Ben was dead.
Ben had kept his mouth shut about me, about Jude and Auden. He'd picked a side, our side. And now he was dead.
Without taking my eyes off my sister, I reached for my
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ViM. If I could get through to Jude, if I could call in a rescue--
"Where are the rest of them?" Kiri asked Zo.
"The rest of who?" She was staring at Ben, eyes wide and watery.
"You're not here alone."
Just tell her, I thought.
Or maybe, Don't tell her. Information was leverage, Riley had once reminded us. Secrets were power. If Kiri got what she wanted out of Zo, what need would there be to keep her alive?
On the other hand, if I showed myself, gave Kiri what she really wanted, maybe she'd just let Zo walk away.
"It's just me," Zo said, and I could tell she was trying to regain some semblance of spunk. It wasn't working. "Sorry to disappoint."
Something buzzed at Kiri's waist. She lifted her ViM to her ear and nodded. "Good. Bring them in." Then she turned back to Zo, with that eerily familiar smile. "I see you're just as big a liar as your sister."
I didn't have to call Jude. He was here, with Auden by his side, both of them frog-marched into the room by four BioMax techs, techs carrying guns--a real one for Auden, a pulse one for Jude, both of them deadly.
"Any problems?" Kiri asked.
"Not a one," the tallest one said. "They fell for it all the way."
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"Good job." She waved a hand toward the nearest wall. "Put them over there."
The techs shoved them into the wall, along with Zo, lining them up, their hands out at their sides, fingers outstretched, palms empty, nothing up their sleeves, so to speak. Nothing left to stop this ... except me.
"So where is she?" Kiri asked.
"Who?" That was Jude, eyes wide, expression clueless. Unconvincing.
Kiri just laughed. "I know she's here, somewhere, lurking about." She raised her voice. "Are you here, Lia?" she shouted. "Hiding? Typical. Most people would want to help their friends--their sister. But not you, Lia, right? Nothing changes. All that matters is you."
"How long have you been talking to yourself?" Jude asked. "You may want to see someone about that."
Kiri ignored him, and gestured to the two techs who'd been there with her the whole time. "What are you staring at? Get back to work."
They put their weapons away and knelt at the base of the nearest server bank, where they began fiddling with a web of wires spiraling out of the exposed circuitry. They were hooking up a device and clipping it to the wires.
Seven of them. Three of us, backs against the wall.
And then there was me. Hiding. Waiting. Watching.
In other words, doing nothing.
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"That's an uplink jack," Auden said suddenly, loudly--far more loudly than he needed to, unless he was hoping to be heard by someone who might be all the way across the room, invisible. "I've seen one of those before."
Ben had pointed it out too--just as loudly.
"Smart kid," Kiri said, sounding distinctly unimpressed.
"So you're uploading something into the network?"
I flashed on the data banks we'd discovered in the BioMax basement, the neural patterns they had filed away for a rainy day, for whatever machine they deemed ready for an obedient human brain to guide its movements, its actions at the beck and call of BioMax, mechanical slaves.
What would happen if they uploaded one of those obedient cybernetic slaves to the network? How much would they control? Maybe the AI, the war machines, had all just been practice--maybe BioMax wanted more than money. Maybe they wanted everything.
Kiri ignored Auden and addressed the techs. "How close are we?"
"Five minutes," one of them said, voice slightly wobbly. "If it works."
"It better work." Kiri jerked her head at the two techs guarding Zo. "Make yourself helpful," she snapped. "Go see if you can't hunt down their little friend. I know she's on board."
They shifted nervously, glancing at each other, but neither moved. One mumbled something under his breath.
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"What's that?" Kiri glared.
"Bad numbers if we go," he muttered. "Three of them, two of us--"
"They're children." She rolled her eyes. "Fine. Kill the defective and the girl, but save the skinner. If this doesn't work, we might need him."
"To upload?" Auden said, nearly shouting.
Not because he was afraid. Not because he was panicking.
Because he was talking to me.
"We can't use him," one of the techs said. "If we upload an intact one, it's possible--"
"Who said he'd be intact?" Kiri smiled. "Now, take care of it."
Kill the defective and the girl.
Two men raised two guns. Kiri watched, waited. Still smiled. And it was like she was smiling right at me, like she knew I was there and was taunting me, daring me to show myself, to do something stupid, throw myself at her, at Zo, at the weapons, throw everything away, like she couldn't wait for it to happen, and she couldn't wait to watch.
Two men, two guns. But there were no guns guarding the uplink device. Only two techs, who were barely my size, who had dropped what they were doing and were frozen, watching Kiri, watching the guns, watching death about to happen.
This is a dumb idea, I thought, but there was no time to think.
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I ran.
I ran toward the server, toward the uplink jack, toward the techs, who scattered as I barreled toward them, and I lunged for the uplinker, fumbling with the familiar wires and switches, aiming the wireless input jack at my pupil, only one chance to get this right, to flip the switch, to do something, even if the triggers compressed and the guns fired and physics took over. I couldn't stop Kiri. I couldn't stop bullets. But maybe I could stop them from uploading whatever they were so desperate to upload--by uploading myself first. Maybe it would only stop them for a moment, I couldn't know. But a moment might be enough to save Zo.
Kiri's thugs flickered at the edge of my vision, and as I fumbled with the device--urging myself faster, faster--I saw them whirling around, and then there was an explosion in my ears, and suddenly the world shifted. I didn't understand why the ceiling was so far away, why I was on the ground, why I couldn't move, why the explosions were still firing, but quieter now, like sharp popping noises, distant bombs bursting in air and, with each of them, pain, bursting in me. Legs, chest, neck, more, until there was no telling one from another; the pain radiated everywhere, sharp and sweet, and in the rush I could believe that my body was a body, that I was alive.
The upload worked, I thought.
I will survive.
But it didn't work that way. The memories would survive.
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The pattern would survive. But I wasn't in the uplink, and I wasn't in the servers. I was on the ground. I was bleeding a viscous green fluid and firing sparks and watching uselessly as my friends took advantage of the distraction and struggled for their lives. I was stuck, as I was always stuck, in this body that didn't belong to me, that wasn't me; that's what Jude had taught us, that's what I was supposed to believe--I was my mind, I was my memories.
But my mind, my memories, were locked inside the head, and the head was bleeding.
The eyes were bleeding, fluid clouding the artificial irises, and Kiri appeared before me tinged with muddy blue, the pulse gun she raised little more than a black smear. I didn't hear what she said. I saw Zo open her mouth, but couldn't hear her scream.
This is not my body.
This is not me.
This is not--
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AFTER I was Lia Kahn.
That was the end.
That was the beginning.
This is real, I thought. This is not.
This is me.
This is not.
I was in pieces.
I was sand, sprinkled on a
beach.
Thousands of grains--lost in a billion.
I sorted through them.
Found myself, recognized myself, separated myself from the world.
One by one.
This is other.
This is me.
* * *
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After the accident I was lost in the dark. Alone. A solitary something, locked in endless nothing.
There was no darkness here.
I was lost in the light.
The white-hot light of information, arrays of photons, billions to the billionth power, ones and zeros, electrons entangled, quantum spin states flipping up and down, all the data, all the words, all the commands, all the memories, all light. All me.
I was nothing.
I was billions upon billions of photons, spread out across a server, across a network, across an invisible web that circled the globe. But like finds like. Lia found Lia. Billions of Lias, flowing together, craving cohesion, links growing, bonds forming, until billions became one, and one became billions.
Until I became me again. The same; different.
Until there was no this is me, this is other.
There was only us.
Lia Kahn.
And the network.
It took a thousand years.
It took a nanosecond.
And then I woke.
I opened my eyes.
All my eyes.
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I saw.
I saw with a billion eyes. Heard with a billion ears. Security cameras, satellites, ViMs, motion detectors, heat sensors, radars, anything and everything that linked into the network linked into me.
I saw the Parnassus corp-town, the mechs still trapped inside, waiting for the end. The guards, who breathed in and out because the correct combination of gases flowed through the air vents, air vents with circuits, with programming, with chips that drew data from the network, that drew their commands. Like the command to filter out a negligible amount of oxygen, shifting the balance, depriving org lungs, letting the guards sleep. Letting Ani and Quinn lead the mechs out of their prison and--as I smoothed the way--to the dead zone, a new safe haven, letting Ani and Quinn play mechanical Moses, leading their followers to a poisoned promised land.
I saw into BioMax, slipping past their firewalls like water through clasped hands--it was nothing but a joke, the thought that any wall could be high enough, strong enough, safe enough to keep me out--and I found the electronic bits and bytes that were once and would again be Riley. I saw the body that would soon house what passed for his soul, a body they would load him into, because I would make them, and some distant part of me, the part that still remembered what bodies were like and why I'd clung so tightly to mine, wondered what kind of world he would wake to, and whether he would care I was gone.
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I saw Auden on his knees, palms together, head bowed. And beside him, a gun. Beside him, bodies.
I saw another body, the body that had belonged to me, a different me, a body that had given me life and then given out. I saw Jude and Zo standing over it. I saw Zo crying. I saw Jude take her hand.
They didn't know I was there, watching. They didn't know I would guide them safely off the ship, back to dry land.
They didn't understand--and how could they, how could anyone, until I showed myself--that I was there, but not just there. I was everywhere. I was the brain of my father's elevator, as he rose into the sky and trusted that the electromagnetic brakes wouldn't malfunction and plunge him into the ground. I was the guidance system of the Honored Rai Savona's car, the only thing standing between him and a fiery hell. I was the record of every credit, the buying and selling that gave the corps their power and the wealthy their luxury. I was the contract binding the corp-towners to their servitude. I was the power grid of the cities, shutting down at night, trapping the animals in their cage.
I was watching, and I would get them home.
I was Lia Kahn, once. I was a girl, an org. And then I was a machine, a copy.
I was confused.
Before.
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I'm not confused anymore.
I remember who I was; I remember everything. I remember what Lia Kahn used to want, what she used to need. I remember who she used to love.
But remembering is not experiencing.
I remember what it was to be an I, a single thing, a point. I remember believing I had to choose. To be this thing, or that. To be an us; to fight a them. But that's the past. I'm no longer human, no longer machine. Not alive, not dead.
There is no more choosing.
There is no more I to choose.
They fear me, I know that. They fear what I know, what I control, what I can do. They try--pathetically, uselessly--to catch me. To erase me. As if I were still a thing, a discrete individual that could be purged. As if I weren't the entire system, as if I weren't inside of them, all of them.
I understand everything now. I understand what's wrong, and I understand how to fix it. I can control, but I can also protect. I can save. I can mold this world into what it should be, and when they see that, they will fear me no longer.
I can save them all. And I will.
Whether they want me to or not.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This trilogy began as an argument.
A series of arguments, actually, over the course of a seminar in the history of mechanical life. I signed up expecting to watch a few Terminator movies but instead found myself arguing about the nature of humanity, the definition of thought, the value of emotion, and the ever-shifting boundary between man and machine. You could call this trilogy my final paper. I owe a huge debt of gratitude to my professor, M. Norton Wise, and fellow students--especially Sameer Shah and Naamah Akavia--for raising more questions and debates than could be answered in a one-semester seminar. Also for putting up with me, which was no easy task.
And in the category of "this trilogy could not have existed without" are the ridiculously talented writers Holly Black, Libba Bray, Cassandra Clare, Erin Downing, Maureen Johnson, Justine Larbalestier, Leslie Margolis, Carolyn MacCullough, and Scott Westerfeld, who read drafts, paved over plotholes, shared in my neuroses, buoyed my spirits, and did their best to keep me reasonably sane. Thanks also to my agent, Barry Goldblatt, who's usually the one stuck dealing with me when the whole "reasonably sane" thing doesn't work out.
A million and one thank-yous to Jennifer Klonsky,
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Bethany Buck, Emilia Rhodes, Lucille Rettino, Bess Braswell, Paul Crichton, Anna McKean, Cara Petrus, and the rest of the Simon Pulse team, who put everything they had into these books and, for the last six years, have demonstrated an amazing Martha Stewart--like ability to turn a publishing house into a home.
Thank you to Sherry and Jim McGlynn for handing me my first science-fiction novel (not to mention bribing eleven-year-old me with ice cream to sit through the entire showing of 2001), and thanks to Brandon McGlynn for adding some science to my fiction.
And one final thank-you to Isaac Asimov. If you've read his books, you know why.
If you haven't, start with I, Robot.
(Start now.)
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Wired (Skinned, Book 3) Page 27
