“Not bad for a first time.”
I nodded, took in the view, the thin white ribbon of road we’d just conquered. “You do this a lot?”
He shrugged. “When I can’t sleep. Or when I need to remember how small the world is.”
The helmet was stifling. I took it off, shook out my hair, and immediately regretted it—the wind was arctic up here, slicing at my ears. He noticed, and without a word, unzipped his own jacket and offered it to me. I hesitated, then let him drape it over my shoulders. It was warm, and heavy, and stank of smoke and leather and something uniquely him.
We stood at the edge of the overlook, boots almost touching, watching the lights below. The night pressed in, and the silence became a living thing between us.
I thought about all the things I could say. About my work, about the men who wanted me dead, about the math of risk and probability that kept me up at night. But none of it seemed relevant, not here, not in the cold clarity of altitude.
Instead, I said, “Thanks for not killing me on the ride up.”
He grinned, the scar on his jaw twisting into a question mark. “Wouldn’t be worth the cleanup.”
I smiled, but then I turned serious. “Why me?”
He considered, then said, “You think like a predator. Or maybe just a survivor. It’s rare, in my world.”
“I don’t feel rare,” I said. “I feel disposable.”
He didn’t argue, didn’t offer comfort. Just looked at me, really looked, and said, “You’re not.”
The wind picked up, and I found myself shivering, despite the jacket. He put a hand on my shoulder, just for a second, a steadying touch.
I glanced sideways at him, studied the battered face, the eyes that had seen too much and still wanted more. “You ever get tired of being the strong one?”
He shrugged, eyes on the lights below. “It’s not strength. It’s just inertia.”
“Not much difference, from where I’m standing.”
He laughed, but there was no joy in it. “You’d be surprised.”
We watched the town for a while, the silence growing heavier. He lit a cigarette, offered me one. I took it, more for the warmth than the nicotine, and let the smoke fill my lungs.
After a minute, I asked, “You ever wish you’d made different choices?”
He exhaled, the smoke curling into the darkness. “Every day. But the world doesn’t pay for what might’ve been. Only for what is. I try not to look back. Try not to let the past camp in my head.”
I nodded, thinking of all the lines of code, all the “if” statements that could have gone another way. The branching paths of the possible, collapsing to this one improbable night.
“You want to tell me why we’re up here?” I asked. My voice sounded thin in the air, like it was trying to escape before I could regret the question.
He shrugged. “Sometimes the only way to see the problem is to get above it.”
I nodded, but I didn’t look at him. I looked down at the lights, the neat lines, the laboratory square at the far end of the valley where the real monsters lived. I thought about my project, about the hundreds of hours I’d poured into it, the funding memos, the ethics waivers. About how many nights I’d tried to turn off my own pattern recognition and failed.
He watched me watch the town. I could feel it, the weight of his attention, the hunger to understand or at least categorize me.
“Do you even like what you do?” he asked. It wasn’t a challenge—just a raw question, sharp as rebar.
I fished another cigarette out of the jacket he’d loaned me and rolled it between my fingers. “I used to,” I said. “Then they told me what it was really for.”
He waited, patient.
“Artificial intelligence for post-nuclear command-and-control,” I said. The words were brittle, like they’d been freeze-dried and reconstituted. “They call it Blue Spirit. The idea is that after the worst has already happened, someone still needs to make decisions. Machines, instead of people. Adaptive, distributed. Self-repairing. Something that doesn’t die just because a city does.”
He whistled, low. “So you’re building Skynet.”
