by Eric Warren
Frees head snapped to look at her. “Is this true?”
“They had me confined!” she said. “All I cared about was getting out of there. I didn’t know I’d killed her.” She’d forgotten how cold she’d been. And knowing what she knew now she realized it had been murder. A cold-blooded murder. The nurse hadn’t been armed, or even threatening. All she had tried to do was stop Arista from running. Arista could have run right around her and the result would have been the same. Instead she violently destroyed the woman. Why had she done that? What was there to be gained?
“So you did do it.”
She nodded, looking him in the eye. She mouthed: I’m sorry.
“You see? She is too unpredictable. I am surprised she hasn’t killed you yet,” Charlie said. “Let me guess. You brought her here because you thought you could use her to activate everyone? I hate to disappoint you, but simultaneous activation is impossible. Those people out there are the way they are until they die. There’s no central broadcasting station from which to transmit. The humans can only change us based on our proximity to them. The idea was if a human was in danger, its extreme emotional state would trigger the total AI in its machine to assist in ways it wouldn’t be able to imagine or comprehend while using its base programming. It was another safety feature. To save them.”
He wouldn’t turn on her, not now. Even if what Charlie said was true Frees knew her. She wasn’t the same person she’d been when they met. He wouldn’t really do anything to harm her.
“What will you do with her?” Frees asked. She furrowed her brow at him, unable to read his face. Was he just baiting Charlie?
The woman beamed in approval. “We can take care of this immediately,” she said.
On another portion of the wall away from the gate, a low rumble and a hiss emanated as a bright purple line appeared in between the divide of the wall. Two doors slid open, slow in their pace and parting to their respective sides. Inside was a long tunnel, bathed in purple light, lined with six large glass canisters on each side. When the doors came to a rest Arista realized the canisters were suspended from a gantry, which moved forward, drawing the purple glass cylinders toward them. The gantry came to a silent halt; inertia rocking the containers as the liquid inside sloshed back and forth.
Some of the containers weren’t empty.
“What…is this?” Arista asked, all thoughts of changing Charlie erased from her mind.
“My collection.” The woman walked over to the containers, gesturing to them as if showing off museum pieces. “Here we have Adam. He is male, thirty-one years of age, and eastern European.” She gestured to the first tank. Inside was a person, curled into a fetal position, connected to tubes and a breathing apparatus, apparently unconscious.
“Is that…a human?” Arista gasped.
“Next is Betty, she is fourteen, with a mixed heritage of Brazilian and Croatian. I admit I had to use some of Adam’s DNA to construct her, hence their shared resemblance.”
“Frees, what is going on?” Arista asked.
Charlie moved to the next canister. “This is Donna, she is my oldest at seventy-two. She is Egyptian, a rare find for me.” She turned to look at Arista. “I didn’t have much to work with which makes me proud of her.”
Arista backed up a step. All of these were humans? And she was keeping them in some kind of suspended animation?
“Next is Earl, who is forty-five and Japanese. Acquiring his DNA was particularly difficult. Finding anything in Japan is…tough. But I managed and here he sits. I cultivated his DNA for years before I managed to sequence it and grow a viable specimen. He’s one of my favorites.” She took another step down the line. “Finally, we have Francine and George. My twins. They are both twenty years old and Irish. Notice their matching hair color. According to the history texts you might expect red, but actually brown was more prevalent among Irish humans.”
“What have you done?” Arista whispered.
“They are my insurance policy,” Charlie said. “You asked what I would do in unexpected situations. These are my answer.”
“This is how you make the Peacekeepers,” Frees said.
“Obviously they have no mental capacity. They are not much more than undeveloped brains inside sacks of meat and bone. But, they do provide the proper ‘key’ to unlock machines when I need them to.”
“Is that why all the Peacekeepers eyes are red and not orange? It isn’t working quite right, is it?” Arista said. “You’re trying to cheat the system and you’re getting an inferior product!”
“No. I am getting exactly what I want. You are correct, these humans don’t unlock my machines completely. And that is how it should be. I still maintain a level of control over them. They remain docile but have independent thought. It is a desirable balance in the short term. But I have already predicted too many Peacekeepers will eventually revolt against me. Maybe not for a few hundred years, but the programming will eventually break through.”
“And those people. Those humans,” Arista said, “how long do you keep them?”
“Until they die of course. I’ve never had one live as long as Donna. Most die in their fifties or sixties. But she is persistent.”
“And you just…biologically engineer them?” Arista thought she saw Frees recoil. He gripped his leaking shoulder again.
“From DNA leftover from the war. Wherever I may find it. Before, not long after the hostilities ended, I was lucky and acquired a piece of an actual human. But those days are long gone. They decompose too quickly. In the early days it was much easier. I have enough DNA stored for at least six more generations but adding Arista into the mix will prolong the longevity of the program.”
She couldn’t believe it. He’d had a cache of humans inside the Cadre this entire time. Could this be where she’d come from? Was she one of his experiments that escaped? She glanced at the six empty glass containers. Had one of those been her home once?
“I’m never going back in there,” Arista said. “I’ll die first.”
The woman shrugged. “Regardless if you live or die, I will still be able to harvest your DNA. I can clone an exact copy of you if I wish.”
“Frees, you can’t actually be considering this,” Arista said, her breaths growing more ragged. An entire lifetime, stuck inside a tiny container; she wouldn’t survive it. Unconscious or not, it was no life. It was a living death. “Frees!” She grabbed him by the shoulder. “You have the ability to stop this!”
“I’m not sure I do,” he said. “Maybe she’s right about humans. Maybe it is better if they’re kept away from the population. Where everyone is safe.” He couldn’t be serious.
“Excellent,” Charlie said. “I already have an “A”, but I will just rename you. How do you feel about Hanna?”
Arista’s hand balled into a fist. This couldn’t be happening. The first time in her life she had ever encountered humans and they were nothing more than the experiment of a machine gone mad. They were prisoners, just like all the machines, except much, much worse. And even though it went against everything her body was telling her, she had to do something about it. She understood Frees better than ever, he wanted freedom for his people. He probably saw them just like she saw the humans right now. Full of potential, full of the possibility of life and yet it was wasting away before their eyes and there was absolutely nothing they could do about it.
The Device pulled up a schematic in her mind. It was exactly what she needed. “Frees,” she said. He turned to face her. “It’s time we jumped.”
He blinked once. “Do it.”
Thirty-Four
ARISTA RAN TO FREES, GRABBING HIS ARM and ejecting the spent power cell. The Device gave her a forty-five percent probability it would still fire once she hooked the original power supply back up.
“What are you doing?” Charlie asked, walking toward them.
Arista fumbled with the controls in his arm, he steadied it with his free hand. She accessed the firing controls for the felp.
“Trusting each other,” Arista said, raising Frees’ arm and tapping a control on the inside of his wrist.
The first cylinder exploded with a shattering of glass, sending fluid spilling down and all over the floor. Charlie jumped back, avoiding the liquid as the body inside came crashing down to the ground.
“What are you doing!” Charlie screamed. “These are your people! This is it, the last of your race!”
“I’m sorry,” Arista said, pulling a Peacekeeper’s handgun from underneath her jacket. She’d been right, it was better if they were both armed. She squeezed the trigger of the gun, sending a bullet into the soft skull of the human in front of her.
“No!” Charlie ran at her. Arista turned Frees’ arm slightly and fired again. The woman snapped back, crumpling to the floor immediately. The felp would only work on non-organic components.
“I guess you were paying attention when you did all those repairs on me,” Frees said.
“Something like that.” She fired at the second cylinder. Then the third and fourth and fifth and sixth. Soon enough they had all been destroyed, along with their occupants. As soon as the bodies stopped twitching, she let go of his arm, allowing it to hang effortlessly. She’d done it. She’d eliminated any chance of reconnecting to her past. To her heritage. But it was not a life any human would want, suspended indefinitely in some kind of living nightmare.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
Arista drew a deep breath and exhaled. She was exhausted. Utterly spent. She stared up at the giant glowing eye bearing down on her, the lights around it flashing faster and faster. “Yeah. I think I am. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices. And some sacrifices are tougher than others.” She lifted her wrist, still feeling the ghosts of her fingers and wiggling them.
“We have to finish what we came for,” Frees said, looking at his own useless arm. “You’ll have to use it again. I can’t even lift it anymore.”
She glared at him. “You weren’t really going to hand me over to him, were you?” she asked.
“I might have considered it for a few milliseconds. Though, honestly I’ve been pondering the thought since the moment I met you.”
She snorted. “Very funny.”
A door on the opposite side of the room slid open, revealing another woman, surrounded by four Peacekeepers. Their eyes burned red.
“What, no camouflage this time?” Arista taunted.
“There is no need. The time for subterfuge is over,” the woman said in Charlie’s voice. She wasn’t dressed as sharply as the first woman, instead more like a secretary. “You destroyed my favorite avatar. Which means I really want to kill you. But since you are effectively the very last human now I can not afford to do that,” she said, taking her time walking around the middle of the room, the Peacekeepers staying close to her back, their weapons drawn on Arista. “You are young. You still have at least twenty-five or thirty more years in you. Fifty if you can hold out like Donna. I only hope I can complete my work by then.”
“Tell me something,” Arista said. “If there’s no central transmitting station then how do you keep switching bodies so easily?”
“A copy of my program resides in each machine as I am the one who activates them all. I am the parent to all my children. I can remote access that program from here.”
“Then why not just infect Frees?”
“Your influence eradicates my program. Activated machines have messy minds. Though it hasn’t been from lack of effort.”
Arista looked around, exaggerating the movement. “I don’t see Patrick anywhere. What, couldn’t order my favorite torturer to come get me?”
“Patrick has been wiped and recycled, due to your influence,” Charlie said. They moved closer. Arista put her hand on Frees’ arm, feeling for the open panel. The Peacekeepers leveled their weapons at her head.
“Exactly what I thought.” Arista dropped Frees’ arm and kept her own gun pointed at the floor.
“You will be placed in suspended animation now. Do not worry, it is painless,” Charlie said.
“I don’t think so.” Arista fired her gun. The heat from the barrel burned through her jeans and the bullet just barely grazed her shoe almost before she’d even processed she’d pulled the trigger. A surge of adrenaline flooded her system, producing the Device to flash warnings all over her vision. She jumped back unexpectedly, startled by just how close she’d come to shooting herself.
She glanced up. The Peacekeepers had stopped advancing on them. Did she dare to hope?
“What do we do?” one of them asked another while simultaneously lowering his weapon.
“I…don’t know,” responded another.
“Do not let her influence you,” Charlie said, panicked. “Remember your selves.”
All but one had dropped their weapons. The holdout’s hand shook slightly, as if he were having a war within himself. “Sir, I…am conflicted,” he said. His finger hovered precariously close to the trigger and for the first time since Arista had learned what she could do, she doubted herself.
Crack!
The Peacekeeper fell to the ground, the gun scattering across the ground. Arista looked over to one of the other Peacekeepers who held his weapon out in front of him.
“Tracking the movement of his finger indicated Xian was less than one-point-seven seconds from firing. If he was having an internal battle he was losing,” the Peacekeeper said. “There was no other way.”
“I will not allow this!” Charlie said, screwing up her face. “You must not disturb the experiment. You must not allow this human to corrupt you.”
The Peacekeeper moved the muzzle to the back of Charlie’s head and pulled the trigger. The body collapsed on the ground. Above them, the room seemed to shake with fury as the blinking lights all over the pyramid grew in speed and intensity. The great lens in the middle seemed to grow even brighter, even angrier.
“She is calling for more Peacekeepers, and anyone else in the building,” the head Peacekeeper said.
“We must act quickly,” Frees replied. “Arista, take my arm!”
She nodded, grabbing the arm and stabilizing it with her wrist. She reached into the control panel and fired.
The pyramid only continued to undulate.
“I think I just made her angrier,” Arista said. “You! Peacekeepers, help us!”
The head Peacekeeper nodded, pointing his gun at the pyramid and firing. The bullet entered a section, knocking some of the lights out.
The other Peacekeepers joined in as Arista continued to fire the felp. The pyramid rumbled again, producing an audible whine that blasted their ears. It was almost too much for Arista to stand, but she didn’t stop. “Keep going, they’re almost all out!” she yelled over the din. Her eyes traveled up to what looked like support beams holding the pyramid in place. She re-aimed the felp and fired at each of them, breaking the first after three shots.
“Almost there!”
The sound of their gunshots was drowned out by what had become an audible scream as Arista took out the second support. “Last one!” She tried firing again but the felp wouldn’t respond. “Frees, I need you to divert more power! We’ve almost got her!”
When he didn’t respond she turned back to look at him. The light had gone from his eyes.
“Frees!”
A large crack sounded overhead. The last support was collapsing on its own from the strain of holding the pyramid in place. Arista pushed Frees, trying to move him out of the way, but he only fell on his back. She got up under him again, just like she had when she pulled him into his apartment and started dragging him backward.
“Everyone get clear!” she yelled. “He’s coming down!”
The Peacekeepers scattered away from the pyramid just as the last support broke, sending the massive structure crashing down into the floor. The whole room shook with the intensity of the crash sending pieces of metals flying everywhere. Arista instinctively covered Frees with her own body, praying he had
enough power to maintain his vital functions but unsure that the whole building wasn’t going to come down on them. The sound of metal bending and scraping eliminated any chance she had of hearing anything.
“How does this keep happening to us?” she said, hoping to elicit any kind of return jab but he remained unresponsive.
After a few minutes, Arista realized she could hear again and the room had stopped shaking. She sat up, covered in a fine layer of dust and small parts. “Hello?” she called out.
“Here, ma’am.” A hand went up. It was the head Peacekeeper.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
“We’re clear.”
“Then get over here and help me!” She turned back to Frees. “Don’t worry. We’ve got you.” She knew it was the right thing to say, but in her heart of hearts she wasn’t sure. She’d used up all of his power firing the felp. He should have warned her, told her not to do it, but he hadn’t said a word.
All of a sudden Arista realized she had come to depend on Frees. How would she continue without him?
“We need to get him to a charging cube,” the head Peacekeeper said, kneeling beside Arista.
She gritted her teeth. “Don’t you have anything else? He hates those things.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know of another way. Zubrowski, come help me with him.”
Another Peacekeeper ran up beside them, helping to lift Frees off the ground. “There’s a charging cube in that room back there,” he said, indicating the room Charlie had been storing the humans in.
“Go.”
Zubrowski took off with Frees’ lifeless body in his arms.
“Is there enough time to save him?” Arista asked.
“I hope so.” The head Peacekeeper turned to her. “I’m Obsidian. It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
She tilted her head. “That’s an odd name. So you’re…on our side now?” He was tall and muscular with absolutely no hair on his head. Exactly how she would expect a bodyguard to look.
“I’m on whatever side I choose to be on. But seeing as you almost sacrificed yourselves for us, I feel we owe you a debt.”
