He brushed by me, sending a cascade of data spilling through my internal processes.
His forlorn expression was gone by the time I joined him in the main room. He quickly dressed in plain black pants and a gray sweatshirt and headed for the door.
“I brought a new toy back to the Island. A ship. I’d like you to run your analytical eyes over her.”
An alarm sounded, shrill and persistent. Caleb’s wrist comms buzzed. He tapped open the link and opened the door.
Bren’s tinny voice sounded via Caleb’s comms. “They’re summoning us to the assembly room,” Bren said, then added, “All of us. Including One.”
“Do you know why?” Caleb asked as we strode into the corridor.
“There’s a Chitec-designated ship approaching Mimir airspace. Looks like we have some oncoming orders, Brother.”
* * *
The captain and I entered the assembly room. Filtered windows stretched along one wall, framing a fantastic panoramic view of the permanent lightning storm raging outside. I might have enjoyed it more had Doctor Lloyd not been present.
Caleb’s vitals spiked. My hard processes quieted and my sights targeted Doctor Lloyd. He sprang to his feet and glanced toward the exits, but Bren carefully inserted himself between Caleb and me and the doctor.
“We need him,” Bren said.
We? I didn’t need him, and Caleb’s glare confirmed the same for himself.
If Caleb lunged, however, I’d stop him. James Lloyd’s death would be mine.
“Sit down,” Bren snapped at James.
The doctor jolted and eased himself into a chair as far away from us as possible. He watched us from the edge of his seat, eyes darting.
“Why the fuck is he here?” Caleb demanded, veering toward his brother.
I moved to the windows and admired both the storm and the brothers’ reflections. Silent lightning snapped, streaking great fissures through the churning mix of grays and blacks.
“Because he notified Chitec of One’s presence on Mimir.”
As soon as the words had left Bren’s mouth, Caleb stilled. He was reining himself in and doing a far better job of it than I had. He turned away from Bren and James and prowled around the room. His heart raced, his body flushed with a different kind of desire, one I coveted: the desire for vengeance.
The door behind Lloyd opened and Fran sauntered in. She pulled out a chair, slumped into it, and kicked her boots up onto the table. Whether she knew she’d strategically placed herself in a chair between Caleb and me, I couldn’t be sure, but her green eyes slid questioningly to me. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been begging Caleb not to leave her on the prison planet. She’d gained a scar since then and looked at me with lean fierceness. She’d once accused me of being a threat to Caleb and Starscream. She was a liar and a traitor, but I could appreciate Fran’s methods, from one killer to another.
Every member of the Starscream crew was here. Bedraggled and exhausted to the point of breaking, but together nonetheless.
“Chen Hung is a synthetic,” I said. Now was the perfect time to lay the truth out for all to hear.
Caleb stopped his pacing, surprise apparent on his face. “How long?”
What he’d really asked was, “Who killed Haley?” He already knew the answer.
“Chen Hung made the first synthetic in his own image. That synthetic killed its maker, stole Chen Hung’s identity, and killed the man’s daughter—the only person who could expose him as a fraud. He then proceeded to build one thousand elite soldiers under the guise of the life-ever-after program, selling them to unsuspecting high society people, using the promise of immortality as incentive.”
Silence fell over the assembly room. Caleb sat and slumped forward. He sank his hands into his damp hair, hiding his face from the crew. A fragile quiet settled. Fran and Bren were watching Caleb, while Lloyd gazed out of the window, chewing on his thumbnail.
Everything Caleb thought he’d known about that night at the Chitec warehouse had changed. A synthetic had killed Haley Hung. A synthetic had sent him to Asgard, where he’d been expected to die. To know it wasn’t a man who had done those things, but a machine? I tried to conclude what that must feel like and failed, but all I had to do was look at him, hunched in the chair, his fingers fisted in his hair, to know how it must hurt.
I blinked and found Doctor Lloyd watching me. He shifted in his seat, swallowed, and looked away.
“This is what I learned when I faced Chen Hung on Janus. This is the secret that almost tore me apart.”
“Why didn’t you destroy him?” Caleb fell back in the chair, but he stared ahead at nothing.
“The synthetic Chen Hung also created me—One Thousand and One—and in doing so, prohibited me from ever directly attacking him.” I tried … I tried to end it, but I am not as free as I was led to believe.
The same machine that had inflicted such cruelty upon Caleb had also created me. I thought of Caleb’s earlier smile, the gentle understanding on his face and in his touch. Would that change? Would the truth eat away at his trust in me? I almost wished I could take the words back and hold the secret close if it meant sparing him more pain.
The quiet stretched on, interrupted only by the low background hum of the ship.
“Why would the synthetic Chen Hung make you, One?” Fran enquired in that razor-sharp way she used to cut to the truth. An accusation hid inside her words. Her concerns were justified.
“There are elements of the man inside the synthetic, in the same way there are elements of Haley Hung threading through my processes. He said I was a mistake.”
Caleb flinched as though my words had wounded him and mumbled, “Synthetics don’t make mistakes.”
Fran planted her boots on the floor, leaned forward, and looked to the others. “How do we know she’s not some walking, talking conduit that leads straight back to Hung?”
“I think she’s proven herself,” Caleb replied, aiming something of a sneer at Fran.
“By butchering the entire cadre of active Nine?”
Caleb’s fingers drummed on the arm of his chair. “That wasn’t her.”
Why is the rain red?
Part of it was me, I thought. The part designed to kill. The part hungry for Doctor Lloyd’s death.
“But she could do it again?” Fran asked. “Whatever went wrong with her could happen again?”
“No,” I said calmly. “Doctor Lloyd attempted to rewrite my internal processes and in doing so unlocked my default waking state, leaving my systems open to the synthetic group commands and Chen Hung’s orders.” An odd little smile tugged playfully at my lips as I considered my next words. “Doctor Lloyd will not be permitted to do the same again.”
Fran arched an eyebrow. “Are you telling me that nervous wreck over there turned you into a killer? That’s bullshit, synth. You always had it in you—”
“Throw one more fucking stone, Fran, and I’ll tell the Nine you’re the reason I lost the freighter they had their hearts set on not so long ago,” Caleb said, his voice as cool and hard as steel.
Fran pressed her lips together, clearly contemplating her next words. “It takes a liar to know a liar, Captain. One can lie so smoothly you’d never see her endgame coming—until it was too late. Isn’t that right, synth?”
“You don’t need to answer that,” Caleb snapped.
“If I’m a liar,” I said, “my answer is irrelevant. As is the deviation in this conversation.”
Caleb’s lips twitched. He appeared confident in my loyalty, perhaps more so than I was. Chen Hung had crafted me with his synthetic hands and his coding had recently hijacked my processes. Every member of the crew knew I had been compromised. They shouldn’t trust me.
“She’s different,” Lloyd said. He swallowed so hard his tongue clicked. “When I was er … When I was rebuilding her, I discovered many, many anomalies. She’s not like the other synthetics I’ve worked on. There were physical differences as well as some quite marvelo
us coding intricacies that I’ve never seen before. The work I had to do to repair her—it was quite remarkable, really. I mean, had I—”
Caleb pointed a finger-gun at the doctor. “You need to stop talking before I yank out your tongue and shove it up your ass.”
Doctor Lloyd paled.
Fran gave a dry, humorless chuckle. “The synth is Hung’s killer-puppet, Caleb’s a loose cannon, I’m fleet, Brendan’s dead, the doc is Chitec … I’m surprised the Nine allowed any of us to come within ten klicks of this place.”
She wasn’t wrong. The Nine did seem incredibly trusting, considering the combined past of Caleb’s crew.
One of the exit doors opened and a man I had not seen before gestured for Brendan to go with him. I reached for the cloud to identify him, but my link bounced back. I hadn’t been able to connect with the datacloud since Doctor Lloyd brought me back. A permanent change, a way to limit my resources, to weaken me? I would need Doctor Lloyd to rectify that oversight.
Bren left, and the door clicked closed. Lloyd tapped his foot and shifted again. Sweat glistened on the doctor’s face. Caleb and I wanted him dead. Fran was unlikely to get between us, and if she did, she couldn’t stop me. Brendan had said we might need James. I needed my cloud connection restored. I couldn’t kill him. Not yet.
Caleb watched the closed door, his expression pensive. He bounced his left knee and frowned at Fran. “We are a bunch of reprobates. You’re right.”
“I always am,” Fran drawled.
Caleb looked to me for confirmation. I inclined my head. We couldn’t trust the Nine. Whatever they were about to ask of us, there was a chance it would all be lies.
I was ready.
Chapter Nine: Caleb
“Given the synthetic’s recent revelation, our plans have changed.” The man at the front of the room addressed the group with all the gravitas of someone familiar with public speaking.
Me and my crew had been led into the meeting room a few minutes earlier and told to take a seat. The guy at the front—Mister Aleksey—was your typical leadership-hungry guy. There were plenty just like him in fleet. Upstanding men and women who handed out the orders while the grunts did the dirty work. I didn’t recognize his distinctly tanned face and dark hair, but he had a look about him that screamed, “prime newsfeed slot.” The kind of guy shit didn’t stick to.
All the folks seated around the table seemed normal enough, but most people in the nine looked harmless until you got to know them. Few were ever as good and upstanding as they made themselves out to be. As a fixer, it was my job to leverage all kinds of dirt I dug up about any potential business partners. These people were blank-faced strangers, and there wasn’t much that made me more uncomfortable than doing business with folks I didn’t know.
I had the exit at my back, just the way I liked it. If shit went sideways, I could make it back to the harrier in minutes and wrench that baby free of her umbilical in another five. Fran had glanced my way, no doubt thinking the same. One stood behind me, a cool, calm presence capable of leaping across the table and killing any one of these people if they even thought about double-crossing us. Getting my brother out would be a problem. He’d sat himself at the front because he was a grade-A suck-up.
“There is no denying Chitec and fleet are positioned to cripple the gate system,” Aleksey said, addressing the room. “Given the synthetic’s information regarding the true identity of Chen Hung and how it tallies with our observations, we must act to prevent what could be a humanitarian disaster. We’re not dealing with a greed-driven man at the top of an intra-system cooperation. A man can be reasoned with, a man can be arrested and tried for his crimes. The imposter we’re dealing with is far more dangerous: a machine whose sole purpose is to destroy.”
“That’s not strictly true,” One said, her voice neutral. “He is the progenitor of the synthetics. He is attempting to ensure his survival.”
“At the expense of humanity,” Aleksey replied in a tone that suggested he didn’t appreciate One’s assessment.
“Correct.” She agreed like it wasn’t such a bad thing.
I quickly scanned the men and women peering over my shoulder at One. Most wore the typical hard-faced expressions of people working hard not to give their thoughts away. One wasn’t doing herself any favors by explaining Hung’s reasoning. They’d allowed her to get this close because they needed her, but even I was wondering if she might like to rein in her knack for astute assessments.
Aleksey tapped a podium in front of him and a holowall of the entire nine systems bloomed behind him. The map of the gate system branched out like a family tree, and right at the top was the main gate; the very gate that had recently failed, destroying the ships in transit and killing five thousand people. A dry run. Hung flexing his control. His next move would likely destroy the nine systems.
“He knows the best way to wipe us out,” I said. The group shuffled in their seats to face me. The weight of their combined glares pressed down on me and I swallowed, finding my mouth dry. Fuck knew what these people thought of my crew. We weren’t even technically a crew. From the outside, we didn’t look like much. The Fenrir Nine likely knew we’d all tried to kill each other—multiple times. Maybe that was why Bren had sat at the front, doing his best to separate himself from the criminals.
I cleared my throat and shifted awkwardly in my seat. “Hung owns the company that rescued us from the Blackout. Chitec controls every part of gate travel. All Hung has to do is get inside their systems, turn the gates off, and the nine systems will go to shit. My guess is he hasn’t done it already because Chitec likely amped up their internal security during his dry run. Might be he’s been locked out, but it won’t last.”
Aleksey nodded, his face grim. “Indeed, Captain Shepperd.”
Hung, a synthetic. I was still processing that shit. I mean, fuck. A machine had killed Haley right in front of me—held his hand over her nose and mouth and watched her die. I should have seen what he was; I should have known. Silent killers had filled the entire fucking warehouse, and I’d missed the one standing right in front of me. It had killed Haley. Then later, it had taunted me like a man would, layering up the emotional bullshit to really drill home how Haley’s death had all been my fault. Guilt had insured I didn’t fess up. Then the synthetic that wore Chen Hung like a mask, had shipped off his one thousand buddies to hit us in the balls when we least expected it. Whatever was inside its processes, it knew how to play human beings.
Hate churned so fiercely in my gut that it burned my throat and spilled into my vision.
And that synthetic had created One.
She stood close enough behind me to snap my neck without blinking. I’d seen firsthand how efficient synthetics were at killing. I didn’t want to think of One as the same as them, which was why Fran was doing that for me. Fran got a lot of things right, besides the fuckload of things she got wrong. Was she right about One? I sure hoped not, not least because One was the only person left in the nine systems that I trusted.
“We have enough personnel, ordinance, and mobilized ships to make a significant stand against Chitec’s fleet,” Aleksey said for my benefit, as I was sure none of this was news to the others. “We even have the technology to adopt gate control once Chitec’s firewalls are down. But a frontal assault will result in war and that is something we do not wish to initiate. If we want to prevent massive losses on both sides, a full frontal assault should be avoided. We need another, cleaner way.” Aleksey settled his gaze on One but just as quickly dropped it to me. “There’s a Chitec ship inbound, summoned by Doctor Lloyd. We want the synthetic to return to Chitec with them.”
“No,” I said without missing a beat. I waited, stone-faced, for any of the fuckers to argue.
“Hear us out, Shepperd.”
I might have laughed or snarled, but I knew I smiled, because they couldn’t have asked One to go back to Chitec. “Hear you out?”
One’s hand settled on my shoulder and the touch
locked me down. It was gentle, not meant to restrain. A touch of support or camaraderie and my carefully constructed walls of not giving a fuck started to crumble.
“I cannot strike directly at Chen Hung,” One told Aleksey. “I’m prohibited from harming him.”
“But isn’t it also true, according to your account, that he’s equally as impotent against you?” Aleksey replied.
“That is correct. I’ve yet to test whether I can circumvent the failsafe by using an indirect approach. I do know he couldn’t physically prevent me from leaving his towers.”
“Well then, we have an opportunity. There’s no one better to infiltrate his operation than a synthetic of his own making. One he cannot stop.”
I clamped my teeth and dropped my gaze. It wasn’t my call. One had always made her own choices. I couldn’t order her to do anything she didn’t want to do, but fuck, I wanted to order her to refuse.
Her fingers applied gentle pressure to my shoulder. “I am the most efficient and reasonable method of retrieving pertinent information while infiltrating Chen Hung’s operation.”
“We need to know what he’s planning, when, where—everything. And we believe you can feed that information back to us using a secure sub-comms link. You’ll do it?” Aleksey asked.
“Yes.”
A wry smile slid onto my lips, the one I wore when I really wanted to punch something or someone. I just got her back. I should have flown her out of here—destination anywhere—when I had the chance.
Aleksey nodded. “One Thousand And One and Doctor Lloyd, would you please step out of the room for a few moments?”
Doc Lloyd did as he was told like a good Chitec drone. One’s hand lingered on my shoulder, long enough for a quiet to settle and the looks from the others to turn expectant. But then her light fingers slipped free and she left the room. Her absence shrunk the room around me like I was somehow smaller without her.
Girl From Above #4: Trust Page 5