Sir, her AIC is trying to hack me, Abigail warned him. He's hacking into all of us, sir.
Are you okay?
For now, sir! Allison is helping! But, sir, her AIC, is, is . . .
Abby? Abby!
Alexander slapped Ahmi upside her head with the butt of his HVAR very hard.
"Stop trying to hack my AIC! Now!"
"Mother! Tell me what I need to know. You have to help me." Sehera pushed the barrel of her rifle harder against her forehead. "Please, Mother. I can end this today! We must end this today! But we will need your help. Damnit, Mother, if you ever loved me, if you are even still in there, help us."
"Fuck this," Nancy said. "I owe this bitch." She walked over and started to put a round into Ahmi before her AIC could hack theirs. Nancy had never believed there could be an AIC stronger than hers, or even close. But this AIC was attempting to hack a top-secret AIC, a very, very brilliant one in Abigail, and a top-of-the-line mecha jock's AIC all at the same time, and doing a pretty good job of it.
"No!" Sehera turned to her. Alexander stepped in Nancy's way.
"Not yet," he said.
"Elle!" Sehera started to cry. "Sienna Madira, are you in there? Help us. Help us!"
"Alexander," Ahmi looked over at him. "You . . . I—I'm sorry I tortured you, son."
"Help us, then."
"Sehera, I love you. Copernicus, stop it! Copernicus, no! I'm in control here!" Ahmi fell forward, holding her head and screaming. Blood started to trickle from her left ear, and then it poured. "Stop it!" She rose up, lunging forward into Sehera and taking the railpistol from her daughter's side holster.
"Mother! Tell us who the Separatist cell leaders are!" Sehera pushed her away, not realizing her pistol had been taken.
"Show, unh, Dee who her grandfather was." Elle stood, held the railpistol to the side of her head, and pulled the trigger.
"No!" Alexander shouted.
Sehera stood looking over mother's body. There should have been more blood and gray matter, she thought. She knelt beside the body of the one hundred eleventh president of the United States, of the most wanted mass-murdering terrorist in human history, of her daughter's grandmother. Sehera reached out and closed her dead mother's eyes.
"You two are the White House moles!" Nancy stepped forward and swept her weapon between Alexander and Sehera. Thomas instantly turned and raised his weapon on Nancy. DeathRay looked unsure of whom to point his weapon at.
"No, we're not," Alexander said. "Sehera is just one of many victims of her mother's schemes, and I'm the White House double-agent. Ms. Nancy Marie Bloomfeld, I would think a woman playing the role of somebody else for most of her life could understand the concept."
"But you have been involved with her. Your wife is her daughter? How can we trust you?"
"Before you were even an itch in your daddy's pants, Ms. Bloomfeld, I fought this woman with every fiber of my being. I watched her slaughter, capture, torture, maim, and kill my men. She tortured me to near-death on several occasions. I swore then I'd stop her no matter what it took. And believe me, it has taken a lot."
"Still, your wife is her daughter. How can we trust you?" Nancy repeated.
Sehera answered her. "Put down your weapon, and I'll show you. Plus, I'll save your AICs." Sehera wiped tears from her face. Then she rolled her mother's head over, revealing the exit wound. Sehera reached in and wrapped her fingers around something inside her mother's skull and pulled a gray and bloody deformed mass the size of an egg out. There were clear slimy tendrils extending into her head. Sehera continued to pull until she had extracted the thing from her. Her mother's neck twisted and popped a few times as she pulled. The plastic-coated device looked more like a jellyfish than it did anything else. She tossed it on the floor next to her husband.
"What the hell is that?" Jack asked, alarmed at the sight.
"The root of mother's evil," Sehera replied. Alexander stomped a boot on the thing, shattering it to pieces. He stomped it a few more times and twisted the ball of his foot over the plastic pieces until they were nothing more than a bloody stain rubbed into the hardwood floor.
"That was a prototype top-secret super AIC from over eighty-five years ago," Moore said. "And this used to be President Sienna Madira, until that damned thing went nuts and started taking over her mind. She became Elle Ahmi after that."
"And she was my mother," Sehera continued to cry softly. "As I grew up, I saw her go through multiple personality periods and wild mood swings and amazing periods of brilliance and amoral evil. I always knew something was wrong with her, that she was more than just a terrorist. Alexander and I figured it out during the Martian Desert Campaign, while he was in the torture camps. Being a student of history, he recognized who she really was from things she said and mannerisms she had."
"And it has taken us decades to figure out how to stop her." Alexander put his hand on his wife's shoulder. "How to stop it. And the crazy damned plans twisted around other plans within plans. There was always a glitch in the plans, though. Madira was still in there and was somehow fighting to hold the AI in check. And it looks like she finally won out in the end."
"What did she mean about telling Dee who her grandfather was?" Thomas asked.
"Sehera's father was former Supreme Court Chief Justice Scotty P. Mueller, and Ahmi's partner until she killed him," Alexander said. "I guess she wants her to know who he was."
"Scotty? There was a Scotty who helped me escape on that kamikaze battle cruiser for Luna City six years ago. Was that him?" Nancy asked.
"He let you go?" Sehera asked.
"Yes, he did. If it weren't for him, I'd be dead, and that ship would've probably hit Luna City. After Ahmi and this crazy doctor tortured me, he snuck in and cut me loose," Nancy explained.
"That sounds like my father," Sehera asked.
"You're why she killed him, then. She said he had betrayed her," Moore said. "And I bet I met that crazy doctor of yours forty years ago. I'd like a few minutes alone with that sonofabitch!"
"I killed him."
"Can't think of someone who deserved it more," Moore said with disdain for Ahmi's torture expert. That sadistic bastard had needed killing.
"Wait, wait. This is all too much. You talked to Elle Ahmi after the Battle for the Oort?" Jack asked.
"Yes, I did. We had to keep stringing her along until we found out how deep her Separatists were within the government. We've kept in contact with her and acted like we were part of her plans for decades," Moore said grudgingly. "I couldn't think of a better plan, DeathRay. We had a chance to stop her entire plan, not just her. We had to stay the course. And we had also simulated the outcome of just killing her. The colonies and Mars would have been thrown into a period where warlords fought each other for bits of the power vacuum that would follow."
"I was just asking, sir."
"Jesus, I've got a top-secret super AIC in my head, throughout my body. Could that happen to me?" Nancy asked.
"We've read your file, Nancy. The technology is decades ahead of what President Madira had implanted," Moore told her. "Besides, Abby really likes Allison and assures me that she is perfectly healthy."