The Infinite Sea(102)

            Razor, I’m serious. Now would be a very good time.

            “Hands on your head! Now.” Struggling to catch her breath. “Good job. Now walk toward me, backward. Slow. Very slow, or I swear to God I’ll shoot you.”

            I obey, shuffling toward the sound of her voice. She orders me to stop. I stop. I’m still, but the mechanisms inside me aren’t. Her position is fixed: I don’t have to see her to know exactly where she’s standing. The hub’s dispatched the managers of my muscular and nervous systems to execute the directive when called upon. I won’t have to think when the time comes. The hub will take over.

            But I won’t owe my life entirely to the 12th System: It was my idea to grab Jumbo’s jacket.

            And that reminds me:

            “Shoes,” I murmur.

            “What did you say?” Her voice is quivering.

            “I need shoes. What size are you?”

            “Huh?”

            At the speed of light the hub’s signal fires. My body doesn’t move quite that fast, but double the speed that is probably necessary.

            Right hand jams into Jumbo’s baggy sleeve, where I slipped the ten-inch knife, pivot to the left, then throw.

            And down she goes.

            I pull the knife from her neck, slide the bloody blade back into the left sleeve of the jacket, and check out her shoes. A pair of those white, thick-soled nurse’s shoes. A half size too big, but they’ll work.

            At the end of the hallway, I step into the last room on the right. It’s dark, but my eyes have been enhanced: I can see her clearly in the bed, fast asleep. Or doped. I’ll have to determine which.

            “Teacup? It’s me. Ringer.”

            The thick, dark lashes flutter. I’m so jacked up by this point, I swear I can hear the tiny hairs thrumming the air.

            She whispers something without opening her eyes. Too soft for the unenhanced to hear, but the auditory bots transmit the information to the hub, which relays it to the inferior colliculus, the hearing center of my brain.

            “You’re dead.”

            “Not anymore. And neither are you.”





71

            THE WINDOW BESIDE the bed jiggles in its frame. The floor quivers. Bright orange light floods the room, winks out, then an earsplitting roar and a fine mist of plaster floating down from the ceiling. The sequence repeats. Then again. Then again.

            Razor’s hit the magazine building.

            “Teacup, we have to go.” I slide one hand behind her head and lift gently.

            “Go where?”

            “As far as we can.”

            Bracing the back of her head with one hand, I hit her in the forehead with the heel of the other. The precise amount of force, no more, no less. Her body goes limp. I heave her out of the bed. Another blast as the ordnance in the magazine continues to detonate. I kick out the window. Bitter cold air crashes into the room. I sit on the sill facing the bed, cradling Teacup against my chest. My intent alerts the hub: I’m two stories above the ground. Reinforcements race to the bones and tendons in my feet, ankles, shins, knees, and pelvis.

            We deploy.

            I flip as we drop, like a cat falling off a countertop. We land safely, like a cat, except Teacup’s head bounces up on impact and smacks me hard under the chin. In front of us the hospital. Behind us the blazing ammunition storehouse. And to our right, exactly where Razor said it would be, the black Dodge M882.