vN (6 page)

  Emptiness aside, Amy liked the dumpster just fine. It was surprisingly clean, and its faint rusty smell gave her only a little twinge of hunger. If she were still in a child-sized body, it would have made the perfect spot to play Scorched Earth. She had designed her own tanks in games, of course, and had bounced and careened over their perfectly rendered deserts blowing the middles out of everything from Nazis to djinns, but she had never really played that kind of game
outside
, with things she could actually
touch.
She wasn't allowed to visit playgrounds during the day when human children might be there, so when her parents took her to the nearest place with swings and slides and cargo netting and a crow's-nest, it was always after dark and the other kids were always gone. She would sit up there alone, or maybe next to her dad on the swings (her mom's arms were so much stronger that she always pushed them both), but inevitably they left before too long.

  If they'd had a backyard, maybe she could have played those games there. But they weren't rich, so they didn't have one, so she didn't. She built her tanks and forts in-game instead, and her dollhouse's walls and chimneys had gone gluey and flexible with having been recycled and reprinted so many times. She wondered about the dollhouse, now. The week before graduation, she'd programmed some new designs – based on having looked up the word "caliphate" a while back. Maybe the panels were still there waiting for her in their tray; pale and thin like the bone cups she had seen in a museum once. When she got home, she could put all the pieces together.

  "What's taking you so long?" Javier asked.

  Amy looked up. Javier stood over the dumpster, clutching the old keyboard to his chest.

  Amy looked around the dumpster. "This place would make a great fort."

  Javier frowned deeply. "Were you tased as an infant? Quit daydreaming and get out of there." He moved on to the third dumpster. Amy heaved herself out of hers, and watched him cautiously put down his bounty before propping open the lid. Looking inside, he laughed and patted his belly. "We're eating good tonight, that's for sure," he said, and jumped in.

  The dumpster promptly closed around him. Amy watched the massive lid slam down on Javier's head. Locks sprang up, threading through bails that pinned the whole structure together. She heard nothing. Maybe he was too muffled in there. She took a hesitant step forward to listen, and startled as a sudden thud sounded against the walls of the dumpster. "Hey! Get me out of here!"

  Amy ran the rest of the way to the dumpster. She ran her fingers over the lock; it zapped her and she flew backward. She skidded roughly over the broken asphalt. Her teeth sang. Her limbs refused to move. This was twice in one night. Locked inside her own body, she worried about permanent memory damage. Javier continued banging inside his new cage. And now there was an alarm, and it was speaking in calm authoritative tones over funhouse music: "LIE DOWN ON THE GROUND AND PUT YOUR HANDS OVER YOUR HEAD. POLICE HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED. LIE DOWN–"

  
"Amy!"

  She tried speaking. "I… I can't…"

  
"AMY!"

  She forced herself to stand. Her legs were slow. She stumbled. "I'm coming…"

  "Get me out of here!" The dumpster shook with the force of his kicking and punching. She saw dents. "The whole lid's electrified!" she heard him say, his voice muffled with garbage. "You gotta get me out from outside!"

  "I…" She looked at her hands. "I'll try. Wait right here."

  "Hurry!"

  Amy staggered away from the dumpster.
You could just leave him, you know
, a voice inside said.
He's not your business. He kidnapped you at gunpoint
. Amy shook her head heavily. It would be wrong to leave him, if only because she had said that she wouldn't. She staggered forward toward the car, crossing the parking lot on traitorous feet. She opened the door with shaking hands. Thankfully, Javier had left the keys inside. Amy buckled herself in after two tries. She turned the ignition, and promptly rammed the sacks of old clothes. Wincing, she carefully switched to reverse, twisted in her seat to look behind her, and pulled away. Then she stopped with a jerk, and tried wrestling the car to her will. It was absurdly stubborn. She blinked and tried keeping her gaze straight. When it wan dered, so did the car. It felt heavy and stupid under her guidance, like a clumsy prosthetic. Javier had set the seat way back, and she had no idea how to fix it. She had to keep stretching her legs just to brake in shaky fits and starts. She made a wide turn and put the dumpster in her sights.

  "Hold on!" Crossing her fingers, Amy floored the gas and aimed straight for the dumpster. The impact threw her forward so hard her teeth clicked. A giant pillow exploded in her face, slapped there as though by an especially nasty girl at a sleepover. The alarm changed. She heard sirens, now. She wanted to sleep.

  Someone wrenched the passenger side door open. The car sagged under sudden and massive weight. Javier. "Good thinking," he said. "You shorted the system."

  "I crashed the car."

  "Yeah, well, get moving, unless you want to wind up back in jail."

  Amy looked up. She squinted out the shattered window. Police cars were filling the parking lot. "Oh, no…"

  "Oh, yeah," Javier said. "Floor it." He held his stomach and grimaced. "I mean it. Move! Now!"

  "Stop yelling at me!"

  "Start driving!"

  "Shut up!" Amy tried in vain to peek over the giant balloon in her face. "I can't see!"

  "Pull back and go right," he said. "I'll talk you through it." He bent double in his seat.

  "Are you OK? Did I crush you?"

  "No. Just drive." He hissed air through his teeth. "Aw, damn. Not good. Not good."

  "What's not good?"

  "Just drive!"

  Amy jerked the car into reverse, promptly rear-ending a police car, then peeled off across the parking lot. "Where am I going?"

  "You're entering traff– You're there."

  She heard horns.

  "Keep going straight. Nudge yourself left."

  
"Nudge myself?"

  "I don't know! Think left! Just do it!"

  "I
hate
this. I
hate
cars. I don't understand why people actually
like
this."

  "Those people drive a lot faster than you do."

  Amy's foot fell. She leaned out the window. An oncoming car nearly took her head off, and she ducked back inside. The car filled with red and blue police lights; the sirens sounded much closer, now. "What do I do?"

  Javier turned back to look at the police cars. "Uh… Go left."

  "There is no left! There are
cars coming
!"

  
"Puta madre,"
Javier muttered, rolling his eyes and yanking the wheel from her grasp.

  They roared across two lanes of traffic. The sound of Amy's shrieks filled her ears. Other cars swerved to avoid them.
Take your foot off the pedal
, something inside reminded her, but it was too late – she felt the ground give way beneath the car, heard a groaning creak as the vehicle tipped forward, then over, and began to fall.

  Trees rushed to catch them.

 

Amy tried her door. It was jammed; she had to slip outside her seatbelt (it took a lot of awkward bending) and slide over to the empty passenger side. In the dark, she could only feel around in the dirt. Javier must have crawled away. "Javier?"

  Nothing. Just distant road noise, and the occasional hush of air through the pines. Then the single chirp of a stopped police car. Turning, Amy saw two white vehicles parked at the place where the car had ripped through the guardrail. She didn't bother looking for humans; she scuttled away from the flickering rays of busted headlights and into the deeper darkness. She ran blindly. Rocks and raw roots tripped her twice, but she barely noticed. The important thing was to stay out of the light.

  Her new long legs no longer seemed so awkward; they carried her a lot farther a lot faster than her old ones would have done. Ducking under a low-hanging bough, Amy paused to listen again – this time for machines. Right now, humans worried her less than other, lesser robots. It made sense that the officers parked on the embankment hadn't come down to look for her; two baseline humans simply could not outrun a frightened vN. But a drone could survey the entire forest with a single glance, and a botfly could zip in and out of the trees to seek her out, and both of them could give the police the information they needed to surround her. She listened again. But she heard no high-pitched cicada whine… just the quiet hiss of muttered swear words.

  "Javier?"

  "Not so loud!" he said.

  He had hidden himself behind a tree a few yards away. She saw his foot, now, the only thing wiggling in the shadows. Amy scrambled over, her limbs twice as clumsy now, and leaned against the tree.

  "Are you OK?"

  He shook his head. He doubled over. "No." His lips pinched together and his eyes squeezed shut. "Jesus Christ, you'd think this'd get easier with time."

  "What's wrong?"

  Javier almost laughed. It came out high and a little desperate. "Where did you grow up, a fucking
convent?"
He slammed his head against the tree and trembled. The vibration came from inside him, like someone had twisted his tendons taut one at a time until they shivered and sang. Under his eyelids, his eyes darted back and forth. He smelled a little sweet; his systems had started burning energy at a furious pace.

  "You're scared," Amy said.

  "Gold star,
querida
, gold fucking star."

  "Hey, don't snap at me just because you're the one who's frightened. Don't you think it's a bit late for that now, anyway?" Javier continued shivering. His hands came up to cover his face. He rocked back and forth against the tree. Amy swallowed, and tried to think of something nicer to say. "I mean, you've already done some pretty scary things today, and you didn't seem frightened at all."

  Hesitantly, she reached over and tried to pat Javier's hand. It burned hot to the touch, and shook under her fingers. He grabbed them and squeezed them; Amy squeaked and he let go, a little.

  He spoke through gritted teeth: "This is different."

  Javier placed her hand over the warm skin of his enormous belly where his shirt had ridden up. Beneath it, something moved. Javier's heels ground ruts in the dirt. He whimpered and kept her hand pinned to his body. "When you feel it start to rip," he said, "you just keep it open, OK?"

  Amy looked into his damp and grimacing face. "What?"

  "Better this way. Didn't want to do this in a cell." Javier's eyes opened. They seemed calmer now, focused. "It's the stress. The shocks. He's early."

  Beneath Amy's fingers, something warm and wet oozed up from Javier's navel. It glistened in the dark. She pulled his shirt up the rest of the way. A seam opened, bubbled, split across his skin. Javier curled his fingers under the tear and pulled the skin back slowly.

  "You gotta help me," he said. "Baby's coming."

 
 

 
 

Javier's baby popped free of his father's body like a shiny coin from an old rubber purse. He emerged head-first, his wrinkled body wreathed in glimmering smoke, and blinked once at Amy before vomiting everywhere. Then he lifted up his arms feebly.

  "Pull him out," Javier said, holding his giant wound open with trembling hands.

  "What?"

  "Careful. He'll be slippery."

  Javier was right. Sticky threads black as obsidian covered his son, and they stretched like melting candy as Amy lifted him, leaving wisps of themselves curled around the surrounding trees and their needles. Amy had to wind the baby around a few times, like collecting noodles around a fork, before finally pulling him free. She tried to wipe him off (and succeeded only in coating her arms up to her elbows in Javier's goo), but Javier tugged the hem of her shirt.

  "Don't," he said. "It's good for him. Raw materials. Growth medium." He pushed at the flabby skin of his belly, trying to close the wound. It oozed out all over his hands. He curled in on himself like a human boy who'd just been kicked. "He needs the sun. Find a clear spot."

  Amy looked down at the baby in her arms. He had his father's perfect eyelashes and head of shiny black hair. The goo had already dried into a fine crust there, and it crackled all over Amy's arms and hands. He regarded her with calm, still eyes. "Don't you want to hold him?"

  "No. Go. Now." When she didn't move, Javier slit one eye open. "Please. Just gimme a minute. I'll be there."

  "Are you sure? Because–"

  "Will you get going, already?"

  Amy stepped back. "Fine. Sorry." She turned and started walking.

  "Hey."

  She whirled. "Now what is it?"

  "You're OK, right?" Javier swallowed. "You were sounding a little crazy, before."

  "Excuse me?"

  "Talking in your sleep," Javier said. "After we crashed." He tapped his temple. "Thought you were booting wrong."

  Amy frowned. "I'm fine. And I
don't
talk in my sleep."

  Javer grinned. "How would you know?"

  Rolling her eyes, she carried Javier's son into a little empty place where she could watch the sky paling into blue from an old stump. She and Javier must have crawled further away than she'd originally estimated, because from here she couldn't see the wake of destruction their stolen car must have left behind. When dawn finally came, she saw how alone they were – the trees stretched on for miles, their progress broken only by jagged lumps of rock. Water streamed between a few of them, forming dark ribbons that whispered down a mountainside ringed by other, lower mountains, all blanketed in a patchwork of alternating bald earth and spindly pines. Amy had never been anyplace this green before. There were fewer resources for vN in out-of-the-way places, her dad had told her. Cities were better. More shops sold vN food and the humans were friendlier, less afraid. It was safer, he said, to stay urban. Now they were lost in the middle of nowhere.