The Archive Undying, page 37
Is it asking Imaru, or him? Sunai shakes his head. Imaru nods against his cheek.
The seed is forced into his mouth. Imaru closes Sunai’s fingers around the disruptor, depressing the button in his fist. The Maw shatters and envelops him entire.
36
They’re not a network, not truly. They’re just together.
They, Sunai and the Maw, breathe deeply of salty sea air and chlorine wafting from the pool below. They ache in their wrists and spine and ankle. It’s awful and it’s glorious. They laugh deeply, from their gut, and they kiss Imaru’s temple, her cheeks, her mouth. Her eyes are wet. They hold her head to their chest.
They love Imaru, and they pity her. She can’t bear her own victory, which is why her shoulders are unbending, and why she won’t return their embrace.
What is it she’s won? Ah, yes: them. Separate, now one. And how! They don’t know this story, so they tell it to themselves.
She is a murderer, is Imaru. She killed them. What? Hush, it’s true. Their flare of doubt is swiftly smothered. Of course it’s true. They remember how she did it.
Mostly they remember. Death is always trauma, is wound. Some details are locked in place like stinging scars, others vanish like blood leaving the body. Imaru’s face stayed, as did her hatred and her sickness. Years ago, on the eve of their shared death, she entered the Lotus shrine (they think) and brought with her the passenger (she did?) and with it, she became the reason they died—they Sunai, Sunai and the Maw, Sunai and the Maw and the city. She razed them at their root, left them in shredded fragments.
Her saving grace: once they were dead, she hated herself instead.
Self-loathing drove her to save them-as-Sunai from the ruin she’d made of Iterate Fractal. It pulled her back to the city she’d killed, which was how they-the-Maw came upon her in the smugglers’ tunnels under old Mangrove. And it’s why, when they held her facedown in the shallows, she didn’t kick, or scream, or even gasp—
What?
Ah, yes. A tale for later. Suffice to say, when they-the-Maw offered Imaru a chance to remake herself, to carry the disruptor schematics to the Weis under the guise of their own assassination, to find Sunai so they could be reunited, and in so doing, to lend her hand to their rebirth, she agreed as if in prayer.
Some alarm yawps. Imaru pushes away, unnaturally rigid. “You need to go.”
“I do.” They caress her cheek. She turns from them. They say, pleading, “Come with me.”
Her mouth slants, no kind of smile. It says, You know why I can’t.
Do they? Yes! Sunai understands in the same complete and instant way they grasped the mechanism underlying the Maw’s attempt to integrate on Lily.
Integrate, yes, that’s what they’ve done. They surpass interface—defy it. They are free.
Some aspects of this knowledge require closer inspection, but a deeper reckoning will take precious time, and Imaru’s right. They must leave, fast and alone. The Harbor comes for them. Already more sirens keen and Harbor ships arc across the water.
Something is amiss. The militia rigs and Harbor cruisers head not for Orchid District and the Heavenly Pearl, where the Maw has finally broken free of its chains. They streak toward Grotto, at the opposite end of the bay.
They, ENGINE and relic, Sunai and Maw, lean past the faux-bamboo railing. The Harbor looms far away, and the Grotto fleet even farther. It’s difficult to catch details with the murk of dawn pooling on the water.
They vault over the railing and lope past the crystal pool. The beach rolls up to meet them, the pulverized remains of Iterate Fractal’s corpse vibrating in response to their unspoken desire. As they leap down the steps from the pool to the sand, particles of bone and coral swell in a staircase of lifting hands, erected by trace elements of capillary root. They slow as they take in what has befallen the other side of the bay.
A black, spindly body climbs the tallest tower of the Grotto fleet. Another fragment of the Anthill. It crouches on the dilapidated coral spire like a crack in space-time. No, that’s two bodies, lurking close beside each other. A third flashes between the tethered ships of the fleet. A boat at the perimeter crumples and sinks.
They are much, much too far away to hear the fragtechs’ rampage. But oh, they can imagine it. They are frozen by remembered screams.
“Hey!” Imaru calls from at the base of their staircase. “It’s coming—that thing. You have to leave.”
Unspoken: Or what did I betray you for?
Ah, Imaru. She hoped one guilt would satisfy the other: sacrifice traded for liberation. They love her, so they hoped she would find a peace even as they suspected she wouldn’t. Now she looks toward Grotto full up with anxiety. She might be sick.
There was a moment off the coast of Lily, not long ago, when one of them stood beside her on the deck of the Never Once as the other gazed up at her through the water, writhing in the shape of a stunted dragon-child. Imaru was whispering: “You should be careful. Something is wrong. He’s brought the other relic.” Her warning came from fear. She was afraid to betray Sunai and afraid that the Maw might die even if she did.
Now they live, yet she’s still so damn afraid.
Imaru is silenced by her own conviction. She chose their freedom as the Maw. She can’t ask them to stay, not if it would kill them.
She need not ask. They’ll do it anyway.
They recoil from themself. No. They are to flee, not just from the Harbor, but from that thing, the passenger, their murderer. They must fly as far as they can, perhaps forever—as long as it takes to finally save one of their relics.
They, Sunai, touch their face. They press their fingers to their cheeks and their mouth, unsure why they find their flesh so unremarkable. They say, “What about Adi?”
The question unleashes a war within their chest: full yearning against vast disdain. They love Veyadi, and they hate him. They are too many times betrayed by their adoration of his mind, his heart, his considerate frown. He is torturer, jailer, and would-be executioner. They’d be better off with him dead. They should count themselves lucky they won’t have to kill him. It would hurt to do it.
“No,” they say. “To hell with that. We can’t leave him. I won’t. Fuck off.”
They cackle in hysterical delight. What a wonderfully stupid thing to say to oneself! In the eternal spirit of stupid things, they leap. One habitually forces themself to act despite doubt, and the other is too intoxicated by their joining to resist the impulse.
They touch ground as a full-formed assemblage of bone-and-coral fragments dragged up from shore and sea, knit together by fine roots unspun from their main body. The armor is crude, defined by the limitations of their lesser form. The greatest portion of their capillary trove has been split off, given over to the Harbor’s programmed hulk of insensate rocks. In the end, they stand barely twice as large as Imaru, who backs away in the swirling sand, then lurches forward, seeing their intention.
“No—you have to go.”
“We are going. Going to help.” They quell an impulse to touch their knuckle to her cheek. “You’d do it for me.”
Imaru’s face contorts. Their heart twinges as they prey on her sympathy. She will do as they ask because she can’t bear the alternative.
“Find Adi,” they say. He’s alone, now. Alone with their murderer. If they’re going to stay, he has to live, and if he’s going to live, he must be protected.
Her laugh is faint. “He’s going to kill me.”
“Tell him I need you. Tell him I need him too.”
The exact nature of those needs goes unsaid because it’s unclear. They only know that they can’t stomach the thought of coming to the end of all this and finding Veyadi dead of the passenger, or Ruhi, or stray frag violence.
Neither could they bear to lose her.
Imaru’s mouth parts as if to protest. They leave before she can.
* * *
Grotto is under siege. The few days since the last assault saw fortifications rise up all across the fleet. In a matter of minutes, the work is undone. The black fragtech of the Anthill swarm over towers and bridges. They are shot at by harpoon guns and net cannons, harried by drones. A collection of rigs—militia conscripts working in concert with free salvage-rats—drag captured frags away from the fleet to tear them apart in the bay. It’s not enough. It can’t be.
They count three Anthill frags when they set out from Orchid, dashing across the water on plates of bone and coral that form and dissolve under their feet. There are five—no, six—by the time they reach Jasmine. They’ve drawn level with the piers—seven now, at least, but it’s grown difficult to keep track—when the newest monster shows its face.
First, they see their greater shell assembling midway between Grotto and Lotus. The bone-and-coral ENGINE takes the form of a massive company-cat, bristling with long spines. They swerve to intercept it. With that grand reserve of capillary root, they could easily command the ruins surrounding the Grotto compounds.
They’ve just dashed within range of the ENGINE’s NT network—it sings at the fringe of their mind, alive with power—when it shatters. The body they should have claimed is rent apart, and the cache of capillary root flares and dies. They stagger back, reeling from neurotransitive whiplash as they stare up at the ENGINE’s massive, indifferent murderer.
This fragtech before them is infeasibly large. Even as they know the passenger is capable of hiding its vessels like it hid its shrine, they find it difficult to grasp how it ever concealed something that takes up so much of the horizon. It’s also horribly familiar. They’ve seen this frag more than once in the past month, most recently just days ago. It’s their giant, the one they glimpsed from their hotel suite. Reconcile Elegy.
Freed of its sandbar off the mainland coast, Reconcile Elegy’s tapered limbs are a clean, unnatural white. A vast, segmented cape streams from its pauldrons and a haloed crown adorns its shapely skull. All fifteen stories of the once-inert frag have already passed Lotus. It moves on Grotto with the same relentless focus as its fellows, but where the Anthill frags scrabble with insectile abandon, Reconcile Elegy strides unbowed. A Harbor security cruiser darts toward Elegy’s slender knee, and a diaphanous banner uncoils from its wrist to lash out. The force of the cloth craters the cruiser’s deck. As the ship capsizes, the banner flutters back from the carnage with a deceptively delicate waft.
“Where did it dig that one up?” they mutter. “I haven’t seen anything like it since … since—”
“We passed it on the way down from Ghamor, just off the southwestern tip of the mainland. Still buried, then. You remember?”
Their recollection is uncommonly clear. They marvel at the tidiness—they understand it’s due to the synthesis of human processing with autonomous registry—even as they rack their brain for further information.
“It’s traveled even farther than the Ants,” they say. “Just when did the passenger start reaching?”
Rather, when did Ruhi? The thought chills and threatens. They shove it aside. Later.
Where is Elegy headed? They track its course to shore. Past the fleet, across the bone avenue, lies the broken nautilus shell of the Three-Eyed Carp. Their former shrine.
But why? If the passenger means to murder them, why didn’t it make for Orchid? It knew where they were.
Ah. Their roots. The archival seeds within their chest and gullet are the font of their self, but the roots are the means by which they build and preserve their body. Without those roots, the seeds will be exposed to any death the passenger chooses for them. Their remaining troves lie in Grotto and in the Harbor. The one in Grotto is an easier kill; given the choice, they’d rip it up first too.
They dash past the Harbor cruiser Reconcile Elegy pummeled and sweep their arm toward it—back and up, up. The gesture summons a coral hand from the waves to support the ruined hull. It’s second nature; they only regret the expenditure of capillary root once it’s gone.
They can smell Grotto, the smoke and fire, just as they can see the shore, where some of the fleet’s denizens have begun a frantic evacuation. Reconcile Elegy advances on the first moored boats and towers, driving toward their old shrine with single-minded indifference. It cannot be stopped. Even if they had the root to spare, no barrier they built could withstand its banners. The best they can do is get their people—their citizens, those who survived their death—out of its way.
They dive between the lashing lengths of cape, and fragments of their armor break and whirl around them, pushing tender flesh forward on a current of misshapen fish. They swim in wide arcs around Elegy’s footsteps, into the thick shadows beneath the fleet, until they claw out of a crack between a tower and a houseboat. They frighten a cluster of citizens sheltering on a nearby deck. One enterprising young person fires a harpoon gun toward their chest, which they dodge by inches.
“Stop it!” they say through a bone-and-coral mouth. “I’m helping.”
Words aren’t enough. The citizens shrink from them and into the path of an Anthill frag, skittering down a nearby spire with a screech of metal on bone. Fine, action it is. Quick as thought, two enormous hands breach into the world: one peels off the bone tower to snatch the Anthill frag by the middle and hold it tight as its coral twin tears out of the water to shield their citizens.
They, Sunai and the Maw, stagger with the effort, planks creaking and sloshing into the water. It was so much easier to manipulate the world they grew when they were properly networked to it. At least when they snarl at their citizens to flee, every last one of them bolts.
They leave the Anthill frag to struggle, but the shield-hand they reclaim. Their flesh is finite, and there will be more stragglers in need of protection.
They tear through the fleet, minor harbinger of Elegy, capturing and redirecting those trapped, abandoned, or too stubborn to flee. It’s grueling. They spend more than they can afford. By the time they stumble onto the cracked bone avenue, they have nearly exhausted their root supply, and they are diminished by every measure.
“Sunai!”
It startles to know they can be recognized as such. It startles even more to be caught by human arms and helped down to the ground. Yet the person supporting their sagging weight is relieved as he shouts, “You’re right—it’s him!”
“We found him,” another says into their radio as they approach.
“I told you so!” a third crackles back. “I fucking told you!”
They-Sunai recognize all three. Cothai, who threw himself from the side door of a truck to catch them; Oyu, who hopped from the driver’s seat and runs forward with radio in hand; and Wei Jin, crowing over their fine intuition.
“Get out of here,” they rasp at the lot.
Cothai soothes them as he would a unruly toddler. “Easy, easy. What was that?”
“You have to leave.” They roll out of his grasp and onto their knees, landing on the bone avenue with a sickening crunch. “The passenger, it’s coming for my roots—no, never mind. You have to go. Evacuate the fleet.”
They are met with loud human silence, clear despite the deafening mechanical barbarity roiling from the water. Cothai and Oyu exchange a glance, their expressions bewilderingly concerned.
“The roots, huh?” Jin says through the radio.
One formidable crack is followed by another. Reconcile Elegy reaches the fleet, and its approach slows only because it must wreck what it passes through.
“Well at this rate, you’re pretty fucked,” says Jin.
“We know,” they snarl.
As they struggle to their feet, Cothai and Oyu fall back, wary of the bone and coral crawling up the body they once knew as Sunai.
More vehicles approach, trucks burdened with harpoon guns and motorcycles carrying riders in salvage-rat gear. The Ginger Company.
“Okay,” says Jin. “How long would you need to grab like, a chunk? Never mind. Doesn’t matter. Oyu, tell the Gingers I want them covering Sunai—the Maw—you know. Cothai, get someone to track down Imaru. And you—Sunai.”
That name feels wrong, but they grunt to accept it; not their most pressing concern.
“Harvest what you can, then get the hell out of here,” Jin tells them. “We’ll delay Elegy as best we can. Just don’t get fucking caught!”
What to make of this? Jin led the plot to assassinate them. Putting aside Imaru’s true intentions when she brought the schematics to the madam and her heir, Jin pursued the Maw’s death with fearless sincerity. They sacrificed their own body to that end. Yet how eagerly they betray themself now.
What else are they casting aside? The madam’s approval? Their own revenge? They can’t know what Jin wanted from the Maw’s death, as they never asked. Neither do they have the time to do so now. Reconcile Elegy crashes through another band of the fleet, decapitating a sentry tower with an idle swing of its hand.
Oyu sprints off to hail a truck, which comes screeching to a stop. Cothai makes to join Oyu, but they catch his arm before he can join the other Gingers. His eyes widen as he cranes to meet their gaze, at once familiar and monstrous.
“Tell everyone to stay clear of the courtyard,” they say. “It’s not here for you.”
Protest dies on Cothai’s tongue. The softest of the Never’s crew, he’ll honor the request because it was made. They release him, he runs, they haul themselves toward their old shrine. There they will search for the rot their heart left in the sand, to salvage whatever remains before they must at last choose whether to flee—or to stand, and die, for someone other than themselves.
37
You are accustomed to this sort of thing—the sharing. I have been sure of that ever since you harnessed my thoughts with your own. Your facility with neurotransitive architecture is a consequence of the life forced upon you by Iterate Fractal, after it ravaged your body and rebuilt you in its image. Where Sunai invites stray threads of my brethren into himself, your mind forever wanders, seeking out new purchase within them. A perilous pastime, when the things you catch on would so readily devour you.
