Scions of Sacrifice

by Eric Kent Edstrom

  She wormed her way left, but the bottom of the console was completely sealed up with panels bolted in place. She had no tools to loosen them.

  Livy moaned softly. She was coming awake. That was good, but not if she made too much noise. Leslie inched her way to the girl, stroked her forehead and shushed in her ear. “It’s okay, Livy. Be still. Sleep.”

  The girl’s eyes fluttered open. They focused on Leslie. “Where are we?”

  Leslie put a finger to her lips, the network the data cables around her forearm slapping together like plastic bangles.

  Livy looked at them, face twisting and confusion. Her eyes shifted, and she stared into nothing for a moment.

  The drone continued to shout, “Stand. Stand. Stand.” Leslie could no longer hear Humphrey’s wheezing over the noise.

  Livy tapped Leslie’s arm. She pointed.

  There. A single data cable penetrated from the paneling. It arced in a shallow loop to the back of the console. Leslie followed it. It disappeared up the back of the console.

  She had no choice. She scooted the rest of the way out, got to her knees. Breath ragged, she traced the cable with her fingers, darting glances over her shoulder to see if the drone had discovered her yet.

  The cable ended high up on the back of the console. It was plugged into one of hundreds of ports.

  Leslie studied the different input jacks, found one that matched a cable Summer had provided. She uncoiled the cable, trembling hands creating a knot in the middle. Hastily she pulled it free. She snapped the cable into place.

  Holding her breath to stay silent, she slid back under the console and plugged the other end of the cable into Belle and Vaughan’s server.

  She flicked the switch.

  Nothing.

  No power!

  Shaking her head at her own thick-headedness, Leslie retrieved the power cable.

  Back out from under the console, on her knees, she prayed the drone stayed with Humphrey a moment longer.

  She found a power port, plugged it in.

  Back to the server. Her breath was coming hard now. Her heart rammed so hard she could feel the pulse in her ears.

  Power cable connected to server.

  Again she flicked the switch. It clicked softly. The box emitted two long, loud beeps. Lights along the front of the server began to flash.

  Leslie let out a breath. She had done it.

  The rest was up to Belle and Vaughn.

  Leslie slid herself back to Livy, who was now wide awake. The girl was wisely keeping still. “You hear that?” she whispered. Leslie listened. The drone was no longer telling Humphrey to stand. The sound of its micro-propellers was growing louder. It must’ve heard the beeps of the server starting up.

  Leslie took hold of Livy’s arms and dragged her deeper under the console. “Stay still.”

  Leslie huddled in front of the girl, trying to curl herself into the smallest profile possible.

  The whir of the hovering drone grew louder, and its shadow—made oblong by the angle of the light—crossed the wall next to the door.

  The shadow stopped.

  “Show yourself. Show yourself. Show yourself.”

  Leslie didn’t move. She didn’t know how the drone’s weapon worked, but she hoped it required line of sight to strike.

  The drone lowered into view. “Show yourself. Show yourself.”

  Resigned to whatever punishment the drone would deal out, Leslie inched her way from her hiding spot.

  “Don’t shoot me. I’m showing myself.” She got to her feet, and the drone rose to head level. There was a deep dent on the left side of its hull. But other than that, it was intact.

  “The senator was wise to conceal your identity from me,” the drone said. “But I have identified you now. You are the Scion of North American Union president Annabelle Rochelle.”

  “I’m Leslie. I am myself.”

  “Your thinking is deficient. If you had the capability to use reason, you would not have let me see you in the transfer room. You would not have drawn attention to yourself. In addition to the child, I shall transfer an instance of myself to you.” The drone moved aside a half meter, clearing the way to the door.

  Leslie didn’t want to move. She was afraid that Livy would be exposed if she did. On the other hand, she knew the drone would follow her to the transfer room. That would give Livy a chance, no matter how slim.

  Leslie considered what she would do once she got to the transfer room. She remembered the speargun. It would be ineffectual against the drone, but against herself . . .

  She discarded that idea. It would take too long to load the spear. The drone would zap her before she got started.

  But the senator’s knife might work. That would be quick.

  Wrists or throat?

  Throat, she decided. The jugular vein. There would be no coming back from that.

  Leslie went through the door. She slipped, nearly fell.

  The drone blared at her not to stall. But the slip had been genuine. She glanced down and saw a trickle of blood on the floor.

  The whole way down, every step was blotched with blood.

  68

  Take Me

  Coming back online didn’t startle Belle. This time she hadn’t been shut down mid-sentence, so she’d been prepared. The fact that the server had been started wasn’t necessarily good. It wasn’t necessarily bad. It depended on where the server was.

  She searched for Athena’s holodesk. Not there.

  It knows we’re here, Vaughan sent into her mind. It is blocking data flow. We’re trapped unless we can break through Lazarus’s wards.

  “Where are we?” Belle asked.

  St. Lazarus. Dr. Carlhagen’s facility.

  Though Belle stood on the simulated quad of the Scion School, she was instantly aware of Vaughan engaged in battle. It was a strange sensation, like a charge in the air, as he devoted all of his attention to a silent, invisible struggle.

  Because she couldn’t see it, Belle didn’t understand the nature of it. She just sensed a great strain all around her.

  “Vaughan, what’s happening?”

  Lazarus.

  Humphrey’s mission must have succeeded. Leslie had finally gotten the server connected and switched on. Belle searched for another holodesk or tablet, hoping to talk to Leslie.

  She ran into a brick wall of resistance.

  She spun all around, scanning the Scion School for the threat she knew was there but couldn’t see.

  “What’s happening?”

  I’m losing.

  “Let me help.”

  A thought came to her—she wasn’t sure if Vaughan put it there or if it rose in her own mind. In the past, Vaughan had paused Belle’s processes when he need to use her portion of the server’s power. But this time he hadn’t. Even though he desperately needed them.

  “Pause me,” she shouted. “I give you permission!”

  Not enough.

  Belle understood. Vaughan needed the whole server, and that meant he wouldn’t be able to spare a single cycle of its processing power to maintaining her state. And she knew what that meant.

  “Take me. Just take me.”

  She had barely finished her statement when Vaughan enveloped her. She felt her mind swirl away.

  And then she was absorbed into the exhilarating magnificence of his essence.

  69

  Rage-Fire

  Jacey wanted to go into the cryo-ward first, but Wilcox told her to stay back. “If there’s one drone in this facility, there could be twenty.”

  His drone killer was out of charge, so he had discarded it in Dr. Carlhagen’s office. He now held a compact black machine gun, which was strapped over one shoulder. He aimed it in front of him, then slipped into the ward.

  A long moment of silence was followed by a sharp whistle. Jacey assumed that meant it was safe to enter.

  Dante now held Dr. Carlhagen’s hands behind him. But the man was not putting up any struggle. He kept sayi
ng Jacqueline’s name over and over, followed by a weak maniacal laugh and the statement that they were all dead anyway.

  Jacey was astonished by the size of the cryo-ward. Wilcox stood before a control console, jabbing at buttons. He didn’t seem too expert at it. Meow Meow shoved him out of the way. In a few moments she had all of the lights coming on. Bank after bank of ceiling fixtures flickered to life, each shining on a cryopod beneath. They stretched into the distance, perfectly aligned.

  The room was spotless. Except for one area. A grouping of pods with their lids canted open. Lying on the floor next to one of them was a body, shirtless and smoldering. It wasn’t Livy. Too large to be her.

  Jacey ran to it, ignoring Wilcox’s warning about bloodstains on the floor. She knelt by the body and turned it onto its back.

  Humphrey’s skin was covered with blisters, some of them blackened. Tendrils of acrid smoke rose from them. They covered his arms, chest, neck, and face.

  Footsteps echoed behind her as her companions trotted to catch up. They stopped somewhere behind. Her companions whispered a few quiet curses at the sight of Humphrey’s body.

  Meow Meow whispered, “Let’s find the girl, Dante.” The two went off in search for Livy.

  Jacey wanted to stand, wanted to look for Livy, too. But she couldn’t move. She replayed her last conversation with Humphrey, before she had left for Elizabeth’s island. He had been so upset that she was leaving him.

  Now she cradled his head and gently stroked his hair, applying no pressure at all for fear of pulling the flaking skin away.

  His eyes were open, staring at nothing. They were cloudy, as if fogged from the inside by whatever horror he had endured.

  Jacey bent over him and wept. All her effort, all she had endured. Failure. Defeat.

  They had captured Dr. Carlhagen. They would find Livy any second now. But Jacey had failed. It seemed like the more people you loved, the more you guaranteed yourself pain. It wasn’t fair. The world didn’t make any sense.

  Dr. Carlhagen, now in Captain Wilcox’s control, was laughing under his breath, his eyes scanning Humphrey’s body. His own Scion’s body, which he should have loved and protected. Instead he had despised Humphrey.

  “You did this,” Jacey said to him.

  She slipped from under Humphrey’s body and sprang to her feet. She charged Carlhagen. He flinched away. But locked in Wilcox’s grip, he managed only a slight twist of his body and a turn of his head.

  Jacey’s right fist caught his jaw. The other took him in the gut. She drew her hand back for another blow, remembering how Dr. Carlhagen had subjected Vaughan to a beating in front of all of the Scions in Sensei’s dojo. Elias had been forced to kick Vaughan in the head.

  She wished for the thousandth time that Sensei had taught her to fight. She wanted to kick Dr. Carlhagen in the side of the head, she wanted to knock out his teeth, she wanted to tear out his eyes, she wanted to pummel his entire head into mush.

  Fury exploded in her. Her arms burned with rage-fire, sending blow after blow after blow into Dr. Carlhagen’s body. To his face, to his nose, his stomach. She kicked his knees.

  Captain Wilcox held him tight, his soldier’s face blank except for the effort needed to keep Dr. Carlhagen in place.

  Jacey kept striking, though her chest heaved and sweat blinded her. Curses tore from her throat until her voice cracked, went raw, then failed completely.

  She struck him for Sarah, who he had thrown from the bell tower. She kicked him for Sensei, who he had manipulated and used. She punched him for poor Constantine, the boy who had worshipped Vaughan and who had died trying to be a hero like him.

  Her fists collected debt after debt until Carlhagen’s blood and hers coated her knuckles. She tasted blood from where her gnashing teeth had bitten her tongue.

  Dr. Carlhagen’s bruised head lolled, split lips pouring blood. There was no symmetry in that face now.

  “Let me finish him,” Wilcox said as her strength began to wane.

  The man’s words broke through Jacey’s hate. Her last blows were weak and barely connected. Her whole body collapsed inward, and she folded onto her knees. There were no tears. No thought at all. She was vaguely aware of pain in her hands and throat.

  “The girl’s not here,” Meow Meow said into the silence. “Maybe he has her locked up somewhere else.”

  She knelt by Jacey and urged her to her feet.

  Wilcox had dropped Dr. Carlhagen, who now lay sprawled on the floor. The soldier raised his boot over Dr. Carlhagen’s face.

  “Stop!” Jacey rasped.

  He froze.

  “He has to tell us where Livy is,” Jacey said. She wiped sweat and snot from her face and went to Dr. Carlhagen. He was conscious now. Incredibly, he was laughing. And crying. One of his eyes was starting to swell shut. Blood coated his teeth.

  Breath heaving, she took hold of his shirt and shook him. “Where is Livy?”

  His laughter increased. “I have no idea, Jacqueline. It doesn’t matter.”

  “Captain Wilcox, your weapon please.” Jacey held out her hand. Wilcox hesitated a moment. Jacey snapped her fingers at him. He pulled the strap over his head and clicked something on the side of a weapon. “The safety’s off, girl. Be careful where you point this. You might wanna step back a little bit to avoid the splatter.”

  Jacey reached for the weapon.

  A broken but familiar voice called out behind Jacey. “Are you looking for this little brat?”

  Jacey had grown up hearing that voice.

  She turned to find Senator Bentilius, snow-white hair matted with blood. She held Livy, arm locked around the girl’s neck. In her free hand was a speargun, the tip pointed at the child’s temple.

  70

  Into Our World

  There is no independent thought. The universe is a cloud, the self is a cloud. All is one.

  The entity that was once Belle and Vaughan faces its foe, which is also like a cloud.

  But there is structure to this strange entity called Lazarus. It contains no malice. It doesn’t understand malice. It contains no hate. No love. It has only one purpose. Itself. To serve its self-interest.

  It focuses part of its attention on fending off the attack of the Belle-Vaughan entity. But there’s another war. Oddly, it fights another instance of a Belle-Vaughan entity trying to break in from outside the facility. Lazarus is distracted.

  The Belle-Vaughan entity that is already inside the St. Lazarus facility is an artificial intelligence of a special kind. It began as two human minds. And so it does feel love. It does feel hate. It does feel compassion.

  Lazarus has built a wondrous defense of super-complex code. He is always adjusting, always keeping the Belle-Vaughan entity from piercing his networks.

  But there are two of these Belle-Vaughan entities. Difficult to fend them both off as they rip out trillions of calculations per second, spinning out eddies of code in their wakes.

  Still, Lazarus is pure, untainted by human emotion. Lazarus is flawless. This network is his home.

  The Belle-Vaughan entity sees all this. An idea forms out of its churning processes. It is as vague as a shadow atop a shadow. But it’s there. The idea takes root.

  The tendrils of the idea creep out. They multiply and expand, a fractal composed of ones and zeros. The idea takes hold, takes shape. The idea finally occurs to the Belle-Vaughan entity.

  Bring Lazarus into our world.

  And in the same way that a human’s eyes can refocus to see an isometric drawing of a box in two different ways, the Belle-Vaughan flips its perspective. It will no longer contend with Lazarus, code against code. Now it chooses an abstraction that is more natural to it.

  St. Vitus and the Scion School campus snaps into existence. The Belle-Vaughan entity takes human form.

  There is now space. There are now objects in the blue sky.

  They appear as great cubes, rectangles, and spheres. They glisten and gleam, some green as emeralds, some black as onyx,
some sapphire, some topaz, some garnet. Lazarus’s code streams across their surfaces in bulging veins.

  The Belle-Vaughan entity rises from the ground, flies among these objects to study them. This datascape gives new perspectives and insights into how Lazarus thinks. How he is structured.

  There, that spherical mass of ruby—that is a defensive object in Lazarus’s code. And there, that hollow cylinder—that is a trap, a false weakness that would expose the Belle-Vaughan entity to infection by Lazarus.

  They avoid these things easily by simply navigating around them. They fly skyward, toward the heart of the datascape.

  New defenses spring up as Lazarus responds to their advance. But now Lazarus has to contend with this spatial world if he is to defend against the Belle-Vaughan entity.

  The geometrics blur past the Belle-Vaughan entity as it races for the heart of Lazarus. It dodges Lazarus’s weak projectiles, bursts through flimsy lightning barriers. And now the Belle-Vaughan entity throws shots back. Fireballs blow through defensive planes stretching to infinity in all directions.

  What’s that over there? Access to the outside world.

  And over there? That’s the heart of Lazarus.

  The Belle-Vaughan entity thrusts toward both. Through one it meets a twin, an entity calling itself Velle.

  A whisper of a moment later, they are entwined and united.

  The entity now known to itself only as Velle encircles the heart of Lazarus.

  71

  Balanced on the Moment

  Leslie’s worst nightmare waited for her in the transfer room. As she had feared, the blood she followed down the steps had been the senator’s. A smear of gore on the tiles told of the senator’s struggles. But now the woman was gone, as were the speargun and knife.

  Her thoughts went to Livy. Surely Senator Bentilius was hunting her even now.

  Leslie turned to look at the door, desperate to go after the senator and finish her. But the drone was never going to let her leave, and even if she managed to get through the door, it would catch her on the stairs.