Destiny: Quantic Dreams Book 3

by Elizabeth McLaughlin

  I remembered all the times he had been there for me. How many nights he had stayed up with me when I was small and scared, certain that some unnamed tragedy was bound to befall us. The fights where I accused him of being the world’s worst father, cursing and spitting in my teenaged rage. He wasn’t perfect, of course, but he always waited until we had finished fighting before reaching out and hugging me until things felt better. When I was pregnant with Marcus and terrified of being a mother, he would tell me stories about my own mother and offer any wisdom he could impart to me. And I had abandoned him to live out decades with only that psychopath A.I. for a companion. If I wasn’t the world’s worst daughter, I definitely came close. On top of losing Dad, my wife had been shot. Shot because of my clumsiness and my failure to be quick enough. Shot because I had led her into a veritable suicide mission. We could have lost her, and it was all because I didn’t insist she stay home. I turned from the fire to gaze at her sleeping form. The day’s travels had not been easy on any of us, not least of all her. Her hair was plastered down with sweat and dirt, and underneath the survival blanket the tear I had made in her shirt was becoming more ragged.

  Finally, I couldn’t cry anymore. I spit the mucus from my mouth and nose on the ground and covered it with some dirt in an effort to hide the signs of my anguish. It didn’t matter; my eyes would be swollen and puffy by the time I had to wake Marcus up. He would understand. Eliza would too, even if I was still embarrassed to cry in front of her after all these years.

  A small voice in my mind reminded me that Dad had come on the journey with the full knowledge he might not be coming home. I don’t think death at the hands of androids was the fate he envisioned, but he knew that the journey might have been the last of his life. Somehow the reminder didn’t make it easier. I wish it did.

  I spent the remainder of my watch concentrating on my senses. Rotating through what I could feel, smell, taste, and see kept the grief at bay and it reassured me that there was no one sneaking up to kill us. I chuckled to myself. That’s the standard I lived by now. No vicious animal or homicidal robot creeping through the darkness to rip me apart? Everything’s great! How quickly life changes.

  Where we went from here was still up in the air. The androids had every reason to come after us; we had humiliated them with our escape and killed another of their own, even if a panther had done the deed for us. The machines would be coming for war. The moment we got home the colony had to move. I felt a pang of regret at the hundreds of man hours wasted; all the material we had so carefully collected and cultivated to make a life on the outside would go to waste. Leaving the surface colony left us with two options; try to return underground and hope that we could reassemble enough of the shelter to make it functional again, or set out and hope there really were humans with military technology. The truth was that we only had the second choice. The shelter’s entrance would be all too easy for a group of androids to blow through, especially since they had real weaponry.

  In a twist of irony, we were left with the same problem that spurred us toward the machine city in the first place. I reached down and toyed with the handful of palm seeds I printed before our escape. There were no doubts that I could engineer a genetic solution—I was already most of the way there—but the colony still had little food. One could only hope that the aid the androids had sent wasn’t completely gone. We were going to need every extra calorie we could get.

  I jumped a little as my tablet crackled to life. Marcus’s and Eliza’s did too, jerking them out of a sound sleep. The noise sounded like a radio with bad reception. Marcus grabbed his gun and stood over the two of us like a wolf guarding his family. The crackling got louder, feedback breaking through the noise loudly enough that I was convinced it would disturb the local wildlife. So much for laying low.

  “...ello?” A voice broke through the noise. “Can you hear us?” The speaker was distinctly human. An android wouldn’t bother with the pleasantries. “Hello? If you can hear us, listen closely.” I searched the tablet’s screen for some way to interrupt the transmission and reply, but there was none. “I can’t tell you my name. You know as well as I do that they’re listening, and I don’t want to put either of us in danger. We know who you are, and where you are.”

  “Fuck.” Eliza tried to push herself on to her elbows but the pain forced her back down.

  “We come as friends. We know what happened to you in the machine city, and we have heard what is coming. You have allies. Go North. We will find you.” Another crackle as the transmission ended. The three of us looked at each other in silence for a moment.

  “There’s no way.” Marcus stared past me, keeping his gun lowered but at the ready. “Those sick fucks are just trying to lead us to the middle of nowhere like lambs to the slaughter. Hell, I'm wouldn’t put it past the machines to have staged this entire thing. Who understands the way they think.”

  Eliza said nothing and looked at me. I glanced down to notice my fingers drumming against my leg and shot her a look. She smiled gently. “Shut up.” I grinned.

  “Sorry, dear.”

  “Uh huh.” My dear wife knew that my mind was already on the case. The voice on the broadcast sounded human, but that didn’t mean anything. The vague wording wasn’t evidence of a human being either. The machines had access to the full repository of human knowledge. It wouldn’t be hard to concoct up an imperfect script. But something about the way the voice spoke nagged at some small corner of my mind. I held up a finger and shut my eyes. The image of the aircraft that flew so close to the machine city appeared. I hadn’t seen the fuselage too closely. There were no obvious markings or symbols that I could remember, but what I saw was old. Everything in the machine city was brand new, made of sleek metal and glass intended to imitate nature in every way. The unmanned aircraft was certainly advanced, but its metal and plastic plating had shown clear signs of wear. Unless there was another rogue A.I. out there looking to throw a teenage rebellion...

  Breathing.

  The answer struck me mid-thought. That’s what had sounded strange about the voice. The speaker hadn’t said much, but there were distinct pauses in their words. We must have mistaken the sound of inhalation for more distortion through the radio waves. Androids were more than capable of imitating a human voice, but they wouldn’t think to fake breathing.

  “It’s real. Holy shit, it’s actually real.”

  “What?” Marcus screwed up his face in disbelief. “How could you possibly know that? Come on, Mom. I know you were hoping for other humans out there but you heard what the machines said, we're it. The last of the species.”

  “Breathing. The speaker on the radio paused in between some of their words. What the three of us assumed was radio distortion was actually the sound of a person taking a breath.” Eliza’s brows furrowed. She wanted to believe me but this was a little too good to be true in her mind. “Remember the plane that buzzed the machine city?” Both of them nodded. “Does anything stick out about it in your mind?”

  “Not really. There weren’t any symbols on it or anything.” I could see the wheels turning behind Marcus’s eyes. He’d figure it out in a second, but I couldn’t wait that long.

  “It was old.” My quick-witted wife to the rescue. “Everything in that machine city was brand new and sparkling, like it had just come off the assembly line. The aircraft that freaked them out didn’t look like anything the machines would make. It was old and kind of worn.”

  “That’s my girl.” I reached out and took her hand. “Old hardware means that it’s not something the machines were operating. From everything they told us I seriously doubt there’s a rival group of androids out there. I don’t think we’re the last of humanity. Go back to sleep. It’s a couple of hours yet before I need to wake Marcus for the watch.”

  Five minutes later, they were snoring again.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Marcus’s internal alarm clock had woken him half an hour before it was time to change shifts. I dra
ped myself over Eliza’s body and held her as closely as I could without hurting her. The next thing I knew I was blinking in sunlight. “Good morning, beautiful.” Eliza turned her face to mine and stroked my cheek with her good hand. “Ready to get our asses back home so we can stop the impending android apocalypse?”

  “Did someone give you the other dose of painkiller?” I rolled my eyes at Marcus, who shrugged innocently.

  “Painkiller is the bessssssst.” Eliza drew out the last word, giggling to herself as she did so.

  “Christ Marcus, did you give her the whole packet?”

  “Uh...it’s more that she grabbed it and downed it before I could stop her. Sorry Mom.” I sighed and pushed myself to my feet. Ever the helpful son, Marcus had already taken the liberty of extinguishing the fire. He handed me a protein bar and marked off that days’ ration of water on the skein. I usually found the protein bars repulsive but the growling of my stomach overrode my tastebuds and I wolfed it down. I took Eliza’s protein bar and opened it for her. She winced as she pushed herself to her elbows but ate the whole thing, seemingly just as hungry as I was. Hungry was good. After each of us had the chance to perform our morning absolutions behind a nearby bush, it was time to set off again. With a full night’s rest, Eliza was practically bounding with energy. I had to keep an eye on that; with the bump in strength would come a crash. We couldn’t risk her overexerting herself. Her immune system needed conservation of energy to keep fighting the catalog of bacteria that wended their way through the gauze pads at that very moment.

  We made good time, covering more ground every hour than expected. Marcus and I kept our weapons at the ready. I gave Eliza’s gun to our son. He was the better shot and faster too. If something happened, he could defend us far better than I could. As we walked, the three of us traded stories about Dad. Compared to the grief of the night before, swapping tales of my father’s heroics had us all in stitches before long. Reminiscing breathed life into his memory. It took the pain away like a balm on a wound. The damage was still there, but it started to feel like everything was going to be all right.

  “What are we going to tell the others?” Marcus brought up a very good question. It wouldn’t be enough to say that Dad had just died. My father was something of a legend among the colonists; the truth about our escape from the virtual world had grown into something of an urban legend. I never saw the harm in it. Let the old man live out his days in glory. It wasn’t hurting anybody.

  “The truth, obviously.” Eliza scoffed. “They deserve to know everything about the threat that is coming for them.”

  “I disagree.” Both Marcus and Eliza whipped their heads toward me in surprise. “If we barrel into that camp sounding the alarm it’ll do nothing but cause panic. We’re going to sit down with Jason and Nicole and tell them the whole story. If Fang hasn’t wandered off into the woods to study mushrooms by now, he can sit in too. The rest of the colony gets told that my father was killed. That’s it. When the questions arise, we’re too filled with grief at the loss of a beloved family patriarch to talk about it.” I was surprised at my own voice, deadpan and serious. “We get the colony packed up as quickly as possible. Everything we can carry, but we need to be as mobile as possible.”

  “Agreed. Mom, will you have the palm DNA spliced in with the potatoes by the time we get back?”

  “I’m close to the solution, but I really need the shelter’s labs to check my math. I’ll do as much work as I can before we get back. We’re going to be telling a thousand people who have just been well fed that they’re going to be hungry again. This should go well.” It was the instability that was the real danger here. Humans are creatures of habit. We could roll with the punches but shakeup our lifestyle too much and the slightest hitch could tip us over the age into chaos. Our shelter had already performed admirably with only a few major interruptions along the way. Things could have gone far worse. One could only hope that this wasn’t going to be the thing that undid us.

  At midday, I risked a look at Eliza’s wound. It was healing as well as could be expected given the circumstances. Still on track for some stitches and a wicked scar was in her future, but the flesh was pink and I couldn’t see any inflammation. The walk was probably helping. Keeping healthy blood flow to the area was vital. I rolled my eyes to myself; In addition to the badass fighting skills, now I knew how to treat bullet wounds. Not exactly the life trajectory I had planned for myself.

  The terrain had long since gone from thick forest to plains. Long swaths of grass rippled ahead of us with only the occasional creature interrupting the verdant waves. The setting was a sharp juxtaposition with the constant whir of my thoughts. Even with the wide vantage point it was hard to let down my guard. I was surely missing something. Some danger or threat in the grass ready to carry my soul to the afterlife and all of this would be for naught.

  The day passed without instant. There weren’t any more transmissions from our mysterious friends. To my surprise I felt a kind of sadness because of that. Human contact was a rare commodity these days and knowing there were strangers out there made me long for home all the more.

  There were a few times we had to stop and rest to let Eliza recoup her strength. Each time I felt the urge to run to her and look her over like a dog searching its mate for wounds. As comforting as it would be for me, it would just make things worse for her. Over decades of marriage we grew so close that when one of us was worried, the other tended to worry even more.

  On our second night camping under the stars, I let Marcus take the first watch. Eliza motioned me to where she was settling in for the evening. I moved to curl myself around her but she stopped me.

  “How are you doing, beloved?” Her eyes searched mine, cloudy with exhaustion and pain. “We haven’t really talked since...”

  “I’ll be fine.” It wasn’t a lie, I would be fine. Right now the only way I was getting through this ordeal was by focusing my attention elsewhere.

  “I know you’ll be fine, hon.” Eliza rolled her eyes at me. “You’ve been using my injury as a fine distraction.” Ouch. There were drawbacks to having a partner that knew me this well. “You may have Marcus fooled but I haven’t missed it. Finding your father...it was rough, to say the least. I know that he and I didn’t get along all the time, but I did have love for the man. He was a good father to you and a good grandfather to Marcus. I am sorry that he gave his life to this cause. He worked so hard to see his family happy. He deserved to return home and see the people he fought so hard for prosper.” That did it. The flood of grief I held back since that first night ripped through me anew and I hid my face in her good shoulder while I sobbed. If Marcus noticed the noise, he didn’t turn. I bit my lip to keep from wailing to the world and tasted the coppery tang of blood. Eliza didn’t waiver for a second. She held me tightly and whispered nonsense words to me as I let the pain out. When there were no more tears to cry I allowed myself to fall asleep to the sound of Eliza’s breathing.

  Marcus woke me up a few minutes before it was time to change shifts. He held a finger to his lips and pointed. In the sky, hundreds of yards away, were two lights. One red, one green. If I slowed my breathing, I could hear the faint whir of rotors. “Has it moved since you spotted it?”

  “No, it’s just been hovering there. Hasn’t even circled around us.” He took out his tablet and pulled up the camera feed linked to his night vision goggles. In dark relief I saw a quad-copter drone. A camera lens was visible on the front of it, but that was it. Like the strange airplane, the drone wasn’t very advanced. It was hard to tell in the dark but the body looked like it was made of plastic, not metal. If it was the androids, there wasn’t a lot we could do about it. If our pursuers had finally caught up to us, they wouldn’t be hanging back. They would have slaughtered us before we could realise their presence. Perhaps it was our mystery guests. If so, we needed to get in touch.

  “Marcus, do you still have the chart laying out Morse code on your tablet?”

  �
�Sure, Mom. But why?”

  “Pull it up.” I unsheathed the small flashlight I shoved into my pocket before we left. There was no guarantee that the drone’s camera would see the tiny beam in the darkness but it was worth a shot. I raced through what I could signal. There was no guarantee the drone would stick around for much longer so whatever I signalled had to be quick. Better to stick with the old standby, then.

  O O O - - - O O O

  O O O - - - O O O

  Dot, dot, dot, dash, dash, dash, dot, dot, dot. S.O.S. Save our ship. Centuries old, the signal was still a commonplace enough phrase that any human watching would get the idea. If these mystery humans were surveilling us, there was hope that they had done a flyby of the colony too. The drone waggled back and forth for a moment. Either it was the world’s most well timed flight malfunction or there was someone on the other end of that camera acknowledging the signal. With that, the drone flew off.

  “Get some sleep, my love.” I patted him on the back. “I’ll be sure to wake you if anything else exciting happens.” I secretly hoped that something did. I would have killed for the smallest creature comfort in that moment. My middle-aged physique wasn’t made for sleeping on the ground even for a single night. At this point I was going to need some painkiller of my own. I reminded myself that all I had to do was make it home. Home meant a real bed. Or, at least a proper sleeping bag. One more day.