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  Deirdre felt a significant internal chill. “The closest example I have… just before the Ravagers activated… was my father ordering me into his ship so that we could leave the surface, avoiding the destruction to come. I instead fled to find a… friend… with the intent of forcing my father to choose to either save us both or lose me.” Her eyes had flicked away as she recalled everything that had happened—shooting her father’s latest lover, fleeing the building, the sight of the Ravagers dissolving what’s-his-name’s body before her eyes—but now returned to Miriam. “Does that help?”

  “You’re willing to disobey if it means saving others. If there’s a higher… moral authority that commands your actions, something that holds greater sway than your father’s orders.” Miriam tilted her head. “Is there anyone like that in your life now, Deirdre?”

  She thought instantly of Roddy, ever doing the noble thing, thought of him telling her she was doing the right thing, and nodded. “Yeah. I think there is.”

  “Good. When you get your orders you’ll need to think of him telling you it’s the right thing to do, think of him scolding your father as Se— as Oswald tells you to stop. Can you do that?”

  “How do you know the person is a him?”

  Miriam smiled. “Just a hunch.”

  Deirdre’s hand went back to her hair. Just how much had they learned about her?

  “I could ask more questions, Deirdre. But I think you understand the problem. I can’t imagine scenarios and let you try to program yourself to act accordingly until we figure out where you’re going and who you’re targeting.” She chewed her bottom lip for a moment. “Where were you headed when we had our first encounter?”

  “To New Phoenix.”

  “Where?”

  Deirdre considered. “You know about New Venice?”

  “We do.”

  “It’s the same type of facility, built for the same purpose, but much further west and south.”

  Miriam nodded. “I suspect I know the approximate location. What was driving you there?” She smiled, faintly. “Other than the car, that is.”

  Deirdre allowed herself to smile at the attempted humor. “My father likes warmer climates. He’s made clear that, once everything on the surface is wiped clean and then terraformed back to a pristine state, that he’ll build his new home in that area. He’s been there before, and I’ve been there with him, so I’m known there. I decided that I’d head that way and spend my time there until he arrived, perhaps see if the people there could send word to him that I’d arrived.”

  “I thought you said you had a falling out?”

  “Nobody but my father and I know about that, though.” She offered a faint smile. “Well, you know about it now.” Her face turned serious once more. “I’m sure I could convince them that there had been a change of plans to explain why I’m on the surface right now. And survive there pretty well, until my father arrived. But that could be a month or more from now.”

  Miriam nodded. “Are others likely to head to New Phoenix before him? Close friends of his who’ll want to live in that same warm climate?”

  Deirdre nodded slowly, as the faces of her father’s closest friends flashed in her mind. “I’m certain of it.”

  It was only when Miriam opened the folder of printed images that Deirdre noticed she’d been carrying it since she walked in. “Can you identify which of the people here might fit that description?” She handed the opened folder to Deirdre.

  Deirdre took it delicately, as if afraid she’d break it… or that it might break her. “Understand that neither my father nor any of his closest friends and potential neighbors have told me if this is true…”

  “We know the information will be imperfect, Deirdre. But your knowledge here is key to figuring out where we’re most likely to find each of the thirty. Your best guess is more likely to be accurate — at least for friends of your father — than anyone else. And we can then use other means to figure out where others might be.”

  Deirdre nodded. She flipped through the pages, pausing as she recognized the faces that had flashed through her mind, and handed those pages to Miriam. She was counting the number of pages in the folder as she went. As she turned the last page and closed the folder, she realized she’d handed four sheets of paper to Miriam, and that she’d pulled them from a stack of twenty-eight.

  It meant that they’d fully identified the thirty with a high level of confidence.

  And they’d left her parents’ photos out of the stack. She felt an odd sense of gratitude; it meant she’d not had to visualize the crosshairs on her parents’ faces as she’d done with all the others.

  Miriam glanced at the images on the page before fixing Deirdre with a stare. “We’ll provide you with a variety of supplies that will give you options for carrying out your assignment.”

  Deirdre swallowed. Then she nodded.

  “You’ll keep using the same ground car; we could probably provide you with a better one, but it would look quite different than what they’d expect to see in New Phoenix. No sense triggering any more suspicion than necessary.”

  As if they’re expecting to see me drive up in a ground car at all, Deirdre thought.

  “We’ll provide you with some upgrades, though, to help you out on the journey there. We’ll add our own tracking and communication systems that aren’t traceable by Phoenix.”

  Deirdre’s eyes found the pages in Miriam’s hands. For some reason, she had no difficulty imagining the woman on the page dead by her own hand. It seemed odd, but… she wasn’t reluctant. Or nervous.

  She was excited and eager. “Sounds good. When do I leave?”

  * * *

  In a room deep in the bowels of the facility, two people watched Miriam’s conversation with Deirdre with interest. They watched as Deirdre’s apprehension about her career change from fashion mogul to secret assassin melted away, and exchanged knowing glances.

  “Think she’ll figure it out?” the first asked.

  “She knows we did something.” The second viewer shrugged. “She kept touching the gel every time Miriam said something revealing about her.”

  “That just means she thinks we read something in her brain. Think she’ll figure out that’s not all we did?”

  The second smiled grimly. “I doubt it. But even if she does… she won’t be able to fight it. Not until we get what we want out of her.” The woman paused. “I wish we could have set her up to take out her father, though.”

  The first nodded. “As poetic and perfect as that would be… it might have caused issues.” A smile followed. “And who’s to say she won’t end up doing that anyway, even if by accident or unintentionally?”

  The second speaker turned back to the screen. “We can only hope.”

  Chapter 9

  The Island of Eden

  As a robot, Micah often struggled with metaphors of any variety. His coding dealt with binary concepts: on and off, one and zero, true or false, yes or no. Subtlety, nuance, and non-verbal cues were difficult, and his ability to react to those forms of communication was far more a matter of after-the-fact pattern recognition built upon centuries of data points, distilled down into the literal language of machines.

  It was thus difficult for him to look at the body-form of Hope Stark and remind himself that it was in fact a robot like him, rather than an actual flesh-and-blood human being.

  And he had to remind himself that the robotic “consciousness” driving that robot in its newly activated life belonged to Sheila Clarke, not a clone of a woman he hadn’t seen in a thousand years.

  But he could at least sympathize with “Sheila” as she tried mastering the art of digital living. “Try again. Say whatever comes to mind.”

  He watched as “Hope’s” face grated through extreme twitches of musculature as the robot tried to mimic a natural-looking pattern of speaking. “I don’t have a mind.”

  He sighed. The words, in Hope’s voice, came from the speakers inside the robot’s throat
, but the mouth movements didn’t align with the spoken words. And the facial gesticulations were a severe distraction; if he was dealing with a human, he’d worry about seizures. “That’s true, but don’t say that aloud. Those who meet up with us can’t know you aren’t human.”

  “You are well-practiced at the particular deception.”

  “Thank you. I find it best to learn to keep suspicions about my humanity, or lack thereof, to a minimum.” He paused. “I need to make some tweaks again.”

  “Hope” turned around, facing away from him, and Micah found the trio of notches in the back of her head. He pushed them, and the back of “Hope’s” scalp popped open, revealing the digital brain. As he moved, his robotic brain searched its own massive code base and found the syncing routines for verbal speech and mouth movements. He also identified additional code routines he’d built for smoothing and softening facial gestures, throat movements, eye blinks, and head movements that should accompany verbal speech. “Hope” hadn’t had much difficulty learning to walk in the mannerisms of the real human woman he’d once known; speech was another matter altogether.

  He detached his right hand and connected the port into the digital brain housing Sheila Clarke’s personality and memories, found the comparable — and at the moment, much simpler — routines related to verbal and non-verbal communications, ran a gap analysis and differential between the code sets, merged the two together, debugged, made some tweaks to optimize the speed of performance, and uploaded the new code into the digital brain. The entire process took twenty minutes, an eternity for a robot accustomed to making such changes in his own code in nanoseconds.

  He detached the connection and sealed “Hope’s” head back up. “Turn around and try again.”

  The body-form turned. “We don’t have an eternity to get this right, Micah.”

  He allowed the smile to form on his face. “Good thing we’ve got it working now, then, isn’t it?”

  The facial expression that formed on Hope’s face was one he recognized more as Sheila than Hope. “Solid crunch time performance, then.”

  “Very much so. Please make sure that, once we start interacting with others, you check with me on whether you are to be Hope Stark or Sheila Clarke.”

  The other robot nodded. “If we are around existing allies, I am Sheila, who survived an attack aboard the space station that left me physically scarred and altered my voice; I am wearing a wig and a lot of makeup to hide my injuries as I heal. If we are among the Phoenix, or possibly our new allies, I am Hope Stark, whose presence will frighten the former and inspire the latter.”

  “You learn well.”

  He’d created body-forms of many of the leaders of the old guard, recognizing that the ability to animate those forms in any final battle scenario could cause shock and hesitation among the immortals comprising Phoenix’s ranks, and that such hesitation could mean the difference between victory and defeat. He’d tested that theory out during his visit to the space station and forced encounter with Oswald Silver, and Silver’s reaction had been exactly as he’d expected and desired.

  Sheila/Hope practiced moving her limbs, walking, jogging, jumping, stretching, laughing, and other movements and mannerisms, and continued doing so when a soft chime sounded in the area. The sound came over speakers throughout the underground compound, a backup alert system for him but a necessary one for any human or robot not permanently connected to the island’s communication networks. Micah waved at Sheila/Hope and gestured for her to follow, and the pair moved to a small room set up for visual communications.

  Micah answered the incoming communication and watched as a holographic image of a crowded room appeared. A large man smiled when Micah’s image appeared on his image screen. “Micah! Good to see you again.”

  Micah nodded. “It’s good to see you as well, Roddy. Given the crowd around you, I suspect that your mission was a success.”

  “Very much so. Not without incident, mind you. But a success nonetheless.”

  “Have you told your parents?”

  Roddy frowned, and his eyes narrowed. “Yes, and that’s part of what we’ll need to talk about.” He let his eyes resume normal width. “Do you have any reason to suspect any outside interference or any uninvited guests participating in this call?”

  Micah nodded. “There has been some evidence that portions of my network may be compromised. I’ve left a few more secured nodes operational, in part because the benefit of doing so is worth the increased risk of detection and traceability.” He paused. “Is your question regarding interference related in some way to your conversation with your parents?”

  Roddy nodded slowly. “They’d been very explicit that they wanted to see Mary and the children. See them, alive and well. But they answered my call on audio only. And the responses they gave me suggested that they were trying to warn me to stay away.”

  Micah stroked his chin. “That’s entirely possible. Unfortunate, but possible. We’ve made enough trouble at this point that our enemies are undoubtedly trying to find us, looking for any sign of where we might be basing our operation. The fortresses—lightly populated, immune to Ravagers, and well-stocked—those would be an ideal place from which to foment and launch a rebellion.”

  “It’s why my parents are there. I know that.” His face paled slightly. “I just… I don’t want that conversation to be the last I have with them, Micah. Intellectually, I know that the coming battles will be costly for our side, given how lopsided the numbers are. But… still…”

  “We’ll certainly do what we can, Roddy,” Micah replied. “But we must approach your parents’ residence with extreme caution, if at all. If they were offering vague hints of their situation, it is likely that they’ve concluded they’ll need to wage any battles alone. And parents will willingly sacrifice themselves to protect their children.” He let his eyes move to the holographic projection of the twins’ dirt-streaked, intense faces. “Even more so to protect their grandchildren.”

  Roddy turned and glanced at the twins. Micah couldn’t see what he did, but their faces lit up with big smiles. “I suppose you’ve noticed we have large group here.”

  “I recognize several of them, though I didn’t in previous encounters.” He moved his eyes again. “Hello, Mary. It’s good to see you again, especially now that I know it’s you.”

  “Hi, Micah. I apologize for not identifying myself during our last run-in.”

  “Quite understandable.” He switched his eyes to a man he didn’t know. “My apologies for inflicting injury upon you, sir. I hope you are healing well?”

  The man chuckled. “Still hurts a lot, but functioning well enough. Name’s John, by the way. Happy to hear we’re on the same side now.”

  A third man waved from the projection. “Hello, General. I’m pleased to see that you survived the attack on the bunker.”

  “I’m pleased to see you as well, Wesley. I feared after locking you in the brig just before the Ravager activation that we’d not speak again.”

  “Takes more than just a couple of little robots to take me out, sir.”

  “Clearly. Still, perhaps I should have—”

  “You have no reason to apologize, General. I… I remember enough now to understand the bigger picture, to know that my behavior was largely dictated by others. And I know you knew that as well.” He shook his head. “But my actions demanded that I face that punishment. My only wish at this point is that I could apologize to Sheila for my behavior, and ask her forgiveness.”

  “It is then a fortunate coincidence that I also have a guest with me.” Micah waved Sheila/Hope forward. “Sheila is here. She had an encounter of her own with our enemy, and suffered significant injuries that require heavy concealment.”

  Wesley stared as Sheila/Hope came into view, and Micah thought he saw John stiffen slightly as she moved into view. But whatever reaction there had been, it was gone a moment later, and Wesley’s baffled face dominated his visual sensors. “That’s… you’re Sheil
a?”

  “I am indeed,” Sheila replied. “A wig and quite a bit of makeup to hide the bruising I suffered.” She paused. “I heard what you said, Wesley. And Micah has shared with me more about your background than I’d previously known. I can’t say your treatment of me is acceptable… but at least I can understand it.”

  “I hope you can forgive me.”

  “Forgiveness is not the issue. It’s forgetting that will be difficult.”

  “Speaking of forgiveness…” Micah sensed that the verbal interplay between his two former employees could go on for quite some time, and they had little time to spare. “I need to apologize to you, Wesley. I should have foreseen what was coming and acted to prevent the torture you experienced.”

  “You took care of me in the aftermath, though, General. That’s something I remember. And as to what happened, well… I didn’t see the clues that should have warned me as to how I was being used, and the reward Phoenix prepared just for me.” His face turned stony. “I don’t fault you, General. I only hope you’ll give me the opportunity to repay Phoenix for what they’ve done to me. And to the rest of the world.”

  “Still…” Micah shook his head. “I suppose that we must all, for now, accept that we have crimes for which we must atone, and move instead toward preparations to vanquish the greater enemy.” He studied Wesley’s face. “You said that you’ve remembered a lot more, Wesley. How much, exactly?”

  Wesley frowned. “Most of what I remember isn’t… conscious, I guess you could say. Sensations. Impressions of people. Few true memories, images and sounds of events. What’s been most curious is that my body seems to remember how to do things I don’t remember learning, and in many ways wouldn’t think I could do. I jumped into the middle of a river and only then realized I could swim quite well. I rigged electronics to break out of the Brig and I’m not really sure how I thought to even try it. I operate far more exotic weapons than the simple sidearms we trained with in the Brig. I somehow managed to wipe out an angry mob and blow a fuel storage tank. All stuff I didn’t plan, or research, or ask someone how to do… I just knew to do it.” He shook his head. “I don’t know where that came from, General. But it’s… been quite handy, to say the least.”