Rebel Born (Secondborn #3)(70)

“I don’t know if he knows he’s dead.” I take a deep breath. “So I really was dead—drowned in the throne room?”

“Yes,” Ransom replies. “I thought all was lost when I examined you on the slab.”

“You didn’t know I could come back to life?”

“Roselle, I don’t know a lot. I have theories, but even I couldn’t imagine you obtaining immortality.”

“She’s a god,” Cherno replies. “It’s in her blood.”

“I don’t understand what you mean, Cherno.” Ransom shakes his head. “I don’t even understand how you’re awake.”

“I’m a god, too,” Cherno explains. His head flits, almost birdlike. “I melted the implant in my brain.”

“I think what Cherno is trying to say,” Clifton translates, “is that whatever you implanted into Roselle’s brain has activated latent genetic traits she inherited from her ancestors.”

Ransom catches on with a dubious look. “Like immortality.”

“And telekinesis,” Reykin replies.

“What you’re talking about are called atavistic traits. If someone is born, let’s say, with fur on his face like a wolf-man, some consider it an ancestral trait from a previous evolutionary state.”

“Well, there’s the science behind it,” I say.

“But that means your ancestors were really gods,” Ransom says.

“Like Cherno,” I reply.

“No,” Clifton denies my example with a frown. “Not like Cherno. You have no dragon in you. You’re a god like me, but I think Ransom gets the point.”

“So . . . you’re immortal and you have telekinetic powers?” Ransom asks me with a growing smile.

I nod at him, my look serious. “I’m sort of a freak.”

“From what I’ve seen so far, I’m pretty sure everyone here’s a freak. I mean, look at this place.” Ransom lifts his hands and gestures at the odd opulence around us. “And what’s so great about normal?” He shrugs. “When it comes to the brain, we’re all unique. If I were to slice your brain and Reykin’s brain into pieces, they’d be significantly different, on many levels—biochemically, the numbers of dendrites and axons, the gaps between neurons, the neurons themselves, you name it. I could map your brains and create a clone that exactly matches them, down to the atoms that make them up. But if I were to put your implant into Reykin’s brain, I’d get a different result, because you’ve had different experiences.”

“So it’s twofold,” I state. “Nature and nurture.”

“Yes,” Ransom agrees. He seems to have relaxed a little and settled into the conversation and his surroundings.

“Can you make another implant like Roselle’s?” Reykin asks.

Clifton leans forward. A deep frown creases my lips.

“Maybe,” Ransom replies, caught off guard. “But who would want one? Anyone who gets the implant would face possible integration by Spectrum—and that’s if everything went well and the body didn’t reject it, and I was able to make all the right incisions in all the right places. It’s a gamble. I took it with Roselle because I had no choice. My Census overlords were going to make her a Black-O whether I performed the surgery or not. I thought this way she’d have a chance.

“For the first few hours after her surgery, I thought she was going to die. The implant didn’t seem to be responding, and her vital signs dropped significantly. I thought we were both dead. I knew that as soon as Crow found out what I did to her, I’d be tortured, forced to give them my research, and then slaughtered. But after Roselle’s initial setbacks, she steadily improved. I burned everything—all my research—after that. Hiding Roselle’s reports was dangerous. I swapped out scans with other subjects’ images. It became a cat-and-mouse game. And then when she did integrate into Spectrum, I lived in daily fear that we’d be discovered. But Roselle’s device hid itself, by design—I’d written protocols for it to regard Spectrum as a threat and to imitate standard VPMD protocols whenever it was singled out for testing. It did it so well that I thought my technology was a failure, because after a while, I couldn’t tell the difference when I’d test her. I wasn’t even sure she would awaken from Spectrum. It’s not something I want to bet on again without a battery of tests and research.”

“But it could be done?” Reykin asks with a calculating look.

My frown deepens.

“Maybe,” Ransom replies, but he seems confused. “My mind has been a little fuzzy since the escape from the Sword Palace. I’m having a hard time remembering some things. I was unconscious for a long time.”

“It’s probably only temporary,” Reykin says, trying to reassure him.

“Yeah . . . temporary . . . ,” Ransom echoes. “If you want another prototype like Roselle’s, I’ll need a lab, and that’s just the beginning. Re-creating just my work environment will take time. The vital equipment isn’t exactly lying around, or something I can just throw together.”

“Forget about another implant.” I give Reykin a withering look. “What we need is a way to reverse engineer Spectrum. If we can’t destroy it, maybe we can succeed in pulling individuals out of the AI.”