Siege (14 page)

“I know, I know. But we're getting farther and farther away from being human.”

Neither of us says anything for the next few seconds. The fire truck's siren grows louder. Then my acoustic sensor picks up the squeal of the truck's tires. Although I can't see the vehicle, I know it's stopping near the burning pine tree. I can hear the boots of the firefighters on the tarmac. They're probably wondering,
How the heck did that tree catch fire?

DeShawn breaks the silence by clanking his hand against my back. The look on his plastic face is reassuring, but also a little impatient. He's anxious to get back to work. “It can't be helped,” he says. “We don't have a choice.”

After leaving DeShawn's hangar, I stop by the Biohazard Treatment Center, but the doctors won't let me inside. They say there's been no change in the condition of the students. All four are still unconscious and smoldering with fever.

Dad's in the treatment center too, still trying to isolate the anthrax microbes that have infected Brittany and the other kids. The doctors say he's too busy to be disturbed, but I bet that's not the real reason they won't let me inside. I'm guessing they don't want another incident like the one that happened this morning. My mom is probably still in the treatment center, still comforting Jack Parker's mother, still praying for the kid's recovery. And meanwhile I'm out here, outside the center's heavily guarded doors, alone and angry.

For a moment I consider barging in. I could easily shove the armed guards aside and bust through the air locks. But instead I just stand there and let the wave of anger run through my circuits. Then I turn my Quarter-bot in the opposite direction and march toward a squat concrete building half a mile away.

This building is normally used as a warehouse for aircraft parts, but General Hawke has turned it into a temporary training facility for the Pioneers. Basically, it's like our Danger Room in New Mexico, a place where we can test our robots in combat simulations. I stride through the building's entrance and head downstairs to the heart of the facility, a cavernous basement room that's as big as a gymnasium. I know Zia will be there. Spurned and insulted by Amber, she'll retreat to what she knows best, the lonely self-discipline of military training. So that's where I'm going too. I can't put off my assignment any longer.

Zia's War-bot stands alone at the far end of the room, which has a high ceiling and fluorescent lights that are way too dim for such a large space. The room is empty except for two huge piles of spare parts on either side of Zia. The pile on her left is about three feet high and nine feet wide. It's a jumbled mound of miscellaneous electronics—motors and sensors and batteries and circuit boards. Thousands of memory chips and microprocessors are scattered across the heap. There's also enough copper wire to electrocute an elephant.

Zia seems to be sifting through the spare parts in the pile. As I stride toward her, she bends her torso over the mound and scans it with her cameras, searching for something. Although her helmetlike head doesn't have a face, I can tell that she's deep in thought. After a couple of seconds she extends her left arm and plunges it into the heap. When she pulls out her hand, she's grasping a tiny silver disk between her steel thumb and index finger.

I focus my own cameras on the disk in her hand. It's an impact sensor, a simple device for detecting collisions. “Let me guess,” I say, pointing at the disk. “You're making some improvements to your armor?”

Her War-bot nods. “That's right. I learned something from the last battle.” She retracts her arm, bringing her right hand close to her torso, and slips the tiny disk into a slot in her armor. “Be prepared. That's my new motto.”

“FYI, it's also the Boy Scouts' motto. So what are you preparing for?”

Zia points at the other pile of parts, a slightly smaller heap sprawled across the floor to her right. I notice that all the parts in this pile are the same: small gray cubes, each an inch wide. They look exactly like the modules in DeShawn's Swarm-bot. This is a little confusing, because DeShawn was in his Einstein-bot when I said good-bye to him fifteen minutes ago. I step closer to the heap of cubes, which are jumbled and motionless, like the modules of Sigma's Swarm-bots after I fried their electronics. “Uh, DeShawn isn't somewhere in that pile, is he?”

“No, those are his spares. He let me borrow a few thousand modules last night so I could figure out a defense against them.” Zia extends her right arm now, and I see a small radio transmitter in her hand. “This remote control can send signals to the Swarm-bot. I can activate the swarm and order it to attack. Here, take a look.”

She presses a button on the transmitter, and an instant later the pile of modules comes alive. Thousands of cubes start spinning their rotors and rise from the floor. The swarm hovers like a gray cloud over the War-bot's bulbous head. Then the modules attack, all of them descending at once and latching on to Zia's armor. They cover her War-bot like a cloak.

“Now watch this.” Her voice is muffled by the modules covering her speakers. “The sensors in my armor detect the cubes landing on me. Then there's an automatic response.”

I hear a chorus of metallic zings, like the sound of someone yanking out a drawer full of kitchen knives. At the same time, ten thousand sharp black spikes thrust out of Zia's armor. They extend from every part of her War-bot—torso, head, legs, arms—like the steel quills of a monstrous porcupine. Each spike is only three inches long, but that's long enough to skewer the modules. The pierced cubes hang from Zia's quills for half a second, then all the spikes simultaneously pull back into her armor. Sloughed off, the broken modules clatter to the floor.

I applaud her demonstration, clanking my Quarter-bot's hands together. “Nice job. Simple but effective.”

Zia doesn't acknowledge the compliment. Instead, she strides toward me, crushing the fallen modules under her footpads. “Okay, Armstrong, enough fun and games. We got a score to settle.” Her War-bot looms over me. I have to tilt my cameras upward to see her head. “Are you ready to take your punishment? For what you did to Shannon?”

I'm nervous, no doubt about it. Few things are as intimidating as a nine-foot-tall War-bot. But I push the noisy fear out of my circuits. “I'm hoping a simple apology will be enough. I already apologized to Shannon, or at least I tried to. And because she's your friend, I'll apologize to you now.”

“It's not enough.” Her voice is low and fierce. “I talked to Shannon last night. I asked her what you did to hurt her. She was so upset she wouldn't tell me, but I figured it out. The answer was in the memory files we exchanged.”

I keep my cameras focused on Zia. Six months ago, just before Sigma captured us, Zia and I got into a fight so vicious she came very close to destroying my electronics. To save myself, I had to transfer all my data to her robot, and for exactly five-point-two seconds we shared the same circuits. I got out of Zia's machine as fast as I could, but in that brief period I saw all of her memories, and she saw all of mine. This happened just a day after I shared circuits with Jenny Harris for the second time. “I guess you're talking about me and Jenny, right? And the virtual-reality program?”

A grunt comes out of the War-bot's speakers. It sounds disdainful, as if Zia thinks this whole business is a little ridiculous. “It wasn't a big deal. You were just fooling around. Sneaking kisses in virtual reality, and whatever else you and Jenny imagined you were doing. I just assumed you told Shannon about it.” Zia raises a massive arm and clenches her steel hand. “But you never told Shannon, did you? You hid that secret from her all those months. That was wrong, Adam. That was
cowardly
. You turned it into a big deal by lying about it.”

I nod. Zia's saying exactly what Shannon said. And they're both right. “Look, I agree with you. I'm guilty as charged. So if you want to punish me, go ahead. Get it over with.”

I aim my cameras at the War-bot's raised fist. It's as big and dense as a bowling ball, and at any moment I expect Zia to slam it down on my Quarter-bot. This girl has no qualms about violence; when we fought six months ago, she carved up my armor with a welding torch. If she wants to punish me now, to teach me a lesson by shattering my robot's head and all its cameras and loudspeakers, she'll do it in a nanosecond. It wouldn't be murder—my neuromorphic circuits are in a safer place, deep inside my torso. In fact it wouldn't even hurt, because the armor in my head has no pressure sensors. There's nothing stopping her.

But her fist hangs in the air, motionless. Zia's War-bot seems paralyzed. She stays silent and still for so long that I start to wonder if her circuits malfunctioned or her software crashed. Finally, she synthesizes another grunt and retracts her arm. She backs away from me, shaking her War-bot's head. “Ahh, it's not worth it. It would take hours to repair you.” Then she turns around and strides back to the mound of spare parts.

Zia bends over the pile and scans it again with her cameras. She probably wants me to go away now. But I haven't performed my assignment yet. I take a step toward her. “Listen, there's another reason why I came here to see you. And that reason is all about
you
, not me.”

“Really?” Zia doesn't sound very interested in what I have to say.

I take another step forward, my circuits roiling. I feel guilty about what I'm going to do, because it's so deceptive. I'm going to try to trick her into talking too much. But if I can prove that Zia's the traitor, then all my trickery will be justified. “I know why you're upset. You wanted to be friends with Amber, but as soon as she got here, she snubbed you. And that must feel pretty bad.”

“
Amber
?
” Zia doesn't look at me, but her voice booms with synthesized disgust. “Why should I care about
he
r
? She's just a know-nothing rookie with a jet pack on her back. I'm
not
impressed.”

“Her father served under General Hawke in the First Armored Division. During the war in Iraq. And so did your father.” I step toward her until we're just five feet apart. “You wanted to talk to Amber about the war. It was important to you.”

“There's nothing to talk about.” Zia plunges one of her steel hands into the pile and pulls out a rechargeable battery, identical to the ones that power all the Pioneers. She holds it up to the dim light from the overhead fluorescents and focuses her cameras on it. “My father died in combat, and so did Amber's father. But thousands of other soldiers died there too. And hundreds of thousands of civilians.” She studies the battery for another half second, then tosses it back to the mound. “It was a dirty war, and that's all there is to say. The last thing I need is a sob session with Amber.”

I cock my Quarter-bot's head. I don't believe Zia, and I'm trying to signal my skepticism. “I know you better than that. When we shared circuits, I saw your memories of your parents and how they died. You suspected that General Hawke lied about what happened to them.”

Zia still won't look at me. She shrugs, lifting her War-bot's shoulder joints. “Everyone lies. Especially generals. That's how they get soldiers to fight for them.”

“But you were obsessed with learning the truth! Isn't that why you were so excited about Amber joining the team? Because maybe she knew something? Maybe she could help you find out what—”

“I don't need Amber's help. I already know what I need to know. And now I've got more important things to do with my time.”

This last sentence grabs my attention. I have the feeling that Zia just told me more than she intended. “More important things? What do you mean?”

She finally turns from the pile of spare parts and focuses her cameras on me. Because she doesn't have a face, I can't read her expression, but I think she's suspicious. “What's going on, Armstrong? Now that you've messed up with Shannon, you want to go out with me?”

“Huh?” I'm confused. “I don't know what—”

“Well, you're asking me all these personal questions. Does that mean you like me? You want to be my boyfriend?”

I shake my Quarter-bot's head so vigorously, the neck joint screeches. “No, I just—”

“Good, that's a relief. You're not my type. So let's just keep our relationship professional, all right? We're fellow soldiers, that's all. And that means we don't ask each other a lot of personal questions.”

Frustration crimps my circuits. I've made no progress at all in the assignment Hawke gave me, and now Zia has shut down the conversation. I'm no good at this. “Okay, fine. I was just trying to help, but I can see it's a waste of time.”

“You can't help.” Zia's voice drops an octave. She sounds distant and miserable. “No one can help. Because no one really cares.”

“You're wrong about that. We're a team. We're the Pioneers. We look out for each—”

“Go away, Adam.” Zia swings her cameras back to the pile of spare parts. “Just leave me alone.”

Joint Base McGuire's wind tunnel is on the other side of the airfield, inside a building that looks like the world's biggest trumpet. That's where I find Marshall.

At one end of the building is a gaping circular mouth, more than two hundred feet across. The rest of the building is much narrower; like a trumpet, it tapers to a slender tube, although in this case the tube is slender only in a relative sense—it's fifty feet wide and six hundred feet long. The building is made of steel, and its walls vibrate slightly from the sounds inside.

My acoustic sensor detects these vibrations, and after a moment it determines what's making the noise: a pair of synthesized voices. I can't hear them well enough to understand what they're saying, but I can tell that one of the voices belongs to Marshall. The other has the twangy accent of the newest Pioneer, Private Amber Wilson.

I enter through a steel door at the midpoint of the tube. Inside is the wind tunnel's test chamber, which is big enough to hold an F-22 fighter jet. The building's mouth is a hundred yards to my left, and an equal distance to my right is an enormous eight-bladed fan. It's not turning now, but the fan is the source of the tunnel's wind. When it spins, it pulls air into the tunnel, like the fan in a vacuum cleaner. The air rushes into the building through its wide mouth and gathers speed in the narrowing tube. Then it gusts at hurricane strength into the test chamber and under the wings of any aircraft positioned there. Last, the air is sucked into the fan and blown out the other end of the tunnel.

Under ordinary circumstances, military engineers use the wind tunnel to analyze the aerodynamics of their jets and helicopters, but right now there are no engineers or aircraft in the building. Instead, Amber stands behind Marshall at the center of the test chamber's steel-plate floor. Her Jet-bot's black arms are clutched around the torso of his Super-bot.

Both Pioneers pivot their heads toward me as I stride into the chamber. Marshall synthesizes a chuckle while Amber lets out a delighted cry. “Corporal Armstrong!” She raises her right arm to salute me but keeps her left wrapped around the Super-bot. “What a surprise! You're just in time!”

I return her salute, but focus my cameras on Marshall. His Super-bot is grinning. He doesn't look embarrassed; on the contrary, he seems genuinely pleased by my unexpected arrival. His smile makes me feel terrible, just as guilty as I felt when I talked with Zia ten minutes ago. I'm being deceptive again—this isn't a chance meeting. I came here to wheedle information out of my fellow Pioneers. But I tell myself once again that deception is necessary. It's justified if it'll help me find out who betrayed us.

“In time for what?” I point a steel finger at them. “Are you two putting on a show?”

“Settle down, Adam.” Marshall skews his plastic lips, enlarging his Super-bot's grin. “It's not what you think.”

“Professional wrestling? Mixed martial arts? Are you practicing takedowns?”

“No, nothing so dramatic. This is a training exercise, believe it or not.”

“It's flight training,” Amber interjects. “I thought of a maneuver we might be able to use in combat.”

Her voice is cheerful and enthusiastic, but also a little sly. I suspect she's breaking the rules. She's not supposed to be here. “I thought Shannon was giving you a tour of the base?”

“Oh, that lasted only fifteen minutes. Lieutenant Gibbs had to rush off somewhere. But I ran into Corporal Baxley, and when I told him about my flight training idea, he said he was willing to give it a try.”

Marshall lifts his Super-bot's shoulders, shrugging inside Amber's embrace. “I'll try anything once.” He chuckles again. “Twice if I like it.”

He winks at me with one of his plastic eyelids. This is typical Marshall Baxley behavior, and if I'd seen him cavorting like this yesterday, I would've thought nothing of it. But now I'm suspicious. Did he really run into Amber by accident, or did he seek her out? Is he following orders from Sigma? Maybe recruiting another ally for the AI?

The suspicions make me uncomfortable. I shift my cameras, aiming them squarely at Amber. “So, uh, what's this maneuver?”

“It's better if I just show you.” She activates her radio transmitter and sends a wireless signal to the wind tunnel's controls. A moment later, the giant fan at the end of the tunnel starts to turn. “Grab hold of something solid, Adam. As we say in Oklahoma, ‘There's a storm a-coming!'”

The fan spins slowly at first, its twelve-foot blades turning clockwise like the vanes of a windmill. But after a few seconds, it spins faster, and the blades whirl around their hub in a bright, noisy blur. The fan powers the airflow down the tunnel, and soon a brisk wind is streaming through the test chamber. The sensors in my armor allow me to track the steady increase in the wind speed: forty miles per hour, then eighty, then a hundred and twenty.

As the wind buffets my Quarter-bot, I stretch my arms toward the chamber's wall and grasp a steel column to anchor myself. Meanwhile, Amber extends her Jet-bot's wings from the upper sections of her arms but keeps her robotic forearms and hands clasped around Marshall. She also extends the jet pack from her back and fires up the engine. The jet's thrust counters the pressure of the wind, which is strong enough to buoy Amber's wings. Her Jet-bot's footpads lift off the floor. As she rises, she carries Marshall's Super-bot with her.

The two robots ascend twenty feet and hover in the center of the test chamber, riding the ferocious gale that's coursing down the tunnel. Amber straightens her robotic body to form a streamlined aircraft, and Marshall hangs from her belly like an oversize missile. The wind speed in the tunnel is almost three hundred miles per hour now. Although I can barely stay on my footpads and the howling is so loud it overwhelms my sensors, I can still detect Marshall's and Amber's voices at the heart of the maelstrom. Marshall is trying to give instructions—“Go a little higher! And more to the right!
No, no, to the right
!
”—but Amber doesn't seem to be listening. A triumphant whoop comes out of her loudspeakers. “
Yeah! Hi-Yo, Silver! Away
!
”

Because Marshall and Amber may not be able to hear me if I shout at them, I send a radio message instead:
Hey, nice takeoff. You two look great together.

Marshall responds first:
Well, well, do I detect a note of jealousy? Do you wish you were up here too?

That depends on what happens next. Are you ready to show me that maneuver, Amber?

Yes, sir! Ready as I'll ever be!
Even over the radio, Amber's voice has a Wild West twang.
Okay, Marshall, remember what I told you? Let's do this thing just like we planned. On the count of three: one, two…

Wait, I'm not quite—

…three!

Amber unclasps her hands and lets go of Marshall. Unfortunately, his robot isn't as aerodynamic as Amber's. The three-hundred-miles-per-hour wind slams into the Super-bot and hurls it down the tunnel.

Marshall plummets to the steel-plate floor, clattering and tumbling toward the fan. He flails his robotic arms and claws at the steel, his fingers carving long gouges to slow himself down. His robot finally slides to a stop, just fifty feet from the fan's whirling blades.

Amber radios a command to shut down the airflow. The fan blades start to slow, and the wind in the tunnel dies down. While Amber lands her Jet-bot and retracts her wings, I race down the tunnel to see if Marshall's okay. His Super-bot lies on its torso, which is dented in several places. His plastic forehead and cheeks are torn, exposing the armor underneath.

“Hey, Marsh? You all right?” I lean over him. “Are your circuits damaged?”

He tests his Super-bot's motors, flexing its arms and legs. Then he aims his cameras at the machine's torso, scanning the dents in his armor. Finally, Marshall lifts his robot's head and looks at me. “I'm not seriously hurt. Just some cosmetic damage. But trust me, Adam, I'm
seriously
angry.” Using the Super-bot's arms to lever himself upright, Marshall gets back on his footpads. “That girl is a menace. She pretends she's an expert, but she has no idea what she's doing. If I were Hawke, I'd send her right back to Oklahoma.”

He points his cameras at Amber, who's striding toward us. She swings her Jet-bot's arms, swaggering like an actor in a cowboy movie. “Okay, we gotta work on the landing. But it wasn't so bad for a first try, right?”

“Are you crazy?” Marshall points at the dents in his torso. “You almost killed me!”

Amber shakes her robot's head. “Come on, you're exaggerating. All your systems are functional. If we were in combat, you could jump back into the fight.” She turns to me. “That's the whole point of the maneuver. I can use it to transport other Pioneers to a battle, without the need to land.”

I stare at her. Amber's confidence is astounding, and so is her cockiness. I can't help but wonder if she was like this before she became a Pioneer. “Look, it's a good idea, at least in theory. But in the future you should—”

“You should find someone else to practice your stunts with!” Marshall's voice echoes down the tunnel, loud and high-pitched. “You're criminally reckless! And unforgivably stupid! From now on, just stay away from me!”

Amber turns back to Marshall. She extends her arms, steel hands turned up, in a conciliatory gesture. “Hey, I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to—”

“Why are you even here?” Marshall scrunches his plastic face into a scowl. The rips in his cheeks and forehead make him look sinister. “Just yesterday you were dying. You were probably begging for painkillers and crying for your mama.”

Amber slowly lowers her arms. As I watch her reaction, I remember something Hawke told us about the girl: while Amber was in the last weeks of her illness, her mother committed suicide. Most likely because she couldn't stand to watch her daughter suffer.

“And look at you now!” Marshall clenches his hands. “The Army gives you a strong, steel body and you think you're saved! You think you're invincible!”

Amber's torso is vibrating in distress. I move toward her, trying to shield her from Marshall, but he extends his Super-bot's arm and pushes me away. “You're not saved, Amber! And you're not invincible! Sigma is out there, and it's a thousand times stronger than us! You're going to die again, and this time you won't come back!”

“Marshall!” Appalled, I push back at him, slamming my Quarter-bot's hands against his armor. “Stop it right now!”

He stands his ground, still scowling. I lean my weight against his machine and focus my cameras on his Superman face, now torn and full of hate. For a moment I don't even recognize him.
This isn't the Marshall I know. This is someone else.

Then he steps backward, pulling away from me so suddenly that I almost tip over. Without another word, Marshall marches back to the test chamber. Five seconds later he exits the wind tunnel.

I watch him leave.
Is he the traitor?
I still don't know. But if I had to make a guess right now, I'd say it's more likely to be Marshall than Zia. Because his behavior is inhuman. Something has changed him.

I raise my hand to my head and rub the armored plate above my camera lenses. Then I turn to Amber. Her torso isn't vibrating anymore, which I guess is a good sign. “Uh, are you okay? That was—”

“I'm fine.”

That's all she says. Her Jet-bot doesn't move. She just stands there in the tunnel, as still as a statue. I can't be sure what's going through her circuits, but I bet she's thinking about what Marshall said, about Sigma and dying and her final hours in her human body. I get the feeling that Amber will never be the same, never as cocky and free-spirited as she was just a few minutes ago. And now that she's hurting so badly, she reminds me of Jenny, who was so scared before she became a Pioneer and so lost and vulnerable afterward.

I take a step toward Amber. “Listen, I gotta apologize for Marshall. He was damaged in our last battle, and ever since then he's—”

“Sorry, I have to go.” She turns away from me and heads for the exit.

“Wait, where are you—”

“I have to find Lieutenant Gibbs. Our tour got cut short before she could give me an assignment.” Amber shakes her Jet-bot's head as she hurries off. “If I'm going to live inside a machine, I need an assignment. I need a job to keep me busy. Otherwise, I'll go nuts.”

A moment later she strides out of the wind tunnel. Then I'm alone again.

• • •

Although it's only one o'clock in the afternoon, my circuits are already strained to their breaking point. I run a diagnostic check on my electronics and see the reason for their poor performance: it's been nine days since the last time I put my Quarter-bot into sleep mode, and that's way too long. So I go to the quietest spot on the Air Force base—a bunker used for storing classified documents—and start shutting down my systems.

First, I cut the power to my motors, freezing my Quarter-bot in a standing position beside the stacked boxes of old papers. Next, I turn off all my sensors—the cameras, the acoustic sensors, the accelerometers, everything. I deliberately plunge my mind into a silent black sea where there's no up or down, no surface or bottom. Then I disconnect all my radio links except for a backup communications system that can send me an alert in case of an emergency. And last, I shut down the logic circuits that organize my thinking and sustain my consciousness. Now my thoughts are free to travel where they will, diving and weaving through my memories and emotions. In other words, I can dream.

It begins with a memory of my mother. When I was nine years old, Mom was supposed to drive me to a doctor's appointment because my muscular dystrophy was getting worse. I couldn't walk more than twenty feet without stumbling, and my doctor wanted me to come to his office for some tests. But Mom couldn't bear to hear any more bad news about my condition, so instead of taking me to Westchester Medical Center, she drove me to Rockefeller State Park.