The Infinite Sea(98)

            I grab the other end of the rod as it arcs toward me, first with my right hand, then with the left, hands shoulder-width apart, and power the rod into her neck, spreading my legs for the balance and leverage necessary to crush her windpipe.

            Our faces are inches apart. I’m close enough to smell the cyanide breath trickling out of her parted lips.

            Her hands are on either side of mine, pushing back while I push forward. The floor is slick; I’m barefoot, she isn’t; I’m going to lose the advantage before she blacks out. I have to drop her—fast.

            I slide my foot to the inside of her ankle and kick out. Perfect: She falls to the floor and I follow her down.

            She lands on her back. I land on her stomach. I clamp my knees tightly against her sides and shove the rod down hard into her neck.

            Then the door behind us flies open and Jumbo Recruit lumbers in, gun drawn, shouting incoherently. Three minutes in and the light in Claire’s eyes is fading, but it’s not all the way out, and I know I have to take a risk. I don’t like risk, never did; I just learned to accept it. Some things you can choose and some you can’t, like Sullivan’s Crucifix Soldier, like Teacup, like going back for Zombie and Nugget because not going back meant there’s no value to anything anymore, not life, not time, not promises.

            And I have a promise to keep.

            Jumbo’s gun: The 12th System locks in on it and thousands of microscopic droids go to work augmenting the muscles, tendons, and nerves in my hands, eyes, and brain to neutralize the threat. In a microsecond, objective identified, information processed, method determined.

            Jumbo doesn’t have a prayer.

            The attack happens faster than his unenhanced brain can process it. I doubt he even sees the curtain rod whizzing toward his hand. The gun flies across the room. He goes one way—for the gun—while I go the other—for the toilet.

            The tank lid is solid ceramic. And heavy. I could kill him; I don’t. But I smack him hard enough in the back of head to put him out for a long time.

            Jumbo falls down. Claire rises up. I sling the lid toward her head. Her arm rises to block the projectile. My enriched hearing picks up the sound of a bone snapping from the collision. The silver device in her hand clatters to the floor. She dives for it as I step forward. I slam one foot on her outstretched hand and with the other kick the device to the other side of the room.

            Done.

            And she knows it. She looks past the barrel of the gun leveled at her face—beyond the tiny hole filled with immense nothingness—into my eyes, and hers are kind again and her voice is soft again, the bitch.

            “Marika . . .”

            No. Marika was slow, weak, sentimental, dimwitted. Marika was a little girl clinging to rainbow fingers, helplessly watching the time wind down, teetering on the razor’s edge of the bottomless abyss, exposed behind her fortress walls by promises she could never keep. But I will keep her final promise to Claire, the beast who stripped her naked and baptized her in the cold water that still roars in the broken shower. I will keep Marika’s promise. Marika is dead, and I will keep her promise.

            “My name is Ringer.”

            I pull the trigger.





68

            JUMBO SHOULD HAVE a knife on him. Standard issue for all recruits. I kneel beside his unconscious body, slip the knife from its sheath, and carefully cut out the pellet embedded near the spinal cord at the base of his skull. I slip it between my cheek and gums.

            Now mine. No pain when I cut it out, and only a small amount of blood trickles from the incision. Bots to deaden sensation. Bots to repair damage. That’s why Claire didn’t die when I rammed a broken pipe into her neck and why, after the initial gush, the bleeding quickly stopped.