STAR FALL PEOPLE Chapter 43

Sofia: San Francisco

(Previous chapter, or start at the beginning.)

Sofia didn’t go into the atrium. She gazed upon Sley’s corpse from a third-floor balcony, standing in the recesses of shadows, where she could tremble unseen. She had been here since she returned to consciousness in the hallway outside the lab, Mang and Nadia still knocked out. Sofia had somehow gotten to her feet using her only hand. In the chaos, her body had fallen on the injector gun. She picked it up.

The others were coming to. She had given the lab only a quick glance. The grenade had left it a dark cavern full of flickering flames. No sign of the boy. Sofia hurried down the corridor to the ladies’ room, looked at her reflection. Forced herself to look at her mangled body. The arm severed below the shoulder. Her sweatshirt, shredded and covered with her blood. She didn’t want to see what was beneath the rags. But she had to know.

Slowly, gingerly, she removed the top. The cami beneath was just a tattered crimson stain. Mang’s sword had slashed her bra in two, and she looked at her naked torso. The long gash crossing her chest had stopped bleeding. Her fingers prodded the edge. Look. She could see rib bones. A membrane had covered the organs, pulsing above her untouched heart. I’m looking at my heart. If Mang’s blow had been just one centimeter—no, a few millimeters closer, she’d be dead. Really dead. Dead dead.

She raised the stub of her arm. It had ceased bleeding and the nub seemed to have grown new, pink skin. How long would the regeneration take? Would it be complete? I can’t be seen until I’m healed.

The realization stunned her more than the wounds: her life hadn’t just changed; she had slipped to an outside existence. Either she marched outside and told everyone she had endlessly regenerating biology, thereby submitting herself to the life of a lab rat—probably in some government facility—or she had to begin a new life avoiding how to explain herself. Who she was… What she was…

Sley had done this for five hundred years. Sofia couldn’t imagine wanting to exist like that. Maybe telling the world about her biology was the right thing to do. The responsible thing to do. The…the adult thing to do.

God, am I going to be twenty forever? The idea repulsed her. Some days she reveled in her adulthood, its feeling of independence, but too often she still felt like a dopey kid. She had always wanted to grow into becoming like Mama, with Mama’s glamor and easy worldliness…wanted that, of course, until she learned the full extent of Mama’s genetic inheritance. If she were frozen at twenty, though, did that mean the time bomb in her genes, Huntingdon’s chorea, would never go off? Can I…can I ever be a mother?

She looked at her demonic body and decided she would need to come up with a way to reveal its secrets. She didn’t want to become a monster like Mang or Nadia. Or live a life constantly on the run like Sley. She’d start by asking him. Sley, she’d ask—she couldn’t bring herself to call him Father or Dad—Sley, let’s find a way to live in this world, and to let this world accept us. But on her terms. No one could see her until she’d healed.

She exited the bathroom into the empty hallway and headed away from the atrium, towards the guest apartments. A palm scan was enough to admit her to her quarters.

Gunfire roared and the building shook. She’d have to hurry. She showered off all the blood and grime, easing her back into the spray, keeping the water off her exposed chest. The room’s closet yielded some Phanes gear; she pulled on a fresh T-shirt and a zip-up crew, tucking the missing arm’s loose sleeve into the pocket. And then there was the injector gun. Deadly to human and immortal alike. Sofia put it in the room’s safe.

By the time she had made her way to the balcony overlooking the atrium, the fighting had ended. The place was crawling with soldiers and cops, taking pictures, interviewing survivors. No sign of Mang, but Carlos was by the door to his security control room, his fluid hands explaining something to a soldier. The murdered security guard lay beneath a tarp. Two police medics were covering Sley’s body, but not before she glimpsed the gaping hole that had once been half of his face. Sley’s dual visage, half an ugly ravage and half smooth as porcelain but betraying a look of astonishment.

“Dammit, Sley,” she whispered, her hand wiping tears. Why did you have to leave me so alone?

Fat Beard sat nearby with hands tied behind his back. The scientists huddled together in a meeting pod, Dave Mason’s face covered in bandages, Beth Banerjee nursing a glass of water and Francesca Pizzicatto staring into emptiness. Sofia’s gaze alighted on Gideon Frankel walking out of sight, throwing a suspicious glance over his shoulder. Now what are you up to?

A new group of people dressed in business suits entered the atrium from outside. At their center strode a plump Black woman with streaky blond highlights, her suit tailored to show off her curves, and red pumps giving her the extra inches of a boss. She flashed a badge, and one cop pointed toward an empty chair. Where a moment ago Gideon had sat. Sofia heard the Black woman shout “Where’s Frankel?” The cop looked stunned and gestured his confusion, but the woman didn’t have time for his sob story and ran across the atrium, her team fanning out.

Sofia bolted for the stairs. How long before they found her—and when would they notice her arm had grown back?

            She found Gideon in Francesca’s immunology lab. A loud hum filled the room, as if it were filled with insects. Gideon sat by a computer workstation. The air around him grew fuzzy and rippled.

“Gideon?”

He turned around, obscured by the darkening cloud. “Mang practically cut you in half.”

“What are you doing?”

“You’re one of them, aren’t you? Sley’s kid? Like father like daughter.”

“What is this?”

Gideon turned back to the computer. “I’m trying to halt a catastrophe.”

“The drone attack?”

“Yes. I’m trying to get Genie’s attention. Ask it to break into the drones’ cryptography… call it off.”

The cloud swirled around him, growing thicker. And louder.

“What is that?”

“I think it’s a nanobot swarm. I logged into the Jin Nao servers, and those things just emerged off those silicon wafers.” He waved furiously, as if to ward off gnats.

“Gideon, what happened? Where’s Mang?”

“Gone. Took off in his helijet.” He banged the keyboard in frustration. “Genie, where are you?” He turned in his chair to face her. “Kid, the trouble with gods is they never respond to your calls. You think Sley and Mang were gods? Maybe you think you’re a god? Well, let me tell you, there’s a new Yahweh in town, and it’s called artificial general intelligence. And it’s not interested in answering our prayers. It’s…it’s…”

His jaw dropped as the cloud of nanobots spun into a black column.

“They’re in here,” she heard someone say.

The imperious Black woman marched in, followed by two of her suits and a quartet of armed soldiers. Francesca came last.

“What the hell is that?” the woman demanded.

“I don’t know,” Francesca said. “Sofia, what are you doing here?”

“That’s him, ma’am,” a soldier said, pointing at Gideon.

“I know that’s him. Gideon Frankel, you’re coming with me.”

“You look important,” Gideon said. “You’ll want to wait for this.”

“I’m Assistant Director Deborah Church of the FBI, national security division. You can come with me, or we can carry you out of here.”

“You want me to stop the drones or not?”

She stepped his way, eyeing the thickening column of bots. “You know how to stop them?”

“No, but it might.”

“What the hell is that?”

Francesca asked, “Are those my nanobots?”

Deb Church said, “That’s what that is?”

“They’re for organ transplants,” Francesca said, walking around the humming column. “They’re designed to flow through blood streams. Not fly.”

“They can communicate, though,” the FBI woman said. “Just like those drones seem to communicate, dodging everything we shoot at them. Are you able to disable them?”

“No,” Gideon said. “Tom told you about Genie. I’m trying to find a way to communicate with it. Only Genie can call off those drones. But first we must convince it.”

“We’re out of time,” Church said. “The attack is imminent. Doctor Frankel, are you really telling me you can’t hack your own program?”

“It’s writing its own program.”

“Mang’s dead,” Church said.

“Dead?” Sofia asked. “How?”