by Claudia Gray
“It’s the end of my favorite movie. Casablanca. You appear to be in the role of Captain Renault.”
“Casablanca. I know that one. I remember!” Robin’s laugh turns out to be beautiful. “Shouldn’t I be dressed like—like—the one in white, who was so pretty—”
“Ilsa,” Abel says. “But Noemi would always be my Ilsa.”
“Noemi,” Robin repeats, wonder in her voice. “You love this person?”
He nods as he stares into the fog surrounding the airstrip. Maybe, if he thinks hard enough, Noemi will come walking toward him in one of Ingrid Bergman’s costumes—
But no. It would not really be Noemi, just an illusion of her. Spending time with an illusion who couldn’t truly love him back would only drive him mad.
Robin adjusts her cap, then nods toward the propeller plane that’s waiting farther down the runway. “This time, I think Rick should get on board.”
“Are we going to continue the story?” In no religion listed in any of his databanks has Abel ever seen a theory of the afterlife that involved spending all eternity making up movie sequels with near strangers. It could, he supposes, be worse.
“Don’t you understand?” Robin asks, her eyes alight. “If you brought yourself here, then you also have the power to leave.”
“True.” Abel ought to have understood this before. Then again, dying and entering the afterlife is something of a shock. It hampers comprehensive analysis. Abel decides not to make a habit of it.
Robin’s soul is currently nestled in an ornate wooden box sitting on Gillian Shearer’s desk. It seems possible, maybe probable, that he’s in there with her. But can he remove himself from the box as easily as he arrived? Is there another potential holder for his soul—one from which he might be able to take action?
“They haven’t always left me alone in here,” Robin murmurs. “I could tell they were trying to talk to me. But their voices were only echoes, without any real words, and they made me move around this—this triangular thing that pointed to letters—”
“It was a Ouija board.”
Robin huffs and rolls her eyes, and it’s such an ordinary human gesture that she seems, for an instant, truly alive. “Well, they know I’m in here, at least. Which means they could potentially figure out you’re in here, too. I don’t think you want them to do that.”
“No.” Surely Robin’s data solid is periodically scanned for deterioration. If he were detected within it, Abel anticipates he would be immediately deleted. “We ought to travel to another, more recent data solid. We could find one that’s already installed for direct interface with the Winter Castle computer systems, which would give us both access to much more information—”
“No,” Robin says softly. “Not we. Just you. I can’t make that journey anymore, if I ever could.”
“Why not?” Abel realizes that he understands, in some instinctive way, how to exist as data. Perhaps that’s natural for anyone whose soul is fundamentally software. Robin Mansfield cannot share those instincts. After this long, however, she ought to have some idea how to do it, and he could teach her the rest. “There are possibilities for our future existence outside of this data solid—which admittedly are all more theoretical than immediate. Still, we have reason to hope.”
“I’m not really myself any longer.” Robin paces around him on the tarmac, her boots shiny in the glare of the airport lights. “I remember Burt—remember loving him, then almost hating him—but I don’t recall where we met. Did he ever tell you? I think he proposed to me at his PhD ceremony, but I don’t have any idea how long we were together before that. Did we have a wedding? It’s just… a blur. I think I knew all of that when I first woke up in here, but I don’t anymore. It’s all gone.”
Data degradation, he realizes. The changes Gillian feared are real, and perhaps worse than she knew. Mansfield stored his dead wife’s consciousness in a far more primitive form, generations of tech back from what he used for himself. While enough of Robin remains for them to have this conversation, this is still only a fragment. She’s incomplete, becoming more and more so as time goes by.
“When you say the name Gillian”—Robin’s voice quivers with pain—“I know that’s my daughter. I remember being pregnant with her, I put my hands on my belly and loved her even before she was born, but I don’t remember her face. I must’ve seen her face sometime, but I can’t think of it at all. If I were myself, I’d know my own little girl. Wouldn’t I?”
Gently, Abel says, “Yes. I think you would.”
They can build no mech body for Robin’s soul to dwell in. Mansfield has no genetic samples fresh enough to successfully create an Inheritor for his late wife. Barring a major leap forward in technology—which might be decades or even centuries away, if it ever came at all—Robin is eternally trapped, with no end in sight.
It’s very like Mansfield to assume he’ll conquer all obstacles sooner or later. Abel cannot share this delusion. Apparently, Robin can’t either.
Robin straightens, tugs on her French uniform jacket, and turns to face him. “I’m so tired of it now. So tired of feeling my mind break down, bit by bit. I thought in the beginning that maybe I’d been freed from death itself. Now I understand that it wasn’t perfect freedom I’d been given. It’s only perfect isolation.”
“Isolation is worse than any death.” Abel thinks back to those thirty years in the pod bay. The only thing that makes the memory bearable is the knowledge that it ended.
He reaches out with his consciousness, instinctively, and senses a way out. Maybe not his final destination—but it would work for now. And from there, he can continue the search.
When his eyes next meet Robin’s, she obviously knows their time together is at an end.
“Please,” she says. “When you talk with Burt and Gillian, tell them to please, finally, let me go. Let me find peace. Tell them it’s what I want.”
“They’re unlikely to agree,” he says.
“Then please, find a way to kill me. Or delete me. Whatever you’d call it.” Robin’s hand rests against his chest for a moment. It’s the only touch they share, startlingly real. “Just promise me you’ll end this, however you can.”
Abel nods. She steps away from him, turns toward the phone booth, and walks away, perhaps to round up the usual suspects.
He turns up the collar of his trench coat and walks toward the plane. There’s no pilot, and yet somehow he knows he has to generate the feeling of movement. The sense that a transition is not only necessary but also allowed.
So he reaches into his pocket and pulls out his papers. To the ether he says, “Signed by General Weygand himself.”
The papers worked in Casablanca. They work here. The propellers spin, and the airplane begins to rumble forward on the runway. Abel sits back, and at the moment he feels the plane’s wheels leave the ground, he closes his eyes.
He can’t imagine where he’s going. He can only reach out—out past this data solid, past this room, past the Winter Castle itself—searching for something he’ll only know when he finds it.
And then he does.
29
NOEMI STAGGERS BACKWARD. “PROFESSOR MANSFIELD,” she whispers.
Mansfield grins at her with Abel’s face. “Miss Vidal. What a pleasure it is to see you again.”
Whatever control she’d regained over her body is gone; she feels like she might crumple to the floor, lose consciousness, explode. Usually she’d strike back at anyone or anything that hurt the ones she loves, but she can’t attack Abel’s body. It’s still precious to her even when his soul is gone.
Gone.
The hand that closes around her forearm doesn’t touch her the way Abel would’ve. Mansfield’s grip is as hard and merciless as a steel cuff as he says, “You’ve become far more interesting than when we last met. More interesting, and less human.”
Noemi’s eyes well with tears, but she won’t allow herself to cry. Only inside her head does she wail: Abel’s gone, Abel’s go
ne, we’re too late, he’s gone. Out loud, she says only, “Whatever your daughter did to me didn’t work. I’m already breaking down.”
He isn’t dismayed. “Bluffing me, Miss Vidal?”
“No.” How much she’d like to slap him, but it’s Abel’s face, even without Abel behind it. “If you keep me here, you’ll see the truth soon enough.”
“Oh, don’t worry,” he says. “You won’t be going anywhere.”
His speaking patterns, the tones of his voice—he doesn’t sound like Abel at all. How could she have been fooled by this golem, even for a moment? Maybe she only saw what she wanted to see.
Mansfield cocks his head, studying her. “There’s no way we’d ever let you go. The first hybrid between human and mech? The prototype? We have a great deal of research to do.”
“What are you going to do, dissect me?”
“Only as a last resort.” The simplicity of Mansfield’s answer chills Noemi to the marrow. “This is a whole new technology that could help humanity. It would be selfish not to share the knowledge.”
“You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met,” Noemi says. “All you want is profit.”
“You don’t think this technology can save lives?”
Gauging by the way Noemi feels right now, hybridization seems more likely to end lives than save them. “Let’s just say you’re not ready to make mech-human hybrids yet. Seems like a lot of your big projects aren’t ‘quite ready.’ They don’t usually wind up being what you promised at all. The Osiris was supposed to be this big secret, but Remedy found out about it in time to crash it on Haven. The Inheritors were supposed to be ready to provide eternal life right away, but what happened with Simon proved they’re not even close. And you’ve still learned nothing.” Her voice shakes, but she wills herself to keep speaking, to spear him with every word. “The galaxy calls you a genius, and I guess you must have been. Once. A really long time ago.”
The spear draws blood. Noemi sees Mansfield pull back; his expression darkens with anger and contempt that have no right to be on Abel’s gentle face. “You’re speaking rather hastily for someone who’s soon going to be a subject in my lab.”
Mansfield wants that threat to scare her, but Noemi is past all that. She laughs at him. “I don’t think I’ll be around much longer. I know Abel’s gone. The rest is noise.”
Could Ephraim’s team, or Harriet’s, still find her in time? Noemi can’t even bring herself to hope for that. They’re in other parts of the Winter Castle, maybe headed back to the snowmobiles by now. Besides, even if they did find her, Mansfield would attack them. She knows how much damage Abel’s body can do.
From a comm unit at Mansfield’s belt comes Shearer’s voice. “Do you need assistance, Dad? I can have some mechs on the way to you in seconds.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mansfield snaps. “Since when have I needed anyone’s help?”
Mansfield literally thinks he’s better than every other human and mech in creation. Including Noemi. Including his own daughter. Dazedly Noemi wonders whether Shearer knows this, and if so, why she’d destroy someone as beautiful as Abel just to bring this bastard back from the dead.
Really, though, Noemi knows why. It’s the same reason why she was willing to fight and die for Genesis even after her planet wrote her off as a lying traitor. The reason why it hurt Abel to prioritize his own life over Mansfield’s. There’s always one core purpose in our hearts that we’ll sacrifice anything for.
Noemi thinks, Love is Directive One.
Mansfield isn’t dwelling on his daughter’s concern for him; he’s too busy studying Noemi. He lets go of her arm to pace around her. “Maybe someday hybrids could outpace even mechs as fine as myself—but not yet. Not for a long while. For now I am more efficient, stronger, smarter than any other being in creation. I am indestructible.” Mansfield’s voice behind her back makes Noemi shudder. She can feel her hair standing on end. “I have capabilities beyond any human. I can begin my work anew, and I can go beyond it. Create wonders the galaxy has never seen. Make the worlds everything they should be.”
Noemi grits her teeth. “You mean, you’re going to play God.”
“Someone should, don’t you think? Oh, that’s right. You’re from Genesis. You think angels are playing harps up in the clouds, and you can leave everything up to them. Didn’t you ever hear it said that God helps those who help themselves?”
The contempt within her bubbles hot, like liquid iron being poured into her veins to go hard and strong. “You think believers are like children. You don’t think anyone’s really seen the universe for what it is, except for you.”
“I don’t think it,” Mansfield says. “I know.”
He continues pacing around her, his gaze intent and alien. Glimpsing his profile, Noemi wishes it were Abel next to her—wishes it with all her will, her blood, her bone. If wishing could change reality, Mansfield would vanish in that instant, and Abel’s soul would light up behind those blue eyes again.
But any soldier who’s been to war knows what wishing is worth.
Instead, she gazes past Mansfield to the far corridor. According to the blueprint of the Winter Castle inside her head, this corridor should lead away from the hub, closer to the perimeter of the building.
You aren’t faster than he is, she tells herself. You aren’t stronger. But he’s even less used to his mech body than you are to yours. You’re also mad as hell, and if you catch a lucky break, maybe that adrenaline can get you out of here.
Escape feels so useless. What else can she do to prevent Earth’s destruction? Nothing comes to mind. She’s lost Abel, just like she lost Esther. The two people in her life who trusted her the most, gave her the most—who loved her—she failed to protect either of them. They’re both dead partly because she was too damn slow to save them. There’s no way to repent for that. No way to redeem it.
And Abel was so gentle. For all the raw information in his databanks, he always remained so innocent. So open to exploration, discovery, joy. If anyone deserved more than his fair share of life, it was him. Instead, Noemi’s left with the hollow hurt of knowing he spent about 90 percent of his life trapped in an equipment pod bay, without gravity or light or companionship—but never, never without hope.
All his hope turned out to be in vain.
But he didn’t only have hopes for himself, Noemi remembers. Abel had hopes for her, too. He gave up so much to give her a chance to live. She won’t waste it.
Far corridor, she tells herself. You just need one shot at the far corridor.
Mansfield continues circling her. “Personally, I suspect you only need a software update. I can’t know for sure until I get you to my lab. For now, though, let’s assume that you are breaking down, as you claim. Physically, probably, I could fix you. Mentally? You’re a hazard. It’s really not worth repairing you.” His voice goes even colder. “Well then, I guess I’ll have to remake you into something much more useful.”
He steps behind her. She has a clear shot to the corridor. Go.
Noemi bolts forward, using every bit of power she has—human, mech, all of it. Her balance is uneven, but she’s upright, and her newly fast reflexes still work. If the corridor wavers and splits into two corridors as her vision doubles, it doesn’t matter as long as she aims for the middle. When she reaches the corridor, her footsteps echoing against the curved, iridescent walls, she tries to calculate how long it would take her to reach the snowmobile—of all the times for that voice in her head to fall silent instead of giving her information—
Mansfield’s weight slams into her back; his arms seize her as she thuds into the wall and onto the floor. She’d forgotten how heavy that body is. Winded, Noemi struggles for breath, wriggles in an effort to escape his grip, but it’s no use. She fights him even as he pins her to the ground and peers down at her like a hawk sighting its prey.
“You’re trembling,” he says. “Are you so scared of a face you claimed to love?”
Noe
mi never claimed to love Abel. She wishes she had, because she knows now that she did. Abel never even got to hear her say those words. Regret consumes her, threatens to swallow her whole.
But Noemi spits back, “You don’t look like him.” A sob catches in her throat. “I could always see Abel’s soul. And I can see that you have none.”
“Enough.” Mansfield shakes his head at her as though she were a naughty little girl who refused to follow the playground rules. “Let’s get you to the lab.”
Noemi tries to be brave. She has to face that this is the end of her life, at least in any form she’d ever want to live it.
The floor shudders. Then it shudders again. A distant thudding comes closer. Mansfield sits up, clearly as confused by this as she is, though not alarmed.
At least, he’s not alarmed until the nearby wall collapses, breaking outward in a spray of dust and shimmer. They both stare as the miasma settles to reveal an enormous dark shape, something with arms and legs—
“A Smasher?” Mansfield gapes at it as it lumbers forward, all two and a half meters of gray hulking metal, its immense weight shaking the foundation of the Winter Castle itself. “Who the bloody hell programmed a mining droid to come through here?”
“No one,” the Smasher says in a tinny, monotone voice from the small speaker at the center of its chest. “It was my idea.”
Noemi stares. Smashers don’t have ideas. Smashers also don’t attack humans. But this one grabs Mansfield in one of its enormous, multipronged hands, and tugs him away from Noemi easily. She skitters backward, crab-walking away from the bizarre scene.
Am I hallucinating? Am I breaking down completely? Is this mech brain failure or something?
“Abort previous protocol,” Mansfield barks, trying to sound authoritative while clutched in the Smasher’s hand like a toddler’s dolly. “Delete instructions. Initiate dormant mode.”
“I’d rather not,” the Smasher replies. It lumbers to a nearby chute with the genteel label REFUSE, instead of GARBAGE. It opens the broad door and drops Mansfield unceremoniously through it. Noemi hears him shouting as he thuds against the walls all the way down to wherever the castle garbage ends up. It would’ve been incredibly satisfying to watch, if Noemi wasn’t pretty sure she’s headed there next.
