Devil in the Device

by Lora Beth Johnson

  Andra wished she could show Cruz Eerensed at its best: nano’swarms zooming through the city, ’drones wandering listlessly, searching for their next task. Vendors opening their fruit stands and butcheries. Rickety carts next to high-tech ’bots. People wearing sun-damaged skin and modded limbs. But even with Maret no longer on the throne and a new ’dome protecting it, the city was hurting. Too cramped and dirty. Streets quiet and rampant with despair. Not a ’bot in sight. The pocket hovered to the west.

  She’d expected things to be better with Zhade in charge, but something was wrong.

  “Holy shit,” Cruz breathed.

  She’d almost forgotten he was there, and when she looked his way, she saw the same dawning horror she’d felt the day she realized what had happened. That Earth was destroyed.

  * * *

  The next place Andra took Cruz was the rocket.

  They wound through the tunnels, and Mechy was waiting for them to open the door. Cruz ignored Mechy—he was just another mech’bot to him—but his jaw dropped when he entered the cavern. Standing there, under the shadow of the skeleton of a rocket, had a way of making one feel especially small. Andra hoped it gave Cruz a bit of hope too. Things were bad. But this was their way out.

  Cruz didn’t say anything for the longest time, then finally: “You really should have that power hub behind eco’glass. One touch and it’ll fry your system.”

  * * *

  Finally, they wound through the tunnels to the Vaults.

  When they entered through the air’lock, Cruz let out a gasp. Andra knew what he was seeing. The lobby, with its high ceilings and circular reception desk. Frozen holos displaying various collections and exhibits. The huge astronomical clock hanging from the rafters, still ticking away. He’d probably come here as a child, and then later did contracted work for them. Everyone from Andra’s time was familiar with the Vaults, and due to its enviro’control, the building remained basically unchanged in a thousand years.

  Cruz gaped as Andra led him past the emptied exhibits and labs, winding from hall to hall until they reached her room. She pressed her thumb to the lock and the door slid open, and she ushered Cruz in.

  He sat in Andra’s ergo’chair, took a deep breath, and twirled to face her. “Okay, Andie, explain.”

  Though he still seemed shocked, there was the beginning of excitement written on his face. A new puzzle for him to solve. An unexpected experience.

  Andra sat across the table and met Cruz’s weighty brown eyes and told him everything. Told him about waking up and being terrified and alone. Told him about coming to Eerensed and all the things she’d discovered since. Told him about finding Griffin’s clone and the rocket and needing to upgrade the colonists’ tech.

  When she finished, Cruz didn’t react. Merely sat there, mouth pinched, not meeting her eyes. Finally, he looked up at her under his lashes. “So you know?”

  Andra raised an eyebrow. “I just told you that rogue LAC tech destroyed the planet and your boss created hundreds of clones of herself, and that’s your question?”

  He bit his lip. “Do you?”

  “Know what? That I’m not actually human? That I’m an AI raised as human so I wouldn’t overthrow my human overlords? That I’m a created thing?”

  Cruz had the decency to look ashamed.

  “Yeah.” She leaned back in her chair. “I know.” She was unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice, and it made her feel guilt. She wasn’t supposed to be bitter about this.

  Cruz watched her warily.

  “So what was your job?” Andra asked, trying to sound nonchalant. “How were you supposed to socialize us?”

  Cruz was suddenly interested in the different tablets and ’bands on the table. “You know about that too, huh?”

  Andra nodded. “I saw it on the manifest. Were you supposed to become friends with us? Were you dating Rashmi to socialize her? Was it part of your job? Did she know about this?”

  Cruz ran his nail over a groove in the table. “Sort of. A little. Rashmi and I . . . It’s complicated.” He looked up. “And you and I were definitely really friends. Just because it was also my job, doesn’t mean that our friendship wasn’t . . . isn’t still real.”

  Why did Andra even care? It wasn’t like she should hope for friendship with humans.

  “Listen, Andie—”

  “It’s fine. I understand.”

  “I’m still sorry. Someone should have told you sooner.”

  Andra swallowed. He shouldn’t be apologizing to her. Not as a human to an AI.

  She waved away the apology. “We should be focusing on getting everyone’s tech upgraded.”

  She turned to her work’station, unplugging the anomalizer, and it blipped a neon green.

  Cruz looked like he was about to apologize again but sighed, nodding to the anomalizer. “What did you say it would protect us from?”

  “The pockets.”

  He blinked. “I’m sorry, what?”

  “That cloud of tech you saw on the surface? Those are . . . almost like a ’swarm of decon’bots. They destroy everything. Everything. And they can’t be controlled.”

  That was a bit of a lie. They didn’t destroy Andra, and she could control them. Sometimes. In the throne room and at Lake Superior, it had been instinct. An instinct she needed to tame.

  She reached over to grab the mini’dome that contained the tiny pocket and held it out to Cruz. “Like this.”

  The pocket swirled angrily in the ’dome. Cruz took it from her, awe on his face.

  “Be careful!” Andra snapped.

  He gave her a look that suggested she was a fool for ever considering he wouldn’t be.

  “You trapped this? How?”

  “It’s . . . a long story.” And one she didn’t want to get into now. It would lead to awkward questions, and she didn’t know if she was imagining it, but with the pocket in front of her, she felt like the voices were just at the edge of her consciousness, waiting for her to admit them.

  “So,” Cruz said, setting down the mini’dome. “Where do we begin?”

  The pocket pushed against the skin of the ’dome several times before expanding into a cloud and falling still. Andra watched it for a moment, until she was sure the voices wouldn’t surface, then she leveled Cruz with a stare.

  “I need you to convince someone to let me upgrade their tech.”

  * * *

  Ophele Hammad volunteered. She was a tall Black hijabi with a plump, pleasant face and a modded hand. Cruz and Andra met her at the therapy tent. Ophele and the other cryo’techs had been using it to help the others through reanimation procedures, but they were nearly done, and were converting the tent to a standard lab with all the necessary accoutrements for ’implant procedures.

  Cruz pulled back the flap of the tent, and Ophele was waiting for them, surrounded by holo’displays and lab equipment. Her face brightened when she saw Cruz but faltered when she saw Andra.

  “Who is this?” she asked, even though Andra was sure they’d met at a few LAC family functions.

  “Oh,” Cruz said, as though the question surprised him. “This is Andromeda Watts, Dr. Watts’s daughter. She’ll be doing the procedure today.”

  Andra tugged at the ends of her hair. She’d asked Cruz not to tell anyone she was AI yet. She didn’t want to be treated like a ’bot. But now she’d rather that than to be treated like Isla’s disappointing middle child.

  Ophele gave Andra a sad smile. “I was sorry to hear about your mother. She was a remarkable person.”

  Andra bit her lip. “Thank you. Um, have a seat.” She gestured to an ergo’chair they had been using for reanimation therapy.

  Ophele sat and cleared her throat. “I thought one of the ’implant techs would be completing the procedure.”

  Cruz scratched the back of his neck. “Well, we can
have one on standby, but Ms. Watts is uniquely qualified to complete this procedure. It actually requires her . . . ’implant to perform the upgrade.”

  Ophele looked Andra up and down. “How old are you?”

  Andra tried to stand taller. “Eighteen.”

  She didn’t know if that was true. She was born almost a thousand years ago, but between the two times she’d been in stasis and the lack of seasons, she wasn’t sure how long she’d been alive. It sounded better than seventeen though.

  Ophele hmm’d.

  “Don’t worry,” Cruz said, his expression a perfect mix of compassion and confidence. “Ms. Watts woke early, and Dr. Griffin trained her personally to complete this procedure. It’s noninvasive, presents no risks, and will take less than ten minutes.”

  Andra should have been concerned about Cruz’s ability to fabricate lies on the spot so easily. Instead, she was impressed he managed to know the exact right thing to say.

  Ophele nodded, giving Andra an apologetic smile. “Of course. I was just . . . surprised.”

  Andra tried to smile back but wasn’t sure she achieved it.

  Cruz hit the controls to lean the ’chair back, tilting Ophele’s head so they could access the emergency port behind her ear.

  “May I?” Andra asked.

  Ophele nodded, and Andra moved part of her hijab aside to reveal the port.

  It was barely visible, as dark as her complexion. They were created to match the skin tone of the individual. Though some people decorated the skin around the port with tattoos, most kept them unobtrusive.

  Andra flicked aside the covering to reveal the port underneath. It was a tiny circular hollow that the pointed end of the anomalizer would fit neatly into. Cruz handed it to her. It felt heavy, warm from Cruz’s touch. The neon color turned her skin a sickly green.

  “A small pinch,” Andra said, and slid the end of the anomalizer into the port.

  Ophele flinched, but Andra knew it was more anticipation of pain than pain itself. Technically, there were no nerve endings around the port, as they’d been removed when the ’implant was embedded. Andra quickly connected a wire to the end of the anomalizer and then snapped the other side to the end of her reset tool.

  She wished she could use the port at the back of her neck, but it was merely decoration, part of the lie to convince her she was human, using an ’implant. Instead, she had to stab herself in the heart to connect to the anomalizer.

  She took a deep breath, made sure Ophele wasn’t watching, and slid her reset tool in.

  Pain shot through Andra’s body, and it was all she could do not to gasp. She gritted her teeth, felt Cruz put gentle pressure on her free hand as she looked up to the ceiling, eyes smarting, willing her body to adjust to the pain.

  She took a deep breath, steadying herself. Cruz met her eyes and she nodded, before pressing the button at the edge of the anomalizer.

  At first nothing happened. Ophele didn’t react. Andra felt a tug at her heart, but that was all. She studied the anomalizer, looking for any indication it was working. A noise or a light. It looked just the same as it had, glowing green.

  Ophele screamed.

  Cruz jumped up. “What’s wrong?”

  “Get it off! Get it off!!” Ophele reached back to push away the anomalizer.

  Andra scrambled to detach it, but it was locked in.

  “Unlock it!” Cruz cried.

  “I’m trying!”

  Ophele’s back arched and her cries filled the space. A few people came running, filing into the therapy tent. Her shrieks grew louder and more frantic, her body curled in on itself.

  Someone pushed Andra out of the way. It was one of the cryo’techs. Raj. He fumbled with the anomalizer, but nothing happened. He looked up at Andra.

  “What did you do?”

  Ophele’s cries stopped. Her entire body relaxed, and the anomalizer detached itself.

  Andra rushed to pick it up, while Raj and the other technicians started attaching Ophele to various machines, monitoring her heart and breathing. Andra melted into the background as they started yelling to one another.

  “She’s flatlining.”

  “Pull up the defib app.”

  “Ten cc of renovetnol.”

  “Help me!”

  “Turn her on her back.”

  Raj turned on Andra.

  “What the fuck did you do?” he snapped. A holo’display of Ophele’s heart appeared over his shoulder. It was completely still. An alarm was blaring.

  “I . . . it wasn’t . . .”

  This wasn’t how this was supposed to go. Griffin’s clone said this would be easy, that Andra could handle it. She’d used the words “You literally can’t mess this up.”

  Yet Andra had found a way.

  Cruz stepped in front of her. “She was helping me.”

  “Clear!” one of the ’techs called, followed by the whoosh of noise the defib app made as it tried to restart Ophele’s heart.

  “Helping you do what?” Raj snapped.

  Ophele’s heart still wasn’t pumping, the alarm still blaring.

  “Clear!” Another whoosh.

  “Ophele thought she might have had an allergic reaction to the cryo’protectant,” Cruz lied quickly. “We were running some tests, that’s all. We don’t know what happened.”

  Andra opened her mouth, then closed it like a fish.

  “Is this true?” Raj asked.

  Andra nodded, peeling her eyes away from the projection of Ophele’s unbeating heart, shutting out the panicked voices of the cryo’techs.

  Raj held out his hand. “I need the attachment you were using.”

  Andra’s hand tightened on the anomalizer.

  The alarm faded into the background. The shouts growing distant. An icy calm descended on Andra.

  Destroy him.

  That dark feeling swept over her. It would be so easy. Even if she wasn’t in a tent full of deadly tools, she could overpower him with the nanos in the air. He would die, gasping, asking no more questions.

  Andra blinked back to herself. The alarm returning to full blast. The cries of the cryo’techs overwhelming.

  “Here.” Cruz handed Raj a plain diagnostic ’implant attachment.

  Raj took it, weighing it in his hands, looking slightly confused. It was bulky and opaque, not shimmery and green like the anomalizer, but Raj nodded, turning back to the cryo’techs trying to save Ophele.

  Holo’displays were blinking red, alarms blaring, ’techs shouting. Raj pushed them out of the way, fingers flying over one of the diagnostic ’displays. The alarm cut off.

  A beep.

  Then another.

  The holo of Ophele’s heart started pumping.

  “Great job, Raj,” a ’tech said. “Can we wake her up?”

  “No.” His eyes met Andra’s briefly across the tent. “We’ll have to keep her in a coma until we know what’s wrong with her.”

  Andra swallowed, guilt consuming her, and slipped out of the tent, the anomalizer heavy in her pocket.

  NINETEEN

  THE DEFECT

  Zhade took his time getting to the Vaults. He would be glad to see Andra, but she’d made it crystal last time that she wouldn’t be glad to see him. Originalish, the meetings had been once a turn, to ensure Zhade, Andra, and the Schism were all working together. But after a while, Zhade had stopped going. The meetings were full boring, anyway. Lots of arguing. Lots of convoing bout the stupid rocket Skilla was building. The thing his mam had asked her to build. Asked Skilla, not Zhade. Neg. Instead, she’d sent Zhade adesert.

  He imagined bout what Tsurina had said. That his mam was alive. It had to be a lie. How could he trust the woman who’d had his mam executed, and apparentish—according to Meta—abandoned her first kiddun in the Wastes, and didn’t love her second?r />
  If his mam was alive, she wouldn’t let him believe she was dead. Wouldn’t have let him wander the desert alone. She’d have at least come back for him by now. Marah?

  And if not for him, she’d have come back for Eerensed. For Skilla. For Andra. She could have repaired the gods’ dome, prevented the pocket from taking the Lost District. She could have skooled Andra what it purposed to be a goddess, protected her from Maret and Tsurina.

  If she was alive, she had chosen not to come back, and everything in Zhade rebelled against the imagining. It had to be a lie. His mam was dead.

  Except—

  There was a tiny spark of hope in his chest. What if Tsurina was telling the truth? What if he could skool to use the Crown and get his mother back? What if together they could tame the rogue angels and save Eerensed from itself and the planet, destroy the pockets, reestablish the goddesses so Andra could return aboveground? They could tell the people who he for true was, and he could get his face back.

  Maybe Andra would want to be with him then.

  Fishes and wishes.

  He paused a moment outside of Andra’s room. Straightening his cape and patting down his hair. One deep breath and he knocked on the door. It slid open.

  Skilla was standing and gathering her things, Xana waiting for her with one hand on the ax at her hip. Andra sat at the far end of the table, face drawn, shoulders hunched.

  “Ah,” Skilla said. “He actualish showed his face, to convo. Should we start this meeting over?”

  Andra looked up at Zhade, her expression blank.

  “No, go. I’ll . . .” she stammered. “I’ll convo him.”

  “You’ll convo him everything?” Skilla asked, something pointed in her expression.

  Andra nodded, looking away.

  Skilla’s eyes narrowed as she turned to Zhade. “Evens. But there is one thing I want to tell you.” She took a step closer, and Zhade had to stop himself from shrinking back. “If you don’t hold the angels in control, I will. And you won’t like how I do it.”

  Zhade gave her a fake grin. “I always do enjoy your threats, Skilla. You must practice them amirror to be so good at them.”