Simon Morden - Theories of Flight

[Petrovitch?]

He breathed in and it was sweet agony. He was still alive. He was still connected.

“Chyort.”

[I am ordering an advance. One moment.]

The roaring in his ears was no figment of his imagination. There were actual voices raised in a war cry, a long, drawn-out bellow. Petrovitch found himself on the tarmac, lying on the loose fringes of the rubble field. Half-bricks and splinters of wood lay with him. He sat up, certain that he had burst all his stitches and racked up a fresh list of further injuries.

His gun had gone. His glasses had gone. He had blood coming from his hands, his face. He rose to meet his warriors. Gray-clad MEA, olive-green European soldiers, the blue of Oshicora workgroups, all running toward him from the end of the street.

But they were mute, grim in their task, guns and staves and swords held in front of their bodies. So he turned to see where the sound was coming from, and the Outies were charging from behind him, mouths wide for as long as their breath would last.

He drifted out into the middle of the street. In the confusion, perhaps the Outies mistook him for one of their own. He wasn’t wearing a uniform, and he wasn’t an obvious target. They ran by. He looked up at the coach, beached like a whale, sides pocked with holes, dented, scraped. A face pressed against the darkened glass, a pale pink palm either side. Lucy.

The two sides met a little way down the street, forming brief scuffles where bullet or blade swiftly decided the outcome. Once engaged, they were committed. They fought and fell. More Outies streamed by to replace those who had fallen, and Petrovitch, shadowed by the stranded coach, was ignored.

Until one dusty man carrying a long steel pole seemed to leap down in front of him, a boy at his side. He recognized them both: the boy he’d rescued, the man he’d seen kill twice from Lucy’s bedroom window.

The man leaned down to bark orders to the boy, a few words, no more, who was then off, back the way they’d come. He spotted Petrovitch. His head turned toward him even as he ran with his message.

Of course, he knew Petrovitch had had a gun, and of course he was going to shout a warning.

“Fox!”

So it was him. The one whose sole aim was to burn the city. Petrovitch stooped for a ragged brick and so by chance avoided the metal bar thrown like a spear. As he straightened up, he banged against the steel, embedded in the side of the coach behind him. And by the time he’d remembered that the man moved like lightning, he had the red arc of a knife flashing in front of him.

He threw the brick off target. It landed a glancing blow, and there was no real force behind it. Fox shrugged off the impact with a grunt and lunged forward, swinging the tip of his knife in Petrovitch’s face.

His body was sluggish, too drugged and damaged to respond quicker. The point sliced across his eyeline and against the bridge of his nose. The darkness was sudden and profound. Petrovitch felt himself twist and fall, all the sharpness of the debris on the road rising up to meet him.

He couldn’t see.

He wasted time trying to blink away the obstruction: it felt like his eyelids were closing around burning boulders.

[One moment.]

He concentrated on that voice, and the light came flooding back.

He was looking down on a blood-spattered body, more dead than alive. A figure was crouching over it, knife held high. There was a rock under the body’s left hand. He closed the fist over it and told it to lash out.

It connected. The figure staggered back, and he could see that the body on the ground was his. The coat, the remains of the coat, gave it away. His perception shifted, rotated, until he was looking at the scene from inside his own skull, through his own ruined eyes.

There was distortion, blank areas where the satellite couldn’t image, but it was good enough. Good enough to do what he needed to do. He dropped the rock, extended his middle finger on his left hand—the artificial one made of transplant-grade titanium—and locked it rigid. He waited for Fox to come at him again.

He was blind. His adversary knew that and knew there was nothing to stop him throwing himself down with his full weight behind the blade. An easy kill.

So the sightless Petrovitch rolled aside, more marionette than man, leaving Fox floundering. He continued to roll until he was clear, and then he was up. He could stand. He had control. His movements were robotic, precise, fast. As fast as Fox’s, who was swinging low at his calves. Jump, kick to the shoulder, recover. No, he was faster.

The first cast of doubt entered Fox’s face.

He kept on coming, though, still not quite believing that Petrovitch knew what it was he was doing, convinced that he was just lucky, not realizing that the cable snaking from his skull and down his back was the key.

Fox was still an unbeliever when Petrovitch crouched down and threw his arm up under the swinging knife. His punch drove his metal finger deep into Fox’s chest. He could feel his fingertip force through skin and muscle. He could feel the wet slickness spread over his hand and wrist. He jerked his arm hard, once, twice, then thrust Fox away with one last shove.

The man tried to keep his feet. He kept on stepping back to maintain balance, each footfall marked with a bloody stain. The front of his dusty clothing turned dark and glistening. He finally stopped and tried to raise his knife. It made it halfway, but it slowly sank back down. Then he fell, metal clattering by his side, and he didn’t get up again.

Petrovitch was surrounded by uniforms. They’d forced their way forward. The coach was secure, the battle-front now shifting back toward Regent’s Park.

[A medical team is on its way. Lie down on the ground. Elevate your feet. Slow your breathing to one breath every ten seconds and lower your heart rate to half.]

Petrovitch didn’t agree. He was managing to block the pain by disconnecting the feed. If he’d known he could do that, if he’d known he could have done half of what he’d just achieved, he would have plugged in the silver jack so much sooner. He felt such joy. He had transformed himself in the way that he wanted to transform the world. He had so much energy, he felt so vital, that he almost picked up a fallen Outie spear and plunged back into battle.

Lucy ran from the emergency exit on the bus, screaming and weeping. She didn’t want to touch him out of fear, her own and that she would hurt him.

“Ohgodohgodohgod.”

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s more than okay.”

“How can you say that? Your face…” She held her hand over her mouth, though all Petrovitch could see was the impression of her nose and chin under her pixelated hair.

“Will you do something for me?”

She looked at him, looked away, then forced herself to look back. “I don’t think there’s much I can do. Not now.”

“There’s a computer shop at the far end of this road. If it’s shuttered, find someone who’ll break it open for you. I need a camera, one of the clip-on computer ones. Small as you can find. Bring me a choice.” He wiped his cheek with the back of his hand where the drying blood was tickling him as it dried. “Can you do that?”

He saw her chest heave as she struggled to draw breath. “Yes.”

“Go. I’ll be here.”

[Petrovitch. You must lie down.]

“Just tell me one thing: have we pushed them back?”

[Yes.]

“Then keep pushing. Lay down a series of ambushes on the route. When we’ve gone as far as we can go, pull back and suck them in. Then do it again somewhere else. Keep hitting them until they run.” Fox’s knife had fallen out of his grip, and lay close by Petrovitch’s booted foot. He bent low and picked it up. “This is where we build ourselves a new beginning.”