CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
"PerSoc, our perfect society, shall rule when darkness has fallen to the light." - Makr, the One and Only
The silence that represented an end of pain also signaled an end to Bio-Cyber co-existence, and perhaps, the beginning of an impossible revolution.
Why didn't I move? Why couldn't I? I wanted to save them. Save them all. Am I a coward?
Harry remembered the look in Barry's eyes—something he would never forget.
"I'm not worthy," he said aloud, keeping the rest to himself.
Dar looked back at Harry and Desiree for a split second and then continued her vigilant watch for Cyber coming toward them. The slaughter seemed almost complete. So far, the three of them had survived. Because we hid. Dar wondered. Smoke and debris drifted past them, covering the sun and temporarily darkening the sky until it was one giant shadow.
When the carnage complete, the cybert butchers filed out of the building in perfect military fashion. Harry noted that there were ten or fifteen mobile killing cyberts. Apart from a few security cyberts, none were types or models he'd seen before, or even knew existed! That meant Bios Inside didn't know them either. A wave of despair came over him as he happened on the truth—the truth he so desperately wanted: These are cyberts created solely to kill Bios. Killing machines. Pure killing machines.
Harry slumped in defeat, his mind racing. We are no threat to the world anymore! Surely no threat to Cyber efficiency! Makr has the nerve to judge us? Unbelievable! You spare us, Makr? Why? To witness the horrors you can unleash so easily?
The last killer out fused the entrance with a blaster, melting the facade and door into molten rock and red-hot, glistening steel jelly. Must be to keep in any wounded or barely alive Bios, but why? Harry wondered. The cybertank will destroy anything that lives when the entire structure is reduced to rubble. So why do it now? Why waste resources tormenting the intended victims? Why?
Physically stronger and more resolute now, Desiree clung tightly to Harry. Dar acknowledged in her heart that this was what the other woman had wanted all along. She'd been quietly keeping alert, and now suddenly searched through her purse. How could she have forgotten she had it? Not like it would have made a difference anyway. Ironically, she had expected to use the mini-blaster to persuade a few Outsiders to give her the information she needed to do her job. Forget you, Makr! I'll not do your dirty work anymore.
Harry saw Dar reaching in her purse. He thought she, too, might be losing control.
"This is no time for make-up, darling...er...Dar," Harry said. What he saw looked like a make-up case.
She put it back inside her purse. "I guess I'm just a little jittery," she said, snapping her purse shut.
"We're all frightened," he said gently. "We've survived this long...who knows, we might make it after all."
Although only seconds had passed, hiding and waiting in the shadows seemed infinitely longer. It was getting hard to breathe without breathing too hard, too fast, and too loud. Harry knew something about hyperventilating. They had to wait until the way was clear—totally clear of Cyber.
Whirrrrrrr!! Whoooosh!! "Warning! Warning!" The women gasped. Harry knew that sound.
A street cleaner cybert whisked by on a magnetic layer, dissolving and vaporizing dust and dirt. Road kill and Touchable remains, thought Dar. All the same now!
"Streets must be clear. Clear the streets for cleaning. Remove all essential obstacles." The cleaning cybert's urgent voice meant it had noticed their presence, but its capacity for thinking was not as well developed as most menial labor cyberts. It would suck and dissolve what human pieces remained, however small. To the cybert, they were merely obstacles, obstructions to cleaning. The small cybert sprayed a cleaning solution to dissolve a pool of blood, sucked it inside and exhaled a harmless white vapor.
"Step aside. Just stay out of its way. It's not interested in us," Harry said calmly and quietly so as not to be sensed by another cybert that might have been be interested. Dar took advantage of the distraction to take that something out of her purse.
Harry rubbed his face and ran his fingers through his hair. He needed to think. Decide what to do and how to act. But he was afraid to act, afraid he would freeze when others were depending on him. How could he forget the slaughter of innocent, loving, giving, and sharing people? He was done with Makr's world as he knew it. There had to be something better, but he didn't know what that was.
"Harry." Desiree had battled her grief and seemed almost anxious to get into the fray. "There is something else you should know. Someone gave us away," she confided. "A traitor!"
"What!"
"Maybe it's too late already. Barry suspected it was the woman who knew a lot about Cyber—especially the main cyberserver. I'm sorry, I..."
"It doesn't matter now anyway."
She looked at Dar with accusing eyes. Harry didn't notice; he seemed preoccupied, staring straight ahead to find the answers in front of him, which were not there.
"Harry!" Desiree whispered loudly to gain his attention, but he had been paying attention all along.
He just didn't want to accept it. "You mean the programmer who planted Donna's file was the traitor?" All that sounded too easy.
"The same." Desiree continued to throw sharp looks - spears really - at Dar. Harry finally noticed, but it was too late.
Monstrous Shadows, as tall as a three-story building, blocked the light coming from the street. It was still more Cyber security—three of Makr's most sophisticated cyberts—the meanest "gunslingers of Tombstone"—moving toward the fugitives who retreated deeper into the darkest shadows.
"Harry Bolls, you are under arrest. Come out or we'll fire," Wyatt Earp commanded. Harry saw no options, and started forward hesitantly.
"No!" Desiree cried and, using the last of her adrenaline surge, hauled him back and pushed him behind her.
"I love you, Harry!" She launched herself forward at the Cyber trio of terror.
Two of the cyberts fired their weapons. A bright light. Desiree was gone. Like Bob, like Barry and all the others.
Harry, blinded by the bright light and his own tears, rushed forward, screaming, taunting the Devil's demonic cyberts as Desiree would have done.
"No!" He screamed. "NO! NOT HER!!" His face reddened with rage, and tears streamed down his face as he fell to his knees, sobbing. He didn't care about much else at that moment. Let them kill me, he thought. I'm not much good here anyway. Before that could happen, though, something in Harry snapped. He had strength enough to die. He taunted them just the same.
"No one has the right to kill! Not even you, Makr! Come and get me you blowhard piece of crap!" He waited for them to kill him as he danced around them.
The cyberts stood without making a move to lift their weapons. Two bright lights. A third. Then, a fourth. Harry was looking at the street lit up ahead. The street cleaner cybert whooshed by a second time, vaporizing trash particles left over from the cyberts who had been vaporized a fraction of a second before.
Then, an explosion big enough to knock Harry and Dar off balance and to the ground. The streetlights flickered and stayed on brighter than before. The three killer cyberts were a frozen tableau a few yards away as a powdery shower of exploded street and building fragments fell to the ground. Harry and Dar coughed and dusted themselves off, as they stood virtually unhurt by the blast.
It wasn't over as another blast that made the earth tremble, came this time from the cybertank. The blast had fused part of the wall behind Dar, and the less flexible, previously unaffected concrete above collapsed. Now, she was covered in the concrete and steel debris.
Harry rushed to her side. Thank Makr she's alive! Harry frantically tried to remove all the scraps of metal and concrete holding Dar captive.
She groaned, obviously in pain, unable to move. He checked to see if it was more than the shockwave that had hurt her. Seeing no wound, he continued picking out the debris. No bones sticking out from the flesh. Careful, there could be intern
al injuries, he told himself.
"Did you love her, Harry?"
Dar turned her face away from him, mostly to hide her tears, but she couldn't bear to face him now. He was so good...so right for these people. Too bad he doesn't have a chance.
"Let's take care of you now." She grabbed his hand and squeezed, demanding answer. "I honestly don't know. I know I cared deeply."
Freeing her from the debris was going to take a while.
"Hang in there, Dar. I'll have you free in a minute."
She was looking better already. "You should leave, Harry. Leave while you can."
Harry didn't budge. Instead, he continued to remove concrete and other debris he could lift. She may come out unscathed, except for a few bruises, after all. Although that would do her no good if the cyberts find her trapped here.
She continued, "My name isn't Dar."
Harry stopped for a second, then, struggled to move more rubble to free her. He spied her mini-blaster and held it in his palm.
"My real name is Marlene Hess. I work for the State—Inside, or at least I did."
Harry could only look into her eyes, confused and hurt.
"I'm sorry, Harry. I truly am." She couldn't help the sobbing, her body heaved uncontrollably. The tears she shed were real, the pain deep.
"There, you're free now." He helped her up. The smile he usually had for her was gone. "So you were the programmer—the plant."
"Yes." Pause. She sniffed.
"Was seeing me part of your plan?"
"At first, yes. You were the target, but not..."
"A lot of good people died here tonight." His voice was even and his emotion buried.
"The best."
"You're responsible?"
"Yes. I killed them all." Her voice was flat, but the flatness couldn't mask a sympathetic and guilt-ridden woman. She didn't really fear what was coming next. She knew she deserved it.
Harry held up her own weapon and pointed it at her. She closed her eyes and waited.
"Go ahead. Please. I know I deserve it."
Angrily, he aimed it at her for less than a second, shaking his head, unable to hold the weapon steady, denying his ability to kill another Bio. Even one that was a traitor!
"Why! Why! Why!" he exploded.
He swung the weapon around again, this time finding the street cleaner cybert they had ignored earlier and blasting it instead. The cybert's red light sensor seemed to have been looking directly at him when he fired. Was that a warning or indicator light that the laser was about to fire on him? Street cleaners were specialized cyberts; they were not known to fire at Bios or anything not garbage. Until now. Maybe Harry was garbage after all.
"How about that? I can kill a toaster." He turned in time to see four more cyberts, armed and deadly, heading straight for him. Why don't they fire? Why don't they kill me?
There was a blinding light, followed by a shockwave. Harry and Dar were knocked to the ground senseless, but alive.