PeterWatts_Blindsight

Peter Watts 182 Blindsight
As much as possible of what you can't. And hope that this new
reduced time limit would expire before Rorschach spiked us into
gibbering dementia.
The walls around me twitched and shivered like the flesh of
something just-killed. Something darted in and out of sight with a
faint cackle of laughter.
Focus. Record. If the grunt doesn't see it, it's not real.
Sixty-five meters in, one of the ghosts got inside my helmet.
I tried to ignore it. I tried to look away. But this phantom wasn't
flickering at the edge of vision; it hovered near the center of my
faceplate, floating like a spot of swirling dizziness between me and
the HUD. I gritted my teeth and tried to look past, stared into the
dim bloody haze of the middle distance, watched the jerky
unfolding travelogues in the little windows labeled Bates and
James. Nothing out there. But in here, floating before my eyes,
Rorschach's latest headfuck smeared a fuzzy thumbprint right in
front of the sonar feed.
"New symptom," I called in. "Nonperipheral hallucination,
stable, pretty formless though. No spiking that I can—"
The inset marked Bates skidded hard about. "Keet—"
Window and voice cut out together.
Not just Bates' window, either. Sascha's inset and the drone'seye
sonarscape flickered and died at the same moment, stripped my
HUD bare except for in-suit feeds and a little red readout flashing
LINK DOWN. I spun but the grunt was still there, three meters off my
right shoulder. Its optical port was clearly visible, a ruby
thumbnail set into the plastron.
Its gun ports were visible too. Pointing at me.
I froze. The drone shivered in some local electromagnetic knot
as if terrified. Of me, or—
Of something behind me…
I started to turn. My helmet filled with sudden static, and with
what sounded—faintly—like a voice:
"—ucking move, Kee—not—"
"Bates? Bates?" Another icon had bloomed in place of LINK
DOWN. The grunt was using radio for some reason—and though
almost close enough to touch, I could barely make out the signal.