“Valle!”
He wouldn’t have registered Grid’s voice if she hadn’t thrown an open panel from Amarna’s plinth at him and struck him in the shoulder.  In a syrup-thick haze, Valle saved Walter’s profile to his throat storage and returned to the main window.  He pressed every button, releasing every artificial organ.
The plinth opened, tubes and valves hissed loose from the computer.
“Stop it, Ingrid!”
“Why did you help us get to you,” Grid met the jackal’s eyes, while she worked the life support system loose.  “if you wanted to turn us away?”
Amarna was quiet.
“It was a chance to see you again,” she said, softly.
“Damn right.”
Sparks erupted from the bioprocessor level’s floor and walls, a cloud of crackling electricity and inscrutable darkness billowed, for only a fraction of a second, and a shape burst out of it, slamming violently into the curved wall.  Crucis hunched, one wingless fist on the ground and the other’s razor claws brandished at his waist, prepared to leap already.
Valle spilled out of the seat at the terminal.  He tried to stand, but his feet wouldn’t obey, and only pushed him farther from his brother.
Crucis didn’t pounce, but stalked.  He approached the hawk as she struggled with Amarna’s connections, hands at his sides.  He spared a glance to Valle, grinning.  His entrance had shattered many of the screens on the outside curve of the chamber, and the lights flickered violently.
i’ve been busy
i’ve been busy
i’ve been busy
Grid fell back from the plinth and fired her springgun, at nearly point-blank.  The fireless but lethal bullets bit into Crucis with only a series of dull thunks: one in the gut, three in the chest, one in the neck, one in the cheek.  One tore away a chunk of his leaf nose and crunched into his visor, buried itself right where an eye would be and blacked half of the screen out.  Aside from the inertia of the bullets striking him, the Fang was unfazed.  Blood wept from the wounds, but stopped quickly.  He made sure she had time to watch it.
She threw the gun at him, with a cry of rage.  His abdomen split in a horrible quarter second, raptorial blades outflung to catch the weapon out of the air, draw it back to the cutting and grinding implements populating the gaping body cavity, which devoured it and spewed it back out in hot chunks.
As Grid tried to make a move, Crucis grasped her leg in one foot, struck at her face with the opposite hand.  She avoided the blow, and it caved the floor in just beside her.
“Crucis!” Valle shouted.  He had gained his knees, bracing himself against the chair.  His thoughts were a cloudy soup, and he felt ill.
The assassin stopped, and cocked his head back at his brother.  He trapped Grid’s head under his foot, squeezing cruelly with the thumb, and grinned.
hello brother
hello brother
hello brother
The words jittered across the working half of his visor.
can i help you?
can i help you?
can i help you?
A monochrome, pixelated eye, sporting luxurious lashes, appeared in the visor, and winked.
Valle was on his feet.  Whether the floor lurched or only his knees did, he wasn’t sure.
“You knew,” he said, reaching an accusing finger at his twin.
Grid pounded her fists against Crucis’s leg, clawed pried at his prehensile toes without success.  It wouldn’t take much to tear her artificial neck apart.
you didn’t?
Valle came nearer.
“You knew!”
careful
Crucis pressed Grid harder into the floor.  She ceased to struggle against him and only scrabbled at the metal.
Valle was only a step away from his brother.  The now-mutilated mirror of his own face grinned still, but the grin faltered when Valle met his artificial eye for a long few seconds.
what did you think
The message didn’t reach the end of its cycle before Crucis grabbed Valle by the throat with a quick motion that drew them both to their full height.  The visor then remained blank, as Crucis’s chest heaved.
Valle clutched at the hands around his neck, but only halfheartedly.  The smile was gone from Crucis’s face.
The assassin jerked as Grid leapt onto his back, clutching at his chest with the talons of one hand, and a knife in the other.  She buried the knife between his ribs twice and dragged it across his throat, all in the second it took him to let go of his brother and hurl her away, to strike the wall of monitors with terrible force.
As unperturbed by the slit throat as by the bullets, Crucis glowered.  His hands worked, as he studied his flimsy brother and the battered hawk.  Then his gaze fell on Amarna.
Up to now, the jackal had kept her head bowed and eyes shut, praying silently.  She faced Crucis when he squared on her.  Her words, though, were for Valle and Grid.
“There’s a hecatomb,” she shouted.
Amidst screams from Grid, Crucis took the Egyptian crown brain tank in his hands, and he crushed it.
His smile was back, when he turned to his horrified brother.
An alarm began to scream, drowning Grid’s voice out.  The flickering light flashed out, and was replaced by an even more unstable read one.
“Bioprocessor core failure,” a voice boomed.
Valle stumbled back to his feet, and leapt at his brother.  Crucis prepared to counter with a simple swat, but Valle evaded it.  He planted his feet on Crucis’s matted, bloody chest, and dug his fingers around the damaged visor.  Shocked, Crucis staggered for a single moment that Valle knew he wouldn’t have for anyone else.  In that time, the visor gave way and tore free from the cavity it covered.
Furious and blind, Crucis thrashed as Valle fell back to the floor.  His mouth worked in a silent roar.  Grid was up again, and she made a move at him in fury.  She managed to leave a trail of talon marks across Crucis’s muzzle, before Valle caught her around the middle and bore her away, down the stairs.
The cooling disc tore at them even more harshly than before when Valle dragged the weeping and shouting hawk through the hatch.  The wind in his ears masked any sound of his brother pursuing them, as he surely would as soon as he got his bearings.  When they reached the antechamber to the elevator, it wouldn’t respond to Valle’s touch.  The bat struck and kicked it, but gave up and pulled Grid down a staircase that spiraled around the central tower.
“Bioprocessor core failure.”
The stairs took them down to a lower level, below the spherical computer.  Something like a maintenance shed, hung from the bottom of the bubble.
“Bioprocessor…his sub is down here.  I’ll unlock the hatch.”
If she noticed it, Grid was too despondent to react to the change in the synthesized voice.  Valle hardly cared at the moment.  The hatch to an airlock sat inconspicuously among shelves and cabinets of tools, opposite a scarred wooden workbench.  It opened when they approached, and they stepped out into a glass bulb surrounded by darkness.  Another hatch opened into the cockpit or a tiny submersible, the one Crucis had taken to reach the bubble without the umbilical.
“Start it,” he said out loud, once they were locked inside.
The sub’s motors thrummed to life, and it disengaged from the bubble with a mechanical crunch.  Free in the open ocean, it began to drift.
“I’ll be out of range, soon.  I’m glad I could say goodbye.”