Androids don’t feel, I remind myself, and there is nothing I would like to do more now than to not feel.
I sink to the floor, the wet stones soaking the seat of my jeans, and draw my knees up to my chest, hugging them against my body as my head sinks down, my short hair barely covering my face. I just want to be alone, but I feel the death of the tracker nanobots in my blood, and I cannot be alone, even from them. I am surrounded by death, inside and out, and all it does is remind me of how futile everything is, everything ever was.
I feel rather than see Jack sit down beside me. He doesn’t touch me. He just sits there, beside me, the only warmth in this cold, dead cave.
I look up when I feel a cool breeze on my skin, making goose bumps race along my arms.
“There are ventilation shafts,” Jack says, pointing up. I follow his finger, but see only darkness. I feel like I’ve lived in this darkness for so long that I will be blinded by sunlight.
“She’s really gone, isn’t she?” I say softly, staring at a glint of a copper ring around the finger of one of the skeletons resting in the wall across from me. It reminds me of the rose-gold ring my mother wears. I try to remember if the doppelganger of Mom had her ring, if that’s one more piece of her lost.
It takes Jack a moment to realize what I mean. “Your mother?” he asks.
I nod my head. “And Akilah.”
“I think so.” We both know that Akilah’s body was gone—we both saw it destroyed. But I had hoped that there was something left, something that was my friend. Something left of my mother beyond the metal skull and sparking electrical wires.
“How?” I ask simply.
Jack stares blankly ahead. “I’m not sure. At the Lunar Base, when a soldier died—and it happened far more than the news lets on, there are a lot of ‘accidents’ during training missions, and skirmishes from Secessionary States. Anyway, if a soldier died, he’d be replaced fairly quickly with a doppelganger. It didn’t take long for me to figure out something was wrong. All the soldiers in the Lunar Base were young—some of them younger even than the military should allow, mostly from the Foqra District, or other poor areas. There weren’t a lot of soldiers, but as soon as one was killed or seriously wounded, the replacement… it looked just like the person, knew the person’s memories, but…”
“They weren’t the same.” I’m not speaking about the soldiers.
“No. None of them were ever the same.”
We’re silent for a long time after this.
“Is that what happened to my mother?” I ask in a very soft voice. “Did she die? Was she replaced with… that?”
“I’m not sure,” Jack says again.
And then, because I can’t help myself, I say, “Is that what happened to me? Is that why I can’t remember you?”
Jack doesn’t answer.
The corpses around us wait for us to speak again.
“Here’s what I know,” Jack says finally, his low voice a rumble among the bones. “All the ones who died and came back—they were fundamentally different. Some memories were there, most weren’t. They were extremely patriotic. They were blindly obedient to superiors. They had no emotional attachments—to anyone. They weren’t themselves.”
Jack turns, looking me in the eyes. “But you’re still you, Ella,” he tells me, sincerity ringing in his voice. “You’re just missing one piece.”
“You.”
“But everything else is there. Your memories of me didn’t define who you were. Who you are. You’re still you, whole and complete, and everything that made you you is still there.”
And I wonder if he means, everything that made me love you is still there. But those are words that cannot be spoken, not here, not now, not by this version of me that doesn’t know that version of him.
“Am I human?” I ask, my eyes drifting to Jack’s bag, and the nanobot analyzer that told him how much of me is microscopic robots. This is not a fear I have quite been able to voice yet, but it is the deepest terror within me. I grew up in a world where things can look human but aren’t, but I have never once questioned my own humanity. It was just so clear that androids weren’t anything more than dressed-up robots. But seeing Akilah and the doppelganger for Mom, seeing my own super-human abilities… I’m questioning everything, starting with myself.
“You’re you,” Jack says, but I notice that this doesn’t really answer my question.
forty-nine
Jack stands, then offers me a hand to pull me up. “Ready to go?”
I stare around at the skeletons littering the catacombs. “Is this what you meant?” I ask. “When you told Julie we were going to sleep? You always meant to come this way?”
Jack stares at me, his face flickering in shadow from the flashlight. “Yes,” he says. “And now it’s time for us to stay awake.”
“Where’s that?”
Jack tries to smile. “You’ll see.”
“And you told Julie and Xavier to take Akilah and go to war…”
Jack heads toward the far side of the catacombs, and another set of stairs. “There’s an old World War II bunker on Gozo—the tunnel cuts back around, and they can get there and then to a safe house.”
I follow him up a set of stairs—old, but more modern than the ones in the secret tunnel. A wooden handrail used to exist, but it’s nothing more than rotting splinters now.
“Why did you separate us?” I ask.
“What?” Jack calls back down.
I speak up. “Why did we have to split up?”
Jack pauses for a moment, but doesn’t turn around. “I wasn’t sure it was safe.”
“I don’t care if it was dangerous—I could have gone with Akilah. Even if she’s… different… I’d rather be with her than not.”
Jack still doesn’t turn to face me when he says, “I thought it wouldn’t be safe for them.”
I stumble on the steps. My nanobot count, the tracker bots that were inside of me, my inhuman abilities… I don’t know if I can’t be trusted because of what I am or because he doubts what side I’m on, but at the end of the day—I’m a liability.
Jack opens a door at the top of the stairs, kicking against it when it sticks. We step out into the cool night air. I drink in the fresh air, filling my lungs until they ache and sighing the air out in one long whoosh.
Stars twinkle overhead, barely visible. I can see the lights of the city of Mdina nearby, so bright that they wash out the sky. We’re in Rabat, and while we’ve just emerged into a fairly large town, no one notices us. People keep to themselves here. I lived in Rabat with Mom and Dad before Mom developed the technology for the Reverie Mental Spa, and we had a small house with ivy and dusty limestone walls. This part of Rabat, however, is desolate. A few children race by, one on a bicycle, lugging a heavy cart behind him. Although they’re young, these children are working, not playing, and the curve of their backs and the cracks in their hands imply that they’re already far older than their ages allow.
In the distance, I can see the outline of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the namesake of the catacombs. Its roof is caved in, the sign is broken, the big door in the front is missing, exposing a shadowy, bare inside.
The UC never banned religion, not like some of the Secessionary States did. It just engendered apathy. Rather than actively discouraging people to drop their religion, the government simply ignored it. Holidays were changed from religious memorials to festas and parties. Tax exemptions were eliminated; no special allowances were given to any religion. When a religious statue was damaged or broken, it wasn’t repaired—it was replaced with something different, something neutral.
It wasn’t that the government made the people give up church; it’s that the people simply forgot to care. When Mom was first diagnosed with Hebb’s Disease, I caught her praying. I guess it’s only natural to pray at a time like that. But we both were embarrassed, as if I’d seen her naked, and I’ve never known her to pray since.
There are still a few cathedrals and
churches scattered across Malta—St. John’s always has a big charity drive for the Foqra District every year—but for the most part, people don’t bother. I’ve never really cared about religion one way or another—neither of my parents were deeply religious, although Akilah’s family was—but seeing the hollow remains of St. Paul’s Cathedral, especially after stepping out of the catacombs filled with its own remains, makes me a little sad.
It feels as if everything in my life is nothing but rotting bones.
Jack takes me a few blocks away from the catacombs, and he accesses a street-level garage with a retina scan. The locks to the metal door slide open, and a few minutes later he emerges with an antique black electric-model all-terrain Vespa with gold trim. It’s beat-up and old, but when he starts the engine, the thing is silent, and the tires look new. It looks inconspicuous, old, and worthless, but the bike is probably powerful enough to scale a mountain on.
Jack swings a leg over the seat and scoots forward, making room for me. “I don’t get my own?” I say.
“There’s only one, love.”
“Then let me drive,” I say. “And don’t call me love.”
Jack moves back in the seat, but just before I clamber on, he adds, “Of course, you do know where we’re going, right?”
I growl and climb onto the Vespa behind him. I don’t put my arms around his waist, instead opting to hold onto the fender behind me. Jack glances back at me, shrugs, and the scooter purrs to life, lurching forward and bouncing over the pot-hole-ridden street in front of the garage as the doors close automatically behind me.
I’m so turned around that I’m not sure where we’re going, other than away from civilization. Jack avoids all the bigger towns and cities on the way. Mdina fades into the background, although the bright lights of New Venice—including the sparkling tips of Triumph Towers—are still visible to the northwest.
When Jack veers off the road and into the rocky terrain of a warehouse packing district, I grab his waist to avoid falling off the back, clinging to him as we bounce painfully over the streets that were probably never properly paved. Jack drops one hand on top of mine, holding me against him, and I start to pull away, but decide against it. It’s warm, next to him, and it makes me feel safe.
After a while, I realize where we’re going. The land is more and more deserted, not even factories venturing this far north and east. Hollow remains of buildings stare blankly at us as Jack risks the bumpy streets again. The roads were once well-travelled and popular, but hardly anything of that time remains.
We’re heading into the former war zone.
The Secessionary War was hard on every country involved. There is a mark in every land. In Malta, our biggest scar is the former capital, Valetta.
Jack stops before we reach the ruined remains of the city. He pulls up to a twisted iron gate that blocks a series of broken stone steps. A blue-and-white tiled sign speckled with age announced that we’re at SENGLEA. Underneath the city is a phrase written in Latin: Città Invicta.
Jack sees my gaze. “It means, ‘the unconquerable city.’”
What a joke. Every city falls.
I jump off the Vespa, rubbing my sore butt as Jack uses an old-fashioned key on a metal lock at the top of the stairs, and the gate swings open. The dim night sky is full of more stars than I have ever seen. I push past Jack, my eyes to the heavens, and step forward onto a plaza made of smooth, pale bricks, many of which are cracked or missing. A low wall made of similar bricks lines the side of the plaza, and I rush to it, breathing in the heady scents of saltwater as I gaze up.
Above us, the moon is a sliver, nothing more than a tiny scratch of white in the sky. The constellations stretch out far over the sea, and the waters glitter beneath them.
“It’s beautiful,” I breathe. I never see the stars in New Venice.
I turn to look at Jack. But he’s not looking at the sky. He’s looking at the water. He’s looking at the hole in the world, an entire city leveled and filled in with the sea.
“That’s where Valetta used to be,” I say, even though we both know. The once great city, the former capital of our entire nation. Nothing but a sunken circle of black water. All that remains of the city—all the remains of the hundreds of thousands of people who used to live in the city—is under the sea.
I look around me with fresh eyes, eyes that are aware of where we are. There are bricked-in olive trees arching over us, a sort of memorial made of stone balls in the center—but past the garden I can see the relics of old buildings, the crumbling foundations of a church, a clock tower that was knocked sideways in the force of the blast that destroyed Valetta.
“When the capital was bombed during the Secessionary War,” Jack says somberly, “Everyone there died immediately. It completely wiped out the whole city. But some of the cities nearby, like this one… some of the buildings survived. Most of the people didn’t, not if they didn’t make it to a shelter.”
I feel dangerous just standing here, overlooking the remains of a city long-dead. The bomb was a solar-flare; the radiation poison might make a person sick, but it rarely killed, not like nuclear bombs of the past. Still, I feel as if we shouldn’t be here, a wrongness that reminds me of my reaction to the catacombs.
And then I recall what PA Young told me, about how she was in Valetta just before the bomb, with my parents and Ms. White. I imagine what it must have been like as they huddled in a bomb shelter for protection. The terror, the horror. Ms. White, nearly bleeding to death after her arm was lost in the blast. My parents, not even married yet, unsure of if they would survive. And Hwa Young, the woman who would one day rule the entire UC, crouched in a shelter, listening to the sounds of a hundred thousand people dying.
Maybe if I’d been there, I would understand why she is willing to turn people into soulless shells in order to avoid such violence again.
Jack and I lean over the wall at the top of the garden in Senglea, looking across the Grand Harbour at where Valetta once stood. Jack makes a sort of growling angry noise, and turns his back on the emptiness that was once the capital, staring instead at the scattered remains of the city we’re in, destroyed not by the bomb, but by the blowback and tsunami that followed it. “It’s worse, I think,” he says in a low, almost inaudible voice, “to leave something more than a gaping hole.”
fifty
Jack walks under the wind-swept olive trees toward a tower built into the wall at the very edge of the city. We’re high up overlooking the harbor, and I’m momentarily filled with vertigo as I watch Jack jump over the pavement broken by tree roots and age, nothing more than a twisted, rusted iron railing protecting him from the deadly drop over the side of the walled city.
A small tower is built into the wall, no more than the size of my closet. Neat, rectangular windows are cut directly into the stone bricks that make the hexagonal room, capped with a pointed dome roof that ends on a geometric sort of a design that I can’t quite fully see in the dark. Over top each of the windows of the tower is an additional carving, alternating between a giant ear and an enormous eye. A bird, its long neck craning down, is carved into the stone.
Jack notices me staring. “This used to be a watch tower, like a thousand years ago. The eyes and ears represented how the guards of the city were always watching and listening.”
We were asleep—among the closed-eyes of the dead
in the catacombs—now we’re awake. Jack’s code finally makes sense.
As Jack approaches the tower, the stone bird over the door comes to life. Jack stands still, his eyes wide, as the bird’s head moves up and down. The bird snaps back into place, every appearance of stone. The eyes and ears carved into the tower flash once, bright red, and then they, too, fade back into stone.
“I don’t think that’s from a thousand years ago,” I say, staring at the stone bird, the electronics inside it now invisible.
Jack snorts with unamused laughter. “The Zunzana may have done a few updates. It’s a bug-out tower now,
for if one of us has to go on the run.”
I step inside the small room under the stone roof. The windows are open, as is the door. It’s small, but there’s plenty of room for both of us standing.
Jack works quickly, first typing a code into his cuff, then touching a hidden panel under the lip of the stone wall. Silvery material drops like curtains around the building.
“Anti-tech cloth?” I ask, touching the slick material.
“It’s the closest thing we have to an invisibility cloak,” he says. He nods toward the door. “Go look.”
I step outside the tower room and look back at it. The anti-tech cloth lines the inside, keeping any geo-locators or nanobots out. Meanwhile, the outer shell of the curtains is made of a thin, malleable screen that projects the image of an empty tower. When I’m right next to the curtains, I can tell that they’re hiding the tower, but even from a few steps back, it looks as if the tower is empty, all signs of Jack gone.
When I step back inside, there’s barely room for me to stand. Jack has opened a hidden compartment in the floor and withdrawn two instabeds. He pops open the packages, and two foam mattresses spring to life.
I lean so far against the window that I’m practically hanging out it, my shoulders against the anti-tech cloth. The instabeds are narrow and thin, much like this tower room. When Jack lays them down, they’re side-by-side. It’s more like one large bed than two small ones. I can’t take my eyes off the nonexistent space between the mattresses.
Jack looks up and notices my nervous face. “I don’t bite, love.”
I whip around. “I told you to quit calling me that.” Jack opens his mouth to speak, but I don’t let him. “I don’t care what kind of person I am in your memory. Because I’m not that person now.”
Jack looks as if I’ve smacked him across the face. He turns silently back to the beds, pushing them as far apart as possible. My heart is racing; I feel like I’ve run a marathon.