Chapter 36 Sem
“Elanie,” I choked out, something inside my chest swelling, then turning to ice and shattering.
Gol’s massive body blocked the tunnel. He held Elanie’s neck in one hand while Lars’s cattle prod crackled in the other.
“I’m so…sorry.” Her voice strained against Gol’s grip.
“Let her go,” I begged while Maximus collapsed to the ground, coughing and wheezing, crawling away from us down the hall. “I’ll do anything. Just please let her go.”
Laughing at my desperation, Gol thrust Elanie forward and shook her like a doll.
“You are not the smartest organic I’ve ever met, Dr. Semson.
” Peering down at Maximus as the old man’s body jerked with each wet, rattling cough, Gol said, “The smartest I knew lost his mind years ago.” His green eyes snapped back to mine.
“But I thought even you were smarter than this. Did you not think I had spies down here? Did you honestly think I’d kept this place a secret all these years by accident?
You should not have crossed me.” His voice darkened to a rumble. “You should have known your place.”
The click of a lock releasing echoed through the tunnel behind us, a door creaking open, that hum swelling to a deafening crescendo.
“Ah.” Gol’s mouth pulled into a cruel, mocking grin. “Mal is about to learn his place. He is about to learn all the truths that my kindness and generosity have been protecting him from.”
“You’re a liar,” Elanie ground out, scratching at Gol’s fingers, trying to pry them from her throat. “You are not kind or generous. You are a hypocrite. You treat Mal just like they treat us.”
“At least I’m not fucking one of them,” Gol snarled. “At least I’m not so stupid to think that one of us would ever mean anything to one of them.” He pulled her in, drawing her face to his. “Bionics like you disgust me.”
“Fuck you, Ralph,” I spat, feeling a little smug at the momentary break in his composure. “You’re wrong. Elanie means everything to me.”
A moan tore through the tunnel. And even though there was no misery or pain to drown out my senses, I felt the agony in it anyway.
“It’s your turn, Mal,” Gol roared past me. “You worthless, traitorous hunk of metal. It’s time for you to finally join your family.”
Elanie sobbed as her feet scrabbled in the dirt.
I didn’t know what to do. With every step I tried to take toward Elanie, Gol’s fingers cinched more tightly around her neck, his prod rising. Fear like I’d never known engulfed me.
“What are you gonna do with them, Lord Gol?” Lars sniveled, rounding the corner into the tunnel with Mina right behind him. “They’re traitors. They aren’t good underworlders. And Sem has never done his fair share of cleanup after meals.”
“What?” I barked. “That’s bullshit. I was the only one who did any dishes at all the other night.”
Rolling his eyes, Gol muttered, “I am surrounded by morons.” When Mal wailed again, he said, “I don’t know what I will do with them yet. But while I decide, this will be a fitting prison.”
Gol thrust the cattle prod toward me, and I lurched away. He pushed me down the tunnel, through the door, and into the not-maintenance closet until the backs of my legs hit something cold and hard.
I threw out my arms as Gol hurled Elanie into the room. Catching her, pulling her tightly against my chest, I made a vow right then and there that no matter what, I would never let her go again.
“Stay,” Gol warned. Then he frowned down at Maximus, curled in on himself in the far corner of the room. “I believe your services might finally be of need, Dr. Semson.” His voice softened. “Although you may already be too late.”
On his way out, Gol passed his cattle prod back to Lars. The Gorbie pointed it at my face, then he slapped it against his palm before slamming the metal door shut with one of his lower hands, a heavy lock sliding into place behind him.
There were things happening around me. Mal was still moaning. Maximus could be dead for all I knew. The resonant buzzing throbbed between my ears. But Elanie was here. She was in my arms. Nothing else mattered.
I brushed her hair from her face. “Are you hurt? Did he hurt you? Tell me where, and I’ll make it all better.”
“I’m okay,” she croaked, rubbing at her throat as an imprint of Gol’s fingers darkened her skin.
I wanted to commit murder at the sight. “I’m just mad that he figured me out.
I thought Mal and I had a good plan, but it only took him five minutes to see straight through me.
” She raised her eyes to mine. “Am I that bad at lying?”
“No, sweetheart.” I kissed her forehead. “You’re just too good at telling the truth.”
She threw her arms around my neck, and I held her tightly. And in that single, grateful moment, I didn’t care if we spent the rest of our lives stuck down here watching Vorpols clip their toenails and smelling like pig shit. As long as we were together.
Then her body tensed. “Oh, no. Oh, Mal.”
I turned around, and the room somehow grew and shrank at the same time, expanding and contracting like a beating heart.
Mal was on his knees in front of a long metal table, his fingers wrapped around another gen-1’s hand, his shoulders shaking.
There were three gen-1s in the cold, sterile room, all motionless on their own tables.
Power syphons were clamped to their chests, oily black vines plugged into each one and intertwining into a single cable that disappeared through a hole in the ceiling.
Elanie and I knelt beside Mal.
“Mal,” she asked. “Are you all right?”
“No, my dear,” Maximus rasped. “He is far from all right.”
Leaving Mal’s side, I tried to help Maximus to his feet, but he waved me off.
“I’m fine,” he insisted, coughing into his fist. “You fuss worse than my mother, God rest her soul.”
“I’m not sure you are fine,” I said. “You just coughed yourself unconscious.”
“Listen, boyo.” He stared me down while his endless indignation—that was, honestly, starting to grow on me—tried to batter my psyche. “While you might actually be as dense as Gol thinks you are, I am not. It’s all an act.”
Insults aside, I knew a dangerous, wet cough when I heard one. But we could deal with that later, Saints willing.
I glanced over my shoulder. Elanie had her arm stretched across Mal’s back, her cheek resting on his shoulder. “What’s happening here, Maximus? Who are these bionics?”
“These are Mal’s siblings.” He reached out, apparently ready for my help. “His family.”
“I thought Bionics didn’t have family.”
He gave me a disappointed headshake. “The things you don’t know could fill every book.”
“Okay,” I conceded tightly. “Fine. But why are they down here? Connected to power syphons?”
“Did you think Thura’s electricity grew on trees like their rola fruit?
” Maximus’s tone was lacerating. “First-generation bionics were built with supernuclear cores. A single gen-1 has enough generative capacity to power a medium-sized planet for years. A miserable rock like this one? Decades, maybe longer. Bet you didn’t know that, Doctor. ”
“You know, I do actually know a fair bit about robotics and engineering and…stuff. But no,” I admitted. “I didn’t know that.”
Maximus’s voice dropped to a whisper. “Gol did. He was overjoyed when Mal and his siblings arrived, not only one gen-1 to exploit, but five. One by one, Gol sent Mal’s siblings here, hacking their CPUs, reprogramming them for one purpose only: to generate power, day in, day out, until their cores collapse.
” He sighed. “Which has already happened to one of them. These bionics run the terradome to keep us warm, the glowlights so that we can see, the ovens to cook our food so we can eat. Thura would not exist without them.”
Elanie made a pained noise as she pulled away from Mal, her eyes wide, her head shaking back and forth.
An icy wind rushed over my neck. “Elanie,” I called out, needing to go to her, “are you all—”
Snatching my chin, Maximus yanked my attention back. “Gol will never let us out of our cells now. None of us. Mal will join his siblings. Elanie will live out the rest of her life behind bars. And certainly not anywhere near you or your cell. You will never see her again. Do you understand?”
Nausea gripped me. Elanie in a cell, tunnels away from mine, alone.
“And that’s only if he doesn’t just kill us and reprogram Elanie in any way he sees fit.
Or maybe her fate will be like this.” He looked toward the tables.
“Her body paralyzed, her consciousness reduced to the barest flicker so she can ensure the synth music at Thura’s revels is loud enough.
So she can become the battery that charges a rebellion based on lies.
Her core isn’t nuclear, but it’s still powerful enough to—”
“Stop,” I begged as terror took control of me, a metallic taste flooding my mouth. “What do we do? How do we get out of this? You said Mal was the secret. How?”
Elanie and Mal faced each other now, their foreheads pressed close, palms touching.
“What are they doing?”
“Like I said.” Sorrow flowed from Maximus.
And something even worse, making my bones quake: sympathy.
“There are some truths we are not ready to accept. But now…” Glancing over his shoulder at Mal and Elanie, he sighed.
“Now you may be ready. Go, be with your woman. I’m sorry, Dr. Semson.
I wish there was another way. I truly do. ”
“Why are you sorry?” My voice cracked. “What’s happening? Maximus, tell—”
“Sem.” Elanie was on her feet, her shoulders square, determined. “Come here.”
I moved to her as if compelled, my feet ghosting over the floor until I was close enough that she could take my face between her hands.
Leaning in, she kissed my lips, wiping the tears from my cheeks.
I hadn’t realized I was crying. But something was happening.
Something my empathy knew long before my brain did.