The Jennifer Morgue - Charles Stross [33]
I open my eyes. The projector’s out and Ramona is sitting on top of Sophie from the Faust Force, or the thing that’s animating Sophie’s body, methodically whacking her head on the floor. Then I realize that the pain in my side is Ramona’s: Sophie is fighting back. I roll over and find myself facing Anna. Her face hangs like a loose mask and her eyes glow faintly in the twilight that the almost-closed blinds allow into the room. I scrabble desperately, grab the edge of the table, and pull myself over it into her lap. She grabs for my head, but whatever’s inside her isn’t very good at controlling a human body and I roll again, drop arse-first onto the floor (my coccyx will tell me about it tomorrow), and scramble to my feet.
The previously orderly meeting is dissolving into the kind of carnage that can only ensue when most of the members of an international joint-liaison committee turn into brain-eating zombies. Luckily they’re not Sam Raimi zombies, they’re just midlevel bureaucrats whose cerebral cortices have been abruptly wiped in the presence of a Dho-Na summoning geometry (in this case, embedded in the dissolve between two PowerPoint slides), allowing some random extradimensional gibberers to move in. Half of them can’t even stand up, and those who can aren’t very effective yet.
★★Have you got her?★★ I ask Ramona, working my way past Anna (who is currently keeping François occupied by chewing on his left hand) and nearly tripping over the wreckage of my tablet PC.
★★She’s fighting back!★★ A stray, booted foot lashes out at me and now I succeed in falling over, on top of Sophie as luck would have it. Sophie looks up at me with blank eyes and makes a keening noise like a cat that wants to break a furry critter’s neck.
★★Well fucking do something!★★ I yell.
★★Okay.★★ Sophie jerks underneath me and tries to sink her teeth into my arm. But Ramona’s ready with a springloaded syringe and nails her right through the shoulder. ★★You’ll need to open the wards so we can get out.★★
★★I’m going to—★★ Oh, right. Ramona’s a guest. I lurch upright and lunge for the blotter in front of Anna’s seat, grab at her gavel, and rap it on the table. “As the last quorate member standing I hereby unanimously promote myself to Chair and declare this session closed.” Five heads, their eyes swimming with luminous green worms, turn to face me. “School’s out.” I race for the door, piling into Ramona as I yank the handle open. ★★Got her?★★
★★Yes. Grab her other arm and move!★★
Sophie is kicking and writhing wordlessly but Ramona and I drag her through the doorway and I yank it shut behind us. The latch clicks, and Sophie goes limp.
★★Hey.★★ I look sideways. ★★What’s—★★
Ramona lets go of her other arm and I stagger. ★★Well isn’t that a surprise,★★ she comments, looking down at Sophie, who sprawls on the hotel carpet in front of the door. ★★She’s dead, Jim.★★
★★Bob,★★ I correct automatically. ★★What do you mean, she’s dead?★★
★★Poison-pill programming, I think.★★
I lean against the wall, dizzy and nauseated. ★★We’ve got to go back! The others are still in there. Can we break it? The control link, I mean. If it’s just a transient override—★★
Ramona winces and stares at me. ★★Will you stop that? It’s not a transient and there’s nothing we can do for them.★★
★★But she’s dead! We’ve got to do something! And they’re—★★
★★They’re dead, too.★★ Ramona stares at me in obvious concern. ★★Did you hit your head or something? No, I’d have felt that. You’re squeamish, aren’t you?★★
★★We could have saved them! You knew what was going to happen! You could have warned us! If you hadn’t been so fucking curious to know what was buried in the presentation—shit, why didn’t you just snarf a copy and edit it yourself? This isn’t the first time it’s happened, is it?★★
She lets me rant for a minute or so, until I run down. ★★Bob, Bob. This is the first time this has happened. At least,