Defy the Worlds (Defy the Stars #2)(48)

“I just mean—this is probably our best chance.” Noemi double-checks her blaster. Her hands are still trembling, but she suspects she can shoot straight. “Remedy has to be as messed up as we are. Maybe we can catch them off their guard.”

A low, mournful cry startles her, as well as the others. The sound is coming from the once-unshakable Gillian Shearer, whose cheeks shine with tears. She’s trying to climb up to one of the tanks she was working on earlier, one that has cracked and is draining pink goo down the sides. In the controls is set a diamond-shaped octahedron roughly the size of a large human fist, which is blinking in a strange pattern.

“Simon,” Gillian sobs. “Oh, God, Simon, no.”

That was the name of her dead child. Gillian must’ve been hit on the head so hard she doesn’t know where she is, or maybe temporary amnesia just wore off and reminded her of her loss. Embarrassed for the woman, Noemi looks away—until she hears glass cracking.

She looks up. In the murky cargo bay with its dim orange emergency light, it first seems as though the leaking tank is splintering of its own accord. Then, through the gloom, she makes out a shape within the tank.

The shape of a tiny human hand pressed against the surface—

With a great crash, the side of the tank gives away. Fluid gushes down in a waterfall, soaking Gillian and splashing on everything nearby. In the rush, the shape of a human boy falls, too, hitting the floor with a heavy thud. Noemi stares as he tries to get to his hands and knees; he fails, maybe because everything’s slippery but also maybe because he doesn’t know how to move yet.

This isn’t a little boy, Noemi realizes. This is a mech….

The mech raises his head. He has long red hair that stretches past his shoulders; he’s sopping wet and completely naked. His features aren’t totally formed yet; there’s something soft about his face, something fetal, even though his height is that of a six-or seven-year-old child.

But it’s still plain that he’s terrified.

Gillian, pushing her damp hair back from her face, approaches the crawling mech. “It’s all right,” she says, trying to smile. “I’m sorry we had to rush—it’s going to be all right—”

The mech says, in a shaky child’s voice, “Mummy?”

Oh, my God. That’s her son.

Her dead son.

Mansfield’s always planned to put his soul within Abel’s body and so be immortal. That means he must have some procedure or ability to record or store his soul—in effect, an entire human consciousness. Yet Noemi had never considered that he might use this power to preserve someone else, much less his own grandchild.

She looks up at the octahedron, now gone dark.

“Yes, that’s right, Simon. It’s Mummy.” Gillian’s smile pierces Noemi’s anger with the woman. Nobody could be invulnerable to such naked pain. “We weren’t supposed to wake you up for a while yet. I’m so sorry. Something’s gone wrong, but don’t worry. I’m here, Grandfather is here, and we’ll take care of you. We’ll put everything right later.”

“My thoughts are noisy.” Simon paws at his head. His fingers are slightly webbed. “Make them stop.”

“That’s because you’re different now, but we can help you learn to handle all those thoughts.” Gillian moves tentatively toward him. The wet, shivering child in front of her must bear almost no resemblance to the son she lost, but she holds her hand out to him just as she would’ve before. “Come here and let Mummy help y—”

“No no no!” Simon wails. “I don’t want to!” Gillian stops where she is.

Mansfield pushes himself up with one arm. Noemi expects him to call to Simon, too, but he speaks instead to his daughter. “This one’s botched.”

Shaking her head fast, Gillian says, “No. It worked. It’s Simon. Can’t you see that?”

Simon presses his tiny webbed hands to either side of his head. “There’s all this talking in my head but it’s not words.”

Noemi’s knowledge of Abel helps her understand what must be happening in Simon’s head. “It’s your programming,” she says gently, crouching low as she approaches so she won’t be any taller than the child. “You’ve got lots and lots of information in there that you can use.”

“I can handle this, thank you.” Gillian’s tone could carve ice.

Probably Noemi is out-of-bounds. But what are the boundaries in a situation like this? All she knows is that she sees something—someone not very different from how Abel must’ve been when he was new. The thought tears at her heart and makes her want to do anything she can for him.

Maybe there’s nothing to be done, because Mansfield croaks, “Gilly, you need to let this go.”

His daughter ignores him, crawling half a meter closer to the shivering mech that is also her child. “Darling, come here to Mummy. I’ll set things straight, you’ll see.”

Simon gets to his feet, unbalanced and shaking. Gillian freezes. No one else in the room says a word. He takes one step toward his mother, then another, and then he runs at her as fast as he can—

—at mech speed, which is too fast. He slams into Gillian so hard she goes flying backward, hits one of the broken tanks, and slumps to the floor.

At the sight of his mother’s collapse, Simon screams—a raw, anguished sound—and rushes away crying. The door is now suspended overhead, flush with the ceiling rather than the floor, half open. Simon leaps to it, squeezes through, and vanishes, a wild thing lost in the wreck.