CHAPTER 27 KORI #3
Ednit’s breaths are deliberately measured, but I can see the stress in his trembling shoulders and fisted hands. “Welcome home, Kori,” he snarls.
I collapse my helmet again so he can see my eyes, no longer looking up at him in trained respect. Never cowering again. “Good to be back.” I turn to my new ally. “And a pleasure to meet you properly, Jelza.”
Jelza’s eyebrows lift. “How do you know my name?” Understanding passes across her visage. “Did we meet once before …? Outside his office?”
I nod stiffly. “I accessed a memory that was never meant for me. I’m sorry for the violation, truly. I—I didn’t know what it was,” I stammer. “So I hope you can forgive me.”
“We have an adversary in common,” Jelza says, resigned. She turns her stolen heatshot rifle on Ednit. “You should be ashamed of yourself, Doctor. Not even of what you’ve done. Just of the fact that you thought it had a chance in hell of ending well for you.”
The squeak of a door hinge. Light from the next room over floods this one. I turn to see a second-grade child standing in the doorway, clutching a doll to her chest, her ears covered by chunky pink noise-canceling headphones. Her eyes flood with tears.
“Mommy?” she says, too loud, clearly unable to hear herself through the headphones. “Mommy, are you okay?”
Jelza nearly drops her stolen heatshot rifle. I can see her legs physically fighting not to run to her daughter.
“Dawn, baby, Mommy is fine. I promise. But this is a bad man, and Mommy needs to talk to him about why he’s been bad.” Ednit audibly groans. “I need you to keep your headphones on and stay in your room for me,” Jelza instructs. “Can you do that, please?”
Lower lip quivering, Dawn drops her headphones to hang around her neck instead. “I’m scared, Mommy.”
Aspect takes a bold step forward. Amidst everything happening, I neglected to introduce them to Jelza at all. “Aspect—can feel—what tiny person—feels!” they proclaim, throwing their arms wide. “Aspect—go to room—and comfort—tiny person!”
Jelza looks at me in total disbelief. “Is that a mining mech?”
“Aspect—is an Aspect!”
I blow out a heavy breath. “They’re … a little more than a mining mech. Look, I don’t have time to explain now, but Aspect … cares … about other people. They can help Dawn calm down. They’ve done it for me more times than I can count, and I’m a lot older than she is.”
Jelza looks from me to Aspect and then back to me, clearly overwhelmed but knowing now is not the time to ask for clarity or question the only available babysitter.
Turning back to her daughter, she says, “Baby, the robot is going to keep you company while Mommy finishes talking to this nice lady and this bad man. Would you like to show him your dolls?”
“What—are dolls?” Aspect queries.
I fight back a laugh. “Extra tiny people.”
“ASPECT—LOVES—TINY PEOPLE!”
They toddle over to Dawn, offering an open hand. After a moment of hesitation, the child takes it, and they walk together into her bedroom, Aspect closing the door behind them.
“All right,” I say. “Back to business.” My hands threaten to tremble, but I keep my wrists locked, my heatshot muzzle pressed to Ednit’s forehead firmly enough to leave an indent. “You’re one of them, too, aren’t you? Evolved.”
“One of us, Kori,” Ednit hisses through his teeth. “For once in your life, you could stand to be grateful.”
“You lied to me. My whole life, every medical appointment, every reassurance that everything my mother did, everything you did was to keep me safe—”
“How is that a lie? Your body will never age. Taken care of properly, it will never die, and should it malfunction beyond repair, you can always upgrade to a newer model. You are what ancient generations could hardly dream of. A marvel of science. A triumph of the human species. Pagonian plate fully realized as flesh and sinew, muscle and bone—”
“And a pawn in Chloe’s tyrannical grab for power.
” The trembling is so bad now that I lower the heatshot pistol, entirely out of fear that my finger will twitch against the trigger and do something I can never, ever take back.
“How long was she going to leave our subjects in the dark? People who trust us. People who believe we’re just like them. ”
“But we’re not like them, Kori,” Ednit says.
He tries to stand, but another blow from Jelza’s rifle keeps him low on his knees.
“We’re better. We’re more. The future is boundless, Kori.
One leader with generations of experience.
Perhaps one leader for the entire planet, someday—the delicate tension between dayfolk and nightfolk finally brought to heel. ”
“And if the dayfolk want another leader? If the nightfolk prefer to be left alone?”
“What people want is not always what is best for them, child. That’s why they have leaders.”
I spit on the floor. “You disgust me.”
“Are you determined to control everything, Doctor?” Jelza interjects. “The entire planet? All our lives, according to your perfect design—no matter how many people you have to deceive or abuse or outright kill in your sick experiments to get there?”
Ednit doesn’t lift his head, only raises his eyes to glare right through Jelza. “Need I remind you that you volunteered?”
“I didn’t know—”
“You read the consent forms. They were excruciatingly detailed. You wanted to ascend beyond death, to secure an eternal future for your daughter—”
“Who wouldn’t look at me.” Tears well in Jelza’s eyes. “Who said my hands felt colder, and stopped letting me tuck her into bed. Who asked me, through blankets pulled up almost over her eyes, when her real mother was coming back.”
“Are you not the strongest you’ve ever been?” Ednit protests. “The closest humankind has ever come to immortality?”
“The better house, the better school, none of it was worth it.” Jelza’s tears overflow, streaking her cheeks.
“You can deceive the populace at large, but children … children know, Doctor. She knew the exact same thing I knew—beyond my flesh, in the fabric of my soul.” She gestures to the sonogram on the fridge.
“Do you know what it feels like to lock eyes with her—in this body that didn’t even birth her—as we share a meal across the kitchen table, knowing that she will wear and tear and eventually fade, while I live on forever, an unnatural echo of the woman, the mother I ought to be? ”
“Your daughter would enter the program when she’s of age,” Ednit says, abject. “As we plan to do with all the others. You would always have each other.”
I shake my head rapidly. “How old is old enough to surrender your body to the state, Ednit? Would you even tell her? Or would you call it a routine doctor’s appointment, then surgically excise every memory you could find of the procedure, lest they cause even one single crack in your control?
” Jelza looks at me with horror, beginning to understand as the full breadth of what Ednit concealed from me. “I would know.”
Ednit doesn’t break eye contact, but he also seems to have nothing to say, and his lack of answers, his lack of any possible moral justification, burns in my blood.
Jelza’s knuckles are white around her stolen heatshot rifle. “Who decides who deserves to live forever, Doctor?” she says, breathless,
trembling. “And how could a leader who doesn’t know death possibly care for lives that begin only to end?”
I swallow hard against the rising bile in my throat. “How many of them—of us—are there, Ednit?”
“Why should I tell you?” Ednit says. Jelza nudges the side of his head with the rifle again.
“All right, all right. A dozen elites, your mother, yourself, and myself among them. A hundred more Evolved spread throughout the settlement, regularly monitored, and many of them monitoring public sentiment about the monarch as well.”
Over a hundred. Despite being small in the grand scheme of our population, which has consistently hovered between ten and twelve thousand in the periodic census, the thought of that many makeshift gods being among us is mind-numbing.
How many even wanted this? How many would dare to join me and Jelza in fighting back?
“And they all know what they are?” I ask.
“The attempt to limit your own self-knowledge was … unique,” Ednit says, as if that cute little word could possibly encapsulate the utter betrayal I feel. “Your mother had a special desire to protect—”
“Oh, save it,” I groan. My racing thoughts and more pointed words are abruptly cut off by a low, rumbling sound that my anxious self nearly mistakes for a weapon.
In Ednit’s coat pocket, something rapidly vibrates—far more likely a portable comms tablet than any kind of explosive device. I can’t imagine immortal Ednit sacrificing his limitless life to anyone, no matter how loyal he is to my mother’s schemes.
“Answer it,” I order.
“And be calm about it,” Jelza adds, waving the rifle for good measure.
With comical, drawn-out slowness, Ednit slides the comms tablet into his palm and taps the receiver. “My lady?”
It could only be my mother. I swallow against a wave of sick.
Her voice, indeed, crackles from the communicator. “We have a problem, Ednit. Alarms in central observation are shrieking a code for
an adverse weather event, but the officer stationed insisted it didn’t look like any storm they’d ever seen, so I checked the cameras myself. It’s a wall of blue-white motion on the horizon, all right. But not clouds. Sets of beating wings.”
A muscle feathers in Ednit’s forehead. There’s real fear in his trembling tone, try as he might to disguise it, and not just from me and Jelza standing armed above him. “So the nightfolk boy’s threat was not empty. How many are there?”
“Too many to possibly prevent the populace knowing,” Chloe snarls. “And one far ahead of the pack. Either a fresh threat or a warning.”
I nudge Ednit with the side of my pistol. “Ask what the lone nightfolk looks like,” I whisper.
Ednit gulps. “And what does the separated soldier look like?”
“As best our scopes can tell, bigger and stronger than the rest of them,” Chloe says. “At least eight feet tall. Broad wingspan, favoring one side. In all likelihood, they’re to breach our front line alone so the army can follow.”
I can hardly catch my breath.
Adria. That’s Adria.
I whack Ednit with my pistol again, probably hard enough to bruise but not even close to hard enough for me to feel bad about it.
“Tell Chloe she’s here to negotiate,” I whisper. “Send a delegation. If you open fire, this will be a thousand times worse.”
Ednit covers his mic with a cupped hand and counters, “And how do I know I can trust you?”
“I don’t want this settlement to die in a nightfolk assault any more than you do. Trust me, Ednit. For once in my damn life.”
Jelza adds, “Or maybe she’ll actually use that pistol.”
Ednit uncovers his mic. “I have intel that leads me to believe it’s a rogue negotiator, not a front line. I can meet you outside the settlement to receive them. Do not open fire.”
“This had better be damn good intel.”
Jelza slaps the side of her rifle as if to say, This thing can fit so much intimidation in it.
“It’s the b-best,” Ednit stutters.
“Then I’ll see you shortly,” Chloe agrees. “Make it quick.” And with that, the comms tablet’s screen clicks off.
Ednit stares at the floor with undue interest. “I suppose you’re going to ask me to take you there,” he drawls.
“Good instincts. Myself, and Aspect, too.” Holstering my heatshot pistol, I turn back to Jelza. “Do you have somewhere you can drop Dawn? Somewhere safe?”
Jelza nods. “I have a sitter. It’s short notice, but if I tell her it’s urgent, she should be able to get here.”
“All right, so that’s covered.” I cross my arms. “You were specifically chosen for the Evolution Project. My mother considered you an accomplishment. How high does your government access go?”
Jelza visibly squirms. “Higher than I’ve ever desired to exercise it.”
I glance between Aspect and Jelza, a plan rapidly brewing.
“Chloe’s cronies will be gearing up for a warning broadcast throughout the settlement, to tell everyone to take shelter before the nightfolk army arrives. You’re going straight to that broadcast room, supposedly under her orders, and linking to broadcast frequency 45P3C7. Can you handle that?”
Jelza hesitates, then says, “I can. But what then?”
I can’t help but flash a smile. “Then we show everyone who my mother, who their monarch really is. She’ll never deceive anyone again.” I lay a hand on Jelza’s shoulder and squeeze. “And she’ll never hurt your daughter.”
Jelza sets her jaw, staring distantly into space. “What are you going to do?”
Before I can answer, the door to Dawn’s bedroom slams violently open. I whirl, momentarily afraid for Dawn’s safety, only to discover the child clapping and giggling wildly. Beside her, Aspect is wearing a long
blond wig, a massive, glittery blue dress, and a similarly sparkly flat shoe on one foot, the peg leg apparently having rejected the attempt.
“KORI—IS NOT—THE ONLY PRINCESS—ANYMORE!” Promptly, Aspect performs a profoundly awkward pirouette.
Dawn shrieks with laughter. “He’s pretty!”
“They,” I say instinctually. “They’re pretty.
” But it occurs to me that I was the only one who assigned they/them pronouns to Aspect.
A mech is usually an it, and I wanted something more personal; they made sense insofar as assigning an arbitrary gender to a robot felt silly and performative.
“Um, Aspect? Do you … have … preferred pronouns?”
Aspect cocks their head. “Pronouns—for Aspect?”
“Words for Aspect,” I offer. “He is Aspect. She is Aspect. They are—”
“Any of those—for Aspect,” Aspect says, giving their dress another sparkly twirl. “Triple dog—is better—than dog. So triple pronouns—are better—than single pronouns—for Aspect!”
Jelza arches an eyebrow once again. “A dog? An extinct, Earthside dog?”
“Triple dog,” Aspect corrects, like that clears everything up.
From the ground, Ednit moans, “This is the worst sleep cycle of my life.”
“Well, buckle up, Ednit,” I say, kicking him with the toe of my armored shoe, “because it’s about to get even worse for you.
” I turn back to the others. “Jelza, get your sitter here with Dawn and then hurry to the broadcast room. Aspect, stay close to me. Ednit … you’re coming with us to the surface.
” I sheathe my heatshot pistol at my side.
“And if you try anything, if you give me any excuse at all, I’ll ensure this is your last sleep cycle, too.
” Aspect toddles eagerly toward me, and I quickly add, “Um, and lose the dress, Aspect.”
If they could frown, it would all be over for me. I would never be able to say no again. But they simply stamp their foot, then toss the dress aside in a cloud of loose glitter, asking, “Aspect—still a princess?”
“Aspect,” I say, taking their hand in mine, “is whoever Aspect wants to be.”