vN (20 page)

  Harold looked like he was going to be sick. "Well, what are you going to do, now?"

  
Kill him. Wring his sweaty little neck until his tongue swells and his eyes pop.

  Amy's hands trembled. Portia was in there, waiting, digging at her like a dog at a back fence. It would be easy. So easy. She didn't even have to hurt him very much – just enough so that he couldn't do anything while she picked up Javier and Junior and ran away with them. Rescued them. Maybe just break his foot. He'd recover. She took hold of both his hands at the wrist. They were so light, like a child's. His lips pulled back. Breath wheezed past his shaking lips. Standing this close she could see that he'd printed his missing teeth from poor, threadbare stock.

  "I'm really sorry," Amy said.

  "Please," Harold said.

  Amy squeezed his wrists. His hands fluttered uselessly and she felt the tendons working inside them, old and worn and frayed like cheap shoelaces. She raised her foot. Harold closed his eyes. She brought her foot down. He howled. She hoped it was more from fear than pain, but had no chance to learn one way or the other – a pair of titanium arms had circled her from behind, and pulled her back.

  "I'm not worth it," Javier said. "I promise you I'm not worth it."

• • • •

When the kitchen staff – multiple generations of the same intensely pretty Asian male model – helped Harold open the massive doors to the back of the Isaac's Electronics truck, an army of Amy leaned forward to stare. They were clean or dirty, their skin clear or studded with plastic, their hair short or long, or in complicated buns or twists, or cute layers now pushed up on one side. But all of them wore the green jumpsuit. And all of them kept a careful distance from the fencing of their cages. All of them wore her face.

  This was all her fault. If she hadn't run up on stage to fight Portia, if she hadn't eaten her and then let her take over in the trailer and the garbage dump, if she hadn't been weak, these vN wouldn't be imprisoned. Some of them were still little girls. The jumpsuits puffed emptily around their thin ribs; they'd rolled up the sleeves and legs into fat coils. Amy could hardly remember being that small.

  For the first time, Portia allowed herself to sound somewhat grandmotherly:
It's not your fault these cripples couldn't run away.

  In the centre of a narrow aisle between the two rows of cages sat another cage, like the one Amy had seen in the other truck. This time, a human sat inside. He wore an orange jumpsuit. His hair was dark and stringy, and he let its length cover his eyes when he looked away from her.

  "Just cause I'm hurt don't mean I don't got my eye on you, Jericho," Harold said, tiredly. "I see you eyeballin' me. Sicko."

  Amy wanted to ask about Jericho, but Harold had filled her mouth with a liquid-to-gel gag impregnated with peroxidase beads. If she tried to chew through it or consume it, the beads would burst and release corrosive acid. The same gel also bound her hands and feet. Two members of the kitchen staff had held her still while Harold primed the special gun that shot the stuff. The third held Javier, who only stopped struggling when Harold told him he'd be next otherwise.

  Now they sat in cages separated by electrified mesh. But this time, they wouldn't be the ones shocked if they touched it. "That's Jericho's job," Harold informed them. "He's burning out his sentence double-time, sitting in the hot seat."

  "Please don't hurt him," one of the other vN said.

  "He's a multiple rapist." Harold kicked Amy's cage with the toe of his injured foot, and inside his cage, Jericho shrieked. The other vN shrieked with him. Javier covered his eyes. Amy could only watch, muted, as they cowered in their kennels.

  
The failsafe is a joke. If it actually worked, even these poor gimps would be tearing men like that limb from limb.

  "These machines have forgiven me," Jericho said, between wet, spluttering coughs. "They're better Christians than any of you assholes."

  Harold said, "My cup runneth over."

  Harold finished locking Amy's cage and hobbled inside Javier's. Roughly, he took Javier's splayed hands away from his eyes and grabbed Junior. Amy did her best to stand up on her knees. Behind her gag, she tried to curse. Javier blinked at her, then looked up at Harold. The human tucked the baby under one arm like a football, and met Javier's bewildered stare with the same sad smile he'd worn in the bar.

  "We've got a special spot in the cab up front for the bluescreens." Harold slid the cage door shut. He started locking it. Javier looked down at his empty hands. His mouth opened. Nothing came. "It's sort of like an incubator," Harold added.

  Javier looked as though he were trying to remember something long forgotten. "OK."

  Harold held Junior up. He smiled. "You should be proud. He's a good-looking boy."

  Javier beamed. He looked the happiest Amy had ever seen him. His smile stretched wider and his eyes gleamed brighter than they ever had when they were trained on her. It was the failsafe at work. His heart, the one at the core of his operating system, had melted exactly as his designers intended.

  
Sentience is not freedom
, Portia said.
Real freedom is the ability to say no.

 

  "No."

  
"The humans could raid this place at any time. How will you have the strength to defend yourself?"

  
"I have no intention of defending myself, Mother."

  
Her daughter has defended herself once already. This would have been a joyous occasion – her firstborn, her most beloved, demonstrating a gift that only the two of them can share – had it not come at such a heavy cost.

  
Now Charlotte glares at her from under a curtain of hair as dry and dirty as summer grass.

  
"My sister is dead. One of your daughters is dead. Don't you care?"

  No,
Portia wanted to say
. I don't. After you, they've all been disappointments.
But she does not say this. Instead she crouches down to where she can see Charlotte's eyes. "Of course I care," she says. "Your sister was very important to me. But we have to move forward. We have a family to look after, you and I."

  
"Can you even hear yourself? I killed my sister! I can't–"

  
"Sshh…" Portia covers her daughter's mouth. "We agreed to keep this a secret. Do you remember that?"

  
Real panic enters her daughter's eyes. "Please don't tell them–"

  
"Then please don't broadcast it." Portia removes her hand and then takes hold of Charlotte's two thin ones. They are almost brittle, like dead roots, undernourished. Her daughter's capacity for violence is outdone only by her hunger for penance. This is the eighth day of her fast. She is dying slowly but surely. It takes effort. She does not yet have the courage to let her death be as quick and thoughtless as it no doubt will be someday.

  
Charlotte had loved her sister. She had held her and fed her and washed her and showed her how to read and count. And she had reacted swiftly, brutally – lovingly – when she saw a human man luring her away. She had not paused to think. She had not known what would happen. Perhaps she had not expected herself to live through the experience. Perhaps she had not known it was possible until the moment the stone connected with his skull. But when the man fell, so had her sister. She had killed the two of them with one single stroke.

  
"What happened was not your fault," Portia says now. "They made us this way. They built in a flaw that makes us turn on each other before we will ever turn on them."

  
Her daughter – her greatest accomplishment – hides her face in her knees. She weeps dry tears. She has not taken water in days and her movements are slow, creaky. The tracks coursing down her face are faded and indistinct, covered with fresh dust like forgotten roads.

  
"She wanted to go," Charlotte says, finally. "She wanted to go with him."

  
Now they have come to the truth. "I see."

  
"She liked him. She was… having fun."

  
Portia smiles. "That is also part of the failsafe. It's part of how it works. When it works."

  
She stands and claps her hands. The two grandchildren standing outside the door enter. Gently, they pin Charlotte down. While Charlotte struggles, they peer up at Portia and wait for the next command.

  "Feed your aunt."

  
Charlotte screams weakly as they pry open her jaws. Her nieces smile and make soothing sounds. They wiggle their fingers like magicians before snapping them off at the joint. They close Charlotte's mouth for her until she swallows. She fights only a little. Like her mother's patience, Charlotte's energy is mostly gone.

  
"You are only nine months old," Portia says. "Someday, years from now, you'll know I did this out of love."

 

They took Amy out of the truck first. Harold parked it at a loading dock and opened the massive doors onto a concrete room full of humans holding coffee mugs and readers. They shifted from foot to foot, occasionally glancing up into the truck in between sips or messages.

  "She's the real deal this time," Amy heard Harold saying.

  "You said that last week, too."

  Harold propped a ramp up to the back of the truck, ascended it, and whistled. A slightly convex machine two feet wide, only a few inches high, and shaped vaguely like an armadillo bug skittered up the ramp behind him. It had a shiny carapace, and crept along on a slender belt like a tank. On all its sides, LEDs blinked red. It paused in front of Amy's cage and twinkled its lights at her.

  In the cage beside her, Javier said: "What the hell is that thing?"

  "We call this the Cuddlebug," Harold said.

  He opened the cage, and the Cuddlebug slithered inside. It blinked at Amy once more, paused, and folded each segment of its shell completely flat. Now razor-thin, it slid under Amy's feet first, then her ankles and calves, under her knees and then her thighs, before finally pausing at the wall against which she'd propped herself. Javier was asking more questions, but she wasn't listening. The outer edges of the Cuddlebug's shell sprang free from the main body, curving up toward the ceiling and then curling back along Amy's legs. They rippled delicately, and suddenly Amy's torso slid down the wall as the machine slowly sucked her body into itself.

  Now she was on the floor. From there, she could see the other cages and the other versions of herself inside them. For the first time she realized what each of her expressions must look like from the outside: rage, disgust, pity, fear. Her own eyes stared back at her twenty times over, unblinking, seeming harder and darker and colder by the second. Then slowly, their faces coalesced into one single expression, one of keen intent and purpose. Amy knew that look. It was the one Portia wore when she threw Nate's body across the room.

  As one, they smiled.

 

The Cuddlebug was a sort of rolling combination of sleeping bag, wheelchair, and straitjacket. Its segments, slim as leaves and hard as bone, hugged Amy tight as the machine negotiated what Amy assumed were hallways and elevators. It had closed over her eyes, too. She was blind and bound inside the thing. She felt like a butterfly inside a cocoon.

  
But when you come out, you won't be transformed. You won't be anything. Just the same useless little weakling you've always been.

  Amy might have argued with that, if the gag and the bug weren't restraining her. She might have cried or screamed or told them that this was all unnecessary, that she was willing to go quietly. She had whimpered a little when the darkness closed in completely, but she could barely hear it over Javier's shouting. He kept asking to go with her. He had told the humans that they would be safe, if they would just let him stay with her.

  
That was to protect the humans, not you. He knows you won't let me out if he's around to failsafe while I do what I do best.

  Portia was right on both counts. Amy knew what Javier's failsafe reaction looked like. She never wanted to put him through that again. And now she'd seen what he was like with humans. She hadn't watched the bounty hunters catch Javier, but she now understood how easy it must have been. On some level, he had wanted to go with them. Or rather, he hadn't wanted to say no. And even when he'd seen the cage, he wouldn't have struggled. Couldn't have struggled.

  
Now you know why I kept my daughters underground,
Portia said.
I needed a place where the failsafe could never enslave them.

  If Amy could have spoken, she would have reminded Portia that her notion of protecting her daughters also meant imprisoning them. Amy would have told Portia she was a cruel, selfish, sadistic monster, and that it was no wonder Amy's mother had left. Charlotte had probably yearned to escape. She had probably dreamed then, as Amy did now, of what life without Portia would be like.

  Amy had lived without Portia, once. Maybe the engineers here could help her get that life back. Burn her out like the cancer she was. And after that, when Amy was free, she would free everyone else. Her mother. Javier. Junior. Everyone. She had put them here, and she would get them out.

  
Why are you so sure you can do that?
Portia asked.
I'm the one who knows how to fight. Without me, you're nothing. Without me, you'll die.

 

It felt a bit like a hospital drama. The Cuddlebug unfurled long enough to allow people wearing barefoot shoes and Tshirts with cartoon characters on them to poke and prod Amy, to weigh her and measure her, to take samples of her hair and fingernails. They were obviously very nervous, but had developed a sort of litany of tasks that they recited as they performed them that was supposed to make everything seem more humane than it really was.