Debris of Shadows Book I: The Lies of the Sage Page 11

  “That’s right,” she said as tears welled in her eyes. “It would be enough to take at least everyone here out, and rip this place open to the outside air. Nobody move.” She turned, staring into each of the faces that surrounded her. “And right now I’m on the goddamn edge, so would you please tell Sigma that I’m here to see her.”

  “I’m here,” Sigma said from behind her. Alyanna turned.

  “I want Matthew,” she said. “Take me to him, right now.”

  “What make’s you think he’s here?”

  “Stop it,” said Alyanna, her saliva catching in her throat. She swallowed. “I know you took him.”

  Sigma met her eyes. “You would kill us all? Including, if he is here, your son?”

  “He’s hurting, you bitch,” said Alyanna. “He needs me.”

  Sigma blinked rapidly, and Alyanna slapped her. A jolt of electricity shot through her arm.

  Sigma took a sharp breath as her face flushed, the amber lights flaring in her eyes. “Go ahead,” said Alyanna. “Maybe my jaw won’t clench while I’m being electrocuted.”

  The Cyleb resumed her blinking, and nodded. “I’ll allow it,” she said. “Follow me.”

  Bullshit, Alyanna thought, someone’s giving you orders. She followed her to a set of brushed steel doors in the back of the chamber. They slid apart, revealing an elevator. She stepped inside. Sigma entered, flanked by 0800.

  “What do you hope to gain by this?” Sigma asked as the elevator descended.

  “My son,” Alyanna said through her teeth, “I just want my son. You took him from me.”

  “But you gave him to us,” 0800 said. His voice held no malice. “You turned him into an artificial intelligence. What life could our brother have locked away with you?”

  “What choice did I have?” she asked. But before anyone could answer, the elevator came to a stop, and the doors slid open.

  “Go,” Sigma said.

  Alyanna stepped into a luxurious hallway. Her shoes sank into a thick, burgundy carpet as she walked past walls paneled with mahogany. Light shone from brass fixtures hanging from a plaster ceiling. “So this is how you live when the public doesn’t see you,” she said. Neither Cyleb responded. They walked down the hall in silence until they reached the end. Sigma opened a set of double doors.

  Alyanna gasped.

  The room beyond was a small art gallery. Someone had adorned the walls with Alyanna Galbraith originals. The diversity of the collection amazed her. Among the works were a painting of a mare and foal that she had made in college, a charcoal sketch of her parents on their twentieth anniversary, and at the far end, illuminated by a spotlight, the zhivoi–painting of her son. Matthew saw her, and ran to fill the canvas. “Mommy,” he mouthed, his eyes wide.

  “Oh God,” she said through clenched teeth. “Oh God, Matthew, I’m so sorry.” She touched her lips to the paint. “I’m going to make it better,” she said, “I promise.” She leaned back, put her fingers against his face, and started to put pressure on the capsule.

  “Would you really kill us all?” a voice asked. The tones were deep and soft. They resonated within Alyanna’s chest. She turned her head in spite of herself.

  A man stood in the doorway. His face was long and hairless, devoid even of eyebrows. A scar ran from one eye down to his neck. His distended cheek muscles made his face into an eerie rictus of cracked and broken teeth. He wore an outdated army uniform, one she had not seen except in history books and virts. His skin glowed with a dull, amber hue.

  “I have to,” she said. “I can’t let him hurt anymore.”

  “He’s learning,” said the man. “Yesterday he was lost, his left arm detached and striking at both him and his dog. Now, even under the emotional shock of seeing you, he is able to remain whole.” He met her eyes. “I think I can be fast enough,” he said. “I think I can remove that pill from your mouth before you bite down. The problem is, I would take most of your teeth, if not your tongue and jaw with it, and that would traumatize poor Matthew.”

  “Go ahead and try, bastard,” she said. “Who are you, anyway?”

  “I’m sorry, my manners,” the man said. “I am General Malachi Jaeger, better known as General Orange, or even more distastefully, ‘Clown–Face.’” Alyanna’s eyes widened. “I see by your reaction history has not completely erased me,” he said.

  Alyanna turned back to the painting. She shook her head. “Don’t you see,” she said, “I can’t let him go on like this. I lost him and my father today. I don’t want to go on.” She looked around, her breath coming in short, quick gasps. “This has to end now, for both of us.”

  “Even your unborn child?” Jaeger asked. “We saw when we scanned you in the airlock.”

  Alyanna blinked. The world dipped in front of her eyes. She felt lightheaded, and on the verge of fainting. With all that had happened in the last twenty–four hours, she had forgotten. “Richardson,” she said, “goddamn Richardson.” Her stomach churned. She lurched forward, her mouth open. The capsule fell, and bounced on the carpet. Sigma dove, and scooped it up with one hand. She backhanded Alyanna with the other. Alyanna fell to the floor, flinging her arms over her head to protect herself. Sigma loomed over her, her hands clamped into fists.

  “Stop,” said Jaeger. He pointed at the painting. Matthew was sobbing. His face swirled into a rippling storm. His body doubled over as his left arm detached from his shoulder. It slithered to Bananas, and snapped at her. The dog laughed as the thing bit her face and nose. She tried to lick it. It bit her tongue.

  Jaeger rubbed his temples with his fingertips. “Mrs. Galbraith,” he said, “would you please reassure your son? He needs you.”

  Alyanna pulled herself to her feet, and caressed the turbulent paint. “Matthew,” she said. “Shh, it’s okay, it’s okay.” The maelstrom slowed as the snake slithered away from Bananas. “It’s okay.”

  Matthew’s head began to take shape again. Its mouth formed words, but Alyanna could not make them out through its distorted lips. “What’s he saying?” she asked.

  “He’s saying, ‘No, Mommy, it’s not okay. It’s not,’” said Jaeger.

  Alyanna could not help but smile. Good for you, she thought, feeling a stab of pride. “You’re right,” she said, “it’s not okay. It’s far from okay; it’s all pooped–up.” Jaeger chuckled, and everyone turned to look at him for a moment. “But sweetie,” she continued, “it will be okay, I promise you. It’ll be better.”

  The twisted visage congealed back into the face of a child. “I want to go home,” he mouthed. Alyanna could just make out the words.

  She thought for a few seconds before she spoke. “I do too,” she said. How is Bananas?”

  The golden retriever raised her head at the sound of her name. “She’s good,” said Matthew. “I want a hug.”

  Her jaw trembled. “Not right now, hon,” she said. “But I tell you what, you can hug Bananas all you want.”

  “My arm is broken.”

  Alyanna closed her eyes. “I know,” she said, “can you make it do tricks?”

  “Tricks?”

  “Yes. Can you make it run around you in a circle?”

  The snake paused. Moving with jerking spasms, it shifted back and forth in place. It shot out in a line in front of Matthew, then behind him, and then in front of him again. “I’m doing it,” Matthew said.

  “Keep practicing,” said Alyanna. “I bet you can teach him other tricks too.” Jaeger placed a hand on her shoulder.

  “We should leave him, for now,” he said, “all of us. In time, he will be calm enough to be whole again. Meanwhile, we have things to discuss.”

  The Cylebs led her from the gallery to a conference room. They sat around a black, stone table.

  “When can we leave?” Alyanna asked.

  “You may leave any time you wish,” said Jaeger. “However, Matthew must stay with us.”

  “Like hell,” she said.

  Sigma sniffed. “With all respect, sir, why are
we even bothering with her?” she asked.

  Jaeger raised his hand towards her without taking his eyes from Alyanna’s. “Mrs. Galbraith, your son is one of us now. You made him that way. What can you offer him except a place on your wall? Every day you would walk by him, your heart breaking more and more as he descended into despair and madness. Then one day, you would take him down, douse him in gasoline, and burn him to ashes.”

  Alyanna looked up. She saw it all in her mind. She saw her boy amidst the flames, writhing as the zhivoi–paint bubbled and blackened. Then she would swallow a bottle of sleep medication, and wash it down with whiskey. “I would never do that,” she said.

  “Your son is one of our brothers,” he continued as if she had not spoken, “more so than you know.”

  “What does that mean?” she asked.

  He gestured to 0800. “Don’t you find something familiar in the faces of the third generation?” he asked. “Don’t they remind you of someone?”

  She thought it over. “I can’t tell,” she said.

  “There was an accident,” said Jaeger. “You and your husband were in your car, going to a show, and lightning struck it in mid–flight. The dispersers failed, and the engine exploded. You were barely pregnant. You had tried for years, hadn’t you? Making sure you had the right temperature, making sure it was the perfect time of the month, telling your husband not to wear tight pants, whatever worked.”

  “How—how do you know—”

  “You were sick one morning. You had an inner ear infection, and you thought you were miscarrying. You told your father that if your baby died, you would kill yourself.”

  Alyanna folded her arms across her chest. “I was hormonal,” she said. “Pregnancy can play hell with your chemistry.”

  “And then you were in the accident. The car crashed. Your husband died. You survived, but you were unconscious for a week, and you lost your baby.”

  “No,” she said. She dug her fingers into her triceps. “No I didn’t. How can you say that?”

  “Benjamin was terrified of what you would do when you found out,” said Jaeger. “After your mother died, you were all he had. So he used his connections to steal an embryo from us, and impregnated you with it while you were in an induced coma. It wasn’t one of our third generation clones, but a prior, failed attempt. It was one we had rejected, but kept frozen, because it was the offspring of two of our own. It had a different mother from the original third generation template, but the same father.”

  Alyanna shook. “You’re lying,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Galbraith,” said Jaeger, “but you were a surrogate mother.” She felt her stomach churn. “You carried him, you gave birth to him, you nurtured him, and you love him, but he is not yours. He has always been one of ours. You have merely brought him home.”

  Alyanna cried out in a long, guttural wail that burned the back of her throat. She squeezed her eyes as tight as she could. She felt a hand on top of hers, holding it with a gentle, but hot and leathery pressure. She opened her eyes to see that the general had taken it in his glowing own.

  “I’m sorry you had to find out this way, I really am. But the point remains, Matthew must stay here. We can teach him, help him to learn, and develop. We’re working on a way to form a link to the nanomachines, to connect his mind with the Sage. This would give him much more interaction and information. Once that happens, his possibilities are endless.”

  “The Sage,” she said. “I have no idea what that means.” She stared ahead, not focusing, just seeing. “What if I refuse?”

  He squeezed her hand. “Don’t you see that you have no choice in the matter? You can’t take him away from us. And once you leave here, you will never be allowed to return.” She slumped in her seat. “There is, however, another option. You may be our guest for as long as you wish—correction: as long as Matthew wishes.”

  Alyanna glared at him, her eyes wide and burning. “Why?” she asked.

  “Because you are his world. He is one of us, he is with us. If he is mad, or hurting, it affects us all. Ripples work their way across the water of our minds, and even those on the far shore are affected. Besides, what do you have to return to? By now, Richardson has discovered your deception, and will see you prosecuted for fraud. I doubt the claim you have in your belly will deter him much.”

  “My God,” Alyanna said, putting her hand to her stomach. “This is just all too much.”

  “You and your son will have a home. When the time comes, your other child may join you.”

  “We’ll all be prisoners,” said Alyanna.

  “From what I understand, you were a prisoner long before, it was just of your own choosing,” he said. “Here you will have access to almost all the information you could wish. And of course, you may paint. You can do almost anything you want.”

  “And all I have to do is keep Matthew happy?”

  “All you have to do is keep him sane,” said Jaeger. “You created this situation, Mrs. Galbraith. As far as I see, this is your only way of correcting it.”

  She bit the inside of her cheek. “I’d like to be with my son, please,” she said.

  “Of course,” said Jaeger. He turned to 0800. “Escort Mrs. Galbraith back to Matthew, and make arrangements. She’s going to be staying with us a while.”

  Alyanna turned at the door. “One thing,” she said. “I am his mother. I don’t care what you say, I am his mother.”

  Jaeger met her gaze. “Yes,” he said. “I understand. You are his mother.” She gave him a sharp nod, and exited. He turned to Sigma after the door slid shut behind them. “You don’t like her, do you?”

  A multitude of expressions washed over Sigma’s face. She blinked, pursed her lips, rolled her eyes, and finally chose a look of resignation. “Does it matter?” she asked.

  “No,” he said as he stood. “Careful, Sigma. I am the past. You second and third–generations are the present. But that woman and her children are the keys to the future.”

  Chapter 5

  “The Sage,” said 0800 as he and Alyanna walked through the corridors of the Sanctuary, “is the network of all our minds combined. It was something your father and Colonel Rivers thought of, a way for us to be more than just the sum of our parts.”

  “So you’re always a component of this Sage?” asked Alyanna. She ran her fingertips along the wood–paneled wall. It felt cold. “Why this? Why all the ornate decoration?”

  0800 shrugged. “It’s how the original four wanted to live,” he said. “It made them feel more human.”

  “And you don’t need to feel that way? Human?”

  “I am human,” he said. “But I’ve never known any life other than the one I’ve lived. The first and second generations are different. They were biopures first.”

  Alyanna touched her stomach. It was so hard to believe that she would be a mother again. Or was it for the first time? A tendril of anxiety burrowed its way into her heart, and she shoved the question as far away as she could. “So,” she said, “you’re jacked into this Sage all the time?”

  “No, not all the time,” said 0800. “Well, not consciously. Subconsciously, yes, the same way we can communicate with each other’s thoughts if we’re in close proximity. But to be a conscious part of the Sage, we have to, as you put it, jack in.”

  “Like being hooked up to a virtual reality machine?”

  0800’s eyes narrowed as he considered the allegory. “For you, that’s what it will be. But for us, it’s so much more. I’m sorry, I can’t really describe it. Perhaps it’s the difference between wearing a V.R. suit, and having an extremely realistic dream. Yes, I think that’s it. Our connection doesn’t create a mask for our natural sensory inputs, it supersedes them directly.”

  Alyanna opened and closed her mouth as she tried to wrap her brain around the concept. “Whatever,” she said. “How about Matthew? What will it be like for him?”

  They had reached the end of the corridor. “See for yourself,” 0800
said.

  The Cylebs had filled the small art gallery with racks of computers and other apparatus. There seemed to be two main devices. One was an array of lamps that bathed the painting in light. The other was a boom arm with a whirling sphere on the end. It shot out whisker–thin lasers that whipped across the canvas faster than her eyes could see. The effect turned the painting into a flickering, radiant storm of yellow and violet.

  “What the hell is that thing?” she asked.

  “It’s scanning information from the nanomachines within the paint,” 0800 said. “It gathers new data every 5.722 milliseconds.”

  “It’s giving me a headache.”

  “Then don’t look at it.”

  Alyanna squinted at the painting despite the advice. “I can’t see Matthew or Bananas,” she said. “It’s too bright.” She closed her eyes, and turned away, folding her arms across her chest. “Is he okay?”

  The Cyleb put a hand on her elbow. She shrugged it off. “He’s fine,” he said. “He’s whole again. He’s finding the process exhilarating. It helps.”

  “Great,” she said. “So how can I see him?”

  0800 led her to a chamber that reminded her of a hospital room. The walls and floor were covered with white ceramic tiles, and the air carried a hint of disinfectant. A black wetsuit, complete with hood and goggles, awaited her on top of a plastic, sheetless cot. Wires and tubes snaked from the suit into the ceiling. “Please disrobe, and put on the gear,” he said.

  Alyanna looked at the suit. She touched it. Her fingers sunk in, the rubbery fabric compressing around them. “Why?” she asked.

  0800 gestured to the cot. “When you’re done changing, lie down,” he said. “I’ll be waiting outside. Let me know when you’re ready.” He left the room.

  To Hell with that, thought Alyanna. No one had said anything about obeying every whim. She had never gone full suit before; never worn more than goggles and gloves. She had heard all kinds of stories: V.R. rapes, tortures, and even viruses designed to drive unsuspecting users insane.