SEATTLE, PRESENT
Talus is a hellish sight in the dim candlelight of the buried cathedral—a pale, beautiful man with a disfigured face, wearing black motorcycle armor and standing in a field of disembodied limbs that squirm and clutch their plastic fingers. At his feet, Batuo’s body lies in pieces, silent, eyes still open.
Lifting the bone saw, I jam my thumb into the trigger button.
I don’t even see Talus move, just feel a stab of pain as my wrists are pinned together in one of his hands, the bones grinding. The saw tumbles out of my grip and sprays sparks against the floor, spinning away like a pinwheel firework.
Talus pulls me close to him, turning my body as if we were dancing, staring into my face as I struggle, curious and arrogant. The flat plane of his naked cheekbone nearly brushes mine. He cocks his head, not even bothering to pretend to breathe. Past me, he spots the relic where I left it curled in Peter’s lifeless fingers. He looks disappointed.
“Peter made a poor decision, trusting you,” he says, letting go.
As I take a breath to respond, he plants a gloved fist in my stomach. I fall, flailing backward. My vision erupts with leaf-veined patterns of cathedral ceiling and a streaking star field of candle flame. I land hard on my side, forehead smacking the floor, one arm crumpled under me like a broken wing.
The world flashes, overexposed.
I’m blinking fiercely, trying to clear my eyes, my breathing shallow. The punch was like being hit by a car, impersonal, mechanical. Legs shaking, I drag myself blindly onto all fours, one rib stabbing with pain, my forehead wet and warm.
Through the ringing in my ears, I can hear Talus.
“Are you happy now?” he asks, speaking to Peter’s helpless body. Talus limps around the glimmering rings of the operating table, angrily flexing his fingers in shredded black gloves. On my knees and elbows, I crawl after him.
“Huangdi’s anima was never yours to protect,” Talus says to Peter’s body. “Not in all the centuries you wasted. He always belonged to her.”
Talus leans over Peter, his sharp features bathed in ethereal blue light from the machine. With both hands, he peels the relic out of Peter’s slack hand. When he speaks again, a wrenching sadness pulls at the curve of his blue-tinged lips.
“We sacrificed so much to your stubborn loyalty, Peter. Why couldn’t you see the Yellow God for what he was? Why couldn’t you adapt?”
As I near, Talus’s eyes flick over to me. Expressionless, he watches me crawl to the surgery table. His long blond hair is rippling in its electrical field. The relic seems to smolder in his fingers. Groaning, I hug the base of the control panel pedestal, hauling myself up to my knees, smearing half-dried blood over the hospital-white contours of the machine.
“You are a worm to us—do you know that?” he says from across Peter’s body. “A worm…interfering in a battle between gods.”
I don’t have the breath to speak.
Planting one foot, I push up, fat droplets of blood trickling down my chin. Leaning against the pedestal, I take a deep breath and wince at the pain from my rib. I lean my elbows on the panel, hunching my body over it.
In my peripheral vision, Talus is a thin blue shadow. All I see now—all I can let myself see—are the two brass knuckle–like devices sitting on top of the panel. Talus is reaching for me. Before I can react, he catches a handful of my hair in his fist. Pulling my face up, he looks into my eyes, enjoying my reaction.
“Time for you to go,” he says.
“Not yet,” I say, pulling away.
I’m already raising my hands, stumbling backward, my knuckles ridged with the brass knuckle devices. A gurgling torrent of liquid metal surges into the trough. Shining tendrils are already trickling up.
Our eyes catch. Too late, Talus understands.
“No—” he tries to shout.
With a scream, I bring my hands together in a brutal clap. An implosion of liquid metal leaps up and collapses over Talus’s surprised face.
The impact compresses his skull and flays away part of his scalp. Scouring flesh, the metal courses over his skull and solidifies into a thin, quivering mirrored surface. Talus’s metal-coated mouth opens and closes in mute horror. Staggering backward, he falls sprawling onto his back, droplets of liquid metal spraying in shining arcs.
I toss down the brass knuckle devices and the remaining liquid falls back into the trough around Peter’s sleeping form.
It is quiet now. Just the sound of my harsh breathing as I round the table and Talus’s boots squeaking spastically over marble.
The avtomat rolls over and manages to crawl a few feet, a glittering trail of liquid metal dribbling from his nostrils and ears. His jaw is frozen in a silent scream. Frantically, he rakes fingertips over his cheeks and eyelids. Sightless and silent, his frozen face is strangely beautiful, like a Greek sculpture.
I pick up the relic where it has fallen and slide the chain back over my head. The weight on my chest feels like coming home.
Batuo’s mangled torso is sprawled on the floor. He has been systematically dismembered. Metal bones glint beneath sliced chunks of contoured plastic sheathing. I had so much to learn from him, and now he’s a ruin.
My fear and adrenaline flare into anger.
Following me in secret, sabotaging my research—not only has Talus destroyed my career, but he’s murdered his own kind. An incredible world exists, and he has been snuffing it out.
The damaged machine is on its knees now, in a praying posture, running fingers patiently over the metallic mask melted to its face. Sensing my attention, Talus drops to all fours, sweeping fingers over the ground, searching for his antique sword. I creep a few steps closer to the monster, and kick the gladius away from him.
He lunges, a knife appearing in his hand. Blind and deaf, he misses my thigh by inches. I fall, kicking my legs to scoot away from the still lethal machine.
Crawling to the gladius, I wrap my hands around the hilt.
Behind me, the once angelic-featured man is on his knees again. Now he is sawing at himself with the knife, slicing the flesh around the outside of his metal mask. I stand, dragging the tip of the heavy gladius. Talus drops the knife. Curling his fingers into the wound around his face, he pulls, flexing, prying his own face away from his skull. Just a machine, I remind myself.
I lift the gladius over my head, favoring my bruised rib, blade wavering.
A demonic scream fills the cathedral as Talus rips the mask away, flinging it into the shadowy heights. Faceless, Talus sets his eyes on me, wide and evil in skinless sockets, bits of pink skin stuck to the bluish carbon-fiber planes of his skull. The sculpted flakes of material are arranged like bones, delicate curves that manifest as a corpse’s grin. Now the machine is on all fours, crawling quick like an insect, still vomiting threads of shining liquid. He roars incoherently, lower jaw askew, a sluglike lump of tongue nestled between sculpted teeth.
Letting my scream join his, I bring the gladius down.
Talus jerks as if he’s been electrocuted, tearing the hilt from my hands. The blade slices through armor and flesh, sticking fast in the machine’s shoulder. Not slowing, the skeletal monster snarls and leaps at me, knocking me onto my back and clawing at my face.
“Whurm.” He coughs, tongue lolling over a lipless mouth. “Whuuurm—”
A woman’s arm closes around Talus’s neck, dragging him back.
“The spear,” says a familiar voice, grunting with exertion.
Smearing a forearm over my eyes, I see a flash of Batuo’s smiling face. The monk is grappling with Talus, hips off-kilter, a flayed piece of robe tied around his midsection to hold his guts inside. His right leg is completely naked, a different skin tone from his left arm. It might be a woman’s leg, a bit shorter and more slender than the other. The sockets where the limbs fit are visible. His right arm is also brand-new, harvested from the butcher’s shop of spare parts.
Half of Batuo’s broken spear lies near me. Snatching it up, I scramble back to Talus. The half-blind machine writhes under Batuo’s patchwork body, oblivious to me as I approach. With both hands, I drive the leaf-shaped blade into his armpit. Ribs crunch as the tip pierces, hitting the cradle housed deep inside his chest, connecting with the relic.
Talus finally goes still, pinned down by Batuo’s mismatched arms.
Eyes blank, the faceless man stares at nothing. The body is smeared with dried metal, shoulder sheared nearly in half, jacket ripped open in a dozen places. The red-tasseled spear juts out from under his armpit.
It would be pathetic if it weren’t so terrifying.
Batuo crawls away from the corpse. He tries to stand and can’t.
“Are you okay?” I ask.
“Oh no, June,” he says. “Not even close.”