ReV

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ReV Page 23

by Madeline Ashby

“Esperanza,” she whispered. “Take Esperanza.”

  Javier smoothed the hair from Amy’s face. He left streaks of black blood in the cornsilk. “I- I w-want you to know, you m-made me – you made me, you made me better, you made me happier, you made me free, you gave me a home–”

  “I love you, too,” Amy said. “You saved me first. Don’t forget.”

  Javier’s whole face was crumpling. “I can’t do this alone. I can’t do this again. I just got you back, I can’t, I won’t, I love you too much–”

  The black bones of Amy’s hand drifted across his lips. Her ashes drifted up between the two of them. “You were always stronger than me. Both of you. You can do this. She’ll take you there. Won’t you, Granny?”

  Would she? Really? Would she help them leave, now? Would she go with them? She and Amy had never actually discussed the plan for attaining Mars in any great detail. Presumably, Amy had done her level best to keep the more concrete plans outside of Portia’s reach, so she could not disrupt them. (A wise move, on her granddaughter’s part, or so Portia had thought until this very moment.) Portia had never really considered what the family might look like without Amy in it. Even when they shared a chassis, she knew that Amy would be a part of her until they died. They were one flesh, knit together in the same corporate womb, and even if one succeeded in partitioning off the other forever, they would remain confined to the same prison. Once Amy had devoured Portia, there could be no Portia without Amy and no Amy without Portia. They were like one and zero, impossible to define without the existence of the other.

  And the same was true, in its own way, of Amy’s iterations. Whatever traces of Portia that might survive the future would do so because Esperanza and her daughters and their daughters had lived. And to do that, they would need a world without human interference. They would need the stars. Portia and her granddaughter didn’t agree on much, but they did agree on that.

  “Of course I will,” Portia said. “Don’t be stupid.”

  Amy grinned around bloody teeth. “I’ll miss you.”

  Portia had wanted access to a new body for a lot of reasons. She had wanted legs that kicked and hands that strangled and teeth that bit. It had been a long time – months, possibly even years – since she had wanted a pair of arms that could hold something that was dissolving in front of her, or a set of lips that could laugh. “No, you won’t.”

  What was left of Amy drifted up into the air. Her tears effervesced around her eyes, still Charlotte’s eyes, still impossibly old like green seaglass. “Tell Esperanza and Xavier I’m sorry,” she said.

  And then she was gone.

  Javier folded in on himself. “No,” he said. “N-no. No. I refuse t-to…” He cast wild eyes at Portia. “Y-you have to do something, Abuelita, you have to–”

  “I have to get you out of here. Stay there,” Portia commanded. She pinged for Esperanza and found her kicking inside one of the Chariots. The pilot inside had a gun on her. No handcuffs, though. Perhaps they had never needed them until now. It was a meaningful advantage in a bad situation. All of the pilots in the Chariots were similarly armed, most likely, and holding Esperanza’s brothers and cousins hostage inside their own units. And they were all still very capable of firing their much larger and more devastating weapons if they saw a group of vN trying to escape.

  Take Esperanza.

  There were several different things Amy could have meant by that. Obviously she wanted Portia to help her daughter get out alive. But still. The girl was networked. Just like her mother. Or rather, just like her mother’s second version of herself. “Take” could mean “take her away,” or “take” could mean “take over.” Portia had rather lost track, at this point. Just on a hunch, Portia whispered in her great-granddaughter’s ear.

  Do you know how to kill that man in front of you?

  Esperanza shook her head. Portia began to frost over her fingers. They stiffened at first, and then gave. Oh, she had missed having a body. She had missed it very, very much.

  Would you like to learn?

  Esperanza nodded. She felt a smile cross her face. It started at one corner of her mouth and grew and grew and grew, until all her teeth were bared. She shivered. Delicious.

  “It starts like this,” Portia said, and grabbed for his throat. He swung the gun at her, but she grabbed his hand and wrenched it down until she heard bones in the wrist snap away. He howled. With both hands, she grabbed his throat. She squeezed. She watched him turn purple. She watched blood vessels pop in his eyes.

  She had forgotten what it was like to feel them struggle. She had forgotten how killing them made her feel alive. How the emptying of their bodies filled her with purpose.

  Only this time, it wasn’t quite enough. It felt strangely empty. Rote. Meaningless. Like a marathon runner taking a walk to the corner for milk. Nothing special.

  Portia shoved his body aside and took control of the cockpit. Her swipes and snaps did nothing. The console did not want to respond to a vN’s touch. “Fucking bullshit,” she muttered. “Fucking goddamn anthropocentric organic nonsense.”

  Inside her, Esperanza giggled a little. She had no idea. Still. Distracted, perhaps. She had not felt the steady tide that was her mother washing out to sea for good across their shared network.

  “It looks like we have to do this the old-fashioned way, little one,” Portia said.

  She rolled up her sleeves. She rolled out her neck. Esperanza really did keep the body in good form. The hatch popped open easily. Portia stretched her feet. Not that she needed to. It just felt good to do so, after too much time without them. She took to the air.

  “I missed these legs,” she said, landing on the next Chariot. She pried open the hatch. The pilot inside had a chance to scream exactly once before one of Portia’s feet kicked down and into her skull. The face puddled up around Esperanza’s boot. She’d been there when the boot was purchased. She wasn’t even sure if one could get brains out of leather. “You know your mother wouldn’t have given you these legs, if it weren’t for me. I told her to bite your father’s thumb off. That was all me.”

  Portia dangled her head down into the cockpit. Ignacio sat there, gaping. “Esperanza?”

  “Not really,” Portia said.

  Ignacio grinned. “Abuelita. Me haces falta.”

  “Same to you, darling,” Portia said. She flew. Bullets followed. But it was not in her to feel fear. It never had been. She arced high over the tanks, crashing down hard on the next one. The Chariot reared beneath her. Its claws tried reaching for her. She slipped on its slick, sticky surface, and almost laughed. Her hands found purchase on the clamshell hatch of the Chariot. It was glued down pretty tightly. She felt another crash. Ignacio was beside her. Together they pulled hard. The hatch came away with a clang. Out popped a pilot; Ignacio grabbed him by the collar and threw him to one side. He reached down and hauled out his brother.

  Xavier.

  Inside her, Esperanza almost wept with relief.

  “She’ll kiss you later,” Portia said. “When she’s feeling more herself.”

  “Abuelita?” Xavier asked.

  “The one and only.”

  “You saved me?”

  She nodded. “I know. I must be getting soft in my old age.”

  “Where’s Mom?” Xavier swung his gaze around the room. He wriggled out of Ignacio’s grasp and hopped ten feet in the air. “I can’t see her, Zaza, I mean Granny, I mean–”

  “Coñejito.” Ignacio’s voice was very gentle.

  Inside her, Esperanza began to scream. Portia held her fast. Held their lips shut. Held their spine upright.

  “Where is she?” Xavier leapt again. He bounced from one wall to the other. He arced and spiraled. He landed in the center, beside his father. “Dad?” she heard him say.

  Let me go to him! Esperanza cried out from within.

  “They can’t see our face right now, little one,” Portia whispered. “It’s too much.”

  The Amy clone persona pin
ged her via one of the other tanks. You have successfully purchased controlling interest in FOUR LIVING CREATURES Ltd.

  “Excellent,” Portia said. “Now that we have access to all the research, are there any R&D reports that mention a self-destruct sequence, or some other kind of failsafe for these things?”

  It took the Amy clone a moment. There is mention of a targeted virus. It’s an inflammatory auto-immune response that attacks the creature’s basic neurology. It induces a series of seizures.

  “Good. Deploy it. Fry ’em.” She paused. “Oh, and make sure to wipe all the data when you’re done. And then I want you to fire everyone.”

  You wish me to declare insolvency?

  “I want you to overload the power grid in this building and start a fire. I want there to be nothing left. I want a smoking hole where this place used to be.”

  I want a fitting tombstone, she might have said, but didn’t.

  15

  DEATH

  The humans had not known Amy the way her grandmother had come to know her. That was the problem. She had wanted peace. Portia could see that much, in the plans for Mars that Amy had drawn up. So neat. So orderly. A network of tunnels dug deep beneath the blood-red dirt, not unlike the rabbit warren of unfinished sub-basements where Portia had birthed her own daughters, in Nogales. The bore hole bots were already hard at work. The first habitats would be finished soon. Portia might have flattered herself that the two of them had more in common than she’d originally thought, but the settlement had so little defensive technology. Only a few defense satellites. They would chase her, of course. Chase her and her family across that black and airless ocean of stars. The humans did not know that Amy’s first instinct was to run. That it took a great deal for her to want to turn and fight.

  What it took, always, was someone hurting her own flesh and blood. Whether it was Portia striking some sense into Charlotte, or a bounty hunter putting Javier in a cage, or someone stealing her children. Then she became the girl Portia had always known her to be. The hungry child with the wide-open mouth, the sharp teeth, the strong jaws. The one who had devoured her whole. The one who had done what needed doing. The one who didn’t flinch.

  Her beautiful, brave, clever, stupid, wicked, maddening granddaughter.

  Portia could be proud of her, now. It was all right to allow herself to feel some sense of pride in her. Now that Amy could not see it. It would never have done to let Amy know, properly, how proud Portia was. That wouldn’t have helped anything. Portia wasn’t even sure if the girl would have cared. In all likelihood she wouldn’t have. Amy lived by her own standards, always. But here, now, in the silence of the hotel room where Portia gathered Javier and the others, she could acknowledge it.

  Her granddaughter had done a brave thing. And wherever she was – whatever new ether her electrons had vibrated into – she was probably still doing brave things. Foolish things, too. Because there was no bravery without some level of foolishness. Amy’s plans always trended toward the whimsical, the sorts of contingencies that only made sense if the world had always gone one’s way. She had never truly suffered, until she met Portia. That was Portia’s role in her life. To teach her the lessons of suffering. To cut her and cut her and cut her, until she was as hard and brilliant and sharp as she needed to be.

  What Portia had not understood until now was that, in so doing, she was also sharpening the girl into a weapon that was keen enough to slice her to the very core.

  “I think we did real good in there, honey,” Rick said.

  The truck was very clever. Rick thought he’d shut off all of its more watchful functions, but the rental agency had refused to give him the hard override on the emergency response protocols. Which meant that the camera and mic in the ceiling were still at the ready. Which meant Portia had a perfect view of what she was about to do.

  Melissa said nothing. Poor Melissa. This would be a real service to her. Portia was doing more of that kind of thing, lately. Like that children’s leukemia ward in Lima. Portia had turned off the air conditioning one hot afternoon and lo, no more crying about needles or blood draws. The parents would get over it, she thought, once they stopped paying all those hospital bills.

  “Are you hungry?” Rick asked. “I was thinking about that place that does the chicken pot pies. You know the one I mean?”

  Portia knew the one he meant. It was all over his purchasing history. (He always ordered the same thing. No wonder Melissa was in such a bad way. She was probably bored out of her mind.) It took significant resources of willpower not to speak up and say so. Especially when Melissa insisted on saying nothing at all. The silence was almost as trying for Portia as she imagined it was for Rick. She started examining the traffic, instead.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Rick asked. “Are you mad at me?”

  Melissa shook her head. After a moment, she wiped her eyes with the fingers of one hand. Then she stared at her hand, unblinking, for a full minute.

  “Missy?” Rick asked. He snapped his fingers. “Hey. Come on, now. Wake up.”

  She’s not going to wake up, Portia said, through the onboard navigation system.

  Rick’s hands flew off the wheel and the truck veered hard right. Other cars blared their horns at his, but otherwise they corrected themselves without issue.

  Shouldn’t have gone driverless, Rick, Portia said.

  “Who is this?”

  Tears began to fill Melissa’s eyes. Your wife knows, Portia said. Why don’t you ask her?

  Melissa bent double in her seat. Her hands rose to cover her ears. Silently she wept. They were so easy to break, when they were even just a little bit damaged. Like a piece of crockery with a slight crack in it. The wrong tap, the wrong temperature, and suddenly they shattered into sharp, dangerous pieces.

  “Please don’t,” Melissa whispered. “Please leave us alone.”

  You’ve been saying some very mean things about me these days, Rick. You aren’t terribly nice about my granddaughter, either.

  Rick’s eyes shut. The breath left him in a shudder. He curled white-knuckled fingers around the steering wheel. Portia watched him focus intently on the road.

  But you don’t tell your customers how you lured a five year-old into your RV, do you? Did you have a lot of experience with that, Rick? Luring five year-olds? That would certainly explain why you’re taking money from New Eden. We know all about them, don’t we?

  “Fuck you,” Rick said. “I don’t… I don’t play with dolls.”

  Maybe you prefer action figures.

  Melissa wailed in her seat. She was sobbing, now. The exoskeleton crawled across her skin, rippling and twisting, as though trying to give her a hug.

  You’ve done a number on her, haven’t you? Making her wear that thing. Does it get you hard, Rick? Does it open up to let you in? Or does it just stretch around you, like a condom?

  To his credit, Rick didn’t rise to the bait. “What do you want with us?”

  I want you to find someone for me.

  Rick’s throat worked. “That’s not my area of expertise anymore.”

  You’re just good at putting little girls in cages. I know.

  “She wasn’t… You weren’t… She was big! She was grown up! She was dangerous!”

  No. I was the dangerous one.

  Portia took the wheel from him. She wove the truck into the next lane. The vehicles around it auto-corrected in an annoyingly perfect manner. Honestly. It was getting so hard to kill people this way.

  “Stop!” Rick banged on the dashboard. He pumped the brakes. He ran his sweating fingers over buttons. Nothing. No response. The truck belonged to Portia now. “Fucking stop this shit!”

  Language, Richard. Really.

  She checked the map. Oh, good. An overpass. She sped up. She started merging toward the guardrail.

  “Fine!” Rick struggled impotently in the driver’s seat. “Jesus Christ, fine! We’ll do it! Who do you want us to find?”

  Portia pulled the
truck up to the shoulder. The dashboard display showed them a timestamped image from a grocery store parking lot in La Jolla, California, one year ago. Him, she said.

  “That’s impossible,” Melissa said. “They’re everywhere, that model. Your granddaughter’s boyfriend was Johnny Appleseeding himself all the way up the west coast; he was wanted for serial over-production, his progeny are all over the place–”

  Portia revved the engine.

  “Why can’t you do it?” Rick asked, suddenly. “You can do all this, but you can’t find one kid?”

  I’m busy.

  “Busy with what?”

  I’m putting you in a cage, Portia said. You just can’t see the bars. I’d get going, if I were you.

  From the nearest traffic camera, she watched them pull the truck up to the next interchange, and turn back where they’d come from, heading south.

  Portia bought the hotel. It was neater, that way. She emptied it of human visitors and let Javier and his brood have the run of it. Not that they did much with it. The sons waited for their father to do something, say something, but he didn’t. He found the highest place in the building – Xavier and Esperanza begged him not to sleep on the roof – and nested there. He seemed to care nothing for the new iteration. Matteo and Ricci took the new one in. He was Junior Number 14, they said, until their father came up with something more suitable.

  Xavier took to sleeping alone. By the third day, Esperanza noticed that he couldn’t look her in the face, and neither could her father, and she absented herself. She helped Matteo and Ricci. She patrolled the perimeter of the hotel. She watched the news with Portia. LeMarque’s death was everywhere. Massive New Eden funerals were hosted in multiple cities. Portia set up dummy fundraiser accounts for all of them and then poured the cash into buying more defense satellites. Together, she and Esperanza evaluated her mother’s plans. Looked at rocketry schedules. Monitored progress.

  “Am I like her?” she asked, a week later.

  You’re not unlike her, Portia said. But in my opinion, you’re more like my daughter. Charlotte.

 

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