Bobbi stared at him a moment longer. “Couple of months. She used to be one of Scalli’s people.”
“Ah.” Walken nodded. Were there a window to glance out of, he would have done so. But in the closed confines of the van, he could only look at his feet. All the while, he felt her gaze boring into him. Why did that upset him? There was no question. He knew why. “It is…good to see you, Bobbi.”
Perhaps he should not expect anything from her but anger. After all, he had vanished for years, leaving her to pick up the pieces on her own. Even though she had chosen to fight the Yathi once discovering the truth, he started her journey. That would be enough to anger anybody, wouldn’t it? “I am…sorry that this has happened this way. I would have contacted you sooner if…”
“You had months to do it,” she said. “Enough to contact Scalli, Lionel, even this Mendelsohn woman.”
“Yes.” He closed his eyes. “I understand that you are angry with me, Bobbi. Truly, I am very sorry. I do not believe that I will be able to ever truly explain, or make suitable amends.”
Her eyes narrowed. “I don’t know what I feel about you right now, Tom.”
“You did shoot me,” Tom said. “I felt that was rather illustrative.”
“You deserved it,” she replied. “Might be that you wouldn’t be where you are if you hadn’t gone off on your own without telling me. Or explaining anything.”
“You’re right.” He nodded. “I…am sorry, truly, I am. For everything. I was a terrible person when you met me, and I treated you very badly. I did not see it until much later.”
As he said the words, regret began to radiate from that narrow seam of emotion inside of him. It was true, he had been a misogynistic ass, wrapped up in himself and his conflict, unable to see her as a person. She had been a screen upon which to project his ideals and fears, the budding madness the Yathi had dragged out of him. Dragged, not created; that madness had been his all along. “I am sorry that I did not treat you as a person. And for being self-absorbed… And for choking you.”
The words drew a further silence from her. She continued to watch him, but something went on behind her eyes, calculations aplenty. They both remained stock still, fed only by the rhythm of the road against the van’s silent heels, the gulf between them being tested. A real streak of fear mingled with the regret , fear that she would hate him, even though he knew he deserved that hate. He had not been human to her. He did not feel that he deserved humanity in return.
“Here’s the thing,” Bobbi said, slow and deliberate. “I hear what you’re saying, and I believe that you feel the way you do. But you realize, that was six years ago, right? I’m over that now. Besides, we established that I was into the choking thing early on.”
He frowned faintly. “I am not saying this to get some form of emotional advantage over you.”
“Good thing, because you won’t get it even if you tried.” Bobbi clucked her tongue. “Tom…” She sounded utterly drained. “I have had a very long six years, and I am very, very tired of everyone’s dramatic bullshit. I’m over thirty, for God’s sake. You were a shitty person, yes. So was I, in my own way. If your story is true, and you’re fighting alongside us, that’s what I care about – I’m sorry if that’s not romantic narrative or whatever, but I’m pretty done with romanticizing things.”
Walken kept quiet for a long moment. He understood what she said. And certainly, masculine navel-gazing was not what he was aiming for. And yet there he sat, literally staring down at himself. Perhaps he retained more humanity than he expected. Or perhaps only the terrible parts remained. “I understand. I wanted to make the past better between us, that is all.”
“I think that ship’s been torpedoed.” She bit her lip and sighed. “Let’s just talk about the present, and the future. Like, why Cagliostro’s had us working on parallel courses without communication. Why hasn’t he had us working together from the start?”
“I’m not certain.” Walken appreciated the change of subject. He did not want to try and further process the other. “I am only aware of that being’s interactions with Lionel Knightley and his associates. Were I in Cagliostro’s position, I would want to ensure that my new acquisition was stable, and that they would not somehow revert and kill the rest of my operatives upon meeting them.”
“You mean ‘pawns,’” Bobbi said darkly. “It’s all right, Tom. I know what we are to him.”
Walken nodded. “Yes. Favorite pawns, nothing more. Do you think that there are others like us out there?”
With a faint frown, Bobbi looked askance. “I used to think that there might be, but as the years have passed, I think that no, we’re what’s here. From everything we’ve ever learned, one came before us, and that turned out badly.”
“You mean Redeye.”
A flicker of mingled sadness and anger crossed Bobbi’s face. “Yeah.” She looked back toward him. “It was an ill-conceived plan, making her, but he was just waking back up to his humanity then. Which begs the question.”
“If he’s really sane at all?”
Bobbi nodded. “That’s what I’ve been asking myself.” The change of subject seemed to work for her, as well. She sat up a bit straighter, hands resting on her knees, and her eyes glittered again with their old intelligence as the wheels in her head turned on. “Look, so I’m clear: everything you said back there was accurate, right?”
He nodded.” As far as I am aware, yes. Though I will admit, I’m surprised that you’re taking this as well as you are.”
“You mean you’re surprised that I’m letting you within a mile of me, considering it all?” She snorted. Walken could easily read the tension inside her, though she had become very good at developing a general shield behind which to hide her emotions. He supposed it necessary, considering her position. “Let’s just say that I’ve got reason to humor you.”
Walken managed to smirk. “I am glad for that.”
“Yeah.” Conflict registered in her face, a swirl of warring emotions.
He leaned forward a little. “Tell me, Bobbi.”
“Not yet.” She buried the emotions behind a wall and called out, “Shaper, pull over!”
Walken said nothing as the van pulled aside and screeched to a halt. Through the back windows, he saw that they had stopped outside a cluster of crumbling storefronts. He looked back to Bobbi, who sat staring at him, as did the two in the front, the man named Shaper and her pale lieutenant, Violet.
“Now look,” said Bobbi, leaning forward, possessed of a sudden volcanic glare. “I’m sitting here talking to you as though you’ve joined the team and I should trust you implicitly. Which is stupid, because I haven’t seen you in six years, and it’s hasn’t been long at all since I figured out that you were alive and heard this crazy-ass story from you. So here’s the deal, Tom. You say you’ve got plenty of machines in your skull, fine. That means I should be able to interface with them. Would you say that’s correct?”
He blinked at her. “That would be correct. What do you propose?”
Bobbi fixed her eyes on his, green flashing bright in the low light. “I want you to let me access your brain. Access, as in interface. Right now.”
“I don’t understand.” He gestured to his skull. “I don’t have any interface ports.”
Bobbi only looked at him, tapping at one temple with a fingertip.
“I got ways,” she said. “Now are you going to do it, or what?”
He considered. She could be testing him – no, she was certainly testing him – but the idea of opening his brain up to her terrified him in a way that he could not understand or explain. She had been an extremely gifted hack artist six years ago. Now, with vast experience manipulating the Network and using it to kill the Yathi, he could only imagine what she might be able to do to him. For a dizzying moment, he wanted to refuse, to leap through the van’s back doors, to sprint away into the night and abandon this woman and all the past that she represented. It would be easy; the metal would be like pap
er to him, and they had no weapons that could harm him. She was the danger, if she could do what she said.
But no, this was Bobbi. The future. His friend.
Or at least, she had been. He found himself wanting her to be that again.
“I accept.” Walken leaned forward, offering her his head.” If you can connect to my mind, you may do so.”
Bobbi looked at him guardedly. “What? Just like that? No resistance?”
He was as surprised at his lack of inner turmoil. “You have had an epiphany. The integrity of what I have told you, if not my own character, seems to depend on it. And as you have said, you have only been aware of my fate and my continued existence for a few hours. I want you to trust me. You have obviously decided that to do so, you must access my mind. Therefore, I have no other recourse but to accept.”
Her eyes narrowed. “So you don’t want me to do it.”
He shrugged. “The very idea is frightening to me, but it must be done.”
Three sets of eyes all turned on him at once, boring into him – Shaper’s and Violet’s, hard, promising imminent violence should he prove the least bit false. Bobbi’s, probing within him like glass shards. She set her jaw and nodded. “Okay, then. Do whatever you need to in order to get ready.”
“I’m ready.” Which he was not, but he had no way to prepare himself. A slow tide of fear built inside him, not the remote concern he had felt before, but something animal and visceral. It did not feel human, or perhaps it had simply been so long that it did not truly feel a part of him. He kept it down, though. He wanted this to work. “Please, go ahead.”
“All right.” Bobbi reached into the breast pocket of her fatigue tunic and withdrew a short, fat spike of black alloy terminating in a neural interface plug. “Safe connection device.” She waved the thing like a tiny wand. “Or as safe as it can get, anyway. One of my people designed it a few years ago. We used to use Grails for this, but we ended up needing something specialized.” Bobbi drew back the hair on the left side of her face, exposing an unornamented ear missing a tiny notch of cartilage along its top curve. “It’s got everything we need – transceiver, virus buffer, etcetera.” She pulled the clear plastic dust plug from the socket behind her ear with two fingers, placing it into her breast pocket, and then slid the spike home.
Bobbi stiffened slightly, then her face became a bland mask. “So here we go,” she said with a newly-gained calm, and then closed her eyes.
Walken imagined himself drawing a deep breath, an act of meditation that helped steady him. He waited for something, any sign of mental invasion. After what felt like an eternity, a subtle pressure entered his psyche. He may have had machines installed within his brain, but he did not feel like a computer; the encroachment of Bobbi’s headware on his mind was not like spear of machine code but a gentle presence. She must be taking her time. He was grateful for that.
Walken sat there, his hands in his lap, her relaxed face framed in his field of vision. Bobbi’s thought-presence found places in his skull like warm water filling the pores of a sponge. He willed his mind open as far as it could go, trusting in this person who, though she had become so different to him now, remained very much in some ways the woman he once knew. In this moment, nostalgia’s ghost seemed enough to see him through.
The act must have taken only a few minutes, though it felt like hours, before she withdrew from him. She exhaled softly, emerging from the hacker’s trance, her eyes opening, hard, clear shards.
“All right,” she said, no emotion audible, almost a chip voice. “I trust you.”
“You trust me,” he echoed.
She nodded once.” I do. “Bobbi extracted a small foil package from her other breast pocket. She took two strips of livid orange gum from it and popped them into her mouth.
Walken wondered if she still laced the gum with tranquilizers. “What was it that you found?”
Bobbi looked back at her fellows, who regarded her with an almost fevered interest, before turning her attention back to him. “Your memory. Or at least, a big part of it. It’s electronic now. Everything you’ve been going through, at least for the past few years – it’s all in there, all accessible.”
His brows arched.” You saw it all?”
A shadow fell over Bobbi’s features. “I saw enough.”
“So he was telling the truth,” Violet offered quietly. “What do we do?”
“Change of plan,” Bobbi said. “We take him back to the Cavern. Yasmeen says that his Seal of Community isn’t engaged, so it looks like we’re all right.” Her face remained drawn, however. “And let that guy, what’s his face, with the plane?”
“Jacinto,” Walken offered.
“Yeah, Jacinto. Tell him to hang back for now. We don’t exactly got anywhere to put him, and you’re safe in our custody.”
“Already taken care of,” Walken replied. “I…had expected a longer period of confinement.”
“So I did I,” she replied. “I imagine I’m going to surprise the folks at home, but there we are. They’re probably all used to the fluidity of these situations.” Bobbi frowned at him, quiet for a moment. “They really did do a number on you.” She sounded soft, hollow.
Walken managed a thin smile. Cracks formed in the ice coating his emotional complex, which of course he knew would happen around her. “Yes, but on the other hand, I had done a great deal of damage to myself before that. They merely took what was already there, and expanded upon it.”
She shrugged. “I guess. You don’t mind a blinder hood being put on you, do you?”
“I trust you completely.” He leaned forward as he said the words, finding them very easy to say while offering his head to her for the second time. “Do as you will.”
He had expected something impressive, but when he finally arrived at the place Bobbi called Plato’s Cavern, Walken found himself surprised at the extent to which she had grown her headquarters. Smooth and laser-cut underground chambers, the lines of each tunnel exact to the millimeter, every room filled with equipment obviously constructed from the remnants of knowledge her Reclaimed had kept after their return to humanity, fusions of human and Yathi technology. Some of it looked quite mad, but all of it undeniably functional. He glimpsed the Reclaimed themselves in workrooms and lounges, though they had more the appearance of patients in a mental ward. Those not at work seemed to sit at rest, quiet and serene, staring straight ahead and rarely blinking. They looked nothing like what he had expected, especially since he had only fleeting accounts of Redeye’s creatures to draw upon. No screaming madmen, no messages scrawled on the walls in blood. Perhaps she had the dangerous cases in cells, or had euthanized them. The idea made something inside him squirm.
With just the meager tour on the way to the meeting room, Walken understood how Bobbi could be a bloody thorn in the side of the Yathi advance. This was the product of not just a keen mind, but one open to possibilities and opportunities most would never be able to countenance. A flash of pride managed to leak out of the cracks in his internal ice – pride in Bobbi, certainly, but also in humanity. Yes, all very good, whispered a traitorous voice in the back of his mind. But who knows how many times such movements have risen up? Perhaps this is doomed to become one of many failures. He pushed the thought away; he could afford no room in his heart for doubt right now, not when he had just reunited with his friend, not when she had done so much. Walken would no longer question the future, the time for that had long past. He had no hesitation, only commitment to seeing it through.
They settled in the conference room, where he sat quietly at one end of the table as Bobbi addressed an assembly of the Reclaimed, unaltered humans, and her subcommanders in the field represented by holographic images. She told them everything that he had shared with her, which he had expected. They met her words with suspicion, which he had also expected. One of the commanders, Janelle Green, wasn’t terribly receptive, though she seemed relieved about something Walken could not identify. The other, Trent Mulcahey,
proved much more open to accepting the situation, and though he too appeared relieved, Walken got the feeling his reasons differed. What was it these people had feared? Him?
Not that the other humans in the room looked any better. Between the attention turned to their leaders, they stole many not so subtle glances toward him, a mixture of suspicion and curiosity. He did not blame them. Whether or not they had heard of him before, he was not of their kind, and he sat boldly and unshackled before them, which made him a potential danger and a curiosity all in one. The Reclaimed, however, stared at him as a group. The entirety of the sanest ones stood in a semicircle around Bobbi, a wall of augmented flesh, all of them staring at him with their wide silver eyes, eyes that he shared. He could not imagine what they might be thinking. Their faces betrayed no emotion, only a protectiveness for Bobbi that radiated from their bodies like heat.
“I want to know what proof you have that this dude isn’t going to flip out and kill everybody,” Janelle Green said, her scarred face twisting in disbelief. “I mean I don’t mean to insult you, but this…”
“Is a total jump from my previous opinion.” Bobbi nodded. “No, I absolutely understand. I just know, Janelle. I read his mind, I told you.”
Janelle frowned. “Fucking weirdo Yathi. So what does that mean?”
She had a point, and of course, Walken wondered that very thing.
“I told you that he allowed me access to his mind when we were driving back,” Bobbi said. “Well. He could only open the door, he couldn’t control where I went. There’s a lot in there, but I went for two things: any potential connection to the alien inside of him, and his memory records.”
“Which you were able to read, because his brain is riddled with data modules at this point.” This from Mulcahey, whose tone and expression had turned curious rather than suspicious. “What about memory from before that time?”
“Still chemically encoded. No dice, but that’s all right, as I have all the pertinent data. He broke out of Yathi custody, twice. Everything he’s told us up to this point is true.” She shrugged. “Or at least, his memories of escape are there. That’s enough for me right now.”
Gathering Ashes (The Wonderland Cycle Book 3) Page 43
