by Tarah Benner
I know that look. He’s asking for help. He doesn’t want Maggie to see what he’s seen.
I answer Van de Graaf’s plea without a word. I step around Maggie to block her view, and my gaze settles on a pair of red high-heeled shoes. They’re attached to a set of thin bare legs, which are splayed out from a black pencil skirt.
It’s a strange position for a woman to be in — not restful, not sexual. She’s lying on her stomach in her fancy work clothes, and my brain can’t immediately process what I’m seeing.
I’ve seen plenty of dead bodies before — mostly men in fatigues with nasty wounds. But to see a woman lying dead on the floor knocks the air right out of me.
“What the —”
Maggie touches me on the arm, pulling me aside, and I’m so shocked that I don’t have the presence of mind to stop her.
“Oh my god.” Her hand goes limp on my arm, but she doesn’t burst into tears or get sick as I’ve seen a lot of young soldiers do.
Maggie is tough — tougher than I give her credit for. She steps back and raises the rifle we borrowed from Davis, pointing it down the hallway as she scans for a threat.
The swell of dread inside me intensifies as we step around the woman and approach the offices in back. She has straight dark hair that’s caked in blood. She was struck in the back of the head as she ran from reception. She must have tried to warn the others.
The back offices are frozen in the aftermath of violence. Upturned chairs litter the conference room, and papers are scattered over the floor. Shards of glass glisten from the carpet like diamonds, and there’s a splatter of blood on the corner of a table where one man fell.
The rest of his colleagues are lying in a heap near the back of the room. By the looks of things, they had no time to escape. They retreated to a corner, where they were slaughtered one by one.
“The bots did this,” says Maggie in a hollow voice.
I don’t speak. The injuries are familiar — great gaping holes through the chest where a bot reached its claw through flesh and choke marks on the victims’ throats.
Tripp’s eyebrows are scrunched in confusion, as though he can’t believe what he’s seeing.
We leave the conference room in heavy silence, all of us dreading what we’ll find next.
Room after room tells a similar story. BlumBot employees were caught unaware. Many of them were murdered at their desks, music still blaring from their devices.
But when we reach the very last office, I feel my throat clench at the sight of something more familiar. Two men in uniform are slumped outside the door. Their bodies are splayed uncomfortably — as though they were fighting when they fell.
These men are not employees of BlumBot International. They’re dressed in dark navy jackets, polyester pants, and the same fake-leather shoes. Their jackets tell me they were from Homeland Security. They were guarding Ziva’s door.
“How did this happen?” croaks Van de Graaf. For once, his voice isn’t cocky or self-important. He’s devastated.
If you’re lucky, you can go your whole life without seeing anything like this. If you’re unlucky, you’ve seen it so often that it gets stripped of all meaning.
I still remember my first dead body. It was in an alleyway near our apartment in LA. I was eleven, and it didn’t seem real.
I don’t know how to answer him. There’s no answer that will make any sense. Instead, I raise my rifle — ready to shoot — and push the door wide open.
Ziva Blum’s office is like a tropical oasis. The walls are painted the same sky blue, and leafy green plants burst from every corner. Palms hang over her desk, and dirt is spilling from an overturned hibiscus.
The office is in shambles. One chair is lying on its back. Pens and papers are scattered everywhere. The trash can has been violently overturned, its contents littering the pristine floor.
Two men are slumped facedown in front of the desk. They’re from the Department of Homeland Security, and they were questioning Ziva. They must have had a short forewarning, but it didn’t do them any good.
Silence seems to swallow us whole as we survey the violent wreckage. The only sound is the slight buzzing of a light fixture — probably some special bulbs designed to mimic sunlight.
Then, suddenly, I hear something else. It’s so quiet that I wonder if I imagined it — a soft intake of breath as gentle as a breeze.
I take a quiet step toward the desk, holding up a hand to keep Maggie and Tripp quiet. I can hear the sound of a human breathing. There’s someone else in the room.
I force myself to lower my rifle. The bots don’t need to breathe.
Positioning myself between Maggie and the desk, I step around it in a fluid circle and come face to face with Ziva Blum.
She’s hunched in a ball beneath her desk, shielded by a metal panel that extends to the floor. Her knees are drawn up to her chin, and I can see cloudy mascara tears trailing down her cheeks.
For a moment, we just stare at each other. Ziva has big brown eyes, dark curls, and two prosthetic legs that are more famous than she is. I can see a few inches sticking out from her pant leg — a maze of pink metal, silicone, and screws. These are the legs she designed herself — the legs that revolutionized the entire robotics industry.
My eyes drift from her legs to her face, and I feel her whole body relax.
“Oh, thank god,” she breathes, bursting into tears.
“Ziva?”
It’s Van de Graaf at my shoulder — anxious to play the conquering hero. He steps around the desk and reaches down to help her, and Maggie edges in for a closer look.
Ziva slowly gets to her feet, looking around to make sure we’re alone. She’s wearing a set of high-waisted gray pants and a long-sleeve white blouse that billows out at her arms. She can’t be more than five foot six, but she’s added three or four inches in heels.
“Oh my god,” she whispers, cupping her mouth as she surveys the bodies. “Oh my god. Oh my god.”
“Ziva,” says Van de Graaf, grabbing her shoulders. “What the hell happened?”
Ziva trembles, and her eyes fill with tears. She looks around, utterly helpless — not at all like the Ziva I pictured.
“I don’t believe it,” she whispers, her head shaking from side to side. “I just don’t believe it.”
“Ziva,” Van de Graaf repeats. “Talk to me.”
“What happened?” I growl impatiently. I’m sick of Van de Graaf’s coddling.
Van de Graaf and Maggie both shoot me dirty looks. I know what they’re thinking — that Ziva is the victim. But something doesn’t smell right.
“It’s all true,” she whispers, looking around in horror. “The bots . . . They aren’t my bots.”
“What do you mean?”
She shakes her head, utterly perplexed. “They’re out of control. I don’t know what’s happened to them.”
“Your bots have been slaughtering everyone in their path,” I say. “Why did they leave you alive?”
I can feel the waves of animosity pouring off Van de Graaf, but I ignore him and keep my eyes on Ziva.
“I don’t know.” She looks as though she really doesn’t.
I glance at Maggie, who’s still staring at Ziva.
“What do you know about a man named Lieutenant Buford?” I ask.
Ziva glances at Tripp, searching for answers.
“The name doesn’t ring a bell?”
“No.”
“He’s one of the men responsible for the bot attacks on Earth. He used Space Force motor-memory data to program the bots for destruction.”
Ziva looks genuinely shocked, but I’m still not convinced that this woman is innocent. I’ve been fooled by liars before.
“I don’t understand,” she says after a moment. “How have the bots reactivated? It shouldn’t even be possible.”
Maggie shoots me a guilty look.
“Buford took my private hostage,” I say. “He trapped her in an airlock that was scheduled to open.
She would have been killed. We had to reset the power to that sector, and it must have reset the bots as well.”
Ziva seems to understand but still looks visibly shaken. “But how could he have bypassed my security to install the malware?”
I open my mouth to speak, but Van de Graaf cuts me off. “We were hoping you could help us with that.”
“Me?” Ziva blinks in confusion, but then his meaning dawns on her. “I know what you’re implying, and it isn’t true,” she says. “I already told the investigators . . .”
Her gaze falls to the floor, where the two men lie motionless. She breaks off, and I can hear tears building in her throat.
“No one is accusing you,” says Van de Graaf gently.
“Ms. Blum,” I say, stepping in before Tripp can coddle her even more. “Do you have any idea who might be behind these attacks?”
“No, I don’t. And, as I told them,” — she indicates the fallen men — “there is no one in my company who would have any reason to initiate this.”
“Buford couldn’t have acted alone,” I say matter-of-factly. “Whoever is responsible needed an officer of his rank to access the Space Force servers. But you said yourself that your security —”
Ziva bristles, and I see a shadow of the hard methodical CEO behind her delicate feminine features. “I stand by my security,” she says in a firm voice. “The very idea that a member of my team would dream up something like this . . .”
Ziva trails off, and I glance over at Maggie. Her eyes are full of sympathy, but there’s something else there, too. Something isn’t adding up for her. Something isn’t adding up for me, either.
“Ms. Blum,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “All due respect, but . . . There has to be a reason the bots left you alive.”
Ziva takes a deep breath, and I can tell that the rational part of her has been thinking the same thing.
“Did they see you?” asks Van de Graaf.
“Yes!”
The way Ziva says it takes me by surprise. It’s not a tentative “yes” — it’s emphatic, shocked, and wildly grateful. It’s a response that rings true.
“They saw you,” Tripp repeats.
She nods. “They burst in here, and John and Noah —” She breaks off, glancing down at the men’s bodies.
“The men from the Department of Homeland Security?”
She nods again. “They stood up.” Ziva’s voice breaks, and suddenly her eyes are glistening with tears. “They tried to fight them, but . . .”
“How many bots were there?” I ask.
“Two.” She shakes her head. “Two of my most advanced lifeforms. I . . . I just froze.”
“But they saw you.”
“Yes,” says Ziva. “It took them a few minutes to dispatch John and Noah. They fought hard. But I didn’t know what to do. The bots were blocking the door, so I hid under my desk. It didn’t make any sense, but I didn’t know what else . . .”
The tears begin to overflow, and Ziva pinches the bridge of her nose. It’s a practiced gesture — she has practiced not crying.
“I hid under the desk,” she continues. “One of them came around . . . I could hear the footsteps. I didn’t have anything to fight with. I just sat there, thinking I was going to die. Her head appeared around the corner of my desk, and I thought . . .” Ziva closes her eyes, still shaken from the memory.
“What happened then?” asks Van de Graaf.
Ziva drags in a deep breath, as though it physically pains her to continue. “I saw my reflection in her eyes.”
“In the bot’s eyes?” Maggie asks.
Ziva nods. “I thought that I would be next — that she was going to kill me. And then . . .” She holds out a hand and pushes it away. “The bot just turned and left.”
For several seconds, no one makes a sound. I know the others are thinking the same thing I am: Ziva’s story doesn’t add up.
It’s possible that whoever is behind the attacks spared Ziva because they still need her. Or maybe she’s behind the whole thing.
“I know how this must sound,” Ziva whispers. “But I swear to god . . . I have no idea why they didn’t kill me.”
“The person who’s responsible must know you personally,” says Maggie.
Ziva looks surprised and then uncomfortable. I don’t blame her. But I also don’t believe that someone in her company isn’t involved.
“Ms. Blum, who have you fired within the last year?” I ask.
Ziva shakes her head slowly, as though she’s having trouble remembering. “Only a few low-level employees . . . people from other tech companies.” She shrugs. “They just didn’t work out.”
“It’s possible that one of them was behind the attacks,” I say.
Ziva draws herself up a little taller. “I’m sorry, but that simply isn’t possible. What we do here . . . It isn’t like creating an app. We create artificial life forms in humanity’s image. It requires a deep understanding of AI, as well as cognitive science, robotics, mechanical engineering, design . . . We must be part scientist, part artist.”
“I assume that means you let these people go before they had a chance to learn any trade secrets?”
“Of course,” says Ziva. “We only bring team members into the fold when we are certain they will be with us for life.”
“For life?” says Maggie, her eyebrows shooting into her hairline.
Ziva cracks a sad smile. “I told you this wasn’t like any other company . . . That is why I was so persistent in my demands that BlumBot remain independent in every possible way. You cannot do what we do unless you have a deep passion for it. We have a sacred duty to be responsible stewards of the technology. We will not release a bot unless we feel that it has the potential to improve the human experience.”
Maggie and I exchange a meaningful look. It’s clear that Ziva is a true believer. At the very least, she’s been drinking her own Kool-Aid.
And yet after everything that’s happened — everything we’ve gone through to speak with her — Ziva isn’t giving us answers. We’ve reached another dead end.
12
Maggie
For a moment, we just stare at Ziva. I can’t decide if she’s just your run-of-the-mill fanatical CEO or certifiably insane. On the one hand, the lady talks as though she thinks she’s God. On the other, her emotional reaction to the bots’ destruction seemed genuine.
I glance from Jonah to Tripp. I can’t tell what they’re thinking. Tripp is probably used to her zeal. He’s worked with Ziva for years. But Jonah? I’m pretty sure he thinks she’s nuts.
My rambling thoughts are interrupted by a loud ping from Ziva’s desktop. I jump, my heart slamming into overdrive, and Ziva looks as though she finds the sound physically painful.
“I should get that,” she says after a moment.
I meet Jonah’s gaze and lift my eyebrows. What kind of person answers a ping when there are two dead bodies lying on the floor?
Ziva reaches over and touches the glowing white orb with a shaky manicured hand. The reverse image of a man’s face appears, and Ziva nearly collapses in relief.
“Mordecai!”
Tripp’s eyebrows shoot up. Clearly this name means something to him, and he’s just as shocked as Ziva.
The man looks to be in his late forties with straight black hair that’s been slicked back over his head. He has a large forehead, a plump face, a large hooked nose, and dark eyes. He’s not especially handsome, but there’s a dark dignity to his features.
“Mordecai,” Ziva repeats, tears springing to her eyes.
“Sister,” says the man in a smooth, oily voice. “You look terrible.”
A joyful laugh breaks through Ziva’s tears. Mascara is running down her beautiful face, and her short mop of curls is mussed in the back.
“Where have you been?” she cries, more desperate than angry. “With everything that’s been going on —”
“I’ve been busy,” Mordecai replies.
“Busy?”
Tripp frowns.
“How did you like my little present?” the man asks.
Ziva stops crying and stares at her brother. A chilling silence falls over the room, and an odd expression flickers across Tripp’s face.
“I thought I’d have them pay you a visit,” Mordecai continues. “Though if I’d have known how horrified you’d be, I might have dragged it out a bit longer.”
An odd electricity crackles in the air, and a dark cloud unfurls inside me.
“You seemed so keen to ignore what was happening,” Mordecai continues. “I thought it was important that you have a front-row seat.”
A sudden realization seems to dawn on Ziva, and Jonah’s face turns to stone. A sick feeling bubbles up in the pit of my stomach, but I can’t bring myself to speak.
“No,” Ziva whispers.
Mordecai lets out a cold, mocking laugh. “Oh, yes. I’m afraid this is one thing you can’t control, little sister.”
Ziva swallows. A look of dark disgust is spreading across her face, changing her entire demeanor. A woman who was helpless and devastated moments before now looks fierce — emboldened by a sudden burst of fury.
“You did this,” she says under her breath.
“Not alone,” says Mordecai, as though he’s being modest. “We can’t all play God as well as you. But, I have to say, for a first attempt . . .”
“No.” Ziva shakes her head. “You did this?”
“I really wanted my takeover to be impactful,” Mordecai muses. “I wanted to get your attention. I can see that I’ve succeeded.”
“How could you do this?” asks Ziva in a low deadly whisper.
“How could I?” Mordecai scoffs. “That’s rich — a bit like the pot calling the kettle black, Sister.”
Ziva doesn’t move a muscle. She’s still watching her brother with a murderous expression, and a million questions spring to mind.
“You’re not angry, are you?” asks Mordecai.
“You did this out of spite?” Ziva seethes.
“Spite? No. I’m not that petty. To stop you from soiling Father’s vision, yes. That I would do.”