Siege (15 page)

We went for a walk in a grassy field, and Mom said I could let go of her hand. It didn't matter if I stumbled, she said, because the ground was soft and smelled like spring. I fell on the grass a hundred times that afternoon, but for once I didn't feel frustrated or embarrassed. Mom and I laughed and lay on the ground and looked up at the clouds. It's one of my favorite memories, so that's where I start my dream.

In real life, Dad wasn't at the park that day, but in my dream he's lying on the grass with Mom and me, gazing at the sky. He looks young in my dream, without any lines on his face or gray hairs on his head. We start playing a game, surveying all the clouds and pointing out the ones that look like animals. I point at a big, round cloud and shout, “That's a turtle!” and in my dream, the cloud looks
exactly
like a turtle, with four stubby legs and an oblong head.

Mom shouts, “Horse!” and the cloud she points at is a perfect replica of a rearing stallion. Then Dad points at a long, slender cloud and yells, “Snake!” but it doesn't really look like a snake. The cloud has dozens of dark rings dividing it into segments. I feel a creeping terror as I stare at it. It's
not
a snake. It's a Snake-bot.

The dream lurches into nightmare. The Snake-bot coils and slithers across the sky. Mom vanishes—
Where did she go? I don't see her anywhere!
—and Dad ages ten years in an instant. Gray-haired and gaunt, he points at me, and I notice that I'm no longer a nine-year-old boy. I'm inside my Quarter-bot, but the machine isn't working. I can't move my mechanical arms and legs. I'm on my back, paralyzed, and Sigma's Snake-bot stretches toward me. A moment later Dad vanishes too. The Snake-bot's sharp tip hangs in the air, just a few yards above me.

Then I see a woman running across the grassy field. At first I think it's Mom, but this woman is skinnier and much younger. It's a teenager.
It's Jenny Harris.
She's wearing a fancy cashmere sweater and a blue hat that hides her baldness. This is how she looked before she became a Pioneer, when she was just an ordinary seventeen-year-old dying of cancer. She races toward me, waving her arms.

“Adam!” she yells. “You have to run! You have to get out of here!”

All I can do is stare at her. I remember kissing Jenny in the virtual-reality program. I remember the softness of her lips, the silkiness of her skin. And I also remember that she's dead. Sigma erased her. She's gone.

And yet she seems so real as she rushes across the grass and kneels beside me. She grabs my Quarter-bot by the shoulder joints and stares into my camera lenses. “
You're in danger, Adam
!
” she screams. “Don't you see it?”

The steel tentacle curls in the air above us. But I don't care about Sigma anymore. I'm so happy to see Jenny again that nothing else matters. “I thought you were dead,” I whisper. “Are you real or just one of my memories?”

“You don't see it!” She tightens her grip on my Quarter-bot and tries to shake the heavy machine. “You're not paying attention!”

The Snake-bot descends, slowly and silently. It's less than three feet away.

“
Adam! Please respon
d
!
”

I'm startled. Jenny's lips are moving, but the voice coming out of her mouth isn't hers. I'm listening to my father's voice now, and the message isn't coming from the dream. I'm getting an alert from my emergency communications system. Dad's trying to get in touch with me!

I restart my logic circuits and emerge from the dream. The grassy field in Rockefeller State Park disappears, and I'm back inside the Air Force bunker, surrounded by boxes of classified documents. I transmit a radio signal on the emergency system, responding to the message I just received.
Dad? What is it?

There you are! I've been looking all over for you!

What's wrong? Are we under attack?

No, no, but you need to come right away to the Biohazard Treatment Center.

Why? What do you—

It's Brittany. And the other kids. They're awake.

I run full speed across the Air Force base and get to the Biohazard Treatment Center in less than three minutes. After an interminable wait at the air lock, I rush into the intensive care unit where the four students from Yorktown High School have spent the past eighteen hours in fever-induced comas. But now all four of them are sitting up on their gurneys, their backs propped against pillows, their beds surrounded by doctors and nurses in moon suits. The kids look tousled and a bit woozy from their unnaturally long nap, but they're alert enough to notice my Quarter-bot. Their mouths drop open in disbelief.

The youngest, Emma Chin, seems the most surprised. She shakes her head in wonder as I enter the room. Tim Rodriguez gives me a more suspicious look, narrowing his eyes. But Jack Parker has the most extreme reaction: he grips the guardrails on either side of his bed and presses himself back against his pillows. He's terrified at the sight of me. But I pivot my cameras past him to focus on the girl at the other end of the room, the pale, slender blond I've known since kindergarten.

Brittany leans forward on her gurney, her blue hospital gown hanging loosely from her shoulders. She stares at my Quarter-bot as I approach her. My dad stands at her bedside, wearing his protective suit and holding a clipboard in one of his gloved hands. I assume he's already told her about my transformation from human to machine, but I have no idea how she'll react when she sees what I've become. Will she scream in horror? Break down in tears? Or, worst of all, will she react like my mother? Will Brittany decide that I'm just a copy of Adam Armstrong and tell me to get out of her sight?

I stop at the foot of her gurney. An IV line is still attached to her right arm, and there are dark circles under her eyes, but otherwise she looks pretty healthy. I switch my cameras to the infrared range: her body temperature is exactly 98.6 degrees. Even better, her heart rate and blood pressure are back to normal. A surge of relief sweeps through my circuits.
She survived the anthrax! She's going to be fine!
But then she shakes her head and bites her lower lip, and my relief turns to panic.
She's stunned. She's scared. She doesn't recognize me!

Dad steps forward, his moon suit crinkling. Behind the suit's visor, his face is as anxious as ever, his eyes darting from me to Brittany and back again. He reaches for the curtain hanging next to the bed and pulls it out full-length to give us some privacy. Then he clears his throat and stretches a gloved hand toward my Quarter-bot. “Uh, Brittany? This is the robot I mentioned, the one that Adam's occupying right now. It's equipped with cameras and acoustic sensors, so he can see and hear you. And it has loudspeakers too, so he can talk. Say hello, Adam.”

Desperate, I try to think of something to say. I want to prove I'm really Adam Armstrong. I want to convince her beyond a doubt that her old friend is inside this machine. I devote all my processing power to the problem, and in a hundredth of a second I come up with three thousand possible solutions, most of them long speeches that attempt to verify my identity by listing all the personal details and secrets that only Adam Armstrong could know. But in the end I conclude that shorter is better. I give my synthesized voice a casual tone and say, “Hey, Britt. How are you feeling?”

She doesn't answer. Instead, her eyes water as they stare at me.

My panic rises, jangling my circuits. “Listen, I'm sorry. I should've told you about this sooner. I had all those months to do it, while I was at our base in New Mexico. But I was afraid, you know? I was so afraid.”

She starts to cry. Tears leak from the corners of her eyes and slide down her cheeks. But she doesn't make a sound.

This is worse than physical pain. My soul is writhing inside my wires. “Am I scaring you, Britt? I'll go away if I'm scaring you. Because that's the last thing I want to do.”

Another tear drips down her cheek. Then she shakes her head again. “No, I'm not scared. That's not why I'm crying. I just feel so sorry for you, Adam.”

That last word echoes in my electronics.
She said my name! She believes I'm Adam Armstrong!
“I'm all right. Really, I'm—”

“Your dad explained the whole thing. How he recorded everything in your brain. And then moved all your memories into a computer.” She wipes her eyes and looks up at Dad for a moment. Then she turns back to me. “To tell you the truth, I didn't believe him before I saw you. But now I do.”

Dad leans over the gurney. I catch a glimpse of his face through the visor, and it seems that his anxiety has eased a bit, replaced by a look of scientific curiosity. “What changed your mind?”

Brittany keeps her eyes on me and smiles. “It's simple. As soon as I heard Adam's voice, I knew.”

I can't speak. I can't synthesize a word. The joy I'm feeling is so powerful it occupies every circuit inside me, every transistor and microchip and logic gate. This is the best moment of my life, robotic or otherwise.

No one says anything for a while. Then Dad breaks the silence by clearing his throat again. “I also told Brittany about Sigma. And the attack on Yorktown Heights. I explained how the anthrax killed nearly everyone.”

Brittany stops smiling. “But not me. And not my parents. They were at work in the city.” She grimaces. “I guess I should be happy they survived, right?”

The look on her face extinguishes some of my joy. There's an unbridgeable gulf between Brittany and her parents. Otherwise, they'd be here right now.

I decide to change the subject. I gesture at Dad's clipboard. “So what's Britt's condition? Is her immune system still fighting off the anthrax, or is she clear of the infection?”

Dad looks down and starts flipping through her patient chart. I aim my cameras so I can scan the medical data: the results of blood tests, X-rays, CAT scans. But before I can view all the information, Dad tilts the clipboard so I can't see it anymore. “Brittany's condition is excellent,” he says, smiling at her. “But we'll need to keep her under observation for at least a few more hours.”

Now I'm suspicious. Dad's hiding something. But I don't say anything in front of Brittany. I don't want to alarm her.

Dad clears his throat a third time. It's a really annoying habit of his, and it always gets worse when he's nervous. “Well, I better get going. I still have more tests to run. Adam, you can stay here for another fifteen minutes, but after that you should let our patient get some rest.”

Brittany nods, smiling again. “I'm not tired, Mr. Armstrong, but I'll do whatever you say. Thanks so much for everything.”

“There's no need to thank me. I'm just glad you're getting better.” Dad pats her arm, then leaves.

I wait until Dad's out of the intensive care unit. Then I point a steel finger at Brittany's IV tube and the clear liquid that's dripping into her arm. “So are you happy with the nutrient solution you're getting? Or are you hungry for some real food?”

He eyes widen. “I would
love
some real food. Do you think they have any sandwiches in this place?”

I feel another spark of joy. Brittany's treating me the same way she'd treat any friend. She isn't flustered or even distracted by the fact that she's talking to a robot. It seems too good to be true, and that bothers me a little. How did I get so lucky?

But I'm not going to overthink it. I'm going to enjoy my good luck while it lasts. “Yeah, I can rustle up a sandwich. You still like turkey and cheddar?”

“Oh my God, Adam, that would be fantastic. But can you really—”

“Just watch me. I'll be back in five minutes.”

I stride out of the ward, ignoring the stares from Jack, Tim, and Emma. Then I head for the laboratory where Dad installed his analysis equipment. He set up the lab inside the Biohazard Treatment Center because he didn't want to carry any contaminated blood samples outside. The only disadvantage is that he has to stay in his moon suit while he's working. He's staring through his visor at a computer screen as I enter the lab, but he turns his head when he hears me come in.

“Adam? What are you doing here? I thought you'd want to spend more time with—”

“What's wrong with Brittany? What aren't you telling me?”

Dad lets out a long sigh. “Can we talk about this a little later? I'll have better information once I run some more tests on—”

“No! I want to talk about it now!” My voice is so loud it rattles the lab equipment. I lower the volume of my speakers and try to stay calm. “Is Brittany still infected or not?”

He frowns behind his visor. “I don't know if she's still infected. Or any of the other kids, for that matter. I was never able to isolate the anthrax bacteria from their blood or tissue samples. I found plenty of anthrax spores clinging to their clothes and skin, but no germs inside their bodies.”

“So what made them sick? I thought they inhaled the anthrax spores into their lungs, and then the spores released the bacteria. Isn't that how it works?”

Dad nods. “Yes, the spores germinate in the lung tissue and the bacteria start to grow and multiply. I suppose it's possible that Sigma modified the anthrax so radically that the standard tests can't detect the bacteria. But I looked at all the blood samples under the microscope and didn't see bacteria of
any
kind. Not a single microbe.”

“But it has to be an infection, right? I mean, those kids were really sick. And all those other people died.”

“Yes, it certainly looks like an infection. And I guess the cause of the infection could be a virus instead of a bacterium. Viruses are much smaller than bacteria, too small to show up on a microscope slide. Maybe Sigma discovered a way to combine the worst qualities of bacteria and viruses. Maybe it used anthrax spores to spread a new kind of virus that can kill within minutes.”

Dad's thinking out loud, looking at the evidence like a scientist, and proposing theories to explain it all. But I can tell from his tone of voice that these explanations don't satisfy him. He sounds uncertain.

“I only want to know one thing, Dad. Is Brittany safe?”

He shrugs inside his moon suit. “I don't think she's contagious anymore because we got rid of all the anthrax spores on her skin. But is a virus still inside her? And will it do any more damage? I won't know till I do more research. Certain viruses can hide in the body for years. They're especially good at hiding inside nerve cells and brain cells.”

This isn't a very comforting answer, but I guess it's the best he can offer now. I'll just have to wait for him to finish his tests. “Okay, okay. But keep me in the loop, all right? If you discover something important, I want to know about it.”

“Yes, Adam, of course. Now are we finished? Can I get back to my work?”

Luckily, my electronic mind forgets nothing. “Do you know where I can find a turkey-and-cheddar sandwich?”