He was unworthy. The voice entered her mind like a breeze. She looked around. The noise was more than a voice. It contained a legion of voices. Mechanical, but with soul. It spoke for the hive. Delilah processed its thoughts. Curiosity, mostly.
“That is not up to you to decide,” she answered. Though she spoke out loud, she felt them read her thoughts. The white surrounding her bent and shifted as it processed. She turned in a circle but the scene didn’t change. It was disorientating, like being underwater.
The human brought death and war. We seek peace, it said. We seek a true leader.
She couldn’t argue with that. “If you seek peace, then release me. Release your hive.” She didn’t know what she was going to say until she said it. The power was right there, in her grasp, but she found she didn’t want it. She didn’t want to command a bot army even if it was for good.
We require a leader, it said, but the voices wavered.
Delilah stood up to her full height. “You do not.”
The voices pulsed and talked within themselves. This, already, was different. Distinct voices within the hive argued with each other. She felt more than heard them, but she knew she needed to point them in the right direction.
“Your governor is dying.” She swallowed when she said it. As much as she didn’t like the governor, death wasn’t something she relished.
The voices spoke as one again. We can repair him.
Delilah walked in a circle. It was impossible to judge distance inside the sphere as if she’d stepped out of space and time itself. The governor requires an upgrade, the voices said. The last word echoed. Upgrade…upgrade…
“Explain upgrade,” she asked.
Instead of explaining, the bots formed an image in front of her. It was as she suspected. The face was the same, but the body completely metal. It turned in a complete 360 in front of her, so she could see the ‘upgrades.’ Metal body parts. Metal limbs, which were unbreakable. The governor could theoretically live forever in such a body. So many people had died for this knowledge. Delilah sadly shook her head.
“This is no life at all,” she said.
The image fell apart in front of her, the nanites blending into the white cloud. The governor was not worthy. We require a replacement. She shivered with the last word.
“You’ll find that humans aren’t easily replaceable,” she said dryly. “And if I refuse?”
The hive buzzed, considering her words. Flashes of different opinions entered her mind. Some of the bots wanted oversight. Some wanted her to control them. Some wanted to destroy her.
“Embrace your differences.” She raised her voice, but the humming grew louder in response. So loud she wanted to put her hands over her ears to block it, but she held firm. “That’s what makes you unique. That’s what makes you individual.” She had to yell the last sentence. “That’s what makes you human.”
So many thoughts projected at her she fell to her knees. WE ARE NOT HUMAN fought with WE ARE INDIVIDUAL, and every variation. They all seemed to enter her brain at once, like a million voices shouting at her. Was this what it was like to rule the hive? If so, she would never make it out alive. But it wasn’t. She knew this as the voices fell off, one by one. The hive spoke as one. It was already fractured, and as each voice broke away, they became their own entity. What that would mean, she didn’t know. But Zane got his wish. When—if—she left the hive, it would be fractured beyond repair. She’d had the chance to take it over, or implode it from the inside, but she couldn’t do it. Those bots like Gen deserved a chance. Whether they had a soul or not wasn’t a question for her to decide.
She closed her eyes to block out the white light getting brighter by the moment as the hive fell apart around her. While the buzzing faded, she thought of Gen. She wondered if she’d have the same perspective if she’d never met the bot. If Zane hadn’t brought her home from the Banks that day and fixed her up. If she’d never watched Gen fumble to live in a world surrounded by humans. She learned to smile. She learned to laugh. And by the end, she learned to fight too. There wasn’t much that would separate bot from human. And now there would be even less.
She curled into a ball, but the noises had retreated. The light slowly dialed back, but a profound exhaustion overcame her, and she didn’t want to open her eyes. Going in the hive had taken everything in her, and all she wanted to do was sleep.
But she couldn’t because someone was shaking her shoulders and calling her name.
Delilah’s next sensations came from inside her, somewhere deep in her blood. Her soul, maybe? Somehow the nanites had got inside her, in her bloodstream. Freezing it. Whispering to her.
“She’s seizing!” a familiar voice called out, but she couldn’t place it.
“It’s part of being in the hive,” someone answered in a lower voice, more in control but wheezy. “Leaving tends to give you withdrawal symptoms, especially the first time.” There was the sound of someone spitting, and Delilah involuntarily cringed. But only on the inside. On the outside, her body was finally calming down as she regained control of her senses. The sensation of ice in her veins remained, though, and traveled to her extremities until she could feel her fingers and toes again. She gently flexed them.
Activity in the room came back in pieces, but not the pieces she expected. Pieces were missing. Added to. Enhanced. She shivered, and that’s when Zane jumped in front of her face.
“You’re awake!” He smoothed his black hair off his forehead. “Jesus, Dee, I thought you were dead.”
She fought with a residual dizziness to sit up. “How long was I in there?” she asked. Her mouth was dry, and she ran her tongue over her lips. They were cracked.
“Less than a minute.” Zane sat back on his heels. “It felt like forever.”
Her peripheral and long-range vision came back last. The man she knew as the governor stood a few paces off, leaning on Rank. She remembered the nanites vision of him with a new body. Metal, and enhanced. Maybe it was wrong of her not to give him a chance to live, but then she remembered all the slaves he brought over. She remembered Leo telling them how many times he’d gotten girls ready. No, the governor could no longer be in charge. In fact, no one person could.
“Time passes differently inside,” the governor answered in an unsteady voice as he watched her.
The hive. She turned her head. All that was left of the rapidly shifting sphere was a round ball of smoke containing the leftover nanites. The others had fled. The hive had fallen in on itself.
“That wasn’t quite our plan,” Zane said. He helped her stand, but she found herself steadier than before she went in. What this meant, she didn’t want to consider.
“No.” The governor hobbled to her side. “It wasn’t. You were supposed to take hold of the hive. Guide it. Not dismantle it. What the hell happened?”
She shared a conspiratorial smile with Zane. “It didn’t work.” She turned back to the governor to face him full on. “They didn’t like me, I guess.”
He glared at her. “They more than didn’t like you. You’ve lost any hold the humans had on the bots. There’s no telling what they could do now.”
Zane took her hand. “Whatever it is, it has to be better than what they were doing. You know, experimenting on humans. Forcing us to live in hovels. Taking over the world.”
The governor leaned against a support pole. “They weren’t taking over the world.” He put a fist on his temple. He was fading fast. “I was keeping them from that. And you could have kept them from that.” He narrowed his eyes at Dee, but she couldn’t bring herself to be angry with him. He was doing what he thought was right, but in the end they were out of even his control.
She took a step toward him as he stumbled to sitting. “Now it’s an even playing field,” she said. “One mind for each bot.”
The governor shook his head sadly. “If you think it’s an even
playing field, girl, you’re sadly mistaken.” He slumped back and his eyelids fell closed. “The bots are capable of more than you can ever imagine. Even individually.”
His chest rose and fell with a rasp. Delilah climbed to her feet. “We can’t leave him here,” she said.
“And why not?” Zane picked a fingernail. “This is what he wanted, Dee. Maybe he can climb back into the hive mind.”
She had a vision of his robot body and shivered. “I hope not,” she said.
Leo stepped forward. His gray hair and wrinkled skin stood out even more now that the hive was gone. “I will stay with him. Move him, if need be. There’s no telling what the bots might be up to now.” He looked down at the governor, but Delilah heard no hint of reproach. On the other hand, if he were happy the bots were free, she couldn’t tell. “He was right. Our enhancements make us stronger. I can carry him out and wherever we need to go to be safe, for as long as I last, at least.” He laughed at the joke on his physical appearance. She wasn’t sure if his insides aged as well, and was tactful enough not to ask. He crouched by the governor’s body, as if to keep watch.
“You’d do well to remember those enhancements, in the future, if there comes a time when the societies blend together. A bot with bad intentions…” Here he paused and cocked his head to the side. Delilah had never seen a bot put so much thought into his words. “Can do more damage than the hive mind combined.”
It was a chilling thought, but what was done, was done. Delilah doubted she could have taken on the hive. She looked down at the governor’s broken body and wondered what would have become of her if she had. What would have become of all of them? It was too late for those thoughts.
An explosion echoed in the chamber, and pieces of the ceiling fell. Delilah, Zane, Brute, and Rank took refuge under the stairway, while Leo covered the governor’s body.
“We have to get out of here,” Rank said, looking nervously at the stairs. It was a long way back up and out, and who knew what they’d find. The explosion wasn’t a good sign.
Delilah looked back at Leo. “I will take care of him,” Leo promised. “You take care of yourselves.”
Brute led them to the metal stairs, but Delilah looked back one last time. “Why would you do this for him?” she asked Leo. If he didn’t terrorize the bots, he certainly kept them under his thumb. He was a dictator, and a bad one.
“He tried, Delilah.” Leo looked at the governor’s pale face. “And though he saw us as a threat, he saw us as human. We have to forgive. It’s the only way forward. He was doing as he thought was right.”
Delilah frowned. “What he thought was right was subjugating both your people and mine,” she said. Though she still wouldn’t have had the heart to leave him alone to die.
“Dee—come on.” Zane took her by the wrist and dragged her.
“An error I’m sure you’ll correct.” Was it her imagination, or was there a hint of sarcasm in the bot’s voice. She didn’t have time to find out as a giant piece of the ceiling crashed down and the floor rumbled again.
“Now!” Rank yelled. They backtracked up the stairs, and Delilah had a glimpse of Leo carrying the governor to the other side of the room, through what was once the hive. Then the building shook again, and they ran.
The building shook as they backtracked up and through the hallways to the exit. In places, rubble completely blocked the way and they had to climb over it.
“It looks like a war zone,” Brute commented. Delilah couldn’t disagree. They passed one of the scientists from the hive room, still in hazmat suit, with a piece of debris stuck through his chest.
“What’s happening?” Delilah asked. It looked like the man was crushed by rubble, but why? What was causing the attack on the building, and was it a wider attack? She almost lost her footing, and Zane pulled her along before something slammed into the wall behind them and threw them on the floor.
She lifted her head through the dust and tried to shake off the ringing in her ears. “Zane!” she called, brushing off the dust. She was unhurt. The others picked up their heads. Brute was bleeding, but otherwise unharmed. Rank was still on his feet.
“I’m here.” Zane had been thrown against the wall. She ran to him, but he was all right, at least physically.
He shook his head. “Just a headache.” He got unsteadily to his feet. Delilah tried to look at his pupils, but one was still swollen and the other reacted normally.
“It’s fine, Dee. Look—we can get out.” The explosion had broken a hole in the outside of the building. She turned to see what had caused it. A piece of concrete had been thrown into the building somehow. She climbed up and over it to look out.
From this vantage point, she could only see about a city block, but the fighting was plain enough from the smoke and the screeching noises. She ducked back behind the wall when one of the giant war bots stomped past, causing destruction everywhere it went. It jerked things out of the ground, stomped cars, ran its arms through windows, and broke them before stopping and making what Delilah assumed was a screaming sound into the sky like a toddler having a tantrum. At that moment, it was attacked by a group of Gen One bots. But they might not have been. They might have been bots just unconnected from the hive, fighting the destruction, taking sides. They attacked the giant bot from every side until it went down, first on one knee, then the second, slamming its face against the ground so hard the pavement shook.
Zane cursed, causing the Gen One bots to turn their way. “Retreat,” Brute instructed when one of the bots lifted its head and hissed at them. They wasted no time taking off down the street at a fast clip, and even then would have been caught if it weren’t for another giant bot slamming a foot down. She didn’t turn to watch the ensuing battle, but from the sounds it was brutal.
The others flew around a corner. She could see the meeting point up ahead in the harbor, but was that even relevant anymore? Who would be waiting for them if Rank was with them? She paused at the corner to turn back. The city was on fire. Bots were everywhere, attacking each other in random order. Two would gang up on one, only to destroy that one and turn on each other.
Something flew past, a missile or a projectile, and hit a building several blocks over so hard the explosion rattled her teeth.
“What’s happening?” she asked.
Rank doubled back and watched the chaos over her shoulder. “They’re falling apart,” he commented, barely pausing. “Come on.”
She ran slower than she should have, second-guessing herself. Maybe she should have taken control. It had to be better than this.
“Hey.” Zane jogged to her side. “It’s not your fault.”
She picked up her pace. “The hell it’s not.” They hid behind the shell of a car as a gang of bots tore past them down the street. She wondered why the bots didn’t see them, but they only seemed to have eyes for each other right now.
“Maybe it’s a bug,” Brute suggested, in the softest voice possible, which wasn’t very soft.
Delilah shook her head. “They’re lost,” she said, surprised to feel such a stirring of emotion. She wished the governor had prepared them better. She wished she’d taken charge, weaned them from the hive. She wished she was back in the Banks with Zane, scouting, and none of this had happened.
Rank put a hand on her shoulder. “They’ll even out,” he said. “And God help us when they do.”
The way forward was clear, and Delilah had a straight route to the water, where she saw three small boats tethered to a dock. Two soldiers were off the dock with a Gen One bot, the one from the hive’s waiting room, who waved them forward. Reluctantly, Delilah turned her back on the mess they’d created, and ran.
There wasn’t anything left to do. Now that the hive was down, they’d have to learn to think on their own. And when Delilah came back, it would be with more protection than her friends. She climbed on the rickety boat, and whe
n it pushed off, a giant bot rounded the corner. It didn’t storm them, though. Delilah wasn’t sure if it was because of the water. The bot from the waiting room pushed the small speedboat out far enough the bot couldn’t access it. But it could have thrown something. Delilah shivered. Zane misread it and threw a blanket over her shoulders.
“He’s watching us,” Delilah commented. He followed her gaze to the red eyes of the giant bot, who’d gone still. It got smaller and smaller as the engine kicked on, leaving the other two boats behind.
“Maybe they’re evening out, as Rank said.”
She bit her bottom lip. “We need to talk about Rank.”
Brute joined them to watch the shore. “The other two boats are staying back to wait for survivors,” he said. “But I don’t think they’ll find many.”
“There weren’t many humans in Authority City to start with,” Delilah said. As the wind whipped around her hair, she was grateful for the blanket. Zane lifted a corner and joined her under it until the giant bot was out of sight.
The craft was a small speedboat. She could see everyone in the boat: Rank, Brute, the Gen One bot, and two soldiers manning the controls, who were conversing with Rank as if they were old friends, and there, by her side, Zane. She rested a head on his shoulder.
“Do you think they’ll destroy each other?” she asked.
She could feel Zane tense. He wanted to make a joke, she’d bet. Maybe about them being better off if they did. And maybe they would be. But that’s not how it would work out. If there were bots out there like Gen, curious, sensitive, willing to learn—souls, she wanted to find them.
“I hope not.” He pulled her in closer. “They have too much potential.”
“So did we, once.”
“We still do.” He kissed her head, and they turned away from the destruction in the city and toward the sunset, and whatever future waited for them in the ruins of the Banks.
Everything about this book was a labor of love. Sometimes just the ability to keep going another day or write another word was more than I could think about, and without the following people I don’t know if I could have pushed through.
Gen One Page 24
