Then Dubs looks at me, all serious for a minute. “I know it’s not the best of circumstances or anything, but it’s kinda nice, just you and me now. Hangin’ out…” He stops. “Like, we don’t have to say anything. We can just chill.”
“I don’t want to talk to you, either.” I laugh, but then I, too, get serious. I look him right in the eye. “I wouldn’t want to be in this mess with anyone else,” I say. “You’re my family.”
I almost tell him I love him, but I know he wouldn’t be able to take it. He’s already blushing, lifting the lid off the pot and pouring the thin soup into our cups. He’s normally as loud as a bull elephant, but give the guy a real emotion, and he clams right up.
“We should probably set up camp,” he says later, after our bellies are warm, if not exactly full.
I stand up and brush the dirt from my jeans. “You can. I’ll be back in a little while.”
Dubs frowns. “Sixie, you’re not going back for it. Not now. In the dark. Alone.”
“Since when do you give a rat’s ass about being careful?” I shove my hands in my pockets. I buried the Q-comp at our last camp because we thought we’d be back in a matter of hours. Now that my hunger’s sated, it’s all I can think about.
“Since I want to sleep, is when,” he whines. “What’s so important about it that we can’t go tomorrow?”
“It’s everything I have left of them,” I say, more harshly than I mean to. “You know that.”
And without another word, Dubs buttons his coat back up, kicks snow over the fire, and follows me on an hour-long hike down the mountain.
A little after midnight, we come upon the clearing, but as soon as we do, I stop dead in my tracks.
There are footprints everywhere.
I can feel the adrenaline spinning through my veins. I can’t see much; the moon’s still too low in the sky. When I try to listen, I can’t hear anything but the pounding of my heart.
“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” I whisper.
But before I can say another word, Dubs is charging forward through the snow, barreling toward the place we buried the Q-comp.
“Dubs, no!” I yell.
Because the snow’s falling fast, but the footprints are fresh.
Because we’re in a clearing surrounded by trees.
Because we have no idea who’s out there.
But Dubs, true to form, doesn’t give a damn about any of that.
“We didn’t come all the way back down here for that stupid computer to have it just be gone,” he rages, rooting around in the brush and kicking snow everywhere.
I crouch behind a boulder, my eyes scanning the darkness for anything that might be heading for him. My fingers reach for the Colt and grip its cold handle. I’m searching every shadow, every crevice.
Except for the one right behind me.
CHAPTER 36
THERE’S NO TIME to struggle: it grabs me by the hair, yanking my head back; then a hand wraps around my neck. I twist and flail, but I’m caught like a bug in a net.
I don’t even know what it is—human, Bot, freaking Bigfoot—but it’s strong as hell. I claw madly at the gloved hands on my neck, but they tighten as my kicking feet are lifted off the ground.
I can’t breathe.
Black spots cloud my vision as my oxygen level plummets. My brain sparks like fireworks. I feel a sudden, amazing rush—like the best high of my life. But I know what it means: my brain cells are starting to die.
I hear Dubs shout, “Let her go, you robotic asshole!” but it sounds like he’s yelling from outer space.
Then he slams into us, and the Bot loses its grip—now it’s holding me with only one hand. I start kicking, fighting like mad to get away, driving elbows and fists at anything I can reach.
The Bot pivots away from me, smooth as a dancer. I hear a pained grunt from Dubs as the Bot delivers a powerful blow with its other hand.
But my friend won’t give up. He sounds that maniac roar of his—the one that sends anyone who knows him scurrying for cover. Then he charges. The Bot stumbles back at the impact.
The glove releases me, but it’s not over.
I see a flash of black leather as the Bot delivers a lightning jab right to Dubs’s nose. Blood spurts everywhere.
I’m still bent double, coughing, when Dubs collapses in a pile of red-splattered snow.
I glance up, my oxygen-deprived brain sputtering into gear like a boneyard bike. I’ve got to get out of here.
And that’s when I realize it’s her. The beautiful, black-haired Hu-Bot responsible for the Pits massacre.
For a moment we just stare at each other. I’m thinking: You almost just killed me. And: But the other night you let us escape.
I can’t tell if I’m still spinning from lack of air, or what, but it almost seems like she’s looking at me with concern. Like she’s sorry she just crushed my windpipe and KO’d my friend.
Like she’s about to let us go again.
But then she blinks and shakes her head like she needs to clear it. She narrows her glittering, unnatural eyes, and I understand what’s about to happen.
So I do the only thing I can think of: I freaking run.
CHAPTER 37
I’M STUMBLING, SLIDING, and cursing my way through the icy woods, hoping against hope that the Hu-Bot experiences a spontaneous electrical failure.
Every frozen gulp of air makes my nose burn and my lungs seize. The muscles in my legs blaze in white-hot pain. Branches slap my face, and roots reach out to catch my ankles.
Behind me, I can hear footsteps. Even though I had a head start and I’m running for my life, the Hu-Bot psycho is gaining on me. She’s probably not even running that hard. She’s probably skipping along back there. Taunting me. Making me think I’ve got a chance of escape.
Which I don’t.
Except…
Up ahead there’s a choice to make: skirting along the base of a rocky cliff—or trying to climb right up it. I don’t think Hu-Bots were engineered to enjoy mountain climbing, so I figure going vertical is my one hope. I take a deep breath and start scrambling up.
For a short while, the Hu-Bot sticks close behind me, clambering over boulders like they’re nothing but pebbles. Then the boulders start to thin out, and pretty soon there’s just a sheer wall of cliff rising up. And this is what I’ve been looking for.
Humans have thousands of nerve endings in each finger; Hu-Bots have a fraction of that. If the Hu-Bot can’t feel as well as I can—if her sense of touch isn’t human sharp—then crawling up a cliff with tiny crevices for fingerholds is going to be a lot harder for her than she wants it to be.
And maybe I can finally gain some ground.
I wedge a hand into a crack and haul myself up, then find another hold and do it again. And again. And again. My arms are quickly exhausted, but I ignore the pain.
This is my last chance.
The Hu-Bot’s still close behind me. We’re spiraling as we climb, so by the time we’re seventy-five feet up, we’ve come around to the other face of the cliff. There’s a narrow river running along below us now, and I tell myself that this is good: that if I fall, it’s better to hit water than boulders.
I point a quivering toe out to the left, find the foothold, then stretch out my left arm to grasp a tiny indent with two fingers, and then the rest of my body over to follow, balancing on a tiny platform for a few agonizing moments, until I’m ready to try to move again.
Now we’re moving by inches—it’s the world’s slowest chase. My calves are in knots, my fingers bloody. Every step feels like it might be my last.
She’s only a few feet below me now. Why doesn’t she just shoot me and get it over with?
There’s a tiny ledge right next to my right foot, and I can see her calculations. She’s going to make a leap for it.
She pushes off the rock, launching herself toward me. Her hand hits the ledge, but she can’t find a grip. Her fingers scrabble wildly. She clings to the cliff,
balanced on a tiny outcropping on one foot. She flings her head up and looks at me.
“Help!” she calls.
Is she joking?
Does she really think I’m going to help her?
She’s flailing now, losing her balance.
People say that Hu-Bots don’t really have feelings. That they’ve just learned to fake them perfectly.
But when I look into those blue eyes, I see pure, undeniable terror.
She’s screaming now, and the words are hard to decipher, but I think she’s saying, “Oh God, oh God, please—”
I think of the Hu-Bots sitting in church pews carved by the humans that they later murdered, and my blood goes to ice. I lean down low, like I’m going to help her.
I say, “You have no god.”
At that, her eyes open impossibly wide—and then she loses her grip and falls.
CHAPTER 38
DESPERATION AND DISBELIEF flood MikkyBo’s mind. She reaches out, hands clawing at the empty air.
But you can’t grab on to nothing. Gravity always wins.
Her hair billows up, and cold wind tears through her clothing as she spins downward. For the briefest of instants, it’s almost like flying. Like a joy rush…
Then Mikky hits rock—and a sharp edge slices off her left arm clean at the elbow.
As Mikky’s internal processors speed up, time seems to slow down. She stares at the space where her hand once was in shock. She knows it should hurt, but she’s too shocked—too terrified—to feel the pain of it.
But what she feels next is worse than pain. It’s something she’s never experienced before. It’s like being electrocuted over and over again. It feels like her entire being is nothing but one cosmic, silent scream of terror.
It is the exact opposite of a joy rush, and it will not end.
The wind catches her body, turning her around, and Mikky slams into the cliff again. She feels her leg twist at the knee, and her panic intensifies. Then comes another impact, and her head snaps at the neck.
Her head bobs like a yo-yo now, connected to her body by only by a thin flap of bioskin. She sees the river below, rushing up to meet her.
She is about to expire.
All her perfectly engineered processors can’t begin to comprehend this thought. It’s simply too horrific.
Crash.
MikkyBo lands on a rock in the middle of the river. Her body flops, but her head bounces. Then she’s soaring up, back into the sky she fell from, watching her body slide off the rock and get dragged downstream, its three remaining limbs bobbing, its neck a ragged mess of tissue.
My head’s come off, MikkyBo thinks, her mind numb with disbelief.
Then she slams back into the water. Water fills her nose and mouth. Her swirling hair brushes her cheeks. The rapids force her down.
She reaches for one last joy rush while her brain is still intact. She imagines chocolate-mint ice cream. She can almost taste it.
But before she does, there’s a blinding light. A last gasp of electrical activity. Of consciousness. It’s brighter than the sun. It lasts one beautiful, terrifying instant.
And then everything goes dark.
CHAPTER 39
TAKE THAT, YOU overbred can opener! I think, watching the Hu-Bot fall.
I’m feeling great—I’m safe!—until I realize she’s rocketing down to earth with my Q-comp in her pocket, which means that my family’s memories will be destroyed right along with her.
And then she screams, so high and scared. And next, her freaking arm gets torn off.
She’s bouncing down the boulders like a giant doll. And, just like that, I’m not angry anymore. Suddenly I’m sick.
Because the thing is, even though Hu-Bots’ insides are 3-D printed replicas of human insides and are made of tissue grown on lattices, I’ve seen enough real humans being blown up or ripped to shreds to know that the Hu-Bot looks as real as any of them on her way out.
It’s gruesome.
I’m still clinging to the rock, my toes wedged in a crevice and my arms shaking, watching the whole horrible scene. And I can’t help it—I start to think that maybe she wasn’t just a dumb Hu-Bot, after all.
Maybe she resembled humans in other ways, too.
She tried to wave the Corvette to the side of the road, didn’t she?
She never fired the Mercy.
She stood there after the crash and watched us limp away.
Which means that, in a way, she saved us—more than once. And what did I do for her? I laughed as she fell.
My stomach twists, and pretty soon I’m gasping for breath. But not from exertion—from tears.
I don’t even understand what’s happening. I’ve managed to keep a lid on my emotions for a decade, and now I’m freaking crying for someone who knocked out my friend, who tried to capture me, and who helped kill a bunch of my people.
Not even someone. Something. A mass of metal and plastic and God knows what else.
The Hu-Bot hits the river. Her head pops off like a champagne cork.
I stand there, shaking and sobbing, for another minute. And then I do the stupidest thing I could ever imagine anyone doing. It’s so moronically insane, I can’t even believe I’m capable of it.
But I am.
I pull my fingers from their crevice. I reach out to the air.
And I jump after her.
CHAPTER 40
I’M SCREAMING.
Or at least I think I’m screaming. Every part of my body is sending screams to my brain, but all I can hear is the roar of the water.
By some miracle I survive the jump, but now the churning current is doing its damnedest to rip me to pieces, just as it did to the Hu-Bot when she fell.
Where’s the Hu-Bot now?
The night’s too dark, and the water’s moving too fast; I can barely see anything. Just the white foam of the rapids, shoving me down. Just rocks in the riverbed, banging me bloody. I go under, and my larynx spasms as it closes to keep water out of my throat.
I kick hard off the bottom and thrust my head out of the river. Oxygen surges to my brain as I take in air in huge, grateful gulps.
I’m being carried downstream, faster and faster. I go under again, then resurface, gasping.
I grab on to a log wedged between two rocks, and for a moment, I can breathe. But then the log comes loose, and the water pulls me along as its roaring grows louder. The sound deepens, changes. And I know it without seeing it: downstream it’s about to come to an end. Downstream it’s about to become nothing but air.
Ahead of me is a waterfall.
The rapids drag me under again, tearing the log from my hands. I claw my way back to the surface, reaching out for something—anything—else to hold on to. Panic makes my feet slip. I’m breathing too hard, and I snort water into my nose. Desperate, I fling out my arms, pinwheeling them in some mad crawl stroke to keep myself from sliding over that edge.
My hand hits something solid, and I close my fist around whatever it is in a deathlike grip.
It’s… an arm.
The Hu-Bot’s arm—the one that’s still connected to her torso. I guess the two of us are going to swirl down the great drain of life together.
Well, that’s fitting, you moron. You got what you came for.
But the adrenaline’s kicked back in, and I’m using reserves of strength I didn’t know I had. I pull myself out of the frigid water. I claw my way up the Hu-Bot’s body, using it as a bridge, and then hurl myself onto the shore.
My face lands on hard rocks, and I feel a cut open up on my cheek. But there’s no pain—I’m too cold for it. My body’s racked by gasps; my mouth spews out a fountain of water mixed with blood from the broken capillaries in my lungs.
Eventually the coughing stops, and I breathe in sweet air. I don’t know if I’ve ever felt worse—or better.
It’s got to be some kind of miracle that I’m not dead.
I know I can’t stay here; I’ll freeze to death. And I’ve got to find
Dubs. But I can’t move yet. I close my eyes, willing my heart to steady and my body to stop shaking.
After a few minutes, I open my eyes again.
And the Hu-Bot’s staring back at me.
CHAPTER 41
I SHRIEK AND scramble backward before I realize what’s happened: the Hu-Bot’s head, separated from its body, has caught in an eddy near the shore. Her long black hair’s snagged on a branch.
And I burst into tears. Again. I’m exhausted, freezing, alone. I don’t know how I got into this mess, and I don’t know how I’m going to get out. And those eyes just watch me, calm and blue.
I wave a hand in front of them: no response.
I reach down and pull the head out of the water. It’s heavy, and there are leaves and twigs all tangled up in the thick, glossy hair. “I tried to save you,” I tell it.
But that’s not exactly true. I knew I couldn’t save her even before I dove off that cliff.
I followed her down because I didn’t want her to die alone. How messed up is that?
And so now here we are—a sopping-wet girl and a broken-down Hu-Bot—on the side of a Colorado river as dawn begins to break through the trees.
I scan the sky above me. Did the Hu-Bot send out a distress signal as she fell? Are the helicopters already on their way? How many years in prison do you get for destroying a Hu-Bot—a hundred? Or do they go all medieval on you and just impale you on a pike?
I need to find Dubs, and then we have to get back to our campsite, gather up our supplies, and start running.
It’s because of you, I think, suddenly not feeling sorry for the dead Hu-Bot at all. You couldn’t just let us go once and for all. Cars get stolen every day, but you had to be a hotshot and bring in the full troops.
The eyes are frozen open, and the mouth is caught in a scream—but, even so, the Hu-Bot looks perfect. Beautiful. Her damp skin, pale and smooth, her lips pink and full.