Crysis: Legion by Peter Watts Read Free Book Online Page B

pressure in the passageway is supposed to only push back unruly microbes, not hold up the whole structure. It’s the higher-pressure air between the inner and outer walls that keeps the tunnel up. If opening the door is enough to cause a slump, the walls themselves must be leaking.
    Like I said: the guts of a whale. The light shining through the walls is blood orange, like looking at the sun through closed eyelids. The walls themselves almost seem to breathe around you: air seeps from one bladder to the next, one segment of intestine still taut enough to stand in while the next is so flaccid you have to get down on hands and knees and push through curtains of billowing PVC. Disinfectant sprays like digestive juice from hidden nozzles; it condenses on my faceplate and fucks with my vision. The Reassuring Voice has a different routine in here, urges me to
move to the next chamber when you hear the chime
, tells me to
remain calm and go with the doctors
if the alarm sounds, hints at dire consequences for anyone who might
obstruct medical or security personnel
.
    No alarms go off. No chimes sound. The only noises I hear are the endless maddening voice of Loop Lady, the soft wheezing of the tunnel between her announcements, and the scuttling of—
    Wait a second:
scuttling
?
    Something runs over my boot. Something the size of a sourdough loaf drops onto my face. I get a split-second glimpse of a very small fire hose nozzle or a very large hypodermic needle; things like gleaming scalpels
rat-tat-tat
against my helmet. I bring my fist up—pure defensive reflex—and I swear I nearly punch myself in the face before remembering the age-old question,
Who wins when the awesome power of the Nanosuit 2.0’s artificial muscles meet the awesome protective shielding of the Nanosuit 2.0’s armored faceplate?
I don’t know who wins but it’s pretty obvious that the loser is whoever’s
wearing
the Nanosuit 2.0 when we find out. Best-case scenario I end up with bug guts all over my windshield, and I haven’t seen any wipers on this thing. Worst-case, I punch right through the faceplate and smash my own brains against the back of the helmet.
    So I deflect the swing at the last microsecond, pull off to the left, and however many thousand g’s these carbon-nanomyofibrils pull just kinda glance off the respirator and the momentum spins me around like I was sideswiped by a semi and I am going
down
, man, I am spinning like a ballet dancer into all that flaccid plastic and I can hear bladders popping and tearing all along the tunnel, wrapping around me and I am on the floor, gift-wrapped for the delectation of some giant mutant flea out of an old Bowie album.
    Whatever it is, I land on it. It bursts under my ass like a burrito.
    I buckle down and tear myself free and bull my way through the rest of the sequence. Maybe I see shadows moving behind the plastic, vague shapes the size of softballs and cocker spaniels. Maybe it’s my imagination. Valium Girl keeps urging me to remain calm, to be patient, to move forward when I hear the chime. Somehow she sounds a bit testier now. And when I hear for the hundredth time that
Successful treatment of the Manhattan pathogen depends on early diagnosis
I want to break out laughing—because nothing says
medical competence
and
effective
quarantine
like a bunch of Mutant Chernobyl Bloodsuckers living in the heart of your decon facility.
    It’s not working, Roger. Nice try, though.
    Actually, I believe you. I’d know if you were lying, and even if I didn’t they’d probably leave you in the dark just on general principles. So let me fill you in: Your bosses just tried an emergency remote-shutdown through a backdoor optical channel in the twenty-thousand-angstrom range. Didn’t you see that little laser light winking in the air duct back there?
    Oh, that’s right. You can’t see infrared.
    The thing about radio, see, is you can always jam the signal. Optics are a
lot
tougher to hack. Pass a light beam