An End Read Online Free PDF Page B

him. His lifeblood coursed out of the ravine Mother had carved in his neck, and Hank gasped his last breath with a look of utter incredulity on his weary, weathered face. Hank slumped against the baseboard, growing puddle of red around him.
    Mother returned to the table, calmly wiped her blade on the pretty doily upon which the teacup had been resting. Bright droplets of Hank’s essence had spattered across her face, but she did not seem to notice. The blade returned to its hidden sheath.
    Tears welled up in Fleur’s eyes. “How could you—”
    [hush.] Mother withdrew a silver sphere from her seemingly endless supply of interior overall pockets, rolled it across the table. A wave of her hand and the ball flashed to life, projecting a perfect image of Hank into the chair where he had been sitting. The image immediately grabbed its throat in terror, but finding no mortal wound where there should have been one, simply glared at Mother.
    “You fucking—Mother, what the fuck? ”
    She looked all-too-pleased with herself, and grinned widely. [you wouldn’t want to go where i’m sending you like that, hank. you wouldn’t last long as a flesh construct.]
    Hank was wordless. He grabbed his projector and placed it in his pocket. “You could’ve fucking warned me. Uploaded me and didn’t fucking warn me.” He looked uneasily over at his own dead body.
    [oh, hush now, hank. you’ll like this even more than being a cowboy.]
    Fleur’s eyes flashed with realization. “No humans... Just me. You killed him so that—”
    [and her eyes were opened.]
    “But we’ve cleaned everything already. There were no more systems to infect.” She began to shake her head back and forth, unconsciously denying that which she knew she could never refuse.
    [let’s just say this is something special.]
    “I can’t! I won’t do it. I—”
    [you will.]
     
     
    [natural immunity. that’s an asset, son. right now, your only asset.]
    Zero was held motionless, floating in the center of the spherical chamber to which they had transported him. It was dark, but three revolving spotlights, perhaps force generators, were fixed upon his limp body, holding him in stark contrast to the rest of the expanse of shadow. They surrounded him, these men who spoke with lips and tongues that projected nonsense and minds that projected perfect silverthought, violent in its intensity. He was struggling against the mental onslaught of hundreds of prying minds, the last of his mental defense mechanisms slowly cracking and falling.
    [we’ve interrogated your machine. you’ve come a long way, Zero.]
    how can he know that?
    The man before him smiled, his lips curling to enunciate those grinding words that were quickly surpassed in volume by the direct mind-to-mind communication that was much more effective, even if it was highly disconcerting.
    [your machine... it gave us everything we need to know about you.]
    The man walked closer. Black-clad hand reached out, gently touched Zero’s cheek.
    [so long... it’s been so long since we’ve seen you. eons.]
    Zero frowned, beyond confused. That touch, almost imperceptible as (leather?) fingertips traced his cheekbone. The man’s eyes were a piercing blue, so faded as to suggest white. Impossible blue, the blue of a life spent in the darkness of space. Zero had the most unsettling feeling that he knew this man from somewhere, sometime...
    [we sent her to populate your galaxy many, many years ago. after she stopped responding to our communications, we just assumed that the colony had been lost. but it would appear that the dear creature you call “Mother” has been busy, busy, busy.]
    The man grasped Zero’s chin firmly, locked his gaze into Zero’s eyes, and his world became a burning city, a woman screaming, looking up, reaching up, pointing into the sky, where a vessel hung, lights flickering from within, a radiant sphere of white expanding out from the interior as phase drives amplified the Fleur virus,