Defy the Worlds

by Claudia Gray

  —no, yesterday. Isn’t it? Everything’s blurring together. Her body ran on pure adrenaline for hours and hours, but has now run out.

  Just get back to the mech area, she tells herself. Simon has to be captured, but she’s in no shape to do it. Remedy has to be negotiated with, but first they’ll have to reestablish contact; with comms damaged if not destroyed, that next contact seems likely to be a while away. If the force fields hold long enough for them to regroup, they might be able to devise a strategy to take the ship back from Remedy, and then—

  Better to ask that question later, assuming she ever gets the chance.

  Noemi stumbles over something on the floor-ceiling, glances down, and sees that it’s a chandelier. Or it was a chandelier. Now it’s just an etched-crystal hazard underfoot. Who puts chandeliers in a spaceship?

  Irritated, she turns the corner that leads back to the cargo bay. In the distance, she can just make out a small huddle of passengers under one of the emergency lights. They can’t see her at all. One of them whispers, “How much longer is this going to take?”

  “Two days, maximum,” says Vinh. “That’s what I was told, pre-treatment.”

  Treatment? And how much longer is what supposed to take?

  “So we wait, then,” says the first speaker. “How do we stop that Genesis girl from going after Remedy in the meantime? It’s a risk we don’t have to take.”

  Vinh shakes his head. “I doubt we’ll have to worry about her much longer.”

  Noemi knew the passengers didn’t much like her. She hadn’t guessed they were counting on seeing her dead.

  18

  ABEL CANNOT EVALUATE ENOUGH VARIABLES TO DETER-mine how probable, or improbable, this circumstance might be. However, it is not impossible.

  “Identify yourself!” shouts the same voice he’s heard before.

  From the place where he huddles behind a chunk of wreckage, he checks the timbre and inflections against his memory banks, rechecks them, and nods. “My name is Abel,” he calls. “And yours is Riko Watanabe.”

  Footsteps come closer—just one person, small of build. A few people mutter, “What are you doing?” and “Come back!” but she doesn’t stop until she sticks her head through the door. Despite the tan fatigues and goggles she wears, he identifies her easily. It is indeed Riko.

  She has the same short haircut she did before, the same wary expression. This is hardly a joyous reunion. But she lowers her blaster rifle, which in the current situation counts as a good sign.

  “This is Abel,” she calls to her fellow Remedy fighters. “The mech I told you about, who broke me out of prison.” After another moment’s hesitation she adds, “He’s a friend.”

  Abel is not sure he would’ve described her as a friend; he is even less sure whether he’s willing to apply that term to anyone who freely takes part in terrorist activities.

  Under the circumstances, however, he must take what allies he can find.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks. “How in the worlds did you find us?”

  “I was following Burton Mansfield, who is holding Noemi captive,” Abel replies. “I believe they are both on board.” Impossible to tell whether they survived the crash—but he refuses to speculate further. Not until he has more data. He won’t give up on Noemi one moment before he has to.

  Riko nods slowly. “Mansfield’s on the manifest, yeah, but Noemi? How did he manage to take her hostage? Hadn’t she gone back to Genesis?”

  “It’s what humans would refer to as ‘a long story.’” Abel risks getting to his feet. The Remedy members closest to them tense and clutch their weapons tighter, but nobody aims at him. They appear to have trust in Riko’s judgment. So he adds, “All I ask is for a chance to look for her.”

  “Fair enough,” Riko says. “In return, we could use a little help.”

  “Whatever I can do.”

  Whether Abel likes it or not, for now, he’s on Remedy’s side.

  The extravagance of this ship struck Abel as wasteful, even cruel, as soon as he saw its golden exterior. However, he had failed to account for the danger presented by that gaudiness until he encountered the interior, and had to follow Riko and her party across endless rooms and hallways littered with the remnants of chandeliers, champagne flutes, and stained glass.

  “Think of how many people could’ve been fed for the cost of that thing,” says Riko as she nudges one of the larger crystal prisms aside with her booted foot. “Four dozen? A hundred? And how many chandeliers are there on this ship?”

  “I haven’t seen enough of the layout to come up with an informed estimate.” Abel remains within half a meter of Riko, partly because she is his guide, but also because the other members of Remedy are far less sure of him than she is. They’ve hung back approximately three and a half meters, following at a careful distance, muttering among themselves. He doesn’t object. On a crashed ship, on an isolated world, it would be tactically unwise to needlessly antagonize terrorists.

  Riko Watanabe is such a terrorist. He has known that since her connection to the Orchid Festival bombing. Yet this information refuses to fully process when she gives him a small, uncertain smile; the expression makes it clear how young she really is, no more than twenty-one or -two.

  “We’ve got to introduce you to Captain Fouda,” she says. “Explain to him exactly what you can do. With your abilities, you might be able to help us get some of this ship back in operating order. I mean, I know it’s never going to fly again, but at least we could get it running as some kind of shelter.”

  Given the extremity of the crash, Abel doubts this. “While landing, I observed a large structure some kilometers distant. The most rational conclusion is that this was the shelter built to house the first settlers here. Your group should send a team there to investigate. It would undoubtedly provide better long-term shelter than the wreckage of this ship.”

  “Of course they had homes waiting for them already. These bastards would never come here to settle the land through hard work like any other colonists.” Riko clutches the blaster rifle she holds a little closer. Abel’s very glad not to be standing in its crosshairs. “The Columbian Corporation’s fancy-pants passengers are too good to dig ditches, or winter in ready-huts. No, they have to be surrounded by luxury at all times, taking a luxury ship to keep them comfortable until everything’s set up to their satisfaction. It’s ridiculous!” She nods toward an ornate mural on one wall, an upside-down portrait of the falcon god Horus.

  Her irascible mood seems likely to cause complications. Abel keeps his tone even. “You’re entirely correct that the use of resources for this ship was wasteful. But the Osiris has been destroyed. We should move on.”

  Riko stops midstep. The orange emergency lighting catches the spikes in her short black hair and the thoughtful expression on her face. “I know you’re right, but it’s hard,” she finally says. “I’ve been fighting this kind of evil since I turned ten. Moving on—that’s never been an option before now. It’s always been about tearing something down. Never about building something up.”

  “New worlds offer new possibilities.” Abel continues making his way through the Osiris corridors, and as he’d anticipated, Riko stays with him.

  By this point on his visit to a new vessel, he’s usually mentally constructed a rudimentary layout of his surroundings. Form follows function, and the fundamental structures within any station or ship usually conform to basic templates. The Osiris, however, is different. Its corridors wind and bend in illogical ways, more like the tangled streets of an ancient city than anything designed. Even though maps of the ship are posted at every stairwell and lift, they won’t illuminate without main power, which means they’re as useless as the nonfunctioning lifts and the stairs that seem to dangle from the ceilings. They walk through a spa with saunas and hot tubs hanging down uselessly, a ballroom with ridged acoustic tile that would’ve caught sound from beneath efficiently but is tricky to walk on, and finally a banquet hall with long opa
lescent tables dangling from the ceiling.

  This extravagance seems likely to set Riko off on another tirade against waste. Abel decides the best means of distracting her would be to obtain more information for his own purposes. “Since you were ten?”

  Riko, still gazing at the shimmering tables above, doesn’t quite catch it. “What?”

  “You said you’d been fighting since you were ten. I wouldn’t have thought Remedy accepted recruits that young.”

  “Oh. They don’t. That was a—turn of phrase, I guess.”

  Abel considers what he knows of the human subconscious. “Even turns of phrase mean something.”

  Taking another couple of steps, her boots crunching against broken glass from the tables, Riko shakes her head. “I was ten the first time I saw a food riot on Kismet. You wouldn’t think people would be starving a couple miles from a beach party, would you? But we were. You could hear people laughing while you lay in your bed hungry.”

  “Kismet hides that fact very well.” Even Abel, who is hardly naïve about humanity’s unkindness to its own, hadn’t realized hunger would be one of that planet’s problems.

  “There’s plenty of fish in the ocean, and humans can eat most of them, but you have to serve the resort guests first.” She stares into an unseen distance, focused only on the past. “Tons of edible fruit grows, both on Kismet-native trees and the ones we imported—the palms with their coconuts, or the bananas, or the pineapples—but the resort guests love those. They eat it all. Every alcohol distiller in the galaxy ships to Kismet, plus we were able to ferment the local bellfruit into a wine so sweet you could hardly believe it. And the guests drank all the wine. Every glass. Nearly every drop. You could spend every day harvesting food, every night serving it to the guests, and then at the end of it go to bed ravenous.”

  “That sounds difficult.” Hunger is one human experience Abel can’t share. He doesn’t think he’s missed much.

  “We have it pretty good on Kismet, at least better than the Vagabonds or laborers on Stronghold. But compared to the people who visited our world to eat and drink the best we had, and who lay around on our beaches all day while we slaved to make them comfortable? We were desperate, and we knew it.” Riko leans against the wall, and suddenly the blaster rifle looks too large for her slim arms and tiny frame. She could be a little girl playing soldier, if Abel didn’t remember the sight of dead bodies after the Orchid Festival bombings. “Sometimes the anger boiled over. We’d have riots. Strikes. Lootings. Then the mechs would sweep in and arrest or kill however many people it took to restore order. I saw friends of mine die. Can you imagine what that feels like?”

  Abel thinks of Noemi lying on her biobed, nearly delirious with fever, Cobweb tracing white lines on her skin. “Yes,” he says to Riko. “I can. Let’s move on.”

  She furrows her brow, clearly aware she’s troubled him in some way. However, she says nothing, for which he’s grateful. Maybe tact has more utility than he’d realized.

  Once they’ve secured this door, Riko pushes open another in a corner to reveal something far less dramatic: a bathroom, or what was once a bathroom before it turned upside down. As he looks at the ceiling, he says, “Relieving wastes may prove to be… a challenge.”

  Coming up behind him to take a peek, Riko groans. “Shit.”

  “I wouldn’t.”

  A faint creaking farther down the corridor compels Abel to focus his hearing on that area. Two more creaks and he’s certain. He straightens and gestures at Riko, who takes another moment to realize what he’s already determined: Someone is walking toward them.

  The other Remedy members are far behind. This person is approaching from ahead.

  It could be another Remedy patrol, Abel surmises from Riko’s reaction, which is wary but not panicked. He follows her lead, keeping hold of his weapon but not yet aiming it.

  The footsteps enter human aural range, and Riko’s dark eyes widen. However, the proximity of this unknown intruder is less disquieting to Abel than the arrhythmic steps; this person isn’t walking through the corridor as much as stumbling through it. A sound-wave analysis indicates that this individual is barefoot and extremely small, possibly even a child.

  Not an attacker, then. More likely a passenger injured and dazed from the crash. But even a small adult, if injured, dazed, and afraid, might fire if startled. Abel remains on alert.

  A figure appears in the doorway, silhouetted by the dull orange emergency light. The individual is male-presenting, approximately one hundred fifteen centimeters in height, with childish body proportions, pale skin, and long hair, unclothed. Abel’s analysis stops short when he recognizes the scent in the air. The smell is one he remembers vividly from the first moments of his life—the oddly sweet odor of mech generation fluid.

  When the figure takes another step forward, emerging from shadow, Abel sees a small boy holding what appears to be a severed mech hand, as if it were a plaything. Mansfield has indeed begun making child mechs. The boy mech’s features are ill-formed, incomplete. This one wasn’t finished yet. How can he be awake?

  “I’m lost,” the mech says. In his voice Abel hears emotions he’s never heard from another mech, even himself—terror, misery, and confusion. “I don’t know where we are.”

  “We’re on a ship called the Osiris.” Abel keeps his tone even and calm. He’s aware of Riko gaping at the two of them, but she says nothing. “Can you tell me your model designation?”

  “I don’t know what that is.” The mech curls into one corner and flops down, just like the exhausted child he appears to be. He hugs the severed hand to his chest.

  “Your name,” Abel says gently. “What is your name?”

  “I’m Simon Michael Shearer,” the mech announces automatically, as though called upon in school. His fear and disorientation remain strong. “Why are there things in my head? There are thoughts in there I didn’t think.”

  Shearer. Gillian’s surname is now Shearer. She lost a child some months ago. The information filters through Abel’s mind, combines with his knowledge of Mansfield’s obsession with immortality and his and Gillian’s hopes for organic mechs, and delivers a conclusion that radically changes the situation: This can only be Gillian’s son, Mansfield’s grandson. Simon, not Burton Mansfield, is the first individual to have his consciousness resurrected in a mech body.

  Abel is looking at the only other mech in the entire galaxy who possesses a soul. Every other day of his existence, Abel has been totally unique—and he knows better than most that to be unique is, in some sense, to be alone.

  He’s not alone any longer.

  Empathy floods his emotional capacities, and he holds out one hand. “It’s all right,” he says gently. “You’ve changed, Simon. It takes a while to get used to changes. But I can help you.”

  Simon trembles, afraid even to hope. “Can you get all the weird thoughts out of my head?”

  That must be how his childish mind interprets data input. How different is a human brain from a mech one? What feelings are the same, and which have changed? Abel longs to know the answer to these questions, but Simon is not yet in any condition to answer. “I can’t remove them,” Abel says, “but I can help you understand them. Focus them.”

  “But I want them gone!” Simon shoves himself up to his feet. He’s on the verge of tears. Abel takes another step toward him, only for Simon to skitter backward, stumbling on his chubby, childish legs. “Make them stop!”

  “I would if I could.” Abel can do nothing for this child but exist alongside him. At least Simon will never endure what Abel endured; he will never be alone.

  “You said you could help!” Simon shouts, and he lifts the hand up, as if to throw it at Abel. It wouldn’t be much of a projectile, but it’s the only weapon the little boy has.

  “Watch it!” Riko gets between Simon and Abel, even though protection seems unnecessary. “Just calm down, and—”

  Simon shoves Riko, hard. Harder than any human child could. She
flies across the room, hitting the wall solidly before slumping down semiconscious.

  At the sight of what he’s done, Simon makes an anguished cry that seems to pierce Abel through. The child doesn’t understand his own body or his own mind. He is in a world literally and figuratively upside down.

  Before Abel can stop him, Simon runs out again, escaping deep into the wilds of this crashed ship.

  To pursue or not to pursue? Abel must remain here. Riko’s the only member of Remedy who is loyal to him at this point; if he goes running through the Osiris without her, other members are likely to fire on him. He badly wants to help Simon, but he can’t do that by being destroyed or disabled.

  Abel will set things right with Simon, but that has to wait.

  Instead he goes to Riko’s side, where a brief examination reveals she isn’t injured beyond being winded and stunned. But as he checks her over, part of his brain plays another thought on infinite loop: I am not alone. I am no longer alone.

  Captain Rushdi Fouda of the Remedy fighters has only an honorary title. Within 3.2 minutes of meeting the man, Abel has determined that Fouda’s never been in military service. He enjoys the idea of command more than the reality—and surely whatever preconceived idea Fouda had of leadership looked nothing like this: control over only isolated pockets of a crashed ship on an unfamiliar world. The Osiris might as well be a city under siege, with certain streets and neighborhoods barely held, others destroyed, others hostile.

  Nor is Fouda eager to welcome a mech into his ranks.

  “It’s like I told you, Abel’s no ordinary mech,” Riko insists. She puts one hand to her forehead for a moment, wincing.

  Although Abel determined she suffered no traumatic brain injury from Simon’s attack, she’s nonetheless had a headache for roughly the past eight minutes. It occurs to him to wonder about the toxicity zone he flew through on the way to the Osiris; exposure to such elements would certainly harm humans in short order, and a headache could be the first symptom. However, given that everyone else seems fine, Abel surmises that the dangerous zone is far enough away, and that the air filtration aboard the Osiris must still be functioning as adequate protection against any effects at distant proximity.