I wrap my hand around his throat and tear out the wires going into the ports just in front of his ears. His consciousness falls out of its licentious revelry and back into his war-scarred, tech-enhanced body. I strangle him and then break his neck like a sheaf of dry hay.
Concerned, Cassius comes over. “You murderous hypocrite.” His expressionless helmet fixes on the frozen dream above the dead Green before he looks away in disgust. “Venusians.” He makes a spitting sound. “Found an architect, with healthier dreams.” I follow him to a slender Green woman with narrow eyes and the tattoo of an architect over her right eyebrow. Her delirium is tamer. She flies atop a scaled beast over a gloomy fortress lit in green light. The black mountains that surround the fortress are jagged enough to have been hewn by a giant with a scythe. Her eyelids flutter as Cassius eases her out of the dream. She starts. Her eyes focus on her new, frightening reality. As she tries to scream, I wrap Bad Lass around her neck and say: “Your life is in your hands. Don’t drop it.”
—
The Green architect does not choose to drop it. She is slight, probably a third of my weight, and so nervous her thin fingers shake on the keys of the hallway terminal. I made her access it manually so I can curb anypotential mischief. Cassius keeps a lookout. The Green’s program filters through thousands of images. The brigs are filled with prisoners—most of them Golds or Grays—but no Sevro. She widens the search, delving into high-security zones until I have her stop on a bleach-white security room. A man lies in the fetal position, clad in a yellow prisoner’s jumpsuit, his head encased in a giant wolf helmet. Cassius must hear my heart beat faster.
“Got him?” he asks without turning.
“Maybe.” I zoom in on the prisoner’s exposed hands until I see a skull tattoo on the back of his left. Still not convinced, I assess the scars on his right hand. They match the ones Sevro received from Atalantia’s cajir war beasts on Earth. I swallow, nervous now that I’m so close. “That’s Sevro.” I check my chronometer. If Aurae is on schedule, she’ll have landed theArchimedesand finished her space walk on the sixth construction spindle by now. Our insurance should be in order. “Let’s go get him.”
With our jamField hiding us from cameras, I put the Green on a razor leash and force her to lead us. She unlocks the maintenance lifts to take us as close as we can get to Sevro’s prison. Accessing the maintenance crawl spaces, I have Cassius release a Sun Industries spider drone in the ventilation ducts. He guides it via the uplink in his helm until it peers through the vents into the high-security block. It crawls in and begins to pump gas from its carry-pod. An alarm blares inside and the Grays on duty scramble for their helmets. At the same time, I thrust the Green toward the main door controls.
Shaking, she hunches over the controls until the door hisses open. I drive my elbow into the back of her head and move in low and fast just as the spider explodes in stutters of white light. The first Gray turns toward the door. He’s blind when I spear him through his armor and heart. I lift him up and run with him as a shield. Guns crackle. Slugs slam into the Gray’s armor. But I’m into them, and that’s where I do my best killing.
Shoving the Gray off Bad Lass I cut at a man holding a rifle and take both his arms off at the elbows. I kick the other way and snap a Gray’s neck as I catch him under the jaw. I whip another around by his ankles and jerk him down from the level above, retracting the blade and taking his feet off, and then slam the razor into the crest of another Gray’s helmet. He parts like split wood. I whip at two others to either side of me.The damage to their helmets is superficial, but it buys Cassius time to shoot both Grays as he follows behind me.
“Three o’clock,” I call. “Low.”
Cassius ducks just as the Obsidian’s axe sweeps past where his head was moments before. In the same motion, Cassius sweeps his razor over his head in a circle, dividing one of the two charging Obsidians at the waist. His blade catches in the armor of the other. He blocks a second axe-strike with his aegis, a glowing shield emitted by his left vambrace, and rolls to free his blade. The Obsidian’s next swing crashes down. The axe sparks against his pulseShield and rebounds. Cassius stabs his razor two-handed under the Obsidian’s armpit, taking his opponent under the jaw. The blade emerges out the top of the Obsidian’s helmet. Cassius recalls his blade and cleans it as he stands.
“Clear,” he says. “I’ll hold here. Get your Goblin.”
I stumble over the twitching bodies and tear a pass card off a centurion’s armor. I race down the security block’s main corridor until I reach Sevro’s door where I wave the pass card. The heavy metal retracts upward and I burst into the cell.
Sevro lies in the center of the white room. The wolf helmet on his head is so heavy the act of lifting it from the floor makes the veins in his neck bulge. I race to him and with a careful swing, cut the lock on the helmet. I sheathe my razor and tear the helmet away. Sevro’s face is dewy and crusted with dried saliva, dead skin, hair, and yeast. He smells as cheesy as a popped cyst. His eyes blink out at me from the tangle.
They are Gray.
The man has Sevro’s tattoos. His scars. But he is not Sevro.
“Hellllllp meeeee,” the imposter begs.
“Oh. Shit.” I drop the imposter. “Cassius! Trap!”
Booms sound from the Hall. Cassius fills the doorway, his rifle shouldered. “Darrow.” He stares at the imposter at my feet. “They’ve blocked the exit. Two squads at least.”
I raise my helmet. “We have to punch through them. It’s our only—
“Move!” I shout as the cell door begins to close with Cassius in its way.
Cassius hurls himself into the cell. The door slams down behind him with enough force to crush granite. He rolls to his feet, razor out again.
“You idiot. What was that?” I shout.
“You said ‘Move’!”
“The other way!”
“You didn’t specify which direction!”
“Who dives into a bloodydamn cell?” I snap.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The blood on Bad Lass hits the floor harder with each drop. I feel the unmistakable twinge in my stomach, a leaden weight in the brain and limbs. “Gravity. There must be a well under the floor. We have to get out.” I pull a breaching charge from my thigh pack and toss it to Cassius. The gravity increases exponentially and the charge falls short. My feet rise with excruciating slowness and descend with a force greater than any horse’s kick. My pulseArmor is tough. Not top of the line, as I’m accustomed to wearing, but tough and battle-tested. Still, it succumbs to the weight. My knee drives into the floor hard enough to dent it. Cassius keeps his feet. He trudges toward the door with the charge in hand.
“Elephant…on my…gory chest,” Cassius says through gritted teeth. Blood pounds in my head. Ten times the weight it would be on Earth. My heart gallops from the strain of pushing it through my veins. I crash down like an ancient Martian godTree. I land poorly, and feel the cold needle-fire down my left arm as a nerve pinches in my neck. I lay there wheezing. Cassius burbles something I can’t understand. He must not make it to the door. There is no explosion. There is no Sevro. Did Apollonius ever have him? I’ve been played for an utter fool.
A voice too vibrant, too ravening to belong to anyone but Apollonius comes from a speaker above.“Darrow, Darrow, Darrow. Truly you are divine. For you have answered my prayers. Welcome to the Dockyards of the Minotaur. Welcome to your doom.”
