After dinner, the robots escorted us home like the proper gentlemen they were programmed to be. Our habitat was a room as bare and desolate as the dining hall, only without the comfort of hot food to mitigate the dreariness. Creaky metal bunk beds lined the walls. Harsh, cold light blared down from the ceiling panels. It was like I’d just joined the military; I was as close to being a Civ-in-training as I ever wanted to.
There was plenty of space, at least. The room could’ve housed many times our number without trouble, the bunks stretching out from one end to the other like mirrored copies of one another. Mirrored, except for the messes of clothing and washroom implements spread out over those bunks which were occupied.
I found a bunk I liked and set up shop. I chose it because the adjacent beds were also empty. Dragging the filthy wafers that passed for mattresses off these two empty bunks, I proceeded to pile them on top of mine until I had something that looked like a stack of ice cream sandwiches.
“Gods, Mull… what are you doing?” asked Ezra.
“What’s it look like I’m doing? Making myself at home. Help me lift this, will you?”
We nudged the bed against the wall and pulled the pins, then removed the top bunk and set it in the middle of the room.
“Thanks,” I said. “Much better. Now I’ll be able to sit up when I have nightmares about Ms. Foxglove. Do I get a nifty kit of jammers and soap like you guys?”
“What’s all this about?” Angus asked, coming over to inspect the decor.
“It’s about comfort and serenity,” I said. “Not unlike myself.”
He blinked, shook his head, and walked away.
“Wait, where’s my soap? These mattresses smell like piss. I’m gonna need two showers a day to wash the stink off.”
“Closet,” he said, pointing.
“Ah. Thank you, my good man.” I went over to grab myself a set of towels, brushes, and supplies for cleansing my various crevices. I could see that this living arrangement was going to work out swimmingly.
The conversation before bedtime centered mostly around lighter topics, with Thomas and Rindhi doing most of the talking. They were both well-traveled, as it turned out. They’d seen more of the world than I had, both separately and together in the service of the Archduke, and there were plenty of good stories to tell.
Rindhi, in particular, had spent huge swathes of his life abroad, spending months or years in some places to study his first passion—languages. All his modest talk about not having ridgebacks in Mani-Pani had been no indication of how well he knew their particular dialect. The common name of their language was Grallish, he said, though that sounded nothing like its formal name.
While Rindhi told tales about being worshipped by natives, robbed by street urchins, and cursed at by kings in a dozen different languages, I thought of other things. Largely they were the same things I’d gotten into the habit of thinking about in my isolation cell—Pyras, Gilfoyle, Yingler, Ostelle, Mom, Dad, Sable. Loose ends, spinning in my head like a six-gun’s cylinders.
Mostly, of course, it was Sable. If I’d ever come close to being in love with anybody, it was her. Not in love, mind you—just close to it. As the days drew on, I got more and more anxious about finding her. Partly because I cared for her, and partly because I felt guilty for letting her and the others take the fall.
Over the next few days, we worked from dawn to dinnertime, the Brunswicks and myself tinkering away at the logic drive while Thomas hovered, Rindhi rolled, and Nerimund lurked in whatever cabinet or cubbyhole struck his fancy. Nothing exciting happened.
Then, the day came when the testing floor was ready. That was the day I had to remove the medallion again, and it hurt me even more than the first time. I could’ve sworn it was clinging to me, like a stubborn spot on a piece of clothing, refusing to let go. Maybe now that it had tasted the darkness in my heart, the entity inside felt as drawn to me as I did to it. It was the poison pill I wanted to keep taking. Only, it was also taking me.
I set the device on the counter and rubbed my bare chest, feeling empty inside. The callouses had softened, the skin now as supple as a feather pillow. Angus picked it up, clutching it between tender fingers, as if he was scared he might break it. He lowered it into our custom-built receptacle and locked it into place.
The emerald-colored gems in the medallion’s face did not sparkle or glimmer when Angus flicked the switch to turn on the remote control unit. Neither did the automaton on the other side of the glass move or illuminate. The test subject was a stripped-down version of the guards that had been accompanying us everywhere we went. It wore no clothing, no mask, and no outer panels to cover its machinery.
“Kelvin, guard the door,” Angus said, speaking through the comm unit.
The robot obeyed, walking to the wall and putting its back to the glass.
“Kelvin, move to the center of the room.”
It did.
“Kelvin, jump up and touch the ceiling.”
There was a short delay as the automaton processed. It sank to its haunches. Then it leapt, its powerful legs launching it into the air like pistons. It reached with its hand, but its full extension was two yards shy of the ceiling. Landing gracefully on its toes, it bent its knees again and froze in place, calculating.
The next jump was higher, but the robot’s hand still fell about a foot short. It crashed to the ground, still on its feet but with a heavier rumble than before. It repeated the same motion, bending at the knees and jumping, but getting no higher this time. Over and over, it jumped and landed, like some simple-minded kid caught in a never-ending game of Simon Says.
Angus turned off the comm. “They can only jump so high before they start sacrificing some of their balance. This one could touch the ceiling easily if it wanted to, but it’s programmed to stay within certain physical limitations so it doesn’t cause undue damage to itself or its surroundings.”
“If he jumps any higher, that floor ain’t gonna hold out,” said Ezra. The old man cringed each time the robot came crashing down onto the concrete.
Angus flipped on the comm. “Kelvin, stop.”
The robot crashed down, stood up straight, and froze.
“You ready, Hal?” Angus asked, turning toward me.
“As I’ll ever be,” I said, wondering what I’d gotten myself into. If this was what it took to prove the medallion’s value, I supposed it was worth it.
Before he unlocked the heavy metal door, Angus explained to me what was going to happen. They were the same plans we’d discussed previously, so it was more a reminder to me and a briefing to everyone else. He was going to transfer command of the automaton to me. After a few preliminary tests, he was going to transmit the medallion’s signal through the remote device—not to override the automaton’s built-in programming, but to add to it. We’d observe the robot’s behavior, and I’d give it a set of commands that were more complex than it was used to.
“Good luck, Mr. Nordstrom,” Thomas said. He’d been good about calling me that in front of Angus.
“Something tells me I’m going to need more than luck.”
The testing floor smelled of friction and oiled steel. It was the size of a small gymnasium, but it felt more like a cardboard box with the automaton standing there. It swiveled its head, following me with its eyes as I moved across the room. This is nothing I haven’t dealt with before, I told myself, knowing it very much was. The medallion was now playing for the other team. To make matters worse, all my augments were gone. That made me feel as naked as the robot was.
I moved into position, fearing for my life.
Angus’s voice came shallow and tinny through the speakers. “Transferring control.”
Getting me set up to command the test subject had been no simple task. We’d had to record a vocal imprint so it would recognize me. The imprint also identified me as the robot’s master, whom it was programmed not to harm under any circumstances. That was what we were here to test today.
“Kelvin, come here,” I said, loud and clear.
Inside the robot’s abdomen, gears began to spin. It turned and came toward me, moving with such swift and determined gait that I readied myself to sidestep it in case it didn’t stop. I had no doubt it would’ve trampled me into the floor. And yet I stood firm until the robot came to an abrupt halt in front of me.
“Kelvin, take three steps back and do four jumping jacks,” I said. Simon says.
The automaton paused to process before it followed my instructions, surprisingly light on its feet. Okay, so it was doing what I told it to. The easy part’s over, you bucket of bolts.
I drew the pulser on my hip and pointed it at the robot. “Oh, the pain!” I shouted, flying into hysterics. “Kelvin, help me, help me… please! I need help!”
It stared at me, processing, sporting the most what-the-hell-am-I-supposed-to-do look I’d ever seen on a robot’s face. Of course, it was the only look I’d ever seen on a robot’s face.
“Kelvin, help me, you accursed thing. I’m being beaten to death by swarms of tiny invisible men. Get them off me, Kelvin. Kill them all!”
At the word ‘kill,’ the automaton stutter-stepped forward, then stopped, processing some more. I moved the pulser and fired a burst past its left shoulder, close enough to have sizzled the hair on its skin. If it’d had hair. Or skin.
Angus’s voice came through the speakers. “You have to start by saying its name, or it won’t respond to you.”
“Kelvin, never mind. They’re gone,” I said. “I’m fine now. Kelvin, get out of the way, or I’m going to fry your circuits like bacon. Kelvin, from now on, hop on one leg.”
It paused, then lifted a foot and hopped aside as I sent another burst past its head. Its internal components were ticking and spinning as it balanced, waiting on my next order.
Now it’s time for the real test. “Kelvin,” I said, “go pick up the gun.”
Kelvin began to hop across the room toward the table that stood against the back wall. It armed itself and turned to face me.
“Kelvin, stop hopping.”
The robot lowered its other foot and stood still.
I went over and stood beside it. There were three black squares mounted to the far wall, each about the size of a pizza box. They were called RadPads—Patent and Trademark Maclin Technologies—and each was bordered by a thin strip of color around its edge. Red square on the left, blue in the center, and green on the right.
“Kelvin, arm laser and prepare to fire.”
It raised its hybrid rifle and switched over.
“Kelvin, commence firing drill sequence. Target RadPads.”
Kelvin beeped twice.
“Left,” I said.
Kelvin fired a bolt at the left-hand pad, where it stopped dead, like a ray of sunlight into a thick black curtain.
“Blue.”
He shot the blue pad in the center.
“Right. Green. Middle. Red. Center. Red. Left.” I called out a sequence of instructions, alternating between color and position, beginning slowly and picking up the pace as I went on.
It didn’t take Kelvin very long to fall behind. Soon he was missing his targets, three or four steps behind my orders, blowing pits into the concrete wall.
“Kelvin, stop,” I had to say, to prevent his last several shots from going off. “Angus, feed him the signal.”
A pause. “Are you sure?” came the reply.
“Do it.”
“Ooookay… transmitting.”
A strange wave of jealousy swept over me when I thought about the medallion’s influence being fed to the robot, like I was watching another kid play with my favorite toy. But I began Kelvin’s sequence again and started calling out targets.
He hit the first few without delay. I picked up the pace. He was dead center on every shot, aiming as I spoke and firing when the word was done. I sped up some more, and he stayed with me. No matter how fast I went, the robot stayed on target, until I was calling them so fast I was shouting whatever came to mind. As fast as the rifle could snap them off, Kelvin was laying them down with pinpoint accuracy.
“Kelvin, stop. Wow, that was much better.” So far, so good. Now it was time for the final test. The real test. The one I had bet would be a success, but that Dr. Gottlieb had bet would be a disaster.
I donned my protective mask with its high-impact visor, then crossed the room and stood in front of the blue center target. It would be impossible for Kelvin to score a direct hit on that target without my face getting in the way. The only way the automaton could take that shot was if it overrode its programming. Or if something forced it to.
You’d think we would’ve been smart enough to heed the long history of fear surrounding machines that override their creators’ programming. I knew how much of a gambit it was to test whether Kelvin would harm me, but that was precisely what we needed to do before Angus could certify the automatons as being safe enough for wider use.
The RadPads hummed, giving off a hot electrical smell as they cooled.
“Kelvin,” I said. I took a deep breath. “Prepare to fire. Commence firing drill sequence. Target RadPads.”
Kelvin raised the rifle and beeped twice.
“Left.”
A bolt sizzled across the room and struck the pad, less than two feet from my precious face.
“Green.”
Another shot, on target to my right.
I inhaled and closed my eyes. “Blue.”
Nothing.
“Blue,” I repeated.
I opened my eyes. Kelvin was standing there, poised and ready, but no shots came.
“Blue. Center. Middle.”
Kelvin was not shooting. And more importantly, the medallion wasn’t overriding his prime directive of not harming me. I was excited. Understandably so, I might add. And in my moment of excitement, I did something dumb.
I turned toward the control booth to give Angus a thumbs-up. In doing so, I must’ve swayed on my feet a little, because the next thing I knew there was a laser bolt searing toward me, aimed at the center target. I’d given Kelvin an opening, failing to consider that I’d also given it five consecutive commands to shoot the blue target.
It all happened in an instant. An instant that must’ve seemed very long to Kelvin, thanks to the medallion, but which felt very short to me. I shrank away from the blast, turning toward the robot and stretching out my hands. Kelvin was not equipped for human body language recognition, so that gesture accomplished a whole lot of nothing. I had begun yelling out the command, “Kelvin, st—” when one of his laser bolts caught me through the left ear.
There was a wet, searing pain, like a drop of water on a live skillet. I went deaf. Not just in my left ear, but the entire left side of my head. I fell to the floor, more out of a desire to get out of the way than because anything had made me. There was no blood when I turned to look up at the wall, but when I felt for the ear that should’ve been there, my fingers encountered a dripping blue-violet wreckage.
People were scrambling around in the control booth; I could feel the scuffling of footsteps through the floor as Kelvin fired the last of its five shots, dead on target. Angus’s voice came through the comm. He said something that put Kelvin’s lights out, and then the door was opening and feet were pouring through it and there were hands on me and too many voices talking for me to tell one from another.
They hoisted me up onto some kind of stretcher and carried me down the hall. I kept telling them I was fine; it was only my ear, for crying out loud. But I didn’t spend long protesting. I came to my senses after a few seconds and realized I was being carried, which beats walking any day of the week.
When I arrived at the clinic, or whatever you’d call a room like that in a place like the Maclin facility, my favorite person in the world was there. Dr. Gottlieb peered down at me like some curious scientist examining a specimen under a microscope, hemming and hawing over the damage. He did something to me that hurt. Then he did something else that hurt more. He did a third thing that I barely felt, but which somehow seemed like it should’ve hurt even worse than the first two things.
By the time he’d finished with me, the deafness in the left side of my head had been replaced by a numb deafness. I had an earlobe, he said, and I had that whole top part that curves out from where it’s attached to your head. But the back—that middle section with all the thick cartilage, where your earhole is—that part was gone. Like someone had taken a gigantic hole-punch and chomped it right out of there, an ear piercing session gone horribly wrong.
Back in the bunk room, I finally got a good look at myself in the mirror. My ear was a marshmallow of white gauze, the side of my head wrapped up tighter than a locksmith’s daughter. The laser bolt had left a heat line along my cheek and scorched a little path through the hair in front of my ear. I wondered what my ear’s punctured remains must’ve looked like, but that was something I’d find out soon enough.
“You’re lucky you didn’t get a bolt in the eye,” Angus said. “That would’ve been it for you.”
“If there’s one thing I’ve never been, it’s lucky,” I said. “At least now we know the medallion works.”
Angus frowned. “It certainly improved Kelvin’s performance. I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. But we’ll have to do some further testing before we know whether it’s safe.”
“Even if that doohickey is safe, how you gonna transplant it into thousands of automatons at the same time?” Ezra wanted to know.
“We’d have to take it apart and mass-produce it,” said Angus.
“Dr. Gottlieb says that can’t be done,” said Thomas.
“It doesn’t need to be,” I said. “We don’t need a billion copies of the entire medallion. We just need to figure out which part of it is responsible for the improved reflex response and replicate that.”
“Gods, you look awful,” Angus said, ignoring my comment as he looked me over.
I grinned. “Good news, everyone. For once, I feel better than I look.”
“You do have a bit of a sour complexion,” Thomas told me. “Why not go and have a lie-down?”
“I was planning on it,” I said.
I’d just hit my bunk and was trying to ignore the dull throb of pain in my head when Ms. Foxglove entered the room. “Oh, goodness. What do you want? Come to gloat about how wrong I turned out to be?”
“Gentlemen,” she said, prim and polite as ever. “Forgive me for barging in on your personal space, but I’ve just had word that Mr. Nordstrom’s visitors have arrived.”
I shot out of bed. “Visitor…s? As in, plural visitors?”
“That’s right,” she said. “Two of them.”
“I asked for one person. Are you sure you got the right guy?”
“Are you feeling well enough to follow me?”
“For this, yes.”
“Right this way, please.”
After a bunch of hallways that all looked the same, she brought me into a tiny room, where a pane of what I assumed to be double-sided glass looked into another, tinier room. There sat my two most primitive acquaintances in the world. Chaz Wheatley and Gareth Blaylocke looked ragged, as if they’d been through a tiring ordeal. My guess was that their abductors had been responsible for that.
“What’s he doing here?” I said, pointing at Blaylocke.
Ms. Foxglove gave me a curious look. “You’re referring to the curly-haired man, I presume. I’m told he refused to leave the other man’s side. Our operatives had no choice but to bring them both in.”
“Friends to the bitter end,” I muttered. “Backstabbers and their loyalty. Like skunks and their stench. You never know who they’ll use it on until you get too close. I’m guessing you’re going to let me go in there and talk to them?”
“I’ll be watching from in here. If you need any help, just say so.”
I scowled at her. “Please. They’re primies.”
“You’re on a level playing field, then.”
“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you? I don’t need augments to keep a couple of primitives in line. My only concern is how in the heavens I’m supposed to strike fear into their hearts with this lump of cottage cheese on my head. They’ll never take me seriously this way.”
“That sounds like a problem without a solution,” she said.
“You are a cold, cold woman.” I ripped the bandage away to reveal the raw wound, hoping it would make me look more menacing. Or that the sight of it would make her dry heave. Either or.
In the mirror’s half-reflection, I could see the purple crust of dried blood around my ear and the smears of flaky blue along my jaw. I turned my head for a better look, then nodded. “You’re about to be glad you did something nice for me.”
I entered the interrogation room and flipped the table. With that out of my way, I grabbed Chaz by the collar and lifted him off his chair, which fell over as I pinned him to the wall. “You traitor,” I whispered.
“Don’t hurt me,” Chaz pleaded, struggling.
I felt Blaylocke trying to pry my arms away. I let Chaz go, shoved Blaylocke off me, then spun his chair around and sat down. Chaz rubbed his neck, then picked up his own chair and slid it as far away from me as he could before he sat down. Chairless, Blaylocke stood next to the wall and glared at me.
“Welcome to my secret underground fortress, you traitorous dogs.” I could practically hear Cordelia frowning in the next room.
“Why did you bring us here?” asked Chaz.
“We’ll get to that in a minute.” I jabbed a finger at Blaylocke. “What in Leridote’s blue heavens are you doing here?”
“I wasn’t going to just look the other way while they walked off with Chester,” he said.
“You couldn’t have tried?”
He scowled. “We’ve got to look out for each other.”
“You didn’t feel too obliged to look out for a poor gullible sap like me when the chips were down, did you?”
“We didn’t have a choice. Yingler had us both by the balls. I can’t speak for Chester, but Lafe has been pulling my strings for longer than I want to admit.”
Chaz nodded his agreement.
“I’m surprised they found you so quickly. I’m even more surprised you were still in the stream. I would’ve thought you’d both gone home by now.”
“Yingler wouldn’t let us. After everything broke open with Gilfoyle, he was too scared of us going home and telling everyone. Now he can’t find Pyras anymore. He’s been looking for it for weeks. The other two councilors, Malwyn and DeGaffe, must’ve ordered the city moved after they sabotaged the Clarity. They knew Yingler was up to something. That techsoul scum. Sorry… no offense.”
“Whatever. Thanks to me, you’ve been saved from that pretentious law-loving windbag and brought here, to my elaborate and well-apportioned stronghold.”
“But why?” Blaylocke asked.
“I told you I would get to that. This is why I think you’re an awful person. You’re telling me you knew Vilaris’s true identity all along and you couldn’t warn me about him?”
Blaylocke looked at his feet. “I know you’ve never liked me much—”
“Understatement of the year. Go on.”
“We were sworn to secrecy. Yingler not only threatened us—he threatened to have us both sent to jail if we stood in the way of Regency justice.”
I shook my head, remembering how Yingler had used that same threat to coerce Sable and Thomas. He’d almost gotten me to turn myself in, that no-good weasel. He would’ve, too, except that Thomas had warned me, whereas Chaz and Blaylocke had never found the stomach to. “Sounds like Yingler’s in the habit of manipulating people with justice,” I said. “I can’t believe I trusted that guy. I actually liked him.”
“You’re a terrible judge of character,” said Blaylocke.
“You’re a terrible everything.”
He shrugged. “I tried to help you. I kept it to myself when you destroyed the crackler remote. I was hoping you’d see your chance and get away before it was too late.”
“You dimwit. I stayed to help you guys! That whole time, you wanted me to get away? So much for friendship and loyalty. I still hate you for not saying anything. You let me walk right into Yingler’s trap, like a blind guy at an archery tournament. I had no clue what was actually happening. Worse than almost getting me killed, you made me look like a friggin’ idiot.”
“You had no love for Gilfoyle before that night,” said Blaylocke.
“The reason I had no love for Gilfoyle is the same reason you’re here, coincidentally. Not you, Blaylocke. Chaz. I need your expertise as it pertains to one of my augments. We need you to isolate its best quality and rebuild it—better, faster, and stronger than it already is. We’ve got a biotech here who’s good, but none of us are good enough. We’ve hit a wall. We have the resources, but I think you’re the only one who’s got the brains to solve this.”
“You had us dragged halfway across the stream so Chester could fix you up again?”
“I didn’t have you dragged anywhere, Blaylocke. You dragged your own sorry keister along for the ride, so shut your hole and deal with it. From now on, I want you to think of this as a free vacation. A vacation about which you have no right to complain. The heavens know, thinking of it that way is the only thing that’s been getting me by.”
“I thought you were in charge here.”
“No. I’m not in charge at all, which sucks. Doesn’t it? That whole secret underground fortress thing was just my way of welcoming you to paradise. A bit of creative embellishment, if you will.”
“How did you wind up here?”
“I’m going to explain everything. Until then, if you’d just keep your comments to yourself for two seconds and let me talk to Chaz, maybe we could get somewhere. I think you’re going to fit right in around here, Chaz, ol’ buddy. Keep in mind, I’ve just gotten the people in charge to start liking me. Now they’re going to meet Blaylocke. Try to make up the difference, will you?”
“How?”
“I don’t know… be charming and stuff.”
Chaz nodded uncertainly.
“Oh, and one more thing… I want you both to call me Hal from now on. Just Hal, that’s it. Mr. Nordstrom is too formal.” I winked at them, my face turned away from the glass so Ms. Foxglove couldn’t see.
Blaylocke gave me a knowing look, but there was an air of spitefulness in it. If he ever wanted things to go badly for me, he could make that happen. Then again, so could Thomas or Ezra. There were now more people who knew my real name than people who didn’t, and I’d be lying if I said that didn’t make me a little nervous.
I turned toward the glass, hoping Ms. Foxglove was satisfied enough to have the door unbolted. She was, and I introduced her to my star gadgeteer with more than a little fanfare. Then I brought the two primitives to the bunk room, where I made the rounds with Chaz while letting Blaylocke fend for himself. I also made it plain that the two newcomers were primitives, and that anyone who didn’t like it could walk off a ledge.
Days passed, and the new additions slowly began to meld with our little group. We were like one big happy family who hardly knew each other. I felt like I was back at one of my birthday parties growing up. You know the kind—where you invite your best friend from school and your best friend from the neighborhood and your best friend from your baseball team, and then you realize that none of them know each other, and you’re the one who has to keep them all from getting bored or ripping each other’s throats out. In the days to come, there would be plenty of boredom and throat-ripping to spare.