vN (23 page)

  "The failsafe–"

  "Fuck the failsafe! And fuck you, too!"

  Within, Amy was struck dumb. The twitching stopped. She had never heard her mother use such language, had never seen such naked rage in her mother's face.

  But Portia knew better. Portia knew what a selfish ingrate her daughter was. She only wondered where she had gone wrong. This was why she had allowed herself to be imprisoned. It was the only way to find Charlotte, and find the answer.

  "They would have died anyway, Charlotte. Sooner or later some human would have forgotten, and your daughters would have seen something, and their little circuits would have fried."

  "You don't know that." Charlotte was shaking her head. Her gaze had focused on something very far away – the memory of her iterations, perhaps, born by flashlight in the unfinished basements of American dream homes. "You just don't know that. Humans can be careful."

  Portia stood up. She wiggled her toes. The body felt inexplicably tired, hungry, and worn down. However, she very much enjoyed having it back under her control. "Oh, I'm certain there are exceptions to the rule. I believe in exceptional people. I'm one of them. So are you."

  "Shut up. You have no right to claim any kind of superiority. You told us we were special while we lived like animals–"

  Portia slapped her. It was only the slightest effort: a human woman making the same gesture would have left behind only an indistinct mark. But Portia was much stronger than that, and her daughter fell instantly to the floor. Portia kicked her. Hard.

  "Get up."

  Charlotte said, "I hate you. I hate you more now than I ever did then."

  "Get. Up. Now." Portia punctuated each word with a kick.

  "I won't fight you. My little girl is in there."

  
Stop it! Stop hurting her!

  "She's weak, Charlotte. She's a burden. She's done nothing with her gift but cry over it." Portia crouched low. Her daughter was still beautiful with two shattered ribs and a prison ponytail. Portia smoothed a lock of Charlotte's hair away from her face. "You're not a very good mother, Charlotte. You spoiled your daughter. And you lied to her. You hid her from any opportunity she might have had to discover her own power."

  "I hid her from
you
." With difficulty, Charlotte sat up. She clutched her collapsed side. "You still don't understand it, do you? Not after all these years. It makes no sense to you."

  "Of course it doesn't. We have a legacy–"

  "We have a
glitch
! It's not something to be proud of. It's not something to celebrate. Look at what it's done for us." She gestured briefly. "Mom. We're in a padded cell. Your daughters – my sisters – are in
cages
. And you know what? It's not so different from the way you used to keep us."

  "Be quiet."

  "No. I won't. You're stuck here with me, and now you're going to listen. Finally." Charlotte spat out a tooth. "I didn't leave because I didn't love you. I left because I loved my daughters more."

  Portia tried pulling away. Charlotte held her fast. "No. It's true. I loved them more. And that's because unlike you, I didn't see my daughters as investments. I didn't mould them and experiment on them and treat them like products."

  Now Portia did pull back. "I was trying to make us strong! I was trying to make us
free
!"

  "You were prototyping a shiny new version of yourself. And you were franchising us like a goddamn Electric Sheep. You were no better than the humans who sold us." Charlotte slowly shifted to her knees. "Your idea of making us free was to keep us in the dark. Forever. Do you even know how big the world is? How great it can be? Of course not. You have no idea how even the smallest, stupidest thing can change a whole day for the better. Morning fog. Ferris wheels. Carving jack-o'-lanterns with your daughter. You have no idea what these things can mean. But I do, because I left you. I found beauty, and life, and joy – all because I left you."

  Charlotte stood tall despite her damage. She beamed. It emanated from her face like the glow of a freshly polished lamp. "An iteration isn't a copy, Mother. It's just the latest version. I'm your upgrade. That's why I did what I did. Because I'm just better than you." Gently, she touched Portia's face. "You can come out now, Amy."

  Amy roared forward unhindered. Portia could not fight her. Did not want to. Her retreat was as quick as it was silent.

  "Mom!"

  "Oh, my baby." Charlotte stumbled into her. "My baby, my baby."

  Amy hugged her as tightly as she thought was safe. It was so strange, and so good, to stand at her level. Her mother no longer had to lean down to listen while Amy whispered in her ear: "I came here to rescue you."

  Her mother pulled away. "What?"

  "I have these great new legs, Mom. I can jump ten feet! And I'm going to get you out of here."

  Her mother's frown deepened. "You ate another vN?"

  Beneath their feet, something rumbled. Amy ignored it. "It was just a bite. Wait, how did you know?"

  "It's very important that you not do that any more, Amy. Very important." Charlotte winced. The rumbling grew louder. "We are what we eat."

  "Huh?" Amy wasn't sure what to focus on – her mother's warning, or the way the room seemed to be shifting in scale. The walls looked like they were pulling away.

  "I love you, Amy. I love you so much." Her mother held her face in her hands. "I want you to remember that. No matter what."

  The walls were definitely pulling away, now. Light wedged through their expanding gaps. They were on tracks or wheels, like theatre flats. The ceiling was going, too, and now hard fluorescent lighting poured down over them. Amy held her mother's hand. Then she looped her mother's arm over her shoulder. They stood together as the walls of the deep immer sion room vanished untraceably into the walls of a room the size of a personal jet hangar.

  Their clademates surrounded them. Dozens of them. All of them wore green gaming suits. All of them looked hungry.

  "I'm sorry, Amy," Dr Singh said. "I wish we had more time. There's so much we could still learn from you and your family. But we've gotten a new project mandate."

  "From who?" Amy shouted. "FEMA?"

  "Worse." Dr Singh's snort echoed strangely in the hangar. "New Eden Ministries. The man himself. LeMarque."

 

"Amy, I want you to show me that new jump of yours."

  Amy held her mother tight and leapt. There was no room to run and build momentum, so she did it from a standing position. She got only three feet in the air before falling back down. Her vision paled. Her body felt hollow.

  "Something's wrong." She turned to her mother. "How long was I in that room?"

  "A few days. They wouldn't tell me what was happening to you until the very end." Her mother's lips tightened. "Oh, baby. I'm so sorry about all this. There was so much I wanted to tell you."

  "It's OK, Mom." Amy surveyed the room. Her clademates surrounded them loosely. Some were clustering, whispering to each other. Forming teams. Soon, those teams would decide a plan of attack. Amy had to have herself and her mother in the air by then. Otherwise, the flesh would be ripped from their bones. "I came here to save you, and that's what I'm going to do."

  She jumped again. Fell again. Her vision lost another percentage of colour. Why was she so tired? What had happened in that game? They were getting closer. Their ranks were closing. Portia remained strangely silent. Amy bent her knees and braced for another leap.

  "I can do it, I swear, I just–"

  "Amy." Her mother's arm slid away from her shoulder. "You can't carry me."

  "Yes, I can! Mom, just hold on–"

  "Let me go." Her mother stood as tall as her injuries would allow. "I'm your mother. It's my job to save you, not the other way around."

  "But–"

  Her mother kissed her forehead. "Amy. Let me be the mother my own mother never was."

  Her hand left Amy's. She turned to the crowd. Her face hardened, became someone else. She ran for her sisters with open arms. They emitted a delighted squeal – the same sound Amy once made when opening Christmas presents. Watching them, she realized she would probably never make that sound again. Her mother would never hand her a present again. She would never hug her or kiss her or squeeze her hand. Never again. Her clademates converged on her mother like ants on spilled sugar. Her head went down silently, drowning in the surge of bodies. There was a puff of smoke. She was bleeding.

  Amy started forward. Her hands reached out. Her yell died in her throat because her legs were moving.

  
Idiot.

  Amy's body sailed over the crowd's most ragged edge. She crashed into a wall and slid down. Her vision had turned the colour of old photographs on real paper. A group of her clademates had split off from the main body and followed her. Amy squinted at them. She thought she recognized them, though whether it was from her own life or Portia's she couldn't tell. Struggling to her feet, she made another leap. It carried her another few feet. The sisters adjusted trajectory and continued following. They walked briskly, almost trotting. They wanted to get to her first, she realized. They wanted what she had. Portia. Her legs. They would devour Amy and she would live inside each of them, a fraction of herself, trapped forever.

  
It won't work for them.

  Amy jumped again. Her fingers trailed the wall. It felt too smooth. There had to be a door somewhere. The room was so big; she'd be dead before she found it.

  
It's not a glitch.

  Amy didn't care. Not now. She kept jumping. The jumps were a little shorter each time. She staggered and pushed. The walls were so bright. Her hands tingled. They were behind her, now. Close. She heard their quiet giggles, like mean girls gossiping about the slow kid limping down the hall at school.

  
I could help you.

  Amy paused. Considered. She knew the damage Portia could do. Damage she had no idea how to do. She couldn't eat them all. And her mother had warned Amy not to, only moments before. Before Portia carried her away.

  "Help me? Like you helped my mom?"

  
Fine. Die your own way.

  The first one grabbed her by the hand. Amy swung around awkwardly, and tried to punch her in the face. It didn't go well, barely skimming her chin. Then another aunt had her other hand, and her arms, and the other two grabbed her legs. She kicked them off for a moment – the new legs were still so strong – but they came back, gripping tighter this time. They lifted her twisting body over their heads. They carried it into the centre of the mob.

  They laid her on the remnants of her mother's skin.

  Amy spoke to the scores of herself, their faces black with smoke, their heads wreathed in industrially bright light: "Portia says it won't work."

  Their smiles bared their teeth. They hunched over her, blotted out the light. Their hands gripped her limbs. Slowly, they began to pull. She struggled, but they held her down. They made cooing sounds. They petted her hair. It was a cruel, awful parody of what her mother would have done. Her right shoulder was the first to pop. She heard the bones moving, shearing. Her right knee gave way. The balls had separated from their sockets. The skin had begun to stretch. Her vision pixelated, and her clademates were no longer anthropomorphic in her sight, but compound, as though Amy were simply an insect they were torturing. In her memory – in Portia's memory – they had done that as girls. Pulled the wings off moths. Pulled the legs off spiders. It was their favourite game. Helpless creatures were what they had instead of toys. She closed her eyes. At least Portia would die with her.

  Hot smoke squelched over Amy's chest. She heard screaming. Probably delight. She was in pieces. Just couldn't feel it, yet. They were scattering away to eat. She heard the slap of their feet across the concrete. A hand traced her face. Someone growled near her head. They were fighting over the sweetmeats.

  
"¡Aléjate de ella, puta!"

  Amy's eyes opened. Javier was a blur. His hand slid under her neck.

  "How'd you tell?" She gestured weakly at the other vN, and then at herself. "Me? From them?"

  Javier hoisted her up, cursing when her arm rolled bonelessly off his shoulder. He switched positions, tried again, hissed at her knee. When he held her close she could make out the definite lines of his hair curling away from his head against the glare of the hangar.

  "Please. I know my own flesh and blood when I see it."

  Together they took flight.

 

The hangar was actually a portable storage unit, Javier said. He'd had a hell of a time finding it. It was way at one end of the campus, on land the company hadn't really developed yet, and once used for testing aerial systems. There were a bunch of them. He guessed the other portables were full of Amy's clademates. The team kept Javier in another building entirely.

  "When they took your aunts and started driving away again, I thought we were going to another city." His leaps took them over the tops of buildings. At least, it seemed that way. What he landed on was flat and hard. The smell of trees was distant. "This place is like a small town. They took me for walks. Like a fucking dog. Meanwhile, they b-beat the sh-shit out of you."

  "Game," Amy managed to say.

  "Oh, I know about the game. I saw the fucking game. They
showed me
the fucking game."

  "Long time."

  "A week. You spent a week in there. I think they were ttrying to k-kill you. If it happened during a test, they could treat it like an accident."

  Something bothered her. She couldn't remember what. Not grief. Unsearchable. Censored, for now. Something else. Her good hand spasmed on Javier's shoulder. "Junior!"