6

SHE’S ALIVE.

Abel keeps coming back to this thought every few seconds. That reaction makes little sense; technically speaking, Noemi has been alive this entire time, and has only shifted to a new form of being. Still, he aimed for the impossible, and it has been achieved.

Granted, his probability of surviving this trip to Haven is currently at a discouragingly low 3.3 percent. That’s irrelevant. Noemi’s probabilities are shifting, but at minimum she has a 94 percent chance.

Gillian finally bows her head in assent. “You can take Vidal to your ship. But you’re going under guard, and if you make one move, they won’t aim for you. They’ll aim for her.” Her blue eyes turn toward Noemi.

“I won’t attempt to escape,” Abel says.

She snaps, “Your promises are meaningless.”

“It isn’t a promise. It’s a necessity. I couldn’t attempt to take off without risking the destruction of my ship, and Noemi along with it. I wouldn’t have gone to so much trouble to save her if I were going to immediately endanger her again.”

Noemi groans in discomfort, or maybe in protest. He can’t tell, because her eyes have become unfocused, her body limp. The cybernetic nervous system must have just deepened its penetration into her brain. Adjustment will take time; he wishes he could help her through it.

But she’s strong, resourceful, adaptable. She’ll triumph in her new body. His assistance is not required.

Gillian’s blue eyes narrow, like laser pinpoints in the stark white laboratory. “We could take her to the ship for you.”

“And trust you to see her safely offworld?” Abel raises an eyebrow. “Our past encounters suggest that trusting you would be highly unwise.”

“You’ve developed an attitude, haven’t you?”

“You can call it an attitude if you wish,” he says. “I call it self-respect.”

Gillian Shearer has no answer for that. She allows Abel to load Noemi back onto the biobed; the warrior mechs that align around him are the only additional show of force Gillian needs. The mech who first captured Abel is still moving a little too slowly, but it is operating well within acceptable parameters. If Gillian notices the mech’s flaws, she doesn’t show it. She just watches as Abel eases Noemi’s biobed out the door, mechs marching behind him.

The biobed’s antigravity casters keep it hovering; even a human could push it with ease. As a precaution, Abel flips on energy bands that glow around Noemi’s wrists and legs. The bands are normally meant to keep unconscious patients secure. They should prevent her from hurting herself before she gains some control.

Seventy-eight seconds later, Noemi stirs, awake again. She blinks up into the light as he pushes the biobed down a long white corridor with gleaming walls. “It’s just a bad dream,” she murmurs. “A bad dream. That’s all. This isn’t real.”

Humans sometimes say such things rhetorically, as an expression of dismay. Abel believes Noemi is being literal. She doesn’t yet trust the new information from her transformed body. Her still-growing cybernetic nervous system can’t make sense of her unfamiliar surroundings. It will be a long time before she can marvel at her new capacities, abilities, strength. Instead, in this moment, she’s… confused and afraid. He’d hoped to guide her through more of the transition, but he probably won’t get the chance.

It’s uncomfortable to see her that way, but it’s for the best. If she can’t fully process what’s happening to either of them, maybe his fate will hurt her less.

“Stay calm,” he says to Noemi. “Everything will be all right.”

Behind him march the six warrior mechs—three Charlies and three Queens—who have been assigned to make sure that everything will definitely not be all right, at least not for Abel. They’ll force Abel to leave the ship and take him back to Gillian Shearer and his imminent death.

Still, he hasn’t given up. Shearer has a 96.7 percent chance of successfully completing the consciousness transfer. Yet she might realize the task to be impossible, or discover that Mansfield’s soul has degraded in storage. Three point three percent isn’t a promising chance, but it isn’t nothing. Any value above zero equals hope.

Though it’s hard to concentrate on such things when Noemi lies so close to him, breathing and blinking and almost entirely awake—her brown eyes open and searching for him—

Analyze, he tells himself, and gets back to it.

Gillian’s laboratory seems to have been located near the heart of the Winter Castle. It would be logical for residences and important scientific facilities to be centralized, and therefore offer the most protection from intruders and the sharp Haven cold. However, his exit doesn’t take him through the rest of the castle. Instead, the warrior mechs lead him through empty underground passageways. Abel would assume them to be service corridors, were it not for the elaborate iridescent patterns painted along every wall. Perhaps the opulence of the Winter Castle extends even to its most basic areas.

Their group passes through a type of insulating lock into a kind of gear room stocked with hyperwarm coats, thick gloves, and insulating coveralls. Neither Abel nor the mechs behind him take any of the cold-weather gear; he can do without it for the limited time they’ll be in the snow. Behind the gear racks in the distance, he sees another kind of man-shaped machine—not mechs but enormous Smashers, robots designed for deep-earth mining. They’re two and a half meters high, more than half a meter wide, all in dark colors like navy, brown, and black. The rounded plates of their torsos and limbs make them look benign, but they can punch through sheer rock. Smashers created the tunnels of Cray and are carving out iron ore on Stronghold. There’s little they can’t overpower. But Abel can think of no way to turn the Smashers against the mechs guarding him.

Could I seal off the air lock? Trap them inside while I return to the Persephone? But he can’t leave the Persephone here on Haven while he attempts to escape and return to it. He has to get Noemi safely away from this place as fast as he can.

Nor can he fight six warrior mechs hand to hand. He would risk the fight if it didn’t mean risking Noemi’s life, too. That is unacceptable.

Saving her means letting her go and accepting his fate.

Noemi remains too dazed to object until they board the Persephone. At first her eyes light up; familiar surroundings must comfort her. But Abel sees her watching the mechs behind him.

“Did I dream Gillian?” she whispers. Her memory has not yet achieved normal functionality. “This isn’t real, is it? This voice in my head keeps saying it is, but the voice can’t be real either.” Despite her confusion, she sounds so alert that he’s encouraged—until she tries to sit up. The snap of the energy bands shouldn’t hurt, but it stuns her again. Her new brain functions and nerve endings don’t know how to process the input yet.

Noemi’s adaptation will be a fascinating process to witness. Abel wishes he were going to get the chance to witness it.

“I preprogrammed a course back to the verge of the Haven Gate,” he tells her. Right now it won’t make much sense to her, but her additional brain components should be able to replay it all. “You don’t have to do a thing. Just rest.”

“Don’t do it,” she pleads. “Kill me—deactivate me, whatever it would be now. Tell Gillian the deal’s off.”

“If you should see Harriet and Zayan again, please apologize for my abrupt departure. I would’ve liked to tell them good-bye.” He thinks of his Vagabond crew members, remembers the ready way they both smiled. “If you decide to pilot the Persephone as your own ship from now on, you could offer them places on your crew, though I suspect they’ll choose to settle on Genesis. Give my regards to Ephraim as well, and as for Virginia—” Abel pauses. “If you get in touch with her, even send her a prerecorded message, that will be enough. She’ll know what’s happened.”

“I don’t understand—” Noemi writhes in the grip of the energy bands. “Let me up!”

He snaps off the energy beams, freeing her. She rises immediately, only to wobble off balance and fall from the biobed. Abel had already lowered it, so she only rolls a few centimeters to the docking bay door. From the doorway, the mechs stand rigidly at attention. Probably they’re counting down a set number of minutes before they will force him to leave the ship or simply kill Noemi.

“Why can’t I move normally?” Noemi’s fear is turning into panic. “What is this voice in my head telling me about the other mechs? Make this stop, please—”

“I can’t do that.” He smiles at her, hoping to be reassuring. “Noemi, you can do only one thing for me—lead a long and happy life.”

She doesn’t reply at first, just stares at him with eyes that are welling with tears. Finally she chokes out, “You’re going to do this, aren’t you? No matter what I say. Because I can’t stop you.”

Abel nods. “I’m sorry.”

Noemi rakes her hands over her close-shorn scalp. The skin regenerators have almost finished sealing over the incisions from her surgery. Few human women shave their heads, for various sociological reasons, but Abel finds Noemi even more beautiful this way. Nothing distracts attention away from her large, dark eyes. Her voice is raspy as she says, “I wouldn’t have wanted this.”

“You had no chance to determine your own fate. I had to decide for us both. I chose you.”

She shakes her head. “You keep giving yourself away for me—like your life doesn’t even belong to you—”

“It does,” he says. “Or it did. It’s worth it.”

Noemi wipes at her cheeks as she says, “We were just starting.”

She means them, he realizes, as a romantic couple. They were going to travel through the stars together, on the adventure she’d dreamed of always. He wishes he could’ve had that time with her. Even a day of it. That would be more joyful than most human lifetimes.

Abel reaches toward her, then stops. The shimmer of the force field around him means he can’t touch her. It would have meant so much to him to kiss her farewell, or even hold her hand. But Gillian’s mechs remain behind him, ready to pounce, and apparently programmed to give him no more time.

The mechs step forward in unison. Two strong hands seize Abel by the shoulders and pull him to his feet. Noemi cries out in dismay, “No. Abel, don’t!”

He pushes one control on the nearest panel, activating the time-delayed autotakeoff. Soon she’ll leave this planet and take her place among the stars.

“Good-bye,” he says as they pull him back off the ship, into the snow. Abel watches her face until the last moment when the door pinwheels shut, separating them forever.