“I’m fine,” she said in a noticeably hoarse voice.
Quinn stared at the hollow image of her on the screen. “You don’t look fine.”
She was in a hospital bed wearing a patterned gown. An IV needle jutted from her right hand. Her head had been shaved again, and her eyes were dark and sunken into her skull. In fact, Quinn noted with some dismay that she looked exactly as she did the first time they met. A flash fear arose that all of the gains she’d made over the last 15 months had been erased, just like that. Her warmth. Her engagement. Even the occasional smile. Was it all gone, wiped like dust from a screen?
“They tell me you were stabbed and had a Grand Mal seizure in surgery,” he said softly.
It had taken over 30 hours and 18 phone calls to get permission to talk to her, and in that time, Quinn had found his way back to HQ. He sat at his desk, alone, cradling his chin.
Nio scoffed. “Sounds worse than it was. The seizure wasn’t from the attack. It was a reaction to the leakage. From the implant.”
Another implant. Semmi had warned him. But still. How many odd machines are you gonna put in your body? he wanted to ask her. But he didn’t.
“You wanna tell me about that?”
“Not really.”
She coughed several times. Quinn waited for her to stop.
“Why? Because you know I’ll object?”
“Because I just don’t.”
Her hoarse voice cracked periodically and her nose was stopped. She sounded like a lifelong smoker with a cold.
“You don’t sound fine, either,” he noted.
“Before you get all judgmental, you should know it saved my life. Just not the way I wanted.”
“The implant?”
She nodded. “Stopped the knife.”
“And the leakage?”
“We’re waiting to see. They plugged the hole, but the fluid is still in my central nervous system.”
“Fluid?”
“Yeah.”
“Are we talking spinal fluid or power steering fluid?”
“More like experimental fluid. Can I tell you about it some other time?”
Quinn nodded. She looked exhausted. “Can you at least tell me who attacked you?”
“I couldn’t see his face. But he was military. Or ex. You should’ve seen him . . .” Her voice trailed off.
Quinn immediately recalled their run-in with the mercenary in Maine.
“Modded?”
She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”
The encounter had rattled him. Quinn was a big guy and not used to losing fights. He’d been practicing martial arts ever since, which Nio had said was ridiculous.
“Then what?”
“It’s hard to explain. It’s like—I dunno. Like he’d done it before.”
“Guy like that, I’m sure he’s killed several times.”
“No. I mean, like he’d been in that exact situation before. He knew exactly where everyone was gonna be.”
“I thought he got shot.”
“That’s what they said.”
“According to the report I read, it was an automatic rifle at close range.”
“Exactly,” she said. “And none of the bullets hit.”
“Then why did he fall?”
Nio pictured the man in armor falling back deliberately, like a scuba diver.
She squinted and shook her head again. “I don’t think he did.”
“What do you mean?”
She took a deep breath and coughed. “The question isn’t why he left. It’s why was he even there. Why would someone go through the trouble of stitching me up for an espionage charge only to try to kill me, and in such an incredibly unlikely way? I mean, attacking North American Air Command? That’s not just the Canadian military. That’s your guys, too.”
“They’re not ‘my guys,’ but yeah. It’s ballsy.”
“It’s more than ballsy,” Nio corrected. But her eyes were elsewhere. “It’s suicide.”
“Which makes me wonder: What’s to keep him from coming back and finishing the job, once whoever hired him realizes you’re still alive?”
She turned the tablet to show Quinn the armed Canadian soldiers outside her room.
“Correct me if I’m wrong,” he said with a sarcastic tone, “but didn’t you just tell me the guy who attacked you cut through a whole squad of army guys?”
“Then I’m fucked.” Nio lifted her arm to show the handcuffs that kept her locked to the hospital bed.
“You need me to . . .” He let his voice trail off.
She knew what he meant. Quinn was asking if she needed him to bust her out.
“No.”
He had done it before.
Quinn asked another question then, but Nio didn’t hear it. Turning the tablet had caused the app windows to shift, and she caught a glimpse of the news report she’d found that morning. Jane Setera, mother of two, had died on the operating table. It was a tragedy. But more than that, it meant the game hadn’t been fake. It had been very, very real. The good news was that the Setera’s ordeal corroborated her story. The bad news was that a woman was dead and a family devastated. She doubted any of them would ever set foot in that house again. The kids would need years of therapy. With no mother, whatever else they were to become had changed completely.
“I said, why is someone is trying to kill you?” Quinn repeated.
“I got out of it,” she breathed. “That’s all that matters.”
She had spent all morning giving her statement to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Nio didn’t feel like going over it all again with Quinn. She knew he would look it up anyway.
“Was it . . .” His voice trailed off.
Nio waited. “Was it what?”
“You know. Was it him?”
He meant Amok.
“I don’t think so. He wouldn’t play fair. There would’ve been some trick to it.”
“Seems like a helluva coincidence, though.”
“What does?”
“You catching something like this twice.” Quinn saw the skeptical look on her face. “Maybe they’re related somehow. That’s all I’m saying. Maybe somebody is taking over for him. Copycat or something.”
“In other words, your friends at the FBI might’ve actually arrested the right guy, which would mean he’s not still out there. You’d like that.”
“I would. He tortured people. And tried to kill us.”
“He tried to kill me. You were just collateral damage.”
“Ah. Well. At least I know where I rate.”
“Oh, come on. That isn’t what I—I just meant that you didn’t have to be worried. He’s never been after you directly. Or your family.”
“That’s nice of you to say. But we both know he’d kill me in a heartbeat if he thought he could get any pleasure out of hurting you that way, which is the best argument for him being behind bars.”
But it was an old argument, and neither of them wanted to revisit it.
“I’m gonna say something,” Nio said in her hoarse smoker’s voice, “and I want you to take it how I mean it and not however the pain medication makes it come out. Can you do that?”
“That’s ominous.”
She took a deep breath. “I met someone. Before I got the implant. We went out. Sort of. I mean, we weren’t dating. But he was someone I could see myself dating, if that makes sense.”
“Okay.”
“You can just tell sometimes, right?”
“He hurt you?”
“No. We were never a thing. He wasn’t interested.”
“His loss.”
“Would you just listen to me for a minute without immediately trying to protect my feelings?”
She waited a moment to underscore the seriousness, and Quinn raised his hands in surrender.
Nio sighed. “For the longest time, I thought the biggest hurdle to me, you know, ever having anything like you and Khora was the cancer. At some point, you have to have that awkward conversation about my old life and why I took the cognitive enhancer and how cancer was one of the possible side effects and there’s that implicit question no one ever dares ask: why the hell would you do that to yourself? I was all geared up for it. But . . . we didn’t even get to that point. As soon as he found out who I was—”
Quinn waited a moment for her to get the lump out of her throat.
“He was never mean about it or anything,” she went on. “But there was definitely this switch, you know? He’d been kinda flirty and then suddenly there was always this respectful distance between us. Not that I even spoke to him that much. Honestly, I don’t even remember his last name. It’s not about him. It’s what he represents, I guess. For the first time since I was diagnosed, I started to believe that maybe there was some path to a normal life for me. To be honest, I’d never really considered it. Like, ever. But you meet someone like that and your mind starts to wonder.”
“Sure.”
“So, I had this sudden expectation, only for it to be immediately yanked away. Turns out, I didn’t have to have the cancer conversation, which is way easier. Honestly, I don’t know what I’m so upset about.”
Quinn waited a moment. “Can I talk now?”
“Yesss.”
“Are you sure he didn’t leave because you’re a giant pain in the ass?”
“I knew you were gonna say that.”
He shrugged. “Gotta be me.”
“Yes,” she said in a mocking tone.
Quinn took a long breath and let it out. “I dunno what you want me to say, Trouble. I don’t get that whole point of view. His, I mean. I don’t see what difference it makes.”
Nio smiled at her friend. “I know you don’t.”
“So, is this why you disappeared?”
“Sort of. Maybe. I dunno. After the implant surgery, I just couldn’t be around you and Khora, not with the baby coming. I know—” she interrupted before he could object. “I know you guys wouldn’t have minded, even with a newborn. You’re like Superman and Lois.”
“Hardly.”
“It’s the whole it’s-not-you-it’s-me thing. I thought I was past my whole disappearing-to-push-everyone-away phase, but I got hurt and apparently not. So, now I have something else to work on. Add it to the list.”
“What did your sisters say?”
Over the past year, Nio had reconnected with nearly all of her siblings, but she was closest to Mutiny and Manda.
Quinn saw her mouth hang open for a moment.
“Case in point,” she said.
“You haven’t told them.”
“I haven’t told them.”
Quinn could see her getting teary, and they were both quiet a moment.
“We need you, you know,” he said.
“We?”
“Section 08. Me.”
Nio rolled her eyes in jest and then wiped them when a tear fell. “That wasn’t an invitation.”
“I’m not gonna let it go. I’m gonna keep asking.”
“I said I would help if I could.” She coughed again and cleared her throat. Then she felt odd. Like dizzy but not. She raised her opened hand until it was visible on the screen. It was shaking.
“That doesn’t look good,” Quinn breathed.
Nio made a fist. “You act like I’m being difficult or something, but I totally said I would help.” She made bug eyes and leaned closer to the camera. “Because that’s what friends do. They help.”
“We don’t need help. We need you. Here. Not whenever you have a little time. All the time.”
“Answer me this, Cowboy. How much of your job is paperwork?”
Quinn didn’t answer, so Nio went on.
“Are they actually letting you investigating crime or are they steering you to the politically expedient topic of the day?”
Quinn sighed at the floor.
“That’s what I thought,” she snapped triumphantly.
But the victory turned immediately sour.
“Sorry,” she said. “I’m not trying to bad-mouth your job. I know you like it. And I’m happy for you. Really. I hope it’s a place you can finally settle. And as your friend, I will support you. But I’m just not a government employee. Okay? Can we just accept that as an axiom?”
“So, be a consultant.”
“A consultant?”
Quinn nodded. “We can’t cover every discipline, so we fill in the gaps with variable labor. I met with a paleontologist yesterday, in fact.”
“I didn’t realize Section 08 was working prehistoric crime.”
“You’d be surprised,” he drolled. “The point is, you got a lot of time on your hands right now, no?”
Nio didn’t answer.
“Help us with the case. You know damned well Chang will approve it.”
“They’re monitoring everything.” She pulled down her gown at her neck, revealing several electrodes attached to wires. “And I mean everything.”
“I’m sure they are,” Quinn said with a slow nod. “All the more reason. They’re gonna run everything you say through semantic analysis, right? Have the machines check for truthfulness in your cadence and tone. So, let’s show them what side you’re on.”
Nio turned to the window.
“Come on,” Quinn urged. “What do you have to lose?”
She knew exactly what he was doing. And a tiny part of her hated him for being so good at it. He knew her well enough to intuit that being stuck in the hospital was going to drive her crazy. Her mind was too active and tended to run off the rails when not engaged. So, he was giving her something. A puzzle. A challenge. She knew what he was doing, just as she knew she needed it, but there was also that deeply contrarian part of her psyche that resented meddling, and she felt an urge to say no, if only on principle. It was like some part of her had gone to the cabin to deliberately fail, to create an emotional crisis because she didn’t know how to live any other way. She had tried and been immediately rejected, so she went back to what she knew, which was life on the run.
And here was Quinn trying to save her, throwing her a lifeline. Like he always did. For everyone. She wanted to throw it back.
But she heard Mutiny’s voice inside her head. You’re supposed to be an adult.
“Fine,” she said. “Send me what you have. I’m not promising anything, though. I’m still pretty heavily medicated.”
“Fair enough.”
“How is Khora, by the way?”
“Very ready not to be pregnant anymore.”
“I bet.”
“And annoyed at the hours her husband puts in at the office.”
“I bet,” Nio repeated, softer.
“I’ll tell her you said hi.”
Nio got serious then. “Please do.”
“Dr. Chang’s gonna get you outta there, Trouble. You know that. He just needs a little time.”
She smiled weakly. “Yeah.”
“Talk soon.”
She nodded, and they ended the call.
Quinn looked down at his desk. Something had happened that she wasn’t telling him. But he could tell that, whatever it was, it had wounded her deeply. She was struggling with it too much even to acknowledge its existence, so he let it go.
His alarm beeped, announcing his next meeting, and he got up and walked into the hall outside the lab where Clo was approaching from the opposite direction. There was long gap between them filled with the echoes of their footsteps.
“You look like a cat with a live mouse,” he accused in a loud voice. “How did the meeting with Legal go?”
She held up a file. “They say we can run that tissue sample against some of President Kennedy’s belongings if we want to.”
Quinn shook his head. “I thought you went to talk to them about Quest.”
“This is the part where you say we want to,” she told him.
“Fine. I give up. Call the Archives.”
“I already did,” she admitted as they approached each other. “They’re dusting some of his stuff for us now. I’ll pick it up this afternoon.”
“Please tell me you talked to them about our murder. The real one, not the century-old time travel fantasy.”
“They’re still hammering out the details with Quest’s lawyers.”
“What’s taking so long?”
“I don’t know. Man’s playing hardball. They got the whole legal team in on it. They said it might be a couple days. Where are you off to?”
Quinn nodded toward the main building. “Welcome interview, same as I did with you.”
“Is this the one from Cyber Command?”
Quinn nodded gravely.
“You don’t look happy,” she suggested.
“Long story.”
“Is it true it identifies with a gender?”
“Some of them do. I believe Matia is female.”
Clo made a face. “Why?”
“My understanding is it’s rude to ask.”
“You can’t tell me they want to be human.”
“Ha. I doubt it. I think it’s more for us than for them.”
“Meaning what?”
“Well, think about how people treat machines. How they react. Condescension. Fear. If they present themselves humanely, if they take a name in place of an alphanumeric designator, it helps people see them as a living thing. Most names are gendered, so the rest just kind of comes along.”
“Hmm.” Clo made a face. “Seems like a stretch.”
“I would think a non-binary person like yourself would appreciate the power of identity.”
“That’s just it. Your identity isn’t something you pick because it makes it easier to make friends. Half the time, you lose friends over it. This makes it seem . . . fake. Mechanical.”
“Great. My choices are offend the non-binary community or offend the sentient machine.”
“What’s she gonna be doing, anyway?”
But that was a question he couldn’t answer. Quinn had a good idea why Cyber Command had suddenly volunteered a resource, and a non-human one at that. Director Ogada could put whatever euphemism on it he wanted. Quinn preferred the direct description: she was a spy, which left him with a thorny question. Long-term, there was no easy answer. Short-term, he could stall—with a long training program, for example. He disliked sidelining anyone that way, machine or not, but there was simply too much else going on for him to do much else.
“Hey,” Quinn called back to Clo after she passed. “Who were you gonna have do the genetic analysis?”
“I assumed the FBI, same as usual. You have something else in mind?”
Quinn thought for a moment. “Call me kooky, but given the history, don’t you think it’s a little strange giving evidence on the Kennedy case to the Bureau?”
“I guess.”
“See if you can send it to Shepard’s gal. What’s her name? Minerva.”
“Gal?” Clo joked while making a note to remind herself. “Call Shepard’s gal,” she said as she wrote on her tablet.
“What should I have called her?”
“Colleague? Friend? Student?”
“Just make sure she understands it’s voluntary.”
Quinn rode the elevator to the west hall of the main building, where the doors opened to reveal the high foyer. The building’s angled front wall leaned over it to a height of three stories. Directly in front of the elevators was a large, open waiting area for those with business on the upper floors, such as appeals or interagency work. Although plush, the furniture was all boxy and low to the ground, like something from the 1970s. Antique was in, apparently.
A nine-foot robot waited motionlessly at the back.
“Warrant Officer Taggart?” Quinn called. “I’m Agent Quinn.”
The robot moved forward smoothly if a bit menacingly. It was clearly military in design and looked somewhat like a humanoid tank, albeit distantly.
“Special Agent Quinn,” she corrected his title.
Quinn extended his hand, and she took it gently. It was cold, which was more than a little unnerving.
“Please do not worry about my form,” she said, as if she had been programmed to do so at every encounter. “This body has been entirely de-weaponized. My damper”—she pointed to a red light near her neck—“ensures that I am no smarter or stronger than an above-average human. As long as the red light is on, I am incapable of breaking the bones in your hand.”
Considering she was still holding it, that was good news. Quinn was a big man, but the robot made him feel instantly small. It was vaguely humanoid in that it was bipedal and had two arms, but that was where any similarity ended. The arms and legs were nowhere near proportional, and the robot had no head or neck. The swiveling, torso-mounted sensor unit was flush with the shoulders. The torso itself was T-shaped and joined the pelvic crossbar at a heavy joint that allowed the robot’s upper portion to pivot in any direction, including folding itself in half, backward, where the arms and torso could disappear under cavities at the rear of the armored thighs. Those thighs could then slide together to make a protective box during transport or heavy bombardment.
Strangely, a leather purse was slung across the robot’s midsection, and the rubbery tips of its fingers were painted red.
Quinn motioned to the low cushioned seats. “Did you have any trouble out front?”
He sat down and watched as the robot tested the chair first by pressing down with one hand. It looked like she had a fresh coat of dark, radar-absorbent paint, and there was a single white digit on her back, a number five. After confirming the chair could not handle her weight, she bent over it as if she were sitting, but the cushion was not flattened, which meant she was only pretending to sit, back straight.
“Are you referring to the protests?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“They were unarmed,” was all she said, so Quinn changed the subject.
“Can I inquire about your body, or is it rude to ask?”
“Of course not. It is a decommissioned Russian Solutbot.”
“No kidding? Where would the US get a Russian military robot?”
“I do not know. I am not authorized the view the files.”
If she was brusque, Quinn realized, it may not be on purpose. It wasn’t that AIs were incapable of social niceties. Some were incredibly artful manipulators. Rather, it’s that, by their nature, they were incredibly neurodiverse. Even as different as humans were, they all shared the same wetware, but different classes of AI had entirely different biomechanical substrates. Some were further from each other than they were from humans. Many of them had radically alien thought patterns. Knowing Quinn’s son had autism, Nio had taught him to approach machines the same way and not to get frustrated.
“But your conscious matrix didn’t come with the robot, is that correct?”
“That is correct.”
“And you aren’t curious what the body was used for?”
“No.”
Quinn expected there would be more and waited a moment. “I see,” he said.
Almost all of his experience with artificial consciousnesses had come talking to Semmi, who was curious and warm. Warrant Officer Taggart was much more machine-like than Quinn expected. Perhaps she was just that way. Perhaps Cyber Command had done something to her. As the sole agency responsible for tracking and capturing rogue AIs, they had presumably found Matia somewhere and “reconditioned” her for internal use, placing her inside the Russian frame. She clearly had no memory of her former life, nor any curiosity about it, which was definitely unnatural. He could easily see them making her deliberately less human in order to draw a distinction, to be a walking advertisement for containment.
“Well,” he said awkwardly, “today, I just wanted to welcome you to the team and talk a little about what we do.”
“I have been fully briefed,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Great. That certainly helps us get you settled in.”
“I am prepared to begin work immediately. I do not need to ‘settle in.’”
“Are you familiar with the organization of the Science Contr—”
“Yes. As I said, I have been fully briefed.”
Quinn pointed to the glass-walled licensing section at the other side of the foyer, directly in front of the main doors. “During normal operation, Section 06 flags applications that involve research that could potentially be weaponized or might otherwise be a threat to the public.”
“I am aware of Action Reports. I have been fully briefed.”
Quinn paused. “Are you saying you know how to execute them?”
“Yes. The procedures are documented.”
Quinn found that hard to believe. Warrant Officer Taggart was either overconfident in the documentation or else he was right and Cyber Command had done something that affected her judgment.
“Well . . .” Quinn began, unsure what to say. “We have three Action Reports currently. Typically, they require travel.”
She stood. Standing over Quinn suddenly, the robot was quite imposing.
“I am authorized to travel. With your verbal approval, I will access the reports and begin processing.”
“Hold on. Typically we schedule the interviews—”
“Title I, Section 9 of the Science and Technology Control Act specifies that all persons submitting to licensure are subject to random audits and unannounced inspections of personnel and property. If they are a threat, scheduling the review will make it easier to hide relevant facts.”
“Fair enough. And in any other situation, I would likely agree. But I feel I should point out Section 06 has a tendency to . . .” What he wanted to say was “cover their ass,” but he wasn’t sure that would be received appropriately. He was also aware that everything Matia saw or heard was probably being recorded and observed. So, instead, he simply said: “None of the Action Reports have turned into anything yet. They were all routine—flagged and cleared.”
“That is not diagnostic. Your deviation from procedure may have unwittingly allowed the guilty to escape detection. With your permission, I will conduct the inspections now. I will also audit prior inspections for evidence of remediation.”
“One of them is in Georgia. How are you—”
“I am fully autonomous, registered, and licensed for interstate travel. I have full access to the GSA motor pool.”
It seemed odd to Quinn. But he heard Nio’s admonition in his head immediately. Why should it? Why should machine intelligence be treated any differently? Why should they be second-class citizens? Why couldn’t they go wherever they wanted? The director had made it clear the threat reports, rather than the anomaly in Texas, was the priority. He was also the one who had agreed to letting a spy in their ranks. Sending Matia to complete the inspections killed two birds with one stone.
Something about the situation made him uneasy. But with all his objections dismantled by the robot, he couldn’t think of a better alternative. At the very least, it got her off his back for a few days.
He shrugged. “Okay. Consider yourself authorized. Report back—”
But Warrant Officer Taggart had already turned and was walking toward the front.
Quinn watched her leave.
“Well.” He stood. “That was easy.”
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