Cryo-Man (Cryo-Man series, #1) (32 page)

“I’m sorry for worrying you,” I say.

Her expression hardens again. “Who says I was worried? Well, not about you… or because of you… I mean I was just afraid you’d gotten yourself killed and all this time I spent waiting for you – waiting to fulfill
E’s
final request – was for nothing.”

I don’t know why I think there’s more to the story – perhaps it has to do with us being the only two hybrids, or at least the only two
here
– but I drop the subject for now.

“We shut down the tower,” I say. “The signal is off and the robots turned on the remaining humans.”

I glance at Nej, who looks sad but does not say a word about the fate of his half-brothers.

“Is anyone going to tell me what’s happening?” the princess asks, frustration creeping into her voice.

“We were being held captive, just like you,” I tell her. “Nej helped me escape. But he refused to let us leave without going back for you.”

Of course there are plenty of details I don’t include but I figure Nej can admit whatever he wants later on. Nej struggles to walk a few steps, finally needing to sit on the ground.

“You’re hurt,” the princess says, rushing to his side.

He forces himself to stand, though it’s clearly a struggle.

“It’s not so bad,” he says through gritted teeth. “Are you really a princess?”

“I used to be in the place I was from,” she says. “But not anymore. None of that matters out here. Please, just call me Regina.”

“Nej,” he says quickly, his face turning bright red in the process. “I mean, that’s
my
name.”

“Well, thank you, Nej,” she says. “I’m very grateful for you not leaving me.” The princess turns to me. “You, too… I think.”

I’m sure it’s difficult for her to thank the robot that killed her family so I merely nod.

“You were heading for River City?” Mom asks her.

“How did you know that?” she asks, obviously still skeptical. “My people
willingly
told you?”

“You have nothing to fear from us,” Mom says. “Your friends are only about a day ahead of you. If you hurry after them, you might catch up before they reach the city. They told me you were bringing a message.”

“Yes, one of hope,” she says. “Dearborn will not survive much longer and River City will crumble if our two sides don’t come up with a plan to destroy the robots. I’m sorry, does talking about destroying robots offend you?”

“We’re not part of
those
robots,” I say. “We were created far away from here, far west of River City.”

Regina’s face brightens.

“Is it true? Was the robots’ production center in the west destroyed in a blast?” she asks.

“Years ago, we saw the destroyed land with our own eyes,” I say, glancing toward Mom. She nods in agreement but still doesn’t look at me.

              “When I was a little girl, I remembered Dearborn almost falling,” Regina says. “We were nearly swallowed on the east
and
west by robots. My parents thought we’d have to abandon the city but then robots from the west suddenly stopped arriving and Dearborn rallied. We fought to a stalemate for years but that was mostly because the robots didn’t have the numbers needed to destroy my people. I just wish I knew how that signal worked, how that old man controlled the robots.”

             
“Nej was held captive in those woods much longer than me,” I say. “He would be the one with insight into 37’s control. His family was also killed so I’m sure he’d love to go to River City with you.”

             
Regina looks toward Nej, who’s slow to pick up on my signal. Finally, he manages a nod.

             
“That would be great,” Regina says. “I can use all the help I can get, as long as you’re able to keep up.”

             
“I will,” he says before turning to me. “And you two can help us deal with any robots we encounter along the way.”

             
Nej has such hope and trust in his eyes. I’m not looking forward to breaking the news to him, but I guess the best way to do it is like ripping off a bandage. I frown and shake my head.

             
“We’re going the other way,” I say.

             
Nej raises an eyebrow. His mouth opens to speak but then thinks better of it. Besides, Regina beats him to it.

             
“Toward Dearborn?” she asks longingly, though her gaze quickly hardens. “Toward more robots and the biggest remaining production center?”

             
I look to Mom, who nods.

             
“That’s where I have to go to learn about my sons,” I say.

             
Nej hobbles toward me and offers his hand. He’s the first human since E who hasn’t shied away from physical contact with me.

             
“Make sure when you reach River City, you cross the water on the – ”

             
“On the western side, I know,” Nej says. “I listened closely to everything you told me about your journey.”

             
I nod. “Thank you for rescuing me. I don’t know how long I would’ve been stuck in that stadium if you hadn’t helped.”

             
Nej’s eyes begin to well as he shakes his head. “I should be the one thanking you. Without you, I’m not sure my eyes would’ve ever opened to how awful it was being imprisoned there.”

             
“Now you can live your own life, become your own man, the one you always wanted,” I say.

             
Mom warns them about where the nearest robots are stationed in the surrounding area. She also tells Regina how to care for Nej’s wound, though the young man insists that he’s fine. The two kids have few belongings, little to hold them back on their travels.

             
“Protect that princess,” I tell him.

             
“I will,” Nej says, quickly looking away from Regina when she turns to him. “Good luck learning about your children. I’m sure they would’ve been proud to have you as their father.”

             
With nothing left to say, Regina leads Nej away. He limps the first few steps but I watch him grow stronger the farther he walks. I stand there and watch with a sense of paternal pride. Not for the first time, I wonder if my obsession with reaching the Heaven Box is stopping me from focusing on what’s important in
this
world instead of a world long since gone.

             
I sense when Mom steps next to me. Nej and the princess disappeared into the trees several minutes ago but I still watch for any sign that they’re in trouble.

             
“Thank you,” I tell her. “Really. There’s no words I could say to describe what you’ve done for me.”

I finally turn away from staring toward the trees. Mom is usually straightforward and brazen but she looks away before our eyes can meet. I think her wrinkled skin briefly turns a light shade of red. 

              “Oh,” she says, clearly surprised. “Well, I… I was just doing what E wanted.”

             
“That’s it?” I ask.

             
“I don’t know what you’re implying but I don’t appreciate it,” she says. “And you better be careful not to annoy me. You need me now more than ever. I don’t think you’d like if
I
just walked off.”

             
For some reason, I doubt she’d ever do that to me. Still, I push away the smirk that tries to creep across my face. No reason to get under the woman’s skin, human
or
metallic.

             
“Regardless of why you did what you did, I still want you to realize how grateful I am,” I say. “For that matter, I’m grateful you read my CIFPOL folder. You must have a photographic memory if you remembered all those coordinate numbers to my Heaven Box.”

             
She shakes her head. “I
don’t
remember all the numbers.”

             
“But I thought – ”

             
“Would you let me finish?” she snaps. “You always interrupt me. I don’t know the numbers but I know the location.”

             
“You have a GPS in your mind, too?”

             
Mom turns and begins to head east. I take a final glance toward the area where Nej disappeared before turning to catch up to her.

             
“Unfortunately, no,” she says. “E planned to install one in me but never had the chance. No, I took the numbers from your folder and looked at where they were. I know the spot… from a photo.”

             
“You looked at where they were?” I ask, confused. “How? And what photo could you have seen that – ”

             
She stops suddenly and I nearly bump into her.

             
“Will you trust me already?” she snaps. “I think I’ve earned that much. Unless you want to go off and look for it on your own?”

             
I’m not so certain she’s bluffing anymore. My smirk is suddenly nowhere to be found.

             
“I trust you,” I say.

             
She nods and continues walking, this time in silence. I follow as she leads me on a wide path around 37’s woods, even though the override signal is now dead and the battle is over in a forest that’s no longer so dangerous.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Five years ago, I spent weeks rushing through the Endless Forest before reaching 37’s territory. Now I spend even more time continuing through the woodsy part of the country. This time, I’m not alone.

At first, it’s kind of nice to have company; nobody wants to be alone for so long. But it quickly becomes apparent that Mom and I are involved in less of a traveling partnership and more of a traveling dictatorship. She’s the one with the information so she’s the one who makes the rules. She stresses one rule so often that the single word will probably echo in the back of my mind forever.

“Caution,” she constantly says.

But when she says it – over and over and over – all I hear is the word ‘slow.’ For that matter, there’s rarely a tree Mom sees that she doesn’t want to stop and hide behind. Most of the trees are smaller than we are so it’s not like we’re doing a great job of blending in. Every time we stop, she puts a robotic finger to her dome to shut me up before slowly peering around the corner at the nothingness making up this overgrown part of the country.

“Be careful,” I whisper.

             
Mom’s head quickly turns from side to side, looking among the sea of trees and bushes for any sign of danger.

             
“What do you see?” she asks nervously.

             
“I think I saw a… yeah, it
is
here,” I say, pointing into the distance.

             
Mom tries to look but slowly shakes her head.

             
“I can’t see it, what’s out there?”

             
Suddenly, a tiny animal climbs down the base of one tree and scurries up another.

             
“It’s one of those deadly squirrels,” I say. “It’s a good thing we were well hidden.”

             
Mom shakes her head in disgust and keeps walking.

             
“You think this is funny?” she asks, disgusted.

             
“No, I think we’ve been walking slower than a human for weeks now,” I say. “E created us to be faster than any human
or
robot. We’re wasting his talents by moving so slow.”

             
“I’m not explaining myself again,” she says. “The most important rule we can follow is – ”

             
“Caution, I
know
,” I say. “But these woods are empty.”

             
Mom holds up a hand to stop me again. She quickly rushes to take cover behind a nearby tree.

             
“Empty?” she whispers. “What do you call that?”

             
At first, I see only trees and grounds overgrown with greenery. But when I look closer – when I see what this greenery covers – I realize this area hadn’t always been forestry. Buildings are covered with a green façade, houses in several stages of decay that now have trees growing straight through them. Some structures look like they could fall at any moment; others appear to need only a few hours of landscaping before becoming livable again.

             
Seeing evidence of a former civilized world never ceases to amaze me. A part of me still hopes I’ll emerge from these woods and find the world just as I left it. But seeing overgrown civilization is nothing new. We run into this type of thing just about every day.

             
“I call them ruins,” I say. “Empty ruins, just like the rest of the wreckage scattered around the forest.”

             
“If humans decided to settle in this area, don’t you think they’d take shelter in this kind of place?” Mom asks.

             
“That’s what you say about
every
place we come across,” I say.

             
“For all we know, the humans have lookouts or snipers hiding in perches around their settlement, ready to shoot at the first sign of robots,” Mom says, scanning the treetops.

             
I shake my head, the quiet whirring of my movement loud among the forest’s silence.

             
“Would you shut up already?” she hisses.

             
“If by some tiny
chance there
are
humans here – and if by some tiny chance they
have
snipers hidden in one of the trees – do you really think they’d
want
to draw attention by starting a battle?” I ask. “Or do you think they’d rather keep quiet and let their enemies pass without calling attention to themselves?”

             
Now it’s her turn to shake her head. “You
always
think you know
every
thing. Some things never change.”

             
I thought I’ve done a good job keeping my opinion to myself over the last few weeks but I suppose Mom thinks otherwise.  

             
“I’m just using common sense,” I say. “Humans want to avoid interactions with robots as much as they can. And any robot wandering this far off the beaten path will ignore us as long as we give it no reason to think we’re trouble. I understand wanting to be safe – excuse me, wanting to use
caution
– but this is starting to get ridiculous. We should be moving as fast as we can.”

Mom turns to me and puts her hands on her hips, an amusing pose for a robotic body. Still, I can almost imagine the old woman standing like this at some point in her former life.

“You rushed across the country after leaving CIFPOL, right?” she asks, her voice so sweet that she suddenly makes me nervous.

“Yeah.”

“And how’d that work out for you?”

I frown and nod my head. There’s no need to verbalize my answer.

“You can rush into any situation you want, I’m not stopping you,” she says. “But I’m not following you and I’m not sharing any more of my spare parts if you get broken again. I like my glass dome where it is; I like having my wires protected, thank you very much.”

In the end I’m forced to proceed slowly, to do everything exactly as she wants. The overgrown neighborhood ends up being deserted but I take no pleasure in the fact that I’m right.

This type of situation comes up time after time during the next few weeks. Thinking about my sons and my Heaven Box makes it hard for me to move slowly but I have no choice. As much as it drives me crazy, the time
does
pass without incident and there are quite a few humans and robots along the way that never know we’re hiding. There even comes a time when I instinctively duck behind trees before I’m told. I’d hoped my enthusiasm and desire to travel quickly would rub off on Mom but it’s her habits that end up instilled within me.

The hardest part is containing my excitement about the Heaven Box. I’ve tried broaching the subject with Mom several times but her answers are always brief, annoyed, like it’s the last thing she wants to talk about. Initially, her trepidation to discuss the subject puzzled me, made me wonder about her true motivations. She knows how important the box is to me, she knows that finding it is the lone reason for my existence. I kept telling myself not to push the subject, not to do anything to anger her or give her a reason to leave me.

I’ve tried to pry more information from her about the box’s whereabouts but she’s only offered snippets that would prove little help if I was on my own. But when I finally wondered aloud why she was being so vague, I learned that I wasn’t the only one with trust concerns.

“If I tell you exactly where to find it, how do I know you won’t leave me in the middle of my next shutdown?”

I’m about to deny that I’d do such a thing but that obviously wasn’t the case in the past. I suddenly feel awful about what I did when first meeting her but she doesn’t want to hear my apology. I find this to be a classic example of the old woman’s dichotomous personality. Sometimes I question her sanity – one minute she’s very sweet and the next she gets on my case about anything and everything. And though she claims she only wants to help me find the Heaven Box, there are times I wonder if she really hopes we’ll fail.

One day it hits me: she’s jealous. I got the chance to learn my sons’ names, I got a chance to see a photograph of them, I got a chance to see my family tree and learn about my wife and my sickness and my death. Most importantly, I have a chance to find this mysterious box and unlock more of my memory, something she has no shot of ever doing. Even when I was stuck under 37’s control, I at least had a chance for finding happiness in the future. I can’t imagine how Mom feels having no opportunity to reclaim her memories.

Days pass without seeing a single sign of life until Mom suddenly stops and holds up a hand. I rush behind a tree and peer around the corner, searching the forest. I find no evidence of trouble. Mom turns her head to the side.

“What is it?” I ask after nearly a minute. “What do you see?”

“It’s not that I see something,” she says. “I think I hear something… or feel something.”

I close my eyes to listen but it’s not what I hear that concerns me as much as what I don’t hear. The woods are completely silent, not a chirping bird or buzzing insect to be heard. The last time I experienced such silence was when I first entered 37’s territory.

“What do you hear?” I finally ask.

“It’s like a vibration in the distance,” she says.

I look on the ground and spot a small puddle from a recent rainstorm. The water gently ripples even though there’s no wind.

“What should we do?” I ask.

“Keep moving forward but much slower. Use caution,” she says.

At the mention of that word, she looks at me and winks, a small grin crossing her lips. The sight of her smile makes me even more worried. We move along, covering barely a mile during the next few hours, stopping every few minutes. In time, the distant sound of stomping grows louder, the vibration beneath our feet grows more pronounced. Something is out there – something big – and we’re getting closer to it with every passing step.

More signs of buried civilization litter the forest, taking the place of trees and greenery. The only time I saw land this thinned out since leaving the rubble-strewn land of the west coast was when I encountered River City.

“Another city?” Mom asks as if reading my mind.

I nod. With our possible hiding spots becoming fewer, I propose that we wait until nightfall to continue moving. Mom can hardly believe
I
was the one to make the suggestion but she agrees. Once the sun falls, we proceed and head over a nearby ridge.

Down below, the forestry disappears completely as we encounter flattened barren lands. In the distance, we see what appears to be light. For a moment I’m excited at the thought of real civilization with real human comforts. But upon closer inspection, I realize it’s not artificial light at all.

“Fire,” Mom says.

             
The orange glow becomes much more obvious once we press forward. After less than an hour of walking, the orange glow lights up the rest of the world around it, showing a metropolis filled with large buildings that look mostly intact, at least for now. But between us and the sprawling city is a sea of movement, like a giant herd of ants covering every square foot of land. But it doesn’t take long to realize what’s really moving out there.

             
“Robots,” I say. “The Army.”

             
When I first saw the Robot Army outside River City, I never imagined a larger force could be assembled. But this army dwarfs the other one, at least ten times the size, if not more. Closer to the city’s outer limits, we see flash after flash illuminating in the night, a battle raging as the robots attempt to surge forward.

             
“This must be Dearborn,” I whisper, shaking my head in terrified awe. “How did the princess and her people make it out of this mess?”

             
Mom continues to stare toward the city for a long time. But hers isn’t an expression of terror at seeing the battle or so many robots. Instead, it looks like she’s trying to figure something out.

             
“I think I know that place,” she says.

             
“Dearborn?”

             
She shakes her head. “I don’t know what it’s called now but I think it used to be called Chicago… in my last life, that is.”

             
The name certainly rings a bell in my mind though the city doesn’t look familiar to me.

             
“Chicago was still a city when you lived?” I ask. She nods but doesn’t look away. “That must mean we lived around the same time period. Are you remembering more about your life?”

             
She doesn’t answer for so long that I wonder if she heard me. She finally shakes her head but offers nothing else. I don’t ask.

             
“We need to take the long way around,” she says. “Head south.”