by Eric Warren
Pulling a small override chip from her belt, she pressed it up against the face of the control panel, which immediately went blank. “New inputs,” she said. “Entry point, L-442. Exit point, O-75. Confirm.”
She pulled the chip away and the panel confirmed the new exit as Osaka, her original gate destination. Since Hogo-sha hadn’t been shut down she’d have to cloak as soon as she arrived. He’d be looking for her and the gate was a good distance from their location. She double checked the tracker to confirm Arista hadn’t left the tower to find she was in the exact same spot. “Finally doing something right for once,” she said. “I should have used the parents’ card earlier.” She wasn’t sure what McCulluh had planned for the pair of autos and she didn’t really care. If it got the girl to cooperate that was all that mattered.
Sy hit the initiate button on the panel and the gate emitted a low rumble, the face of it shimmering in front of her. She pulled the refractor from her belt and affixed it to the front of her shirt, ready to activate it as soon as she was through.
“Ready or not, here I come.” She stepped through.
Thirty-Six
“The gate has been activated,” Shin said, his gaze off in the distance.
“That was quick,” Frees said, checking the power levels on the felp.
Arista turned from watching him. “Where is she? Have you de-activated her comm?”
“Working,” Shin said. The lights of Hogo-sha above him blinked faster. “She has…more advanced technology than I expected. I believe it is blocked but she has disappeared from my surveillance.”
“The refractor,” Arista and Frees said at the same time. She smiled at him and caught a hint of a smile back. This was it, they were really doing it. Her heart rate was faster than normal, but it wasn’t out of control. Not yet. Not until she looked Sy straight in the eyes and asked her why. Until then they had a job to do and little time to do it.
“ETA?” Arista asked.
“If her footspeed is normal, fifteen minutes,” Shin said.
“Okay.” Arista turned, surveying the area. “Since I’m unarmed…” She waited for a reaction but Shin’s face remained neutral and Frees just rolled his eyes. She cleared her throat. “Since I don’t have a weapon I’ll need to stay out of sight. Is there room for me behind the panel?”
As she said it the control station sunk back into the bookcase. “There is now,” Shin said.
“I’ll stay in here until she’s knocked out.” She turned to Frees. “Are you sure the felp will work on her?”
“I’ve never used it on a human. It won’t kill her but it should make her head ring and disable any piece of equipment she’s carrying on her, including the refractor.”
Perfect. That was all they needed, just a few moments to immobilize her. “Do you think she’ll be brash enough to come through the doors?”
Frees shrugged. “I wouldn’t be surprised given how cocky she is.”
Arista took a deep breath. Okay, now she was getting nervous. She could feel her throbbing pulse in the end of her short arm, thumping regularly like it was sending out radio waves. “Good luck,” she said, brushing her hand against his arm.
“You too. Now you better hide.” He didn’t return the gesture, but his eyes lingered on her a moment longer than they should have. She didn’t think she imagined it.
Taking slow, calculated steps she reached the bookcase. She watched both Frees and Shin disappear as the bookcase slid in front of her, obscuring the room from her view. The space became pitch-black as it clunked shut.
Nothing to do but wait.
As the minutes passed Arista began to grow restless. Her hand felt clammy and wouldn’t stop sweating, no matter how much she rubbed it on her pants. Beads of perspiration had formed at her brow and she dispersed them with a simple swipe.
Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.
She should have brought some water; there was no telling how long she might be in here. Sy might take the long way around, try to wait them out. Or she could just come barging in like a rhino through a bookstore. She didn’t like how they only had Frees’ weapon to rely on, but Shin had no offensive weapons of his own, other than his ability to control parts of the building. The plan was to set themselves as soon as the elevators started moving, even with no one inside, they would know she was close. Most likely she wasn’t coming up the stairs because for one, it was three thousand stairs to the top and two, she’d be completely spent by the time she reached them.
Hogo-sha had situated himself in a much better environment than Charlie. Not locked away in some basement, but instead sitting atop a castle in the sky, watching everything. Even now in this pitch-black room Arista could feel the gentle sway of the building under her feet, like a palm rustled by the ocean’s wind. Which was good. It gave her something to focus on.
The Device told her it had been twelve minutes. Any second now.
Fifteen minutes.
Twenty-one.
Thirty-two.
At forty-five minutes she sat down as comfortably as she could get, all the nervous energy having drained out of her. Sy must be planning a wait-and-see strategy. And why wouldn’t she? It wasn’t like she had somewhere she needed to be. As if to remind her she couldn’t stay in here forever, Arista’s stomach growled. When was the last time she’d eaten? She couldn’t even remember.
Wanting to call out to make sure they were alright, Arista refrained. It would do no good and her call might come at the exact wrong moment: when Sy entered the room. She leaned over, pressing her ear against the bookcase but no sound permeated through. She wasn’t sure if that was because nothing was happening or because the bookcase was too thick. What was the density of wood when sound was applied to it in a normal atmosphere?
As she waited for the Device to produce the answer a separate notification came up in her vision. Something she’d never seen before but reminded her of the warning when she’d burned off her own hand.
Alert! Carbon monoxide detected. Evacuate the area.
Carbon monoxide? In here? If she didn’t get out soon she’d suffocate. This must be Sy’s doing, driving her out of her hiding place. Had she accessed the HVAC? At least she could still rely on Frees and Shin; they would all face her together after all.
Arista pushed herself back up and felt around the edge of the bookcase for some kind of latch, but there was only smooth wood. A knot formed in her stomach and she banged on the wood, yelling for Shin to let her out, to retract the wall. What if he couldn’t hear her? What if they managed to defeat Sy, only for Arista to suffocate while she was here hiding? Frees wouldn’t let that happen. Not if he could help it.
She smacked her hand against the wood harder, producing an audible clap in the small space as the alert continued to flash in her vision, despite her blinking it away. The bookcase wouldn’t move. She gathered up what little breath she had and held it. Carbon monoxide was colorless, odorless; essentially the perfect killer. Had Sy flooded the entire top floor with it? There were HVAC units every five floors. It was the only explanation.
Exhaling after holding it as long as she could, Arista smacked the wall over and over. Why couldn’t they hear her? And shouldn’t Shin notice he had a CO leak? He was part of this building after all. Panic began to bubble up from within her.
Just when she thought she couldn’t take another breath the bookcase finally moved. Light spilled into the small space and Arista pushed herself out of it as quickly as possible, stumbling over her own feet and landing on the cold, tile floor. She gasped for air, pushing it in and out as quickly as possible in an effort to replace any CO already in her system with oxygen. But the alert hadn’t gone away. It still flashed in her vision like an annoying gnat circling her head. She needed to get off this floor. CO wouldn’t affect Frees or Shin but she’d be dead in a few minutes with a leak this large.
She stood, finally getting a good look at the room, realizing something was very wrong. Frees was nowhere to be found
and in front of her stood Sy, her hand on Shin’s shoulder as he knelt before her, both of them facing Arista. Sy had a weapon pointed at Shin’s head.
“So good of you to finally join us,” Sy said. “I thought it’d take you forever to come out of there.”
Thirty-Seven
Arista realized she was gaping and she closed her mouth. What was going on? Where was Frees? “I don’t understand,” Arista said. “How did you get in here?”
“Through the door, of course,” Sy said, indicating the main doors. The hand on Shin’s shoulder removed itself and found a pocket, extracting a small metal box. Sy pressed the box once and the CO alert in Arista’s vision disappeared immediately.
“What…?”
“Fear is a powerful motivator,” Sy said. “And I understand you’re claustrophobic.” She leaned around Arista to catch a glimpse of the alcove where she’d been hiding. “But I guess it’s not as big of a deal as it used to be. That is, until you’re suffocating,” A wicked grin spread across Sy’s face. There hadn’t been any CO danger, somehow Sy had access to the Device and had produced a false reading. That wasn’t good at all. How often had she done that?
Arista shook her head. Focus.
First things first. “Where’s Frees?”
“He’s already prepped and ready to go,” Sy said. “Now I just need you. No need for things to get messy.” She tapped the barrel of the gun against the side of Shin’s head.
“It does not matter,” Shin said. “You will kill me anyway. Arista, do not allow my demise to affect your decisions.”
“You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this.” Sy’s her finger tightened on the trigger.
“Wait!” Arista yelled. “I will come quietly. If you agree not to harm him.”
Sy made a retching noise. “Ugh, your compassion for them is so sickening. Don’t you have any pride? Any loyalty to your own people? You’re still a human, remember? Or,” she glanced at Arista’s arm. “Most of one anyway.”
Arista stuck her chin out, ignoring the barb. “If all humans are like you I want nothing to do with them.”
“Despite the fact we raised you from a baby. Helped you, gave you all kinds of advantages. None of that matters, does it? And he,” she tapped his head with the gun again, “He and his cohorts are the ones who have been trying to kill you, in case you need reminding.”
“If he’d wanted to kill me, he had plenty of opportunity.” Her eyes met Shin’s. He wasn’t scared, worried, or even very excited by what was happening to him. He was going with the flow.
“That’s how they work, don’t you see? They get you to gain their confidence, and then, when you’re least expecting it, bam! They’ve got you, your family, everyone you ever cared about. You don’t remember what the war was like. You don’t remember how barbaric they were.”
“And you do? You can’t be more than ten years older than me! Remember, for us, age actually counts for something!”
Sy rolled her eyes. “Twenty, actually. But why would you remember? Why would I think any of the history you learned before you left would stick with you? You lost everything, didn’t you? I guess I had hoped somewhere beneath all that you would have retained something of your humanity.” She glanced over, as if remembering some event. “That was what was supposed to…”
“Supposed to what?” Arista asked, her eyes flicking between Shin and Sy.
“It doesn’t matter now. What does matter is you listen to me. This, this right here is your enemy. It is the enemy of all humans. The thing that craves our extinction.” Sy glanced down at Shin for a moment.
“Ironic then,” Shin said, “the product of your own imagination is your own ending.”
Sy grimaced and hit him on the side of the head with the gun. His head jerked to the side, but no other part of his body moved. The skin of his scalp tore from the impact, but otherwise he seemed uninjured. He returned his head to its original position.
“See that? Nothing. They may pretend like they have consciousness, like they have a soul but we know better. And I’m going to prove it with your friend out there.” Sy indicated the hallway beyond the doors.
“Frees? He’s out there?” Arista asked.
Sy exhaled, exasperated. “Look. I’ve had a long day. I want to get paid. Are we going or do I have to kill him and take you out of here on a hovering stretcher?”
Arista screwed up her face. “You’re getting paid for this?”
“Of course I am. Do you think I’d risk my life and my safety if I weren’t? Sorry, girl, but you’re not that important.”
Arista stepped back as if she’d been stung. Learning Sy wasn’t even doing this for some nebulous “good of all humans” and instead for her own personal gain hurt more than she expected. How were people like this real? Machines acted like this sometimes, sure, but they were just filling a role. It wasn’t how they really were. Didn’t Sy have any integrity?
Sy huffed. “Fine. The hard way then.” She raised the gun to Hogo-sha and fired at the same time Arisa screamed for her to stop.
But it was too late. The blast hit Hogo-sha directly in the center, causing all the lights to light up at once. Shin craned his neck to watch, only to collapse on the floor seconds later.
It was like watching a fire burning through a forest. All the lights blinked out in a circular pattern from the impact, the parts of Hogo-sha left behind turning an ashen gray. As the shockwave continued to make its way up the AI, parts fell off in large shards, piercing the ground and crumbling. The whole thing was disintegrating.
“Now,” Sy said over the din of the pieces collapsing. “Let’s go.” She pulled something out of her belt around and pointed it at Arista, who dove behind one of the giant shards, now stuck in the floor. They continued to pepper the ground all around her; she could be impaled at any moment. She looked up to see the shockwave had made it all the way around the sphere and even larger pieces fell away. A giant one at the end of the room fell, hitting the floor at an odd angle and collapsed into the glass, shattering it once again. Four other panes followed due to the shock of impact. Arista kept an eye on the shards, trying to anticipate where they would fall next.
“Don’t make me chase you. They said bring you back, they didn’t say in what condition!” Sy yelled. From the sound waves Arista determined she’d moved from her original location. The Device calculated she had backed up to the doors, in order to stay as far away from the shards as possible. As the shard she was hiding behind began to crumble Arista jumped to another one, sidestepping another falling piece as she did. Tiny pieces of obsidian peppered her back and head. She did a quick check to make sure no other shards would impale her for the time being. “You’re just making this worse for yourself.”
The destruction around Arista was horrifying. Shards of Hogo-sha lay everywhere, disintegrating. What kind of weapons did the humans possess? And were they planning to use these weapons on the machines?
“If you had all this power, why did you need me?” Arista yelled from behind the cover.
“I did it for you! I tried to give you a chance! They told me to bring you back but I wanted you to succeed. I could’ve taken you that night in the supply yard if I’d really wanted to, but you needed a win, sweetie. And I was the only one who was going to give it to you.”
“A win?” She searched the ground around her, looking for something, anything that could work as a weapon. She picked up a smaller shard that would double as a makeshift knife. But it crumbled in her hand.
“After Charlie. After what you did to those humans.”
Arista stopped cold. She knew. Somehow, she knew. Her whole body began to shake and tremble.
How?
“People back at the colony weren’t too happy about you killing them,” she taunted. “If you’d brought them to us we could have helped them. We could have saved them, given them good lives.” Her voice was growing closer as what was left of Hogo-sha tapered off, the largest pieces disintegrating around her. �
��But no, you decided to execute them. In cold blood. Just like a machine would.”
The piece blocking Arista from her view fell apart and Arista scooted away from it on her hands and knees, back toward the open windows where the wind whipped through the air, spreading the dust and particles that remained of Hogo-sha around.
“I wanted to give you a chance to redeem yourself. If you could kill another Cadre member, or even better the two remaining threats—which I would have suggested as soon as you got back—that would have gone a long way to helping your reputation. People could have understood you better then. They would have said you were under too much pressure that first time. But with two clean kills on your plate after,” Sy locked eyes with her, “you would have been welcomed back as a hero.” She kicked a piece of Hogo-sha aside. “But then you had to go and align yourself with them. And not only did you not kill this one, you assisted him. And that is a crime from which there is no retribution.” She pulled out the same small box she’d pointed at Arista earlier. “You should have taken my advice. I would have helped you. That hand was supposed to make it easy. Get in, get out. I would have removed it before it did any real damage. Given you one without a weapon in it. But now I see you were never capable of doing the job. You only killed Charlie because it was a situation of convenience, not skill.” She raised the device to Arista’s chest. “Results not duplicatable.”
Two arms reached out faster than Arista could see, and before she knew it, one was holding Sy around the throat and the other had grabbed her hand with the device and had smashed it together, the crunch of bones and metal prickling Arista’s ears.
Sy screamed, falling to her knees as Shin held on to her from behind.
“She is ten times the person you are,” Shin said, his voice still calm and level. “Your efforts to corrupt her were unsuccessful. As were mine. She is unique.”
Sy screamed again as Shin released her hand which was now a bloody mess. The small device she’d held sparked and fell to the floor.