Siege (16 page)

After spending another fifteen minutes with Brittany, I leave the Biohazard Treatment Center and spread the news of her recovery to the other Pioneers. But to my surprise, no one seems as relieved as I am. DeShawn's busy with his laser, Zia's reinforcing her armor, and Marshall's repairing his plastic face. When I tell Amber that the four Yorktown High School kids have emerged from their comas, all she says is, “Very interesting.” Shannon's reaction is a little closer to what I expected: she raises her sparkling arms and cries, “Thank God! That's wonderful!” But then she shakes her head and adds, “If only there were more. Just four survivors out of twenty thousand. It's so awful, so horrible.”

She's right—the statistics are devastating. And maybe it's stupid to be happy about those four kids when so many others died. But I'm happy anyway.

Then, at 3:00 p.m., General Hawke orders all the Pioneers to an emergency briefing. We gather again at the air base's headquarters, inside the wood-paneled conference room that's way too small for us. Now it's even more packed than before because Amber's here too and Zia has bulked up her armor. In addition, Hawke has set up a wall-size video screen that takes up all the space at the front of the room. On the screen is a satellite photograph of Yorktown Heights.

“All right, Pioneers, this is what we've been waiting for.” Hawke stands in front of the screen and taps the bottom of the photo, which shows the wooded hills in the southern half of my hometown. “Our surveillance satellites have detected some suspicious activity in this area.”

The general points a remote-control device at the screen and uses it to enlarge the lower section of the photo. There aren't many houses in that part of Yorktown Heights, but on Kitchawan Road there's a three-story, glass-fronted building shaped like a crescent. I recognize it immediately: it's the Unicorp Research Laboratory. My dad worked there for twenty years, leading the research group that developed artificial-intelligence software for the U.S. Army. That's where he created Sigma.

Hawke steps closer to the screen and points at a wooded slope just north of the lab. There's a long gouge running through the woods, a trench of brown mud bordered on both sides by uprooted trees. At the bottom of the trench is a gleam of silver. It's a Snake-bot rising to the surface.

“Over the past hour our satellites have spotted thirteen Snake-bots near the Unicorp Research Laboratory.” Hawke sweeps his hand across the screen, pointing at other trenches to the north and south. “The machines seem to have arrived all at once, probably after tunneling across the globe from North Korea. We can't tell from the photos what the Snake-bots are doing, but it's no accident that they've converged on the Unicorp lab. It looks like Sigma has returned to the place of its birth.”

I scrutinize the satellite photo. I was there six months ago, inside my dying human body, when Sigma took over Dad's lab and blew up half a dozen offices. The photograph shows scaffolding at the damaged end of the building, where the repair work is still unfinished. The photo also shows a massive pileup of cars in the lab's parking lot. When the anthrax spores hit Yorktown Heights yesterday and spread down the corridors of the Unicorp lab, the infected workers must've panicked and tried to drive away from the building. But judging from the photo, no one made it out of the parking lot, and many of the workers didn't even make it to their cars. At least thirty corpses are sprawled on the asphalt.

It's a struggle to curb the anger that's flaring in my circuits, but I manage to raise my steel hand to get Hawke's attention. “Sir, is there any advanced machinery at the Unicorp lab that Sigma can use for its own purposes?”

As I expected, the general nods. “Unfortunately, there is. I talked to your father a few minutes ago, and he gave me a full inventory of the equipment there. Although he dismantled all of the lab's neuromorphic computers after Sigma escaped from them, the building still holds an automated manufacturing system that can produce a wide variety of electronic parts. Sigma could use the system to upgrade its Snake-bots and maybe even build new ones.”

Shannon raises her Diamond Girl's hand. It glitters under the conference room's fluorescent lights. “Sir, the U.S. Air Force should launch an immediate strike against the Unicorp lab. They should send a whole squadron of planes to bomb the building and any Snake-bots near it.”

Hawke nods again. “That's an excellent idea, Gibbs, but there's a complication.” He presses a button on his remote-control device, and the video screen shows a different photograph of the laboratory. In this image, there are no trenches near the building. “Our satellite took this photo a bit earlier, fifteen minutes before the first Snake-bot arrived. Look carefully at the driveway in front of the lab.”

I feel a shock as sharp and jarring as a short circuit. There's a small crowd approaching the building's entrance. Twenty-nine people, to be precise, walking in a loose cluster. The satellite photo is so detailed that it shows the sweat stains on their shirts and the fatigued expressions on their faces. They look exhausted, like soldiers who've just finished a twenty-mile march. But the people in this photo are too young to be soldiers. They're children. “They're from the Brookside Elementary School,” Hawke adds. “Earlier photographs show them marching across Yorktown Heights toward the lab. No adults are with them in any of the photos.”

“My God.” Shannon turns away from the screen. Her Diamond Girl looks a little unsteady. “How did they survive the anthrax?”

DeShawn's Einstein-bot steps toward her and offers his steel arm for support. “The teens resisted the disease better than the adults did. If youth is a protective factor, then it's logical that the younger children would survive too.”

“But wouldn't they go home?” Shannon's voice is high and quavering. “Why walk to an office building?”

Zia points at the photo. “Sigma lured them there. To protect itself from an air strike. The AI knows we won't bomb the building if it's full of children.”

The room falls silent. The truth is so horrible that none of us knows what to say. I glance at the other Pioneers to gauge their reactions, and they seem dumbstruck, well and truly freaked. Marshall has a disgusted frown on his plastic face. He shakes his Super-bot's head and mutters, “Hideous, it's just hideous.”

But are his feelings genuine? Or is he putting on a show?

Finally, Hawke presses another button on his remote control, and the video screen goes blank. “I think all of you know what comes next. The Pioneers are going back to Yorktown Heights.” He looks at his watch. “The operation will begin in thirty-five minutes. Gibbs, I want a tactical plan. Figure out a way to hold off the Snake-bots and get those children out of the lab.” He turns to DeShawn. “Johnson, go get your laser. Ready or not, we're gonna use it.” And then, to my surprise, Hawke points at my Quarter-bot. “Armstrong, come with me to the command station. I want a complete description of the layout of your dad's laboratory. Everyone else, report to the airfield. The V-22 is already on the runway.”

Without wasting another second, Hawke strides out of the conference room, looking very much like a Pioneer himself. I have to quickstep down the corridor to keep up with him. He turns left and marches up a stairway. Then he leads me into a small, windowless room and shuts the door behind us.

This isn't a command station. It's a supply closet. Puzzled, I point my cameras at the shelves. We're surrounded by boxes of toilet paper and emergency rations.

I turn back to Hawke. He's scowling so hard, his eyes look like pale marbles sunk deep in his ruddy face. “What do you have for me, Armstrong?”

I'm confused. “Sir? Are you talking about the layout of the Unicorp—”

“No, I already have all that information. I'm talking about the assignment I gave you. What intelligence have you got so far?”

Now I understand why we're in this out-of-the-way closet at the far end of the headquarters building. Hawke wants to make sure that no one overhears us. “Uh, the truth is, I don't have much to tell you. I'm not the best person to do this kind of—”

“You talked with Allawi, right? And with Baxley too?”

I nod. “Neither one confessed, if that's what you want to know.”

“Armstrong, I don't have time for your attitude right now. Let me describe the situation in the simplest terms possible.” He raises his right hand and points his index finger directly at my camera lenses. “I know one of the Pioneers is a traitor. In thirty-two minutes I'm going to put your team on a plane to Yorktown Heights. Do you know what'll happen if I let the traitor board that aircraft with the rest of you?”

I shake my Quarter-bot's head. “No, sir, I don't.”

“Neither do I. But I can assure you, it won't be good.” He stops pointing at me and grabs my Quarter-bot's arm just above the elbow joint. This is surprising and disturbing. Hawke almost never touches our robots. “Now listen carefully. I need to determine which of the Pioneers is the traitor. I'm going to pull that robot off the Unicorp mission, so it won't threaten the rest of you. That Pioneer is going to stay behind, here at McGuire, where I can keep an eye on it. But I need your help to make this decision. Based on everything you've seen and heard, who do you think the traitor is?”

It's not fair. He can't force me to do this. “Sir, you're asking me to accuse one of my friends. And I can't do that without proof.”

“No, you're not listening.” The sensors in my arm detect an increase in pressure. Hawke is tightening his grip. “You say they're your friends, and that means you care about them. So what will make your friends safer? Should I take Zia off the mission?”

I shake my head again. “No! That won't help! It'll only—”

“What about Marshall?”

This isn't fair
. And yet Hawke is right—we'll be safer if the traitor doesn't come with us to the Unicorp lab. For everyone's sake, I have to use my best judgment. I have to make a choice.

I remain silent for six long seconds, forcing Hawke to wait, making it clear I don't want to do this. Then I say, “Yes, pull Marshall off the mission.”

Hawke doesn't thank me. He simply nods and lets go of my arm. Then he looks at his watch again.

“You have thirty-one minutes to get to the airfield. That gives you just enough time to say good-bye to your dad.”

• • •

I can't find Dad. He's not in his lab at the Biohazard Treatment Center. The doctors there say they don't know where he went, and I can't reach him on his cell phone.

I rush into the intensive care unit to look for him, but he's not there either. The ward is much less busy than it was a couple of hours ago; the doctors and nurses in moon suits have taken three of their four patients to the treatment center's X-ray and CAT scan machines. Only Brittany remains on her gurney, and no one seems to be monitoring her. She's sitting up in bed, leafing through a copy of the
Air Force Times
, which is probably the only reading material available here.

I notice that she no longer has an IV line hooked to her arm, and the gurney's guardrails are down. Except for the fact that she's still wearing a blue hospital gown, it looks like she could be relaxing at home, in her own bedroom. As she reads the newspaper, she twirls a lock of her blond hair around her index finger.

When she hears the clanking of my Quarter-bot, she looks up and smiles.

“Hey, it's you again.” She tosses aside the
Air Force Times
, which falls to the floor. “I didn't think you'd be back so soon.”

Once again I'm amazed that Brittany's acting so normally. She's treating me like an old friend and totally ignoring that I'm inside an eight-hundred-pound robot. It's hard to believe that she could adapt to this change so quickly and talk to me without even a trace of uneasiness. But maybe she's working really hard at it. Maybe she's fighting her instincts and tamping down her fears and putting on a happy face for my benefit. Either way, I'm grateful. If I had a face, I'd smile back at her.

“Hey, Britt. I'm looking for my dad. Have you seen him in the last half hour or so?”

“No, the last time I saw him was when the three of us were talking.” She raises her hand to her forehead and brushes the hair from her eyes. Then she reaches for the back of her neck and scratches an itch there. “Why are you looking for him?”

I don't want to tell her about the Unicorp mission. Brittany's been through enough. And there's no point in making her worry. “Oh, we usually get together at this time of day. You know, just to talk.”

It's not the most convincing lie I've ever told, and Brittany clearly doesn't buy it. She turns her head to the side and narrows her eyes. “What, like a father-and-son chat? You and your dad do that every day?”

“Uh, no, not every day. But, you know, pretty often.”

She looks askance at me for a few more seconds. Then she shrugs. “Well, you're lucky to have a dad who likes to talk. My dad yells at me a lot, but we don't have too many conversations. And don't even get me started about Mom.” Brittany looks down at her bedsheet. She sounds more sad than angry. “You know I ran away from home, right?”

I nod my Quarter-bot's head. “Yeah, I heard.”

“I just want you to know I had good reasons for leaving. You can't imagine how awful it was, living with my parents.
Anything
would've been better.”

I'm surprised she's talking about this. In all our years of friendship Brittany never once mentioned her troubles at home. I think it's great that she's willing to confide in me, and under ordinary circumstances, I'd be happy to listen to her, but in nineteen minutes I have to be at the airfield to board the V-22 that's waiting on the runway. “Listen, I—”