CHAPTER 22
Uriah was looking around the basement. There were red marks on the neck of his previous body.
She could barely enunciate her words, and when they did come out, they were hoarse. “Why isn’t he –?”
“That’s why I’m searching. I strangled him so he would have to wait a while to revive the body, but there’s no stopping him from screwing things up more while the body’s still usable.”
She offered Jane a hug – as much for herself, she supposed – which the robot accepted. “You sure about this, Dennis? When that body’s beyond repair, you won’t have anywhere to hide from the satellite.”
“I know that. It wouldn’t be the first time one of us did something absolutely mental today.” His eyes rested on the boy before he resumed the scour.
No … The implications of the predicament dawned on her just as the noise of shattering glass rang out.
Uriah emerged from the darkness holding a long shard. “This’ll do.”
“Dennis, we can’t –”
“You mean you can’t. That’s my body he’s manipulating, and I’m prepared to sacrifice it. If you could cut Michael off from the machines that were probably keeping him alive, butchering the body shouldn’t be too hard.”
“It’s not that it’s immoral, I just … can’t do it. What if he could still live?”
He knelt by the unconscious man. “Then Marshall, or whoever Jane thinks he is, is gonna make a puppet of him. I don’t like this any more than you do, Sabrina, but it’s too risky to leave the bodies vulnerable to control until we find some way to contact Zolnerowich.”
“I –”
“What are you doing, Dennis?” said Jane.
Jane. Uriah wasn’t the only one whose life they couldn’t spare.
“You said it yourself. This isn’t Marshall.”
She shoved Sabrina aside and reached for the shard, but he held his hand out of her reach. “No, the person controlling the body wasn’t Marshall,” she said. “But his brain is still in there.”
“It’s vitrified, Jane. There’s nothing we can do.”
She thrust her hand in front of his face. “You might think it’s okay to give up at this point, but I don’t. Now, I want some answers!”
“You think you can intimidate me? Whatever happened to helping Sabrina and me, even when it didn’t bring you any closer to Marshall?”
Sabrina approached Jane, resting a hand on her upper arm, but the android did not soften in the slightest. “It was bringing me closer to him. I had to get rid of this impostor, but now I just need to get the antidote out of his copies. And I can’t do that without you two.”
Uriah scowled. “You bitch. Is that what we’ve been to you all this time? Tools to get to Marshall?”
“Dennis, go easy on her,” Sabrina said. “She can’t help it, this is just what she was made for. We were idiots to think otherwise.”
“Yeah, well, psychopaths were made to be callous pricks. Does that mean we should tolerate what they do, even if they can’t help it?” He focused on Jane’s eyes, apparently making an effort not to appear threatened.
“Here’s how it’s gonna work, ‘droid. You are not in the position of power here. Up in the atmosphere right now is a satellite that’s ready to nuke every machine on Earth with an EM pulse. Guess who’s deciding whether to use it? Humans on Luna. Humans who wouldn’t think twice about deactivating you or that ‘impostor’ who dies right along with the antidote.”
Sabrina squirmed. “Um, maybe we should rethink this.”
“We aren’t the ones who can rethink this, don’t you get it?” Uriah took the opportunity of Jane’s surprise at his yell to whack her arm away from him. He seized it and threw her to the floor, stabbing the center of the hand with his shard. Jane shrieked.
“Dennis, stop it!” She threw herself in between the two before they could do more damage to each other, snatching the glass knife when she caught him off guard. She picked up the EM gun by the body and threw it out the broken window. “All right, now you’re both harmless to each other, and we can be sane about this.”
“Sane?” said Uriah. “Sabrina, I don’t think you understand the situation. You can’t reason with a robot like Jane. All that can pacify her is her maker, and the only way we can revive him is by trying to negotiate with a man who says he’s ‘prepared the humans for enslavement.’”
“It’s not necessarily a man we’re dealing with.”
“Yes, it is,” said Jane.
They stared at her. “What?”
“Dennis, didn’t you notice anything about the way he spoke? It reminded me of someone we both thought was the bad guy all along.”
Sabrina could not breathe for a second.
“Livingston?” whispered Uriah. He punched the wall. “To think I felt sorry for him!” She raised an eyebrow at this, to which he added, “That’s right, you never knew. Sabrina, I made a terrible mistake. I – I looked through the records at EMFI, and … there’s no way he could have – God, do I have to spell it out for you?”
She folded her arms, grimacing at a loss as to how to deal with this information. Jane narrowed her eyes. “This has been your fault all this time.”
“So? This isn’t about blame. It’s about dealing with the threat at hand, which is the scum-shitter who enslaved me and brainwashed you, rape or no rape.” He held his hand out to Sabrina. “Give me the glass. We’re running out of time. Nanobots take a while to travel, but not so long that we can afford to point fingers.”
“I’m not giving anyone any weapons until we think this through, especially now that I know what happened the last time you decided to gamble someone’s life on false pretenses. You’re hurting yourself as much as Jane if you do this.”
He looked frustrated beyond belief, but soon he let go and sighed. “Okay, tell you what. Sabrina, you keep that ring directed at my body” – he nodded at the Organic – “and Michael at all times, and I’ll go looking through Livingston’s stuff. There’s probably something here that can help us find the reversal for vitrification. If we can get the cure without letting Livingston screw us over, we all win.”
“And now that Livingston’s not controlling the bots around here, I’m gonna have a word with the governess,” said Jane.
“Right, lemme just go release a bear into a nursery.” Uriah grabbed the banister with one hand and pointed at her with the other. “I don’t want you out of Sabrina’s sight.”
“Since when do I have to listen to you?” Jane raised her right hand. “I have more than an EM gun, you know. Get outta my way.” She charged toward the stairway, briefly meeting the resistance of his Transhuman strength, then loosed a beam of concentrated hot energy from her palm.
“Holy –” He lay slumped over the wooden steps, which Jane traversed before Sabrina could think of what to do. She knew she could have stopped her with the ring, but it was beyond her capacity.
“Dennis, are you okay?” She rushed to be by his side, but he gave her only a cold glare.
“It didn’t exactly hurt, but I think we should be asking why the hell you didn’t terminate her.”
“I thought you liked her!”
“That was before I knew she was as manipulative as Livingston. Turn around, by the way, I still want you to keep watch,” he added with more irritation than he likely intended. “I don’t get you, Sabrina. You’ll pretty much kill your own son, but not a fanatical robot.”
She was glad for the excuse not to lock pupils. “Did I say I was proud of what I did back there? It was in the heat of the moment. But Jane’s … a person. I can’t, not even when I hate this technological madness so much I’m almost glad for that satellite.”
Uriah said nothing.
“It’s horrible, I know. I think of my son as a monster! But isn’t Jane doing just what any of us is? She does what makes sense to her given what she finds worth fighting for, no matter who wants to st
op her.”
“I get the point,” he grunted. “Give me the ring, and don’t turn around. I can’t feel the pain, but she messed up my fake muscles somethin’ horrible. You do the search, it’s less risky to have me here anyway when I’m gonna die.”
She backed up beside him and slid the ring into his hand. “You’re letting Jane go?”
“Eh, what’s the worst she can do? The ‘Wich won’t listen to her.”
Sabrina hesitated. “If this is it for you –”
“Don’t say it. If you haven’t said it to me already, it would be fake if ya told me now. Just go.”