Flight (37 page)

He ignores me and starts crawling again so I follow.

The truth doesn't set you free, Junco, that was pure bullshit. Let it go and if you need to know what it is, well, then–

"Shit!"

"What?"

"They're evacuating the clone tanks."

And then I hear it. The slurp of water circling a drain somewhere up ahead. The massive deluge is upon us in seconds and Gideon is speaking in my head.
Hold your breath, Snowbird, just like they made you in the pool. Hold your breath and crawl fast or you will die.

The words sting me back to the past, swimming in my house pool as heavy hands hold me under the water for minutes at a time.

"Why are you sad?" HOUSE asks me.

"I don't get to see Gideon."

"You never see Gideon when you're at home."

I shake my head up at her and flop back on my bed. The purple canopy ripples from the blast of cold air coming from the ceiling. "I'm not supposed to be at home in the summer, don't you see?"

"So you want to be at camp?"

"Ahrrrrhhh. You make me angry. You know what I mean, HOUSE. I want to be with Gideon. He's my only friend during the summer and now I have to stay home and do regular stuff."

"Maybe you shouldn't have been bad, Junco?"

I turn away, not that it makes any difference. HOUSE can see me no matter what position I'm in. "I'm not bad. Gid said so. I'm just doing my job. Matthew is bad."

"But now he's coming here to teach you to swim because you ran off after Gideon was taken away and no one could find you for two days."

I swallow down the fear that comes with the memory of how Matthew punished me. "Yeah, but my dad will be here."

"I'll be here too, Junco."

I nod. I know that. HOUSE is good to me. "You're a good friend. I just wish you were real – errr – I mean, I know you're real, HOUSE. I meant I wish you had a body, so you could play with me."

"Should I make a holographic body?"

I sit up. "Can you do that?"

I can almost feel her smile. I know she's an AI and can't really smile, but sometimes I can
feel
her smile. "I can if you order me to, Junco. I am here to take your orders just as if you were your father."

This is new to me. "Since when? You never did that before."

"Since you came home last week. Your father reprogrammed me to accept your orders as absolute. It is not something that can be undone, by anyone."

I pause to think about this new development. I won't be ten for a couple more months, and maybe I don't know a lot of stuff about the grown-up world, but I know what this means. I have a new power. It scares me a little. Dad only gives me powers when he thinks I might need them. "Will I get in trouble if I ask you to be real?"

"If you tell me to make it a secret, then I can't tell anyone about it."

I smile. Sneaky HOUSE. "Make a body and keep it a secret."

And then she's in front of me, sitting on the bed, wearing clothes that came right out of my closet. I squeal. "You did it!" She smiles for real now and this makes her hazel eyes glimmer gold in the sunlight coming through my courtyard window. "You look like me, only younger."

"I'm the little sister," she says as she stretches out near the bottom of the mattress. "Your bed feels wonderful." She looks up at the canopy and then down at the quilt. "I like unicorns."

I giggle. "Me too, even though it's a little babyish. Pretty soon Dad said he'll move my bedroom into my safe room and I can pick new stuff from Peaks. You can come with me. To pick it out, if you want."

There's a knock at the door and HOUSE disappears.

"Enter."

"Who are you talking to, Junco?"

I flop back on the bed. "Just HOUSE."

My dad scratches his chin and makes a face down at me and I know he knows I'm hiding something, but what I said was not a lie so he's probably not sure what to do about it. I laugh at this and he shakes his head at me. "Junco, I hope you're not making plans."

I frown at him. "I'm not. I didn't lie, I was talking to HOUSE. Ask her."

He changes the subject. "Matthew will be here tomorrow for swimming lessons, so–"

"I don't need swimming lessons, I already know how to swim!"

"Junco, I already explained this to you, these are advanced lessons. For when you're trapped somewhere with no air. To prepare you."

This makes no sense and I want to scream this up at him. We live in the Rural Republic, there aren't even lakes most years, it's so dry out on the plains. Our mountain cabin has a lake, but I'm not allowed to walk on the lake when it's frozen and ice is the only thing I can think of that would make me trapped somewhere with no air. So why would I need to learn to hold my breath? Most of the time they want me to breathe more, not hold it in. "That's stupid."

"It doesn't matter if it's stupid, you're still going to learn how to hold your breath." He walks around the room, probably looking for something, anything, that might be out of place and can explain the feeling that I'm hiding something. But it's all in order and my eyes track him as he returns back to the end of my bed. "You should go out to the barn and practice."

"Can't," I say with satisfaction. "Michael's not here today. Had to go to Peaks for a dentist appointment. And the rules say that I can only ride when Mich–"

"I know the rules, Junco. I didn't know Michael was gone today. You should go play piano then. Now. No arguing."

I make a face at him as I get up. "I will play piano, but not because you told me to. I'll play because I
want to
."

He puts a hand on my shoulder as I walk past, making me stop. "You have a very bad attitude these days, Junco. You better not let it get out of hand."

I look up at his eyes. He's not playing with me. "Sorry. I just miss Gideon."

"Gideon is gone now. He won't be back for a very long time. Which means you'll just have to accept it and move on."

I huff and look away. "I'm not happy about that. Not happy at all."

When I look back up at him he smiles. "But you will not act out any more, do you understand?"

I nod and walk out to the living room. The smooth white tiles are cool on my bare feet and I'm glad I don't have to go outside and ride today. It's hot out there.

There are soldiers around, like always, but most of them I don't know. The living room guard tips his head at me as I pass and I smile. "Would you like me to play Asgarth, Private Roche?"

He says nothing because my dad follows me into the living room. "Junco, don't talk to the guards, you know better."

I groan. Loudly. "Maybe someone should tell me what I
am
allowed to do, instead of what I'm
not
allowed to do. That would be easier."

"Your mouth will make this day an unhappy one if you cannot control it."

I ignore him and sit down on the bench and swing my feet as I flip through the sheet music I have propped up on the stand. "Asgarth it is, Roche." My fingers pick out the notes, one by one, and I secretly wish for bubblegum. I like to chomp and snap my gum to the beat, but no one else seems to appreciate how much better I play when I can do that.

My dad comes over and starts the metronome and I frown.

"HOUSE?"

"Yes, sir?"

"Record this and send a copy to my office when she's finished." He looks down at me, but my fingers never stop. "Junco, ninety minutes and not a minute less."

I don't answer. I'm really pushing my luck, but sometimes I can't stop myself. He walks away and I smile. Teeny tiny victories are all I can hope for these days. But I'll take them when I can. "HOUSE, did you know I'm a lion?"

"Why are you a lion, Junco?"

I grin, but still my fingers never stop. That's the secret to piano time. Just keep playing. No one cares what it sounds like, as long as I keep playing. "Because I kill to stay alive." I hear Roche mutter,
Oh, fuck
, from the other side of the room and I laugh. "I kill just like the prairie lion. Because they tell me to. And if I don't they will kill me. So I kill whoever they–"

I'm flung down on the floor and my head smacks against the tiles. "What did I tell you, Junco?"

I stare my dad straight in the eye. "You told me never to lie. And what I said was the truth."

He pulls me up by the arm and I feel my shoulder pop a little at the force, then he drags me back to my room and pushes me down on the bed. "You just broke your security clearance, Junco. That is punishable by death. You are lucky – very, very lucky – that I love you. Private Roche will keep his mouth shut, but say that in front of Matthew and I will not be able to save you." He closes the door as he leaves and the biometrics on the doorknob flash red.

Locked in.

I lie there and laugh as I look up at the purple canopy fluttering in the air conditioning. "HOUSE?"

"Yes, Junco?"

"Now, where were we?"

"We were talking about your new power and my secret body."

"Right. Let's play Sammie dolls. You wanna play dolls, HOUSE?"

She appears in front of me and extends her hand out to pull me up off the bed. I grab it and wonder how she can do that if she's just a hologram. But I forget that question as she gives me the answer I'm looking for. "I'd love to play with you, Junco."

I reach out for Gideon in the flooded drainpipe but find nothing but filthy water rushing past me, entering my mouth and making the urge to vomit resurface. I push it down and realize he's gone. I force my chin up towards the top of the passageway and gulp a breath of air, then go under and claw my way upstream.

The foul liquid is not water. It reeks of the tank gel from morph, but it's not red and it's not thick. More like–

The thought drops off and I push it down because it's just too disgusting to think about. I swim and concentrate on holding my breath and not opening my mouth until I am ready to expel the carbon dioxide building up in my blood. I shut down the neural impulses to my diaphragm, then slow my heart and restrict circulation to my core.

The passageway, while cramped and uncomfortable for Gid, is neither of those for me, especially in water. I swim strong against the current, ignoring the passing floaties that might be remnants of God knows what. I bump into Gideon's feet and stop, holding onto his legs so the water can't push me backwards as I wait for him to remove the grate above his head.

A flash of light tells me it's open and then he's pulling himself up. I follow and feel his hands grab my armor, pull me out and drag me off to the side of a trench flowing with amniotic fluid pouring out of hundreds of clone tanks.

The air escapes my lungs slowly and then I inhale. I am in control of my body, not my reflexes, and this makes me powerful.

"That was excellent, Junco. You've never liked the swimming."

"No, I never did. But then again, I want to live, so what choice do I have?"

Crashing glass snaps us back to attention and we turn and look at the same time.

The clones are not dead.

"Forty-two minutes, Junco." He swings the plasma weapon around from the tether on his back and points it at the writhing bodies.

I know what this is.

Fucking payback time, that's what this is!

It might've taken its time getting here, but who gives a shit. It's here now. My grin is so wide my cheeks begin to hurt.

I pull out my SEAR and flick the little imperfection with my thumbs and fire it up and then we move in a coordinated way that defiantly screams we are partners as we turn to face the monsters clawing their way out of the tubes.

Chapter Thirty-Four

The clones closest to me are all Irin in different stages of life. And they act like her too, with teeth bared and hissing coming from their mouths even as they writhe on the floor with atrophied muscles, slapping around in a pool of metabolic fluid that would make me puke if I had any mapolina left in me.

I sweep my SEAR across their necks as I pass, making them shrivel up in a fetal position as they melt while Gid keeps his attention on what's ahead. He starts running and I follow, trying my best not to slip on the slick stainless steel floor.

Everything is stainless steel, the walls, the back half of the tubes, the machines and the giant double doors that we head towards. Gid stops and listens to a commotion on the other side and an Irin slithers over towards me and grabs me by the leg, pulling it towards her mouth to bite.

I kick her and drag the SEAR across her neck, then point it at the others and they shrink back at my violence.

Gid turns. "Trouble out there, Junco. I can't tell for sure, but I think it's Soli's clones."

"How much time do we have, dammit? We need to get to the fucking roof, if that means we have to kill them, then let's just do it."