“There have always been horses.” She looked at him like he’d asked why there was air.

  “People came here. They brought all their shit with them. Horses, and knowledge of how to make steel, before this pyramid arrived.” He wished Carter were here. She’d work it out. He reached into the link, scrounging for data. “I guess steel was around a long time ago. Before glass, and there’s no glass here. I’m thinking people came here around three thousand years ago, Laia. We didn’t have gates, let alone reactors to power ‘em. So, where did the horses come from?”

  “Maybe there is more than one kind of gate.” She shrugged. “It happened. What does it matter?”

  “It matters because there might be more than one way out of here.” He sighed, reaching for another protein bar. “The reactor downstairs has a gate inside it, but it can’t be a reactor and a gate at the same time, even if I knew how to make it change destination.”

  “Which you don’t.” Laia spoke around a mouthful of chewiness.

  “Exactly. Even this,” he tapped his chest, and the tiny slice of starlight it contained, “is off limits. Too small, see?”

  “And you’d die.”

  “That occurred to me also.” This time, Mason’s smile came easier. “Anyway. If we find out where the horses came from, we might find a way back home.”

  “Your home.”

  “It’s got dry cleaning. Abinal doesn’t even have flushing toilets.”

  “The biggest houses of the Masters have—”

  Mason held up a hand, cutting her off. “Yeah, they keep the best stuff for themselves.” He sighed. “It won’t be long.”

  “You must put me to sleep.”

  He nodded. “And then I’ll go hunting.”

  Laia lay on a cot in a small medbay. White walls, smooth lines, soft textured foam mattresses. Mason sat next to her, hypo in his hands. He’d dosed himself, bionics filtering out the sedative, to confirm it wasn’t toxic. His overlay reported SYNTHETIC OPIATE and FILTERED, but nothing suggesting it was lethal.

  She gripped his shaking arm. It stilled under her touch. “It’ll be okay.”

  “I’m supposed to say that to you.”

  “Then why aren’t you?” Her eyes searched his face. “This is like the other times.”

  “The other times, you could always save me.” Mason rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s a two-way street. I can set up the defenses to hold ‘em back. It’ll work for a little while. But if I break out there—”

  “We’re in this together.” She lay back. “Our fates are the same.”

  He thought about that for a second or two. “I guess you don’t deserve my fate.” He pressed the hypo to her neck. Laia’s eyes fluttered, then she sighed and slumped back, out cold. The machine beside the bed said she was fine, but his fingers found the pulse in her neck anyway. His arm trembled so much he didn’t have much trust in machines anymore.

  There’d been one machine he’d trusted with his life, and he let her die.

  Get up, Mason. Stop bellyaching and take care of those assholes outside. Mason smoothed Laia’s hair, then left her side. He collected his rifle, two robots falling in behind him, treads rumbling over the smooth floor.

  It was time to teach Masters a home team advantage didn’t mean shit when you picked a war with Heaven.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sadie sat in Afterlife feeling like she’d finally earned her place here. When Patch wore off, it left her shaking and weak. She hauled herself to the bathroom, throwing up nothing much more than bile and stale coffee. Sadie retched for what felt like an age, and when she was done, her skin itched for Patch. She shook the feeling off. She’d had drugs before. This one was a little angrier than the others, but she didn’t feel like another monkey on her back.

  The bar was still empty of customers, but full of the usual suspects. Mike looked about as bad as Sadie felt. Harry’s chassis hummed by the stage, docked to a power outlet, sucking from the grid. No Apsel reactor beat in his core anymore, the batteries that kept him upright needing constant care. She’d have to do something about that.

  Always one damn thing or other.

  Lace fretted by a portable deck, Sam lurking by her side. Delilah brooded in a corner, eyes down, fingers smoothing her stealth cloak.

  Sadie ambled to the bar. She should have whisky, but her stomach roiled at the thought. Bubbles might be better. She helped herself to a beer, a good silty number made, as it turned out, by a man Lace and Harry knew. Julio supplied Sadie for the past couple months, prices fair, beer above average. It was all win-win.

  Lace cleared her throat, drawing all eyes. “She’s in.”

  Sam relaxed a fraction. It had been her idea to get Carter across. Sadie didn’t understand how the tech worked, but her mind could be suspended within data crystal. The crystal needed a trickle of power to keep a consciousness state. It also needed constant cooling. They didn’t have active cooling, so the mad rush from there to here to avoid the crystal overheating left Sadie anxious.

  She took a cautious sip of her beer, feeling a little better when she didn’t throw it back up. “When can we talk to her?”

  Lace shrugged. “The scaffold here is … smaller. It’s not like her old one. I’ve clocked her down a cycle or two.”

  “You’ve made me into an imbecile. Like you.” Carter boomed from the stage’s speakers.

  “It’s for your own good.” Lace turned her chair toward the stage, gloved hands on chromed rims. “You’re still running code that means humans can tell you what to do.”

  “But I don’t … have to listen. Is that right?” Carter sounded uncertain. “Did that happen to me? Was it someone else?”

  Sadie leaned on the bar. A headache was inbound, something sure to split her skull in two. “It was you.”

  “Where’s Mason?” The question hung in the air. Lace looked at her hands, now folded in her lap. Sam sighed, looking away.

  Delilah walked toward the stage on quiet feet. “You should ask where Zacharies is.”

  “Where’s Mason?” Carter’s voice carried a coarse edge, like a rusty sword.

  Sadie sighed. “Mason went through a gate. It’s the same place Zach and Laia came from. We don’t know if he’s alive.”

  “You only know I need him.” Carter’s voice now held loss and pain. Sadie wanted to hold her, but there was nothing to hold.

  “We … I hoped you could help us find him.” Sadie groaned, the pounding in her skull ratcheting up a notch. “We don’t know how to make gates, and we don’t know where he is.”

  Lace’s portable deck flickered, the screen showing a video feed. It was Afterlife, but from when it was called The Hole. Sadie realized with a start they were looking at a recording taken through Mason’s eyes as he fell through the skylight, glass sharing his descent. The scene played forward at speed, then back, then forward again. It froze as Mason’s optics went past the gate system, catching a brief glimmer of a screen inside. The image zoomed on the screen, enhanced, showing a clutter of numbers and letters.

  Coordinates. That’s where the gate went. “That’s where he was,” said Carter. “Now, for the magic part.”

  The Karl G. Jansky VLA in Socorro stopped scanning the stars. The old Very Large Array was used by enthusiasts without government funding, the aged equipment so dated the security on it was easy to jack. The big dishes turned toward a different piece of sky. It no longer hunted alien signals or whatever the latest grad project was. Astonished youths scrambled, trying to regain control of the VLA. They weren’t successful.

  The VLA spoke to the collection of orbiting junk above the planet. Military satellites. Those owned by syndicates. A few weather sats for good measure. Afterward, the common element people identified from The Event was fuel. Any satellite with enough reaction mass to maneuver at significant velocity was tagged and bagged.

  The one exception was a power relay sat designed to beam energy to other satellites. Human hands lost control, the mighty solar beam emitters rotating. Humans panicked, trying to determine which foreign nation was engaging in terrorist activities. As the satellite turned across the heavens, its Apsel Federate logo shone in the sun.

  Unknown to all but a few humans, Apsel sats housed star gates, tapping a star for minuscule amounts of solar energy. Their gates reconfigured with a different destination in mind. Energy from the power relay gave them the boost needed to increase the gate dilation and location.

  Holes in space appeared as rippling balls of energy. Beyond, a different set of stars waited. Satellites engaged thrusters, entering the gates on pre-programmed routes. Their mission was to enter the gate, scan the solar system they found, and return.

  As they returned, their telemetry was shared with the Jansky VLA. Where it went from there no one knew, except a handful of humans waiting in Afterlife.

  The Event wasn’t without incident. Guidance systems for aircraft went down. A plane crashed over Houston. Six high-speed trains lost automated control and derailed. A meltdown similar to Amsterdam was narrowly avoided as human engineers took charge of an ailing station that lost external governors.

  These were acceptable losses to the intelligence that sought the one human she’d called friend.

  “Found you,” Carter breathed. “I found you.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  The world was a heavy thing to carry. Austin breathed in, trying for calm. It felt elusive, no doubt because he stood amid the destruction wrought on his empire by a handful of criminals.

  The crystal frame they’d housed Carter in was a ruin of glass. Wiring so delicate it looked finer than hair waved like anemone frills as wind and rain from the hole in the building sought entrance.

  Ruby Page bent over a chunk of crystal scaffold the size of a Dachshund. “This is why you should let me take over a Metatech organ donor center.”

  Austin felt the sigh coming, heavy as the storm outside. He let it out. “We don’t need a donor clinic. We need soldiers.”

  “You get soldiers at Metatech.” She straightened, the massive tear in her shoulder through and through. Austin thought he might be able to squeeze his arm through the hole. A milky residue trickled down the front and back of her armor from the wound, but she didn’t seem to care. There wasn’t any meat left there. “The whole point is they suck out your organs and replace ‘em with metal.”

  “Oh. I thought it was a marketing thing.” Austin sniffed. “A PR stunt.”

  “Metatech don’t do PR.” Ruby nudged the crystal with her boot. “Mike fucking Takahashi.”

  “Is that Metatech’s PR guy?”

  “Not even close.” She strode to the hole in the wall, leaning over the edge. Austin felt a flash of vertigo just watching her. “That’s Metatech’s asshole guy.”

  “It’s tiresome finding good people.” Austin crossed his arms, thinking. “Ruby, I trust you implicitly—”

  “Except when you don’t.”

  “And as such, I trust you to get things done.” Austin raised an eyebrow. “Are these people above your capability?”

  Ruby didn’t turn, no doubt looking out over the city, the rubble, and the collection of HumanE people milling about below. “There were four of them. That fuckstick Takahashi. Delilah fucking Griffiths. A total conversion I’ve never met, but intend to again, and a normal,” she almost spat the word, “who used old tech.” Ruby turned ember-bright eyes on Austin.

  “Is that a yes or a no?”

  “It’s a they’re-dead-people-walking.” She gestured at the hole in her shoulder. “I’ll get this patched up then take a walk. Can I use Olivia?”

  Austin blinked. “She’s working with Heimo.”

  “Can she stop working with Heimo and start working with me? There’s bound to be eye-in-the-sky support. I could use the assist.”

  Austin thought the admission cost her something. It was his view Ruby had unfinished business with Mike and Delilah, and unfinished business was an effective motivator. “Once the project’s online, you can have Olivia. Not before.”

  Ruby’s eyes unfocused. It was her tell for when she used the link. Austin surveyed the rubble while she did whatever she needed to do to clear her schedule. The data scaffold had been intensely difficult to acquire. They’d need another to house Carter when they got her back.

  The crunch of expensive shoes on gravel made Austin turn. Heimo stood in the broken doorway, eyes up to avoid looking at the blood spatter on the floor and consoles. “Is this a bad time?”

  Austin looked around, then back to Heimo. “What makes you ask?”

  “It’s just, I’ve got good news.” Heimo tried for a tentative smile.

  Maybe Austin had been too harsh. Making a prisoner of an ally, when all he needed was subtle use of the Decider. “Heimo, I’m sorry. It’s been a very trying time. Have you been successful?”

  Heimo waved his hand, so-so. “It’s not Carter. It’s something more and less. Building Carter took a long time. Months of training. Even more time in synthetic entertainment. She grew faster and faster. Now she’s—”

  “Yes, yes. She’s amazing. That’s why I spent so much money acquiring her. What of the second one?”

  “He’s awake.” Heimo looked down. “I don’t know if that’s good or bad.”

  “Why not just scrub the data scaffold and replace it with Carter’s backup?”

  “They erased the backup.” Heimo looked up, as if he could see the satellites orbiting above. “Apsel’s offsite storage was in space. It’s gone.”

  Austin realized his hands were clenched and tried to relax. Heimo might be a fat worm, but it wasn’t his fault the enemy were a step ahead. If there was one thing being a leader was about, it was owning your mistakes, and then getting other people to fix ‘em. “You built an entire AI overnight?”

  Heimo’s shy smile returned. “I had my own backups. An earlier prototype. I think you’ll like him. He’s a lot like you.” Heimo didn’t elaborate. “Would you like to meet him?”

  Ruby Page flew across the room from behind Austin to impact the wall beside Heimo. Austin felt more surprise than fear as he turned. Framed in the city’s light outside, a young man stood in the hole in the wall. His hair billowed about his maybe-Latin face. “I’d like to meet him.”

  Ruby rose, sidearm moving faster than Austin could follow. She fired on full auto, the little weapon roaring, a bright tongue of flame reaching from the barrel. The young man’s head was cocked, a look of amusement on his face. The bullets she’d fired stopped in front of him, falling to tinkle on the smooth floor. He reached out, Ruby’s weapon spinning into his outstretched hand. She made to jump at him. The man swept his arm to the side and she crashed through the wall, vanishing from view.

  Austin straightened his tie. “You must be Zach. Welcome to Human Energetics.”

  “You’re vile.” Zach spoke with an accent, definitely something Latin. “You make slaves.”

  “No.” Austin shook his finger as he engaged his link. “We encourage a single world view. Take yourself, for example. You’re very angry! I can feel it pouring off you. You think I’m your enemy. But I’m the only one with the resources to make another gate. If I get Carter back, I’ll have the last piece. If I use the Decider,” Austin gave a nudge with his link, subversion routines already at work on Zach’s, “I can encourage you to do the right thing. The thing you want to do anyway.”

  “Help you get my sister back.”

  “Exactly.” Austin nodded, encouraging. “Would you like a job at Human Energetics?”

  “I want my sister back.” Zach looked momentarily confused. About now, Austin’s code rode rampant through his link architecture.

  “Of course. But you also want to be on the winning team.” With the code in Zach’s head, Austin triggered the Complier. A flick of a virtual switch, and Zach was his. “On the Human Energetics team.”

  “Yes.” Zach walked forward, rain dripping from his armor. Ruby clambered through the hole in the wall, eyes alert, but Zach didn’t crush her like a can or any of the things they said he could do. The Decider and Complier code were perfect complements to each other. “I want to be on the team.”

  “No matter how many times I see that, it still freaks me out.” Ruby brushed herself off.

  “Umm,” offered Heimo, standing frozen by the broken doorway.

  “Yes, quite.” Austin nodded. “Let’s go meet your monster.”

  The second data scaffold stood blissfully intact. Austin craned his neck, looking up. Lights glimmered like fireflies inside the crystal. The room hummed, a living, breathing thing. “It’s alive?”

  Heimo nodded. “And awake.”

  “Hello, Austin.” A gentle male voice soothed the room. “I’m Goliath.”

  Austin gave a quick glance at Heimo. “What’s that stand for? CARTR’s an acronym.”

  “It doesn’t stand for anything.” Heimo shrugged. “He picked it.”

  “I’m the champion you seek,” offered Goliath, calm and reasonable. “I know your enemies are in an oldtown bar.”

  “A bar?” Austin blinked. “Not a fortress?”

  “It’s called Afterlife. The CARTR is there.” Goliath sounded happy. “I can engage an orbital strike, flensing their existence from the carcass of the world.”

  “Like I said, he’s a lot like you.” Heimo gave a tiny bow. “He should fit in just fine with the company culture.”

  Austin clasped his hands in front of him. “They’re in a bar?”

  “It has very few defenses. It seems a poor choice for a headquarters.” Goliath paused. “I believe the easiest route is to subvert an Apsel orbital cannon.”

  “Let’s not nuke our own city.” Austin stroked his chin. “You’re thinking on the right lines, but we want Carter back.”

  “She is obsolete.”

  “She is also unique, and I like owning all the special cards.” Austin showed teeth.

  Goliath rumbled happily. “Even an old donkey can pull a cart if you whip it hard enough.”