Seed (41 page)

“Didn’t think I’d never hear your voice again,
manito
,” Brood confessed. He moved along a passage, narrow and smooth as the inside of a throat. Its walls glowed pale yellow around him. He’d stopped running. Sweat poured from him. He sensed himself climbing, winding slowly upwards in a long spiral. The light moved with him, letting the passage go dark behind him. The air felt thick, tropical.

“Me neither,” Pollo said.

“Pollo.
Dónde está usted
?”

“Above you. You getting closer.” A light appeared far ahead. The passage’s walls illuminating the way for another. “Landraces coming, Carlos. Hurry.” Brood ran. The light drew nearer. He held the shotgun like a ram before him.

“Stop,” Pollo commanded. To Brood’s right, the wall flexed open, revealing a small chamber full of red pods. Pods like the ones in the Corn Mother’s dome. Brood stepped inside. The wall flexed closed behind him. “Quiet now,” Pollo said. Brood thumbed off the Mossberg’s safety, and waited. Heavy footsteps trundled past. “Okay,
esta bien
,” Pollo said after a moment. Brood stepped forward. The wall flexed open.

“You sound different, little bro,” Brood said as he continued up the passage.

“
Sí
. I’m better.”

“What do you mean?”

“I dream about Mamma here. Do you remember the garden?”

“
Sí
.” Brood smiled. “I remember tomatoes.” Ripe, soft in his hand. The windmill’s metal squeak above the greenhouse’s plastic sheeting. Their mother humming quietly as she pressed fingers into dark soil. “With salt.”

“
Es bueno
,” Pollo agreed. Brood recalled his brother’s vacant gaze, the interstitial space into which he’d stared, even as a toddler. “I like this place,” Pollo said. “Satori.
Siento su vida
.”

Brood came to a sharp bend in the hall, placed his back to the wall, peeked around. Saw only more hallway, and kept on.

“Carlos,” Pollo said after a moment. “I lost her. I don’t know where she went to.”

“
Quien
?”

“The advocate, Carlos. A woman. A killer. She got snake in her.”

“
Entiendo
.” Brood’s hand tightened on the Mossberg’s pistol grip. “I met one in Kansas.”

“Be careful.”

“
Entiendo
.”

Twice more Pollo directed Brood to hide in rooms behind the smooth passage wall while landraces ran past. In one, an egg-shaped membrane stretched wide in the far wall, revealing the city beyond. Flesh folding over steel and brick and old, cracked plexi. Brood saw a strange sky the color of dead skin. Realized it was the dome’s interior. Realized, too, that he was very high up, higher than anything else in the city.

“There’s a fork ahead,” Pollo informed him as he moved up the passage. “Go left. You getting real close.” Brood angled left.

The wall flexed open beside him. A slender woman stood there naked. She smiled needle teeth at him in the hallway’s soft glow.

Brood swung the shotgun around. Pulled the trigger. The Mossberg hammered the space between them. Took a fist-sized bite from the woman’s side. She shrieked, leapt…So fast. Brood felt impact, heard Pollo yelling. Then he was on the floor, the advocate straddling him. Her hand closed on his throat.

“Carlos!” Pollo’s cry reverberated in the passage.

The advocate leaned forward. Her teeth parted. An impossibly long tongue unfurled itself from her mouth. Its tip, dry and coarse, tickled Brood’s cheek.

“Carlos!
Dónde está
?”

Her other hand drew back, extending fingers that were too long. She hissed: laughter.

Something slammed into her. A smear of bestial motion, a sound like stone hitting meat.

It took Brood a moment to realize he still lived. Another to understand the advocate was no longer atop him. He sat up.

She lay on the snakeskin floor ten feet away. Another woman stood over her, arms raking, clawing, a feral blur. The advocate twitched, went still. The woman who had attacked grabbed her, and pulled, grunting. Something snapped. The woman stood, held the advocate’s separated head at arm’s length. Regarded it as though it were something precious.

“Sister,” she whispered, and brought the head close. Pressed its lips to her own and for an instant the two faces hung there, mirrored, identical. Her pale eyes turned to Brood then. She dropped the head with a thud.

Brood leapt to his feet, scrambled for the shotgun. The woman bared carnivorous teeth. Brood brought the Mossberg to bear.

“No!” Pollo’s voice filled the air. “She mine, Brood.”

The advocate’s hips swiveled weirdly, primed with coiled strength. She took a slow step towards Brood. He kept the Mossberg leveled, but didn’t fire. The advocate took another step. Another. A low growl emanated from her throat. She moved carefully past Brood. Languorously tilted her head to one side, indicating he should follow.

“Where you at, Pollo?” Brood asked the air around him.

“Close,” came the answer.

Brood kept his distance as he followed the advocate. Muscle rippled along her back as she walked. He kept the Mossberg aimed.

Soon, an opening appeared in the wall to the advocate’s left. She turned, her smile bright, vicious. She motioned inside.

Brood moved to the opening, saw an ovular room. Luminescent skin walls. Fat pods hanging from the ceiling, connected to what looked like viscera.

“Pollo!” The boy sat opposite the door, cross-legged on the floor in a pool of cold light, his hand pressed to the wall.

Brood rushed to him, sank to his knees, lay the shotgun down. He embraced Pollo. Held him for a long time, squeezing him close. Felt bone and muscle, solid and real. Felt Pollo’s heart beat, slow and steady, against him. He worked his hands over Pollo’s fattened ribs, touched his shoulders, touched fingertips to Pollo’s face. Pollo met Brood’s gaze, calm and unblinking.

“You grown,” was all Brood could think to say when he could speak. He palmed tears from his eyes. Pollo smiled. His eyes shone with intelligence.

“You been eating, too,” he said.

“The army.” Brood shrugged, then he embraced Pollo again. The walls flickered, shifted colors around them. After a moment, Pollo pushed him away.

“You stink, homes. Bad.”

“Bodies,” Brood said. “That bitch made me piss myself, too.” He looked down at himself and shook his head. “That’s twice.”

“Don’t got much time.” Pollo held out a hand. “Got a knife?”

“
Claro
.” Brood pulled the pig sticker from his waistband and handed it over. Without hesitation Pollo placed the blade against his arm, the arm with which he leaned against the wall. He cut deep. “Fuck are you doing!” Brood cried. He saw then that his brother wasn’t touching the wall. Pollo’s arm
was
the wall. The skin of his forearm had melded seamlessly with the skin of Satori’s wall.

“
Tranquilo
,” Pollo said. Brood reached out, touched the wall where Pollo’s hand should have been. Satori’s skin was warm and smooth.

“What happened to you?”

“Something good,” Pollo said. He waved Brood away with the knife, then put the blade once more to his arm, just beneath his elbow, and began to cut.

….

It hurt to breathe. Beyond the Go Pill-and-morphine vibrations rippling along her nerves, Doss sensed ribs grinding against one another in ways they shouldn’t. Her heads-up display flickered, went out, came back on. Spider web cracks lined her visor. Beyond them Doss saw the charnel ruin of her impact with Satori. It covered her. Shredded muscle, tendons, strips of skin. Something warm and wet trickled along her side, down her legs, over her neck. Hydraulic fluid, she hoped.

“3-A on the ground,” reported a Ranger. 3-A was Chalk 3’s leader, Ranger A…Jake. “All dogs outside the dome, roll call.” His voice was cool, all business. It filled Doss with pride. In the darkness, she smiled. Rangers reported in. She chinned her mic.

“3-A, this is Lead. Give me a sitrep.”

“I’m on the airfield. Outside the dome, inside the outer wall.” He paused. Over the radio came unmistakable hot bark of an M-8, as familiar to Doss as the sound of her own voice. “Got some company.”

Doss toggled her display to the widest possible view. Saw two red circles representing Satori’s domes, the square outline of the outer wall. Between them, the blue squares of perhaps fifteen of her Rangers scattered across the airfield’s broad emptiness. Red dots, too many to count, surrounded them.

“3-A,” she told him, “you are lead. All Rangers are yours. Gather as many as you can, then punch through the nearest wall and make your way to where the Falcons can evac you. Get my kids home.”

“Copy that, Boss Momma.” Jake gave orders: “All dogs, you heard the boss. Rally on my position”

“Falcons,” Doss commanded, “your dust-off is on 3-A’s priority.”

The pilots copied. On Doss’ display, the blue squares of her Rangers began to coalesce. She toggled to her immediate view…Nothing but red. Overwatch, she realized, read Satori Tower as one big hostile. Not far from the truth. Also fucking useless. She toggled the display off. Gripped a slab of architecturally thick bone that lay across her chest and, with a painful hydraulic whine from her suit, pressed it away.

Sat up, found herself in a narrow passage, slick with blood from her impact, running parallel to the wall. She chinned her mic.

“Where you at, Gomez?”

“Below you, Boss.” Gomez’s voice sounded thin with pain. “Guessing thirty feet. Missed the hole you made.”

“You functional?”

A pause. Then: “Fucking aye. On my way to you.”

“Negative. I’ll come to you.”

“Copy that.”

Joints in Doss’ suit, warped from impact, screeched in protest as she stood. One of the suit’s legs didn’t work right. Heat radiated into her back from a fucked battery pack.

She hefted the breach gun, aimed it casually at the floor a few feet away. Bone and meat shrapneled past her in the blowback as she fired the third barrel. Smoke cleared, revealing a hole in the floor big enough for her to drop through, so she did.

The drop suit’s leg gave out on impact. She propped herself on a knee. Milky light spread around her, revealing the smooth walls of a passage that stretched like clean intestine in either direction.

Gomez stood there, peering out through a shattered visor, surrounded by the mutilation of his impact through Satori Tower’s wall. Pain contorted his face. One arm of the drop suit had collapsed, twisted out to the side and behind. His other hand held his M-8 up and ready. He tried to smile.

“Seen some stupid shit before, Boss, but damn…”

“We’re in, aren’t we?” Doss pointed to the twisted armor of Gomez’s arm. “You okay?” He clenched teeth, nodded. Over coms, Jake shouted orders above the din of gunfire.

“Gotta hurry.”

“Let’s do some killing,” Gomez agreed. “Which way?”

Doss’d meant for them to drop through Satori Tower’s top, straight into the Fathers’ laps. Now they were far below the intended target.

“Up,” she said.

They moved, Doss holding the breach gun’s fat barrel out before her, Gomez trailing, M-8 up and ready. The strange pale light skimmed along the walls with them, revealing an intersection. A wider passage running perpendicular.

“Hello.” The voice came from everywhere. Doss halted, thumbed up her visor, looked at Gomez. He raised eyebrows and shook his head like,
fucked if I know
. “You have come to do me harm.” The voice was male, preternaturally smooth. “You will not succeed.”

“Am I speaking with Bill Coach?” Doss inquired.

“I am Satori.”

“So much for initiative,” Gomez observed.

“Your people are killing my Rangers on the airfield,” Doss said. “Stop your attack.”

“It was you and your soldiers who attacked me.” The voice was calm as a weather report. “They must die. You must die.”

“You attacked us,” Doss stated to the air in front of her. “With the Tet. We came for clean seed. Give us that, and we’ll stand down.”

“The Tet,” the voice said. “Yes. The Fathers were greedy in its application. An inability to balance immediate goals with long-term self-interest. A primate failing. They should have had more patience. As it applies to me, however, the Tet does serve as an act of preemptive self-defense.”

“Suit yourself.” Doss slapped her visor back down and gave Gomez a signal.

They turned right. The tonnage of their suits’ hydraulic compression pounding holes in the rattler-patterned floor with each ten-meter step as they ran. Upwards in a long spiral. Upwards, towards the Fathers…or whatever had spoken to them.

CHAPTER 28

here was very little blood. Pollo rose to his feet. Shoulders back, exuding physical presence. The hieroglyphs on his naked torso looked like religious etchings in the wall’s dopplering light. He held up the stump of his left arm and gazed proudly into Brood’s face. Already skin had begun to grow, sealing the wound.

“
Curado
,” he said. Brood stared, shook his head.

“Let’s get the fuck out of here.”

“We ain’t going out, big bro. We going
in
.”

“
De que estas hablando
?”

Pollo smiled. He glowed with the sort of weird fervor that reminded Brood of people who loved Jesus too hard, or liked killing just a little too much. He started to speak, but the heavy thump of a nearby detonation cut him short. The sound of a very big gun. The advocate growled. Swayed back and forth on her feet, something savage held barely in check.