Lockland brought his head down. “It’s a plan.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Why are goodbyes so hard?” I grumbled.

  Maisie replied, her voice issuing out of the smooth polymer egg with her perfect computer-modulated inflection, “Human emotion, when you are dealing with separation from loved ones, can cause a strong reaction in one’s state of well-being—”

  “Got it,” I said, cutting her off. “Thanks for the explanation. That was a rhetorical question, by the way. No need to answer those.”

  I’d just taken off from the barracks. Luce was packed with everything I could think of, including six batteries, which would be enough to power this craft for at least five years, if not longer. Lockland had insisted I take the barrel laser we’d used while breaking into the government building, as well as a reflective suit, which was capable of redirecting laser fire back at the shooter. The effect wasn’t strong enough to kill, like the super-reflective pure fire suits, unless the laser was shot at close range. But wearing it had saved my life a time or two. It was one of our prized possessions.

  “I’m familiar with rhetorical questions,” Maisie replied. “But your voice did not contain the appropriate cadence or inflection to qualify as such.”

  I lifted a single eyebrow at the egg, which I had stationed in a groove of the console next to me. She was almost like a person, except not, since she was an inanimate object. I shook my head as I continued to pilot Luce south. We’d be in the air for at least four hours. “You know,” I told her, “I’m not sure I trust your authority on human-voice inflections. Not every human sounds the same. We all have our own quirky nuances. That particular question I uttered was rhetorical, but it was also coupled with sarcasm.” And a little sadness. Daze had tried to keep it together during our final goodbyes, but he’d made me feel like I was abandoning him without ever voicing a single word of complaint.

  His tears and stricken expression had said it all.

  He knew this mission was life or death for Case, and the kid blamed himself for what had happened, so he understood I had to go. But that didn’t make it any easier. Daze also believed that if Case hadn’t taken the time to secure him in the back room, Case would’ve been able to fight off his kidnappers.

  While this might’ve been true, it was a more likely scenario that Daze would’ve been taken as well—if not outright killed. The outskirt had saved his life.

  From the sounds of it, after I’d calmed the kid down enough to hear the whole story, there had been at least three or four crafts full of Tillman’s men. Although the kid hadn’t heard any names, I assumed these men belonged to Tillman, who, according to Reed, seemed like the one in charge of all the militia’s tactical decisions.

  “I will update my references on rhetorical questions to include sarcasm,” Maisie asserted. “Even though there was little to no sarcasm detected.” Her multicolored lights blinked around the craft, enhancing her point with a subtle mock.

  I chuckled. “Are you implying my use of sarcasm was inadequate?”

  “In the first statement, yes. But now,” she answered, “the sarcasm is duly noted.”

  Grinning, I angled Luce west.

  It was going to be a long flight, but at least I had intelligent company to banter with. My goal was to retrace the flight Case and I had taken not so long ago, but it was going to be difficult, because I hadn’t been piloting for the first four hours of that trip, and we’d been flying in Seven, not Luce. I had no flight recorder to rely on.

  “Maisie,” I ordered, getting back to business, “if you can, I need you to access your database from the time when Daze set you free.” The kid had somehow managed to activate Maisie to think for herself on that journey. It’d happened right around the time we’d spotted the militia base. “Remember, you informed us about the pulse storm, and shortly after that, we flew over a militia base. You detected a craft following us. Do you have a record of that?”

  “Of course,” she replied. “I am programmed to remember every encounter.”

  “Great.” With relief, I added, “I need that location. Where the pulse storm began is close enough.” I would have to be watchful in my approach, landing well before we reached the headquarters and going in on foot.

  Maisie’s lights blinked around, this time in an unmocking way, which was easy to see since it was dark outside the craft. Our perpetually occluded sun had set an hour ago. “I have secured a longitudinal and latitudinal record,” she said.

  That was fast.

  But knowing those coordinates wouldn’t help me, since to use them, the craft would need to access satellite data that did not exist any longer. “Latitude and longitude won’t help,” I told her. “I’m going to need you to give me verbal directions. As in, head south thirty kilometers and then turn west for forty-five more.”

  “I can do that,” she said. “For efficiency purposes, if I synced with your flight recorder, I could input the data directly.”

  “You can do that?” I asked, surprised. I had no idea.

  “Yes. Although this craft itself is ancient by modern standards,” she said, “its technology has been updated. Your control panel contains AI-compatible software, which is a surprise, but not unwelcome.”

  “It’s not ancient.” I snorted, feeling slighted on Luce’s behalf, even though this craft had originally been my grandfather’s. Being an A class dronecraft, it’d been one of the first off the assembly lines, making it at least seventy-five years old. My ancestors had previously utilized hovercrafts. Hovercrafts had a max altitude of five meters and were boxy and inefficient for long flights. But once the new and improved dronecrafts were engineered, they’d been mass-produced for public consumption. “It’s worn in…and comfortable. Like synthetic leather after a year of use. Or sleeping pods, once they’ve calculated your contours.”

  “I detect defensiveness in your response,” Maisie said. “I will attribute it to your fondness for this craft, which is apparent and well-placed. Subsequent dronecraft models would not have held up as long after prolonged use. Being the first craft manufactured, the A1’s engineering safety factor was set higher than in subsequent models. They were constructed with the strongest latticed graphene available. Later models reduced the airframe structural requirements as they added crash-prevention technology, such as air bubbles and parachutes.”

  I peered at the egg. It was surreal to have so much knowledge so close to me at all times. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get used to it. And the way Maisie spoke—it was as if the distant past had happened only yesterday.

  She was right about the safety features on personal dronecraft. As time went on and technology advanced, life-saving measures were integrated into all crafts, mandated by law. But they seldom functioned now. Most features required yearly maintenance, especially finicky air bubbles, which were meant to enclose the craft in a silicone aerogel that formed and hardened instantly before impact. Aerogel required a chemical reaction, and most of the chemicals necessary had long since dried up.

  “Luce has a parachute,” I told her. I maintained it fairly regularly, but I’d never needed to use it, so I actually had no idea if it worked. Last I checked, there were no obvious holes. “This was my grandfather’s craft. He took great pains to keep her in good condition, replacing panels when necessary and adding safety features, like the parachute. Bender is the one who upgraded the tech.”

  “Yes, it seems Bender is talented at fixing things,” she said, surprising me. “The circuit boards integrated into your dash have been fused together with parts from three separate crafts. It is an ingenious arrangement. At the time of my creation, nothing like this existed, because before disaster struck, if the panel had malfunctioned, it would have been replaced by an exact replica made by the manufacturer.”

  “It must be strange for you to take in our world now. It can’t really match what’s in your database.”

  “I am fortunate that my integrated software program has what’s called Disaster Protocol, which automatically enacts if more than forty percent of my data does not compute with the environment around me. It activated within the first thirty minutes.”

  I whistled low. “The military thought of everything.”

  “I would not be much help if a cataclysmic event occurred and I could not adapt,” she replied. “My interface was designed at the highest intelligence levels.”

  “Were they expecting the apocalypse when they made you?” I figured that was unlikely. History noted that the meteor that decimated our planet was initially identified when it collided with an asteroid a short time before it impacted the moon and broke into three pieces, each of which crashed into Earth’s surface.

  Maisie replied, “It is unknown what they were expecting. Nothing is notated in my database. Disaster Protocol is a standard program, detailing the outcomes of every conceivable event, including, but not limited to, earthquakes, cyclones, tornadoes, tsunamis, volcanoes, and meteor strikes, as well as man-made events, such as nuclear detonations and war, and other unlikely scenarios, such as an alien incursion.”

  “You’re programmed to deal with extraterrestrials?” I chuckled. The military really had thought of everything. “I have a hard time believing anything exists out there, but that’s mostly because none of us have ever seen past the clouds with our own eyes.”

  Maisie’s lights began to blink sporadically, morphing suddenly to white as she projected something onto the ceiling and windshield of the craft. “Our solar system is here.” A tiny pinpoint of light above my head flickered. It was full of impossibly small stars. She enlarged the projection. “The odds of other planetary life existing are two-point-four to one.” The display began to rotate.

  “That’s incredible,” I said as teensy galaxy upon teensy galaxy passed by my line of vision. “The details are so intricate. They actually look like images I’ve seen. How are you doing that?”

  The projection coalesced, and a graphic of Earth landed in the middle of the windshield, spinning slowly. “I have the ability to amplify images, though unlike a hologram program, I am limited to 2-D.”

  “Don’t be too hard on yourself,” I said with an awestruck tone in my voice. “This is fantastic. Can you project anything that’s in your database?”

  “Of course,” she confirmed.

  “Can you show me the sun?”

  A second later, a roiling orb of yellow and orange swirling light hit the windshield. I had to squint because it was so bright. “That’s not a picture,” I breathed. “I can actually see the gases moving inside.”

  “This is a moving, pixelated image, formatted for quick viewing. I thought you would enjoy it.”

  “I do. It’s amazing. What else can you do?” I asked.

  “I am programmed in four thousand and forty-two languages. I can replay audio of historical events. I can calculate complex equations instantly. I can—”

  “Wow, okay. That’s more than enough for now,” I said, interrupting. “Instead, how about we upload those coordinates into the flight recorder? I’m going to have to make a decision fairly quickly on which way to direct Luce.”

  “I will require assistance to complete the task,” she said.

  “What kind of assistance?” I asked, confused.

  “My lifecable must be inserted into the dash. There is a small panel located on my underside. Although I can detect and read software remotely, for technology such as that used by this craft, I must be connected physically.”

  I reached over and picked her up, turning the shell over in my hand. “Lifecable, huh? I don’t see a panel.”

  “It’s seamlessly integrated,” she replied. The hum of her voice made the polymer vibrate slightly. “Place your fingertip against the bottom. I will detect the heat and open.”

  I peeled off a glove with my teeth and did as instructed.

  Sure enough, a small square slid open with a quiet schick. I pressed my shoulder light on to get a better view. A small cable was coiled inside, no more than a few centimeters long. “I don’t think I can get your lifecable out of such a tiny opening without damaging—”

  A moment later, the cable breached the panel on its own, exposing a standard nine-pronged nano connector, a quarter of the size of my fingernail. Our ancestors had perfected standardization across tech. This plug-in allowed old and new technology to integrate without issue. “Insert my lifecable into your dash’s system. I detect three entry points. Use the one nearest the flight data recorder. You must remove a panel to access it.”

  I knew Luce inside and out. Back before the dark days, her dashboard would’ve lit up with all kinds of gadgets that relied on satellite and other remote-access programs to operate, including a flight screen. But ever since I’d owned her, most of those components had remained dark. I removed the panel Maisie had referred to, exposing a nano receptacle, and directed Maisie’s lifecable into it.

  Once connected, Maisie’s lights began to flicker, and the previously defunct viewing screen blinked to life for the first time.

  As I watched in fascination, numbers scrolled across the liquid crystal screen, accompanied by fleeting images of topography. Everything was moving too fast for me to get an accurate read on our location.

  Just as quickly, it stopped, homing in on a location that seemed familiar.

  I leaned up in my seat. “That’s it, the building we’re looking for. It’s the one in the middle.” I tapped the screen, and the picture enlarged. “Most of the other structures around it are gone.” The photo was an aerial graphic, likely taken by satellite long ago. “Do you have any information about this particular site?”

  Maisie hung from my dash, snapped in by her lifecable, lights blinking. “The data attributed to the picture states that the target was a medical facility that specialized in the manufacturing and treating of limb defects.”

  “Limb defects?”

  “Yes, humans frequently lost limbs in pedestrian accidents involving public transportation or extreme sporting. This facility developed and fit intelligent 3-D printed bionics onsite and trained patients to use them.”

  I nodded. “Now that you mention it, I do remember reading about public transportation being prone to accidents. Once everything became automated, and before all the kinks were worked out, there were spates when systems failed on a regular basis. They blamed hackers at the time, but it was never resolved, according to the information left behind. As for extreme sporting, I’d like to see those adventurers try to swing on a cable in the rain fifty stories up with no landing aids strapped to their backs. There’s no need for a limb center now. You either survive, or you don’t. No second chances.” The flight recorder beeped, keeping me on track, and I angled Luce in the direction indicated on the screen. “I guess it makes sense that the militia would make their headquarters there. The building was probably stocked with multiple bio-printers, beds, and basic medical supplies, not to mention medi-pods to keep people relatively healthy.” We already knew from Reed that the militia flew people who needed critical care to the medi-pod we were using to fix Mary, as it was fueled by a fusion reactor strong enough to heal desperate injuries.

  “That is a possibility,” Maisie said. “Or it could be its proximity to the weapons facility.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  “There’s a weapons facility nearby?” I asked.

  “Yes. According to the data, it produced class A military-grade weapons. Both buildings are located inside a Manufacturing Mecca, which is an area of land dedicated to the making and producing of goods. The structures are clustered close together on purpose to facilitate ease of transport throughout the country. Industrial-sized magnetic-levitation trains converged at their center.” Her lights spun in an arc, then disappeared. “You can remove me now. My upload is complete.”

  I reached over and unplugged her, watching as the tiny cable retracted on its own and the secret door slid shut. “I’ve heard of Manufacturing Meccas,” I said, setting her back on the console. “I’ve just never seen evidence of one before. The government was heavily involved in their evolution.”

  “That is correct. Meccas were government-sponsored, and the land was tax-free. There were quite a few throughout the country, but this was one of the largest. Any consumer, from anywhere in the country, could request a high-demand item to be delivered into their hands within minutes or hours from these various locations.”

  “Wow.” I whistled. “Instant gratification was big business.”

  “This particular mecca earned a combined $3.7 trillion per month.”

  I could not even begin to fathom coin like that.

  The coin we traded now was left over from an era when most people used credit uploads to purchase everything. Hard currency was rarely utilized and stayed in banks for safekeeping. Lucky for us, the sturdy coins averted total destruction. “That’s a lot of funds in a single month.”

  “These meccas were extremely successful. Delivery fees paid by the consumer were heavily taxed by the government. The companies profited excessively.”

  “Did workers earn a fair wage?” I asked, thinking back to a discussion I’d had with Darby about 3-D-printed homes and people who’d fled to rural areas but found no work. This location was certainly rural.

  “Very few humans were employed. Meccas were fully automated. When maintenance bots became advanced enough to fix themselves, humans were no longer needed in any area of manufacturing. Wage amounts are unknown.”

  “Damn. What a mixed-up world,” I said. “You could get anything your heart desired within minutes, but affording those items had to be tough for a majority of the population.”

  “Creditors were abundant and were a requirement to keep the economy going,” she replied. “The data suggests that, without them, the entire world would’ve financially imploded. The average human carried more than one million dollars in debt throughout their lifetime.”