Shattered (38 page)

“I didn't say we wouldn't
help
them,” Jude said. “Just that we wouldn't get them out.” He threw the snowball up as high as he could. It fell apart in midair, showering us with snow. “Think about it: We have two objectives, right? Rescue our friends—and destroy the lab.”

He said it like it was obvious. “I don't know,” I said.

“If you're right, and they're working on a way to wipe us out, then we have to stop them,” Jude said. “So unless you want to change your story, and now you think the org was lying …”

“No.”

“Then we have to get rid of the lab. So we do them both in one shot. Look, they've got heavy security in place, and if the hostages are …
damaged
, that means they might not be able to run, or walk. Or even understand what's happening. How do you expect the three of us to get in and get out—get
all
of us out, without getting caught ourselves?”

“Maybe I could convince Zo to help with the—”

“No. No orgs. If we do this,
we
do it. We don't rely on someone
who can screw us over at the last minute. Ruin everything.” He shook his head. “But I don't see how we get them out—get past the guards, the fence, the security AIs.
Maybe
we can get ourselves in. But we'd need more firepower or … I don't know, more
something
to get everyone out.”

I don't know
—it was a phrase I was pretty sure I'd never heard him say before. Perfect timing for the all-knowing Jude's knowledge to run out. “It doesn't have to be just the three of us,” I said, afraid I already knew exactly what he'd think of that. “Plenty of other mechs would—”

“I can't trust anyone,” Jude said, his voice laced with steel. “Not anymore. I trust Riley. Riley trusts you. But that's it. We're done.”

“Just get to the point,” Riley said. Something in his voice made it sound like he already knew where Jude was headed.

“After what's been done to them, we don't even know if they can be fixed,” Jude said. “What we
do
know is that they've got perfectly good, intact copies in storage. If something happened to their bodies, they could just be downloaded again. Start fresh. So we make it happen. We don't rescue them—we destroy the lab, and we destroy them with it.”

Riley was nodding.

Just one problem. “How do
we
get out?”

Jude shrugged. “Same way we get in—it'll probably be easier, all the Faither freaks running around trying to save their precious lab. They won't even notice us. And if that doesn't work …”

“What?”

“We go out the same way the others do,” Jude said. “Destruction. Download. Simple.”

Right. Simple. Just blow up our friends—and ourselves along with them. Die, and wake up miles away in some BioMax lab with no idea how we ended up there. Shoved into new bodies, and forced to pay whatever price for crimes we couldn't remember committing. If anything went wrong …
But that's not what you're afraid of,
I told myself. No more avoiding the truth.

Death meant nothing anymore. But I was still afraid of it.

“Even if we could do it …” I hesitated, unsure how to put words to what I was feeling. The idea made sense … but it felt wrong. “We just let them die?”

“It's not death,” Jude reminded me. “It's just their bodies, not their minds. Their minds are safe in storage.”

“
Copies
of their minds,” I said.

“You're a copy,” he pointed out. “Feels real, though, doesn't it?”

I am what I remember,
I told myself.
I am what I think.
How
I think.

And all that was bits of electronic data, coded into a computer. It didn't matter if the data was in my head or on a server. It didn't matter
which
head the data was in, or how many times it had been duplicated. Maybe I wasn't an exact copy of the old Lia Kahn, because you always lost something going from analog to digital, from org to mech. But the
next
me would be just as mechanical as this one. The next me would be a perfect replication.
The next me would be me. And if it was true for me, it was true for all of them.

“We do it this way, they start fresh,” Jude said. “Whatever Savona's done to them, they won't have to remember it. It'll be like none of this ever happened. And Ani … who knows when she last backed up. It could all disappear.”

And she could come back like nothing happened,
I thought, hearing in his voice how much he wanted it.

“I have a guy who can get some explosives,” Jude said. “Riley and I know how to rig them.”

Like it was just a trivial errand, a grocery list. Pick up apples, two pounds of chicken … and enough explosives to blow up a secret laboratory and everything inside.

“We get in, blow the lab, get out—if we're lucky, no one will even know we were there. As a bonus, it looks like the Brotherhood blew up its own hostages. Can't hurt with public opinion—and since there's nothing we can do,
yet
, about the Synapsis attack …”

There was something surreal about this whole thing. Like I'd become someone unrecognizable; we all had. But: “It actually sounds like it could work.”

Riley frowned. “You're not saying all of it,” he told Jude.

Jude wasted half a second on a wide-eyed
Who, me?
stare, then gave in. He never said no to Riley, not in the end. “You said they're never alone in the lab?” Jude asked me.

I nodded. “As soon as they're done with the experiments for the night, they take the mechs back to the Temple, string
them back up on the posts. Zo says there are usually people in the lab working all night—” I finally got it. “No. No, we get them out first. Sound some kind of alarm. Send a warning. Something.”

“The whole point is that it has to be a total surprise,” Jude said. “If they knew we were there, we'd have to fight our way out. And we'd lose. There's no way to alert the orgs without giving ourselves away.”

“Then we come up with another plan!” I insisted. “I'm not—” I didn't even want to say it out loud. The words would have sounded ludicrous coming out of my mouth.
I'm not killing anyone
. As if I was the type of person for whom that was even an option. Unrecognizable was one thing. This was alien. This was unthinkable. “Tell him, Riley. Tell him we can't do this.”

I waited for Riley to take Jude's side or keep his mouth shut. But he shook his head. “No,” he said firmly. Not to me, to Jude. “She's right. We don't do this.”

“It's not like they're innocent. They're not in there having a tea party.
They're
trying to kill
us
. We'd just be striking first. Self-defense isn't a crime.”

“You want to turn us into monsters?” I asked. “You want to confirm everything they say about us? You want to make it all
true
?”

“You want to
die
?” Jude snapped. “This isn't just about Sloane and Ani and all the rest of them, not after what you saw. We didn't turn this into a war, they did. And in a war, you fight. Self-defense is not murder.”

“Dead is still dead,” I told him. “And if you knew anything about what it was like when people—”

“Lia, don't,” Riley said, his voice quiet but insistent.

“No!” I cried. “If he understood what it's like when people fall, when they stop breathing, and their eyes … if he'd seen what we saw, he wouldn't …”

“That was fake,” Jude said tightly. “So maybe you're the one who doesn't get it. I've seen death. The
real
kind. And I've seen people die because they couldn't protect themselves.” He shot a glance at Riley, who looked away. “Or because other people refused to do what was necessary to protect them.”

“It doesn't make it okay,” I insisted. “It doesn't mean we shouldn't find another way.”

“Stop being such a child!” Jude yelled. “Sometimes there just
isn't
another way.”

“And sometimes there is,” Riley said. “So we find one.”

“Zo could be in that building,” I said.

“You said she's not allowed in there,” Jude reminded me.

“Fine. So someone else's sister could be in there.”

“You're right,” Jude said. “
Sloane
. Sister of an eight-year-old kid named Max. And Ty's got two little brothers. Brahm has an older one, who doesn't acknowledge his existence.”

I couldn't believe he'd bothered to find out about anyone's families, much less remembered the details.

“Then there's Ani. Who doesn't have anyone,” Jude continued. “Does that make her less valuable? Does that mean we should sacrifice her so the orgs trying to kill her get to live?”

“I don't want to sacrifice
anyone
,” I said.

“You want.
You
want. Like that matters.” Jude shook his head, plainly disgusted. “Reminder: They're
orgs.
They're going to die sooner or later, so what's the difference if it's a little sooner than later?”

“You don't mean that,” Riley said.

Jude shrugged. “Maybe I do, maybe I don't. Here's what I know. Sometimes it's necessary to sacrifice. Isn't that the bedrock of our wonderful society? Isn't that why the masses get shoved into the cities, why they live in the dark, eating synthetic garbage, dying without med-tech? So that the few can enjoy their cars and their network and their organic, free-range beef? Pollution stays under control, population stays under control, everyone's happy—everyone who counts, at least. Every day, we sacrifice the many for the good of the few. So why not, just this once, sacrifice a few for the good of the many?”

“And it's just a coincidence that in this case, the ‘many' is us,” I said sarcastically.

“It's no coincidence,” Jude snapped. “It's self-preservation. In case you haven't noticed, we're in trouble. It's not just the Brotherhood. It's the government restrictions. It's the corps turning on us. It's
BioMax
claiming to be on our side but holding the keys to the kingdom. What happens if they suddenly decide that mech tech is too much trouble for them? What if they don't want to give us new bodies anymore and just let the old ones break down? Let us disappear? We have
no control
,” Jude hissed. “And you may be okay with that,
but I'm not. At some point, we have to start standing up for ourselves. I say we start now.”

“Listen to yourself,” I said. “Orgs. Mechs. Us. Them. Like they're so different from us—like
you're
so different from Savona. As if you don't sound just like him, ranting and raving and not caring who gets hurt. You're both so convinced that you're right—”

“The difference is I
am
right!”

“I'm sure he thinks so too.”

“Wake up, Lia! Some people are right and some people are wrong. Some
things
are right. And if you're too cowardly to admit that, if you're too scared to face up to the truth and do what needs to be done, then you're just as wrong as they are. Maybe more so. At least they believe in what they're doing. You're just being willfully stupid.”

“Don't call her stupid,” Riley said.

“I can speak for myself,” I told him, putting a hand on his shoulder so he would know I appreciated it, even if I didn't need it. Then turned back to Jude. “Don't call me stupid.”

“Go ahead,” Jude told Riley. “Nod along with your girlfriend. Let her tell you what to think.”

“That's not what I'm doing,” Riley said. “She's right. You're wrong. That's it.”

“Oh, really?” Jude sneered. “Since when do you care who gets hurt? As long as you get what you want, right? Take care of what's yours, and never—”

“Shut up,” Riley said, a warning in his voice.

“You think he's going to choose
you
?” Jude asked me. “Think again. He knows what he owes me. He's never going to forget that.”

“You owe each other,” I said. “And now he's paying up by stopping you from doing something stupid. Why don't you stop being so pigheaded and paranoid and
listen
? We're not your enemy.”

“We?”
Jude rolled his eyes. “I love how she talks like she knows you. But she doesn't know anything, does she? Not about who you really are. What you're willing to do.”

“I'm telling you to shut up—”

“He doesn't have to tell me anything,” I said loudly. Like shouting would make it true. “I know what I need to know.”

“So do I,” Jude said. “This is the only way to rescue our people. And to stop these psychos from doing any more damage. I'd rather do it with you, but if I have to, I'll do it alone.”

We argued with him. We kept arguing until there was nothing left to say—until it was clear that Jude was convinced this was the only way. And every time Riley spoke, every time he exchanged one of his looks with Jude or trailed off in the middle of a sentence, knowing Jude would understand and I wouldn't, I wondered. I hated myself for it. But I heard Jude's voice, his unspoken expectations, and I wondered.
Who were you, Riley?
I thought.
What did you do?

The argument drained us all, and in the end we were still left with no alternatives, no compromises, no resolution. We all agreed: Ani, Sloane, Ty, and Brahm needed to be rescued.

We agreed that the lab was dangerous and should be destroyed.

And we agreed there was no way we could accomplish those tasks without getting caught, not if we gave the Brotherhood any kind of warning.

We agreed that time was running out. Maybe they were closing in on the answer they needed, the way to destroy us all. Maybe they weren't and they were just torturing their prisoners, every day, every night. Either way, it had to end.