vN The First Machine Dynasty(57)

Hot smoke squelched over Amy's chest. She heard screaming. Probably delight. She was in pieces. Just couldn't feel it, yet. They were scattering away to eat. She heard the slap of their feet across the concrete. A hand traced her face. Someone growled near her head. They were fighting over the sweetmeats.



"¡Aléjate de ella, puta!"



Amy's eyes opened. Javier was a blur. His hand slid under her neck.



"How'd you tell?" She gestured weakly at the other vN, and then at herself. "Me? From them?"



Javier hoisted her up, cursing when her arm rolled bonelessly off his shoulder. He switched positions, tried again, hissed at her knee. When he held her close she could make out the definite lines of his hair curling away from his head against the glare of the hangar.



"Please. I know my own flesh and blood when I see it."



Together they took flight.





The hangar was actually a portable storage unit, Javier said. He'd had a hell of a time finding it. It was way at one end of the campus, on land the company hadn't really developed yet, and once used for testing aerial systems. There were a bunch of them. He guessed the other portables were full of Amy's clademates. The team kept Javier in another building entirely.



"When they took your aunts and started driving away again, I thought we were going to another city." His leaps took them over the tops of buildings. At least, it seemed that way. What he landed on was flat and hard. The smell of trees was distant. "This place is like a small town. They took me for walks. Like a fucking dog. Meanwhile, they b-beat the sh-shit out of you."



"Game," Amy managed to say.



"Oh, I know about the game. I saw the fucking game. They showed me the fucking game."



"Long time."



"A week. You spent a week in there. I think they were ttrying to k-kill you. If it happened during a test, they could treat it like an accident."



Something bothered her. She couldn't remember what. Not grief. Unsearchable. Censored, for now. Something else. Her good hand spasmed on Javier's shoulder. "Junior!"



Javier snorted. "Where did you think we were going? He's at the reboot camp. I patched him just the other day."



• • • •

The reboot camp was its own building. Only one room held the bluescreens. It was kept very cold. Its steel door sweated condensation. The mocking handmade signs that employees regularly stuck to it always peeled away.



"It says Maternity Ward," Javier told her, as he kicked it aside.



He got them through the threshold. Amy wasn't sure if security was light because their escape had diverted it elsewhere, or simply because it was never good to begin with. Mediocrity would certainly explain how Q.B. had his way with all those bluescreens before losing his job.



Inside was dark, and exquisitely cold. Racks of cages like library stacks filled the room. They hummed. As Javier carried her through the stacks, lights inside each cage awakened to their presence and faded with their passing. The wave of light followed their progress. It exposed each small body, tiny and perfect and lifeless, eyes open or shut, skins dark and pale and all shades in between. It reminded Amy of a museum she had visited – drawer after drawer of preserved specimens, carefully repaired and exhibited. She had gone there with her mother.



"Ssh, don't cry, they're just sleeping."



He turned the corner and stopped. People in cleanroom suits stood at one of the cages. One held an infant in gloved hands. Amy squinted. Junior. In human hands. She thought of Javier allowing him to be taken away. Thought of her hands around Harold's fragile organic wrists.



She slid down out of Javier's arms and stood on her good leg. The cold had frozen her processes, her grief, and turned it to hate. She stood tall. Gripped her right arm. Popped it back into place. She stretched her right knee. It snapped back together. They stared at her through gleaming hoods, faces made invisible by glare and her exhaustion. She ordered her words slowly: "Javier. Close your eyes."



They jumped back as one. "Wait!"



The one holding Junior ripped off his hood: Javier stared back at Amy. Or rather, another version of him. His hair was cut differently. A clademate. They all removed their hoods, now. Familiar dark eyes examined her, then focused on Javier.



"Dad," one said. "Don't you recognize us?"





9



The Museum of the City of Seattle





There were five of them. Their names were Ignacio, Gabriel, Matteo, Ricci, and Léon. They all lived together in the abandoned concrete plant south of Seattle, where the quake damage was almost total. Amy saw only a little of that damage from the van the boys stashed them in, on their way off campus. They had a special pass that let them cross the I-90 bridge easily because they worked part-time in the Museum of the City of Seattle. There was a special lane for prepaid tourists and museum personnel.