Project 17 (15 page)

“There’s bound to be a first-aid kit here somewhere,” Max said. She pointed at Caleb. “Go do what you have to do. I don’t want to stay up here forever.”

Lillian knelt to help her up, but Laura flinched. “Come on,” she told her. “You wouldn’t be able to sit up on your own.”

There were no other chairs, so they helped Laura sit on the floor with her back to the nearest wall. One of the doors Lillian saw indeed led to a small pantry, and Max found ice packs in the
fridge, and painkillers in one of the cupboards. Lillian was glad to see it was a closed fracture; if Laura’s bone poked out of her skin, would they have let her bleed to death?

“Now sit tight and don’t do anything stupid,” Jamie said.
“Jesus.”

Caleb was now seated, finding his way through the code. The smaller screens lit up, one by one. They showed scenes at the event downstairs, a speaker onstage, people sniffling in their seats,
and people eating canapés and whispering to each other about this great loss.

“Laura,” he said, “where are the robots stored?”

Sweat had made her hair stringy. Some strands stuck to her face. She shook her head.

Caleb was angry. “Our robot can break more than your forearm, you know that.”

“Please,” Laura whimpered.

“You’re Project 17’s Controller, aren’t you? Apart from Nikolas?”

Laura didn’t reply.

“There are ten in total. Margaret blew one up, another one is no longer connected to Central. All the others are active.”

Max looked at the screens. “They’re embedded,” she said. “The robots are downstairs.”

“Shit,” Lillian said.

“You got all that?” Caleb said, talking to his brother.

“Hold on a second,” Paul said. “I’m calling someone.”

*

Paul’s voice went through their no-hands as his call connected. “Hello, Professor Morales. Are you going to nurse that glass of champagne the entire night?”

Nikolas Morales took a moment to reply. Lillian imagined him looking around the floor, checking the faces of the people standing close to him. “Abraham,” he said finally. “The
prodigal son.”

“Feels like I never even left.”

“You’re either very stupid, or very suicidal.” A sip. “But I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist. She treated you like her own son.”

“You killed her.”

“She killed herself, boy,” Nikolas said. “You treat her like a goddamn saint. This tribute is making me sick. Who do you think approached me about Neuropro? She built it for
warfare. She wanted us to sell it to the Mother Ship, Northpoint United, which could sell it to the US government. Of course she didn’t know we would be using it on one of her beloved
‘sons’, the barren fuck.”

Paul didn’t reply.

“What? No comeback? Did I just break your rose-colored glasses?”

“You had my niece and my sister-in-law killed,” Paul said, his voice dangerously low. “A toddler. You cut up a little child to pieces.”

“Your brother did that, or didn’t you see the memo?”

Paul sounded disgusted. “How could you live with yourself?”

“But you believed it, didn’t you,” Nikolas said, almost gentle. “You believed your brother killed his own family. We gave you the drugs and you administered the pills to
him—no questions asked. There is no history of mental disorder in your genetic line, and yet you believed he was guilty. Yes, he was stressed at work, but you didn’t even bother to look
for other explanations? I would have been mad at you, if I were Ezekiel. I would have felt betrayed.”

Caleb sat rigid in front of the monitors.

“Then after a while,” Nikolas continued, “you got sick of staying at home and taking care of your brother. We offered you the Seton job, and you were over the moon,
weren’t you, Abraham? You couldn’t wait to get away from him.” Pause. “It’s a necessary illusion, isn’t it? The illusion of freedom. If you woke up each morning
to get to work with a tumbler of freshly brewed coffee, if you had your own desk in a brightly lit office, then it was as if the past decade didn’t happen. It was as if you were
free.”

“You make me sick,” Paul said.

“You are a dead man,” Nikolas said, and broke the connection.

*

An earsplitting shriek burst out of the no-hands. Lillian doubled over and pulled it out. “What the fuck!”

They couldn’t hear anything for five minutes. When the feedback faded away, Caleb said, “Are you there? Hello?”

“Should I go down?” Jamie said.

That’s when Paul came back online. “Hello?”

“There you are,” Caleb said, relieved. “What the hell was that?”

“I don’t know. Listen: I don’t see any Felisas here. If you’re positive they’re here, they must be in disguises.”

“Are you in a safe place?”

“Yes. Nikolas hasn’t spotted me.” Paul took a deep breath, as though bracing himself for something. “Zeke—”

“It’s okay,” Caleb said.

“Zeke—”

“It’s
okay.
Stay with our Felisa.” He started typing. “See anything?”

One of the screens showed the words “Robot 3” and a hand reaching up to something off-screen: a cap or a wig.

“Wait. Yes. Woman at the back in slacks and a red blouse. Dark purple wig.”

“Project 17?”

“It’s a Felisa. But don’t send directives to the others just yet. Nikolas is—”

A phone was ringing. Lillian patted her jacket and took out Laura’s phone. N. MORALES appeared on the Caller ID. They let it ring. The phone died and came alive again two seconds
later.

“Be careful what you say,” Caleb said. He gave Lillian a small nod, and Lillian came over to sit in front of Laura.

“Sir?” Laura said. Her voice was shaking. She couldn’t help it. “In the bathroom, had too much champagne, I guess. The program is running, sir, all eight are active. Yes.
Yes. Will do.” Nikolas hung up.

“He wants me to check Central,” Laura said. “He’s going to give me a target.”

Lillian looked at Caleb. They all knew what that meant: Nikolas was going to have the Girl X’s search high and low for Paul.

“Well,” Lillian said, pocketing the phone once again. “At least you’re in the right place already.”

“What are you going to do?” Laura asked. Lillian wondered as well. The plan was to find where the robots were stored, activate them, and then—and then what? Put on a show? Both
brothers were mum.

Caleb typed, Max at his elbow, watching with growing interest.

“You know Project 17,” Laura said, insistent.

“I don’t think you’re doing this just for the money, Laura,” Caleb said, without taking his eyes off the screens. “Why are you here? What did he promise
you?”

Laura was silent.

“Did he promise you the best Elder home for your mother? Protection from Brian?”

Laura cried, a soft mewling like a kitten abandoned on the side of the road.

“But you knew, didn’t you?” Caleb said. “You realized that it wasn’t worth it. Who is the media’s anonymous source about Neuropro?”

They looked at her. The light in the room hit the tears on Laura’s cheek, making them shine like glass. She said, “Margaret was kind to me.”

Caleb nodded. He was done. One of the monitors showed the perspective of Number 3, the robot with the dark purple wig, and onscreen, surprised faces came into focus, guests whipping their heads
around as they were shoved aside. Number 3 was walking briskly to one of the students busy recording the event with her phone. Number 3 grabbed her. The view changed—Number 3 turned
around—and the screen showed a crowd of people with shocked looks on their faces.

“Listen!” Number 3 said, reaching a hand up. A flash of purple as she threw away her wig. “This is the unmasking. This is Girl X. I am a product of Nikolas Morales of
Northpoint-Pascual. No one is safe.”

The student taken hostage screamed and the guests covered their mouths and ran to the exits. The monitors turned black at that point, save for the main monitor that showed a blue bar crawling to
100 percent. SENDING, the monitor said. The email addresses in tiny font at the bottom of the progress bar changed too fast, but Lillian caught one word that appeared in most of the addresses:
news.

The progress bar reached 100 percent and turned red. DELETING, it said, before the monitor shut down.

“I have deleted all records of your having access to this computer,” Caleb told Laura. “Now let’s get out of here.”

The way down was faster than the way up. All they had to do was push buttons to open the doors. When they got to the ground floor, people were running out of the auditorium while Sentries rushed
in. They couldn’t find Paul, or Felisa, or Nikolas Morales. They stayed near the entrance with a crowd recording a life-changing video to share on their social networking sites.

Number 3 had her arm wrapped around the student’s neck. A Sentry was shouting warnings, but after a moment he raised his gun and shot Number 3 in the head, and again, as she was falling,
through the neck. The student, still imprisoned behind that arm, fell with her.

The other Girl Xs attacked the Sentries that moved forward to rescue the hostage, leveling the auditorium as they punched holes into the Sentries’ chests, as they threw them across the
room. There were guests who failed to leave the auditorium before the siege began, and they kept to the shadowy edges, clutching each other.

The student was still trapped on top of the fallen Girl X. She was wriggling to get free, but a defeated Sentry fell across her, crushing her legs. Her scream ricocheted off the walls of the
auditorium, and a number of people detached themselves from the spectators and ran out of the building.

“She’s hurt,” Laura said, but Caleb said nothing. “She’s hurt, she’s hurt.”

Someone was screaming for help. Their Felisa, stripped now of her sunglasses and headscarf, was leading Nikolas Morales into the center of the room, bending his arms behind his back. They had
been in the room the whole time.

“What the hell’s going on?” Lillian asked, but one look at Caleb and she knew he also knew nothing. She had heard his directives—none of them involved this.

Felisa whirled Nikolas around so he would face her. Lillian couldn’t believe what was happening even as it happened: Felisa threw her fist back and struck him in the face. The first blow
cut the skin on his cheek, dislodged an incisor, spattered some blood on his clothes. He raised his arms.
No
, he seemed to say. Felisa hit him again, and broke his jaw. He fell to his
knees, blood and saliva streaming out of his open mouth. He couldn’t scream because he could no longer control the bones on his face.

“Oh my God, oh my God,” Laura said. Jamie and Max couldn’t look anymore.

“Caleb,” Lillian said, but he was looking at something else. Lillian followed his eyes. Paul. He was with the crowd, watching Nikolas get beaten to death.

Felisa kicked Nikolas. He fell on his back. She hit him again. Lillian remembered the robot when she was still connected to Central, straddling Al inside Lester’s apartment and hitting as
though she wanted to flatten him. Felisa lifted her right leg and slammed her foot on Nikolas, the force strong enough to break ribs. Then she stepped on his neck.

Three holes appeared in Felisa’s nape, so suddenly that they seemed to have been generated by Felisa herself. More Sentries had managed to bulldoze through the crowd, and one of them had
taken aim and fired. Felisa fell, facedown, next to the body of Nikolas Morales.

They ran with the crowd out of Pascual Tower onto Ayala Avenue. The Sentry vehicles, media mobiles, and ambulances that were on location for the Margaret Morales tribute suddenly came alive. The
street was pulsating with light.

Lillian recalled the sudden whine of feedback that made her dig out her no-hands earlier.

She’s designed to imprint visually and follow oral directives, not programmed code. Rebooting could wipe those directives clean
.

Anyone could reboot her and give her new orders.

Paul manufactured the feedback—Lillian didn’t know how, perhaps by playing a recording he had stored for the purpose?—because if he turned off his no-hands they would know, his
brother would become suspicious, and he didn’t want them to realize he was busy rebooting and reorienting Felisa. Where did he do it? A quiet corner, a stall in the men’s washroom,
pressed together like lovers.

I would burn him alive if I were you,
Lillian had thought when Caleb told her about Nikolas.
Ruin his life the same way he ruined mine.

The same cruel revenge had occurred to Paul, but he didn’t have gasoline and a box of matches. What he had was a robot, and a man beyond forgiving finally in his crosshairs.

*

*

They left Laura with one of the ambulances and headed to Jamie’s car. Paul drove, because Jamie was too shaken to drive. Nobody spoke. Max decided that it might be too dangerous to drive
all the way to Bulacan after what happened, so they went back to the hotel and booked another room, adjacent to the Doloreses.

They slept almost instantly, in the clothes they were wearing. Sometime in the early morning Lillian heard a sound coming from the brothers’ room. She stood up and opened the door, saw
them stepping out with their bags.

Lillian wanted to ask,
Where are you going?
What will you do now?
But they were already walking down the corridor. When they disappeared around the corner, Lillian entered
their room. The beds weren’t immaculate but didn’t seem slept in. There was an ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts on the bedside table. She imagined them staying up all night,
smoking and just staring at each other, thinking of what they had done.

Her phone beeped when she went back, and so did Max’s and Jamie’s, the phones briefly lighting up in the darkness. Lillian checked her message. It was from an unlisted number, but
she knew who had sent it.
Thank you for all your help. We have to go now. We’re sorry for not waking you up to say goodbye, but we have already caused so much trouble in your lives.
Please stay out of trouble.