“Current command: remain here until I return,” says Eleven, its maddening cheerfulness apparently untouched. “If you would like to input your own command, you will need permission from this suit’s owner.”
The suit’s owner, meanwhile, lopes away with echoing clanks of metal on metal. He is not shambling, he is not limping, he is running. Apparently every part of this experience was put on for one purpose: to fool Sarya the Daughter.
And fooled she was.
“You mark my words, Eleven,” she murmurs savagely, watching Hood disappear beneath the [Welcome to Watertower!] banner. “My mother—”
And then she is on the floor of the suit, boots above the level of her head. She struggles to a sitting position with a grunt. Every strap has retracted, leaving her completely free to move. The wall in front of her blossoms open with a hum of servos, revealing an empty Dock A. And then every holographic control flips off at the same time. Left glowing in the center of the cockpit is a single word.
[RUN]
And Sarya is shoved out of the hatch like garbage. She tumbles down the gangway and hits the floor hard enough to knock the wind out of her. From her back, mouth open, she watches the suit fold smoothly shut. Its huge arms relax, its running lights blink off, and around its middle a holographic banner begins orbiting.
THIS AIVVTECH UNIVERSAL AUTONOMOUS ENVIRONMENT IS OUT OF ORDER. PLEASE HAVE A WONDERFUL DAY ELSEWHERE.
Sarya staggers up, staring at the suit and adding yet another brand-new experience to a rapidly lengthening list. Did it just—? It did. A sub-legal intelligence just outsmarted this Hood character and her, and given literally any other circumstances it would be the weirdest thing she’d seen all day. She takes a step forward, watching her distorted reflection do the same in the curved front of the suit. Eleven stands there, colossal arms fixed to the floor as if bolted down, showing no sign that any of this just happened. And then for a split second the banner around its middle changes.
I SAID RUN, YOU IDIOT.
And Sarya is ripped back from the theoretical to the present. She has no time to be insulted. She has no more thoughts of finding Humans or escaping from a humdrum life. Right now she is not ashamed to admit that there is only one thought on her mind.
“Mother,” she whispers.
She turns and sprints for the maintenance hatch.
Better to wake the storm than the sleeping Widow.
The proverb repeats in Sarya’s head as she is practically thrown from an extremely unwilling engineering drone. Clearly her mood is affecting her persuasive abilities, because she’s never had such a time trying to get a ride. She’s never actually been rejected by a drone before, but it happened twice before she seized onto this one and refused to let go until it took her to Residential. That sort of thing certainly does not do much for your pride. But at the moment, as she lays a hand on the hatch that leads into her own corridor, the opinion of a sub-legal intelligence is the least of her worries. No, she has far bigger problems.
Like her mother.
She startles several passing intelligences when she emerges, blinking, from the darkness. She is aware of their gazes as she takes a breath and squares her shoulders, but she couldn’t care less. Her mouth dries and her palms dampen with every step she takes. Her stride slows, as if she is forcing her way through something physical. Somewhere behind her is a massive metal bounty hunter and ahead of her is the safest place on Watertower, and yet she is literally dragging her feet. But, honestly, anyone who knows anything about the life of a daughter would sympathize. Because to get to her room, Sarya has to do the most dangerous thing she can think of, the thing that multiple proverbs specifically warn never to do.
Wake a sleeping Widow.
This is why Sarya is barely moving at all by the time she comes in sight of her apartment. Her breath is coming in short gasps, and her heart is thumping in her ears. The hatch is orange, danger-colored, unlike every other residential hatch in the corridor. If she still had her Network unit—goddess damn you, Hood, by the way—she would see a large, high-contrast warning scrolling over the door. It would tell her, in extremely graphic terms, exactly what her mother is not responsible for should anyone be fool enough to open this door. This door and that warning are two of the concessions that a Widow must make, should she wish to reside in the company of other species. It’s not the Widow’s fault, after all, that her species has spent a billion years evolving into the fearsome hunters that they are. She can’t be blamed for possessing built-in weapons capable of killing any prey within ten meters within a fraction of a second. She is allowed to mingle with Network society because, like any other evolved complex individual, she is in control of her instincts. She has evolved higher brain function that keeps that sort of thing from happening unintentionally. But, of course, that only applies when the Widow is conscious. When that same Widow is sleeping, that higher brain function is dormant. It’s busy dreaming, fantasizing about hunts and battles and goddess knows what else while leaving the killer instincts in charge in its absence.
Which is why tragic accidental murders are a staple of Widow literature.
Thus, the last few steps to her apartment door are each, sequentially and respectively, the bravest thing Sarya has ever done. The few intelligences passing by steer around her and move on, and she would swear some of them move faster after they’ve seen her than before. They may be speaking to her, for all she knows, but without a Network unit she has no idea. Anyway, there is no room in her head for anything but what lies in her immediate future. And finally she is there, standing in front of the orange door, practically blind and mute. If a walking trash pile weren’t after her, she would turn around now. She would hide in the backstage areas, ride around in carts until the end of time or until she is sure her mother was awake, whichever comes first—
And then she shrieks and falls over backward when the door hisses open in her face. A nightmare crouches in a black room, every blade extended, razor mandibles a chittering blur.
“Oh,” says Sarya weakly, from the floor. “You’re awake.”
Shenya the Widow’s blades do not relax when she sees who is at her door. “You,” she hisses softly, pointing one at her daughter. “Room.”
It is the shortest possible command, the remnants of a ruthlessly butchered longer sentence. Some deep instinct has apparently awakened Shenya the Widow—which is better than Sarya doing it, and yet still bad news for someone. Sarya does not say another word, and not for a millisecond does she consider disobeying. She stumbles to her feet, then edges her way into the dark common room with her head bowed. She gives those trembling blades wide berth, then nearly runs the last few steps to the safety of her own room. She gropes in the darkness for the manual controls, not daring to say anything aloud in her mother’s hearing. And finally, the door hisses shut and she is alone.