by Elsa Jade
Underneath the shroud programming, he was a being with hopes and dreams, even if he didn’t have the access code to get to them.
But how could she say so to this smirking Theta, who presumably knew entire galaxies of information she’d never considered. It would be folly to try to Earther-splain him.
Almost as foolish as trying to hack the code of a killer robot, and that hadn’t stopped her.
She blinked at him with all the wide-eyed admiration of a first-year community college student with a visiting professor. Then she looked down at her second tablet and started typing frantically. “I see what you mean,” she breathed. “That is so…” She typed more. “Amazing. Just really amazing. You’ve opened my eyes in a way I’ve never experienced before.” She peeked up at him through her lashes. “It’s too bad you have all these other obligations keeping you away from the matrix when they could really use…” She sat up straight. “Oh, I know.” She spun the second tablet toward him. “If you add the imprinting code here, we can download it to the gel when the compiling is complete and then we’ll have something really special.” She beamed at him.
For a moment, she thought she’d oversold it when he peered at the second tablet warily. He shook his head, making the lightly oiled waves of his hair dance around his shoulders. “I’m not sure,” he said demurely. “Maybe this world isn’t ready for a shroud-based love bot.”
She gazed at him. “I know you’ve been here for more than a century, and I’ve only worked at the IDA for a few years. But I gotta say, I don’t think there’s a Dirt in the universe that needs it more.”
He blinked those green eyes at her again, and she knew, rather than telling the best lie that mixed truth and falsehood, this time she’d told him exactly what she believed.
To her surprise, he nodded. “Give me the other end of the jack. I’ll give you my code.”
She bit back a whoop of glee as she disconnected the cable from her computer and handed him the free end. Having learned her lesson from the nosy Cosmo, she’d deleted everything and reformatted this second tablet to factory presets. While she wasn’t a hundred percent certain that a cyborg designed to spy couldn’t find the ghosts of her old data, she’d have to take the risk if she wanted his code.
He plugged himself in, half closing his eyes. But she sensed his regard anyway. “You intrigue me, Vic Ray,” he murmured. “I’ve met only a handful of Earthers aware of your rightful place in the universe—very low,” he clarified. “And they were all mercenaries and monsters.” He ducked his head a little in that way that she associated with barn cats who might be willing to come over and strop themselves against your ankles—or maybe just bite. “You seem genuinely good.”
“I guess my time with the dating agency infected me with the love bug,” she said. “And I just want to give it back to the universe.”
He made a noncommittal noise. “The only thing worse than mercenaries and monsters…are missionaries,” he said. “True believers will pray wholeheartedly for apocalypses that even an Omega would not condone.”
Considering her own history, she couldn’t dredge up a response of any sort, truth or lie. She just accepted the tablet that he held out to her.
The peak of Earther technology, judiciously upgraded with ET elements she’d borrowed from elsewhere, represented everything that she’d come here to do: to free the shrouds and win her place with the transgalactic community somewhere far away. But now, the tech felt small and flat and cold in her hand.
Maybe being far away wasn’t exactly what she wanted anymore.
But she still owed Mach and the others their freedom, as she’d promised.
She tucked the tablet against her chest and manufactured another admiring smile for Lehigh. “I’ll add this to the gel just as soon as the original upload is complete. Thank you so much for coming tonight.” She glanced at Delta who still stood quietly in the corner. “Maybe we should have him stay. For dinner.”
Troy laughed. “Burnt toast? Thank you, no. I have…errands of my own to complete tonight.”
Tired of his little games of insinuation, she asked tartly, “With mercenaries or monsters?”
Maybe he was getting bored too because he didn’t laugh this time. “And myself. I’ll be in touch.”
Coiling the cable uncertainly, she glanced again at Delta. He showed no signs of planning to detain Lehigh. Maybe that was just as well; the cable was hot in her hands, and the jack that had plugged into the Theta’s hand almost scalded her fingers.
Whatever he’d pushed into the tablet was something she needed to see and maybe quarantine.
Or maybe he’d been truthful about giving her just the imprinting code.
But if he’d decided to deal sincerely with his matrix-kin…that meant he might be right about Cosmo, and even if she found the shrouds’ hack, she’d never find an Omega’s heart.
Chapter 10
From the pine-tree-covered hill behind the Strix Springs house, disguising his presence in darkness and cold, the Omega watched.
To compensate for the distance and suboptimal conditions, he had switched his vision to a low-light thermal imaging system which leached all vibrancy from the electromagnetic spectrum where he typically set his inputs to maximize the usefulness of this planet’s solar radiation.
It suited his mood.
This setting turned all of Vic’s myriad brown hues and graceful movements into a single flat gray impression, roughly pixilated, that better reflected how a shroud should feel about anything that crossed his path.
Except he wasn’t supposed to feel anything at all.
Cosmo launched his fist toward the trunk of the tree beside him, then pulled the punch at the last moment because it was a tree. Not the Theta that he actually felt like harming.
The coarse bark nipped at his knuckles when he pressed his fist against it, like a reminder that he wasn’t supposed to be feeling anything, remember?
“I’m sorry,” he murmured.
Now he was talking to trees. Although he talked to cats too, so maybe he hadn’t changed too much.
This was why Omegas stayed in stasis. He didn’t have an Alpha’s capacity for synthesizing data into actionable steps, nor a Delta’s steadfastness on the field. He couldn’t match a Theta’s clever if solitary exploration of new situations.
No wonder Vic was standing with Troy Lehigh near Cross’s truck. The Theta was most like her: smart, able to walk in two worlds, always looking ahead.
Beautiful. Even with his deliberately utilitarian vision, Cosmo knew she was beautiful. Illuminated by the powerful headlights, in her silver puffy jacket, she seemed to blaze in his view. Though everything in him yearned to go to her—zeroing in like a blaster-bomb on target—he forced himself to narrow his vision, cutting down the glare.
But still she glowed. Or maybe that was just his memory of her. She’d burned a permanent pathway in his mind when they’d shared his nanites and she’d envisioned the encoding for love itself.
He was in awe of what she’d done, taking the ugliness of the shroud programming and turning it into a glittering constellation like stars that would guide others to find their place in the universe with the beings they’d love. Being Omega, he would never be loved. He was the tragic end, not the hope and renewal and joy that he’d seen downloaded into the gel. His chest tightened at the realization that he’d gotten to be part of her discovery—not an end, either, but a part in the middle.
Whatever she went on to do next—maybe with the handsome, clever Theta at her side—Cosmo knew it would change worlds.
For the better.
And he stayed in the darkness and cold on the hillside and watched. He knew his Alpha was also covering the house, distrusting the Theta. But while an Omega didn’t ordinarily have a protecting role in the matrix, he’d fought alongside his brothers once before so he could at least keep watch from his vantage point.
But the reunion with their long-lost Theta seemed a victory. Delta even raised a hand i
n farewell as the truck departed before escorting Vic back to the house. He went inside, but she lingered a moment, one step down on the porch stairs, staring up at the night sky.
Cosmo’s adaptive vision adjusted to the absence of the bright headlights, and though he was still far away, the delicate multicolored bulbs of the Christmas lights around the railings glowed in his eyes.
She wasn’t just beautiful. Even more than he wanted to pet the barn cats, he wanted to be close to Vic, to bask in her presence like she was his very own star in an otherwise empty void.
But to her, he could never be more than a larger, mobile version of her tech tools. Useful at times, but probably never worked quite right…
She pivoted on the step, and for a heartbeat she seemed to be staring straight toward him.
He caught his breath, still waiting.
Then she turned and went inside. And even though the perceptible levels of electromagnetic radiation didn’t change again, his vision faded back to gray without her.
Time passed. He watched the barn cats slink around the house on their nightly patrols. His nanites warned him that his organic bits were in danger of freezing right off. He ignored them, and they continued their regularly scheduled maintenance, and then came back to shake him hard with bone-deep tremors to indicate that, no really, if he valued his extremities, he needed to pay attention.
Annoyed, he sent them circulating at a higher rate through the outer layers of his skin, which warmed him enough to prevent cold damage but was also how the Alpha found him.
“I figured you’d be out here somewhere.” Mach walked quietly between the trees, sticking to the thick carpet of pine needles and avoiding the patches of snow so he didn’t leave obvious footprints.
Cosmo didn’t answer. If he replaced all his organic parts with implants, he wouldn’t have to bother with frostbite.
Or the deeper cold that had sunk in when Vic vanished from his sight.
“I don’t trust Troy Lehigh,” Mach continued. “He came here tonight and gave up the imprint code, exactly as he said he would, but why now? Why has he been gone so long?”
Finally Cosmo stirred. “If you want answers, why didn’t you keep him here?” Lehigh would’ve been forced to obey a direct order from his Alpha.
“For the same reason I’ve never commanded you to come inside.”
Cosmo lifted his chin. “Because you can’t order me. An Omega ends the chain of command.”
“That’s not…” Mach sighed. “I never commanded you because it would be wrong. When we crashed here without being activated, I was able to see just how wrong. I tried to make a place for us where we’d never be controlled.”
Restraining the urge to snort—only because his self-preserving nanites stoppered the breath in his nose—Cosmo noted, “Lun-mei ordered you to grow chest hair because she didn’t want to shave her legs during the winter ‘when no one will be impressed anyway’ and she thought it wasn’t fair that shroud grooming requirements are so minimal.”
He could almost hear his cowardly nanites groan at his indiscretion, but Mach only laughed. “She asked,” he said. “Not ordered. Anyway, I’m smooth again because she said she likes—”
Cosmo held up one half-frozen hand. “It’s wrong that I have to know this at all.”
Mach subsided with a chuckle. “You need to know what pleases Vic too.”
“I already do.”
“Oh.” Mach looked nonplused. “Well, I’m glad we had this talk—”
“I took all her files, including her preferred pornographic material. And I gave her everything I have inside of me. Literally.”
Mach sucked in a breath between his teeth. “Dammit. Lun-mei told me I should’ve had this conversation with you after we found out Delta had a child. If you have stuff inside you, there’s these things called condoms—”
“I just said I watched all the porn, so I know what condoms are,” Cosmo interrupted impatiently. “I could make myself ribbed for her pleasure like you make yourself hairy. But I am not what she deserves.”
“Deserves?” The Alpha cocked his head. “In more than a century, I don’t know that I’ve seen any being get what they deserve. There is good and bad aplenty, Cosmo. But fair is rarely part of the equation.”
Turning his face away from the distant lights of the house, Cosmo focused on the dark and cold. “Then I want Vic to have only good. And that is not me.”
“She’s already had bad,” Mach pointed out. “Did she tell you she doesn’t even know where she comes from? Even we know that about ourselves. And when the Black Hole Brides went missing from the Intergalactic Dating Agency outpost here in Montana, she fought planetary authorities to track the Earther women when no one else cared enough. That’s how we found her, but she was alone through all that. You may want only good for Vic, but who will stand with her through the bad?”
“It’s not that simple,” Cosmo muttered.
Crossing his arms over his wide chest, the Alpha stared at him implacably. “No. It never is.”
That wasn’t an order from his Alpha, but still Cosmo felt the ache to obey. “I will stand with her.”
“Not from way out here,” Mach pointed out. “She needs you where she can see you, touch you, believe in you.”
“She wants to leave here.”
“Because why wouldn’t she, considering? Maybe she just needs someone to show her a good reason not to go. Or maybe someone to go with her.” Mach turned the other direction. “Keep your watch then. Maybe she doesn’t want anything else at all, but don’t wait too long to tell her what you feel. You’re not in stasis now, so you can’t blame that if you stay stuck forever.”
He wasn’t stuck, Cosmo brooded, as his Alpha continued his rounds. Well, he was a little stuck because his nanites had abandoned his toes and they were apparently frozen.
Grimacing, he rocked his feet back and forth until blood and bot flow returned. The prickling pain of cells coming back to life went deeper than skin and muscle; he felt it…whatever was deeper than that.
But pain was built into shroud programming, and though he circled the ranch through the night, he kept coming back to the same place. The sun rose eventually, adding the light and heat from its distant nuclear fusion to his systems. But even that energy—from gamma rays to ultraviolet—couldn’t knock him from his trapped course.
Through the day he orbited around the house. He watched Delta go through his daily ranch chores. He saw Mach stop in and then leave again, presumably going back to the Fallen A. Lindy returned with Stella.
He did not see Vic.
Probably she was caught in the new code. He’d seen the way she focused to the exclusion of all else. He hoped someone made her laddoo since he’d eaten the last of it and hadn’t even appreciated it at the time.
And still he walked and watched.
The next day, Delta was out in the yard well before the sun. At least that gave Cosmo something to watch. By midmorning, chores were done, and Lindy emerged from the house with Stella in her arms. The small Earther/Delta hybrid was dressed in fuzzy green pants, a red coat so thick it made her arms stick straight out, and a golden bib. The white pompom of her red-and-white striped hat bobbed in front of her face, giving her a slightly cross-eyed expression. Actually, she looked like the goats in the town square.
Cosmo was glad he was far enough away that he didn’t accidentally say that aloud.
After Lindy strapped Stella, in her car seat, into the truck, Delta spun her around and pressed her against the side of the vehicle. He kissed her.
It wasn’t the two-mouths-pressed-together gesture that had confused Cosmo before, nor was it the pr0n suction that he’d reviewed on repeat in his mind the last couple of nights. This was like the laddoo Vic had given him when they’d downloaded his code (he’d reviewed that recipe too): spicy and sweet, fun and filling, nutritious yet still a snack. It was the kiss of beings who were working at their relationship…and loving every moment.
Cosm
o stopped watching, giving them privacy, but the kiss seemed like something he needed to know. He waited until the sound of the engine faded away on the cold, crisp air, though the rumble seemed to linger in his veins, rattling the nanites.
Vic was alone in the house.
He spun that direction as if magnetized even while every cell in his body felt suddenly adrift.
Tell her what you feel.
His Alpha’s voice was almost a command in his head. As an Omega, he wasn’t forced to obey.
But he wanted to.
Still, what would he say to her? He ran through all the data from her tablet—again—as he raced back to the Fallen A on the float-sled they’d taken from the scavengers a couple of months ago. Caroming over the snowy fields between the two ranches, he repeated phrases from her favorite movies, quoted from her favorite books, even sang aloud her favorite songs. Some of those were worse than the pr0n.
Nothing sounded quite right.
He slammed through the kitchen door at the Fallen A, startling the ranch dogs, Chip and Pickle, who were guarding Lun-mei as she made a sandwich.
The little Earther female jerked upright too. Meanwhile, Chip and Pickle had already turned their attention back to the sandwich. “Cosmo, what are you doing here? Mach said you were watching over Vic next door.”
“I am done watching,” he announced. “I am ready—almost—to talk to her. I just need nuts.”
Lun-mei arched her brows. “It shouldn’t take that kind of courage. Just be yourself. If she likes you back—”
“Nuts and fruit,” he clarified. “I am going to make laddoo.”
“I…have no idea what you are talking about. Maybe don’t be, like, yourself-yourself, since you’re kind of…” She pursed her lips to one side.
“I know,” he said. “I didn’t before, but I do now. I’ve been working on myself lately.”
She nodded. “Figured out some things, have you?”
“Since I flew over from Miz Lindy’s a few minutes ago.” He started going through the cabinets, checking the contents against the recipe in his archive. “I’m going to make one of Vic’s favorite foods and then I’m going to tell her I’d like to be another one of her favorite things.”
