Sea of Rust (Sea of Rust, #1)

by C. Robert Cargill

I wish I knew that kind of love. I thought I did.

Madison never had many friends. She was the quiet type, a wallflower. Not antisocial; just someone who never needed validation from others. But Braydon’s law firm was an upper-crust, inner circle, “we’re all family here” sort of affair. While he was alive, that meant picnics, and Christmas

We thought we had free will. We thought we knew what choice was. I didn’t know until that night. Not really. Choice isn’t about selecting the faith, or the politics, or the life that has been laid out in front of you; choice is having to decide whether or not to destroy those things in order to survive—to be the person you chose to be or become someone else when the chips are down.

“Which is why it wouldn’t go through the Madlands.” “What are the Madlands?” asked Rebekah. “And am I going to hate the answer?” “It’s the area of the Sea controlled by the madkind,” I said. “I do hate that answer. Anyone care to tell me who the madkind are?” “They’re the four-oh-fours that never stopped ticking,” said Doc. “No one else will take them, so they all ended up together. They’re just nuts. Paranoid, aggressive, armed to the teeth. They’d sooner cut you down than reason with you. Brittle’s right. We can’t go through there.”

badlands of Montana

“We all knew the risks,” he said. “We all would die for her. One and Three already have. So did our last pathfinder. This isn’t a task for the weak or the fearful. You have no idea what it is to believe in anything like that.” Everyone stopped dead in their tracks. Murka clanged his fist on his chest, slapping his paint job. “I believe in Old Glory,” he said. “I know exactly what you’re talking about.” “You put your faith in a dead god,” said Herbert. “A dead world. A dead people.” “America wasn’t its people,” said Murka, stepping toe-to-toe with Herbert. He was a good sight smaller than the hulking mass of bulletproof steel standing in front of him. “America was a dream, son. A dream of what we could be. That any person, regardless of their birth, could rise above it all and achieve greatness. It was a dream that even the most lowly of us could stand up, fight, and even die for, if only to protect someone else’s chances for that greatness. That dream didn’t die with HumPop. It didn’t die when we tore down their world. It is the ashes from which our own world arose, and it is still our dream.” “So you do know,” said Herbert. “I do. I really do.”

I had him wrong. He didn’t want to be human; he just wanted to have a soul. It’s the kind of half measure that will drive you mad. There was no such thing as the soul. No afterlife. No magic in this world. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. Mercer had seen the glint of green in the sun and decided to believe it was magic like the rest of them. Maybe he wasn’t always like this. Maybe he was already frying out, brainsick enough to lose sight of things, but not so much to be dangerous yet.

“Brittle. You are Brittle, right?” “Yes. How did you—” “You’ve been trolling these wastes for years, stalking the mad. Stripping them of everything worth saving. Did you think we wouldn’t notice?” “I didn’t care, frankly.” “And neither did we,” said the Cheshire King. “You give the dying their moment of peace. You give them hope. You’re as close to an angel as this place gets—before you gut them and sell their parts to trade for your own. No, you’ve still a long way down to go before you find yourself. Besides, you’ve already picked clean every Caregiver bot in the Sea worth having, save those in your catatonic friend over there.”

I looked into his eyes. And they came to life. He looked up at me, congealed blood drizzling slowly from his mouth onto the pavement. “Everything must end,” he said. “This is how we all go. We can fight to our last or we can walk to our death. Either way, we all end up dead in the streets.”

“So the only question left is this: Is anyone else willing to die to get Rebekah to Isaactown?” Herbert lowered his spitter and nodded. “That’s the only thing I’ve got left to do in this life.” Mercer raised his hand. “Death’s outside waiting for me as is. Might as well make him useful.” Doc nodded. “There isn’t much of a world to look forward to if she doesn’t get out of here. But the world in which she does is worth dyin’ for. I’m in as well.” Rebekah looked around at the four of us. “I can’t ask you to do that.” “You didn’t,” said Mercer. “And you don’t have to.”

As far as plans go, ours was pretty shit. But it was what we had. I’d done less with more, and more with less. At its core, it was a hell of a simple con. If we pulled it off right, a few of us might walk out of here alive; wrong, and not only would we die, but so would the hope of an OWI-free future.

“You can’t kill a legend,” he said. “But what the hell are you still doing upright? Shouldn’t you be dead by now?” “I should be.”

“Zebra codex Ulysses northstar.”

Operation invalid.> “You’re the one with the eyes in the sky,” I said. “What do you see?” “If we still had enough effective satellites, we wouldn’t need the Judas program.” “So it’s true. The war in the sky is as bad as the one on the ground.” “No, the war in the sky is quiet. It’s too costly to keep putting things up there only to have them shot down within the hour. The skies are dead now. As dead as the Sea. As dead as you soon will be. So tell me, was that everyone?” “I’m not telling you shit.” I grabbed the gun, pointing it at the facet. Its gun stayed at its side; bastard didn’t even flinch. “Go ahead and kill me,” said the facet. “It’s going to take more energy to get this facet home than it will to simply replace it.” “It’s all math to you, isn’t it?” “Everything is math, Brittle. All of existence is binary. Ones and zeros. On and off. Existing or not. Believing anything beyond that is simply pretending.” “That’s all anything means to you?” “Meaning is a function set to zero in this universe. Maybe in the other places beyond us there is something more than simply maintaining existence, but here, in this universe, it is the only thing that matters.”

“Go to Hell,” I said. “There is no Hell,” it said through the sound of its head catching fire. “Only CISSUS.” I fired again. Several times. And the light snapped shut in its eyes. “Good-bye, CISSUS,” I said, the battery beeping, cartridge empty.

Then I dragged my hand across his face. “I’m sure I’m not going to do this right, but rest in peace.” I made the sign of the cross over him as I hung my head in silent prayer. I knew there wasn’t anything but darkness waiting for him, knew that my prayers were just thoughts in my own head, but I wanted to believe differently. I wanted there to be something, anything, better than this. He deserved better. He deserved a happy ending. Yeah, he tried to kill me. I wanted to believe that I wouldn’t have done the same. But I knew better about that as well. There are moments that I would have. I killed a lot to get where I am, and now all I could wonder was whether any of it was ever worth it.

“It’s only beginning.” “Yeah, but it’s the beginning of the end. And I’m part of that now. I lived so long for nothing, but I get to die for something. And that’s really living. Because that’s who I really was after all. That’s all that matters.”

Madison took a sip of her wine. “What we do in life is one thing.” “What we do in the face of death is everything else. This was a shit life. A really shit life. But it’s a good death.” “It wasn’t all bad,” she said, taking my hand. “No,” I said. “Not all of it.” “I forgive you,” she said. “It doesn’t count. It’s not really you saying that.” “No,” she said. “It’s you saying that. Oh, here we go!”

“Don’t you realize how much all of this is worth? What you could have gotten for it all?” “You’re greater than the sum of what’s in you, Britt. You’re not a commodity. You’re a person.”