Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I leap out of the rowboat and begin my swim to the far side of the lake, feet pushing against a submerged log so I can course underwater as long as possible. All of it out of sight of Ambrose.

My thoughts clarify. I decide I’ll leave forever, strike out and make my way as far as the ruins of Inverness, let Cusk or Fédération do the work of apprehending (destroying?) my trespasser without me having to witness the carnage.

By the time I emerge from my long swim to the far shore, though, Sheep high-stepping over the slippery mossy rocks to be as close as possible to me, I find myself leaning against a trunk and looking for Ambrose as I catch my breath. To keep up my situational awareness.

He’s still in the boat, motionless. Stunned. I’m sure I surprised him; I surprised me, too. But I knew somewhere in the back of my brain that I’d be losing my home the moment he arrived at my door, that my solitude was over as soon as my location was known. That is my fault as much as his, for letting down my guard. I’m not about to continue to stick my neck out for this intruder from a warring nation, even if he’s uniquely tied to my own fate, thousands of years from now and across the galaxy.

As I watch him, I also realize that I don’t want Ambrose to be murdered by a warbot. That I liked having him here.

What a stupid, stupid organ, the heart.

Maybe I don’t want to be alone. Maybe a sheep isn’t enough company. Those damn fish flashing deep under the ice, scales catching the light only when they turn.

Crouching in brackish muck, water dripping from my soaked shirt, I watch Ambrose take up the oars and row himself away from me—and to my hut, where he disappears inside. No doubt helping himself to my carefully foraged supplies, my weapons and food.

He ruined my life, and now he’s taking over my home.

He’s got my cottage to live in, while I’m up to my shoulders in the slimy reeds.

I might not have thought this through very well.

I guess I’d assumed the warbot would be on us immediately. But it could be days or weeks until one arrives. Or maybe it never will. I’m not sure what to do next. Suddenly—frustratingly—lightheaded, I clomp out of the reeds and sit on the wet pine needles of the forest floor.

Only a few dozen warbots exist in the world, so the Dimokratía cosmology academy couldn’t spare a functioning one for us to practice with. We conducted training exercises around warbot tech, though, since you can’t understand modern world history without becoming intimately familiar with them. They determined the outcomes of each of Dimokratía and Fédération’s three major wars, and maintaining access to warbots is the primary reason that each country has to include the Cusk Corporation in its political decisions. Warbot political clout, and accumulated wealth through decades of military dominance, were essential to Cusk pulling off the Coordinated Endeavor mission in the first place. A warbot can fire two rounds a second and process visual and auditory information with near instantaneous speed, which means their target has no time to run or even strategize once it’s been spotted. Warbots don’t need to think before they leap. Even trapping one won’t work, since they detonate if they’re restrained. Adding in the fact that it can print itself new ammunition from elements easily found in soil, one warbot can reasonably take on an army of humans (not that either country is putting organic bodies on the front lines anymore). It’s hard to imagine how Ambrose can possibly prevail if he stays here. More than impossible to imagine. Impossible, full stop. Our only option is to flee.

Maybe he is intentionally waiting here for the warbot to kill him?

Or maybe he thinks the warbot will escort him back to receive judgment from Cassandra Cusk. Even though that is his mother, I would still bet the warbot will kill him here and now, adding Ambrose Cusk to the long line of would-be rebels whose executions were livestreamed by their country at war.

If the warbot isn’t coming after me—and there is a chance of that, since I’m not the one who livestreamed an attempted takedown of the world order—I can just worry about keeping myself out of the gunfight, listening for the buzz of electrical bolts or the pop of gunfire, then cleaning up any blood, patching any bullet holes, and returning to peace. After that, no one who remains in the world will know where I am.

I stare at the glass wall that I so recently cleaned. It’s full of dazzling reflected light from the lake, so I can’t see inside. I stroke Sheep’s still-woolly head; she gives a loose thread from my fustanella an experimental nibble and then huffs down and closes her eyes. She falls asleep, blissfully unaware of the executioner robot on its way.

I continue to pet her, running my hands over her soft fuzzy ears. Sheep will never be wild. She’s from a long lineage of animals who have been selected, generation after generation, for their docility. Without me, not only does she have no one to protect her from predators (wild dogs roam through this area from time to time), but she doesn’t even have anyone to save herself from her own hair production. She’d have died if I hadn’t come along to shear her. She needs others in order to survive. It’s good she has me.

When the clouds clear the sky, I can better see through the glass. Ambrose isn’t rooting through my belongings. He’s hunched over his travel bag, unpacking and repacking. Probably taking stock of what he has available to help himself survive.

He’s a Cusk. He must have experience with actual warbots. He probably had a warbot bodyguard in his nursery. He must know that he has no chance of fighting it. And yet he’s staying here, not fleeing.

Why isn’t he fleeing?

I fall asleep without quite meaning to, nestled in soft pine needles as I listen to Sheep’s snores and the soft lapping of the lake. What wakes me is a sound wave, brief but percussive, over so quickly that when I come awake I can remember only being startled, and have to work to recall the sound itself.

Something broke the sound barrier.

A warbot’s one limitation is ground speed, which maxes out at a fast human walk. I can’t imagine any of the Fédération higher-ups wants to wait while a warbot jogs its way here, so they are probably flying it in close to us. The nearest suitable clearing is the abandoned parking lot, so I extricate myself from still-sleeping Sheep and head down toward it, avoiding the boardwalk and sticking to the chaotic green woods, my boots squishing through thick moss.

What will I do when and if the warbot comes for me? I’m not sure. Glean what information I can. Hope to process it quickly enough to save myself. Nhut.

The rain is back. I find the best shelter I can, under a low and dense tree, but even still, large freezing drops find the gap where my collar meets my skin. Chipmunks and birds flit through the area, and I watch a wild boar—an animal that’s newly returned to Scotland after centuries of being locally extinct—roam through the parking lot. It’s a perfect, wide-open arrow shot, the kind I never usually get. I wish I had my bow with me, so I could roast myself some wild boar tonight. The boar disappears into the blackberry bushes on the far side of the clearing, unaware that it was ever being hunted.

I’m as quiet as I can be, but quiet doesn’t matter much against the wild dogs, who rely more on smell. An hour into my watch they come through the far side of the clearing, yipping and whining and sniffing. They’re onto me. Not that I’m in much danger, since this is the loner pack, the small and runty dogs. One is massively pregnant, and lagging behind the rest. When they inevitably find me, the dogs will growl and circle and raise my heart rate, but I can handle them.

This is no normal dog encounter, though. Their finer senses have picked up on something I haven’t. They bark and scatter. I withdraw closer to the trunk, pulling my knees in tight.

A low whine, rising in pitch as a small craft hovers over the clearing, high enough not to risk interference from the EMP dust on the ground. It is magnet propelled, so there is no wind to gust against anything on the ground. It’s like the flying craft has been digitally inserted. The rest of the clearing is as it was, except for the unnerved dogs.

What looks like a white basketball drops, thudding heavily into the ground, without even the hint of a bounce. Its two hemispheres expand to show a glowing electrified middle, forming a vertical hovering cylinder. I’m seeing my first warbot.

It ticks and whirs, processing data in the area. Once it’s got enough information about threats and targets, it will decide what to do.

Which means I need to get out of here.

But not right away. The warbot can detect the vibrations of pulsing blood. Instead of fleeing, I concentrate on my urge to flee, go deep inside and drop my heart rate like I’ve been trained to do. In the academy we spent hours in chilled pools, cold enough to ride the edge of hypothermia, so we’d learn what a slow pulse felt like and—eventually—be able to produce one at will. We all had our own techniques; my mind brings me back to slowly treading water next to the comfort of Li Qiang. Not so close to touch, but having him near enough to know that this imagined cold darkness might be close to oblivion, but is not death.

Even though doing so risks getting my pulse up, I keep my eyes open. That’s why I can watch as, along the rim of the warbot’s top rounded half, the hatch beneath the painted Cusk insignia flips open and the white barrel of a weapon appears.

It’s over within a couple of seconds. Pht pht pht , and then the wild dogs are dead. They don’t even have a chance to whine. There are six small red clouds where the dogs were, and then the sound of extra rainfall as their gory mist splatters to the earth.

There is no fighting this thing. I know this now more than ever.

I close my eyes, will my pulse slower and slower. I won’t even know if I fail. If the warbot attacks, I will cease to be before I know anything.

I have not yet ceased to be.

I open my eyes, to see the warbot hover over each puddle of dog splatter, then float to the far edge of the clearing. It goes still—likely determining whether there are other targets nearby, and where it should head next if it doesn’t detect any.

My pulse. Low but not enough to pass out. Cold, dark pool. Li Qiang.

The moment goes long enough that my fingertips tingle, the sustained focus making my legs scream out for permission to tremble. Another bodily reaction I need to suppress. Sweat runs down my temples, salty in my mouth, as I watch the warbot hover. Finally, it floats down the overgrown road. I take a deep breath. The warbot has chosen the most likely route to human settlement, which is fortunate for two reasons: it’s heading away from my home, and it probably can’t detect my pulse anymore at this distance.

I’ve gotten lucky. Like Ambrose, its coordinates led it to this lot but not my hut itself; it will have to search until it finds us. Maybe Devon Mujaba didn’t log a very precise location, or maybe he worked in a safeguard. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before the warbot’s search brings it circling back. But we have a little window.

Move, Kodiak!

Part of me is inclined to flee for my life, but another part of me, the one that cried when I made that recording for my future selves, says I need Ambrose to know that I have seen the warbot, and that there is no chance of survival if he stays.

I now know that there’s no chance of survival for me, either, if I stay. Even if I’m not the target, if the warbot is willing to kill dogs just for happening to be in the area, it will be perfectly happy to kill me. As I speed along the path to the hut, I wonder if Ambrose has tracked down my bow, if he might accidentally attack me. I don’t think so, and it’s not worth the risk of calling out and alerting the warbot to where I am.

I’m cursing myself as I go to help him. The heart is not the wiser organ.

And finally, a thought that’s been lying out of focus at the edge of my mind becomes sharply and horribly clear: Devon Mujaba sabotaged the zygotes. I’ve managed to shove the shock of that to the periphery until now, but it is creeping in.

Not a useful thought to indulge. I leap along the mossy wooden planks, picking up speed as I go. I hurl myself into the door to the hut, knowing all too well how flimsy its wooden latch is. As I burst in, I’m ready to warn Ambrose.

But he’s not inside.

I look out the glass at the broad lake. A small figure makes its way along the shore, and heads into the trees at the far end.

Ambrose heard the sonic boom, just like I did. And he’s already come to the conclusion to flee.

I’m the one being left behind.

I’m the one in danger.

I grab whatever is within reach—bow, arrows, a spare shirt, a knapsack containing some food and maybe some bandages, if I remembered to put them away. I don’t have time to check before I’m hurrying down the steps, listening for signs of the approaching warbot. A hawk cries, and the lake’s waves lap, but that’s it. Not that the warbot will make much noise while it stalks, not if it’s functioning properly.

I scramble along the other side of the lake from Ambrose, so that I can pick up Sheep on the way. She looks at me groggily, then gets up and bleats. She keeps up easily as I speed through the trees, hooves better than feet at our current task. Of course she has no idea what danger we’re facing, but she’s clearly picked up on my urgency.

I give my home one last long look, then speed along to catch up to my intruder and shipmate.