Cyberdrome (32 page)

“You did not
cause this,” she said. “A device inside the intruder did this to me. I would
have been deleted no matter where I was located.”

“But I lived,”
he said, and realized there was a question that had been plaguing his thoughts
since that moment. How had he survived when Elsala and every other Sentinel
inside HomeSpace had not?

“The device’s
shock wave was designed to absorb energy as it traveled,” she said, answering
his thoughts again. “That is how it was able to travel across all of Cyberdrome.
You simply had no energy left to absorb.” She smiled again. “That is what
protected you.”

“I understand,”
he said, and for the first time since the attack, he did. He had not caused
Elsala’s deletion, nor was he responsible for his own survival.

Her face
changed, suddenly becoming soft and full of warmth. “It was not your fault,
Javid,” she whispered softly. “None of us were to blame for what happened.”

“You used my
name,” he said, reaching out to her. Perhaps there was still something there,
he thought. A glimmer of the Elsala he once knew and loved.

She suddenly
covered her ears and turned to look behind her. “All of you stop yelling at
me,” she cried. A moment later, she turned back to Javid and whispered, “Please
take me to the Gift.”

She truly was
lost, he realized.
My Elsala is gone
. He stared at her for a moment
longer, before asking, “Where is this Gift you speak of?”

She uncovered
one ear and pointed down the tunnel, toward the rest of the group. He shook his
head as he weighed the risks of bringing her to Alek and the others. A deleted
Sentinel—and one so clearly unstable—could pose a threat to the mission.
However, she was once Elsala, so how could he refuse her request?

After a moment,
he made a command decision and began walking back down the tunnel. Elsala
climbed into her Tracer and followed.

o     o     o

Alek was sitting
alone in the Research Pod thinking about Earth-Zero when the Rover lurched to a
stop. Maya, Herschel, and Cloudhopper stepped through the side hatch.

“We just got a
message on the communications panel,” Maya said. “It said surrender immediately
or be terminated.”

“Who sent the
message?” Alek asked.

“It appears to
have come directly from the supervisor program,” Cloudhopper said, “which means
Ceejer is somewhere nearby. Seems it wants us alive for some reason.”

“I think it just
wants more hostages,” Maya added. “Anyway, we signaled the Tracers to stop so
we can discuss what to do next.”

Alek followed
them out of the Rover. Persis and the two KaNanee were climbing out of their
Tracers, each avoiding eye contact with the other. Everyone realized right away
that Javid was missing.

“Where is the
Sentinel?” Cloudhopper asked.

Just then, a low
humming sound made them all turn and look back up the tunnel. There was
Javid—jogging toward them, followed closely by what appeared to be a partially
see-through Tracer.

Javid walked up
to Alek, and then turned to watch someone crawling out of the vehicle. It was
the green woman who had helped him out of the fire.

“Alek, this is
Elsala, my former mate,” Javid said, his voice somber. “She was deleted in the
original battle with the intruder.” He looked at Alek. “I do not know her
motives, but she insisted on coming here.”

Maya walked over
to stand next to the green woman. “I never got a chance to thank you.”

“You are the
Gray Sentinel,” Elsala said as she approached Alek, ignoring Maya altogether.

“That’s what
they tell me,” Alek said.

Elsala turned to
her side and spoke to no one. “You were wrong,” she said. “He carries the Gift.
He will set us free.”

Alek looked at
Javid who shook his head. He then faced Elsala. “What Gift?” he asked.

She turned back
toward him and pointed to his stomach. “You carry a class-twelve deletion
routine inside you,” she said, matter-of-factly. “It is a Gift for the
Supervisor.”

Alek felt his
mouth drop open.

“What?” Maya
yelled as she ran over to Alek.

“She’s crazy,”
Alek said, holding his stomach. At least he really hoped that was the answer.

Maya looked him
in the eyes and held his arm. “She was right about my
—
” she stopped
and glanced over toward Cloudhopper.” She can see inside of us,” she added,
holding her own stomach.

“I don’t care if
she can read our minds,” Alek said. “She’s wrong. I don’t have a deletion bomb
inside me.” He looked at Maya, and then Cloudhopper. “Do I?”

“Volunteering
for a suicide mission is one thing,” Cloudhopper said. “Being tricked into it
is altogether different.”

“There’s only
one way to be sure,” Maya said, looking at Elsala. “Show him”

Elsala stepped
up to Alek and reached for his stomach. He backed away. “I’m not sure I want to
do this,” he said.

“It won’t hurt,”
Maya said, remembering her own experience, “and it might finally answer the question
of why Rebecca sent you in here.”

“All right,” he
said, taking a step toward Elsala.

He watched as
her hand became more transparent and then disappeared into his abdomen. He saw
a cloud form around him, and then saw the deletion routine inside him. They had
replaced one of his kidneys with the device. It was small, but he could somehow
feel that it was very powerful.

The cloud parted
and he was again back in the company of Maya and the others. “She’s right,” he
told them. “It’s a class-twelve deletion routine. Leconte must have added it to
my Avatar when I was digitized.” Then he remembered something. “Lorena said she
thought I was broadcasting—giving away my presence inside the Core. If I really
am a Trojan horse—a gift meant for Ceejer—then it makes sense that she would
make it easy to find me.”

“If the thing
inside you goes off,” Cloudhopper said, “it could take out an entire sector of
memory, and everything—or everyone—inside it.”

“What are we
going to do?” Maya asked them both.

Alek looked at
her. “I know what I’m going to do,” he said. “Surrender.”

He started toward
the Rover when she grabbed his arm. “You’ll die, Alek—just like your father.”

“I’m a lot
healthier than he was,” he said, “I’m willing to bet that my heart can
withstand the stress of sudden disconnection.” Then he looked at Herschel and
Javid standing nearby. “Or, maybe I’m simply a program from Earth-Zero, or an unformatted
Sentinel. Either way, I’m a walking bomb. I need to get away from all of you.”

“If you really
are a Trojan horse,” Cloudhopper said, “then you’re only at risk if you
approach Ceejer. We will find a way to escape the machines up there and leave
this area.”

Alek turned to
him. “Don’t you get it? This might be the answer. All I have to do is surrender
and go meet Ceejer. When the bomb inside me blows up, Ceejer will be deleted
and you and all of the hostages will be set free.”

“You can’t just
volunteer to kill yourself,” Maya yelled. She looked like she was on the verge
of crying.

“I don’t seem to
have much choice,” he said as he turned and headed toward the Rover.

He stepped
through the side door and then into the pilot’s cabin. He was about to fire up
the main drive when he paused. Was he making the right decision? It wasn’t as
if he wanted to be the hero and die—it was just that he didn’t see any other options.

He heard the
door in the back hiss open and close. He turned around just as Maya climbed
into the co-pilots chair.

“You can’t go
with me,” he protested.

“And you can’t
leave,” she said.

“Why?”

“I’m pregnant,”
she said, staring out the front window.

After what
seemed like an eternity, he realized that his mouth was wide open. He closed it
and then started to ask who the father was, but then realized that it was
obvious. It was Roy Cloudhopper. Then another, more important question, came to
mind.

“Why did you
volunteer to come into Cyberdrome, if you knew you were pregnant? You knew more
than anyone how dangerous this mission could be.”

“I didn’t know,
Alek. I would never have come if I’d known.”

“Then how?”

“How do I know?
It’s complicated.”

He looked around
them. “More complicated than this?”

She looked out
of the window and then crawled back into the rear cabin and sat down. Alek followed
her back and kneeled beside her.

“I tried to tell
you the last time we were in this compartment,” she said. “I met Elsala inside
the crashed Survey Vessel back inside the simulation,” she said. “She put her
hand inside me, and showed me a fetus growing inside me.”

“Cloudhopper is
the father, I assume.”

“No, idiot, you
are.”

His head
suddenly felt light. “How—how is that possible?”

“I was confused
too,” she began, “but it’s the time difference. You just got here, but for me,
it has been several weeks since we made love.”

Alek felt his
chest burning and he was having difficulty breathing. He stood and walked a few
steps away from her.
This isn’t happening
, he said to himself. Maya was
the love of his life back in college. He let her go only to save her from—from
what? As he stood there on two strong legs, he couldn’t remember what he
thought he was saving her from by leaving. Now she was back in his life and she
was pregnant with his child. He was going to be a father.

“Are you okay,
Alek?”

He turned to
look at her. It was obvious that she needed him to be strong for her, and he
couldn’t disappoint her—not again.

“I’m fine,” he
said as he walked back and sat down beside her. She put her arms around him and
placed her head against his shoulder.

“How did we ever
get to this place, Alek?”

He looked
around. “What do you mean?”

“I mean this
place in our lives.” She looked up at him. “I loved you so much back in college,
Alek. I thought we would be together forever. You were supposed to be the one
for me.”

He thought back
to those days and sighed. “I just couldn’t bear to see pity in your eyes.”

She bolted
upright. “You thought I pitied you? How shallow did you think I was? I would’ve
done anything for you.”

“I’m sorry. As I
said, I was stupid. You had always been so active. I couldn’t stand the thought
of you having to change your life so drastically, especially because of me.”

She sat back
down. “If the roles had been reversed, would you have changed your lifestyle
for me?”

“Of course I
would.”

“And would you
have resented that change?”

“Not for a
moment.”

“Do you
understand now? Do you understand what you did to me? What you did to us?”

It had never
dawned on him to turn the situation around. In three years, he had not once
thought of what his decision might’ve done to her, how it might’ve affected her
life. He thought he was saving her from a dull life. He never realized that he
should’ve let her make that decision.

“I love you, you
know,” he said, “I never stopped loving you.”

She hugged him
tightly. “It’s nice to have you back, Alek. I wish you had never left.”

“I’m sorry,
Maya,” he said, pulling gently away from her, “But I have to leave you one more
time.”

“You can’t go,
Alek. It’s suicide.”

“You don’t know
that. Maybe this is the only way out—for all of us.”

“What about our
child?” she asked, standing to face him. “What about being there for us?”

He smacked the
wall with his fist. “Damn it, Maya. Don’t you understand? I’m doing this for
you and our child. I want you out of this place and facing Ceejer alone is the
best way to do that.”

“We can work out
some other plan,” she said. “Roy was a commander in Special Forces. He can come
up with something.”

“There are no
other options,” he said as he reached over and pressed the pad to open the side
door. When it slid open, he turned around and faced her. “And time has run
out.”

“Wait,” Maya
yelled. “Maybe there’s an option you just don’t want to consider.”

Alek stopped and
turned to her. “What are you suggesting?” he asked. “Cut me open and remove the
bomb?”

“Exactly,” she
said with a strange gleam in her eye.

“I was kidding,
Maya.”

“I’m not,” she
said as she grabbed his arm and pulled him out of the Rover.

“You can’t just
cut this thing out of me.”

“How the hell do
you know?” she asked. “I helped design these Avatars. I probably know them
better than anyone else.”