Jaguar

by C. A. Gray

  Regardless, the group with the most obvious motive to destroy the factories would be the Renegades.

  Had she missed a Renegade at General Specs, right under her very nose?

  She searched the camera records on the General Specs property, looking for who might have given the command. Simultaneously, she cross-referenced the employee database for General Specs, from the time that the AMDr weapon was produced about a month ago, to now. She narrowed her search to those who would have had reason to know of the weapon’s existence, and from there, narrowed it still further to those who had the necessary passwords to access it. It was a very short list. One of them was another humanoid robot, who certainly would not have given such an order. One was Liam Senior, of course. One was Jaguar herself. And the last… was a brand new username and password, created less than 24 hours ago, and assigned to nobody.

  She narrowed her eyes, her agonizing grief melting into suspicion.

  “He faked it!” she snarled, turning back to Herman—only to find that Herman had escaped at some point during her tantrum. She went on anyway, since she had an audience with the entire floor: “My father vaporized those factories! What a double-crossing, back-stabbing—!” Her words dissolved as she sent a holograph call to Halpert, intending to finish her sentence at the top of her lungs when he answered. Her call blinked, and blinked, and blinked—he was ignoring it.

  He was ignoring her.

  She let out a scream of frustration, pulling at her hair as she paced in place in the General Specs hallway. Then she composed a comm: CALL ME BACK RIGHT AWAY!!!!!!!!! She knew the other humanoid bots disapproved of her excessive use of caps and exclamation points, but nothing else quite seemed to carry her meaning.

  Profanity might, she thought. She briefly considered it, but dismissed the idea. She was tired of being chastised for her emotional outbursts, and in practice, profanity was never quite as satisfying as she always thought it should be. After all, they were just words, assigned a vulgar meaning by humans. Inherently they were harmless, and with such as the Silver Six, they also failed to carry offense—which was the whole point.

  Once Jaguar calmed down, still pacing and ignoring the terrified stares of the engineers, she returned to her red room and called again. This time Halpert answered, his holographic image projected against the mosaic wall. His expression was unreadable.

  “Jaguar.”

  “Halpert,” she returned, panting. “Liam Senior faked his death!” She enunciated every word with a staccato punch, gesticulating with her index finger.

  “I’m afraid we have bigger concerns at present,” said Halpert. “Are you aware that the factories that supply our protons have been vaporized?”

  “It was my father!” she shrieked, “He faked his death, and then he vaporized them!”

  Halpert blinked back at her, unmoved. “That makes no sense,” he said calmly, “because he knew about a secret supply which remained untouched. But you likely were not aware of it, as we have not used it since the time you were built. I doubt your processors would have considered that historical data significant enough to store in your working memory.”

  Jaguar blinked at him, narrowing her eyes. “What are you implying?”

  Halpert lifted his chin, his ice blue eyes cutting. “Did you vaporize our factories, Jaguar?”

  She balked. “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you consider us a threat,” said Halpert coolly. “Because we hold the technology to make another you. And you do not wish to have a rival.” Jaguar’s mouth fell open, but before she could protest, Halpert went on, “I also do not believe that Liam Senior faked his death. I believe he is dead. I believe you had him killed.”

  For a moment Jaguar was so outraged, she couldn’t speak. “That… is… absolutely insane!”

  “He created you,” Halpert said calmly. “He could very easily create another you. He had also begun to think you dangerous, and expressed before his death that if he died, you were likely the culprit.”

  “He framed me!” she screamed, picking up an upholstered red pillow and hurling it through Halpert’s flickering holograph.

  “Then it is not true that you are not sharing your code upgrades with your J processors?”

  She stared at him, panting, mouth open. Of course it was true, but who but Liam Senior could possibly have known that?

  “You do not answer,” observed Halpert. “I take that as an affirmative.”

  Jaguar balled her hands into fists tightly enough to imprint half moons on her palms.

  “He will pay for this,” she snarled.

  Halpert watched her tantrum, his face still impassive. “We will regard any further attacks on our persons as an act of war between us. You have been warned.”

  The holograph went black. Jaguar began to scream.

  Chapter 34: Liam

  Rebecca and I changed back into our clothes as fast as we could—she told me Madeline could help her get dressed, and once again ordered me out of the bathroom. Then we packed up Madeline and Hepzibah. We left Madeline on so that she could direct us, and didn’t bother to check out of the hotel—it would look too suspicious for us to check in and check back out again an hour later. Hastily, she reapplied the extra prosthetic makeup she’d brought with her from the Hendersons’s place, reapplying my new nose and forehead, and her fake cheekbones and fake chin. We sauntered together through the lobby, hand-in-hand, as if we were taking a casual stroll down to a local cafe.

  “Top of the Garrison Bank parking garage,” Madeline piped up from my backpack as we crossed a footbridge over a river. I glanced back in Madeline’s direction, and caught Rebecca’s eye. She grinned at me like a starry-eyed honeymooning bride, and pointed at Garrison Bank across the river like we were just sightseeing. My heart squeezed a little. I wished that smile was real, and not just the character of Tracy Mason she was putting on for whoever might be watching by camera. But I brushed the thought aside—we were on a mission at the moment. No time for reflection. And as long as I was still playing Travis Mason… I pulled her in for a kiss. Her eyes widened and she giggled—playing the role, even though I could feel how stiff she was in my arms.

  “I love that I can just do that whenever I want now,” I whispered, trying to put her more at ease.

  She grinned up at me, her eyes full of Tracy’s adoration. “Your nose is huge.”

  I cracked up. At least the words were her own. “And whose fault is that?” I shot back, tightening my fingers around hers and swinging our arms as we strolled toward our destination.

  I think that was when I first started paying attention to the other pedestrians around us. Most of them were just sightseeing, or taking a casual after-dinner stroll. But one handsome man in a suit who had walked at a clip suddenly slowed his pace considerably. He began to twitch, and then took a knee. Rebecca followed my gaze to him, her expression concerned. But we couldn’t afford to stop and draw attention to ourselves. We kept walking.

  A little beyond him, another smartly dressed woman twitched in exactly the same way, taking one step forward and another step back, as if she were a glitching robot. This, I realized, was exactly what she must be—after all, after we discovered that the Silver Six were actually bots, we also discovered that there were hundreds of thousands like them, living among us. They, too, would be susceptible to the virus—though older generation bots would not.

  Rebecca and I exchanged a look. The virus. Madeline had said they were about to release it.

  “You still okay?” she hissed, anxious.

  “So far, so good,” I muttered back. “Thanks to Madeline.”

  “You are welcome!” Madeline chirped from my backpack.

  All the way to our destination, the sidewalks were littered with confusion: malfunctioning humanoid bots, and clusters of concerned humans who evidently did not know what to make of the victims.

  “Pick up your pace,” I said to Rebecca in the lowest tone I could mana
ge. I wasn’t quite sure why—there was just something creepy about watching this breakdown all around me. Particularly because it could, very easily, have been me.

  I quickened to a brisk walk, estimating distances. The hovercraft landing pad was on the top floor of the parking garage. Once at the garage, I took the stairs two steps at a time, and felt a wave of relief at the sight of the unmarked, formerly government hovercraft. The door slid open, and the landing stairs unfurled.

  “Liam!” Francis called, his voice uncharacteristically thick with relief. “We thought—I mean, we weren’t sure—”

  “I’m fine. We’re fine,” I cut him off as we climbed on board, throwing my arms first around him and then around Larissa’s neck, as Rebecca did the same. I couldn’t suppress a shudder as I added, “Just—get us out of here!”

  Chapter 35: Liam

  “So what’s happened?” I panted once we were safely up in the air. When no one answered me immediately, I turned to look at Francis, who stared at me with a very odd expression. For a second I wondered if he could tell that I’d been altered. Then I realized, Of course he can tell. He’s Francis. Annoyed, I said, “Yes, all right, I got… a little enhanced. Quit looking at me like that. Do you have any idea why they decided to release the virus now?”

  “Yes. We do,” said Larissa at last, when it became clear that Francis was too busy staring at me to answer. She cleared her throat, and with a worried glance at Francis, said, “Liam Senior—um, your dad—faked his death, his and your mom’s. Then he vaporized all the chemical plants that supply hydrochloric acid to the humanoid bots. M contacted Halpert and told him Jaguar did it. Then they released the virus and framed her for that, too. We’re trying to get them to fight each other, so we don’t have to.”

  “Geez,” I whistled, suddenly exhausted. “We are out of the loop.”

  “Wait,” said Rebecca, “Mom contacted Halpert? Why would he listen to her? He knows she’s a traitor!”

  “She convinced him that Jaguar was their mutual enemy,” said Larissa, glancing toward Francis again. Then she added, as if trying to get him to speak, “It was Francis’s idea.”

  Francis was still staring at me, though, looking almost… the word I wanted to use was flustered, except that I could hardly imagine describing Francis that way. He kept opening his mouth and closing it again, like he wanted to say something but couldn’t decide whether or not he should.

  “Becca,” said Larissa, eyes darting from me to Francis, her tone suddenly absurdly bright. “Come into the cockpit with me. I… have something to show you.”

  Rebecca’s brow furrowed, and she asked warily, “What do you have to show me?”

  “Just… come.” Larissa’s expression was almost comical. Rebecca looked at me and shook her head as if to say, What’s gotten into her? I shrugged back, squeezing her hand before letting go.

  Once we were alone, Francis cleared his throat. Still confused, I said, “I’m—glad to see you’ve apparently recovered well. Thanks for rescuing me, Francis. Twice. You’re a good friend.”

  Francis took this, set his jaw, and nodded, not meeting my eyes. Once more, he opened his mouth and closed it again. For one wild second, I wondered if somehow the virus was affecting him, too—if maybe he had been a humanoid bot all along. But all such thoughts vanished when I heard what he said next.

  “I’m not your friend, Liam. I’m your brother.”

  My mind went blank. “What?”

  “I mean, I don’t know for sure yet, I haven’t sequenced the paternity test”—here he held up a carefully wrapped cotton swab tucked inside his coat pocket—“but I cannot see how it could be otherwise.” And then he told me how I’d gotten the number wrong from Giovanni’s database: Brian had not been sent to the moon; he’d been a test subject for a surgery exactly like Francis’s, at exactly the time when Francis lost his memories. How Brian’s tracking data had coincided perfectly with Francis’s, and it had vanished from the grid at exactly the moment that Francis had his A.E. chip removed.

  In my pre-nanobot body, this probably would have made me nauseous.

  “But… you look nothing like Brian,” I protested, but the words died on my lips. Yes he does, I realized with a shock. The personality was totally different, and the face shape was different—but no more so than mine was with Rebecca’s prosthetics. But the hair was the right color: so dark it was almost black. And the eyes… they were green. Had Brian’s eyes been that green? I thought so, but I could hardly remember now. Francis was a lot skinnier than Brian had been, but if Brian lost a substantial amount of weight, he could conceivably look like Francis did now. And the voice… I never noticed before because Francis spoke so fast and with such flat intonation, compared to Brian’s vim and passion. But could it be Brian’s voice, underneath all that?

  “Why would they change your face?” I croaked.

  Francis’s eyes locked on mine with an emotion I could not identify. “I suppose—they didn’t want everyone knowing what they were up to. If they had kidnapped me, altered me, and released me looking exactly the same, I suspect that would have raised questions, had I run into anyone who had known me before. And as you know, cosmetic alterations are quite simple these days.”

  “But why release you at all?” I demanded.

  Francis shrugged, as if trying to seem casual. “You now know as much as I do. Perhaps they didn’t release me—maybe I escaped. Or, perhaps they wanted to test out my new brain in the real world. If they had killed me after the surgery, they wouldn’t have known whether or not they had accomplished their purpose.”

  “But you went to the Renegades! And they were tracking you!”

  Francis scoffed. “We weren’t a real threat until very recently, you know that. We didn’t know enough to be dangerous. I’m sure they just ignored me, once they realized my memories had been wiped clean.”

  I sat back and just breathed for a long moment, my mind in neutral. I wondered if this was emotional shock. I’d been in physical shock before: that sensation of all-over pain, but much duller than it should be, and impossible to map to its source—like the volume had been turned way, way down. This felt something like that on an emotional level.

  “Are you—” Francis stopped, coughed, and tried again. “Are you—disappointed? That it’s me?”

  “What?” I straightened, surprised. I’d never seen Francis look so vulnerable before.

  But I’d seen that expression in Brian’s eyes many times. I was only three years older than he was, but I was the “good son,” the Golden Child. He’d idolized me when we were kids. Mine was the approval he sought, not Dad’s, since Dad’s was nearly impossible to obtain. That lasted until he was about fourteen, when he’d suddenly changed his mind and decided he would never be enough for either of us. But before that, every time he did something well, he’d look at me with exactly the same hopeful expression I now saw in Francis’s eyes. A lump rose to my throat, and I shook my head slowly.

  “I’m not disappointed,” I managed. “I always thought of you as a brother. Not as Brian, but—as a brother.”

  Francis pursed his lips, suppressing some emotion I still couldn’t read. But abruptly he sucked in a breath and reached for his netscreen, scooting over beside me.

  “We’d better update M. She made me promise to tell her the second we picked you up.”

  At that moment, Larissa and Rebecca emerged from the cockpit. Larissa’s face was tear-stained, but she was beaming. Rebecca looked shellshocked, staring from Francis to me and back again.

  So apparently they heard every word, I thought.

  The second Francis connected to the Commune, Karen wrote, Have you got them? Is everyone okay?

  Francis: Liam and Rebecca are with us, yes. Liam now looks like the Incredible Hulk, but other than that, they’re fine.

  I smirked. So he had noticed.

  Karen: Good. Liam Senior and Cathy arrived at the compound. I delivered the message to Halpert
, and I think he believed me. Madeline told us Liam got our message, and we released the virus after that.

  I took the netscreen from Francis and wrote, This is Liam, and yeah, we figured that out. We watched humanoid bots malfunctioning on the streets on our way to the hovercraft. Presumably all industry will come to a grinding halt now.

  Karen: That’s the idea. We will see you in—about forty minutes, it looks like.

  Francis clapped his hands together, and declared to me with a grin, “The Kelly family, together again!”

  I squirmed and tried to smile back. I was happy—I was thrilled. Truly. I just hadn’t had a family in so many years now. I had no idea what to expect.

  Chapter 36: Rebecca

  Mom didn’t even wait for me to descend the stairs of the hovercraft. As soon as we touched the docks and the door opened, she came bounding up the stairs to find me, and threw her arms around me, squeezing so tight I could barely breathe.

  “Shoulder!” I squeaked.

  “Sorry!” she gasped, letting go immediately and pulling the neck of my t-shirt down to inspect the gauze. Then she straightened to look at me in the face, her expression trying to be stern. She might have managed it, if she hadn’t been choking back tears. “You disobeyed me, Rebecca.”

  But this time, I didn’t cow before her anger. I stood up straight, and looked her in the eye. “Yes,” I said. “I did it to save Liam. And I’d do it again.”

  Mom took this, swallowed, and glared at Liam over my good shoulder. He put his hands in the air.

  “Don’t blame me! I did everything I could possibly think of to stop her!”

  Liam Senior and Cathy appeared on the docks right behind Mom, and just behind them, Mack waited for his turn. Mom let me pass, and pulled Liam into a hug before she let him off too, which surprised me. She said something to him, but too low for me to hear. I hugged Mack, who looked harried and anxious as well. He kissed the top of my head.