THE PRINCE
For a moment, there was no noise except Zhade’s breathing, a high-pitched wheeze that even to his own ears sounded like a cry. Maret lay at his feet, still as death, but Zhade recked what he was seeing—this was the same deep sleep the goddesses had been in.
Andra fell to her knees, depleted, one hand slapping the marble. She raised her head to look at Zhade, blood dripping from both ears.
“Shaving it close there,” he said through heaving breaths.
He couldn’t comp what he’d just seen her do. She’d called the pocket. Her eyes had blazed like the sun and it was almost as though a dark current was running beneath her skin. There had been a moment he was certz she would destroy them, engulf them all in the pocket, bring the palace down round them. But then she’d come back to herself and saved him mereish in time. He could tell from the pallor on her face and the tremble in her limbs that it had cost her something.
Zhade stumbled to his feet, clutching at his wounds, but there were too many. He meant to go help Andra, but instead, she was pushing herself to her feet, then easing him into the sole chair in the room—the throne.
She tore Zhade’s shirt open, and then started ripping off strips.
“Easy, Goddess. I never recked I’d say this, but I’m not in the mood.” He watched her tie a piece of fabric around one of his cut hands. “Who do I fool? I’m always in the mood.”
He ran a finger down her cheek, drunkenish. She slapped his hand away, then tied the tourniquet just a little too tight. He jerked his injured hand back.
“Be gentle with me, Goddess.”
“You’re delusional.”
“Mereish with you.” He knit his brow. “I recked you were going to say something else.”
She glared at him, her face pale, as she started bandaging the wound on his abdomen. “Proof that when”—she gulped in a breath— “you’re supposed to be listening”—another breath—“you’re just waiting for your turn to talk.”
He grinned. “It’s part of my charm.”
“You’re an asshole.”
“That is a massive, yet disgusting insult. I reck I was born a thousand years too late. I missed all the best words.”
When she finished tying the piece of fabric, Zhade stared at her for a moment. She seemed to be evens. A bit pale. Weak, but not so weak she couldn’t bicker and flirt with him. She would need a meddoc, but first things always came first.
He got up, ignoring her confused expression. Crossing to Maret’s body, he picked up his brother’s fallen sword. It shrieked against the marble. He took a few unsteady steps, groaning as he grasped the sword with both hands.
“Wait.” Andra’s voice was quiet, but firm.
Zhade let out a breath, lowering the sword to his side. “He killed my mother. He killed Wead. He’s evil.”
“Can you really murder your own brother?”
Zhade’s mind was a swirl of images, dark and messy as the pockets. His brother needed to die. But Zhade hesitated, waiting for the Goddess to realize her part in all this.
“If you kill him,” Andra pleaded, “Tsurina will take over. However horrible Maret is, you know she’s worse. She’ll let everyone die.”
Zhade nodded. Though he didn’t reck what Andra was talking bout, it served his purpose, so he marched forward. “She can’t take over if she doesn’t have the Crown,” Zhade said carefulish. This was where he had a thin string to half-walk. What came next had to be Andra’s idea, or she’d never do it.
“So what do we do? ’Implants don’t work that way. You can’t just detach it from the host.”
“Even if he’s dead?” he asked, though he recked the answer. His mam hadn’t recked where the Crown came from, but she had recked how it worked. That Crown was staying in place til . . .
“We’re not killing him!”
“We either kill him or keep him like this forever. And keeping him in this state is hurting you, I can see.”
Andra scowled, but there were still smudges of blood under her ears and eyes and a thin cut along her cheek. “There’s a third option. We can let him wake up.”
“With the Crown? Do you for true reck you can keep fighting him? If you summon the pocket again, can you full bars control it?”
It was a cheap throw, but Zhade didn’t allow himself to regret the look of hurt that crossed Andra’s face. It was necessary. All of this was, he reminded himself. He bit the inside of his cheek. This was taking too long.
“What if . . . we could remove the Crown without killing him?” Zhade asked.
“I told you. That’s not possible. Not without—”
There it was. The realization. He recked she would get there eventualish.
“I can do it,” she whispered. “I think.” She touched the back of her head.
His mam had told him as much. That if the Third learned to use her power, she could remove the Crown. All the goddesses could—but the First was dead, and the Second was broken.
Zhade shifted, dragging the sword against the marble, catching the Goddess’s eye. She took a deep breath, nodded, tightened her grip on the dagger, and closed her eyes.
This was different from the other times he’d seen her use her power. There was no cloud of stardust, mereish her steady breathing, brow creased in concentration. He couldn’t reck if she was in pain or not, but it was obvi she was struggling. Like she was using a muscle she’d mereish discovered.
He waited, and watched, and suddenish, there was a click, a squelching noise coming from Maret’s body, a whirring, and then the Crown dropped from his forehead.
The Goddess sucked in a grating gasp, her eyes wide, staring at the gleam of the now-detached Crown against the marble.
Zhade shook as he bent to pick it up, his body warring against his will. The Crown was sticky with Maret’s blood, and cold to the touch. It was lighter than he’d expected. He wiped it on his shirt, and then before Andra could object, he fastened it to his forehead.
Zhade gritted his teeth as the anchors dug into his skin at the temple, cheek, and behind his ears. His eyes rolled back into his head and his lids shut. He gasped as he felt something slithering behind his skin, in his mind, something connecting and attaching and joining. One more click, and he let out a breath and opened his eyes.
“What did you just do?” Andra cried.
His temple felt heavy where the Crown sat, and he had an odd awareness of the stardust surrounding him. Of the Second. Of Andra. But he couldn’t focus on this new consciousness just yet. He needed her to comp why it had to happen.
He pulled the grafter from his pocket—the same magic he’d used to try to heal her, the thing that caused her so much pain. He’d spent four years adesert on the spell, and the moment was soon and now. There was no going back. He pressed the grafter to his temple and felt something like silk slip over his face. It had been the same when he’d healed his sun spot adesert. Then, the pain began.
White-hot fire raced through him. Temple to temple. Forehead to chin. He may have been gasping or screaming or crying. He was nothing but the pain. Pressure built behind his cheekbones til he recked they would snap. His forehead caved in. His eyes burned. The muscles of his mouth stretched, pulling his teeth apart, dragging his jaw wider, his chin forward. He felt likeish he would collapse. The pressure was too great. The pain was too real. He was going to die. He wanted to die.
As soon as the imagining passed through his head, it stopped.
The ghost of the pain tickled his skin, but it was the wrongness that distracted him. His eyes didn’t see in the same way. The boundaries of his body were warped. His thoughts were muddled and distorted, and he wondered just how deep the spell had gone.
Andra gasped, and he recked what she saw.
She was looking at him, but he was wearing Maret’s features.
They had looked similar
before, but now, thanks to the graftling wand, they were all but identical, the spell re-forming his face to his brother’s. That’s why it had healed wounds adesert. It wasn’t glamour. It was real. It actualish changed the person: grew new skin, altered bone structure, re-formed muscles. This was no illusion. Zhade’s face was actualish now Maret’s.
And it was permanent.
This was not what his mam had wanted. But she wasn’t here. She couldn’t reck the stakes from agrave. She had told him to wake the Third, to save her, and to hold Maret from the throne. Zhade had spent four years adesert coming up with the sole plan that would work. He would protect the Third and rid the people of their dictator guv by taking the throne himself. But they would never follow a bastard prince they’d never heard of. He needed to be Maret.
His mam had never wanted the Goddess brought back here, but Zhade had needed her. To get him back acity, to give him Maret’s Crown.
“What are you doing?” she gasped.
He stood, Maret’s features settling into place, his power glistening at his temple, and forced himself to meet her gaze.
“Deciding my fate.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
goddess, n.
Definition:
a superhuman being regarded as having power over nature and human fortunes; a deity.
an object of adoration.
an exclamation expressing strong feeling, esp. dismay, disgust, exasperation, or anxiety.
The self-assured look on Zhade’s face—Maret’s face—scared Andra. Her fingers itched for a weapon.
“This was your plan all along, wasn’t it?”
Zhade shrugged. “It was fulltime the goal.”
Andra’s grip tightened on the icicle dagger. It felt heavy in her hand, and she was drained from using the noncompatible tech around her. But worse was the exhaustion from trying to control the corrupted tech of the pocket. She felt corrupted herself.
“This entire time, you were just using me.”
Zhade’s eyes widened. “Neg.” He almost seemed hurt. But Andra knew better, knew he was only wearing a mask.
This had always been his plan. Why he’d brought Andra back with him. Why he’d stayed in the palace. Why he wanted her to be a goddess. His slimming muscles, his bleached-out hair. It hadn’t been stress. It had been intentional, to look like Maret. He’d been preparing for the last piece of the puzzle—for Andra’s ’implant to access the tech around her, so she could get him the crown. The crown that could control all the technology in the city. Now she’d given it to him. He had what he wanted, and Andra . . .
“Are you going to kill me? Now that I’m not useful?”
“Neg! Why would you imagine that? Neg, certz not. You have to know that. I would never hurt you. I promise.”
“Don’t make promises you won’t keep.”
He moved toward Andra, but she held the icicle dagger out between them. She may have been too drained to use its upgrade abilities, but it still had a pointy end.
Zhade ran a bloodstained hand through his messy hair. “Fraughted sands, Andromeda. How could you believe I would ever hurt you?”
The dagger quivered. “I don’t know what to believe. This whole time you’ve been manipulating me. Moving me into position. You were never, not once, honest with me. You helped me, then helped Maret. You . . . kissed me, then betrayed me. You saved me from execution, but then brought me right back here for Maret to corner, so you could kill him and take his crown?”
“That’s not what happened.” He took a step forward, then another, until the dagger was poised above his heart. His breath was coming too hard, his chest heaving. Andra pulled the dagger back, but he stepped forward, wrapped his wounded hand around hers, and brought the blade to his neck. Its rainbow lights danced against his skin. “If you don’t trust me, Andra, if you”—he swallowed—“can’t trust me, then you need to kill me. Now.”
The end of the dagger bit into his neck, and a trickle of blood ran down his throat. She tried to pull back, but his grip held firm. It could be a bluff. Andra didn’t know anymore. She’d never fully known Zhade, had no clue who he really was, what he would or wouldn’t do.
She heard a moan behind her.
Rashmi.
She’d forgotten about Rashmi.
She turned, and found the AI a few meters from the throne, chain broken, a plank of splintered wood piercing her stomach.
“NO!” Andra cried.
Blood blossomed across her abdomen, soaking through the fibers of her rough shirt. Andra rushed over to her.
“What happened?” she cried. “How long—”
Andra vaguely remembered glass and wood and stone coming down around them as she pushed the pocket away. She hadn’t even thought about the consequences of a collapsed ceiling; she’d just acted on instinct. Rashmi had been bleeding out while she and Zhade had been arguing. And Andra hadn’t once thought to check on her.
“Why? Why didn’t you say anything?”
Rashmi coughed, and blood bubbled at her lips. “I forgot I could. Lights are fading. Gears are winding down.”
Rashmi was dying. She was an AI, yes, but her body was biological. It could die, and with it, the information stored in her matrices. The ability to remake the ’dome. The entire hope for humanity left on Earth.
Andra hated herself then, for thinking of what Rashmi’s death meant for her, not what it meant for Rashmi. She was no better than her mother, than the rest of them, treating AI like a lamp or furniture or just another ’bot. AI felt things. Fear. Hurt. Love.
Pain.
She cradled Rashmi in her arms.
“Not enough time . . .” Rashmi croaked. She took a ragged breath. “. . . to explain.”
She lifted her hand and pointed a shaking finger at Andra. No, not at Andra. At a spot beneath Andra’s collarbone. She looked down. Her shirt had torn in the fight, proudly displaying her birthmark, the scar that split it down the middle almost faded from existence.
“That?” Andra said, and she couldn’t keep the tears from her voice. “That’s a birthmark.”
“No. It’s not,” Rashmi rasped, then touched her finger to it, and Andra’s brain exploded in pain.
THIRTY-NINE
interface, n.
Definition:
a surface regarded as the common border between two bodies.
a program or device that allows a user to interact with a computer.
a shared boundary that connects one machine to another.
Andra saw everything Rashmi saw. Andra was Rashmi. Rashmi was Andra. They were no longer two separate entities, but extensions of each other. And Andra began to understand.
* * *
Sometimes Rashmi believed she was human. In her dreams, she was human. Except they weren’t dreams, they were glitches.
She’d thought she was human for most of her life. She looked like her mother. She had her father’s laugh. She even had the same physical tics. Drumming her fingers against her left knee when she was anxious. Pursing her lips when she was thinking. Sitting with one leg underneath her. She even had the same aversion to the smell of fresh-cut grass and the sound of fireworks. But all those behaviors were nurture, not nature. They were learned, and Rashmi had been created to learn.
That’s what made her different from ’bots after all.
What made her different from humans . . . well, she was still working that out. From what she could tell, she was exactly the same. Except her brain worked more quickly and her thoughts were nanos.
Rashmi’s brain was programmed, but so were humans’. They were just programmed through instinct, social conditioning, and biological factors, rather than computer algorithms. Everything Rashmi was, she was given by others, but she didn’t see much of a difference in humans there either. As far as she co
uld tell, the only difference between her and the humans was her purpose. The fact that she had one.
Right now, she felt especially human. Everything hurt, but it could have been worse. Rashmi’s programming demanded she put humanity’s needs above her own, and her death didn’t scare her as much as the failure of her mission did. The pain was excruciating, but no more than a side effect of dying, and she had to push it aside in order to save the world. And for the first time since she woke, her thoughts were blessedly free of interference.
Her body was fading, but she had a job to do.
Her primary job, as had been explained to her when she’d first woken up in Eerensed, was to continue running an algorithm that her brain had been calculating for the past thousand years while her body was asleep. It was an algorithm in two parts, half of a calculation that saved humanity. That was another difference, she guessed, between her and the humans. Her brain could work independently of her consciousness.
Her other purposes were less clear, but more encompassing. Protect humanity at all costs. Put the needs of humans above her own. That’s why she had built the ’dome. That’s why she was still running the algorithm. (It was easier to access once she knew it existed.)
There had been setbacks. But now, she was close. So close. And she would die before the algorithm was finished. There were fail-safes, of course. Ways to back up the data in case of an emergency such as this. But they had been built into the cryo’system, which was no longer an option for Rashmi. She lost the other options when the First died four years ago. She would have had no way to pass on the information, except . . .
Except.
As luck would have it (and Rashmi believed in luck, just as much as the humans did), here in front of her was another AI. There was no global network available, but the AI’s access port was exposed just beneath her collar. Damaged, but Rashmi hoped (hope, such lovely human fantasy) that this would work. She reached her shaking finger to the port. And her world went white.
Goddess in the Machine Page 33