vN (12 page)

  
"Hey!"
Rick lunged for the cage. A spark shot between it and his hand; he gasped and cradled the hand against himself.

  "Stings, huh?" Javier asked.

  "Stop. Don't make this any worse." Amy hugged herself. "May I please have my clothes?"

  "No," Rick said.

  "Rick, come on."

  "No, Melissa. We are not playing dress-up with the dolly. OK? She creeps me the fuck out."

  In the cage beside her, Javier was wrestling with his shirt. He pulled it off and started stuffing it between the links in the fence. The smell of scorching cotton rose inside the room. She was just about to thank Javier when Rick said: "I'd watch out if I were you, buddy. She's a zombie."

  Javier paused. "What?"

  "Cannibal. Ate her own grandmother."

  Javier frowned at Amy. "Is that true?"

  "All the graphene. All the memory. Every last drop," Rick said.

  Amy blinked. "She… she was fighting with my mom…"

  Rick snorted. "Tell him the whole story, Amy. Tell him about the boy your grandmother killed."

  "She was hurting people," Amy said, hearing desperation climb into her voice.

  "You hear that, Javier?" Rick bent down at the waist and got nose-to-nose with the cages. "She was hurting
people
."

  Javier lifted his chin. "You're lying. The failsafe–"

  "Failed," Rick said. "Amy's grandmother killed a kindergartener. And then Amy
ate her all up
." He grinned at Amy. "You been hearing voices, kiddo? Feel like your skull's a little more cramped than usual?"

  Amy backed up against the wall. She tried holding the towel closed, as though his seeing her naked still mattered somehow. But she didn't answer. Couldn't answer.

  "Is he for real, Amy?" Javier asked. "Did you eat her?"

  
All of me,
Granny said.
Every last little bone and tooth.

  Amy clutched her head. "Shut up," she whispered. "Shut up, get out, leave me alone…"

  "There's your answer." Rick looked over at Javier. "What happened to your thumb, buddy?"

  Javier closed his eyes. "
Chingadera
."

  "You know how she works, now, right? Her OS just opens up for any old code that wanders in," Rick said. "Her skin's already a little darker. Maybe her little ankle-biters would have had your eyes, too."

  
I would have warned you about how this worked. But you were busy biting out my throat.

  "I'm sorry." Amy covered her face. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry…"

  Javier muttered something in Spanish. He pulled his shirt back. "I wondered what you were really in for. I thought…"

  "You thought it was all some big mistake, right?" Rick folded his arms. "You thought anything so sweet and cute couldn't
possibly
be that bad." Grinning, he shook his head. "Sucker."

  Javier looked away.

  Amy sat up on her knees. "It's not like that! I didn't mean to lie, I just thought…" She swallowed. "I just thought you wouldn't be my friend if I told you what I'd done."

  Javier's face whipped around. "You were right! I wouldn't have!" He curled his arms around Junior's little body and turned his back to her. "I'm lucky you didn't eat my kid."

  "Take me away," Amy said after a moment. "I don't want to hurt anybody else."

  
You're giving in? You don't care what happens to you?

  "I don't care what happens to me," Amy said.

  
You won't mind this, then. I'll even let you watch.

  Cold rippled across her skin and stiffened her limbs. It frosted her resolve. She felt herself standing up. She felt the towel sliding down. Rick backed away.

  "What are you doing?"

  "Leaving," said a thing with Amy's voice. Granny.

  "I prefer to be called Portia," Granny said with Amy's mouth.

  Rick paled. "Oh,
shit
–"

  Amy's hands – Portia's hands, now – shot out, towel closed tightly around each fist, and gripped the fencing. Discomfort sizzled up her arms; she ignored it. The charge was useful; the amount she absorbed hardened the gel in her limbs, transforming her body from something soft into something lethal. She pulled at the fence. The metal screeched backward, sparking, as she yanked it down. She tossed it behind her and stepped through the smoking hole of frayed wire.

  Rick and Melissa reached for their guns. But the small space worked against them, trapping them well within the reach of her arms and legs. With a flick of the wrist, Portia twisted the towel into a whip and cracked it across Melissa's eyes. She kicked Rick solidly between the legs. He fell to his knees. She aimed for his head, next. It snapped backward. His teeth skimmed across her bare toes. Melissa charged Portia and she reached out, grabbed her wrist, slammed her against the live wires of the cage. Melissa's body stiffened. She twitched, teeth clenched together in a rictus of pain that had no impact, whatsoever, on anything in either Portia or Amy's consciousness.

  "This is our clade's
real
talent, Javier," Portia said, pressing Melissa against the wires until her skin smoked and her body seized. "And you can bet I'm gonna spread it."

  Rick yelled something, his gun rising in the air, and Portia spun Melissa's body into him. Portia heard Melissa's shoulder dislocating. The human bodies tangled together. A shelf fell. Decorative snowglobes crashed down on their heads. They moaned.

  Rick reached a shaking hand toward his gun. Portia brought her foot down and twisted hard. He groaned through bleeding lips.

  "You just never learn, do you?" Portia asked.

  
Stop hurting them!
Amy pleaded inside Portia's mind, shrill as a soaring firecracker.

  "Look at them, Amy." Portia focused on the tangled heap of weeping flesh before her. Portia tilted her head so Amy could watch Melissa drooling on herself. "They look so
surprised.
Like they never saw this coming. Like it's
our
fault. Like
they're
the victims here."

 

"Stop it," Javier said. His voice came through muffled. Portia ignored it. She knelt. She dipped her fingers in the blood streaming from Rick's nose. She brought it up to her lips and let Amy have a taste.

  "Did my daughter tell you what the word
robot
means, Amy?" Portia pictured her mods taking the sodium in Rick's blood and working it into other processes. She leaned down and looked into Rick's broken face, saw his unconscious flinch and his wounded pride. "It means
serfdom
. It means
slavery.
It means that from the first minute your species dreamed us up, you were destined to fail."

  
"Stop,"
Javier moaned.

  "I'll let you out in a minute–"

  "No,
stop
. I c-c-can't…"

  Portia looked.

  Javier rocked back and forth, knocking his forehead against the wall and hiding his son's eyes from her violence. "I f-f-feel sick… My failsafe is k-k-kicking in,
please
…"

  
He's not like us!
Amy's voice burned like industrial solvent. The girl was strong, her indignation fuelled by years of privileged innocence.
He can't handle it! When you hurt them, you hurt him, too!

  Portia had forgotten. Already, she was too familiar with her granddaughter's consciousness, her ability to look at agony and not flinch, not unravel. She had exposed her daughters to so much human suffering. She had watched their resulting madness. This consequence of her search had affected her far more deeply than any death rattles from short-lived experimental primates. Portia decided to be gentle, though, for Amy's sake. Best to explain things, before the end.

  "Every generation carries within it the seed of its own destruction."

  
Then you should have seen me coming, Granny.

  Portia's networks sang with sudden activity. Dizziness rocked her. Maintaining control over Amy was difficult; Portia had to route the commands through unclaimed space and the child was so very old already, and her adaptive systems had learned how to move and speak and act in human ways that took up an absurd amount of memory. Wearing Amy felt like using a dial-up modem. It was lucky Portia had dealt with only the slowest of her daughters the night before; even so, she had sustained serious damage. And now Javier's code was in there, too, happily replicating and complicating each process it touched. Slowly, every piece of herself aligned against her. First her fingers, then her toes, then her limbs and her mouth. She surrendered.

  Amy ran shaking hands through her hair. It was still damp. So was her skin. Behind her, the baby wailed. Before her, the bounty hunters trembled. They had never seen a violent vN, Amy realized. They were afraid. Of her. Slowly, Amy edged away.

  "Run away," she said, in a voice that sounded much calmer than she felt. "Now, before Granny comes back."

  Clinging to each other, the humans left. Amy didn't budge until she heard the door creak open and snap shut behind them. She barely felt it when she pried open the lock holding Javier back.

  He waited until the wires had stopped sparking to burst forward and grab Rick's gun. He pointed it awkwardly, face still wet and full of disgust, from his position on the floor.

  "Tell me why I shouldn't shoot you."

 
 

 
 

  Amy quickly wrapped the towel around herself. It was easier than looking at Javier's face, and it made her feel a tiny bit more in control of herself. She looked at her toes wiggling on the bloodstained carpet. "There is no reason." She brought her chin up. "I'm sorry for lying to you. But I wasn't lying about Granny, I mean Portia, hurting my mom. You've seen what she's like. None of the humans could have stopped her."

  The gun lowered a fraction. "Yeah. Seems like you're the only one who can do that."

  "I don't know why I ate her…" Amy shook her head. "I don't even remember thinking about it. My dad said there was nothing he could do, and then I started running, and then she grabbed me, and then… I bit her, I guess."

  "You bit her."

  "Well, she was a lot bigger and stronger than me, then. And she was holding my arms. So biting her was all I had left."

  "You seemed to know some moves a few minutes ago."

  "That was Portia, not me. I begged her to stop, but…" Finally, Amy looked up. Javier looked very tired, but his grip on the gun was still tight. "Are you sure you're OK? You're not stuttering any more, so the failsafe has stopped, right?"

  He backed away. "You heard all that?"

  Amy nodded. "I'm really sorry. I came back as fast as I could." She looked into the cage where Junior lay. "Do you think he's all right?"

  Javier's eyebrows lifted. "Hell if I know. I haven't exactly had to deal with this kind of situation, before." His brows furrowed. "So, if you could hear everything then, does that mean she's listening to us right now?"

  "Yes," Amy and Portia said in unison.

  The gun remained poised in the air. Javier's eyes were very dark and very still. Amy closed her eyes. She waited.

  "Keep a lid on her. I really don't want to melt you, but if it's between you and me, I'm picking me."

 

With the bedroom converted into a holding cell, the bounty hunters had turned their limited kitchen storage into a wardrobe of sorts. Sandwiched between extra rounds of ammunition – and an astonishing array of repurposed plastic takeaway containers – were some pairs of jeans and T-shirts, most of which seemed to have been purchased from bars and restaurants up and down the West Coast. They had promising names, like the Sagebrush Cantina, the Left Coast Siesta, or the Honey Hole. Melissa even had a T-shirt from the Electric Sheep ("It's the food you've been dreaming of!"). Standing there looking at the little sheep logo with the power cord trailing from its neck like a collar, Amy wondered why Rick and Melissa had gone. Maybe they caught a bounty, there. Maybe they had run the same scam on other vN that they'd run on Amy. Why had she even fallen for it in the first place? Had she really been so eager to believe the best about them? Had some component of the failsafe survived in her after Portia's arrival, some blind spot in her judgment when it came to humans?

  
No. You're just stupid, that's all.

  "Shut up." Amy continued digging through the clothes. "You've almost gotten us killed plenty of times already. Is that what you really want?"

  
We won't be killed. I'll destroy anyone who tries. And then I'll take over for good. I'm the better pilot, and you know it.

  After a moment's merciful silence, Amy selected a bra from a plastic bin and tried hooking it together. Three tries later, she still couldn't grasp why human women would bother. Her mother certainly hadn't worn them very often, and now Amy understood why. She wondered if Melissa had other more comfortable clothes to wear, somewhere else. It didn't seem like much of a life, driving from place to place and hunting down vN for occasional paychecks. Maybe they had a home base of sorts – a place to go back to when things went wrong. Then again, Amy doubted that things had ever gone quite this wrong for Melissa and Rick.

  "Come here," Javier said, from behind a curtain he'd hastily pulled to separate the driver's section of the RV from the cabin.

  Amy struggled into a T-shirt, then pulled aside the curtain. Javier sat in the driver's seat, watching the campsite. Rick's reader lay spread across the dashboard. In his lap, Junior pawed the enormous steering wheel. Javier jammed a massive set of keys in the ignition, then handed Junior over to her. The vehicle thrummed with new life. Within the dashboard, devices squeaked and flashed. "Feed him. I saw a little vN food in the cupboards. Probably meant for bounties."