Chapter 39
Grass slid along Chloe’s body, then something harder and rougher, like rubber sandpaper. A painted line went past.
She was on the aircab pad. Norman was dragging her toward the edge.
She tried to struggle, but her muscles barely responded. And her wrist, the one Norman held clenched, kept firing pain through her, draining her strength even as she tried to gather it.
“No,” Norman was saying a little breathlessly to the System, who was pacing along with him, flanked by a stalking dogbot, “a congresswoman with a gunshot wound would need an explanation. This is cleaner.”
“What about the hacker?”
“Him you can shoot.”
Chloe was only feet from the edge now, and Norman dropped her arm, stepped across her body, bent, and began shoving.
She pressed her good hand and her feet as hard as she could against the rough platform surface.
He swore and straightened to kick her, then dropped to his knees beside her now-limp body and heaved, rolling her over onto her face beside the edge.
Beyond Norman, the System stood beside the dogbot, watching expressionlessly. “Help me,” Chloe managed to say, her voice slurred in her own ears. “Sys. Help me.”
Norman laughed. “That’s not her choice.”
He rolled Chloe over again, and now one arm, her bad one, was hanging over the edge, while with the other she tried feebly to push him away, blinking against rain and tears. The System watched. She wouldn’t help.
Chloe summoned enough strength to say, “At least take care of Kleio.”
Norman braced with his feet and began to shove.
The System flickered.
There was a flash like lightning and a boom that overwhelmed Chloe’s smartbuds and lashed painfully against her eardrums.
A wisp of smoke curled from the dogbot’s barrel and was lost in the rain.
Norman straightened, but he seemed unsteady on his feet. Tentatively, he put a hand to his chest.
The System’s image flickered and stuttered, and when she spoke, her voice stuttered as well, slowed and stretched by the glitches, the syllables cut off and restarted multiple times. But Chloe understood each careful word: “It was always my choice.”
Blood seeped between Norman’s fingers. He swayed, then crumpled with a thud beside Chloe, half across her extended arm.
For a moment, his eyes locked to hers, and she saw the disbelief in them, but then that, and all other expression, evaporated like the smoke from the dogbot’s gun, leaving emptiness.