Peter Watts - Echopraxia

He pulled a roll of splinting tape from the kit, snapped off a few thirty-centimeter lengths (long enough to extend past the wrist — it was starting to come back). He laid them down equidistantly around Valerie’s arm ( God she’s cold ), pressed gently into the flesh ( Don’t hurt her, don’t fucking hurt her ) until the adhesive took and hardened the splints into place. He backed away as the vampire flexed and turned and examined his handiwork.

“Not set straight,” she remarked.

He swallowed. “No, I thought—this is just temp—”

She reached across with her right hand and broke her own forearm like a sapling. Two of the splints snapped with a sound of tiny gunshots; the third simply ripped free of the flesh, tearing the skin.

The fascia beneath was bloodless as paraffin.

She extended the refractured arm. “Do it again.”

Holy shit, Brüks thought.

Fuck fuck fuck .

Not a test, he realized. Never a test, not with this thing. A game. A sick sadistic game, a cat playing with a mouse…

Valerie waited, patient and empty, less than two meters from his jugular.

Keep going. Don’t give her an excuse.

He took her arm in his hands again. He clenched tight to keep them from shaking; she didn’t seem to notice. The break was worse now, the bend sharper; bone pushed up from beneath the muscles, raised a knotty little hillock under the skin. A purple bruise was leaking into existence at its summit.

He still couldn’t meet her eyes.

He grabbed her wrist with one hand, braced against the cup of her elbow with the other, pulled . It was like trying to stretch steel: the cables in her arm seemed too tough, too tightly sprung for mere flesh. He tried again, yanked as hard as he could; he was the one who whimpered aloud.

But the limb stretched a little, and the broken pieces within ground audibly one against another, and when he let go the lumpy protuberance had disappeared.

Please let this be enough .

He left the broken splints in place, laid down new lengths of tape adjacent. Pressed and waited as they grew rigid.

“Better,” Valerie said. Brüks allowed himself a breath.

Crack. Snap.

“Again,” Valerie said.

“ What’s wrong with you? ” The words were out before he could catch them. Brüks froze in their wake, terrified at the prospect of her reaction.

She bled. The bone was visible now beneath stretched skin, like a jagged deadhead in murky water. The contusion around it expanded as he watched, a bloody stain spreading through wax. But no, not wax, not anymore; the pallor was fading from Valerie’s flesh. Blood was seeping from the core, perfusing the peripheral tissues. The vampire— warmed —

She’s vasodilating, he realized. She’s switching into hunting mode. Not a game after all, not even an excuse.

A trigger…

“I’ve got it,” said a voice from behind.

Brüks tried to turn. Valerie’s impassive gaze pinned him like a butterfly.

“No, really.” A pale flash, a beige jumpsuit. Lianna coasted into view and braked against the wall. “I can finish up here. I think your guys need some supervision out on the hull anyway.”

Valerie’s eyes flickered to her broken arm, back to Brüks. He blinked and she was gone.

“Let’s get you out of that suit,” Lianna said, unscrewing his helmet.

She’d cut her hair. Her dreads ended along the jawline now.

Brüks sagged and shook his head. “How can you talk to her like that?”

“What? I just—talk.” The helmet tumbled off across the compartment. Brüks fumbled with zippers and clasps, still quaking; Lianna unlocked his gauntlets. “Nothing special.”

“No, I mean—” He took a breath. “Doesn’t she scare the shit out of you?”

“Yeah, I suppose.” She glanced at the first-aid kit drifting to one side. “Holy shit, she had you using that ?”

“That creature is fucking insane .”

Lianna shrugged. “By human standards, sure. Then again—” She tapped the bulkhead with her toe: a diagnostic pallet unfolded from its dimple in the wall. “Not much point in bringing them all the way back from the Pleistocene if their brains worked just like ours, right?”

“Weren’t you afraid?”

She seemed to think about that for a moment. “Guess I was, in a way. I mean, predator-prey, right? Gut response.”

“Exactly.”

“Chinedum said there was nothing to worry about.” She gestured him over to the pallet; he floated into place, let her strap him down around the waist. Biotelemetry readouts bloomed across the bulkhead.

“And you believed him. Them.” It. Whatever the pronoun was for Hive .

“Of course.” She ran her finger down the stack of biosigns, winced at something she saw there. “Okay, let’s see what we’ve got.”

She cast her gaze around the compartment (“We should really get around to unpacking this stuff sometime”), opened a silver crate tagged with medical icons. A few seconds of rummaging turned up a scaffolding gun from the instrument trays stacked within. She dialed it to OSTEO and set the muzzle against his broken ankle. “You’re nerve-blocked, right?”

He nodded. “Jim shot me up with something.”

“Good. ’Cause otherwise this would really hurt.” She fired. Brüks’s leg jumped reflexively; he caught a glimpse of black filaments, fine as filaria, lashing frantic tails before they burrowed into his flesh and disappeared.

“Might itch for a bit once the block wears off.” Lianna was already scanning the compartment for other treasures. “Takes a while for the mesh to line itself up when you’re dealing with all those little bones—ah.” An off-ivory cube, this time—no, a transparent one. It took its color from the viscous casting putty inside: the stuff quivered like gelatin when she cracked the lid.

There must have been enough in there to put ten people into full-body casts. Brüks glanced around while Lianna scooped up a handful; at least a half dozen other crates were filled with the same stuff.

The putty squirmed in Lianna’s hand, aroused by her body heat. “Where are we going?” Brüks wondered. “How many broken bones are you expecting when we get there?”

“Oh, they don’t expect anything. They just like being prepared.” She slapped the goop onto his ankle. “Hold still until it sets.” It slithered around the joint like a monstrous amoeba, fused to itself, crept a few centimeters up his calf and down around his heel before slowing and hardening in the oxygen atmosphere.

“There.” Lianna was back at the cube, resealing it before the rest of its contents crusted over. “You’ll have to wear that for a few days, I’m afraid. Normally we’d have it off in eight hours but you’re still fighting traces of the bug. Might stage a comeback if we crank your metabolism too high.”

The bug.

Luckett, screaming in agony. A lawn littered with twisted bodies. A disease so merciless, so fast that it didn’t even wait for its victims to die before throwing them into rigor mortis.

Brüks closed his eyes. “How many?”

“What—”

“Did we leave behind.”

“You know, Dan, I wouldn’t write those guys off. I know how bad it looked, but if I’ve learned anything, it’s that you don’t second-guess the Bicams. They’re always ten steps ahead, and they’ve always got plans within plans.”

He waited until the voice beyond his eyelids finished talking. Then he asked again.

It didn’t answer at first. Then: “Forty-four.”

“Ten steps ahead,” he repeated in his own personal darkness. “You believe that.”