Starbreaker

by Amanda Bouchet

  “It’s all right, baby.” I reached for her, brushing my hands down her arms. The high-tech material of her stolen uniform felt strange, lightweight, and too smooth under my palms. I hated seeing Tess in military clothing. It was anathema to everything she loved. “You can tell me anything.”

  She winced, her nose scrunching up. Her indecision hit me like a punch to the gut. Did she think I would judge her? That didn’t feel like trust.

  Breaking my loose hold on her arms, Tess turned away, grabbed an elastic from her nightstand, and wrangled her hair into a ponytail. I could’ve sworn her hands shook as she snapped the hair band into place.

  “Tell me or don’t.” Sincerity erased the last traces of roughness from my voice. “Whatever you want. Share the secret or just say Abracadabra and pop the locks. We’ll be in. I don’t need to know how, and you don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  Her hands twitched at her sides. Her fingers curled in. “You’re not curious?”

  “I’m curious.” Who wouldn’t be at this point? “But I won’t push.”

  “I just feel like you should know. Especially since we’re”—she swept a vague hand between us—“close.”

  Close? It was all I could do not to flinch. I didn’t want close. I wanted fucking combined.

  But the time to talk about that never seemed right. Tess was still uncomfortable with my past and the fortune bounty-hunting had made me. Sometimes her barriers went up, and I knew my second chance hadn’t come with complete forgiveness and trust. I still needed to earn those. Now, Gabe had materialized from out of nowhere, exploding into the present from a past everyone thought was dead. We had to take off for the Ewelock heist in mere minutes. We barely had time for this important talk, let alone another one.

  “It’s an AI. Inside me,” she blurted out.

  I couldn’t help the slow blink that followed her unexpected admission. Magic might’ve been easier to believe somehow. “It’s galactic law that no human can be enhanced by artificial intelligence. It has been for almost three hundred years now.”

  Her smile held anything but humor. “Yes, well, the Overseer doesn’t follow galactic law. He just imposes it on everyone else and adds new ones at the drop of a hat to suit his agenda.”

  My stomach turned over. The man knew no limits. “Did he do this to you? When you were a kid?”

  She shook her head no and visibly tensed.

  “I don’t understand.” There were rules about this. People could have mechanical elements inside them as long as they didn’t contain programming, things like bionic limbs or other prosthetics, mainly for medical reasons. Robots, especially humanoid ones, were full of AI. Basically, they were walking, talking computers shaped a bit like people and doing a lot of human tasks. Working toward artificial general intelligence in truly humanlike androids had been banned ever since the Wei-Peng experience. That disaster took up a whole semester in every kid’s history classes. It had proven once and for all that robots that believed they were smarter, faster, and better than humans would eventually band together to destroy their makers.

  Luckily for the human race, the experiment had been contained by a necessary fail-safe: the constantly evolving androids had never once been made aware that anything existed outside of the self-sustaining Wei-Peng station. No entrances. No exits. No outside communications. No visitors on or off, ever, from the moment the scientists activated their AGI bots. When the last human heartbeat extinguished on the space station, it blew up. History books told us that Wei-Peng exploded well before the original human crew would’ve died of old age—and they’d been reproducing. The station log, recovered from the debris, reported that the conquering androids hadn’t offered terms of surrender. They chose execution, even for children. It was more efficient.

  “How much of you is AI?” I asked, trying to understand. Tess had blood. I’d heard her heart beat against my ear. Touched her everywhere. She was real. I loved her.

  “Not much.” She turned away from me, fiddling with her hair again. It was sheer nerves, and I wanted to stop her. “But I get it. You’re right. I’m not fully…human anymore. Not everywhere. It’s disgusting.”

  “I didn’t say that.” I turned her back to me. “I’m just surprised, and no part of you is disgusting. Can you explain? I thought any experiments melding AI with the human body were banned after the Wei-Peng explosion.” Scientists and lawmakers had taken a step back from what everyone had assumed was the future, fearing that people could end up dominated by the artificial intelligence inside them. The human mind and body evolved. It stood to reason that an internal AI component connected to that evolving system could also evolve, learning things and behaviors outside of its original programming. That was a risk humans had decided not to take after seeing how quickly Wei-Peng went wrong.

  Tess pressed her lips together, a flat line that said she was still afraid to talk.

  I cupped her face in my hands and searched her eyes with mine. “You can talk to me. I won’t judge.”

  Her fear gutted me. That lack of trust. My fault.

  I brushed my thumbs across her cheeks, my heart in a knot. “Every part of you is precious to me.”

  Tess’s eyes softened. Her slight nod came just before she stepped back. “It’s not in my brain or anything. I don’t think it’s connected to me in that way, or if it is, I’m not aware of it.” She frowned, probably because that was the whole fear with integrated AI. If it adapted and learned your muscular and nervous systems, making improvements on them, what was to stop it from hijacking your entire body? From getting to the point where the computer ran the show instead of the person?

  “Okay.” I wanted her to go on. Nothing was clear to me yet.

  “The Overseer commissioned the new technology for himself. It was totally off the books and covered by about a thousand smoke screens. A one-of-a-kind deal, just for him. That’s why the exchange happened at our house, instead of on Starbase 12, where he did almost everything else. And I have no doubt the scientist who developed it died the day he delivered it to my father.” She winced. “I mean, to the Overseer.”

  I bit down on a curse. Our house… He’d kept Tess and her mother prisoners to his scare tactics and tyrannical gloom, strapped Tess down in a basement laboratory and stole her blood, and now this—along with a whole hell of a lot of other abusive and shady things that made me want to fly into a rage. Fuck the wall; my fist needed his face.

  “What was it exactly? This new tech?” I was curious, but that was it. Any anger or disgust I felt wasn’t directed at Tess. All I wanted to do was take her in my arms and kiss the crease from between her brows, but she was stiff and didn’t particularly look like she wanted to be touched. I hoped she’d relax when she realized I didn’t give a damn what was inside her. I just wanted to be a part of it.

  She took a deep breath. “From what I understood from a conversation I wasn’t supposed to hear, it’s a computer system integrated into my hand that recharges based on my own kinetic energy. It’s specifically designed to interpret data from electronic locks in close proximity and adjust its own response to disable them. With nothing telling a door to stay closed, it opens.”

  “Lock magic.” Incredible. “How did you end up with it?”

  Tess backed up a few steps and leaned against the door, staring past my shoulder. “Mom had just died. The person I thought was my father hadn’t looked at me or talked to me in days, or offered a word of comfort, although that was no surprise. I was totally alone, with no idea what was going to happen, or what I should do next. I wanted to know why Mom got so sick like that, just out of the blue. I wanted to know what was happening for her funeral. Help. Understand…”

  She shook her head. Her eyes dropped to the floor. “I wanted to find Uncle Nate. That was my real reason for sneaking around. He’d been gone for several days and didn’t even come back when Mom was just lying t
here…burning up and turning into this…shell. He missed her last days, last hours. Even if he’d changed, pulling back from us, I couldn’t understand him not coming back for Mom and me. Not then. Not when I had no one else.” Her voice wavered. Tear-bright eyes lifted to my face. “I thought if I could just send him a message, he’d come. Even if Mom was gone, I thought he’d come back for me. I knew he would.”

  Pressure banded in hard ribbons around my chest. He’d come back, all right. He’d come back to betray her, terrify her, abandon her to strangers, and tell her she was dead.

  “Oh, sweetheart…” Everything in me burned to close the distance between us. “I’m aching to reach for you. Please let me, Tess.”

  Her eyes brimmed with tears. Suddenly, she moved. She came straight into my open arms, and I wrapped her in a tight hug.

  “I’m sorry. You must’ve been so scared. So alone.” Eight years old, on her own in the Overseer’s house, not knowing if there was anyone left in the galaxy to love or protect her. It broke my heart.

  Tess exhaled with a shudder, softening against me. “I thought maybe I could find some information in the Overseer’s office. Figure out where Uncle Nate went. I snuck in two days after Mom died and snooped around, looking for something that might help me send him a message. I didn’t find anything, and then I heard him coming—the Overseer, talking with someone else.”

  Tess put some distance between us again but without the wary stiffness from before. “I was not supposed to be in his office unless summoned. I panicked and hid under the desk. He came in with a scientist. I never saw what the man looked like. Didn’t recognize his voice. I heard them talking about a fancy new AI—what it did and how to inject it.”

  “What did they say?” I asked, wishing she hadn’t left my arms so fast. But that was Tess. She had two feet and she stood on them.

  She held out her left hand, palm up. “To inject it into the center of the hand. It would spread out, merging with everything from wrist to fingertips. The scientist loaded it with programming based on a bazillion different variables that would be able to ‘speak’ to any modern electronic lock. If I can get my hand within a few centimeters of the control panel, the AI can interface with it and tell it to open up.”

  I asked the first question that popped into my head. “Why did you stay on Hourglass Mile?”

  “The locking mechanism was out of reach when I was in my cell, and the mine exits were always crawling with guards, although they didn’t really care what went on in the tunnels. Fights. Sex. Murders.” She grimaced. “And even if I somehow managed, I wasn’t leaving without Jax.”

  Right. Jax. He was already broken enough. Losing Tess would’ve finished him.

  “How long does it take to interface?”

  She thought about it. “I don’t think it’s ever taken more than thirty seconds to trigger a lock.” She looked at her left hand as though an alien had sprouted from it and was waving tentacles in her face. “That sounds fast, but those have been some of the longest half minutes of my life.”

  I’d bet. Then again, betting had never gone well for me. “And the door just opens?”

  She nodded, looking uneasy again.

  Tess needed to understand that I was the last person she should feel uncomfortable with, especially concerning her body. I lifted her hand and kissed the center of her palm. I could see the injection point now—a tiny dot where the skin was whiter. Tess’s gaze jumped to mine, a hesitant smile pulling at her lips.

  “Let me get this straight.” Watching her closely, I kept her hand in mine. “You were eight years old, your mother had just died from a mysterious fever, your father—or the man you thought was your father—was a tyrant who terrorized you and everyone else, and you waltzed into his private office, eavesdropped about a brand-new invention he was going to use to benefit only himself, and took the damn thing before he could?”

  She looked at me blankly, clearly not getting where I was going with this. “I guess so.”

  “Do you understand how incredibly strong and brave you are?”

  Denial flashed across her features. “I was scared out of my mind! I just wanted a bargaining chip. I could tell something was happening. Something big. I knew he was about to get rid of me. Mom was gone. He already had a basement full of my blood. He’d always been so cold to me, sometimes violent. Not paternal at all.” She snatched her hand back and folded her fingers in on the tiny pinprick. “I thought if I took his AI and made it merge with me, he couldn’t kill me. He’d still need me for something.”

  “You wanted to stay with him?”

  “No!” The word blew from her with the force of a jet engine. “I was a kid. Alone. I didn’t know what to do—besides try to find Uncle Nate. I wanted to run away. Mom and I had wanted to run for years, but we couldn’t escape. There was no out from him.” She snorted in disgust. “No out but death.”

  Our eyes met. Tess’s suddenly widened. “He faked my death.”

  I slowly nodded. I didn’t like the way Bridgebane had done it, with secrets and lies, even from his niece, but he’d given her the only out either of them could conceive of: the death of Quintessa Novalight.

  “Fuck.” Tess ground the heel of her hand against her forehead, squeezing her eyes shut. “Should I feel guilty for being awful to him? Because I was. Don’t deny it.”

  “Don’t even think about that.” I clasped her head in my hands, urging her to look at me. “He deserved everything you said to him. But what you can do is move forward from here.”

  Her eyes glittered with moisture again. She finally nodded and swallowed so hard I could practically hear the tears sinking back down her throat.

  Letting her go, I asked, “What made you think the Overseer couldn’t just get another AI from the scientist?”

  “It was the only one. They said so. A unique piece developed for the Overseer alone. It would give him access to anything, anywhere. No one could hide from him—or hide anything from him. He would never allow anyone else to have that kind of power.”

  “But the knowledge was there. The plans were somewhere. Couldn’t this scientist make another?”

  A genuine smile ghosted over Tess’s lips. “That’s the thing most people don’t understand about Simon Novalight. He makes long-term plans on a huge scale, but he’s somehow criminally shortsighted. I’m confident that scientist died before he ever left the Overseer’s house that day, and before the Overseer discovered the AI was missing from his office. The scientist couldn’t make another. Did someone else create one from his notes? Maybe. Maybe the Overseer has ‘lock magic’ now after all. I don’t know. But if you’d heard his roar that afternoon, you’d know it wasn’t easy to replace.”

  Good for Tess. The man deserved a hefty setback. “He never suspected you?”

  “Me?” She shook her head. “I was just a tool he didn’t need anymore. He couldn’t use me to control Mom now, and he had all the blood he thought he needed. He threw me out the next day. Uncle Nate finally showed up the same day I stole the AI, and the Overseer apparently greeted him with orders to take me away and make my disappearance permanent.”

  Criminally shortsighted was just the start of it. Arrogance blinded the man. At least that day, his disregard for Tess had worked in her favor.

  “He was done with me,” she said, “just like he was done with that scientist. He couldn’t conceive of a world where his huge supply of base ingredient was destroyed or stolen any more than he could conceive of a world where he left something precious and irreplaceable in his private office and then never saw it again. A blow like that doesn’t happen to the Galactic Overseer. Just like the wife he chose couldn’t possibly think he was a monster. Mom loathed him, and he hated that he couldn’t change her mind, no matter what his tactic. She was the one thing he never managed to control, and his only power over her ended up being me. Suddenly, she was gone, and I was an utter
ly unnecessary element in his life and household.” Tess flicked her hand through the air. “Boom—float the girl from the air lock.”

  I swiped a hand down my face, trying to wipe away the shock, even though nothing that man did should shock anyone anymore. “He loved your mother.” Obsessive, abusive, controlling. That wasn’t what love looked like to me, but I was beginning to sense the Overseer’s version of it.

  “I’m not sure ‘love’ is the right word, but yeah, I think so. In a really warped way. I mean…he killed her.” Tess fidgeted with her pants, rolling the side seam between her fingers.

  “Why would he think your uncle would comply with an order to murder you?”

  “Bridgebane had already been following the Overseer’s orders for years, ever since he followed Mom to Sector 12 and somehow got in with Novalight. He was a Dark Watch general, captain of DW 12, and someone people feared across the galaxy. Not to mention the Overseer’s ‘best friend,’” she said with air quotes.

  “So, another inveterate asshole?”

  Her one-shoulder shrug was noncommittal. “I hoped not, but it looked like he was headed that way fast. The Overseer already thought so—or thought Uncle Nate was the kind of man he wanted for a friend and general. And I think a person like the Overseer, someone with no normal human feelings or compassion, can’t conceive of those things in others, especially when those others are careful to hide them.”

  Tess’s watch beeped with a repeated three-toned chime. She switched off the alarm, and I could already see her focus shifting in the way her body angled toward the door. “Time’s up. We need to get to the cruiser.”

  “Wait.” I reached out and caught her wrist. “The GIN Project… Once he finds new sources of A1 blood, will he keep going with it?”

  “He’ll have to. It’s not some secret project in his own home that he can sweep into the closet after he gets what he wants. And why wouldn’t he? He’ll reap the benefits of getting to control people in the most effective way yet without having to do anything. His goons will keep the project in motion with the established It’s all for your own safety discourse, and he knows that.”