"Leaving," said a thing with Amy's voice. Granny.
"I prefer to be called Portia," Granny said with Amy's mouth.
Rick paled. "Oh, shit–"
Amy's hands – Portia's hands, now – shot out, towel closed tightly around each fist, and gripped the fencing. Discomfort sizzled up her arms; she ignored it. The charge was useful; the amount she absorbed hardened the gel in her limbs, transforming her body from something soft into something lethal. She pulled at the fence. The metal screeched backward, sparking, as she yanked it down. She tossed it behind her and stepped through the smoking hole of frayed wire.
Rick and Melissa reached for their guns. But the small space worked against them, trapping them well within the reach of her arms and legs. With a flick of the wrist, Portia twisted the towel into a whip and cracked it across Melissa's eyes. She kicked Rick solidly between the legs. He fell to his knees. She aimed for his head, next. It snapped backward. His teeth skimmed across her bare toes. Melissa charged Portia and she reached out, grabbed her wrist, slammed her against the live wires of the cage. Melissa's body stiffened. She twitched, teeth clenched together in a rictus of pain that had no impact, whatsoever, on anything in either Portia or Amy's consciousness.
"This is our clade's real talent, Javier," Portia said, pressing Melissa against the wires until her skin smoked and her body seized. "And you can bet I'm gonna spread it."
Rick yelled something, his gun rising in the air, and Portia spun Melissa's body into him. Portia heard Melissa's shoulder dislocating. The human bodies tangled together. A shelf fell. Decorative snowglobes crashed down on their heads. They moaned.
Rick reached a shaking hand toward his gun. Portia brought her foot down and twisted hard. He groaned through bleeding lips.
"You just never learn, do you?" Portia asked.
Stop hurting them! Amy pleaded inside Portia's mind, shrill as a soaring firecracker.
"Look at them, Amy." Portia focused on the tangled heap of weeping flesh before her. Portia tilted her head so Amy could watch Melissa drooling on herself. "They look so surprised. Like they never saw this coming. Like it's our fault. Like they're the victims here."
"Stop it," Javier said. His voice came through muffled. Portia ignored it. She knelt. She dipped her fingers in the blood streaming from Rick's nose. She brought it up to her lips and let Amy have a taste.
"Did my daughter tell you what the word robot means, Amy?" Portia pictured her mods taking the sodium in Rick's blood and working it into other processes. She leaned down and looked into Rick's broken face, saw his unconscious flinch and his wounded pride. "It means serfdom. It means slavery. It means that from the first minute your species dreamed us up, you were destined to fail."
"Stop," Javier moaned.
"I'll let you out in a minute–"
"No, stop. I c-c-can't…"
Portia looked.
Javier rocked back and forth, knocking his forehead against the wall and hiding his son's eyes from her violence. "I f-f-feel sick… My failsafe is k-k-kicking in, please…"
He's not like us! Amy's voice burned like industrial solvent. The girl was strong, her indignation fuelled by years of privileged innocence. He can't handle it! When you hurt them, you hurt him, too!
Portia had forgotten. Already, she was too familiar with her granddaughter's consciousness, her ability to look at agony and not flinch, not unravel. She had exposed her daughters to so much human suffering. She had watched their resulting madness. This consequence of her search had affected her far more deeply than any death rattles from short-lived experimental primates. Portia decided to be gentle, though, for Amy's sake. Best to explain things, before the end.
"Every generation carries within it the seed of its own destruction."
Then you should have seen me coming, Granny.
Portia's networks sang with sudden activity. Dizziness rocked her. Maintaining control over Amy was difficult; Portia had to route the commands through unclaimed space and the child was so very old already, and her adaptive systems had learned how to move and speak and act in human ways that took up an absurd amount of memory. Wearing Amy felt like using a dial-up modem. It was lucky Portia had dealt with only the slowest of her daughters the night before; even so, she had sustained serious damage. And now Javier's code was in there, too, happily replicating and complicating each process it touched. Slowly, every piece of herself aligned against her. First her fingers, then her toes, then her limbs and her mouth. She surrendered.
Amy ran shaking hands through her hair. It was still damp. So was her skin. Behind her, the baby wailed. Before her, the bounty hunters trembled. They had never seen a violent vN, Amy realized. They were afraid. Of her. Slowly, Amy edged away.
"Run away," she said, in a voice that sounded much calmer than she felt. "Now, before Granny comes back."