Julie raised her voice slightly. “No.”
“I do not understand your negation. To what does your negation refer? This is a logical plan with a high probability of success.”
“If you want me to cooperate with you, you need to stop and listen to me.”
“There is an eighty-five percent probability that you will not have anything useful to say.”
“You sound like some of the male surgeons I’ve known.”
“I do not understand the relevance of that statement.”
You’re arguing with a homicidal robot whose eventual goal is to destroy the human race, Julie. Now is not the time to be sarcastic. She took a deep breath.
“Never mind. But why risk a…” She thought quickly. “…slightly under twenty-two percent chance that I will not attempt to provide you with that insight? Which does not include the probability that I will become so angered I refuse to cooperate, which I rate at approaching one hundred percent.”
“You raise an insightful point,” the robot said, still in that slightly monotonous female voice. “We will test another subject first.”
Its chest panel flashed yellow for a moment and then shifted to green, then blue. “The second large unit is online and available. I have sent it to bring Ms. Jance to us. We will use her as our first subject.”
Julie balked. Ms. Jance had been pleasant and polite. She’d even tried to protect Julie when the robot had first appeared. She also knows about my research, Julie reminded herself. Which she’ll blab to the government which will use it for God knows what. She also helped kidnap me and wanted me to do experiments on my son. Julie looked at the tip of the syringe hovering near her arm. It’s also her or me. “Fine.”
The inside of the monster seemed to be nothing but more tentacles. Thick ones that looked like tree trunks seemingly served as structural supports. Medium-sized flexible ones attached the metal plates to the support tentacles. Thin ones had fine, hairy threads at the end, like neurons.
No organs. No respiration, no digestion, no central nervous system. If the monster hadn’t been using human technology as armor plating, and weapons and distraction techniques to save itself from the bomb, Pax would have said any kind of intelligent behavior from the monster would be impossible. Consume and destroy, that was it.
Yet clearly some kind of intelligence was in there.
Pax. The front of the monster is at the bottom of the mountain and headed for the ocean. If you don’t do something soon, I’m going to start attacking.
And do what? What is flailing at it with negative energy going to do?
The fuck if I know. But I can’t just watch it get away.
Fuck it. He was never going to be able to take it down like this.
Terry had done far too good a job on his monster. Because its reproductive system matured at the same time as its tentacle growth, the monster was practically un-killable—kill a tentacle, release a thousand spores. If Pax were going to destroy it, he would need to do something to keep it from reproducing. He needed to damage the monster on the genetic level.
The kind of damage radiation would do.
Pax stopped his three pinpoint shields from spinning, and condensed them into a single ball. Inside it was not only the remaining energy from the nuke, but all of the radiation.
Heads up, he told Scarlett. I’m nuking this thing from the inside.
The tentacles began snaking into the space around him.
He released the shield on the radiation. The shimmering blue ball vanished—revealing a handful of nothing.
The tentacles closest to him shivered and retreated, their skin turning brown and flaking off. Deep cracks ran down the centers of the tentacles, exposing pink spores underneath. The spores puffed up and burst through the cracks—then they, too, turned brown.
The tentacles nearest him were already brown, dry, and dead.
Radiation kills it! Pax sent. We can kill it!
Go for it, sent Scarlett. I’ll capture the rest of the spores and bring them to you.
The monster heaved, and Pax was flung upside down, bouncing around inside the beast until he landed on one of the metal plates.
Pax? Scarlett sounded confused. It, uh, it just flopped over on its back. Is it dead? There’s steam or something coming out of it, like a third of the way down.
Metal screeched, and the plate under him shuddered, releasing a puff of brown dust, and dropped a meter. Above him, Pax could see cracks of daylight showing where the monster’s armor was cracking. Pax threw up a shield. No need to get smacked on the—
The entire plate, a hundred feet above him, was ripped away, and a giant claw reached in, neatly pinched Pax around the stomach, and flung him out of its guts.
Chapter 16
As soon as the operating theatre door opened, Julie could hear Ms. Jance arguing with the robot. She was just this side of hysterical but was keeping it together. The robot, which had strapped Ms. Jance to its chest with power cables under her arms, was not impressed and paid no attention. Its legs whined and clomped as they descended the stairs toward the operating theater.
“Interesting,” said the first robot. “The astral creature is still fighting.”
Julie looked to the first robot’s chest screen. It was showing live footage of Pax being eaten by an enormous… centipede. Even though her mind knew she could reach out and hold Pax’s cold, dead hand on the autopsy table next to her, her heart still lurched in her chest.
“Take your hands off me!” Ms. Jance shouted. Uselessly. Her fists went tink, tink, tink against the metal.
On the screen, the monster lurched and began to spew pink mist. Something was moving around in its guts.
Ms. Jance screamed.
She had slid out of the cords, her blouse tangling with the plugs and half-ripping off her body. The robot’s spindly arms were trying to hold her, but it wasn’t going well. Ms. Jance kicked the robot’s flashing red chest screen with one foot. Her shirt tore the rest of the way and she sat on the floor.
The robot was between her and the way out.
Ms. Jance got up, crouching like a linebacker. Her skirt had split up one side; she looked like a wild woman.
The robot watched her, one arm dangling limply. A small panel opened in its front, and the robot reached in. The thin claw was replaced by a thick metal tube with a thin nipple at the end.
“Ms. Jance,” Julie said, “I’d cooperate if I were you. That’s a cutting laser.”
“I know what it is,” Ms. Jance said. She faked right, then ran down an aisle of seats, and jumped over the back of the next row, dropping to the floor.
The robot’s arm moved jerkily as it tried to aim. It shot at her and missed.
Smoke rose from the carpet-covered wall.
Ms. Jance pulled one of the microphones off the desk. The robot shot again and missed.
But not by as much.
The microphone flew from Ms. Jance’s hiding spot, over the plexiglass wall, and hit one of the overhead screens, making a loud clatter.
Both robots tracked the mic with their cameras. The second robot shot at the microphone—missed—and burned a hole in the screens, which threw down sparks and spat out smoke.
Ms. Jance’s feet slapped on the floor. By the time Julie glanced at the woman, she was already halfway up the stairs.
The second robot turned to face her. Too slow.
Ms. Jance reached the door, shook the handle twice, and threw herself on the floor behind the last row of seats.
The second robot shot again with its laser, hitting the door. The metal handle diffused the light around the room. Too late, Julie turned her head and covered her eyes. Flashes of color sparked behind the lids.
“Ms. Jance,” Julie called. “Please, just settle down.”
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“Stop helping them!” shouted Ms. Jance as the second robot climbed back up the stairs, heading for her. “Traitor!”
“I’m no traitor,” Julie said. She looked at the first robot and the syringe still pointing at her arm. I’m just not willing to die here.
Pax’s hamster ball arced through the air and slammed into a wall of rock. The rebound flung him backward, spinning him and bouncing him across the landscape like a soccer ball in Central Park.
He dropped his shield and rammed headfirst into an outcropping.
His body flopped against the ground, coming to rest in a hole that looked like it had been a shallow basement before the monster had eaten everything.
Is it dead? he sent to Scarlett.
No. I think you just split it in half. And both halves are still moving.
Pax cursed, threw up another shield, and bounced out of the hole.
He’d been flung half a kilometer away across the island. He made the ball bigger and rose into the air.
The front end of the monster was about a hundred meters long, had three sets of claws, and was dragging itself down the slope of the volcano, more or less in his direction. The middle of the monster looked like it was melting. Two sets of claws scrabbled on the ground, but it was clear the entire section was dying. The metal plates along the sides had fallen off. Piles of junk were crashing disjointedly down the slope.
The back end of the monster was climbing out of the crater at top speed, headed toward the ocean.
A black, cloudy mass drifted over the moon, formed into an approximately human shape, and landed next to him. Scarlett.
I have to get it all in one place, Pax thought. I have to kill it all at once.
What do we do? asked Scarlett.
“We need to compress it into a ball so I can kill it,” shouted Pax.
“On it.” Scarlett flew above the top of the volcano and started summoning threads of negative energy. “This won’t hold it for long. The way this thing handles negative energy is just weird.”
“What?”
“You’ll see.”
Scarlett flung out thick threads of negative energy into the volcano. She pulled them tight, wound the strands around her fist, and pulled tighter.
The monster buckled as it came out of the mouth of the volcano and flopped over on itself. It twisted, trying to get itself straightened out, but the junk on its armor was jammed together too tight.
Tentacles sprouted from every surface of the monster. The metal plates vanished with a groan of stressed metal beneath a tangle of green vines. The claws buried themselves in the rock at the top of the crater.
The monster began to reel in the threads of negative energy, pulling Scarlett toward it.
She threw out another handful of threads. They attached to the solid rock underfoot and immediately pulled so tightly they twanged. The monster at the top of the crater shuddered, pulling even harder.
Scarlett screamed. Her arms were stretching impossibly long, like rubber bands.
Her hand twisted, trying to wrap a loop around her fist—
The threads slid out of her grasp. She went flying in the other direction and slammed into the ground.
The monster shuddered again—and absorbed the threads.
It eats negative energy? thought Pax. Just like the fucking tentacles.
The other section of monster was almost on top of him. Pax threw a shield around it and rolled it out of the way.
The monster was still changing. Bulges formed on the side facing the ocean.
Pax started to throw up another shield. He’d condense the two shields and trap the monsters together and then nuke them both with his remaining energy—
Pax!
Scarlett was on her feet, hunched and drained-looking, her skin a dull gray. Brown, crumbling tentacles from the dying middle section were crawling up her legs, trapping her on the ground. The tentacles were falling apart, disintegrating. One good rip, and Scarlett should be able to free herself.
Instead she raised her arms, throwing out hundreds of thin strands of negative energy that wrapped around a ball of brown sludge rolling toward him.
The strands tangled around the ball, weaving into a tight net—then broke.
Pax threw a sphere over the ball and nuked the sludge inside. It turned into a puddle and soaked into the ground when he dissolved his shield. The excess energy he’d drained from the bomb was gone. The energy he needed to keep the other end of the monster trapped was rapidly draining.
Scarlett’s gray, dry mouth stretched open wide—then tore away, collapsing into gray dust. In seconds she had disintegrated into a pile of dull, gray threads twined with the last fragile tentacles of the monster.
Before he could react, Pax’s other shield burst. The monster clattered onto the ground and started running up the volcano toward him.
The bulges erupted on the side of the monster at the top of the volcano, squirting what looked like giant footballs into the air. They arced upward—then splashed into the ocean.
Seeds.
The bulges collapsed for a moment, dangling like empty balloons, and then started to bulge outward again.
Scarlett was down, and he was low on energy. Moonlight wasn’t going to cut it. He should harvest the radiation from the middle section before it sank into the rock—the lower end of the monster was almost on top of him. Suddenly, it swerved over the brown sludge and the gray dust where Scarlett had been, absorbing all the energy from them, leaving bare rock behind it.
It continued up the volcano.
Overhead, another jet was screaming toward the island. Another jet.
Another bomb.
Pax started running.
Julie secured Ms. Jance to the computer chair with medical tape, fastening her arms with the wrists turned up to be able to get at the veins more easily. Ms. Jance followed the actions with steady eyes that glared her disgust at Julie.
Julie tried not to meet them as she wrapped thick rolls of tape around Ms. Jance’s chest and waist, then around the woman’s crossed ankles. She’d had to restrain too many patients during her internship in the ER to put much faith in restraints that only attached legs to each other, so she bound the crossed ankles to the central chair post as well. It wouldn’t take long for Ms. Jance to work her way free, perhaps an hour or so. Julie hoped this wouldn’t take that long.
Julie cleaned a spot on the woman’s arm.
“You don’t need to do this,” Ms. Jance said.
“I do, I’m afraid,” said Julie, lining the needle up with Ms. Jance’s vein.
“You’re just trying to save your own skin,” said Ms. Jance. “You’re a coward.”
“That’s true,” sad Julie. She pushed down the plunger, and the silvery material slid into Ms. Jance’s median cubital vein.
Ms. Jance gasped.
The jet tore through the night. It didn’t drop anything: a surveillance pass.
Goddammit, drop the bomb, will you?
Pax tracked it using the heat of its jets. It was circling back. No telling whether it would drop a bomb on the next pass—or at all.
Fuck it. I need to do something. Fast.
The lower half of the monster charged headlong into its other half, the two molding together. The bulges spat out twenty more football-shaped seeds. They arced over the ocean and splashed into the dark sea.
Pax absorbed the last few scraps of radiation from the middle section, knowing it wasn’t enough. He needed more than the dregs of a nuke to take this thing down.
Julie withdrew the needle and wiped Ms. Jance’s skin at the puncture site with a swab. The two robots stood motionless on either side of Ms. Jance, both monitoring her condition.
“It’s rather cold,” Ms. Jance
said.
Julie walked back to the sharps container on the wall, pushed the needle in, and threw the swab and the packaging material in after it. She went to the sink and began washing her hands. She couldn’t turn around. Couldn’t look at Ms. Jance yet.
Julie’s wedding band was loose on her finger and slippery from the gel soap. She twined her fingers together, scrubbing at the cracks between them, and rubbed at her nail beds. She washed up to her forearms and used a paper towel to turn off the water. Her hands were pale from the cold water. She pushed the plain gold band of her wedding band as close to her palm as she could.
When she and Robert had married, she’d wanted to be a surgeon. She’d had nightmares about losing the ring inside someone and sewing them up before she realized. Never mind that she’d gone into cytopathology instead of surgery; every time she so much as looked at that ring she felt sick with the thought of losing it somewhere and not being able to get it back.
She moved toward one of the chairs against the plexiglass panels and rubbed her hands together, trying to warm them up. The ring spun on her finger every time she brushed it.
Ms. Jance’s teeth chattered and silvery sweat had sprung out on her forehead. Julie stumbled the last few steps to the chairs and sat down.
On the robot’s monitor, Julie watched a blue bubble of some kind bounce up the side of the volcano. The volcano was so steep it was like watching a ball fall down a set of stairs in reverse. Inside was a tiny humanoid figure, Pax’s double.