Devil in the Device

by Lora Beth Johnson

  “Enough.” Auric gently took Andra’s hand. “I trust you. I’m proud of you. I will do whatever you need, no matter how much it hurts.”

  Andra gave her father a sad smile. For some reason, that didn’t make her feel particularly better.

  TWENTY-TWO

  THE GIFTED

  Zhade stood in the middle of the empty cathedzal. Evens. Not empty. A host of angels surrounded him in concentric circles. Light filtered in through the stained windows, casting an array of colors on their shiny casings. The gods’ dome scrys behind him winked in various rhythms. The room was dead silent. He shivered, his bare feet cold against the red velvet floor. He wore his old guard uniform pants and nothing else. Nothing, except the Crown.

  He closed his eyes, allowing himself to feel his connection with the angels in the room. It was weak. He could sense them, but it was like seeing something in his peripheral vision. When he tried to focus on them, they disappeared.

  Atop of that, he was distracted by the memory of his kiss with Andra, the feel of her body against his, the desperation in how she held on to him. Then, her realizing what she was doing, pushing him away, disgusted to have kissed the boy who had betrayed her time and time again.

  He recked he wasn’t full good for her. Recked that she deserved better and should stay away from him. So why did it hurt so much?

  He glared at the closest angel, its sleek casing glinting in the dancing light. He could bareish sense it through the Crown. The more he tried, the more diff it became.

  Magic had always come easyish to him. But he’d always used Low Magic. Creating spells, brewing potions, inventing conduits. This was different. This was feeling and instinct and will. It was a skill he didn’t have, a talent he’d yet to develop.

  But he had to.

  This moren, he’d heard of nearish ten rogue angels throughout Eerensed. Citians were surrendering their magic in droves, but it wasn’t enough. Still more hid their angels, sole for their eyes to turn red and kill their masters. Nearish thirty dead in the past few days. He had to stop this. Stop feeling sorries for himself and do what he was purposed to do. Protect his people. Decide his fate.

  He tried again, attempting to sense the angels through the Crown. There were dozens of them. Every angel that the citians had surrendered to the palace. Large, bulky ones with spears. Thin, sleek ones with transparent skulls. Some that didn’t even resemble humans at all. Arachnid limbs and sharp joints. He could bareish focus on one, let alone all of them. He imagined bout Andra controlling the pocket, all those minuscule pieces she commanded at once. But then, Andra was a goddess, and he was mereish Zhade.

  Neg. He was the son of a goddess. He was the Guv. He could do this.

  He focused on one angel. Fishy. Zhade had sorcered it to create conduits plenty of times. He recked it, not mereish as an angel but as a friend. He concentrated, and Fishy’s essence, identity bloomed in Zhade’s mind.

  He couldn’t describe it. It was a new sense, not like sight or touch but with elements of both and neither. Fishy felt green, cold, buzzing. It was a network of magical veins and arteries pooled into a single being.

  Zhade also felt the Crown. It was an odd sensation. Part of him and apart from him. An extra limb, an extension of himself. It recked what to do, even if Zhade didn’t.

  Lift your spear, he commanded Fishy.

  Nothing happened.

  He thought again. Lift your spear.

  A twitch but nothing more. Zhade was already feeling defeated.

  “You’re not concentrating,” came a voice.

  Zhade opened one eye and glared at Tsurina. “Maybe I could if you would stop interrupting.”

  She lounged on Andra’s chaise, which she had demanded Kiv bring to the cathedzal. The big man had sole glared when Zhade told him his plan to skool bout the Crown from Tsurina. He didn’t argue, though.

  Zhade had need to find time for Kiv to visit Lilibet. He’d purposed to. For true he had. He’d planned on having Gryfud take Kiv’s place for a few bells. But Gryfud was busy holding the guards from being suss bout Meta, and Zhade had no one else he could trust to hold Tsurina from escaping.

  Kiv comped full well, even if he didn’t like it. He stood nearish the cathedzal double doors, huge arms crossed over his chest, a scowl on his face. He watched Tsurina like he was bout to murder her, and Zhade recked it was sole his loyalty to Zhade that prevented it.

  “It shouldn’t meteor,” Tsurina snapped, standing. Her long silk dress draped dramaticish to the floor. She held her arms out as though she were bout to dance. “This is all yours to control. The stardust, the angels, even me. If I’m distracting you, it’s because you’re letting me.”

  Zhade rolled his eyes. “I can’t control you. I can sole control magic.”

  “For true?” Tsurina scoffed. “Because you haven’t so far.”

  “Is this wonderful technique how you skooled Maret?” Zhade snapped.

  “Try again.”

  Zhade closed his eyes. He took a deep breath in through his nose and let it out heavyish through his mouth. Then he reached out with his magical senses through the Crown.

  What was it that Andra had said? Thoughts with intent? She likened it to moving a part of your body.

  You can think about moving your arm without moving it. You can also move your arm without thinking about it.

  He had memory of Doon as an infant. The jerky movements she made. Reaching for things and missing. How long it took her to walk. He’d been eight, nine at the time, but it had fascinated him watching someone skool all those things, to be so bad at things that came naturalish to him. Now he was the infant.

  Lift.

  Your.

  Spear.

  He imagined it happening. Not merish the words in his head but the consequences. Fishy’s many-jointed fingers wrapping tighter round the spear. He imagined what it felt like when he gripped his own. The muscles running from his neck down his arms, into his palms. The twitch of each finger. The sensation of holding something. The slight clench in his abdomens as he prepped to lift something. The strength coming not mereish from his torso but down his legs. He imagined it all, and he planted that image in Fishy’s mind.

  This, he thought. This is what I want you to do.

  But it wasn’t asking. He didn’t ask his arm to move for him. It was part of him. It was him and he was it, and there was no commanding or asking or trying. There was mereish doing.

  He was Fishy. Fishy was him. And as Fishy, he imagined the act of lifting the spear, everything it entailed. He didn’t plead or cajole. He mereish did.

  One moment, Fishy was holding it looseish at its side, the next, it had tightened its grip and lifted it from the ground. It grasped the spear with both hands, and then pointed it forward, at Zhade’s heart.

  He sucked in a breath.

  With will and intent, he had Fishy lower its spear and walk toward Zhade. One step. Two.

  Zhade couldn’t hold back his smile. Power ran through him, from the Crown to his head and heart and all throughout his body. He expanded his senses to feel more angels in the room. A second spear lifted, then a third. Each time, the effort grew easier, til thirteen angels were holding their spears aloft.

  Stardust swirled round him, hungryish, asking for a task. Through them, he could feel the shape of the room, the figure that was Tsurina. They butted up against her, and it was the empty space, the part of the room that lacked stardust, that told Zhade where she was, how she was standing.

  He concentrated harder, condensing the stardust round her so he could sense the tension in her arms, the expression on her face. She was relaxed, vulnerable. She had no way to defend herself, and Zhade no longer needed her. She hated him. Always had. And now he could kill her so very, very easyish.

  There was no reason to hold her alive. She’d already served her purpose. Skooled him to
use the Crown. Gave him answers bout his mam for Andra.

  His mam.

  Who Tsurina claimed was alive.

  If he killed Tsurina, he’d never reck for certz.

  He opened his eyes to find Tsurina watching him. Shame fell on him like a pile of rocktins, and he came back to himself. He was no longer Zhade and the stardust, Zhade and magic, Zhade and.

  He was mereish Zhade.

  Tsurina met his eyes and smiled.

  “Good.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  00110010 00110011

  The entire LAC stood around Andra, their eyes fixed on the wire that ran from the reset tool in her heart to the one poised to enter her father’s skull. He lay strapped to an operating table, bands covering his chest, torso, and thighs. He gave Andra a smile, ignoring the thousands of eyes watching them, but Andra felt every one of them.

  It was necessary, of course. In order to get upgraded, the people had to trust her, and they wouldn’t trust her—a child they knew only as their boss’s daughter—unless they saw her perform a successful upgrade.

  “Are you ready, Andra?” Cruz asked.

  He’d finished attaching the monitors to her father. One holo shot from the monitor on his chest, revealing Auric’s beating heart. It was accompanied by a thump-thump noise that Andra felt in her bones. Another monitor displayed her father’s brain, alight with activity. A third showed his lungs, and a fourth, his neural’implant. It projected a dense network of nanos and electricity. Once the upgrade was complete, the nanos in the ’implant would appear on the monitor as the corrupted tech.

  A chill ran up Andra’s spine, but that was the point, wasn’t it? For the tech to look corrupted, give off that signature, so that the pockets would now see Auric as one of their own, preventing any attacks. This was a good thing. She was protecting her father.

  So why did it seem so scary?

  Perhaps it was the sound of hushed voices echoing around the cavernous space of the Icebox, the yellow kinetic lighting, the feeling of anticipation she could sense even through the nanos wafting around her.

  Perhaps it was the thought of Ophele, lying in a coma a few tents away.

  Was she ready? Cruz had asked. No, but she didn’t have a choice.

  She nodded and brought the anomalizer to the small port beneath her father’s left ear. It cast her father’s cheek in a green, sickly glow.

  “This is really going to hurt, Dad,” she whispered. “But it’s only going to be for a moment.”

  He grabbed her wrist, his palm slick with sweat. He smiled, eyes watery. “I trust you.”

  She smiled back. “I love you, Dad.”

  She drove the anomalizer into the port and clicked the button. Auric’s eyes shut and his heart rate increased, but the monitor remained a neutral shade of green. The pain sectors of his brain were still dormant. His lungs expanded and contracted.

  It was exactly six seconds before everything went red. His heart rate spiked, his brain lit with electricity, his lungs gasping.

  Andra wanted to cry, but she had to seem confident if the other colonists were to trust her. It had to appear that she knew what she was doing. And she did. Mostly. But it didn’t make it any easier to watch as her father struggled, as the monitors flashed red.

  Then everything stopped.

  The ’display of his heart froze, the comforting thump-thump replaced by a blaring alarm. His brain activity went blank, and his lungs blew out one last breath. The room was silent except for the alarms begging Andra to do something. To use a defib app. To spike him with O2. Something.

  But Andra waited.

  Watched as the ’displays remained frozen, the only movement in the ’implant monitor, which showed the upgrade at work. The new code overtook the frenetic code of the ’implant and assimilated it. The ’implant tech was panicking, each nano picked off one by one by the incoming tech.

  The room held its collective breath, and Andra stood transfixed on the flashing ’display of her father’s heart, still and unbeating.

  Had Cruz’s upgrade been a fluke? Cruz had been sure that trust was the answer. Andra had seen how the new code worked and agreed. What if they’d done it wrong? They were an untrained AI and a boy barely older than a teenager, after all. What if there was no guarantee her father would wake up?

  What if she’d just killed him?

  Auric’s eyes flashed open, and he sucked in a breath. The entire room let out theirs.

  The alarms stopped blaring. Auric’s heart was beating again, his lungs filling with air, his brain lit with activity. The nanos in his ’implant were now as dark and clouded as the nanos in the pockets, but, unlike the pockets, they weren’t killing him.

  Andra choked back a sob. Auric’s eyes found his daughter, and he smiled. Andra couldn’t return it yet.

  “Try turning on the orb,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. She nodded to the kinetic orb floating a few feet above Auric.

  It flicked on.

  Andra let out a relieved sigh, as technicians darted forward to unstrap him. The other LAC scientists clapped politely.

  “I have a question,” Cristin Myrh, one of the environmental scientists, said. She had straight blonde hair, with bangs cut straight across, and she’d been glaring at Andra during the whole procedure. “How do we know it worked?”

  This, Andra and Cruz were prepared for. They’d brought one of the air’lock chambers from the Vaults, reinforced it with cryo’tank platelets, and placed the pocket inside.

  Andra swallowed as Cruz wheeled it to the center of the crowd.

  “This chamber,” he said, “is filled with nanos that mimic the . . . atmospheric anomalies on the surface. They destroy everything that doesn’t share the same . . . makeup.”

  The lie was carefully crafted. Close enough to the truth, but with no mention of decon’bots or the entropics created by the LAC. Instead, Cruz suggested they were natural occurrences.

  “Professor Lim will step into the chamber, and the nanos will not hurt him, because the ’implant is helping to mask him from the anomaly.”

  “What about a control?” Raj asked. “One of us should step in there so we know what would happen if we did go out into the atmosphere.”

  He narrowed his eyes at Andra, and she looked away uncomfortably. He hadn’t approached her again about what had happened to Ophele, but she knew he blamed her. And he was right to. It had, after all, been entirely her fault.

  Cruz gave Raj a perfectly apologetic smile. “I’m afraid that’s impossible. Even minimal exposure could be fatal. But we can use a ’bot to showcase this.”

  Andra hated this part. She’d tried convincing Cruz to use something else—a chair, a work’station, anything—but he’d argued that the scientists would need to see the effect on something humanoid.

  There were very few ’bots left in the Vaults except for Mechy, and Andra had absolutely refused to allow him to be destroyed. It reminded her too much of her mother disassembling their standard AI growing up. It hadn’t been True AI, of course, and it had attacked her mother, but it had seemed sentient to Andra. Mechy wasn’t AI, true or standard, but she wouldn’t sacrifice him.

  Instead, they used a small ’bot they’d found powered down in the Vaults’ maintenance room. A serve’bot with a sleek white exterior, barely taller than Andra. It was thin and feminine-looking, and though its face didn’t hold expression, Andra imagined she saw fear in its eyes as it entered the chamber.

  As soon as the ’bot stepped through the air’lock, the pocket attacked. The ’bot jerked back, scrambling for the exit, but it was too late. The scientists gasped as the ’bot was enveloped by the darkness, its shape outlined by the pocket like a shadow. It took less than a second and the pocket dispersed, forming an inert cloud, leaving no trace behind.

  “You’re going to put Professor Lim in there?” Cr
istin Myrh asked, her eyes wide.

  “It’s perfectly safe,” Cruz assured her. “That is, in fact, why we completed this procedure.”

  Andra’s stomach dropped as technicians helped Auric to his feet. And though he was at first as unsteady as Cruz had been, he was soon striding over to the chamber with uncharacteristic confidence. He looked back at Andra, his eyes shining with pride, and he entered the air’lock. The chamber sealed behind him, and the glass door between the antechamber and the main chamber slid aside. The corrupt nanos were waiting, and her father stepped forward.

  Andra held her breath. She knew this would work. Knew it in her bones, in her mind. But her heart was terrified for her father. Her father who had raised her. Her father who knew what she was and still loved her. The pocket consumed him.

  She couldn’t see anything within the cloud, not the shape of her father, not his patched elbows, not his smiling cheeks. For the second time, she wondered if they’d gotten it all wrong. But then the cloud dispersed, and there was Auric, completely fine. The pocket danced around him, swirling like leaves caught in the wind. Auric held his hands out, and corrupted nanos played across his fingers. Tickled up his arms.

  But they didn’t hurt him.

  She’d done it.

  Andra had done it.

  She hadn’t needed to contact Griffin’s clone for advice, hadn’t given up. Finally, finally she’d done something right. She’d helped humanity. And what better way to start helping humanity than with her father?

  The room burst into applause. Her dad smiled, and Andra smiled back.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  THE GUARDIAN

  “I take it your lessons are going well?” Meta asked, holding pace with Zhade as they made their march through the market.

  The day was bright, the sun not full low yet to disappear behind the pocket. A gentle breeze flapped Zhade’s cape, a sign for certz that the gods’ dome was weakening, but he didn’t want to imagine bout that now. This even, he would look at the controls in the cathedzal. Maybe even use the Crown to fix it—though Andra had said not to use High Magic with the gods’ dome.