“Close your eyes.”<\/p>\n
Br\u00fcks obeyed; the insides of his eyelids glowed brief bloody red as the laser scanned down his face<\/p>\n
“Word of advice,” Moore said from the other side. “Don’t tease the zombies.”<\/p>\n
Br\u00fcks opened his eyes. “I wasn’t teasing him, I was just chat\u2014”<\/p>\n
“Don’t chat with them either.” The Colonel ran his eyes down some hovering mid-air diagnostic invisible to Br\u00fcks without his hood. “Remember who they answer to.”<\/p>\n
“I can’t see Valerie forgetting to tell her minions not to spill any dangerous secrets.”<\/p>\n
“And I,” Moore said, “can’t see her minions forgetting to tell her anything you might have asked them. Whether they answered or not.”<\/p>\n
Br\u00fcks considered that. “You think she might take offense at the melanin-fetish remark?”<\/p>\n
“I really have no idea,” Moore said quietly. “But I<\/em> sure as hell did.”<\/p>\n Br\u00fcks blinked. “I\u2014”<\/p>\n “You look at them.” There was liquid nitrogen in the old warrior’s voice. “You see \u2014 zombies. Fast on the draw, good in the field, less than human. Less than animals, maybe; not even conscious. Maybe you don’t even think it’s possible<\/em> to disrespect something like that. Like disrespecting a lawn mower, right?”<\/p>\n “No, I\u2014”<\/p>\n “Let me tell you what I <\/em>see. I see people who once had names. The one you were chatting<\/em> with was called Azagba, back in day. Zag to his buddies. But he gave that up\u2014 maybe for something he believed in, or because it was the best of a bad lot of options, or because it was the only option he had. You look at Valerie’s people and you see a racist joke. I<\/em> see the seventy-odd percent of zombies recruited from places where warfare and starvation run so rampant that nonexistence as a conscious being is actually something you aspire <\/em>to. I see people who got mowed down on the battlefield and then rebooted, just long enough to make a choice between going back to the grave or paying off their jump start with a decade of blackouts and indentured servitude.” He stabbed the air and nodded: “I was right: it’s precancerous.”<\/p>\n “That’s why you went up against her,” Br\u00fcks realized. “Not for me, not for Sengupta. Not even for the mission. Because she killed one of your own.”<\/p>\n Moore looked right through him. “I would have thought, by now, that you’d have learned to keep your attempts at psychoanalysis to yourself.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Close your eyes.” Br\u00fcks obeyed; the insides of his eyelids glowed brief bloody red as the laser scanned down his face “Word of advice,” Moore said from the other side. “Don’t tease the zombies.” Br\u00fcks opened his eyes. “I wasn’t teasing him, I was just chat\u2014” “Don’t chat with them either.” The Colonel ran his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dumbspeech","category-fiblet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2215"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3771,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2215\/revisions\/3771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rifters.com\/crawl\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}