David Williams - The Machinery of Light

“I don’t think so,” says Haskell—she reaches out—

“I do,” says Sinclair—flicks his wrist. A dart whips toward the Operative’s head—

—who ducks out of the way. Shakes his head.

“Now why did you have to do a thing like that?” he asks.

“Take him,” says Sinclair.

Lynx and Sarmax move toward the Operative. But Linehan heads in the other direction, dropping down to where Haskell is. Sinclair whirls, hurls another dart after him, but just misses as Linehan ducks behind the pod that contains Haskell.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Sinclair asks.

“Fucking your whole day up,” says Linehan—

—by doing what Haskell’s telling him to. She’s managed to shield his mind with hers, managed to convince Sinclair that he’ll do whatever he asks. But the cat’s out of the bag now. And Sinclair’s coming right after him—will be on him in seconds. He starts grabbing at the piping around Haskell’s pod, ripping it straight out of the paneling—

The Operative’s scrambling up the side of the inner Room, Sarmax and Lynx in hot pursuit. A knife thrown by Sarmax just misses his head. A dart flung by Lynx whips past his leg, skitters past him. He snatches it from the floor as he clambers up. They’re down to basics now. Behind him he can hear Linehan going to town on Haskell’s equipment—can hear the belching of pneumatic pipes torn asunder while something presses in upon his mind—

“You can’t escape us,” says Lynx.

He might just have a point. Sarmax alone would still be more than a match for him. And with Lynx in the equation, it’s even more of a long shot. Especially when there’s no zone left for him to access, his mind pressed back into his skull by the vortex the Room’s becoming, his brain once more having purview over nothing save his body. The Operative depresses a trigger in his mouth, feels a needle slide into his cheek, one last shot of grade-A combat drugs surging through him, a rush that’s intensified by the certain knowledge that Sarmax and Lynx are riding the same wave, too, building still further as he thinks of Claire at the center of it all … remembering her on the edge of seventeen, a mind like nothing he’d ever seen, a single endless summer …

Hide-and-seek: Linehan’s on one side of the pod, Sinclair’s on the other. Linehan’s doing his best to keep it that way, moving back and forth to prevent Sinclair from coming to grips with him. He knows the only reason he’s still sane is because Haskell’s offering some protection. But this is a game that can have only one ending. So he’s smashing against the equipment with his bare fists, rending metal as Sinclair starts bellowing like a wounded animal and Haskell’s mind starts convulsing—

The Operative feels it too: a mind in meltdown, flailing against him as Lynx and Sarmax close in from both directions. It’s like all surfaces are twisting around him now—mentally and physically—more darts flung by Lynx and Sarmax slicing past him as he struggles to breathe and the walls along which he’s climbing seem to be somehow bending—

“What the fuck is going on?” yells Lynx.

“The no-room’s crashing,” mutters Sarmax.

The Operative shoves off one of the screens, straight back toward his pursuers—Lynx draws a knife, slices it in toward him—

—just as Linehan doubles back again—wrong way this time. Sinclair’s right there, scuttling in toward him like some kind of demented crab, hands looking more like claws —and Linehan does the only thing he can do: leaps at him, burying his teeth in Sinclair’s neck—

—as the Operative ducks in under Lynx’s killing blow, smashing his fist into Lynx’s face, puncturing the skin with a fingernail that hides a needle that extrudes—

“Fuck,” yells Lynx—the last coherent thing he says as the poison enters his brain and he starts frothing at the mouth—

“Good riddance,” says Sarmax.

“Just us now,” says the Operative.

“Like it should be.”

Teeth tearing through flesh that’s really something more—Linehan feels Sinclair’s claws rending him but he’s still pushing the man-who’s-no-man backward, shoving him up against the canopy-door as Sinclair’s blood gushes into his mouth, turning to acid as it does so—burning, overwhelming him with pain even as his teeth clash together, even as the thing he’s fighting keeps on rending him—

—even as Sarmax feints left, goes right, then lashes a kick against the Operative—who pulls his leg out of the way as the blade that’s extending from Sarmax’s ankle just misses hamstringing him.

“Oldest trick in the book,” he mutters, as he stabs Lynx’s dart at Sarmax’s face—

“This one’s even older,” says Sarmax, knocking the dart flying as he unleashes an almost impossibly strong punch—but the Operative ducks, grabs that arm, hauls Sarmax in as they start to grapple—

“Like we’re back in the ice,” he says.

“Ice is all there is,” says Sarmax as he gets the Operative in a headlock. The Operative tries to break free, but it’s no use. Sarmax always was the stronger. And now his former mentor is cutting off his air.

“Over soon enough,” says Sarmax.

“Like right now,” says the Operative—he shoves backward, smashing Sarmax through one of the screens. Shards of plastic fly. Blood’s all over the back of Sarmax’s head. But—

“Won’t save you,” says Sarmax.

“Think again,” says the Operative—he’s grabbing one of those shards, twisting his arm as he plunges it through Sarmax’s eye—

He’s blind now, Sinclair gouging out both eyes, but still Linehan fights on, pure dying adrenaline pumping as his opponent starts crushing his skull with fingers that may as well be drills. As the bone cracks, the brain within processes images: temples opening into universes that unfold onto the ramparts of all the heavens, all of it falling past him like myriad shooting stars, far-flung patterns somehow coalescing into the face of the woman he’s giving his life for and even with his ruined mouth he’s still going out smiling—

—whereas Sarmax just stares at the Operative for a moment with the one eye he’s got left. The shard protrudes from the other—

“Bastard,” he says.

“You just won,” says the Operative. “You’ll see her now—”

“Always …” mutters Sarmax—trails off, his remaining eye rolling upward in his head. The Operative springs to his feet, whirls—takes in Sinclair standing at the base of the pod, facing him—