Im not dead, Lena, I said with an involuntary grunt. Im not an avatar.
One hand popped free from the bracelet, and I let it drop to the floor of the cage.
Keep saying it, she replied.
I squinted at her through the cage, making sure her eyes were locked on the instruments and the windshield, and began to slowly stretch out the straps, pushing them away from me with care. Keeping my eyes on her, I ducked my torso under one, then the other, letting them slide back into the seat. Bending down a little, I freed my feet from their strap and sat up again quickly, trying to stay still and stiff as if I were still strapped in. I traced her shoulders with my eyes, remembering what she smelled like, sweat and something sweet underneath Id never been able to place.
I wasnt going to hurt her if I could help it.
You cant help it,
Squalor hissed.
Insects destroy. Consume each other.
I ignored him, ignored them all, chattering away. I sat still for a few moments, looking around. I was free, but I was still in the cage. As discreetly as I could, I put my hands into my coat, feeling around, wondering if shed been lazy about patting me down, too. She hadnt left me my gun, but shed left my blade in my bootshed rushed, maybe worried over voices in the rooms below, maybe anxious to get me in the cage before I came to. Maybe, in the back of her mind, knowing that for people like us having something
anything
to defend yourself with made all the difference. I slid it from the boot carefully and sat up again slowly.
Her eyes flicked to me and then away. I cursed under my breath and tried to brace myself just as she wrenched the wheel all the way to the left, sending the vehicle into a spin. I was torn from the seat and slammed against the side, cracking my head against the roof, the blade flying from my stiff fingers and rattling around on the floor.
Suddenly, wed stopped, silence smothering me, and I sagged down onto the floor, one leg hooked on the second seat painfully. She looked back at me, and for a second our eyes were locked on each other. I thought, suddenly, that I saw something there, some softening, some flicker of doubt.
Then she leaned forward and slapped a big red button on the control panel.
Instantly, my whole body lit up in orange, ragged pain. Everywhere my skin touched the interior of the vehicle, I sizzled and spat like someone was running live current into me. My teeth clicked down hard onto each other, my tongue slid back into my throat, and my lungs seized up like rusty motors.
Youre half-smart, Marlena said, unstrapping herself and turning around to watch me twitch. This heaps designed for transporting avatars. Ive been working this for a few months now, shacking up at the facility when Im not out snatching a list of artificial folks theyve lost track of. Im getting good at it. Thatll fry your systems good, but youll come back online in a bit good as new. And when you come back online, Averybot, youre going to be secured again, and I suggest you just enjoy the ride this time, unless you want to go through this again.
The facility.
It didnt sound hopeful.
I couldnt respond. Black spots appeared before my eyes as all my muscles felt like they were going to snap at any moment. Marlena was in my line of sight; she stared back at me, her face tight and annoyed. After a moment she leaned over and slapped the red button again, and I gladly shut my eyes and passed out.
I woke up strapped into my seat again, but without the sensation of motion. I squinted my eyes in an attempt to focus; Marlena wasnt in the front half of the cabin. I was alone in the vehicle, still sizzling in perfect silence, my whole body feeling bruised. I considered trying to move, but my muscles felt like theyd been melted into glass, brittle and liable to snap. I considered speaking, but my tongue felt like it had swollen to about six times its normal size.
I considered just sitting still and seeing what happened, and liked that option.
Disappointment and frustration filled me like pus. I wondered if Marko had lived, where Grisha had gone. Id been so
close,
so goddamn close. Standing right outside his fucking house, ready to go in and get some answers.
It drained away a second later. Fuck it. It would have ended in disorder and disappointment anyway. With me half dead and everyone else all the way dead. With nothing changed. With Dick Marin still on top of the pyramid, with me still on the rail, with no idea where Michaleen was.
With a soft hiss the back door of the vehicle was pulled open, and a moment later the straps snapped open and retracted, letting me sag forward in the seat. Hands reached in and pulled me out, rolling me roughly out the door and onto my back, where I lay on the hot, dry ground, the thick air pushing down onto me in a terrible, familiar way. Eyes closed, I could feel the sun on my face, burning, and I imagined myself turning red already, starting to blacken on the edges.
I opened my eyes and struggled onto my belly, raising my head up. I squinted through the clear, painful glare and saw it, the train tracks half buried in sandy dirt, the arrival pen still holding the weirdly eternal bodies of several Stormers, their white uniforms tattered and flapping weakly in the wind, their silicone skin and alloy bones untouched, perfect in their ruin.
Welcome back to Chengara, Averybot, Marlena said. I turned my head to glance back at her and saw the stick, the Taser, coming down. I shut my eyes and made sure my tongue wasnt between my teeth.
XXXIII
AND YOU DIDNT EVEN KNOW IT UNTIL A FEW MOMENTS AGO
I opened my eyes slowly, imagining I could hear the seal that had formed over them breaking open, a tiny ripping sound. My vision was hazy at first, all painful bright spots and murky shadows, but after a few blinks the small world around me clarified.
Dick Marinor a version of him or maybe the real deal, the Prime; who the fuck knew?sat in a simple metal chair across from me, smiling. I imagined hed been sitting there for hours with that smile in place, just a holding pattern, taking up a tiny percentage of his total consciousness as it monitored this one node on the network a thousand times a second.
Hello, Avery, he said.
He was wearing a snazzy black suit, the fabric shining in the dim light, tailored perfectly to his body. His hair was cut severely short and parted with razor accuracy, and his sunglasses were custom jobs, thin and delicate, wrapped around his temples like a visor embedded in his skin. In his cold, plastic hands he held a prop: a digital clipboard, thin and gray, its screen of digital paper shimmering.
I tried to speak and found my tongue too swollen at first. I worked it around, looking for some saliva to get things moving.
Marin waited patiently, his eager smile seeming to encourage me. As I struggled I looked aroundwe were back underground, I was sure, based on the sealed feeling of the room, the texture of the half light around us. Something about the way the air smelled, too, reminded me of those terrible moments after my failed attempt to escape.
Youre looking well, Dick, I managed to mumble.
He laughed, the same sudden release of noise I remembered, and then he stopped, just like that. My goodness, weve gone through a lot of trouble to get all of you Averys back under control. Im glad to see your sense of humor made the transition across the singular divide.
I nodded. I get it, I slurred. Im an avatar, right? I just
think
Im human.
Marin cocked his head. You doubt it? Of course you do. Youve always been an egotist, havent you, Avery? He made a show of referring to the clipboard. Lets see. Youre one of thirty-two released into the wild. Weve retrieved twenty-seven and destroyed four. He looked back at me, his smile adjusted down a notch. That leaves you, the last one. And of course, youre the unit we
need.
I blinked. Released by who?
By your esteemed former boss Ruberto, of course. He obtained your unfinished imprint from this facilitywhere you died, by the way, just a few hundred feet from herewhen he took it by storm in the action last year. We have since reclaimed this facility, but he did claim a great deal of valuable intelligence from it. One such asset was you. He created thirty-two of you and sent you all out to cause disruptionyour one definite skill. Some to try and assassinate my Prime, some to simply set off bombs and recruit other troublemakers, assassinate high-ranking police, et cetera. His smile brightened a few clicks, lighting me up. You all thought these plots were your own idea, of course. Youre skilled at what you do, Avery, and you were difficult to contain. We even had to consider and engage freelance talent.
Hes lying,
Dolores suddenly whispered to me.
Always am,
Little Dick confirmed, sounding cheerful.
You just never know about
what.
I nodded slowly. Marlena.
Inexplicably, Marin made a gun shape with one hand and pointed it at me. Exactly. We didnt think much of her, either, but talent is short in these desperate times, and she certainly got the job done. I assume she had
intimate knowledge of you and exploited it. Took the job cheap, too, apparently as a grudge. She didnt appear to like the idea of you as an avatar.
I tried to shift in my seat, but I was tied down to it too tightly. My feet and hands both burned with the phantom fire of limbs long gone numb. It was a much better job than Marlena had done on me. So why am I the special one? I asked. I didnt know what Marin was doing with this youre-an-avatar bullshit, but the ache in my hip and the razor slice I got every time I took a deep breath argued against it. Having few other options, I thought Id play along a bit, see what the King Worm spat out at me.
He leaned forward a little. Something odd happened to you during processing, didnt it? he said quietly. Because of data corruption and severed transfer lines, there were actually several imprints of you on file, which isnt supposed to happen. You are the only unit created using the first imprint. The other imprints, numbered two through seven, are degraded copies and contain varying degrees of neural information describing the personality and data of Avery Cates, ranging from sixty to ninety-six percent completeness. He glanced down at his clipboard. I wondered if these tics were on-purpose showmanship to act human or if they were remnants of the time, decades ago, when Marin had been a real live person. Two of those partials were functional enough for Rubertos use in creating his Cates units. His people apparently didnt know how to use refining algorithms to round off the missing spots and used the imprints as is, with even their date and inception stamps intact. He looked up at me again. Now you, youre from imprint one. Imprint one scans out at one hundred and fourteen percent complete. Which is, of course, impossible. His grin disappeared. My Techs didnt even know the Amblen Rating went beyond one hundred.
I tried to grin experimentally, and it seemed to go well. So Im smarter than you thought?
Marin let out another sudden, barking laugh, his expression unchanging as he opened his mouth and threw his head back. It was disconcertinga blank, unhappy expression and this harsh, braying laugh. It stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and he snapped back to staring at me blankly.
No, Avery, youre not smart. Look where you are! Dead, and you didnt even know it until a few moments ago. In my power simply because I ordered it. No, smart is not the concept I was looking for. You are
saturated.
I nodded. Fuck you, Dick. Im not an avatar. So youve either made a huge mistake here, and boohoo for you if you did, or this is the weakest trick youve ever tried.
Why? he said immediately. Because you feel pain? Because you bleed? Because you
feel
human? Hell, Averyyoure programmed to feel these things. I could program you to feel like an elephant, if I wanted.
A cold spike sent ripples through me. It
might
be. I might be an avatar, convinced by programming and firewalled data that I was human. My heart lurched into motion, pounding in terrorwas I a fake? A copy of a copy? A Monk without even that last shred of humanity left to him? A fucking puppet?
My heart pounding. Even that might be faked, a data stream feeding into a processor loop, sending operation codes to activate subroutines and functions.
Thats all you are
now, Squalor suddenly whispered at me, sounding almost sane for a change.
Thats all any of us are. The only difference is the hardware.
Dont believe it,
Salgado repeated.
A trick. A technique. If Squalor were coherent, he would tell you this is impossible.