The Machine Awakes

by Adam Christopher

  “Affirmative.”

  Kodiak zoomed in on the feed, then brought up audio. They were just minutes away. He wanted to know if they were saying anything.

  There was nothing but the rush of the wind. Then the drone adjusted its directional microphones at the target and began processing the audio. It was hissy, barely understandable, but enough of what Cait was saying came through for Kodiak’s stomach to do a flip.

  “Eight-seven … un … oo-two-Juno-Ju…”

  Kodiak clicked the feed off and pulled his staser from its holster.

  Time to close the net.

  * * *

  Cait blinked, and Glass was gone. She looked up, saw the men loom over her, the leer on their faces, and then her hair was blown across her eyes as the wind suddenly picked up, swirling around the rooftop, strong enough to blow the water off the surface and fill the air with a fine, sharp mist.

  The hum in her mind had turned into a roar like a jet engine. The prickle coursing across her body was so sharp she wanted to dig her fingernails into her arms and rip her skin off.

  She stood.

  The men staggered backward, squinting in the wind as they looked not at her, but behind her. Cait balanced herself as the wind buffeted her on the rooftop. She held her arms out, staggering slightly as the wind gusted, pushing her forward.

  One of the thugs turned to run; Cait threw a hand forward and the man’s feet left the ground. He flew forward through the air, then tumbled onto the roof and didn’t move.

  The remaining thug yelled something at his bare-chested boss; Cait’s attention moved to him. She flicked her wrist, and he twisted, like something large had slammed into his shoulder, then his legs went out from under him, and he tumbled backwards.

  The bare-chested leader roared something that was lost against the other sound, the sound of engines howling in the night, and went to grab Cait. He got two steps closer; Cait fell to her knees, head down, and pulled her hands together in front of him. The man doubled over and was flung back across the roof. He collided with the stair block, hard enough to crack the concrete.

  Cait collapsed, falling sideways onto the roof. She squinted against the spray of water being blown from the object hovering between her and the lights of New Orem. It was long, rectangular, just a silhouette backlit by the city. It rocked slightly in the air, and there were other shapes, men jumping out from the side of it and running toward her.

  And then she let herself surrender, finally, to the wonderful, glorious, warm, comforting bliss of nothingness, a world without fear and without pain and without thought.

  25

  Cait woke up and looked around. The room was steel gray, the walls made up of individual panels that slotted into each other. There were various small pieces of text and barcodes printed around the place in white, and here and there LEDs in multiple colors either shone or blinked.

  She recognized it immediately. She knew exactly where she was.

  She was back at the Fleet.

  Cait raised herself up and leaned forward at an uncomfortable angle, but her wrists were held in place by manacles. She pulled against them, then cried out as electric hot pain surged down her neck. She slumped back onto the couch, panting. The pain faded quickly, replaced now with a dull thud across her temples.

  “Yeah, you’re going to want to take it easy awhile,” said a voice nearby. She turned her head, wincing as her neck stretched again, and saw a black man in a suit the same color as the prefabricated walls standing next to the bed. His hands were in the pockets of his jacket, and clipped onto the lapel was a square of mirrored silver, an icon etched onto it in gold. Cait squinted, trying to recognize the insignia. Then she gave up and lay back on the bed, her head thundering. She was well and truly sick of being stuck in medical units, being restrained. She closed her eyes and waited for her headache to subside.

  Footsteps. She opened her eyes and saw the black guy had been joined by another man. He was taller, white, with messy black hair that looked like it needed a wash and a stubble-covered chin. He was wearing a black uniform that included an armored vest over a black shirt, the words FLEET and BUREAU stenciled, one under the other, across his chest. Like the man in the suit, he sported a square chrome badge on one side.

  Cait looked at the pair—one smart, manicured, in a tailored suit, the other the exact opposite. She glanced at the words on the second guy’s vest again.

  Fleet Bureau? The Fleet Bureau of Investigation? Cait’s groggy mind raced. Of course. The Fleet’s internal police force. Sure, she knew who they were. Everyone who worked in the Fleet did, even Academy dropouts like her.

  Which meant they’d got her. Finally, they’d got her. And maybe that was good. Yes, it was good. She could tell them everything. Tell them about the Morning Star, about Samantha Flood.

  About her brother? About the voices in her head? About Glass, the man she’d killed accidentally?

  About the fact she’d nearly pulled the trigger on the Fleet Admiral?

  She pulled at the manacles again. She was restrained because she was under arrest. They thought she’d done it. That she was the shooter. Public enemy number one.

  Cait felt her pulse begin to race. She looked around, suddenly panicked. Where was she? The room didn’t look like a medical unit. It was square and featureless. She craned her neck around and saw there was a stool at the head of the bed. Sitting on it was a woman in an olive and blue uniform, an inverted black triangle on her chest. She had short hair—shaved short—and she looked into Cait’s eyes, her face expressionless, her mouth set into a straight line. Cait recoiled in surprise, but the woman didn’t even flinch.

  Cait’s eyes dropped to the black triangle insignia on the woman’s uniform. She thought she knew what it meant, but she couldn’t remember.

  Dammit, what the fuck was wrong with her? She couldn’t think straight. Couldn’t remember.

  Where was she again?

  “Caitlin Smith?” asked the tall man. Cait blinked and turned her head to look at him. He frowned, glanced at his colleague, then turned back to her, hands on hips, his whiskered chin creasing as he frowned. “I’m Special Agent Von Kodiak from the Fleet Bureau of Investigation. This is my partner, Special Agent Mike Braben. Do you know where you are now?”

  Cait nodded, just a little. Her head still hurt, and the light in the room was too bright. All she wanted to do was sleep and sleep and sleep.

  “I’m in the Fleet complex,” she said. Her voice was stronger than she expected. The man called Kodiak nodded. And then she said: “I didn’t do it.”

  Kodiak exchanged another look at Braben. Braben seemed to shrug. Kodiak turned back to her.

  “Do what?”

  Cait shook her head. “I didn’t kill him. It wasn’t me.”

  “Okay, well, that’s what we’re about to find out,” said Kodiak. “Under Fleet Bureau of Investigation primary directive one-zero, I have to inform you you are currently being held in connection with an ongoing investigation. Under Fleet Bureau of Investigation primary directive one-one, you are now the physical property of the Fleet—”

  “It wasn’t me,” said Cait, her eyes wide.

  Kodiak ignored her. “And as per Fleet Bureau of Investigation primary directive four-six-one pertaining to desertion of duty, you will now be subject to psi-interrogation to ascertain your level of guilt and culpability.”

  “Okay,” said Cait. “Okay, okay, okay.” She gritted her teeth, preparing for what was to come. Psi-interrogation? Good. Psi-interrogation would reveal the truth, everything. They’d know it wasn’t her. They’d know everything she did about her employers, who had turned out to be the Morning Star. She presumed they already knew what they’d done to her physically—perhaps now they’d be able to figure out why.

  Cait closed her eyes. “I’m ready.”

  She heard Kodiak shift on his feet, and then he said, “Authority to proceed granted.”

  Cait tried to relax. Psi-interrogation wasn’t a cakewalk. It
wasn’t standard procedure either, an extreme technique usually only used on the most uncooperative suspects, or those otherwise unable to provide voluntary statements. She guessed that as prime suspect in the assassination of the Fleet Admiral—the head of state himself—psi-interrogation was considered the first option.

  Good, good. She didn’t know what to expect, but she thought that if she relaxed, opened her mind, tried to squash the fear she felt welling inside her, that it would be easier. Both for her, and for her interrogator.

  Okay. Okay, okay, okay …

  She felt the interrogator seated behind her place hands on Cait’s shoulders, and Cait suddenly felt her strength ebb away like melting ice. She lay back on the couch, watching the shapes crawl behind her eyelids as she recalled her training, trying to remember how psi-interrogations worked. She’d seen some recordings of real ones as part of her basic psi-training. She knew the principles, but it was a specialized skill, not something taught as standard. But the numbness, the feeling of warmth—like drifting to sleep but staying awake, aware at the same time—that seemed to make sense. The interrogator sitting behind her had just blocked Cait’s motor centers with a single thought. Next she would begin peeling away the layers of consciousness, extracting thoughts, ideas, memories that would be used against the suspect.

  Okay. Okay, okay, okay. That was good. Because she was innocent. She hadn’t shot the Fleet Admiral. She hadn’t shot anyone.

  Her eyelids fluttered, and she could just see the two agents heading toward the door to leave the interrogation room. They were talking to each other, but she couldn’t hear what they were saying, only the roar of the blood in her ears, the sound of an ocean far away.

  “My brother,” she said … or she thought she said—she wasn’t sure because she couldn’t feel her mouth or her lips or her tongue anymore. She could just see the two agents stop and turn around. “My brother … where is my brother?” Had she said that aloud, or was that just in her head?

  The agents looked at each other, then turned back to the door.

  Cait felt her eyes close and the darkness move around her like it was a thing alive, like warm water. Blood warm.

  She felt like she was falling. There was a moment of fear, that sudden panic that something was wrong. Instinctively she reached out, not with her hands but with her mind, searching for something—anything—to indicate that she wasn’t alone and that Tyler was there, somewhere, somewhere where he could see her and hear her and tell her that everything would be all right and okay.

  There was someone there. She could sense it. Tyler? No. The interrogator. Or was it…?

  “Glass?”

  She wasn’t sure if she’d spoken his name aloud. She stared into the swirling blackness, shadows chasing shadows.

  But there was nothing but silence. Her brother was gone. Whether she’d ever heard or seen Glass at all or whether it had been her addled mind playing tricks, she didn’t know.

  Inside her mind she screamed, and she thought she might have screamed in the room too, but she didn’t know, she wasn’t sure. She tried to open her eyes but there was nothing but blackness, nothing but darkness, nothing but a void, and absence.

  This room is shielded.

  Cait started at the voice, a movement that was involuntary, bypassing the psychic spell cast by the interrogator to block her motor pathways. Cait’s neck ached as she jerked against the couch. She thought maybe she was straining against the manacles too, trying to pull herself upright while her mind sank in a world of infinite nothing. But she wasn’t sure what was real, what was a figment of her imagination.

  Like the image of Glass, the man in the long pale coat with the enigmatic smile. She looked at him, and the more she looked, the more she wasn’t sure she was seeing anything at all. He flitted away, at the edges of consciousness, just the echo of afterimage lingering.

  Don’t answer back. They’ll hear us.

  Okay. Okay, okay, okay.

  The interrogator is good, I’ll give her that. But don’t worry. I’m well hidden. She won’t find me in this corner of your mind, so long as you keep quiet and don’t show her the way.

  Cait tried to think of nothing, but her head was filled with a thousand thoughts, a million questions. Most of which were about how she needed to get away from Glass, the monster who did … did something to her. What, she still didn’t know. She wasn’t afraid of him, not now. This was anger. This was rage.

  Glass laughed.

  Yes, that’s good. That’ll confuse them for a while. Just long enough for us to talk.

  Listen.

  She did, and then she felt it. It was almost like a physical sensation, a rush of nothingness, like a door had suddenly been opened and beyond was a space so vast it was infinite, black and endless. A sensation of presence so strong, so real it felt like she was being lifted up by a multitude of arms. Like sleep paralysis, that split second when the mind awakes but the body doesn’t, the weight of a demon crushing the chest, staring into your soul with eyes that spin like blue stars falling.

  Cait’s lips twitched, and her eyelids flickered. That she felt too.

  Oh, the interrogator is getting close. She’s heard something. Very well. Just listen.

  And then the room spun and Cait saw orange and red clouds and heard a howling wind.

  Listen very carefully …

  * * *

  Braben left Kodiak in the observation gallery. Kodiak, alone in the dark, flicked the wall panel to “view” and stared into the psi-interrogation room, rubbing his eyes at the brightness that flooded in. He knew he needed sleep, but now was not the time. There was no telling how long the interrogation would last. Could be minutes. Could be hours. Could even be days, Kodiak recalled with a sigh. And he needed to be here when the results came in. Braben had offered to take it in shifts, but Kodiak had told him to get some rest. Braben had left, muttering something about how Kodiak was such a hero. The observation gallery at least had its own coffee machine. Kodiak made a cup and leaned with one arm against the wall as he turned back to the observation window.

  It looked like absolutely nothing was happening in the other room—the psi-interrogator leaning over Caitlin Smith’s head, Caitlin herself still on the angled couch. In reality, the psi-interrogator was extracting information by the gigabyte. But there was nothing Kodiak could do until the procedure was over and the psychic data feed had been analyzed and interpreted in a way he could read, or hear, or see.

  As a Bureau agent, Kodiak was trained in standard interrogation techniques, but he didn’t enjoy it. Some agents were better at it than others—some even seemed to have a natural talent, a knack that made watching interrogations a fascinating and highly educational experience. Kodiak knew he was not one of these agents. Back in the day, before Helprin’s Gambit, he’d preferred to let his partner do the hard questioning. Kodiak’s main problem—as Braben had often said—was that he was impatient. This he knew. Interrogations were frustrating, an open-ended game in which one partner steadfastly refused to play for as long as possible, if at all. And when they did—and most did, eventually—Kodiak drew no particular satisfaction. If they’d just told the truth from the beginning, nobody’s time would have been wasted. Crimes would be solved, resources saved, and in some cases, lives saved.

  Psi-interrogation was altogether different, and Kodiak had to admit he liked the technique, whatever moral qualms churned somewhere at the back of his mind. The special kind of cases psi-interrogation was reserved for were rare on Earth, and for most reluctant suspects, just the threat of psi-interrogation was enough to make them talk. But out on the Warworlds, things were different—out there, there were secrets to be sold, missions to be sabotaged, escapes from the madness of a never-ending war against a nameless, unrelenting machine race to be made. Out on the Warworlds, psi-interrogators were kept very busy indeed.

  Kodiak sipped his coffee. It was terrible but strong. He’d been awake for … he’d forgotten how long. But he was close now. An
swers were coming. He could feel it.

  And then, as Kodiak watched, the interrogator tilted her head. After an age of nothing, the slight movement sent Kodiak’s heart thundering in his chest.

  Caitlin Smith was saying something. Kodiak could see her lips moving, but only just. It reminded him of the cadets earlier, just before things went batshit crazy.

  With that good old sinking feeling, he reached for the controls on the wall next to the observation window and pumped the sound up.

  “Eight-seven-nine-one-two-two-Juno-Juno.”

  “Eight-seven-nine-one-two-two-Juno-Juno.”

  “Eight-seven-nine-one-two-two-Juno-Juno.”

  Oh, shit.

  The interrogator tilted her head to the other side, then began looking left and right, like she was following something in the room. On the bed, Cait’s body was still, her lips moving as she intoned the secret, mysterious, meaningless code.

  The interrogator stood from her stool, still turning her head, left and right and left, then looking over her shoulder, spinning around in a complete circle, knocking her stool over.

  Something was wrong. Very, very wrong. Kodiak’s hand found the comm on his collar and he thumbed the call button.

  “Control? This is Special Agent Kodiak down at the interrogation center. Can you get me—”

  The comm barked in his ear. Kodiak yelled in surprise and jerked away from the window, sending his half-dead cup of coffee flying across the gallery to splash against the wall.

  He looked around. He had the feeling something else was in the room with him. He turned back to the observation window and saw the interrogator was still on her feet, looking around her room like Kodiak was in his.

  Kodiak gingerly reached for his comm again, but his hand paused as he watched the scene unfold in front of him. The interrogator had stopped moving and now looked at the window—at him, he thought, even though from the other side the window was just another gray wall panel. She held her hands to the side of her head and appeared to be squeezing the sides of her skull. She sidestepped Caitlin’s supine form.