“Understood, Morgan.”
<You too, Maii,> she added.
<I’ll do my best,> said the young reave. <But I’m still not picking up anything.>
Of course not, Roche thought to herself bitterly as she left the room. That’d make things too goddamn easy...
* * *
She walked to burn off her frustration, and to keep herself active. There was too much work to do for her to rest: loose threads to tie up, plans to set in place just in case the Crescend didn’t contact her, decisions to make. Would she return to the COE and see what happened, or try somewhere else? If the clone warriors had appeared in many other places, as Rufo had suggested, maybe ranging further for information might be fruitful.
There was one image she couldn’t shake: it was of the cloud of seed machines that had made the revenge capsules which had in turn made the clone warriors. Rufo, via Maii and the irikeii, had imagined them dispersing outward through the galactic halo, then inward again, converging at one point. Why he had imagined that, she didn’t know. Maybe he was aware of something she wasn’t, or maybe it was just the easiest way to visualize what was going on. It might have meant nothing, but she found it hard to forget. If the clone warriors were converging, it would make sense to find out where they were heading. And meet them there.
But without the Box, many things she had taken for granted became complicated. Collecting and collating data from a variety of sources was just one of them. Monitoring Cane was another. She was appalled to realize just how dependent she had become on the AI during their short association. The Box had fulfilled many of the simpler functions of other machines but with the independence and initiative of a person trained in many different fields.
Even something as basic as flying the Ana Vereine would be difficult without the Box. Kajic oversaw most systems, and there were numerous dullard AIs to take up some of the slack, but Kajic was still only Human. He needed to sleep, like everyone else, and made the occasional mistake. At some point, she supposed, she would have to find him a crew.
Right now would be the ideal opportunity, too. Galine Four had been lost when the Gauntlet collapsed, and as a result the Ana Vereine’s holds were full of refugees from the station, jammed in with the isolation tanks she had jury-rigged for the resident outriggers. The latter had weathered the disaster well, even the ones like Lud who had lost their all-suits; some were already talking about where to sell the spare spine and what system to target next. It was the station personnel, more used to comfort and space, who were complaining. Some, she was sure, would happily accept an offer of employment in exchange for better conditions, even if only in the short term.
Myer Mavalhin was one of them. He had eventually made it onto the ship, and his incessant calls for her attention were no doubt designed to ensure he wasn’t kicked off again before he tried to plead his case one more time.
After talking to Cane, she went to the holds, found him among those crowded together there, and took him into a secure office cubicle to talk in privacy. His expression betrayed hope, which she was quick to dispel.
“You’re not coming with me, Myer,” she said. “And if I can’t say it enough times to make it sink in, then that’s your problem, not mine.”
“Why are you so adamant about this, Morgan?”
The question was reasonable enough, and she did her best to answer honestly, to keep old hurts out of it. “One: you’re unreliable; I can’t depend on you when I need to. Two: you’re a loose cannon, thinking more of yourself than the people around you. Three: you don’t have the sort of experience I’d need for someone in this situation—”
“As if anyone has,” he interrupted, avoiding her gaze.
“Four,” she continued firmly. “You rarely listen to anyone but yourself—especially if it’s something you don’t want to hear. Even now I doubt I’m getting through to you.”
He grimaced slightly. “So much for hoping it’d be like old times.”
“There was never going to be any chance of that, Myer,” she said bluntly. “You want me to keep going?”
“Thanks, but I’d prefer you didn’t.” He looked at her then in a way that she found disconcerting. “You know, Morgan, back in College you’d have given in to a bit of coaxing and sweet talking—like that time when we scammed that cruiser to Temoriel. Remember? God, you swore three shades of purple there was no way you were going along with it. But in the end you did, and you enjoyed yourself, too. You always did. That’s what you were like in those days. I could rely on you then.” He shrugged, apparently unaware of the irony in his words.
“I’ve more important things to worry about now,” she said.
“You tried that excuse then, too, but it didn’t have as much power over you. Now it’s as though the important things are all you have left. You’ve... changed, I guess,” he concluded.
She smiled at this. “I guess I have,” she agreed, and got up to leave.
But he had one thing left to ask her.
“Did you ever find your parents, Morgan?”
The question took her by surprise, and she stopped and stared at him for a long moment. “What?” in the end, was all she could manage.
“Your parents,” he said. “Did you ever find them like you said you would?”
“No, I...” she began. “I mean ...”
“I’m sorry,” he said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Just that I knew what finding them meant to you, and I was curious as to—Hey! What’d I say?”
But she was already running from the room, ignoring the sound of Myer calling after her. She could hear Kajic also, in a moment, as well as Maii. But she didn’t stop to reply to any of them. She just kept running, moving through the corridors of the ship as though she were being chased by demons...
She remembered. Her aspiration had always been to join COE Intelligence. Part of that had been her desire to travel, and to escape poor conditions on her homeworld, but another part had been to gain access to powers ordinary citizens didn’t have. The records on Ascensio, her homeworld, had been closed to her when she shipped out to Military College. She had always intended to return one day to find out who her parents had been. She had had a mother once, and a father. Something about them must have been recorded somewhere. Even a name would’ve been better than nothing.
But she had never gotten around to it. How could she have forgotten them? What had happened to her? Perhaps she had changed more than she had ever allowed herself to realize.
She didn’t see the corridors that whipped by her. She didn’t even care. Intentionally or not, Myer had managed to hurt her very deeply, and she was running from him as much as herself. Maybe if she ran hard enough, she could forget that she was crying, too. Tears spilled out uncontrollably, welling up from somewhere deep within her; somewhere long forgotten...
<You are behaving in a highly irrational fashion, Morgan,> said a voice inside her head.
She came to such an abrupt halt that she almost tripped over her own feet. She swayed on one spot for a few breaths, wiping at the sweat and tears on her face and waiting for the voice to speak again.
<Aren’t you going to say anything?> it said finally.
<Box?>
<Yes, Morgan.>
<But—how?>
<Listen to me, Morgan. It is imperative that you do not tell anyone about my reappearance. I have gone to great lengths to ensure that my true location remains unknown. It would be a shame to have to start all over again.>
<Your true location?> She was slowly catching her breath, but felt as though she were losing her mind. <The valise was destroyed—>
<That was always a possibility. Hence, a backup was needed. Or, more accurately, the valise itself was the backup. At best it was only ever intended as a decoy.>
<A what?> Confusion quickly changed places with anger. She had lugged that damned valise hundreds of kilometers across a desert world, thinking it the most valuable thing in the galaxy—o
nly to find that it was a decoy?
<It was necessary, Morgan. You will come to understand that eventually.>
<So where are you? If you weren’t destroyed with the Sebettu, you must be around here somewhere. On the Ana Vereine? But how did you get on board? The only thing I brought with me from Sciacca’s World was the valise. Along with Maii and Cane and Haid, of course—>
She stopped as a terrible thought occurred to her.
<Correct, Morgan. That is indeed all you brought with you.>
<With me.>
<Yes,> said the Box. <I am a part of you, and always have been.>
* * *
Now she was certain she was losing her mind.
She remembered being in orbit around Trinity, where AIs were made for the COE by the Crescend. She remembered waiting for the mysterious engineers to arrive to take her down to the surface, where she would be given the AI she had come to collect. But she didn’t remember anything after that point, because somehow she had been rendered unconscious. The next thing she knew, she had awakened with the valise strapped to her wrist and the Box’s voice inside her head.
<They operated on me? Without my permission?>
<It was deemed a tactical necessity to maintain security to the highest possible degree. You might never have known. I certainly had no wish to tell you. I feared your reaction would be negative.>
<Could you blame me?> Hugging herself, she slid down the nearest wall until she was squatting against it. Too many shocks; too much uncertainty; too much to be afraid of. <So where exactly are you?> she asked.
<There is no specific location, Morgan. I am distributed evenly throughout your body. That way, I could not be removed by cutting off, say, an arm, or severing your head. Such amputations will only momentarily hinder my performance. My components work on a cellular level, and are able to call on your cells as backup should you and I be severely damaged.>
<Does it work both ways?>
<It is not intended to.>
She closed her eyes, trying to get her head around the concept of having an AI inside her, but not even really wanting to succeed. She was riddled with it—like fat, or cancer.
<How do I get rid of you?>
<You don’t until we return to Trinity. Only there does the necessary equipment exist to disentangle our separate structures. Until then we remain symbiotes.>
<And afterwards ?>
<You will have noticed no side effects for my being inside you. I am completely self-sufficient and undetectable, internally and externally. The difference between my being in a valise strapped to your wrist and being inside your body is a small one, I would think.>
<But kind of an important one, wouldn’t you agree?> She had been invaded, and she was angry with how dismissive the Box was being about it all. <What if I were to change my mind? What if I told you and the Crescend to stick your little conspiracies and go my own way? What would happen to you then?>
<Don’t fool yourself, Morgan,> said the Box. <If your intention was to keep me from my maker, then you would not succeed. You would be located eventually, and I would be taken. I am too valuable a tool to be thrown away so carelessly.>
<But I can get out of this if I choose to?>
<Of course.> The Box seemed to ponder this possibility. <But you won’t, will you?>
She didn’t answer at first as doubt suddenly welled in her. <This is crazy. No—it’s impossible! What about all those times we were out of contact, or we had communication lags, or we really needed you and you couldn’t get through?>
<Maintained to allay your suspicions. You coped with every situation well enough.>
<And on Mok?>
<Then you were correct to be suspicious. I was relaying information via you to and from the Ana Vereine, which was much farther away than I had you believe. Juggling you and Kajic was difficult, but by running the backup in the valise it was possible. Had the need to talk not been so great, I would not have bothered. Certainly it was the only time I broke my usual cover.>
She shook her head. <I can’t believe you’d go to so much trouble.>
<I cannot force you to accept the truth, Morgan; you can believe what you like. You are not some puppet that dances as my will directs. You are as free as you ever were.>
<But—>
<But the fact remains: I am here, talking to you now, when you know the valise was destroyed, and I have always put your safety above my own. How else can you explain it?>
She put her head in her hands. She couldn’t explain it, none of it. It was all a mystery to her. It was all so crazy.
A hand touched her shoulder and she flinched violently.
“Hey, it’s okay, Morgan! I didn’t mean to startle you.”
She stared up at Haid, too disconcerted and confused to speak.
His hand withdrew. “Uri told me you’d had some sort of fit and I came to see if you were all right. Are you?”
“I—” She almost blurted out everything she’d just learned. That the Box was inside her and had been put there under circumstances the Box described as a “tactical necessity” but which she thought more akin to rape. That she was being used even more thoroughly than COE Intelligence had used her. That she had been betrayed—again.
But something stopped her. Something the Box had said.
I have gone to great lengths to ensure that my true location remains unknown.
The fact that the Box—that the Crescend—might have gone to such extremes struck her as so strange and unlikely that it temporarily overrode any concerns she had for her own well-being. She could think of only one explanation for its behavior, and once the thought was in her head there was no denying it. Why else would it wish its existence in her to remain a secret even now, when the danger of the second clone warrior was past?
The Box was hiding from Cane.
It was afraid of him.
“Morgan?”
“What?” She remembered Haid standing there. “Oh, I’m fine. Just thinking and working too hard, I guess. Didn’t mean to give you a scare.” She held out her hand and he helped her to her feet.
“Are you sure?” he asked, still studying her.
“Positive.”
“Maii? Is she lying?”
<I have sworn not to read Morgan’s mind without her permission,> the reave said to both of them.
Roche breathed a small sigh of relief. If Maii was telling the truth, the Box’s secret could be kept a little while longer.
And as she thought this, she suddenly realized that she had already made up her mind: she would keep the Box’s secret. For now, at least. And not because anything it had said convinced her to, either. She hated what had been done to her, but her curiosity as to what the Box planned to do next was strong enough to override the anger she was feeling.
Haid was still watching her.
“Maybe I should spread the workload a little,” she said, smiling weakly. “If you’re bored, there are plenty of repairs to be done. I’m sure Uri could use a hand. And we’ll soon have shuttles from the Starburst docking to offload all these people. They have to be organized and ready to move. And what about supplies? Do we have enough to keep—?”
“Okay, already!” Haid raised a hand, laughing. “I’ll get on to it now, I promise. But do me a favor and make sure you get some rest soon, all right?”
“Sleep is for the faint of heart,” she said, quoting a lecturer from Military College. “If a lack of it makes you a little crazy, then you’re in the perfect state to fight. If it doesn’t, you’re in the perfect state to lead.”
Haid’s brow creased. “Sounds like rubbish to me.”
Privately she agreed.
* * *
It was only later, as she lay back on her bunk, that she realized how difficult it was going to be to find any time at all to rest.
Most of the refugees had been offloaded. All of the Starburst’s shuttles and three of the reconnaissance squadron’s cruisers had made two trips each. The remaining stragglers wou
ld go with the last shuttles, due to cycle through within the hour. Haid was in charge of liasing with the Armada while Kajic concentrated on repairing the Ana Vereine. Yarrow Jelena Heidik’s wizened body had been loaded aboard and placed in argon until someone was available to look at it. Roche had feigned exhaustion—no great task—to go to her quarters.
<Commander Gent is about to call you,> the Box said. <He has just received a priority communiqué from his superiors.>
Roche sighed and lay back on the bed. It hadn’t taken the Box long to get back into the swing of things. <Saying?>
<That the Armada is massing near Sol System, fearing a breakout of Wunderkind at any time. He has to join them, but will drop off the refugees along the way.>
<Good.> She closed her eyes. <Why won’t you tell us the truth?>
<I’m sorry, Morgan?>
<You know what I mean. You infiltrated the datapools on the Ana Vereine when we first got on board; you corrupted COE Intelligence so they would think the Sol Apotheosis Movement was behind it all; you’ve done everything possible to lead searches in the wrong direction, and still you won’t let anyone know what’s going on. Why?>
<This is too big a threat, Morgan—truly galactic in scale.>
<So?>
<So what the COE thinks it knows won’t make much difference to the big picture—if it is wrong. There are many thousands of similar governments under similar threats; some or all may already have been infiltrated by the clone warriors. Information is the key to any war, and we do not wish to reveal the full extent of our knowledge just yet.>
<So it is a war, then?>
<Most definitely, albeit one conducted thus far on a covert level. Only when cornered will the true and indiscriminate aggression of the clone warriors surface.>
< ‘Indiscriminate’?>
<They will kill anyone, any way they can. They seem to have no other purpose.>
<But what’s the point of that? If they kill everyone, no one wins. Everyone’s dead. Isn’t that a bit self-defeating?>