Each time he visited her, Zhade convinced himself the next time would be different. That she would have memory what she liked bout him. That things tween them would be like they’d been before.
Sole, it never was.
Still, he entered the Vaults with hope.
He went through the first airlock. Zhade had done this a dozen times now, but it still gave him a shock. The door whooshed shut behind him. The toxins were sucked free from the air through some magic Zhade didn’t comp. The sole evidence of the process was a high-pitched whine. It took a handful of ticks, but Zhade spent the full time tense. There was a beep and a second glass door whooshed open and he entered the lobby.
It was like walking into another world.
The ceiling was higher than the cathedzal’s, the walls a dusky blue. Iron beams ran floor to ceiling, staircase to wall, in formations Zhade couldn’t comp. Andra called it art. A giant clock hung from the ceiling, larger than the time chimes and more complex. Circles inside circles inside circles. It ticked away as Zhade entered a hallway to the southhand side.
He hadn’t had the bells to look at all the magic down here. He didn’t reck what most of it did. The first hall was lined with rooms with small boxes and screens. They all looked the same to him, but apparentish each did something different. In this part of the Vaults, the walls were clear, the magic on display. Deeper in the building, the walls became opaque. Zhade had wandered into a few rooms, but little was left. Andra was using most of the magic for some purpose or another.
Lights bathed everything in a bright white glow, as he traversed a series of hallways, and finalish ended at Andra’s door. Zhade swallowed, straightening his cloak. He patted down his hair, then wiped away a smudge of blood at his temple. He knocked.
The door slid open immediatish, revealing the room beyond.
Discarded magic organized into mounds littered the room. Shelves were stacked with what Andra called pre-books and the scrying boards she called computers. Andra’s cot stood on the far side of the room, and the table next to it held a vase with the starflowers he’d asked Lilibet to put there. They were wilting.
There was an oval table in the center of the room, and at the far end sat Andra, a magic orb hanging over her head, drenching her in light. Zhade froze.
There were bags under her eyes and her skin was sallow. Her hair had grown long enough to pull into a small knot atop her head. She was hunched over a scrying board, muscles tense. He had the impulse to go to her, wrap his arms round her, and whisper to her that it was time to take a break. Get her some food. Maybe hold her while she slept.
But she wouldn’t want that.
She looked up and blinked. For a tick, Zhade imagined he saw some kind of emotion in her features, but whatever it was vanished quickish, replaced by cool detachment.
He cleared his throat. “Hiya, Goddess.”
“Hey.” She swallowed, and they sank into awkward silence.
He sat in a nearish chair. He fidgeted, trying to get comfortistic, but the combination of Maret’s form-fitting clothes and the hard chair made it impossible.
“I found some info bout my mam,” he said.
Andra blinked. “Already? What did you find?” She absentish scooted her chair nearer to his.
Zhade cleared his throat. He could feel the warmth of Andra’s arm next to his. “There’s a city northhandwest of here where my mam apparentish spent time and a half. People saw her peace in that direction, but no one could ever find where she was going, soze there could be some of her old stuff still there.”
Andra’s dark eyes shone. “How did you find out? Did she leave something behind? Do you have a map?”
Zhade opened his mouth but hesitated. He didn’t reck why he didn’t want to tell Andra bout Tsurina. Maybe he was embarrassed by how much she scared him, that she could have overpowered him so easyish if Meta hadn’t shown up. Maybe he didn’t want to tell Andra bout Meta. That for the first time since becoming guv, there was someone aside him. Not angry at him for getting Lew killed, like Dzeni. Not disappearing to who recked where, like Doon. Not focused on some ship to the stars and frozen gods, like Andra. Not avoiding him because he wore a murderer’s face . . .
For whatever reason, he lied.
“I mereish asked round.”
Andra didn’t seem to notice the flat tone of his voice, his tense expression. She was tapping furiousish into the scrying board, casting some kind of spell that brought up a map of the Wastes. Then she brought up another map, this one with lines and large splotches of blue, and laid it on top.
“Northwest, you said?”
Zhade nodded.
She ran her finger across the map and landed on a blue blob.
“It’s Lake Superior,” she breathed. Her face glowed in the light of the map.
“It’s what?”
“I was looking over some old recordings of your mam, and I noticed something in the background.”
Another spell and there was Zhade’s mam, standing before him on the table. He sucked in a breath. She looked different than he’d ever seen her, hair closer to his golden color, a magic eye, silver running neath her hair.
“That’s why it’s important for all colonists to be asleep before their trip to the Ark—”
“There!” Andra said, interrupting her. Zhade’s mam froze, her hands clasped, eyes boring into his.
“What?” Zhade asked.
Andra pointed to a door half opened behind his mam. He dragged his eyes from her face to look at what Andra was pointing at. A plate on the door in the shape of a ragged mountain behind a rotating scry of his mother’s symbol. He shook his head, not comping.
“Every LAC facility has its location on its door holo’plates. I couldn’t figure out what this one was, but see?”
With a flick of her wrist, Andra brought the shape closer to them, removing the image from the scry of his mam and placing it over a blue blob on the map with the exact same shape.
“What is it?” Zhade had never seen anything like it before.
“A lake.” Andra traced her finger over its edges.
He’d been distracted by his mam’s sudden appearance, but now he couldn’t take his eyes off Andra. The intensity in her gaze almost scared him.
“What’s a lake?”
She blinked as though she was suddenish brought back to herself. “A large body of water.”
Zhade sat forward, hand threading through his hair. “That full thing was filled with water? Like an ocean?”
Fishes and wishes.
“Neg. I mean, yes, it was completely filled with water, but oceans are much, much bigger.”
Zhade shook his head. He believed Andra, but he had trouble imagining anything bigger than the lake afront of them. Sands, he couldn’t even imagine that.
“This,” Andra said, “was one of the largest lakes in the world. The largest if you’re talking about fresh water and surface area.”
“Soze what does it meteor?”
Andra bit her lip, and when she looked up at Zhade there was a tinge of a smile. “I think this was where your mother was going. To a lab in the lake.”
“In the lake,” Zhade echoed.
Andra nodded, her eyes roving hungryish over the map. “It wasn’t unheard of, especialish when you were working with dangerous science, to have labs in bodies of water, far away from civilization. LAC had a few in Salt Lake, the Caspian Sea, Lake Victoria. But Canada outlawed underwater labs after what happened to the Great Bear Lake. There shouldn’t be anything in the Great Lakes, but if there is . . .” She huffed out a laugh and sat back. “I’ve scoured every bit of data I could, and couldn’t find anything bout another LAC location on this side of the continent, but now . . .”
She was full smiling now, and despite her earlier haggard appearance, she looked radiant. Sands, he wanted to kiss her.
A burst of adrenaline tore through Zhade’s gut, followed by nausea.
“I’m going with you,” he said. “I want to see this place my mam visited.”
Andra furrowed her eyebrows. “But . . . you have a city to govern.”
Zhade felt the wind rush out of his sandcloud. That was true. He couldn’t just wander off into the Wastes anymore. He considered briefish putting Meta in charge as Tsurina. Once he changed her face, she could say that Maret was sick and she was ruling in his place for time and a half. But that would purpose trusting Meta, which he didn’t.
It would also purpose that everything he’d done, everything he’d sacrificed—his face, his relationship with Andra—was for nothing. He’d decided his fate.
Sides, even if Andra let him go with her to see where his mam used to peace to, she probablish wouldn’t want him there. A full trip through the Wastes that would take who recked how long, next to the face of the boy who tried to kill her.
But he didn’t like the idea of her going alone.
“You should take someone with you then. That’s a bit of desert you have to cross. And the pockets . . .”
He trailed off, because Andra could control the pockets. He didn’t like to imagine bout it. He had memory of the look in her eyes, the light shining out of them in a way that wasn’t full true human. For a moment, he’d felt like he’d lost her, that she’d been consumed. She’d come back to herself, but not before Zhade started to worry. Andra was powerful for certz, but this was full bad magic she was dealing with. If she went out in the Wastes, would she come back as herself?
Andra was watching Zhade with an uncipheristic expression. “I’ll be evens,” she said. “Sides, I could probably just send a drone instead. There are plen—”
She broke off into a coughing fit. Zhade reached out but stopped short of touching her. It was a wet, hacking cough, and Zhade wondered if she’d been sick when he’d seen her yesterday, how he hadn’t guessed, who was taking care of her.
Her coughing stopped and she took in one more breath before sitting back. The hand she’d covered her mouth with was covered in a dark, tarry substance.
His stomach plummeted. “How long have you been coughing blood?”
Andra shook her head, quickish wiping her hand on a nearish towel. It was already covered in dark stains.
“It’s evens,” she said, giving him a tight smile. “Just, you know, a case of strep from all this damp air.”
Zhade wasn’t convinced. He’d spent full bars time with Tia Ludmila and recked coughing blood was bad magic.
“Really,” Andra said. “I’ve got history’s best medicine down here. All I need is some rest and fresh air.”
Zhade frowned. “You’re not going to get any fresh air down here.”
“There’s a synth’plant room somewhere in the Vaults. It’ll do the trick.” She stood, turning her back to Zhade and throwing the bloody towel into a basket. “Don’t worry, I won’t go up to the surface for fresh air and cause a panic, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
That’s not what I have shakes bout, Zhade wanted to say, but he could already tell she wanted him to peace.
“Do you need anything?” he asked, though he recked the answer.
“Neg. But thank you for bringing me the info about your mam.”
Zhade nodded, but he was already starting to regret it. What if she left while she was still sick? What if the danger wasn’t that she’d come back changed, but that she wouldn’t come back at all?
“You’ll send a drone?” he asked.
She nodded. “For certz. No reason for me to go out into the Wastes if I don’t have to.”
She turned to Zhade and smiled, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes.
SEVEN
00110111
She didn’t send a ’drone.
But she did take Mechy with her.
She’d left a note for the others, and together, she and Mechy had hopped in a hover parked just outside the city walls and taken off toward the horizon.
It was deathly hot, and the open carriage of the hover provided no shelter from the wind. Andra pulled her sweater closer to protect her from the sand, draping the hood over her head and around her mouth. Something like purpose welled up inside her as she watched the horizon.
Another bout of coughing interrupted her thoughts, and dead nanos splattered onto her palm. She wiped them away.
She didn’t know how serious it was—an AI hacking up dead nanos—but she felt like she was running out of time. Time she needed to figure out what Griffin wanted her to do, where she would get cryo’plating for the rocket, and how to save humanity. Whatever she found at Lake Superior, she hoped it would give her answers.
She drove and drove, following a green eco’grafted line—one that Griffin must have put into the terrain—as the endless expanse of desert stretched out around her. The sand glittered in the sun, and the eco’graft stretched in the distance to the north. Northish. In a northerly direction.
For an AI, Andra was shit at cardinal directions.
Destroy.
The thought came from inside of her, and Andra jerked.
“Is everything okay?” Mechy asked.
“Yeah,” Andra said, but something inside her froze.
It was the same voice she’d heard in the rocket’s cavern. It spoke with her voice, resonated with her consciousness. It brought with it the urge she’d felt the day she fought against Maret, when she’d converted all the nanos in the throne room to the same corrupted tech as the pockets. She thought back to that day—the power that had surged through her, the desire to assimilate more and more until there was nothing left but her in the universe.
An echo of it remained, some residual energy humming in her veins.
And it was speaking to her.
She coughed up another splatter of nanos.
Destroy, the voice, Andra’s voice whispered. Destroy.
* * *
She’d been driving for almost six hours when she found the remains of Chicago. Unlike the other ruins she’d passed, Chicago was recognizable. Andra could guess the trajectory of what had been the skyline from the collapsed skyscrapers. The outline of the ghostly steel structures was stark against the horizon. The destroyed city was surrounded by flat, barren land, nothing around it for miles. There were no suburbs, no Lake Michigan. Time had destroyed them both.
Andra had been living through Earth’s future for the past two months. She’d had proof that billions had died, that something terrible had happened. But seeing it from this angle . . .
She thought of the series of events that led to this. The pockets ravaging the world. Society collapsing. Families taking refuge in emptied buildings or trekking out across the earth to find somewhere safe, as the population thinned, until there was no one left to maintain the buildings. Until time and weather eroded them into a scrap pile of metal.
She asked Mechy to stop the hover, then threw up over the edge.
* * *
Andra kept driving along the banks of what had been Lake Michigan. At least, she guessed they were the banks based on the structure of the desert floor. If she was lucky, she could make it to wherever she was going by the end of the day and back by the next morning.
If she didn’t run into a pocket.
If she didn’t have trouble finding the lab.
If the lab actually existed.
If
If
If
Mechy shut down to conserve power, and Andra was left with nothing but her thoughts to keep her company. Her lips grew chapped, and her throat sore from coughing up nanos. She realized just as the sun started its arc toward the horizon that she hadn’t eaten all day.
She found an apple-like fruit in Mechy’s pack and, assuming it was for her since he was a robot, ate it. She continued on, watching the s
hadows get longer and the air grow colder.
Then suddenly, Andra saw the eco’grafted line come to a stop in the distance, and beyond: water.
Her breath caught.
There was water.
Water. In the middle of the Wastes. Not part of some bio’dome or some muddy roadside puddle. But an actual lake.
Andra leaned over the front of the hover to get a better look.
She didn’t know how far she was into Lake Superior–that-had-been, but she was about three miles out from Lake Superior–that-was-now. She revved the engine and sent the hover flying across the desert, now pockmarked with grass, scraggly trees, even a flower here and there. But Andra was solely focused on the water as it grew closer, until it swallowed the horizon, stretching past where her eyes could see, widening until it filled her entire field of vision.
When she reached the lake’s edge, she slammed the brakes and jumped out of the hover, running to the bank, splashing into the shallows, letting the water soak her shins, her thighs, her stomach, not stopping until it reached her shoulders, and then dunking her head so it enveloped her. The water was warm and heavy against her skin, dragging her down. She opened her eyes and, for a moment, hung suspended in the murky shallows. Sand rose up around her feet, dispersing like a nano’cloud. She let herself feel still and calm and filled with hope. Water was life, and if there were still lakes in the world, there were still oceans. The planet wasn’t lost.
She gasped as she broke the surface, then pushed her wet hair out of her face as rivulets of water streamed down her cheeks. She cupped her hands and brought a huge gulp to her lips. She drank, and drank, and drank, laughing all the while. She buoyed her body to the surface, lying back, and let herself float. The sky was dotted with clouds, limned by the rays of the setting sun.
Zhade would love this, she thought. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply.
* * *
Devil in the Device Page 7