The God Mars Book Six: Valhalla I Am Coming Read Online Free

been
converted from the Pax, who have no guns as far as I’ve seen. We
still haven’t seen a single drone wearing Chang’s black uniforms,
no sign of a potential non-Pax “Vector Zero,” unless an infected
Pax brought this back home, either unknowingly or under Asmodeus’
control.
    I wish I had a proper map of this maze. Maybe I could
find Asmodeus’ access point, guess where he might be holed up
(assuming he’s even here at all). Lux and Bly send me enough data
to get a rough sense of where the Harvesters are being encountered,
but this is still a blind labyrinth for us. They could well slip in
behind us, a…
    I hear it as I’m thinking about it: Sounds of
violence from behind me, bows and swords against flesh and bone. I
shouldn’t have left the Hunters. I turn back to…
    You shouldn’t have left them.
    It’s Asmodeus, in my head. I reach out, try to find
his signal.
    “But then you never were a team player, not when you
were being honest.”
    That wasn’t in my head. That was in my ears , echoing in the tunnels. But it doesn’t sound right.
Raspy. Weak. Like he’s hurt.
    “That’s right, sweet thing,” he taunts as I run
toward the sound. “This way… I have another present for you.”
    I find a chamber with a shaft of light lancing down
through the middle of it. There’s a table in the glow, and sitting
up on it is a male in Pax Hunter gear, mask and all. A shaky hand
reaches up and lowers the hand-hammered Mycenaean-style mask of a
journeyman warrior. The room is thick with the stink of death.
    “You’re early. I’m not done yet.”
    It’s… It’s Asmodeus, but it isn’t. I can see him in
the face, a definite resemblance, but not really him—like he’s part
someone else. And the hair and beard don’t match. And his eyes glow
red—corpse eyes with Harvester stalks.
    “Still, you get the idea.”
    I charge forward, run my blade up under his jaw and
out the back of his skull, twist, then rip upwards until I split
his head apart, flinging his mask into the stone ceiling. Then I
chop down quick into the remains of the module, so hard my blade
winds up halfway down through his sternum. I get washed in blood
that smells like rotten meat. I step back, and the split body
sprawls back across the table.
    “Hey! I spent days on that…” he complains like
I’ve just ruined an idle art project. But his voice still isn’t in
my head. It’s behind me, now sounding small and higher-pitched. I
spin, only to face a straw-haired little girl, maybe seven
Standard. Her face is corpse-blank, her eyes glow, but she doesn’t
try to attack me.
    “Okay, I didn’t really spend days on it. I just
program it and it makes itself.”
    His voice—distorted and disturbingly childlike—is
coming out of her mouth, which just hangs open limply. He’s
not making her speak, he’s got a speaker inside of her. He’s just
digitally mimicking a child’s voice.
    “You’ve probably figured out that I gave you
Fuckhead, left his spectacularly-lobotomized body for you to
collect. Nothing sinister. I just couldn’t stand the guy anymore.
Can you blame me? I mean, what a self-obsessed dick. No social
skills whatsoever. And impressively stupid for a smart guy. He was easy . All I had to do was give him ideas, and watch him
work. He had no idea I was downloading all of his nanotech skills.
I wonder why Chang never thought of that? We could have ditched the
asshole ages ago. Maybe he just wanted the company. Not that
Fuckhead was ever any kind of good company. He just made you want
to rip off his head and shove it up his ass, every time he opened
his mouth. Did I mention no social skills? Or social smarts: After
I’d milked him for everything he knew, I just idly dropped the hint
that maybe he should get out there and have some fun in person for
a change; get out of the lab, get back on the horse, get the fuck
over when your girlfriend filled him full of his own bots’ bullets.
I was like his own personal Doctor Phil.