29

NOEMI STAGGERS BACKWARD. “PROFESSOR MANSFIELD,” she whispers.

Mansfield grins at her with Abel’s face. “Miss Vidal. What a pleasure it is to see you again.”

Whatever control she’d regained over her body is gone; she feels like she might crumple to the floor, lose consciousness, explode. Usually she’d strike back at anyone or anything that hurt the ones she loves, but she can’t attack Abel’s body. It’s still precious to her even when his soul is gone.

Gone.

The hand that closes around her forearm doesn’t touch her the way Abel would’ve. Mansfield’s grip is as hard and merciless as a steel cuff as he says, “You’ve become far more interesting than when we last met. More interesting, and less human.”

Noemi’s eyes well with tears, but she won’t allow herself to cry. Only inside her head does she wail: Abel’s gone, Abel’s gone, we’re too late, he’s gone. Out loud, she says only, “Whatever your daughter did to me didn’t work. I’m already breaking down.”

He isn’t dismayed. “Bluffing me, Miss Vidal?”

“No.” How much she’d like to slap him, but it’s Abel’s face, even without Abel behind it. “If you keep me here, you’ll see the truth soon enough.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” he says. “You won’t be going anywhere.”

His speaking patterns, the tones of his voice—he doesn’t sound like Abel at all. How could she have been fooled by this golem, even for a moment? Maybe she only saw what she wanted to see.

Mansfield cocks his head, studying her. “There’s no way we’d ever let you go. The first hybrid between human and mech? The prototype? We have a great deal of research to do.”

“What are you going to do, dissect me?”

“Only as a last resort.” The simplicity of Mansfield’s answer chills Noemi to the marrow. “This is a whole new technology that could help humanity. It would be selfish not to share the knowledge.”

“You’re the most selfish person I’ve ever met,” Noemi says. “All you want is profit.”

“You don’t think this technology can save lives?”

Gauging by the way Noemi feels right now, hybridization seems more likely to end lives than save them. “Let’s just say you’re not ready to make mech-human hybrids yet. Seems like a lot of your big projects aren’t ‘quite ready.’ They don’t usually wind up being what you promised at all. The Osiris was supposed to be this big secret, but Remedy found out about it in time to crash it on Haven. The Inheritors were supposed to be ready to provide eternal life right away, but what happened with Simon proved they’re not even close. And you’ve still learned nothing.” Her voice shakes, but she wills herself to keep speaking, to spear him with every word. “The galaxy calls you a genius, and I guess you must have been. Once. A really long time ago.”

The spear draws blood. Noemi sees Mansfield pull back; his expression darkens with anger and contempt that have no right to be on Abel’s gentle face. “You’re speaking rather hastily for someone who’s soon going to be a subject in my lab.”

Mansfield wants that threat to scare her, but Noemi is past all that. She laughs at him. “I don’t think I’ll be around much longer. I know Abel’s gone. The rest is noise.”

Could Ephraim’s team, or Harriet’s, still find her in time? Noemi can’t even bring herself to hope for that. They’re in other parts of the Winter Castle, maybe headed back to the snowmobiles by now. Besides, even if they did find her, Mansfield would attack them. She knows how much damage Abel’s body can do.

From a comm unit at Mansfield’s belt comes Shearer’s voice. “Do you need assistance, Dad? I can have some mechs on the way to you in seconds.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mansfield snaps. “Since when have I needed anyone’s help?”

Mansfield literally thinks he’s better than every other human and mech in creation. Including Noemi. Including his own daughter. Dazedly Noemi wonders whether Shearer knows this, and if so, why she’d destroy someone as beautiful as Abel just to bring this bastard back from the dead.

Really, though, Noemi knows why. It’s the same reason why she was willing to fight and die for Genesis even after her planet wrote her off as a lying traitor. The reason why it hurt Abel to prioritize his own life over Mansfield’s. There’s always one core purpose in our hearts that we’ll sacrifice anything for.

Noemi thinks, Love is Directive One.

Mansfield isn’t dwelling on his daughter’s concern for him; he’s too busy studying Noemi. He lets go of her arm to pace around her. “Maybe someday hybrids could outpace even mechs as fine as myself—but not yet. Not for a long while. For now I am more efficient, stronger, smarter than any other being in creation. I am indestructible.” Mansfield’s voice behind her back makes Noemi shudder. She can feel her hair standing on end. “I have capabilities beyond any human. I can begin my work anew, and I can go beyond it. Create wonders the galaxy has never seen. Make the worlds everything they should be.”

Noemi grits her teeth. “You mean, you’re going to play God.”

“Someone should, don’t you think? Oh, that’s right. You’re from Genesis. You think angels are playing harps up in the clouds, and you can leave everything up to them. Didn’t you ever hear it said that God helps those who help themselves?”

The contempt within her bubbles hot, like liquid iron being poured into her veins to go hard and strong. “You think believers are like children. You don’t think anyone’s really seen the universe for what it is, except for you.”

“I don’t think it,” Mansfield says. “I know.”

He continues pacing around her, his gaze intent and alien. Glimpsing his profile, Noemi wishes it were Abel next to her—wishes it with all her will, her blood, her bone. If wishing could change reality, Mansfield would vanish in that instant, and Abel’s soul would light up behind those blue eyes again.

But any soldier who’s been to war knows what wishing is worth.

Instead, she gazes past Mansfield to the far corridor. According to the blueprint of the Winter Castle inside her head, this corridor should lead away from the hub, closer to the perimeter of the building.

You aren’t faster than he is, she tells herself. You aren’t stronger. But he’s even less used to his mech body than you are to yours. You’re also mad as hell, and if you catch a lucky break, maybe that adrenaline can get you out of here.

Escape feels so useless. What else can she do to prevent Earth’s destruction? Nothing comes to mind. She’s lost Abel, just like she lost Esther. The two people in her life who trusted her the most, gave her the most—who loved her—she failed to protect either of them. They’re both dead partly because she was too damn slow to save them. There’s no way to repent for that. No way to redeem it.

And Abel was so gentle. For all the raw information in his databanks, he always remained so innocent. So open to exploration, discovery, joy. If anyone deserved more than his fair share of life, it was him. Instead, Noemi’s left with the hollow hurt of knowing he spent about 90 percent of his life trapped in an equipment pod bay, without gravity or light or companionship—but never, never without hope.

All his hope turned out to be in vain.

But he didn’t only have hopes for himself, Noemi remembers. Abel had hopes for her, too. He gave up so much to give her a chance to live. She won’t waste it.

Far corridor, she tells herself. You just need one shot at the far corridor.

Mansfield continues circling her. “Personally, I suspect you only need a software update. I can’t know for sure until I get you to my lab. For now, though, let’s assume that you are breaking down, as you claim. Physically, probably, I could fix you. Mentally? You’re a hazard. It’s really not worth repairing you.” His voice goes even colder. “Well then, I guess I’ll have to remake you into something much more useful.”

He steps behind her. She has a clear shot to the corridor. Go.

Noemi bolts forward, using every bit of power she has—human, mech, all of it. Her balance is uneven, but she’s upright, and her newly fast reflexes still work. If the corridor wavers and splits into two corridors as her vision doubles, it doesn’t matter as long as she aims for the middle. When she reaches the corridor, her footsteps echoing against the curved, iridescent walls, she tries to calculate how long it would take her to reach the snowmobile—of all the times for that voice in her head to fall silent instead of giving her information—

Mansfield’s weight slams into her back; his arms seize her as she thuds into the wall and onto the floor. She’d forgotten how heavy that body is. Winded, Noemi struggles for breath, wriggles in an effort to escape his grip, but it’s no use. She fights him even as he pins her to the ground and peers down at her like a hawk sighting its prey.

“You’re trembling,” he says. “Are you so scared of a face you claimed to love?”

Noemi never claimed to love Abel. She wishes she had, because she knows now that she did. Abel never even got to hear her say those words. Regret consumes her, threatens to swallow her whole.

But Noemi spits back, “You don’t look like him.” A sob catches in her throat. “I could always see Abel’s soul. And I can see that you have none.”

“Enough.” Mansfield shakes his head at her as though she were a naughty little girl who refused to follow the playground rules. “Let’s get you to the lab.”

Noemi tries to be brave. She has to face that this is the end of her life, at least in any form she’d ever want to live it.

The floor shudders. Then it shudders again. A distant thudding comes closer. Mansfield sits up, clearly as confused by this as she is, though not alarmed.

At least, he’s not alarmed until the nearby wall collapses, breaking outward in a spray of dust and shimmer. They both stare as the miasma settles to reveal an enormous dark shape, something with arms and legs—

“A Smasher?” Mansfield gapes at it as it lumbers forward, all two and a half meters of gray hulking metal, its immense weight shaking the foundation of the Winter Castle itself. “Who the bloody hell programmed a mining droid to come through here?”

“No one,” the Smasher says in a tinny, monotone voice from the small speaker at the center of its chest. “It was my idea.”

Noemi stares. Smashers don’t have ideas. Smashers also don’t attack humans. But this one grabs Mansfield in one of its enormous, multipronged hands, and tugs him away from Noemi easily. She skitters backward, crab-walking away from the bizarre scene.

Am I hallucinating? Am I breaking down completely? Is this mech brain failure or something?

“Abort previous protocol,” Mansfield barks, trying to sound authoritative while clutched in the Smasher’s hand like a toddler’s dolly. “Delete instructions. Initiate dormant mode.”

“I’d rather not,” the Smasher replies. It lumbers to a nearby chute with the genteel label REFUSE, instead of GARBAGE. It opens the broad door and drops Mansfield unceremoniously through it. Noemi hears him shouting as he thuds against the walls all the way down to wherever the castle garbage ends up. It would’ve been incredibly satisfying to watch, if Noemi wasn’t pretty sure she’s headed there next.

Look for an emergency alarm. See if you can hit it. Whatever security Shearer’s got would probably target the Smasher and maybe you’d get your chance to escape. This plan dies as soon as Noemi thinks of it, because already the Smasher is plodding toward her. It stops a few steps short of her and says, in its flat voice, “The garbage chute won’t kill Professor Mansfield. I chose to leave his body intact, since I hope to have use of it again.”

Hope had died inside Noemi’s heart. Now it’s born once more, along with the single soul she loves most in the whole galaxy. “Oh my God,” she whispers. “Abel?”