Paul Hughes - Broken - A Plague Journal

“He’s sending little girls to do his job for him.” Maire bared her silver fangs as she crouched down to Sapphire’s tangled pieces. “Don’t cry, child. You’ll be with your sister soon.”

“Don’t you fucking—”

“Too late. Jade’s droptroops were among the first to go.”

“You motherf—”

Maire tore into the girl, her claws slicing into the cardiac shield and cleaving her breast into halves. Sapphire lurched, but she was trapped under the weight of the dead Mara’s umbilicals. She tried to scream, but a simple flick, and her vocal cords were split. Maire gutted her, the foul internals steaming out into the frigid air. She reached into Sapphire’s chest, groped around, and plucked a tiny silver marble from its resting place. She admired its design and saw movement from the corner of her

Honeybear Brown smashed the side of Maire’s head with a hanging interface line, but teddy bears don’t have much strength. The impact elicited a quick jolt of pain and a bark of surprise from Maire, who whirled on the toy. He jumped at her throat and clawed there, but his paws were plush. Before she could throw him off, he scrambled down between her breasts and wrenched Sapphire’s marble from her hand. He landed on the floor with not much of a sound at all, tumbling to rights and activating his shield.

“You mother fucker .” The bear sparked to static and disappeared back into Judith ME.

Maire howled with rage.

Children and toys.

The war continued.

“Does Adam know?”

Paul nodded.

Sam sipped tea, replaced the cup and leaned forward, hunched with arms hanging limply over his knees. “Did you ever think it’d come to this? That it’d all fall apart?”

Paul didn’t have an answer.

“You had to have some idea that this was coming. That Maire would use everything Hope knew. That she’d incorporate it into whatever Program the Enemy’s on now— Seven? Fourteen? Fifty-fucking-three?”

“I wasn’t thinking.”

“Neither was Alina.” He hadn’t meant it to cut, but it did.

“I should have known, but…We forget the basics when we’re broken. Maybe a part of me knew that Maire’d upload Hope’s ME. Maybe I was afraid to think of what could happen when she did. That everything Hope knew, about our forts and maths and Judith Command, all of it would suddenly be crystal-clear. Maybe I didn’t want to believe that Hope could be the end of us.”

“Maybe you were too busy locked in your chamber with Al to notice.”

“I’m sorry, Sam. Sorry that I took her away from you for so long.”

“You don’t need to apologize for—”

“But I do. It wasn’t fair. We got tangled up in each other. But now, well, she’s all yours.”

“I don’t understand.”

“She’s yours for the assault on the Delta bleed. I want her to be your pilot. Our pilot.”

“Am I missing something, Mr. Hughes?”

Paul’s face was caverned and ancient. His eyes looked nowhere. “You know I’ve looked up to you for as long as I can remember.”

“I assumed that’s why you brought me in.”

“You’ve been a mentor, an inspiration. You listened even when you didn’t know I was talking to you.”

“Go on.”

Paul’s right hand shuddered violently. He put it under the table. “If we’re going to end this, we need to merge.”

“Are you implying—”

He coughed a laugh. “Not like that.”

“It’s the silver.”

“You have the vessel structure. I have the silver. Together, we can…Maire will never have seen anything like it.”

“Do I get to stick around for the drive?”

The hand pounded against the underside of the table. The echo bounced in the empty construct. “I think it’s time you get out of here, Sam. Maybe it’s time for me to take over. To let you rest.”

Sam sipped slowly, and the motion evolved into a nod as he lipped tea from his mustache. “I was wondering when you’d make this decision.”

“It’s not that I want you to go. Alina loves you. Everyone does. I do. But maybe it’s time that I stand on my own for once. Everything you’ve done for me—I can’t pay that back. But I can set you free. Let you out of this. Maybe it’s time for you to go home.”

“You sure about this, son?”

“No.”

Their combined laugh was sad and knowing.

“Well, then,” Sam stood and walked around the table, “no time like the present.”

Paul stood. He shook with the fear of letting go. He extended his hand, and the solid shake became a bear hug, all slapping and gripping.

Sam pushed him back and grabbed his shoulders. His gaze was direct and forever. “You do this. You win this.” His hand went to Paul’s stubbled cheek. “And you take care of Al for me, okay?”

“I will.”

Another hug, but it was something deeper; Sam’s beard tickled as Paul shifted into the silver, reaching out and snapping Sam’s phase tethers, the intricate web of memory and possibility that held him securely in the construct. Paul shook and coughed as he consumed Sam’s pattern, the silver coursing through the broken collection of them, the oceans of machines dismantling and uploading the strands in a flash, in static, and silence.

Paul fell gasping, alone, to the floor, silver spilling out of him, a splash and a rebounding recall. He lay there into the night, categorizing and learning the complexities of the vessel. At some point, his breathing slowed. At some point, he pretended to sleep.

When he woke up, he missed Sam, but he knew that there are some trips you have to take alone.

He had that cigarette musk in his mouth. The touch, the feel of cotton wads jammed into his ears with a pencil tip, straight through into the decay. He had that taste of blood wrapped around his tongue, the muzzy veil of waking up. He had that indistinct disconnect that only comes from revision and abject fear.

He cycled open the door to Jud’s chamber, saw Alina on the chaise, comforting a sobbing Honeybear Brown. His heart sank as his eyes slid to another silver projector marble in the bear’s paw.

He half expected West’s blow, and that half allowed it to connect, knew that it had to. His jaw rocked away, feeling unhinged, locking as he reeled a stumbled step or three, righted, met Adam’s second swing with a steel grip and threw the larger man to the floor. He stood over the fallen soldier. He worked his jaw until the grating of bones and intricate workings released. A tooth was loose, three. He pried them from sockets with his tongue, let them fall to the floor as new grew.

West’s chest heaved; his teeth were clenched in a snarl to match his eyes. Paul walked to the conference table, joined the remaining Judith Command. West stood slowly and sat across the table, kneading his hands back to feeling from the impact.

Alina sat next to West, rolled the marble across to Paul.

“‘Phire?”

“I couldn’t get Jade’s.” The bear spoke as he settled into a chair. “There wasn’t much left of the droptroops.”

West’s eyes reached across the polished wood with an unabridged fury.

“I’m sorry, Adam.”

“You’re saying that a lot, lately.”

“They knew the risks.”

“They were my—”

“No.” Paul let the word echo. “They weren’t.”

“Just another merge.” Reynald spoke from behind a stack of glass. He threw them to the table, a faint crack splintering the bottom display, a triangle of it spinning lazily toward Paul. Before it sparked out, he read: elta bleed 96-over. [A/O reports 04% . “Not his daughters, no. Not from the AE-line. Does it matter?”

Paul snuffled back a drip of silver. His hands were under the table. He kept turning to the right.