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Binary 15.7

Eidolon, Brandish and I sped down the street after Jack Slash. My eyes darted between the buildings for any sign of where he might have hidden. We were just passing a three-way intersection with a closed garage on our left when Dragon's primary body dropped to the ground before us. She wore one of her green-and-gold suits, and glowing thrusters on her hands and feet gently lowered her to the ground.

"Jack's in there," she said, jerking her head towards the garage. "At a guess, Bonesaw's with him. We've seen her creations, but no sign of the Tinker herself yet."

I nodded. "She's his best chance at getting out of this," I said. "Do you have a floor plan?"

She nodded. "Two stories," she said. "Most of the ground floor is taken up by the garage itself, with a little lobby behind the customer door there." She pointed. "Upper floor is mostly one hallway with a few offices and an employee restroom, plus an apartment for the owner."

"Any escape routes?" Brandish asked.

"Fire escape," said Dragon, pointing up at the second floor. Sure enough, there was a narrow balcony complete with an extensible wrought-iron ladder. "On the other side there's a door that gives rooftop access. I've got suits watching both."

"Excellent," I said. "Follow my lead. If all goes well, no one has to die today."

"Wouldn't be much of a tragedy if Jack Slash bit it," Brandish muttered, but fell into position behind me.

I strode forward, hooked my hands into the handle of the aluminum garage door, and tugged. Metal snapped with a clang as the door came free of its latches and sprung upwards. From the gloom inside came a surge of movement, a tide of skittering flesh and metal, as dozens of spider-like creatures charged us. Each was about the size of a dog, with four limbs constructed of organic muscles tugging on metal bones and joints. The central frame of each was a rough hemisphere of patchwork metal, bone, and chitinous carapace.

I kicked the first one to approach as I drew Sunrise. With my left hand I launched a jet of flame. The drones ignored the fire even as it scorched their bones black and set the muscles of their legs sizzling like meat on a grill.

Lasers lanced forth in lines of blue and green light as Dragon leapt into action. Eidolon crushed swathes of the things with gravity. Brandish charged forward with a battle cry, twin handaxes of prismatic light blindingly bright in her hands. I swung Sunrise in wide arcs, shearing through flesh and metal as easily as the air around them.

There had to be nearly a hundred more of the little drones, several clambering down the stairs in the back of the garage to join the fray as we fought. They were no match for us, but I was certain Bonesaw and Jack Slash had known they wouldn't be.

"They're stalling!" I called out between strikes. "Dragon—they're not trying to leave?"

"No sign of them!" she replied, grabbing one drone and hurling it like a spinning discus at three of its fellows. "They're definitely upstairs, though!"

I cleaved through the central shell of one of the drones. Grey brain matter, mingled with circuitry and metal, fell leaking to the floor. It didn't look like an actual brain—more like Bonesaw had jury-rigged a sort of organic computer out of salvaged brains. Clinically I wondered how much of the brain mass around me had been harvested from humans, and how much from animals.

It took a few minutes to clear the room. By the end of it, Eidolon, Brandish, and I were all breathing heavily. Dragon wasn't, of course, but her suit ejected several steaming heatsinks from its weapons as she reloaded. "Still nothing," she told me grimly. "I don't like this. Feels like a trap."

"They've got to be running low on tricks by now," Brandish said. "Is there anything Bonesaw has that we haven't already seen and dealt with?"

"Not on her dossier," Dragon said.

"Doesn't mean she doesn't have something to pull out," I said. "Stay behind me and be ready."

I ascended the stairs. The building was deathly quiet as we emerged into a long hallway. The floor was linoleum, and my boots landed with muffled thuds as I walked down it. I opened each door I passed, but the first four opened into dark and empty offices without any hiding places big enough for Bonesaw, let alone for Jack Slash himself. The fifth opened to a bathroom, also dark, with three cubicles. I checked each, but they were empty too.

We returned to the hallway. It ended in a turn to the right. As I rounded the corner, I saw light filtering out through the gap beneath the door. I raised Sunrise, turned the handle, and pushed the door open.

"Hey there," said Jack Slash, grinning despite the blood trickling down his face, despite the brain surgery currently being performed a few inches above his eyes. He was seated in a wooden chair in the center of the apartment's narrow living room. There were two small tables set up beside him, scalpels and other medical equipment strewn across them. Behind him, standing on a stool so that she was looking down at him stood Bonesaw. A look of intense concentration was on her face, and her hands were busily working at his open cranial cavity. I could see a sliver of the dark purple-grey of his exposed brain under her scalpel.

I pointed Sunrise at them. "Hands away from him, Bonesaw," I ordered.

"Now, now," said Jack easily. "No need to be so hasty." He blinked as Brandish stepped into the room behind me. "Huh," he said, carefully not moving his head. "Thought you'd be out for longer."

"Step away from him, Bonesaw," Eidolon growled, raising hands luminous with green fire.

A sudden smile broke out across her face. "There!" she said, making a quick incision with her scalpel before stepping away. "Done!"

Even as she spoke, Jack's face froze. His eyes glazed over. Then they slid shut as his head slumped forward onto his chest. I blinked in surprise.

"What?" Brandish asked. "Was that a mercy kill?"

Bonesaw just smiled at us. It was an unsettlingly bright, innocent expression.

"He's not dead," said Dragon. "Life signs are still strong. Lot of brain activity."

Jack twitched. His head rose up again from his chest. His eyes opened.

There were no whites or irises in them now. They were empty, black, and studded with stars.

"Maia," said the Shard, and both Brandish and Eidolon screamed behind me. So did Bonesaw, her whole body flinching in sudden, shocked agony. The Shard's voice reverberated in my skull like the hammer of a bell, but they had it worse. Eidolon, who had been hovering slightly off the floor, fell to the ground with a thud, and both he and Brandish crumpled to their knees.

I whirled around just in time to see Dragon's shuddering hand come to rest against the side of her head. The electric-blue irises of her eyes were sputtering, as though they were receiving only intermittent power. "That voice—" she began hoarsely.

"I am Broadcast," the Shard said behind me, the name emerging as a strange, staticky burst of undiluted meaning, and the light died in Dragon's eyes. She fell to the ground, limp—not dead, as I could still feel her through her link to Vilya, but out of the fight for the moment. Beside her, Brandish and Eidolon both writhed, hands clutching at their ears and skulls.

I turned back to face the Shard. It was studying me. Behind it, I could see Bonesaw shaking convulsively on the ground. Despite being nominally its ally, its voice still clearly affected her.

I took a guarding stance with Sunrise. "Surrender," I said. "I've fought your kind before—I can do it again."

It blinked at me. Its blank expression looked unnatural on Jack Slash's angular features. "I do not think you have fought anything like me," it said. Then it opened its mouth again and made no sound.

No. The opposite of sound. The opposite of Song.

My eyes barely had time to widen before the floor disintegrated beneath my feet. I fell to the floor below. My three companions all thudded to the floor around me. Brandish cried out sharply as the impact sent a sharp, physical pain through her body to accompany the spiritual pain in her head. Eidolon fell silent as his head hit the concrete and he fell still. Outside, I could see two of Dragon's suits laying in the street where they had fallen from the sky.

I wasn't immune either. I could feel my grip on the Song slipping away, drowned out by that horrible, droning Silence. I could scarcely hear the melody of the world around me.

Broadcast slowly drifted down, its mouth still open in Silent Song. I stared up at it in horror. It wasn't Singing control over the world around it to slow its fall. It was Silencing the gravity around it.

Its leather boots hit the ground. I lifted my sword and realized that it was shaking in my hands. I took a deep breath, steadying it, and opened my own mouth to Sing.

Brandish sighed in relief as the Song burst out around me. She slumped mercifully into unconsciousness, falling curled to her side. Song and Silence clashed in the air between me and Broadcast, setting it crackling and humming with power.

Broadcast drew a knife from one of several holsters at its belt. The blade shimmered darkly, as though the edge itself were forged of the space between galaxies.

"You drove back the Administrator," Broadcast said, its voice layered with the Silence beneath. "You crippled the Desire. You slew the avatars of the Catalogue. But no, Mairë, student to Aulë, you have not faced anything like me."

"What are you?" I asked, the words becoming part of the Song as I breathed them into the air.

"I am Broadcast. Communicator, Speaker, Voice of the Warrior." It stepped forward, and Silence billowed before it like smoke, pushing back the weight of my Song. "I am that part of the Warrior which gives voice to his thoughts. I am the Silence that speaks, the voice of the darkness." It readied its knife. I knew, as deeply as I knew the Song itself, that no mithril armor would stop that blade.

I shifted my grip on my sword. "Then the Warrior," I said grimly, "had best be ready to become mute."

I leapt forward, then sidestepped. The void blade extended as Broadcast slashed at me, the disastrous edge shearing through the outer edge of my pauldron. I swung Sunrise in a quick, overhead arc. It made a sharp hissing sound as it was deflected off the flat of Broadcast's knife.

Broadcast stepped back and stabbed at me. I caught the strike against the flat of Sunrise, my left hand bracing against the blade as the force of the blow pushed me back. Sunrise hissed again at the impact, and I realized with horror that the damascened galvorn blade was melting against the blows. Not quickly enough that its integrity was threatened, but if I kept using it, it would be.

I jumped away from Broadcast and sheathed Sunrise. From the other side of my belt I unhooked Iphannis, extending the haft from a small handle to its full eight feet. The tip of the spear sailed past Broadcast's ear as it jerked its head to the side before stepping back out of range.

I pulled Iphannis back, gripping it in both hands. Song and Silence crackled around us like a thunderstorm. Out in the street, I saw one of Dragon's suits starting to move, picking itself up and clutching its head.

Keep its attention on you, came a voice across the Ring-network, tight with mental pain—but it wasn't Dragon's.

I dodged right, and Broadcast's star-studded eyes followed me, its body turning to face me—away from the street. Before it could react, I charged again, swinging Iphannis' blunt end upward from below.

Broadcast's blade tore through the haft like it wasn't even there. The knife spun in its grip and swung the other way, severing Iphannis' blade from the remains of the haft as I followed through on the strike. Then the knife whipped up towards my face, faster than I could react.

A luminous blade of white steel stabbed right through the hole in Broadcast's skull from behind, its tip nearly clipping my helmet. By the time the blade hit my cheek, it was perfectly ordinary steel again.

The Silence fell away as the black seeped away from Jack Slash's eyes. Pale blue stared unseeingly at me for a moment before the sword was tugged back out of his head, and he fell to the ground like a marionette without strings.

Sophia breathed heavily as she lowered Amauril. Behind her, Dragon was picking herself back up, and Brandish and Eidolon were both stirring.

"Thank you," I said, the words emerging in a gasp for breath.

"Anytime," said Sophia. "Where's Bonesaw?"

I gulped down another lungful of air, then jumped, sailing up into the hole in the ceiling.

Bonesaw rubbed at her temples with shaking hands. She stared at me as I emerged from the perfectly circular hole in the floor. Her eyes were slightly glazed, and her breathing was rapid and shallow.

"That wasn't him," she mumbled. I wasn't sure if she was talking to me or to herself. "That wasn't—he's dead, isn't he? And I killed him."

"From a certain point of view, yes," I allowed, stepping forward.

She swallowed, her eyes focusing on me for a moment before they started staring into space again. "It was so easy," she whispered. "After everything he did… after everything… and it was so easy to kill him I did it accidentally."

I drew Sunrise. There was a tiny mark on the blade where it had been damaged by Broadcast's knife. I leveled it at her. "Surrender, and I'll do what I can for you."

She blinked up at me, her eyes finally focusing and staying focused. "Now what do you mean by that, Miss Mairë?" she asked, her singsong voice shuddering. "After everything I've done, I don't think there's much place for me anywhere but your Birdcage."

"You've done many terrible things," I agreed. "But there's always room for mercy."

She cocked her head and let out a girlish giggle, unsettling with her hands stained with blood. "What makes you think I even want your mercy?"

"The fact that I think you didn't want any of this," I said. Her eye twitched and I knew I had struck a nerve. "You've done awful things, but I get the feeling you didn't have much choice about most of them."

She didn't answer, but her smile faded away. Her eyes stared into nothing above an empty expression.

"Today you have a choice," I said. "What happens next is up to you."

Her eyes flicked to the tip of Sunrise, then back to my face. Something broke in her eyes. "It was so easy," she murmured. "All this time. Could I have done it sooner? Could I have..." She trailed off, looking back down at the sword.

"Surrender," I said. "Please."

Tremulously, she nodded.

End Arc 15: Binary