I AM MAN, page 6
“If a Kishran prince was assassinated, why is the Republic at war?” he asked.
She stopped twisting her hair and let a sigh blow from her red painted lips. “Because a Valetian Elite was also killed in the attack.”
X5 took a breath, desperately searching his archives for information on this event but, like the memories of X04, they were gone. Erased.
He said, “Valetian Elite?”
“A word we use for high-ranking members of Pureblood society.” She shrugged. “We can’t all be royals.”
“Who was murdered?”
“My cousin. His name was Bastion.”
“Since both countries suffered loss, Prince Helios wants to arrange a marriage with you and Pygmalis to unite the two pillars against Savai,” he stated.
Clora nodded. “It shouldn’t have taken ten years for us to join forces. But the facts were so murky when everything first happened. Although the assassin had been Savish, Prince Dima was only in the Vale by invitation. To the Nation of Kishra, it looked like the Republic might have played a part in the attack.”
“Like inviting the prince to the Republic and having him killed by an assassin. Even sacrificing one of their own Elites to make sure the blame was placed on the Savai Empire.”
Clora gave a grim smile and resumed her twisting. “That wasn’t true, of course. But Kishra didn’t believe anyone or anything. So, all three pillars went to war, tearing each other apart until now. Neither the Republic nor Kishra can stand much more of this. My brother is right; a marriage between myself and Pygmalis is the only way to unite our pillars. We would become one super army and end the war before the new year.”
“But that isn’t what you want,” Code said plainly.
She glanced at him in the mirror. “What I want is peace and justice for my cousin.”
“Not this way.”
“You seem very passionate for a Skel.”
He looked away, feeling pressure build in his chest. He hated being nervous, it always gave him gas, which was weird because he didn’t have a stomach, so the extra air bubbled in his chest cavity until he expelled it later.
Yes, he expelled it by farting.
No, it wasn’t like human farts.
Yes, it was just as humiliating and gross.
He had an exit—not a butthole—in the plating on his backside where he could get rid of things like buildup from his internal parts, fluids from his energy valves, and sometimes—unfortunately—gas.
“I’m sorry if I overstepped,” he said quietly.
Clora smiled, reaching for a long, sharp hairpin to secure her bun in place. “You’ve shown more concern for my wellbeing than my own kin.”
“I’m just doing my job.”
Her smile wilted on her face. “I see. Well, you’re very good at it.”
He knew what he’d said might have sounded rude, but he didn’t want her to think he liked her. Well, he did like her, but not that way. Skel were designed to have emotions, but he knew what they said about the ones who felt too much. There was always one—and nobody wanted to be that one. A Skel who fell for its client.
Clora stood and brushed the wrinkles from her dress. It was more of a nightgown, flowing, thin material with splits up the sides. Pygmalis would undoubtedly love it.
“He’ll be here soon.”
Which meant it was time for him to go.
“You’ll have to answer the door yourself, since you don’t want me around.” He tried not to sound as bitter as he really was.
She nodded. “Of course.”
He swung his weapon over his shoulder and left, gliding through her room toward the door, but something on the edge of Clora’s dresser caught his eye. It was the notebook with Bass written on the cover, left out in plain view. In the princess’s defense, she probably never expected to have any guests in her bedroom, but with Pygmalis on his way, she should be more careful. If he found her in possession of a sealed artifact, who knew what he would do?
Each one of his organic parts told him not to, but X5 grabbed the notebook anyway and headed out the door. He was just going to hide it and when everything was all clear, he’d put it back—hopefully without her noticing. Of course, his Core was still recording everything, so he picked up a couple other things from her room just to cover his tracks. A hairbrush, a bottle of perfume, a dress from the pile of dirty clothes on her floor. To anyone watching the memories stashed in his Core, it looked like he was packing a bag for her to sleep in another room for the night.
With his tracks officially covered, Code-X5 headed to a room across the palace. He didn’t want to be anywhere near Clora’s room while they … did what needed to be done. After seven minutes of walking, he found a small lounge and stored the bag of stolen goods inside.
A small sense of relief washed over him, but it quickly turned into a storm of panic when he opened the door to the lounge and found X04 standing there.
“What were you doing in there?” she asked.
“None of your business.”
“There are cameras set up throughout this entire palace. All I have to do is tap into the security systems and roll back the footage to find out what you were doing.”
His eyes narrowed. “Then you’d better get started.”
X04 took a step closer, blocking his path. “Even without tapping into the system, I know you entered that room with a bag and now you’re leaving without it.”
“Why does that matter to you?” he said hotly. “Why are you always spying on me?”
“Because my client ordered me to.”
He paused. That hadn’t been the answer he was expecting—he thought she was still obsessed with his wiped memories and whatever past connection with her he couldn’t remember. Then it hit him; her “client” was Pygmalis.
“Why would the prince order you to spy on me?”
“I don’t know.”
Even without an explanation, the reasoning was clear. This entire scheme had been orchestrated by Helios—he was the one who sent Pyg to Clora’s room to begin with. They were working together; so, if the prince wanted eyes on X5, it was likely because Helios wanted it, too.
But why?
It could be simple. Considering X5’s first encounter with the prince, he may be cautious of the Skel interfering with his “great plan” on Clora’s behalf. He could even be afraid of him. Or it could be deeper than that. Pygmalis may know about his connection to X04, he may even know what’s missing from his memories. Or if he’s connected to the last prince’s assassination—Prince Dima, his older brother.
He shook his head. “You didn’t ask any questions when you got the order?”
X04 regarded him cautiously, as if trying to determine whether she could trust him. X5 wanted to roll his eyes, he wasn’t sure he could trust her. But his threat indicators were low, and it wasn’t like X04 didn’t have the opportunity to completely hack and take over his systems when she was in his private channel earlier. If anything, she wasn’t out to kill him and she wasn’t a threat to Clora.
“I didn’t ask questions. But he did tell me to report any suspicious behavior.”
If he ever got sweaty, there would have been a layer of it covering his forehead. “I took some supplies inside,” he started, but X04 cut him off.
“I was curious about your activities. But I don’t see them as suspicious.”
Now it was his turn to regard her cautiously. Was she trying to tell him she wouldn’t snitch about the bag in the lounge?
As if answering his question, X04 stepped aside and motioned for him to pass. “Have a good night, Guardian.”
He walked away, slowly. “You, too.”
Was this the beginning of some sort of alliance? X5 wandered through the palace, replaying every second of their conversation in his head. There was so much going on now that he didn’t understand, and he hated it. Because he needed to understand if he was going to protect his client. He didn’t even know who the enemy was anymore. Helios—maybe? Pygmalis? The Savai Empire? And even if X04 wasn’t going to report to Pygmalis, she might do other things, like snoop around. Code decided to at least go back and move the bag somewhere else.
It wasn’t there anymore.
He checked the room in the exact spot he’d left it in, and it wasn’t there. He wanted to curse, allowing himself to be fooled so easily by the other Guardian. Now was the time to take a lesson from X04; Code tapped into the palace’s security systems and pulled up the logs from the last hour, but an alert from Clora popped up on his feed just as he started reviewing the footage. He closed everything and focused on the alert. It was a distress call, sent without any words or messages. Which meant something horrible had happened.
With his threat monitors raging, Code-X5 bounded down the hall toward Clora’s room. The concrete beneath his feet cracked from his heavy footsteps but he kept running, pinging the locks on her door as he rounded the corner. He ran straight through the opening, leapt over her piles of clothes, and knocked over some artwork as he searched for her in the candlelit room.
His mad rush came to a halt when he finally found her. Clora was sitting on her bed, her hair free from its bun to cascade down her back. The bed was still neatly made; gold covers and blankets and throw pillows decorating the black mattress. But, Code realized, some of the blankets had a horrible stain on them. Crimson red blotches seeped into the featherbed. That’s when he noticed Pygmalis lying in the bed. Perfectly still.
Clora let go of a sob and held up her shaking hands; she opened her palm to reveal a bloody hairpin. “Help me,” she whispered.
Chapter Six
X5 allowed a single moment of horrified shock to wash over him before he decided what to do next. Clora-Vean was sitting on her bed beside the dead body of the crown prince of Kishra. She had murdered him. With her hairpin.
As much as Code disliked Pygmalis, he never thought he would get to stare down at his lifeless body. He was lying on his back, no shirt or pants or nightrobes at all, and staring up at the ceiling—mouth open, like he’d died screaming. Multiple stab wounds riddled his neck with blood crusting the lacerations. It didn’t take long for the Skel to put the story together; Clora had lured him to bed, climbed on top of him, and let her sharpened pin lay kisses to the artery in his throat. If she hadn’t completely screwed them over, X5 would have been proud. Instead, all he felt was overwhelmingly worried.
The first thing they needed to do was get rid of the body. That meant dismembering it and then burning it, plus tossing the murder weapon, throwing out all the sheets and blankets and possibly the mattress, too. X5 could do all of that, but he didn’t know what to do afterwards. His Core would be recording everything, sending the footage directly to his factory. Even if no one watched the footage for another year, they wouldn’t be safe. This wasn’t some random body in a dark alley, it was the crown prince of Kishra—people would be looking for him, asking questions. The political upheaval would be catastrophic, and all eyes would be on Clora. They would have to leave. Probably better to leave without even dumping the body.
Clora let out another horrible sob, covering her face with her bloody hands. It dawned on him; this is probably her first kill. X5 had no idea how many people he’d killed; he didn’t think it was many, since he was only a Guardian—which meant protecting people, not murdering them. But when some contracts meant protecting a commander while on a high-class military operation, killing was inevitable. Still, he doubted he’d taken more than a couple hundred lives. It depended on how many kills had been removed from his memories.
The princess sat crying on the edge of the bed, her nightgown stained red at the hem and on the sides, where she’d wiped her hands on the material. “I don’t know what to do!” she sobbed.
She was a murderer, but she was still his client, and he was still her Guardian. He turned to her. “I’m going to—”
Help you is what he meant to say next, but his Core took over and overrode that decision. Before he could comprehend what was happening, he’d alerted palace security and had pinged the systems to her bedroom to shut down the area so Clora couldn’t leave.
He stood there, completely immobile, while the princess stared at him in horror. Her eyes were wide with shock and her mouth was open; she didn’t move until she heard the alarms going off in the hallway. Then she started shaking her head and crawling backwards over her bed, as if she could escape.
X5 watched rigidly, wishing he could somehow intervene. His Core scanned the princess, ran an ID check for possible impersonation, then delivered a report to security of what it thought had happened in the room. It pegged Clora as the aggressor and marked her as a danger to herself and others. Its recommendation for proceeding action: Subdue and detain.
He was frozen. With his Core in control, X5 could do nothing as Skel lined up outside Clora’s door and shouted orders for her to obey. With a human dead before him, his systems saw her as a threat, but she was still his client so instead of subduing and detaining her himself, it locked him in place to prevent him from intervening. If he could move, he would have defended his princess. If he could move, he would have destroyed every Skel outside and any humans waiting with them. But when the doors opened and the security team rushed in, X5 realized the Skel had not come for Clora.
S14 was the first to enter; it swept the room with its red eyes and then ordered Clora to step away from the bed and remain still with her hands above her head. She obeyed, sniffling, and trying to gulp back her tears. Two Guardians entered on its command, guns raised and eyes glowing in the darkness. They found the body and scanned it for any signs of life, gave their report to S14, and then they approached X5. It was S14 who pinged his Core for permission to initiate arrest. To his horror, his Core complied and began a complete systems shutdown.
The process started in his comm links, cutting his connection to every security system, camera, and server he’d had access to before. The world suddenly felt much quieter, being confined to the eyes and ears on his head. Although Code was made of metal and had been crafted by an engineer, at that moment—as the world hushed around him—he felt very human. One by one, his systems were shut off and his links severed. He could feel his Core shutting him out of his security functions, granting itself access to his archives to eat away memories it deemed unnecessary—namely the memory of Clora holding the bloody hairpin. It was preserving itself; trying to get rid of any connection to the murder, but it was too late.
The Guardians took hold of X5’s arms, keeping him in place while S14 scanned the barcode etched into the base of his neck. It relayed all the recently deleted information from his Core to the Soldier, who would report that information to its client. It wasn’t until he heard his voice that X5 realized S14’s client was Prince Helios.
The crown prince stood in the corner of the room, arms crossed, and eyes narrowed as he took in the situation. He was rigid all over, like a gentle breeze could snap him in half. “What does it say?” he asked, voice low and serious. Long legs took him across the room in just a few strides, he was standing before X5 in one quick second, extending his hand so S14 could transfer Code’s information to his data gem.
Helios read the data, grimacing as he realized the emergency report sent by his Core hadn’t been wrong; Clora was the killer. This would have been the moment Code allowed hope to bloom in his hollow heart, it would have been the moment where the Guardians let him go and arrested the princess instead, but that was not what he wanted. He could not rely on his Core, which was frantically trying to erase any involvement and connection to the prince’s death, but he could rely on Helios’s tainted heart. The part of the crown prince that would cover up a murder to save his favorite sister.
Although he had placed Clora in this situation, X5 knew Helios would never allow her to be thrown into prison. So he held no hatred for the golden prince as the Guardians at his side held him firmly in place. He did not fight his Core as it severed connection to his organic functions, one by one. His hearing went first, then his breathing shut off, forcing his systems into autopilot as his mind began to drift away. The last thing he saw before his visual sensors were cut was X04 guiding Clora away.
------X------
Core Systems reboot initiated
0.00%
Estimated time until reboot completion: Thirty-Six [36] hours
With his Core rebooting, X5 was, for the first time, entirely in control of his own body. Well, he was in control of all the parts his Core couldn’t command at the moment. That meant all he could do was lay there in darkness and think about things available only in the organic parts of himself. Most of his memories were stashed in his archives, which were monitored by his Core, so he had very little to think about. With only half of an organic brain in his head, he was designed to store short-term memories in his actual mind while all the rest were routed to his Core to organize and shelve according to date, time, event, etc. Memories that contained potentially incriminating information were immediately forwarded to his Core which decided, of its own accord, whether X5 needed the memory or not. Usually, it was determined that he didn’t.
In this case, his Core had eliminated nearly all of his memories of the death of Pygmalis and Clora’s involvement. It was an attempt to clear any connection to X5 and keep him from getting dismantled and destroyed. Unfortunately, Code’s Core did not predict that S14 would retrieve those deleted files and upload them to his archives all over again. Nor did it have any failsafe measures in place to prevent Prince Helios from placing all the blame on X5 regardless of his memories or lack thereof.
So there he was, lying on the concrete ground of a prison cell—memories intact, and Core rebooting.
Core Systems reboot … 7.00%
He could feel his Core coming back online. At this rate, it was able to restore function to the connectors that monitored his organic parts. That meant he didn’t have to depend on his single lung to breathe anymore, and he could trust his Core to take over the complex circulatory system that pumped a mixture of blood and other vital fluids through his organic and manmade parts. His anxiety began to ebb as he felt his central module ping to life; he took a breath of air run through the filters built into his chest cavity and sighed in relief. He’d never noticed how much sand was in the air until he’d been left to breathe without his filters. Suddenly, he wondered how Clora and the rest of the Valetian Purebloods breathed without sucking down a mouthful of hot, golden dust.
