Sooner Dead (Gamma World) - Mel Odom [98]
“We know that, but there’s nothing we can do. Pardot isn’t going to listen to us. He’s got his own agenda.”
“I know but you two remain our only hope.” Scatter’s face wavered in midair. “Ocastya is running out of time.”
Stampede pushed out a short breath. “What’s happening to her?”
“Our present bodies are nearly indestructible, meant to last forever, and they very probably will. However, the psychological mind is not meant to do something like that. Experiences are layered into our minds, and eventually the core self becomes dissipated and loses its frame. Without proper anchoring, a fractoid self can become irrational. In order to prevent this, we are paired forever, always true to each other because each of us is half of a greater whole.”
Scatter’s face flickered and lost cohesion, drifting into a small Milky Way inside the tent. When he spoke again, he sounded more strained. “Every seventy or eighty years, roughly approximating our original life spans, we have to—for lack of a better explanation and this one simplifies the process far too much—reboot.”
“How do you do that?”
“We share our lives together. When the one of us that needs to reboot connects with the other, information, personality, memory, and self are exchanged. The core person gets rebuilt from the partner. But we have to be together, in physical contact, for that to take place. If Ocastya is not allowed to reboot soon, even if she survives her injuries and the remodeling of her body, she will never be herself again.” Scatter paused. “I cannot bear to lose her.”
Hella lay there quietly and didn’t know what to say.
“I know I am asking a lot.” Scatter sounded embarrassed and mournful all at the same time. “But there is no one else I can ask.”
Quietly Hella tried to figure out what to say, but she never got the chance to decide on a course of action. Gunfire erupted around the camp, chattering in the automatic triple bursts that signaled they were being fired from the security bots.
Stampede pushed himself to a sitting position, his face grim in the muted yellow-white light from an exploding shell that momentarily lit his features. “The Sheldons aren’t going to wait till morning.”
Hella pushed herself up and formed her good hand into a gun. She got to her feet and was surprised by her strength as well as the residual pain in her injured arm.
“We are under attack.” Scatter’s hovering face spun quickly in the darkness, flickering silver again and again as explosions tore through the campsite. In the next instant, the face dissolved and floated through the tent flaps.
“Grab as much gear as you can carry.” Stampede pulled on his backpack, holstered his pistols, and took up his rifle. “We’re only going to get one shot at getting out of—”
The rest of what he intended to say was lost to the thundering assault of a nearby mortar round. The concussive force ripped and buckled the tent, and it knocked Stampede from his hooves. Hella got blasted off her feet as well and slammed into the hard ground.
CHAPTER 26
As she sucked air back into her lungs and struggled with the partial deafness brought on by the mortar explosion, Hella stared through the shredded tent walls and marveled that she was still alive. Muzzle flashes punched holes in the darkness all around her. She glanced around, searching desperately.
“Stampede!”
“Don’t yell, Red. I’m deaf enough as it is.” Stampede surged up from the ground like a mass of darkness come to life. Blood from a wound on his temple matted his fur. He raised his rifle and scanned the camp. His square teeth showed in a smile that held only lethal intention. “Let’s get Daisy and get out of here. We can get lost easier in the night.”
“Scatter.” Hella looked around but couldn’t find the fractoid anywhere.
Stampede shouldered his backpack. “What’s the first life you save?”
“My own.” After years of instruction, Hella’s answer came