Fugitive X (17 page)

Kevin showered—even he was getting tired of how he smelled—and struggled one-handed into his clothes. He followed Otter, Pil, and Cort to the mess hall.

After breakfast, 23 was waiting for him outside. “The Governor wishes to see you,” it said, and began walking.

Kevin shrugged and followed, acting nonchalant, although his heart started thumping hard.
Was this about the escape attempt?
“What does he want?” he said.

“I do not know,” said 23.

“Is it about last night?” Kevin pressed.

“I do not know,” repeated 23.

“Well, does he know about the . . . about what happened?”

23 abruptly stopped walking, forcing Kevin to skid to a stop. “I have been told to bring you to the Governor’s laboratory because he wishes to speak with you. That is all I will divulge. Do not ask me more about the Governor’s intentions.” It turned crisply away and resumed walking.

“So, about that,” said Kevin. “About what happened. Why did you cover for me? How come I’m not in jail or whatever?”

“Your freedom has been curtailed,” said 23. “You will be more closely monitored. Another escape attempt, should you survive it, would engender harsh punishment.”

“But why did you let me get away with the first one?” Kevin insisted.

“Are you requesting punishment?” said 23. “That can be arranged.”

Kevin was taken aback—23’s comment was surprisingly un-robotic. Was it capable of sarcasm? “Doesn’t answer the question,” Kevin said.

23 didn’t reply.

Kevin lapsed into silence, realizing he wasn’t going to get any farther with the robot. 23 led him to the Governor’s cabin, but instead of walking to the front door, he went around to the other side of the building. A small door, accessed by a small, dug-out three-step stairway, was tucked against the corner of the building. 23 stood quietly outside the door, waiting.

“Aren’t you going to let someone know we’re here?” said Kevin.

“The Governor knows my location,” said 23.

Kevin filed that bit of information away—the Governor’s bots apparently had some sort of location tracking enabled. He wondered how similar it was to the City chips. And were the tracking and communications networking packaged
together? It seemed logical. But how would the Governor keep his network secure? It had to be one of three things—either the signal was only strong enough to cover the Island, the signal was scrambled, or the Island Wall tech was muffling the signal in some way. He’d bet on the last theory—the Wall muffling. Keeping the signal weak wouldn’t prevent it from being picked up by nearby or highly amped receivers, and even if you scrambled it so the comm wasn’t readable, the fact of the scrambled signal itself would be a beacon to your location.

Lost in his tech ruminations, Kevin was startled when the door swung inward. The Governor stood on a small landing at the top of a set of earthen cellar stairs. He was wearing a white lab smock that was stained with brown and black streaks and had a set of scope glasses pushed up to his forehead. He nodded without smiling. “Come in,” he said. He turned and walked down the stairs.

The stairway—simple wood slats with no railing—led down into a large basement. The walls and ceiling were unfinished, bare earth. The ceiling was low, about seven feet high, with two rows of lightstrips. The room was supported by four planed but otherwise unfinished wooden columns. The low-tech vibe of the architecture was at odds with the equipment lining the perimeter on low wood slat tables—vid screens and overflowing boxes of tools and supplies. On the far wall, something intrigued and mystified Kevin—a small metal cabinet, about three feet cubed, that had a massive
tangle of wires running from it, up the wall, and through the ceiling.

The cabinet was obviously a network hub of some sort—could it be the heart of the Wall tech? He was so focused on the cabinet that it took him a few seconds to notice the operating table in the middle of the room. The table was a dull gray metal, and laying on it, perfectly still, was a bot with the epidermis of its face removed.

After recovering from his shock, Kevin hurried over to the bot and began studying the facial interior. His first reaction was surprise at how much neo-plastic was in there—the casings for the eye cameras, the nanomotors and gears, even the coating for the intricate flow of wiring—all neo-plas. He tried to make sense of it all. Those connections, the tiny mushroom-shaped wafers—they were probably sensors, to monitor skin stimuli; and that small black box, near where the mouth would be, that had to be the speaker for the bot’s audio. It was amazing how small it was, though. He had no idea how a speaker could be that efficient. He began to reach down, to move the speaker box, to figure out the amplification technique, but the Governor’s hand grabbed his and pulled it away from the bot.

Kevin jumped. He had completely forgotten about everything, and everyone, else in the room. “No touching,” said the Governor. He gave Kevin a small, enigmatic smile. “Interesting, isn’t it?” he said. “Could almost get lost in it, the circuit routing,
the AI coding, the sheer challenging puzzle of it, right?” The Governor—Dr. Winston, Kevin reminded himself—was staring at Kevin. Kevin felt the Governor’s intensity, and it made him uncomfortable, but he didn’t quite understand it. “You could get so caught up in the details that you forget about the bigger picture, forget about what you’re actually building, and why. Pretend you’re just a pure scientist, and none of it is your fault, not your responsibility. . . .” The Governor shook his head and sighed, turning away from Kevin. “You’re too young to understand.”

“Don’t tell me I’m too young,” Kevin said angrily. “I’ve killed bots and crippled their communications network! Maybe it was just for an hour, but still, I’ve done a lot and I’ve seen a lot and I don’t need you telling me I’m too young to understand anything!”

The Governor watched him, and Kevin folded his arms over his chest and stared back. And then the Governor surprised him. “I’m sorry,” he said. “You’re right. You have been through a great deal. I should not be so patronizing. I apologize.”

Kevin wasn’t sure how to react to the apology, so he said nothing.

The Governor picked up a small clamp that was resting on the table next to the bot’s head and bent over the bot’s face, carefully adjusting something. “So, Kevin,” said the Governor without looking up, “you temporarily crippled their comm network, you say? I’d be very interested in hearing about that.”

Kevin berated himself. He couldn’t be losing his mind every time someone called him young. “It was nothing,” he said. “Got lucky.”

“Got to one of their mainframes somehow?” said the Governor. He looked down at his work and reached back into the bot’s face. “6, hand me the splitter next to your left hand, please.” The bot on the table lifted its arm and handed the Governor a small tool. Kevin felt a small twinge of disgust. . . . The patient handing the doctor his tools during its own operation. The Governor dug deep into the bot’s face with the splitter, squinting. “That would knock out a City’s comm cloud for a bit,” the Governor continued, “but they’ve got too many fail-safes to take out their networks by blowing things up. You’d run out of explosives first.”

“I didn’t use explosives,” said Kevin.

The Governor set his tools down next to the bot’s head and looked up at Kevin. “No?”

Kevin hesitated, then decided,
What the hell
. “I built an overload device. Blew out the power supply.”

The Governor smiled. “Very clever. That would work on some of the small scouts, but not much else. . . . Anything larger would have a shielded core. Interesting that it worked on one of the mainframes. That’s poor engineering. Or maybe just arrogance . . . They never thought anyone would get close.” He turned back to the bot on the operating table, waving Kevin over. “Come here.”

Kevin walked over to the Governor, his curiosity stronger than his distrust.

“You’ve noticed the leather patchwork on my robots. Neo-plas is almost impossible to come by now, so I’ve had to improvise. Cured pigskin works, but it only lasts for a year or two before it degrades, so I have to replace the patches periodically. See these?” He pointed at one of the mushroom-shaped wafers inside the bot’s face. “Basic sensors. They embed in the pigskin. Not really ideal, but it gets the job done. Hand me that piece of patch, will you?” The Governor nodded at a segment of pigskin resting on a tray next to the bot’s waist.

Kevin picked up the skin—it was surprisingly soft and supple—and handed it to the Governor.

“The trick is to bind it to the existing neo-plas without overcooking it, if you understand what I mean,” he said. The Governor laid the patch over the bot’s left cheek and began carefully attaching the sensors to the patch.

“Governor,” said Kevin, “why are you showing me this?”

The Governor sighed and set his tools down. “Because it’s obvious to me that you have talent. An intuition for engineering. No formal training, and still, look how much you’ve managed to figure out. Two months in the Island and you’ll be my best engineer.”

“I don’t want to be your engineer,” Kevin said. “I want to leave, and find my brother and sister, and help my parents.”

The Governor closed his eyes for a long moment, then
opened them slowly. “Kevin, my boy, I can’t help your parents, or your brother or sister. I’d like to, believe me, but they’re not here. What I can do is help you, and keep you safe.”

“I’m not going to sit here and hide, like a . . . like a scared old man, when my family’s out there!” Kevin said, too angry to care about insulting the Governor.

The Governor shook his head. “I’m sorry you refuse to understand,” he said. “23, take the boy to his work.” He picked up his clamp and pointed it at Kevin’s hands. “And if you try to escape again, you’ll get a lot worse than singed hands,” he said. “Now go.”

Kevin didn’t wait for 23; he walked quickly up the stairs and out of the basement. The bot followed close behind.

Back out in the fresh air, Kevin felt a bit of his anger dissipate, replaced with confusion. Why was the Governor reaching out to him? Why had he let Kevin get away with the escape attempt without punishment? Was it really just Kevin’s tech skills, or something else?

“I’m not going to be one of the Governor’s bots,” Kevin said to 23.

“No,” said 23. “You would not make a good robot.”

“You got that right.” Kevin said, and smiled. Wait, was 23 making a joke? Could machines have a sense of humor?

As they approached the Wall gap, Kevin could see that Pil and Cort were arguing. Pil was gesturing angrily with his hands, getting into Cort’s face, and then Cort shoved Pil in the
chest and he fell over. Pil jumped up, hands clenched into fists. 23 stepped between the two boys and grabbed each of their forearms. “Cease your hostilities immediately,” it said. Both Pil and Cort tried to pull themselves away from the bot, but 23 tightened its grip.

Suddenly Otter was standing over the bot, holding the hand planer menacingly. “Let go of them now,” he said.

“Lower your weapon or I will be forced to aggressively defend myself,” said 23.

“Go to hell, you damned bot,” said Otter.

Kevin saw that the two adult men had picked up planks of wood and were walking toward the confrontation. 23 let go of Pil, raising its hand toward Otter, and Otter stepped back and triggered the hand planer with a whirr. . . .

Kevin surprised himself by stepping between Otter and 23. “Wait!” he said. He turned to the bot. “23, there’s no need to interfere. Pil and Cort fight all the time. It never means anything.” 23 hesitated, his arm still raised. Over his shoulder, Kevin could hear the hum of the hand planer and feel Otter’s angry tension.

The bot lowered his hand, let go of Cort, and took a step back. “Very well,” it said. “Do not overtax your hands today. They are not fully healed.” It turned and walked away.

Otter switched the planer off. “Don’t ever step into my fight again,” he said to Kevin. The two men dropped their planks of wood and turned back to their cabling.

Kevin shrugged, appearing more calm than he felt. “Just saving you from your own funeral,” he said. “Maybe you could have taken 23, but I don’t think the other bots would’ve been very happy about it.” Otter scowled but spun away without saying anything else.

THE NEXT MORNING AT SUNRISE THE CAMP CLEARED OUT, LEAVING
behind two rebels—one with her left arm in a sling, the other with his foot in a makeshift wooden splint. It was obvious, based on the amount of firepower that they were packing and their grim, serious demeanors, that something big was about to happen.

“Are they heading to the City?” Nick asked the woman with her arm in a sling. If they were, he needed to be a part of it. He might be able to use the battle chaos to get his parents out. . . .

“No,” she said gruffly. “Haven’t gotten the orders for that yet.”

“So where are they going?” he asked. “What’s the plan?”

The woman scowled and said, “If you don’t know, then you aren’t supposed to know. Now keep quiet, otherwise I’ll activate your sister’s stun collar just to shut you up.”

The other guard limped up on his bad leg. “Don’t worry about Jackie,” he said to Nick. “She’s all rusted out because not only is she missing the action, but now she has to be a babysitter.”

“What is the action, exactly?” said Nick.

“Clamp it, Witt,” said Jackie, shoving the man on the shoulder, sending him staggering back and forcing him to hop to stay off his bad foot.

“Dammit, Jackie, you trying to break my other foot?” said Witt. Jackie ignored him. Witt hobbled back to Nick. “She’s right,” he said, giving Nick a slightly apologetic shrug. “You’ve got a long way to go before getting back in Ro’s good graces, now that you’ve dragged your true believer sister into our camp.”

“Like I told Ro, we had nowhere else to go,” Nick said. “And she’s not a true believer. She’s just . . . she’s just confused right now.”

“I’m not confused,” Cass said. She was sitting on a log near a fire pit, staring into the ashes. She looked up at Nick and Witt. “My parents, my
real
parents, are alive and happy in the City. And that’s where my home is.”