XOM-B

by Jeremy Robinson

  My foot strikes the edge and I leap once more, this time flinging myself into the air with the equivalent energy of Sir’s strike.

  Sir doesn’t see my jump. He’s already turning away, focusing on the gunship, which still hasn’t opened fire. Then I see why. Heap is still clinging to his back, just below the neck. I zoom in, viewing the scene through multiple spectrums and see the strong glow of some powerful energy source. I’m not sure what Heap is up to, but I know Luscious is on board that gunship.

  “Sir!” I shout as loud as I can.

  He turns back toward me and though he has no real face, I see surprise in the way he flinches back. But then he collects himself, pulls back and swings, harder than before, perhaps hard enough to destroy me. But neither of us will ever know because by the time I reach the point of impact, my mind has provided a solution and I deftly flip over, plant my legs atop his swinging arm and leap off.

  Extending a fist, I punch through the lowermost crimson eye, shattering it and the electronics within. Clutching onto a bundle of cables, I jump out of his head’s interior, swing across his face and kick my feet into the second of his lowest two eyes.

  Four more to go and he’ll be blind.

  But I’m never going to get the chance. His hand is just a few feet away when I notice it and if he gets ahold of me, there will be no escaping his grasp.

  But the digits, each about the same size as me, freeze in place as a spasm shakes through Sir’s body. I hang there, watching the strange phenomenon for just a moment when a voice shouts at me. “What are you waiting for?”

  It’s Heap, now standing on Sir’s giant shoulder.

  “There isn’t much time!”

  Trusting him, I shove away with my feet and swing around toward the shoulder where Heap reaches out and catches hold of me. The VTOL lowers down, its stairway hovering just a foot over Sir’s shoulder.

  Wasting no time, we hurry up the steps, which rise up and close behind us. When the hatch fails to close all the way, Heap takes hold of its handle and begins pulling it up manually. When I move to help, he refuses. “Go help Hail. I’m not sure she really knows how to fly.”

  I’m about to say, “And I do?” but then realize, I do!

  “Hang on!” Hail yells from somewhere within the VTOL.

  The three repulse engines kick in and shove us skyward quickly.

  The turbines kick in hard, shoving me to the floor. I step into the vehicle’s main compartment, clinging to a wall. Harry and Luscious are there, strapped into a pair of seats.

  “What’s the plan?” Luscious shouts.

  “I don’t know!”

  As I climb to my feet, Luscious raises her hand to me. I take it, squeeze it and kiss her soft skin, relieved, but not understanding how she’s alive.

  I reach the cockpit and push through the door. Hail is there, seated and clutching the controls. Her face is twisted in pain, but it’s tempered by a fierce determination. I push myself into the empty seat beside her and take the controls on my side. “I’ve got it.”

  Hail looks relieved as she lets go and leans back.

  Through the windshield I see the interior of the capped city passing quickly by. We’ll be outside in seconds.

  “Where are we going?” I ask.

  “East,” she says. “Fast as you can.”

  “Why?” I ask. “What’s happening?”

  A roar reaches up from below, shaking the aircraft. Hail reaches forward, toggling a switch that activates a view screen built into the dash. A view of the ground behind us is revealed. But we don’t just see the shrinking city below. Sir is there, propelled into the air by giant rockets beneath his feet, spewing fire that incinerates the dead and capped city alike.

  “We need to get away from him!” Hail shouts.

  That’s obvious, but something in Hail’s voice reveals that I still don’t fully understand what’s happening.

  And then, in a flash I do. The big robot soldiers are powered by small fusion reactors—nuclear fusion reactors, meaning “small” doesn’t matter much. And those reactors can be manipulated from a panel where I saw Heap clinging. But how did he know this? Mohr, I realize. While Sir trusted my creator, the reverse was not true. He must have prepared Heap for this possible confrontation. I glance back, through the VTOL, and see a plume of energy rising up behind us.

  I activate the com. “Heap, are you in?”

  “Good to go,” he replies.

  “Everyone, hold on,” I say calmly and then gun the VTOL’s afterburners, pushing them well past their limits. We’re slammed back into our seats, frozen in place by G-forces. In seconds, while Sir’s massive body is still fighting to rise into the air, we’re miles away.

  “Freeman.” Sir’s angry voice booms through the com system. “There is no place on Earth you can hide from me.”

  I’m struck by a sense of regret that someone with the vast potential that was granted to Sir could be reduced to such a vengeful, unintelligent state. I vow to never be like him, toggle the radio and reply, “Good-bye, brother.”

  “Freema—!”

  A flash of light glows all around us, lighting up the landscape and revealing hordes of undead, both old and new, average sized and colossal, all headed toward the light and their destruction. We never hear the explosion or feel the resulting shock wave. We outrun them both, but the resulting warm yellow glow gives me hope for a future without Sir.

  Without war.

  Without death.

  I look at Hail, my copilot, and wonder if such a thing will ever be possible. Will death always be the end result of life? Are the two inexorably connected? Or can we find another way? I think back to my theory on energy, how it can’t be destroyed, only altered, and sift through a myriad of texts about God, the soul, spirits and the afterlife. I smile.

  Maybe it already exists?

  53.

  It turns out that the island Heap had me memorize the coordinates of during our flight from Liberty was not something he came up with on the spot, but rather a hideaway created by Mohr. It seems that while Sir ruled with an iron fist, the kindhearted … or kind-cored … Councilman Mohr was able to have this “laboratory” built in secret. Had Councilman Cat known his construction teams were really building a bunker meant for me, to ride out the end of robot civilization, I’m not sure they would have been so forthcoming. But Mohr fooled everyone, even Sir. In the end, not even a Strategic Intelligence Robot could predict the resourcefulness of humankind, nor the lengths they would go for justice, or vengeance.

  I know now that Mohr was fighting for more than revenge. It’s true that he helped create the Xom-B virus and enabled the hordes to invade and ultimately decimate the robot population, but his end goal wasn’t mutual destruction.

  It was evolution.

  The human race had become robotic. To a fault. For the most part, they became stagnant and incapable of growth. Of creation. They would exist, and then, one day, they wouldn’t.

  And it took a human mind in a robotic body to see fault in this. Sadly, like Sir, Mohr saw evolution as a violent race, with one species pushing the other to the brink. Since I was just a single being, Mohr acted on my behalf, and the zombie horde did the killing that I couldn’t, that I wouldn’t have done. I understand the logic behind it, but I could never exterminate a people. I sometimes feel bad for what happened to Sir, despite what he did.

  I sit at the base of a wall that’s purposely overgrown with vines, making it invisible from the shore and sky. Not that there is anyone left to see me. We’ve been here for three months and Heap thinks that the undead are mostly likely powered down.

  Dead again.

  Forever this time.

  We’re not going to venture back to the mainland for another month, though, and even then we’ll stay inside the VTOL, which is parked in plain sight on the roof of our dwelling. And after that? I’m not sure.

  There are just four of us now.

  Hail survived her wound and could have been repaired,
but she refused. A few hours after reaching the island, Heap took her aside and delivered a three word message to her from Mohr. I’m not sure what he said, but it melted the tension from her robotic body and brought a smile to her face. She replied saying, “I wish I could still cry,” and then insisted we kill her.

  I couldn’t abide by anything so violent, but she described how her power supply could be deactivated without causing her any pain.

  “I’m not really alive,” she said. “The intellect in this shell is not me. I’m already dead. Let me go. Let me be with him again.”

  Realizing she was speaking of Mohr, whom I suspect she loved once, I couldn’t refuse her. We disabled her power, removed it from her body, and then, as she requested, destroyed her body so that she couldn’t one day be brought back.

  I’m not sure if we killed her or if she was already dead, but I respected her wishes, and if I’m honest, I was relieved that the last person responsible for two global genocides was no longer among us. We found ourselves as allies for a brief time, but she had brought horror to the world.

  Though I suppose that could be debated. Mohr would. I can hear his voice in my mind chanting evolution and progress. As I watch the seagulls floating in the breeze and admire the orange sun poking up over the horizon, knowing that the world is at peace, part of me agrees with him.

  The dull footfalls of Heap reach my ears as he moves through the building at my back. We’ve repaired the damage to his head, which was superficial as Mohr had moved all of Heap’s most integral systems to his chest and wrapped it in a protective six-inch-thick Tungsten shield strong enough to endure a railgun round. He spends his time maintaining the facility and the VTOL. At night we watch the stars together and talk about human history. It’s strange to be teaching him, but we enjoy our time together, like we used to, perhaps a little bit more now that one of us isn’t lying to the other.

  It’s been hard to accept, but Heap knew everything. He wasn’t involved in the planning or implementation of the plan of the Xom-B virus, but he knew it was coming. After years in the wilderness, protecting the human children, Heap returned to the robotic world and was taken in by Mohr, who eventually revealed that he was, in fact, human. Heap’s loyalties belonged to Mohr and Mohr alone. Until I was created and Heap’s sole duty became to guide my growth and protect me from the coming turmoil.

  I don’t think I fully understood why until two months ago.

  The grass beneath me is damp with morning dew. I pluck a leaf from the vine by my shoulder, collect a bead of dew on the tip of my finger and drip it onto the back of Luscious’s hand. She smiles and watches the bead trickle over her skin.

  “What do you think he’s painting today?” she asks.

  “Every day is different,” I say, looking at Harry, who’s standing in the field of grass, which he trims once a week. He also prunes the island’s many trees, has created flower beds and basically turned what was an overgrown secret bunker on a small island into a resort. Since we require no food other than power, which we absorb from the sun through our skin, Mohr stocked our shelter with what he thought, or hoped, I would require. A vast library, art supplies, musical instruments and a collection of movies, music and art he had pilfered from around the world. My favorite piece is called The Kiss, Der Kuss in the original German language, by a human named Gustav Klimt. The six-foot-square oil painting depicts a man and a woman sharing an embrace, and a kiss, in various shades of gold on a copper background. Something about it reminds me of Luscious. Like a reflection of how I feel about her, only not as bright.

  While we have all experimented with the various artistic supplies left to us, no one has made better use of them than Harry. His paintings have helped all of us process what we experienced and survived and often give a sense of hope for our future. I suspect he will continue a solitary life, maybe here on this island, painting until his body wears down. I smile at the idea. I can’t think of any life Harry would prefer.

  “You seem happy today,” Luscious says, tugging on my chin until I’m facing her. She smiles at me, pulls me closer and kisses me in a way that could never be captured in a painting.

  She’s right. I am happy today. In part because Luscious is still with me. When she was shot, I thought for certain she’d been killed. Taken from me for good. But I inspected her body as soon as we landed and found no wound. There was a hole in her leather clothing, in the front and out the back, but her body had healed.

  Like mine.

  It was Hail who had figured it out.

  “She’s like you now,” she said. “Able to heal. The nanomachines that make up your body somehow transferred to her. She’s been transformed.” Hail sounded as astonished as I felt, though perhaps not as much as Luscious, whose body could now grow, and adapt.

  Her body has changed a lot since. The seven cigarette burns on her arm have disappeared. Her skin is softer, suppler and somehow more feminine. She’s unable to shift her face or change her hair color, which is fine with me because I love the way she looks. What she can change is the length of her hair, but not through some artificial means. It’s growing.

  So is mine.

  A week ago, Harry gave us both haircuts. Even Heap laughed at the sight.

  “Are you going to tell me?” Luscious asks.

  She knows I’m keeping something from her. Something amazing. About the two of us.

  “Do you remember Heap giving Hail a message?” I ask.

  She nods, watching the bead of water inch toward the edge of her hand. “Three words, you said.”

  “Right.”

  “Heap told me,” I say. The words were a gift for Hail. They gave her hope. Set her free. And perhaps, in a small way, redeemed the horrible things they had done.

  “What were they?” she asks.

  The drip of water dangles from her hand and relents to gravity, dropping free and landing on Luscious’s prodigious belly. I smile so hard it hurts. Her round belly holds a child.

  Our child.

  He or she grows from the same nanomachines that form our bodies and I suspect will meet us inside another month.

  Procreation.

  Life.

  But even without seeing this, Mohr knew what he had created.

  What I was.

  What we are.

  I lean close to Luscious, smelling her fiery red hair, letting it tickle my nose. With a gentle laugh, I repeat the message from Mohr, delivered to Hail by Heap, repeated to me and now spoken to the woman I adore.

  The words come out as a whisper. “Human, after all.”

  ALSO BY JEREMY ROBINSON

  The Jack Sigler Thrillers

  Prime

  Pulse

  Instinct

  Threshold

  Ragnarok

  Omega

  The Chess Team Novellas

  Callsign: Queen—Book 1

  Callsign: Rook—Book 1

  Callsign: Bishop—Book 1

  Callsign: Knight—Book 1

  Callsign: Deep Blue—Book 1

  Callsign: King—Book 1

  Callsign: King—Book 2—Underworld

  Callsign: King—Book 3—Blackout

  The Antarktos Saga

  The Last Hunter: Descent

  The Last Hunter: Pursuit

  The Last Hunter: Ascent

  The Last Hunter: Lament

  The Last Hunter: Onslaught

  Milos Vesely Novellas

  I Am Cowboy

  Stand-Alone Novels

  Kronos

  Antarktos Rising

  Beneath

  Raising the Past

  The Didymus Contingency

  SecondWorld

  Project Nemesis

  Island 731

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  JEREMY ROBINSON is the author of bestselling thrillers, including SecondWorld, The Last Hunter: Descent, Project Nemesis, and the Jack Sigler thrillers, including Threshold and Ragnarok. His novels have been translated into ten languages. Born in the co
astal town of Beverly, Massachusetts, Robinson grew up on a steady diet of seacoast exploration and science fiction, and began his creative career as a comic book illustrator and screenwriter. He now lives in New Hampshire with his wife and three children.

  Visit Robinson online at jeremyrobinsononline.com and sign up for the newsletter for free content, contests, and updates on upcoming projects. Connect with him on Facebook at facebook.com/sciencethriller, and follow him on Twitter @jrobinsonauthor.

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THOMAS DUNNE BOOKS.

  An imprint of St. Martin’s Press.

  XOM-B. Copyright © 2014 by Jeremy Robinson. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.thomasdunnebooks.com

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover design by Jeremy Robinson

  Cover photo by iStockphoto.com

  The Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  ISBN 978-1-250-03171-6 (hardcover)

  ISBN 978-1 -250-03172-3 (e-book)

  e-ISBN 9781250031723

  First Edition: April 2014