NINETEEN

  Jill hadn’t moved from the table when Max pushed through the back door. The human followed close behind.

  “I told her she didn’t need to bring me here, I can go anywhere in the city undetected,” the human said as soon as she was in the door. A curt smile spread across the woman’s face. “I’m sorry, that was rude. I’m Forsythia. Sy for short.”

  “Yes, we talked.”

  “Right.” Sy wiped her brow. “Well. Thank you for allowing me in your home.”

  “H’ve got some supplies if you’re hungry. Things we keep on hand for Arista,” Jill stood and opened the pantry door. Max moved into the living room.

  “That would be nice, yes. I haven’t eaten since yesterday.”

  Jill grabbed a few pieces of bread and some fruit from the refrigerator. “You were at the gate all night?”

  Sy nodded, taking a seat across from the one Jill had vacated. “I needed time to work on the gate. And to prepare Arista’s new hand. I manufactured it on site, though I already knew I would need it. I brought the base with me and made the measurements the other night.”

  “But you didn’ tell her,” she said softly.

  “I wanted it to be a surprise,” Sy said, flattening her own hands on the table and drawing them across the lacquer of the table.

  “How’d you know?” Jill smashed some nuts with a pestle, working quick to turn them into a butter.

  Sy looked up. “From the initial Cadre reports when they first picked her up. We were monitoring then too. They said a human had been discovered after burning off her own appendage. Then things happened so fast.”

  Rock music blared from the other room.

  “Max! Turn that down, it’s the middle of the night!” The music volume decreased. Jill looked over at Sy. “She likes music.”

  “I think that’s fascinating. All of you. I find you all fascinating.”

  “You’ll excuse us if we seem a little paranoid. We’re not used to dealin’ with humans.” Jill pulled the fruit over and whisked it into a chunky jam. She spread the jam on one piece of bread and the jelly on the other.

  “It’s understandable. We didn’t do the best job the last time around. We’re trying to be better. Just like you.”

  Jill slid the sandwich over to her. “Arista likes these. Hope you like it too.”

  “Yes, thank you very much.” Sy finished the sandwich in six bites. “Delicious.”

  “Arista’s room is the only one with a bed if you want it. The rest of us stay down here.”

  “That sounds great. I think I’ll head up now; I’m beat. You’ll let me know if you hear from either of them?”

  Jill nodded. “Yep.”

  Sy beamed. “Thank you again for your hospitality. I will see you in the morning.”

  Once she was upstairs Jill pulled Max into the kitchen. “Anythin’?” she asked.

  “Other than an obsession with the other one you mean?”

  Jill glowered. “Anythin’ weird, I mean.”

  Max looked up to the ceiling. Arista’s room was on the back side of the house, not directly above them. “She’s hiding something. I don’t know what. She spoke with Arista for a while, after Frees called you I assume. I didn’t catch all of the conversation.”

  “Can we trust her to bring them back?”

  Max shrugged.

  Jill pondered it. Something about Sy didn’t seem quite right. She was too comfortable around them, like she’d been practicing. Jill didn’t trust people who weren’t suspicious of others. Suspicion was healthy. It saved your ass when you otherwise would be dead. “Follow me,” she said. “And don’t make a sound.”

  Jill moved through the living room to the stairs, taking them one at a time, listening for creaks or squeaks. If she happened upon one she tested a different part of the stair before she proceeded. Max followed her moves precisely until they were on the landing. She moved into Frees’ room, closing the door behind Max. She mouthed: Listen for her.

  Max nodded.

  Now. It was time to see if Frees really knew what he was doing with all this scanning equipment. She turned the main power on and the machine flickered to life. Jill lifted the headphones and slipped them over her ears, scanning the comm waves for anything that might be relevant. Anything that looked out of place.

  Max’s finger came into her view and pointed to an anomalous reading on the screen. Jill tapped it once and an audio feed ran through her headphones.

  “—at the old machine’s house now. There were complications.” Sy’s voice. Who had she contacted?

  “Where is the girl?” A male voice she didn’t recognize. It sounded gruff, no-nonsense. Like a military commander.

  “Still in Japan.”

  “Jesus. She was supposed to be back by now.”

  “Yes, sir, I know. The AI was better prepared than we anticipated.”

  This was just Sy giving her report to the colony. Jill expected as much, the woman wouldn’t be operating in a vacuum.

  “Will she make it back?” the man asked.

  “It’s unclear. If she’s already used the new weapon it’s probably unlikely. This was supposed to be a quick one-two punch. She may not even get the job done there.”

  “She better,” the man said. “Otherwise you’re going in to get her. She’s too valuable to leave in the field, alive or dead. So one way or another, Sy, bring her back.”

  There was a pause on the other end of the line. “Yes, sir.”

  Max resumed her position by the door. Jill waved at Max to come over, picking up a second set of headphones.

  “And what about the machines?” Sy asked. “Are we still a go on them?”

  Max’s eyes grew wide as she listened.

  “I want that one without the skin. The others I’ll leave up to you. Echo wants as many as she can get, but I know your resources are limited. You know how important this is.”

  “What if by some miracle she comes back and hasn’t removed Hogo-sha?”

  “You told me that wasn’t going to happen. You said she was too worried about disappointing us.”

  “Devil’s advocate, sir.”

  “If she comes back without completing the mission, sedate her, bring her back immediately. We’ll re-evaluate if we have to.”

  Jill heard Sy take a breath. “Yes, sir.” She ended the call.

  Max removed her headphones at the same time as Jill. “What do we do?” she whispered.

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Jill said. “Re-evaluate. And they have some kind of plan for us? I knew she wasn’t telling us everything. We have to warn Arista somehow. Tell her not to come back either way. At least not until we get the chance to remove Sy. But we can’t kill her, we’ll just keep her locked up, where she can’t hurt anyone.”

  “We need to get them back, they shouldn’t even be over there,” Max said.

  “Is that worry I hear in your voice?” Jill set the headphones aside and turned off the machine.

  “No. I don’t care about the girl,” Max said. “But Frees deserves better.”

  “Yes,” Jill said, “Yes, he does.”

  TWENTY

  She sat, watching, for hours. Arista had perched herself along one of the pipes above the tunnel leading into Shin’s hideout. It gave her a great vantage point of all directions, should he decide to send someone back down to look for her. And it was also close to a rusty pipe, which the Device confirmed was leaking 99.9% water with only trace heavy metals. Nothing she should be concerned about. Still, she took it sparingly.

  Everything in the hideout was just as they’d left it as far as she could tell, but she couldn’t discern if anyone was still inside or not. If Shin had come back to ambush her then this would be the perfect opportunity. But she doubted he would. He saw the power of her weapon when she knocked him on his ass back in the tower. He wouldn’t come back unless he was sure he’d be able to take her down. Which either meant a lot of firepower or a lot of backup.

  Or both.

  “Screw it,” she whispered and jumped down. Creeping along the wall she approached the entrance: a simple metal door, standing open just as they’d left it. The Device reached out with its limited scanning capabilities but found nothing of note. If she was going to contact Sy she needed to make this quick.

  Arista peeked around the corner, taking a mental snapshot of the room before drawing back to analyze it. All seemed normal. No one inside and nothing out of place from when they’d left. Still, she touched her pinky and thumb together, powering up the hand. She ducked inside, scanning the room quickly with the hand outstretched in front of her. How quickly she’d come to rely on it. Now she understood why Frees built his. It gave him security.

  Stop thinking about him.

  Right, she was here because she needed to get out of this place. After she’d had some time to think it over she realized returning to the tower immediately wasn’t the best idea. She needed to get back home to Chicago and come back better prepared. Maybe with Sy. Everything about this had gone wrong from the start. Not to say that it had been Sy’s fault because how could she have known? It was just an unfortunate situation. And the more she’d mulled the idea over the better it had seemed to her. Go back home, figure out a new plan, come back prepared. She needed to get back to where she could get some rest and some food and some time to think clearly.

  Powering down her weapon, she took a deep breath to calm herself and stood up fully. All of the equipment was still active. She took a moment to inspect the terminal, using the Device to scan for any known monitoring device or surveillance equipment and finding none. Arista grasped the end of the desk and pulled it away from the wall, inspecting the components. Nothing seemed nefarious, though it rarely ever did until it was too late. She could thank Shin for that lesson.

  Pushing the desk back into place she drew in a deep breath. If Shin had wanted to monitor the calls, he would have done it while he was standing there in front of them. So she wasn’t giving up any information he didn’t already have. Maybe it wouldn’t matter anyway, best case scenario was she’d be out of here in a few hours. She took control of the main terminal, connecting her own comm with the system.

  Here goes nothing.

  “Arista? Is that you?” Sy answered immediately. Arista switched it over to visual communication and a hologram of her materialized in front of Arista’s face.

  “Sy, thank goodness.”

  “How did it go? Were you successful?” Sy’s eyes were wide, hungry for information.

  Arista had to push down the sick feeling rising in her stomach. She had known this would be the first thing Sy would ask. And she last thing she wanted was to disappoint her again but she had no choice. She needed help. “I’m sorry, Sy. I tried, I really did. He’s just been one step ahead of me this entire time.”

  “It’s okay!” Sy said, her voice chipper. “I know it’s tough. We didn’t expect this much resistance, but we can work around it. What do you need from me?”

  “I think I need to come back. To regroup. Maybe we could get a couple more people from the colony? All of us go over at once. That way we’ll be better prepared. We’ll have a higher chance of success.”

  Sy frowned. “You want to come back? But the mission isn’t done yet.”

  “Yes, I know. I just don’t see how I can do it all by myself—”

  Sy cut her off. “What happened to Frees? And that other man who was helping you?”

  Arista bit her tongue to keep from saying something about him she’d regret later. “Frees decided it wasn’t for him. And Shin…” She checked behind her to make sure no one had snuck up on her. The room behind her was still empty. “Shin died while we fought our way in.”

  “That’s unfortunate. At least you survived. But I’m sorry, Arista, I can’t come get you. We still haven’t heard from your friend at Cadre HQ about the patrols. I can’t access the Gate until we do. You need to find a way to remove Hogo-sha. Once you do that, it may disrupt the worldwide Peacekeeper patrols. They are all connected to the same network.”

  Arista hung her head. Should she tell her Hogo-sha didn’t even have Peacekeepers? Taking him down would likely have no effect on the machines back home. Sy needed to find a way to reach the gate on her side. “I can’t get anywhere close to him. He’s got too much protection.” She thought about mentioning the fact Hogo-sha tricked her and Frees using Shin but dismissed it. Sy didn’t want to listen to her whine.

  Sy’s chipper mood had disappeared. “Then you need to find a way. Listen, while you’re over there you need to do everything you can to stop him. Because I don’t know how long it will be before we can get you back and every day you go without food is only going to make this worse. That weapon in your hand should give you everything you need to destroy him. And you need to do it sooner rather than later. Understand?”

  Arista nodded, not looking at the holo. Instantly, she was transported back to when she was a little girl, Dad chiding her after she made a fuss about going out to play with some of the other kids. They had been in Gallup, New Mexico at the time. And the kids were just out there playing soccer, kicking it around. She had wanted to do nothing more than join them for a few minutes. Kick it back and forth. But Dad asked what happened if she fell? Skinned her elbow or otherwise injured herself? It wasn’t worth the risk of exposure. But in the moment, Arista had thought it was.

  This time she was being chided over not doing something. Life was funny like that sometimes. But she had made a promise to Sy. After all they were already looking for her parents; it was up to Arista to hold up her part of the bargain. Even if she had to do it all alone.

  “Why don’t you get some help over there?” Sy asked.

  “How?”

  “Use some of the machines. Try to make your own Peacekeepers. Loyal, yet autonomous.”

  “How would I do that?” She’d never considered making her own Peacekeepers before. As best she could tell they were made when a semi-conscious human had access to them, instead of a fully conscious one. The process didn’t quite complete itself in some way. At least that’s how Charlie had done it. But the machines here were different. They were immune.

  “I thought you knew. We’re still unsure how they’re made. We assumed the Cadre had begun to crack the failsafe codes humans built in all those years ago.”

  Good. So she didn’t know. Better to keep it that way.

  Trying to veer the direction of the conversation away from the approaching cliff, Arista launched on a tangent. “I tried changing one of Hogo-sha’s ‘Peacekeepers’ when we first arrived. They aren’t Peacekeepers. I don’t know what they are, but I had no effect on them. They don’t respond like the machines there, I can’t change anyone.”

  “Really? That’s fascinating.” Sy corrected herself. “I mean it’s terrible for you, but I’ve never heard of that before. He’s clever. You have to find a way to outthink him. That’s the only way you can beat him, he’s much more prepared than I’d given him credit for.”

  “I don’t think they’re anything special,” Arista said as if she hadn’t heard Sy, as if she couldn’t help relay the information. “I think they’re just normal husks whose eyes are red.” Damn. Right back over the cliff. Great job, Arista.

  “What makes you say that?” Sy asked.

  Because he isn’t making Peacekeepers using humans as guinea pigs. You know, like Charlie did. And oh yeah, I killed all of those humans, so he couldn’t make anymore. Forgot to mention that.

  “Arista?”

  “Shin told us. Before he died.” That would work, though the pit in her stomach protested to the lie. Was it really lying, though? Shin had told her and, in a way, he had died. She wasn’t about to admit to being tricked so easily. A scratching sound reached her ears and Arista whipped her head around, double checking the room again. Still empty.

  “What’s wrong?” Sy asked.

  “I don’t know. I need to go. I might be compromised here.”

  “Stay strong. You can do this. Don’t forget we’re all counting on you.”

  As if she needed the reminder. She took one last look at Sy before cutting the comm link. As soon as it ended she dropped down to the floor to minimize the possibility someone might take a shot at her from somewhere. Was she ever going to get a break? Sy had seemed resistant to bringing her back; could it really be that hard to get to the gate on her side? She could turn herself invisible!

  Arista took another breath. Blaming Sy wouldn’t do any good. She needed to complete the mission. Maybe by then the Peacekeepers would’ve moved on. Should she go back out the way she came? Or the other way; the one they had left through to reach Hogo-sha? It was more likely someone would come through the main entrance. Back door it was then.

  The Device still wasn’t picking up anything. It had probably been nothing, maybe just the building settling. But she wasn’t about to put herself at unnecessary risk. Hogo-sha might have undetectable operatives.

  She slipped out through the back into the long familiar halls Shin had led them down. Co-opting more machines for her own needs wasn’t an option, not to mention it put a sour taste in her mouth; she thought the part of her life where she used the machines for her own purposes was over. But Sy had seemed disappointed, what if she tried an experiment? On someone innocuous, someone random, just to see if it worked? And if it did, she wouldn’t force them to do anything against their will, she’d make sure they had an option. That was, if they didn’t turn on her as soon as they became autonomous. Visions of the farmer and his shotgun danced across her memory. No, this needed to be better. It needed to be a sure thing.

  TWENTY-ONE

  “We’ve been here forever, when are you going to order?” the man asked from the table closest to Arista’s hiding place in the restroom. She’d managed to stay off the streets and come in through the back as soon as the sun was up, sneaking in through the rear of the restaurant and past the staff without notice. It was better than trying to grab someone off the street again, Hogo-sha’s men could be anywhere.

 

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