Page 94 of Elanie & the Empath
“Saints below,” I whispered.
“The other bionics were irate. Gol and I tried to warn them. We begged them to remain calm. But they didn’t listen. They banded together in a revolt, refusing to work until justice was served.” He closed his eyes as a wall of pain and regret shoved into me. “They were all decommissioned. Every last one. Except for Gol.”
“I’m sorry,” I said uselessly.
“I wasn’t.” Maximus’s pain shifted into sharply flaring rage. “I had no time to be sorry, because I was furious. I’d spent most of my career working with bionics, watchingthem wear themselves to their wires, watching them sacrifice every bit of autonomy they’d been tricked into believing they had. And then I watched my entire crew die. Something had to change. It was a question I’d been asking myself for some time: What if there was a place where bionics could be free? Somewhere hidden from LunaCorp’s all-seeing eye? From Imperion’s iron-clad rule and draconian policies?”
“Thura,” Mal supplied. “You were trying to help us.” His head ticked, turned toward the door.
“Wewere trying to help,” Maximus corrected. “Gol and I. And we succeeded, for a while. Until Gol decided he wanted a bigger reach, more power, more control. Until he lost his way. Soon, instead of wanting to liberate bionics, he became obsessed with a singular desire to punish organics, to seek revenge, to turn the tables and lead a new generation of bionics to rule the stars. He was committed, ruthless, and willing to do things I never imagined…” He scrubbed his hand over his face.
“What happened?” I asked.
“What always happens in a power struggle. One of us won, and the other wound up down here, shoveling pig shit.”
Mal’s ear twitched, his eyes narrowing on the door.
“Gol will never stop,” Maximus warned. “He will continue to lure bionics here and imprison any organics who happen to show up with them. Soon, he will start training Thurans to fight. He will build an army.” When he looked at Mal, a cold, bleak despair spread out from him like cracks over a frozen lake. “No matter what it costs everyone around him.” He coughed again, then cleared the rattle from his throat. “It’s time. It’s time to put an end to his reign before it’s too late.”
“How?” I asked, but Maximus had already struggled back to his feet, motioning for Mal to join him.
“All right, friend,” Maximus said calmly, almost tenderly. “It’s time for you to head back up. You know what to do.”
“Yes, I do.” Mal stood and turned toward the door, his shoulders following suit. “I will. But”—his hydraulics whirred as he started walking—“do you hear that noise?”
I stood still, listening. “I hear the pipes clanging.”
“I hear the pigs snorting,” Maximus added with a shrug.
“No. There is something else.”
I’d never heard this tone from Mal before, sudden and harsh.
“This is not the pigs or the pipes.” He took another step toward the door. “It is so loud. It is deafening. How do you not hear it?”
“Time to get back up there, Mal,” I said, watching the gen-1’s expression harden into stone, the yellow light shining from his eyes intensifying, turning amber, orange. And then, so quickly I couldn’t get out of the way, Mal charged, shoving me into the wall as he barreled through the door.
“This is because of whatever you did inside him, isn’t it?” I hissed while Maximus and I hustled to keep up with the titanium tower of fury marching down the tunnel in front of us. “Did you twist the wrong screw or something?”
Maximus’s glare was withering. “I didn’t twist the wrong anything. I don’t make mistakes. This is something else entirely.” His sorrow pushed on my shoulders. “And terrible timing, at that.”
My stomach sank, then dropped as we followed Mal through a left turn, then a right, and another left. As I realized where he was going. Because I heard it now too, thelow, resonant humming I’d heard the day I followed Lars to the pumps.
“What is in that maintenance closet?” I demanded. “What’s he about to find?”
“Maintenance closet? Lars tell you that?” He stopped, turning to point a finger at me. “You know, for an educated man, you’re exceptionally dense.”
I gritted my teeth, taking the old man’s elbow and guiding him down the tunnel. The humming intensified until it vibrated through my ribs. “Is it the satellite array or something?”
“Stars above!”Maximus cried. “How did you get through med school? Who in the worlds would put a satellite array underground?”
I frowned, fighting another pout. “I’ve heard of it. Or read about it, maybe.”
“Where? In your favorite sci-fi novel? No, my naïve little friend, the satellite arrays are not underground. They’re hidden five kilometers northeast of Thura. Gol thinks they’re impenetrable, that numbskull. As if I wouldn’t have left myself a back door.”
I yanked Maximus down the tunnel as footsteps approached. Reaching out with my empathy, I picked up on a vibe of dull irritation mixed with a weird horniness: Lars and Mina, looking for me.
“Saints!” I hissed. “I’m supposed to be at the pumps.”
