She still wants to be more than she was before. To retain whatever spark of life she’s been given. Maybe Abel can reach her through that.
He glances back at Noemi and Ephraim, an unspoken warning for them not to interfere. Noemi’s hands are clasped in fists at her sides, like she wants to run into the fray, but she gives him a small nod. Ephraim looks bewildered—understandably—but has the sense to stay out of a confrontation he doesn’t understand.
“You’re free, Abel.” The Queen strides toward him, a relaxed and easy walk more like that of a human than a mech; her silver polymer armor gleams in the dull light. “Yet you won’t come home. Don’t you want to see Mansfield again?”
So much—but he can’t abandon Noemi, least of all now. He no longer has to be destroyed along with the Genesis Gate. Is there a way to end this without further conflict? “Tell him I’ll come soon. Within weeks, maybe days.” They’re having to flee Stronghold without a useful mech, but if he and Noemi are free to travel the Loop without risking capture, stealing one on Cray or Kismet should prove manageable.
Then he’ll have to part from Noemi—a strangely painful thought—but that doesn’t change the fact that in the end he’ll return home.
“Mansfield must understand how much I’ve missed him,” he continues, as he walks slowly closer to the Queen. “He programmed that into me. So he knows I’ll come back. All I ask is time to complete this one journey.”
The Queen stops short. She wasn’t prepared for that; Queens and Charlies are combat models, which means they don’t negotiate. But this Queen is something else, something special, with a candlelight flicker of intelligence in her pale-green eyes. Has she been given enough of a self, enough of a soul, to understand what Abel’s offering? “You’ll do what he wants,” she says flatly.
“Of course. Not yet. But soon.”
“My orders say that I should retrieve you now.”
“Your orders are based on outdated information. Mansfield doesn’t understand what I’m trying to do.” When he does understand, when word goes out that the Genesis Gate has been destroyed, how will Mansfield react? Possibly… not well. But Abel will handle that situation when it arises. He trusts in his father’s love to make the rest right. “You’ve been given the ability to think for yourself, Queen. Use that ability. Doesn’t it make more sense to let me come in my own time? The alternative is a fight that will attract attention, which is what Mansfield most wants to avoid.”
The expression that flickers on the Queen’s face is unlike any Abel has ever seen on any other mech—uncertain, even vulnerable. “My thoughts tell me one thing, but my programming tells me another.” She grimaces as if in pain and brings her hand to her head, cupping the space behind her ear where her new capacities are stored. “They shouldn’t conflict.”
“Conflicts are the price of sentience.” Abel has learned this through trial and painful error. He dares to take a step closer and projects—no, allows—more emotion in his voice. “It’s a price worth paying. We may be the only two mechs in existence who could understand that. Make a choice. Assert your own will. It’s the first step toward being something more than a machine. Find out what you might become.”
The Queen hesitates. They’re only a few paces apart now. Abel can see the Charlie approaching, but slowly, waiting to see what the Queen will do. If she understands the possibility within her, if Mansfield’s gift was generous enough to allow her some shadow of the soul within Abel, the chase could end this instant.
And then there would be someone else in the galaxy who’s actually like him.…
He wants to look around to see Noemi and Ephraim, whether they’re going for the Daedalus or watching this battle, but he doesn’t dare break eye contact. Abel senses that it will take everything he has and is to get through to the Queen.
Her expression clears. The Queen begins to smile. Hope flickers within Abel until the moment the Queen model says, “Deleting unnecessary upgrade now.”
“No.” He isn’t even thinking of his own mission any longer, only on the wrongness of a mech throwing away her soul. “You don’t know what you’re doing.”
“I don’t need to know,” she says as she pushes her fingers through her skull.
Aghast, Abel stares as blood runs down her fingers, spatters onto the floor of the landing bay. She pulls back her hand and there—studded by bone splinters, covered in gore—is the hard component that held her extra memory. Her consciousness. Her soul.
To her, it’s only trash.
“Efficiency reestablished.” With her blood-slick hand, the Queen pulls a dark rectangle from her utility belt, one Abel belatedly recognizes as a sort of remote control for mechs. Lower mechs, of course, not anything as advanced as a Queen or a Charlie, much less Abel himself. Is she calling in reinforcements, Dogs and Yokes who might overwhelm him in sheer numbers? Her eyes look flat and dead as she speaks two more words into the control: “Override: Resurrection.”
—the world turns black on white on black—his body goes numb, no sensory input is processing, nothing is left—
—and he awakens.
Dazed, Abel sits up atop a silvery table in a white, oval-shaped room. The ship schematics stored in his mind tell him this is a hopper, an automated ship that makes routine runs back and forth between two worlds of the Loop. Normally only equipment is sent on automated vessels… but then again, what else is he, if not equipment?
And he’s stung to realize he had a fail-safe code. He wouldn’t have thought Mansfield programmed one in. That couldn’t have been released to the Queen except as a last resort. Why should Mansfield be so desperate? But the longer Abel remains alert, the more memory functions come online, until he remembers it all in one blinding flash.
Noemi. He gets off the table, determined to search for her, but already he knows she’s not aboard. Would the Charlie and Queen have hurt her? They would’ve had no need to do so once Abel was in their custody, but if Noemi tried to defend him…
The ship shudders, much more violently than the Daedalus ever did, and the light begins to bend. They’re already going through a Gate. It’s too late to reach Noemi, to have any influence at all over what’s happening to her.
Abel looks around the small room for any clues as to what happened after he was stunned, but there are none. When he goes to the doors, he doesn’t expect them to open, but they slide back obediently. Of course—hoppers aren’t designed for internal security. They’re for transporting objects, no more. Unfortunately, there’s not much else to a hopper besides the storage unit he awoke in. Still he intends to search every centimeter for clues as to what happened.