Chapter Thirty-Eight - Leah’s Alive!

“Infrastructure is artificial. It grows brittle and breaks down, it burns out, it takes a whole lot of effort to keep going. Entropy is a never-satisfied beast, and it’s a whole lot more voracious than the Antithesis. Technology kind of has a problem with not being self-healing. Your car can’t eat vegetables and regrow the corroded wire that’s stopping it from starting up.

Humanity invests more than ten percent of its output into maintaining things, and they’re still falling apart.

I have no clue how to solve that, but—”

– Excerpt from online discussion on economics, shortly before the forum was taken over by eco terrorists in a recruiting drive for suicide bombers

 

***

 

Leah and I separated slightly, each of us stationing ourselves behind sturdy-looking trunks not too damaged by the toxic air, and on a synchronized count, we finally took aim, nailing a Four in the head each, before they had time to react to us. The skulls of these weren’t sturdy enough to protect them against my flechettes, and Leah’s also dropped unceremoniously.

“Threes next, they’re faster!”, I flicked a mental shout at Leah’s eye.

The faster firing rate of my Sentinel allowed me to kill two, and Leah took out the third Three, before they’d even crossed half the distance to us. But we still had to deal with four Fours.

Two bore down on me, moving much faster than I’d expected as they used their tentacles to hurtle themselves through the brush and trees.

Leah! She’s not gonna be able to move!

I jumped backwards as fast as the Fours were chasing me, keeping them out of arm's reach, before I turned around and started running in a circle.

I looked to Leah and saw that she’d already killed one of the two Fours attacking her, but I nearly stumbled as my heart froze, when I saw her pinned by the second against a tree, while she was fighting to get the Foxteeth pointed at its head.

I saw the armor panels in the overall hardening everywhere tentacles impacted, protecting her against the bashes and slices, and relief washed through me. But the toughening was also making it difficult for her to actually move the gun. She could bend her arm only in fits and starts between restrictive protections, and I heard her grunts and frustrated swears over the call.

I couldn’t aim for the head, it had buried itself against Leah to pin her against the tree while the tentacles whaled at her, so I frantically came up with another solution.

Once more, I yelled at her, “Gonna hose it down! Won’t hurt you!”

With a thought dedicated to the Sentinel, I loaded the spray and carefully excluded Leah’s figure from the guiding picture, then I took aim, and pulled the trigger.

I kept running as I watched the hail shred through tentacles at their softer and highly flexible base, sharp knife-tips flicking away and getting stuck wherever they thunked into trees or the ground. None of the steel and brass balls had the kind of energy to penetrate the armored skin of the alien, so they bounced off in all directions, several of them even hitting Leah, who visibly flinched and swore in surprise, but who was well protected by her armor.

I sheared a bit more than half its tentacles off, and that gave Leah the space she needed to finally nail it in the head and drop it.

“Leah!”

“What!”

“Gimme a quick hand!”

I used my antennae to keep sight of the Fours behind me, taking full advantage of the combat maneuvering I’d learned in my dreams, carefully dodging every lunge and dash. I wasn’t able to really get a clean shot against their erratic behavior while trying to stay close enough that they’d stay focused on me only, but eventually one of them still started towards Leah. Luckily, it gave me a very nice line against its profile as It moved perfectly perpendicular to me, with its head clear out in the front, as if it was sniffing for prey. Leah aimed at it, but I was much faster and put a hole through its brain.

The other Four was still chasing me, and while I worked to set up a kill, Leah turned the tables instead, first with an unlikely bullet through a knee that caused it to stumble and catch itself with its tentacles, and then a second that rammed through its skull.

It crashed with tangled limbs and tore open the ground as it slid to a violent stop in a soggy ditch.

I slowed and realized that I was breathing pretty heavily—way heavier than I should after what was only really seconds of exertion, and I knew that I could move a lot faster if I really went at it.

The combat stress? It figured, I wasn’t as used to fighting as I had once been, a long time ago. I didn’t freeze up or do other stupid stuff that could get me killed, but I also wasn’t exactly a cold blooded veteran.

Killing Antithesis was a lot less…stressful than my childhood, though.

I wrenched my thoughts to other topics.

Blessedly unsweaty despite running so hard, I listened to every sound around us, tuned to catch any stragglers to the fight, or if we’d been detected by any other units nearby.

But all was calm, even to the spy cam. The closest movement was over a hundred meters away, meandering past us. A group of twelve Threes.

Satisfied, I returned to Leah.

I made some questioning noises at her when I noticed that she was looking a little down and depressed, and leaned into her, to shake her out of her minor funk.

She glanced down at me and asked quietly, “Hey, when do you think is a good time for me to call home? It just really hit me that I could die here, and the little ones have no idea where I am or what’s up with me. I want to at least…let them know I’m still fine.”

My eyes widened in realization, and I said, “I think you should try to reach them right now. We don’t have a lot of time and we need to keep moving, but there’s no reason why you can’t take a minute between fights to call them.”

“Mmm. Okay. Give me a few, Tinea.” She replied, as she let her cheek rest atop my head, squishing my antennae to the side. I wiggled them until they lay more comfortably draped past my shoulders.

I leaned into her and let myself relax, while I used the spy cam to scout around us in a circle a hundred meters across, methodically checking through every bit of foliage so I wouldn’t miss any lone xenos. Just beyond that perimeter, I found a Four climbing a tree to hide itself among the sickly leaves, holding very still as it hung from the thickest branch. I made a mental note to look up more.

***

Leah closed her eyes and let her arms fall around Tinea, basking in the warm breath that  caressed her throat, and the closeness she offered, and forced a little peppiness into her thoughts. Fought against the gloomy feelings that ambushed her with worries. She reconnected to the uplink, and Ypsi helped her recall all the contact links she’d been using prior to being kidnapped.

She let Ypsi update her profile picture with the new eye, and made sure the simulation the kids would see didn’t show any of the dirt on her, and generally looked nice and fresh and perfectly fine.

Leah! Calls are going to be a bit difficult. The internet is working very hard today! The big invasion is making everybody want to talk at the same time. But I can force your call through, if you like!

“Oh, that would be nice, but can you, like, check what and who you shove aside for me? I don’t want any important emergencies to get silenced. If there’s somebody who’s talking to their family, don’t interrupt them either. I don’t care about any corpos though. As long as the call isn’t personal and doesn’t help with the incursions or stuff like that, I don’t care about them.”

I can do that, Leah! There is a board meeting happening right now, between the top executives of Trash’R’Us Inc. They’re discussing who to pin the blame on for a chemical accident in a dumping facility. They themselves caused it, by cutting financial corners when it was built. The most likely candidate is a widower with two children, because he’s ‘replaceable middle management’.

“Oh yeah, fuck ‘em. Let’s make sure they can’t compare stories. And, will you keep an eye on everybody in that meeting, please? I’d like to make sure they won't take advantage of anybody else either.”

Okay!

Finally, Leah sent a ping to literally everybody she knew and cared about or was responsible for, and waited if any would join what was probably going to be a rather busy group call.

Oh shit. “Ypsi! Do you think anybody might be tracking the people I just pinged?!”

No worries, Leah! I checked and found nothing!

Leah wasn’t sure if that was good or bad. Could’ve been the hint they needed…which was probably why nobody was spying. But on the other hand, that meant nobody was going to get hurt because of her.

Most of these pings never even reached, and Leah couldn’t help but worry if they were okay. They might just not be able to connect, stuffed into a vault somewhere, or maybe the infrastructure was down around them. A few pings dropped in and out, until Ypsi stabilized the bandwidth Leah was hogging.

Within seconds three people answered.

Or rather, five people, with three little children stuck face-first to the camera in one screen, waving excitedly and yelling all at once. “Leah! Where are you?!” “Come back home!” “Lee!”

Leah grinned, made her avatar wave back, and muted everybody but herself for a second. “Hey ya’ll. Sorry, gotta go fast, I’m between fights. I’m alive, I’ve got somebody who’s helping me, and I’ll introduce her to you as soon as we’re back. That might take a few more days, we’re several hundred miles to the north. How are you all?”

“What are you fighting?!” “Lee!” (Dang, the smallest one with her grasping fists was so cute!) “Jenny broke her arm!”

“Oh no! What happened?”

“She tripped down the stairs and hurt herself. Sister Lana took her to the hos…hostitel?”

“Hospital.”

“Hospotal!”

“Almost!”

“Hihi! But Jenny came back the same day! Her whole arm is wrapped up now and there’s this plastic thing around it. It was really ugly, so we all made it pretty! Everybody wrote their names on it. Lana wrote mine for me! She said next year she’ll teach me how to do it myself!”

“Oh, that’s exciting! Make sure to say thank you, alright? And you’re all okay?”

“Yeeep! We’re all okay. We miss you, though, and Andi keeps crying. Come back soon!”

Aw. Andi, the littlest one, stretched her hands out towards the screen again, with wet eyes.

“I’ll come visit you soon, Andi. Just a few more sleeps, okay?” Leah said gently.

“Mmm. Lee. Huggie.”

“Yup, huggies, Andi.”

“Mmm!”

Leah had to smile as happiness and adorableness filled her up from inside. There was nothing so precious as the littles.

“Bye, Andi, Sam, Jora. I gotta talk to the adults for a moment, and then I need to keep moving if I ever want to come home again.”

“Okay! Bye, Leah!” “Bye bye!” “Lee!” Three tiny hands waved happy and sad waves that Leah returned with as bright a smile as she could muster, and then she closed their part of the call.

Leah took a good look at the two adults, who looked at each other, until Sun reacted to an unspoken question and answered with a question, “Is this connection secure?”

“Ypsi?”

Yes! No one’s listening in! And I’m keeping the call from being recorded on their end.

“Okay, we’re good. How are you, and what’s been happening?”

Sun answered, “We’re fine, nice and safe from the incursions. New Montreal has a pretty big wall going up and the mood is surprisingly positive, all things considered. But it was strange when you disappeared, so Jem went to check on you, and was able to detect damage from tampering on your door. We had a feeling that you didn’t go…willingly, but we didn’t know where to look, or what to do about it. We closed up your place and we’re keeping an eye on it as best we can, and there’ve been no visitors, since. We’re pretty sure nobody blabbed to anybody about you being a samurai, and we kept your disappearance a secret as much as possible by claiming illness. We figured that you might be able to use your samurai tech to lift any evidence from your place, maybe?”

“Good thinking, very good. Yeah, I was planning to. I, and another new samurai, got kidnapped, most likely by a corporation. Corpos are the only ones I can see being both greedy and stupid enough, with the resources, to manage something like this. Stay safe, don’t go alone, and immediately alert me if something seems…fucky. Ypsi will make sure you can reach me without delay, as long as we still have a connection to the internet.”

Okay!

“Alright, Leah, but, new samurai?”

“Tinea. Good girl, she got me going again. She’s way more proactive about murdering aliens, though. I’ll introduce you once we make it back,” I said, and Sun smiled at the obvious humor in my tone.

But time didn’t wait for nobody, and Sun wanted to end the call. “Jem and I need to go see to the kids. I’ll trust you to come back safe, wherever you are, okay?”

“Sure thing. We’re in that big crater. North north-east, and like seven hundred miles. Or was it kilometers? Something like that. Anyway, it’ll take us a while to get back. Lots of aliens moving south that we can kill, but we gotta go slow and careful.”

“Good luck.”

Leah smiled at the two, and shut down the call completely. They’d let the others know, if it mattered. They weren’t dumb enough to share the news with untrustworthy people, or even publicly, either.

She squeezed Tinea and opened up the bottom half of her visor. Breathing in the dusty smell of her hair, she took another look at the video of the spy cam that Tinea was currently controlling. Nothing. 

They had a few more moments before they needed to move again, and Leah had questions to ask of herself.

 

***

 

People introduced this chapter

Sun - female, 28, Asian Canadian, romantic partner of Jem, colleague to Leah and fellow caretaker of children. Bounces between multiple orphanages, daycares, and schools.

Jem - male, 27, African Canadian, romantic partner of Sun, colleague to Leah and fellow caretaker of children. Bounces between multiple orphanages, daycares, and schools.

Sister Lana - female, 24, Russian Canadian, primary caretaker at orphanage “Saint Viktor” in New Montreal

Jenny - female, 6, British, orphan at orphanage “Saint Viktor”, honorary big sister of Andi

Andi - female, 4, Canadian, orphan at orphanage “Saint Viktor”, calls Leah “Lee”

Sam - male, 6, African North American, orphan at orphanage “Saint Viktor”, ‘boyfriend’ of Jora

Jora - female, 6, Scandinavian Canadian, orphan at orphanage “Saint Viktor”, ‘girlfriend’ of Sam