Architect (Last Resistance Book 3), page 4
The man drags his dirty look over to Lefevre. “Something wrong with her?”
Dhruv answers first. “Give her a second,” he says in a firm tone, holding out a hand as if to keep the man back. He’s the last person I would’ve gone to for sympathy, but I’m grateful for his compassion all the same. He approaches me carefully, leaning into view. Close, but not too close. His thick brows draw neatly together, an unspoken question in his eyes. Are you okay?
I press my lips together and offer a drained nod, but I can’t manage to make myself say, fine. Because I’m not. We lost Liz and Armin and too many others yesterday, Prim’s missing, and now I’m seeing goddamn ghosts. I feel like a lunatic, or maybe a very confused prophet. But I have the opposite of Cassandra’s problem: everyone keeps listening to me when they shouldn’t.
The stranger snorts derisively. “You militia types are all the same. Think the whole damn world revolves around you. I’d love to sit around here lollygagging all day, but I’ve got places to be, people I’m looking after. Gatsby!” He whistles, like he’s calling for a dog.
That’s when I hear it: a moaning whir. The rushing water had stifled the sound, and it isn’t until I see the broad shoulders of the machine rising above the aisles several gondolas down that I can pick out the discordant noise.
The machine turns in answer to the stranger’s summons.
Within seconds, four EMP-Gs are trained on it, my team practiced in the art of putting machines down.
“Hold on now!” the stranger shouts, putting himself between us and the machine. He’s flapping his arms like a corner mascot trying to get attention. It works, to an extent. We all glance at him, but only for a moment. Lefevre’s already trying to inch us back into the storeroom—more defensible and our only sure exit—and Dhruv’s head is on a swivel, looking for more machines. Where there’s one, there’s always more. “Would you put those goddamn things down?”
The machine starts toward us. The machines never wear any expressions on their face; some, like those operating in hospitals, were built to look friendly with simple features, but by and large most machines today are autonomous weapons in vaguely anthropomorphic bodies. It’s still easy to project features onto the sensors they do have. This machine’s optics articulate slowly, their glow a soft white as opposed to red, like the exposed bulb from a broken taillight. Its ponderous movements put me in mind of an old man, and I feel a pang of instinctive sympathy as it clips a cardboard display and stumbles a little, its left leg buckling with every other step, almost like a limp.
As it nears, I want to rub my eyes, unbelieving. Someone—presumably this stranger—has sharpied in a mustache on the machine’s face, as well as scrawling across its broad forehead in an arching bridge from one optic to the other: GATSBY. There’s also a smiley face with X’s for eyes on what could be considered its right pectoral and numerous other drawings across its lower half that look like they came from a child’s unsteady hand.
Ximena mutters in Spanish what I can only assume is an oath. She looks itchy, like she wants to pull the trigger on this thing. I share the urge, but the man is clearly comfortable having his back to the machine—plus, he’s wearing a firearm on his hip that will do a lot more damage to us than our EMP-Gs will to his pet machine. Although, given the age of this machine, maybe I’m wrong about that.
I extend my arm, offering an unspoken order to my teammates to stand down. No one lowers their weapon, but I feel confident their nerves will hold. They won’t fire unless provoked.
“Explain,” I say, not taking my finger off the trigger of my own EMP-G either.
The man narrows his eyes. “You short on memory or something? I gotta go through this again?”
“What do you mean?” Then it clicks. Before, when I thought he was Rankin, he acted like he recognized me. You again, he’d said. “Have you seen me before?”
“Are you trying to screw with me?”
I gesture openly. “Just an honest question.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen you before,” he says, sounding a little less testy now. “About two hours ago. You seemed confused then, too. Nearly took out ol’ Gatsby here with that fancy pistol of yours. I just got him up and running again. You know, it’d break my little girl’s heart if I came back without him.”
He has a daughter. That fact is almost more shocking than him traveling with a machine as a companion. No one has kids anymore. Even at McKinley it was a rare and discouraged occurrence. We’re not at the repopulate-the-Earth stage of the apocalypse, not yet, and I figured you’d be hard pressed to find someone willing to bring an innocent life into this deadly world. But then, those on the outside likely don’t have the same reproductive control as in McKinley. Do prophylactics have expiration dates?
I wrestle my mind back from the trivial, focusing on the most important part of what the stranger’s just said. “Two hours ago. Did she say where she was going?”
“She,” he repeats. “If that wasn’t you, you’ve got a clone running around.”
I almost laugh and make a point not to look at the others, afraid that if I do I’ll break. “Something like that. She’s my sister.”
“Twin, huh? My cousins were twins.”
I wait, expecting him to say more, but he doesn’t. Okay then. “We think she might have gotten lost, so if you could—”
“Didn’t seem lost to me. Bit desperate, sure, but who isn’t these days?” He eyes me warily. “Seems to me she was running from something. Looking for a fast route out of town. I figured you’d know about that unless you’re who she’s running from.”
“Like I said,” I glance at the machine, making sure to keep it in my periphery at all times, “she’s my sister.”
He rubs his reddened nose with the flat of his hand. “That might not mean much. Those closest to you often do the most damage.”
“I don’t want to hurt her,” I insist. “I just want to find her. And we’re kind of in a hurry, so if you don’t mind…?”
The stranger shakes his head. “You’re not listening. She’s long gone by now. I don’t know where she was headed, except away from here. Maybe you’ll consider doing the same. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but there’s a pretty nasty fire heading this way. I suggested she go south to avoid it, but I don’t know if she took my advice. Hell, I’m not sure if she even heard it. She was talking to herself a little bit, by the end. Gatsby seemed to like her all right, though.”
Talking to herself? I’m no doctor, but that seems… bad. Of all the surviving clones, Samuel believed Prim was in the best physical shape, less vulnerable to diseases caused by mutations in her genome, but maybe we should have been more worried about her mental health.
“What was she saying?” Dhruv asks.
“It was more like she was seeing things that weren’t there.” Kind of like imagining a stranger as your dead friend? Hell, maybe I need to be evaluated, too. “You ever see someone suffering from night terrors? Like that, but without the screaming.”
Everyone is quiet, like they’re all waiting for me to say something—but what do you say to that?
Are you sure you can trust her? Samuel had asked me in confidence, our last night in Kamloops before the fires pushed us east. I thought he was referring to Snow, not Prim, though now I’m not sure.
She’s me, isn’t she? I’d replied. She wants the same things I do.
Samuel had been uncharacteristically quiet and closed-off since Calgary, and at that time his brown eyes, normally soft and gentle, were hard with worry. That’s what concerns me.
I knew what he meant. One clone had already tried to kill me back at McKinley, desperate for the life she wrongly believed was hers, and Rhona the White had made subtle threats of the same in Kamloops. They all wanted what I had. They all wanted to be Rhona Long—and in many ways, they already were, as much as me. I couldn’t deny them their identity, but I wouldn’t deny my own either. It was an impossible situation with no easy solution.
You don’t have to trust her—trust me. I reached out to give Samuel’s arm a gentle, reassuring squeeze, but he was already moving away, putting even more distance between us. Hey. You do trust me, right?
The room held the quiet of a grave, of something dead or dying.
Maybe we shouldn’t have gone to Calgary, he finally murmured. But before I could interrogate him on what exactly he meant by that, Lefevre was calling for me from downstairs. The smoke was getting worse, the nearby fires almost showing in the sky above the trees, and the Canadians had been ready to move out.
That was over a month ago. I’ve tried bringing up what Samuel said since, but he never wants to talk about it. He’s given excuses that he’d just been tired, that he’d spoken carelessly. But I’ve watched him around the Longs, and I’ve studied the Longs’ behavior around him. It’s not all forgiveness and healing embraces, as it was in the immediate aftermath of Calgary. We’re not one big happy family. We’re the scar tissue from a mistake.
“Thanks for the insight,” I manage around the lump in my throat. “One last question and then I promise we’ll be out of your hair.” The man-who-is-not-Rankin nods his consent. I indicate Gatsby with a tilt of my head. “That machine… did you reprogram it? Why hasn’t it attacked you?”
He grins for the first time, but it’s touched by self-deprecation. “What do I look like, some kind of nerd? No, I didn’t reprogram it. No need to. Couldn’t pay for internet anymore, and without Wi-Fi I never got around to updating its operating system before those big fancy AIs lost their goddamn minds. Gatsby there’s all original software. I could barely afford the thing, even with those government credits, but after my wife died, well. I needed help with Mollie. My daughter,” he clarifies.
“Aren’t you worried it’ll turn on you?”
The man barks out a laugh that sounds more like choking. “This old rust-bucket can barely turn a page in a book. It was never made for war.”
I glance at the weapon that’s been messily soldered to its right appendage, the machine equivalent of a wrist. “You gave it a gun.”
“Just for show. Not everyone out here’s as friendly as me.” He lifts his wader as more water begins to rush inside, and then hefts a bag of what I assume is scavenged loot onto his machine partner. “If we’re done with the twenty questions, I’d like to be on my way. I’d suggest you do the same. This place isn’t gonna give you much else.” I’m not sure if he means the mall or the city, but he’s probably right, either way.
He's already a good ten feet away and going, Gatsby splashing after him, when I add, “You and your daughter could join us.” Lefevre gives me a questioning look, but I shrug. He doesn’t seem like a bad person, and it kills me to think of his daughter, Mollie, growing up in isolation. Not that we have anyone in our group her age, but still. Living people have to be better than an outdated nanny-machine. “Safety in numbers.”
“No, thanks. I’ve seen the trouble your type gets up to, doesn’t seem that safe to me. You’re wrong if you think bombs and bullets’ll win you some peace. In my experience, the harder you throw yourself at something, the harder that something’s going to push back.” He tosses out a halfhearted wave, continuing toward the broken storefront without slowing or even turning around. “Good luck finding your sister.”
It’s only later, after our sweep of the mall turns up nothing and we’re driving back to camp, that I realize I never asked the stranger his name. And he never asked me mine.
Four
The Erik Nielson Whitehorse International Airport, along with being a mouthful, has too many windows. It doesn’t have nearly enough walls. Back when there was a chance we could be airlifted out of the region, it seemed reasonable to post ourselves where a chopper or plane could conceivably land without much difficulty. Now all I can see are the vulnerabilities inherent in the building, all the ways machines might sneak in—and certain people out.
I find Dr. Samuel Lewis precisely where I expect, dressing injuries at one of the gates inside the main terminal where all our wounded were delivered. We brought back five injured, but when the stench of released bowels slaps me in the face and I catch sight of a pale hand hanging limply below a blanket, I mentally revise that estimate to four. Shit.
“What can I do?” I ask, pushing up to Samuel through the makeshift triage center. Mangled rolls of gauze, scissors, and strips of bloody cloth are piled on top of small meal trolleys no doubt pilfered from the planes parked and rotting out back. “How can I help?”
Samuel doesn’t immediately slacken with relief or pull his eyes from the man he’s helping. He finishes his current task, hands moving with training and confidence, before addressing me. His eyes take a moment to lose their daze as he leaves his bubble of focus.
“… Rhona.”
He sounds surprised, like he was expecting someone else. I hate that recent beat of hesitation, like he’s cycling through a mental checklist to make sure he’s not saying the wrong name. Samuel moves to hug me but stops at the last moment, remembering everything on him. His gloves are dark and slicked red. The front of his shirt is patterned in bloody tie dye, presumably from grasping hands, Samuel serving once more as a bridge for those desperate to hold onto life. “Did you find her?”
Of course, his first thought is for Prim. He must feel guilty for having lost her.
“No,” I say and gesture him to another part of the terminal where we can have a little more privacy. He departs reluctantly, casting one last worried glance behind him at the injured. For someone who isn’t that kind of a doctor, Samuel is pretty damn good at taking care of people.
I catch Samuel up with the discovery we made at the mall and who we met, carefully leaving out the part where I mistook the bald stranger for our dead friend. That’ll only make Samuel fret more, and although a tiny, selfish part of me is attracted to the idea of pulling in all his attention and being looked after right now, it’s not fair to foist more fear onto my friend just because I’m feeling insecure. What happened was a simple case of mistaken identity. That’s all.
“What are we going to do?” he asks, referring to Prim.
“Nothing,” I say, and when he furrows his brow at the cold note in my tone, I add, “There’s nothing we can do. She made the choice to leave. If she’d wanted us to know where she was going, she would’ve told someone. Left a note. Something.”
“Not if she’s in the midst of a mental health crisis.”
“We don’t know that she is.”
“The man you met said she was talking to herself and possibly hallucinating,” Samuel points out. “That could indicate—”
“It could indicate a lot of things,” I cut him off. “It was dark when she left. Maybe she bunked down there for the night and was still waking up when he found her. Or maybe the presence of his machine kicked off some temporary PTSD.”
Samuel frowns, unconvinced. “Is that what he said happened?”
“What do you want me to do?” I cross my arms. “Even if we had the numbers to canvas Whitehorse—which we don’t, especially now—and even if the Calgary fire wasn’t bearing down on us—which it very much is—Prim’s probably not even inside the city limits anymore.”
“Okay,” Samuel says.
He’s placating me. I don’t like the fact that he feels he needs to.
“I’m not trying to be callous,” I say. “I’m just being realistic. The mall was a crapshoot we just happened to win a little on. We aren’t going to find her when we don’t know where she’s headed.”
“C’mon, Rhon.” Samuel looks away, mouth flexing in a strained smile, almost a grimace. “We both know where she’s going. And why.”
McKinley. Camus.
“She can’t be that stupid—right? Obviously we would have gone back by now if it were safe.” Before Samuel can reply, I rush on, talking out my thoughts, “Plus, why wait this long? She could have ditched us long ago. What made her decide to leave now?”
Samuel takes a moment to consider this. “Well… this is the closest to McKinley we’ve come.”
“We have to do something about them,” I mutter darkly. “It isn’t safe anymore.” Although, as soon as I say it, I’m not sure whether I’m more afraid of something happening to the clones or them happening to someone else.
I pace away from Samuel and then back, chewing on my thumbnail. I want to twist my hair between my fingers, but it’s cut too short. I had to distinguish myself from the other Longs somehow. My odd freckles should’ve been enough, but it hadn’t felt like it.
I’m having trouble catching my breath. I tug at the front of my shirt still splattered with Liz’s blood—now dried to dark splotches not dissimilar, in fact, to the aforementioned freckles. My chest feels like someone’s tightening a belt across it, and I have to mentally order myself to hold still long enough for the frantic percussion of my mind to settle.
What if, by some miracle, Prim actually reaches McKinley? What then? The New Soviets would probably kill her outright, believing she’s me. But there’s also the possibility they drag her inside and prop her up as some kind of puppet. A beloved icon returned, alive and unmartyred.
And Camus… would he believe she’s me? On paper Prim certainly seems like the closest of us to the original Rhona. Based on the psychological tests Samuel’s run in the month since we found the clones, Prim retained more of her memories than the rest, more even than I did. I’ve seen how she can turn on the charm with others too. She’s persuasive. But is she persuasive enough? Even if Camus knew better, would he quietly resolve to accept her anyway? Close his eyes, tamp down his reservations, and just—pretend?
My lover’s face flashes in my mind’s eye, his voice tangled with regret.
I keep thinking, why not pretend for a while? But I can’t. I can’t forget. And I can’t love you like I loved her.
But he’d learned, hadn’t he?
“—Rhon?”
“What?” I snap at Samuel. He’s staring at me like he isn’t sure of me again, like he doesn’t know who I am. But he knows. He’s always known. “What?” I insist. “Say what you’re thinking.”
