Willful Machines (27 page)

He finished the incision a few inches above his navel. Then he made two horizontal cuts, one at the top, one at the bottom, forming a capital letter
I
. He put down the knife and disengaged his hand from mine. The tips of his fingers felt along the central seam. Then they dug into the flesh. His face contorted. A soft groan seeped through his closed lips.

“It'll be over soon,” I said. The words felt silly and stilted and inadequate coming out of my mouth. As someone with limited interpersonal skills, I didn't excel at this kind of talk.

Grimacing, Nico peeled back the flaps of flesh, their undersides pink and glistening—the “living” part of him, less than a quarter of an inch thick—revealing his artificial pectoral and abdominal muscles. I bent forward, my aversion to blood already giving way to my fascination with anything robotic. Again his insides reminded me of Nevermore. His muscles and hers were made of the same rubbery material. Beneath the translucent, synthetic meat of his chest, I could make out the shadow of his metal rib cage, and beneath that, a fist-size red light throbbed—in rhythm, I realized, with that thrum I'd felt earlier.

Nico gazed at his vivisected torso, his mouth still scrunched shut. With a hiss, his two pectoral muscles split away from each other. His metal rib cage hinged open like a double door. A wave of heat blew outward, searing my face. A dense nest of circuity occupied his central cavity, neatly arranged around the pulsing red light. The thrumming I'd only been able to feel with my hand a few minutes ago had now become audible.

I pointed at the red light. “Your power supply—is it nuclear?”

He nodded.

“Where's the explosive?”

He indicated a black device about the size of a walnut. It had a small dial on it, like an old-fashioned combination padlock, and from it radiated a profusion of black wires that snaked around his power supply and into his body.

“The explosive itself isn't all that powerful,” Nico said, “but when it's triggered, it causes my reactor core to detonate.”

“Nico, are you telling me you're a nuclear bomb?”

One corner of his mouth curled up. “Only a small one.” He picked up the knife again. “The trick is to disengage the explosive by cutting the wires in the right order.”

“Where do I come in?”

“At the end. You'll see.”

Nico's hands hovered above his chest. They didn't shake—literal nerves of steel were one perk of being a robot, I supposed—but the grimace hadn't left his face. He drew out the wires and
examined them one by one. It was strange: there he lay with his robotic innards exposed and impossible to ignore, but at the same time, seeing him afraid and uncertain made him seem more human than ever. I kept my hand on his shoulder and stayed as still as I could and hoped he couldn't hear the knocking of my heart.

He settled on a wire. He pulled it taut, put his blade to it, and cut.

We both exhaled.

“Talk to me, Lee.”

“What about?”

“Anything.”

But the only things I could think of to say sounded hollow and stupid.
He just wants to hear the sound of your voice
, I told myself.
String words together. It doesn't matter which ones.
“This has been a weird day.”

“You're telling me.”

“You scared the hell out of me earlier. When you suddenly turned evil and hauled me all the way up to the mountain? And then you jumped into that chasm without any warning? After I told you about my thing with heights, too.”

“I know. Sorry about that.” Another wire went snap.

“But I realized something while I was plummeting through the air.”

“Funny,” Nico said. “That's when I do some of my best thinking too.”
Snap.

“Two things, actually. First, I realized I didn't want to die. Remember how I told you I'd always imagined jumping from a high place would make me feel like I was finally free? Well, it didn't feel that way at all. The whole time, all I could think about was how little the idea of smashing on those rocks appealed to me. I wanted to live. And you know why?”

Nico had stopped cutting wires. The light in the center of his chest threw a pulsing red glow over his face. He shook his head.

“It had to do with the second thing I realized. Before you jumped, you whispered in my ear, ‘Trust me.' And I realized while we were falling into the chasm that I did. Even though I had no good reason to at that point, even though all the evidence suggested you were a crazy terrorist bent on killing me. That was all you had to say. You had me in your arms, and I knew I'd be okay. And then after we landed and you started running through those tunnels in the dark, I was still scared—freaking out, actually—and confused, but deep down I knew you hadn't turned on me, not really. And I didn't want to die, because that would mean I couldn't be with you anymore.”

“I know how you feel.” Nico drew out another wire and pressed his blade against it. “I don't want to die either.” He cut.

We didn't blow up.

“I think being alive is the best thing ever,” he said. “I love reading Shakespeare.”
Snap.
“I love eating food.”
Snap.

“No kidding. You're lucky you're a robot, because otherwise you'd weigh about three hundred pounds by now.”

“And I love being with you too, Lee. I don't want it to stop, any of it. Sometimes I wonder if Charlotte made a mistake when she created me. Like you said before, I don't exactly have the personality of a suicide bomber.” He sifted his fingers through the nest of wires in his chest. “But maybe she had her reasons.”

Another chime came from his puck. “You have ninety seconds of battery life left.”

“Damn,” Nico said. “Too much talking. But I think we're almost done.” One last wire went
snap
. “This is where you come in, Lee. I'm going to shut myself down now.”

My heart lurched into my throat. “What?”

“Only for a minute. When I'm out, you have to turn this dial two clicks to the right, five to the left, and three to the right. You got that?”

“Two right, five left, three right.”

“Then you press this.” He indicated a large translucent button located in the center of his pulsing red heart. “That'll reactivate me. But you have to move fast, before the light runs out. And don't remove the bomb from my chest, okay?”

“Okay.”

“Say it one more time.”

“Two right, five left, three right.” Then I blurted, “I love you.”

“I love you too. ‘More than words can wield the matter.' ” Another grin. Full wattage this time. “That's Shakespeare, by the way.”

“I figured.”

He settled back, his messy curls spreading out on his makeshift pillow. “Now to sleep. ‘Perchance to dream.' ”

His eyes closed. The grin faded from his face. The red light in his chest died away, and the thrumming cycled down little by little, leaving only silence. No more mellifluous purr. No rumble of destruction, like at school, either. Just nothing.
Focus
, I ordered my brain.
Pretend you're working on one of your Creatures.
I bent forward, and Nico's puck bobbed closer. I grabbed the dial and then jerked my hand away again: Nico had forgotten to mention his insides were blisteringly hot. I yanked the sleeve of my shirt down over my fingers and took hold of the dial again. I turned it two clicks to the right.

A sound sliced through the quiet: a skittering of rocks. It seemed to come from the corridor behind me, but in that darkness, I couldn't see a thing. On my shoulder, Gremlin whined again. The light on Nico's puck had started to dim. My hand was shaking now, my breath coming in shallow pants. I went slow, counting five clicks to the left one by one.

More noises behind me. I spun around. This time, something penetrated the dense blackness of the corridor: a blue glow. The slender legs of a Spider stepped into view. Its luminous eye peered into the room and fastened on me.

I
whirled back to Nico, heart galloping. My hand trembled harder than ever. From behind me came a quick, light tapping sound. Gremlin raced down my chest to hide in my blazer pocket. I counted three clicks to the right. The device released a small beep. I reached for the button on Nico's power supply.

And at the same time, I couldn't help myself—I stole a glance over my shoulder. The Spider charged toward me. Its blue eye seemed to float in the midst of a whirlwind of flashing silver legs. One of those legs snapped forward. It connected with my stomach. I went flying.

I landed in a heap on the far side of the room. Lying there on my side, my body curled up like a fist, I choked for air. At least the Spider hadn't killed me, which it could have, easily. Probably it had orders to take me alive. I scrambled to my feet. The robot watched me, its eye tilted at a curious angle. Nico lay just behind, still unconscious, the button in his chest unpushed.

Then he vanished. Everything vanished, except for the Spider's blue eye. In the sudden darkness, the puck clattered to the floor, its battery finally dead. The next second, an inhuman scream knifed through my ears. I doubled over, my hands clamped to my skull, my eyes squeezed shut, the noise shoving out every other thought.

Then it disappeared again, leaving only echoes chasing each other down the corridors. What had just happened? For a second I imagined the Spider in front of me had finally given up its polite murmuring to reveal its true, furious voice. Then I realized: unable to connect to the Supernet and running on autopilot, the robot had sent out a message the only way it could. It had let its fellow Spiders know it had found me.

The machine flew at me again. I stumbled back, tripped over a rock, and landed hard. On my back, I shimmied away, the heels of my dress shoes scraping against the dirt floor. My arm flailed behind me, searching for a weapon. My fingers found something—one of the lead pipes littering the floor—and closed around it. I swung with all my strength at the one thing I could see: the Spider's eye.

The pipe crunched into metal and shattered glass. The Spider twisted to the side, its legs, glinting in the dim glow of its damaged eye, staggering. I clambered across the floor, through the blackness, toward Nico—or at least toward where I hoped he was. My hands knocked against rocks and pipes, searching for him. Then I felt something soft and warm wrapped in cloth: his
arm. My fingers kept going, feeling their way to his torso, slipping over the hot, slimy inner surface of his flesh, hurrying past the rubbery artificial muscle, until they reached the nest of wires and circuitry inside his central cavity. The hot metal burned, but this time I didn't bother to protect my fingers. The sound of groaning steel at my back, the dim flashes of blue, told me the Spider had regrouped. I slammed my palm down on the button.

Nothing happened. His heart—that was how I thought of it, even though the correlation wasn't strictly accurate—stayed silent and dark.

I shook my head and banged my hand down a few more times and said something like “no” or “Nico” or “please.” The Spider's foreleg bashed into my back, harder this time. Charlotte might have ordered her minions to bring me back alive, but she clearly hadn't said anything about uninjured. I skidded across the floor. The robot lurched after me. It scooped me up and flung me against the jagged rock. The hot sting of impact shot through my body. My back slid down the wall, my blazer bunching up around my shoulders, my legs splaying out in front of me, my glasses sagging halfway down my face. The Spider locked its dented eye on me again. It clicked an attachment into place. Without my glasses, I couldn't make out what it was exactly, but I heard the metallic reverberation of a blade. The robot's slender legs flurried toward me. Its eye bore down on me, as unstoppable as a locomotive. Everything else was an empty, cold black.

The Spider leaped into the air and landed on top of me, three of its legs stabbing into the wall, caging me there. A fourth leg, the one with the blade, slashed upward and paused high above me. I closed my eyes and pictured the weapon slicing my skull. Maybe the Spider had orders to kill me after all.

Then:
BOOM.
My eyes blinked open in time to watch the Spider smash and crumple against the wall to my left. Its blue light fizzled and died, replaced by a red glow, flickering but growing stronger. I fumbled my glasses back onto my face. Nico stood a few feet away from me, the light in his chest still settling back into its slow, steady pulsation. He turned to me, his face a luminous crimson. “Are you okay?”

With the back of my hand I swiped away the blood pouring from my nose. “Perfect. You?”

Nico's cut-open flesh hung down on either side of his torso. Severed wires still dangled from his excavated chest. “Ditto.”

“I thought you were—”

“I know. But I wasn't.”