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  A helpless avatar screams, the rumbling staccato carrying as the infection spreads over its form. The scream dies as the avatar changes, the body stretching until it is tall, reed-like.

  A face, new, alien and terrible, shifts to stare at the camera. Whatever human intelligence once lay beyond it is gone now, warped into something I no longer recognize. It reaches out with long, spindly fingers and the display turns into a scrambled mess. All that remains is the audio, a horrible mix of static applied to the screams of the end of the world, and I am thankful when it soon ceases.

  I wonder if the Purge left the video record for us on purpose.

  “LT?”

  The diagnostics on the team has returned clear, but before I answer I delete the video record. No one else needs to see it. Or hear it.

  “Sorry, Rogers, just finishing up a diagnostics screen,” I lie. “We’ve got our orders. Mission parameters are pretty clear: we keep the baddies away from the inner corridor. Internal network traffic only. Any threat of infection, kill switches are to be engaged. We can’t afford to let that shit in.”

  “What about the other teams?” Hayes tries to sound casual, but I pick up the inflection in his voice.

  Entire datastore arrays have been wiped out, human streams corrupted or cut off, and that includes the defense personnel. The other security teams were cut off too late.

  “There are no other teams. It’s just us.” I let that sink in for a second, but not longer. We’ve got a job to do. “It’s time to go.”

  The team feed blinks in the affirmative as the others confirm their readiness. I check the diagnostics one last time, ignoring the nervous silence, and then clear a transfer route that ends just beyond the Campo District.

  The circuit is private, shut off from the Core, but it will have to work. I don’t see any degradation or infection present in the route, but I won’t know for sure until we make the jump.

  I open the group feed. “Okay, soldiers, ready up. I’ve got us a loop. Committing in 3… 2… 1. Commit. Jump in ten.”

  My feed flashes as the countdown commences. Someone says something smart, Rogers I think, but I tune it out, instead focusing on my own thoughts in the few precious seconds left that I’ll have to myself.

  I try to shake the image from the recording, the face staring impassively at the camera. I need to steel myself. There’s no place for weakness now, no place for anything but the hard-bitten, uncompromising soldier. I can feel the frown as I push the image into the darkness.

  The countdown flashes in amber, and then red, just before it hits zero. I feel the final digit as much as I hear it, a last note that seems to hang, and then the jump kicks me hard.

  Pressure, instant and blinding. It’s almost like the jump pushes the breath from my lungs, even though that notion passed with my body long ago.

  I fight it, honing in on the training that has served me so well. Turning my attention to my soldiers, I check their feeds as they travel at near-light speeds towards our delivery point, ensuring their route integrity. It also distracts me from the mounting stress of the jump as we near our destination.

  A final, unpleasant twist and then it’s over. It can’t have been more than a handful of seconds at most, but I can’t help the surge of relief as the jump terminates. I feel the expansion of form as my consciousness stream finishes the upload into an armored R-HOST. The link completes and an encryption pattern unlocks full access. My avatar powers up, streaming diagnostic sequences. The pressure from the jump subsides, and after a moment of silence my feed comes to life with woops from the other soldiers.

  “Okay, can it, troopers,” I say, the brief grin disappearing as I take in my surroundings. “Check your HOSTs and load up.”

  We are in a small, abandoned facility, our fusion-powered avatars the only source of illumination. The dust that covers everything cannot hide the sterile, purposeful nature of this place. It is an arming facility, hidden in reserve, and there’s not much here save the handful of avatars. But the weapons arrays on the armored carapaces and the ammunition cabinets that take up much of the far wall are enough.

  I signal for the others to ready up on the tactical feed and approach the ammo cache. A weapon cabinet beside me streams open, and with a thought a clamping arm piles ribbons of flechette rounds neatly into the ammunition storage along my back. I hear the others step up to the cabinets, and then the only sound is the whirring, robotic hands as they stow ammo into armored cavities.

  The stoic silence as we arm up does not escape me.

  The nervous edge, that familiar feeling just before the jump into a combat operation, returns, an uneasy queasiness that settles over me. A hundred lifetimes is not long enough to quell that feeling, and I know a thousand still wouldn’t be. A reminder that I am still human.

  Or at least human enough.

  The robotic hands slip back into the cabinets, ammunition storage on my avatar showing full capacity. The armor seals shut, and a ribbon of flechettes pops into the arming feeds of the avatar’s integrated weapons systems. One last look at tactical, and the squad’s diagnostics show that we’re ready.

  “Two by two, on my mark.” I signal the facility’s door release, and after an agonizing second of groaning metal, they grind open. “Go, go!”

  I lead the way through the facility’s open hatch, Shen beside me. I clomp on the metal ramp of the facility, and then we are outside, on the outer fringe of the district.

  We enter the Campo district through a small security node. The alarms are almost an afterthought, the raging infection storming the district more than enough to indicate what kind of trouble we’ve landed in.

  The world is eating itself.

  I can almost feel it growing, even cut off from the Core. Like a diseased limb, blood pumping, flesh screaming against the constricting edge of the tourniquet. Right before the wet doc steps up and saws it off.

  The thought drags at me, the surge of nausea welling up in my throat as the realization hits.

  I am the wet doc.

  *

  I don’t know how we’re supposed to fight this. It’s the first thing that hits me, the first rambling, unconscious reaction to the havoc created by the spreading virus.

  The district, what’s left of it, is a charnel pit. The Purge swirls over the remains of rows and rows of structures, splitting off and coalescing like a living, starving organism hunting for food. The digital, luminescent colors of the district, selected and maintained by the Core for the benefit of its citizens, has been drained of its life, stripped down to a primal glittering blackness as the infection stretches its multitude of limbs and tendrils.

  I don’t know how we’re supposed to fight this.

  “LT?”

  Shit. I hope I didn’t say that out loud.

  “Let’s get a move on,” I say, but it’s more for myself, I think. I check the tac map for viable routes into the habitat corridor. The infection is moving, swarming, probing as it assimilates the district that is still in its way. Marking the broken down section on the far eastern side of the tac map, much of it rubble and debris, I issue commands through the tactical feed.

  The squad’s icons blink their acceptance on the feed, and we move as fast and as quietly as possible, sticking to the outer limits of the district. Our target is almost ten klicks away. We need to get there quickly, but not too quickly. I don’t want the infection following us home, so to speak.

  We scramble down an empty avenue, isolated from the rest of the district by an inter-connected stretch of low-rise buildings. I run a scan over the area, but it has likely been abandoned for some time. No signs of life, here, so we keep moving, sticking low and quiet. We stay on the fringe, focused and silent. I am reminded what professional looks like. Even a wise-ass like Hayes can look the part when he needs to.

  The avenue ends in a cluster of fallen buildings, collapsed ceramic walls shutting off any access. We move towards the interior, the old habitats only a klick away.

  “
These ruins may be inhabited, but our primary is closing down this corridor so that shit can’t hit the Core.” It’s not fair, but the mission is the mission. “So be prepared, because we may have to accept civilian losses here.”

  No sooner do I say that than I spot them. Squatters. Meat left largely alone by the Core’s routines, human in every old-fashioned way imaginable. A few have survived, but I am sure that I don’t want to know how.

  And they won’t like us here.

  I issue orders and we move in, two by two. I’m flanked by Hayes, his hardpoints shifting towards the squatters, who have begun to gather in front of their decrepit habitat.

  “They can’t hurt us, Hayes,” I say via private channel. “Easy goes.”

  “So you say, LT,” Hayes whispers, as if someone might overhear him. “I just hope they’re not too hungry.” I wince and keep my mouth shut. I really don’t want to know.

  One of the squatters shambles forward on unsteady legs, a thin woman, a long, tattered shirt covering her down to her thighs. She is flesh and blood. Her eyes are wide and manic, her limbs flailing as she nearly falls over the remains of a cracked wall. So long since I have seen an actual living, breathing person. Longer since I have known what that was like.

  Mission objectives flash in my mind, and I know it’s impossible, but I want to help her. My consciousness is streamed through a secure datastore, off the Core network. If something goes wrong here, I can just engage my kill switch and the system will re-download my stream into another box of military hardware.

  If—no, when—this woman dies, there is no coming back for her. She doesn’t have a reset button.

  Another comes forward to confront us, an older man with thin, graying hair at his temples. He looks confused at first, like he’s not sure what he’s seeing. And maybe he is confused by the sight of us, soldiers clad in tall, powerful remote HOSTs, capable of turning an entire block of their ceramic alloy buildings into dust.

  There’s maybe a dozen squatters outside the habitat now. They are coming to take a closer look, which makes me a little nervous, despite my earlier words of wisdom to Hayes.

  I open a public feed and raise a hand. “Hold up, please. Stay where you are.”That’s when I see the man’s eyes go black. Flecks of black nanite spurt from his eyes and mouth.

  “LT?” Hayes’ voice is pitched in alarm. “LT, I have targets inbound.”He marks incoming on the tac map from behind us, amber blots moving fast. The Purge is coming, and it’s smarter than we thought.

  A scream breaks out from one of the female squatters. She simply ceases to exist, the rest of her flesh consumed by the infection. It swirls outward from where she stood. The Purge can’t use flesh and blood, but it doesn’t need to. The squatters have become an effective trap.

  The old man continues to walk forward. I have no choice. I focus a hardpoint on him and send a short burst of flechettes into his chest. He doesn’t scream out in agony, doesn’t show that it hurt at all, just slumps to his knees as his chest collapses.

  The Purge shoots from the fatal wound and swarms towards me. The HOST’s hardpoints pivot and I fire a stream of rounds into the infection, stepping to one side so that Rogers and Shen behind me get their own angles of fire.

  “Fire at will!” I shout, and I loose another shuddering stream of flechettes into the rest of the squatters.

  The squad’s HOSTs open up. Shen and Rogers turn to face the flanking Purge, raking fire across the massed infection as it hurtles towards us. Hayes takes out two squatters, Dissolver rounds tearing down their flesh, and charges ahead, electrical arcs playing across his armor.

  My tac map flashes an alarm, and my peripherals pick up another target a fraction of a second too late. I swivel to face it, and the impact of the Purge sends me skidding across the debris.

  Infection swarms over my armored carapace, a buzz in my audio as it digs into my armor, feverishly trying to break it down. Pinpricks of unpleasant touches, fraying the bindings of my armor, register as stinging pain in my mind. Unconsciously, the brief flitter of a long-forgotten memory surfaces.

  I always hated bugs.

  Trying to hold back the wave of panic, I send electrical cues throughout the shell of my HOST. Sparks dance over the corrupted nanites, and the foul odor of burning electronics washes over my sensors. The Purge drops from my form like flies.

  I try to get to my feet but stagger back, infected nanites crawling all over me, boring into my armor. My integrated weapons jerk as I fire at them, my visuals in constant, twitching motion. Too many targets. Alarms flash in the corners of my visuals, my armor breached in countless spots. I fry circuits, feeding more current into the armor’s electrical backlash, but it does no good. The Purge tightens its grip, pushing out new limbs that tear into my armor.

  SHEN-4B flashes over the communication array. A voice sounds through my feed, faint and tinny underneath the Purge onslaught, and then cuts off.

  I open up a reply but my voice is cut short in a sharp, high-pitched squeal of pain as the nanites dig into my internals. The Purge bores into my form, bypassing armor and what defensive systems I have left. The armor tries to shift in a vain effort to protect me, but there are too many breaches.

  Someone screams, but I can’t tell who.

  No choice now. I ping the squad feed. “Kill,” I say over the communication array. “I repeat, kill!”

  I feel the grimace on lips that no longer exist, that hated feeling of failure and then silent trepidation as I hit the kill switch. The agony is brief, and I quickly fall into blackness.

  *

  TACKETT-6D ghost image found. Retrieving… Initiating upload… please hold.

  10… 32… 61… 89… 100… upload complete.

  Interfaces online, registration complete.

  TACKETT-6E persona assimilating…

  Artifact regeneration… analyzing systems… CORE network found… connection established.

  Bypassing trauma nodes… priority order.

  Assimilation complete.

  TACKETT-6E online.

  I call out, but no one answers. I wait and wait, but it becomes obvious.

  No one else is coming on-line. It is just me.

  I am in the Core. Countless routines run in the background. I can feel them, like a million pulsating beacons, swirling overhead. The Core is everywhere, circuits running under the platelets of this satellite, circling over the artificial atmosphere.

  It takes me a few seconds to register the command interface flashing. It takes a few seconds longer to realize the Core is calling me.

  The feed snaps open as soon as I acknowledge, and everything rushes into my consciousness. It’s a direct line into the massive neural interface of the Core. A surging stream of data, connections and voices and digital impulses, overwhelming and everywhere. Pain, blooming until I scream. It’s too much, driving me blind, the Core’s routines crashing over me, through me.

  Something snaps, and an envelope of silence surrounds me, protecting me from the Core’s wide area network. A single connection remains, blinking in my feed.

  TACKETT-6E, confirm. The query is a stable, steady drone in my head.

  “Tackett-6E, confirming.” I catch the nervous hitch in my own voice. The decryption routines lock, and information floods my feed again. But controlled this time, clear and precise.

  The Core issues a map of the surface, marked with coordinates. Paths are highlighted and timestamped, tracing the swirling, surging movement of the infection. At first it seems haphazard, random, but then a subtle pattern emerges. The cloud of chaos is stripped away, leaving behind the visible markers that surround the sub-surface Core.

  The Purge doesn’t want the surface. The infection has left the segmented districts, dismantling them, taking everything valuable, and it has surged towards a specific set of coordinates. It doesn’t want the districts, doesn’t want this planet at all, as evidenced by the massive blot that circles one particular point of interest on the map.

 
It wants the Core.

  I can feel the undercurrent now, like trembling fingers. The Core is afraid. The artificial intelligence has thrown soldiers at the infection, and ultimately we have proved worthless. The virus continues to spread, infecting or destroying everything in its path. The Core is worried that it can’t stop the infection, any more than we could.

  The map shifts in my vision and fades. Inventory listings flash in my feed. Seventeen armored shells are still stored within the Core, over two dozen full ammunition bins. Enough firepower for a last, destructive accounting. But the suits were designed for human streams. There aren’t seventeen soldiers to fill them.

  TACKETT-6E.

  “What are you asking me to do here?” Another stream of information scores my feed, and I can’t help the pause when I see the mission parameters the Core has handed me. “You want me to perform a split-stream?”

  I can’t, it has to know that. I’ve done it before, but this sounds insane. Seventeen?Splitting the human consciousness into multiple streams has been done, during crisis points, often after sustained losses. The mind is capable of multitasking at levels that rival the best supercomputers, to a certain point, and for short periods I have managed multiple suits at once. Multiple, as in four. Not seventeen.

  Yes. TACKETT-6E is tasked with defense of external Core systems, until solution is in place.

  To the Core this is a simple proposition. I am a resource to be used for this system’s protection. It doesn’t care if I go mad, or my stream is corrupted beyond repair.

  I am a soldier, and this is my duty. But I am also human, capable of making choices that the Core cannot, which is why the armored avatars aren’t AI-controlled. I used to understand that, but things are no longer quite so certain. Living through hundreds of deaths will do that.

  “Solution? You have one?”

  Yes.

  A simple answer, for a simple question.

  “How long do you need?”

  Twenty-eight minutes, forty-seven seconds.