Into Darkness Read online

  She raised a fist. “Only one objective: find the AI and kill her. Get the job done fast. She knows we’re here.”

  Marley gagged on the stench of thick mildew exuding from the crumbling hall. Blotches of turmeric yellow and crystalline red tumors discolored the walls. Ceiling plaster crunched beneath her boots, and from deep within the building, a machine hummed.

  As they moved down the hall, the team members slipped through doors, cascading past each other and clearing rooms.

  “No one watching the front door. Don’t like this at all,” said Bozzie.

  “Eyes sharp,” Marley snapped.

  The hallway ended in an intersection. Marley pointed to Bozzie and Yip. “You two take the left passage.” She nodded at Chang and Cowboy. “With me.”

  “We should stay together,” Bozzie said. “Strength in numbers.”

  “Not a good strategy.” Marley recalled the grainy footage broadcast from the previous team. Asim, another of the Prime’s Augmented agents, had chosen to keep his elite team of mercenaries together. A mistake. They had all walked into a trap, a room of flames.

  Marley handed Bozzie a kill drive. “Find the AI’s chassis and insert the drive. Keep the comms line open. Any trouble, I’ll come running.”

  Marley, Chang, and Cowboy moved with a practiced speed. Chang assumed the lead, her soft voice directing Cowboy and Marley as they quickly cleared rooms. The rooms were empty: smashed resin furniture, a neatly sheeted bed, a rat’s tail vanishing into a toilet bowl. Eventually they came to a stairwell and had no choice but to ascend.

  Marley paused to access Bozzie’s visuals. He and his crew, on the other side of the building, had reached a set of stairs leading down. “… don’t … this,” he muttered through the comms channel. A flurry of static clipped his words.

  Bozzie’s team glided down the stairs into a deeper darkness, the pools of lights intermittent.

  Marley turned off the visuals. She climbed after Chang and Cowboy up the stairwell, her boots crushing broken plaster and glass.

  They cleared that level and went up the next flight. On the upper floor, sunlight angled through gaps where the bricks in the outer wall had collapsed. The tracks of large robotic feet lined the dusty floor. Marley touched the drive in her belt pouch. The virus on the drive would send tendrils into the Antaboga-2’s network: her code would consume itself. Marley’s work would be over. Hsu’s death avenged.

  She did not want to think about what was next.

  A cold sweat formed on Marley’s brow. This operation did not feel right. Antaboga-2 would never allow Prime’s agents so close to a local chassis. It was the only place she would be vulnerable. She should have attacked or set up traps.

  Static pulsed over the comms line. Marley strained to hear. Did she hear a voice beneath the waves? A scream? The static flurried.

  “Marley?” Chang hissed. “Was that Bozzie? We should turn back.”

  Marley remembered the fragmented video of the previous failed mission: the figures crouched, the blinding white flame, Asim screaming.

  She needed to focus. She could not let emotion get in the way. She had a job to do.

  “Clear this level. Stay on mission.”

  “It’s Bozzie,” pleaded Chang.

  Marley pointed to the robotic tracks. “Something’s up here. We find what it is.”

  “Moment I see something, it’s full of holes,” said Cowboy over his drooping mustache. “Extreme prejudice.”

  Chang and Cowboy moved to the next doorway, counted down their fingers, and slipped out of Marley’s sight.

  Marley waited for some resistance. A shimmer of wire connected to explosives in the walls. The sudden unfolding of skeletal robots, the tips of their guns flaring. Something.

  But they found themselves alone in the gloomy hallways.

  Finally one room remained. A small peephole glinted in the middle of the door: the light of the room distilled into a single jewel of brightness.

  Marley opened the channel to Bozzie again. Waves of static.

  Chang hunched to the left of the door, the barrel of her rifle close to her cheek. She shook her head. Wheel tracks disappeared beneath the door. Something heavy had been moved. Marley knew the chassis would not be easy to move.

  Marley wished Huang Di Prime would have infiltrated Antaboga-2’s network. But the moment she sensed something, she would have run. The AI should have run now. She should have fled long ago. Unless she wanted to lure them in.

  Marley swallowed. She turned to her crew.

  Her image reflected in Chang’s goggles. She looked no different than the others, her metal flesh hidden by the combat skin.

  But she was not the same. Her life ended that night outside of Taichung. Marley nodded at Cowboy.

  He winked and then kicked the door open.

  The center of the room had been cleared: couches, tables, and empty cardboard boxes shoved to the walls. In the lone window, a crack glowed white like trapped lightning.

  Chang bent on one knee in the center of the room. She raised a gloved hand, rubbing hydraulic fluid between thumb and forefinger. Marley followed the trail of thick power cords and data cables to the wall.

  “She was here,” said Marley. “We missed her. We’re too late.”

  The static from the comms channel surged, and Bozzie’s voice broke through the white noise. “Marley … help.”

  Five

  BOZZIE’S CRY MADE Marley’s heart shudder. She remembered Asim’s screams, the flames as Hsu’s skin bubbled and blackened, her own terror of being trapped. She could not let Bozzie burn, too.

  Marley sprinted out of the room and leapt down the stairs shoving off the walls to keep her balance. With each level she dropped, the gloom grew darker. She heard Chang call after her but Marley could not make out her words.

  Panting, she finally reached the intersection where she had parted with Bozzie. Behind her in the stairwell, glass shattered and Cowboy let loose a string of curses. Marley stopped. Better to approach together.

  She stared down the hallway at the door through which they entered the building. In the mouth of the alley, the platoon of robot soldiers stood motionless.

  After a few seconds, Chang stumbled to Marley’s side. “Damn, don’t leave us behind like that.” She rested her hands on her knees. “Can’t keep your pace.”

  Cowboy limped down the stairs after her. His left side was white with plaster dust. He stared towards the alley. “Bringing in the cavalry?”

  “We need more mercenaries,” said Chang starting towards the entrance. “Or the robots.”

  “We go after Bozzie now,” said Marley.

  “She knows we’re here,” said Chang. “It’s a trap.”

  “I’m not leaving him. Not to her.”

  “I didn’t sign up to die.”

  “I’m not leaving him.”

  When Marley reached the stairs leading to the lower levels of the building, Chang returned to the point position and the light mounted on her rifle showed steps treacherous with green slime. Almost immediately Cowboy slipped and fell hard on his hip. More curses. As Marley began to descend, she noticed a single handprint on the glistening walls as if someone stopped and considered turning back.

  Finally, she reached the basement. Icy water lapped against her knees. Marley’s reflection bent and distorted in the oily fluid. She stepped with hesitation.

  Ahead, the hall melted into complete black.

  Marley rolled through the comms channels but found only static. She signaled the others to disconnect from the comms line. Someone had jammed the system.

  “Too much interference.”

  She stared ahead into the rippling waters. Her night vision flickered, and then it too filled with static.

  “Can’t see shit,” said Cowboy. His feet sloshed through the water. “Something’s fucking with our gear.”

  “Shut it down,” said Marley. “Rely on your lights.” She flicked on the light mounted on her rifle.

&nbs
p; Chang shot a look over her shoulder at Marley. “It’s the AI, isn’t it? We’re in too deep.”

  “Chang’s right,” said Cowboy suddenly stopping. “We should fucking blow the place.”

  “Blowing the place is a mission failure. Only inserting the drive will terminate her.”

  “Blow the shit out of the place, I say, girlie. Kingdom come,” said Cowboy. He kicked up a spray of water. “I get paid to do a job, not be led to the slaughter and this job’s gone south.”

  “Bozzie called for help,” said Marley. “He’s one of yours.”

  “He’s dead,” said Chang. Her lips pulled thin. “The AI’s messing with us.”

  “There’s a chance Bozzie’s alive.”

  Marley imagined what it would be like to be bloodied, broken, struggling to keep above the oily water, gasping.

  She shouldered Chang aside and took point.

  She swept her light across the room.

  Something bobbed in the water. Further ahead, the hall disintegrated into unfathomable black.

  “What the fuck?” said Cowboy.

  “Maintain positions,” said Chang.

  Marley shuffled forward. The gap between her and the others grew.

  She fixed her light on the floating object and then quickly pointed it up the dark hall, afraid that someone would leap out of the shadows guns blazing. She held her light for a slow count of three before lowering it to examine the object.

  A boot.

  A foot poked out of it.

  A foot and the lower part of a leg.

  The boot looked untouched: shiny black with polish, laces in a tight double knot.

  The leg was severed with a clean cut at mid shin. Bone, tendon, and skin were sliced in a cross-section like an illustration from an anatomy text book.

  Chang prodded the boot with her gun. “Had to be a robot to make a cut that clean.”

  “Or a goddamned samurai,” said Cowboy.

  “Shut up, Cowboy!” said Marley. “Focus.”

  “We should call in an air strike.”

  “Focus!”

  Marley pushed aside the boot and sloshed forward. The broken remains of small cameras hung on the walls. Despite that, Marley could not shake the feeling something was watching her.

  They were inching forward when two metal panels dropped from the ceiling and slammed into the floor cutting off the hallway ahead and behind.

  She remembered the video of Asim in the lair, the shuddering image, the white burst of fire.

  “Down!” Marley screamed.

  She was halfway beneath the surface of the water when the hall exploded.

  Six

  MARLEY WOKE IN icy water. She squinted at the single fluorescent light flickering above. On the dark walls, rivulets of water throbbed though cracks. Close but unseen, a machine hummed. The air reeked of sulfur.

  A dark-skinned woman, a Balinese dancer wrapped in a shimmering green sarong, lowered herself, knees together, in front of Marley. She wore a gold crown hammered into the shape of a sun.

  The woman vanished as if scratched from Marley’s sight and then returned again, suddenly bright.

  “You are nothing to him,” said Antaboga-2. She brushed at a stray hair on Marley’s face but the AI’s palm passed through Marley’s cheek. “He sends you here to die.”

  Marley lifted her hand and waved it through the dancer. Marley closed her robotic eye and Antaboga-2 disappeared.

  That was not right.

  Marley’s stomach tightened.

  Marley slid her hand to her belt. Her nano knife was gone, but the kill drive sat in its pocket. They did not realize the weapon she had. She needed to find the chassis.

  Marley struggled to her feet. Something heavy dragged on her. She felt a cable connected to the data port in the base of her skull. Shit! Antaboga-2 was inside her. Marley yanked at the cable. Welded.

  She glanced past the interface: at the edge of darkness, light reflected on metal. The chassis.

  “She’s not lying,” said a voice from behind Marley.

  She wheeled about.

  “Asim,” said Marley. Half his beard had been seared off. Beneath his tattered clothes his skin was red and blistered. His fluvium limbs, on the other hand, glowed. “You’re alive! But Antaboga-2 killed you. I saw it.”

  “Did you?” He circled Marley until he stood next to Antaboga-2.

  “Help me finish the mission.” Marley tottered forward but her legs gave out and she collapsed to her knees into the icy water, the cable splashing behind her.

  “I have a proposition,” said the Balinese dancer. She held out sweet-smelling red hibiscus flowers in her cupped hands. “Join me. Huang Di Prime is a monster. Together we can defeat him.”

  “Asim, she’s a murderer,” Marley said ignoring the interface.

  Asim laughed. “You see nothing, do you?”

  Marley whispered. “Without Prime, I never would have survived the accident.”

  Antaboga-2 punched a virtual hand through Marley’s chest. Marley screamed. It felt as if bones cracked and muscle tore. Antaboga-2 yanked out a simulated heart, still beating. “Asim, you said she would turn.”

  He shrugged. “A fool. Why not worm further in? Easy enough to replace her memories.”

  “I don’t want her anymore. Useless plaything.” Before Marley’s eyes, Antaboga.2 transformed into a giant green snake. She glided away on the water. She turned back toward Asim. “Kill her.”

  “I’ll make it quick.” Asim drew his nano knife and seized Marley’s wrist.

  Marley could not tear her hand away. His hand tightened like a vice. All her strength had sapped out since Antaboga-2 simulated pulling her heart out.

  “Asim, please!”

  He slashed at her neck.

  She blocked the blow. The nano knife cut clean through her biometal skin to the tubes and wires beneath.

  Marley screamed. Pain burned up her arm. Her fingers went limp. She scrambled backwards through the oily water.

  “Where you going?” Asim kicked, his foot furrowing a dark wave. His boot smashed her face. She rolled with the blow. Pain swelled her lips and she spit out a bloody tooth.

  She tried to stand but the thick black cable had pulled taut and she could only rise to a crouch.

  He kicked again. She ducked but his boot glanced off her head and sent her sprawling sideways. The cable pulled against the base of her skull.

  Marley tugged at the cable. It would not come loose.

  Asim lifted his foot to stomp down on her head. This time she rolled forward, narrowly avoiding his kick, and bowling him over. He sprung up and slashed with the nano knife. Marley thrust up the cable to deflect the blow.

  The nano knife cut clean through, severing the connection: Marley’s strength surged back.

  She leapt forward, cracking Asim’s nose with her fist. He stumbled towards Antaboga-2’s chassis. Marley caught up with him in three steps, grabbed him by his chin, and hurled him to the floor. He waved the knife and hissed.

  Marley laughed. She sprung forward and drove her knee into his chest plunging him beneath the water. Air bubbles seeped out of his lips. He slashed again but she caught his hand. She squeezed until his biometal fingers snapped. She forced the blade, slowly, towards him.

  Then she dragged the blade across his throat.

  Asim sunk beneath reddening waters.

  Marley followed the severed cable to the chassis.

  She pulled the kill drive from her belt pocket. “Die, bitch.”

  She shoved it into the chassis and terminated Antaboga-2.

  Seven

  CAPTAIN ADAMS WOKE with a start, his palms reflexively smashing into the polymer lid of the stasis pod. He wanted out. By the time the last of sleeping fluid slurped down the drain slats and warm water rinsed over his dark skin, he was trembling. He yanked the release latch and kicked the lid open.

  He tore out his mouthpiece and sucked in a deep breath. Bitter cold. HDC-117’s systems were cycled down. He
woke out of mission. Not good.

  He needed to find out what happened.

  He sat up and stared at the others. Their pods were dark, their figures distorted in the sleep fluid, pale shapes wavering beneath the glass.

  All but Marley. Her pod was open and empty. He cursed.

  “Penelope, darling.” His voice rolled out gravelly. “Why’d you wake me so early? Cat scratching at the door?”

  Before the ship’s AI could respond, bile rose in Adams’s throat. More than two dozen deep space sleeps, yet every time he woke disoriented. His stomach churned. He grabbed the handles on the side of the pod and waited.

  “My Captain,” said the voice of Penelope. “You need time to transition out of the stasis cycle. You know better.”

  “Woke in the middle of a dream. We were on a beach holding hands and dancing in the waves. You and I.” He swung his legs out of the pod and pushed himself to standing. He cursed his aching knees. “Getting too old for this, Penelope.”

  “Forty eight is within the company parameters for Deep Space Captain Second Rank.”

  “There’s parameters and then there’s my spinning head. Time’s running out and still not enough credits in my pocket.” He shuffled to the locker and toweled his skin. He fanned his fingers through his tightly curled hair spraying water. He reached for his combat skin and his stomach surged – he vomited a pale green liquid onto the metal floor.

  A small black bot chirruped as it separated from the wall. Its brushes and hoses sucked the muck off the floor, and then, as fast it emerged, it vanished through a small panel.

  “Would you like me to schedule a physical when we dock at Orion 7?” Penelope asked.

  “Orion 7?” Adams wiped his lips with the towel and tossed it into his pod.

  “The itinerary has been updated.”

  He snorted. “It’s Marley, isn’t it? Never should have let her on our ship. Too dangerous to be around Prime but fine on the same ship as you?”

  “I have seen no indication that Antaboga-2 infected her implant.”

  “You don’t send that much fluvium armor to babysit a cargo of sleeping pilgrims.” He caught himself clenching his fists and forced himself to relax. He took a deep breath. “So why Orion 7?” he asked.