Gen had left her new clothes, sweatpants and a t-shirt. She slipped into them, noticing the plain brown cargo pants and shirt next to them. She hoped they were for their mission, which she hoped would be soon.
“Why is it just us?” she asked Gen, shoveling some kind of stew in her mouth, eating like she’d never eaten before.
“It’s not.” She gestured to the other side of the room. The bot could eat, but didn’t have to, and there was no use wasting resources now. On the other side of the room were two sets of bunk beds. Gen would need to lie down to recharge, so she’d use one, but the other two?
“Smoke and Shadow will be staying here. They’re securing the village,” she said.
Delilah had all she could do to nod and not drop her head in the empty bowl. Gen took it from her, and led her to one of the bottom bunks where she promptly fell into a dreamless sleep.
The night unfolded so uneventfully Delilah forgot where she was when she woke, and for a moment thought she was back in her tiny apartment in the Rez and it was all a bad dream. The cabin wasn’t much bigger than her apartment, but the air was different: clearer, cleaner—and the smell of meat was in the air. She squeezed her eyes closed to staunch the tears that threatened to flow when she realized Zane was truly gone, and everything that happened came back in a wave.
Gen was using a small kerosene stove to fry up some ham, a rare treat in the Banks, rarer than chocolate, even. A quick glance at the other bunks told her Smoke and Shadow weren’t there, though the sheets were messed enough to guess that they’d slept there.
“That smells amazing,” Delilah commented, getting up to stretch. “Where did you get meat?” Gen fiddled with some knobs on the stove and turned with a smile. She wore a different outfit, green pants and a beige short sleeve shirt. With her short hair brushed back, she looked every bit human.
“You’d be surprised what you can find scavenging the city. It lasts a long time in cans, is all,” Gen said. She scooped some on a plate and offered it to Delilah, along with a slice of bread. “They usually serve breakfast together in the mess hall, but given our circumstances, they allowed you to rest,” Gen explained. Delilah made her way to the small, two-seater table. The chair wobbled when she sat on it.
“They?” she asked. She took a bite of the bread. It was fresher than she’d ever tasted it. Sometimes they could find some in the Banks, but you were taking your life in your hands to eat it. Sometimes it was worth the risk though. Hunger did funny things.
“Shadow’s group has been around for a long time. Though,” Gen paused and looked out the window. Delilah followed her gaze to see a cloudy sky and a dirt road. “Her numbers have been depleted. Delilah…” She leaned on the table. “This raid…it’s dangerous. Maybe more than you know. This isn’t the first raid Shadow has attempted.”
Delilah wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “I know,” she answered. “Brute explained some of it to me.”
Gen pursed her lips. “I’m not sure he explained all.”
Delilah forked a piece of the ham. “He said none of the rescue attempts have worked, and that many times they don’t return.”
“Yes.” Gen looked outside again as someone passed. “But they have more intel than they’re letting on. Specifically about these zoos, as they call them.”
Delilah put her fork down. She was losing her appetite. “The people zoos? I’ve heard them talked about but never believed they were real. What would the bots want with people zoos?”
Gen squirmed in her seat. “It’s conjecture, really, but we assume…curiosity? It’s not like they can observe and experiment in the free zones.”
With that, the last of Delilah’s hunger went out the window. She pushed the plate away. “Experiments?”
Gen picked at a spot on the wooden table. “Social, mostly, or at least from what we can tell. They put humans in situations, see how they react. Test medical procedures.”
Delilah stood up and pushed her chair out behind her. “That’s torturous!”
Gen looked down. “That’s not the worst of it.”
“There’s more?” Delilah imagined Zane in some social experiment, all the ways they could be hurting him right now. She took a step to the door.
“There are rumors of physical experiments, too. That these zoos are holding tanks or cover-ups for the real work they’re doing.” Gen’s voice dropped until Delilah could barely hear her. She took a step to the door, stopped, and turned.
“Which is?” she asked.
Gen’s shoulders slumped. “Biological experiments. Merging humans and robots. Creating, essentially, a new species. Delilah…” She looked up and met Delilah’s eyes. She had always thought it was hard to read Gen’s emotions. Her engineering made it possible for her to cover what she was thinking, but not now. Fear was written all over her face. Gen even paled. When had that been added to her programming? “They’re experimenting with souls. They think if we can merge humans and robots, we can take it from you, somehow. Souls. Humanity.”
The look of abject misery on Gen’s face was more than Delilah could bear. She walked back to the table, angled the wiggly chair so she was sitting right across from Gen, and sat down so close their knees touched.
She knew the debate. According to the stories, it was one of the reasons for the bots and humans to go to war. That bots weren’t real. That they were a construct, and thus, had no soul. The fact that the new bots all attached to a central command, so to speak, made them mindless machines. But they didn’t have to be. Gen was proof of that. She took Gen’s hand and curled their fingers together. There was no difference. Flesh was flesh. Born, or created.
“You have a soul,” Delilah said quietly. She’d never come out and said it, but she knew it in her heart to be true. Gen was as much a person as she was. The realization had come on her slowly, after living with Gen and seeing the bot learn to handle human emotions: anger, pride, even love. These last few days had cinched it for her.
A single tear streamed down the bot’s cheek, its salty makeup configured so as not to affect her systems. Gen pulled her hand back and wiped it. “We don’t even know if you have a soul,” the bot joked, the humor returning to her eyes. It was true, no matter how many experiments they did, the idea of a soul was theoretical, at best. No one could prove or disprove it.
“Gen,” Delilah leaned in, “whatever it is that makes us human. You have it. I’m not sure why the bots are trying to experiment with humans when they had it right the first time. Your independence. Your curiosity. Your sense of right and wrong. Your spirit of adventure.”
Gen made a noise somewhere between a laugh and a hiccup, and Delilah continued. “And I consider you more than a friend. You’re a sister.” They both stood and Gen pulled her into a hug.
“If there is anyone I want going in with me to this mission,” Delilah said, “it’s you. Maybe that’s what the other missions were missing?”
She pulled back, and Gen smiled. For all Delilah’s talk about Gen being human, she had advantages that humans certainly did not. Her photographic memory. Her ability to calculate and plan. Perhaps, together, they could make this work.
Gen nodded once. “Perhaps you are right. If we go in together,” she linked arms with Delilah, “we will be stronger.”
“I think,” Delilah responded, “that’s what we should have been doing all along.”
Gen pulled her arm back. “Dee—I’m sorry…” she began, but Delilah cut her off.
“No more sorries, okay?” She put her hands on Gen’s shoulders. “But no more hiding things, either. Agreed?”
Gen smiled and looked down. “Agreed. There are some clothes for you in the bathroom,” she said, “then they are gathering in the mess hall to plan.”
Delilah nodded gratefully. It would be good to clean up. She took as long as she dared. It was the first time she’d looked in a mirror in
a few days, and the events of the last few days had left their mark. Was it her imagination, or was her face more drawn in? She’d picked up sun on the boat, but in combination with the red cracks in her eyes, it only made her look sickly. Even her smile looked plastered on, and she suspected it would until she saw Zane.
She stepped out after brushing her thick hair back and fighting it into a braid. Gen had cleaned the little cabin. Even Smoke and Shadow’s bunks were well made. It was like they’d never been there at all.
“Thank you,” Delilah told her, and Gen smiled graciously. She handed Delilah a light jacket.
“It’s chilly,” she said, opening the door. Outside low clouds muted the sunlight. Puddles pooled on the dirt road that led down the middle of the little cabins, but the rain had passed overnight, taking the smell of dead fish with it. The air was clean, but the road empty. Everyone was already meeting, Delilah assumed, and she doubled her pace.
Gen led her back to the meeting hall, which looked even more rickety in the sunlight. “It’s multi-purpose,” Gen explained. “They hold meetings here, serve food. There’s a kitchen in the back. Some people even hold religious services,” she trailed off. Religion was complicated for the bots and humans alike.
Shouts echoed out the wooden walls. The meeting was not going smoothly, from what Delilah could tell. Gen opened one of the wide double doors and ushered Delilah in.
The hall might have appeared shoddily built on the outside, but inside was warm and light. Tall windows shone natural light on the rows of chairs that led up to a raised platform in the front. On a long table, Delilah thought she spied the maps strewn out. Shadow sat directly behind it, wearing a white, long-sleeved shirt. She wore her long hair down around her shoulders. Brute sat off in the corner, his arms crossed, and Smoke, all in black similar to Delilah’s outfit, paced.
A man in the audience stood, arguing passionately against sending another crew. “We’ve lost so many.” He looked around. “Half our numbers, at least, just in these raids.” Delilah counted forty altogether. The prisoners they’d brought had already mixed in. The man addressed the platform. “We can’t keep sending people on these suicide missions.”
Smoke opened her mouth to argue, but Shadow held a hand up. She stood, pushing the chair back, and the hall fell silent. Delilah leaned against the wall. Shadow commanded them, Delilah noticed. Not just their attention, but their respect.
“I hear your concerns,” Shadow began, “but there is every possibility our people are still alive. At least some of them. And if that’s the case, we have a responsibility to rescue them. Never leave anyone behind, right? We stand by that, or we don’t.” She walked the two steps off the podium and addressed the man to his face. His shoulders hunched, and Delilah could barely hear his next words.
“I want my daughter back more than anyone, Shadow, but we can’t keep going on like this.” Shadow touched his arm, and leaned in to whisper. Before the room erupted in conversation, Smoke stepped up.
“This raid will be different. Smaller. And all volunteer.” The crowd simmered down. She didn’t have quite as commanding a voice as her sister, but close. Delilah could see how they were leaders. She met Delilah’s gaze over the crowd. “And this will be the last. If we can’t rescue our people, we’ll be forced to switch tactics. But, that is for another discussion. Our people will assemble for the raid, and the rest of you will disperse to the various safe locations. Does anyone have any questions?”
The meeting must have happened well before, because the crowd was mostly mollified, with a few grumbles. Shadow patted the man’s arm and returned to the table, but didn’t sit. She conferred with Smoke, and Delilah raised her hand. It wasn’t like her to speak up, and her hand trembled slightly as every head turned to look at her when Shadow acknowledged her.
“Yes,” she nodded. “Delilah, one of our new recruits.”
Delilah cleared her throat. She wanted her next words to be loud and without challenge. She met Shadow’s eyes. “I have a question,” she said. The corners of her lip turned up, as if Zane were pulling strings from far away. On stage, Brute shook his head with a smile. She nodded to him.
“When do we leave?” she asked.
The team couldn’t leave on the rescue mission for a few more frustrating days. The prisoners who chose not to stay and fight had to be moved to safe houses where they would decide on their own whether to return to their old life. It was risky. They were fugitives, and sure to be looked for. But the pull of the past and family—even love—was too much for some people to walk away from. Delilah understood. She was walking into hell itself for similar reasons.
They left a few at a time, most by foot, some by boat. The star with the circle was chosen as the official symbol of the Human Coalition. Seeing it on a house would mean it was clear, at least until the Authority found out about the symbol. For now, though, the prisoners were scattered with only the picture of a star to guide them. It made Delilah feel a tiny bit better to feel Zane’s influence. He was holding on somewhere, she was sure of it, but they needed to leave soon.
Smoke, Shadow, Brute, and Gen poured over the latest intel looking for the best place to strike and combing over their plan when they got in to Authority City. They’d released some of the little bots, like Thor, on the other side of the river. Poor Thor himself didn’t make it, crushed in their getaway. They downloaded the remaining intel, but it was spotty and unreliable. Mostly they relied on old maps of the city, but the buildings had been upgraded and changed so much they had no idea what they were getting into. Their plan mostly came down to crossing the river and winging it.
“It’s a risk to take the electronics, even the signal scramblers.” Shadow leaned her tall frame over the map, which was laid out on one of the long tables in the meeting hall where they’d met after lunch. The map was a complicated architectural diagram, but the specs hadn’t been updated since the bots took over. Presumably, the same buildings were there, at least the large ones, just added on and improved in ways they didn’t know.
Smoke frowned. She’d piled her hair in a bun on her head, and ran a finger along the main road through the city, tracing a route to the shore. “We have to bring the scramblers, or they’ll nab us right away.”
“They’ll probably nab us anyway,” Brute added. He’d been playing the middle. If they brought the tech, it was in danger of falling into the bots’ hands. If they didn’t, they risked their own lives. But since technically they were going in as employees, they shouldn’t need it. At least, not until they needed to escape.
Smoke sighed. “From the top, then.” Brute was still in contact with Rank, who set the whole thing up. Rank had put out the word he had people looking for work. They knew Delilah’s identity, but they hadn’t traced her to Zane, or, if they did, Rank made the connection disappear. Rank got them jobs with the group that went into the city on boats in the morning, but they didn’t know what it was or what they’d be doing. Theoretically, the group came back in the evenings, but Delilah and Brute planned to break off, find their friends, and rendezvous with Shadow, who’d have a boat hiding in a location on the harbor that used to be a hotel and marina.
“They’re going to search us, anyway,” Brute said, shaking his head. “The scramblers we can hide, but the map and anything else? They’re too big.”
Delilah bounced on her heels. She hadn’t been able to sit down at these meetings for two days. She slammed her fist on the table. “We know all this. When do we go?”
Smoke looked calmly at her. She’d adopted a mother-like persona around Delilah, making sure she ate and rested, to the point where Delilah felt stifled. Smoke’s tight lips formed a frown.
“She’s right,” Shadow conceded. Smoke tried to talk, but the older woman cut her off. “You’ve been dragging your heels, Smoke, and they could have gone two days ago. What is your hesitation?”
“My hesitation…” Smoke pulled
her gaze from Delilah. She looked at the map. “We don’t have enough intel. We don’t have weapons. Supplies.”
Gen put a gentle hand on her shoulder. “We have all the intel we’re likely to get,” she said.
Smoke tossed her hand off and stood up, throwing back the chair so hard it toppled. “Well, shouldn’t we wait until we have more? Otherwise it’s just another suicide mission!”
The room was quiet for a beat, but the others exchanged worried looks. They knew something Delilah didn’t. Something she’d been intuiting. “You lost someone,” Delilah said, more of a statement than a question.
Smoke pursed her lips. Delilah didn’t think she’d answer, but when she did her voice was low and angry. “My daughter was your age.” She flexed her fist. “A lot like you, too. Curious. Brave. Fearless.”
Delilah couldn’t help but smile. No one would have called her those things two weeks ago. She’d been a delicate flower who had to be protected. Now she was a blade, and she was ready to fight. Smoke paused too long, her shoulders hunched. Shadow jumped in.
“She volunteered for one of the raids, like you, actually.” She put an arm around Smoke’s shoulder, and Smoke let her. She kept her eyes closed, and Delilah wondered if it were her daughter she was seeing in her mind. A girl who looked like her, slender, with dark hair and pale features. “Her boyfriend had been taken, and she wouldn’t accept he was gone.”
Smoke interrupted by clearing her throat. “It’s okay.” She shrugged out of Shadow’s hold. “It’s my daughter, my story. It was poorly planned. We had even less intel than we have now, but she wouldn’t let that stop her. They barreled in, under cover of night. They had the early scrambler tech that only worked off and on, but she was hell bent.” She took a breath, looked up and out the window. It was evening, and the sun was low. Fall was coming on and a chill blew through the cabins as she continued. “Charity’s body washed up two days after the raid. We’re still not sure what actually killed her, but it appeared as if she were…tortured.” She spit out the word. Her face was twisted in a way Delilah had never seen, and she had seen a lot of pain in her life.
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