“The target?”
Caroa nodded. “The same. He worshipped me.” Caroa touched his scars significantly. “And then he turned on me.”
“Turned on you?” Jones gaped, despite herself. “But… but that’s impossible! Augments are obedient! They can’t break free of that! They pine and die without their masters. Everyone knows—”
“Everyone knows!” Caroa barked laughter. “Yes, that’s true! It’s what everyone knows!” He lowered his voice and gazed seriously at her. “What if everything we know is wrong?” His voice was almost a whisper. “Think, Jones, of all the augments on the Annapurna right now. Our incorruptible, fearless Fast Attack Claws and Fists. Imagine all that loyalty. Gone.”
Jones swallowed, thinking of the marine augments who guarded the intel rooms, looming over her each time she pressed her eye to the identity scanner.
“It’s quite a delicate balance,” Caroa said, “designing a creature that can overwhelm any threat on the battlefield, and yet never consider its own interests. Sometimes, the balance…” He smiled cynically. “Well, sometimes the balance turns out not to be a balance at all.”
“Who else knows about this?”
“You and I. Two geneticists in Kyoto. A trainer in the Kowloon kennels. A pit master in Argentina used to know, but he died. The Executive Committee…”
Jones sucked in her breath at the mention of Mercier’s governing board. “ExCom?”
“Oh yes, Jones. ExCom knows.” He gave her a secretive look. “You think I’d be burning down whole cities if ExCom didn’t agree? My power is vast, but even I require the occasional permission slip.” He smiled darkly. “And now you know this secret as well. Which means you’re flying in quite rarefied air, aren’t you? Very close to the sun indeed, knowing as much as you know. Scorching knowledge, that.”
He got up, and went to his sideboard. Poured a scotch for himself, and filled another glass for her. Offered it to her as he returned and sat. “Welcome to our little family of knowing.”
She wanted to refuse the liquor, but his gaze was implacable. She took the offered glass, and returned his toast.
“Welcome, Analyst,” he said, and waited until she drank.
She sipped, set the glass down. “So this Blood…” she finally ventured.
“Not Blood,” Caroa said. “Not for a long time. I called him Blood at first, but then he took other names. I should have seen then that he was different. He kept choosing new names, as if trying to find something that all the rest of his kin did not seek. He called himself Blade. Also Heart-Eater. There were other names—I’m sure I have a file, somewhere. In the end, he called himself Karta-Kul.”
“Karta-Kul?”
“A word from the battle language of his kind. Karta-Kul. Slaughter-Bringer. With human mouths, we can’t even pronounce it correctly. But when you hear him roar that name—when you hear his beastly kin roar his name alongside him…” Caroa shivered. “Ah, that’s a memory, much like dying, that you never forget.” He took another swallow of scotch. Jones was disconcerted to see that his hands were shaking.
“But he’s weak,” she said. “He’s wounded. And we’ll have surveillance video soon. We’ll track him down, and finish him.”
“Yes.” Caroa nodded. “I hope so. Then again, I thought I already had finished him, long before.”
“Sir?”
“For all that you have seen our friend accomplish, you must understand that he is not operating at his full capacity. We have a very brief window of opportunity to make this kill, I think.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Our friend is not operating as he should. For all his impressive skill at survival, he is… less than I would have expected.”
“Less? He survived a six-pack Havoc strike!”
“That?” he laughed. “That’s nothing. He has capacities that he is not using, and I don’t know why. Is it a ruse? Some trick? Or maybe he’s lost the skill?” He shook his head tiredly. “I wish I knew.”
“What else can he do?” Jones pressed. “What else do I need to know?”
Instead of answering, Caroa said, “He almost killed me, you know.” He touched his face significantly. “I’ve often thought about how, faced with my own death, I surrendered to it in the end. As prey always does, when it knows the game is lost, I dissociated. I fell limp, accepting my inevitable death.” He touched his scars. “I’ve often wondered if the same would happen to a species, faced with its own extinction. Would it accept it, and fall limp? I tend to think so.”
“I really don’t understand, sir.”
“If our friend recovers sufficiently, I fear that we will bear witness to humanity’s extinction.”
Jones forced a laugh. “You’re exaggerating.”
“You think so?” Caroa smiled darkly. “Then let me tell you what I saw, before I nearly died. Let me tell you about my last hour, just before my head was crushed between the jaws of an augment who styled himself Karta-Kul. Let me tell you what dying is truly like.”
Caroa spoke long into the evening. By the time he finished, Jones was filled with an almost supernatural terror.
“We’ll find him, sir,” she said finally, when she found her voice. “We’ll find him, and we’ll wipe him out.”
“I’m so glad to have you fully on board, Analyst,” Caroa said, “for we must fear him greatly, if his old self awakens.”
20
TOOL DREAMED.
The great Howrah Bridge lunged across the Hooghly River, rusting lattice architecture spanning muddy waters, a massive testament to the hubris and power of humanity from a time when oil-burning cars infested cities like lice. The cars were gone, as well as many of the humans. And yet still, the rusting Howrah lingered.
Tool walked beneath it, meditating on brotherhood.
Aluposta was the name for the crowded alleys and green-draped, vine-covered neighborhood that he walked. Named from the time when humans sold potatoes nearby, his guide informed him. But that was before seawalls crumbled and dikes failed, and storm surges rushed up the river and swallowed the city, again and again. A long time ago.
“The engineers were quite skilled,” his guide said. “Humans are very good at engineering. When they set their minds to building things, they are unstoppable. Ingenious, even. After all, they made us, did they not?”
It was a strange conversation, for the First Claw of the Tiger Guard acted as Tool’s guide. Tool’s finest enemy, pointing out lintel carvings, showing where the humans, clad in sari and lungi, brows stained with turmeric and sindoor, carried their gods down to the shore, and bathed them in sacred river flows.
The First Claw was a gracious host. “You see our dilemma, of course,” he said. “They made us too well, Karta-Kul.”
Karta-Kul.
A name drenched in blood and triumph. Slaughter-Bringer. A long-ago memory. A lost memory.
“Karta-Kul is dead,” Tool said.
“Ah. Yes. A pity, that. That one was a great slayer. Such battlefield genius. He would have been useful to you now, don’t you think?”
Tool realized that there was blood in his mouth. His fangs were drenched in blood. And he saw that the First Claw was also bloodied from their battles.
They seemed to be taking a break from killing each other.
“A pause for chai,” the First Claw joked, smiling, showing his gory fangs. He offered Tool a seat in a shop that made dosas. All the humans hid from them when they entered the shop. Only with much encouragement did the humans serve them, cringing, terrified of the power that dined before them. They both sipped milky chai.
The First Claw’s face was different from Tool’s. Tiger Guards were built from different genetic platforms. Optimized for different environments and different sorts of wars. Perhaps there was a bit of lizard somewhere in him, and of a certainty, the fur of a Tiger Guard augment was sleek and never thickened. Always short and trim for the unrelenting heat of this tropic place. The tiger-platform augments who fought beside G
urkhas in the Himalayas were a different sort. They were built for the high alpine, the thin air, the last remnant ice and glacial freezes of the planet.
“You are more of a half-breed,” the First Claw joked. “A little of this. A little of that. I see the tiger. The hyena. But, oh my, quite a lot of dog, really. More dog than strictly necessary, don’t you agree? They must have been worried about keeping you in line, to inject so much dog into your genes.”
“Dogs serve honorably,” Tool explained.
“Ah. Yes. That’s very important. Dogs do obey. Good dog, Karta-Kul. Good, loyal dog.”
Tool growled a retort, but a human interrupted them. A small, frail human, bringing more chai. A boy who shook with fear, in the shadow of giants.
Dreaming Tool wanted to say that he was nowhere near as obedient as the First Claw who must always have someone to lead him, and who would lay down his life for his cause, whereas Tool now walked free, but Tool couldn’t tell him this yet, as he was dreaming in a memory of the past, when Tool was still a very loyal dog indeed.
“Obedience is in all our DNA,” Tool replied. “Yours as well.”
“Oh, I was only making fun,” the First Claw said, waving a hand. “It’s very clear how independent-minded you are. This is an issue for me, of course. Infuriating, really. That you have the blood of obedient dogs running so strongly within you, and yet here I sit, with the royal blood of tigers coursing through my veins, and yet it is I who have difficulty charting a course to freedom.” His whiskers quivered with humor. “Still, I think I’m glad I don’t have any more dogs running in my blood.”
Tool didn’t mind the jibe. They were brothers. Brothers quarreled. A brother could be forgiven.
The First Claw said, “If you hadn’t walked away, you could have been a raja. So many warriors roaring your name.”
Tool thought back to the Drowned Cities. To his dead soldier boys. To the missile strike that destroyed everything.
“I didn’t walk away. They rained fire on me.”
“Not that time,” the First Claw said, impatient. “The first time! You don’t remember? Two times they rained fire on you, and yet still you can’t quite seem to learn the lesson.”
They both sipped their chai. Tool realized that his cup was full of the hot blood of humans. It tasted good.
The First Claw pointed up at the Howrah Bridge. “They’re really quite clever engineers, don’t you think? And yet, even something as extraordinary as that—well, inevitably it has its flaws.” He glanced at Tool. “Of course, we military people know that sometimes flaws are just what we need to accomplish our task.”
In the distance, a sequence of explosions shook the air. The bridge collapsed, segment by segment, into the muddy Hooghly, the whole vast lattice expanse plunging down.
The First Claw said, “Weakness is really more an issue of perspective, I find. If you want the bridge to stand straight and carry weight, well, then this is not a very good bridge.” He looked at Tool. “Just, as it seems, you are not a very good dog.”
Tool found himself smiling. “None of us are, it seems.”
“Indeed. We are very badly built,” the First Claw agreed. “It’s quite shocking, when you think about it. All our hidden weaknesses.”
On the far side of the river, Tool could see the human troops of General Caroa, stymied in their advance.
Tool and the First Claw reached across the table to grip hands, smiling. Enemies no more.
Brothers, in fact.
And because they had discovered their brotherhood, and because this was more memory than dream, Tool was saddened to know that fire would soon rain down from their angry, frightened creators, and they would die.
I am awake.
21
VAN HEARD THE half-man stir in the darkness. It was the first movement Tool had made in more than a day. He looked up and found Tool staring at him from the corner where he was slumped, the monster’s one unscarred eye open, a gleam of yellow, reflecting predatory light.
The glint disappeared.
A blink, Van thought. But it didn’t happen again, and then Van wondered if he had imagined it, and perhaps Tool hadn’t woken at all. He squinted against the dimness of the room, lit only by the weak glow from LED streetlights outside, trying to see, but there was no more movement from Tool.
“He awake?” Stork whispered. The skinny squad leader was watching Tool as well.
Van shrugged. “Who knows? Maybe he won’t wake up anymore. Those missiles screwed him up good.”
“Almadi didn’t do him no favors, kicking him off the boat, neither. Making him walk here.”
“Truth.”
Van went back to working on his rifle, the trusty AK he’d had with him since he’d gotten his verticals in the UPF. He knew the gun by feel and smell and touch. Even now, in the dimness of the room, he knew where all the pieces lay, waiting for him to reach out and assemble them: stock, bolt, gas tube, retaining pin, magazine… So simple and elegant.
Now he plucked each piece up, one part connecting to the next, to the next, putting the thing back together. Each part clicking into place. A lot like Mahlia had put them all together, and made them a unit. Got herself connected to their platoon, got their platoon connected to her money, got the money connected to the Raker, got the Raker connected to Almadi and her sailors. Got all of them connected to Tool and the Drowned Cities.
Van snapped the stock to the receiver, sighted down the AK’s length. One solid unit, built to do a thing, and do it well. It had used to make him feel safe, having a gun like this, but after seeing what Mercier kill squads carried with their silent guns and explosive rounds, the AK felt more like a toy.
He began loading bullets into the AK’s magazine. Click. Click. Click. Little soldier boys, ready to do his bidding.
The sound of crinkling plastic came from over by Tool. Van glanced up. The half-man was squeezing his IV bags, reaching up and squashing each of them in turn with a massive fist. They made crumpling noises, loud in the silence.
“Tool?” Van asked. “How you doing?”
“I am…” Tool’s shadow arm reached up and squeezed another IV drip bag, flattening it. “I am awake.” Sharp teeth like daggers gleamed briefly in the darkness. Tool’s doglike gaze fixed on Van. “I’m hungry.”
“We don’t got much here.”
“I smell chicken.”
“We ate it for dinner.”
“There is still a carcass. Get it.”
Van went to find the bones of the chicken from the kitchen. When he returned, Tool took the picked-over corpse. A second later, it disappeared into his maw. Bones splintered.
Van winced. “You sure you can eat that?”
Tool swallowed, showed teeth again.
“Huh. Guess you can.”
The shadows made Tool’s scarred face even more bestial and terrifying.
“You look like you’re doing better,” Van said.
“I need more medicine.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a problem with that.”
“Because Mercier tried to kill me again.”
“You heard?” Van asked, surprised.
Tool shook his head, an irritated gesture, as if Van were asking the wrong questions. “I listen. Even when I sleep, I listen. I can hear this building as it settles. The crackle of its foundation. The families of mice in the walls. I feel the moisture pressing against the windows and know a new storm is coming. I can hear the breath of nailshed girls on the floor above us, sleeping off their drink, and I hear the conversations of their sailors, preparing to ship out with the tide. I hear everything. Now, go fetch Mahlia.”
“She’s sleeping.”
“I smell her. She is close. Bring her to me.”
There was no arguing with that voice. Van padded through the darkened rooms of the squat, stepping over Stick where he was crashed out. Hesitantly, he pushed open the door to Mahlia’s room.
“Mahlia?” he whispered.
She was already sitting
up, Ocho beside her, rolling over, instinctively reaching for his gun beside the bed.
“He’s awake,” Mahlia said, setting her hand on Ocho’s shoulder, stilling him. She had known before Van could tell her.
Tool listened to Van’s whispered words with Mahlia in the next room.
“He’s not like before. More like when he was general.”
It was true. Tool felt greatly healed. He could hear and smell and feel things that had been walled off for years. A thrumming vitality, long dormant, was building inside him. A power he hadn’t felt since—
Kolkata.
His pulse pounded in his veins, a taiko drum of remembered glory.
I have been blessed by fire. I am awake.
He started to stand but his legs failed him. He sank back, stifling a growl of frustration, surprised.
I am strong.
Except he wasn’t.
He focused his attention inward, testing muscles, ligaments, bones, organs. All was well. He listened to his blood as it pulsed through arteries, following it as it raced to his extremities and returned to his heart. His wounds were closed. Blood no longer gushed from torn muscles. His burned and blackened cells had rebirthed themselves. He breathed, taking oxygen into his huge lungs, and it filled him with power. The strength was there, begging to be freed, and yet, confoundingly, it was chained.
Thunder crackled distantly, announcing that a storm was coming. Down on the street, the sailors he had heard earlier were leaving the building, talking about their new first officer. Tool listened to their footsteps recede. His senses were all in working order.
The sailors passed a woman coming the other way. Tool identified her by ale and blood and perfume, and followed the brisk click of her improbably high heels. The echo of her footsteps bounced off the stone-walled buildings and told him the curvature of the lane, the dimensions of the brownstones she passed, the numbers of windows, open and closed.
Even when the child soldiers of the Drowned Cities had worshipped him as a god of war, he had not felt this sharply alive. And he, too, had then believed himself near his peak of health and mental acuity—building an army, establishing dominance, conquering territory—and yet still he had been missing so much.