I was moving too slowly, though, and she sidestepped lazily, her foot only leaving my shoulder long enough to avoid the blow before coming back down again, pushing me onto my stomach. I cried out, and rolled to try to escape the pain, doing exactly what she wanted. Moments later, the collar of my uniform was jerked down, and something was pressed against the back of my neck.
My net! They were going to take it! If Sage did that, he’d have Tony. Not to mention, if I did manage to enact the New Day protocol, no net meant no neural clone of me. Not that I had any idea whether my clone would be able to do anything to stop Sage once his own psyche was made into an AI, but I had to hope that it could, if only to eliminate him from the candidate pool.
Of course, I had to enact the protocol first. I just wished I could remember the final four numbers. Was it 6323? 2336? I was only going to have one chance at this, and I couldn’t get it wrong.
Tony? I thought as I tried to move away, hoping the AI would give me the right numbers, but Sadie buried one knee on my spine, pinning me in place. I winced, expecting the sting of pain as she cut my neck open to extract the net, but after a few moments, her weight was suddenly gone, with no incision made. Tony? I thought, slowly bringing myself to my knees. What was that?
I waited for a moment, and then frowned. Tony hadn’t answered. Why hadn’t Tony answered? I searched my thoughts and emotions for any trace of him, but was only met with silence, and knew then that Sadie had done something to take him.
“Where is he?” I demanded, straightening up and settling my weight back on my heels.
“Wirelessly downloaded,” Sage said, his side to me and eyes on where Sadie was walking toward one of the inactive machines. “Lionel’s so-called less traumatic way of downloading and uploading the AIs to the nets and other terminals. Now that that’s being handled, Leo… your girlfriend brought us some new leverage! Isn’t that exciting?”
Sage stepped farther to the side, letting me see Grey. My breath sucked in sharply as I regarded the damage to his face. The sides were mottled and bruised, and his lips were split and bleeding. One eye was turning black, and the other one was red from where a blood vessel had ruptured. His stomach was a mess of blood, and more had pooled around his feet.
“I’m not telling you anything,” Grey said. His voice was weak, but the defiance was there. “Not a damned thing.”
“You sure?” Sage asked, smiling like the madman he was. Grey narrowed his eyes and pressed his lips closed, his nostrils flaring as he met Sage’s gaze headlong. I felt a savage rush of pride, at least knowing that, no matter what Sage did to us, Leo wouldn’t tell him anything, but then swallowed it back, knowing Sage would eventually lose his patience, kill us all, and implant Leo in a new human. Leo would eventually break, all without him knowing about the New Day protocol or having a chance to enact it.
And Sage would win. Kurt would become the new AI, and Sage’s legacy would be complete.
“That’s too bad,” Sage said with an indifferent little shrug. “Alice?”
There was a wet snap to my right, and I looked over to see Alice releasing Eric’s head, his neck now bent at an angle that shouldn’t have been possible. His eyes were wide, open, and… vacant. The light from them had been extinguished by Alice as soon as she had broken his neck. I gaped, horrified at the casual brutality of the action, and the pain of losing yet another friend so soon after all the others slammed into me, breaking me. I fell back to my hands, trying to fight the urge to sob, the urge to vomit, the urge to scream, and struggled just to breathe without losing my crap.
A scream tore out of someone’s throat, but it wasn’t from mine. It was from Maddox. I looked over to see her boots scrambling on the floor, trying to fight the hold of the sentinel grabbing her. “You son of a bitch!” she screamed. “You dirty coward! Hiding behind your machines and your broken AI fragments and playing God! We’ll never give you anything you want, you hear me? Leo, New Day protocol alpha-phi-alpha-6—”
A gunshot cut her off, and her boots jerked. I looked away, unable to see another friend die, but a second later, she was thrown to the floor next to me, her body landing with a boneless thud. I winced, a shudder tearing through me as another friend lay dead beside me, all the fire of her green eyes suddenly extinguished.
But I held on to the first number she had said, trying to focus on it and remember what the code was. 6323? 6332? 6233! That was it!
“Stop it!” Grey cried, and I heard the desperation in his voice, and knew he was about to break.
I couldn’t let that happen—not even for me.
“Grey…” I breathed, intent on finishing Maddox’s order. But a cold metal hand wrapped around my throat, cutting me off with a vicious squeeze, and seconds later I was hauled into the air, my feet dangling helplessly below me, the life being choked out of me by the sentinel.
43
I wrapped my hands around Alice’s metal wrists and planted a foot on her chest to try to physically force myself from her grip, but she only tightened her hands. I immediately went lightheaded, my vision blurring as I heard a wheezing, choking sound that I realized was coming from me. The blood trapped in my skull was beginning to pool into my face and around my eyes, making them bulge and water.
I was dying. Alice was choking me to death.
My vision went gray, and I felt the strength in my hands start to fade, my feeble thrashing growing weaker. Darkness began to pour into the edges of the world, encircling the sentinel’s shadowy face, ensuring its nightmarish visage would be the last thing I saw before I died.
“STOP! STOP! I’LL TELL YOU! JUST LET HER GO!”
The voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a long, dark tunnel behind me, barely carrying over the sound of my heartbeat slowing, but I recognized it as Grey’s.
A moment later I was falling into oblivion, the darkness rushing up to meet me. I felt myself wonder what was coming next—whether I was going to see my friends or my brother again, how the citizens of the Tower were going to survive someone as sadistic as Sage, what was going to happen to Leo and Grey…
And then I hit the ground. And suddenly realized I could breathe.
My lungs were already pulling air in, through a constricted throat. I had a brief flash of consciousness as my eyes popped open, revealing the lights of the ceiling above, and then the sudden intake of oxygen coupled with the rush of blood out of my head left me spinning, my vision going gray. I released a shaky breath, my body terrified to release the air for fear it was only a brief reprise, and then took another one, trying to keep it slow and prevent myself from hyperventilating.
I lay on the ground for what felt like eternity, the world spinning on its axis and tumbling this way and that. I became aware of a ringing in my ears, the agony of my arm and shoulder, all in slow degrees, like a dial being twisted up.
But the pain helped me focus and prevented me from just drifting off to sleep, which was my battered body’s current desire.
In an effort to try to arrest the spinning, I slowly rolled to my good side and opened my eyes. Focusing on something stationary would help sort my equilibrium out and give me an idea of what was happening and where I was.
Opening my eyes was hard. Both felt inordinately heavy, like someone had attached tiny weights to each eyelash in an attempt to keep them closed. What was weirder, the right one felt disproportionately heavier than the other one, like it had not only been weighted down, but also taped for good measure. After trying to raise both eyelids and failing miserably, I eventually just diverted my efforts to the left eye, figuring the lighter eyelid was the easier one to open.
Success. I cranked my eyelid open about halfway. The first thing I noticed was the flooring; it obscured nearly half of my field of vision and seemed to be rocking back and forth. I picked a spot a few feet away and kept my gaze on it, keeping my breathing heavy. The rocking began to still, which made some of the queasiness in my stomach lessen. I let out another heavy breath, inhaled, and opened
my eye even wider.
I was facing the dome. It was the next thing I noticed: the smooth, white, egg-like surface cutting into the dark flooring. I let my gaze wander—slowly, of course, for fear of throwing the world out of alignment again—and immediately caught a glimpse of movement to the far right. I tracked it, and saw two… no wait, three sets of legs. Two sets, one white and one gray, seemed to be dragging the third—crimson—through an opening I hadn’t noticed before. It must’ve been there all along, across from where Sage and Grey had been.
As I watched, the room started to glow brightly, and I sensed that Sage was about to win.
Something inside of me refused to let that happen, and I began to scan the floor, looking for something, anything, I could use to stop him.
I spotted my gun lying just a few feet to the right of the door. For several seconds, I stared at it, confused at how it had gotten there. I had been holding it when Sadie hit me. Had they kicked it over here and just missed the fact that it was right there?
Wait, where were the sentinels? Did I risk looking for them and alerting them to the fact that I was conscious, or did I just go for the gun? Did I have the time?
“Dammit,” Sage cursed loudly. “He passed out!”
I knew he meant Grey and wasn’t sure if he was feigning unconsciousness to slow Sage down, or if he was unconscious because he was about to die, but it didn’t matter. He was buying me time to act. It was worth the risk.
I lifted my head slowly, doing my best to ignore the way the right side of my face felt as if it were sliding downward and melting off, and slowly twisted my head more to the right. The axis of the world shifted slightly, my equilibrium not remotely calibrated to handle that angle yet, and I closed my eye for a second, trying to still the sudden rocking sensation.
A rustle of movement had me setting my head down rapidly, and I heard footsteps marching across the floor behind me. I remained focused on my breathing while whoever had just emerged from the room began picking things up and setting them down with impatient mutterings. It took me a second, but I realized it was Sadie, likely coming out to get something to wake Grey. And from the sounds of it, she was having a hard time finding it. I seized the opportunity to open my eye again and resume my lookout, hoping that if the sentinels were around, they were watching her and not me.
She suddenly shouted, “What does it look like?” over her shoulder, loudly enough to make me freeze.
“It’s a pneumatic injector, Sadie,” Sage declared irritably.
“Not the injector, Father,” she snapped, and I realized that neither was paying attention to me. I continued to survey the room, finally noting the set of robot legs standing just to the right of the door, facing in. “The damn vial! What color?”
A quick glance to my left told me the second sentinel wasn’t there, meaning it was either behind me, or had gone back to the main entrance to the room to prevent further intrusion. I couldn’t check behind me with Sadie back there, but as soon as she was gone, I could move.
“The red one! And hurry up. I’m ready to put this to an end. How about you, Scipio? Ready to die?”
“Please,” I heard an agonized moan reply, and I realized that Scipio’s hologram was in the room with them. “Anything to make it stop. I can’t take it. The voices… They’re screaming for me to help, but these chains you’ve put on me… Just end it, please.”
My heart twisted to hear the great machine so desperate for death, in that much pain, and remembered that he felt every death that was happening in the Tower at the exact moment it was happening. He was suffering from it, his very core being corrupted by it, and was powerless to do anything to stop it.
He was beyond broken.
I put my head down as Sadie made a satisfied noise, and listened to the sound of her footsteps marching past me and into the room. As soon as they stopped, I lifted my head up again and risked a glance behind me, peering through a bleary, unfocused eye for any hint of the other sentinel. The world seesawed back and forth, but I just swayed with the rhythm of it and focused, until I was certain it wasn’t lurking back there. I swiveled back around, took one last furtive glance at the sentinel by the door, and then began to crawl.
It was awkward, with one arm still aching and tender from all the places it had been hit. I wasn’t sure if the damn thing was broken or dislocated at this point, but it wasn’t doing much to support my weight as I moved.
But thankfully, I didn’t have to move very far. Within seconds I was close enough to brush my fingers across the gun’s rough grip, and I dragged it toward me with one finger, then two, my eye on the sentinel’s legs. They remained still, her focus completely on whatever was happening inside the room, and a few moments later I had the gun in my palm, the feel of it as heavy as it was reassuring.
I blew out several breaths, and then slowly began to pick myself up off the floor, getting one boot under me, then the other. I ignored the sound of Grey’s sharp gasp coming from the opening, and the sentinel herself, just focusing my will solely on the act of rising. I wasn’t sure where I was finding the energy; I was beyond spent, broken in both body and soul.
Yet somehow, I rose.
I took several more deep breaths, steadying myself as my balance began to sway with the world. Grey gave another sharp cry—this one pained—and the world suddenly snapped into focus.
I turned and leveled the gun at the sentinel, aiming for the black box on its back, which was partially obscured by a metal cage over it. I didn’t have Tony to steady my aim, but I had found some sort of stillness inside that was giving me focus.
I squeezed the trigger, the gun jerking in my hand.
There was a spark from the hard drive, but it was hard to tell whether I had hit the cage or box. I took a step forward, preparing to fire another round, and then the sentinel made a sharp, “EEEEEEEEE!” noise that sent a piercing pain through my head.
I winced, just as a flash of movement emerged from the doorframe, and I fired at it, letting instinct guide me. The sharp noise from the sentinel cut off with a sharp zzt, and I immediately opened my eyes, and saw Sadie standing with one foot through the doorframe, a pulse shield in her hand. I started to fire at her again, already knowing I was too late, but then paused when she looked down at her chest. I followed her gaze… and saw the hole there, already pouring out blood.
Pouring out of the left side of her chest—from approximately where her heart was located.
She looked up at me, her brows furrowing in confusion. “But…” she breathed, before toppling over.
I felt nothing as she fell, and after doing a quick check of the sentinel to make sure it was out, I took a staggering step toward the doorway. The light inside was glowing brightly in an array of prismatic colors. It was like the room I had met the Lionel program inside of, only not glowing white.
The kaleidoscope of colors was like gravel being dragged along the inside of my brain, but I pushed through it, knowing I’d already come so far.
The protocol was on the tip of my tongue. All I had to do was yell it at Leo, and he’d be uploaded into the server, where he could take out Kurt and stop Sage’s plan once and for all. Leaving me to finally kill Sage. I moved up to the side of the door, intent on shouting it through the doorframe.
“Leo!” I cried. Or at least I tried to. But my voice came out as barely a harsh whisper, a gurgle of noise that felt like my entire voice box had been smashed. I suppressed a curse and gritted my teeth. If I couldn’t yell it at him, then I’d have to get closer.
I became aware of the beating sounds of a sentinel’s footsteps, and on impulse, dove through the door. A gunshot exploded right ahead of me, and I felt it impact directly into my thigh, but I was suddenly too enraged to care. Because I could see Sage standing just off center, next to where Grey was bleeding on the floor. His gun was already pointed at me, and I saw the flash of another bullet explode from the muzzle as he fired at me.
My arm snapped out at him, my eyes already settli
ng on the colorful target his uniform was making in the spectral lights. My heart thundered in my chest as I expelled a slow breath and squeezed the trigger. The gun kicked in my hand, making my arm throb with agony, but I ignored it, my eyes watching Sage. The bullet hit him on the left side of the chest, and I barely caught the old man’s look of surprise before he spun away and fell. I exhaled, lowering the gun, and then cried out as I felt the burning in my leg where I had been shot. It was like someone had driven a spike through my thigh.
“Liana?”
I opened my eyes, the weak sound of Grey’s voice chasing the pain away for a moment. I scanned the ground, and saw him lying near where Sage had fallen, already climbing across the floor to get to me. The beating sound of the footsteps came closer, and I knew that at any second, the sentinel would enter, see what we had done, and kill us both.
I began crawling for Grey, but the sorrow in my heart was like a weight around my neck. I knew we couldn’t fight the sentinels. I was battered and broken, and he was in even worse shape. We were going to die no matter what, but there was still a chance that I could save Leo, and through him, the Tower. It broke my heart, though, because I wasn’t going to be able to say goodbye to Leo, or even explain what was happening to him. But I had to do it. It was the only way to prevent any of this from happening again.
I saw him stretching a hand out to me, and grabbed it. Somehow, he found the strength to drag us closer together, because within moments, his arms were encircling me. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, resting his forehead on mine. “I couldn’t let them kill you. I gave him the code. He’s already uploaded Kurt and started the process.”
I pressed my lips together, holding back a cry. I wanted to tell him that it was okay, that we would figure it out, but I didn’t know what was about to happen. It was probably too late to initiate the New Day protocol, but I had to try. “I’m sorry, too,” I breathed. “I love you so much, and I’m sorry I failed you.”