The bumblebee crawled over to my hand. “You took me.”
“I did,” I agreed. “Do you have a problem with that?”
It seemed to consider. “I have no ethical subroutines.”
Great. Not only did I now possess the world’s most advanced spybot, but it didn’t have any idea about morality. If this thing ever got loose—
No, I thought. It wasn’t a thing. It was learning. It could speak. It could think.
It wasn’t a human, but it wassomething. And I was done killing things.
Maybe I could write a few subroutines for it. Maybe I could help this burgeoning life become something better than what it was created for.
A second chance.
“Do you have a name?” I asked.
“I am 100 ED6 GR-4000,” said the AI promptly.
“Well, I’m not calling you that,” I said. “EDGR, huh? How about Edgar?”
The bumblebee’s wings flickered.
“That is acceptable,” he said.
22
I fall to my knees beside Edgar’s crushed form.
“No,” I whisper, picking him up.
Vale must have seen him. She would have recognized him… and with his broken wing, he wouldn’t have been able to escape. I imagine her knocking him to the floor and stomping on him.
I don’t know if an AI being can feel pain, but I ache in sympathy.
This is just exterior hardware, I know. His true self is housed in the computer hidden in my backpack. But I’ve never repaired something as intricate and tiny as a spybot bumblebee. I’m not sure it can be done.
“You’ll be okay,” I whisper, slipping his body into my pocket. I won’t leave it here, no matter how damaged it is.
“Augusta?”
Eames stands over me. I feel his presence by my left shoulder, but I can’t look at him. “It’s fine,” I say. “He’ll be fine.”
He squats down beside me, putting a hand on my arm. Unlike the first time he touched me, this squeeze is gentle. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “You—you had that spybot a long time?”
He doesn’t know that Edgar is an AI—that he’s a person. Eames must think I’m distraught over a toy. But even so, his eyes are soft.
“It’s fine,” I say again. “They didn’t destroy him. Just his body.”
Bodies can be remade. I should know.
But they’re never quite the same.
Piper walks over. “What is it?”
I shake my head. The fewer people that know about Edgar, the better. “It’s nothing. Just… lost our way of spying on Vale.”
I squeeze my hands into fists, trying to calm myself. Edgar’s loss is a blow, but I can still do this. I have to do this. I can fix him later, so long as I survive.
