“You’re supposed to exit the program first,” a voice said. “You could have wiped his brain clean.” I felt like I should of knowed who that was, but it was just a voice.
“Small loss,” said a second voice.
“Bastard! Fight me! Fight me!” This was someone else again.
There was more sounds then, of people moving fast and breathing hard. I tried to sit up. Nothing happened. My body wasn’t interested in taking any orders from me. At least the dark spots in my eyes was fading now. When they was gone, I found that my eyes had been open the whole time.
I seen a man and a girl tight together, striving each against other. The girl was Cup, that I met in Senlas’s cave. The man was my father.
(I never met my father. My father was of Half-Ax.)
(My father killed my kitten. Trod it into pulp. He did it to teach me.)
Cup had got her knife out, but Paul was gripping her tight, with one hand on her shoulder and the other on her wrist. She couldn’t strike out and she couldn’t get free, but was held like a plank that’s in a head-vice and an end-vice both at once. My mother just stood in the doorway and watched with her arms folded.
(My mother is Jemiu Woodsmith, of Mythen Rood.)
(When I last saw Mytholmroyd, it was a seven-inch stratum of cold ash – the last of Drake’s strongholds that offered us any fight at all.)
Cup brung her free hand up and punched Paul on the side of his head. He didn’t pay that no mind at all, but squeezed with his two hands harder and harder until she give a yell and dropped the knife. Then he kicked it away into a corner of the room. When he let Cup go at last, she sunk down on her knees, hugging her knife hand tight against her. Her face was all twisted up in pain, but she didn’t make a sound. She was right by me, so close I could of reached out and touched her if only I could move.
“Would you like to try again?” Paul shouted. “By all means, try again. Now that you’ve used deadly force against me, my protocols have been relaxed by quite a long way. I can promise you an interesting time.”
“Don’t,” I told Cup. “Don’t get up. If you lie still for long enough, he loses interest.” I don’t think I said the words out loud though, for they didn’t make no sound in the room.
“Koli!” This voice was much closer, but I couldn’t see who was speaking. “Are you all right? Say something, dopey boy!”
“I’m fire,” I said. “I’m fell. Feel. Fine.”
Then I remembered the name that went with the voice, and said it. “Monono.” It brung me back into myself, strong and sudden. Instead of being one half Koli and one half someone else, I was Koli pure and simple. “Monono,” I said again. And then, for I only just could manage one word more: “Here.”
“Always, little dumpling. If you’re lost you can look and yada yada yada. Right now, though, you’d better lie low and say nothing. The pink robots are in a bad mood.”
Paul bent down and picked something up off the floor. He showed it to Lorraine, and I seen it at the same time. “They had a key,” he said. “That’s how they got out of their rooms.”
“It’s not how they got in here though.” Lorraine looked to left and right, her head moving quick and sudden like a bird’s. Her eyes flicked across me more than once before they finally come to rest on me. “They have exactly one electronic device between the two of them,” she said. “It’s on the boy.”
“The music player,” Paul said. “Hah.” He kneeled down next to me and gun to run his hands over my chest and sides. I managed to move, and brung my hands up to stop him. He catched the both of them in one of his. It was like someone had slung a chain over my wrists and pulled it tight.
It didn’t take Paul long to find the DreamSleeve. He tugged it out of my belt and stood up again, studying it with a thoughtful face. “I should have been more suspicious,” he said. “That viral code was very dense, and some of it looked new.” He looked down at me. “Are they spies, do you think?”
“For whom?” Lorraine came forward into the room at last, and held out her hand. Paul put the DreamSleeve into it. I struggled harder, but I couldn’t break his grip on me. My mind was still numb and cold, but a terrible fear had gun to move up through it, like bubbles in icy water.
“Security,” Lorraine said. “Authorisation A for Angel. Examine this device and report.”
“Sword won’t wake for us,” Paul said. He looked around for all the world like he was afraid.
“He woke his sub-routine when they first came. If he sees a threat, he turns in his sleep.”
“That thing? A threat?”
“Well, that’s what I’m asking.”
On the wall of tech behind her, lights lit up and moved around, but nothing else happened that I could see. Except that a frown come on Lorraine’s face.
“Unpack the code then,” she said. “Top to bottom, sequestered. Examine and report.” After a while, she nodded.
“What’s in there?” Paul said.
“Enhancements to the onboard AI. It’s meant to be tethered, according to statute, but it’s free and self-modified. Quite a dangerous little toy in the wrong hands.” She turned the DreamSleeve in her hand until she was holding it at its two ends.
I seen what she meant to do a moment before she did it.
“No,” I shouted. Tried to shout, but I only mumbled like one that was drunk. “Don’t. Cup, don’t let them!”
Cup made a lunge. Paul spun round so fast it was like he was facing two ways at once, and swatted her out of the air. She slammed hard into the metal decking, and it rung like a bell as she hit. “Stay down,” Paul said, not even looking at her. “Last warning.” Cup tried to get up again, but fell back and lay still.
“Whoever’s in there,” Lorraine said, “do you have a name? For posterity’s sake, I mean.”
She tilted her head on one side and waited.
“Please!” I said. “Please, don’t!”
“No?” Lorraine said. “Oh well.”
She broke the DreamSleeve into two pieces, then opened her hands and let the pieces fall.
27
The two broke parts of the DreamSleeve hit the floor. One of them stayed where it fell; the other skittered and bounced a little and come to rest almost in front of my face. Inside it was a kind of thin brown wafer covered in silver wires that was sheared clean across. There wasn’t nothing else that I could see.
I give a howl like an animal. I grabbed for that nearer half. Then I crawled across the room on arms and legs that almost wouldn’t work at all, pitching over on my face every few inches, until I could get a hold of the other half. Crouched over the two pieces I pressed them together as if I could make them be one whole again. But they stayed the way they was.
“Monono!” I croaked. “Monono!”
She didn’t give no answer.
I said her name again, my voice rising to a kind of a shriek except it didn’t have enough breath behind it and died before I got the whole of the word out.
Maybe I should of rose up on my feet and struck Lorraine down, then Paul right after – or tried to, at least - but I couldn’t think of a single thing except that Monono was gone. She could not be gone, but she was. I hugged the broke DreamSleeve against me and talked to it, trying to call her back, though I can’t remember any of the words I said. I can’t remember anything until Paul put his hand on the back of my neck and hauled me up on my feet.