, Major, and I break one of her legs. Just like a matchstick.”

“Please. Leave her alone,” I plead into the radio. “I’m coming to you, I promise.”

“See that you do,” says Nanny Theresa. “And if I were you, young lady, I’d be quick about it.”

I shove the walkie-talkie back into Brody’s hand and turn to Gazelle, pointing down the long, dim corridor. “I need to get inside that dome. Right now.”

“Yes, Commander,” she says as she immediately turns her back to me.

“What should
I
do?” asks a clearly rattled Brody. “I don’t know what’s happening or why, but I need to help. I need to do something!”

“Then you start running right behind us. I’ll send Gazelle back to get you as soon as she’s taken me to the entrance to the dome.”

Brody nods fervently.

“It’s gonna be dark in there,” I mutter as I put my arms around Gazelle’s neck and grip her waist with my legs. “What I wouldn’t give for a flashlight right now.”

“Here,” Brody says as he rummages through his satchel. “I don’t have a flashlight, but will these do?” he says, holding out a fistful of glow sticks and flares.

I smile at him. “Yeah, Brody, those’ll do fine,” I say as I take them and tuck them away in my bag.

“I’ll see you soon,” Brody says, and I give him a stoic nod.

“Let’s go,” I say in Gazelle’s ear.

“Hold tight,” she replies, and my head whips back from the sudden acceleration as Gazelle takes off in a blinding burst of speed down the passageway. The air rushes in my ears as the walls whizz by to the sound of Gazelle’s thudding footsteps echoing all around me. The lights set into the ceiling at four-yard intervals flick past rapidly overhead as Gazelle strides powerfully onward, and in no time at all, I can see the corridor up ahead widening as we approach the quantum-grain reservoir.

Gazelle slides to a halt beside a curving handrail that runs around the edge of a walkway inside a huge concrete cylinder. Lights built into the wall illuminate the reservoir all the way up. It looks like I’d imagine the inside of a city water-storage facility, except in the center there’s a massive pillar-like conduit that extends high up into the middle of a giant circle of darkness above. That’s obviously the underside of the dome, and instead of water being piped up to it, the outer surface of the central tube moves in ascending ripples like it’s completely covered in a pitch-black, shivering liquid.

“The stairs, quickly!” I bark, pointing at the concrete staircase to the right that spirals upward around the wall of the reservoir.

Gazelle nods and dashes toward them, bounding up the stairs a dozen at a time. Piggybacking on Gazelle is not a comfortable experience on level ground, but adding stairs to the equation makes it feel like I’m on the back of a bucking bronco. I hold on as tightly as I can without strangling her as we go higher and higher and higher around the inside of the towering cylinder.

I look above me, and I can see the huge black disc getting closer and closer. Gazelle leaps up the last of the stairs and comes to a skidding stop on a wide landing made of metal grating. At the end of the landing is a ladder with a safety cage around it that reaches thirty feet straight up to a circle of glowing blue lights set into the wide disc of shimmering black.

“There’s the hatch. I’m going in,” I say as I release my arms and legs from Gazelle, step onto the grating, and stride toward the ladder.

“I’ll go get that Brody guy,” Gazelle says as she turns to leave.

“No,” I order her, and she immediately stops in her tracks. “There’s someone very dangerous up there,” I say, pointing toward the hatch. “Brody means well, but he’ll just be another thing for me to worry about if he enters that dome. I need you to climb the ladder behind me and wait by the hatch. When I give you the signal, I want you to get my friend Bettina out of there as quickly as you can.”

“Of course, Commander. What does your friend look like?”

“She’s fifteen years old. She has brown hair, glasses, and she’s wearing jeans and a t-shirt with a picture of Einstein on it. It’s very important that she’s kept safe. She might be the only chance any of us has of getting out of here alive.”

“Yes, Commander,” Gazelle says stoically.

“Even if I’m being attacked, you get her to safety. Understand?”

“Yes, of course,” says Gazelle.

“Thank you,” I say as I take a deep breath and look Gazelle right in the eyes. “Let’s do this.”

I turn to the ladder, grab the rungs, and begin making my way up to the hatch. Gazelle follows right behind me. After a thirty-foot climb I reach the dark-gray hatch, and in the glow of the blue lights around its border, I see a keypad in the center of it. Thanks to Dr. Pierce’s handiwork, its button panel has been levered off and is hanging by a tangle of multicolored electrical wires. I push against the hatch, and it easily opens inward; it’s not even heavy.

I crawl up through the opening onto a shiny, smooth black floor. It isn’t silent inside the dome. I can hear a quiet hissing sound all around me. I shuffle on my knees and look back at Gazelle, who’s perched on the ladder below, looking up at me. I reach into my satchel, take out one of the flares, and close the hatch over her, carefully wedging the flare between the lid and the floor to leave a small gap for Gazelle to hear me through.

“Wait for me to call you,” I whisper.

“Yes, Commander,” she whispers back.

I retrieve a few glow sticks from my bag, get to my feet, and quietly walk around the hatch into the darkness, bending one of the sticks as I go. The activation capsule inside it breaks with a muted snap. I give it a quick shake, and it lights up with a bright green halo in my hand. I hold the stick high, waving it from side to side as I walk farther into the dark, but all I can see is the shiny black floor, illuminated in a circle of green, ten feet in every direction.

I look over my shoulder, and for some reason I don’t understand, I can’t see the ambient light coming from the gap in the hatch behind me. A ripple of fear shudders through me, and my first impulse is to go back and look for it, but the thought of Bit trapped somewhere in here hardens my resolve. I haven’t gone very far, and I know the hatch is vaguely back in that direction, so I decide to lay a trail of bread crumbs, so to speak. I crouch down and put the glow stick on the floor, then I crack another one and walk on another twenty feet or so before I quietly place the second stick on the floor, too.

My heart is beating quickly in my chest, and I gulp nervously as I crack and shake another stick. It lights up in my hand, and after walking twenty more feet into the darkness, I place the third stick down. I turn back to survey my markers, and I freeze in my tracks with frightened surprise. There should be three glow sticks, twenty feet apart from each other, all in a row, pointing the way back to the hatch . . . but I can only see one. The other two have vanished. They stay lit for hours, so they can’t have gone out. I quickly stride back to the last stick I dropped and stand over it, looking in every direction for the next one, but there’s nothing but darkness and that strange, quiet hissing sound all around me.

I’m starting to panic. I want to call out to Gazelle so I have a point of reference in this pitch-black darkness, but I stop myself. That might alert Theresa to Gazelle’s presence and jeopardize my chances of getting Bit to safety. If Theresa has moved or taken my other markers, then she already knows I’m here.

I don’t know what kind of sick game she’s playing, but she can obviously see me, and I can’t see her. She could strike me down in an instant if she wanted to, so what is she waiting for? Maybe she wants me to draw this whole thing out for her own warped satisfaction, have me cowering in the dark, shaking with fear before she does the deed?

Well I’m not having it. Sorry, Nanny, but I refuse to play by your rules. I refuse to be afraid.

“I’m here! Show yourself!” I scream out. My brow furrows with confusion. That didn’t sound right at all. When Bit radioed me from inside the dome, I could hear her voice echoing in the cavernous space. But my voice had no more echo than if I were standing in a tiny room. I don’t know what’s going on, but something doesn’t feel right. I need more light, so I reach into my satchel and pull out a flare. I’m about to pop the plastic cap and light it when a woman’s voice gently whispers through the dark. “Wait.”

I was already on edge, but now my blood feels like it’s boiling with adrenaline as I spin on my heels, glaring into the blackness all around me. “Hello?!” I shout. “Who’s out there?!”

Suddenly a lump begins rising from the floor beside the glow stick at my feet, and I leap backward in fright, holding the flare out in front of me, wishing that it was more than just a glorified Roman candle. Come to think of it, even if I had a knife or gun, I don’t imagine it would do any good against a quantum construct, which is exactly what is growing out of the shiny black ground right in front of me.

The construct is the same color and has the same glossy sheen as the floor it’s emerging from, and it hisses quietly as it gets taller and taller. I anxiously stare at the amorphous blob, not knowing whether to run or not as it rises in a rippling liquid column until it’s standing a few inches higher than me. In the sickly green hue of the glow stick, I watch as the thing begins changing, molding itself into a distinctly womanly shape.

The darkness around me begins to brighten, and when I look around I’m shocked to see that I’m standing inside a small enclosed dome, thirty feet across and fifteen feet high, and the increasingly intensifying bright white light is emanating directly from its curved wall. The glossy black female shape shimmers, then the surface of it quickly begins sliding down from the top like an oily veil, revealing the details of the person underneath.

Whoever she is, she’s facing away from me. First I see long, straight black hair, then shoulders, and in the following few seconds her arms and her back, then her lower body, all the way to her feet, are revealed. She’s wearing a crisp white dress. I’ve only ever seen it in a photograph, and only from the front, but even from the back I recognize it instantly. My heart leaps into my throat, my hands drop loosely to my sides, and the flare slips from my fingers and thuds to the floor.

“Mother?” I whisper bewilderedly.

She slowly turns to face me, and I’m completely lost for words. There she is. The flawless skin of my mother’s brow crinkles with emotion, and her beautiful, gentle sapphire-blue eyes seem to shine with joy. A smile trembles onto her lips, but then it widens into a beaming grin as she suddenly lunges at me with open arms and pulls me into a warm embrace.

“Finn,” she sighs, hugging me tightly as she lets out a breathy giggle. “My darling daughter.”

I don’t know how to react. My mother is dead. She has been ever since I was born. Before today I’ve only ever seen her in photographs, and when her face appeared on that Drone shortly after we arrived here this morning, I was so shocked I fainted. Now her consciousness has a physical form, she’s holding me, and I have absolutely no idea how to feel. This is all too sudden. I’m speechless and numb, and as my mother pulls away and looks at my stunned expression, I can tell that she sees how overwhelming this is for me.