Broken: A Plague Journal (13 page)

“I shouldn’t tell you this,” his eyes swept the construct, “but Al has a little crush.”

Suspicion confirmed. Only in a universe I’d made would that happen. “Well... Huh. Send her my regards. Tell her to keep up the good work. The Author appreciates all she’s done. Purpose be and all that jive.”

“You conceited prick.” Another sip through the grin. “‘The Author,’ huh? I’ll be sure to tell her.” He winked.

West called to me from the other table.

“Better go, Sam. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“Good luck with your insertions.”

“Good luck with your own.” I patted his back as I stood. “Bring Alina with you tomorrow.”

“Ha! Will do, buckaroo.” Sam snapped to fade through the echoes of his best Hank impression.

“How’re the boys?”

“Getting by.” Paul sat down, the now-cold steak on the table before him. He thought it away.

“Nice Jedi powers, Obi-Wan.”

“Nice fishsticks, Batman.”

Benton looked from West to Paul to West, rolled her eyes. Her gaze fell flatly back to the numbers on her glass.

“Working through recess, Hope?”

“No rest for the quantum theorists.”

“Any leads?”

“If we pick up the bear, it should push us to Alpha fifty-five-to-sixty-over. Seems that toy was a big part of our target’s pattern.”

“God, I hated that fucking cartoon.” West grumbled over his ketchup and maybefish. “And those toys were just creepy.”

“I never had toys.” Benton didn’t look up from her calculations.

West studied his plate.

“You can play with Honeybear once we get him. Fair enough?”

“Great.” She snapped the glass shut and it faded from the construct. “I’ve mapped the insertion for tomorrow. You boys get some sleep at some point. We want a good run.”

“Yes, dear.”: unison.

Benton shattered from the construct.

“Enough exposition for today.” West wiped his mouth. “I’m turning in. Night.”

“Goodnight, Adam.”

After he’d faded, Paul sat at the table until the bar construct was empty and he was alone. Well into the non-night of his consciousness, he mulled over the select regrets, fears, and dreams that had created the person he had become, and when the false sun had risen over the false horizon, he decided to sleep.

There’s a moment when panic becomes sensual: you can taste the copper of your blood, the tang of adrenaline and sweat, and the deeper wash of terror. Suddenly I felt that the innovative new helmets I’d designed for insertions were entirely too suffocating.

My breath came hard and ragged as I began to choke on the blood filling my left lung. I felt the suit envelop the shard of phase flak and begin to repair me.

I struggled to my feet. Another wave of splinters from the wrecked vessels coming apart in the atmosphere above us struck the city.

“Take cover! Jesus fuck, take cover!” My words sounded like a blood clot feels.

I glanced right to see West throw himself over Benton as the shards fell. His armor was fluctuating phase; one shard hit his leg but harmlessly faded from being. He grabbed Benton and hefted her to safety under a shattered concrete support tilted precariously against the nearest building. I crawled into a doorway across the debris-littered street.

“They’re not here!” Benton shouted over the roar of the battle above. She had her glass out, and I saw numbers flickering through the display. “Something’s wrong with our position!”

“Stay here.” I heard West speak to Benton over his subdermal. He ran from the protection of the overhang across the street to my side. “You okay?”

“Just some flak in the lung. Suit’s fixing me.”

“Okay... Okay. Hope! Can you make it over here?”

She did.

Her eyes and hands swept my armor. “Is it bad? Oh god… Are you—”

“I’ll be fine.” I sat up against the wall under the grind of my still-shattered ribs. “What’s your glass say?”

“Half-empty. Position’s off. The attack’s happening, but our target isn’t at the Maire complex. Neither’s his mother or the toy.”

“Any readings at all on them?”

Another blast of flak hit the street. Benton flinched. “Too much shit in the sky. Can’t get a lock.”

“Okay.” West rose from his crouch. “Maybe they’re still at home. We have to go check.”

“He’s wounded. We could log out and try a closer insertion.”

“I’m fine.” I grunted through the words and stood with West’s assistance. “We can’t risk slipping even more.”

“Fine. Where do they live?”

I paused. “You have the stats.”

“You wrote the book. The stats are fucked, anyway.”

“Okay.” The hole in my chest sealed. The grating of bones was almost gone. “Let me remember.”

By the time they reached Helen Windham’s humble apartment, Paul’s wounds had healed and he was walking without West’s assistance. The veils of phase flak falling from the sky became more and more sporadic as the battle ended. The quiet in the city was broken only by the collapse of the massive cannon to the west as it broke apart and fell into the ocean.

West kicked down the door to the apartment.

It was dark. The curtains were still drawn. They activated their halo lights and began to search the home. There wasn’t much to search.

They found the figures in the living room, two husks of silver dust prone on the floor, the larger mostly concealing the child below.

“Don’t touch them.” Paul sighed. This was an unfortunate development. “Got any signal on the glass, Hope?”

She opened her panel. “Yeah.” She hesitated. “Running at Alpha ninety—”

“Shit.” West shook his head through blades. “Must have just missed ‘em.”

“What about Honeybear?”

Her face brightened. “He’s here. He has to be! The reading’s off the scale.”

“Okay, where’s the kid’s room?”

“No...” Paul walked to the far side of the living room. “I remember where he is.” He reached under the couch and pulled out a ragged brown bear. “At least that didn’t change.”

Benton ran her sensors over the toy. “It’s a close enough signal match. Should bring us back down to Alpha sixty-over.”

“What about those two?” West stood over the dead shells of silver that had recently been Helen and Hunter Windham. “Does this seriously fuck up our line on Delta?”

“It shouldn’t. I can bring in Helen from one of the Seattles, and Hunter... We can try to bring Hunter and Lilith both in at once.”

“That’s gonna be tricky.”

“That might be mathematically impossible.”

“We’ll do it.” Paul tossed the bear to Benton. “Trust me.”

retrieval and concealment crews are finished with the salvage and load placement.

“I guess we’re leaving now?”

time to hit the road.

“Alright.” Alina stood up on Samayel’s hull. She’d miss the warmth from below. She’d miss the light, and the wind, and the real air. “Real” air. “Sam? How far down to the shield layer?”

three hundred miles or so.

“That’s enough.” She ran toward Samayel’s edge. “Catch me at fifty!”

al, don’t—

But she did.

The rush of vertigo, the wind and heat around her body, caressing in ways no lover could, enveloping, becoming. She spun to see Sam dropping away above her, his nacelles flickering to life as he dove after her. She swam.

The heat grew.

It was freedom; it was everything.

She laughed through the tears of that limit experience.

Falling, falling through light and heat. Falling through silence. She felt the stillness, but knew she was falling. How the senses are deceived into stasis; how the senses lie through the truth of the heart.

It seemed hours before Sam matched her descent and she landed gently on his back. He coasted along the shield layer, swept upward on an exit vector.

girl, you’re crazy.

“I know.” She couldn’t force her grin from her face.

By the time Sam had reached the atmosphere barrier, Alina was snuggled into her command chamber, sleeping peacefully the sleep of those who had fallen into a sun.

They left Fort Myers forever.

“Mmm
hmm
.” Judith looked at the bear with skepticism. “That’s it? A toy?”

“Not just any toy, Jud. Honeybear Brown.”

She picked him up and turned him over. “And this toy is important to our mission how?”

“He’s a character in both timelines. A potential Delta crossover in and of himself.”

“Paul,” her metallish eyes betraying her disbelief, “it’s a fucking
toy
.”

“Not to Hunter.” He took the bear from Judith’s grip. Static and shift and

The bear moved. Jud jumped.

“Honeybeeeeear, Honeybear Brown!” The toy’s eyes lit up. “I’m the nicest little bear in the whole darned town!” He looked around the room. “Where’s Windy?”

Jud looked like she was about to answer Honeybear, but she shook her head. “Paul, that thing’s god damned scary. I should know. I’m god.”

“You’re neat!” Honeybear smiled at Jud.

Paul stifled a chuckle.

“Take that talking bear and get back to work, author. Next run, you’d better bring me back a human being. No stuffed camels or ostriches, you freak.”

“Gotcha, sweetness.”

He picked up Honeybear and faded with a smirk.

She’d heard that their counterparts on the Judas side of the Delta bleed piloted vessels powered and protected by black holes, and the captains linked with their ships through mechanical gauntlets and webs of silver (not exactly
her
silver, but a silver nonetheless). She’d heard that they had fought a war against an army of consciousnesses emulated with machines from the future. She’d heard that they were cannibals. She liked cannibal movies; she still believed in werewolves.

Sam draped her with
her
silver, the veil webbing and penetrating her skin, concentrating over her cardiac shield plate. Locked securely into the firing chamber, she shared all that was her existence with all that was Samayel.