Innocence Lost

by O. J. Lowe

  “Just make sure we’re far away from here when he does,” Fazarn said. Sounded like he’d heard those same rumours to Wilsin. “Does that blasted thing still work?”

  Wilsin turned away, studied the thing while Aubemaya relayed the question. He saw that single hand reaching out, touch it on the neck, fingers dancing across invisible switches. The eyes, previously unblinking and dead, changed. A light shone through them, the difference between them and human eyes suddenly indistinguishable. The mouth moved, though not in time to the sounds coming from it.

  “I appear to be unfunctioning. I cannot move.”

  The voice was neat, clipped, upper-class southern Canterage at its finest. The voice of one who knew their place was to serve. Wilsin glanced into the cockpit of the speeder, saw the problem immediately. The endroid didn’t appear to be aware that its body ended in a trail of wires and synthetic fluid, the seats thick with the scarlet fluid. Blood that wasn’t blood.

  “You had an accident,” Wilsin said. “What happened to you?”

  The head rotated to face him, nothing even remotely human about the gesture. A human neck craned, the muscles tensed, and the bones twisted to allow the gesture. Here, it was simply a rotation, the neck turning idly on the shoulders.

  “Vocal or facial recognition unavailable. Not an authorised user. Request for information denied.”

  He smiled. If that was the way this thing wanted to play, he could play that game. He folded his arms in front of him, tapped the mangled roof of the speeder. Even that hadn’t escaped damage, a quad of rips torn through the metal. Light from the dim bulb above poked down onto the seats, leaving the cavities bathed in shadows.

  “Bet I can make you talk,” he said.

  Endroids had been approved by the Senate following a concession by their creators. They would be permitted to make them provided they were subject to recognise the authority of the kingdoms just the same as their owners or their designers. They would not be above the law. The law had been updated to include their presence, the punishment for a rogue endroid being deactivation. Every Unisco agent past a certain rank knew the access code needed to prod them into compliance.

  “Endroid,” he said. “This is a tango-alpha-four-one-one-U request for information as to how you arrived in this circumstance.” That code would prove he was who he was, that he was to be granted aid immediately and the consequences would be dire should it not comply with instant effect. “Answer my question.”

  The eyes blinked, normally too fast to see but there was almost something deliberate about the gesture here. If these things could think for themselves, he’d have been worried. Not that it could have done anything to him. It didn’t reply, just sat inscrutable like a cat.

  “Answer my question. Where is the rest of your body?”

  If it could have looked sulky, no doubt it would. The words were reluctant, but it didn’t have a choice. “I do not know. Perhaps where I left it. I remember… Oh dear. My goodness. How horrible.”

  “What is?” Fazarn looked at the endroid, the face turned to look at him. “What’s horrible.”

  “Vocal authority unrecognised. Cannot process information at this time.” The level of snootiness in the voice was remarkable, Wilsin thought. A part of him wondered if it was doing this deliberately. They shouldn’t sound like they were enjoying bundling themselves up in the protocols of their programming.

  “Who is your owner?” Wilsin asked. He gave Fazarn a look, one that made him retreat to his original position, muttering under his breath. The doctor being unhappy wasn’t even a problem that registered with him right now. Brendan would back him, he hoped. Finding out what the endroid knew was more important than stroking Fazarn’s ego.

  “I am the property of Lord Ronald Carston of Wyndsar, Canterage,” the endroid said. The pride that layered the words made him feel sick to his stomach. The thing knew it was a slave and was happy about it. Its eyes flickered, sputtering sounds broke from its orifices. “My master sought to travel here…”

  “I know of Carston,” Fazarn said, unable to keep his mouth shut in excitement. “A gentleman and a scoundrel. The sort of man that…”

  “Alex, that thing will break you in half if you insult its master,” Wilsin said from the corner of his mouth. “Just a friendly reminder.” He didn’t know if Fazarn had seen that it couldn’t walk but it had the desired effect. He didn’t want to listen to him go on. He’d heard bits about the lord, not all of it good but most of it irrelevant. That he’d gone off on a trip like this wasn’t something he found surprising. Few things could trump a rich man’s ego.

  Wilsin turned back to the endroid, glanced into the cockpit of the speeder. The synthetic fluid was gushing out of it now, flooding the seat below it. It smelled of unripe cherries, he was sure he could taste it on the buds of his tongue. Firing it up, getting it going like this couldn’t have been good for it. Its limbs were twitching, he jumped back as an arm flailed into the side of the speeder, only ruined metal protecting preventing it from hitting him in the groin.

  “You’re dying,” he said. Two words but he felt the weight of them. Death was a ridiculous notion to apply to something that wasn’t alive, yet they felt apt. “You don’t have long.”

  “My systems have been compromised. Suspended state has been disabled. Cannot be reactivated. Yes. I do not have long.” It looked at him, their eyes met. “I will not betray my master.”

  “I’m going in there,” Wilsin said, pointing in the vaguest direction of the jungle. Out the corner of his eye, he could see it looming, a green cloud on the horizon. “We’re taking a boat upriver. If he’s alive, I’ll get him out of there.”

  Experiencing the laughter of a synthetic being was a first-time experience for him, not one he wished to repeat. It was laughter at its most joyless. The mirth of something missing that vital spark of humanity. “You are going there?”

  More laughter. It couldn’t hold itself up any longer, the body fell backwards. “I am,” Wilsin said. “I’m leading a party in there very shortly.”

  “Well actually…” Fazarn started to say, went silent as Wilsin’s hand went under his jacket, came back with the giant T6 blaster pistol. The angry black eye pointed in his direction. Wilsin tried to ignore the weight of the weapon, just kept it steadily pointed at him. He was probably going to be reprimanded for this. Aubemaya shrieked and threw her hands into the air. A little unnecessary given she wasn’t the one he was pointing it at. The old man just looked amused, like it wasn’t anything he hadn’t seen before. Maybe he hadn’t. This was a rough kingdom.

  “You won’t come back,” the endroid said, breaking the silence. Four little words but he could feel the effort behind them. “You’ll die with my master and his men. They’ll come for you. Can’t fight them. Too many of them. They’re everywhere.”

  It forced the last word out, emphasising the first part with effort. He didn’t know if it was in pain or not. Didn’t look like it was comfortable.

  “What?” Wilsin asked. The timer was running out. They could have minutes or mere seconds, he needed to make the questions count. “What’s out there in the Green?”

  It answered, voice almost silent, the vocal receptors fading but he heard it. A single word just about audible.

  “Monsters.”

  Any chance to ask further questions was lost to him, the thing started to spark and spasm, head twisting around on its axis, arms smashing out blindly into whatever was in reach. Wilsin jumped back, saw one of them punch through the side of the speeder. He brought his weapon up out of reflex, aimed and pulled the trigger, felt the vibration all the way into his shoulder. His aim had been true, right in the centre of its twitching face. It had been in its death throes and now it could rest. The old man went crazy, would have leaped at him had the barrel of his blaster not still been smoking. Still he yelled in fury and Aubemaya stuck her head up to translate.

  Wilsin raised a hand, cut her off. “I don’t care,” he said. “I don’t care how
pissed he is. Tell him that our initial agreement stands, and he doesn’t need to thank me in advance for saving his life.” He holstered his weapon. “I’ll be outside.”

  He moved to leave, not before taking in the speeder and the headless body in the cockpit. The old man still looked furious, Aubemaya was relating back what he’d said, or at least she should be. He didn’t need to justify what he’d just done. He was right, he probably had saved the old man’s life. First time he tinkered with the endroid, he’d have blown himself up.

  More than that, he’d seen the look on its face. It had been suffering, these things weren’t human, but it didn’t mean that they weren’t exceptionally capable of making you forget that sometimes. Just for a moment, he’d seen that pain and he’d acted, moved to put it out of its suffering. Improper conduct.

  The sun beat down on his face as he stepped out, ready to face whatever wrath Brendan was about to bring down on him for the way he’d acted. A wry smile flitted across his face. The prices they paid for the things they did sometimes.

  Chapter Fourteen. The Harshest Lesson.

  “I never liked lone survivor scenarios. Too eager for the cadet to develop a Divine complex, fighting for the sake of it. It’s habits we’d like to break out of them, not encourage. If they treat every exercise like they have nothing to lose, sooner or later we’re going to have to teach them how to fight for something. They’ve all got their reasons for being here. They should never forget that. It should be their motivation to succeed. Any idiot can die. It takes someone special to live against all odds.”

  Memo from Tod Brumley to Inquisitor Nandahar Konda at the Iaku Unisco Academy.

  Two months ago.

  “Killing a man in hot blood is easy. If someone is trying to kill you, then natural survival instincts to kick in. Those instincts are the basest of human need. It is these moments when you realise it comes down to you and them. A crystal-clear choice. And I never met someone who actively wanted to die in those circumstances.” The instructor looked around the room, cleared his throat. “None of you have ever experienced it yet. Should you graduate, you’ll miss your time of innocence. Your first kill changes you just as much as your hundredth. As your thousandth.”

  Pete blinked. One thousand kills. Were there really people in Unisco who’d killed a thousand times? He didn’t even want to consider that. Surely it was exaggeration.

  Next to him, Theo looked disinterested. That was how you knew he was paying attention. The silence. He’d come to work that out in the last months, since they insisted on grouping him and Dan Roberts with Pete in exercises. Never all the time but more often than they didn’t. He wouldn’t have described any of them as friends. Theo never gave the impression he’d learned more than the rudimentary about human behaviour. Looked like a human, behaved like an endroid sometimes and not a particularly friendly one.

  Dan Roberts, on the other hand, was friendly enough without being over the top about it. Neither of them would replace Scott any time soon. He missed his friend. It felt like too damn long since he’d seen him, since they’d had a chat and shot the shit. After Carcaradis Island, they’d gone their separate ways. Scott had his own life, he had Mia and that bloody ghost, and Pete felt like he had a hole in his gut where his life used to be. Since that day, he’d asked himself over and over if he’d made the right decision joining Unisco.

  Every time he’d asked himself that, the answer had always been a resounding yes. He couldn’t have done anything else. Alone, he didn’t have the skills to take on Coppinger’s group, bloody their nose like he wanted. He owed them that, for his sister. He couldn’t forgive them for Sharon. He was young, he was a talented spirit caller if he did say so himself, he’d thought himself fit and in good condition. Why wouldn’t Unisco want to take him?

  Revenge was a powerful motivator. He’d said as much in his interview with the recruiter, they’d sat there and listened to him talk before saying their part. They’d made him want to belong, realise when his chance came to get revenge, it would be his to take. That feeling alone had been enough to make him sign up, even with the caveat that the revenge he wanted might not be the one that he’d get.

  “Because,” the recruiter had said with a smile, showing a single broken tooth amidst a mouthful of pearly whites. “Stopping her is revenge enough. Doing your part in making sure her plans don’t come to fruition hurts her far more than wiping out a hundred faceless underlings. Remember, there’s always a bigger picture.”

  Those words had comforted him through the first nights in the academy. First doubts were natural. His part in the bigger picture was to get through here, graduate and do his part in the war effort.

  “Cold blooded murder is never condoned by Unisco,” the instructor said. Waul Paddington, his name was, he’d written it on a screen at the front of the room at the start of the session. His accent wasn’t hard to understand, a bit abrupt and harsh but he made his point. As he rose to his feet, his bulk trembled. He might have been fit once, his lifestyle was catching up with him and his belly crowded over the top of his uniform trousers. “Never. There are circumstances in which it needs to be done sometimes, but already you have failed should that arise. Every other option has been exhausted. Should your cause be just, then you need not worry. We back our agents wherever we can. In the field, your judgement is the final call.”

  He paused, ran thick fingers through straggled hair. He looked like he hadn’t seen a groomer in months. Maybe he hadn’t. This place wasn’t exactly a centralised hub of commercial activity. The academy had been placed here for isolation. When you were here, you were here for the long term. Communication with the outside was limited. It was the only reason he hadn’t spoken to Scott for the four months he’d been here.

  “Of course, you will be investigated. Every kill you make needs to be investigated, hence the reason we have inquisitors. All of you will talk to an inquisitor at some point. Some of you may go on to work for them. It’s an honourable role, no matter what some agents might tell you. Of course, some are decent guys, others are assholes. Kind of the kingdom. The only agents who dislike them are the ones who get the call from them every other week.” Paddington smiled. “And for every innocent agent who acted true in the line of duty, there’s one who tried to get ahead through less than scrupulous means. Nobody likes a dirty Unisco agent. We have a duty, a higher calling to make sure that the laws of the kingdom in relation to spirits are upheld. We have to be better than everyone else, not just physically but spiritually as well.”

  He folded his arms in front of his chest and exhaled. “We set the standards we expect the rest of the kingdoms to follow, it does not matter whether there are four of them, five of them or just one. Our mandate is what it is.”

  The lessons had come thick and fast, punishing his mind with their constant onslaught of information, tests for things he was expected to remember. Even the combat didn’t let up, though he thought he was getting better at it. When they showed Unisco agents in shows on the viewing screens, they never revealed how much documentation was tied up in it. Some part of him had thought that it would be like that. He’d been mistaken.

  His latest appointment was with the academy inquisitor, a sallow-featured Burykian whose eyes locked on him the moment he entered the room. Deep pools of brown followed him, the slash of mouth curving into a smile.

  “Sit down, Cadet Jacobs,” Konda said. He’d seen the name on the door as he’d entered. Inquisitor Nandahar Konda. The office wasn’t much but that kept it in line with most of the others he’d been in here. Calling it sparse was being generous, a few filing cabinets loomed at either side of the desk, an elaborate teapot sat atop one of them. Steam puffed merrily from the spout, he tried not to study the designs on it and instead looked at his host. “Drink? Tea? Water? Coffee? I’d offer you beer but that would be highly inappropriate, no?” His grin split larger, almost pulled his lips back over his gums.

  “Tea, please,” Pete said. That steam escaping the po
t smelled good, a little herbal and he’d found himself trying not to make a show of sniffing it too enthusiastically. Never good to show eagerness. “It smells good.”

  “Is my own infusion of herbs, fruits and leaves,” Konda said, rising to his feet. Small hands clutched the pot, he brought it down onto the desk between them with a delicate clunk. “Isn’t just good, is pretty damn fantastic.”

  “I don’t normally drink it,” Pete said. He meant it as well. Tea wasn’t the drink for him, it was coffee’s inferior younger brother in his opinion. Up close, he could see the colours of the Burykian flag on the kettle, designs of suns and moons, stars and sigils whose meaning he couldn’t even start to guess at. Konda placed a cup in front of him, a cup in front of himself and slid back into his seat.

  “Well, help yourself,” the inquisitor said. “Relax, you’re not in any kind of trouble. This is just an informal chat, you know? I do it with every trainee at some point, sometimes twice or thrice.”

  “You need that many informal chats with some cadets?” Pete asked. He didn’t want to touch the teapot, saw how delicate the handle looked. He could well imagine himself breaking it off, the accident leading it to smash against the desk, hot tea everywhere. Bad enough he scalded himself, even worse should he burn Konda.

  “Those I deem problematic,” Konda said. “Not everyone is cut out for this work, you know? Some burn long before they reach the pinnacle of excellence we demand.”

  “Yeah, I can imagine.” It didn’t take a lot of thought really. He didn’t think he was struggling with the training. So far, it hadn’t been an insurmountable challenge, he’d had to work for things but nothing that he wasn’t capable of. Some weren’t so capable, he tried to blot them out of his consideration. Dwelling on others wouldn’t help his case any. Wherever he could, he tried to offer advice should he see someone struggling, yet that could only go so far. He couldn’t make someone stronger or faster or fitter, so it was halfway to a losing battle before he’d even started.