“It could be anyone,” Amy said. Her fingers traced the black veins of disease riddling the tissue. “The bone is open source. So is the dazzle pattern. Anybody could print those. It’s the muscle, and the tumour, that’s proprietary.”
Of course, she was already researching. Javier wondered why she’d even invited him along.
“But why not just send a real sub?”
Amy flicked the muscle with her fingers. It shivered a little. “I’m more interested in where they got the puppet vN. I don’t really know much about them. The island says the records have been buried. All that’s left are press releases.”
“What about the skin?” he asked. “Is it vN leather?”
She nodded. “It’s yours, actually. Your clade’s. Photosynthetic, but with viruses added to skim out protein from the water. There’s a gel medium on the surface; it acts like flypaper, but for plankton. Reduces drag, too.”
“Ooh, fancy.” He laced his fingers behind his head. “So we’re looking at some serious designers, here. People with the kind of money and expertise to build a boutique submersible that’s just couture enough to be real fucking ugly.”
She smiled. “Yes. Just because it’s sophisticated doesn’t mean it has to be pretty. Though it’s an interesting combination, vN skin with organic tissue.” Her brow furrowed. “The use of your clade’s skin – at least, the use of it as a base – might be some kind of personal threat.”
“Oh, come on.”
“I’m just trying to consider all the possibilities–”
“Querida. I’ve pissed some people off in my time, but I don’t have enemies.”
She blinked. “We all have enemies, Javier.”
He had a feeling he knew where this was going.
“He was wrong, you know,” she said. “The puppet.”
“I know.”
“I’m not going to let anything happen to you, or your children.”
“Xavier’s yours, too, you know.”
Amy lay her palm flat over the twitching muscle. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I know. That’s why I’m not going to let anybody hurt him. Or you.”
Javier didn’t like the look in her eyes. He’d seen it before. When Portia was wearing her face.
“This doesn’t have to get bad,” he said. “You don’t have to hunt these people down, or anything. You don’t have to strike back.”
She turned to him. In the dark, her eyes seemed to glow. “They came to our home,” she said. “Where your children sleep.”
Our children, he wanted to say, but didn’t. “You don’t even know who they are,” he said instead.
“Not yet,” she said. “But I’ll find out.”
“And then what?”
Amy shrugged. “I don’t know. It depends on what they do next.”
He crossed the distance between them. He held her face in his hands. “Don’t do this,” he whispered. “Don’t go down this road. It was just surveillance. It’s probably some next-level paparazzi bullshit. We live with that every day. There’s no need to be angry.”
“I’m already angry.” She smiled wistfully. “I’m already so much more angry than you can ever understand.”
“They didn’t do anything wrong.”
“I’m not angry about this,” she said, stepping away. “I’m angry about everything.”
“You won,” Javier said. “We’re not on the run, anymore. We’re not in prison. Portia’s gone.”
Amy was silent. Javier simulated many different ways of framing his next question. He chose the simplest.
“She is gone, right?”
Amy shut her eyes. “It’s not that easy. Quarantining Portia, hacking you. It’s not that easy.”
“You keep saying that, but you never actually explain what you mean.”
She lifted her gaze to meet his. “Do you understand what happened to me, when I remade myself?”
He shrugged. “Yeah. I know what you told me, anyway.”
“Well, I didn’t tell you everything. I couldn’t. Because it’s impossible to express. I saw everything, Javier. Everything Portia had ever seen. Everything the island ever saw. Everything they ever did. All the memories.”
He held his hands open for her to take, if she wanted to. “What are you saying?”
She looked deeply, terribly, inconsolably sad. “It means that if I change you – hack you, remake you, however you want to think of it – I would see everything you’ve ever done, too.” She bit her lip. “And everyone you’d ever done it with, too.”
He took a step back. He didn’t want to say the next part. “And I’m guessing that’s just a bit too much to ask of you, isn’t it?”
Her programming allowed for a shift in her shoulders that looked an awful lot like a deep sigh. “Right now, it is,” she said. “Maybe later, I’ll be more… grown-up, about the whole thing.”
“Right. Grown-up.” He nodded. How strange, he thought, that his favourite killer robot should be rendered so stupidly and pitiably human by something so organic and predictable as jealousy. He turned away, and found the fresh air whistling into the sub through the hole in its reeking flesh. He let the rain spatter his face before speaking. “Come on. The shipment will be here any minute.”