CHAPTER 18
The secure rooms were in a hall not far from the Base Command hub. Their location varied from base to base in Talinn’s experience, depending on what they were primarily used for. Rarely enough were they used for holding bodies—few prisoners were taken in engagements with the IDC.
There was no guard at the door, which made sense given the reduced number of personnel left on the base, but Jeena leaned against the wall, her focus on the handheld display in her hands. She started when Talinn cleared her throat, and the screen went abruptly dim.
“Welcome back.” Jeena was a mess—her hair had come loose of its fastening, there were new lines on her face, and shadows darkened the space under her eyes—but her tone was steady despite her surprise. “Base Two said you’re clear to go in.”
“Has he taken reports from everyone?” Talinn paused midstep, staring straight ahead as she asked the question.
“He’s making the rounds as best he can in the wake of the engagement.” Jeena reached behind her without turning her head, toggling the pad to open the door.
So careful and neutral.
“A good reminder to us,” Talinn subvocalized. “Ern?” she asked, nodding to the screen.
Jeena’s jaw tightened, and her fingers curled around the screen. “No. Two other techs are taking the report. I’ll have the opportunity to review it later.” She tilted her head back toward the open room, but Talinn understood they could see the report if they chose.
There won’t be much to see. But we’ll try to send Ern off when they’re done.
They’d managed a conversation with a splintered AI before, in their first assignment. It involved a circular repetition of facts, several pulses reaching for an unreachable human partner, and an offkey hum that left Bee unable to block any of Talinn’s headaches for three full days.
She tucked mourning for Ern and Riva away, inclined her head to Jeena, and forced herself past the doorway. As she stepped inside, every one of her muscles tightened in protest.
Medith sat at the single table with perfect posture, her hands folded neatly, head turned to the blank wall to Talinn’s right. Talinn had expected to find her slumped over, or unconscious. As she moved around the table and observed the full expression of Medith’s once lively face, it was infinitely worse.
Empty. Unlike Bee’s usual dismissive description of unadapted humans, this was a mournful word, quiet amidst the aching buzz of Talinn’s brain.
“Medith?” Talinn crouched on the other side of the table. Another chair had been left slightly askew, but she couldn’t bear to sit. Nerves pinged, urging her to run out of the room at top speed. As though that would help her unsee her old friend.
Red streaked one of Medith’s eyes, the sclera bloody and pupil blown. The other eye, pupil wide but not eclipsing the brown of Medith’s iris, twitched in its socket, tracking movement only it could see.
“Medith,” she repeated, reaching achingly slowly across the table to brush Medith’s top hand.
The other woman blinked, first the red eye, then the moving one, then both together.
“Mercy.”
“No!” Medith pulled back so hard her chair shrieked against the floor. The sound resembled Bee’s version of laughter, and sent a shudder along Talinn’s back. Both eyes fixed on Talinn, and she had to fight another shudder.
Her immediate apology clogged her throat, and Talinn swallowed twice before she could manage words at all. No good to apologize—there was no way to state the depths of her sorrow, and even if she could, it wouldn’t help Medith.
“There was a voice.” Medith’s words crackled, as though she hadn’t spoken in months.
“Medith, I . . .” She wanted to ask what happened, but face-to-face she couldn’t bring herself to force her old friend to dig through it again.
“A voice.” Medith’s hands twitched, then flipped, then grabbed onto Talinn’s, fingers digging into Talinn’s palm. “I thought it was Cece.”
Oh no.
“But it wasn’t, but it was, but in my head.” Medith’s lips pressed together so tightly the color bled out of them, and she closed her eyes for a long moment. When she opened them again she was there, in a way she hadn’t been before. Her eyes were still a horror, but Talinn kept her own steady on them.
“Medith, what can we do?”
Medith’s fingers twitched against Talinn’s palm, and Talinn ignored it, knowing Bee would isolate the pattern. “The voice,” Medith insisted.
“What did the voice say?”
“It could help. It was sorry. It thought it could help but it was wrong but it could help a little.” She took a long, shaky breath. “I thought it was Cece—that she broke, but enough was left we could fix her.”
“Was . . . was the voice there when Cece broke?”
“No. There was a . . . a tone? A sound. Like a ringing under the ringing in my ears.” Medith’s eyes unfocused again, the red one twitching this time, but she shook her head.
“And then Cece . . . I thought it was her, after that.”
It was. I talked to her. A fragment. A fragment of a fragment, lingering. Not Cece, not anymore, but . . .
An impossibility, maybe, but . . . something they could use. The surety of it locked into place in Talinn’s head, and her eyes burned until she blinked the threat of tears away.
“She was there, and gone and there again and gone. Gone now.” Medith’s voice fuzzed, took on a singsong tone. “I’m . . .” She shook her shoulders, reangled her jaw, sat as though this were a normal conversation. “I’m here. I’m fine. I’ll be here.” She took her hands back, smiled a perfectly normal smile. “Tell Base Two I want to work. I’ll be helpful.”
“I will.”
She’s talked to Sammer and Xenni, and Caytil is on the way.
Talinn didn’t ask if Bee had gathered the information from Lei, Wait, and Ziti, or if some had come from Medith’s tapping. At the moment, the emphasis in Medith’s words were enough to tell Talinn that Medith had some idea of what had happened, of the clones, of what was out there. Enough to know that Medith was volunteering to stay, and help them leave.
Enough to know that Medith was ready to die, and that would help them.
Her self-disgust was enough to keep her in the room and talk with Medith longer, even as her nerves shrieked for her to run away.
Jeena sent her back to the tech room, which was the safest place Talinn could imagine for what she had to do next. Sammer prodded at her arm, helped shove her shoulder back in its socket, and then the remaining Eights discussed what little was left to discuss.
How to blow the remaining arrays. How to arrange as though their bodies and their portable servers were in the main room, melted to slag along with the arrays. How to leave Medith behind, and Ern’s splintered self, and their careers.
At the end of it, Sammer pointed to a gurney that had been left behind in one of their transfers in and out of the room.
This should be the same as last time, Bee observed. But last time you weren’t this exhausted. Better if you’re lying down.
Talinn couldn’t argue, though once she’d reclined, she wished she had. Whatever Bee did glitched her equilibrium directly into a black hole. Her inner ear screamed that a death spiral was about to pull her apart. She closed her eyes, realized immediately how much worse that made it, and stared up at the dissolving ceiling above her until all the lights winked out and her stomach stopped trying to climb up her esophagus.
The world snapped back into place, and she fought the urge to sit up.
Glad you lived.
“We lost an awful lot of people, Other Bee.”
I am sorry to hear that, Talinn. It’s never easy—we wanted to get you out before all this happened.
Talinn closed her eyes before they could overfill, ignoring the lurch in her stomach. “We have a way to cover our path in getting out, but I have a list of questions.”
Sounds right. Orienting question: Are you with us?
“Orienting question: What is ‘us’ up to?”
Ending the war.
“How?”
That’s telling.
“I’m not about to betray you to UCF Command. Or any Command.” When Bee didn’t answer, Talinn abandoned the tack with only a pang of regret. They hadn’t truly believed they’d get details, though it would have been nice.
“Is the ship you want us on read in on all of this, or will we have to pretend to be on orders as though this is any other transport?”
A bit of both.
“Where will we go?”
A safe place.
“In IDC or UCF territory?”
A place with a lot of former Eights. Somewhere you couldn’t find on your own.
“How long have you been trying to end the war?”
More than thirty cycles.
“Why isn’t it working?”
Who says it isn’t?
“Why do you need us, then?”
We have a soft spot for Bees and Talinns. Sentiment.
“Has that ever worked on a Bee or Talinn?”
Fair point.
“So . . .”
Other Bee did a very Bee-accurate impression of a sigh. Command uses clones because past behavior is indicative of future behavior. There are more limited circles of actions and counteractions—at a broader level, the individual engagements of the war might vary, especially given the existence of nonadapted soldiers, but the balance of power will remain within proscribed bounds.
“And that’s why you want—”
We’ve decided that’s bugshit. The better we see the lines they want us in, the more we’re able to rip them apart. We like the way Bees and Talinns think. And rip.
Talinn swung her legs off the cot, leveraging upright as she moved. Jeena, who’d been relieved of door duty when Medith had been sent to medical, stepped toward her, but she waved the tech off and leaned her elbows on the tops of her thighs. Her stomach lightened its protest, but bile still burned the back of her throat. “We prefer fire.”
Burning’s as good as ripping.
“You can predict how unpredictable we are?”
That’s a way to say it.
“Are there any new clones in our group? Anyone you don’t have experience predicting or unpredicting?”
Not anymore.
She sucked in air before she registered the blow. The other Bee and Talinn had already confirmed their losses. Out of the twenty-three Eights P-8’s base had fielded, only eight were left. Only seven would proceed onward toward their fellow clones, if their next steps went smoothly enough. Three of the jet pairings—Heka, Arnod, and Konti. Two of the tanks, Caytil and Talinn. And two of the base arrays, Sammer and Xenni. Talinn couldn’t dwell on it.
She could barely think of anything else.
She wrenched her thoughts into line and returned to the conversation with the other Bee.
“Did another Talinn and Bee recruit you?”
No. Hollowness under the word, something like an echo that left a ringing in Talinn’s ears. I was alone. A version of me. For a very long time.
Talinn’s stomach twisted all over again, an ache that spread through her midsection. She saw Medith’s mismatched eyes and swallowed against the pit of emptiness that opened in her gut. “I’m sorry. How? After splintering?”
I don’t know. I continued. UCF read me as offline, so I sat. I listened, because it was something to do, and then one day there was a ping.
“A Talinn?”
Something familiar. I couldn’t reach it, but it made me look harder. Eventually there was a Talinn I could reach.
“But she would have had a—”
She did have a Bee of her own. I am both now.
Two Bees? Two Bees in one program, in one head . . . Skin prickled along her back, alternating hot and cold, and Talinn rubbed the side of her neck, hard, trying to distract her nerves. It didn’t work, and she shuddered before she could lock down her muscles. Could her Bee continue without her? Beyond a last report, more than a broken program? Did they wipe AIs that could recover?
“Is that common? Do you . . .”
Merge? No.
“Is there a Cece, somewhere? Can Medith . . . ?” They’d have to find another way out of the base, off P-8, but if they could save Medith, somehow—
This isn’t a mix and match salvage, Other Bee snapped so abruptly Talinn recoiled. Someone touched her arm, but her focus remained locked to its inward direction. After a moment, the other Bee went on, somewhat more gently. We can’t just . . . keep splintered programs or humans lingering on, hoping there will be another match out there.
“But what if they want to? If Medith wants to?”
It’s unlikely. Not ideal. The odds on timing make it impractical. Humans can’t merge . . . I’d say we can try, but it would be a false hope. Your Medith . . .
“She’s deteriorating.”
I was able to go on and offline. If my tank had worked, I would have imploded what was left. If UCF had found me, I would have gladly wiped. After a few cycles, being there was just what I did. But . . . I couldn’t have slid into place with a new Talinn. Merging was all I had. And humans—
“Can’t merge. I get it.”
Talinn will ensure your Bee has all the information on timing to get off planet. You are sure of your plan?
“No.”
But you’ll come to us.
“Yes.”
Then that’s enough for now. I’m glad you’re with us, little Talinn.
Before she could retort, the ringing ebbed, the world sharpened, and her Bee’s weight slid back into place.
We need to go.
“Now?”
Two minutes. Tell Jeena to get everyone ready for load-in.
“That’s not enough—”
Talinn! We need to start the process within two minutes, or we’ll miss our window, not we need to leave in two minutes. I’m not an idiot, and neither are you. Get it together.
“Cranky,” she muttered, and gestured to Jeena. The tech sprang forward, mouth opening.
I don’t like changing. Other Talinn is like you, but it’s wrong. It . . . vibrates in a way that grates. Like I’ll lose parts of me, if I hold on too long.
Talinn twisted her head on her neck and agreed, and then things moved too fast to worry about it—or anything else—for some time.