“I know you think you are doing the right thing, but you are going about it all wrong. I love you, Merovech, I really do. I would not be here if I did not. But that does not mean I need you to rescue me. I don’t need a big handsome prince to come riding in and fight all my battles for me.”
“I didn’t—”
She put a finger to his lips. “I am not a princess, I am tougher than that, and I solve my problems myself, in my own way and in my own time. And if you really, truly want to be with me, then that is something you will have to learn to accept, okay?”
She pulled her finger back.
“And yes, Merovech.”
Merovech blinked foolishly, his composure in tatters. “Yes what?”
Julie smiled, and spoke slowly, as if addressing an idiot.
“Yes, if we make it through this alive, I will marry you.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
PERSONAL FRANKENSTEIN
“AH, YOU’RE AWAKE,” the man said. “Welcome back.”
Victoria blinked up at him from the bed.
“Who are you?” She tried to move, but her arms and legs wouldn’t respond. She smelled antiseptic and cold steel. The ceiling was low, white and curved. “What’s happening, where are we?”
“You are on board the Maraldi, in the infirmary. You have been unconscious for some time.”
Victoria’s vision swam. She creased her eyes, trying to focus.
“And you are?”
“Come, come, Victoria. Surely someone with your background can figure that one out?”
Victoria ran her tongue over her lower lip. She’d never seen this man before, but there was something familiar about the condescension in his tone. She took a guess.
“Doctor Nguyen?”
The man gave a small smile. “Very good.”
“Why can’t I move?”
“When I installed your gel-based processors, I also installed an override command. A simple word that renders you immobile.”
“Why would you do that?”
He moved over to the sink and turned on the taps. “I was designing the perfect slave army,” he said over his shoulder. “I wanted to make sure they couldn’t revolt.”
As he washed and dried his hands, Victoria ran over what she knew about him.
Doctor Kenta Nguyen had been born in Osaka in the late nineteen eighties, and was now over seventy years old. He was a graduate of the Human Genome Project and, until leaving Japan to take up a research position with Céleste, he had been one of the leading innovators in the ongoing Japanese biotech revolution. She remembered him as a small, cantankerous man in a tweed suit. Now, he stood tall and limber in a dinner jacket and bow tie. He looked around thirty years old, and in amazing physical shape.
“You’re an android,” she said with a hammer-blow of realisation, “just like Berg.”
Nguyen shook water from his hands and turned back to her.
“Ah, poor Berg. He was one of our earliest successes, and quite unhinged. I was terribly sad to lose him.”
“He was a murdering psychopath.”
Nguyen gave a small, pitying shake of his head.
“He was a loyal soldier.” He reached for a packet of surgical gloves, and extracted two. “And all his so-called ‘victims’ will live again.”
Victoria let herself sneer.
“Bullshit.”
“Really, Miss Valois? Look at me.” He flattened a palm against his chest. “I left my body in Paris, and yet here I am, as alive as you.”
“I don’t call that life.”
Nguyen sighed like a disappointed schoolmaster.
“And what about you, Victoria? May I remind you that the brain in your head is more than fifty per cent synthetic. And yet you claim to be alive, do you not?”
“That’s different.”
“Is it?” He examined his hand. “I’ll grant you that these bodies are far from perfect. I’m still having trouble integrating some of the finer senses, for example. But they will suffice, for now. Bodies like this will keep us all alive when the bombs fall, and we can improve them later. After all, we will have hundreds, maybe thousands, of years.”
“Speak for yourself.”
Nguyen gave a small, tight smile.
“I haven’t introduced you to my assistant, have I?”
He clapped his hands twice, and a girl tottered into the room on six-inch heels. She looked to be somewhere in her early twenties. She wore a white lab coat over a tight cocktail dress. Long, blonde hair fell around her shoulders, curling down to an ample cleavage. In her hands, she held a silver tray of surgical implements.
“Victoria,” Nguyen said with a flourish, “meet Vic.”
Victoria frowned. Beneath the girl’s make-up and fake tan, the skin held the stiff, waxy sheen that identified her as another of Nguyen’s androids.
“What is this?”
Nguyen smiled. “This is you. This is what I did when Berg brought me your soul-catcher.” He reached out and curled his fingers in the girl’s hair. “I call her ‘Vic’.”
Watching him, Victoria felt her skin prickle. Bats flapped their wings in her chest cavity.
“Three days ago,” Nguyen said, “I took your back-up and I loaded it into this body. This is you, Victoria. Your memories, your personality, your ‘soul’.”
The girl stood, inert as a waxwork, her blue eyes fixed on the middle distance.
Victoria’s mouth was dry.
“I don’t believe you. I would never have let you do that. I would have fought—”
Nguyen waved her to silence.
“Oh, I am more than aware of that.” He untangled his fingers from the girl’s hair. “And believe me, until I installed the behavioural safeguards, this one fought like the devil herself. Now, though, she is incapable of violence.” He reached out and cupped one of the girl’s heavy breasts in his palm. “But why worry about violence when she and I have so many better things we could be doing? Isn’t that right, Vic?”
The girl blinked. She looked down at the hand holding her breast.
“Yes, Doctor Nguyen.”
He smiled. “You see, Miss Valois, even you can be tamed.”
Immobile on the bed, Victoria felt her cheeks burn.
“You sack of shit.”
Nguyen gave a disapproving click of his tongue.
“Such language.” He let go of the girl and pulled the surgical gloves on over his artificial fingers: first one hand, and then the other. “You have to see the big picture, Miss Valois. These bodies, these hands, are simply tools. With them, we will save the world.”
“By destroying it?”
Nguyen shook his head. “I am a doctor. My job is to make people better. To make the human race better.” He snapped the elastic cuff of the last glove into place, and selected a shiny silver scalpel from the tray in his assistant’s hands. As he picked it up, the blade caught the light: cold, and thinner than paper.
“You’ve caused us considerable trouble,” he said. “We should have had Merovech by now. Without him, the Duchess cannot order a strike against the Chinese. She does not have the authority.”
“Too bad.”
Nguyen’s lips thinned. “No matter. He will be here soon enough. The RAF are bringing him to us.” He looked at his watch. “And as soon as the Mars probe’s safely away, he’ll order the launch of a cruise missile at Shenzhen City. The war will start on schedule.”
He took up position at the head of the bed. “We’ve been preparing for this for years. With the industrial resources of Céleste at our disposal, we’ve constructed legions of android bodies, and converted as many of our followers as we can.” He showed her the scalpel. “And now, I’m afraid, it’s your turn.”
Victoria’s vision swam. Her pulse hammered in her throat until she could hardly draw breath.
“What are you doing?”
Nguyen leant over the bed. She felt his palm enfolding the back of her head in much the same way he’d just enfolded the
blonde girl’s breast.
“Now,” he said, “Let’s get that gelware out of there, and into a new body.”
“No!”
“Hush now.”
He held her firmly, his weight pressing down on her, and she felt a sickening prick as the scalpel punctured the skin at the crown of her head. She wanted to kick and flail, but her limbs wouldn’t respond.
The blonde girl watched her. Their eyes met.
“Vic, help me!”
The girl looked to Nguyen, and back, but otherwise remained motionless.
The blade moved, slicing obscenely downwards, and Victoria screamed as she felt the skin of her scalp part. The tip scraped bone and Nguyen straightened his back. His gloved hands were red with her blood.
“I’m going to need the saw,” he said, and stepped into the adjoining room.
Victoria felt tears rolling down her face, to join the hot blood soaking into the sheet beneath her head. Too many men had had their fingers in her cranium. Why couldn’t they leave her alone?
Why couldn’t they just let her die?
Hopelessly, she blinked up his window and enabled the sound.
“Paul?” she said.
His eyes were wide and his knuckles were red where he’d been chewing on them.
“I’m here, Vicky. I’m here.”
“What should I do?”
“I don’t know.” He sounded almost hysterical.
“I’m out of options, Paul.”
He screwed up his eyes in thought. His fingers tugged at his beard.
“Try talking to the robot?”
“Vic? She can’t help.”
“We haven’t got anything else.”
Victoria took a breath. The android still watched her, its face devoid of expression.
“Okay,” she said, and raised her voice. “Please, help me, Vic.”
The android tilted her head. From the adjoining room, Victoria could hear Nguyen moving equipment.
“Please?”
Without a word, Vic stepped up to the bed, and Victoria’s heart jumped as she took one of the scalpels from her tray.
“What are you doing?”
Vic put her finger to her luscious red lips. Then she placed the scalpel in Victoria’s numb hand, and wrapped the unresponsive fingers around it.
“Wait,” she whispered, and then stepped back to her former place.
Nguyen appeared in the doorway, carrying an electric saw. His eyes narrowed, and he looked from Victoria to the android.
“You can ask her all you like, but she won’t help you. She can’t. She’s programmed to obey me, and me alone.”
He carried the saw over to the work surface and plugged it into a wall socket. He revved it a couple of times and then, seemingly satisfied, he turned back to the bed.
“I’m afraid this will hurt,” he said. “But don’t worry, the hurt won’t last. And when you awake, you’ll be just like her.”
He flicked the switch and the blade whined. As he moved to bring it down on Victoria’s head, the blonde spoke. With a Japanese curse of irritation, Nguyen flicked the saw off again.
“What did you say?”
Vic turned and set her tray down on the side. When she turned back, her expression had hardened.
“I said, ‘Osaka’.”
Victoria felt her limbs twitch. Nguyun frowned in puzzlement. Then his eyes opened wide as he realised what was happening.
“No, don’t say—!”
Freed from her restriction, Victoria stabbed upward with all her strength. The scalpel caught the doctor under his chin and punched up, through the roof of his mouth, into the base of his brain. He staggered back with a roar, and Victoria rolled off the opposite side of the bed. Her arms and legs were a flaming agony of needles and pins, but at least they were working again.
She crawled to the feet of the blonde girl, and pulled herself up on the material of her white coat.
“Thanks,” she gasped.
Nguyen leant on the bed, the scalpel’s handle still protruding from beneath his chin. Fat blue gobs of fluid dripped from the wound.
Vic watched him dispassionately. “He shouldn’t have let me into his files,” she said. “I found all the command words. Now quickly, repeat this after me. Tango. Honshu. Hellas. Basin.”
Nguyen turned his head in their direction, fury burning in his eyes. His thumb activated the saw in his hand. Victoria ran her tongue over her dry lips.
“Tango. Honshu. Hellas. Basin.”
The android smiled. “Thank you.”
“Those were your command words?”
“Oh yes.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What do you think?” She reached into the pocket of her lab coat and pulled out Victoria’s quarterstaff.
“Where did you get that?”
“He gave it to me as a souvenir. He thought it was funny.” She shook it out to its full length. “Now, get down.”
She pushed past Victoria and lunged across the room. The staff’s tip caught Nguyun in the chest, pushing him off-balance, but he responded with a swipe from the whirring saw. The girl parried, and brought the other end of the stick around to connect with the side of his head. Nguyen staggered and went down on one knee.
With her back to the wall, Victoria recognised the moves Vic used: they were the same ones she’d been practising herself, over and over again, for the past six months. She felt her fingers grip, and her arms twitch in sympathy with every thrust and parry.
For a moment, Nguyen seemed to gain the upper hand. He caught hold of the girl’s sleeve and delivered a couple of resounding whacks to the side of her head. Victoria looked around for a weapon with which to help, but all she could see was the steel tray. She clicked herself into command mode and dialled everything up to eleven: heart rate, adrenalin, metabolism, the works. Then, with every ounce of her amplified strength, she took the tray and swung the narrow edge of it at the back of Nguyen’s neck. The hacking blow jarred her arm, but she felt something crack. The doctor’s head lolled forward. His grip on his opponent loosened, and Vic skipped back, out of reach. She raised the quarterstaff to her shoulder and smacked it end-first into Nguyen’s face. The blow sent him reeling against the bed. A second snapped his head back; and a third severed whatever was left in his neck, tearing his head from its mount.
The head hit the deck with a solid clump, and rolled in a small half-circle before settling. Victoria and Vic stared at it. Then Vic walked over and kicked it full in the face, slamming it against the wall, leaving a dent. Then she kicked it again, and again. On the fourth kick, Victoria reached out and took her arm.
“I think he’s dead.” The head had split, revealing a mass of wiring, circuitry, and oozing gel; and beneath all that, something greasy, pale and organic. Vic stood stiffly, glaring down at the mess she’d made.
“You don’t know what he did. What he made me do. What it was like.”
Victoria gave Vic’s shoulder a squeeze, and mentally issued the instructions to drop herself out of command mode.
“It’s okay now. It’s over.”
Vic gave a snort. She retracted the quarterstaff and dropped it onto the bed. “It’s not over. It’ll never be ‘over’. Just look at the state of me.” She took hold of her over-sized breasts. “Look at these stupid things. If he wasn’t already dead, I’d tear them off and choke him with them.”
“He is dead,” Victoria said. Vic ignored her.
“When I was you, I didn’t know whether I was properly human. Think how I feel now.”
“You are still me.”
“No, you don’t believe that any more than I do. I’m the back-up, same as Paul. Just a ghost in a machine.”
Victoria wanted to comfort her, but didn’t know how. How were you supposed to hug an android?
“I remember being you,” Vic said, “but I also have new memories, memories I don’t want to have to live with.”
“You could help me,” Victoria suggested, t
rying to massage some feeling back into her forearms. “We could put an end to all this, forever.”
Still looking down at the glistening, oozing remains of Nguyen’s shattered skull, Vic shook her head.
“No.” She sat on the edge of the hospital bed. “No, I don’t think so.”
“You know what’s at stake?”
A shrug. “Some of it.”
“Don’t you care?”
Vic turned to her, eyes narrowed to slits. “Don’t you dare, okay? Don’t you dare. You do not get to lecture me.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
“I didn’t know you’d survived. I thought you’d died in Paul’s flat. I thought I was all that was left. And that bastard wrapped me in this stupid body and raped me, over and over again.” Fingers spread wide, she ground the heels of her palms into her forehead, just above her right eye, in a gesture Victoria recognised as one of her own.
“I’m just the back-up,” Vic said. “I’m not the real Victoria Valois, you are. And I can’t take it anymore.” She looked down at her synthetic body with a lip-curl of disgust. “Honestly, I don’t want to live this way.”
Victoria clenched her fists. The pins and needles were wearing off.
“What are you saying?”
“Oh come on, you know exactly what I’m saying.”
Victoria stopped rubbing her arms and hugged herself. She could tell the girl was hurting, and hurting badly. All her doubts had fled. Despite what she’d said to Nguyen and Berg, she now knew beyond all question that a back-up’s pain could be every bit as raw and deep as a human’s.
“Please,” she said. “Please help us.”
“No.” Vic gave an emphatic shake of her blonde head. “I’ve killed our personal Frankenstein, the rest’s up to you. All I need you to do is deactivate me.”
Victoria glanced down at the head lying smashed on the deck at their feet.
“I’m not sure I can.”
Vic turned to her. She reached out to touch the stubble on Victoria’s scalp, then drew back her hand.
“All you have to do is repeat a few words.”
“Another deactivation code?”
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