Agent Nick Vernon found it a bit awkward to be riding in Kestrel’s car with her and her Artificial.
With his clothes as wet as they were, he asked if she could turn up the heat, which she gladly did.
But the water pooling on the floor wasn’t what made him feel the most uncomfortable.
Ever since his wife had left him three years ago, he’d been cautious about getting close—in any way—to a woman. Friendships, even simple interactions, were sometimes too much.
When Dakota divorced him, it hadn’t been because he spent too much time at his job or had a drinking problem or had slipped up and had an affair with a coworker. No, none of the old clichés. It wasn’t even because she’d met someone else. No, Dakota had simply notified him one day that she would be happier alone.
And maybe that’s what hurt the most.
He often thought that it might’ve been easier if she’d left him for someone. But as it was, she just told him bluntly that she didn’t love him anymore and that she’d decided to move on. She said the words without anger or malice, telling him almost offhandedly that she was done with him. And that was the end of their eleven-year marriage. Just like that.
Although he hadn’t set out to keep tabs on her, since she also worked at the National Counterterrorism Bureau, over time he’d heard from coworkers that she hadn’t moved in with anyone or married again, and that she seemed happy. She’d left the Bureau a year ago. The last he heard, she was doing security consulting for transnational organizations.
Though she might have found happiness, it had eluded him.
In the intervening years, he’d dated sporadically but never seriously.
So, in time, he had become a cliché—the law enforcement officer who buries himself in his work to the detriment of his personal relationships. After all, you have to do something to pass the days of your life, to numb the ache in your heart, and if a lover won’t do it, maybe a big enough distraction would at least make the loneliness bearable.
Maybe.
But so far, despite all the success he’d achieved in his job, loneliness had become the default setting for his heart.
And now, he sat soaking wet in the car of a woman he hardly knew, a woman whom, despite how good he might have been at reading people, he hadn’t been able to discern with complete certainty wasn’t somehow involved in yesterday’s terror attack.
* * *
Jordan’s condition deteriorated on the way to the production plant.
He began speaking incoherently, talking about seeing his mother again and asking about my parents, my last name, if the CoRA was real, and other things that I couldn’t even understand, and by the time we made it to the freeway, he wasn’t saying anything at all, and his left arm was twitching uncontrollably.
Yesterday at the hospital, Benjiro Taka had given me his contact information, so now I called him to see what we should do with Jordan, how best to help him.
The Terabyne rep asked me a series of questions about Jordan’s status and ended by inquiring if he could walk on his own.
“No,” I said. “And he’s getting worse by the minute.”
“Bring him around back, to Loading Bay D. It’ll be easier for us to get a look at him there than if you come in the front. I’m on my way back from the hospital, but I’ll send an associate of mine to be there waiting for you when you arrive.”
I called Trevor to tell him what’d happened and learned that he and Agent Carlisle had gone to the federal building.
“Do you want me to come over there?” Trevor asked me concernedly.
“No. There’s nothing for you to do here. I just wanted you to know what happened.”
“I’ll put a call through to the plant manager to make sure the best technicians they have take a look at Jordan.”
“Thank you, Trevor.”
“Of course.”
“I’ll reach out to you later about dinner,” I said in closing, “once I know more about Jordan.”
At the facility’s entrance, Agent Vernon pulled out his NCB badge to get us through security, but the guard said that Mr. Taka had already cleared us, and then waved us on.
We merged onto the looping road that led to the back of the plant, and as we did, we passed the meditation pool where I’d helped Ethan yesterday.
The more I thought about what’d happened here, the more a tangle of grief constricted around my heart like thick, veiny tentacles that refused to let me go.
People died in this place and I’d been right among them—and even the man I’d thought I’d saved hadn’t made it.
Now, although the area was cordoned off with caution tape, there were half a dozen people sorting through and categorizing the debris and the remains of the Artificials who’d been destroyed when that portion of the building collapsed. They wore NCB wind jackets.
“Is that your team?” I asked Agent Vernon.
“Yes. We’ll see what they come up with.”
At Loading Bay D, he picked Jordan up and carried him to the door. After directing my car to find a parking spot, I joined them inside.
A young technician was waiting for us. She introduced herself as Sienna Gaiman, and was clearly a Plusser, with her artificial pupils narrowing and recalibrating repeatedly as she studied Jordan.
“What happened to him?” she asked me.
“He jumped into a river.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t sound right. Why would he do that?”
“It was to save a boy who’d fallen in,” Agent Vernon explained.
“Still . . .” She looked confused. “Well. Let’s see what we can find out.”
Jordan moved his mouth like he was trying to speak, but no sounds came out and it made me think of yesterday’s nightmare of the burned man outside my window, mouthing inaudible words as he smacked the glass with a charred hand, trying to get in.
Sienna directed Agent Vernon where to place Jordan on a waiting gurney.
Feeling more and more concerned, I asked her to tell me honestly if he would be alright.
“Obviously, our Artificials aren’t designed for that type of experience,” she said somewhat critically, as if I were responsible for Jordan’s decision to jump into the water. “If they’re immersed too long they will experience a CaTE.”
“But he didn’t,” I noted. “I mean, he came back, so he’ll be okay, right?”
“We’ll have to see.” But she was slow in replying. “How long was he submerged?”
“I don’t know exactly. Thirty seconds? A minute?”
“Unfortunately, that’s more than enough time for irrevocable damage to occur.”
“Maybe it was less,” I said, backpedaling, as if that might make the damage less severe. “I wasn’t exactly timing things.”
“In any case, we should have some answers for you in the morning. Unless we . . . Well, we’ll know more after running our diagnostics. Why don’t you call in around noon and we’ll see what we can tell you?”
“Alright.”
With a flick of her finger, she passed her contact info to my slate.
“I should tell you,” she said, “I spoke with your brother. I can get you a new model—if you wish.”
“A new model?”
“A new Artificial. If this one can’t be saved.”
“But he can be, right?”
“I mean . . . I believe so . . . If that’s what you’d like.”
I thought back to the moment when Jordan, without a second thought, and certainly knowing he wasn’t made for such a thing, leapt into the river to save that boy. “It’s what I would like.”
Sienna gave me a nod.
After she and a colleague left with Jordan, Agent Vernon said to me, “As long as we’re here, are you up to walking over to the damaged portion of the building to have a look around? It’d be helpful if you can show me exactly where you were when you offered your assistance to Mr. Bolderson.”
Truthfully, I didn’t want to return there, but I also didn’t want to hinder the investigation. The Purists were dangerous, and if I could help him find the people behind this, then maybe something good could come out of it all.
“Okay,” I told him. “Let’s go.”
He spoke with a nearby security officer who handed him a couple of visitor passes, then the two of us left for the other end of the complex, the NCB agent’s drenched clothes still dripping water as we crossed through the building.
* * *
The strict rows of lights on the ceiling seem to wink at him one at a time as he’s wheeled down the hallway. Lying on his back. Eyes open to the world.
He understands.
And he does not.
Perception interfering with his apprehension of his surroundings.
Words come to him, and he can barely comprehend how. A memory. Or a dream. Both?
Both. Both.
Both: “Will I die one day, Mother?”
“Everything dies, sweetheart.”
“Not rocks. Rocks don’t die.”
“You’re not a rock, Jordan. You’re a robot.”
The words fade into a place he does not recognize. The not-quite-forgetting, not-quite-remembering place. The place of presence, of embracing the moment, of—
“You’re not a rock, you’re a robot.”
“Everything dies.”
Yes, he would die.
Mother told him that.
Mother.
“Don’t worry,” the woman walking beside the gurney says to him. “We’re going to get you taken care of.”
She reaches for the button on his left wrist.
And then, all is black.
All is gone.