I Am Titanium (Pax Black Book 1) (24 page)

Pax leaped up in a graceful arc above the ice. Lana was somewhere to the south.
Far
to the south. He had to find a faster way to get there than jumping around in his shield bubble. His top speed might have been a hundred and fifty kilometers per hour, if that.

Scarlett could fly. She’d hovered on a nest of negative energy above the burning, blasted school. Lana could fly. She used blasts of heat, like a jetpack. Terry, that fucker, could teleport.

What could Pax do?

He had a bubble. A hamster ball. A shield. He could heal the
shit
out of anybody still alive—but he couldn’t travel faster than a car.

Fucking hamster ball.

Pax shoved the shield in annoyance—and found himself flung upward as the shield slammed into the ice below him. The ice directly under him crushed into powder, with cracks radiating outward in bigger and bigger chunks. The snow sparkled darkly where water burst up through the cracks.

Pax arced through the air and bounced. The shield had spread into a huge, thin blue-tinted ball. The shield came down again, crushing the snow underneath it in a wobbly pattern. His astral hamster ball rolled to a stop against a long blue ridge where two icebergs had smashed together.

Pax pushed his shield farther away, this time with a steadier hand and mind. He was a hundred meters in the air now, two hundred. It wasn’t flying. But it was close. He stretched the shield even farther, until it was more of a loose mesh. He tried extending his arms forward and flying like a superhero—but all he did was float in midair. A great pose, but useless.

Pax sighed, stood up, and started running. The hamster ball rolled under him. The higher he pushed himself, the faster he rolled.

In a few minutes he hit the edge of an iceberg and ramped off into the sparkling, dark ocean. A polar bear shook itself awake at the splash and started lumbering down the iceberg. Pax rolled across the water. The waves flattened underneath him, and floating chunks of ice skidded out from under the shield, dipping their edges into the water.

He pushed farther away from the surface. Arctic birds dipped their wings, as they flew through the invisible edge of the shield, the boundary nothing more than a ripple in the wind. A few of the lower clouds heaved as he passed under them.

He spent the time trying to calculate his speed. At his best estimate, he was running at almost a thousand kilometers per hour.
Not bad for someone dying in a hospital bed five days ago.

Akllana’chikni’pai rose in the air, searching around her. The piles of branches and rubble had all collapsed, motionless, on the forest floor. The greenery around her shivered, as though a thousand monsters were crawling among the leaves. She searched, but she couldn’t actually
see
any of them. They seemed to know when she was turned toward them and froze before she could do more than glimpse movement out of the corner of her eye.

Using her swords and drawing heat from the bright sun overhead, she formed a huge ball of fire and rolled it into the forest. If she couldn’t find the monsters, she would burn everything. Her fireball blasted trees and burned down huts hidden in the branches. Electrical lines collapsed, birds shrieked in terror, a propane tank exploded. The fire fed itself, as surely as any monster.

A shadow flickered across her eyes as she formed another ball of fire and threw it into the trees. When she looked up, a bird circled overhead, a hawk.

The bird circled in tighter and tighter spirals and dove toward her.

At the last moment it changed, and Terkun’shuks’pai stepped gracefully onto the burning ground.

He still wore the clothes of a warrior. He carried an odd, alien, pink bud in his hand, more like the new shoot of a fern than a thing with petals.

“What do you think of my new creature?” he asked, walking across the hot rocks, still barefoot. “Is it not clever?”

“How could you do this?” Akllana’chikni’pai spat. “This thing will kill everything on the planet!”

He smiled gently, rubbing his empty hand across his bald head. “All life on a world is bound together, you know that. If you kill off humanity without changing what my progenitor did to all of life here, its replacement will be as brutal and arrogant and destructive as the race it replaced. Unless you change the ecosystem, the species will fill the same roles, over and over again. Humanity is unbalanced between competition and cooperation, but so is all earthly life. They have a saying—”

“There was no need for you to have done this, Terkun’shuks’pai. Especially if you knew what I was sent here to do.”

He hummed in the back of his throat, possibly with satisfaction. “Have your seeds of second-level intelligence already been released, then? How they will wreak havoc, destroying the humanity that supposedly wronged them.” He smiled. “We are fortunate, are we not, that living creatures so rarely discover our existence? How angry they would become if they knew of our manipulation. Which reminds me. Have you told the boy about my creature yet? Is he on his way to help you destroy it? Surely, it must be a monstrosity, worthy of death.”

“Stop this, Terkun’shuks’pai. Or…”

He waited for her, that infuriating smile still lightly curving his wide lips.

She couldn’t finish it. She could do nothing, take no effective action, make no threat, no plea that would provide a lever with which to move his plan.

“He is coming,” she admitted. “He does not know—I thought I was the traitor here. I am an amateur, it seems.”

His smiled broadened. He sniffed the flower in his hand, and it unfurled, spreading out delicate pink feathers and scattering miniscule spores into the wind.

“Who are you?” she demanded. His ancestor had been cruel, cold, hawklike, manipulative. “Are you Terrun’shusta’pai? What have you done to—”

He shook his head. “I am the same one you have known, and my progenitor still resides within the Council’s prison. But I have traveled farther than you. I have lived a hundred times your lifespan, wandering strange worlds while you were imprisoned here on Earth. I have seen more, learned secrets that grieve me. I have split into thousands and reabsorbed them to acquire the knowledge I needed.”

“That’s monstrous! Those we generate must be allowed to live in freedom, not be…
swallowed
.”

“A dark time is coming, Akllana’chikni’pai. A very dark time. Outside the worlds we know is another world, a kind of twist in time and space, an ancient universe that has almost completely consumed itself. It has found a weak spot here, near the Earth, and is even now preparing to begin consuming us.”

“We do not have the power to defeat it, not if all the energies of the undiscovered worlds were combined with what we know. It is a darkness that makes the negative energy produced by humanity shine like the brightest light.”

“You’re mad.”

The smile had left his face, leaving wrinkles as if from age, but it reappeared now. “I find it difficult, at times, to preserve myself in the face of all the lives I have lived. The difficulty is not that I am mad, but that I am right.”

“What are you
doing
, Terkun’shuks’pai? What is all this
for
?”

He gestured to the barren rock, the fires burning down the forest, the subtle movement in the trees that told her that her fires had not been enough and that the monster’s younglings were spreading, growing. “Humanity cannot help but fight that which will attempt to destroy it, no matter how futile the battle. I have given them tools with which to fight and allies to help them. I have angered and frightened the Council so they will seal this world away from the others, to help contain the spread of the darkness, should humanity fail.”

As Terkun’shuks’pai faded from her sight, Akllana’chikni’pai heard him whisper. “I hope it is enough.”

Chapter 14

I
n the security office of the DARPA offices, David leaned back in his chair slowly. The radio station was playing Charlie Mingus, sweet baritone sax jazz. He placed his well-shined shoes on the desk, careful not to put his back out again, and rested his hands lightly on the plastic arms of his chair. He let his eyes close. He wasn’t sleepy, just sinking into that light doze that was the best way to listen to music. The DJ must have picked tonight’s selection just for David.

The phone buzzed, and he turned off the volume.
Every time I get relaxed.
He picked up the phone. “Hello. Security.”

The phone was quiet except for a faint hum in the background, like the line was being monitored.

“Hello?” No answer. He looked down at the phone and read the screen. It was coming from somewhere on the fourth floor. Not the operating theater Ms. Jance and those folks were using.
That
line had been wired into the third floor for some reason.

David flipped through the fourth-floor video feeds. All the lights were out except in the robotics development lab. It was 1:17 a.m. and Al Lombardo, a programmer who didn’t have a wife or kids to go home to, was asleep at his desk again, face down in a pile of hardware. His monitor was flashing, with gray lines running across the screen. The rest of the room looked normal—cords dangling from the ceiling to the big yellow frames holding robotics equipment and motorized armatures, the kind for welding computer chips. David liked to come in early on testing days, see what they were up to. Lombardo had said he was doing something fun, and David would be getting an invitation to see it as soon as they had a few bugs worked out. David flipped on the intercom connected to the computer. He was already chuckling to himself.

“You sleepin’ again, Lombardo?” he shouted into the microphone.

But the kid didn’t even twitch.

“Hey, Al? Al Lombardo, you awake in there? I swear you don’t stop jerking my chain, I’m going to come up there and pinch you.”

The kid didn’t move. He must be plumb out.

He called to the other guard station, at the other end of the building. The other guard station was a cakewalk. Nobody came in through the back door except deliveries, and those generally didn’t start until after shift change. The phone rang four long rings, was snatched up, dropped, and picked up again. “Hello? Security?”

“Pallone? You still awake over there?”

“Am now.”

“I’m going up to the fourth floor. Looks like Lombardo is asleep in the Robotics lab again. Keep an ear out for the phone, you hear?”

“Yeah, yeah. Call me when you get done so I can go back to sleep.”

“I’m gonna make you work the front desk one of these nights, Pallone. Have to stay awake
all
night. You never know when folks be coming up and wanting something or other. Tonight, Ms. Jance brought in—”

“Yeah, yeah. Call me when you get back.” Pallone hung up.

David would have bet twenty bucks that bastard was going right back to sleep. Well, he wouldn’t be sleeping long, because David was going to sneak up behind Pallone and scare the pants off him.

David smiled at the thought, picked up his flashlight, and, whistling that sweet jazz melody, walked over to the bank of elevators.

Pax shrank the ball of energy surrounding him until it was at arm’s length.

Hamster-ball,
said Pax, sighing.
Call it what you like, but it’s still a hamster-ball.

He was just off the coast of the island. Greasy, ash-covered waves bobbed him up and down. Half of the thick layer of forest that lay on every other island had been stripped away, leaving black ash and steaming, bare rock. As far as he could tell, the trees hadn’t just been burned; they’d been dissolved. A shimmering wave of black vultures—there must have been hundreds of them—circled above the island, looking for scraps amidst the ruins. They weren’t going to have any luck. Everything living had been stripped away. Everything else had been destroyed. Instead of buildings, there were pits in the ground. No boats were offshore, not even the giant cruise ships. No docks or piers. No power lines, no bodies, no rubble, no
roads
. The place was a blank slate. A world untouched by life.

Almost.

A clear, bright flame moved slowly up the side of the hill, walking on what might have been an old roadbed. Lana stood out against the black, lifeless landscape like the first star in the night sky.

Pax rolled onto a small beach and dissolved his shield. The waves around him pushed black, stinking scum over his feet. Chicks in bikinis should have been lying out on chairs. Little kids should have been running around and shrieking. Dogs chasing frisbees. Instead, it looked like the whole island had been scooped out with a spoon.

It made the destruction of Scarlett’s school seem like the work of an amateur.

“Lana!”

She paused for a moment and then continued as if she hadn’t seen him.

She’d lied to him. She had no intention of letting him try to convince her humanity was worth saving. She’d already begun her dance of death. Pax charged up the hill toward her, getting ready to throw a shield around her, to control her. He caught up to her on top of a small ridge, a flat area that might have been a parking lot.

“Lana!” His voice came out harsh and angry and still didn’t match the fury inside him. “What did you do?”

“Nothing.” Lana sounded weary beyond belief. Her swords hung limply at her sides. Her hair hung in smoldering black threads along the sides of her face, and her skin burned a deep, dull red: a fire going out. She turned and looked at him and then lowered her eyes before he could make out her expression. “Terkun’shuks’pai has released a monster of his own engineering onto your world. Left unchecked, it will consume all life. I tried to burn it. I did not succeed.”

The words were a shock. Pax had thought of Terry as a friend, a helper. To see him blamed for the destruction around them…

Pax was ready to shout at Lana, to deny her words and throw them back in her face, when she brought up her eyes to his. Even through her flaming, alien form he could see the complete despair there and knew that, no matter what else, Lana wasn’t lying.

Pax held up his hand to her shoulder, not touching her, just looking at the contrast between their skins. His cool metal skin shone silver-white, untouched by the ash. Hers was turning darker every second.

“Did he tell you why?”

“He agrees humanity is a threat. But he claims that removing humanity won’t solve the problem. He wants to destroy all life and start over completely.” She raised her fragile-looking chin. “He knew the Council would never support this.”

Pax looked out at the ruin of the island. “We have to stop this.”

“I am useless to you. He’s anticipated everything I’ve done. And used it against me.”

“So you’re saying we should give up.”

She shook her head. One of the swords slipped out of her fingers and burst into sparks on the rock. She didn’t seem to notice. “He can still be surprised. He didn’t expect the difficulties he had in bringing the astral material to life. You were the one who figured out how to bring the bodies to life. Not him.”

“I wish I hadn’t.”

Lana’s shoulders slumped even farther. “I’m sure he had other plans if this one failed. He would sacrifice
anything
to achieve his ends.”

Pax looked up at the vultures circling overhead. “I’m nothing to him,” he said, realizing with the words how horribly betrayed he felt. “Just a tool.”

Warmth spread through his shoulder. She had put her hand on him. He could see holes in her skin where the ash was falling in on itself. He’d crush her if he held her now. Lana’s eyes were nothing but two sparks drifting inside her sockets. They still managed to look on him with pity. “He said his one regret was betraying you.”

Pax shook his head, unable to look away from her collapsing in on herself. “Lana, what’s wrong with you?”

“I’m going back to the astral plane. I only wanted to stay long enough to say farewell.”

“But I need you. To help me stop Terry.”

Part of the skin over her breasts fell in, collapsing in a puff of sparks. Her hair was breaking off, drifting across the barren rocks, landing among the rest of the ash.

“Stay. Please. For me.” The words felt foreign, and involuntarily, coming out of him like a nurse jerking out a feeding tube.

She raised her last sword in a salute and tossed it away from her like a javelin. He watched it spin in lazy loops, crumbling into black flakes and a few lonely sparks in midair.

When he looked back, she was a thousand sparks drifting on the breeze.

In the pool of negative energy, Scarlett lay curled up tightly in a ball, weeping. The pool had gone dark, taking away Scarlett’s view of the sky, of the clouds. It couldn’t erase the image in her mind of Pax blowing her off and jumping away, but it made her feel better. The negative energy threads stroked her shoulders like sympathetic friends. The only thing missing from her pity party was a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Therapy.

While she lay there, the negative energy had been pumping something into her, making her more solid. And the more solid she grew, the more her own negative emotions began fading into the background. They were still there, but they didn’t bother her anymore.

For once in her life, she didn’t feel
anything
, and it was a relief.

And still, the negative energy wanted something from her.

All right,
she sent out.
Tell me what you want. Let’s get this over with.

Images started to flash in front of her eyes—threads of negative energy being drawn through some kind of hole, where they were eaten by a bunch of weird bug-like things as large as taxis.

Okay,
she thought.
Uh… giant bugs from outside space and time are sucking negative energy through some kind of hole in our universe. Why should I care?

The image shifted to that of a giant, flying black city moving through space. It looked like a termite mound made of shining black puke, and it was crawling with more bugs. It was moving toward the hole.

So… I should care because they’re probably going to invade soon and kill everyone? Isn’t that what you want? Death? Destruction? Me burning down more schools in your honor?

NO.

It was the first time the negative energy had used a word, and it rattled through Scarlett’s very being with its power.

A flood of images followed. Two kids pounded each other beside some tan-and-green plastic playground equipment while a little girl watched them from the top of the slide. An old man and woman argued in front of a trash bin beside a lake. They shouted at each other, the muscles standing out along the sides of their necks. An angry-looking man wrapped in a hoodie and a Mets blanket ate rocky road ice cream out of a half-gallon container, tears running freely down his cheeks. He stabbed the ice cream as if he were trying to eat its heart out.

The negative energy showed her the dark city flying toward the sun—growing larger and larger as it flew, eating planets and comets and asteroids and moons. When it reached the sun, it stretched thin until it could wrap itself completely around the surface—and then the sun went out.

Scarlett understood.

The black city was going to attack the Earth and use it as a springboard for consuming the solar system and, from there, the universe. And the negative energy didn’t want the black city to do this. It much preferred to live symbiotically with humanity and watch it get in petty fights with itself.

YES.