Architect (Last Resistance Book 3), page 21
There’s only one reason to pull the machines back like this. To evacuate the clones and brainwashed prisoners and let the enemy’s ground forces advance, undeterred, into the city center.
It’s not a radius. It’s a goddamn bullseye. And the countdown timer has begun.
By the time Glasgow shuts down the signal minutes later I’m on my knees, hot tears flowing over my cheeks.
My breath emerges in a shaky whistle as I regain my feet. Thankfully, the ax doesn’t seem to have done more than superficial damage to a couple instruments on the console, but I’m not sure it matters either way.
“What did you see?” Glasgow sounds almost considerate, almost human, in this voice that isn’t mine. There was never gentleness in my broadcasts, only a rousing demand for action. I wonder if this is Glasgow’s real voice belonging to someone still around or else now long dead. Or maybe neither. If this is the same AI responsible for the massacre at the theater—and I’ve never gotten solid confirmation it is or isn’t—then Glasgow began its career as a thespian. It’d need to be good at voices. At pretending to be something it’s not. We’re alike, in that way. Actors on a world stage.
“They’re going to destroy the city.” I struggle to find words through my extreme nausea. “And everyone in it. Did you know? Is that why you launched the boat without us?”
“Do you still wish me to stop the vessel, Rhona Long?”
“Will there be enough time?”
“Statistically, no.”
Someone’s still banging on the door behind me, but I don’t hear Camus anymore. It sounds like whoever it is might have found another ax and are trying to bust inside.
“I’ll play those odds,” I say to Glasgow. “Do it.”
“I hope it makes a difference,” Glasgow says, again using my voice.
“That makes two of us,” I answer as the persistent oscillation underfoot suddenly vanishes. The shore passes either side of the vessel more slowly. The boat is not stopped but drifting. I’d guess we can’t afford to stop completely by dropping anchor, and Glasgow knows it. Well, if this is the most the machine’s willing to compromise, I’ll take it. And pray it’s enough.
It takes effort to get Samuel on deck since he can’t climb the ladder, and Ulrich refuses to leave the water until Samuel is safely aboard. In the end, we have to lower an emergency craft for them both since Samuel can’t even wrap a rope around himself without aggravating his injury. The entire process takes longer than I’d have liked, and the whole time the stares of Jo’s people press against my back, the mood shifting from general concern to annoyance. The tension builds like a wave, breaking only once the engines start back up and we’re actively moving downriver again.
“Take him below.” Jo calls two bystanders forward with just a crook of her fingers. “Kalani and Jacob will look after him.”
“We have our own medic,” I say, tightening my arm around Samuel. For some reason I feel extra protective. After almost losing him, I don’t want to give him up to the care of strangers. “We just need supplies—”
Jo frowns sympathetically. “I’m afraid your friends decided against coming with us.”
“Sorry, what? All of them?”
“Ellen Soo decided to come with us, and a young man who calls himself ‘Dunk’. They’re below deck helping to prepare cabins for everyone. But as for the rest of the Canadians, no.” That would include the rest of the Canadians and Charlene. I can hardly blame her after everything she’s been through—everything I put her through. But it still feels like a slap in the face.
“Kalani and Jacob are both good at what they do,” Camus tells me in a voice that is entirely too gentle. I don’t like that he thinks that’s what I need right now, gentling. I’m calm. I’m so freaking calm. “You can trust them.”
“It’s fine, Rhon,” Samuel agrees.
But I’m not sure I trust anyone—or anything—aboard this boat. “You left them behind too?” I say to Jo.
“They chose their own way,” Jo says. “Not everyone’s minds can be changed. It seems they felt they’d be better off following another.”
Bullshit, I almost respond, but everyone has a breaking point. A line they won’t cross. Working with machine-lovers and a commander they no longer trust could definitely constitute such. “And where exactly did they go?”
“That I don’t know.”
“Into the city?”
“I don’t know,” Jo repeats.
I have trouble believing the rest of my team unanimously decided on remaining in a war-torn city versus evacuating with the only known friendlies in the area, but I can litigate their decision all I want to and it won’t change the facts. They knew my plan to find Samuel and then leave the city. If Jo’s to be believed, they chose another way. They chose Charlene.
They didn’t choose me.
I hope I’m wrong about the higher echelon’s plans and my friends don’t come to regret their decision.
I deliver Samuel to Kalani and Jacob, hoping Samuel will ask me to come with him. He doesn’t, departing without a word. I tell myself it’s all the pain he’s in, not that he doesn’t want me around, even though he’s definitely been acting strangely since being rescued. I pass Ulrich an anxious look that he returns with a nod before following the group below deck.
Nothing remains but to wait as the boat moves into the mouth of the river and toward the freedom of sea. We’re moving at a decent clip. Whatever happens now happens regardless of anything I do; I’m surprisingly relieved by that fact. All the fight from the last few hours goes out of me at once. But as I move to find somewhere to sit, desperate to get off my aching feet, Camus lays a hand on my shoulder.
“Can we talk?”
“Uh oh,” I say, “Am I in trouble?”
“Privately,” he adds with a meaningful look toward Jo, who is currently in serious consultation with some of the other machinists.
I nod and allow Camus to draw me away from the main group. Judging by the grotesque growths of algae as large as basketballs in this corner of the deck and its hard-rusted balustrades, the boat’s better days are behind it, but for now it seems seaworthy enough. I let my mind distract me with inconsequential thoughts like this, afraid of the coming conversation with Camus. He looks serious. Never a good sign.
“Fire away,” I say when it’s clear that we’re alone.
“I don’t mean to flog a dead horse, but… back in the city—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
He opens and closes his mouth in an aborted attempt at arguing. “Fine. Then perhaps we can discuss what happened just now, with you barricading yourself in the wheelhouse with an ax.”
I place my hands on the railing, clenching the metal. Wind from the movement of the boat buffets the side of my face, and Portland passes ahead of me, the city looking truly dead now from the outside, devoid of both soldiers and machines. Smoke hangs in the air, dense as fog. “It was the only way. Jo would have abandoned Samuel and Ulrich. I did what I had to in order to save my friends. I’d have done the same for you.”
“I don’t disagree with the intent, only the method. Joanna isn’t your enemy, Rhona. I know you have your disagreements, but she’s a reasonable person who genuinely cares about others. You don’t have to fight her. You can just talk to her.”
“Talking didn’t seem to be getting you anywhere.”
“You didn’t give me time—”
“Because we didn’t have time!” I snap, turning toward him. It takes effort to rein in my volume, but I do it to avoid uncomfortable glances from the machinists. “There’s a reason Glasgow cast off without us. Machines are going to do to Portland what the New Soviets did to Calgary and Detroit and Palo Alto.”
I can tell this news catches him off guard because he fumbles his response, seemingly caught between multiple questions he wants answered. “How did you—did Glasgow tell you this?”
“Sort of.” I take a small, steadying breath. “I saw it.”
“You… saw it?”
I have a split second in which to decide whether or not to come clean, knowing he might think I’ve gone completely mad. But it might also help him to understand my recent behavior, and right now I need to be understood. The alternative is remaining alone, slowly sinking into my secrets, and that didn’t turn out so well for my predecessor. “I’ve been experiencing visions—or something like them. I see through the machines. When you first found me it was happening then too. For some reason I’m able to tap into the higher echelon’s hive-mind consciousness. But only when I’m exposed to a specific signal.”
“If this is a joke,” Camus begins, starkly serious, “it’s in poor taste.”
“I wish it were. I don’t know why it’s happening or how it’s even possible. I’m hoping Samuel might have some ideas, but it’ll have to wait until he’s well.”
A moment passes, the wind moaning forlornly above the sounds of the disappearing conflict, and then Camus opens his arms to me. I’m caught off guard by the generous invitation, but find myself gravitating to him anyway, unexpectedly hungry for his closeness. I want him to tell me everything’s going to be all right, though I wouldn’t believe him even if he did.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs as I relax against him. Despite the shocking wet of his clothes I’m comforted, soothed by his touch and the familiar tones of his voice. “I didn’t know. I wish you’d told me sooner.”
“At first I didn’t trust that what I was experiencing was even real,” I say. “I thought it was like the psychogenic attacks I had back at McKinley after the bombing. It wasn’t until the machines answered my orders and shot themselves that I knew I wasn’t imagining it. But that knowledge didn’t make things better. Camus, I feel like I’m going crazy.”
In response, his arms tighten around me. “You’re not crazy.” I make a doubtful noise, and he chuckles lightly. “You’re passionate. A little dogged at times. Stubborn. But maybe those are all good qualities, given what you’ve had to endure. Considering that you’ve had no frame of reference for what you’ve been going through, I’d say you’re handling things rather well.”
I raise a skeptical brow. “You were just telling me how worried you were about me thirty seconds ago.”
He pauses to clear his throat. “I didn’t have all the facts.”
“Facts like how I’m somehow hardwired to communicate with machines and can receive the higher echelon’s commands through a mysterious signal like a glorified walkie-talkie?”
“Yes. Those. Put like that, it does sound… odd, granted. But is it any odder than being a clone? Life is strange. Yours more than most.”
Tell me something I don’t know.
We find a place to sit on deck. There’s no lack of seating as this appears to have once been a ferry of some kind. Benches line a portion of the deck, and it’s hard not to picture them filled with the ghosts of sightseers.
All that’s left now is to wait.
Given how long it took to travel the city by foot, I’m surprised by how quickly our vessel meets the Columbia river and then, at last, the sea. Out here we make far better time, as the boat makes use of its hydrofoil, speeding us along the surface of the water like an ice skater balanced on one blade.
Salt air swats me in the face, making all my cuts sing with pain, but at least I can breathe easier away from all the smoke. It’s harder to judge out here in the water, without landmarks such as buildings and freeways to use as points of reference, but a little farther and I’m confident we’ll have exited the lethal radius of whatever the higher echelon has planned.
“I’m going back to the wheelhouse,” I say. “Maybe I can listen to the signal and get a sense of when the attack is coming.”
“Is that safe?” Camus asks. “Do you know what that signal’s doing to your mind, I mean?”
“Nope. Not a clue. But I’m not dead yet, so.”
His look is all disapproval, but he says, “I’ll come with you. Just in case.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to find a dry change of clothes?” The cold air hasn’t done the job of drying them out yet.
“That can wait.”
We’ve almost made it to the wheelhouse when the clouds split around a bolt of lightning. No, not lightning—
A warning alarm starts to wail through all of Glasgow’s physical analogs—each of the predators—as the bolt connects with the city. Except it isn’t lightning. It isn’t even a missile like the ones used to immolate Calgary. An enormous plume of darkness blooms around it, swallowing the city—not quite a mushroom cloud, but its close relative. Our engines are already pushed to their maximum speed, but I swear I feel the rumble of them straining to go even faster.
The boat rocks as the foil suddenly begins to retract. I don’t understand why we’re setting down in the water when we should be going faster until I see the wall of water accelerating toward us, packed with superheated air and the shattered remains of Portland. We’d be upended for sure if it hit us while we were up on the foil—I’m not sure the boat won’t capsize even now.
“Brace!” Jo cries over the horrified silence on deck. It seems I’m not the only one whose brain isn’t computing quickly. If this were a nuclear attack we’d be dead, but it’s still a technology I’ve never seen the machines implement before. And then I think about all the people still in the city. Charlene and all the McKinley and Oregon ground forces.
No one could have survived that.
I’m not sure we’re going to survive it either.
Camus and I reach for each other at the same time, crowding ourselves into the wheelhouse with Jo and a few others. All of us crouch below the window and grab onto whatever we can, which mainly consists of the navigation table anchored to the floor.
The boat tilts dangerously as the wave hits, and I think, we didn’t make it. We aren’t far enough out from the city. I think about that radius, about the death that lies inside.
Everything goes dark as violent water swarms the deck. Screams punctuate the blow, both from inside the wheelhouse and from outside, where those on deck had no time to get below and had to take their chances abovedeck. Come to think of it, it’s probably not any better below, where water will be pushing down the stairwells.
The kinetic energy of the blast is enough that I can feel it even through the walls of the ship, like a thousand guns fired at once. The air inside the wheelhouse pressurizes like the inside of a plane, only much more rapidly. My ears pop, and my stomach lurches like we’re falling, rather than being swept away from the city.
Camus grips my hand. I wonder briefly if this is how it always ends for us. Holding onto each other. Begging in body, not words, for more time.
The bulkheads groan with a sound like air escaping from the mouth of a long dead corpse. The boat isn’t going to withstand this terrible force. I picture the walls of the wheelhouse caving in, the glass shattering like my visor did in the Willamette, my world becoming nothing more than ice water and blackness, like being swallowed down the throat of a giant.
But the walls do not fall. The glass must be reinforced, because it does not break. The boat manages to hold stubbornly together, and then, miraculously, the water begins to retreat from the window.
Instead of releasing back down the river toward the sea, the wave lurches the boat again, this time back toward the city. I move cautiously onto my knees in time to see the effects of the blast. In addition to absolutely leveling the city, the force evaporated the rivers through Portland and the part of the Columbia that snakes around it on the north side. I can see the angle of the naked shore as well as the water rushing back in. We’re caught on a tidal swell, dragged into the absence. I’m not sure what will happen if we don’t escape this wave. I don’t know if there’s any radioactivity from whatever just destroyed the city, but I have worries beyond that. If we become beached on the shore of the city, we’ll be trapped once more.
“Give it more power, Glas,” I tell the AI.
“There is a risk to the electronics,” Glasgow warns.
“If we don’t escape this wave, the electronics will be the least of our worries.”
“If the systems become overloaded, we could be stranded in the current.”
“Do what she says,” Jo orders. She nods to me, and I nod back. I think we can both agree, better to be dragged to the sea than caught in the higher echelon’s snare, left to be hunted by the machines that have gathered at the edges of the devastation. If anyone survived, there’s nothing left for them to live off of there; eventually they will be driven into the net the higher echelon has cast around the city.
The console lights flicker as all power is diverted to the engines. I feel the vessel straining as Glasgow battles to break us free from the wave, sailing us perpendicular to the current. It reminds me of resisting the G-forces of a rollercoaster curve.
“Come on, come on,” I whisper under my breath, watching the city slowly slide away from the center of the window. Relying on an artificial intelligence to save me was never part of my plan, but what’s that saying, “man plans, God laughs?” I’m sure Glasgow will have a fine chuckle after all this.
I hate being unable to do more than cheerlead, but I continue to lean there, gaze pinned to the horizon like I can save us through sheer force of will. The alternative is admitting that none of this is within my control. I have been out of power since Calgary, but this is the final nail in the coffin of my illusions to the contrary.
A moment later, I realize there is something I can do. It takes effort to find my legs, especially against the tilting angle of the deck.
“What are you doing?” Fear laces Camus’s voice like a whip.
“I’m going to see if anyone needs help on the deck.”
“No,” he says. “Rhona. Absolutely not.” I can tell he’s trying to scoop his thoughts together to tell me it’s too dangerous, that I could slip off the deck and into the water and that would be that. No recovering my body, just like the last time.
