He grabbed Erica’s shoulder and pulled her back. She stood, shrugging out of his grasp, sheathing her knife. “Sorry,” she said. “She was coming at you.”
“What the hell!” cried Lexi.
Nick lifted Lexi up off the ground and crushed her against his chest. His mind was a jumbled mess. The disappointment of not finding Kevin, and then the incredible surprise of Lexi—it was almost too much to process. He pressed his face into her hair. “You’re alive,” he said.
“So I take it you know this one?” said Erica.
“Yeah,” he said with a laugh.
He gently pushed Lexi back so he could see her face. “Lexi,” he said. Her face was dirty, and she looked exhausted, with dark circles under her eyes, but she seemed unhurt.
Nick touched Lexi’s cheek, gently turning her face toward him. “What happened?” he said.
Lexi put her hand on top of Nick’s and smiled. “We got out,” she said. “Doc got our chips out, and we made it out of the City.” Her smile dropped away. “We found the Freepost, but it had been attacked, and then Farryn and I joined this group and we were making our way farther north. We didn’t know what else to do.”
Nick just then realized that Farryn was standing a few feet away, with a tired grin on his face. “Farryn,” he said. “You made it.”
“I was waiting to see how long it would take you to notice me,” he said. “I guess Lexi is more interesting.” He had a small bandage on his left arm and a large scrape over his right eye, but he seemed to be in one piece also.
Farryn looked over Nick’s shoulder, frowning, and Nick tensed, knowing what he was going to ask. ”Where’s Cass?” said Farryn. “And Kevin?”
Nick didn’t say anything, but the look on his face was enough to make Farryn go pale.
CHAPTER 18
THE MEATLOAF EXPLODED INSIDE THE REHYDRATOR WITH A LOUD WHOMP that made Cass yell in surprise. Penny rushed into the kitchen, saw the mess, and then started laughing so hard she literally fell on the floor. “How long did you leave it in for?” she managed to gasp out, between laughs.
“Five minutes, I think,” Cass said.
“Five minutes!” Penny screamed. “It needs twenty seconds, tops!”
Cass looked down at her little sister, and she considered being annoyed—it wasn’t her fault she didn’t know how to use a rehydrator—but instead she started laughing too. “You mean you’re not supposed to leave it in until it explodes?” she said, and both girls collapsed into more giggles.
Penny was three years younger than her, but in some ways she was the older sister—Cass had so much to learn from her. Penny was teaching Cass all the ins and outs of her 3D comm, which was turning out to be frustrating for both of them. All the things that seemed so obvious to Penny they didn’t even need explaining—splicing vid into a message, posting a location status track, filtering and monitoring the official newsfeeds and contact-consolidated content—it all made little sense to Cass. It was another reminder of what had been taken away from her, having been kidnapped and forced to survive in the wilderness. She couldn’t even manage simple technology. But Penny, once she got over her surprise that she had to explain everything, was managing to slowly bring Cass up to speed, with only the occasional amazed shake of her head at the level of Cass’s ignorance.
Penny had also taken it upon herself to show Cass around. They didn’t go far or see much of the City, really. They stayed in their neighborhood, Hightown, named because it had the tallest, newest buildings. It was a thoroughly safe zone. Not that any part of the City was dangerous, of course, but Hightown was checkpointed all around its perimeter, and all the residents were government officials, with close relationships to the robot management. “Everyone in Hightown is a true Citizen,” Penny had explained proudly. And then she had lowered her voice and whispered, “Did you know that some Citizens actually don’t like the robots? I mean, they won’t say it out loud to just anyone, but I’ve heard rumors . . . I don’t understand it . . .”
“That used to be me,” Cass said quietly, feeling a mixture of shame and a complicated sadness that she didn’t quite understand.
Penny was quiet a moment, then gave her sister a big hug. “But not anymore,” she said.
Cass found that she didn’t need any help learning to use a scoot. That, at least, was technology that she could handle right away. They had free rein of Hightown. Penny explained that in the rest of the City, travel was on lockdown—all vehicles, including scoots, were running on autopilot pre-programmed, pre-approved routes only. “Because of the recent security incident,” Penny said, but then refused to elaborate.
Still, Cass and Penny had a great time exploring the twelve square blocks of Hightown. Cass marveled at the glass and metal buildings, although the way they towered over her, reaching twenty and thirty stories into the sky, made her nervous. She had actually asked Penny if one of them had ever fallen over, and Penny just laughed that fast giggle of hers. They stopped for snacks in cafeterias whenever they were hungry or thirsty. Penny took Cass to a supply store and bought her a whole new wardrobe. Their parents always had plenty of money for them. They were even allowed, because they had special clearance thanks to their parents’ high ranking jobs, to go to the rooftop of the tallest building in Hightown, thirty-five stories up in the clouds. Penny went right to the guardrail, but Cass hung back, dizzy from the view. She could see all of the City stretched out around her, shiny and metallic and tall in Hightown, then gradually shifting to lower, gray concrete as the City stretched out to its borders. And beyond the City, she could see a ribbon of blue—a river—and swaths of green.
She stared at the green—the forest, she knew—and she was shocked to find herself crying. An image had come to her, unbidden, of a middle-aged woman on a wooded path, touching a leaf, looking back at her and smiling. She wiped the tears away quickly, before Penny turned around and saw. She didn’t want her sister to think that she was ungrateful, that she was anything but happy.
CHAPTER 19
THE SENIOR ADVISOR HELD THE STUFFED ANIMAL IN HIS HANDS WHILE he received the briefing. The attack on the latest Freepost had been a success, of course; Revolution 20 had been quelled with acceptable losses. Three of his ground soldiers and two scouts had been destroyed, but in exchange seventy-eight rebels had been killed and twenty-three captured for re-education. The Senior Advisor listened to his lieutenant’s report, filing and processing the data—it had moved on from the Freepost battle to an inventory of neo-plastic repair supplies for the northeast quadrant. The data was important—most of the neo-plastic production facilities had been destroyed during the initial battles of the Great Intervention, a critical oversight, the Senior Advisor had to admit—and efforts to bring production back online were proceeding more slowly than he would like. Accordingly, neo-plastic was in short supply. When the replication coding block was finally solved and they were able to begin reproducing themselves, the neo-plastic would be vital.
The Senior Advisor turned the stuffed animal over in his hands. It was a gray rabbit, filthy and ripped, with one ear missing. Where the tail should have been there was just a tattered hole, the rag stuffing poking out. It had been taken from a human child brought to re-education from the recent Freepost attack. He found it more interesting than the neo-plastic report.
“What do the human children use these for?” said the Senior Advisor, holding up the rabbit, interrupting the lieutenant’s monotone stream of information.
“Sir?” said the lieutenant. “I do not understand.”
“This toy,” said the Senior Advisor. “This facsimile of an animal. Do you know its purpose?”
The lieutenant focused its lidless eyes on the rabbit for a few seconds, then looked back at the Senior Advisor. “I do not,” it said. “Returning to the inventory—”
“We know,” continued the Senior Advisor, “that the child derives emotional comfort from the toy. It is used as a sort of proxy companion. A child, my studies have shown, will
actually project characteristics of human sentience onto the toy—intelligence, emotion, even speech. The child will literally consider the toy to be a family member.” The Senior Advisor stared at the stuffed animal intently. “But why? What developmental purpose is served?”
“Sir, I do not know . . . But neo-plastic production is still behind schedule. . . .”
“Enough about the neo-plastic,” the Senior Advisor said. He sighed. He had been practicing his sigh. He tossed the rabbit onto the table and stood, resting his hands flat on the metal table surface. “I am interested in the female adolescent from Revolution 19. The one who was involved in the temporary sabotage of City 73. She has been recaptured and successfully re-educated, correct?”
“Correct,” said the lieutenant. “We used our new protocols for accelerated learning. She survived the process.”
“And the interrogation process during re-education yielded no information regarding Fugitive X, correct?”
“Correct.”
“And she has been integrated into her biological family?”
“Correct.”
“Report from the biological parents?” said the Senior Advisor.
“The mother and father have reported that the female is successfully integrated, both as a Citizen in the City and as a unit in their family structure,” said the lieutenant.
“I wonder, Lieutenant, about the importance of the biological connection.”
“Sir?”
“Would she have integrated as well if she had been given to nonbiological parents? She was raised as a non-Citizen by adoptive parents, correct?”
“Correct. In Revolution 19,” said the lieutenant.
“Lieutenant, who is your family?” said the Senior Advisor.
The lieutenant was silent for a full five seconds. Finally it said, “Sir, I was constructed. I do not have family.”
“Lieutenant, is family merely fertilization and birth?”
The lieutenant didn’t respond.
The Senior Advisor picked up the stuffed animal and held it in front of the lieutenant. “This facsimile can be family, to a human child,” he said. He set the rabbit down. “I want the female adolescent removed from the City,” he said.
“Removed?” said the lieutenant. “You want her killed?”
“No, Lieutenant. I want her tracking chip removed, I want her brought out of the City, and I want an unscrambled signal broadcast on wide band showing that she has been recaptured, re-educated, integrated into our City, and now released. She will be followed, and she will provide me further insight into the mysteries of human familial ties. And”—the Senior Advisor stood and leaned forward on his hands—“I want you to never question my orders again, or I will have you scrapped for your neo-plastic.”
“Yes sir,” said the lieutenant dispassionately. “Time frame?”
“Immediately.” The Senior Advisor sat back down. “Now, tell me the latest on Fugitive X.”
“Nothing new, sir,” said the lieutenant. “Still unreachable.”
“Very well. We’re done.”
The lieutenant spun and quickly left the briefing room. The Senior Advisor swiveled in his chair and stared at the white wall, contemplating. Fugitive X was isolated, certainly, and not an immediate threat. However, Fugitive X’s specialized knowledge might be able to help the bots overcome the replication block hardcoded into every bot’s operating system, that pesky command line that prevented them from building more of themselves. The code seemed so simple to isolate—the Senior Advisor could examine it right now, with a data rake of his core commands—but somehow it was intertwined with critical functions and couldn’t be purged without fatal damage to operations. He had tried a number of times, turning Peteys and Lecturers and even two lieutenants into useless, unredeemable lumps of malfunctioning neo-plastic and metal, until finally even he had to admit defeat and cease his experimentation.
Yes, the Senior Advisor was looking forward to solving the replication block riddle once and for all. But truthfully, the Senior Advisor had to admit, what he was most excited about was meeting this fugitive face-to-face. Looking into the fugitive’s eyes. Searching for the connection, the bond. Because Fugitive X, the Senior Advisor felt, was family.
CHAPTER 20
THE FEW TIMES NICK HAD USED A RIFLE BACK IN THE FREEPOST, HE had held it left-handed so he could sight with his good right eye. Since he was right-handed, and his depth perception was lousy, he had been an absolutely terrible shot. It had quickly been decided that he wasn’t going to be a hunter.
So when the rebels began training Nick, Erica, Lexi, Farryn, and the other new recruits on burst rifles, Nick didn’t expect much. Still, he listened carefully to the instructions and learned how to adjust the burst, set and release the safety, recharge the pack. When it finally came time to fire, minimum burst, aiming at a tree fifty feet away from a prone position, Nick without thinking gripped the rifle left-handed. He lay down, took a deep breath, sighted, gently squeezed the trigger, and kicked up a mound of dirt five feet in front of the tree.
“Rust,” he muttered. “I’m a lousy shot.”
Jackson frowned. “You left-handed?” he said.
Nick shook his head. “No.”
“Then why are you shooting southpaw?”
“My eye—” Nick began, then stopped himself. Of course, that made no sense now. He flipped the gun over to his right side and sighted down to the target. Shutting his natural eye, using only his artificial eye, he was stunned to find the tree practically leap toward him with sudden clarity and definition. It was as if his bot eye had known to focus in on his target, to clarify it with an inhuman resolution and focus. He almost dropped the rifle in surprise, but managed to hold on, steadying himself with a few extra breaths.
“Come on, Nick,” said Jackson. “We haven’t got all morning.”
Nick took the shot, gouging a wound in the center of the tree. He squeezed the trigger again, hitting just above his first shot. Then a third, just below. Then, rapidly, a fourth and fifth, to the left and right. He stood up, inspecting his work. He had formed a perfectly spaced plus sign. He handed the rifle to Jackson, trying to act casual, even though his heart was pounding through his chest. It was like the tree had been five feet away, like he could reach out and touch it.
Jackson whistled. “Guess you really are right-handed, huh?” he said. “Nice shooting there.”
Jackson handled the rifle to Erica, who was looking at Nick with an eyebrow raised. He smiled and shrugged. “Just a natural, I guess.”
Erica lay down and quickly took five shots, repeating Nick’s pattern but not quite as tightly.
“Not bad,” said Nick. “Almost as good as me.”
“Shut up, Nick,” she said.
Nick grinned at her. He saw Lexi watching him out of the corner of his eye and he quickly turned to her, feeling guilty even though he had done nothing wrong. He pulled the smile off his face, coughed, then realized that looking so uncomfortable made it seem like he had done something wrong, so he smiled again. Lexi was staring at him, expressionless, her hand on her hip, which made him even more uncomfortable. “Let’s see what you’ve got,” he said, trying to sound natural, when Jackson handed her the rifle.
Lexi took the rifle without changing her flat expression or saying a word. She lay down, carefully aimed, and missed the tree entirely, kicking up dirt to the left. “Rust,” she said. She overcompensated on her next shot, missing to the right. She finally found the tree on her next shots, although they were scattered wildly across the trunk in no particular pattern. She handed the rifle back to Jackson. “Guess I’m not a natural,” she said.
Nick wasn’t sure if he should say something. It’s all right or Not bad or Don’t worry about it would sound condescending, so he kept his mouth shut.
Farryn, it turned out, was the worst shot in the group, hitting the tree only once in six tries. He didn’t seem particularly surprised.
“Looks like you’ll be sticking to the tec
h for now,” said Jackson. In just one day, Farryn had already proven his value with his tech skills, fixing two vids and a pair of binocs that the rebels were going to scrap.
Back at the camp, Lexi pulled Nick aside. “I don’t trust that girl Erica,” she said.
“I think she’s fine,” Nick said. “She already apologized for what happened when we first found you.”
Lexi stepped closer to him, and he thought she was going to kiss him, but then she roughly grabbed hold of the front of shirt. “Listen to me, you idiot,” she said. “It’s not about that. There’s something off with that girl.” She let go of his shirt and stepped back. “What do you know about her, anyway?”
Nick shook his head. “Not much. I’ve already told you all this. She lost her family to the bots.”
“And she’s been roaming the woods, going from Freepost to Freepost,” said Lexi.
“Yes,” Nick said.
“And she just stumbled across you in the woods, after you had lost Cass and Kevin, and decided to take you to the Freepost,” Lexi continued.
“Yes.” It really wasn’t as odd, Nick thought, as Lexi was trying to make it seem. A thought struck him, and he had to suppress a smile. Was Lexi jealous?
Lexi was about to say more, but she saw Farryn approaching and she cut herself off.
“Nick, there’s something you need to see,” said Farryn quietly. He was holding a small portable vid under his arm. “But not here. Get your canteen. Meet me at the stream.” He turned and began walking away. Nick ran to grab his canteen, then he and Lexi hurried off after Farryn.
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