by Eric Warren
Takai bent down beside Mitsu. “We will survive. Together.” He placed his hand on Shin’s abdomen and Mitsu placed her hand on top of Takai’s. Finally Shin raised one arm and placed his own hand on both.
Takai looked over at Arista. “Respectfully,” he said. “I decline the procedure.”
“As do I,” Mitsu said.
Arista sat back, hitting the floor. “But…you said…together.”
“We will be,” Mitsu said. “Takai and I. We will fulfill Shin’s wishes. Whatever those may be.”
Arista turned to Shin. “I am so sorry. I never meant for you to sacrifice—”
He shook his head. “It cannot be changed. And I would not change it. As I told her, you are unique. I think we all may have underestimated you.”
All three of them removed their hands in unison.
“Mitsu,” Shin said, his voice even weaker. “Please open a connection. I need to relay information that would take too long…”
Mitsu nodded, tapping the small space above her ear to open her comm. She then tapped two buttons glowing from underneath the skin on her left arm, indicating an upload. Seconds later she tapped her forearm again, nodding. “I understand.”
Shin looked at Arista. It was a longing she hadn’t seen in him before. Something deep within that he’d never let slip. “Perhaps.” He paused. “Perhaps you were not wrong.” He indicated Mitsu and Takai. “I may have been in error. I no longer know.”
“What do you mean?” Arista asked.
“About autonomy. I have spent my life denying my people that which I enjoy. Seeing them now, the range of emotion, the strength of their decision. I am proud.”
Arista’s eyes prickled and she reached out, taking Shin’s hand.
He squeezed his features together in a smile. “You have changed my mind; not an easy thing. But for the few moments I have it, I thank you.”
Arista didn’t know what to say. She glanced up to Mitsu and Takai only to realize they were shedding tears as well. Something they wouldn’t have even been capable of an hour ago.
“When you go,” Shin said, retrieving Arista’s attention. “Do not trust any of the humans. Do not let them expand. They will ravage this world once more.”
She squeezed his hand. “I won’t. I know better now.”
That seemed to satisfy him. He lifted his head slightly to the end of the room where the sun was shining on the bright city. “Such a beautiful day.” He laid his head back and closed his eyes, his hand going slack in Arista’s.
Forty
A flicker. There was a flicker of hope.
No, it was a flicker of light. Something in his vision. Frees wrenched his head to the side, the sensation of falling returning to him. Where had he just been? He remembered standing in the library with Shin, waiting for the woman. Arista had hidden behind the bookcase. And then what? Something happened to him. He concentrated, why couldn’t he remember?
Frees opened his eyes and a blinding white light greeted him. He adjusted the aperture of his irises automatically, dampening the light. Two people stood over him, it took him a moment to recognize them. The orderlies that had helped with Arista’s surgery. He was in the same alcove.
“He’s awake,” the male called to someone in English. Both of them had orange eyes that stared back at him.
“Finally!” Arista’s face came into view. “I was afraid she’d shut you down permanently.”
“You’re okay,” Frees said, surprised at how soft his own voice sounded.
“I’m okay.” She turned to the orderlies. “How is he? Can he move?”
“Full functions coming back online now,” the woman said, examining a transparent tablet. “Give him two minutes. Some of his systems need to restart and engage. I want to run one more diagnostic before—”
Frees sat up, swinging his legs off the table.
“Hey!” the woman said, looking up from the tablet. “Lie back down or you risk damaging your systems. You’ve been offline for over nine hours.”
Frees ran his own internal diagnostic, confirming her fears. If he wasn’t careful, some of his systems might seize up. “I will sit right here,” he said. “Is that alright?”
“Just do not move further for another minute and thirty-six seconds. You think you can manage that?” There was a lot of snark in her voice.
“Your handiwork I assume,” Frees asked Arista. “Shin didn’t pull another eye switch on you, did he?”
“Shin is dead,” Arista said. “I changed them to try and help him. And you.”
Frees hung his head. “I’m sorry. And Sy?”
“Dust in the wind.”
“She escaped?” His head snapped back up.
“Stop moving!” the woman yelled, her voice shriller. “Takai, restrain him.” The man—Takai—approached him but Arista put up her hand, struggling to contain a laugh.
“He won’t do it anymore. I promise.” Takai stopped but glanced at the woman. “Sorry,” Arista added to her. She glanced back down at her tablet.
“Fifty-seven seconds.”
A smile broke out over Arista’s face. “What I meant was is Sy is dead. She had this weapon that could disintegrate things—people. I was forced—I chose to use it on her,” she said, looking away, the smile gone.
Frees kept his eyes on her, wanting nothing more than to comfort her. He’d sworn to himself he’d never allow her to have to make that decision again, and he’d failed. He’d failed to protect her. He’d failed to make the hard decision for her and for that he hated himself. He should have been more prepared for Sy. Whatever she had used on him had been immediately effective, giving him little or no chance. He shouldn’t have been so confident in the felp. Not with Arista’s life on the line.
“Time?” he asked.
“Twelve seconds.”
Arista continued to look away and put her hand to her face, as if to hide herself from the shame. Frees’ internal clock ticked down the milliseconds.
Three.
Two.
One.
He leaped from the bed and wrapped her in his arms, holding her tight. “I am so sorry,” he said. “I should have been there for you.”
Her whole body shuddered and tears fell from her eyes as she laid her head against him. “It’s not your fault,” she whispered.
“I can’t imagine how hard that was for you.” His hands moved up and down her back on their own. He’d never held her like this before, and he wasn’t even sure how he’d known how to do it. He rarely touched anyone. But if this made her feel better, and something deep within him told him it did, then it was worth it. She’d been through so much in such a short period of time.
“You see, Mitsu,” Takai said behind them and Frees turned his gaze so he could see the orderlies. “I want to hold you like that.”
Frees immediately felt her resistance and let her go, whatever spell they had been under had been broken. She wiped her eyes with her sleeve and turned away from everyone, trying to gather herself.
“Takai,” Mitsu said. “You broke it. You should not have said anything.”
Takai turned to Frees and bowed. “Please forgive me, it was not my intention.”
“Oh my god,” Arista whispered, her voice exasperated. She was embarrassed, but why? Frees furrowed his brow. It was best if he took all the attention he could away from her.
“Thank you for your help in repairing me. How did she disable me?” he asked Mitsu.
“I’m still trying to determine,” she replied, tapping on the tablet. “We think it was some kind of emp pulse. But it didn’t overload your system otherwise we never would have gotten things to work again. It was as if it only temporarily disabled you.”
“How would she do that?” Frees asked. He’d never heard of an emp so surgical. His own weapon was emp-based; however it delivered a fatal blow with every shot. He couldn’t control the yield to keep it from killing people. If he could…he’d never have to kill anyone ever again.
�
��We don’t know. We think this was the weapon.” Mitsu turned and picked up a strange-looking device. It was a piece of curved metal with a handle built into one end and a black emitter on the other. In the center were two buttons and a display pad. “We were going to disassemble it once you were fixed to determine how it worked.”
“I would very much like to see that,” Frees said.
“You don’t remember what happened?” Arista asked. She’d come up beside him and despite her eyes being red, no more tears flowed from them.
He shook his head. “I remember standing in the library, waiting. She took her sweet time getting there; I almost came and got you twice, but I figured as soon as I did she would burst through the door.”
A smile played on Arista’s lips, but she kept her focus on Takai. “Are there any security cameras up there? Footage we could watch?”
Takai’s eyes flashed left and right. “I believe so. It is a closed system, they are not uploaded. Rather they are stored here.” Arista followed him to the console in the center of the room.
“Frees.” He turned to find Mitsu watching him. “I have information for you. From Shin.”
“What sort of—?”
“Here.” She tapped above her ear. “Open for upload.”
What sort of information would Shin want to give him? He didn’t even agree with Frees’ philosophy. Was it one last plea to change his mind? Or maybe something about Arista. Something he’d missed while he was out.
Frees opened his comm and within seconds the upload was complete.
“He said use it in good health,” Mitsu said.
Frees glanced at her, then unpacked the information. He couldn’t help but grin. This would be very useful. Silently he thanked Shin.
His eyes caught one of the scanners across the room. It was the same type he’d sought out at the repair shop. “Did you do a deep diagnostic on me while I was out?” Frees asked.
Mitsu’s lips formed a line. “Of course.”
“Were there any…anomalies? Anything that might explain aberrant behavior?”
“Such as?”
“I don’t know. I’ve just been making some…rash decisions lately. And I’m trying to figure out if something might be wrong.” His eyes flicked to Arista. She was studying whatever Takai showed her on the screen.
Mitsu shook her head. “Nothing showed up on your scan. Maybe it was wiped out when the human disabled you.”
He paused. “Maybe.”
“Come look at this,” Arista called to him. He’d mouthed a thanks to Mitsu before turning away. She nodded, returning to her tablet.
When he joined Arista at the monitor she indicated to Takai. “Run it again.” He tapped one of the buttons and an image of the library came into view, from high up. The camera must have been in the upper right corner of the room. Before them was the entire library, in slightly forced perspective. Shin and Frees stood near the middle of the room while Hogo-sha blinked above them. They both turned to something off screen only to collapse seconds later.
Sy came into view holding something in her hand. “What the hell?” Frees asked.
Suddenly Frees stood back up, but his face was blank. Sy stepped aside as he walked under his own power out of the frame.
“I don’t remember doing any of that,” he said. “I don’t even remember seeing her come in.”
“There’s more,” Arista said.
Sy walked over to Shin, who immediately stood as well. “Watch the lights on Hogo-sha,” Arista said.
She was right, they were blinking rapidly. So fast they appeared like they didn’t stop, but Frees could detect microsecond delays between the blinks. Sy pulled something out of her belt, typing into it.
“I think this is where she sent my device the false alerts,” Arista said, scrutinizing the screen.
“She could do that?”
“It was how she got me out from behind the bookcase. Or…wait, no I couldn’t move it myself. She needed to reactivate Shin to do it.” Sy on the screen stared at the bookcase, but started punching buttons on the device, growing more frustrated. Then she turned to Shin who still stood beside her. He got on his knees and she stood behind him, placing a gun against his temple. She tapped something on her belt and Shin lurched forward, then back again. Moments later, the bookcase opened.
“Freeze it here,” Arista said. “That’s how she did it. She had some kind of device that could immobilize, then control you.”
“It probably disabled all your primary thought functions first,” Takai said. “Allowing her to control your body.”
“Do you still have the device?” Frees asked.
Arista shook her head. “It was on her when I…”
He nodded. “That’s okay. But if the humans have the technology to disable us on a whim, why haven’t they attacked yet?”
“I don’t know, but it’s scary to think about. They may have finally found a way to beat you, even if it is just one or two at a time.”
“We have to destroy that colony,” Frees said. “If they’re allowed to use this, if they unleash it—”
“Everything goes back. They take over again.”
He nodded.
“But we don’t even know where the colony is. She wouldn’t tell me. She said the only way I’d ever find it was if she and I went together. They wouldn’t accept us otherwise.”
Frees smiled. “Shin may have given us the answer. He uploaded all his directives on how to control the gates to Mitsu, who just transferred them to me. The colony has a gate, all we have to do is find it.”
Her eyes widened. “Charlie.”
“What?”
“Sy said the colony was in contact with Charlie. The humans he had in captivity had been a ‘payment’ for keeping him at bay. Charlie might have had a record of where the colony was. Why else would they be afraid of him?”
“Then we know where we need to go.”
Arista’s expression hardened. “Back to Chicago.”
Forty-One
It had taken Frees a few times to learn how to use the instructions Shin had left for him. But after three tries they finally managed to re-route one of the gates back to Chicago. However instead of sending them back to the Production Floor Frees had sent them directly to Cadre HQ. Where everything had begun.
Arista stepped through the fog of the Gate. Mitsu and Takai had helped them stop the trains long enough so they could use the same one they’d come through originally. She’d given them the option to join them, but they both declined, saying they would stay behind to facilitate the operation of Hogo-sha’s Cadre, for as long as it could hold. They’d promised Arista they would upload Shin’s cortex to the Collective Consciousness, so he could rest in peace. She’d wanted to stay, to help, but they had bigger issues. Frees suspected that when Sy didn’t report in the humans would either send more humans after her, or begin some kind of assault. Neither was a good option.
Just like last time, the fog seemed to go on forever, until she pushed through and stood back in Charlie’s bunker. It looked the same as it had the last time she was here; what remained of the giant AI was scattered around the floor. The door to the area holding the humans was still open and their cases remained broken all around. However, their bodies had been moved. Obsidian must have disposed of them before things began growing and feeding on their decaying bodies.
Frees stood beside her. “Should you contact him?” he asked.
“I’ll try again.” She reached around and tapped above her ear, opening the comm and located Obsidian’s number. It notified her he wasn’t picking up.
“Still nothing,” she said. “Let’s just make our way up there. We’ll stick to the service elevators. Hopefully there aren’t many Peacekeepers here today. It was close to seven in the morning local time. If they were lucky most people hadn’t made it in to the office yet.
The door on the opposite side of the room stood open and Arista raced through it, down the hall to the only elevator that came this
low. Once they were inside she looked over at Frees, wanting to catch his eye but at the same time not wanting to. She wasn’t sure what had happened back in the hospital but she’d felt something more than she’d intended and the last thing she wanted was to talk about it.
“What are we going to do when we get there?” she asked instead, trying to keep things professional.
“Finding your parents is priority one,” he replied. “Once we have them secured…I…” he faltered. “I’m not sure.”
Arista tapped her belt to make sure Sy’s weapon was still tucked securely inside. She hadn’t wanted to take it, but she’d needed something to defend herself and if the only weapons that could do it was one that turned its targets into dust, so be it. “If Sy was telling the truth those people want my blood. And they won’t be happy to see me. Especially not if they find out I killed her. That I did it again.”
“If they can’t understand you didn’t have a choice then they don’t deserve to know you,” Frees said. He’d insisted on seeing the rest of the recording, but Arista couldn’t watch it again. She didn’t want to see the look on her own face when she pulled that trigger. She didn’t want to see the look on Sy’s face. It had already been burned into her memory.
The elevator stopped on B-1, the first level that they could access the service elevators. As soon as the doors opened on the expansive space Frees’ arm shot out and pulled her back into the elevator.
“What?” She stared at him.
“There’s someone out there. I caught a glimpse of him.”
She peered around the edge of the door. A man lay on the ground with his back to them about twenty feet away. “Let go. We need to see who it is.”
He dropped his arm but moved in front of her. The telltale hum of electricity told her he’d turned the felp on.
As they approached the figure Arista was sure he posed no threat. But she’d been wrong before. This could be a trap. Frees held her back with one hand as the one with the felp built-in grabbed the man and rolled him over.
