Turning back to her daughter, she says, “Baby, the robot is going to keep you company while Mommy finishes talking to this nice lady and this bad man. Would you like to show him your dolls?”
“What—are dolls?” Aspect queries.
I fight back a laugh. “Extra tiny people.”
“ASPECT—LOVES—TINY PEOPLE!”
They toddle over to Dawn, offering an open hand. After a moment of hesitation, the child takes it, and they walk together into her bedroom, Aspect closing the door behind them.
“All right,” I say. “Back to business.” My hands threaten to tremble, but I keep my wrists locked, my heatshot muzzle pressed to Ednit’s forehead firmly enough to leave an indent. “You’re one of them, too, aren’t you? Evolved.”
“One ofus, Kori,” Ednit hisses through his teeth. “For once in your life, you could stand to be grateful.”
“Youlied to me.My whole life, every medical appointment, every reassurance that everything my mother did, everythingyoudid was to keep mesafe—”
“How is that a lie? Your body will never age. Taken care of properly, it will never die, and should it malfunction beyond repair, you can always upgrade to a newer model. You are what ancient generations could hardly dream of. A marvel of science. A triumph of the human species. Pagonian plate fully realized as flesh and sinew, muscle and bone—”
“And a pawn in Chloe’s tyrannical grab for power.” The trembling is so bad now that I lower the heatshot pistol, entirely out of fear that my finger will twitch against the trigger and do something I can never, ever take back. “How long was she going to leave our subjects in the dark? People whotrust us.People who believe we’re just like them.”
“But we’re not like them, Kori,” Ednit says. He tries to stand, but another blow from Jelza’s rifle keeps him low on his knees. “We’re better. We’remore.The future is boundless, Kori. One leader with generations of experience. Perhaps one leader for the entire planet, someday—the delicate tension between dayfolk and nightfolk finally brought to heel.”
“And if the dayfolk want another leader? If the nightfolk prefer to be left alone?”
“What people want is not always what is best for them, child. That’s why they have leaders.”
I spit on the floor. “You disgust me.”
“Are you determined to control everything, Doctor?” Jelza interjects. “The entire planet? All our lives, according to your perfect design—no matter how many people you have to deceive or abuse or outright kill in your sick experiments to get there?”
Ednit doesn’t lift his head, only raises his eyes to glare right through Jelza. “Need I remind you that you volunteered?”
“I didn’t know—”
“You read the consent forms. They were excruciatingly detailed. Youwantedto ascend beyond death, to secure an eternal future for your daughter—”
“Who wouldn’tlook at me.” Tears well in Jelza’s eyes. “Who said my hands felt colder, and stopped letting me tuck her into bed. Who asked me, through blankets pulled up almost over her eyes, when her real mother was coming back.”
“Are you not the strongest you’ve ever been?” Ednit protests. “The closest humankind has ever come to immortality?”
“The better house, the better school, none of it was worth it.” Jelza’s tears overflow, streaking her cheeks. “You can deceive the populace at large, but children … childrenknow, Doctor. She knew the exact same thing I knew—beyond my flesh, in the fabric of my soul.” She gestures to the sonogram on the fridge. “Do you know what it feels like to lock eyes with her—in this body that didn’t evenbirthher—as we share a meal across the kitchen table, knowing that she will wear and tear and eventually fade, while I live on forever, an unnatural echo of the woman, themotherI ought to be?”
“Your daughter would enter the program when she’s of age,” Ednit says, abject. “As we plan to do with all the others. You would always have each other.”
I shake my head rapidly. “How old is old enough to surrender your body to the state, Ednit? Would you even tell her? Or would you call it a routine doctor’s appointment, then surgically excise every memory you could find of the procedure, lest they cause even one singlecrackin your control?” Jelza looks at me with horror, beginning to understand as the full breadth of what Ednit concealed from me. “I would know.”
Ednit doesn’t break eye contact, but he also seems to have nothing to say, and his lack of answers, his lack of any possible moral justification, burns in my blood.
Jelza’s knuckles are white around her stolen heatshot rifle. “Who decides who deserves to live forever, Doctor?” she says, breathless,trembling. “And how could a leader who doesn’t know death possibly care for lives that begin only to end?”
I swallow hard against the rising bile in my throat. “How many of them—of us—are there, Ednit?”
“Why should I tell you?” Ednit says. Jelza nudges the side of his head with the rifle again. “All right, all right. A dozen elites, your mother, yourself, and myself among them. A hundred more Evolved spread throughout the settlement, regularly monitored, and many of them monitoring public sentiment about the monarch as well.”
Over a hundred. Despite being small in the grand scheme of our population, which has consistently hovered between ten and twelve thousand in the periodic census, the thought of that many makeshift gods being among us is mind-numbing. How many even wanted this? How many would dare to join me and Jelza in fighting back?
“And they all know what they are?” I ask.
“The attempt to limit your own self-knowledge was … unique,” Ednit says, as if that cute little word could possibly encapsulate the utter betrayal I feel. “Your mother had a special desire to protect—”
