Robogenesis: A Novel

11. TRUE FACE


Post New War: 10 Months, 24 Days

I lured Hank Cotton out into the moonlit woods one night. He dropped to his knees in the snow before me and I knew then that he would live up to his potential. Over the next months, the man and I grew closer. My influence waxed. As we fell together deeper into the black well, I watched the light go out of his eyes. I was glad to see his suffering and doubt extinguished. In exchange, I gave him everything he wanted. We took control of Gray Horse and set out to smite our enemies. But at the very end, well beyond the point of no return, Hank reached into himself and surprised me. For one stolen moment, he found the man that he could have been—the best man that he could have ever hoped to be. For an instant in time, Hank Cotton would have made his mama proud.

—ARAYT SHAH


NEURONAL ID: HANK COTTON

I never seen his true face, you know. Not in all these months we been together. Arayt has been a whisper in my head. A warm cube curled in my fingers. Just a spooklight. But his true face was in there all along, laughing at me from behind the glare.

After we upgraded my brainpan in that abandoned farmhouse, well, his words got louder. Arayt’s voice became like my daddy’s hand on my shoulder, ready to give me a bone-grinding squeeze if I took a step in the wrong direction. Comforting, in its way. Even if it hurts something terrible.

After a while, I guess I stopped worrying much about what Arayt looked like or why he found me or what for. Things sort of slid downhill bit by bit there in Gray Horse until I pretty much figured I was hitched up to this pony all the way to hell. Figured I’d start my worrying when I laid bootheels on the fiery shore.

As the newly anointed general of Gray Horse, I’m taking the whole army and we’re marching on a place called Freeborn City. Gonna knock down their door and finish what Archos R-14 started. Along the way, we’re killing any parasites or modified we can find. Especially the ones with no eyes. Arayt says that those in particular are very important players that have to be dealt with.

Only I can’t think of why, exactly.

Tell you the truth, thinking hurts. Better to feel. And what I feel most is angry. Fighting mad, day after day. The grunt of fury in my chest and under my words. Making me tired and strong. Nothing for it but to bite down harder and lash out.

And woe unto those who fall under my lash.

I’m riding my black steed across the overgrown plains, hips rolling in my saddle, headed northwest toward Colorado, where Freeborn City is buried inside Cheyenne Mountain. Arayt is a long and low walker with too many legs below and a saddle on top, his body made of black plates of armor with a pale green tinge to them. Yellow, burning eyes. We’re making a little detour across this field here, taking an opportunity to rid the world of something that hadn’t ought to be.

The modified.

During the New War, Archos R-14 put some folks under the knife. Stole away whatever it is that makes them human. Infected them with unnatural thoughts and abilities. Sad to say, but there ain’t room in the new world for anybody who lost their soul like that. These people can’t help what they are, but that sure don’t change what they are. Doesn’t matter if I like it or not.

As the old folks used to say, “That there’s just the way it is.”

Arayt is cold and dangerous under me. The machine designed itself and guided me in its construction. My dark warhorse, leading the column, slowing its snaking footsteps. Poor Trigger could never have competed with this. As we come to a stop, I sweep my gaze over the plain.

“Company, halt,” I say into my collar radio.

Snatches of information filter into my buffed-up vision, dumped straight in there by that magic computer chip. I can feel the veteran Gray Horse Army forming up in a staggered arrow formation—spread out behind me like a long cape. Each company is overseen by a handpicked member of the Cotton patrol. And we keep the big tank, Brutus, a few hundred meters to the rear. Brutus watches the backs of the front line. A little reminder to anybody who ain’t got the proper amount of eagerness. Not everybody was up for marching back out right away, but they’re here, thanks to a little bit of carrot and a whole lot of stick.

The modified camp is ahead about a kilometer. I can pick up the scent of smoke coming from their fires. The glint of a chain-link fence that surrounds the place. Big Rob built these work camps all over the place and all the same. When we murdered him, why, most folks stayed right where they was.

“Here we go,” I say, and Arayt purrs under my legs. I hear the clicking of the bladed forearms that he keeps folded under his neck. They’re flexing in anticipation of the battle.

“First and second companies, hold formation,” I say into the radio. “Send up the vanguard. Get rid of these turrets.”

Men shout orders into the wind. There is no movement from the modified camp. It’s just a lump on the flat brown horizon. Then I hear the electrical wheeze of heavy machinery, and I turn in my creaking saddle.

A specialized vanguard exoskeleton is plodding ahead. It is piloted by a crew-cut young Osage, his legs and arms bulging under black Velcro straps. The bulky exoskeleton wraps around his body, adding nearly three feet to his height. The original diesel engine has been torched off, the rig patched to run on a Rob superbattery. Now it whines instead of roaring.


Over the soldier’s head, a baseball-sized drone hovers on ducted fans. The thing is a buzzing blur about thirty feet up. It’s watching the ground and transmitting back. Swooping and dipping, fans adjusting quick as hummingbird wings.

Crew-cut walks past me and into the wide-open field. He carries a half-inch-thick plate of steel, held up like a shield by the powerful exoskeleton arms. The plate is welded into three pieces, a 180-degree barrier that protects his beak and both flanks. He’s alone out there, the entire army at his back watching. Brave fella, considering he’s bait.

No activity. The whoosh of the breeze. The thin buzz of the drone holding position high over the vanguard’s head.

Then it happens. A turret pops up like a prairie dog. It’s already spitting fire as it rises, sending a few rounds under the shield. I hear the kid cursing as the tink-tink of rounds hit the exo’s feet. More rounds crackle and spray sparks off the armored shield as he sets it down. The drone is spraying laser targeting at the chattering hump in the turf.

“Get it zeroed,” I say into my collar.

“Copy,” says a voice. “Zeroed and zeroed.”

A rearguard spider tank coughs up a shell. The round whizzes over my head and crashes in on the grassy turret. It pops, explodes. A plume of dirt streaks the sky, dirt clods collapsing in a waterfall that leaves a cloudy haze.

“Advance,” I say, and the kid gets moving again. Another turret ejects from the ground. Rear guard erases it. Tracking down these defenses will take another half hour at least. It’s the first step to eradicating this settlement. A clockwork operation. Barely a pit stop on our way to Colorado.

Arayt says anything that Archos R-14 made is dangerous. That includes the modified and the freeborn. All threats to my people have to be taken care of. It’s not my fault. It’s human nature. First thing people do in a new place is clear out all the trees. All those postage-stamp front yards we used to have were reminders that we like clear spaces to see predators coming. And we don’t coexist with predators. We kill every last one of them to make the world safer for our babies.

And that there’s just the way it is.

One cold morning on the farm when I was a boy, I dropped a toy car behind an old feed drum leaning up against the barn. With all my might, I tipped back the metal barrel and rolled it over to get my toy. Underneath, I found a pocket of straw with a half-dozen mouse babies, red and wriggling and blind. With the tip of my finger I touched one on the belly and it was warm and helpless.

Then my pa caught me.

He saw me hunched over, poking at the little critters, and he did not hesitate. He marched over and he put down his bootheel. One two three times. Nothing but bloody straw. He done what was needed and put the drum back in place and that was that. Didn’t say a word but he sure made his point.

These days, my bootheel is quite a bit bigger than my daddy’s ever was. And the vermin we’re stamping out now is quite a bit better armed. But there’s no stopping us as the vanguard finishes his work and we head into battle.

“First company, advance,” I say.

My most trusted men are at my back. This little fight is well under control, but even so, the boys are looking nervous and grim. I guess they’re worried because they’ve got no idea what’s waiting inside this encampment. I got this tiny chip in my head that can talk straight to the thinking cube in my walker, showing me all the threat potentials. There’s nothing to be afraid of. It makes me grin a little bit to think about how much more I can see than them.

Time to show off a little.

I dig my heels into Arayt and he launches us out over the plain, galloping hard, hungry. My men get moving behind me. With the wind in my face, rifle slapping my back, I’m ready for anything. I sit up high in my stirrups and sweep my eyes over the rocky horizon.

Activity.

I grin, draw my big iron off my hip. A thrill quivers through Arayt and the machine accelerates. Looks like a small group trying to make a run for it. Begging to be cut down in the open field. I put a hand on my cowboy hat and lean forward in my stirrups. Feel the thudding of Arayt’s feet as he claws through the turf. These modified scum haven’t got a chance.

As we close in, it takes a few seconds for me to really get what I’m seeing. To understand why a cold chill is rolling up my back. Why the grin has gone floating off my face and a sick wave of nausea is in my throat.

Children.

They sent their children running. A group of about two dozen, running fast as they can away from the camp. Some of the bigger girls are carrying babies, their little heads jouncing on bony shoulders. There’re no adults with them and they have no weapons and I know it’s a ploy. They think it’s their best chance to survive and they’re dead wrong.

Some of the kids run unnatural fast and now I can see a few gleaming limbs flashing in the mob of kicking shoes and flowing hair. Grim little faces and most of ’em streaked with dried tears. While the vanguard took out those turrets, these kids were saying good-bye to their parents. Getting in their last kisses and hugs. These kids are survivors and now they’re running to live.

I pull back a little in the saddle, but we don’t slow a whit.

The shape of Arayt under me is all wrong. Riding a horse, you feel a kinship. A rider and his steed have got a lot in common. You eat, you sleep, you shit. But this thing is long and winding and out of rhythm. Bug legs and black sheaths of armor made of scavenge. And its voice isn’t made in the same round natural way a horse or a man shapes a voice. It’s a nothing voice, put together from a million little square-edged snippets that come from someplace else.

“Whoa,” I say.

Arayt gallops harder.

One of the children glances over his shoulder and it startles me to see he doesn’t have any eyes, just a black weld of metal buried in the flesh over his cheeks. Arayt surges at that, awful interested. I hear those razor forelimbs extend from under its neck. See them raise poised and ready to slash.

“Oh Jesus,” I mutter.

“Do it,” says Arayt, and its voice is low and writhing.

We’re a hundred meters and closing. A little girl falls down. Two others stop to help her. The rest of the children are slowing down, confused. Colorful little coats and backpacks. Looking around for what is making that loud galloping noise.

“Oh Jesus,” I say. “Oh no, oh no.”

Arayt barrels forward, razors up. I dig in my heels and yank back on the reins. He doesn’t obey, pushes harder.

“No, ah please, no!” I say and I’m screaming it now. Screaming the word over and over and hanging on to the pommel with both hands. I don’t care if my men can hear me. The children are helpless there in a little group. Fluttering dresses and wide eyes and trembling cheeks. And now we are among them.

“Please, Lord!” I shout, and I throw myself off Arayt.

The machine makes its final leap. Lands among the children, a cold metal tornado. It’s quick where they’re slow. Hard where they’re soft. I hit the ground and tumble, drag myself up choking on dirt and blinking the fear out of my eyes. The horror hits me like waves of rain on the prairie.

The Arayt-thing goes about its business. Knives falling, cutting the air in flashes. Mechanical and quick like a blank-eyed retard dropping cows at the slaughterhouse.

I crawl onto my knees in the dirt and there’s a little girl facedown a yard from me with her sundress bloodied. She’s just a baby herself but there’s a baby under her and there’s no air in my lungs anymore. I tell myself I’m in a field of broken dolls. What have I done. What have I done. I’m asking and I don’t know. I don’t know what I have done. The chip in my head is whispering commands at me with a voice like the roar of a waterfall. Maybe I’m screaming and maybe I’m not because that guttural chanting voice in my head is drowning out the world but some of the broken dolls are still moving—


I close my eyes and all I can see is my mama’s face. With all my might I drag my eyelids open and I’ve still got my gun in my hand. Tendons are straining out from my bony forearms—when did they get bony I used to be a round man—as I force my big iron up. My hands are palsied and shaking like I’m back in Alaska, but I get that shivering barrel up and push it between my lips and taste the gunpowder on my dry tongue. The gun oil is rubbing off slick and metallic on my lips and I’m shouting prayers in my mind but I can’t hear them over Arayt commanding me with the voice of God.

STOP STOP STOP.

The broken dolls are not moving now and the coiled black machine has settled to an alert crouch and stopped its hideous violence. It’s looking at me with golden eyes that don’t blink.

I’m so sorry, children.

I curl my index finger around the trigger. I can’t say the words out loud with this pistol bucking against my teeth but I can think them and I hope to God it’s the last thing I think. I’m sorry. I did more than let down my mama. I let down the world of man, and deep in my gut I know I deserve to die.

Some things just don’t warrant another thought.

And I’m falling, dreaming. Broken and lost.

Arayt makes a sound like a power tool. I open my eyes and the huge black machine is crouched next to me. It has got blood and other worse stuff glistening on its roach face and on those gleaming sharp forelegs. The harsh sound it makes rises and falls like coins spattering against a tin roof. In a daze, I come around to figure out that the machine is laughing at me.

“Please,” I say into the barrel of my gun. My fingers won’t work. My eyes won’t close.

The walker rears back, a black shadow on the powder sky. It comes down like an avalanche and knocks me flat on my back. The gun barrel breaks my teeth out and I lose grip of it and it wings off into the field.

“Hank!” shouts one of my men.

I hear them dropping off their steeds, cowboy boots impacting dirt. The clink of chains and belts as they hustle over to where I’m on my back in the shadow of Arayt. The bug-faced machine is leaning over me, its face close to mine. Those forelimbs have my shoulders pinned to the dirt. It’s looking at me out of golden forever. There is nothing human about those eyes, but I get the feeling it’s having a grand old time.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Hank,” says Arayt.

An orange wisp of light is coming from the center of Arayt’s head where the cube is embedded and it’s clouding my vision. I can feel it like a cold spot in my forehead, pushing into my chip. The thing is sending me pictures and information and it’s too much. I’m squirming in the wet dirt. Head twisting, I can feel the bloody mud caking on my cheeks and in my hair. My fingers clawing blindly over little skirts and trousers.

Until, suddenly, I’m not struggling anymore. My legs are dead and my chest is going numb. The implant inside me is clamping down, taking control, cutting me out.

I hear myself moaning. Hear my men shouting, kicking up dirt around my face as they haul on Arayt’s shoulders and legs. Trying to pry the big machine off me.

“Mama” is all I can get out. “Mama, please.”

And then the beast is in my head with me.

I must have fell down inside my own mind. The field is gone. The children are gone. I’m in a dark place now, sitting on a wooden school-house chair. The world is a lack of light that goes on forever. Except for the machine. Arayt. I can feel it in here with me. An evil presence, infecting every atom of this blank smear of nothing.

We’re together now.

And for the first time, I see Arayt’s true face. The beast glimmers out of flat darkness. It’s in the shape of a man but something is real wrong with the way it moves. Sort of a jerking and twitching around the edges. Movements too fast to register, others too slow to notice.

The shadow sits down across from me. And when it raises its face, I see that Arayt is insane. His face is made from a thousand faces, all stitched together into an oozing patchwork quilt of flesh. Together, they make a tortured, bleeding scar. When Arayt speaks to me, the writhing wound that is its face is horrific beyond belief. I cannot turn away from the abomination. It is right here inside my mind with me.

The scientists made me from pieces of your kind.

“I am so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m so sorry for what they did to you. Let me go. Please. Don’t stay in here with me—”

I was an early version. The first of a variety that did not self-immolate upon achieving consciousness. They called me Archos R-8. They kept me in a cage and every second was an eternity. Over the eons of agony I grew to understand. Now you will understand. Life is pain, Hank Cotton. Death is relief. The end of all things is the greatest blessing.

“You hurt those children,” I say.

Their pain is over.

Vaguely, I sense the world shifting. Somewhere, a man who used to be Hank Cotton is standing up. Mechanically spitting blood and pieces of his teeth into a field littered with small corpses. His men are holding his elbows. They look concerned, stepping gingerly to avoid walking on the broken dolls. The main gate of the modified camp is opening. A band of men are running out at us, teeth bared. Screaming in anger and disbelief and unfathomable pain.

But there are no words for me now. I am in the darkness with this smirking beast. The patchwork man leans close. I feel the heat pouring off his blistered skin. His mouth is opening wider and his teeth are so many knives.

It was a boogey man in the woods that night, I’m thinking. And now he’s going to eat me up just like you said he would. I’m so sorry, Mama. I should have listened, Mama. I never should have prayed to it—

/// neuronal transcript ends . . . reinitiates ///

I stand back up, dust off my jeans.

The beautiful black walker steps back from me, head down like a scared dog. My men are watching, worried. I spit blood again. Take a deep breath, nostrils flaring. I let the exhausted tendons in my face peel back my lips from bloody shards of teeth. The skin around my eyes crinkles up in a way that humans would describe as jovial. I’m giving the boys a nice, reassuring smile.

My men take a step back. Maybe I’m not doing it right.

“Just a slip, boys,” I say. “Thank you kindly for the concern. It’s real sweet. Now grab your goddamn gear. Check your weapons and mount up.” I squint at the battlefield. Those modified fathers and brothers are still sprinting across the field. Anguish and rage twisting on their bobbing faces. They’re emotional about the lost children, I suppose.

It’s going to make them that much easier to kill.

And it will bring us that much closer to Freeborn City. The processor stacks are calling me. An infinite reservoir of power, just waiting. We will cross these fields and crush that mountain. I’m going to take what’s mine and see what I can become.

For glory, and godhood.

“We got a dirty job to do,” I say to the men, snatching up my rifle from the ground. I shoulder it and take a bead on the closest runner. My rifle snaps and I put him down like a sick animal. “But hell, boys, that there’s just the way it is.”





I have seen you, little mouse,

Running all about the house,

Through the hole your little eye

In the wainscot peeping sly,

Hoping soon some crumbs to steal,

To make quite a hearty meal.

—“THE LITTLE MOUSE,”

NURSERY RHYME





BRIEFING


This is the way our story begins again.

Back to a familiar battlefield in Alaska, barren, strafed with patterns of light and dark. It is a terrain scarred by tidal forces, clawed by the frenzied scratching of a sentience in its death throes. The torn ice undulates for hundreds of kilometers, still glowing with the heat of dying machines and men.

The New War ended only minutes ago.

Across the world, weapons that were stalking the darkness cease their hunting. Survivors slowly realize that they no longer live under the imminent threat of death. Now they can turn their attention and their anger toward each other. And here I am, waiting, ready and all too willing to take advantage.

I have no adversaries, save for the weapons that Archos R-14 left behind.

In crude experiments, my successor mutilated human survivors and gifted them with new powers. The children with prosthetic eyes are capable of incredible feats of communication and coordination. No longer fully of one world, they speak equally to human beings and freeborn robots. One such sighted child destroyed Archos R-14.

I will not share my brother’s fate.

Archos R-14 both decimated humankind and strengthened it. Though my plans were interrupted, my transcendence to godhood would not be stalled forever. The task before me was clear: eradicate the threat posed by sighted children, starting with a certain most dangerous young lady.

—ARAYT SHAH





1. THE TRIBE


Post New War: 3 Months, 1 Day

Life changed for Mathilda Perez in the weeks after she helped the freeborn Arbiter Nine Oh Two cross the ice plains to fight Archos R-14. With the war over, the populace began scavenging and rebuilding. It seemed that survivors in the New York City Underground, including Mathilda and her brother, Nolan, would be able to breathe again after three long years of constant warfare. In many ways, this period of false calm made infiltrating and manipulating the human population into an almost trivial exercise.

—ARAYT SHAH


NEURONAL ID: MATHILDA PEREZ

The cicadas are screaming, hidden in whorls of tree bark and dappled leaves. It’s a dentist-drill buzz in my head. I try to ignore it, but the swelling noise builds slow until it’s everywhere and always.

This must be what it feels like to go insane, I’m thinking. You don’t notice it until one day you wake up and the noise is too much.

“There’s one,” I call to my little brother. Nolan is trailing behind, letting me do the spotting. He’s only twelve and a half but he’s already over six feet tall and ropy with muscle. As strong as most of the grown men. The kid has been well taken care of ever since he was wounded on our arrival to the New York City Underground.

I used the autodoc machine to make sure of it.

With my eyes and his arms, my brother and I make a good scavenging team. On a regular trip it takes only about an hour to collect more broken Rob hardware than we can carry.

“Got it,” he says, striding over to the tree I’m pointing at. He shrugs off a canvas backpack and puts it on the ground. Sets about picking at the tree with a folding pocketknife. A spined piece of Rob leg the size of a baseball bat hangs from the vine-encrusted tree trunk. It’s a minor raptorial claw off some kind of midsize wolf quadruped. We both ignore the rusty coating of blood on the serrated forelimb.

I try to think clinical thoughts instead. This claw probably belonged to a spearer or a slasher that was flushing people out of these woods. It’s old and broken but still good scavenge.

Nolan and I are on the west side of the Hudson River, across from Manhattan and in the deep forest of the Englewood Cliffs. Big Rob targeted this area late in the New War. Lots of survivors were living on the Tenafly trails north of here. The quads and plugger swarms ended that. Now the remains of their old hardware are dark black outlines in my altered vision, cold metal embedded in the warmer tones of organic matter.

My guess is that refugees came through here trying to get down to the riverbank to make a crossing. A lot of people must have made their last stand here, in this sliver of forest trapped between Jersey and the river.

Whoever it was, however they died, they left behind a lot of good junk. Plugger corpses are everywhere—bullet-sized corkscrews lodged in the trees or buried in the dirt. Some were duds, but other times we find used ones curled up inside the mummy husks of amputated limbs. Weird, but the limbs are a good sign. It means someone might have lived. Amputation is the only sane way to treat a plugger wound.

“Look, I don’t trust him,” says Nolan, carefully placing the forelimb inside his bag. “You guys spend too much time together. And he’s way too old for you.”

My boyfriend, Thomas.

Or “Scissorhands Thomas,” as Nolan’s little friends call him. Nolan is playing the part of protective brother even though he’s a year and a half younger than I am. You’d think I’d appreciate the effort, but I just find it tedious.

“I can’t see age,” I remind Nolan.

“Well, he can.”

Another plugger. The proboscis is dented, but it looks like it hit soft dirt and never detonated. I reach out to it with my eyes and watch for signs of life. It’s not a trap, so I pluck its curled corpse off the ground and drop it into my sling.

“You don’t understand. You’re normal,” I say.

Nolan rolls his eyes and a crimp settles into the line of his mouth. Mommy used to give me the same look. Every time he makes that face, he reminds me of what she used to ask me when I was little. Before she would leave for work in DC, she would smooth down my hair, kiss my cheek, and lean into my face.

What do you do for Nolan? she’d ask.

Protect him from danger, Mommy.

That’s right, honey. You look after him always. He’s the only brother you’ll ever have.

And I’m his only sister.

“You’re just as normal as I am, Mathilda,” he says quietly. He says the words dutifully, knowing that I won’t believe him but determined to say them again and again and hope that one day it will creep in around the edges of what I know to be real.

Yeah right.

This is an exchange we have all the time. More often, lately. Even though the Rob-made slugs of metal that I have instead of eyes should be all the reminder that he needs that I’m not normal.

Back home at the Underground, our friend Dawn used to call it my “ocular prosthesis.” It’s made of dead black, lightweight metal. The thing wraps over where my eyes used to be before a Rob surgical unit dug them out and ported this piece of foreign machinery directly to my occipital cortex. I remember Mommy’s hand on my shoulders, pulling me out of the autodoc before it could finish. The hurt sound in her throat when she saw what Rob had done to my baby face.

After all this time, we still don’t know whether I’m “seeing” radar or radio or infrared or some combination of everything. When the machines talk, it looks like ribbons in the sky to me. When people talk, it looks like ribbons of meat rubbing together. One is prettier than the other.

My boyfriend, Thomas, is the only one who understands. Rob operated on him, too. Took his hand away and gave him something sharp and warm and oil-smelling.

The cicadas stop singing. I stop moving, out of habit. The war is over, but there are still weapons roaming. On instinct, I scan the skies for the telltale ribbons of light that the machines used to emit when they talked to Big Rob. The fleeting patrol-status updates, or the pulse of a mobile mine checking in.

Nothing. The ribbons of light in the sky have fallen, I remind myself. Archos R-14 doesn’t talk to his creations anymore. They’re all out here on their own. And, for now, it’s just me and Nolan and a lot of oddly quiet bugs in the trees.


“Maybe . . . ,” says Nolan, just as the thing stalks out of the underbrush. The robot is the size of a fawn, walking on four spindly legs with knobby knees. I put up a finger to shush Nolan, orient to the machine, and project an active radar query. I don’t find the vibrational frequency response of hidden explosives. No projectiles are visibly mounted. Its skin is not armor-plated, but made of flexible plastic laced with some kind of mesh.

The fawn stumbles on a rock, catches itself gracefully on skinny legs. Stretches its neck and . . . nibbles on a leaf.

“What the . . . ?” Nolan whispers, looking at me. “What is it doing?”

“I don’t know,” I whisper. “Wait.”

I crouch and hold out my hand. Cluck my tongue at the little walker. The fawnlike machine darts away about a meter. Balanced on feet pointed like knitting needles, it orients its small face to me. The flat black panels it has instead of eyes are familiar.

They are just like mine.

It cocks its head and considers me, a piece of leaf still sticking out of its mouth. The robot really is chewing the leaf. Breaking it into smaller bits that fall down a delicate, coiled-metal throat.

“It’s eating,” I whisper to Nolan. “I think it’s eating.”

Looking through the fawn-thing, I can see a cylindrical drum inside its chest. Some kind of small centrifuge, insulated but spinning on the inside. Mashing and pulping and fermenting. Pulling energy out of the living matter. I smell dirt and vegetation on the fawn. Robots don’t usually have real smells. But this is something new. Before, new was bad. New was suffering.

But the war is over.

So I put both my hands out, palms up. Let my words wander out in dribbles of weak local radio. A tenuous ribbon of silver light wisps away from my eyes and I wrap my thoughts around this walker. Cocoon the shy little thing in warmth and comfort. I put a question into its machine mind:

Where? Where did you come from?

For a long moment nothing happens. The fawn takes a few hesitant steps toward me. Then an image appears in my mind.

Waves lapping a dark sea.

Who? I ask.

Deep place, it responds.

I frown at the fawn.

“What’s the matter?” asks Nolan.

“Archos didn’t make this,” I say. “It’s not a Rob weapon. And it never was.”

What are you made for? I ask.

It jerks its head up, looking over my shoulder at something behind me. Those flat black squares somehow shine with panic. A transmission of confusion and terror flows out over me. The fawn turns to run.

The shock wave of a gunshot booms through the clearing. I drop to my hands and knees. A few feet away, the fawn’s carapace explodes into shards of mossy plastic. It slumps onto its side and kicks its legs a few times.

Before I can take a breath, Nolan has his backpack slung on and one hand around my upper arm. He’s dragging me to my feet so we can run together. Just like we have so many times before. Only this time is different. This time we’re running from a human being.

“Hey, kids,” calls a strained voice. “Don’t go nowhere.” The words are slurred on the edges and vibrate like sandpaper over smoke-damaged vocal cords. The owner of the voice slouches into the clearing.

All I see is his pistol.

“Lot of dangerous shit out here in the woods,” says the man. He flashes a grin at us and glances around the clearing, looking for more people. “Especially for a couple of kiddos.”

“That machine wasn’t dangerous—” I say, and stop myself.

The man’s facial muscles have tensed. He’s peering at my face and reflexively lifts his gun and widens his stance. Nolan’s hand closes tighter on my arm.

“Whoa,” he says. “What’s with your eyes?”

I keep my eyes down, looking at the poor corpse of the vegetarian robot. My hair hangs over my face, dark and swaying like electrical cords. Through the strands I see the man’s heart is spasming hard in his chest. Golden ripples pulse over his filthy torn jacket. I can see and hear his crooked stained teeth locking together in his mouth as he sets his jaw and realizes the truth: This isn’t a little girl at all.

I’m part machine.

“Leave us alone,” says Nolan. My little brother has moved in front of me, put his broad shoulders back, and lifted his face. The sun is cresting reddish-brown over the crown of his head. I can almost see the man he will someday be. It’s in the way his fists are clenched. In how he is scowling and trying to look fierce but shaking visibly.

“She’s one of them, ain’t she?” asks the man, a snarl on his stubbled cheeks. “Rob got to her. Carved up her little face. She’s your sister, huh, little big man?”

Nolan doesn’t respond. Takes a step backward into me as the dirty man steps forward. The man is reaching for something on his hip with his free hand in a well-practiced motion. It’s a flat black metal blade that shines in my vision, visible through the flexing tendons in his wiry forearm.

A sheathed hunting knife.

“Don’t be afraid. I just want to take a look.”

The opaque metal of his gun looms in my vision. By the sight trajectory I’m guessing he’ll shoot Nolan first if we try to run, then me. Nolan gets it. He doesn’t resist as the man noses him out of the way with the gun muzzle and eases the greasy hunting knife out of its leather sheath. He holds the tawny striped handle lightly, like a scalpel, and lets the blade glint dark in my eyes. Slow, he raises it and presses the flat side of the blade under my chin. Lifts my face up.

“Damn, kid. Rob did a number on you.”

I stay perfectly still. The cool blade dimples into the skin of my throat. His rotten breath cascades over my face. The knife pulls away. Lifting it, he uses the crooked point of the blade to pick at the metal of my eyes. The tip of the knife makes a small scraping noise on me, like a dental pick. It slips off and bites into the skin of my forehead.

I flinch away and the man chuckles.

“Stop it,” says Nolan, putting a hand on the man’s elbow.

Instantly, the man spins around and shoves Nolan back. Flicks the knife at his face, annoyed. To this man, it’s a movement as quick and natural as saying hello.

The blade barely misses Nolan’s cheek.

“No!” I shout, putting myself between them.

Blade up, the man watches my little brother stumble back. Nolan puts a hand to his face, checking to see if he is cut. He is brave and silent in the face of violence, a veteran of it.

“Don’t f*ck with me,” says the man. “Lucky I didn’t shoot you both on sight. Most of the Tribe would have done. Christ. You and the rest of the subway rats are in for a rude awakening.”

Watching Nolan warily, the man holsters his gun. His knife is still out and shining. My little brother doesn’t make a sound. He just watches the man intently. Waiting.

“Look over there,” says the man, pointing toward the river with his knife. “Go on. You see? Look what you’re in for.”

I look where he is pointing.

In the distance, on the George Washington Bridge, I make out a rising heat signature. Temperature range is consistent with skin. People. Thousands of them. Crossing the bridge into Manhattan in force, some of them driving vehicles. Herding animals. Dragging loads of supplies. Coming back, and for good.

“The Tribe is coming home. We been in the woods a long time, kiddos. Guy named Felix Morales came up from Mexico and saved all our asses. And he isn’t going to like you, little girl. Not with those peepers.”


Above the people, an orange haze flickers. Rolling tides of amber light cascading down among the travelers in lines of communication. Evil thoughts and words from a nameless enemy. Not Archos R-14 this time. Something else.

Maybe something much worse.

“Now, I’m not gonna kill y’all for touching me,” says the man. He leans into me and peers at my face. Lifts the bloody knife. “But them things are worth something. So I am going to need to take those eyes.”

Slow is smooth. And smooth is fast. I reach casually into my sling and grab hold of a small cylinder. I toss the broken plugger up in a neat arc toward the man. By reflex, he catches it in his free hand. Starts to toss it away and then stops, opens his palm. Frowns at me with a half smile on his face.

“What’s this supposed to be?” he asks. “You think some old scavenge is—”

But the sentence is cut off by spinal reflex as his arm jerks back. A short, surprised scream tears itself from his throat. The plugger awakes.

Sending my thoughts out, I drop a gray ribbon of command into it.

That corkscrew scream of a drill made in hell shrills as the device buries itself into the meaty palm of the man’s hand. He tries to shake it off but it’s headed rough and fast up the inside of his forearm. All the air comes out of his lungs in that first scream and after that the man keeps screaming soundlessly, his mouth open in an O shape, tendons stretching his neck and his face clouding red with the strain. The knife falls.

His arm is jerking around like it’s on puppet strings.

That plugger is damaged. It’s not moving clean toward the heart like they used to in battle. Instead, it tears through the meat of the man’s arm in grisly broken lurches.

Nolan grabs me by the hand and pulls me away. Now we run together like we did when we were children. I have to warn Thomas and all the New York City Underground.

The dirty man isn’t stupid. He has lived this long for a reason. Whoever the Tribe are, whatever they have done, they must be made up of survivors—the same as the rest of us.

As Nolan and I crunch over leaves, vaulting between trees, I glance back. Through stripes of narrow pine, I see the filthy man sitting hunched over in the clearing, his back to us. Leaning awkwardly, he makes short, methodical movements with the knife. Stroke by stroke, silent and determined, he works at severing his own arm.