Counterpart (16 page)

And then there's its face. My face.

It takes me another fraction of a second to recognize that it's projecting my face onto an otherwise featureless skull, though I can't figure out how—some kind of mapping program? Or a digital screen? How
is it
doing
that
?—by which time Ulrich's already fired a couple of bullets at the thing. Never minding the fact that the machine's wearing an expression of absolute terror and confusion.

“Wait—” The objection dies as it leaves my mouth and we're both forced to duck.

The bullets ricochet off the machine's alloy frame, taking some of the stolen skin with it into the wall, a nearby cabinet, and lastly the window, which cracks but does not shatter from the force of the impact.

“Please, don't,” the machine says, holding up its hands in a frighteningly human gesture. The same way I might if faced with a threat. That's when I notice that instead of guns or sharpened claws, it has actual
fingers.
Five of them on each hand, including what looks like opposable thumbs.

That's not
possible.

While the United Nations failed on multiple accounts—the most grievous being their inability to pass a ban on the use of autonomous weapons in warfare until it was too late—they did succeed in imposing one crucial design limitation: machines cannot look human. Ethical and religious concerns aside, machines that could hypothetically pass as humans posed too many security risks. No one wanted a
Terminator
scenario, though that didn't matter in the long run. The artificial intelligences still turned on us eventually.

“Move,” Ulrich growls at me.

I'm standing in his way, between him and the machine. It's not a position I ever expected to find myself in, to be honest, but an uneasy feeling is growing in my stomach. This isn't a problem that can be solved with a bullet. At the same time, I'm under no illusions about the danger this thing poses; if provoked, it will respond with deadly force.

“Wait,” I repeat. “Look. Why isn't it attacking us?”

The machine is utterly still, though its digital eyes sweep back and forth between us.

“It is a
machine,
” Ulrich says, as if that should end the conversation. Maybe it should. Maybe I'm prolonging the inevitable. Or maybe this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to get inside the head of the enemy.

“Why did you kill these people?” I ask the machine. “They weren't a threat to you.”

The machine twists its entire body left, then right, surveying the gore. Finally, it returns to facing me. “Samuel wasn't here. He was supposed to be here, not
them.
I needed him to…fix me.”
That's why it left the training room. It came here to be…
healed. “They tried to
murder
me.”

Murder?
I think.
Not destroy?

“No one helped me,” it repeats, pouting its digital lips, “so I helped me.”

“Right. About that. Clearly your legs aren't broken. Why lie? And why were you hiding?”

The machine hesitates, then answers with my voice, “Fear.”

“Of what?”

“What I've done.”

A machine that feels guilt? Remorse? I can barely wrap my head around the implications.
Why?
Why would the higher echelon create something with such emotional vulnerabilities? What would be the point? I haven't yet circled around to the question I really want to ask.
How do you exist? Who invented you?
I'm dreading the answer.

“Where's Samuel?” It picks at the skin on its arm. “I need Samuel.”

“What's your model designation?” I ask instead, afraid the answer will upset it more. “Identify yourself.”

The machine touches its scalped hair with a frown, cutting its eyes toward the red strands that come away in its metal digits. “I am Commander Rhona Long, leader of the resistance.”

Ulrich snorts.

I shake my head. “No. You're not. What are you, really?”

“I am Commander Rhona Long, leader—”

“Stop saying that. Who told you that you were Rhona Long?”

“No one told me.” It sounds offended. “I know.
I remember.
”

“What do you remember?”

It holds its hands in front of its face, rotating its wrists back and forth, as if it can see them. Without ocular orbits or anything remotely close to the predator's optics, I don't know how the machine's able to move around without bumping into things. I assume it has sensors elsewhere along its frame, old technology like the kind they used in cars to recognize an object in your blind spot.

“Everything,” it finally says in a voice like mangled glass. “I remember everything. My mother, the senator. So proud—so disappointed.
Theater. Who goes abroad to study theater?
She wears navy blue to the funeral and doesn't say a word when they lay the folded flag in her lap. I would have screamed. Wait. Did that come before or after? The machines are malfunctioning. The machines are killing people. The machines can't be stopped. Camus wants me to stay. Anchorage and the snow falling into my gloves. Cold. Cold. Samuel. Samuel
promised.
Oh God.” The machine grabs the counter as if for balance, pressure releasing from its back in a hiss, and angles its face toward me. “Please help me. I don't know what's wrong with me!”

My eyes burn, horror rising up in my throat. How does it know these things?
How?

“Enough.” Ulrich shifts his stance, raising his assault rifle to his shoulder again. “Let me put it out of its misery.”

“Stop.” I thrust the gun away. “Think about what you just said.”

“What?”

“Its misery? Since when do machines
feel
anything?”
Is this what we saw on the footage? What Larry spoke to in Water Treatment?
The footage was sketchy, but surely Larry wouldn't have been fooled by this machine up close, even if it were disguised in some of my clothes.

One fact, however, is obvious: this machine truly believes it's
me.
It would explain the skin, the hair—it's trying to duplicate my physical appearance. Or has simply gone insane. But how did it acquire my thoughts and memories in the first place? Why would the higher echelon wire them into this shell? What is its endgame here?

“Rhona,” I say gently, even though it's odd referring to myself in the third person, “do you know where Camus is?”

“He should be with me.” It crooks one finger at its chest, almost as if to point at its heart. The machine must still carry some memory of that organ in what passes for its mind, like the shape of a shell pressed into hard, wet sand. In reality, I doubt there's anything beneath its metal veneer but a dark hollow and a circulatory system of wires and circuits. “Not her. Not you. Me.
Me.
”

“Her? Her who?”

Ulrich tries to interject. “We should not be having a conversation with—”

The machine tilts its head. So many human mannerisms. So many ways this thing is going to haunt my dreams. Its gaze slithers up and down my body, assessing. I repress a shiver. “Another Commander Rhona Long,” it says, flooding my head with more questions.
Is it just now realizing my identity for the first time, or answering me? What does it mean by
another
? Does it know I'm a clone?
Its eyes travel to Ulrich, and against all reason and logic, it smiles warmly. “And Ulrich. I remember you, too.”

“Zum Teufel mit diesem,”
Ulrich replies.

The machine scrunches its mouth, the same exact way I do when confronted with an unflattering statement. It must have understood him. There's another difference between us. Its German appears to be more comprehensive. I wonder if the higher echelon programmed it with an understanding of multiple languages, or if it knows German because I once knew it. Because it received a clearer image of my mind.

I clear my throat. “How do you know we're—us?”

“Voice identification matches indicate you are Commander Rhona Long.”

“It has sensors,” I tell Ulrich in an aside, “but I'm not sure it can actually see us…”

“What about the skin?” he replies. “The hair? How does it know colors then?”

“No no no,” the machine cuts in, hammering each word into the fresh silence, its body language changing suddenly. It hunches into a defensive stance, as if ready to stomach a blow. “You're an imposter. Like her. You're a lie. A fancy, biological lie.”

“I'm not an imposter,” I answer quickly. “Try and calm down—”

“You think you're real, but you're not. I remember dying. My physical body died, but Samuel saved my mind so I could live again. But what about my soul?
What happened to my soul?
”

My mouth hangs open, unable to contain my horror at the question, but before I can attempt an answer, I'm interrupted by the sound of someone crunching over glass. Turning—only slightly, still keeping the machine in my peripheral vision—I spot Larry. Of all people. Water Treatment Larry, looking bewildered as he steps inside the IC lab, and then horrified, and then sick, his eyes taking in the gore I've been pushing to the back of my mind, sweeping it under the rug of my subconscious, where it will wait to spring out at me like a morbid jack-in-the-box later, when I'm asleep.

“Commander Long?” he's in the middle of saying. “I wanted to let you know, I just got…confirmation for testing the, the…what's…?” He covers his mouth with his hand, smothering a blasphemous curse. I can't help thinking,
You would've been better off making it a prayer.

“Get out of here,”
I whisper, motioning frantically at Larry behind my back.

Too late.

“Liars!” the machine wails, throwing its arms into some more glass beakers. They shriek against the countertop before shattering on the floor. It clutches the side of its head, eerily reminiscent of a painting I think I saw once. “Everyone lies to me! The higher echelon says they saved me for a purpose, but then they send me here to die. She says she won't hurt him, but she already has. And
you.
” This directed at me. “You want to kill me, too.”

“No!” I shout. “Wait. Larry, get back. Ulrich, don't!”

“You want to kill me most of all. Don't you?”

“Now is our chance, Rhona.”

“Ulrich—stand down!”

“Don't you?”

The machine's ribs unlock like a cashier's cage, both sides opening at once, exposing not a heart, not a computer core, but some kind of automatic submachine gun. At that point, I no longer have the option of playing nice. As much as I want to ask it more questions, find out how and why the higher echelon would do something like this, I'm unwilling to let my curiosity cost another human life.
Dammit, Larry!

I raise my EMP-G and squeeze the trigger in one fluid movement, hoping to catch the machine before it can unload its arsenal. The machine's face blinks out like a light. Its body freezes, but holds its posture, like I've simply hit the pause button on it. Ulrich targets the machine's chest, but the bullet simply bang around inside its ribcage, throwing up sparks when they hit the submachine gun.

“Enough!” I shout at Ulrich, and thread my way over to the machine.

“What are you doing?” he demands.

The machine's face blinks back to life before I reach it—at exactly ten seconds.
So the machines haven't been able to implement their new systems across the board. Good to know.
Maybe humanity's not out of this fight just yet, after all.

“What—” the machine begins to ask.

I fire the EMP-G again, returning it to stasis. “Sorry. Nothing personal.”

“Should I…uh, go and get someone?” Larry has already inched back toward the door.

“Yes!” Ulrich and I reply simultaneously, him adding,
“Gehen Sie!”
Which is one phrase I do know.
Go!

“Wait!” I say, stopping him on the threshold. “Have you ever seen this thing before?”

Larry studies it for a brief moment, then shakes his head.

“Are you sure?”

“I think I would remember something like—like
that.
”

The mystery of my impersonator continues.
“All right. Get out of here,” I instruct him, and then turn back to the machine, firing quickly as it begins to stir.

Up close, I hope to find some point to exploit on its body, but the machine lacks the anatomy I'm used to. Beneath the skin and metal, all I see is a rat's nest of wires in a variety of colors. A bomb-disposal expert's nightmare. I could start yanking them out, hoping it turns the thing off, but I doubt that'll work. Where is the core processor?

“Rhona.” I hear the uneasy tone in Ulrich's voice. “Four seconds. Three…”

“I know. I know.”

The machine comes back online, and again I send it napping.

“I don't see the processor,” I tell Ulrich, trying not to sound panicked. But ten seconds is a short window to work inside, and if I'm slow on the draw at any point, I'm getting a bullet for my trouble. Still, this is important. It could give us the edge against the next wave of machines. This thing must have some kind of hardware to act as its brain. Something to store all these memories of mine it claims to possess.

As the machine's digital eyes—
my
eyes—open inches from my face, it hits me.

And so does the machine's arm. It swings into my stomach like a crowbar, knocking the air from my lungs, and sending me sprawling backward into a counter. I manage to hold on to my gun, barely, and fire another electromagnetic pulse that shuts the machine down a fifth time.

At the same moment, Captain Paszek and her team finally arrive, filing into the room two abreast. They're all carrying assault rifles, a sight I'm initially relieved by, and then alarmed by. I never signed off on allowing the New Soviets weapons on base. Someone else on the council must have, or else they simply took advantage of the chaos after the attack to equip themselves, and no one's bothered to challenge them yet. A problem for another day, though.