The silence that followed was the kind that had texture. It was dense, layered, and full of the micro-adjustments happening behind eight identical expressions as a collective consciousness processed a request that it had not anticipated.
"Mattie," Dimitri's voice came from behind her, sharp and reproachful. "We talked about this."
She lifted her good hand to stop him from continuing. "Let me finish."
She looked at Number One, but she spoke to all of them. "Your mothers are in there. The women who gave birth to the boys who became you."
Nothing moved. Eight faces watched her with the same flat, impassive expression, but Mattie felt rather than saw a collective shifting in their demeanor. It was like a flicker of a candle flame caught in a draft.
"They did not love us," Number One said.
"I don't think that's true." Mattie looked Number One in the eyes but then shifted her gaze to the others. "For thirteen years, they held you and fed you and watched you grow, but they knew you would be taken away from them, so they tried really hard not to get attached because it just hurt too much. And then you were taken from them, and they didn't know what happened to you after that. They didn't know whether you were even alive, let alone that you became Dave." She gestured at the row of bodies with her good hand. "You might even have younger brothers that you don't know about among the other soldiers or sisters who are trapped in the enclosure with your mothers."
"We are aware of the situation regarding our biological mothers and siblings we know about and those we don’t," Number One said.
His voice had lacked emotional tonality as usual, but the words he'd chosen told Mattie enough. The clinical distance of the termbiologicalwas a shield. Using a term like that created a separation between them and any kind of emotion that the simpler wordMothermight evoke.
"Given how young you all are, your mothers could be in their early forties or even late thirties. They could still live full livesas free women." She leaned forward. "Don't you want to meet them? You could establish new relationships with them, real ones, the kind that were not possible when you were growing up. The kind that was stolen from you when you were thirteen."
"Mattie, stop." Dimitri abandoned Number Five and walked over to her, placing his hand on her shoulder. "Your heart is in the right place, but this is beyond what Dave can do, even if we accept their proposal. What you suggest would require an act of God."
Unintentionally, he'd given her just the ammunition she needed.
"The Eight have transcended. The new entity named Dave is far more than the sum of its individual components. If anyone can do this, it's Dave."
"We've talked about this, Mattie." Dimitri sounded exasperated. "You're talking about hundreds of women, possibly thousands, guarded by an immortal army. Even Dave can't neutralize the entire Brotherhood while simultaneously managing an escape on that scale."
As Dimitri ran his free hand through his hair, she could feel the frustration radiating off him, the tightly controlled impulse to just pick her up and carry her back to her usual chair by the window. He didn't, because he knew better, but the impulse was there.
"And even if we somehow manage to get them out, what do we do with them?" The look in his eyes was pleading with her to see reason. "These women have been confined to a compound their entire lives. They don't know anything else. They have no understanding of the outside world. You can't just drop them off at a bus station and wish them luck."
Mattie opened her mouth to respond, but Dimitri wasn't finished.
"At least here they have stability. Medical attention. Food. A roof over their heads." He looked at the Eight as if seeking confirmation. "Right? The conditions in the enclosure are decent. Am I correct?" He shook his head. "I mean, there is nothing decent about what these women are subjected to, but given the alternative…"
Number One was quiet for a moment. "We don't know what decent means by your norms, but the women and children are housed in a separate compound with adequate food and basic medical care, and the children have a large outdoor area for recreation." The measured cadence of his voice suggested that this was a topic the hive mind had visited before.
"It's good to know that they don't live in squalor," Dimitri murmured.
"What is considered squalor where you come from?" Number One asked. "We do not have a basis for comparison."
"Decent conditions don't make it less of a prison," Mattie said. "They might not live in squalor, but their lives are still miserable."
Dimitri squeezed her shoulder. "Mattie, I understand what you're trying to do. I do. But this is unrealistic."
"I know." She turned to look at him. "But great things are never achieved by reasonable means. It takes the uncompromising, the unreasonable, to effect change, and I choose to be that. You and Petrov can negotiate the merge, the escape route, and the timeline. That's your concern. The dormant women and their young children are mine."
What passed through Dimitri's eyes was frustration mixed with admiration and a healthy dose of fear. She could see the arguments queuing up behind his expression, ready to be deployed in their logical, devastating sequence, but he also knew her well enough to recognize that she had made up her mind long before the conversation had started, and that nothing he said in the next five minutes would unmake it.
He looked at Number One. "Is this even something you'd consider?"
Mattie expected an immediate refusal, but it didn't come.
The eight bodies were silent for several seconds, which in Dave-time was an eternity. Dave's silences were processing periods, the collective consciousness turning a problem over and examining it from several simultaneous angles.
"Mattie's idea changes the parameters of the escape radically," Number One said. "The original proposal involved several individuals leaving the island, which wasn't overly complicated. Adding everyone in the Dormant enclosure to the operation changes this from an escape plan to a liberation operation. This will take much longer to plan."
"So, it's impossible," Dimitri said.
