Broken Pixels (Broken Realms, #4)

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 15Mannequins. It was the first thought that came to Mara as she surveyed the bloodless c*****e strewn throughout the church. Somehow it gave her emotional distance from the violence that had occurred here—until her gaze stopped at a pile of limbs stacked off to the right of the tables. At the top, an arm reached into the air, as if grasping for a handhold, a way for the buried victim to pull himself from the nightmare. Glancing down to make sure she didn’t trip on random body parts, she approached the mountain of appendages stacked several inches higher than she stood.

Leaning forward, she inspected the closest limbs. They had been torn apart at the joints—at the knees, the shoulders or hips. The skin was torn and ripped away, revealing hints of metallic bone and artificial sinew. Fibers sprouted from the body parts, dripping a milky-white substance, perhaps artificial blood, but much less of it than a biological person would shed. Shredded clothing still clung to the limbs, which came in all sizes and colors. There was no discernable pattern.

“It appears the arms and legs were of less interest than the heads and torsos,” Ping said.

Mara blinked and turned to face him. “I’m sorry. What did you say?”

He pointed to the tables around them and said, “Except for this one table, the rest hold only heads and torsos. It appears the limbs were cast aside, as if they were of no use to whomever did this.”

Mara moved to one of the tables and looked down on the bare torso of a man. The head was missing, but the limbs remained attached. A patch of skin had been half cut and half torn away from the chest, exposing a dark empty opening.

She turned to the table behind her and found a woman. Her limbs were gone, but her head and torso remained. Like the others, a hole had been punched in her forehead and in the center of her chest.

Ping walked up beside Mara and said, “All the heads and torsos have been assaulted in a similar manner. Perhaps after we find Cam’s head and return to the repository, we can ascertain why someone would be interested in those particular parts of their physiology.”

From some twenty feet away at the right front corner of the room, Sam approached another pile. This one was smaller and composed largely of discarded heads. He turned to Ping and his sister and said, “Hey, did you say Cam’s head was over here somewhere?”

Mara looked up from the table and scanned the room, once again focusing on the floating dots that had led them here. They passed directly through the center of Sam’s chest.

“He’s somewhere right behind you,” Mara said.

Sam spun around and faced the stack of heads on the ground. “Ah, there’s a few dozen heads over here, and I don’t see his.” He bent down and, with a finger, pushed a bald man’s head at the bottom of the stack to the side, causing the pile to collapse, sending heads rolling toward him and around his legs. Pulling back his hands and straightening, Sam gagged. “Gross. You come over here and find him.”

Mara gave Ping a look of exasperation, walked past the edge of the table where they stood and, while cringing, dodged a rolling head on the way to Sam’s side. “What exactly are you doing?” she asked.

“Just trying to find Cam. There were like a million heads stacked up here,” Sam said.

Mara glanced down and eyed a patch of light brown skin. Bending down, she picked up a woman’s head and handed it to Sam, who pulled back. “What do you want me to do with that?”

“Don’t be a baby. Just put it somewhere out of the way.”

Sam took the head by pressing his fingers on each side of its crown, as if letting it touch his palms would expose him to some kind of infection. He slowly turned and sat it on the ground behind them. When he straightened, Mara held a bearded man’s head out to him. The back of it had a large opening torn into it.

“Why do they all have holes in them?” he asked, as he took it and set it aside.

“I don’t know. The Aphotis might be finding out what makes these people tick. I’m hoping Cam will be able to tell us, once we get him put together.” She bent down one more time and said, “There you are!”

She lifted Cam’s head from the floor and turned it to face her. His eyes were closed. Rotating the head in her hands, she inspected it for any obvious damage. While she did that, Ping approached.

“It doesn’t look like she punched any holes into his head, like the others,” Mara said. “I wonder why?”

Cam’s eyes snapped open, and Mara tensed, willing herself not to toss the head to Ping or Sam. She held up the head, stared into its eyes and said, “Cam? Are you there?”

“Syncing with core. Please wait,” Cam’s head said.

Sam’s brows furrowed, an unspoken query.

“Like your playlists update when you connect with the Internet,” Mara said, “his head is updating his body or vice versa, I would guess. Back in our realm he could connect wirelessly with his body.”

“Yeah, but I thought his head was out of commission,” Sam said.

“What can I say? I’ve got the magic touch when it comes to robots,” Mara said.

“I beg your pardon?” Cam said.

Mara grinned. “I’m sorry, Cam. I promise never to use that word again. So? How are you?”

“We need to leave this place immediately,” Cam said.

“Wait a minute,” Mara said. “I thought we would look around and see if we could help some of the other people here. If you could survive this long with your head and torso separated, surely some of these people can be saved.”

“Saved? What do you mean, saved? Who needs saving?” Cam asked.

Mara took a deep breath and said, “Maybe we should just get you out of here and explain what has happened. With all that you’ve been through, dealing with more trauma might not be the best thing for you.”

“What are you talking about? Show me.”

Mara glanced at Ping, and he nodded slowly. She turned and faced the direction they had entered, giving herself a view of the entire church while holding Cam’s head toward her. Looking into his eyes, she said, “Are you sure?”

She felt a twitch at the base of his head that she took for a nod. Slowly she rotated his head to face outward toward the c*****e. She heard him gasp, and a shiver ran from the sides of Cam’s skull through her palms. After a moment, she turned him toward her. Wanting to do something about the shock and pain in his expression, she said, “We’ll look for survivors before we head to the repository. Perhaps we can help some of them.”

Cam slowly closed his eyes, as if a wave of exhaustion overcame him. “Don’t you hear the silence?”

“I’m sorry, what?” Mara asked.

“You can hear the Sig-net. Can’t you hear the silence in this room? The only signal coming from this building is me. They are all gone,” Cam said. “We need to leave now.”

“Gone?” Sam asked. “Do you mean all these people have been murdered, and nothing can be done about it?”

“Is that Sam?” Cam asked.

Mara tilted the head toward her brother.

“Hey, man. Are all these people actually dead for good?” Sam asked.

“New bodies can be fabricated for those who meet the criteria—the ones who have sufficient life expectancies remaining. I can explain while we are on our way to the repository, but I think it’s best if we leave immediately,” Cam said.

Ping, standing behind Sam, interjected, “You have reason to believe that Abby intends to return here?”

“I’m not sure. I could not maintain consciousness for more than a few seconds at a time, but I got the impression that she was keeping me—my head—as a way to lure you to her,” Cam said.

Mara nodded. “That’s not really a surprise. I suspected as much. The fact that she did not tear you apart like the others indicates that she wanted you to broadcast a signal that could be traced. The big question now is, why isn’t she here?” Mara scanned the c*****e around them and added, “After all this and all the trouble to get us here, what was so important that she had to leave all a sudden?”

Cam’s eye narrowed and a look of uncertainty swept over his face.

“What is it?” Mara asked.

“I’m not sure. I have this mental image of her, a disjointed fragment of memory in which she appears distressed,” Cam said, squinting, straining to remember. “I’m not sure when this happened. It could be nothing.”

“Or it could be everything,” Mara said. “Can you share this fragment of memory across the Sig-net? Can we visualize it together, like we did the news stream earlier?”

“That’s possible, but I don’t think it will make any more sense to you that it does to me,” he said.

“Why don’t we get out of here before you two make a psychic connection? I mean, the major concern at the moment is that Aphotis Abby might come back, right?” Sam said.

Mara shook her head. “This will just take a second, and then we can head to the repository.”

She locked gazes with Cam, and her surroundings blurred and then melted away. She found herself lying on the floor of the church, but daylight filtered between the boards that covered the windows, casting pale dust-filled beams onto the empty metal tables lined up in the nave where pews once sat. No c*****e, no body parts.

“What is this?” Mara whispered.

“It’s the church at some point earlier. It could be earlier today, yesterday or several weeks ago. I’m just not sure,” Cam’s voice said, echoing in her head.

“You said it was a memory of Abby. Where is she?” Mara asked.

“Look up.”

Mara tried to crane her head upward when she realized she couldn’t move. She panicked at the paralysis and gasped. She couldn’t feel anything except the cold wood flooring on her cheek.

Cam’s voice in her mind said, “Remember, you’re seeing this from my perspective—just a head lying on the floor. Don’t freak out. Just take a deep breath and look up.”

Mara shuddered, then inhaled. She took a moment to wonder where the inhaled air went after passing through her mouth and then rolled her eyes upward. There next to a nearby table stood Abby frozen with a look of panic on her face. Her arm was extended, her hand clawing at the air, grasping for something that wasn’t there. Mara glanced at her face and noted a blankness in her eyes. She couldn’t see.

“Why isn’t she moving?” Mara asked.

Cam’s voice inside her head said, “Like I told you, it’s just a fragment of a memory, an impression, an image.”

“Does this mean she’s blind?”

“I don’t know, but that’s all there is, and now I think it is time for us to go,” Cam said.

“Mara?” It was Ping’s voice, echoing almost undiscernibly somewhere in the distance. “Someone is coming.”