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Peter Watts 162 Blindsight
her pistol and coasted into deeper gloom. "Yes, it's definitely
stronger here. There's content, superimposed on—"
Quick as a blink, Rorschach cut her off.
I'd never seen anything move so fast before. There was none of
the languor we'd grown accustomed to from Rorschach's septa, no
lazy drift to contraction; the iris snapped shut in an instant.
Suddenly the artery just ended three meters ahead, with a matteblack
membrane filigreed in fine spiral.
And the Gang of Four was on the other side.
The grunts were on it immediately, lasers crackling through the
air. Bates was yelling Get behind me! Stick to the walls!, kicking
herself into space like an acrobat in fast-forward, taking some
tactical high ground that must have been obvious to her, at least. I
edged towards the perimeter. Threads of superheated plasma
sliced the air, shimmering. Szpindel, at the corner of my eye,
hugged the opposite side of the tunnel. The walls crawled. I could
see the lasers taking a toll; the septum peeled back from their touch
like burning paper, black oily smoke writhing from its crisping
edges and—
Sudden brightness, everywhere. A riot of fractured light flooded
the artery, a thousand shifting angles of incidence and reflection. It
was like being trapped in the belly of a kaleidoscope, pointed at the
sun. Light—
—and needle-sharp pain in my side, in my left arm. The smell
of charred meat. A scream, cut off.
Susan You there, Susan
We're taking you first.
Around me, the light died; inside me, a swarm of floaters mixed
it up with the chronic half-visions Rorschach had already planted
in my head. Alarms chirped irritatingly in my helmet— breach,
breach, breach—until the smart fabric of the suit softened and
congealed where the holes had been. Something stung
maddeningly in my left side. I felt as if I'd been branded.
"Keeton! Check Szpindel!" Bates had called off the lasers. The
grunts closed for hand-to-hand, reaching with fiery nozzles and
diamond-tipped claws to grapple with some prismatic material
glowing softly behind that burnt-back skin.