Crashed

by Robin Wasserman

  Riley shook his head. “No.”

  “What?” Jude looked back and forth between us. “We all agreed this was the only way.”

  Riley watched him carefully. “And now there’s another way.”

  “Don’t do this,” Jude said, and it sounded half like a threat and half like a plea. “Don’t choose her.”

  “This is for you,” Riley said, and then, as I stood frozen between them, everything fell apart. It happened fast and slow at the same time—so fast I could barely understand what was happening; slow, like a series of freeze frames, flashes of action trapped in amber.

  Jude lunging at Riley.

  Riley grabbing the electric pulsegun from its holster. Riley saying, “I’m sorry.” Pulling the trigger.

  Jude screaming in rage.

  Jude screaming in pain.

  Jude on the ground, body twitching.

  Body still.

  “Get the orgs out,” Riley told me, kneeling at Jude’s body, looking like a frightened child. “We’ll blow the lab and get out of here before—”

  A siren cut through the night.

  Auden’s hand was in his pocket.

  Riley seized the gun from Jude’s limp grip and held it pointed at Auden. “Hands up!” he shouted.

  Auden gave us a faint smile. “Too late,” he said, holding out his ViM. “The Brotherhood knows you’re here. This is over.”

  “You fucking idiot!” Riley growled.

  “Now what?” I shouted over the alarm.

  “Make the call!” Riley shouted back.

  But it was simpler than that—I just skimmed a finger across my nanoViM, linking in and sending the message, all in one motion. Call-me-Ben and the BioMax reinforcements were waiting for my signal. I’d told call-me-Ben we were going to blow something up. I’d told him orgs were going to die. And I’d told him if he acted quickly, did his job right, and kept the operation in house with BioMax secops whose discretion he could trust, he might learn something about the Synapsis Corp-Town attack that could change everything.

  I just hadn’t told him the where and the when, and thanks to Jude’s GPS jamming patch, he had no way of knowing.

  Until now.

  BioMax had been unwilling to stage a rescue operation, but I’d guessed they would be willing to do anything to protect their image, which had taken a huge blow after Synapsis. And Ben had proved me right, eager to strike a deal that would prevent his precious mechs from committing a mass murder that the public would never forgive and for which, I reminded him, BioMax could ultimately be held to blame. Maybe they were partly to blame—but I was gambling on the chance that, whatever role BioMax may have played in all this, Ben wasn’t a part of it.

  He couldn’t be trusted to be on our side, but he would get us away from the Brotherhood, one way or another. If he showed up in time.

  “Get him inside!” Riley shouted, forcing Auden at gun-point toward the laboratory.

  He didn’t have to explain. Now that the Brotherhood knew we were here, we had two options: Blow the lab with ourselves inside. Or barricade ourselves inside the hangar with Auden as a hostage, keeping ourselves safe until BioMax arrived.

  If call-me-Ben was true to his word.

  And if Savona and his people really cared enough about Auden to keep him alive.

  A river of people streamed out, screaming, as Riley held a gun to Auden’s left temple and shouted over the chaos, urging them to run if they wanted their precious martyr to live. I grabbed Jude’s wrist, struggling to drag his body into the hangar, but it was heavy, too heavy. Riley shoved the gun at me, and I trained it on Auden. They should be shaking, I thought, staring at my hands.

  But they didn’t do that anymore.

  I expected Auden to lunge at me again, take advantage of the chaos to escape and leave us at the Brotherhood’s mercy, but he kept his head down and trudged through the snow as I pressed the muzzle to the back of his neck, safety on, knowing that if I was tested, I’d drop the weapon and let him go. Knowing that was the only thing that kept me moving forward, one foot in front of the other.

  Riley hoisted Jude’s body off the ground and cradled it in his arms, Jude’s head resting on his chest, Jude’s eyes open and sightless. And somehow we made it inside the laboratory, safe behind a locked door and shaded windows, alone with the damaged mechs, with Jude’s still body, alone with Auden.

  “Tell them to leave us alone if they want you to stay alive,” Riley ordered Auden. We had retreated to the far corner of the hangar, putting as much space between us and the entrance as we could, just in case.

  With a trembling finger, Auden activated his ViM and spoke into it. “They want me to say they’ll kill me if you move on them. Just wait for my signal. And tell Savona—”

  Riley snatched the ViM out of his hands and threw it across the room. “Enough.” He forced Auden down into a chair and sent me on a hunt for something that could be used to tie him up. There was a roll of duct tape in one of the cabinets. I tossed it to Riley. With a cool competency, Riley bound Auden’s wrists behind his back, then lashed him to the chair at his waist and ankles.

  “Do you have to?”I VM’d. I knew how it felt to be bound. Riley didn’t answer, just kept going until the job was done. It scared me, how good he was, his movements sure and efficient, his expression determined and free of doubt. It scared me most because this was still, plainly, the Riley I knew, not some alien part of himself that he’d kept hidden from me. This was a strength, a ruthlessness that had been beneath the surface all along. But I understood now that I’d always known it was there.

  Jude lay on the floor beside them, faceup, arms splayed.

  And when Auden was secured, Riley stood over Jude’s body, hands clenched into fists, nothing left to do but wait. I touched his shoulder lightly. “I can’t believe I did it,” he whispered.

  “You had no choice,” I reminded him.

  “There’s always a choice,” Riley said. “I was supposed to choose him.”

  He turned away from me. “I’m going to take a look around,” he said, voice rough. “Keep an eye on him and”—he nodded at the four gurneys—”them.”

  “Okay.”

  The hangar had been cleared of anything left over from its aeronautic days, and much of it was still empty. The walls were lined with screens and the far side of the room was littered with unidentifiable spare parts and long, empty tables—waiting for more experimental subjects to fill them up?

  Only a few feet away from us, four mechs lay prostrate on four gurneys, surrounded by unwieldy equipment I recognized from my early days in the BioMax rehab unit, when I’d lain in a hospital bed, frozen, wires like tentacles hooking me to the machines, their sensors feeding into my exposed brain. Ani’s gurney was the closest, and as I drew near, I could hear her murmuring something. A ceaseless string of incomprehensible babble, like a baby testing its tongue. Her head was shaved, tangles of wires connected to a series of monitors disappear-ing into her open skull. I brushed the back of my hand against her cheek. Her eyes were open, staring past me. And her lips kept moving, spilling out the stream of whispered nonsense syllables.

  “How could you do this to yourself?” I murmured. Then forced myself to look past her to Sloane, to Ty, to Brahm, the three of them in the same or worse condition. The fingers of Sloane’s right hand twitched uncontrollably. The skin on Brahm’s chest had been flayed, the wiring left exposed. His eyes roamed wildly, randomly, skidding from one side to the other, pupils contracting to a point, then periodically expanding in a flush of black that flooded his irises. Ty just moaned. At least her eyes were closed. “How could you do this to them?”

  “What’s wrong with them?” Auden asked, straining to see.

  “You tell us,” I said. “You did it. You and your Brothers.”

  “I don’t know anything about this,” Auden said. “Tonight was the first I even heard about this place.”

  “Right.”

  “I was on my way here to find out what
was going on. I never thought . . .” Auden scowled. “Believe whatever you want.”

  He twisted around in his chair, watching the door. Outside, everything was quiet. For all I knew, the Brotherhood had us surrounded, their pulseguns drawn. If they called our bluff and broke down the door, what then? We could end up on those gurneys too, right next to Ani. Or we could finish this right now. Send Auden outside and blow the place up—blow ourselves up with it.

  It’s not death, I reminded myself.

  And it was infinitely better than whatever lifeless madness awaited us on those gurneys.

  “They’ll come for you, you know,” Auden said. “Holding me hostage isn’t going to get you out of here. You’ll never get off the property.”

  “We’re not worried about that,” I lied.

  “Will they be okay?” Auden asked. “Your friends?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Will they?”

  “They’re just machines, right?” I said. Hating him for the fact that I couldn’t hate him, even here, surrounded by the fruits of what he’d accomplished. “No souls, no consciences. Not alive. So honestly, what do you care?”

  “This was never about anyone getting hurt,” Auden said, his eyes involuntarily flickering to the hole his bullet had torn through my thigh.

  “Tell that to your partner,” I said. Then pointed to Ani. “Tell that to her.”

  “You two are the ones with the guns and the explosives,” Auden said. “You’re just proving that everything we say about the skinners is true.”

  “Mechs,” I said. “Not skinners.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “You used to tell me I was just like everyone else,” I said quietly, searching his eyes for something of the old Auden. “That the download technology was amazing. You said I was just as human as you.”

  “I said a lot of things.”

  “Yeah. You did.”

  He blushed, and I wondered if we were both thinking of the same moment. I wondered how much would have been different if I’d let the kiss continue. Then he shot a glance across the room, where Riley had given up playing with the machinery and was just sitting on the edge of a table, his back to us, his back to Jude.

  “Lia, look at yourself,” Auden said. “Look where you are. You really think you made the right choice? To be with them? With him?”

  “I’m not the one who chose.” I didn’t mean for my voice to sound so small. “You made me walk away.”

  “No one makes you do anything,” Auden said. “You’re Lia Kahn, remember? You do what you want. Isn’t that what you always told me?”

  “You told me to go away,” I said. Even smaller. “And never come back.”

  Auden’s face spasmed, then went still. “And you never did.”

  “So that’s why you did it?” I asked “Tried to turn me into a murderer?”

  “You’re the one with the gun.”

  “I’m not talking about this,” I said in a low voice. “Syanpsis. My face in that vid.”

  “What about it?”

  “I know the Temple was behind it,” I spit out, getting angry all over again. “Savona told me everything.” Surprise flickered across his face. “He didn’t tell you that I knew?” I asked, tempted to fake a laugh, just so he would know how much his little band of brothers disgusted me. “And he told me it was your idea,” I added. “To set me up. Make me a killer.”

  He pressed his lips together, tight, like he was holding in the answer.

  Tell me I’m wrong, I begged him silently. Tell me Savona lied.

  “So? Maybe it was my idea,” he said hoarsely. Before, I would have known—whether he was admitting the truth or lying to sound tough. Whether he was proud or guilty. I would have read it on his face, because he was a horrible liar, and because I knew him. But I didn’t know him anymore. He shook his head. “You think that would make us even?”

  “Do you?”

  But before he could answer, a rolling peal of thunder shook the building. The night filled with shouts and screams, and the windows blazed, illuminated by sweeping spotlights. “They’re coming for me,” Auden said, going pale. “Tell your friend to put the gun away. I won’t let them hurt you.”

  “We’re just machines, remember?” I said. “Nothing can hurt us.”

  “I’ll protect you,” Auden said firmly, absurdly, his ravaged body strapped to a chair. “You won’t end up . . . like that.” Neither of us looked at Ani; we both knew what he meant.

  “Riley?” I called. “You ready? If we have to . . .”

  He nodded, mouth set in a grim line, hand clutching the detonator in his pocket. We’d have to move fast to get Auden to safety. No one dies tonight.

  Except maybe us.

  The thunder roared from above, drawing closer. Not thunder at all, I realized, but a helicopter swooping down on us, or, from the sound of it, a fleet of them.

  “Put down your weapons!” a voice boomed from the sky. I wondered if the ex-Faithers out there in the dark thought they were hearing the word of God. Tough luck, psychos, I thought. It’s not your ultimate Creator.

  It’s mine.

  “They’re not coming for you,” I told Auden, hoping I was right. “They’re coming for us.” He looked confused and frightened and something else—something sorry and sad that we’d ended up here, with duct tape and a gun between us and an armed helicopter overhead.

  The windows shattered. BioMax had arrived.

  At least twenty of them in green uniforms with the BioMax logo striped across the back stormed through the shattered glass, guns raised—both the electric-pulse kind and the ones that shot real, org-piercing bullets. Riley and I flung our hands into the air, allowed the BioMax grunts to restrain us and search us while the others secured the building, insuring there were no mechs (or Faithers) hiding beneath the bulky equipment. Rough hands pinned my arms behind my back. I didn’t struggle. Riley too went along quietly. He handed over his weapons voluntarily, and though they gave him a cursory pat down, they missed the most dangerous one of all: the harmless-looking detonator bulging in his coat pocket.

  “All clear!” one of the men shouted. Only then did call-me-Ben deign to enter, his gray heart-pulsing suit as smooth and unrumpled as his hair and face.

  “Quite a mess of things you’ve made here, Lia,” he said, jerking his head in my direction. The man holding me let go.

  “Once you see what they’re up to in this lab, you’ll thank me,” I told him, joining Riley, putting my arms around his waist, my head against his shoulder. Still tied to the chair, pearls of sweat beading on his face, Auden pretended not to watch. It’s over, I thought.

  Ben himself slit the tape binding Auden to the chair. Auden tried to stand, and one of his legs buckled. A BioMax guy swooped in to hold him up, but Auden shook off his help, then limped toward the nearest wall, leaning against it for support, chest heaving.

  Two of the men lined the three of us up against the wall, weapons loosely trained on us. The others swarmed the hangar, examining equipment and beginning to load it onto a series of large dollies. Ben just watched us for a moment, hands on hips, head cocked in amusement. He nudged a toe into Jude’s body and raised an eyebrow. “Tell me, Lia, does betraying your friends get easier the more you do it?”

  Riley glanced quickly between me and Ben. I kept my face blank, knew that even Riley wouldn’t be able to read anything from it. But I didn’t like what I’d seen flickering in his eyes for that brief moment. The questions.

  “I trust you won’t mind sticking around for a bit?” Ben said, as if we had any choice. “I’m sure we’ll have a few questions.”

  “I haven’t done anything wrong!” Auden protested.

  Ben did a slow turn in place, taking in the machinery, the mechs on their gurneys, then faced Auden again. “You’ll stick around,” he said, not a question this time. “You’ll answer for what you’ve done.”

  So the three of us stood there, watching and waiting, as the BioMax
men bustled around us as if we were invisible, examining the equipment, studiously adjusting the machinery that monitored Ani and the others. Riley wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and I let him. Auden kept a foot of space between us, watching the BioMax men go to work on our damaged friends.

  “Will they be okay?” I asked as one by one the mechs were carried out of the building, their lips still moving in nearly soundless nonsense.

  “One way or another,” call-me-Ben said.

  Life as a mech: One way or another, we would always be fine.

  We waited as a BioMax medic examined Auden to be sure we’d done no permanent damage, as she forced Auden to sit, to breathe into a mask that would infuse his weakened lungs with a supply of oxygen. “I’m okay,” he choked out, knocking the mask away. Standing up again on wobbling legs.

  “We’ll get you a wheelchair,” the medic said.

  Auden shook his head furiously, eyes meeting mine. “I have another hour, at least,” he insisted.

  “The nerve-impulse electrodes give you four hours of mobility under optimal conditions,” the medic said. “This much physical and emotional stress, it’s not unusual your system would be overwhelmed, need a rest. You have to remember that for someone in your condition—”

  “I’m fine!” he snapped, pushing the woman away. One foot dragged noticeably behind as he limped back to his place beside us. “Contact Rai Savona,” he ordered Ben. “He can explain to you what all this is—”

  “I’m afraid your friend Savona has disappeared,” call-meBen said serenely. “Slipped off the property as soon as you were taken hostage. Seems he didn’t want to stick around to see how things played out. So why don’t you tell me what it is the Brotherhood was doing out here?”

  “I don’t have to explain anything to you,” Auden said. “This is private property. BioMax has no authority here.”

  “And yet here I am,” Ben said. “And here you are. Your loyal followers have all been encouraged, strongly encouraged, to go home for the night. Your loyal partner has fled the scene. It seems like it’s just the two of us.”