The Legacy Human (Singularity #1) (Singularity Series)

by Susan Kaye Quinn

  I give him a look like, are you serious with this sir business?

  Tristan relaxes his military-level politeness. “Eli, he’s going to be fine. And you’re wanted in command.”

  I peer at Cyrus, but he’s out. Which is probably for the best. He wouldn’t like the trickle of a plan that’s forming in my head. I nod and follow Tristan out of the med bay pod. We stride toward a silver pod against the back wall, dodging militia using maglev skids to move crates. The transport we brought with us is slowly being guided into the cavern. I’m once again struck by the scale of the operation and the sophistication of the tech. The militia has access to serious resources, which makes my trickle of a plan solidify with the icy realization that it actually might work. The only trick will be convincing Leopold.

  We reach the command pod, and the inside is jammed with more tech and black-garbed personnel. A large screen floats at one end, but smaller ones line the sides, with militia attending to the data streams on each. One monitors a contour map that looks like it could be the mountain range we’re nestled in. Another scans pages of data on a holo screen, pulling out individual threads by waving her hands in a complicated dance. Tristan and I only garner brief glimpses as we pass, heading toward the large screen where Mrs. Astoria and Leopold are having a hushed but animated argument in French.

  Before we reach them, Tristan leans back to whisper to me, “They’re arguing about you. Something about going back to Agon?” His look is questioning, but I don’t want to explain that he may have just rescued me for nothing. Because I need to find my mom and get her a cure, which means getting Lenora back. And to do that I’ll have to face the ascender that Tristan and his fellow dissenter militia just risked their lives to liberate me from.

  Tristan catches my arm, holding me back before I bust in on Mrs. Astoria and Leopold’s urgent French conversation. “Commander,” he says quietly to Mrs. Astoria, “if this isn’t a good time…”

  She turns and waves off his concern. “No, no. This concerns Eli as well.”

  Tristan takes a step back, but doesn’t go far, watching us.

  Leopold’s scowl grows deeper. “We can find another way to get them back, Simone,” he says to her. “Involving Eli will put too many of our objectives at risk.”

  “Too many of your objectives, perhaps.” Red splotches rise up in her cheeks. “Mine are simple: to retrieve the girls.”

  This makes my heart lurch. “Do you know where they are?” That wasn’t part of my plan, but it could be.

  Leopold gives me a dark look which immediately tells me that they don’t, but then he just shakes his head at Mrs. Astoria—Commander Astoria. “I know this is personal for you—”

  “Of course it is personal.” Her body stiffens, and the small rustling noises of the command center fall silent. I’m holding my breath, too. “She is my daughter, Leopold, something I do not expect you to understand. But that is far from my only concern. The girls won the gold. You understand what this means as well as I: they won the hearts of a majority of the ascender world, and no doubt the legacy world as well. Then, while the whole world was watching, on nets both legacy and ascender, it was taken from them. They were denied the gold, Leopold. It is not quite the statement we wished to make in refusing it, but it could possibly have an even more dramatic effect. The Olympic committee denied the will of Orion, all because the girls were associated with us, the resistance. It is unprecedented, and it makes us appear strong. A true threat that must be quashed. But if we allow the girls to disappear into ascender custody, it will prove our weakness to the world. And it will strike a demoralizing blow that no one in the movement will forgive us for. Nor should they. We must strike back. We must use every resource to retrieve the girls and not allow them to become sacrificial lambs to the ascenders’ games.”

  She glances at me, but then returns her steely-eyed stare to Leopold. “In spite of our attack, the ascenders are proceeding with the medals ceremony. We must not allow that to continue unanswered. We should strike at the heart of the Agon, just as we originally planned, regardless of who is on the stage.”

  “If you simply commit the act of terrorism,” Leopold says, his voice tight, “without the defiance of the girls, you will not have the intended effect on the sentiments within Orion, I can promise you that. And it will be even more difficult to retrieve the girls then, if not outright impossible.” The way he says it makes me think it’s already an impossible task to get them back.

  “Perhaps,” Commander Astoria says. “I do not wish to make martyrs of our children. Better to retrieve them, so they can become living symbols of what we are fighting against. But the ascenders must pay a price.”

  Leopold fists one hand and presses it to his forehead, like he’s run out of arguments for the small but fierce Simone Astoria. Given she’s Delphina’s mom, I’m surprised he’s held out this long.

  “Let me help,” I say.

  Leopold points an angry finger at me. “Stay out of this, Eli.”

  “No,” she says harshly. “If the boy can help, you will not stand in his way.” She definitely sounds like Delphina now, and even Leopold seems to cringe a little.

  “Marcus wants me, not the girls,” I say to Mrs. Astoria. Then I turn to Leopold. “He doesn’t need Lenora either, right? Just me. So, it’s simple. We make a trade. Me for all of them.” I leave out that Marcus probably most wants for me to be dead. Although I’m not really sure of that, given he could have killed me before now.

  Leopold is shaking his head, like he’s already thought of all the ways this isn’t what he wants. Mrs. Astoria is sizing me up.

  Before they get too far, I say, “I just want one thing in return.” They both wait to hear what I have to say, but I direct my words to Leopold. “I want you and Lenora to find my mom and get her the gen tech cure she needs.”

  Commander Astoria gives me a sharp nod. That she doesn’t even question the gen tech part confirms my suspicion that the resistance has access to that and probably a whole lot more.

  Leopold crosses his arms and stares at the giant screen. It’s a map of the city, crisscrossed with lines that might be roads or train lines or ancient sewer pipes, for all I can tell. But it’s clearly a level of knowledge that the dissenters wouldn’t have without the help of ascenders like him.

  Finally Leopold turns back to me. “If I trade you for Lenora, she will never forgive me.”

  “And if you don’t, Marcus may crack her personal key,” I say. “What happens then? How much does she know about the resistance? You could lose a lot more than just one human experiment.” I’m reaching here—I have no idea how tightly Lenora is involved in the resistance. Leopold’s grimace gets darker, and he turns back to examine the screen again, but I don’t think he’s looking for something there. More like he’s running a thousand scenarios in his ascender brain, trying to find a solution to this situation. But I’m pretty sure the one I’ve laid out is by far their best option.

  Finally, he turns to Mrs. Astoria. “If we get the girls back, will you hold off on blowing the stadium? There will be a proper time for that, Simone, but it’s not now.”

  “We will not have another chance for a demonstration like this,” she says tightly. “If we wait until the next games, it will not have the impact we desire. I will mobilize the forces needed to execute the mission. If you fail to liberate the girls, I will proceed.”

  I have no doubt she’ll carry through with that threat, even though it would make getting Delphina back nearly impossible… and I’m kind of aghast at her willingness to put her own daughter at risk for the cause. I glance at Tristan behind me, but his face is blank. His words from before float back to me. There’s always that risk.

  “Well, now, that doesn’t give us much time, does it?” Leopold’s sarcasm actually makes me relax. Makes me think he has a plan. He turns to me. “Eli, I have no intention of losing you to Marcus.”

  “Okay.” I have no idea how he plans to manage that, but I’m all for tryin
g.

  “I’ve suspected all along that Marcus wasn’t a true believer. But the things he’s managed… getting Thompson killed, influencing the Olympic committee to get the girls disqualified… I knew he had influence, but I didn’t know how far it reached.”

  “Are you sure he did those things?” I say, although I wouldn’t be surprised.

  “No,” Leopold says. “But I’m certain now that he’s not acting alone. He’s part of some larger force at work here. One that wishes to destroy what Lenora and I and the rest of the group have been working toward.”

  I wonder just how many ascenders are involved in this experiment they’ve been running, but I don’t ask. I may not live long enough for any of that to matter.

  Leopold continues. “I need to know who else Marcus has been working with. And handing you over to him just might be the only way to do that.”

  That gets my attention. “What do you have in mind?”

  He holds me with a long look. “I want you to crack Marcus’s personal key.”

  Less than an hour later, I’m on a one-way ride back to Marcus.

  At least, that’s what I’m assuming at this point. Whatever Marcus has planned for me, I’m not likely to come back from it… unchanged. My stomach churns on that, even though the transport flight across the LA basin is utterly calm. At least, by the end of this, my mom will get the cure she needs and the girls will be safe. Lenora will be freed as well, although I’m a lot less willing to risk my life for her.

  Riding in the cockpit is definitely an improvement over the transport’s cargo hold, and the view is better, too. The afternoon sunshine turns the ascenders’ glass and metal spires into blazing torches as we fly over them. Leopold sits next to me in the copilot seat, with the pilot being one of Commander Astoria’s troops. The 360 degree flying helmet obscures her face, but her battle armor is the same as the dozen militia crammed into the hold, waiting to ensure the exchange goes according to plan.

  In the distance ahead, the Pacific Ocean winks reflected sunshine off a million rolling waves. The ascenders’ aversion to water relegates the beachfront to the seagulls and crabs. We’re headed to some abandoned pier. I think Leopold called it Saint Monica. I wasn’t listening to that part, more keenly interested in the exchange that is scheduled to happen there. What happens after that—the part where I somehow crack Marcus’s personal key—seems ridiculously half-baked.

  Like I said, one way ticket for me.

  Leopold is holo programming something into the tiny button that he says is my weapon to use against Marcus. The pilot heels the transport over in a slow sweep that angles us down the coast. The cloaking device for the ship must be working, or we’d already be intercepted by police bots.

  “Are you sure Marcus isn’t going to meet us at the pier with a hundred tactical weapons bots?” I ask Leopold. “If he’s as well connected as you say, I don’t see why he wouldn’t just set a trap for us and spring it once we get there.”

  “Probably because I told him I would kill you if he brought more than the girls, Lenora, and two personal security bots.”

  “Okay,” I say, drawing the word out.

  He looks up from programming the button and smirks. “He didn’t believe me either. But I know Marcus. If he brings a small army to this exchange, he’ll simply be broadcasting what he’s doing. Which is not legal on several fronts. But most importantly, he’s not going to want to risk losing you in a melee.”

  “You’re sure?” I ask. “Because as far as I’m concerned, this is all for nothing if you don’t get Lenora back and hold up your end of the bargain.”

  He looks me in the eyes. “I gave you my word on that, Eli.”

  My frown probably gives away that I’m not too sure how much that’s worth.

  He sighs and looks out the cockpit window at the vista below. “I have my own reasons for wanting Lenora back.”

  “So Marcus doesn’t crack her personal key and find out what she knows?”

  “That, and I quite literally owe her my life.” He looks back to me with a small smile. “Can you guess what I was before the Singularity?”

  The original ascendance was so long ago, a hundred years and counting, that it’s hard for me to remember the ascenders came from that time period. That they were ordinary people once, all different ages and races and occupations. Intellectually, I know they’re all over a hundred years old, but they seem so timeless in their bodyforms. Eternal. Like gods.

  I try to picture Leopold in that long-ago time of personal automobiles, incurable diseases, and excessive pollution. “Heart surgeon?” I guess.

  His smirk grows into a grin. “Almost. Tibetan monk.”

  I choke on my surprise. “I thought all the religious were dissenters.” Although, technically, I know this isn’t true. A lot of people who belonged to religions still ascended. At the time, it was like a religious calling of its own.

  “Oh, I had my doubts. About everything. That was the problem, really.”

  I don’t understand what he’s saying, but I nod anyway.

  “For a long time, it was everything promised and so much more. I thought it was the true awakening.” Leopold gazes out into the brilliant blue sky ahead of us. “I believed that quenching the fires of ignorance would eventually lead to nirvana here on Earth. But instead of stillness, the passions of self and suffering were even more inflamed. When the realization that I had been wrong came creeping in, it was more devastating than you can imagine.” He glances at me. “I nearly became one of the scrubbed.”

  “One of the what?”

  He gives a sad smile. “I withdrew from Orion and destroyed my backup. I was daring the world to destroy me. To let me see if I truly had a soul that would live beyond this earthly world. I thought I might reincarnate into one of you: a legacy or a newborn dissenter. It wasn’t until I found myself back at my old temple, destroyed in the religious purges, that I realized I was just warming up to the idea of self-termination.

  I listen wide-eyed to his words. “You were trying to kill yourself?”

  “I coated my bodyform with the few chemical reactants powerful enough to reduce it to elemental sludge. I shut down my sensory inputs, so the pain wouldn’t weaken my resolve… then Lenora arrived at the temple.” Leopold holds me with an intense look. “She promised an answer to the question I had given up asking. It was literally the only thing that could have stopped me.”

  “So, you owe her,” I say.

  “Yes, I owe her, but it’s more than that. Lenora thinks you’re our answer. She’ll hate me for putting you at risk, but I don’t need her to love me. I just need her to keep asking The Question.”

  I nod, finally convinced, then gesture to the tiny silver button still lying in his hands. “Tell me how this is going to work.”

  “Give me your hand.”

  I frown, but offer my left hand to him, palm up. He pulls out a thin, tube-like device and uses it to suck up the button. Then he holds the tube to my middle finger and taps it. A small pinch makes me twitch, but then the pain is instantly gone. When he pulls the tube away, there’s no mark or any indication that he’s done anything.

  “You’ll need to be close enough to touch him,” Leopold says. “Once you press your finger against Marcus’s bodyform, the device will be drawn out and transferred to his skin. Make sure you’re not touching clothing because that won’t be enough to activate it.”

  “Okay.” I have no idea if I’ll have the chance to touch Marcus, but it’s at least worth a shot. “What happens then?”

  “Possibly nothing. If he was in his normal bodyform, his automatic defense systems would quickly detect the intruding program and destroy it. But if he’s still in a rental body, it’s possible it won’t have the more sophisticated defenses. They aren’t standard in that level of tech.”

  “And if it works… how long until I know?”

  “Minutes, possibly longer. If it succeeds in cracking his personal key, I’ve enabled a basic immobilization ro
utine.” He frowns at me. “It’s important not to kill Marcus, or at least, not to destroy his bodyform. If that happens, his backup will be automatically activated, he’ll change his personal key, and we won’t be able to access what he knows. I need for you to disable and capture him, understood?”

  I nod, but this seems as half-baked as the first time Leopold explained it to me. “And once I’ve disabled him, how do I get him out of… wherever we’re going to be?” I have no idea what Marcus’s plans are.

  “The device has a tracker as well. We’ll know if you’ve successfully deployed it.”

  “So you’ll come for me?”

  “That’s the idea.”

  The transport heels over again and starts to drop toward the water. The shining sea surrounds the broken skeleton of the pier lying in the water. It’s wide at each end and narrow in the middle. More than half of the broad wooden planks have fallen away, but a forest of concrete pilings has survived the onslaught of weather and years. Most of the pilings serve as perches for seagulls, but a string of the concrete stubs are still connected, forming two slim walkways on either side of the pier. It’s maybe fifty feet across in the narrow section and several hundred feet long. The pilot steers us toward the wide end jutting over the water, while at the beach end, I can just make out the glint of another transport with several figures standing nearby.

  From this distance, I can’t tell who they are, but one figure is laid out on a stretcher… which makes my chest tight. I take a breath and let it out slow to steady my nerves. We swoop down and hover over the pier. A walk plank extends from the ship to the barest sliver of pier that still exists at the end. There’s enough room for the dozen troops, plus Leopold and me, but only because we’re spread out, like birds on a wire. I have an uneasy feeling, like we’re exposed, even with the transport hovering at our backs.

  Leopold is whispering into a communicator, setting up the exchange. I can barely make out Marcus’s transport at the other end. The haze of sea spray and glinting sun make it appear to be a mirage.