Sister of Shadows, page 6
“But she should be an old woman. You’re rewarding her for what she did.”
Vaughan’s brows bunched together. “You know as well as I do a person can appear however they want in this reality. I could bring her back as an old woman or a troll or a bird, but every person has her own concept of what she looks like. Elizabeth sees herself this way.”
It was true. Belle knew it in her heart, but she felt the shadow of jealousy cloud her already unsettled mood. Perhaps Vaughan had wanted to bring this other girl here. Perhaps he had always found Vin more attractive.
But no, Vaughan knew who this woman was. She was a Progenitor, someone who had purchased a Scion to overwrite. He would never be attracted to such a person.
And yet . . . he stared down at the form, who had materialized a towel out of nothing and had begun wrapping it around herself. Just as Belle had done when she’d been reborn.
Belle couldn’t read what was in Vaughan’s gaze. She wasn’t like Jacey, who pried into people’s minds by analyzing their faces.
“Let’s get this over with,” she said. She no longer wanted to walk. In a blink, she teleported a few meters from Vin. Vaughan appeared beside her less than a millisecond later.
This was not Vin, Belle reminded herself before she spoke. “Hello, Elizabeth, welcome to St. Vitus.”
Elizabeth gave Belle and Vaughan a passing glance before her eyes turned up to the sky. She kept turning—gazing all around—taking in the surroundings. Finally, she asked Belle, “Where am I? I don’t remember this beach.”
Belle was about to answer, but Vaughan stepped forward, wearing a pleasant smile. He held out a hand to Elizabeth. She took it and gazed up at him with glistening green eyes. “My name is Vaughan,” he said. “I was once a Scion at the Scion School at St. Vitus.”
Elizabeth tried to jerk her hand away, but he kept hold of it. “Just relax,” he said, voice soft yet earnest. “You are the Progenitor of a Scion named Vin. You came here to overwrite her, and you did.”
Elizabeth turned her eyes to her own hand and body. “I’m young!” she said. “It worked!”
“It did,” Vaughan said. “But you are not the Elizabeth who overwrote Vin. This world is a computer-simulated reality. You, Belle, and I—we are all artificial intelligences. Belle and I have brought you to life here to ask you a few questions.”
Elizabeth’s brow knitted in confusion. “I don’t understand what you’re saying.”
Belle stepped forward, barely resisting the urge to yank Elizabeth’s hand out of Vaughan’s. “You are a computer simulation. I am a computer simulation.” She flung her arm out. “This whole world is a computer simulation. We brought you here to ask you where your private island is. Where is it?”
“How do you know anything about—” Elizabeth stopped. “The transfer machine. I remember Dr. Carlhagen explaining how the transfer machine worked. He said my old body would die. How can I be an artificial intelligence if my mind was transferred into another, younger, body?”
“Because the transfer machine control AI has a habit of making a copy of every Progenitor’s mind,” Belle explained. “Vaughan can access those copies. So here you are—born again. Now, where is your island?”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Elizabeth said, snatching her hand out of Vaughan’s and stumbling away from him. She drew the towel closer around her and crossed her arms across her chest. “Stay away from me. Where is Dr. Carlhagen?”
“He’s not here,” Belle said. “We’re the only ones.”
“I have to get out of here,” Elizabeth said. “I have to get out. I want to be in my new body.”
Vaughan waved his hands and a map appeared in them.
Elizabeth gaped, “How . . . ?”
He moved close to her and held the paper so she could see it. “This is a map of the Caribbean. Where is your island?”
She shook her head slowly. “The scale is too large. I can’t . . .”
Belle circled round to look over their shoulders. The map zoomed in, centering on St. Vitus. “Can you see it now?”
Elizabeth’s face grew grim and she said nothing.
“She’s not going to tell us,” Belle said to Vaughan.
“Why do you need to know?” Elizabeth demanded.
“Because in the real world the Scions are about to escape St. Vitus, and they need somewhere to go.”
Elizabeth laughed. “And you think I’ll help them do that?”
Vaughan dropped the map and it disappeared before reaching the ground. “I had hoped you would feel some sympathy for the Scions’ plight. Especially now that you’ve met one of them and overwritten one of them.”
“Why would she, Vaughan?” Belle said. “You restored Elizabeth from a state right before the transfer. She still wants to transfer. This woman has no remorse.”
Vin raised an eyebrow and tilted her head back so she was looking at them down her nose. “She’s right. I have zero remorse. Right now I’m quite upset. Let me speak with Dr. Carlhagen.”
“Go ahead and find him,” Vaughan said, walking away.
Belle was not content to let the woman simply refuse to tell them what they wanted to know. It was time to show the woman how the simulated world worked. For starters, she dropped the sun below the horizon.
Elizabeth gasped and nearly fell on her butt.
Belle grabbed her hair, then imagined them both two miles up.
And they were. The entirety of the island lay below them, a view not dissimilar to the map Vaughan had just shown Elizabeth. But they were not flying, nor were they standing on anything. They were just there.
Elizabeth’s eyes bugged out and she shrieked. Wrapping her arms around Belle, she cried out. “Put me back on the ground.”
Belle gave her the coldest smile she could manage. “Very well.”
With a thought, Belle let Elizabeth fall. Arms flailing, hair flying, she tumbled toward the island far below. The wind tore the towel from around her body.
Belle closed her eyes and took a couple deep breaths. The screaming was barely audible.
She stopped Elizabeth’s plummet and moved her onto the beach. An AI could pass out, apparently. That was interesting.
But not very useful.
Sighing, Belle gathered up the unconscious girl in a swaddle of air and pulled her along behind her.
“That was a bit excessive, Belle,” Vaughan’s voice spoke in her mind.
“Yes. I see that now.” But it had been damned satisfying.
“Let her sleep it off. We’ll get her to cooperate.”
“Yes, Vaughan.”
Belle knew Vaughan planned to reason with the woman. But Belle intended to take her right back up in the air. If necessary.
If Elizabeth was anything like Vin, it probably would be necessary.
10
I’m a Spider
The kitchen—which Summer insisted Jacey call the “galley”—was amidships on a middle deck, wedged between the infirmary and a cramped crew cabin. Each compartment was smaller than one of the hacienda’s walk-in closets.
Flickering tube bulbs bathed the galley in harsh glare that gave a greenish cast to Summer’s skin. A stainless steel counter ran along one wall; pots, cooking utensils, and a wooden block of knives, were lashed under elastic webbing, presumably to keep them from clattering to the floor in rough seas.
Opposite the counter stood a freezer and refrigerator. A gritty hum emanated from one of them.
“Is it supposed to sound like that?” Jacey asked.
Summer rolled her eyes. “No. The compressor unit is about to fail. The refrigerator is already out. I had to toss out some spoiled food.” She waved a hand in front of her nose.
The state of the boat puzzled Jacey. There was no evidence of maintenance anywhere. The engines weren’t performing optimally, pipes leaked water in the passageways, and even food preservation had been neglected. “If Mr. Justin went to so much trouble to scheme to steal us from Dr. Carlhagen, why would he use such an unsafe vessel?”
“I can think of one reason,” Summer said, leaning against the counter. “He didn’t plan to take us very far from St. Vitus.”
Of course, Jacey thought, impressed yet again by Summer’s logical thinking. “Did you find any maps on board? Any indication of where they planned to take us?”
“There’s a navigation system on the bridge. It’s like a reader screen, but bigger. The interface is locked with a password. Orson has to know it or he wouldn’t be able to pilot the ship anywhere. There are some paper maps, but I couldn’t even find St. Vitus on them.”
It always came back to Orson. The answer to what Jacey needed to do seemed simple, in a way. After all, Orson had planned nothing but bad things for the Scions. And now the safety of all Scions depended upon his cooperation. Wasn’t the ethical choice to force him to help?
Jacey’s stomach soured. But did that mean she could use any means necessary to compel him? What if it went beyond mere intimidation?
“Is something wrong?” Summer asked. Then, as if hearing her own question, she made a silly face. “I mean is something else wrong? Something beyond the fact that we’re all doomed to be overwritten if we don’t get off the island pretty soon in this rattletrap bucket?”
Jacey snapped out of her thoughts. Smiling at Summer’s uncharacteristic humor, she said, “Do you really want to know?”
“I suppose not. I have enough problems of my own.”
An urgent need to get back to campus swept through Jacey, making her limbs buzz with impatience. She didn’t want to wait for the bus to be unloaded and hoisted back down to the dock. She didn’t know how to drive the Jeep. But Summer did.
“Do you need to supervise the unloading?” Jacey asked.
Summer smirked and rolled her eyes. “You don’t really think things through sometimes, Jacey. I’m a Spider, remember? Would you really want me to ‘supervise’ Snakes and Eagles?”
“But I thought you said they had to distribute the cargo evenly so the boat doesn’t tip over.”
“I said so the boat doesn’t list too much. That’s not at all the same thing.”
“Come with me, then. Consult with Dajeet about the unloading and then drive me back to campus.”
Sighing as if she’d just been asked to carry the boat on her back, the girl yanked off her hat, letting sheets of black hair tumble free. “Whatever you command, Boss, I do.”
Jacey let the comment slide. Everyone was under stress and Summer tended to fall into sullen disrespectfulness when the pressure was on.
“Once we’re at sea, you can spend as much time down there tinkering with the engines as you want.”
Summer perked up at that and disappeared toward the exit. She knew her away around the space better than Jacey. By the time Jacey got to the stairs, Summer was already a flight up. She stood there, tapping her toe impatiently. “I need to get that elevator working, too. Just another thing for my list.”
“Elevator?”
Summer pointed at a vertical gap in the wall across from the stairs. “Behind those doors. It’s a lift mechanism. You step in, press a button and a cable pulls the car up or lets it down to move between decks.”
“Why would they need it if they have stairs?”
Summer threw up her hands. “I don’t know. But it doesn’t work.”
A boom far above thundered through the boat. The deck shivered under Jacey’s feet.
“What the hell are they doing to my boat!” Summer cried, looking up.
“They must have finally gotten the bus aboard.”
“They’re supposed to lower it, not drop it.” Summer set off up the stairs and Jacey had to take two at a time to catch up. They pushed into the brightness of day and found the bus sitting perfectly centered on the deck. Scions scrambled to remove the chains and straps.
Summer tore into Kirk, demanding to know if he was incompetent or merely stupid. She ripped off a string of facts about the tensile strength of steel and force vectors, which sounded like an unknown language to Jacey’s ears. Dajeet met Jacey and was about to explain what had happened when a new sound cut the air.
The beat of helicopter blades.
Summer stopped mid-curse and spun. Jacey followed her gaze out to sea.
A black speck hung in the air, approaching fast. Jacey’s heart fell into icy blackness, like a stone dropped into the deepest reaches of the ocean.
The senator’s contingency force?
But if so, where were the rest of them? Humphrey said they’d come by air and by sea. She saw no boats on the horizon. And the aircraft was alone.
It buzzed straight toward them and passed twenty meters overhead, its roar so loud Jacey couldn’t help but duck and cover her head with her hands. The sound faded as the helicopter crossed over land and disappeared beyond the green hills.
“It’s headed toward campus,” Jacey said. “Dajeet, warn them.”
Dajeet turned her eyes on Jacey, expression blank. Jacey yanked the walkie-talkie from the girl’s hand. She twisted the dial to a different broadcast channel and mashed the transmission button. “Humphrey! Are you there? Chopper coming. Humphrey!”
Summer’s hand closed over Jacey’s and brought the walkie-talkie away from her mouth. “The radio doesn’t have the range to reach campus.”
Jacey’s eyes went from the hills in the direction of the Scion School toward the sea. Why was there only one helicopter? Where were the ships? “Come on, Summer. Get me back to campus as fast as you can.”
11
The Unmistakable Shape
At Vaughan’s insistence, Belle left Elizabeth lying in a bed in the hacienda. He said he would tolerate no more cruelty.
Let her stew in her own twisted psyche, Belle thought. She deserves worse than I gave her.
Belle had admonished Elizabeth that if she so much as left the hacienda, Belle would throw the woman into the pit, lock the grate, and never let her out again.
Reaching out with her senses, Belle found Vaughan. He was in Dr. Carlhagen’s office. She appeared there next to him and found him speaking with a hologram of Humphrey projected above Dr. Carlhagen’s mahogany holodesk. Humphrey was looking at a reader in his hands.
“No, Elizabeth isn’t talking yet,” Vaughan was saying.
It struck Belle as funny that she and Vaughan lived in a simulation that was simulating a holodesk, when it could just as easily have simulated an entire life-sized Humphrey anywhere they wanted. It had something to do with human psychology, keeping Humphrey out of the simulation helped the mind stay . . . sane, she supposed.
Humphrey’s brows scrunched together as he studied the map Vaughan had sent to his reader. “We’re running out of time. If we don’t find your server soon, I—”
“Just get the Scions off the island, Humphrey.”
Oh, sure, Belle thought. Worry about the living and just leave us to be deleted.
“You should forget about finding Elizabeth’s island,” she said. “She has no incentive to help us Scions. If anything, she has more to gain by turning you all away and telling the senator’s backup force where you are.”
“Belle makes a good point,” Vaughan said.
Humphrey nodded vaguely as he studied the map. “There are a lot of other islands here. Do you suppose they all have people living on them?”
Nobody answered because nobody knew. Except Elizabeth. “I can go talk to our guest again,” Belle said. “She just needs a little more pressure and she’ll spill everything.”
Humphrey looked up and away. His little hologram seemed to be peering up at the ceiling fan whirling in Dr. Carlhagen’s office. “There’s a chopper coming.”
“The senator’s force?” Vaughan asked.
“It sounds like just one. But they can carry several armed men. I need to go.”
Humphrey’s image disappeared.
A second later, a chime sounded in the air and Vaughan’s head snapped up, eyes going wide. “It’s that reader Humphrey left in the wine cellar. Someone’s down there.”
“Who is it?”
Vaughan gestured like a magician, and a window opened in mid-air above Dr. Carlhagen’s desk. It showed a video feed, mostly dark.
The beam of a flashlight pierced the blackness and shone on the steel door in the wine cellar. Enough light reflected from the metal to highlight the vague shape of a figure holding the flashlight, nothing more than a lighter shadow against the blackness.
“Can’t you brighten the picture?” Belle demanded. “Or turn on the lights down there?”
“Wait. I want whoever it is to unlock the door first. Before they know they’re being watched.”
Anxiety felt odd to Belle’s AI body and mind. It didn’t register as sweaty palms or heart palpitations. Instead it was like a keen sound, a rising tone of alarm that only she could hear.
A hand reached out to the keypad and jabbed in a sequence of numbers.
Vaughan mumbled along: “577-157-325. Got it.”
Sound came through as well, but it was just the scuffing of shoes on the cement floor. Something beeped. Then a click.
A thin strip of light appeared at the bottom of the door, and it grew as the figure pulled the door open.
Light spilled into the wine cellar, casting the figure in silhouette. But only for a flash, then they slipped into the room and shut the door.
“I didn’t catch it,” Belle said. “I thought there was a moment where—I don’t know. Play it back.”
Vaughan rewound the video and played it in slow motion.
“There!” Belle snapped. “No. You went too far.”
With extreme patience, Vaughan backed the video frame by frame, stopping at the instant the figure had turned to glance back into the wine cellar.
The unmistakable shape of a ponytail hung in silhouette. Light from inside the room limned a feminine nose and one cheek. It glinted in her eyes.
Belle looked at Vaughan, expecting to see the same shock in his face as she felt. Instead she saw grim fury as he confirmed what she saw so plainly but couldn’t believe. “It’s Leslie.”
