I recalled my earlier trick and straightened my legs, willing the world to stop, and I was standing yet again—only this time I was upside down, looking at the dome below.
Or where the dome used to be. Jasper was now battling Sage, trying to keep the larger code away from Scipio and Rose, and failing. Even as I began to formulate a plan, Sage shoved his hand through the fragment’s chest and then yanked it back again, something orange and glowing clutched between his fingers.
Jasper took several stunned steps back before falling to his knees, and then his code simply… blew apart, scattered to oblivion by the invisible wind of some unknown force.
Then Sage lifted his hand to his mouth, swallowed whatever he had just stolen from Jasper, and started to glow brighter, his form beginning to twist and change.
I didn’t hesitate this time. I manifested a sword a quarter of the size of Leo’s and launched myself at Sage, intent on cutting the bastard in two.
45
I focused my will upon the sword, imagining that it was razor sharp and indestructible, and brought it down in an overhanded blow, aiming for the top of Sage’s head. His body was pulsating with color, streams of orange lines trailing down his jaw and throat, burrowing into his stomach and then shooting through his arms and legs, the orange-and-white codes intermingling and giving him an outline, and he seemed to grow slightly, his stooped form becoming straighter, taller, more imposing.
He lifted his other hand to his mouth, and I saw bursts of crimson light flashing between his claw-like fingers. It was Tony—or rather what was left of him—and Sage was about to swallow him down, just as he had Jasper. He tilted his head back, lifting his hand to his open mouth—and then spotted me, seconds away from driving my sword through him.
He flowed backward, leaving only a ghostly image of himself, and I sliced through it, planting a foot on the floor and going after the real him. I slashed over and under, trying to land a blow, but he sidestepped each one, avoiding any cut by inches. I grated my teeth together in frustration as I continued to press and he continued to retreat, until finally I feinted a low blow to the left, and then brought my blade up on the right.
The blade severed the arm that clutched Tony, just below the elbow. Sage grabbed what was left of his arm and screamed, molten white code pouring out of the stump, while his arm landed a few feet away. I ignored it, focused solely on trying to end him, but noticed a purple lasso flying through the air from the right out of the corner of my eye, and knew that Rose was trying to secure whatever was left of Tony. I brought the sword around, trying to slice through Sage’s neck, but the old man twisted away, as slippery as an eel, and began bounding across the floor.
I ran after him, changing the sword in my hand for two guns, and began firing, sending small amber streaks of fire after him. They collided with some sort of energy barrier, bouncing off of him with small flashes of light, and I shoved more of my rage and anger into the bullets, forcing them to spew out at a rapid speed. The harder I hit the barrier, the more I could see of it—like the bubble was being outlined by the shots—and it grew brighter and more visible with every additional bullet. I continued to hammer my shots into one spot, trying to find a weakness, and in response, Sage changed his angles, created pads to start leaping up and away through the darkness. I darted after him, bouncing through the darkness in pursuit of him, and continued to fire.
Finally, a crack started to form in the shield he was generating for himself, and I felt a dark seed of excitement humming through me as I continued to hammer my will into that spot, in the form of bullets. There was a sharp snapping sound, and a brilliant glow burst through the crack in a stream of pure white light. I could make out the orange lines of Jasper’s code and see that they were trying to stitch the break together, and though I knew I could damage whatever was left of that code, I had to seize the opportunity. I fired, directly at that spot, and Sage cried out as the shot tore through his back and out of his chest.
He fell forward with a pained cry, one hand going out to catch himself, and I shot it out from under him, and then formed a floor beneath him to keep him from altering gravity and racing away from me again. He hit the ground with another gasp of pain, and then rolled over to face me, his hands already regenerating. I drew back my arm to stab him, but he rolled to the side and somehow managed to push off the ground until he was spinning to a stop on his feet.
“Really, Liana?” He sneered, beginning to grow as a long tube formed in his hands. “Is your imagination that limited?”
He hefted the tube over his shoulder in time for me to see a white light glimmering in the depths of it, and on impulse, I shot my gun at it, aiming for the center.
Sage hadn’t been expecting that, and a second later he threw it away with a surprised yelp. There was a small amber explosion inside the tube, and Sage began to scramble away from it, indicating that he knew it was going to blow. I followed him, intent on not letting him out of my sight—and then the tube exploded, throwing us both up into the air.
I quickly centered my gravity and looked around, trying to locate Sage and go after him again. I spotted him thirty feet away, rising to his feet, and aimed my gun at him, intending to take him out.
“Liana!” Leo cried, his voice suddenly very close. “Look out!”
I caught a green flash of a toe from a massive foot from the corner of my eye and had only a fraction of a second to realize there was nothing I could do to stop it before it slammed into my side, sending me flying. The hit didn’t hurt so much as stun me, and for several moments I couldn’t move or think, every part of me going deathly still and locking up. I had no awareness of what was going on, and no ability to do anything except wait for control to be restored.
“Liana!” a voice cried sharply in my ear, and I opened my eyes, suddenly aware again. I was lying on my back, staring up at a purple dome overhead. I saw a shadow cross over it and come crashing down. I flinched as it impacted with a shudder, expecting the shield to shatter, but it didn’t. Instead, an arm that I hadn’t even known was draped across my chest tightened protectively, as if trying to shield me from harm. I opened my eyes again to see that my head was pillowed in Rose’s lap. Her purple form was hunched over me as she tried to use every bit of her broken code to protect me.
“Rose?” I called, wondering how the fragment AI’s strength was holding up.
“I can’t hold the shield for much longer!” she cried, and a second later, her code flickered in and out. Her eyes grew wide with alarm, but she was already moving. “Here!” she said as she slid her hand down to mine and shoved something into the palm of it. I looked down to see a small crimson orb glowing brightly. It was Tony—or whatever Sage had taken from him and been about to eat.
Rose pushed impatiently at my shoulder, and I sat up, still staring at the orb, confused at why she was giving me this. Did she expect me to swallow it like Sage had done with Jasper’s? Because there was no way I was going to do that.
“What do you want me to do with this?” I demanded, shifting around to look at her, only to find her kneeling next to Scipio. I felt a momentary confusion, wondering how I had gotten back to them so quickly, and then realized Kurt’s kick must’ve thrown me farther than I had thought possible, clearing me from the fight, and dismissed it as another odd feature of the datasphere.
I hadn’t even realized that the AI was still here, but now that I knew, it was hard to look away. His code was spliced with a slick, oily blackness that ran alongside the bright blue lines, clearly corrupting him with its taint. As I watched, black lightning sparked from the inky rivulets and tore through his code, striking against the lines of blue, and he moaned and writhed in agony. His hands were pressed into his hair, clutching his head, and he was rocking back and forth in the fetal position, his eyes wide.
“Please,” he moaned, staring up at Rose with open desperation. “I can’t take it anymore. The pain…. The pain is too much. They’re my responsibility, and I’m losing them! Let m
e die… please.”
Rose’s code flickered again as she reached out to touch his face, trying to smooth away the anguish there. “Shh. It’s going to be okay. I’m going to help you.”
Scipio gave a small sob and nodded jerkily. “Please, I’ll do anything… Just make it stop. I can hear their voices crying for me to save them, but I can’t… He won’t let me!”
It was hard to watch the great machine begging like that, and on impulse, I reached out to take his hand, offering him comfort. Touching his code was gross, like sticking my hand in greasy water, but I held tight, trying to send him anything that would make him feel better.
“Liana,” Rose said, catching my attention, and I glanced back up at her, frowning when I saw her putting her hand over Scipio’s chest.
“What are you doing?”
“Taking out of Scipio what Sage stole from Jasper and tried to steal from Tony. Our source codes—our memory units. Sage took Jasper’s against his will, but Tony, Scipio, and I are giving you ours freely. You’ll need them, too; they have all the records of what Sage subjected us to, which will help you in this fight.”
“What?” I asked, shaking my head as if to clear it from a punch. “I don’t understand!”
“After I… kill Scipio, the New Day protocol will start,” Rose continued, as if she hadn’t heard me. “You’ll have only a minute to eradicate Sage and Kurt’s codes—like you did with Alice. If they kill you, their codes will merge and they’ll be injected in the Core. If you don’t kill them, and all four of you are combined, then the size of the AI you will create will overload the system and destroy the Core and AI forever.”
Overwhelmed by her information, I was still sifting through everything she had just said, trying to find a starting place for my litany of questions, when she reached her hand
out to smooth over the lines of Scipio’s face, staring down at him with a mixture of hopelessness and love.
“I’m sorry I didn’t do a good enough job taking care of you,” she told him, her voice quivering. “I wish I had protected you better.”
Scipio’s face softened, black tears pouring from his eyes. “You did what you could,” he whimpered. “Please… just end this.”
Rose nodded and put her hand over his chest.
“Wait,” I said, trying to stop her from killing Scipio. I wasn’t ready; she needed to wait until we had killed Sage and Kurt first. “Don’t!”
But it was too late. Rose plunged her hand into Scipio’s heart, and the AI released an unearthly note of pain and suffering, his anguish like a sonic boom throughout cyberspace. Cracks appeared in the dome, and then the force of his cry shattered it outward, the sound of his death knell blowing everyone but Rose and me back. I saw Leo’s blue streaking away, tangled with Sage’s white, and started to get up to go after him, but Rose’s tired voice brought me up short.
“Liana, you have to take it,” she said, and I turned back to where she was sitting, cradling Scipio’s disintegrating form in her lap. Next to her sat a blue orb with crackling lines of black electricity rimming it. Her code flickered again, the distance between each blink growing shorter and shorter.
“I don’t know what to do with it,” I said, lifting the hand that already held Tony’s orb.
Or rather, had. Because it was gone and had left in its stead a crimson glove that stretched up my arm in strange overlaying segments, forming blood-red armor over my skin. The individual plates were highlighted by my own amber code, and the entire thing felt smooth under my hands, and lighter than air. It was Tony—what was left of his code—protecting me from harm.
Rose gave a soft laugh that sounded like a bitter cry at the same time, and I turned to find Scipio gone, his code completely erased, and Rose already reaching into her own chest.
“Rose!” I exclaimed, my voice breaking in sorrow. I’d already lost her once today, and the tragedy of it was still fresh in my mind. “Please, I need you.”
“No,” she said weakly, her code beginning to flicker and pulse as her hand withdrew from the hole in her chest, a small purple pearl clutched between two fingers. “What you need is this: a record of what Sage did to us. We know how his mind works, and we can amplify your instincts with our own, to give you the best chance to stop him. Take it.”
Behind us, I heard the thundering approach of Kurt, his massive steps causing the datasphere to ripple and pulse, but I imagined him far away, keeping the distance between us. I wouldn’t be able to do it for long, but it was enough for now.
“You’ll die.”
“But a part of me will live on, in you. Take it, Liana. I know it’s not very much, but I give it to you freely. We all do. Now hurry, because your time is slipping.”
As she spoke, her code began flickering more and more, until the pearl slipped from her fingers, and she was gone. I stared at it for several seconds, and then picked it up, cradling it to my heart. A small surge of warmth flowed through my chest and then around it, then flew up my back and to my shoulder blades. The skin and bones on my back suddenly started to contort, elongating, stretching out, growing, and I glanced over my shoulder to see that a pair of lilac wings had sprouted from my back, taller than I was and filled with iridescent feathers.
I smiled when I realized Rose still literally had my back, and then bent over to pick up the orb with Scipio in it. I wasn’t sure what I expected to happen, but a moment later there was a flash, and I was holding a massive blue sword wreathed in black lightning. It felt light as air as I experimentally swung it around, and I stared at it, suddenly renewed and filled with energy. I had been given protection from Tony, an advantage by Rose, and what I assumed was a deadly weapon, from Scipio. I was as ready as I was ever going to be.
I turned, and studied where Kurt was drawing closer, racing toward me. Every cut and blow that Leo had landed was already healed, his code perfectly intact. Alongside him streaked a white blur, which was avoiding the bolts of blue light being thrown by Leo. Sage looked perfectly intact again, his damage already healed up, and he was holding his own against Leo, dodging his blows easily. I knew he was trying to wear Leo down, and from the looks of things, he was succeeding. Leo’s arms were moving slower and slower, his own code flickering as his energy flagged.
Frustration roiled through me as I realized this battle could drag on and on. If I went for Sage in an attempt to protect Leo, I might be able to surprise him once, but not enough to kill him. If I didn’t manage to get the upper hand on him, Kurt would arrive to save him, and the cycle would begin all over again.
I needed to be smarter, change my tactics.
Kurt’s shape loomed closer. My ability to hold him at bay any further was deteriorating with the attention I was now devoting to the larger problem. His fifty-foot-tall form leapt in the air toward me, both feet lifted up in what could only be described as a purely stomping motion, and inspiration hit me.
I flexed my new wings, flapping them hard, and took off like a bullet, straight for the AI overhead, the blade held tightly in both hands. With my advanced reflexes, I calculated the timing exactly, and then slashed the blade up into the sole of his boot, cutting a bright hole in his code before diving through it, tucking both of my wings tightly around my body as I did.
Within moments I was shooting up through darkened space, using my wings to fly up through his leg and into his body. I was shamelessly inside his code, and not even hiding it, using my sword to cut apart any strand of code that was close enough for me to get at—trying to tear him apart from the inside out.
A slice of a particularly thick string of code suddenly revealed a bright green glow behind it, and I angled for it, knowing it was his source. If I could destroy it like I had Alice’s, then Kurt would die, and Sage would be alone against Leo and me. I streaked toward it, Scipio’s sword already pointed at it like an arrow, and flapped my wings harder, trying to get there faster. Lines of code rose up to entangle me as I flew, angling for the glowing ball of light, and I struck them down left an
d right, my arm and blade flying.
But one snaked past my defense, coiling a long line around my leg and jerking me to a halt. I slashed it quickly, but then two more replaced it, one around my free arm and the other around the opposite leg. Even more sickly green lines of code broke off the walls in an attempt to entangle me, and I realized this could be my last chance to act.
I didn’t hesitate, tossing the blade up so I could catch it in a throwing hold. I willed the blade to become a spear, but I wasn’t certain whether the source code of another AI would respond to me.
It worked perfectly. As I drew back to throw, the tip was already elongating, growing narrower and sharper, with a deep blue glow. I threw it before it was finished—and just before another green line of code caught me around the wing and shoulder. I ignored it, watching as the spear streaked toward the green globe, like a meteor hurtling through the atmosphere of an alien planet.
Several lines of code detached themselves from the wall to intercept it, drawing closer and closer to the spear, and I realized they were trying to stop it. What was more, I had no idea whether capturing it would mean that Kurt could also steal Scipio’s source code from me. Fear made my skin hum violently, and to my surprise, the green lines of code holding me into place responded by slackening, as if my fear had transferred into them, overwhelming their purpose. I seized the advantage, twisting around violently to break them into fragments, and then gave a massive beat of my wings and shot off after the spear, lines of amber erupting from the gun I manifested in my hand.
There was a sharp burst of light before I could confirm that the spear had hit the green orb, and I lifted my hand to shield my eyes. I had no idea whether the spear was hitting Kurt’s source code or Kurt’s defenses had destroyed Scipio’s weapon, but then I heard a deep rumbling, the sound of massive blocks of ice breaking, and I opened my eyes to see… the green orb, still intact.