Peter Watts - Behemoth

"Sudbury wouldn't have been the only franchise seeded," Lubin pointed out. "Desjardins must have obtained the list and gone to town."

"And blamed it on Rio," Clarke murmured.

"All the post-hoc evidence pointed there. Of course, the city was vaporized before anyone had a chance to ask questions. Very little forensic evidence survives ground zero." Lubin tapped a control icon. "As far as anyone knew at the time, Desjardins saved the day. He was the toast of the town. At least he was the toast of anyone with enough clearance to know who he was."

There was a subtext to the aridity in Lubin's voice. His clearance had been revoked by then.

"But he couldn't have got everyone ," Clarke said.

"He didn't have to. Only those infected with Spartacus. That would have been a minority even in seeded franchises, assuming he hit them early enough."

"There'd still be people off shift, people off sick—"

"Wipe out half a city, you get them too."

"Still—"

"You're right, to a point," Lubin allowed. "It's likely some escaped. But even that worked in Desjardins's favor. He can't very well blame Rio for his actions now . He can't blame everything on Madonnas, but as long as convenient scapegoats from Rio or Topeka are at large, nobody's likely to suspect him when some piece of high-level sabotage comes to light. He saved the world, after all."

She sighed. "So what now?"

"We go get him."

"Just like that, huh? Blind spy and his rookie sidekick are going to battle their way through sixty-five floors of CSIRA security?"

"Assuming we can get there. He's likely to have all approaches under continuous satellite surveillance. He must have planned for the word getting out eventually, which means he'll be equipped to handle large-scale retaliation up to and including missile attacks from overseas. Far more than we can muster."

"He thinks he can take on the rest of the world?"

"More likely he only expects to see the rest of the world coming in time to get away."

"So is that your plan? He's expecting an all-out assault so he won't notice one measly helicopter?"

"That would be nice," Lubin admitted with a grim smile. "I'm not counting on it. And even if he doesn't notice us on approach, he's had nearly four years to fill the building itself up with countermeasures. It would probably be impossible for us to guard against them all even if I knew what they were."

"So what do we do?"

"I'm still working on the details. I expect we'll end up walking through the front door."

Clarke looked at his fingernails. The dried blood beneath turned their edges brown.

"You've put all these pieces together," she said. "They make him a monster."

"Aren't we all."

" He wasn't. Do you even remember ?"

Lubin didn't answer.

"You were going to kill me, remember? And I'd just killed everyone else. We were the monsters, Ken, and you remember what he did?"

"Yes."

"He tried to save me. From you . He'd never even met me face to face, and he knew exactly who I was and what I'd done, and he knew first-hand what you were capable of. And it didn't matter. He risked his life to save mine."

"I remember." Lubin tweaked controls. "You broke his nose."

"That's not the point."

"That person doesn't exist any more," he said. "Spartacus turned him into something else."

"Yeah? And what did it do to you , Ken?"

His blind, pitted face turned.

"I know one thing it didn't do," she went on. "It didn't give you your murder habit. You had that all along, didn't you?"

The pince-nez stared back at her like mantis eyes. A green LED ignited on its left lens.

"What's it like, Ken? Is it cathartic? Is it sexual? Does it get you off ?" A part of her looked on, alarmed. The rest couldn't stop goading him. "Do you have to be right there , watching us die, or is it enough to just plant the bomb and know we'll be dropping like flies offstage?"

"Lenie." His voice was very calm. "What exactly are you trying to accomplish?"

"I just want to know what you're after, that's all. I don't see anyone waving pitchforks and torches at you just because Spartacus rewired your brain. If you're sure about this, if he really did all these things and he's really some kind of monster, then fine. But if this is just some fucked-up excuse for you to indulge your perverse little fetish, then…"

She shook her head in disgust and glared into the darkness.

"You'd like his perversions somewhat less than mine," Lubin said quietly.

"Right," she snorted. "Thanks for the input."

"Lenie…"

" What ?"

"I'm never gratuitous," he told her.

"Really?" She looked a challenge at him. "Never?"

He looked back. "Well. Hardly ever."

Equal parts dead and alive— and hardly caring which way the balance went—Taka Ouellette had figured it out.

She'd never done well under pressure. That had always been her problem. And Achilles the monster hadn't understood that. Or maybe he'd understood it too well. Whatever. He had put her under the mother of all high-pressure scenarios, and of course she'd fallen apart. She'd proven once again to be the eternal fuck-up. And it was so unfair, because she knew she had a good head on her shoulders, she knew she could figure things out if only people would stop leaning on her. If only Ken hadn't been there with his biowar canister, expecting answers right now . If only Achilles hadn't come within a hair of incinerating her alive, and then rushing her through Seppuku's gene sequence without so much as letting her catch her breath.

If only Dave hadn't been so impatient. If only she hadn't hurried on that last crucial diagnostic…

She was a smart lady. She knew it. But she was terrible under pressure. Bad, bad Alice , she chided herself.

But now that the pressure was off, see how well she put everything together?

It had only taken two things to get her over the hump. Achilles had to leave her alone for a bit, give her a chance to think. And she had to die. Well, start dying anyway. Once she knew she was dead, once she felt it in her bones, no reprieves, no last-minute rescue—all the pressure disappeared. For the first time in her life, it seemed, she could think clearly.

She didn't know how long it had been since Achilles had been by to torture her. She figured at least a day or two. Maybe a week—but no, surely she'd be dead already if he'd left her here for a whole week? Her joints had frozen up in the meantime. Even if she were to be released from the exoskeleton, her body was as rigid as rigor…

Maybe it was rigor. Maybe she'd already finished dying and hadn't noticed. Certainly things didn't seem to hurt as much as they had—although maybe she just didn't notice the pain so much now, on account of the raging thirst. One thing you could say about Achilles, he'd always kept her fed and watered. Didn't want her too weak to perform, he'd said.

But it had been so very long since he'd come by. Taka would have killed for a glass of water, if she hadn't already died for want of one.

But wasn't it nice that nothing mattered any more? And wasn't it nice that she'd actually figured it out ?

She wished that Achilles would come back. Not just for the water, although that would be nice. She wanted to show him. She wanted to prove he was wrong. She wanted him to be proud of her.

It all had to do with that silly little song about the fleas. He must have known that, that's why he'd serenaded her in the first place. Has smaller fleas that on him prey, and these have smaller still to bite 'em…