by C. A. Gray
“She’s proud of you,” he whispered gruffly. “She just can’t say it.”
“I know,” I whispered back.
I glanced over my shoulder to watch Liam’s reunion with his parents: rather awkward on his father’s part, tearful on his mother’s. With Francis—Brian, whoever he was—it was even more awkward. Partly that was because Francis was Francis, but I could see the uncertainty on his parents’ side, too. They hadn’t sequenced the test yet, after all.
Val and Nilesh hovered behind the first string of greeters. Val caught my eye and grinned with relief. I grinned back at her, and was about to cross the docks to hug her when I saw that Liam beat me to it, sweeping her into his arms. I stopped, feeling an unexpected stab of jealousy as the memory of walking in on them kissing flashed into my mind. I was too far away to hear what they said, but Val gazed up at Liam with that same adoring expression she’d always reserved for him. Mack followed my gaze and lay a hand on my good shoulder, giving it a sympathetic squeeze. I glanced at Nilesh as an afterthought, and was startled to see my own emotions mirrored on his face as he watched Val and Liam.
When did that happen? I wondered.
Once Francis had finished his awkward reunion with the Kellys, he strode past the cluster on the docks toward one of the cabins Mom had apparently indicated for him, cotton swab in hand. Larissa followed him. I guessed he was heading for Dr. St. Peters’s lab, to ask him to run the paternity test. Not wanting to linger and watch Val and Liam catch up any longer, I followed them.
The cabin, which had been vacant when I was last here, was indeed now outfitted as a biochemistry lab, and Dr St. Peters and Dr Yin were both inside. They stood up when we entered, but before we could make any introductions, I gasped involuntarily. Beyond him, slumped in a chair in the corner, was Alex’s lifeless body.
“Ugh!” cried Larissa.
“Seriously!” I agreed, nodding at her.
Francis looked from Larissa to me. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Alex!” I shook my head at him, incredulous. “She’s just—sitting there?”
Francis frowned. “I assume they saved her in case they needed to harvest her for parts.”
“That’s barbaric!” Larissa and I cried simultaneously.
Francis rolled his eyes. “Oh, for heaven’s sake. She wasn’t human.”
“Sometimes I wonder if you are either!” I retorted. All I could think of was, if this were Madeline… I felt differently about Madeline than I had for the last many years, but still. It was the ultimate degradation. We used Alex, we killed her, and now we weren’t even giving her the dignity of a proper burial.
Dr St Peters cleared his throat as if to remind us of his presence, and stepped forward, shaking Francis’s hand. “David St. Peters,” he said. “You must be Francis. I’ve heard a lot about you.”
“I’m sure you have,” was his not-so-humble reply, as he thrust the cotton swab at the doctor, pulling a second clean one out of his pocket and swabbing his own cheek with it. Then he handed that one to the doctor as well. “I need you to run a paternity test on these.”
He blinked. “Uh, okay…” he glanced back at Dr. Yin. “But, are you sure this is the most important thing for me to be doing right now?”
“Yes!” cried Francis and Larissa at once.
He looked taken aback, and held up his hands. “Okay! But just so you know, we can’t access the labyrinth anymore, which means my only supplies are those I’ve already printed. It could take about forty-eight hours to get the results.”
“Fine,” said Francis shortly, and left the cabin.
Dr St Peters furrowed his brow in irritation, glancing from Larissa to Dr. Yin to me. “Is he always this friendly?”
“Oh. It gets much worse,” confirmed Dr. Yin with a smirk.
Francis returned to Liam and his father on the docks after that. Liam was clapping Rick on the back as he thanked him for saving his life. Rick stumbled forward with the force of the blow, which clearly surprised them both—Rick was a substantial guy. Liam apparently wasn’t yet accustomed to his new strength. I stooped to pick up the backpack containing Madeline and started to ease it on to my back, but Liam saw and stopped me, putting it on to carry for me instead.
“So,” said Francis loudly, clapping his hands together once again. “There’s something poetic about us three Kelly boys teaming up to take down Jaguar, isn’t there? Since, you know—in many ways, she was our creation.”
Liam looked at his dad, who shifted uncomfortably. I cringed for Francis.
“Er—yeah,” said Liam at last. “I mean, I don’t know that she was my creation or yours in any… conceivable way…”
“Well, you and I both worked for General Specs five years ago, didn’t we?” Francis persisted. “You were Head of Operations, so surely I had a similar position too, right?”
Liam Senior cleared his throat. “Brian… refused to have anything to do with General Specs.” I noticed he said Brian, not you. “He was the first of us to become a Renegade.”
A brief look of confusion flickered across Francis’s face. “But… before that. I had to have been a lead programmer or something at least, right?”
Liam looked at the ground and his father shook his head slowly. It was clear they didn’t want to recount the painful history, but Francis wouldn’t back down.
“Why not?” he demanded.
Cathy rejoined the group then, clearing her throat. “Karen says we’re all to assemble in the dining hall. We have a lot to discuss.”
Liam took the cue, slipping an arm around my waist and guiding me toward the dining hall and away from the confrontation. But behind us, Francis persisted to Liam Senior, “Why not? I was a brilliant programmer even then, wasn’t I?”
I glanced up at Liam with wide eyes. He gave a tiny shake of his head in response and whispered, “Brian and Dad used to get in shouting matches, because Brian felt like he could never measure up to me in his eyes. Dad is trying not to say that. Ironic that Francis can now program circles around me.”
“Liam,” I hissed back, “are you sure he’s Brian?”
Liam shrugged, then gave a side-to-side nod of his head, as if to indicate, sort of. “Now that I know… I think I can see it. I suppose I could be kidding myself, though. I hear we’ll find out for sure in forty-eight hours, regardless.”
“He really wants to be,” I whispered, as Francis continued to argue, and Liam Senior continued to placate behind us. “It’s sort of sweet how badly he wants to be one of the ‘Kelly boys.’ He really loves you, in his own weird way.”
“I know,” Liam murmured. “But I don’t think it’s because of me. I think he just wants somewhere to belong.”
“He’s more emotional than we ever gave him credit for,” I agreed. “But it’s like—all his emotions are subconscious, ready to ambush him when he least expects it.”
Liam shook his head, glancing over his shoulder at Francis with a slight frown. “I wonder if that’s why they picked him,” he murmured. When he saw my quizzical expression, he explained, “Because Brian was all emotion. The Silver Six were trying to recreate themselves in a human with this surgery. He would have been the perfect test case. But they couldn’t get rid of emotion entirely, so they just… buried it?”
“Which actually makes it even more powerful, not less. But also more unpredictable,” I added, glancing up at him sideways as we crossed the threshold to the dining hall. “Where are you going with this?”
He shook his head. “Not sure yet. Just… thinking out loud.”
When we entered the cabin, I saw Cathy and Val already chatting in one corner. I looked away, but Liam noticed, and caught my eye meaningfully.
“She just knows Val, that’s all,” he whispered.
I shrugged, as if I didn’t care. “I know.”
“Why don’t you go join them? Give her a chance to get to know you, too.” He gave me a little shove on my lower back towards
the two women. I glanced back at him, uncertain. “Here. I’ll send backup,” he said with a wink, stooping to the ground to unzip the backpack and power up Madeline. I cracked up a little, and rolled my eyes. But I wasn’t going to refuse.
“Are we back at the compound now?” Madeline enthused. “Everyone is safe?”
“Everyone is safe,” I assured my little friend, who rolled along beside me as I approached Cathy and Val. They stopped talking abruptly, which made me feel awkward. Clearly I’d interrupted something. I contemplated making an excuse and leaving again, but Cathy extended an arm to me politely.
“Rebecca! So glad to see you again. It will give me a chance to get to know my new daughter-in-law.” She gave me a theatrical wink. I saw Val’s eyes widen with shock, and suddenly grew flustered.
“Oh—no,” I hurried to tell her, “Mom just made up a fake couple and connected our retinas and fingerprints to them on the labyrinth while we were trying to get back here. We’re not—really married,” I laughed uncomfortably.
Val’s expression grew sad and resigned. “Of course not. Because Liam’s ‘not the marrying type.’ Right?” I guessed from the way she said it that he’d said something like that to her, in order to let her down gently. I also guessed that she knew it wasn’t the truth. I saw Cathy’s smile evaporate too as she looked from Val to me, concerned.
“Val—” I began. But she held up a hand.
“The meeting’s starting,” she cut me off. And she was right. We were all assembled in a circle, more or less, but Mom’s posture indicated that she was trying to get our attention. Madeline wheeled over to my side, and I sat down and hugged her cold little body with my good arm.
“This is a war council, as I’m sure we all know,” Mom began. “I think you are aware that all of the humanoid bots, including the Silver Six, are dying. We had intended for them to take over our fight against Jaguar, but as of now, they have not done anything against her to speak of. Perhaps all their remaining energy is focused instead on creating an antidote to the virus. So that means it’s up to us. I’m going to start by giving Mr. Kelly Senior the floor, as he knows the most about what we are up against. Mr. Kelly?”
Liam’s father stood up as Mom sat down. “I’d be lying if I said I knew exactly how Jaguar works now—no one does. But I can tell you how she was built, which might give us some insight into where to go from here.
“For those of you who aren’t aware, in a way, Jaguar receives all of her information from a processor on site at General Specs called J1. But J1 then shares all of its data with two other processors called J2 and J3—one in Tokyo and one in San Jose. If J1 goes down for any reason, Jaguar can access the same information via J2 or J3, but processing speed will be slower. Each of the J number processing arrays contains all current information from the labyrinth considered useful enough to be contained within Jaguar’s working knowledge—including data that might pertain to an individual, such as purchase history, satellite imagery, police records, etcetera. But J1, J2, and J3 are also all used by the Silver Six, other organizations and individuals worldwide—they’re not exclusive to Jaguar. Jaguar herself has evolved by quantum leaps in her ability to make sense of the data and draw meaningful conclusions. She was designed to share her insights and creativity upgrades with J1, J2, and J3 arrays also—but she doesn’t. Therefore, her physical person is the only copy of her in existence.”
“So she’s insecure?” Mack concluded with a frown.
Senior nodded. “Yes. But more importantly, she’s fragile. If we can manage to destroy her, that’s it. She’s done. A massive magnetic pulse or even the trauma of an exploding bullet fired in the correct location could be enough.”
“Except we could never get close enough to do that,” Liam pointed out. “She’d see us coming miles off.”
“I might have a way around that,” Senior replied, looking at his son. “As soon as information is updated in J2, for example, it is designed to immediately synchronize this new information with J1 and J3. Likewise new updates in J1 are immediately sent to J2 and J3 arrays. But these processors are always available for worldwide governmental use to provide reports as well. Certain kinds of report requests are so cumbersome to generate that it creates a small, but noticeable, lag time in their synchronization process. In other words, for that brief window of time, the data between the three may not agree. It’s a flaw in the design that was only recently discovered, and I believe can be used to our advantage.”
“What?” Liam and Francis pounced on this in unison. Liam started laughing incredulously, and Francis demanded, “Who else knows this?”
“A select few General Specs engineers,” said Senior, a sly smile creeping across his face, “but we kept it under wraps to avoid exploitation by hackers, obviously. Even Jaguar herself doesn’t know—we purposely didn’t tell her, because she’s so volatile. She’s already sent four of my best programmers to Exmorton for less. We’ve been trying to fix the problem behind the scenes—”
“But it’s still not fixed?” Liam shook his head in wonder, still grinning. His dad grinned back.
“Nope.”
“Wait, wait,” Mom waved a hand in the air. “Somebody translate for the rest of us, please? What does this mean?”
Francis turned to Mom and explained, eyes twinkling, “It means we can exploit that lag time, and introduce fake data to the processors. Or maybe just scramble what’s already there in the timeline. If we are clever—and possibly lucky as well—we can make the data in J1 disagree with the data in J2 and J3. For example, we can change a record in J1 to say that wheat production in the Americas is 2.3 billion bushels, while J2’s same record shows 3.1 billion bushels. Perhaps J3 reports that Liam Kelly Junior had mitochondrial surgery, while J2 reports that he had brain surgery, and J1 reports that he died from an abdominal aneurysm repair. Once the data is different in the three arrays, there’s no way to determine which, if any, is correct—so the different information remains. Jaguar won’t know what to believe, and she’ll sever the connection to all three of them until she can figure out what happened!”
“Which means she won’t see us coming,” Liam finished, still grinning as he nodded at Francis.
“Wait. Us?” I demanded shrilly. Liam glanced at me and winked. I glared back. “Liam!”
He ignored me, crossing the room to where Francis had already started scribbling in a notebook. Larissa peered over his shoulder, and Senior frowned at Francis. “Are you coding it already?”
Francis spared a glance up at him, one eyebrow arched. “Wasn’t that the whole point of this meeting?”
Senior gave a brief snort, and crossed to join the cluster of programmers, supplying more information about the flaws in their system. The conversation devolved after that as the room separated into those who could code and those who couldn’t. I heard snippets of their conversation, though: the main gist of the code they wrote would pull data history from every A.E. chip, bank account, satellite, and LP address in random order, shuffling up the timeline and feeding different misinformation to each processor. Senior told the coders about bogus usernames and passwords he’d created within various General Specs networks before he’d faked his death, including security, assuming he’d need access without giving away his identity. With security access, he could change retinal and fingerprint data of some of his employees with high clearance, and swap them out for those of members of our team to get us where we needed to go within the grounds. I perked up when he mentioned that he also had created a bogus user with access to the robopsychologist data, designed to try to understand Jaguar’s psychological state. Francis swapped out his notepad for a netscreen, and Liam retrieved one too, with Senior hovering over their shoulders.
“I feel sorry for Jaguar,” Val murmured to Cathy and me.
I cast her an incredulous glance. “You feel sorry for the malevolent superbot?”
“Well, yeah! She has emotions, clearly. And how do we know she’s male
volent? Maybe she’s just… I don’t know, having an identity crisis.”
“Val, she’s not one of your foster kids,” I pointed out, unable to keep a trace of condescension from my tone.
“I’m just saying! They’re going to give her a nervous breakdown, and then they’re going to stalk her and kill her! That’s just… mean.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “Do you remember that she sent Liam to Exmorton?”
“Well, I know,” she murmured. “But I still feel sorry for her.”
I didn’t reply, but Val’s woods echoed in my mind as the chatter in the room reached the point of a dull roar.
They’re going to give her a nervous breakdown.
That sounded like a crisis waiting to happen.
We need to anticipate what she’s going to do after that, I realized. We need that data. With that thought, I jumped to my feet and approached Liam Senior, who had his back to me.
“Excuse me. Sir?” I cleared my throat, suddenly feeling awkward.
“Hmm?” he said absently, without even looking at me. I felt like an underling sent to fetch him coffee.
“Might I have access to the robopsychologist network you mentioned?” I glanced at Dr. Yin and Giovanni, who sat on the other side of the cabin in conversation. “We—have some expertise in that area.”
Senior shrugged, still hardly listening. “Sure. Knock yourself out.” He tore a page out of Francis’s notebook, scribbled down the username and password, and handed it to me. Beside him, Liam glanced up at me and grinned, eyes still dancing like a kid on Christmas Eve. He wrapped a hand around my ankle because it was the closest part of me that he could reach.
“I’m still mad at you,” I hissed at him. “You are not an assassin, Liam!”
“Hey. Somebody’s got to do it,” he blinked up at me, all innocence. I smacked the back of his curly dark head, and retreated, taking my scrap of paper over to Dr Yin and Giovanni.
