Counterpart

by Hayley Stone

  “Rhona, come here.”

  “No.” I turn away from him. He’s weakening my resolve.

  “Rhona.”

  “No.”

  Camus stands.

  A moment later, his arms encircle my waist, his mouth settling in the nape of my neck. I hold my breath, hoping against hope that he will convince me otherwise, deter me from this course. And at the same time, knowing I can’t let him do that.

  “That’s not what needing—loving—someone means,” he says quietly, and I feel his lips shape each word, printing every syllable into my skin. “It’s exposure, yes. Baring parts of your soul best left in the dark, and trusting the other person not to look away. But it’s also relief, the relief of finding another person whose soul testifies to a feeling you can’t quite put into words. Whose very existence is a promise of peace, even when things are falling apart. That’s love. That’s needing someone.”

  I close my eyes, enjoying his radiant warmth, but at the same time knowing we can’t stay like this forever. “You should have been a poet,” I murmur around the thickness in my throat.

  “English major,” he reminds me gently. “I had to do something with that degree.”

  As much as I want to banter with him like nothing’s happened, and allow his pretty words to infiltrate my heart, I can’t ignore the facts. Somewhere thousands of feet below us, separated by layers of rock and steel and a hundred other souls, a woman with my face lies dead in the morgue. Because she loved Camus, too. Because she was willing to do anything to save him, even destroying everything else. Everyone.

  I killed that woman once, I think with a dry mouth, my heart heaving like a dog’s in late summer. I can do it again.

  I slowly extricate myself from my lover’s arms, turn, and face him.

  “Don’t,” he says. His eyes are ovens of misery, scalding me with guilt. I can barely look at him, but I owe him at least that. “Not after everything…”

  I straighten as much as I’m able to, surprised it doesn’t break every bone in my back. Tension makes my jaw stiff, or maybe that’s just leftover injuries from the attack. “I overheard the Russians talking yesterday. Some of them are leaving soon, returning to their base in Yakutsk. I’d like you to go with them.”

  “Yakutsk.” Camus swipes at his forehead. His gauze tents with the movement; he didn’t tape it properly. “You want to send me to Siberia?”

  “You’re making it sound worse than it is. Before his death, I spoke to Kozlov about the Soviets’ major assets. He was mostly evasive, but he did mention a massive cryostorage unit in Yakutsk, storing the genes for all kinds of pre-Machinations agriculture.”

  “A seed bank.”

  I nod. Off the top of my bruised and battered head, it’s the safest place I can think of to send Camus, where he might actually go. “You could travel there, assess its potential for the future, while also providing a vital liaison between McKinley and Cher.” I try a smile on him. “Two birds, one stone.”

  Cher is local slang for Chersky base, the Russian answer to a potential extinction event, much like McKinley turned out to be. Rumor has it the base used to be an old KGB operation center built into the Chersky mountain range during the Cold War, and later served as a refuge for the military elite and their families during the Machinations. The exact coordinates for Chersky base—and countless other bunkers the Soviets claim exist in the Baikals—is still a mystery, though I’d bet the main facility lies somewhere beneath the range’s tallest peak, Pobeda. Just a hunch.

  Camus sits down to process my words, or maybe his shoulder is bothering him. He covers his face with his hands for a moment, then looks up at me. “Is this punishment? For not sleeping with you?”

  How could he think I would be so petty? “Of course not!”

  “You want to know why we don’t make love?” he says, struggling a little over the words make love. “Trust me, it isn’t for lack of desire.”

  “This isn’t about—”

  “Or because I don’t love you. I do. I love you.”

  “Camus.” I breathe in slowly, trying not to lose my nerve. Change the subject, I think. Don’t let him derail you. But I can’t help myself. I have to know. “Then why?”

  “Because I’m afraid.”

  “Of sex?”

  The skin around his eyes crinkles, as if he would laugh. But he doesn’t. “No. Not at all.”

  “Then—”

  “I’m afraid of losing you, Rhona. You were right when you accused me of leaving an exit before. You were right.” He sighs, raking fingers through his short, dark curls. “I thought I knew how to be alone. In fact, before I met you, I preferred my own company to that of anyone else’s. But after you died…I don’t know how to be alone anymore, Rhona. I don’t know how to be without you. Without your humor brightening up my life, without your spirit lifting mine. I realize now, I wasn’t alone before. I was just empty.”

  No no no, I think. Stop there. He’s getting to you. This is for his own good. Break him to save him. But still I have to ask, “Why keep me out, then?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps a part of me believes it will lessen the blow, if something—if the machines ever—I shouldn’t need to say it.” I’ve never seen Camus at a loss for words like this. It frightens me. Here he is, baring his soul, and I’m about to crush it beneath the heel of my boot. I don’t know if I can do this. “Contrary to popular belief,” he adds with a plaintive smile, “and my clever moniker around base, I’m not made of iron. My thoughts and feelings are not always as rational as I’d like.”

  Be cruel. Be cruel to save him.

  “Well.” I cross my arms, hugging myself, suddenly cold. “Like I said, this isn’t about our sex life.”

  “No?” His smile shrivels; it’s like watching a beautiful insect die. He holds out his hands, palms upward in a gesture of surrender, helplessness, or maybe simple frustration. “Clearly I’ve done something to offend you, seeing as you’re attempting to ship me off to Timbuktu.”

  “Firstly, I’m shipping you off to Siberia. Totally different.” He gives me a look that would skin a cat. “Secondly, it’s not going to be forever.” Just until McKinley is better secured. Until I can wrap my mind around what I have to do to win this war, the leader I have to be, without constantly being distracted by your safety, hemorrhaging thoughts and time and concern. I don’t tell him any of this. He would just try to argue with me further.

  He massages his temples. “You’ve had a long day. And an even more hellish month. Perhaps you shouldn’t make important decisions on so few hours of sleep.”

  “I’m not going to change my mind, Camus. You’re going to Yakutsk. That’s the end of it.”

  Camus mutters something I don’t catch, and clutches the comforter nearly hard enough to tear it. Finally, after another moment, he lets go and emerges from his slouch. His strong, upright posture would be more impressive if he weren’t missing his shirt. Mostly he looks like a man kicked out of his apartment by an angry girlfriend.

  “You want me to leave?” I expect him to be harsh, reproachful. Angry. But he delivers the following statement without heat or vitriol. The only indication of trauma is buried in the tormented glaze over his eyes. He spreads his hands. Rises to his feet. “Fine. Consider me gone.”

  “Temporarily,” I correct.

  He stiffens when I try to touch him, and I let my arm drop. “That may not be up to you,” he says.

  This isn’t how I imagined our night ending—apart from one another, so distant we can barely feel each other in the same room. What am I doing? A brief moment of panic claws at my stomach. But as soon as I ask myself that question, I already know the answer.

  What is necessary.

  Chapter 18

  If not for the automatic shutdown command installed in every single one of the Russo machines, and the fact no one actually died in the phony assault, we might have had an inter-resistance crisis on our hands.

  As it happened, the New Soviets claimed
the entire thing was orchestrated as a test to identify any weaknesses in McKinley’s security and emergency-response protocols. To avoid being caught off guard again, they said. The council came back with a severe reprimand, which I was forced to deliver personally, but if Hawking and her lot thought mere words were going to do anything, they were sorely mistaken. The Russians took the rap on the knuckles we gave them with a smile. They weren’t wrong, after all. Our response had been pathetic.

  Nevertheless, once the dust settles, the council accepts my proposal to send Camus to Russia. In exchange, several high-ranking diplomats of the Soviet’s choice will be invited to visit McKinley. The trade is my idea, a way to soothe any nerves about us loaning one of our finest councilors, but in private I still can’t help thinking of it as the setup for a future hostage exchange.

  At least now things should calm down, I think. I hope.

  I’m wrong.

  Two days after Camus leaves for Yakutsk, Zelda calls me down to Military, saying I’d better come quick because Councilwoman Hawking has, and I quote, “lost her damn mind.”

  The request immediately makes me hot with fear. I begin to worry Renee has changed her mind, and decided to retract the not-guilty verdict she and the council rendered only three days ago. At the time, everyone agreed: I had no choice but to kill my clone. Despite a few questions raised during the autopsy regarding the location of the knife wounds, it was a clear case of self-defense. My own injuries testified to the struggle, and Sandra Westen’s death drove the final nail into Crazy Rhona’s coffin. I was innocent. I am innocent.

  But now that Camus is gone, I’ve lost one of my strongest advocates and anything could happen. The political winds changed once; they could do so again. I thought the absence of my lover would strengthen me, but I’ve never felt more vulnerable.

  “It has nothing to do with you,” Zelda replies impatiently, when I bring up my concerns. “Not everything is about you. Now, get down here.”

  I make it down to the military level in record time, but still Zelda rushes me before I even reach the door to her lab. “About time,” she says, as if I took hours instead of minutes. She paces in front of me, arms flat at her side, glancing back at the door unhappily, like a predator watching another, bigger, badder predator digest its hard-earned meal. “You need to get in there and talk some sense into that woman, or I swear to God, Long, I won’t be responsible for my actions!”

  “Calm down. Tell me what’s going on.”

  She stops pacing. “I was in the middle of putting together a prototype of this new EMP device Clarence and a few other technical engineers helped design, when—”

  “Clarence designs EMPs?”

  “A lot of our old stuff doesn’t work against the machines; we’re constantly having to update and revamp, but we got a lot people from Churchill who used to work for some of the top research and development labs in the U.S. and Canada. Ulrich helps out now and then, too. He doesn’t have the technical background, but he offers practical advice for field application.” She looks at the door again. “Anyway, we were working when Hawking burst in and demanded to see Dopey.”

  “Who?”

  “The doppelgänger machine, as you call it. But that’s a mouthful, so I shortened it. You’re welcome.”

  “To Dopey? You have to see how that’s offensive…”

  “Stay on target, Long.” Zelda resumes pacing, glaring at anyone who passes by us too closely in the hall. “Hawking said she needed to ask the machine some questions—about where it was built, why it was built, if it knows of any other clones, where the higher echelon might be storing them. I told her it wasn’t going to work. Only its default state would know any of those things, and I can’t return it to that setting without a repeat of the IC lab. Having your thoughts in a machine’s body causes it understandably to lose its shit. Hawking didn’t care. She gave me the order, and told me to get out. I haven’t been able to gain entry because I no longer have high-enough clearance for the room. It’s my own damn lab!”

  I look at the soundproofed, potentially blast-proof door. Renee, what are you really after? “She’s inside with the machine now? Alone?”

  “Orpheus is with her.” Zelda scrunches her face. “I’m guessing she thought she could play the family card and I wouldn’t say boo about what she’s doing.”

  “She’s obviously never had siblings,” I joke, though neither have I.

  “Yeah,” Zelda says absently. I can tell, beneath the anger, she’s worried. About her brother, or her pet machine?

  “All right. Stay here.” I apply my hand to the identification scanner and the door slides open, as it should. Whatever she might believe about herself, Hawking’s not at the top of the totem pole yet.

  “Like hell,” Zelda says and pushes past me, heading inside.

  Her lab isn’t as state-of-the-art as the chem labs on Biology, nor as large as some of the training rooms on this level, but instead reminds me of a simple mechanic’s shop. Everything is metal and concrete, yet strangely, almost impossibly, clean. There isn’t any grease on the floor. No gasoline vapors cloud the air. Where there are wires, she’s used cords to keep them together and untangled, and with the exception of the tools she was using before Hawking interrupted, everything appears in its rightful place. The last time I visited, I was too tired—not to mention slightly traumatized, carrying the head of my machine twin under my arm like some barbarian trophy—to appreciate how organized the space is. It subverts the image I’ve always held in my head of Zelda as a messy robotics genius. In reality, she’s anything but slovenly.

  Which is why I can’t help but cringe as “Dopey” writhes on one of Zelda’s work tables, knocking off two pairs of pliers and a screwdriver, sending the latter spinning across the floor. Lefevre is holding the machine down, while Hawking leans over it, speaking in the firm voice of a schoolteacher. I can barely hear what she’s saying over all the flailing and the machine’s—laughter?

  “Councilwoman,” I say sharply, at the same time Zelda says, “Get out of my lab.”

  I shake my head at her, and surprisingly, she backs off, slouching back against one of her stations with arms crossed.

  Renee straightens slowly, turning toward us with forced dignity. Behind her, Dopey—great, now Zelda has me thinking it—continues to cackle maniacally, hardly pausing to breathe. Obviously she doesn’t need to breathe at all; I find it interesting the machines programmed that behavior into her, along with the appearance of blinking. It’s almost as if they want her to seem as human as possible. Then again, they didn’t bother to dress her metal skeleton in any kind of synthetic skin or clothing, so who knows what the higher echelon is thinking.

  “Miss Lefevre,” Hawking says. Dopey momentarily hits a high note, causing us all to flinch, before her voice plummets to low, ragged sobs. Her emotions are all over the place, though I don’t blame her, given the artificial condition of her body. It, I mentally correct myself. It it it. “You brought the commander. How enterprising.”

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “What someone should have done the moment we acquired this piece of technology.” She pats a wrinkle from her blouse, trying to look casual. But I notice the way her hand flutters near her throat, and her chest heaves rapidly, as if she’s trying and failing to take in enough air. Even leaving aside any personal ethics regarding torture, merely interacting with the machine would be a disturbing experience for anyone, even her. “Captain Lefevre, keep it still.”

  “It’s suffering,” I say.

  “Hardly. It’s a machine. It doesn’t feel anything.”

  “Come on, Renee. I probably have more reason that anyone to hate this thing, but even I can acknowledge it’s more than just spare parts. It can think. Reason.” I recall its warning when the alarms went off, and its cold metal fingers on my arm. It tried to keep me away from danger. “Maybe even empathize. We don’t know—”

  “It’s an act!” Hawking explodes, flying toward me
like shrapnel, all sharp tones. I have a weird instinct to duck away, but I stand my ground, even as she gets near my face. “Haven’t you asked yourself why? Why would the higher echelon build such a thing, if not to use it against us? We’re predictable as apes. Our base instincts lead us to care about anything even remotely anthropomorphized. We can bond with a stuffed animal if it’s given a name and personality. It’s a game we play with children. Tell me. Are you a child, Commander? Will you be fooled by a little playacting?”

  Now that we’re parted by a mere foot, if that, I notice the sweat on her brow, the moisture on her upper lip. She looks unwell.

  “Renee, are you all right…?”

  She cuts me short with a little wave. “You said Miss Lefevre discovered coordinates written into the machine’s code. It must have some idea about what they’re regarding. Failing that, it must know where it was manufactured, where it comes from. Perhaps it was produced in the same location where your clones are being held. This information could be crucial to solving all our problems, and regaining our allies’ trust. We can’t continue to take the blame for these ambushes. The name of Rhona Long is losing its value as currency.”

  “Why don’t we tell them the machines are manufacturing the footage?” Zelda points out. “It’s a good story.”

  “Because then they will surely never trust another transmission from Rhona Long again.”

  “I’m Rhona Long,” Dopey interrupts, lifting its head to look at us, blinking sedately. Its calm is even more troubling than its mania. “I’m Commander Rhona Long. Com-man-der. Don’t you know what that means? It means I’m in charge here. I’m running this base. And I demand you let me go, at once.”

  It holds our stare for a long moment. Then it throws back its head, producing an image of fresh tears on its digital face, and laughing, like it’s told some horribly clever joke.