It was an hour after the rest of the crew went to bed before Ana came back into the quarters and crawled into her bunk. Robb wanted to tell her that he knew what it was like to lose the one person who meant the world to you. Because he knew it better than most people. He still felt it, the hole in his heart now taped over with the image of his father’s corpse on the Tsarina.
But he was a Valerio, and he doubted she’d want condolences from him.
He waited one minute, two, until her muffled sobs sank into silence and he was sure she was asleep, before he shimmied out of his bunk. Jax was huddled underneath his covers, a pale hand peeking out from beneath the pillow. Robb had never seen him with his gloves off before. Long, thin fingers. No scars, no horrible burns. But all the same, the Solani looked fragile without them. He could still taste their kiss, soft and bitter, and the horrified look on Jax’s face moments after.
He hadn’t thought a kiss would hurt Jax. He hadn’t thought the wounded look would hurt him. He . . . didn’t know what he thought, actually. That Jax’s words were sweet? That, for a moment, he wanted to taste them. He wanted to trap them, claim them as his.
No one had said they cared about him before, not with the kind of protective look in those violet-red eyes.
Another throb of pain pulsed from his side, reminding him why he was up to begin with, and he slipped out of the room and down into the infirmary to find some more painkillers, ignoring the body bag in the corner, the red-haired robot, and the Metal on the gurney.
Finding some pain medicine in the first aid kit, he tore the cap off with his teeth and slammed the needle into his side and bit in a scream as he pressed the medicine into his skin.
The ache dulled to a sore throb.
He wished it would numb the burning in his wrist, too, that was making it hard to move his fingers. But it wasn’t that pain that bothered him. It was the other kind—the betrayal that tightened his chest, made it hard to breathe. Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t take the chip out without doing permanent nerve damage to his entire sword arm.
And it was just a matter of time now before someone found him.
The sound of metal hitting the floor made him yelp, and he spun around, toward the gurney—
But it was not D09.
E0S hovered over the Metal, using small, thin arms to mend the broken wires in the android’s hand. It made the same clattery noise when another piece of Metal hand fell to the floor.
Guilt ate at Robb’s conscience—if he had just cut the ship’s power when he was supposed to, if he hadn’t been so selfish . . . Ana’s Metal D09 would be alive. And if D09 hadn’t destroyed the program controlling the androids and deactivated them when he had, then those Metals in the hall would have killed him.
So he owed his life to D09. He was not the same as those other coreless Metals on the ship.
D09 was good, and the world could have used a little more good a while longer.
Annoyed, he shoved at E0S. “Hey—hey, it’s useless. He’s dead.”
E0S didn’t acknowledge him, connecting another severed wire.
Gritting his teeth, Robb shoved it away. It bleeped angrily. “He’s dead, you stupid can opener! He’s not coming back. Don’t you get that?”
Like his father. Never coming back—no matter how much Robb wanted him alive.
E0S whirled back to D09’s ruined hand. Couldn’t it just take a hint?
He grabbed it out of the air—and froze, noticing a dull light pulsing from the smashed Metal’s chest. D09’s memory core.
It wasn’t smashed.
The ship must have only fried D09’s body.
A plan formed in his head, one that sounded more and more impossible the longer he thought about it. He couldn’t save his father—unless he could reverse time—but maybe he could try to make one thing right.
The bot wiggled out of his grip and whirled up noisily, beeping every expletive in its one-tone vocabulary.
If he transferred the code in D09’s memory core into the other Metal—the human-looking one—would it work? Memory cores were nothing but data, so he should be able to scan a copy into somewhere else. Namely, the humanoid Metal.
What was there to lose in trying?
As a Valerio, he should just let his mother find him and be a good son. He was more than likely in enough trouble already.
He didn’t need to poke around in lives that weren’t his.
But . . . D09 had saved him—all of them. Could he not at least try to do the same?
Damn the part of him that was his father. Damn it all.
Rushing out of the infirmary, he found a toolbox in the back of the skysailer and hurried back to D09, then rifled through it for an omnitool.
The Academy taught basic programming and science. Boring stuff. He never showed up to class, partly because he couldn’t stand the spit-spewing teacher, and he still received the highest marks.
As a Valerio should, his mother always said.
But he didn’t realize until much later how rare that sort of brilliance was. And that his mother would always see him second to his brother.
He found the tool and forced open the paneling in D09’s chest, revealing a cube. It pulsed, like a fading heartbeat, when usually functioning memory cores lit up white.
He extracted the core, carefully setting it on the infirmary computer’s scanner.
The old computer was used more for research and bone scans than anything else, but as long as it didn’t overheat, he was sure he could transfer the Metal’s memories.
Now was the hard part. He exchanged D09 on the gurney with the humanoid Metal on the floor, feeling a little more awkward than he should that the android was naked. He’d seen naked boys before.
He’s not a boy, he reminded himself.
E0S swirled over, inserting a computer cord into the small port at the base of its skull, almost hidden in the hairline. Smart bot.
In theory, the only way to successfully transfer a Metal’s data was to write over another memory core. It was probably why D09 never wanted to try it—because it would essentially kill another Metal.
But this one was empty.
After a few quick keystrokes, the scanner flickered blue, trying to pull data. He waited, folding his arms over his chest, for the computer to read the cube—if it could. The algorithms could be too complicated for this piece of junk console.
After a moment, he gave a sigh. It was worth a try—
Data ignited across the wall-size monitor in zeroes and ones, so suddenly Robb jumped back. Memories, made with numbers. Ana’s entire life with D09 in these jumbled sets of digits.
He glanced at the small cube. A light inside it pulsed gently, like a distant star.
With shaking fingers he keyed in the command to copy the data to the humanoid Metal.
“Uploading data,” the computer relayed. “In three, two, o—”
A thunderous boom ricocheted through the ship, pulling the Dossier out of traveling speed. Robb pitched forward with the sudden stop as the screen crashed to black, red emergency lights blinking on in the corners of the room.
And he knew without a doubt it was his mother come to find her lost son.