Devil in the Device

by Lora Beth Johnson

  “. . . so . . . COOL.”

  He grabbed Andra’s hands again and pulled her to her feet.

  “My sister’s a robot, my sister’s a robot,” he chanted, doing a little kid dance. There were still tears streaking down his cheeks, but a huge grin spread across his face.

  “Oz, we need to talk about what this means,” she said.

  “Do you have any cool robot abilities?”

  A laugh bubbled up inside her. She reached out with her thoughts and caught all the passing nanos until they were thick enough to see. Sparks glittered around her. She held out her hand and let them dance across her palm, curl around her fingers. She clenched her fist and when she opened it, let the nanos disperse.

  “NO. WAY,” Oz breathed.

  Auric cleared his throat. “Is that why? Is that why you were awake before the rest of us?”

  She couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw the affection in her father’s face replaced with fear.

  “Yeah.” Andra nodded. Cleared her throat. “Because I’m not like the rest of you.”

  * * *

  Hours later, Andra sat with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders outside her family’s tent.

  The Icebox was lit with ’fire after ’fire, the main lights doused to prepare for night. Though the colonists had just woken, it was important to get their bodies on the same rhythm as the planet they thought was Holymyth. Most would be sleeping inside their drained ’tanks or on nests of fabric torn from clothes stored there. Lilibet and Xana had brought as many cots as they could find, which, to be fair, had been a lot. But it hadn’t been fifteen hundred.

  After announcing the lie Andra had fed him, Cruz had called the more senior LAC personnel for a meeting, giving each of them tasks to coordinate, from building shelters to creating food from the frozen rations and synth’bots stored in ’tanks. Andra had expected chaos, but it seemed humans craved order. Families had found each other, social groups started to form, and the lack of supplies or information wasn’t yet a frustration. They were still on an adventure. Andra didn’t know how long that would last.

  Acadia was reading inside the tent. She hadn’t spoken a word to Andra since storming off. Oz was playing with a sim on his cot, giggling and growling at something only he could see. Every once in a while, Andra would hear him go quiet, and she wondered if he was remembering his mother was dead. She got the feeling he didn’t truly believe it yet.

  Her father, on the other hand, had left the tent and hadn’t returned. Andra didn’t know if he was angry or shocked or hurt that Andra was AI. Maybe it wasn’t even about her. Maybe it was about Isla’s death. Or Isla lying. She didn’t know. All she knew was that she’d never felt so alone.

  Andra shifted on the cold concrete floor, back to the tent flap, and pulled the holocket from under her shirt, clicking it open. She’d watched the memories countless times since Rashmi had returned it to her. Not only the message Griffin had left her but also the ones Andra had taken before going into stasis. Briella and Rhin doing some popular dance that Andra could never manage. Cruz laughing at something. Andra couldn’t remember what. Her father playing with his dogs, chasing them around the house in a way that was completely out of character for the absentminded professor.

  And the final memory was of her mother.

  She hit play on the ’locket and was surrounded by their old living room. The brown couch. The kinetic orbs shaped like pineapples. Big picture windows, with a view of a field and a large oak. Isla was staring out at the sunrise, holding a cup of coffee.

  “Learn, adapt,” she said, and Andra couldn’t remember if she was talking to Andra or to herself. “If something doesn’t work, you don’t keep trying it. You try something else. Even if it seems ridiculous.” She took a sip of her coffee and was quiet for a moment. “That ridiculousness is what makes us human. Doing something completely unexpected and unlikely and brilliant. That’s—”

  A hand shot through the memory, one that was absolutely real and not part of a sim. Andra scuttled back, a scream stuck in her throat, as the memory collapsed back into the ’locket, revealing the owner of the hand.

  Ice-blond hair dangling in wet clumps. Lips pulled into a sneer, eyes swollen shut. Blood-streaked arms and legs. Completely naked.

  Apparently, the colonists weren’t the only ones who had woken up.

  Maret smiled. “Hello, Goddess.”

  FOURTEEN

  THE FAILURE

  Zhade dragged his feet from one step to the next as he trudged up the palace stairs to Andra’s old room. He was tired and sore. Blood was crusted beneath his nose and ears, and his head hadn’t stopped throbbing since leaving the cathedzal. No one would meet his eye as he’d made his march through the palace.

  Angels were going rogue everywhere acity, and his subjects had witnessed his powerlessness. His rule was unraveling fast, and if he didn’t skool to use the Crown quickish, everything would be for nothing. He had sole one recourse left to him.

  Once he reached the top of the stairs, he sent a message to Kiv’s speak-easy, and the door to the Third’s suite flew open.

  Kiv’s dark figure took up the entire doorway, eyes flashing as he stared down at Zhade. “I’m taking a break to see Lilibet.” The sign he used for Lilibet’s name resembled a heart.

  “Not now,” Zhade signed back, his temple pounding. “Gryfud will be—”

  “I’m taking a break to see Lilibet,” Kiv signed again, this time, his gestures more firm. “I won’t—”

  “Neg!” Zhade snapped aloud. He sighed, closing his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. “Sorries, evens.” His voice strained against his attempt to soften his tone. “You’ll get a break eventualish. Mereish, not now.”

  Kiv’s expression went from rage to hurt, and Zhade comped full well. He’d left Kiv alone at this post far too long, making him guard the woman who had forced him into service and most likeish murdered his fam. Zhade would make it up to him. He promised himself he would. Later.

  “I need you here,” Zhade signed. “Please.”

  Kiv nodded, his jaw clenched. “You owe me.”

  “I reck full well,” Zhade said. And he did. He for true did.

  He had Kiv wait outside, full close he could come to Zhade’s aid if called on the speak-easy. He shut the door, but not before Kiv shot him one last frustrated look.

  “Trouble with your henchman?” Tsurina purred. She sat on the pink chaise near the balcony, book in hand. Her long fingers flipped through the pages.

  Zhade scowled and started pacing. “Are you the one controlling the angels?”

  “Me?” Tsurina didn’t look up. “I’ve been trapped in this room. For certz it couldn’t have been me.”

  “Don’t be spoonish.” Zhade sank down into the gilded chair he’d so oft occupied when Andra lived here and rested his crowned temple on his head in exhaustion. “What did you do and how did you do it?”

  Tsurina set her book aside and sat forward, letting her legs gentlish sweep off the chaise under a curtain of gauzy skirt. “If I did something, I would love to hold fame for it. But again, you have me locked atower, and, unlike you, I don’t have a Crown so I can do things with my mind.”

  Zhade felt the cool metal neath his fingertips. He leveled Tsurina with a glare. “Where did the Crown come from?”

  “Ah.” Tsurina grinned. “You’re finalish asking the right questions.”

  “Evens?”

  Tsurina stood and walked to the magic shield barring her way to the balcony. She looked out over Eerensed, running her fingers along the pink gauzy curtain. The pocket hovered in the distance, mereish on the other side of the dome, casting a shadow over the balcony.

  “It’s a fam heirloom. I passed it down to my son. Then you killed him and took it for yourself.”

  “You gave it to Maret?” Zhade asked. “But you hate magic.”<
br />
  Tsurina turned and gave Zhade a patronizing look. “I hate the goddesses’ magic. This is something else.”

  Zhade felt his pulse pounding in his forehead. “But they’re both High Magic.”

  “They both look like High Magic,” Tsurina corrected. “But theirs is a magic built out of the need to dominate. The Anloch fam magic is grown out of the need for freedom.”

  Zhade raised an eyebrow. “Soze, you took something purposed for freedom and used it to take over a city.”

  “Bodhizhad, we’ve convoed this. I’m not in this for power. I’m here to end the goddesses’ power. Which you’ve done for me, thank you very much. Now, since I’ve gotten what I want, I can help you get what you want.”

  Zhade stiffened. “And what do I want?”

  Tsurina’s lips stretched in a smile. “You want to skool how to use the Crown so you can remain guv.”

  Zhade swallowed, training his face to remain neutral. Was he so full obvi?

  Tsurina paced round the room, heels clacking against the marble. “Oh, you might convo yourself it’s for the greater good, but it’s actualish because now you’ve had a taste of power, and you don’t want to give it up.”

  It was pointless to argue with Tsurina, but Zhade recked in his heart he was doing all this for his people. To protect them in ways his brother had not. In ways his father had failed. But in order to do that, Tsurina might be his sole hope. It was sole when he’d used her advice that he had success in using the Crown.

  “How do you benefit from this?” he asked.

  “Me?” Tsurina gestured to herself. “We can make a deal. If I skool you, then maybe . . . you bring me the Goddess?”

  Zhade froze, his heart stuttering. “The goddesses are dead.”

  “Are they?”

  Zhade blinked slowish, bareish breathing. “You watched me kill Andra myself. You watched her fall.”

  “Did I?”

  “Why would I hold her alive?” Zhade snapped, panic growing. He would not give Andra up, not even for this. “She was in the way of what I wanted. The sole march to gain the citians’ trust was to kill her. And now I rule all of Eerensed.”

  Tsurina sighed. “To be true, Zhade, I have no care if you held her alive or no. I’m not convoing bout the Third. I’m convoing bout the First.”

  Everything in Zhade stopped. His heart, his breath, his thoughts.

  The First. His mam.

  His mam, who was secretive and deific and powerful.

  His mam, whom he’d watched beheaded afront of him.

  His mam, whose blood had stained the same platform he’d faked Andra’s death upon.

  Had she somehow escaped death as well?

  A muscle in his jaw ticked. “My mam’s dead. You saw to that.”

  Tsurina sighed, one arm crossed, the other bent up, wrist twirling in the air, almost like she was dancing. Her full body was relaxed, as though she didn’t care if Zhade took her deal or not. She played the game far better than any of them.

  “Firm. I did see her die. Mereish as I saw the Second and Third die, yet still they live, marah?”

  Zhade didn’t deny it. He clung to a tiny thread of hope, hanging over an abyss, and at any moment, Tsurina could cut it and let him fall.

  She prowled toward him. “I reck the First is alive. And I reck where to find her. And all I ask in return for skooling you to use the magic of the Crown is to find your mam and bring her here.”

  Zhade’s mouth went dry. He recked it was a trap, but he couldn’t see a march round it. He had to skool how to use the Crown, save his people. And if he could see his mam again . . . Even if he brought her back to Tsurina, the Grande Advisor was his prisoner, and he would be wearing a Crown he recked full well how to use.

  Pain shot through his head, and in his mind, he saw a flicker of a memory. Donning the Crown for the first time. Screaming and crying and pain. Tsurina staring down at him, glaring, disappointed.

  Confusion rocked him. Tsurina hadn’t been there. He hadn’t cried out. He’d tried to be brave. Andra had been there. In the throne room.

  “Evens?” Tsurina prompted. “Do we have a deal?”

  Zhade came back to himself. The time chimes started to sound, echoing in from the balcony, throughout Eerensed. The Eerensed he’d sworn to protect. And somewhere, across the Wastes, his mam might still be alive.

  Zhade nodded. “Firm. Skool me everything you reck.”

  FIFTEEN

  00110001 00110101

  Andra wished she had a single lamp, like in those old sight-and-sound interrogation scenes. Instead, she had to make do with shining the light of her tablet into Maret’s face.

  He squinted into it, slouching in a metal chair. His arms were pulled behind his back, fastened with ’cuffs. His head hung forward, wet hair brushing his shoulders. A rough-spun blanket was thrown over his lap, barely covering the essentials.

  Andra had been extremely lucky that Mechy had been nearby when Maret had appeared. Not that Maret had tried to attack her. Instead, he was weak and confused. He didn’t fight when Mechy grabbed him, nor when he dragged him out of the Icebox. It wasn’t like he’d given up. It was like he was exactly where he wanted to be.

  She’d been an idiot. Why hadn’t she considered Rashmi had tied Maret’s ’tank to the same network as the colonists? Andra wasn’t sure where he’d been kept, but he’d somehow made his way to find her. Not to escape. Not to find his brother and enact revenge. He’d come for her.

  Now Andra faced Maret, Mechy standing sentry behind her, in a destroyed lab in the annex. It made her think of how it had been her and Mechy against Maret that night in the throne room. She reminded herself that she’d bested him then. She could do it again.

  He looked up at Andra, bruises under his eyes, and a sneer tugging at his lips. “What happens now, Goddess?”

  His voice was no more than a rasp, but it somehow echoed in the small room. If Maret still had the Crown, he could turn Mechy against her, attack her with stardust, break through his ’cuffs. But his forehead was free of ornament, except for an unsettling bruise that limned the space where it had been.

  A chill ran down Andra’s spine, a darkness filling her. Fear and anger and a lust for revenge. He’d tried to kill her. He’d tried to kill Zhade. He’d failed in both cases where he had succeeded so many times before. A glimpse of her maids’ execution flashed through Andra’s mind.

  Destroy. The voice inside her rose to the surface, but this time it wasn’t trying to convince her. It was agreeing with her. Maret needed to be destroyed.

  The thought sent a chill down her spine. Maybe there was something inside her that wasn’t that different from Maret.

  One day, he’d said to her, you’ll make the same choices as me.

  “Why didn’t you escape?” Andra asked, willing her voice to be strong. “Why did you come to find me? What were you trying to accomplish?”

  Maret rolled his head, working out the kinks in his neck. His arms strained slightly against the ’cuffs. “Where’s my brother?”

  Andra gritted her teeth. “You’re supposed to be answering questions, not asking them.”

  He gave her a mocking smile. “Maybe I would answer some of yours, if you answer some of mine.”

  Andra swallowed. She felt Mechy’s steady presence beside her. “Currently, your brother is wearing your face and Crown, and pretending to be you.”

  Maret burst out laughing.

  It was not the response Andra was expecting, but it was almost like Maret couldn’t stop. He laughed until tears were streaming down his face and he was shaking.

  Andra scowled, crossing her arms. “I’m not here to talk about your brother. I want to know—”

  “Firm, firm,” Maret said, his laughter slowly dying. “Ask your questions. You’re free to do so, but I’m also free to refuse to answe
r.”

  “You’re chained.”

  “Am I?” he asked, looking around.

  For a moment, Andra thought he had discovered a way to free himself from his ’cuffs, but then she realized he was merely being flippant. Like he was the hero in an interrogation scene. Like he was Zhade.

  He stuck out his bottom lip. “I spoze I am, but that does nothing to entice me to answer your questions. And I reck so many things. I was coming to tell you all the charred info I have, but now I don’t imagine I will.” He looked Andra up and down. “You goddesses never comp which one of us is actualish imprisoned.”

  What did he mean by that? Was he talking about Rashmi? Referring to when he’d visit her while she was in the palace dungeons, how he’d take her for walks? How he’d made her think he was doing her a favor, when he was actually her jailor? And she’d fallen for it so well that she’d spent almost all her time guarding his cryo’tank, protecting him from harm.

  The lab went cold.

  Rashmi.

  She hadn’t seen the other AI since the colonists had woken.

  Since Maret had woken.

  “Where’s Rashmi?” She tried to keep her voice steady, but it warbled.

  Maret quirked an eyebrow. “Who?”

  “The Second. Where is she?” Andra started toward him, the voices in her head demanding she grab him by the neck, slam him against the wall, tighten her grip on his throat until she got her answer, but Mechy held her back.

  Maret shook his head. “Wait. Rashmi? Is that what you call her?”

  Andra clenched her teeth. “That’s her name.”

  Maret grinned. One tooth was chipped, and there was blood in the corners of his mouth. “Is it? Are you for certz? I’ve recked her far longer than you have.”

  Andra tried to school her face. He was baiting her. That’s all this was.

  Maybe.

  There was so much Rashmi didn’t remember. Of what happened when she’d woken. Had she confided in Maret before she’d lost her memories?

  It didn’t matter right now. All that mattered was that Rashmi had a habit of guarding Maret’s ’chamber, and Andra hadn’t seen or heard from her since he woke.