The Emperor of Everything

Chapter 19

Corean paced her suite like a newly caged predator, one not yet adapted to the comfort of regular meals and the hateful constraints of her cage. Marmo floated in a dark corner, playing his eternal game against his own coprocessors. The lights of his vidscreen flickered over his half-metal face, and the only sounds were Corean’s footsteps and the tap of Marmo’s fingers against his dataslate.

Her Moc warrior waited in the entrance hall, motionless.

The suite was otherwise empty. After delivering her Pharaohan slaves to Yubere’s stronghold, Remint had planned to recruit more slayers to staff the trap he had set for Ruiz; she had received no communication from him for hours.

When the comm’s chime finally rang, she jumped and swore floridly. Marmo moved toward the comm panel, but she rushed forward and slapped at the receive sensor.

Remint’s cold intense face filled the screen. “I have significant news,” he said in his flat voice.

“What?”

“Ruiz Aw has surfaced at the Spindinny; he bought a half-dozen contracts the night before last and then left in a heavily armed gunboat. He had a lot of money to spend, and he got the best to be found there — such as they were. He revealed little of his purposes during these acquisitions, but from questioning his rejects, I deduce that he has undertaken to perform an assassination.”

Corean was silent, digesting this information. “Who?” she finally asked.

Remint shrugged. “No truly suggestive data exists, but I believe that the target is unlikely to be you — the skills of the personnel he selected would indicate a target of greater importance, much better protected.”

“I see.” She found the notion unpalatable; how could Ruiz Aw have so soon dismissed her and gone on to other concerns? She would make him regret his casual disregard of her capabilities and persistence. Oh yes. “Where did he get the money? And the gunboat?”

“In all likelihood, he is working for someone whose resources are more extensive than yours. This may complicate his capture, should he survive his mission.” Remint seemed unconcerned; he merely reported a possibility, without attaching any emotion to the concept.

But Corean was instantly enraged by the thought that Ruiz might die before she could heal her wounds with his pain. “What can we do?”

“Little, at this point. I’ve hired slayers, and placed them at the site of the trap. I’ve set up a surveillance near the pens. Do you have further instructions?”

“No,” she said. “What of my Pharaohans? Did you make the delivery? Were there any difficulties?”

“No difficulties. However, I did not see my brother. Ordinarily he never misses an opportunity to gloat.” The impassive face kindled with hatred, becoming for an instant a demonic mask. Then the expression guttered out, as if Remint could not long sustain such ferocity, and he once again became the poised killing machine.

“He has other things on his mind, at present,” Corean said.

By the time the sub neared the surface, Publius appeared to have regained all his grandiloquent confidence. “Now we must rendezvous with the gunboat; I will take the controls.”

“No,” said Ruiz. “Not yet, and perhaps never. I’m familiar with this vessel; aboard your gunboat, in the midst of your crew, I’d find it difficult to relax. So we’ll stay below for a while yet.”

Publius seemed about to argue, but then he apparently remembered his dignity, and subsided wordlessly.

Running ten meters below the surface, Ruiz sent the sub at its best speed through the winding channels, toward the Diamond Bob Pens.

When they arrived, he was forced to surface in order to enter the lagoon. He unshuttered the sub’s blast louvers as the murky waters flowed away from the armorglass ports. Immediately he saw that something was wrong. The lagoon was nearly deserted, though a few burned hulks lay awash in the far end. Most of the lights were dark, but several of them had been replaced by jury-rigged glarebulbs, which cast a harsh blue light on the landing and on the phalanx of killmechs that now guarded the entrance. The entrance was a tangle of torn metal around a jagged hole.

Ruiz’s heart jumped up and wedged itself into his throat. Something was terribly wrong. He latched up his armor as the sub slammed roughly into the quay. Before the sub had latched itself to the mooring toggles, he was undogging the dorsal hatch.

“Watch him closely,” he told Albany. “If he does anything you don’t understand immediately, kill him. Don’t worry about me — I’ll be out of range; besides, I may have just lost my best reason for staying alive. If you hesitate, we’ll probably both die anyway, so don’t hesitate.”

He climbed out. As he was lowering himself down the ladder to the quay, he heard Publius start to say something in a brightly inquisitive voice. He hoped Albany was wise enough to keep his mouth shut.

He landed on the quay and raised his empty hands in a gesture of peaceful intent. The nearest killmech blurred across the landing and seized his wrists in padded clamps. “Your business here?” it asked in an unmodulated mechanical voice. It extruded probes, and inventoried the weapons he carried.

“I have property within,” Ruiz said. He noticed that the mech bore the colors of one of the great pirate houses. Glancing about, he saw that most of the lords had sent killmechs to guard the pens. What could have happened?

“Unforeseen events have occurred,” said the mech. “Your property may be damaged or unavailable.”

Ruiz felt his knees wobble; his muscles threatened to turn to water. “What unforeseen events?”

“We are not authorized to discuss these events. You may retrieve your property if it is available. If not, you must speak with the manager.”

It released his wrists and moved aside. He nodded and walked inside, as though in a slow nightmare.

The pens had obviously been the site of a bloody engagement. The corpses of the combatants were gone, but here and there were splashes of brown blood, and everywhere was the smell of recent carnage: an odor of decay, feces, urine, and the persistent reek of discharged energy weapons. Ruiz hurried, faster and faster, until by the time he reached the cells where he had left Nisa and the others, he was running as fast as he could.

The doorways were open and dark, twisted by the same energies that had destroyed the front doors of the pen. Oddly, the doors appeared to have been blasted open from the inside.

He skidded to a stop, gasping for breath, though he shouldn’t have been at all taxed by such a short sprint. He could not immediately force himself to enter her room.

An android stepped from the cell where Ruiz had left Dolmaero; it wore the silver and blue uniform of the Diamond Bob Pens. “These were yours?” it demanded.

“Yes,” Ruiz answered, in a voice that shook slightly.

The android froze for a moment; apparently it was too primitive a model to be capable of smooth transitions between attitudinal modes. Then it smiled, a grotesquely artificial expression. “Come,” it said. “Diamond Bob will want to speak with you.” It pointed down the corridor, deeper into the pens.

“Wait,” said Ruiz. “Where are my properties?”

“Gone. So sorry. Diamond Bob will discuss the matter at greater length.”

Ruiz pushed past the thing into Nisa’s cell. It attempted to bar his way, though with no great determination, plucking ineffectually at his armor. “Please,” it said. “Diamond Bob urgently requests your attention.”

Ruiz ignored it. He roamed around the small room, looking for any indication of Nisa’s fate. The door to the common area was also burned open, but carefully, as if the person who had wielded the graser had not wished to injure the person within. Obviously, the attackers had come from the common area, had broken through the cells and gone on out. Had they taken Nisa and the others with them? Inside her room, he found no bloodstains, nor any sign that lethal weapons had been used — and his heart lifted slightly. He imagined that there still lingered a trace of Nisa’s scent, under the stinks of the ravaged pen. He picked up her pillow, held it to his armored chest. “When did it happen?” he asked the android, who stood in the doorway, wringing its hands in a mechanical approximation of anxiety.

“Diamond Bob will be happy to make full disclosure,” it said. “Please, our customers’ satisfaction is our paramount concern. Diamond Bob will try to compensate you for your losses — though you must realize that Diamond Bob has sustained heavy losses also.”

Ruiz snarled wordlessly. Diamond Bob had lost nothing so valuable as Ruiz had. But at least there was some evidence that Nisa wasn’t dead. Who had taken her. The first thought that came to him was: Corean. Was she really crazy enough to have mounted an assault on the pens? How had she even found the Pharaohans? SeaStack had a number of pens; most of them guarded the identity of their patrons carefully, but none more fiercely than Diamond Bob’s. Ruiz shook his head. Perhaps he could learn more from Diamond Bob.

He stepped out into the corridor and saw that four killmechs now blocked him in. They made no threatening movements, but it was clear that he would be required to talk to Diamond Bob, even if he hadn’t been eager to do so.

“Let’s go,” he said to the android.

Diamond Bob wasn’t what Ruiz had expected; she was a small tidy woman who affected an appearance of late middle age. Her narrow face was innocent of beauty paint, her nose was long, and her lips thin and colorless. She wore her gray hair in a coil at the back of her neck, drawn so tight as to appear painful.

Her office seemed more like a sitting room from some historic holoplay, a play set in some Old Earth fantasy culture. The light was dim and brown. Dull-green ferns sat on tiny round tables, and the walls were covered with a pattern of faded blue roses. The only jarring note in this ancient decor was a huge gleaming killmech, motionless in the darkest corner — though it wore a lace doily on its polished head and held a yellowing aspidistra in its claws, in an apparent effort to fit in.

Diamond Bob indicated an uncomfortable-looking humpbacked couch, and they sat down together. Ruiz removed his helmet and gloves; he was suddenly conscious of the scuffs and bloodstains on his armor.

She didn’t appear to be discomfitted by his appearance. “We have both suffered losses,” she said without preamble. She pressed a stemglass of green cordial into his hand. She smiled perfunctorily and then sipped at her own glass. “You gave your name as Ruiz Aw? Isn’t that the name of a famous Dilvermoon enforcer? Do you claim to be him?”

“No,” he said. “My properties. Who took them?” He set his cordial down untasted.

“Would you prefer tea?” she asked.

“No. Tell me what you know about those who raided your pens.”

She took another delicate sip of her drink. “I’d hoped you could help me with that.”

“How would I know anything about it?” Ruiz tried to look astonished.

Diamond Bob fixed him with her tiny glittering eyes. “Because I believe that the raid was undertaken for the sole purpose of taking your property.”

“What makes you think that?”

“Several things — and my intuition, which is often correct. First, two days ago a clumsy attempt was made to extract your ownerfile from our databanks. Naturally, the attempt failed. Just before that, a notorious slayer visited here, a man named Remint. He interrogated another Pharaohan slave, called Flomel, who had been admitted to the same common area as your properties. Your slaves were Pharaohan, I believe?”

“Yes.” Flomel again. Ruiz cursed himself once again for his softness; he should have known better than to let an enemy live. If he ever got another opportunity, he would rectify that mistake. What hideous bad luck… that whoever had purchased Flomel from Deepheart had quartered him here.

Diamond Bob drew back slightly, as if Ruiz had allowed something of his anger to reach his face. “Well, to continue: The raiders wore armor, of course, but an analysis of the dimensions and movement patterns of their leader matched the analysis of Remint. Odd that he should take no more effective measures to conceal his identity, isn’t it? He didn’t even bother to burn the surveillance imagers. It was almost as if he wanted us to know who he was… he must be mad, as now the lords — who guarantee the safety of my business — are avid for his blood. Perhaps he is mad — my people reported that his affect was very odd during his first visit.”

“What can you tell me about this Remint?” Ruiz asked.

“A moment — let me finish my explication.”

“Continue.” Somehow Ruiz was sure that badgering Diamond Bob would yield little useful information — better to let her tell her story as she chose.

“Thank you,” she said dryly. “Finally, and I think most significant, the raiders took your people away alive, and I think they were only interested in your property, though they took several others as well. That was probably an attempt to confuse the issue; the choices seemed random, whereas all your folk were from Pharaoh.”

“I see.”

“Also,” she added, “we’ve recovered the corpses of two of the other slaves who were taken. Evidently they were carried only a short distance from the pens before someone burned a hole through their heads and dumped them. Fortunately, they weren’t terribly valuable, and were insured.” She sipped at her cordial, and then poured herself another serving. “So you see, I’m very interested in you… and in your enemies.” She smiled, again a very remote and abstract expression.

Ruiz realized, belatedly, that he might be in serious trouble. He had been so concerned with controlling the obvious lethality of Publius that he had almost forgotten that SeaStack was full of other dangerous folk. “Who else is interested?” he asked.

Her smile widened. “No one, presently. I’ve withheld some of this from the lords, though of course I had to give them the data regarding Remint — and they’ve organized a major headhunt throughout SeaStack. If he shows in any of his usual haunts, he’ll soon be apprehended.”

“When do you plan to tell them about me?”

“Perhaps never,” she said. “I can see certain advantages in cleaning up this situation without their help. My reputation has been badly damaged; that will cost me far more than replacing a few dozen dead security people and killmechs. I’m afraid the damage will be permanent, unless I can bring the lords a suitable present; say, Remint’s head on a platter.”

“Our goals converge, to some extent,” Ruiz said cautiously.

“Maybe. Tell me, who would you first suspect of wanting your people — and of being foolish enough to try to take them from me?”

Ruiz considered. The threads of the situation had become so tangled that he could no longer easily follow the one that might benefit him most. He was exhausted and confused; not only could he not see where his advantage lay, he couldn’t even decide where the deepest danger lurked. But he tried to gather his thoughts. Diamond Bob was a businessperson. Her interest in apprehending the raiders was obvious and understandable. Why not deal with her on a somewhat straightforward basis?

“If I tell you what I surmise, will you tell me what you can about Remint?”

She nodded.

“All right. As far as I know, my only enemy here — or anyway the only one who knows I’m in SeaStack — is a slaver whom I know as Corean Heiclaro. Do you know of her?” He couldn’t mention Publius; he was still dependent on the monster-maker. Any suspicion that fell on Publius would reduce Ruiz’s chances of exploiting the monster-maker’s connections to escape SeaStack.

“The name isn’t immediately familiar,” said Diamond Bob. She moved to a rosewood writing desk and tapped at the dataslate inset into the desktop. “No, I find no mention of her in my records. Description?”

Ruiz described Corean as dispassionately as he could — her mannerisms, her slender body, her priceless face. He thought he had kept the hatred from his voice, but Diamond Bob watched him with knowing eyes and a slight smile. When he was finished, she shook her head. “No. She must employ another pen, if she does business in SeaStack — or perhaps she uses a private facility. Or, it may be that she has always dealt with me through underlings. The Pharaohan Flomel was delivered to us by a felinoform who called himself Lensh — and here is another possible connection to Remint. One of the raiders was a catperson. We had almost captured him, when the raider we believe to be Remint took off the cat’s head with a graser. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough left to compare the ID with the one who left Flomel here, but I would think they might be the same person.

“Now. Tell me why you think Corean might have something to do with the raid. Why would she want these Pharaohans?”

Ruiz debated whether he should mention the Gencha, but decided that volunteering such volatile information might be foolish, even if Diamond Bob proved trustworthy beyond reasonable expectation.

“They once belonged to her, before I stole them.”

“Ah.”

“What happened to Flomel?”

She smiled. “He was also taken. We didn’t find his body.”

Ruiz thought. Corean began to seem the likely motivator behind the raid. If so, she now had regained her phoenix troupe, except for the dead Kroel. But was that financial consideration large enough for her to risk the wrath of the pirate lords? The rational answer was no. Was she rational?

He needed more information. “Tell me what you know of Remint?”

Diamond Bob shrugged. “A few years ago he was the most feared slayer of SeaStack, which is saying quite a lot. He’s intelligent, physically gifted, merciless. All manner of myths grew up around his prowess as a killer. Then he seemed to drop from sight. No one with any credibility claimed to have taken his head, so I assumed he had simply grown tired of the profession and retired. It happens. There were reports he’d been seen on Dilvermoon, and on other faraway worlds, but I discount these. Famous people often seem to be everywhere, don’t they? I was astonished to hear of his first visit here, when he interviewed Flomel — as far as I know, that was the first verified sighting of Remint in over four years.”

“Was he freelance?”

“No, not then. He worked for his brother, a man named Alonzo Yubere. Perhaps you’ve heard of him; he keeps a stable of Gencha and does personality modifications, mostly for the lords. But it was rumored that the two of them had a falling out, just before Remint disappeared. I think this must be true — Alonzo is an extraordinarily careful man — he’d never attack me unless his survival was threatened, and I can’t imagine how those properties could have affected him. Either Remint is operating on his own, or he’s working for someone else — such is my guess, for what it’s worth.”

Ruiz felt a dizzy sense of disorientation. Alonzo Yubere. He had been assembling a theory that involved Corean’s thirst for revenge; now that seemed far too simple. There were suddenly too many coincidences.

“Are you well?” asked Diamond Bob. “Do you know Yubere?”

“I… met him. Briefly.” He was remembering the dark-haired woman who had fallen into the depths of the pit. Gencha food. “Tell me, please: Exactly when did the raid occur?”

“Night before last, oh-three-hundred hours. They were in and out in fifteen minutes — very professional work, in most respects.”

Ruiz sat back against the couch, his heart pounding. The woman might have been Nisa; there had been plenty of time for Remint to have delivered the Pharaohans to Yubere before Ruiz had penetrated the stronghold.

Diamond Bob watched him, her shrewd eyes burning with curiosity. “Obviously I have distressed you. Why so?”

Ruiz felt as if he were about to collapse under the pressure of her revelations. He was abruptly a great deal worse than exhausted; his thoughts seemed to run much too slowly for coherence, the beginnings of each thought seemed to fade to formless mist before he could finish it. “Corean was shipping the Pharaohans to Yubere when I stole them from her, or so I believe.”

“If she has completed this shipment, would this be fatal to your purposes?”

“Possibly.” He tried not to think of Nisa dead, rotting in the corrupt soup at the bottom of the pit. Even if her body was still alive, had she already been processed into a less-than-human creature? What could he do, now? He needed time to think, to analyze his options. And he couldn’t be entirely sure that Remint was acting on Corean’s behalf. It was at least possible that Publius was behind the snatch; he also had connections with Yubere, and reason to want some additional leverage over Ruiz. Remint might not have made the delivery to Yubere, in any case. He tried to remember the moments he had spent with Yubere, before he’d killed him. Wasn’t there something there, something he should take into consideration? Then he recalled the flash of recognition he’d detected in Yubere’s face — and at the time discounted. How could Yubere have known anything about him, unless he had been told by either Publius or Corean?

He needed time to think, but was there any time? If Nisa had been taken below to be deconstructed, the process might have already begun. He took a deep breath and tried to clear his head. If she had been taken below, it was too late. But if she was still in Yubere’s dungeon, then it was likely she would remain there for a while, since the false Yubere was in no condition to order her taken to the Gencha. He would have to act on the assumption that the latter was the case; it followed that he ought to first pursue Remint, in the hope that Nisa had not yet been delivered to Yubere. He would very much like to avoid entering Yubere’s stronghold again, since to do so he would probably be forced to release the false Yubere and thus would lose his strongest leverage over Publius.

He rubbed his hands over his face, wishing he were not so terribly tired. “All right,” he said. “You need to know who hit you and why — and I need to recover my property. Can you give me a data-excerpt covering Remint: his history, his habits, his customary places, his associates?”

“I can, and I can include the report the lords’ forensic people gave me — you may find something useful there, though it was a very clean operation,” said Diamond Bob. “But I’ll give it to you only if you’ll agree to share what you learn with me. I’ll pay a fair price for any new data you can add to the file, plus market value for the slaves you lost — and a very good bounty for Remint’s head.”

“It’s a deal,” said Ruiz in a ragged voice.

“Good,” she said. She rose and took a datawafer from her writing desk and dropped it into his hand. “But I have a caution for you, don’t be greedy. Find out what you can, deliver your information to me, get paid, and survive. What you’ve told me leads me to suspect that Remint is still somehow connected with his brother. Don’t make the mistake of dancing with Alonzo Yubere — he plays in a much bigger league than we mere mortals do. Don’t attempt to take Remint’s head, unless the odds favor you very heavily. He’s a legend, as I’ve said — a man-shaped demon.”

“Probably good advice.”

She grinned, an incongruously predatory expression in that neutral gray face. “It is — unless, maybe, you actually are Ruiz Aw.”

A brace of killmechs escorted Ruiz to the entrance.

Back aboard the sub, he was gratified to see that Albany still held his graser aimed at Publius. He had half expected the situation to have deteriorated even more thoroughly than it already had.

Ruiz took a leash from a storage bin and tossed it to Albany. “Take him back into the cargo hold and attach him to the bench.”

Publius leaped up, face shading toward a familiar purple. “This is too much, Ruiz. I’m not your prisoner; we’re allies.” He threw up his chin, to display the madcollar. “Treat me with the proper respect, or I’ll punch our tickets right now. I have my clones; what do I care for this old flesh?” He extended his controller in a trembling hand, his finger hovering over the trigger.

Ruiz was too tired to feel anything but impatience. “Do it, then,” he said.

A long moment passed and Ruiz wondered if Publius had by some strange quirk meant what he had said. He still could not bring himself to be very interested in the answer.

Finally Publius snapped his hand down and turned away. The hatred that boiled off his body was an almost-tangible thing, an almost-visible distortion of the air. “No. No, don’t let the little man destroy us,” he muttered. “More important things must be considered; even dignity must be discarded for a while, if necessary. If we must, if we must….”

He walked ahead of Albany into the hold, and presently Ruiz heard the click of the leash being fastened.

Albany returned and laid down his graser with a sigh of relief. “What now, Ruiz? I see you’ve got more troubles. Where’s your true love?”

“Stolen. I’ll explain later.” He tried to glare at Albany, but he was just too tired. He decoupled the sub and guided it out of the lagoon, and as soon as it cleared the entrance, he angled it into the depths. He set the autopilot to take them down to the sub’s maximum cruising depth, and then programmed it to shut down the engines and drift silently with the sluggish currents at the roots of SeaStack. They’d be as safe there as anywhere else.

“I need to rest for a couple of hours,” Ruiz said. He fought down his misgivings; Nisa might be lost forever if he delayed, but in his present condition, he was sure to make some foolish fatal mistake. “You do too, I know, but we’ll have to take turns. Even with the madcollar and the leash, I can’t bring myself to trust Publius. He’s resourceful.”

“No doubt about it,” said Albany. “While you were gone, he told me how he was going to be Emperor of Everything. Had me going for it, a little, even if he didn’t explain how it was going to happen. But then I got to thinking how he probably wasn’t the sort to forgive and forget — and I’m a guy who put a gun to his head.”

“I can’t fault your logic,” said Ruiz. “Look, I’m going to pass out in the pilot’s chair. Wake me in two, and it’ll be your turn.”

He prepared a ject of soporifics and vitalizers, then shucked off his armor. He touched the ject to his arm and lay back in the chair. His eyes fluttered shut, and he slept.

When he knew that he was dreaming, his first dream-clouded thought was a sense of gratitude that he wouldn’t remember this. He never had good dreams, never… no matter how promisingly they began.

He was with Nisa at the landing, watching her bathe in the little fountain. The air had that golden radiance, the untruthful brilliance that surrounds events remembered from the perspective of a long lifetime. Already, Ruiz mused, the dream was wrong; surely that moment was no more than a few years in the past.

Ruiz watched her with an oddly wistful sense of delight. She scrubbed at her white skin industriously, using the black sand from the bottom of the pool, and her pale lovely body gradually turned pink. She gave him a sweet smile, and the soft amber light shone in her dark eyes.

Nisa seemed as graceful as the bronze creature who stood poised in the center of the pool, a six-legged predator, obviously of some coursing species. Its beautiful terrible head glared blindly; it snarled, exposing long fangs green with the patina of ages. The dark water that ran down its flanks and dripped into the pool steamed, as though the day were cold and the water hot. There was something fascinating about the patterns the water made as it flowed over the bronze, an involving complexity, as the streams diverged and recombined, endlessly. It was almost hypnotic.

After what seemed a very long time, the bronze predator began to seem not quite so graceful. Its limbs were thicker and less cleanly defined, its head a knot of lowering menace. Ruiz tore his gaze away from the ugly thing and looked at Nisa again.

He made a choked sound of horror. While he had been distracted, Nisa had continued her vigorous scrubbing, to hideous effect. Her skin, her wonderful perfect skin was gone, scoured away, exposing the bloody meat beneath. She still smiled at him, but her lips were gone, so that her smile was very wide, long white teeth smeared with red. He saw now that the black sand was really made up of splinters of dark cobalt-blue glass, with which Nisa continued to abrade her flesh.

He could not rise from the coping of the fountain, he could form no words; it was as if his body had turned to stone. He wanted to stop her from continuing her destruction; surely it wasn’t yet too late. She still lived and moved; he had brought her back from death once. Why not again? But he couldn’t act, he could only watch, as she began to change even more terribly.

She was rotting as she stood, and instead of glass, she bathed in handfuls of maggots, which wriggled into her body and made her flesh pulse with hidden movement. She was dead, long dead, now, and yet she still moved.

Her flesh darkened, liquefied, dripped from her into the pool, which now seemed a sump full of dreadful substances, boiling with virulence.

He expected to see, finally, the clean whiteness of bone, but what he saw instead seemed infinitely worse. As the last of her flesh fell away, he discovered that beneath all had been hidden the bright alloy of a killmech. The thing — he could no longer call it Nisa — moved with quick insectile precision to the center of the fountain and laid its claws on the shoulder of the bronze beast.

With a groan that made Ruiz think of long-locked doors opening, deep under the ground, the beast shifted and then stepped down from its plinth.

Both of them, in a movement that seemed to take hours, shifted their gaze until they looked at Ruiz. Their glowing red eyes projected an unmechlike hunger.

In a horribly synchronized motion, they took a step toward him, and the killmech raised its arms in a parody of embrace.

He woke screaming, unable to remember what had frightened him so badly.