Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams Read Free Book Online Page B

Sarah holds her breath as her elastic artificial trachea constricts. Danica’s eyes open wide as she feels the touch of Weasel in her mouth, the temperature of Sarah’s body but somehow cold and brittle. Sarah’s fingers clamp on her wrists, and Princess gives a birth-strangled cry as Weasel’s head forces its way down her throat. Her body bucks once, again, her breath warm in Sarah’s face. Weasel keeps uncoiling, following its program, sliding down into the stomach, its sensors questing for life. Daud’s eyes make desperate promises. Princess moans in fear, using his strength against Sarah’s weight, trying to throw her off. Sarah holds him crucified. Weasel, turning back on itself as it enters Danica’s stomach, tears its way out, seeks the cava inferior and shreds it. Danica makes bubbling sounds, and though Sarah knows it is impossible, although she knows her tongue is still retracted deep into Weasel’s base, Sarah thinks she can taste blood.
    Weasel follows the vein to Danica’s heart. Sarah holds her down, her own chest near bursting with lack of air, until the struggling stops and Daud’s blue eyes grow cloudy and die.
    Purple and black rim Sarah’s vision. She heaves herself off the bed, partly retracting Weasel as she gasps for air through the constricted passage in her throat. She stumbles for the washroom, falls and crashes into the sink. The impact drives the air from her. Her hands turn the spigots. Her hands put Weasel in the sink and feel the water running chill. Her breath comes in rasps. Weasel is coated with a gel that supposedly prevents blood and matter from adhering, but she doesn’t want even a chance of Danica’s flesh in her mouth. The cybersnake is tearing at her breast. The water thunders until she can feel nothing but the speed with which she is falling into blackness, and then she falls back and sucks Weasel into her and can breathe again and taste the cool and healing air.
    Her chest heaves up and down, and her eyes are still full of darkness. She knows Daud is dead and that she has a task. She whips her head back and forth and tries to clear it, tries to scrabble upward from the brink, but Weasel is eating her heart and she can scarcely think from the pain. Sarah can hear herself whimper. She can feel the prickle of the carpet against the back of her neck as she raises her arms above her head and tries to drag herself along, crawling away, crawling, while Weasel throbs like thunder in her chest and she thinks she can hear her heart Crack.
    Sarah comes to herself slowly, and the black circle fades from her sight. She is lying on her back and the water is still roaring in the sink. She sits up and clutches at her throat. Weasel, having fed, is at rest. She crawls back to the sink and turns the spigots off. Grasping them, she hauls herself to her feet. She still has work to do.
    In her room, Princess is spread-eagled on the bed. Dead, it is easier to see the old man in her. Sarah’s stomach turns over. She should drag Princess across the bed and tuck her under the covers, delaying the moment when they find her, but she can’t bring herself to touch the cooling flesh; and instead she turns her eyes away and steps into the next room.
    She pauses as her eyes adjust to the dim light, and listens to the house. Silence. She reads the amber lights above her vision, and can find only routine broadcasts. Sarah takes a pair of gloves from her belt pouch and walks to the room’s comp deck. She flicks it on, then opens the trapdoor and takes from her pouch one of the liquid-crystal music cubes Cunningham has given her. She puts it in the trapdoor and waits for the deck to signal her.
    The cube would, in fact, have played music had anyone else used it. Sarah has the code to convert it to something else. The READY signal appears.
    She taps the keys in near-silence as she enters the codes. A pale light flashes in the corner of the screen: RUNNING. She leans back in her chair and sighs.
    Princess