Infinity Rises (24 page)

My left hand is . . . gone.

Rational thought leaves me completely. The tattered, fleshy stump at the end of my arm simply doesn’t make any sense. It can’t be real, so I tell myself that it isn’t as I scramble to my feet and desperately hobble to the tree. I collapse against the trunk, and the deafening foghorns blast again. My long, agonized scream is completely drowned out by the brutal sound of the R.A.M.s’ guns as pulverized wood chips and dust fill the air and thick, leafy branches thud on the paving all around me. I’m convinced that my eyes must be playing tricks on me when the entire massive shadow cast by the wide canopy of the tree suddenly begins to creep along the ground.

A loud, slow creaking sound is soon followed by a jarring racket of snapping and splintering, and as I look up, I realize with horror that the large tree is tilting over. A meter above my head, the bark cracks, and then suddenly the trunk ruptures into a ragged line of fractures as the bulk of the tree begins toppling toward me. Scrambling and stumbling away from what’s left of the trunk, I only barely avoid being crushed as two-thirds of the tree comes crashing down around me.

A ton of solid wood and leafy canopy hitting the ground sounds exactly like a giant wave breaking on a rocky shore, and I’m smothered in the outer edge of it. I shuffle on my elbows out from underneath the fallen tree. I’m completely exposed, and I can hear the thudding footsteps tromping closer. Dazed, I roll onto my back, and my defensive reflexes kick in as I raise my hand to shield my face. But no shade covers my eyes—instead, a steady trickle of blood splashes on my cheek as I stare at the empty space where my hand used to be. I feel sick. I lower my arm and see the towering robot come into view. It’s joined by another, then a third, fourth, and fifth, all of them standing in a line like gigantic, green statues.

“INTRUDER DETECTED,” booms the center robot. It raises its massive arm toward me, and the metal rails of its weapon fizz with blue sparks as its wailing death-scream screeches through the air.

So this is how it ends. I expected to feel some kind of emotion when I finally came face-to-face with the moment of my own death. Fear? Anger? Sorrow? Even rage would be appropriate. But what I’m feeling can really only be described as intensely . . .
annoyed.

Suddenly every surface of everything around me lights up with spots of dazzling blue light. They’re everywhere: on the ground, on the fallen tree, on my body, and all over the five huge mechanoids. They look like scattered, indigo-colored laser beams reflecting off a mirror ball. As the lights dance across the R.A.M.s, the one in the center starts to swing its massive arm from side to side like it’s trying to swat a fly. The rest of the robots begin acting strangely, too. Their domed heads swivel and tilt in every direction as missiles extend and retract haphazardly over their shoulders. One mechanoid turns and clunks into its neighbor as another giant robot just stands there staring upward, its glowing red eyes pulsing as if hypnotized.

I don’t know what’s happening, but this may be my only chance to escape. I try to roll onto my knees so I can stand. The pain-suppressing properties of adrenaline are wearing thin as fresh warning tones sear through my mind and skewers of genuine agony begin stabbing up and down my left forearm. I feel dizzy. The loss of blood and the loud clanging in my head, mixed with the continuous screaming of the R.A.M.’s weapon, are taking a brutal toll. I’m weak and confused and disoriented. I feel so cold, but . . . my skin is also strangely warm at the same time.

I’m trying to push myself up off the ground when I notice the whining sound of the robot’s gun is changing. It’s getting deeper and louder as my skin gets hotter and hotter. My vision fades in and out of darkness as I struggle to stay conscious. The wail of the mechanoid’s gun is engulfed inside a deafening roar, and I collapse onto my stomach as a scorching wind suddenly whips at my body. I fear that I’ve finally lost my mind. Either it’s that or the gates of hell are opening up to receive me. I’ve never believed in it before, but . . . after all I’ve done, I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the deepest, darkest pits in the bowels of damnation has been reserved especially for me.

I take a deep breath and try to shake off my ridiculous thoughts. My vision clears, and my eyes regain their focus on reality. There, less than nine meters away, I see the actual source of all this light and noise. A pure-black transport has landed in the courtyard. It’s much smaller and sleeker than the Gryphon 400s. On the nose of it, where a set of landing lights should be, is a rotating array of sparkling lenses, casting beams of blue light in every direction. A door slides open on the side of the transport, and three or four people wearing black uniforms leap out and come running toward me. I struggle to keep my eyes open, but they feel like lead, and I’m fighting a losing battle.

Everything goes dark.

Someone grabs me underneath my arms. Two more sets of hands cradle my legs, and I’m lifted off the ground. There’s shouting. I can’t make out the words over the noise, but the intense feeling of annoyance washes over me again, and this time it’s mixed with equal parts of worry and anger. I’m jostled as I’m carried and lifted. I’m laid down on a cool surface, straps are tightened across my torso, and there’s a sting in my thigh. I feel a sudden burst of energy, and when I open my eyes, there are people in gold visors and black combat masks all around me.

The transport lifts off, and through the open door, I can see the ground moving away. One of the people flips up their visor and removes their face mask. It’s a pretty young woman; she may even be younger than me. She motions to someone, and they pass her two microphone headsets. She quickly puts one on, slips the other onto my head, and speaks. Her voice sounds tinny through the earphones, but I can hear her very clearly. “Welcome aboard, Commander. I’m Caitlin, but everyone calls me ‘Gazelle.’ It looks like we got to you just in time. It’s an honor to finally meet you face-to-face.”

Commander? I’m no one’s Commander; she must have mistaken me for someone else. I ignore her and turn toward the door, breathing deeply to clear my head, and as the transport turns, I can see the little blue dots of light still dancing over the mechanoids below.

A male voice pipes in through the earphones. “The electronic scrambler will lose effectiveness once we hit the fifty-meter mark. If those R.A.M.s start shooting, everybody hold on to something.”

Someone grabs my left wrist and plunges the stump into biting coldness. I look down; the girl named Gazelle has stuck it in a container of pink gel. I inhale sharply as the warning tones and pain intensify for a fleeting moment . . . Then they’re gone. She removes the container, pulls an aerosol can from a med bag, and sprays the nub at the end of my wrist with a thick coating of liquid bandage.

The transport swings around, and someone shouts through the headset, “Missiles incoming!” Out the door, I can see the heat-seekers climbing toward us as the aircraft veers wildly to the right. I notice the flickering blue dots of the electronic scrambler in the vapor trails of some of the missiles, and suddenly a few of them begin changing course, curving away in wildly different directions.

The transport drops through the air, and my stomach feels like it’s floating. Explosions shake the fuselage, and the aircraft soon begins to climb again. “That was close,” says a voice.

A few seconds later, I hear an announcement that immediately grabs my attention. “I have a visual on a Gryphon.” I look over and see a man leaning out the opposite door of the transport, pressing the “Magnify” button in the side of his visor. “It appears to have initiated an emergency landing,” he says, “but it seems to be in pretty good shape.”

“Copy that; I’m bringing her around. Point me in the right direction,” says the pilot.

“It touched down where Dome Two
used
to be,” replies the man beside the door.

“What do you mean ‘used to be’?” asks Gazelle as she peers out the open door.

“The dome is gone,” says another voice. “I can’t see anyone outside the Gryphon, but there might be survivors trapped inside.”

“OK, I see it,” says the pilot. “I’m gonna land as close as I can. Keep it quick, please, you guys. Those R.A.M.s are probably on their way.”

Different voices join in a chorus of “Copy that,” and I lean toward the door as the transport descends.

Below us, I see wide-sweeping staircases, paths, and gently curving ramps all connecting multiple levels between twenty or so buildings. There are sharp, angular, modern structures, just like in the courtyard, but among those there are also buildings with ancient Greek and Roman columns, a stylized take on a Japanese pagoda, a medieval-looking castle turret, and even a pyramid that resembles a contemporary Mayan temple. Tall silver towers support the monorail track that winds unobtrusively throughout the sector; beneath it, the paths are lined with cherry-blossom trees, artistically shaped sand gardens, and flowing water features. It’s all really quite beautiful, but as our transport roves overhead, the unmistakable focal point gapes toward the sky like a hole in the earth.

A huge, dark-gray circle spanning at least a 150 meters wide sits on a plateau directly in the center of everything, and there, with two-thirds of its fuselage lying inside that circle, is Otto’s transport. Our aircraft descends, and as we get closer to the ground, I notice what look like human figures standing motionless on some of the paths connecting the buildings. No, they’re not people. They’re service Drones, frozen in place like someone flicked a switch and stopped time, just like the one we saw outside the Security Station. The collapsed dome and those inactive androids clearly mean the power is still out in this sector. Judging from recent robot experience, I’m going to say that’s a very good thing, because as scattered throughout the sector as those service Drones are, I can’t look anywhere without spotting one underneath a tree or standing beside a building.

Our transport turns 180 degrees and touches down on a slab of white stone beside the outer edge of the disc. It looks flat and dark and solid, but Otto’s partially submerged transport tells me that the quantum grains must be nearly chest deep. There’s a flurry of movement as black uniforms leap out the side doors and begin running toward Otto’s transport. The girl stays by my side. She’s smiling down at me, but that weird flood of angry, annoyed concern washes over me like before.

And this time, I realize where it’s coming from. If I wasn’t so messed up, I would’ve figured out why I was feeling these weird emotions sooner.

I look toward the cockpit and see him climbing out of the copilot’s seat. Hunching under the low ceiling and dressed all in black, he makes his way toward me and kneels beside Gazelle. His ever-present combat mask and visor are hiding his face, as usual. In fact, when I think about it, I’ve only seen his eyes once in the entire two years that I’ve known him.

“She’s pretty banged up, but I think she’s gonna be OK,” says Gazelle. “She lost her left hand.”

He looks down at the stump and then raises his own hand. The metallic sheen on the fingers has been worn away by combat, but as far as cybernetic prosthetics are concerned, it suits him. I remember the mission in the jungles of Sudan when he lost his real arm—chopped off at the elbow by a warlord with a machete. I was the one saving his life that time, but, to this day, it boggles my mind that in the middle of all that chaos, he still managed to save that stupid friendship bracelet of his. Pulled it off his own severed limb like it was the most precious thing in the world. Call me a cynic, but a robotic arm just doesn’t look quite as cool with a brightly colored braid of twine tied around the wrist. He rests his cold metal hand on my arm, and I can feel a warm glow of emotion emanating toward me.

“Hi, Zero,” I whisper. “It’s good to see you, too.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

A voice shouting in the earphones snaps me out of our little reunion. “Hello! Can anyone hear me?”

The rescue team has reached the downed transport, and a ripple of anger shudders through me as I hear Captain Delgado’s muted voice reply from inside it. “Yes, I can hear you! We have multiple casualties, the cargo door is blocked, and the side hatch won’t budge!”

I get up on one elbow and squint toward the transport. “My friend is in there,” I rasp.

Zero puts a hand on my shoulder and gently pushes me back down, but I resist. “I need to see if she’s OK.”

Zero reaches up and jabs at a control panel on the roof, and a series of three holographic displays flicker on inside the cabin, each one showing a live feed being broadcast from the visors of the members of the rescue team. Each screen is labeled along the bottom with details about each team member. Their age, sex, pulse rate, adrenaline level, GPS coordinates, and code name.

On the display, I see the first-person view of the team member whose code name is “Jackdaw.” He makes his way around to the right of the crippled transport, climbs up over it, and arrives at the badly dented hatch. “Mantis, what’s it like in there?” he asks.

I quickly look at the screen labeled with the same code name. The writing says Mantis is a fifteen-year-old girl, and, through her visor, I see her placing her hands on the hull of the transport. Suddenly the picture starts to change, morphing into strange pulsating lines of rainbow colors that make little sense to me. They clearly mean something to Mantis, though, because she quickly and quietly begins whispering a tally of numbers. “The good news is there are twenty-three survivors,” Mantis says in a soft, almost meek voice. “The bad news is nine of them are in critical condition.”

“And the worst news?” asks Jackdaw.

“I can see ten bodies with no blood movement at all. They’re dead. It’s a mess in there, Jack.”

The one she called “Jack” shouts at the side of the transport, “Get back from the door! I’m gonna cut through!” I’m wondering how he’s going to do that without any tools when he grabs his index finger and twists it until the fingernail has been rotated right around to the opposite side of where it’s supposed to be. He peels an unusually rubbery pad of skin from his fingertip, and underneath, instead of flesh and bone, there’s a metal point tipped with a tiny, crystalline lens. He points his weird finger at the side of the transport, and suddenly there’s a spot of intensely bright light. Red-hot molten metal begins bubbling and smoking at the edges of the semicircular line that he’s carving around the damaged door latch. He stops cutting, folds the skin over the lens, twists his finger back the way it was, and pounds on the latch with the heel of his palm. The cut section drops into the transport, and he grips the edge of the hole and pulls. The hatch jolts open, but only a crack. He pulls again, but it doesn’t budge. The hinges must be warped on the inside. He looks over his shoulder at a teammate standing at the ready just behind him. “Bulldog, I need a hand with this.”

I watch through the visor feed as the eighteen-year-old girl with the code name “Bulldog” climbs up to the hatch. She reaches into the gap and wrenches open the door so forcefully it slams against the side of the transport with a loud, echoing thud. Bulldog is unbelievably strong.

“Who are you guys?” I ask Gazelle.

She smiles down at me and says, “We’re the Saviors.”

On Bulldog’s visor feed the first person that comes into view is . . . Captain Delgado. His face is sweaty and bloody, but not nearly as bloody as I’d like it to be. Bulldog offers a hand; the Captain gladly takes it and begins climbing out of the open hatch. I’m staring intently at the visor feeds, hoping to see Otto’s frizzy hair or big doe eyes and freckled nose, when the pilot suddenly shouts over his shoulder, “Here they come!”

The three holoscreens cut out and are replaced by a single, large one, and displayed on that screen, tromping down the wide staircase at the top of the sector, are the five hulking Remote Articulated Mechanoids. They’re hundreds of meters away, but the rising streaks of smoke spreading in splayed lines from their shoulders are unmistakable. Five robots launching five missiles each means twenty-five high-explosive missiles are heading in this direction.

Zero signals to the pilot to take off, and then he extends three fingers and sweeps them into the side of his downturned fist. I know Zero’s hand signals. He’s just volunteered us to be a flying target.

Gazelle nods and immediately barks into her headset. “Evacuate, and sit safe down there. We’ll be back after the fireworks.”

On the screen, I watch everything on the ground speed away as the trails of the missiles begin curving up toward us. Zero quickly makes his way to the copilot seat and flicks a couple of switches in the roof of the cockpit. Two holoscreens pop up in front of his face with words written across them. One screen says, “SCRAMBLER ACTIVATED,” and the other says, “MAIN GUN ONLINE, MISSILE LAUNCHER READY.”

The transport veers sharply. I can see the little blue lights sparkling over the white of the missiles’ vapor, and soon a dozen or so heat-seekers begin winding and darting out of control. Gazelle leaps at the wall and slams her fist against a large, red button. Two clamps holding a hinge-mounted rotary gun pop open, and she swings the cluster of barrels out the side door. As the transport comes around, Gazelle clutches the trigger, and the cabin is filled with light and the clinking spray of bullet casings as the rotary machine gun blazes to life, raining fire down toward the R.A.M.s.

Zero waves his fingers through the gun-control holoscreen in front of him, and a glowing line of sparks pours out of the top of the transport toward the robots.

On the ground, I can see dust being thrown high into the air as both streams of large-caliber-machine-gun fire cut thick swaths into the staircase. Two of the R.A.M.s are engulfed inside a cloud of pulverized stone, and yet a whole new set of fresh missiles puff out from inside the haze and spread into the air like the fanning tail of a peacock. The three mechanoids on the right quickly begin tromping sideways across the stairs, firing missiles from their shoulders as the other two bulky, green robots emerge from the dust on the left.

Zero stabs three fingers through the missile-control screen. A “Lock-on” signal flashes red, and as he pulls his hand out of the hologram, three dark lines suddenly streak away from our transport. The pilot gains altitude to put some distance between us and the more than twenty new heat-seekers speeding our way. Zero’s missiles hit the staircase with a resounding explosion, and the two R.A.M.s disappear from view inside a massive plume of fire.

The blue beams of the scrambler dance through the smoky air. It seems to be working, as a dozen or so projectiles twirl and loop wildly. Even at this height and through the noise of the engines, I can hear the thuds of the errant missiles exploding on the ground below. But not all of them have been thrown off course. There are still maybe ten or twelve in the sky . . . and they’re closing in fast.

Zero flicks another switch, and those familiar lines of red flares begin shooting out behind us. The pilot swings the transport around wildly, and my eyes are glued to the screen in front of me as heat-seekers dip and turn toward us. Explosions rock the air, and I hold on to the straps across my body as tightly as I can as the turbines throttle into full burn and the pilot nosedives the transport. The outside camera must be motion tracking the missiles, because the view on the display follows them no matter which way the aircraft is heading, and, right now, we’re heading for the ground.

I can hear the pilot’s rapid breathing hissing through my earphones. He’s panicking, and it shows in the way he’s flying as the transport pulls up barely ten meters from the paving below us, missing the top of a cherry tree by an arm’s length. There are still missiles on our tail. Zero releases more flares as the pilot only just manages to veer out of the way of a silver tower and fly
underneath
a section of monorail track.

Plumes of fire erupt behind us, and there’s a screeching metallic whine. I look out the side door to see the silver tower we so narrowly missed is now toppling in a burning wake of detonations . . . and it’s bringing a large part of the monorail track right down with it.

The pilot swerves to avoid a huge falling slab of concrete and takes the transport dangerously low as we go hurtling along a wide-open promenade lined with cherry-blossom trees. Large chunks of the monorail track tumble and thud heavily behind us as we recklessly skim only a few meters above the path. We’re so close to the ground that the transport barrels straight through an inactive service Drone, completely obliterating it into a flying jumble of silver limbs and orange fluid.

The pilot strains back on the control stick, the transport rises into the air, and as we go higher, something below catches my eye. Tiny, twinkling lights have illuminated the canopies of the cherry-blossom trees at the far end of the promenade. I watch as the next trees light up, then the next. Trees bordering both sides of the wide path are lighting up one after another, the gentle glow filtering through their petals, making each treetop look like a pink cloud in the fading afternoon sun.

For a fleeting moment, I feel almost . . . serene.

BOOM!

The jarring percussion and the shuddering fuselage snap me back to harsh reality as another missile hits the new spray of flares spitting out behind the transport. Two more explosions rock the aircraft as the pilot brings us around. Clinging to handholds in the roof, Gazelle glares, narrow eyed, at the display floating in the middle of the cabin and lets out a huge sigh of relief. Those heat-seekers don’t give up easily, but it looks like somehow we survived them all.

As the transport slows and hovers high above the dark circle, Zero gives the pilot a thumbs-up, and I look out the door toward the staircase at the top of the sector. Those R.A.M.s are at least ten meters tall, so, even from way up here, I can clearly see two of them lying in a large, blackened crater of rubble. I can tell by the red pinpoints of light swiveling on their heads and their jerkily twitching limbs that they’re still active, but one of them is missing a leg, and the other has been completely blown in half. It’s a small victory, but we’ve still got the other three to deal with, and, to my horror . . . I can see them moving in the direction of Otto’s transport.

There’s a panicked line of people hurriedly filing away from the wreck and heading downhill toward the buildings. I strain my eyes out the side door and see a group of soldiers with their rifles helping some of the wounded. I spot Margaux and Percy propping up a limping Brent. I see the Professor tottering alongside the girl named Jennifer . . . but I don’t see Otto.

I hold on to hope, trying to ignore the fact that some people down there are lying on the ground in a carefully arranged row off to the side of the transport. None of them are moving, no one is tending to them, and the only glances they receive as the survivors pass by are fleeting and solemn. I quickly scan the line, and my stomach seizes when I see a school uniform. I glare toward the body, and as our transport slowly descends, I breathe a sigh of relief. It isn’t Otto; it’s Jennifer’s friend Amy. Otto is still alive and inside that transport . . . She just has to be, and any second now, she’s gonna be climbing through that hatch.

Please be OK, Bettina.

As the pilot takes us down toward the plateau, Gazelle suddenly barks into her headset, “There are three, I repeat, three mechs approaching from the north. They’ll be on top of you in a matter of minutes.”

“The Gryphon came down hard,” Jack replies. “We’ve still got some live ones inside the transport, wedged in pretty tight. Bulldog is working as fast as she can, and I’m trying to cut them out, but today’s training session drained my battery dead. Can you give us any more time?”

“You need to hurry!” shouts Gazelle.

“We bloody well know that!” replies Bulldog.

“No, you don’t understand!” bellows Gazelle. “Get out of there now! The dome!”

“What about the dome?” grunts Bulldog. “There is no sodding do—Oh my god.”

Gazelle reaches up and jabs at the control panel, and the single display switches back to the three holoscreens showing the live visor feeds from the rescue team. Every screen shows a slightly different angle of exactly the same thing. A gigantic dark convex wall is rising from the far side of the massive circle, curving into the sky like a colossal black wave. It’s growing bigger and reaching higher with every passing second, and I watch as it extends up and over, forming the crown of the dome, and then begins steadily curving directly down toward the crippled transport. I don’t know what will happen when that wall comes down on that aircraft, but two-thirds of the transport is lying inside the boundary, and by the way the rescue team is suddenly scrambling, I’m guessing it’s probably not going to be good. But what makes it a thousand times worse and fills me with gut-wrenching dread is the fact that . . . Otto is still inside.

The pilot tilts the nose of the transport, and we drop toward the plateau. He levels out just above the landing area and deftly touches down a few meters away from the edge of the massive circle. Bulldog and Mantis run toward the open side door, and Gazelle greets them with an angry glare as she bellows at their combat masks, “Where the hell is Jack?”

“He’s still in there!” shouts Bulldog.

I look at the visor feeds. Two screens show Gazelle’s infuriated expression as she angrily stares out the door, but on the third one I can see the caved-in side of the cargo hold inside the transport and Jackdaw’s hands gripping a metal bar as he feverishly tries to lever a twisted piece of fuselage off the leg of that Dean kid. Dean is either dead or unconscious, because his eyes are closed and he isn’t moving.

“Get the hell out of here!” Jack screams.

“No!” screeches a reply. My heart lifts. I’d know that mule-stubborn voice anywhere.

Jack turns, and through his visor feed I see her lying on her side with her arm shoulder deep in a gap between two buckled struts of framework. “I’ve almost got it!” she shrieks.