Danny and Kate gathered most of the survivors of Platoon A into the shadow of the ambassador’s residence. Tin Men had cleared the building but for security purposes it was still off-limits—the ambassador and his staff would be bunking with their military neighbors until further notice.
“Where’s the lieutenant?” McKelvie asked, fear in his voice.
“Meeting with Finch,” Kate replied.
The rest of them were quiet. Danny glanced up at the wall and saw one of the sentries watching them instead of the street. He tried to imagine this picture from the sentry’s point of view—a bunch of armed killer robots gathered in a quiet corner of the courtyard, conspiring among themselves.
Only we aren’t conspiring, Danny thought. We’re just like the rest of you—we’re freaking the fuck out.
Kate had just finished relating their conversation with Hanif Khan to the rest of them—including what they thought had really happened to the Tin Men during the Pulse.
“No offense, Sergeant,” Hawkins sneered, “but that shit is impossible.”
“Look,” Travaglini said, “I’m no god of biomechanics—”
“We’re still here, Hawkins,” Danny interrupted.
“Kelso—” Hawkins began.
“No, listen!” Danny snapped, scanning the gathered members of his platoon. Kate and Torres. Trav and Hawkins. Birnbaum, Hartschorn, Lahiri, Prosky, McKelvie. Mavrides, who was quiet for once.
“The EMP fragged all transmissions,” Danny said. “I’m talking global. Deep down, I think we all knew it. Believing our piloting relay was on a separate satellite? That comms would come back if we waited long enough? That’s a fairy tale.”
“We’re shielded,” Prosky whined, as if that was the answer to everything.
Kate held up a hand. “Yes, our hardware has shielding that would protect onboard ops and power cores from a pulse like that, but if we were really piloting the bots remotely, we wouldn’t still be here.” She looked around, meeting the eyes of each soldier. “You understand what I’m saying? Our minds are in the bots.”
“That’s impossible,” Hawkins sneered. “You can’t transmit a human mind via fucking satellite.”
“You sure about that?” Danny asked.
“It might be possible,” Hartschorn said. “There’ve been experiments with synthetic brain modification—like adding data storage. If science can do that, it means your consciousness can spread from organic to synthetic neurological materials. From there to transmission…it’s not out of the question.”
He and Birnbaum were both techs, but Hartschorn was their resident science geek. They all glared at him, hating him for not telling them it couldn’t be true.
“No way,” Hawkins said. “I’m lying in my big fucking can back in Germany, waiting for some tech to pop the top and unplug me. So EMPs blew the shit out of everything, so what? There are so many satellites in distant orbit…you’re telling me whatever this EMP was, it fried every damn one of them?”
“Near enough,” Danny replied.
“Your body,” Kate said.
Hawkins stared at her, looking more hurt than angry. He didn’t want to know. “What?”
“Your body is lying in that can, Hawkins,” Kate said. “Your mind is here. Somehow it’s always been here. Not just this time—every time.”
“Uncle Sam lied,” Danny said. “It wasn’t our mental impulses they were routing through those satellites, it was us. Our minds.”
“That’s just…” Hawkins started again, but faltered.
“Oh, no,” Birnbaum said quietly. “The sarge. Kasturi and Jones. Corcoran.”
“Eliopoulos,” Torres said. “He invited me to his wedding.”
“Oh, no,” Birnbaum said again. She put her hands over her curved metal abdomen and her legs went out from under her, just as if she were human. She slid to the ground and sat there among them. Hawkins knelt beside her, put a hand on her shoulder, and for a few seconds they all just listened.
None of them had ever heard a robot weep before. There were no tears, of course. The Tin Men were incapable of shedding tears. But Birnbaum’s soft moan of sorrow was enough to break all of their absent hearts.
“If you’re right,” Torres said, “if comms are down and their minds were trapped when the bots were destroyed, what happens now? Their bodies are still there, back at the Hump. That place is massively shielded. Hell, our bodies are still there. So is that it for those guys? Just…brain dead, back in Germany?”
For the first time, Danny looked at Travaglini’s rocket-riding blonde and Hawkins’s smiley with crossbones and they weren’t amusing anymore. So many of the Remote Infantry Corps had grown up on video games and looked at deployment as just leveling up. Danny had never been quite that cavalier, but now, more than ever, it wasn’t a game. This time there would be no bonus lives.
“That’s what made the Bot Killers so determined,” Danny said. “They knew this time they were killing us for real.”
Ever since he had first signed on for the Remote Infantry Corps—the first time he’d slid into a canister in Germany and opened his eyes to peer out from inside a robot shell—Danny had been having a recurring dream in which he was a ghost in the midst of a war. He often felt that way while piloting his robot: uprooted, as if he had truly left the physical world behind. And now it seemed that he had.
I’m a ghost, he thought numbly.
“Damn it, the sarge,” Hawkins groaned.
Mavrides said nothing, studying them.
“My mom and my little sister live in Vermont,” McKelvie said. “They’re probably okay, don’t you think? I mean…once people really understand what’s happened it’s going to be a shitstorm, but places like that will be okay, right? It’s not like Chicago or something.”
“I’m from Chicago,” Prosky said. “Got an ex-wife there. My little boy, Amos…he’s nine.”
A cold silence settled in. They’d been so focused on themselves that they hadn’t taken a moment to really envision how the rest of the world might be reacting to the fragged engines, the burnt-out circuitry. Panic would war with hope at first. People would want to think that everything would be okay, that someone would be along to fix it all. Local governments would organize their citizens and attempt to brave the worst of it, pull together. Danny didn’t know about the rest of the world, but in America the populaces of major cities would attempt to live up to the myths they had created about themselves.
Some would recognize the truth more quickly, do the math and figure out how long it would take for everything—hell, anything—to get fixed, and know that the chances of a major city holding itself together that long were practically nil. The looting would start, the shooting. The world had too many damn guns. People would want to circle the wagons, gather their loved ones and as much food as they could find, and then they would do whatever they had to in order to protect themselves.
TVs were dead. Phones. No more movies. No Internet.
Jesus, Danny thought. No Internet. All the data that had been stored there, all the books and journals—the knowledge—that had never made it onto paper…all that was gone forever, as if the Library of Alexandria had spanned the world, and these fucking anarchists Hanif Khan worked for had just burned the whole thing down.
Some places might make it work—places where there were still farms, or where people were hardy and could adapt—but soon enough those areas would come under attack by others who wanted what they had. It would get ugly almost everywhere; the big cities would be the worst. Prosky’s son, Amos, had a life expectancy measured in months unless his mother was smart and saw it coming, got the hell out of Chicago.
The others began to talk about their loved ones, the people they feared for. All except Danny, who had no one, and Mavrides, who remained sullenly silent. Danny’s father was dead, his older brother was a prick, and he hadn’t seen his mother since she’d taken off with her dealer when he was ten years old. He had friends, of course, but oddly he thought of Nora, so soft and warm and alive in bed with him that morning. He thought of her little-girl vanity and the fights they’d had and how good her sheets always smelled, full of her perfume and her sweat and the sex they’d had in the softness of that bed. In the time they had been together, he had never once felt as if they were truly bonded, as if they had a future. Sharks had to keep swimming, keep moving, or they would die.
Of all of them, Danny thought he was the best suited to live through this chaos, because there was no one alive he loved enough to distract him from the hard work of surviving.
He looked at Kate and found her looking back. Suddenly memories of Nora blurred and were replaced by images of Kate in the flesh, her lovely skin and the intelligence and mischief in her eyes. He wanted to keep Kate alive, too, and not just because she was a member of his platoon.
The urge worried him. That sort of thing could get him killed.
Torres swore under her breath. “All that shit Lieutenant Trang was saying, about his wife pulling the plug on his body. He knew it right away.”
Mavrides let out a short bark of a laugh. “Trang was falling the fuck apart, and you were all just holding your dicks. Stay on mission. Run back to base. Pledge allegiance to the fucking flag, right?” He laughed again, a terrible sound, the giggle of a child pulling the wings off a fly. “Sayonara to that shit.”
Danny stared at him, at the damn death card on his forehead, and realized that Trang hadn’t been the only one who had figured it all out right away. Mavrides had essentially said as much when he’d shot that civilian in the leg, but the rest of them had still been living the fairy tale, waiting for another satellite to come in range.
“So what do we do now?” Hawkins asked.
“I’ll tell you what we do,” Torres said. “Our duty. The USA gave me everything I have. I signed on to serve my country because I believe in it, and I’m going to keep doing that.”
“What country?” Hartschorn said. “Seriously. How much of the great old USA is still going to be standing in a year? Look, I had cancer as a kid. I never figured I’d live this long, but I did. My body’s alive in that goddamn canister, and I intend to get back to Germany. If there’s still power at the Hump, they’ve gotta have a way to get us into our bodies again. After that, I’ll fight for the people I love, but not for my country—”
“Not for the government that did this to us,” Lahiri said, his voice quietly powerful. “The government that fucked us like this.”
Hawkins had been crouched beside Birnbaum. Danny had no idea what was going on in Naomi’s head and was amazed that she had accepted any kindness from a guy who had infuriated her with his piggish come-ons for months, but now they seemed to have a bond.
“What about you, Kate?” Hawkins asked, his voice a low mechanical growl. “You’re acting sergeant now. What’s your take?”
“Her take?” Rawlins said. “Trang’s the lieutenant. I’m more interested in—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Hawkins snapped, and Rawlins knew better than to argue.
“Well?” Danny said, glancing at Kate.
Kate took a moment, then gave a single grim nod.
“My take is we shag our asses back to Germany,” she said. “When we hit the Hump, I’m gonna have a few questions for the brass.”
Torres rapped on Danny’s arm and he glanced over to see Lieutenant Winslow approaching. The remnants of Platoon A turned toward Winslow, the conversation halted.
The lieutenant was still flesh and blood. He was not one of them.
“Sergeant Wade,” Winslow said, “Captain Finch wants you and Private Kelso in the conference room in ten minutes.”
Kate nodded. “We’ll be right along.”
Winslow frowned, scanned the gathered Tin Men, then gave a nod before retreating. He had sensed the tension among them, that was obvious, but what could he say? They were not his to command.
Danny had begun to think they weren’t anyone’s to command. Not anymore.
Kate turned to the others. “Turn this over in your heads all you want,” she said. “But do not discuss it where you might be overheard. When we visit this topic again it’s going to be with Lieutenant Trang. Sit tight. Don’t do anything stupid.
“Hawkins,” she said. “In the lieutenant’s and my absence, you’re in charge. Keep it together. Keep them together.”
Mavrides scoffed.
Hawkins ignored him. “You got it, Sarge.”
Danny still didn’t trust Hawkins—he’d have put Torres in charge—but he knew Kate well enough to understand. Mavrides was a mad dog, and Hawkins was the only one she trusted to keep him on a leash.
Alexa Day needed caffeine. Which seemed counterintuitive, considering that her hands kept trembling—normally the kind of thing that indicated too much caffeine. But the craving for a Coca-Cola had come upon her and now it was all she could think about.
She glanced back into the corridor. Marines and civilian embassy personnel buzzed around, trying to figure out what they were supposed to do next. Nobody was keeping watch over her. The sentries were out on the wall, waiting for another attack, and her father had gone to Captain Finch’s quarters to borrow a clean shirt. The bloodstains on the one he’d been wearing would never come out.
Alexa hurried around the conference table toward the back of the room and pretended that the tremor in her hands hadn’t just gotten worse. She thought of the fresh black stitches that ran like a zipper across her father’s left cheek and temple and the smaller set on his arm. Arthur Day had always been handsome. These scars wouldn’t erase his handsomeness, but from now on his features would be different. Grimmer.
Exhaling heavily, she pulled open the door at the rear of the conference room. There was a single small window in the room and she was grateful for it—otherwise the kitchen would have been pitch black. She wondered how many candles there were at the embassy and then decided she didn’t want to think about nightfall.
Baz Nissim had told her there would be soda and snacks in the kitchen and he hadn’t been wrong. She tugged a bag of pretzels from a cabinet and then opened the quickly warming fridge to find assorted flavored waters and sodas.
Alexa fetched a can of Coke from the dark, dead fridge, the can still retaining some of the cold from when the appliance had been working. Closing the refrigerator door, she popped the can and lifted it to her lips. The first sip became a deep gulp and she found herself drinking greedily, draining half the can in no time.
Her lips began to tremble the way her hands had done only moments before. Tears welled in her eyes and she set the can on the counter. Her father had tried to console her, told her that her mother would be all right, but Alexa had felt herself flushing with emotion and been unable to reply. At seventeen, she was old enough to know there was nothing she could do to protect her mother and nothing her mom could do to protect her.
Live, she thought.
The word had been echoing through her mind all morning. If Alexa had been able to talk to her, she knew that would have been her mother’s advice. Live. Survive. Make it home. She kept sending those same thoughts out into the universe, hoping that God or whatever power might be listening would carry the message to her mother. Live. Survive. Wait for me.
She stared at the Coke can, but she no longer had any desire to drink the soda. The taste of it did remind her of home, of her mother, and she needed to toughen up. To make it out of this godforsaken war zone, she would have to dry her tears and stiffen her spine and make her own decisions.
Pouring the Coke into the sink, she paused at the sound of someone entering the conference room. Heavy steps, the low hum of machinery—a sound that had mostly vanished from the base—and she knew the people who’d just come in were robots. Tin Men. Not people at all.
Alexa left the can on the counter and reached for the door, intending to announce herself, but then the robots started talking and she hesitated.
“Mavrides is losing it,” one of them said. A female.
“He’ll pull it together,” replied the other. A male.
Of course robots were neither male nor female, but the soldiers piloting them were. She wondered how close to their actual voices these electronic simulations were.
The voices had gone quiet. Standing just behind the kitchen door, Alexa cocked her head, listening to the silence for a moment before a rush of panic went through her. Had she made a sound? Had she given herself away? They would think she had been eavesdropping. She had been, but not in any sneaky way. It had just kind of happened—but Alexa knew they’d never believe it.
“What about you?” the female said, her voice gentle.
“Me?” the male replied.
“How’s your morale?”
Alexa quietly exhaled. They had no idea she was listening.
The male robot gave a low, cynical laugh. “My morale is shit, Kate. But I’m not going to let that get in the way of the mission—whatever we decide the mission ought to be. I’m all right.”
The robots fell quiet again. Alexa knew they could normally communicate through internal channels, so others could not overhear, and she wondered if that was what they were doing. The kitchen door was open an inch or so and she decided to take the risk of being overheard. She adjusted her position, pressed her eye to the gap, and shifted until she had a view of the two robots.
At first, what she saw confused her. One of them—the number thirteen painted on its forehead—held a hand against the face of the other, almost cupping its cheek.
“You’re not alone, Danny,” said the female, Kate. “None of us is.”
Alexa blinked, a smile spreading across her face. She’d kept thinking of them as robots, but of course that had been foolish of her. They were people. Soldiers. Men and women who were just as frightened as she was.
Danny turned away. “We’re all alone.”
Kate stared at him, expression unreadable. “Is that how you want it?”
“Want’s got nothing to do with it. That’s just how it is.”
Alexa couldn’t breathe. What was going on between these two?
The door to the conference room opened abruptly and Alexa stepped back an inch or so. The robots came to attention as Captain Finch and Lieutenant Winslow entered the room, followed by Alexa’s father. The ambassador wore a clean shirt and he looked more alert than he had fifteen minutes ago when Finch had taken him off in search of one. The skin around the stitches on his face had turned an angry red and she wondered how much the wound hurt.
A third robot entered the room and the first two snapped off a crisp salute.
A pair of soldiers began to enter, but Captain Finch held up a hand and instructed them to wait in the hall. Whatever this meeting was, it was for command staff only. Alexa felt her face flush and her pulse began to race. Eavesdropping on Danny and Kate had been bad enough, but that had been sort of an accident. Spying on this meeting was a terrible idea; her father would be furious if he discovered her. She tried to make herself move, but if she revealed her presence, Danny and Kate would know they had been overheard.
Don’t be stupid, she thought. Just go—
“Sergeant Wade,” Finch said. “I’d like your thoughts about our prisoner.”
“A moment, Captain,” said the third robot, who had the infinity symbol painted on his chest.
“Lieutenant Trang?” Finch replied. So infinity bot was a lieutenant.
Trang ignored Finch, staring at Danny and Kate. Robots had facial expressions, but Alexa had always thought of them as fairly limited because so much emotion came through human eyes. Even so, Trang’s irritation was evident.
“Sergeant Wade is here to make a report,” Trang said. “There’s no reason for Private Kelso to be here as well. Whatever decisions are made at command level should remain private until we are prepared to disclose them.”
The moment of tension that followed made Alexa hold her breath. Hostility filled the room like some kind of poison gas.
Kate turned to Finch. “Captain, Private Kelso and I questioned the prisoner together. I thought his perspective might be valuable.”
“You have a lot of thoughts today,” Lieutenant Trang said.
Finch held up a hand. “Enough, Lieutenant. Day’s ugly enough without whatever issues you may have within your platoon.” He turned his attention back to Kate. “The prisoner, Sergeant. What’ve we got?”
Kate nodded, ignoring Trang now. “Hanif Khan. Afghani. Had definite foreknowledge of today’s events, but not who or how. The why is the same as every anarchist group encountered over the past twenty years has had, just taken to the furthest extreme.”
“They think we’re the bad guys,” Finch said.
“Maybe we are,” the ambassador replied.
Alexa flinched, hating the exhaustion in her father’s voice and stung by his words.
“Ambassador?” Captain Finch said.
Alexa shifted to get a better look at her father. He had taken a seat at the conference table—something the others hadn’t bothered to do—and he looked gray and weary. The stitches gave him an air of wisdom, but it was an ugly sort of wisdom. A bleak, hopeless sort. Alexa thought it was no wonder he hadn’t been very good at comforting her.
“I’m not saying the world deserved this,” the ambassador said. “But we were kind of asking for it, don’t you think?”
“I certainly don’t think—” Finch began angrily.
“What do you call someone strong who pushes around people who are weaker, Captain? A bully. No matter our rationale—some of which was sound, some selfish—we were bullies. Well, the weaker kid just changed the fucking rules, and the schoolyard’s never going to be the same.”
Alexa’s mouth opened. Her father never swore.
“That line of thinking isn’t exactly helpful, Mr. Ambassador,” Lieutenant Winslow said.
The ambassador stood up. “You guys need to get your heads out of your asses. Decisions have to be made about the immediate concerns of the people inside these walls. My daughter is here, for Christ’s sake! She’s got to be my first priority.”
“With all due respect, Ambassador Day,” Trang said, “your first priority should be your post.”
Alexa watched her father scowl.
“This is what I’m talking about,” he said. “Pay attention. Folks are going to be turning on each other pretty damn soon. There are plenty of weapons and ammunition inside our walls. We might be weeks or even months away from some upstart warlord deciding to try to take them, but it’s going to happen.”
“In which case,” Winslow said, “what about nukes?”
“Shielded,” Danny replied. “At least, I’m pretty sure all of those facilities are shielded. They’d still have power. And the defenses at those places…nobody’s going to get in there.”
“In the United States,” Kate said. “I just hope the rest of the world’s arsenals are as well guarded.”
“What if somebody launches?” Danny asked.
In the adjacent room, Alexa hugged herself, icy fingers clutching her heart.
“Not going to happen,” Captain Finch said. “Without satellite guidance the missiles could not be relied upon to find their targets. And without communication relays, who would give the order? The president’s not going to be in any position to do it unless he sends the order by smoke signal.”
Kate straightened up.
Alexa tried to read the strange expression on her face—was that fear or confusion?—but hadn’t been around enough robots to make sense of it.
“What is it, Kate?” Danny asked.
“Sergeant Wade?” Finch said. “Something you want to—”
“Sorry, Captain,” Kate said, her voice sounding more robotic somehow. Hollow. “I’m going to need a minute.”
As Trang began to harangue her about protocol and chain of command, she threw open the door and vanished into the corridor. Danny didn’t hesitate or ask permission, just rushed out behind her. Alexa remembered the moment of tenderness she had witnessed between them and quietly prayed they would be all right.
Lieutenant Trang directed his tirade toward Captain Finch as Winslow shut the door behind the departed robots. Through the gap between the kitchen door and its frame, Alexa watched her father return to his seat. He leaned back in the chair and stared at the ceiling as if he expected answers to come down from Heaven.
None were forthcoming.
Danny knew where Kate was headed as soon as she hit the stairs. He followed her down the darkened stairwell and into the waiting area outside the brig. Oil lamps and candles threw long, shuddery shadows upon the walls and it occurred to Danny that they wouldn’t last very long. Plan B for a power outage was to use the generators, but they were just as fried as everything else. How much oil could they have stocked up for those lamps?
“Kate,” he said as he caught up to her, just outside the brig.
The two MPs gazed at them curiously as Kate reached for the door handle and Danny tapped her shoulder.
“Wait a second,” he said.
She rounded on him, inhuman eyes blazing brightly. “You don’t understand!”
“No,” he said, “I don’t. Clue me in?”
She was still for a moment. Then, with a glance at the MPs, she took his arm and walked him back toward the bottom of the steps, where they could speak with a modicum of privacy.
“Today’s August thirtieth,” she said.
Danny shrugged. “And?”
“It’s the first day of the G20 summit in Athens,” she said. When she spoke again her voice seemed quieter, smaller somehow. “I thought my dad was home, Danny. Not safe—nobody’s safe, if this is global—but home where he’d have friends around him. Instead…”
It took a second for her words to click. Then he remembered. “Your dad’s in Athens.”
Kate nodded. “And I don’t think that’s the worst of it.”
She spun away from him and strode straight toward the brig. One of the MPs—a thin Asian man—opened the door for her. The soldier looked up at her, this seven-foot robot with devil horns and a pitchfork painted on its cheek, and Danny could see he was intimidated. A healthy response to encountering Kate, Danny thought.
Queen of the Tin Men, they often joked. But it was no joke.
“Sorry, Sergeant,” the MP said. “I can’t let you through without Lieutenant Winslow or Captain Finch. I wouldn’t have opened the door if the intercom was still working.”
Kate shoved him aside effortlessly. The MP snapped at her and started to draw his weapon. Danny grabbed his wrist as, inside the small cubicle that passed for a guardhouse, the other MP did the same.
“Don’t,” Danny said, lifting his arm straight up, forcing him to aim his weapon at the ceiling. “You’re not going to hurt us, pal. More likely you’ll kill your partner with a ricochet. She just wants to talk to the prisoner. You guys can listen in, report whatever you hear if you’re worried about what she might say.”
“We have our orders,” the MP said.
Danny glanced at the man. “I’m not sure orders mean much anymore.”
The MPs exchanged a glance through the cubicle glass and then the one Danny had grabbed gave a nod. Danny felt the guy’s arm go slack and released him. Moments later, all three of them were catching up to Kate, who had arrived at the door to Hanif Khan’s cell.
The anarchist had moved the mattress of his little cot onto the floor. He lay there staring at the ceiling, not acknowledging their arrival.
“I want to ask you something,” Kate said, anger boiling in her voice.
“More questions?” Khan said wearily.
“About timing,” Kate replied. “The G20 summit—”
“Yes.”
Danny stiffened. He moved nearer to Kate so that he could get a better view of Khan through the bars. The asshole just lay there, still not bothering to look at them.
“What do you mean, ‘yes’?” Kate demanded.
“To your question,” Khan replied. “You want to know if part of the plan was to assassinate the world leaders gathered in Athens. The answer is yes.”
“Son of a bitch,” one of the MPs said, exhaling the words in a rasp.
Danny studied the anarchist. Maybe he truly had no idea who had masterminded all this chaos, but he knew more about the plan than he’d admitted and now he was taking pleasure in their dawning horror.
“There’s more,” Danny said, certain of it.
Khan sat up with a jaunty grin. “Of course there is. Someone who goes to this extent to obliterate the global power structure will make sure they’ve taken away the ability of that hierarchy to reestablish itself.”
Where the hell did this guy go to school? Danny wondered. He didn’t talk like some desert warrior.
“You going to tell us?” Kate asked. “Or you want to keep playing games?”
Khan managed to look insulted. “I think I’ve been very forthcoming. I’m happy to tell you because there is nothing you can do to prevent any of it from happening. The knowledge will increase your suffering, and that pleases me.”
“Go on, then,” Danny said. “Increase our suffering.”
“There are strike teams in Athens, yes,” Hanif Khan said. “And, as you know, strike teams everywhere there are Tin Men deployed. But it’s not enough to destroy the Tin Men if you leave alive the possibility that they will ever be utilized again. It isn’t enough to destroy the hardware. You must destroy the software, too.”
Danny stared at him, a chill racing up his spine. Robot frame or not, he could still feel horror.
“They’ll destroy our bodies,” he said numbly.
Khan did not smile.
“One way or another,” the anarchist said, “this day will see you dead.”