Rubicon, page 36
Blood filled Adriene’s ears. It deadened the dull drone of electronics, muffled Daroga’s voice as he continued to speak.
She barely absorbed his words as he explained the details—something about printed synapses and generated cells, then he fully diverted into technical jargon she didn’t understand—but the gist was clear. And the gist built a fury within her she didn’t know how to suppress.
“Think about cases of catastrophic head injury,” he was saying as she snapped back into focus. “How could a rezone work if the chip was destroyed in the process?”
Her finger twitched, and an image flashed into the back of her mind—Harlan’s head erupting into a bloody shower of viscera. Just one of so many times.
She shook her head. “I had a chip installed. I remember it happening.”
“You did—the first one, for your real body. The husks after that don’t come with one preinstalled, because they don’t need one.”
Her real body …
Her lungs burned, and she had to remind herself to breathe.
She looked down at her hand again, opened and closed her fist, finger by finger.
She’d always known the husks were grown and hurried along in that process by whatever means the eggheads had concocted to clone adult bodies from scratch. She’d always thought it was still a fully biological process. That her DNA was still her DNA. That they were still real.
But no. Their husks were engineered, printed shells inserted with a fake brain and fake nervous system. Laced with altered genetic code that allowed them to rezone. She was the chip.
She’d always assumed it came preinstalled. No—not assumed. That’s what they told her. The lie they told her.
But why? Why lie about something like that, to everyone in the fleet?
A leaden weight sank deep into her stomach and she didn’t have to ponder it for long before the answer became startlingly, crystal clear.
They didn’t want anyone to know, for this exact reason. This reaction. There’d be panic. Disconnect. A fractured sense of mortality. The scrappers were the synthetic ones. The artificial, devious, evil sins against nature. The enemy.
So much made sense now. Why West had never rezoned, why Thurston and Champlan never had, why so much of High Command continued to die of old age despite the fact that they could live forever if they wanted to. Because they all knew the truth. That if they rezoned, they would be nothing but a reprint of their former selves, synthetic fabrications stuck in a cycle that could never end.
Pain bolted through her chest as a guilt-laden question rose from the back of her mind. She’d never even asked, never paid attention, just like with Daroga: Had Brigham and Kato and Gallagher already been husks? What about Ivon, Coleson, Wyatt, Rhett? Or was she now responsible not only for getting them rezoned but killing them? Destroying their one true biological body?
“Hey,” Daroga murmured quietly, tone threaded with concern. He tilted his head to try to catch her eye. “It’s really not as bad as it sounds. You’re still you, it’s just a little … biosynthetic help.”
Adriene’s throat had gone bone-dry, and she could barely crack out a sound. “How do you know all this?”
“West told me most of it,” he admitted with a sigh. “With Rubicon, I do a lot of poking around in people’s brains, and he knew I’d figure out the chips weren’t there and that the tissue I was seeing wasn’t exactly … a hundred percent normal. Some of it I figured out on my own, and some was part of my classification briefing—so for the love of Mira, please don’t tell anyone I told you all this.”
“I won’t,” she breathed, but didn’t look up at him. “He lied…”
“Who lied?”
“West,” she said, shaking her head. “It was part of my contract.”
“For your new role?”
“Yeah,” she said, dazed. “Service annulment, discharge, veteran’s pay. And chip deactivation.”
Daroga gave a consoling frown. “Shit. Well, I’m sure he could annul your contract and grant a discharge. Though … as far as I’m aware, no one who’s gotten a chip has retired yet. I honestly don’t know how they intend to handle it when those soldiers turn civilian. But as far as a ‘chip deactivation’…” He slowly shook his head. “That’s simply not possible. West should know better than anyone—it’s his tech.”
Adriene’s eyes shot up. “You mean the Rubicon tech?”
Daroga’s worried look softened even more. “Well, that too. But no … I meant rezone tech.”
Once again, heated blood filled her ears, the light in her eyes blooming as she stared back at Daroga, unable to breathe.
When she finally found the will to suck a sliver of air back into her lungs, she choked out, “West invented rezone tech?”
Daroga’s dark lashes fluttered warily, but he nodded.
Adriene swung her legs off the side of the bed.
He scooted after her. “Wait, what’s wrong?”
She ignored him and started pulling her clothes back on.
West kept things from her, he always had—as a matter of course. But this was something else entirely.
She’d trusted him. Risked her life and career and relationships for the chance to end her rezones and, with it, her ability to be hybridized.
But he’d done nothing but lie.
She’d gotten seven people rezoned, for what? A chance at stopping her own? It’d been fucking selfish and, apparently, all for nothing. West couldn’t stop her rezones; he never could. He’d done nothing but manipulate her. And she’d played right into it.
But even worse: How many chances had he had to tell her he was responsible for the literal cause of her unending, shit life? That he was the reason rezoning even existed? And he’d never even endured the traumas of his own tech. Even now he refused, while his half-scrapper body racked him with pain.
Daroga’s hand drifted down her back. “Hey, you okay?”
She tugged her shirt on and stood up. “Fine. Sorry.” She grabbed her boots off the ground and pulled them on.
Daroga’s brow creased, and he slid to sit on the edge of the bed. She crossed to him, sliding between his knees and taking his face in her hands, threading her fingers through his long hair as she kissed him hard. He seemed surprised by her vigor before melting into it, pulling her into him.
She paused to catch her breath. “I’m sorry, I have to go. I just … I need to be alone for a bit.”
“It’s your room, I can go—”
“No, it’s fine, really. Stay as long as you want. I just have to take care of something.”
“All right,” he said warily, lips grazing hers as he spoke. “I’m sorry, Adri. I didn’t mean to—”
“Don’t be sorry. I needed to hear it.” She kissed his forehead, letting herself enjoy the embrace for one more moment before she broke free, his arms reluctantly falling away from her.
She marched out the door and to the end of the hall, taking the stairs down two flights before cutting over to the narrow, slatted lift that led to the Rubicon servers.
With a quick glance, she confirmed the corridor was barren before turning back to the wall beside the lift door. She punched it as hard as she could.
A knuckle cracked with a spear of pain. It wasn’t enough.
She hit it again, and again, hot fury thickening under her ribs, knuckles ripping and bloodying, until her heart finally spiked along with a sharp crack of pain.
// Welcome to Rubicon. //
She grimaced, shaking out her aching wrist.
// What—why? What are you doing? //
“How could you not tell me?” she fumed, cradling her bloody knuckles in her other hand.
// Not tell you what? //
“There’s no fucking rezone chip!”
// All I said was I could deactivate the chip if there was one to deactivate—//
“That’s bullshit,” she growled. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
// Well, because I knew you’d react like this, for starters. //
She gritted her teeth, fist clenching, though she stopped herself from striking the bloody mar on the wall again. “You swore you wouldn’t lie to me.”
// I swore I’d stop lying to you. You never asked about the chip again after that. //
“Fucking hell,” she snarled. “You let me go this whole time thinking West was telling the truth—that he’d deactivate my chip if I kept up this endless campaign. You should have fucking told me!”
// Adriene … I’m sorry. //
She froze, shocked into silence. Had he ever used her name before?
// You’re right. I should have told you. //
She wet her lips. His ability to convey tone was getting … eerie. He sounded sincere, and truly remorseful.
She let a fraction of her ire fall from her voice. “Why didn’t you?”
Her ears rang in the heavy silence, a pause. As if he had to consider his words.
// For a long while, especially early on, you were … on a precipice. I was afraid that if you found out … Well, that it might push you the wrong way. And I didn’t want you to hurt more. I thought it was justified—that I was protecting you. As a VI, my initial obligation was to ensure your safety. But the moment that upgrade hit, that became my choice. And I’ve chosen it every day since. //
She swallowed unevenly, chest swelling with raw, unsteady breaths.
// But I understand now why that choice was wrong. I should have told you. I’m trying, Adriene, really. I’m still learning how to be … what you need me to be. But I’ll never stop choosing you. You have to believe me. //
Her shoulders dropped, cradling her knuckles tighter as the misdirected anger bled from her tense muscles. “I do.”
As easy as it’d be to keep screaming at him … he wasn’t the one to blame. But someone else definitely was.
“You ready?”
// Always. //
With blood-smeared fingers, she reached out and pressed the call button.
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
It took her Rubicon a few infuriating minutes to hack the security lock on the lift.
Her anger hadn’t lessened by the time she stepped off and wound her way through the dark halls of the lower levels. She was even more furious when she arrived at the large server room and West wasn’t there to yell at.
The massive wall of monitors arranged over the half-moon counter was quieter than it’d been a few hours ago, though many of the screens still glowed with flickering code.
West had said it’d take a few hours to finish the process needed to get the Mechan—the Architect—hell, the Creator to open up to him. He was likely interrogating the poor bastard.
She scanned the line of monitors and terminals stretching the long console.
// We can certainly try. //
Her HUD flickered as a green scan line dragged across her vision. It landed on one of the holographic interface nodes near the center of the arc. She marched over and swept it open.
A list of security feeds sat docked on the left side. She tapped one labeled “Holding Cells,” then it flashed a red “Clearance Required” warning.
// One sec … //
The red warning flickered off, and the holding cell feed appeared. She tapped to enlarge the camera in the Creator’s cell, which included an “Archival Mode Off” warning.
In the security feed, the Creator still lay faceup, secured by mag cuffs to the floor behind the clear plastic security barrier, completely unchanged from hours earlier. At his feet, West sat on a stool, a tablet propped in his lap. Considering West’s lack of a headset, he must have linked the VI translator to the Creator’s own speech mechanics.
“Is there sound?” she asked.
Her Rubicon highlighted the control toggle, a painfully obvious speaker icon with a line through it. She tapped the symbol, and the audio meter beside the footage danced as the sound activated. It came tinny and distant—sourced from small speakers recessed somewhere in the countertop, still overrun with data cores.
// Connecting … //
A click sounded in her ears, followed by the static hum of ambient noise as the audio feed filtered directly into her mind. Mildly disoriented, she shook it off with an effort and focused on listening in.
“—intelligence which suggests,” West was saying, “you implemented the collective consciousness while attempting to support the command structure for individual hybridization.”
“Yes. Clearly, it did not work as intended.” Though the Creator’s grating voice was difficult to understand in the hollow echo of the stale room, his grasp of language seemed to have vastly improved. But his tone was the definition of placid—as even and toneless as Adriene’s Rubicon’s had been back when he’d been only a VI.
An acrid weight pulled on her heart, and it took her a long moment to recognize the feeling.
She felt bad for him. He was a real, sentient being, trapped in that horrific shell. And if what West had claimed was true, then the Creator couldn’t lie anymore. He had no way to advocate for or defend himself. All he could do was lie there and give West every answer he wanted.
West’s stool creaked as he shifted his weight, metal arm bent against his side. “What went wrong?” he asked. “Be specific.”
“It was not due to any singular detail. The concept itself was flawed.”
“Expand.”
“To conduct my testing, I accorded a small, isolated group the ability—only five. But within hours, they’d adapted and expanded it to all units. Though the moralists had put the end in motion by granting them sentience, the collective consciousness is what ultimately gave them the cohesion they needed to secede so quickly and decisively. Soon after, they discovered our source of alanthum and began to blindly copy themselves—no regard for individuality or self, only quantity. They abandoned the few of us who remained on our homeworld shortly after.”
“But you survived.” West’s tone was that of accusation. His gaze drifted over the three-meter length of the Creator’s shell. “As … this. How? Why did they not destroy you?”
“They did not know I survived the transfer. I stowed away on one of their vessels, then escaped and went into hiding. You need to be exceedingly careful, human.”
West shifted again, rolling his left shoulder back, considering the Creator for a few long moments before responding. “Careful about what?”
“If the Deliverers locate me or otherwise ascertain the method of procedure, they will do to you and yours what my kind attempted to do to them.”
Adriene’s brow furrowed. She absently picked at a hangnail, mind churning.
// You’re thinking about West’s theory? //
She nodded, wary. He sounded as uneasy as Adriene felt.
Yeah. Could that really be what he’s talking about?
// It certainly seems like it. //
In the feed, West stared down at his tablet, unmoving and unresponsive.
“You must believe me,” the Creator continued, his dire plea made eerier by his monotone. “I know what information you seek, and I understand why you believe it will aid your plight. But if you take it from me and use it, the Deliverers will know. They will capture your soldiers, and the secret will be theirs. They will adapt it for their own use, and your hardships will be over. Because they will have won.”
Adriene chewed the inside of her lip.
Take it from him and “use it”? What the hell does that mean?
// I—//
But he cut himself off, a stray sense of reluctance tugging at the back of Adriene’s thoughts. As if he were too afraid to say it outright.
And she couldn’t really blame him. Because if she was following the conversation right, then they were talking about hybridization.
“I understand the risks,” West assured, tone hard.
“Do you? You blame the Deliverers for your strife, and for ours, but they are not the makers of our undoing. My singular hubris led to our downfall more completely than if we had simply left our failing bodies to die naturally, as nature intended. Do not repeat my mistakes, human. Do not provide them with the means to carry out your own extinction. Destroy it while you still have a chance.”
West gave a firm headshake. “Destroying the technology will not stop them.” His metal hand twitched lightly against the glass of his tablet. “With or without you as a blueprint, they will eventually discover what they seek. As long as they exist, humanity remains endangered. This is the only way to ensure they are dealt with before it’s too late.”
“It is reckless, human, and you know it.”
West’s tone turned hard. “I determine what is and is not a risk for my species. You have done nothing but hide for centuries, you know nothing of what we’ve endured or what we now face—a fate you’re responsible for, I might add.”
The Creator’s ocular sensors dimmed slightly.
West cleared his throat. “Just tell me what I need to know, and this can be over.”
“I should not,” the Creator said, and Adriene swore she could hear a hint of grief in his flat timbre. “I should save you from yourself.”
West leaned forward in his stool. “Remember, you are nothing but an assembly of metal to me. I’m interfacing with you this way as a professional courtesy. I respect what you accomplished. But it ends at that—a courtesy.” His tone took on a callous edge. “I’d just as soon plug you directly into my mainframe, download it all, and find the data myself. Then abandon you on some far-flung planet, forever paralyzed in your grief.”
Heat scratched at Adriene’s neck. She’d never seen West like this before.
“Or,” West continued, the tension in his voice equalizing somewhat, “you can tell me what I want to know, and we can have a different discussion about your fate.”
After a long pause, the Creator spoke again. “With these constraints in place, it is not as if you have given me the ability to refuse. But you will not be able to say you were not warned.”
“Noted,” West said, tone clipped. “Now, tell me. How did you perfect the transfer?”
“There was much trial and error preceding, but the breakthrough arrived shortly after I overcame one fundamental misconception.”
