Kiri ignored Auden and addressed the techs. “How close are we?”
“Five minutes,” one of them said, voice slightly wobbly. “If it works.”
“It better work.” Kiri jerked her head at the two techs guarding Zo. “Make yourself helpful,” she snapped. “Go see if you can’t hunt down their little friend. I know she’s on board.”
They shifted nervously, glancing at each other, but neither moved. One mumbled something under his breath.
“What’s that?” Kiri glared.
“Bad numbers if we go,” he muttered. “Three of them, two of us—”
“They’re children.” She rolled her eyes. “Fine. Kill the defective and the girl, but save the skinner. If this doesn’t work, we might need him.”
“To upload?” Auden said, nearly shouting.
Not because he was afraid. Not because he was panicking.
Because he was talking to me.
“We can’t use him,” one of the techs said. “If we upload an intact one, it’s possible—”
“Who said he’d be intact?” Kiri smiled. “Now, take care of it.”
Kill the defective and the girl.
Two men raised two guns. Kiri watched, waited. Still smiled. And it was like she was smiling right at me, like she knew I was there and was taunting me, daring me to show myself, to do something stupid, throw myself at her, at Zo, at the weapons, throw everything away, like she couldn’t wait for it to happen, and she couldn’t wait to watch.
Two men, two guns. But there were no guns guarding the uplink device. Only two techs, who were barely my size, who had dropped what they were doing and were frozen, watching Kiri, watching the guns, watching death about to happen.
This is a dumb idea, I thought, but there was no time to think.
I ran.
I ran toward the server, toward the uplink jack, toward the techs, who scattered as I barreled toward them, and I lunged for the uplinker, fumbling with the familiar wires and switches, aiming the wireless input jack at my pupil, only one chance to get this right, to flip the switch, to do something, even if the triggers compressed and the guns fired and physics took over. I couldn’t stop Kiri. I couldn’t stop bullets. But maybe I could stop them from uploading whatever they were so desperate to upload—by uploading myself first. Maybe it would only stop them for a moment, I couldn’t know. But a moment might be enough to save Zo.
Kiri’s thugs flickered at the edge of my vision, and as I fumbled with the device—urging myself faster, faster—I saw them whirling around, and then there was an explosion in my ears, and suddenly the world shifted. I didn’t understand why the ceiling was so far away, why I was on the ground, why I couldn’t move, why the explosions were still firing, but quieter now, like sharp popping noises, distant bombs bursting in air and, with each of them, pain, bursting in me. Legs, chest, neck, more, until there was no telling one from another; the pain radiated everywhere, sharp and sweet, and in the rush I could believe that my body was a body, that I was alive.
The upload worked, I thought.
I will survive.
But it didn’t work that way. The memories would survive. The pattern would survive. But I wasn’t in the uplink, and I wasn’t in the servers. I was on the ground. I was bleeding a viscous green fluid and firing sparks and watching uselessly as my friends took advantage of the distraction and struggled for their lives. I was stuck, as I was always stuck, in this body that didn’t belong to me, that wasn’t me; that’s what Jude had taught us, that’s what I was supposed to believe—I was my mind, I was my memories.
But my mind, my memories, were locked inside the head, and the head was bleeding.
The eyes were bleeding, fluid clouding the artificial irises, and Kiri appeared before me tinged with muddy blue, the pulse gun she raised little more than a black smear. I didn’t hear what she said. I saw Zo open her mouth, but couldn’t hear her scream.
This is not my body.
This is not me.
This is not—
17. AFTER
That was the end.
That was the beginning.
This is real, I thought. This is not.
This is me.
This is not.
I was in pieces.
I was sand, sprinkled on a beach.
Thousands of grains—lost in a billion.
I sorted through them.
Found myself, recognized myself, separated myself from the world.
One by one.
This is other.
This is me.
After the accident I was lost in the dark. Alone. A solitary something, locked in endless nothing.
There was no darkness here.
I was lost in the light.
The white-hot light of information, arrays of photons, billions to the billionth power, ones and zeros, electrons entangled, quantum spin states flipping up and down, all the data, all the words, all the commands, all the memories, all light. All me.
I was nothing.
I was billions upon billions of photons, spread out across a server, across a network, across an invisible web that circled the globe. But like finds like. Lia found Lia. Billions of Lias, flowing together, craving cohesion, links growing, bonds forming, until billions became one, and one became billions.
Until I became me again. The same; different.
Until there was no this is me, this is other. There was only us.
Lia Kahn.
And the network.
It took a thousand years.
It took a nanosecond.
And then I woke.
I opened my eyes.
All my eyes.
I saw.
I saw with a billion eyes. Heard with a billion ears. Security cameras, satellites, ViMs, motion detectors, heat sensors, radars, anything and everything that linked into the network linked into me.
I saw the Parnassus corp-town, the mechs still trapped inside, waiting for the end. The guards, who breathed in and out because the correct combination of gases flowed through the air vents, air vents with circuits, with programming, with chips that drew data from the network, that drew their commands. Like the command to filter out a negligible amount of oxygen, shifting the balance, depriving org lungs, letting the guards sleep. Letting Ani and Quinn lead the mechs out of their prison and—as I smoothed the way—to the dead zone, a new safe haven, letting Ani and Quinn play mechanical Moses, leading their followers to a poisoned promised land.
I saw into BioMax, slipping past their firewalls like water through clasped hands—it was nothing but a joke, the thought that any wall could be high enough, strong enough, safe enough to keep me out—and I found the electronic bits and bytes that were once and would again be Riley. I saw the body that would soon house what passed for his soul, a body they would load him into, because I would make them, and some distant part of me, the part that still remembered what bodies were like and why I’d clung so tightly to mine, wondered what kind of world he would wake to, and whether he would care I was gone.
I saw Auden on his knees, palms together, head bowed. And beside him, a gun. Beside him, bodies.
I saw another body, the body that had belonged to me, a different me, a body that had given me life and then given out. I saw Jude and Zo standing over it. I saw Zo crying. I saw Jude take her hand.
They didn’t know I was there, watching. They didn’t know I would guide them safely off the ship, back to dry land.