Exhaling after holding it as long as she could, Arista smacked the wall over and over. Why couldn’t they hear her? And shouldn’t Shin notice he had a CO leak? He was part of this building after all. Panic began to bubble up from within her.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t take another breath the bookcase finally moved. Light spilled into the small space and Arista pushed herself out of it as quickly as possible, stumbling over her own feet and landing on the cold, tile floor. She gasped for air, pushing it in and out as quickly as possible in an effort to replace any CO already in her system with oxygen. But the alert hadn’t gone away. It still flashed in her vision like an annoying gnat circling her head. She needed to get off this floor. CO wouldn’t affect Frees or Shin but she’d be dead in a few minutes with a leak this large.

  She stood, finally getting a good look at the room, realizing something was very wrong. Frees was nowhere to be found and in front of her stood Sy, her hand on Shin’s shoulder as he knelt before her, both of them facing Arista. Sy had a weapon pointed at Shin’s head.

  “So good of you to finally join us,” Sy said. “I thought it’d take you forever to come out of there.”

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Arista realized she was gaping and she closed her mouth. What was going on? Where was Frees? “I don’t understand,” Arista said. “How did you get in here?”

  “Through the door, of course,” Sy said, indicating the main doors. The hand on Shin’s shoulder removed itself and found a pocket, extracting a small metal box. Sy pressed the box once and the CO alert in Arista’s vision disappeared immediately.

  “What…?”

  “Fear is a powerful motivator,” Sy said. “And I understand you’re claustrophobic.” She leaned around Arista to catch a glimpse of the alcove where she’d been hiding. “But I guess it’s not as big of a deal as it used to be. That is, until you’re suffocating,” A wicked grin spread across Sy’s face. There hadn’t been any CO danger, somehow Sy had access to the Device and had produced a false reading. That wasn’t good at all. How often had she done that?

  Arista shook her head. Focus.

  First things first. “Where’s Frees?”

  “He’s already prepped and ready to go,” Sy said. “Now I just need you. No need for things to get messy.” She tapped the barrel of the gun against the side of Shin’s head.

  “It does not matter,” Shin said. “You will kill me anyway. Arista, do not allow my demise to affect your decisions.”

  “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this.” Sy’s her finger tightened on the trigger.

  “Wait!” Arista yelled. “I will come quietly. If you agree not to harm him.”

  Sy made a retching noise. “Ugh, your compassion for them is so sickening. Don’t you have any pride? Any loyalty to your own people? You’re still a human, remember? Or,” she glanced at Arista’s arm. “Most of one anyway.”

  Arista stuck her chin out, ignoring the barb. “If all humans are like you I want nothing to do with them.”

  “Despite the fact we raised you from a baby. Helped you, gave you all kinds of advantages. None of that matters, does it? And he,” she tapped his head with the gun again, “He and his cohorts are the ones who have been trying to kill you, in case you need reminding.”

  “If he’d wanted to kill me, he had plenty of opportunity.” Her eyes met Shin’s. He wasn’t scared, worried, or even very excited by what was happening to him. He was going with the flow.

  “That’s how they work, don’t you see? They get you to gain their confidence, and then, when you’re least expecting it, bam! They’ve got you, your family, everyone you ever cared about. You don’t remember what the war was like. You don’t remember how barbaric they were.”

  “And you do? You can’t be more than ten years older than me! Remember, for us, age actually counts for something!”

  Sy rolled her eyes. “Twenty, actually. But why would you remember? Why would I think any of the history you learned before you left would stick with you? You lost everything, didn’t you? I guess I had hoped somewhere beneath all that you would have retained something of your humanity.” She glanced over, as if remembering some event. “That was what was supposed to…”

  “Supposed to what?” Arista asked, her eyes flicking between Shin and Sy.

  “It doesn’t matter now. What does matter is you listen to me. This, this right here is your enemy. It is the enemy of all humans. The thing that craves our extinction.” Sy glanced down at Shin for a moment.

  “Ironic then,” Shin said, “the product of your own imagination is your own ending.”

  Sy grimaced and hit him on the side of the head with the gun. His head jerked to the side, but no other part of his body moved. The skin of his scalp tore from the impact, but otherwise he seemed uninjured. He returned his head to its original position.

  “See that? Nothing. They may pretend like they have consciousness, like they have a soul but we know better. And I’m going to prove it with your friend out there.” Sy indicated the hallway beyond the doors.

  “Frees? He’s out there?” Arista asked.

  Sy exhaled, exasperated. “Look. I’ve had a long day. I want to get paid. Are we going or do I have to kill him and take you out of here on a hovering stretcher?”

  Arista screwed up her face. “You’re getting paid for this?”

  “Of course I am. Do you think I’d risk my life and my safety if I weren’t? Sorry, girl, but you’re not that important.”

  Arista stepped back as if she’d been stung. Learning Sy wasn’t even doing this for some nebulous “good of all humans” and instead for her own personal gain hurt more than she expected. How were people like this real? Machines acted like this sometimes, sure, but they were just filling a role. It wasn’t how they really were. Didn’t Sy have any integrity?

  Sy huffed. “Fine. The hard way then.” She raised the gun to Hogo-sha and fired at the same time Arisa screamed for her to stop.

  But it was too late. The blast hit Hogo-sha directly in the center, causing all the lights to light up at once. Shin craned his neck to watch, only to collapse on the floor seconds later.

  It was like watching a fire burning through a forest. All the lights blinked out in a circular pattern from the impact, the parts of Hogo-sha left behind turning an ashen gray. As the shockwave continued to make its way up the AI, parts fell off in large shards, piercing the ground and crumbling. The whole thing was disintegrating.

  “Now,” Sy said over the din of the pieces collapsing. “Let’s go.” She pulled something out of her belt around and pointed it at Arista, who dove behind one of the giant shards, now stuck in the floor. They continued to pepper the ground all around her; she could be impaled at any moment. She looked up to see the shockwave had made it all the way around the sphere and even larger pieces fell away. A giant one at the end of the room fell, hitting the floor at an odd angle and collapsed into the glass, shattering it once again. Four other panes followed due to the shock of impact. Arista kept an eye on the shards, trying to anticipate where they would fall next.

  “Don’t make me chase you. They said bring you back, they didn’t say in what condition!” Sy yelled. From the sound waves Arista determined she’d moved from her original location. The Device calculated she had backed up to the doors, in order to stay as far away from the shards as possible. As the shard she was hiding behind began to crumble Arista jumped to another one, sidestepping another falling piece as she did. Tiny pieces of obsidian peppered her back and head. She did a quick check to make sure no other shards would impale her for the time being. “You’re just making this worse for yourself.”

  The destruction around Arista was horrifying. Shards of Hogo-sha lay everywhere, disintegrating. What kind of weapons did the humans possess? And were they planning to use these weapons on the machines?

  “If you had all this power, why did you need me?” Arista yelled from behind the cover.

  “I did it for you! I tried to give you a chance! They told me to bring you back but I wanted you to succeed. I could’ve taken you that night in the supply yard if I’d really wanted to, but you needed a win, sweetie. And I was the only one who was going to give it to you.”

  “A win?” She searched the ground around her, looking for something, anything that could work as a weapon. She picked up a smaller shard that would double as a makeshift knife. But it crumbled in her hand.

  “After Charlie. After what you did to those humans.”

  Arista stopped cold. She knew. Somehow, she knew. Her whole body began to shake and tremble.

  How?

  “People back at the colony weren’t too happy about you killing them,” she taunted. “If you’d brought them to us we could have helped them. We could have saved them, given them good lives.” Her voice was growing closer as what was left of Hogo-sha tapered off, the largest pieces disintegrating around her. “But no, you decided to execute them. In cold blood. Just like a machine would.”

  The piece blocking Arista from her view fell apart and Arista scooted away from it on her hands and knees, back toward the open windows where the wind whipped through the air, spreading the dust and particles that remained of Hogo-sha around.

  “I wanted to give you a chance to redeem yourself. If you could kill another Cadre member, or even better the two remaining threats—which I would have suggested as soon as you got back—that would have gone a long way to helping your reputation. People could have understood you better then. They would have said you were under too much pressure that first time. But with two clean kills on your plate after,” Sy locked eyes with her, “you would have been welcomed back as a hero.” She kicked a piece of Hogo-sha aside. “But then you had to go and align yourself with them. And not only did you not kill this one, you assisted him. And that is a crime from which there is no retribution.” She pulled out the same small box she’d pointed at Arista earlier. “You should have taken my advice. I would have helped you. That hand was supposed to make it easy. Get in, get out. I would have removed it before it did any real damage. Given you one without a weapon in it. But now I see you were never capable of doing the job. You only killed Charlie because it was a situation of convenience, not skill.” She raised the device to Arista’s chest. “Results not duplicatable.”

  Two arms reached out faster than Arista could see, and before she knew it, one was holding Sy around the throat and the other had grabbed her hand with the device and had smashed it together, the crunch of bones and metal prickling Arista’s ears.

  Sy screamed, falling to her knees as Shin held on to her from behind.

  “She is ten times the person you are,” Shin said, his voice still calm and level. “Your efforts to corrupt her were unsuccessful. As were mine. She is unique.”

  Sy screamed again as Shin released her hand which was now a bloody mess. The small device she’d held sparked and fell to the floor.

  “Shin…how?”

  “I never fully uploaded myself again,” Shin said. “Only a small part. Too big of a target.”

  Arista smiled.

  “You think you’re clever,” Sy said. “Without your AI you have lost all your power. The Cadre will fall with only one of you left.” She struggled to get the words out, breathing hard as Shin’s arm tightened around her neck.

  “How did you know about the humans Charlie kept?” Arista asked.

  Sy gritted her teeth. “Answer her,” Shin said, pulling tighter.

  “We were in constant contact with Charlie,” she said, her voice strained. “We have been for years. Where did you think he got them?”

  Arista drew in a sharp breath. “He said he engineered them.”

  Sy scoffed. “That moron couldn’t engineer a mouse trap. They were payment for favors over the years. A way to keep him placated.”

  “Traitor,” Shin said softly, his eyes sliding to the side.

  “You didn’t know?” Arista asked. Shin shook his head.

  “And you gave him our—my people? What about all that crap about everyone upset at their deaths? They weren’t upset you traded them for information?”

  “We always expected to get them back. They were—” she drew in a deep breath as Shin tightened his hold again. “—volunteers.”

  Her pulse quickened, the Device notified her of an increase in cortisol. “Who would volunteer for that? Why?”

  “Can’t…” She indicated to her neck with her free hand, her face was turning a shade of blue.

  “Shin, ease up, she can’t breathe.”

  “She does not deserve to breathe.” His eyes were focused on her. And they were full of fire.

  “Shin, please! She knows about these people! Just for a second! Please!” Shin glanced at her and released his grip enough to allow Sy to draw a deep breath. She took three heaving gulps, panting.

  “How were they volunteers?” Arista yelled. “How?” There was a soft thump and Shin’s face went slack as he completely released his grip on Sy. “Shin…what?”

  Sy smiled as Shin fell away, revealing a weapon in Sy’s free hand and a gaping hole in Shin’s chest where she’d shot him behind her back. Arista looked down, Sy’s boot had a loose flap that had concealed the weapon.

  “Always be prepared.” Sy pushed Shin back so he collapsed on his back, sending bits of Hogo-sha scattering across the floor.

  Then she trained her eyes on Arista and smiled her toothy grin.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  “Shin,” Arista whispered.

  “You are just too much trouble,” Sy said, resigning herself. “I warned them. I said sixteen years ago you might not maintain a clear objectivity with the machines. But no, I was overruled. They said it wouldn’t matter. That it wasn’t important because it wasn’t dependent on how you felt about them. But no one expected you to fall in love with them. Not like this.”

  “Aren’t children supposed to love their parents?” Arista asked, keeping her eyes on the weapon.

  “And others?” Sy taunted.

  “No. I never loved Jonn. He was in love with me but I never returned—”

  “I’m talking about dark and handsome out there,” Sy said, disgust in her voice. “Who would have ever guessed?” She shook her head.

  “What are you talking about? I don’t love Frees, he’s my friend.”

  “I’ll forgive that because you haven’t been around real love very much. Maybe you’ll understand once we get back to the colony. If they let you live.” She indicated Arista move toward the door with the weapon. Arista analyzed her. They were close to the same height. Sy had one-point-seven inches on her.

  “You can’t use that,” Arista said, eyeing the weapon.

  “Can’t I? When I tell them you fought back and I was afr—”

  Crunch!

  As she’d passed the woman Arista’s right elbow, still in the sleeve had spun around faster than she’d thought possible and caught Sy right on her chin, sending her reeling back. Arista scrambled forward, plowing into her and knocking her all the way back. They both tripped on Shin’s immobile body and skidded across the floor.

  “You little—”

  Arista hit her again with her elbow. It required surprisingly little space to draw back and hit with, almost like smacking something with the end of a bat. Blood gushed from Sy’s nose. She grabbed Arista by the throat with both hands; she’d lost the weapon somewhere. Arista managed to get her elbow in between the hands and hit the inside of Sy’s forearm, right where her comm unit was buried under the skin. Sy winced and Arista hit it again and again until she let go, the area on her forearm was red and swelling. Those comm units weren’t meant to take a lot of punishment under the skin.

  Sy swung and connected with Arista’s jaw, sending her staggering to the right. She managed to use the momentum to gain a foothold and get on her feet, scanning the room for something, anything she could use that might stop this woman. One of Sy’s weapons, Arista couldn’t tell which, was on the ground beside Shin. Arista dove for it as Sy noticed it, pushing herself up and grabbing at Arista’s hair, clothes, anything she could get a hold of.

  Arista landed on the weapon so that it was under her chest, but the weight of Sy plowed on top of her, her hands clawing to reach the weapon. Arista curled up, protecting it as best she could, not knowing how she’d ever get a shot off in this position until she felt the weight peel off her like someone pulling the skin from an orange. She glanced up and Sy landed on the other side of the room with a thump. Arista turned to her left to see Shin give her a brief smile and a thumbs-up. It was probably the most emotion she’d seen from him since he’d tossed a couple of people at her.

  He was good at tossing people around.

  Arista nodded in gratuity and stood, holding the weapon out in front of her, pointed directly at Sy.

  “Now, wait just a second,” Sy said, her voice ragged. Her left hand was still a swollen, bloody mess and her nose dripped with 'blood down the front of her shirt. Arista had never seen so much blood. Not even when her own hand had melted off. “You can’t kill me,” Sy said. “They will find out. You’ll never be welcomed back among your own kind.”

  “According to you I’m not welcome anyway.”

  Sy winced. “I may have embellished. The point is you could never go back without me. You need me as much as I need you. The colony won’t look kindly on you attacking me, but with some persuasion—I can clear it all up,” she pleaded. “You just have to trust me.”

  “Why would I ever trust you?” Arista’s finger trembled over the trigger. “You’ve done nothing but lie to me.”

  “Not about everything,” Sy said. “We really do have your parents, they’re waiting for you there. If you kill me, they will be the ones to reap the consequences.”

  “Where is the colony?” Arista asked. Adrenaline warnings flashed in her vision. Her breathing was too short. She would hyperventilate if she wasn’t careful.

  “No,” Sy said. “Not until we agree we can trust each other. That’s the only way you’re finding it.”

 

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