Then there was Alderson, trying to hand me something. My vision didn’t register on what he held but instead on the tremble in his fingers, a shakiness that infected the man’s throat so that when he spoke, his words vibrated like the walls.
“… so take this.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, not moving for the packet he offered.
“Never mind me, you’re sixteen and a half. Equivalent. And according to our data your group has the highest kill rate, and the other genetics in your outfit call you ‘the Little Murderer.’ We like this. So you have to take this medicine. It will help with our research.”
“But you shake. Why? The only thing that could possibly reach us here is a deep penetrator and the Russian attack suggests they want our underground positions intact, not collapsed. Even if they did penetrate, we would
be invincible in glory. Death and life are not the same; death is better. And Bentley was a better man than you. Even though you’ve done the right thing by coming here, to where it all could end, I still think he was more like us.”
“I don’t have to ask for you to take it. I could call my Special Forces escort and have them force you. An injection.”
“Why don’t you?”
Alderson didn’t say anything at first, and tapped the table.
“Because you are almost perfect at killing. Better than even the current crop of Lilies. The most promising prototype we’ve seen, an operational example of what we intended when designing genetic units. So we thought you should be asked. That maybe you’d take the agent willingly. We were being
nice
, Catherine.”
I grabbed the packet and ripped open the top before he could flinch.
Better than the Lilies, even Megan?
“What is it? A lie?”
“A psychotropic cocktail. Multiple pharmaceuticals designed to shut down portions of your nervous system, depriving the brain of certain signal pathways. A few months ago my research team in Bethesda found studies that had been conducted over two centuries ago; when taken in the correct doses,
low
doses, the treatment can stimulate creativity. It opens new neural connections. As a result, we think an appropriate regime could result in your brain generating new ideas that otherwise would remain buried, making you a better, more inventive soldier.”
“You want me to find new ways to kill.”
Alderson shrugged. “Let’s say we want you to be creative. Artistic.”
The liquid tasted slightly metallic, like our recycled water, and I squeezed the packet as hard as I could, tilting my head back to shake out the last droplets. After a few minutes I shook my head.
“It doesn’t work.”
“Give it time,” he said. “Sometimes these types of drugs don’t kick in for an hour, or their effects are so subtle that you don’t even notice. In the meantime our recon drones suggest that the Russians are attempting another infiltration topside, but the data is inconclusive. If they come, we want you and the other Germline-Ones to meet them. Sentry bots will be deactivated and your mission will be to stop the attack with no support.”
“All of us have been given this treatment?”
He grinned and took out his computer. “Just you. We’ll follow your progress via drone, documenting changes to your effectiveness.”
“Then I should rejoin my sisters.”
“No.” Alderson motioned for me to stay in my seat and began typing. “There’s time for that still. Right now I need to ask you some questions.”
And then I noticed. The vibrations of plasma impacts moved through the rock and into my body so the energy became a living thing, communicating anger, whispering about the plasma shells’ rage at having been denied real tissue, which I understood and which made me sympathetic to them, made me want to bring Alderson topside. They needed a sacrifice. If the rounds consumed him they would have at least something for their troubles and the shells showed more bravery in their short existence than he had in an entire nonbred life. But then it changed again. Alderson’s coat shone brightly, even in dim combat lamps
that should have made it seem blue, but instead the garment became so brilliant that I could only stand to look at him for a moment. Each thread came into focus—as if my vision had reached a new level of acuity, perfectly tuned.
“And now for the last question,” he said.
“What? I thought you had a lot of questions for me.”
Alderson laughed. “I did. You’ve answered most of them for me already. It’s been… illuminating. You don’t remember?”
“How much time has elapsed?”
But I already knew from my chronometer, and Alderson confirmed it. An hour had gone by and I didn’t remember a thing. It underscored the sensation that had already seeped in, soaking into my brain the same way blood sank into the ground, slowly and quietly: the world had changed, along with my perception of it.
“Are these effects permanent?” I asked.
“The sensations the drugs bring on are not, but over time, as you grow accustomed to the treatments, we predict that new neural pathways will likely be established to the point where you can access them without treatments. If this works, it should make you sharper and keep you there, until you’re discharged. Shall we continue?”
I nodded.
“Have you ever been afraid?”
“I don’t understand.” My mind raced at the thought, and the room shifted sideways, replaced by the vision of our mother beating Megan, the cane whistling as it arced downward. “I fear nothing.”
“Good. Then get back to your sisters. We’ve just gotten word that Popov will be here in twenty-four hours.”
It was almost exactly twenty-four hours between the time our humans abandoned us at Tamdybulak and the moment the Russians arrived. Marines had left us three broken-down but semi-serviceable APCs, and we did our best to camouflage them beneath dirt and concrete blocks, after which there was nothing to do but wait. It only took an hour for the silence to make me tremble.
“Alderson said that I killed better than the rest,” I said to Megan, just to break the monotony. “Even better than the Lilies.”
“What are you talking about? What made you think of him?”
“When I blinked out a little while ago, it’s what I saw: one of my interviews with him. He said that I was the best killer in Germline-One and better at it than the Lilies.”
Megan shifted, and I sensed her staring at me, but my eyes didn’t move.
“We call you the Little Murderer. That was after Majda was taken, when the killing really started, and I think Petra thought of it, started the name behind your back. You were always better than me at killing. Better than anyone.”
“He told me that too. The inside of my head feels cold now, Megan.”
I got tired of scanning the horizon and slipped deeper into the hole, letting Megan handle the watch as I spoke. “It’s not so easy anymore. Do you remember the name of our first Special Forces escort? When they assigned them to us, before their mission changed to hunting us down?”
“No.”
“I see him sometimes too, and it’s always the same dream, always takes place during our first advance into Shymkent. Sunrobe. His last name was Sunrobe. What do you think it means? In my visions you can always see it clearly, stenciled on his armor in yellow, the way Special Forces liked it instead of black. But I think that is a strange name to have.”
“I think they’re all strange. All the nonbreds.”
I shook my head and knocked dust from my carbine’s breach. “I want a last name too, Megan.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re important.”
She snorted. The helmet speakers amplified it, made it sound like a burst of static. “Important to the nonbred. To the soft. But not to us.”
“The soft created us. And Special Forces are so much like the Germline, worthy. Be smart. If it’s important to them to have names, than it must be so for a reason. What if last names are the secret to heaven—not glory? What if our mothers lied to us?”
But she didn’t say anything. My chronometer read oh-one-hundred, and in the green of night vision Tamdybulak had begun to look like a moss-covered boulder field, with half-ruined structure after half-ruined structure stretching beyond the goggles’ range, and in the silence that had fallen between me and Megan, Tamdybulak’s ruin became more inviting. It called to me. In retrospect it could have been the tranq tablets but they had long since ceased to have any dramatic effects, so it seemed unlikely they were the cause, but I thought that the ruins had signaled for someone, invited and welcomed me because they understood the importance of naming, refused
to give up their own name of
Tamdybulak
even though nobody had lived there for years. To this city, I was a native. Anyone could be a native in an empty city.
“I’m going hunting,” I said.
“There’s nothing out there. We’ve seen no movement since you shot their first scout and I can’t risk losing you in a collapse. Or you could fall into a hidden substructure; there may be tunnels all over.”
“Megan. I have to go.”
“Why?”
I thought for a second, remembering Alderson. “It’s because I’m an artist. The Little Murderer. And because it’s after midnight, and the order for discharge could come through at any time so this may be my last chance.”
“The orders already did come,” said Megan, “but not the way you think. They sent word while you were hallucinating, that we’re not to be discharged until after the engagement is over.”
“If we survive,” I said.
“Fuel cells?”
“There’s enough.”
Megan brushed the side of my helmet with her hand. “OK. Go hunting and be the Little Murderer while you have the chance. I love you.”
And so the city took me in, swallowed me into its green on black within gray, and for the first time I could remember it felt good to be away from Megan. For now she wouldn’t see that I was terrified.
The combat suit was home. A temple. Its ceramic carapace had flexible joints and the body section opened like a
clamshell from waist to shoulder so that once you slid in, getting out was almost impossible. Between me and the shell was an undersuit—a synthetic one-piece garment through which tubes and hoses circulated cooling fluids or carried away excess energy. Heat. Without a way to remove it, it would have killed me. A computer system, communications equipment, sensors, vision hood with goggles, and me, all of these things generated energy, and fluids shunted it off to a backpack heat-exchanger before it could accumulate, then blew it through a pair of ports at my lower back where a secondary coolant system, aerosol, lowered the thermal bloom’s temperature to almost ambient. Systems created a slow and steady power drain, but with chameleon skin activated, the drain became more noticeable.
“But I am invisible,” I whispered, “an artist,” and my power indicator had almost reached null by the time I found one of them. “I am Catherine Little Murderer.”
A Russian genetic had buried himself under rubble about three hundred meters from our perimeter, leaving only the tip of a collector exposed, which I wouldn’t have noticed except that he must have adjusted himself and caused the rubble to shift, showing the man’s entire device. A new idea popped into my head, but there was a problem. I had frozen. Sweat ran down my face despite the suit’s coolant and my mouth dried to the point where swallowing became impossible. I prayed that a series of violent shakes wouldn’t make any noise as I lay there. It took three more tablets and ten minutes to force my hands still, and tears fogged the goggles while my arms and legs worked to bring me closer to my target.
Collectors like this one were designed to gather
information sent to them by microbots, which would be fired onto our positions just prior to their assault. The tactic would give the Russians our exact positions. But that was hours from now, an eternity that might never arrive, because what mattered more was that if this one had a collector then the microbot launcher would be somewhere else, with one of his brothers, also hidden in the rubble—not too close, but out here. Still. I ignored the thought that another Russian might be watching as I shifted pieces of rubble, one at a time, from the place where it seemed this one’s chest should have been. Soon a small pit formed. Into this I carefully placed three thermal grenades and after another three minutes I had replaced the rubble in a way that left the arming switches exposed.
Three flicks and three seconds to run
. My finger shook as I quietly typed a message to Megan, telling her of my plan and asking her to inform the others to get ready; there was a chance the other Russian would fire at me when I ran, giving away his position too. As soon as she acknowledged me, I acted.
Three seconds passed as I sprinted parallel to our line. Behind me I heard the pops of my grenades, followed by a muffled shout and then all around me Russians seemed to sprout from the ground. There was no time to fear. Tracer fire erupted from Megan and the others, pinging the rocks to form flickering sparks that made it hard to see through night vision and I dropped to the ground, trying to stay as low as possible. One of the Russians dove next to me, his chameleon skin deactivated by a series of hits that had ruptured his fuel cell. He cursed. Bringing my carbine around, I placed it against his temple and squeezed the trigger, watching in fascination as the man tried to bring
his weapon to bear so that in the end I had to squeeze three times to take his life, three times that ended in a rage. I ripped his helmet off and began slamming the butt of my carbine against his head, and sensed it when bits of him flew against my faceplate and chest.