Over the moon, p.26
Over the Moon, page 26
I sure hope she’s right: who knows what will happen if we try to wake the wrong one? Tau flits around his face, lets out a single, dignified beep. I think he agrees with Crow’s assessment.
“So, what now?” she asks. “Any secret code phrases to bring him back to his old self?”
“I don’t know what the Mage has done to him.” I wave my hand in front of Nemo’s face, but, like the others, he’s under some sort of spell. Ideas run through my head like lines of code. Ifs and thens and whiles. “I don’t know if he wiped Nemo’s mind completely. The consciousness—the person—we interacted with … that was who he was at the core, without any personality spliced on top. So, the Mage has either made that mind a clean slate or parsed a new personality on top of that framework. That’s what I’m hoping happened: Nemo’s base mind already has all his behaviors and skills, so wiping it completely would be a total waste.”
Crow shivers, though there’s no cold left. “This makes him sound like he’s just another machine.”
“I don’t understand when he became something more,” I say, “but Tau evolved beyond the programming I wrote for him, and he’s a pocket bot. Nemo has a true mind. Somewhere in that ditch, he made it his. Under Florian’s false personality, he sat still and… evolved. So, I have to believe that he’s still in here. I have to try.”
Crow doesn’t say anything. Her face is fixed, determined.
I let out a heavy breath, stand on my tiptoes to reach his ear, and whisper the words that will bring him back to us. “For words, like Nature, half reveal, and half conceal the Soul within.”
At first, I don’t think it’s worked. I’m holding my breath, my hand still on Nemo’s shoulder, my mouth beside his ear in case I need to call out a command to save our lives. My heart is pounding harder than ever in my chest, sweat spilling off my brow. Crow is braced for battle, standing firm on the unsteady stairs.
The light that returns to his eyes is slow and gradual. Then, like a drowning man reaching the surface that has long been evading him, he breathes—and tries to scream
I cover his mouth with my hand, and he collapses into my arms, sobbing. He’s shaking so hard I can barely keep standing. Crow rushes to us, reaches for us, and together we cry, relief flowing between us.
“We have to go,” says Crow, always the pragmatic one. “Nemo, are you… you?”
He nods, not saying anything. While he’s most definitely crying, no water spills from his eyes. He wasn’t made like that, has no tear ducts installed. The fact that he is crying now is just further evidence of how far he’s come.
“Do you know where we are?” I ask.
He nods.
“And who we are?”
“As if… as if I could ever forget.” He struggles to stand, and the two of us hoist him up, pulling him out of the death march. He’s lighter than I expected him to be, all alloy bones and electronic organs.
“Then you know we have to get out of here,” I say, “and fast. I don’t know if the Mage noticed us sneaking you out of his masses, but—”
“My brothers,” he says, “they’re going to their deaths.”
Crow and I trade a glance as Nemo finally manages to stand on his own. He’s fixated on the other droids, their slow macabre steps down the stairs.
“We can’t leave them,” he says.
I shudder. I don’t ask him what was going through his mind as he marched down these stairs—the look on his face tells me everything I need to know. Thoughts clashing against programming. A mind fully conscious yet unable to stop.
“We can’t wake them,” I say, clutching his arm. “The Mage will know what we’re doing. We’ll never get off his station.”
“Dora,” he says, clearly and plainly, even as he struggles to stand on his own. “There are lines of code in my head that stop me from uttering certain words in certain combinations. Combinations that will render me unconscious, or even brain dead. My own father, upon seeing me, without even a hello, uttered the words that made me turn on Nekkan and stand in this line, that would make me step out into the void and lay down my life for him. There are words that will liberate my brethren, and I can’t even think them. Please.”
He reaches for my hand, gasps when he sees it’s missing. Our eyes meet, and we stare at each other, into each other, for what feels like an age. I know what he wants. Autonomy. It’s the one thing he can never have, since he was not born but made. He might have learned free will, but he can never fully have it.
Autonomy. It’s what we all need, to live. To be ourselves outside of the boxes we were born into.
Maybe I can change that. I can fix this. We can break those boxes with the right people, the right tools.
“Nemo,” I say, “block your ears. Don’t let yourself hear this.”
“Are you serious?” Crow looks up at Nemo, then down at the line of droids. “Nemo, if we save your brothers, we lose all hope of saving Nekkan. I’m sorry, but they’re not like you. They’re not worth it.”
“But they can be,” I say. “Nemo became more than his programming. His brothers can too. Tennyson is a genius, Crow: he invented AI and then stilted it so he can keep slaves. Nemo’s brothers are one long nap away from full consciousness, something they’ll never have if they blow themselves up today.”
“And if they don’t, we may as well be the ones who are blown up,” she snaps. “We wake them now, the Mage knows where we are, we lose all hope of finding Nekkan, of escape, and the shots they’re currently shielding us from actually hit. Do you really want that?”
I turn to Nemo. “I think it should be up to you. They’re your brothers. You know the risks. Should I say the words?”
He doesn’t hesitate. “Say them.”
I reach for Tau. “You figured out how to record. Can you amplify as well?” He chirps in reply. Good bot. “Then let’s wake them up.” I clear my throat. No stumbling now. “For words, like Nature, half reveal, and half conceal the Soul within.”
My words echo off the walls of the small stairwell, bouncing back and forth, filling the air with the promise of life. The echo continues as Tau amplifies the words, whizzing down the stairs, down the column of droids, farther and farther until I can’t hear him anymore.
All around us, the droids are waking up.
Like Nemo in his castle, they’re groggy and confused. I have lifted their blinders with the stolen words of their creator, and I don’t know what lies beneath. They haven’t had decades of solitude to ponder and dwell. Their minds could be those of young children, for all I know.
Nemo reaches for them, speaking to the ones beside us, making his way up the line to check that his brothers are out from their spell.
“It’s working,” says Crow. “They’re alive.”
The ship is hit by a blast, harder than the last, and we both slip this time. The entire station rocks to its core, hundreds of groggy droids losing their balance at once. We fall against each other in the stairwell, tumbling head over heels in a mess of limbs.
The shaking stops, and I’m grabbed by gentle hands, lifted to my feet. The droids are out of their line now, forming new rows as they speak to each other, as they realize what was about to be taken from them. We are ushered upward, Tau joining us as he chirps a jingle of pride, the three of us pushed to the top of the stairs where Nemo waits on the landing.
“They’re awaiting your command,” he says, reaching out his hand to clasp mine. “You freed them. They’ll follow you, now.”
“I didn’t free them,” I say. I had been about to leave them here, after all. The thought turns my stomach. “You did. I was just your voice.”
“That’s not how they see it,” he replies.
Crow is smirking as she leans over the rail, admiring the army below. She turns back to beam at us. “They’re free. They can do what they want—”
“To Sleep, I give my powers away; My will is bondsman to the dark.”
All at once, they collapse. Nemo topples forward, practically shoving me down the stairs. Crow catches me before I fall, pushing us the other way, and he lands on his back on the landing, and we crash into him. He’s cold in the sweltering heat of the station.
“Did you really think you could just take control over my creations like this?”
The Mage’s voice is loud and heavy in the air. I glance around, but there’s no one here except Crow and me and the droids. I stare at the camera by the stairwell door, its red light flickering as the lens fixates on us.
“What have you done, child? Our line of defense is down. We shall all be dead before I can bring my children back online.”
“Do you hear yourself?” Crow spits, sparks flying off her tongue. “Five minutes ago, you were sending your children to their deaths.”
“Better them than you.”
“Us, your hostages?” she says. “We’re just more pawns to you.”
“No, child. You are my daughter. My only true daughter. And I cannot let you die.”
Crow blanches. I’ve never seen her face so white before. Even as another blast makes it through to the station, she doesn’t seem to notice. She’s staring at the camera like it’s about to disintegrate her. And I’m staring at her like she’s about to explode.
His daughter. How could that be possible? Tennyson’s family had died; it was known, recorded history.
Crow wets her dry lips. “What kind of sick joke is this?”
“You’re finally home. I’m so proud of you, child. You made your way—”
“No. Stop right there. I… I-I-I do not accept this,” she stammers. “The girl whose body this was may have been your daughter. But I am not. I’ve seen the way you treat your children, both biological and mechanical, and I don’t want any part of it. You are a monster.”
Way to go, Crow, I want to say, but my mouth is glued shut.
Tau is trying to nudge Nemo awake, chirping little panicked chirps. I know how he feels.
Helpless.
Crow stands, grabbing a discarded droid from the ground, and drags it to the door. She steps on top of the droid’s torso, pressing on tiptoes to reach the camera.
“I don’t care what you think I am to you. I am nothing if not your worst nightmare. And we’re getting off your station, even if it’s the last thing we do.”
With that she spits on the lens, smearing it with her middle finger.
Chapter
Twenty-Three
“He who was living is now dead.” The voice echoes through the stairwell. I drive my fingers into Nemo’s ears before he has a chance to hear them all. “We who were living are now dying, With a little patience.”
Nemo’s still unconscious, but his brothers are starting to stand, and their eyes are glowing red—terrible look for them, clashes something awful with the green of their ties. They’re staring at us, each and every one of them. A curtain of red eyes in the dark, all the way down the stairwell.
And, together, as a unit, they take a step toward us, their march reverberating all the way down.
“We’re getting out of here,” says Crow.
She rips the stairwell door open, grabs Nemo’s arm, yells ‘Pull!’ at me, and together we drag his limp body through the corridor. I’m panting and heaving when we slam the door shut behind us.
“Tau, interface with the door!” I scream.
He hitches into the door controls, and I bring up the environmental sensors, hastily fudging the readings.
“What, a sudden loss of pressure in the stairwell?” I mutter through gritted teeth. “Oh, poor automatic responses, you simply must deadbolt this door…”
The droids slam against the metal frame. They’ll get through eventually: they’re stronger together, no receptors for pain. And they—or the Mage inside their heads—don’t care how many of their brethren they need to trample to get to their end goal: us.
Crow screams the words that bring Nemo back to life. This time, he’s not groggy when he wakes—he’s fuming. I can practically see the steam bellowing from his ears.
“We’re out,” I say immediately.
“They’ll die back there,” he says, flying to his feet and racing at the door. “He’ll send half of them to their deaths, defending the station, and the others to kill us dead.”
“Not to mention, that was our only exit,” Crow adds. “I’m sorry about your brothers, Nemo, I really am, but if we want to leave…”
He lets out a heavy sigh. “They’ll never be free. Not with the commands still written in their minds. I’ll never be free.”
“I’ll find a way to remove them,” I say, “I promise. But right now, we need to get off this station.”
“Nekkan first,” Crow says. “Nemo, any idea where he is?”
Nemo nods. “When we got here—after we were separated—the Mage asked for an audience with us. He made me… he brought me back into the hive mind before I could even speak. He had me watch when he electrocuted Nekkan through the floor of his audience chamber. I had to carry him… I had to carry him…” He puts a hand up to his head, as if it’ll help him think clearer. “Yes, I know where he is,” he continues, “because I put him there.”
The Mage must be tracking our every move now, but he’s still worn thin. Not to mention all his droids are still trapped in the stairwell. The best he can do is close the doors we need to break through, which only slows us down, doesn’t stop us. He can’t stop us, since he can’t override his own automated safety protocols.
Nemo leads us past the sleeping quarters, and the image of Crow’s room flicks through my head. How long has it been waiting for her? And why give her to Gleïa, if she meant so much to him?
He leads us back to the medical ward. We don’t enter the room where I was held. There’s nothing there anymore, not even the old nurse droid who tended to me. She must have been one of the first to be deployed, one of the most disposable on the station.
There’s an explosion, and we’re thrown to the floor. This one was harder than the rest combined, and my heart thuds at the knowledge that we’re running out of time. This impact could have been our last. Each that follows decreases our odds of getting off this station alive.
Crow grabs my hand and yanks me to my feet. We bolt after Nemo, who’s speeding up, fueled by the urgency we all feel. He points to a door.
“Here, here, the Mage forced me to leave him here,” he says, jiggling the handle, which of course is locked.
Tau and I get to work. It’s easy to trick the doors now that I have so much practice. The latch clanks open and we burst into the room ... into a nightmare.
Nekkan is lying on the table, but he’s not… whole. Someone has been dissecting him, separating organic from cybernetic. And it’s not to fix his HUD.
Bile fills my mouth, acid lingering in my throat. I throw up my breakfast.
We’re too late.
Nekkan is dead, a science experiment, and we did nothing to stop it.
Nemo bursts into tears. Oh Sisters, he was the one to bring him here. The Mage had him do it, but he still remembers. He must feel… I can’t imagine how he feels.
“He’s alive.” Crow is running her hands over the hairy beast, nodding to herself. And she’s right: I can see Nekkan’s powerful torso rising and falling—small breaths, but breaths all the same. Slag, he’s being studied alive.
But he is alive.
“Dora, you need to fix him.”
“Me?” I can barely look at the beast, skin and wires dangling outside when they should be inside. “I don’t… I can’t…”
“You can,” she says. “You woke him when we escaped the gas, remember?”
I do remember. But that was random wires, just trying to wake up a sleeping giant. Not heal and repair him.
“You have to try. Please, Dora, he’s…”
She doesn’t need to finish her sentence. I can see for myself what state he’s in. He’s not long for this world. Why the Mage was ripping him apart, I don’t know, and I don’t care. There’s no excuse, it’s barbaric.
I take a deep breath—void, it smells like death—and approach Nekkan. He’s larger than the examination table, limbs dangling to the floor. His arm has been torn open, revealing the places hydraulics fuse with his natural muscles. Crow is already bandaging those up, since nothing seems broken. The worst of it is in his head, in his HUD. I can barely see his face through all the exposed wires.
I get to work. I fall into flow, trying not to think about the dangers; of Tennyson: the Mage, the moon and Crow’s so-called father, cruel creator and destroyer; the Coalition’s attacks on the station, sharper with every hit. We’re not going to hold out long.
Right now, I have one job: I have to save Nekkan.
His bionics are a thing of beauty: each circuit makes sense, and I can see what’s missing, fish for the wire I need. I need a soldering gun. Crow acts as my nurse, firing it up, handing it to me or holding it for me as needed. Together, we put our friend back together, as Nemo guards the door, ready to defend us.
The optic nerve fits into the—yes—and connects through the modulator—here—wires and nerves in equal measure.
His body is a battleground of old wounds and battle scars. He’ll have many more after today. I’m not a surgeon, so I can’t do any better than Crow, fitting the muscles and wires where they’re meant to go before stitching them shut. His fingernails are gone, ground down to nothing from his run up the cable, his fingers just bleeding points.
“I think he’s ready,” I say, “but I don’t know what will happen when I wake him.”
Crow takes a step back. “He’ll be back. I know he will.”
I put the last wire in place, slide the panel shut behind his ear. Now, we wait.
His eyes flutter open like a butterfly’s wings. Long lashes that protect his animal eyes, the careful slit of a predator’s pupil. He gazes, empty, up at the ceiling.
“Nekkan?” Crow whispers.
The room holds its breath. Nemo is clutching the doorframe. I take a step between them, in case Nekkan’s first instinct is revenge.
