Six (24 page)

As soon as I enter her circuits, everything grows still. Zia's mind is a marvel of quiet efficiency. All her thoughts are fixed on one thing, destroying my Pioneer. She's so focused on this task that she doesn't even notice my presence in her electronics. Racing forward, I dive into her neatly arranged files and try to disrupt her concentration. In a thousandth of a second I plow through her earliest memories—fuzzy images of her mother and father, a veterans' hospital, a military funeral. I see the faces of foster parents and child-welfare workers, all the strangers who took over her life after her parents died. Then I see a long, cold walk down an empty street at night.

These memories are full of confusion and sadness, and Zia has walled them off from the rest of her files. But there's one memory that's so powerful it shapes everything in her electronics, warping the circuits around it like a magnet. It's an image of Zia at twelve years old, facing two older boys in a deserted alley. One boy is tall and pale, and the other is hideously fat, and they're both leering at her.

I see the fat boy step toward her from the left and the tall boy swoop in from the right, and now I know why Zia attacked me. There's a link between this image and the memory of what happened a few seconds ago, right before she went crazy. When I ordered Pioneers 1 and 1A to approach Zia from both sides, I unintentionally reminded her of the worst moment of her life.

As I view the image she finally notices me, and all the activity in her circuits screeches to a halt. Her circular saw stops spinning and the flame in her torch goes out. She pulls away from the damaged torso of Pioneer 1 and for a moment she simply observes me with bewilderment. Then all her thoughts come screaming toward me in a roiling wave.

GET
OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!

Her signals batter me from every direction, but I manage to hold on. I anchor myself to her circuits, digging in.

No! I'm not going anywhere!

GET
OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT!

I hold on for six more seconds, which is long enough for the other Pioneers to immobilize Zia. Shannon grabs her right arm and rips off the acetylene torch, while DeShawn tears the circular saw off her left. With immense relief, I withdraw from Zia's circuits and transmit myself back to Pioneer 1A.

Once the transfer is complete I use 1A's arms to prop my torso to a sitting position. As I gaze across the gym I realize I'm no longer viewing anything through Pioneer 1's camera. That robot is dead, its circuits melted. It's a good thing I copied all my memories and put them into 1A.

A moment later General Hawke rushes into the gym, followed by my father. While Hawke heads for the Pioneers who are restraining Zia, Dad kneels beside me. He yells something, but I can't focus on what he's saying. I'm distracted by another memory, one of the millions of memories I saw in Zia's circuits. It's an image of a typewritten memo from the National Security Adviser, very similar to the one I saw in Hawke's hands when I was in his office two days ago. But this is a newer memo, with today's date, April 6. Zia must've seen it this morning, before the training exercise with the T-90. Maybe Hawke showed it to her.

I read the memo. One sentence stands out from the rest:

“Ryan Boyd, the seventeen-year-old friend of Adam Armstrong, was found dead last night in Yonkers, New York.”

• • •

“Adam!
Adam
!
”

Dad's shouting at me, but I can't answer. There's nothing wrong with Pioneer 1A's speech synthesizer. I just can't speak.

Instead, I aim my camera at the Pioneer's left leg and examine the damage done by Zia's circular saw. It gouged the knee joint, but I should be able to walk on it. Using my arms to lever myself upright, I get back on my footpads and start limping across the gym.

Hawke shouts at me too, but I'm careful not to turn my camera in his direction. I'm so full of rage at the man that if I look at him, I might kill him. I remember what he said just half an hour ago when I asked him about Ryan.
On
the
case,
he said.
The
police
are
on
the
case.
But he knew different. He knew Ryan was dead.

I leave the gym and limp down the corridor. I discover I can move faster if I take uneven strides, and soon I'm bounding along, leaving everyone behind. When I reach the stairway I leap up the steps until I get to Level Seven. Then I race to Hawke's office, clench my hands into fists, and smash the door open. An alarm blares but I ignore it. Striding into the room, I tear apart Hawke's file cabinet and pull out the folder where he kept the typewritten memos from the White House. A quarter-second later I find the memo that Zia glimpsed. I need to see it myself. I need to read the words.

Ryan Boyd, the seventeen-year-old friend of Adam Armstrong, was found dead last night in Yonkers, New York. He was shot once in the head, execution style, and his body dumped in a vacant lot. Pinned to his shirt was a photo of a girl in her late teens, and under her picture was a note, presumably written by the killer. It said, “I HAVE BRITTANY. TELL ADAM TO COME OUT OF HIDING, OR I'LL KILL HER TOO.”

My steel hands tremble. I let go of the memo and it drifts to the floor. It's my fault. Sigma couldn't get me, so it went after my friends.

After another thirty seconds Hawke catches up to me. The general stands in the doorway and frowns at his ruined file cabinet. His displeasure deepens when he sees the memo on the floor. “You shouldn't have read that,” he says. “That's classified information.”

I turn my turret away from him. The urge to kill him is very strong. “Zia read it. You showed the memo to her, didn't you?”

“No, I didn't. If she says I did, she's lying.”

“Why were you keeping it secret in the first place?”

“It was an order, Armstrong. From the National Security Adviser. And in the Army we follow orders, even when they're difficult.” He folds his arms across his chest. “I'd like to offer my condolences. I'm sorry about Ryan.”

I can't stand this. I take a step toward the doorway. “Move it. Get out of my way.”

“Not so fast. We have to talk about what happened between you and Zia.”

“If you don't get out of my way, I'll bash your head in.”

Hawke stiffens. His eyes narrow. “Don't threaten me. I'm your commanding officer.”

“Sorry, I forgot. I'll bash your head in,
sir
.”

“Stop being stupid. You want to help your friend Brittany? Want to get payback for Ryan? You can't do it on your own. You have to work with
me
.” He taps his index finger on his chest. “So whether you like it or not, you're gonna answer my questions. Thanks to you and Zia, I just lost a fifty-million-dollar robot, and I want to know why.”

I'm so angry. My whole torso is shaking. I used to think Hawke treated us like children, but I was wrong. He treats us like possessions. He thinks he owns us.

I extend my right arm, grip Hawke's shoulder, and shove him backward. “Out of my way.”

It's a good, hard shove, maybe a little harder than I intended. Hawke stumbles backward and his head hits the wall on the other side of the corridor. He staggers and slumps to the floor, and for a moment I think he's going to pass out. But then he grimaces and slowly gets back on his feet. Panting, he gives me a murderous look. “Bad move,” he grunts. “Very bad move.”

He reaches for his holster, but I don't care if he shoots me. I turn away from him and stride down the corridor. I'm leaving Pioneer Base. I'm going to find Brittany.

Before I can reach the stairway, though, my system freezes. In midstride I lose control of the motors in my legs. My momentum tips me forward and I crash to the floor.

I can't move my arms or turret either. But my camera and acoustic sensor are still working, and after a second I hear footsteps coming down the corridor. I see Hawke in my camera's frozen field of view. He's holding a remote-control device. It must've sent a shutoff order to my electronics. It's a Pioneer kill switch.

Hawke shakes his head. “You failed, Armstrong. Now you're going to the scrap heap.”

SIGMA MEMORY FILE 9780198374

DATE: 04/07/18

S: Good morning. How are you feeling today?

R: Hey, you're making progress, Unc. You stopped asking about the weather.

(Voice analysis confirms that the speaker is Richard Ramsey. His cell phone is linked to a wireless tower in Burkittsville, Maryland.)

S: So you left Washington, DC, I assume?

R: Yeah, I took a drive last night. From the Secret Pleasures Lounge to the Maryland woods. And I took Colonel Peterson with me.

S: How did you convince him to go with you?

R: I slipped something into his drink. He got tipsy and needed my help to leave the bar. But he was sober again by the time we reached the woods.

S: Was he cooperative?

R: He needed some persuading. After a while he admitted he knew Adam Armstrong. And then he lost it. He started sobbing and babbling and telling this crazy story about children turning into robots. It was pretty strange, Unc.

S: Did he tell you where the boy was?

R: He gave me the coordinates for a place he called Pioneer Base. But I gotta warn you, it's probably bogus. The woods were dark and the guy was scared out of his mind. I tried to reason with him, but he kept talking nonsense. It wasn't going anywhere, so after a couple of hours I ended it.

S: Tell me the coordinates anyway.

R: Yeah, I memorized them. Latitude 37-36-18, longitude 107-35-15. It's in southwestern Colorado.

(Analysis of satellite images shows several newly built structures at the location. The electronic records of the U.S. Department of Defense identify the site as a prison camp and interrogation center for captured terrorists. But the records could be false documents, deliberately fabricated to hide the presence of the Pioneer Project.)

S: You've done well. Where's Peterson now?

R: I hid his body in the woods.

S: Do you think the Army has noticed he's missing yet?

R: No, his fellow officers think he's still sleeping in his hotel room. But they'll probably start looking for him in an hour or so.

(Conclusion: The attack on Pioneer Base must begin in the next hour.)

S: I must attend to other matters now. I believe our business is finished. You'll receive your final payment soon.

SHANNON'S LOG

APRIL 7, 05:25 Mountain Daylight Time

I don't know if I can do this.

Okay. General Hawke ordered me to keep a log. Whenever I get a free moment, I'm supposed to record my observations and store them in my memory files. I guess the idea is that we'll review my notes at the end of the mission, so we can figure out what we could've done better. Assuming, of course, we actually return from the mission.

I'm supposed to record all the facts, so here they are. Four Pioneers, including myself, stand in the cargo hold of a C-17 transport jet. Three hours ago we took off from Buckley Air Force Base in Colorado, and now we're 40,000 feet above Canada, flying on a course that'll take us over Greenland and Norway before we arrive at Russia's Saratov District. The official records of the flight have been falsified to deceive Sigma; in the communications between the Air Force pilots and the ground controllers, our cargo is identified as nine hundred cartons of meal rations, all destined for the small army of American advisers who are assisting the Russian troops outside Tatishchevo Missile Base. There are a dozen other C-17s flying back and forth between the United States and Russia right now. Our hope is that Sigma will see nothing unusual about our flight and therefore won't try to shoot us down.

General Hawke is on the plane too, along with thirty of his soldiers. They're bustling around the cargo hold, making final adjustments to the equipment we brought along for the mission. The Raven drones are packed in crates at the back of the C-17, and we also have tons of spare parts and extra neuromorphic control units. Hawke's team includes plenty of technical experts, but Tom Armstrong isn't here. He decided to stay with Adam and Zia at Pioneer Base.

I'm sorry. I know I'm supposed to stick to the facts, but I have to add a personal note. I hated leaving Adam behind. It was one of the hardest things I've ever done. I still don't know why he shoved Hawke against the wall—the general wouldn't tell us the details—but I can't believe it was all Adam's fault. For one thing, it happened right after Zia almost killed him. Under those circumstances, can you really blame him for getting upset? And then there's the upcoming battle to think of. Defeating Sigma is so important that it seems crazy to deprive ourselves of one of our Pioneers just because he gave the general a shove. But Hawke doesn't see it that way.

On the other hand, I'm glad Zia isn't with us. I'll never forget how she went after Adam with her blowtorch. I was on the other side of the gym, in the middle of transferring from Pioneer 4 to 4A, when Zia attacked him. By the time I was fully transferred to 4A, she'd already cut through the armor around his circuits. It was horrifying. And the worst part was that I couldn't do anything about it. I ran as fast as I could, but I was more than a hundred feet away, and I knew I'd never get there in time.

I thought Adam was as good as dead, and because my circuits are so fast, I started imagining my life without him, even while I was still racing across the gym. It was like how I felt right after I became a Pioneer, like my heart had just been ripped out of me. The emotion flooded my circuits as I grabbed Zia and wrenched the blowtorch off her arm. And it kept torturing me even after Pioneer 1A miraculously rose to its footpads. I thought,
That can't be Adam. He's already gone
.

Okay, this is getting a little
too
personal. Stick to the facts, Shannon.

An hour after the fight in the gym, Hawke announced that Zia and Adam wouldn't be allowed to come with us to Russia. Hawke's soldiers had confined both Pioneers to their quarters, and each faced serious charges under the Code of Military Justice—attempted murder for Zia, and assault of a superior officer for Adam. Neither could participate in the mission, Hawke said, because they couldn't be trusted to follow orders and their lack of discipline would endanger everyone. Then he told the remaining Pioneers that their new commander would be Shannon Gibbs.

Let me be clear: I didn't want to be commander. I told Hawke to pick DeShawn instead. But he argued that I was the best choice to lead the Pioneers because I seemed to have a firm grip on my emotions. He said emotions work differently in an electronic mind. Because our circuits generate thoughts so swiftly, it's easy for anger or fear or sadness to build up to intolerable levels. That's why Zia and Adam couldn't restrain their violent impulses. So it was necessary to select a commander who could control her feelings.

I still didn't think I was the best choice, but Hawke wouldn't take no for an answer. In the end I gave in, but I made him agree to one condition. I insisted on visiting Adam before we left Pioneer Base.

When I went to his room I saw two soldiers standing outside his door. There were two more soldiers inside the room, each carrying an M16 rifle equipped with a grenade launcher. But there wasn't a need for even one guard, because Pioneer 1A had been stripped. Adam's arms and legs had been detached from his torso, which rested on its base in the center of the room. He still had his camera and his other sensors, but the antenna had been removed from his turret to prevent him from transferring to another machine. The soldiers carrying M16s stood on either side of his torso, and they raised their rifles as I approached. They said I couldn't come any closer. I had to stand at least ten feet away from “the prisoner.”

So I stood there, exactly ten feet away, and said, “Adam, what happened?” But he didn't answer. I said, “Come on, talk to me. I want to help,” but he still didn't respond. I waited several seconds, getting more and more anxious, and then I said, “Adam, I can't stay long. In ten minutes we're leaving for Russia.”

After a moment I heard a strange noise come out of his speakers. It sounded like he was choking, which of course made no sense. Then I realized Adam was doing something no Pioneer had done before.

He was crying.