Blood Crown (35 page)

I can only assume they planted it while I lay unconscious on their ship—though that they were able to disguise it so my nanos or Nic’s symbiants weren’t able to detect it is alarming. The Mind knows everything about the
Eden Project
, knows our programming more intimately than we do.

“Do you feel it?” I ask aloud, and then immediately don’t need an answer. Because in that second, Nic's consciousness dives deep into my mind, racing along my nanos, riding them like a wave through my bloodstream.

In an instant I know he will attempt to disable the bomb, and so I imitate him, sending my thoughts, my awareness along the symbiants that pump from my body to his, urging myself to go faster and faster, desperate to reach it.

Two minutes.

I arrive just seconds after Nic has found the bomb planted inside me.

It’s organic
, Nic informs me. It pulses like a heart and I know it actually
is
a heart—the Mind has been trying to build organic bodies for themselves and, failing, wants to destroy all organic life forms.

I send my symbiants rushing around Nic’s bomb, exploring every part of it, gauging it, cataloguing it. A heart no bigger than a child’s, and two of its chambers are packed with enough explosives to take out the entire
Capital
. But it is what is inside the other two chambers that scares me most.

A nano-virus as deadly to machines as the bomb is to humans.

Seconds before the heart explodes, the virus will be expelled through our symbiants and wirelessly transmitted to the ship. It will race with a domino effect to every ship in our networks—mine to the West, Nic’s to the East.

Death for the humans will be slow as their ships begin to die, and oxygen and food production ceases.

Electricity sparks through my symbiants, and I feel them pulse and grow in size—Nic’s heart is feeding them, reacting with them.
Do you feel that?
We are somehow even more connected than before. We are truly becoming one.

Yes
, he says.

We’re becoming stronger—when I’m in you, and you’re in me—we’re stronger!

As one, we set about the only option we have left. I dive into his bomb, searching each chamber, each artery. The explosives are rigged with the main chambers, but their arterial joints aren’t attached to anything, while the chambers filled with the virus are wired directly into Nic’s nanos—the tech that has been passed down to him from his parents, and from their parents before them.

That is the part of me that can speak with the ship and feel my fleet, my kingdom spread around me.

But there has to be something, some way to stop the explosion. I guide my symbiants through the bomb, exploring the blocked arteries of the main chambers—and then I find it. A tiny crack in its armor, a spot where the blockage has come away. I go to work on it, forcing it apart, demanding that it give way.

One minute.

I love you Serantha
.

I can’t think, can’t answer.

There!
I get the artery open and let the grains of explosive material pour out of the bomb and into Nic’s chest where they are swept up into his bloodstream.
Do this! Do it!

I feel the explosives drain into my chest cavity, then ushered into my blood stream. And there, buried deep underneath the explosive in the main chamber of the bomb, I find the detonation key. I throw myself into deprogramming it.

Forty-two seconds.

It isn’t hard, but maybe it is too easy.

The data scrolling through my symbiants tell me the countdown has stopped at forty seconds. But something is happening inside of me, Nic hasn’t stopped the clock. The time races forward and still I sense his symbiants hard at work on the bomb.

Thirty-six seconds.

Nic! Please! Turn it off!

Twenty-five seconds.

And still the countdown continues.

Twenty seconds.

Eighteen.

Thirteen.

He grabs my face with his hands, and kisses me. Pulls my body to him, holding me as if we would be one.

Nine.

His kisses slow, caressing, loving.

Five.

I love you
, he murmurs in my mind.

I open my mouth, my mind, to tell him I love him too.

But he grabs my hand and presses it flat to the console, his fingers intertwined with my own, as fire lights me up from within.

I scream in fury and pain.
How can he betray me?

“What are you doing?” I shout. I push and punch at him but he wards off my blows until he finally grabs my wrist and pins my arm behind me. He yanks me close, and presses me against the console, never letting up on the pressure on my hand or the arm behind my back.

I try to bite him, but he only presses his forehead to mine, making it impossible to move.

Let me explain
. His words drop like cool rain in my mind, promising relief.

My own mind feels disorganized and chaotic while I try to grasp the depth of his betrayal and the truth that we have failed—or rather,
I
have failed. I didn’t protect my people after all.

Listen to me
, Nic urges.

When I open my eyes, I see him through a pool of tears. His pale blue eyes regard me, and they seem . . . not hard and unfeeling like I expect of a betrayer, but entreating, kind. Loving.

Listen
, he repeats.

“There’s nothing you can say,” I choke out around the sorrow clogging my throat.

“Look at it,” he says. He adds pressure to my hand.
Look
.

I search his eyes a moment more for the meaning behind his words, for the trap, the lie, but I can’t discern it. Then again, I’d let him into my heart and mind without any restriction and I hadn’t seen this, hadn’t foretold this utter betrayal. He remains a mystery, as arrogant and distant as ever.

But I close my eyes anyway, and send my internal eye to ferret out the virus flowing through my veins and into the ship. I look where the virus has touched, where it entered the ship’s data bank and where it has spread across all the networks. I expect to see black rot in its wake, to see my tissues failing, to see my ship’s core shorting out, overcome by death.

Yet I see none of those things.

Instead, every string of code has a qualifier attached to it, something that brands it for a specific purpose—the tag to identify us, the human’s tech. Except—this isn’t right.

My eyes fly open and I look at Nic, and see, to my surprise, a small smile raising his lips. He gives the barest of nods, and I resume my examination of the code.

There is the tag that the Mind had attached, that should make the virus attack our tech only, leaving theirs unharmed. Except there is something wrong with the tag, something twisted, something out of place. Nic has reproduced the tag and attached it to the first—essentially creating a double negative, the second tag negating the first.

“We can fix it,” he whispers. I open my eyes, see his soft eyes looking at me so intently.
I only had time to make you immune. I don’t have much time left, and neither does your ship. You have to fix it.

My mind races with the implications. The virus is spreading across the fleet—taking out human tech as well as Mind. Already I can feel it grasping onto the ship’s intelligence core, covering the circuits with a deadly code that clings to it like black poison.

As I watch, Nic’s eyes grow dark, black veins snaking across the whites of his eyes.

You can do it
, Nic’s whispered thought lands in my mind while his pressure on my body fades away and he slumps to the floor.

I fall to my knees by his side, sending my symbiants racing through his body, tracking the virus. I suck them back the second the virus begins to take notice of me. I can’t take it for granted I am immune—Nic might have just found a way to expel it from me before it went live. It might not protect me forever.

I rock back onto my heels, and with my hand resting on Nic’s chest where I can feel the steady rhythm of his breathing, I go in search of the Mind’s bomb package to see if I can retrace Nic’s steps. He’d said I could fix it—and I hope he is right.

I find the bomb, find the chamber that had stored the virus, empty now. And then sigh with relief. Nic left a copy of the tag he added. I open Archibald’s cache and pull from it a sample of my Servant’s DNA. Something whispers inside of me, like a ghost from the past, but I ignore it, keeping my attention focused on the DNA. I untangle it, separating out the piece he has in common with me, and focus instead on the 99% that is
Mind
. Using it as a guide, I create an anti-virus that will sweep through the networks, cleaning away any of the virus clinging to any tech that does not have the Mind string attached.

I wipe my sweaty palms on my thighs, then focus on Nic. I need to test the anti-virus, and I need Nic’s help to send it swiftly across the network—if it works. I don’t dare test it on our ship first because if I am wrong, if I fail, I will destroy our only hope to reach the rest of the fleet. So I brush the hair off Nic’s forehead and prepare myself to use him as my test subject.

“Oh excellent,” Galen croons from the screen above the console. “I see I am not too late. I’ve brought a guest to watch this final episode of the
Saviors of Mankind
. It’s a tragic story, really. And everyone knows how it will end. Still, it
is
entertaining.”

His words are annoyances, buzzing around my mind and pestering me, making me lose my concentration. I force his voice out of my head.

I lean down, my lips hovering over Nic’s. “If this doesn’t work, please forgive me.” I brush my lips against his in a light kiss, then lean down with more intention. I send the antivirus through my kiss into Nic’s blood stream. I try to follow it as long as I can, but soon it is beyond my reach. I lean back, my eyes glued to his closed ones, my hand resting on his forehead, the other on his chest. I wish and pray the anti-virus will work.

“Serantha.” The voice is raspy, low. Barely above a whisper. But it’s enough to freeze me. I’m aware of part of my mind counting the seconds until Nic wakes . . .

one . . .

but I’m turning . . .

two . . .

turning . . .

three . . .

toward that voice.

“There! Perfect timing, my dear. I had hoped you would see who had joined the party.” Gart steps into view, Archibald’s head stuck on his titanium claw as though on a spear, a power pack dangling from the wires and sinews dangling from Archibald’s neck. “What a fitting end to your Servant.”

Nic’s breath hitches but my eyes are glued to the screen.

“Serantha.” Archibald opens his eyes. They find mine immediately and I realize—when I opened his cache, the connection between us was strengthened, like a switch had been flipped. I can feel him now, his symbiants a quiet echo of my own.

I love you
, I tell him across the miles that separate us.

Four . . . Five . . . Six . . . Seven.

I turn away from Archibald and focus instead on Nic.

Nic’s eyes pop open.
They are clear of the virus!
As soon as his eyes find mine, he lurches upward, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck, pulling my face to his.

He crushes a kiss to my lips.
I knew you could do it
, he rasps in my mind, his thoughts breathless from relief, love, and the tang of fear.

I hear clapping. I move so Nic and I can both see the screen. Gart smiles wickedly and draws a finger down Archibald’s cheek, but Archibald’s eyes remain closed. He is so pale, so artificial seeming—it’s hard to believe he could still be alive. That he ever lived.

As if he senses my confusion his eyes open once more.

Galen dabs his lips with a napkin. “Well, I applaud you. Truly, I do. But have no fear—with the Empire of the East under my command, we’ll be seeing each other very soon.” Galen moves to flick his hand—to dismiss us or end the com.

“Wait.” Archibald’s raspy voice rings loudly enough he draws all our attention. And then he smiles.

It is a smile I knew as a child. The one that said,
I know your parents said it wasn’t safe to ride the serving cart down the hall, but here, let me push you.

I cock my head, trying to discern Archibald’s meaning. His eyes never leave mine while he says, “Galen, old friend.”

Archibald smiles and Galen takes his head into his hands while Gart steps back. He stares darkly at the screen while Galen brings Archibald to eye level. “Time to say goodbye, I think. I shant keep you waiting for the next round.”

“I agree. It is time to say goodbye,” Archibald responds.

I feel a rush of warmth through Archibald’s symbiants. They fill me with love—his love.

“Compos mentis,” Archibald says in his raspy whisper.

Galen’s face blanches. “What? No.” Galen drops Archibald’s head as he jumps from the throne, knocking Gart out of the way. “No!”

My body is aflame with Archibald’s love for me, with his final act of sacrifice.

Galen falls to the floor, his open eyes staring, seeing nothing. Gart remains unmoving for a moment, then takes a step forward, his eyes on the android at his feet. Just before he disconnects the com, I see him level a rib-crunching kick at Galen’s still form.

Compos mentis
—Archibald’s symbiants inform me it is a safeguard against android malfunction. It renders both the speaker and the subject inert, dormant, until they can be returned to a repair station for diagnosis.

Archibald’s symbiants flare inside me.

And then they are gone.

Nic grasps me to him, crushing my chest against his own.
He sacrificed himself for us
, he says.
For humankind
.

I have no words with which to answer. Inside, Archibald’s symbiants bond permanently with my own, allowing me to keep a little piece of him—forever.

Nic kisses the center of my left palm before grinning wickedly and placing my hand on the console once again.