Stormblood, стр. 131
‘Oh,’ said Jae slowly, ‘we absolutely do.’
Her steely, cold voice triggered something in me. Thinking back to all the military-grade gear and preparations and manifestos I’d skimmed over. ‘You’re trying to contact the Shenoi.’
‘You’ve got some brains kicking around in there, after all. We’ve spent years analysing every scrap of researched data, salvaged intel from flyby probes, event-monitoring systems, emissary pods, deepspace expeditions. Now we’re ready. We’re going to awaken those who left us this gift, Fukasawa. And we’re going to do it on Compass.’
I felt this ocean of insanity start to drown me in its thrashing depths. ‘What you’re doing is insane. You’re going to commit genocide!’
‘Again with the death and destruction. We’re uplifting humanity to the next stage.’ She stood stiff, chin turned upwards, truly believing she could achieve all this.
‘You can’t control it!’ I roared. ‘No one can! It’s too powerful, it’s not meant to be used!’
‘Like I told you, power is nothing unless you use it, as Harmony demonstrated so eloquently when they destroyed our worlds. Now, we destroy theirs, one Reaper and one skinnie at a time.’
‘You’re a botched abortion of a human being,’ I ground out past my muzzle. This was the woman who’d stolen my brother, poured poisoned honey into his ears, indoctrinated him into this world of horror and insanity. ‘I’ve been dealing with your kind my whole life. You’re just an evil bully with muscle backing you up. You’re a coward.’
The steely expression on Jae’s face didn’t budge. ‘If you were any less arrogant, you’d understand. But the only way you educate a rabid dog is by beating it. You wouldn’t appreciate what we’ve accomplished even if you’d seen it.’
‘I’ve seen plenty.’
‘Oh, no you haven’t. We’ve been hiding out in Compass for years and your band of war-mongering brutes haven’t had the faintest clue where we are. Would you like me to tell you?’
‘Actually, I’d rather you drank a bucket of bleach.’
The insult I’d fired at Jae missed her by a mile. She glanced outside the viewport, as she if she could see it floating there alongside the asteroids. ‘We’re inside the Void Zones,’ she continued. ‘Entire sections untouched by damage, containing perfectly sustainable living space. And that’s where we’ll be triggering the virus and initiating contact with the Shenoi, right under their noses.’
My stomach churned as I imagined it. The chaos, the mass hysteria as all Reapers and skinnies and anyone who’d even dabbled in stormtech were turned into bloodthirsty robots, reprogrammed by the sticky alien matter squirming inside their brains, altered by a shadowy cult unknown to the public. Without someone to blame, the public would turn on the easiest targets: the victims. How many of them would they execute in self-defence before Harmony got it under control? Compass would be torn apart.
And then the Shenoi would come along to deal the killing blow.
‘You can’t do this,’ I rasped. I was slipping and Jae knew it.
‘Your people took everything from me and left me to die. Look at where I am now. There is nothing I cannot do. Nothing. And you’re going to understand that as you watch it all happen and realise you’ve failed everyone. You’ll remember that as the others break you.’ She shrugged. ‘Assuming you survive this.’
My body was in overdrive, the stormtech zapping in my nervous system like a live wire. Running through her words, the tail end of her speech caught like a splinter in my brain. ‘Survive what?’
For the first time, a knife of a smile crossed Jae’s face. ‘You’ve been so obsessed with our enhanced stormtech over these last few months. How about a chance to try it out?’
42
Blue Deaths
The door hissed open behind me. The buckles rattling as I strained to glance over my shoulder. Two cultists wheeled a device towards me. It was interlocked with tangled layers of heavy black machinery, two bulbous objects latched to the sides like diseased growths. They heaved and wheezed next to me, as if they were breathing. A series of cables plugged them into the gleaming cylinders of two fresh stormtech canisters.
I knew I’d never leave this station alive. I’d accepted my fate the moment Artyom handed me over. If I was going to go out, it’d be like a soldier. A Reaper. Wasn’t about to grovel or beg for mercy that’d never come. But hearing the machine groan and croak next to me, as if excited to be put to use, I felt the blood drain from my face and icy fear rise up to replace it.
‘This is some of our purest, most chemically potent product. Normally, it would take you months to withstand something with this big a kick.’ Behind me, the two men checked the taut cables holding me for slack, clicking the buckles home, tightening my harness straps until I could barely breathe. Jae pressed her hands together. ‘You hurt my men. Killed friends who’d helped build this empire. So you get no such privilege. On the off-chance you do survive, you’ll be an excellent addition to our collection of test subjects in the Void Zones. We could run all kinds of interesting experiments on you for years, maybe decades.’
Tendrils launched out of the tube and snaked towards me like carbon-black fingers. The sharp ends glinting as they jammed into my arms and legs, sniffing out the veins. ‘No, no, no,’ I whispered as more growths burst towards me. The cables and restraining harness held me like stone. Sweat ran down into my eyes, down my chest. Pinpricks of pain erupted through my body, the machine’s wheezing growing faster, more ecstatic.
Jae stepped back next to Artyom. His jaw was clenched tight, hands curled into fists.
‘You can’t,’ I choked out.
‘Oh, Fukasawa,’ Jae’s eyes were so deep and dark they threatened to drown me. ‘What did I tell you? There is nothing I can’t do.’
The tendrils kept coming. Piercing my chest, my thighs, cramming