Rebirth (Archives of Humanity Book 1)
Page 17
“What the hell is that?” he muttered. A gaping hole had been cut into the floor of the Frigg. It looked like a massive drill had bore through the underplating.
He slid off the nosecone and dropped onto his stomach. Afforded plenty of clearance, he crawled under the ship. The hole that’d lacerated the Frigg burrowed deep enough into the sand that he couldn’t see bottom, which he imagined had to be filled with water.
Leon looked up. Whatever had punched its way into the ship was guided by a steady hand. Or steady Machinery. The edges of the hole were smooth, not a jagged chip of metal to be seen.
He hoisted himself up and inside, hoping that Orissa was in the cargo bay, submachine gun in hand and the guts of intruders all around her.
She was not, and neither was Droll. The bay was empty except for her backpack.
A thought crossed his mind. One of thorns and malevolence. What if Orissa and Droll were doomed? Good chance they were. The electromagnetic pulse grenade was in her pack. He could take it to the Atlas Mountains, activate it, be the hero humanity needed in its darkest hour. He’d find and free remaining humans, dashing the Machines’ plans to turn them into Rogue Hunters.
No, he told himself, utterly disgusted with himself for letting the thought pass uninterrupted. He couldn’t go on without Orissa. He needed her.
He needed her. That recognition nearly made him stumble backward into the control console. He hadn’t realized just how much she meant to him until now. Until she wasn’t here.
“Major General Imus,” came a small voice.
Droll piloted himself into the ship from below.
“Droll. Where’s Orissa?”
“They took her.”
“Took her? They? Who, where? Why didn’t they take you?” He paused. “I don’t mean that in offensive way, but—”
“I barely escaped, Major General Imus. It is only because my movement does not require the use of legs. Machines took Orissa, but they are not like the Machines I am accustomed to seeing. These are different. They look like… me.”
Leon massaged his chin, taking this all in. “An army of you doesn’t seem like they could seize Orissa. Doesn’t seem terribly frightening, either.”
“One of them had saws for hands.”
“That’s slightly terrifying.” He looked at the hole, frowning. “All right, pal. Down into the depths of hell we go.”
Chapter Seventeen
She’s been through worse, Leon told himself. She’s been to the Red Room. That self-reassurance didn’t quite hit its mark. He couldn’t stop thinking of Orissa as he and Droll descended the tunnel beneath the sand, a blue cone of light projecting from the drone’s lens guiding their way.
Was she suffering? Was she in pain?
If those bastard Machines bled her even a drop, Leon would dissect them bolt by bolt, processor core by processor core.
“Detect anything yet?” Leon asked, keeping his voice low. The tunnel had relented slightly in its steepness, but down, down, down it went, destined to meet the core of the Earth. Its walls were of iron reinforced with rivets and crossbeams.
Droll kept close by, buzzing near his head. “I detect static only, Major General Imus.”
“Much as I like your titles, just call me Leon. Will you?”
“Today is full of surprises, Leon.”
Leon chuckled wistfully to himself. “That it is, Droll. That it is. What’s with your sensors? This place playing foul with them? You’ve gone from hacking Primes to being essentially blind.”
“There appears to be interference, the origin of which I am uncertain. I—”
Droll quieted, and Leon froze. The drone clicked off his light.
Ahead, the mouth of the tunnel opened wide and spilled into a glittering metropolis of unquantifiable size.
“It looks like a city for gods,” whispered Leon, intending for that remark to stay in his head. A violet hue hung in the air like a distant nebula, sheathing the tiered streets and floors that must have risen at least three hundred feet high. They were connected by glass bridges set aglow by strips of dotted light that sparkled like glistening amethysts.
Two statuaries carved from marble dominated the city, each curiously spun into a double helix. For a moment, Leon wondered if the architects of this wondrous place were humans.
But no. Humanity wasn’t so far advanced that it could reroute the sea.
Along the walls were massive tubes of seawater like pipes in a basement, pumping the ocean along and depositing it into an unknown location.
Had he the anonymity and the time, Leon might have poured over the grandeur of this underground wonder for hours. But time hadn’t been a friend for a while, and his anonymity was vanishingly small, particularly with the humdrum of drones meandering like ants in their colony.
The spherical, Droll-like bots fluttered from one section of the city to the other, bypassing bridges which called into question their use. What need did winged Machines have for walkways and roads?
Maybe this place had been carved by human hand. Could be that man was more advanced than Leon remembered.
He crept forward, Droll at his side. He hugged the wall as he went, breathing slowly and quietly, as if too loud an exhale would trigger a human alert and draw every lens-bearing drone on him.
There had to be ten thousand, and that was a conservative guess.
“What are those ones doing?” Leon asked, pointing to a stage of rock that had been cleaved from the mountain itself, tall curtains pulled back. Four drones hovered on the stage, painted in neon pinks and greens, and before them was an audience of fellow Machines.
The four drones danced around one another, wings flicking forward as if in communication. It looked like a tribal festival.
When they finished, they faced their audience and shuttered their lenses. A high-pitched trilling erupted from the crowd. The curtains closed and the drones departed.
“Did I just witness a Machine play?” questioned Leon.
“It would seem they’ve taken after human culture.”
“Or created one of their own,” Leon suggested, head shaking as he spotted one peculiarity after another. One drone appeared to be hawking an accessory attachment service, a holographic display projected from his lens showing saw attachments, drills, lens enhancements. There were no words, only pictures.
Did these Machines have a monetary system? A governance? They might have been made of metal and their brains were inorganic, but they shared more similarities with humans than Machines. It almost seemed as if they had emotions, wants, desires.
It was difficult for Leon to grasp.
Or perhaps, difficult for him to accept.
“All right, Droll,” said Leon, clearing his mind. “We need to find Orissa. She’s here somewhere.”
There had to be more than a hundred hallways and alleys scattered throughout the city, and Orissa could have been taken through any one of them onto her destination. Or, she could be back in the offshoot corridors that Leon had passed coming down the tunnel.
This might take a while, he thought.
An electric shock tore through him then, and he fell. He could hear nothing, feel nothing, as his vision went black.
For the first time since he’d been tapped as a Rogue Hunter, Leon woke without remembering a single dream. That was good.
His imprisonment behind bars that buzzed with pure energy—that was decidedly not good.
The cell was roomy enough, but it had few comforts. It seemed sculpted from the mountain, ceiling and walls of rock standing in stark contrast to the beams of energy that locked Leon inside. A stone bench stood in the corner, but it had already been taken.
By a Machine. A far larger, uglier, and angrier Machine than the drones in the city. It looked like a military scout without its weapon, its conical head inlaid with sensors.
Leon knew he’d let his gaze linger too long on the metal fiend when it rose with purpose. He checked his person and found that while he hadn’t been sh
ackled and stripped naked, he had been stripped of his rifle and belt.
Fleshy fists versus metal wouldn’t work out well in his favor.
“I don’t want any trouble,” said Leon, scooting back, hands up passively. Slowly, he got to his feet, glancing behind his shoulder. He was out of room. The glowing bars of energy were half a foot away, and the Machine didn’t seem keen on mollifying the situation.
It approached with the clanking of titanium footsteps.
Duck and roll. Duck and roll, Leon told himself.
The Machine reared back with its metal fist, but before it had the opportunity to dislocate Leon’s jaw—and brain—a hissing streak of electricity bolted through the bars and struck it in the chest.
The Machine went taut and fell to the ground with a clatter like falling pots and pans.
“Leon Imus,” said a drone in the hallway. “You have a voucher. Please, come with me.”
The energy beams collapsed, firing back up the moment Leon exited. He didn’t know where the drone would take him, but better there than sitting in a cell waiting for an angry, human-hating Machine to awake.
It had been clear before that these drones weren’t like the Machines Leon hated and hunted, but now it became evident the two weren’t on friendly terms.
Could be why those Valedalls hauled ass away from the island, he thought.
“Hold your hands together at your waist,” ordered the drone. “This will not hurt.”
Leon hesitated. This will not hurt. Never in history had those words inspired confidence. Still, he had few options but to comply. It wasn’t as if he could blast his way out of trouble.
The drone flew in close to Leon. A front compartment door opened from the drone’s body, and a thin metal arm shot out, equipped with three metal fingers. The drone wrapped a flexible band around Leon’s wrists, then applied pressure.
Leon felt a warmth that radiated into his shoulders, and the band erupted into a binding circlet of violet energy. He tried pulling his hands apart, but he couldn’t move them so much as an inch.
Whether more impressed or fearful, he couldn’t say.
“This way,” said the drone, leading him down a hallway. Bulbous green lights hung from the ceiling, casting a dim, murky glow.
“Who’s my voucher?” Leon asked.
The drone said nothing. He simply fluttered down the hallway at a casual pace, passing mostly empty cells whose bars had been deactivated. Of those that held prisoners, the inmates were all drones whose shells were rusted and wings bent. Like drunkards with missing teeth and bruised eyes.
The drone stopped at a circular door. A scanner above swept over him, eliciting a gleeful beep. The door spun open from the middle.
“Orissa!”
Leon bolted past the drone and into a square room. Orissa stood at a metal table, cuffs of blazing energy around her wrists, attached to a table leg.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
“I’ve been better,” she said. “Been a lot worse.”
“Mister Imus,” said the drone hovering at the corner opposite Orissa. “Place yourself here.”
Orissa nodded for him to listen.
He obeyed and watched the drone probe a curling metal finger into his bindings, peeling away a wisp of energy he then wrapped tightly around the table leg.
Whatever technology this was, Leon was happy that humanity hadn’t developed it. It was the sort of technology that made one fear police and government overreach. The restraints appeared unbreakable and limitless in their potential.
“You will be attended to shortly,” said the drone, exiting the room. The door closed, leaving Orissa and Leon alone.
He stared at her in silence, drinking in those green eyes, wishing he could feel the softness of her brown skin, the sheen of her black hair.
“You look like you might eat me,” she said.
Grinning, he shrugged. “Maybe.”
She pursed her lips. “Leon Imus.”
“I thought you were being tortured or had been killed, Orissa. Let me crack my crude jokes. I’m just happy to see you’re okay. What happened up there? In the ship, I mean.”
“What did it look like?”
“Like a Machine had a punched a hole up through the underbelly and then whisked you away.”
She nodded. “That’s about the gist of it. They tossed me in a cell, told me I was being charged with conspiracy against the ‘haais,’ trespassing of a foreigner, and conspiracy to cooperate with the Machines.”
“That’s a mouthful. Where are haais?”
“Human associated and acclimated inorganics. That’s what these things call themselves.”
Leon parroted the name to himself. “That clears a few things up, like why they have statues representing DNA helixes in their city.”
“City?”
“You didn’t see it?”
“All I saw were dark hallways and a jail cell. And then this room. Which—”
The whirring of the door silenced Orissa.
In came two drones, one whose metal shell was tattooed with a yellow star, not unlike a sheriff symbol from human yore. The other drone was a familiar one.
“Droll,” said Leon, eyes narrowing. “Tell me my trust in you wasn’t misplaced.”
The drone with the star spoke first. “You may call me Sergeant Hüsswhen.” He oriented himself toward Droll. “You confirm these two humans are not Rogue Hunters in the employ of the Machines?”
Ice water poured into Leon’s gut. He was keenly aware how, with a single word, Droll could doom him and Orissa to a jail cell. Probably to death.
“They claim they were,” said Droll, “but they have since broken free. I have seen them kill Machines, and they have treated me well. I would lay down my own life to protect them.”
The so-called Sergeant Hüsswhen—what a name for a robot—circled Leon and Orissa, lens snapping with each shutter.
“They should be set free,” said Droll.
“We will see,” said Sergeant Hüsswhen. “We’ll take them to the Seat of the Overseer. Their freedoms will be determined there.”
Leon didn’t like the sound of that. A Machine Overseer—human associated and acclimated inorganic or otherwise—was not something or someone Leon cared to meet.
A complex system of locks clicked and clacked, and finally the doors split open. Leon and Orissa stepped inside a vaulted room the color of winter. Slender lights resembling snowdrops hung from the pitched ceiling. Upon a polished dais of marble stood a network of screens. A drone hovered before them, silent.
The Overseer, Leon assumed.
He counted thirty screens before the Machine finally announced itself.
“My apologies,” it said. A sheen of silver reflected from his shell, as if slathered with polish. “The haais network could use an upgrade. Interfacing with it takes no less than twenty seconds, and looping through its vast databases and arrays can take upward of sixty seconds. But I had to be certain of the one who calls himself Droll. I had my theories, but now I have my answers. Come. Oh, and do release those humans. I’m sure they mean no harm.”
Leon side-eyed Droll as Sergeant Hüsswhen relieved him of the band of energy that had bound him. “You seem to be known. That’s not a good thing.”
“I cannot imagine why.”
“Go on,” said Sergeant Hüsswhen as the Overseer drifted toward a pair of doors that opened in his presence. They led onto the grand glass balcony that Leon had glimpsed from below.
He stepped onto it with visible discomfort, the helix statues looming a few hundred feet below.
“My fellow haais!” boomed the Overseer, his voice echoing throughout the city, as if bleeding from the walls and rising from the floor. The drones below ceased their busywork and socializing. They gathered in a large crowd, lenses directed at the balcony.
Leon’s discomfort grew.
“Droll,” the Overseer said, beckoning him forth.
Hesitant, the drone glided onward.
The ensuing warbling was so loud Leon couldn’t hear himself think. It quieted instantly.
“Surely not,” said Droll.
Two compartments opened in the Overseer’s shell, one in front and the other in his rear. A hand with three fingers emerged from the front, reaching around to take a Vaunton cube from the rear.
He presented it to Droll. “This is yours, my friend.”
Leon leaned into Orissa. “What’s happening?”
She shook her head, too attentive to speak.
A slot opened in the bottom of Droll’s shell. The Overseer inserted the Vaunton cube.
“Clovis,” said Droll, aghast as a Machine could sound. He looked into the crowd. “Morph, Gladys, Mai.” He trembled with excitement and continued to list off name after name. “I remember,” he said quietly. Then, with great enthusiasm, “I remember!”
He looked to the Overseer—Clovis, it seemed his name was—and shuttered his lens. If Machines could smile, doubtless they’d be wearing matching grins. Droll’s pure joy was palpable and it pimpled Leon’s arms—he didn’t understand the low level in which Machines operated, but he understood emotion.
He understood happiness. Hope. Joy.
“Come,” said Clovis. “We’ve certain matters to discuss, and they should be discussed in private.”
Droll lingered on the balcony for a minute longer, staring at the drones below, absorbing it all like Leon had this city when first laying eyes on it.
My preconceptions of Machines have been shattered, Leon thought. He wasn’t sure how to feel about that.
At Clovis’s order, Sergeant Hüsswhen unbound Leon’s and Orissa’s wrists. They followed Droll into the Seat of the Overseer, balcony doors closing behind them.
“Four hundred and ninety-five years is a long time, my friend,” said Clovis, idled before the back panels of his screens. “I’m curious to know what’s happened since our forced banishment.”