Company Town (35 page)

“I don't get it.”

Branch moved his hand again, and the crystals flickered once more. Only now they showed Hwa. Many versions of Hwa. All of them younger. All of them stained. All of them dead. Some were burnt. Some were beaten. Some rotted in the girders underneath New Arcadia, their eyes plucked by gulls. Some floated down past barnacles and sharks to the bloodworms down below. Some had never been born at all. Hwa knew this because those crystals showed Tae-kyung in them. An adult Tae-kyung. With medals and a championship belt and a pretty girl who even looked Korean and cute babies, and her mother was there, Sunny was there, too, and she was fat and grey and her eyes wrinkled when she smiled and she didn't seem to give a damn. They were all so much happier. So much better off without her.

“Have you ever wondered why, deep down, you hate yourself and you want to die?” Branch asked. “It's because you're supposed to be dead.”

Hwa blinked tears away from her eyes. It was Lynch's crystal ball all over again. She'd come back to right where she'd started: on her knees, weeping, seeing things that weren't real. Couldn't be real.

“Time is a panopticon, to me and my brothers,” Branch said. “Like this tower. We stand in the centre, and we open the doors we need. But this door, the door to New Arcadia, is the most important one.”

“Oh yeah?” Hwa made herself stand. All her sisters stared at her from their crystals. Maybe this same moment, this same fight, was playing out somewhere else, in some other time, forever. “How's that?”

“Everything that shapes the vision, mission, and strategic plan of the Lynch corporation for the next two hundred years happens here. And it starts when your influence on Joel ends. When you leave the company.”

Hwa frowned. She started circling the room. Examining all her corpses. When her body was swollen or broken or burnt, her stain didn't seem like such a big deal. It mattered a whole lot less when she was dead. Why had Lynch's crystal ball shown her a face that was unstained? Whose future was that?

“But I would never leave Joel.”

The crystals abruptly turned black. Branch grinned widely. His hands clapped together. “I know! You don't! You never do! You stick it out, right until the very end! That was the mistake my brothers all made. They tried
killing
you. But that was worse! He loves you even more after you die!” His eyes glowed. “But I knew, if I could only
discredit
you,
weaken
you,
make
you leave Joel behind…”

“You wanted me to quit.” Her hands became fists. “That's why you killed my friends. You wanted me to quit.”

“I thought you would, you know. You did, after Calliope. And then you came back. Too bad, really. The others would be alive now, if you hadn't.”

Hwa wanted to throw up. She didn't. She took a deep breath. Thought of the master control room. All the buttons. All the switches. The big glassy screens with Branch on them, shrinking and shrinking to a single bright point and fading to black.

The master control room. Of course.

“You're very hard to predict, though. No implants. So little data to work with. We have trouble modelling your simulation.”

Hwa couldn't look at Daniel's neck. She reached for his hand, instead. It was limp. Lifeless. She began feeling around for the gun. “What happens if I quit?”

“The human race, if you can still call it that, leaves this planet thanks to Joel's corporate policy. He makes long-haul space travel a priority after his father's death. Everything he learns in this town about long-term habitation in an isolated, closed system informs his intentions as a CEO. He finds the right people and makes the right investments. He becomes a captain of industry like his father before him. He doubles his father's lifespan, creating a dynasty that lives in the stars for thousands of years after his passing. And all because he doesn't get stuck
here,
in the
mud,
on the
Earth,
imprisoned by gravity and lack of vision. Your lack of vision.”

Hwa's fingers clasped around the gun. She had never fired one before. It felt heavy. Cold.

“And if I don't quit?”

Branch's mouth formed a thin line. “The company fails. Joel disbands it. The Lynch name dies on this planet.”

“So you're just here to protect an investment?”

Branch smiled. In the crystal walls, his brothers wavered into being and smiled right along with him. Insects. Beasts. Ghosts. Monsters. All with the same huge, hungry smile. A salesman smile.

“Don't you understand?” Branch asked. “We
are
the Lynches. We are Joel's descendants. We are Tactics, just like you. We carry out Strategy's plans for the company by making targeted investments in the past. We have expanded our holdings, embraced the true potential of our technologies, and travelled the stars. It was there that we began to prototype long-haul travel solutions. And that was how we developed the doorways into a viable infrastructure. And once we realized how far we could go, the influence we could have…” Branch held his arms wide. “We may not be human anymore, but we still have a family business to maintain.”

The laugh erupted from her throat before she could stop it. Her shoulders shook. Her body trembled. She laughed until it became tears. She couldn't stop.

“What's so funny?”

“You.” She fought to get control of her breathing. “You're what's funny. You fucking idiot.” She looked at Joel. “Joel
chose
to help me. He
chose
to, after you started killing my friends. He
wanted
to. Because he's
that good.
He's
that kind.
And the harder you tried to pull us apart, the closer he stuck to me.”

Hwa picked up the gun with both hands. She reached down into Daniel's waistband and felt more ammo tucked into his belt. She held the gun steady between her knees, in the shelter of Daniel's body. “You poor dumb sack of ones and zeroes.” She raised the gun, loaded now. “You watched the data so close, you forgot there was a fucking
person
underneath.”

She fired once at him, and ran for him. She aimed a kick squarely at his head. Suddenly she was in the air. Swinging in a circle like a child's toy. He was so strong. Unbelievably so. His hand was around her ankle, and his hand felt like this room: made of diamond. Branch was just like this awful place, a hollow creature of silicon and hate, hard and brilliant and cold. Not sapient. Not necessarily. Not even conscious, maybe. Just running a program. Just living the brand identity to the fullest. The future Zachariah Lynch had longed for was here, and it was this monstrous inhuman thing, this venture capital pitch made flesh.

“Did you think that would work?”

“Worth a shot.”

“You—”

One side of his face ripped away. It bubbled and twisted and stretched, trying to repair itself. Suddenly he wore another face—Daniel's. Then Joel's. Then Zachariah's. Then her mother's. And Sabrina's. And Layne's. And Calliope's. And Eileen's. He stumbled back. He let Hwa go. She smelled rot. Cancer. It oozed out of him. Inside he was meat, the same as she. All his power was just appearance.

A muffled voice told her to leave.

It said to go now.

It said it had not lifted her out of perdition in that elevator shaft just to see her die here.

It said it would hold this monster, as long as it could.

It said it was sorry.

For her brother.

For the city.

It said to keep running.

So she did.

*   *   *

Hwa barely felt anything in her knee or her shoulder as she bounced along the waves to the reactor lab. The ice was soft and slushy out here, offering no real resistance to the boat she'd commandeered.

It was snowing again. It came down fast and hard and sideways, meaning she couldn't drive as quickly as she wanted. She only noticed the other boat following her because of the tiny orange flag waving through the storm in her wake. Branch. Cold wind whistled along her teeth, her gums. It should have hurt. It didn't.

She pulled up alongside the reactor and jumped from the boat to the dock without slipping on the thick coating of ice that sheeted it. Ice overhung all the lights, dispersing their violet glow in a weak and watery way. She wasn't even conscious of the cold.

There was a padlock on the lab. Hwa shot it off. She yanked the door open. Left it yawning open behind her. Let him know where she was. Let him follow. The lab doors all opened for her. All she had to do was wave them open. And when she snapped her fingers, the emergency klaxon shut off.

It was like having the keys to the city. Like being a new person. A person with status. All the doors that should have remained closed now opened. Finally, the school doors would open for her, if she only tried.

She had no time to try.

It was also like being back on in the ring. A series of decisions, each calculated to inflict maximum damage in the shortest amount of time available. Everything else just faded into a dull noise. There was only this moment, this choice. It was so simple. So blessedly, mercifully simple. She had missed it.

“Prefect.”

“Ready.”

“Prefect, I need a Bullet.”

The minisub burbled up to the surface like a bout of bad tacos; Hwa spun its hatch open with ease. It should have been heavy. Difficult. It wasn't. She was like one of those mothers who could lift a car off her baby. It felt like being drunk. That special slick easiness that came with not feeling the full extent of her extremities. Maybe that was what came with knowing some extra-dimensional asshole was after you. You just stopped caring.

Hwa watched the boat as it came closer. Then she turned to look at the city. She wished for a moment that the towers were not shrouded in snow, that ice was not clinging to every surface. She tried to think of it in sunlight, under a blue sky, on a calm sea. And with that, she jumped into the submersible.

Inside the minisub, the winch worked just as easily. She spun it shut until a little green light came on in the shape of a happy face. She gave it the thumbs-up. The sub's controls were simple: an accelerator, a joystick, and a brake. It was tethered to the big milkshake straw, so it couldn't go very far. The other instruments on the panel were for lights and cameras, and Hwa had no need of those.

Down.

Down.

Down.

The reactor loomed large in the sub's bubble. She initiated a docking program, and watched as an animation in the instrument panel told her how close she was to making contact. It all looked vaguely obscene. But finally the connection was made, the airlock threaded, and she could emerge.

The interior of the reactor control room looked exactly as its designers had promised. An empty tube led to a blank-walled room. The room had a few displays hanging in it. They showed the reactor's progress and the safety of the core. It was already up and running in a small state; to increase gain you'd have to draw more ions from the seawater and layer in more tritium. But from here, you could vent the whole thing, or seal it off entirely.

The door clanged open. Right on schedule.

“This room.” Branch looked for the door that had just been behind him a minute ago. Now it was a smooth expanse of blank white wall. “What room is this?”

“It's
my
room.” Hwa closed her eyes. Raised her hands. Hoped it would work. Hoped that her instinct was right. And began to draw.

Master control room. All the buttons. All the switches. The door locking behind you. The door no one can open but you. A perfectly secure room where you are in complete and total control. Where you have all the power. It will respond entirely to your commands, and only your commands. It will behave exactly as you need, because this is an emergency. Because no one should be down here. If someone is down here, it's because the city of New Arcadia and everyone who lives there is in profound danger.

When she opened her eyes it was there. The master control room. The one she and Tae-kyung had always talked about. It hummed. It peeped. It sang. The displays showed the reactor in ancient pixellated fonts, pale green on black. It was big and clunky and the buttons were so bright they were hot to the touch. And right there, right under her thumb, was a big fat red one. The Button. The one in every doomsday scenario. The one you weren't supposed to push. Ever.

“Your problem is, you got no imagination,” Hwa said, and pushed it.

INITIATING OVERLOAD
, the displays read.

Branch looked at the displays. He looked at her. “You'll die.”

Hwa shook her head. She swept away all the buttons. Now all the arrays were nothing but grey plastic. “No.
We
will die. Here. In the mud. Together.”

Branch made a noise unlike any Hwa had ever heard before. It was a long, resonant screech of frustration. He threw himself at the walls. He kicked and punched and launched himself at their smooth white surfaces. Nothing opened for him.

“You have to be organic,” Hwa said. “Sorry.”

He vaulted over a rack of useless arrays and grabbed her by the shoulders. He shook her. “End it! End it now!”

Hwa started to laugh. It was the strangest thing. She should have been scared. Terrified. Anxious. Worried, a little, about all her skin falling off and her eyes melting out of her skull. But there was something so delightful about Branch's frustration. He wore the same expression as a cat trying to fight itself in a mirror. Vicious and angry, but still profoundly stupid. The longer she thought about it, the longer she laughed. Slowly, he let her go. She started hiccuping, and he slapped her.

“Aye.” Hwa rolled her neck. The slap barely hurt at all. “Aye, b'y. Really? That's the best you've got?”

He punched her in the stomach. It hurt, but not as badly as it might have. Maybe he was already weakening, somehow. If anything could do that to him, it was probably fusion radiation. At least, she hoped so.