Point of Origin (War Eternal Book 4) (26 page)

"For all of us," Kathy said. "And for him especially."

Alice moved quickly, heading out of the room and down the corridor. Kathy backed away, the hatch closing her in. She waited a few seconds before making her way to Jacob.

"I'm sorry," she said to him, looking back at the door to confirm that Alice was gone.
 

Then she took Jacob and turned him in her grip. He didn't resist as she moved behind him, wrapping her arm around his neck and squeezing. His hands and feet convulsed once as the life drained from him.

"I'm sorry," she said again, lowering his body gently to the floor. "He'll be even more sorry. I promise."

Kathy wasn't sure how long she was waiting there. It might have been minutes. It might have been hours. It was impossible for her to tell, as lost in her fury as she became.

She had failed. Miserably. So much worse than she had even realized. It had cost Jacob first his sanity, and then his life. She should have killed Watson when he had returned to the core after the Knife had saved Asimov. She had thought that she needed the configuration to get back to Mitchell.
 

She had been wrong.

She had thought she was better than the rest of them because she was the only child of Origin made after the evolution. She had believed that made her more than a child and that she was ready to take on the role she had been created for.

She had been wrong about that, too.

What was she, really? A half of a thing, incomplete in all the wrong ways. Unwilling to destroy the Primary because Mitchell needed Goliath, even if she might have found another way to reach him with the help of the Riggers. Unable to overcome the Secondary because her more human aspects were too human. She was as broken as the rest of them, as imperfect as the Tetron couldn't understand themselves to be.

So she waited, with her chest heaving and her face hot, her muscles tense and her jaw tight. She held onto the anger long after it should have faded, long past the time when any human would have passed out from exhaustion or dehydration. She waited longer than any reasonable thing could maintain such a level of pain and frustration and anger.

She waited until the hatch slid open.
 

She waited until Watson stepped in.

His eyes grew wide at the sight of her, on her knees at the edge of the mattress, a makeshift spear at her side. They flicked over to Jacob, his corpse hidden by the sheet.

Kathy rose to her feet, gripping the spear, stepping forward to jam it into the Tetron configuration's neck.

Watson dropped to his knees, lifting his chin to give her a better angle and holding his hands out to his sides.

The motion confused her enough that she paused mid-attack, changing the direction of the spear and casting her aim off to the side of Watson's head. It tore into flesh, leaving a deep, bleeding score across his forehead, but otherwise left him intact.

Watson didn't move. He remained on his knees, looking at her while the blood ran down into his left eye.

Then he began to laugh.

Kathy stood completely still, watching him and trying to understand. She was there, ready to kill him, and he was inviting her to do it and laughing at her.
 

"What are you laughing at?" she asked, unable to decipher the reaction.

"You. This. Everything." He paused, wiping some of the blood from his eye. "You don't get it, do you? You're supposed to be so much better than we are. So much smarter. No, not smarter. Empathetic. You're supposed to understand what we don't. But you don't understand a damn thing."

"I'm going to kill you."

"Good. Kill me. Go ahead." He raised his hand, pulling his neck tight to give her a target. "I'm dead already. A failure, just like you."

"He escaped?"

"Mitchell? Of course he did." He started laughing again, even harder. "He's on his way to see the Creator while I'm here waiting for you to end me, and while the Secondary is continuing to deconstruct the data files we took from Asimov. Except the Secondary isn't the Secondary, is it? The Secondary is the Primary. A little trick I worked out."

Kathy stared at him. "I don't understand."

"Didn't I already say that? It's what makes this whole thing so amusing. You see, I set everything up under the assumption that I would fail. That Mitchell would get away with the coordinates to the Creator, and I would be left with nothing but this starship. Do you know why I made that assumption?" He laughed harder at the question. "Come on, do you know why?"

"No."

"Because it flew in the face of all logic and probability. It was the most impossible outcome that we could derive from over a million simulations. The First called us children and thought that we were incapable of learning enough to understand. But I did learn, and I do understand. The Mesh is broken, the future uncertain. The only way to ensure our survival is to plan for the illogical. So I did. This configuration is worthless now. Of no value at all. You've even taken my one true pleasure away."

He glanced over at Jacob again, licking his lips as he did.

That was all it took. Kathy's rage and frustration boiled over. Before she could consider what she was doing, she shouted in indecipherable furor and rammed the spear into the Tetron's chest with enough force to pick him up and pin him to the wall.

Watson looked at her, laughing even harder at her wild expression, her curled lip and bared teeth, even as his blood poured from the wound.

"Stupid. You're so stupid. Is empathy supposed to make you better? Are emotions supposed to make you better? All they serve to do is make you easier to manipulate. I don't need a neural implant to make you do what I want. All I have to do is push the right buttons."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Kathy asked. She was breathing hard, all of her tension draining from her now that Watson was going to die.

 
"I had to do something to keep the secret, to prevent you from catching on. I had to leave a failsafe to keep the Secondary partially disabled until the time was right. Until I was right. Do you know what they were?"

Kathy suddenly felt cold. She had a feeling she did, now.

"You do. I can tell you do. As soon as I die, the Secondary becomes the Primary. As soon as I die, so do you, along with everyone else on this ship. The Primary will have access to the full core and be able to produce more advanced configurations than I was able with the tooling on the lower levels.

"Mitchell is going to die, too, finally. You see, we'll know where he's going soon. Or rather, the Primary will. The answer was in Mr. Tio's archives. Complete historical transit manifests cross-indexed against known associates and project files cross-referenced against timetables and transport routes. Work that would take humans years to pin together. Work a Tetron can and has been doing in weeks."

Kathy couldn't believe it. "If you know how to determine where he's going, then why come here at all? Why try to stop him?"

"I had to know if I was right. There was no way to lose. If I did stop him, I would have the location. If I didn't, I would still have the location. And I was right. The First said we were children, but I was right. Mitchell will never win because I was right."

Kathy shook her head in disbelief. Even when she thought she was right, she was wrong? How could that be?

"You shouldn't blame yourself," Watson said, reading her expression. "You didn't know. How could you? You're new to this game; this eternal, infernal game. But you see, Watson has played it before. We've been here before. You have the neural chip. If I had ever allowed you a chance to read it, you would have seen. You won't have the chance now."

Watson laughed one more time, a throaty laugh that died off in a sharp gurgle only moments before the human configuration ceased to be.

Kathy could feel the change. She knew in that instant that what Watson had told her was true and that she had fallen into his trap. If it could even be called a trap. There had been no escape from it, not from the moment Watson had taken control of the core and destroyed Origin. It was all planned so well. So impossibly well.

It had happened before. That's what he had been telling her. How much of it, she didn't know. Enough that the Tetron, or at least this specific Tetron, knew to change the approach. How could they win against something that could plan against a future it had somehow already seen?

She glanced over at Jacob one last time. Then she grabbed the end of her makeshift spear, pulling it from Watson's human corpse and letting it drop to the floor.

"I know you can see me," she said, looking up to where one of the pulsing dendrites ran tight along the ceiling of the room. "I know you think you've won, but you haven't. The Riggers are free on this ship. We aren't going to give up without a fight."

Kathy didn't wait for the Primary to respond. She walked over to the hatch and through, out into the hallway. She had to find Alice and the others. She would need their help to get back to the core.
 

She had one last chance to salvage the mess she had made of her mission.

Mitchell leaned over Aiko, running a small packet of smelling salts below her nose. Her face twisted, and she groaned as she opened her eyes, body flailing until she remembered where she was.

"Aiko," Mitchell said. "Relax. We made it."

He could see her body relax in the seat.
 

"Calvin didn't," she said softly.

Mitchell felt the words in his chest. The Federation Admiral had been a brave man. He'd completed the hardest part of the mission without wavering and without complaint.

"I know. We'll avenge him."

"Like the others? The Tetron was in orbit around the planet. They're going to be killed or taken, like the rest of them, aren't they?"

"Yes. We knew what was going to happen once they didn't need the planet anymore." Mitchell didn't like it either. What could they do?

"Are there even enough Tetron to kill to avenge everyone who has died?"

"Probably not. We'll have to settle for all of them."

She smiled. "I don't want to do that ever again. I'm not a soldier. I want to be here with the computers and the data. Those people. And the things that I saw..." She trailed off, closing her eyes as they began to tear.

"I know," Mitchell said, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It isn't for everyone. I'm sorry. You got us what we needed. You're a hero." He turned away from her to where Ming and Seung were standing near the exit hatch of the transport. "You two got us out of there. You may have saved all of human civilization."

Ming laughed. "No. We saved you. Mr. Tio believed in you, and so do we."

"Either way, thank you."

"No thanks needed, Colonel," Ming said. "We're on our way to rendezvous with the fleet. You have some time to clean up and rest."

"Aiko, let me help you to your room," Mitchell said.

"Mitchell-" she started to say.

He put up his hands. "Just an escort, that's all. That kind of motion can make experienced pilots weak-kneed."

Aiko tried to stand. Mitchell caught her shoulder before she could fall.

"Your vestibular system is all out of whack from the effects of the dampeners. What you were feeling and what was actually happening are two different things, and your muscles haven't caught up to that yet."

"You seem fine."

"I've done this before. Believe me, I'm feeling it in my stomach." Mitchell smiled to reassure her though he was feeling the imbalance in his limbs as well. Not strongly enough to fall over, but it wouldn't have taken much of a shove to send him to the ground.

"Okay." She wrapped her arm around his shoulders, let him support her.

"I still can't believe you got down to us like that," Mitchell said, looking at Seung. "If we had medals or commendations, I would give you both."

The pilot bowed her head respectfully.

"Do you need anything, Colonel?" Ming asked. "Food? Clothes?"

Mitchell remembered what Eito had said about the nutrition bars. "A change of clothes would be nice. A pair of grays if you have them."