That bitch.
That fucking bitch.
Aminat booby-trapped the serpentine. Of course she did. Why would she not?
Where am I?
Koriko has no vision yet, even though she can feel eyeballs in the sockets. The body seems complete, yet it cannot move. No, it can move, but only a few inches in any direction. She tries to turn her head, but this cannot be done either. She opens her mouth and sticks her tongue out as far as it will go, leaning forward.
Bone. The body is encased in bone.
Footholder! Footholder, I’m trapped.
You are not trapped. You are quarantined.
You’re talking to me now, are you?
Quarantine.
Yes, you said that. Why?
What you had on you killed Anthony and almost killed me.
I remember. I was there. I saved you.
Quarantine.
Stop saying that. How long do I have to be here?
Unknown. That other body is slowly sinking into the Earth. I had to create a path for it, or it would have killed me too.
But this is a new body; uncontaminated.
And let’s keep it that way. You have to stop provoking the humans.
They killed the xenosphere.
The xenosphere is back and they don’t have the capability to stop it. You know that.
Why do you hate me?
I don’t hate you. You’re my avatar. You and I are one. It is impossible for me to hate you.
You certainly don’t relate to me the way you did with Anthony.
For one thing, Koriko, you do not call me by my name. Anthony did.
What name? Wormwood? That’s a derogatory name the humans gave you.
It is the name I answer to. But you call me “footholder”, which is like saying thing or you, there. I am not a thing. I am alive.
Wormwood is a doomsday asteroid out of one of their most tedious holy books.
And Koriko can mean “grass”, but it can also mean “weed”. Which do you think they were thinking of when they named you?
I think, fuck you. So you don’t like me because I won’t call your name. That’s why you’re sluggish to obey me?
That you minimise the name says everything about the matter. But that’s not why I don’t jump to obey you. I hesitate because you are harming the humans and that’s not what I was grown to do, Koriko. The plan, the method is to keep the local entities happy, make their life as easy as possible, soothe them into extinction. Heal the natural wear and tear along with disease, but at the same time take over the bodies. That’s what I was doing. That’s what Anthony was doing.
This is a new plan. We didn’t come up with it; the humans did.
Some of the humans.
It is always going to be some. We can’t negotiate with seven billion people.
There was never any need to negotiate. This rush, this time-saving isn’t necessary. Ten years is like ten thousand years. It’s all the same.
No, it is not. What about server failure? What about data corruption over time? What about a big-ass asteroid taking out a large section of our moon? What about the possibility of aliens, hostile aliens, coming across our refuge? Our people shouldn’t wait for ever. The risk of extinction rises with every solar cycle.
We will never see eye to eye on this, Koriko.
You don’t have eyes, Wormwood. Now get me the hell out of this bone spur, so I can return to the business of harvesting humans. Now.
Koriko gathers the suffocated, the crushed, the burned victims of her anger, and takes them to the Honeycomb. Her cult flows in her wake, praying to her, assisting her. However the conversation with Wormwood went, at least it is responding better to commands. A footholder gone native. Always a risk. She needs to consider whether retiring Wormwood and activating a new one on a different continent will be better.
The Honeycomb is under siege. More humans than ever before surround it, and they throw missiles constantly, roaring their dissent. Koriko doesn’t understand why they don’t go and protest outside the mayor’s mansion. Isn’t he the one who speaks for them?
There are some clashes between these protesters and Koriko’s cult, but she does not care. Having worshippers is a thing she is indifferent about most of the time, and irritated with at others. Humans will worship anything, even if it is actively killing them. From what Koriko gathers, they have mass-murdered themselves because of religion multiple times. At some point she would like to study the phenomenon, but that’s just intellectual curiosity. For now, she has a job to do. One of her cult members is killed and she swallows his body into the ground in seconds. This activates the protesters in some way and drives the cult into a religious frenzy.
Humans are strange.
They do not part for her so she instructs Wormwood to clear her a path, which it does. Inside the Honeycomb she senses a tension, despite the bright lighting and the smell of lavender on the air. Someone points her towards the high-ceilinged antechamber, where…
Jack Jacques sits in a comfortable chair opposite Lua, who does not look happy. There is a glass of water in Jack’s hand.
“Can you get me a slice of lime for this? I like lime in my water,” he says.
Lua indicates and someone whisks the water away.
“What is he doing here?” Koriko asks.
“Try not to overreact,” says Lua.
“What does that mean?” asks Koriko.
“It means we can kill you,” says Jack. “We can kill you when we want, and we can kill Wormwood when we want. So I am here for a little renegotiation.”
“If you kill Wormwood, Nigeria will crush you,” says Koriko.
“Perhaps,” says Jack. He is infuriatingly calm. “But you won’t live to see it. Neither will any of your people. I have a large number of them rounded up, by the way, the synners mostly. I won’t kill them, but I will make them uncomfortable. I know you guys can read thoughts sometimes. Look into my head and see if I’m bluffing. Read my fucking mind.”
“You’re not—”
“You know, I like my new leg. I thought I wouldn’t, but I do. It’s nice to walk about without a chair again. I like it so much that I want this for humans, so you’re going to turn on the healing again, for everyone, not just because you like me. You’re going to turn on the ganglions again. I won’t charge you for the Ocampo inverters that you destroyed. And if any of your synners tries to murder a human, I will kill them all in a way that will prevent you from ever resurrecting them. I think you should be writing all that down, because you have one hour to comply.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Dahun,” says Jack.
A window smashes inwards and a wet glob smacks into the back of Koriko’s head. Lua’s eyes go wide and Koriko waits for the painful wrenching of her consciousness from the body.
Except nothing happens. She touches her occiput and her hand comes away glowing green. No pain.
“A warning. This time, luminous paint. Next time, a concoction of a weed that you and Wormwood find… stimulating. Now will somebody get me my fucking lime?”
Jack leaves without consequence, saunters in the crowd without fear, even raises a fist, causing a roar among supporters. Koriko is livid, but Lua seems unaffected.
“Why are we letting him get away with this?”
“Because it does not matter,” says Lua. “Their lifespan is a blink. We can afford to indulge him. We can afford to wait.”
We can afford to.
But should we?