Hive III (2 page)

T
he Keepers have a real hard-on for libraries and a bigger hard-on for books, which makes the cramped space of the archive so much more surprising. Oleg tells us it was once the basement of a bank, which he says was a place where Dusters stored their wealth. Frankly, I can't imagine allowing anyone to put their filthy hands on my hard-earned USCs. That said, it’s difficult to imagine having too much to handle yourself.

Oil lamps on the wall
cast disturbing shadows along the narrow corridors. Everyone’s with us except Dhal, who stayed behind to finish Bron's new arms. As we left, the big oaf couldn't let Dhal tinker without offering the kid a final warning.

“
When we get back I wanna see something great. And nothing girly. I don't need arms to end you.”

“
The documents are down one more level,” Oleg says and descends into shadow. We catch up to find him standing before a Keeper guard.

“N
o one may enter without written permission,” the prick says.

Ret’s fists curl into fists. “You
turd. Don't you know what's happened? Nearly the whole city’s been wiped out by Zees.”

The
skeptical look on the guard’s face makes it clear enough has no intention of being tricked. More than that, the word Zee doesn’t seem to mean a thing to him. At this very moment, his entire family is probably either dead or shambling toward Skuld’s rendezvous.

The guard
’s eyes light on my face and the muscles in his expression go slack. “What in Newton’s name is she?”

“
We don't have time for this idiot,” Bron says and when he lifts his arms in a threatening gesture, all they produce is a tiny squeak. The guard’s face splits with a smile and Bron’s face turns the color of a giant radish.

“Are those spatulas
? Oh, I get it, you’re some kind of cook.”

“
That's it,” Bron growls and brings his forehead down on the guard’s nose. There’s a loud crunching sound before the man crumples into a heap.

“
Did you have to do that?” I snap.

A
thin drop of blood rolls down Bron’s forehead. “He's not dead, least I don’t think he is.”

The guard is breathing,
that part’s clear enough, but the big guy’s missing the point. In the coming days we’re gonna need everyone we can get. Even idiots can pull a trigger.

Slowly, w
e make our way inside and find rows of tall shelving, stocked with boxes. Each is labeled with numbers. I spot a box marked 2158. Another reads 2057. “What kind of filing system is this?” I ask.

“
It isn't,” says Oleg. “Those numbers represent the year the document was created.”

Oleg’s
gotta be wrong about this one, ‘cause the current date is 223. There's an extra two in there.

He sees my confusi
on and sighs. “Not long after the fall, the Keepers reset the calendar. The death of the Zee Queen became year one. Before that, Dusters kept their own dates and they got up to somewhere in the early 2000s. But the reset date was only intended for the masses, so they wouldn't long for the decadence of the past. A fresh start, you might say.”

“
So Keepers have their own calendar, then,” Ret says, wiping a coat of dust off one of the boxes. “That sure explains a lot.”

Oleg
waves at a cloud of motes floating before him. “Sometimes, knowledge of the past can be a dangerous thing.”

“
Dangerous for who?” I shoot back. “Only the monkeys in charge utter that kind of drivel.”

Bron is making a mess of a box
labeled ‘Banned Female Attire,’ when Ret calls out. We head over.

“I w
as searching through box 2025 when I found this.’ He hands a document to Oleg, who begins reading, his brow furrowing as his eyes scan down the page.

“
This is a battle report from a Duster general named Dempsey. It’s about the final confrontation with the Queen.”

No
w Oleg is in that same box, digging around. He comes up with a paper and the longer he stares at it, the whiter his face becomes.

“
Don't keep us in suspense, Oleg,” I say hotly. “What is it you’ve found?”

Oleg
swallows hard and his throat makes an audible clicking noise. “The Queen,” he says. “She’s isn’t dead.”

“How's that possible? I bark, starting to feel the blood flow into my face. “You said yourself, they lured her into the open two centuries ago and killed her.”

The stern look on Oleg’s face tells me he remembers exactly what he said and has no need
of being reminded. “That was what we were told.”

“
It's what we were all told,” Ret adds. “Leave it to the Keepers to weave a tale that never happened.”

“
Propaganda.” That's what Sneak is signing and I can see her hands ball up into tight fists as soon as she's done.

“
So those Duster pussies never finished her off after all?” Bron says. “Now I’ve lost all respect for them.”

“Not killed,
she was captured and imprisoned,” but even as Oleg says the words, his head shakes in disbelief.

Ret
laughs, but there isn't an ounce of humor in it. “They locked her away, like some Grinder caught stealing a loaf of bread.”

“
Not exactly,” Oleg corrects him. “She was driven into deepest recesses of a Duster prison and there she was sealed, presumably forever. In order to ensure she would never be disturbed or reawakened, our ancestors chose that as the very site upon which to rebuild the human race.”

Ret blinks
his eyes hard. “You're saying she's locked somewhere beneath the capital?”

Oleg
nods. “According to these documents, yes.”

“
Well isn’t that just great,” Bron snorts, looking like a man with two dinners before him. “So, who do we go after first? Skuld or the Queen?”

“
I have a feeling we won't need to choose,” I say and Oleg knows exactly what I mean.

Bron looks
bewildered and ready to head butt someone else. Outside, I hear movement and realize it’s the Keeper guard waking up. He's moaning, which means he's touching his nose and trying his best to remember how it got bent so far out of shape.

“Skuld’s
heading for the capital,” I say. “We knew he would, sooner or later, but what we didn't know, until now, was why.”

“
Or that he’d have an army of Zees with him when he arrived.”

I glance over
at Oleg and spot the concern deeply etched on his face. I ask the question, although it's clear enough he's already wondering the same thing. “What will happen if Skuld manages to kill the Queen?”

The old guy reaches down and ruffles the edges of the papers he's holding.
“Then there would be nothing left to stop him, Azina, not even you.”

Oleg grabs a wad of papers in his arms and signals that he has everything he needs. One of those things is a map of the catacombs under Attica, and a tunnel that supposedly leads to the place where the Queen is being held. Which raises two disturbing questions. Rule number three of being a gun for hire is ‘never rely on outdated maps when your life is on the line.’ Those discolored papers, that Oleg’s clutching like a newborn child, are probably two centuries old. The capital city has grown a lot since then. They’ve built structures and crude plumbing and who knows how many of those tunnels are still there. But that isn’t my biggest concern. From the corner of my eye I catch Sneak watching me, and I know full well she sees the worry on my face. She knows me well enough to realize it doesn't have a thing to do with fretting about my own life. I would never have strapped myself to Skuld’s little machine if that were the case. I glance down at my inky black arms, bristling with prickly hairs, almost as if to drive the point home. Already I've attacked one member of the team and I can't fight the terror, nagging inside of me, that the closer we get to Skuld and the Queen he's so desperate to kill, the more of a danger I become.

It's dusk by the time we
start heading back to the workshop, and it isn't long before the full devastating effect of Skuld’s plan, on the people of Sotercity, comes into clear focus. A woman in a shredded tunic, her face a mask of shock, wanders the streets, calling out the names of loved ones. She doesn't appear to have been bitten, but the chances are good whoever she's calling out to has, and whatever's left of them is surely heading toward Skuld’s gathering point as we speak. Her eyes spot me as we approach and the sudden change in her expression is dramatic. She thinks I'm a Zee and shrieks, searching the ground for a weapon. Doesn't seem to matter one bit that I'm surrounded by a half-dozen others. Another survivor nearby picks up on the commotion and follows suit. They're heading our way, a handful of new stragglers swelling their ranks by the time Ret raises his shotgun. “Looks like things are about to get sloppy.”

“
Don't hurt them,” I say. How can I possibly blame these people, after what they've gone through? If the tables were turned, I’d probably be leading the charge. I'm a monster. On the outside, at the very least, and perhaps shortly on the inside too. Sneak’s tapping a finger on the hilt of one of her twin blades and I know for a fact if they get too close – even wielding makeshift weapons – she won't hesitate to kill them all. She would lay down her life trying to protect me. I spot an intersecting street and we turn down it. The detour will add a few minutes to the journey, but it isn't worth risking any more bloodshed.

The
mob is far behind when we make it back to the workshop and the sound of hammering. “They should be burying the dead,” Bron says. “Instead of making trouble for the rest of us, who risked our skins trying to stop Skuld.”

Oleg’s staring into his hands as though he were reading something terrible etched into the grooves of his flesh.
“Sotercity’s been reduced to a mob of lowly Grinders.” The elitist old bastard looks positively beside himself. I'm the one that crowd would hang from the city walls, not them. Shouldn’t I be the one in despair? If anyone ever needed more proof the world's a screwed up place, this is it.

The h
ammering stops and Dhal glances up from a pair of gleaming metal arms he's got laid out before him. The kid’s face is a patchwork of grease stains and sweat. These new arms are bigger than Bron’s broken ones, and a universe apart from the comical looking spatulas he's wearing now. Not surprisingly, the big guy looks positively elated.

He nods in their direction “F
or me?”

Oh boy,
now he’s a child opening gifts on the Winter Solstice.

“They
were meant for the son of a high-ranking Keeper,” Dhal says. “Only other pair in existence.” The kid says, nodding to what remains of Bron’s shattered arms beside him. “I salvaged as much as I could from the old units, but you have to understand, they were so badly damaged…” Bron’s only half listening. Details like how and why roll off of him like water off a feathered back. “Get these things off me, would ya?” he snaps.

Dhal
shrugs and begins loosening the bolts to remove the makeshift arms. The boy pauses and winks at me. “You know,” he says pensively. “Maybe I shouldn't, I mean, I could get in a lot of trouble giving these away. That Keeper paid a lot of money for these arms.”

“Never mind any of that,” Bron
barks. “That crusty old Keeper and his snot-nosed kid are either dead or new members of Skuld’s new shitbag army. Get moving.”

It takes Dhal nearly 30 minutes to make the final attachment of Bron’s new and improved killing machines. The big guy stands and holds one in the air, rotating his wrist, flexing the fingers into a fist. He almost reminds me of a woman trying on the new pair of gloves.

“
Whaddyathink?” he asks, knowing full well they’re an impressive spectacle by any measure. He snatches a three inch metal bar off the workbench and bends it as easily as a child might bend a piece of tall grass.

“They’re certainly
shiny,” I tell him.

R
et’s shaking his head. “Zees’ll see us coming from miles away now.”

“
So, you like them then?” Dhal asks and despite the boy’s phenomenal expertise, his adolescent insecurities are hard to ignore.

“
Like them?” Bron bellows, snatching those flimsy temporary arms and crumpling them into a mangled ball of steel. “I'd marry them, if I could.”

Dhal
smiles. “Wait till you see what else they can do. I know you recently lost your demolitions expert, Jinx, so I've added a 40mm grenade launcher to your left arm.” Dhal holds up what looks like a child's marble. “Might not look impressive, but they pack as much power as a full-sized grenade. Tilt that arm into the air and you become a one-man mortar team.”

Ret's got his head buried in
his hands and I know just what he’s thinking. If Bron’s ego wasn't overinflated before, it sure as hell will be once the kid’s done explaining these upgrades.

“
What about my old firepower?”

“
All there. And, like the grenades, I transitioned your arms to fire slightly smaller shells. Just as powerful but you can carry more ammo.”

“
Good, but will they be as loud? I mean, I'll be disappointed if everyone's ears aren't ringing after I lay down a barrage.” Bron’s famous brown-toothed smile is back in full force.

“
Guaranteed to deafen within a dozen yards.”

Bron thinks he's being funny, but those guns
of his have already impacted my hearing by at least 30%.

Dhal taps a compartment at the base of Bron’s right palm. “Right below your blade ejection port I added something special. Go on, give it a try.”

Oleg and the others hurry out of the way just in time. Bron aims his palm at a thick wood beam and fires a spear point across the room. It thuds into the solid oak, trailing a thin cord behind it.

“The cable has a tensile strength greater than steel.
Oh yeah, there's one last thing that I added and I think you're really gonna to love this one.”

“
A built-in toilet roll dispenser that wipes his backside for him?” Ret asks. Bron flicks him a look that says ‘why you trying to ruin my birthday party?’

Dhal
flips a switch on Bron’s left arm, revealing a nozzle.

“
I hope that's not for moonshine,” I say, only half joking. “Bron after a few drinks isn’t pretty.”

Ret
concurs. “Once, after six shots of something called Grinder’s Delight, Bron ripped out the entire bar and sent it through the window.”

Dhal
suddenly looks like he isn’t so sure arming Bron to the teeth was a good idea.

Bron taps the nozzle.
“Never mind them, what does it do?”

Dhal swallows hard.
“It's a flamethrower that fires something Dusters used to call napalm. A combustible gel that burns at over 2000 degrees Fahrenheit. Doesn’t matter if they’re human or Zee, whatever you point this at stops living. There ain’t much in there, so use it sparingly.”

Tears form
at the corners of Bron’s eyes. The thought of that much death and destruction always makes him emotional.

Oleg’s
been patiently listening to all this and now stands to speak. “As impressive as this is, let me remind you even the mighty Bron is no match for the sheer number of Zees Skuld is drawing to him. An army is forming and we don't have anything powerful enough to throw at them.”

“
What about Azina?” Ret says. “You saw how she made those Zees tear the Hive leader to pieces.”

“
I did,” Oleg concedes. “What remains to be seen is how she will fare when she enters Skuld’s effective zone of control. Who are the Zees likely to follow?”

“That’s a question none of us
can answer,” I say. “Not until we're there.”

Oleg’s brow ruffles like one of those cranky
Keeper professors. “Is that the kind of plan in which the future of the human race will depend on Azina? Let's wait-and-see?”

As always, I'd love to
crack Oleg in the head, but I can't deny the sour old bastard does have a point. We're gonna need more than wishful thinking if we want any chance of stopping Skuld from enslaving humanity or worse, driving them to extinction. Dhal’s got his hand propped in the air again like a schoolboy.

“
What is it?” I ask, hoping to hell it isn't another fun fact about Bron’s arms.

“
I know what we can do,” he says.