Unity by Elly Bangs (free e reader txt) 📕

that overpressured and burst, flinging contagious droplets like cannon shells. Every strain was terrifyingly fast. No ship could outrun the explosions of branching quicksilver arms. No submersible could dive fast enough to escape the hairs it dangled like jellyfish tentacles, down into the lightless depths.

“Who set it off?” Danae asked. “Who fired first?”

“What does it matter?” asked a voice from behind us.

I had noticed the elderly woman when we entered the tent, perched awkwardly on a support beam at the back. She looked about twenty years older than anyone else I’d seen since we set foot here, in this city of the firm and short-lived. She wore an ordinary work uniform, except it was clean, and her hands were free of the persistent chemical stains that marked those who labored on the rigs or under the mountain itself.

“It could determine the course of the conflict,” Naoto responded distantly.

The elder didn’t look up from the pipe she was packing. “Way out here, we’ll never know who fired first. We won’t even know whose Gray it is when it comes for us. By then it’ll all have fused together anyway, just one great big wave. No use blaming anyone. The end of the world is just the end of the world.” She lit up and inhaled.

“The world’s not really going to end,” Naoto declared, sounding less than confident. “All anyone has to do is transmit the kill commands, and it all stops growing. Just disintegrates. Right?” He paused nervously. “Right, Danae?”

She barely seemed to register his words at first. She mumbled her answer without ever taking her eyes off the screen. “Soon. Probably hours from now. I’m sure it’s . . . being worked on.”

One of the isotope scavengers, twitching with nervous energy, leaned over to insinuate himself and unhelpfully explain, “No, the world won’t really end. It’s a big game of chicken. It always is. Norpak’s Gray spreads out toward Bloom City, Epak’s Gray spreads for Subkyoto. Whoever’s about to get sludged first throws up the white flag and boom, it’s all over. Mutual Assured Destruction is going to work this time.”

“Not if they don’t trust their opponent to honor their surrender,” the smoking woman said. “And you’re assuming everyone who could’ve sent the kill command doesn’t get turned to sludge before they can send it. You’re assuming people are going to be reasonable at a time like this. If anyone isn’t, it’s the end for all of us. Gray Day.”

“Never gonna happen,” the scavenger insisted, tapping his foot furiously. “Gray Day? Hell. My folks thought Cruithne was going to be it. Sold off all their worldly possessions and camped out at ground zero; watched it skip off the atmosphere right above their heads. Their parents were sure as shit Blood Rain was going to spread and make the whole world as dead and empty as it did Europe, and you know what? We evolved a naturally immunity. Their parents thought nukes would make everyone extinct, but we’re still here.” He paused to tug his scarf down and rub at the ten-centimeter-wide tumor growing up through his collar.

“What about climate change?” somebody jeered. “You know all this wasteland didn’t used to be wasteland, right?”

“But that’s exactly what I’m talking about,” the isotope scavenger said. “The real apocalypse is slow. It’s never-ending. It doesn’t happen just like that. Never has before, won’t this time either.”

“This is different,” the old woman said, spitting out smoke. “Gray self-replicates. There’s no bunker you can hide under. No way to shoot it down or seal yourself off from it. I remember Blood Rain. We got lucky then. It was only a matter of time before we invented a bullet that even we couldn’t dodge.”

Naoto blinked hard and tore his attention away from the screen. “There’s nothing we can do about it. Let’s focus on the here and now. Let’s go find our ride inland.”

“Good luck with that, kids,” the old woman said.

“What do you mean?”

She grunted at her stiff back as she heaved herself onto her feet. “Look around you. Most folks here are migrants from outer Epak, some from coastal cities, some from the north, and they’re not about to spend their last days on Earth digging under the mountain. They’re going home.” She leaned heavily on the bars of the tent’s wall and stared out into the hot drifting sand. “By late tonight this town will be all stripped down and gone.”

“Someone must be traveling east. With all the reactor fuel this place trades to the Confederacy.”

“No one’s going east.”

“How do you know?”

“They all work for me,” she said. “Or did. Excuse me.”

I watched her duck under the beam and walk off down the street. She was the only person in sight who wasn’t either running at full speed or sitting perfectly still in the light of a pane. Danae watched her with an inscrutable expression.

“Come on,” Naoto said.

Danae pulled herself away and started walking, but now she was staring at the shard in her hand. “Even in the time we’ve been standing here, the Gray . . . spots . . . have grown by hundreds of square kilometers. Their growth accelerates the bigger they get. Assuming a terminal replication rate of . . .” She was furiously typing numbers into a calculator program.

Naoto ducked in close to her, and I pretended not to overhear him whispering, “What is it?”

“I can’t stand this,” she said. “Watching it happen. Not being able to do anything.”

I was distracted. I kept checking my shard and expecting a missed message from Kat. I wasn’t used to getting news of this magnitude from anyone but her.

“Damnit, I could almost do it myself,” Danae hissed. “If I were whole, I’d have the kill commands cracked by now. I know I would.” She rubbed her eyes and sighed deeply. “What I don’t know is why I haven’t done it already. The other I, I mean. It must have had time to finish my research, unless I’ve badly underestimated the scope