Ventus by Karl Schroeder

Karl Schroeder / Ventus / Page 741
Just as she reached an open valve door whose portal had
been melted, maybe by laser fire, a voice bloomed in her mind.
Cease to move. You will all cease to move, even if it
means your death. Do it!
The voice hit with the force of an explosion. Calandria
May fell to her knees. She put out her hands to stop her fall,
and saw the white fur on them, the claws. That didn’t matter-because
she recognized the voice in her mind. It was 3340,
whom she had helped to kill.
A sick feeling of horror came over her. She had failed.
The resurrection seed named Armiger had fulfilled its mission
after all.
The knowledge that every living thing on Ventus was
controlled by an unseen power had once frightened Calandria.
That was nothing next to what she felt now. She remembered
what it had been like when, once before, she had been a servant
to 3340.
She must find a way to die.
On all fours now, she bolted through the door into muddy
daylight. She saw a distant cliff-edge, and began to run
towards it. Halfway there, she caught the scents of Jordan
Mason and Axel Chan again. She paused, in an agony of
indecision.
Then she raced towards the scent.
The Titans’ Gates thrust their roots deep under the ocean.
There they drew rivers of water from the cold abyss and
siphoned it into vast underground reservoirs. Pipelines wider
than highways led from these to the desalination stacks that
filled the Gates.
Jordan could feel the stacks, vast invisible towers behind
the cliffs. Galas was right, the pristine mountainside of the