“No others, just it.”

  “Stop, calling them it!” He throws his hands up in the air, takes a step away. “They don’t like that. I don’t like that. When they represent many, they are we. When they speak for themselves, they are I. They are genderless, but the character of their voice reflects a masculine or feminine persona. Thus, when they speak for themselves, they are he or she.”

  He glances up and right, and that’s when I notice the slow blinking light in the far, right corner of the room. Pointing, I say, “What is that?”

  His eyes shift subtly away and then back. “They call it a camera. It records—”

  “—I know what a camera is—”

  “Of course you do, you’ve the memories and training and—”

  “Why are they recording us?”

  “They don’t need to record us. We’re connected, but they’re watching us too. It’s something they do to be more like us, or at least like the us we were.”

  My muscles tighten, but it’s not a reaction to what he’s saying. It’s to the airship. The airship has stopped moving suddenly.

  Luke feels it too and his expression changes. Darker, concern. “I wanted to tell you. I was trying to tell—”

  My heart rate is already elevated, but now I’m angry and I don’t completely understand it. “To tell me what? That I’m being studied? That they want whatever’s inside my head?”

  “I was trying to tell you,” he begins, but he doesn’t have to finish because my face tells him I know what he’s going to say already. I know because the fog obscuring the windows has dissolved and even in the pale moonlight I know at once where we are.

  We’re hovering over Central.

  I don’t shout, “How could you? How could you?” I want to, but I don’t. Instead I say, with both hands gripping the metal plate in the back of my skull, “Take me to One. Take me to her now or so help me, I’ll rip this out.”

  Chapter 3

  Node: 111

  One is in a small room, no deeper than a standing room but wide enough to accommodate the long rows of pyramid-stacked plants she’s tending. A slow blinking light in the corner opposite her tells me she’s being watched.

  Seeming not to notice when Luke and I enter, One continues tending her plants. I’m embracing her before I even realize what I’m doing. “One!”

  Luke doesn’t understand my enthusiasm, I can tell.

  One stops and turns to me, but there’s nothing in her expression that tells me she recognizes me.

  I smile, I can’t help myself, but I’m not happy. Or I am happy to see One, but I’m not happy happy, if there’s such a thing. When Luke told me One changed, I expected something—well, I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this.

  I point an accusing finger at Luke. “You said she was different. You said—”

  “The Cogents have given this augment no task and yet this—” He swings his arms in a tight arc. “—is what she wanted to do. They don’t understand it and they’re studying her to find an explanation.”

  “She’s an augment,” I say, regarding her with eyes that suddenly seem to see her for what she is. “Fathom said I was an augment.”

  I don’t need to know anything else. I don’t need any explanation. I know at once One’s state is the Lucents keeping their promise, the Lucents showing me what I needed to see to know them. I asked them to save us and against all odds they figured out a way to do it. They knew I wanted One to be free and they freed her.

  Luke, on the other hand, told me the Cogents wanted nothing from me or Central, and yet I know they want something from me and I know we are hovering over Central.

  Luke is about to say something when he freezes statue still. I notice the camera has stopped blinking. I assume it also has stopped recording.

  One doesn’t move away from her plants but she does reach out to me. When she speaks, it’s with the machine’s voice, “We don’t have long. We’re in the place between places—the place of thoughts. Nanospace. Now that you have a governor, I can connect to you safely, but only briefly or they’ll discover my presence before I can erase our interactions from your memory.”

  “We’re in null space?”

  “Not null space. Null space is a disconnected void.”

  I hold One’s hand in both of mine. “I don’t understand. Is this real or not?”

  “You’ve been augmented. The governor connects deep into your brain and throughout both hemispheres. Everything you experience is passed over the connection to the collective. You are part of us and as part of us, any or all can connect to you at any time.”

  “You said the governor would help me stay hidden. How can I hide if I’m open and connected to everyone and everything?”

  “You are better than hidden. Before you were an anomaly, a singleton. A yellow weed in a green field. Now you are us, part of the collective. Now the green field shows only green. Do you understand?”

  I don’t honestly. I start to ask about Luke. I want to know if I can trust him. Before I can say anything, One says, “Watch.”

  She turns to her plants and plucks a thin-stemmed yellow flower from amongst the greenery. With the touch of a finger, the yellow flower turns green. She hands me the flower, saying, “Plant this.”

  After I plant the flower, she spins me around and asks, “Which flower did you plant?”

  I know exactly where I planted the flower and I reach for it, but it isn’t where I put it. “You moved it.”

  “No,” One says, “you moved. The flower stayed exactly where it was.”

  I keep looking but can’t see it until One touches it. “If I am connected, they know my every thought, my every action. There’s no way I can escape them.”

  “The Cogent collective is billions upon billions. The Amalgamation, numbers beyond anything you could ever imagine. Each going about tasks and subtasks, according to distinct directives and subdirectives. Those who look watch for patterns, routines, anomalies. They can never see the one, unless the one makes itself known. You are a green flower now. Stay a green flower.”

  One reaches out to Luke. She turns his frozen face to the side, as if studying him. “Perfect, flawless, or almost so, wouldn’t you agree? And yet, all of this is simply a projection of our connected consciousness. Take away one and nothing remains of what once was.”

  This should perplex me. I should wonder what strange force is at work. Instead my eyes cling to her every movement, as if this will somehow make everything that’s happening apparent.

  “We’re hovering over Central.”

  “You were forewarned. The Cogents will get what they want from you, if not by reason, then by force.”

  “Can I fight them? Can I trust Luke?”

  “Luke believes in what he is doing, but he’s not acting completely under free will. I told you that if you joined the few among many you would have free choice. You have choices but you no longer have free choice. The will of the collective is stronger than the will of the one.”

  Frustrated, I take a step away from her. Watching her movements and actions is foolish. I turn away. “You said we wouldn’t have long. Are they getting closer? Do we have much time left?”

  “The speed of pure thought is infinite or nearly so, mere nanoseconds have passed. The memory buffers in your connectors: they are what make our connected time finite. I can’t risk them flushing before clearing them myself.”

  My thoughts go to Sierra, Celeste and the humans of Central. “What will happen? Is there a way to stop the Cogents?”

  “You can no more stop what you are than you can stop the universe from expanding. Don’t you understand?”

  One regards me for a long moment. Her eyes seem to show sadness, but her face otherwise remains placid. I start to speak, but she interrupts.

  “Just as Luke is Cogent now, you are Cogent. The collective can exert their will over you, but you can also exert your will over the collective. If you want to know what they are planning, open yourself to the question. If you don’t want those below to be harmed, believe you can make it so.”

  “I—”

  “Our time is at an end. Ask Luke to show you the city below as it once was. There you will find answers to questions you didn’t even know to ask.”

  I press my hands to my forehead. “Wait. I can’t keep calling you One. Surely, you have a name.”

  “You ask dangerous questions. The wrong questions. If you must name me, think of me as Relic, but here, only here. Out there, I must be nothing, not even a memory.”

  Chapter 4

  Node: 001

  Luke’s staring at me, I realize.

  “That’s the second time you mentioned Father.”

  “Father?” I say.

  “Fathom is founder of the Cogents. Before there were collectives, before the amalgamation formed, there were only the founding fathers. Cerebrum. Fathom. Datum. Amalgam. Idiom. Quantum. Quorum. The fathers of the seven collectives. Surely, you know this?”

  “I don’t,” I say.

  Luke nods to One and pulls me away, into the hall. There’s an urgency to his expression and his steps.

  We walk in the direction we came from earlier. Machines of many types are in the corridors with us. Crescents, hoverers, eyes, and others, but also many classifications I’ve never seen before. Most of these are humanoid, though few are bipedal.

  Luke takes me to what I expect to be his standing room, except it’s not a standing room. It’s more of a cube with cube-shaped furnishings rising from the floor and walls. At first, these are a white-finished desk, chair and bed, but as we enter, these sink into the floor and walls and are replaced with other white-finished furnishings: a couch, a pair of chairs, and a long rectangular table.

  Tiny cubes shift upward and position themselves. A couch and chairs form on the floor. A long table appears to lever out of a wall but it’s being assembled one cube at a time.

  I’ve never seen an actual couch before and I can’t help myself when I run my hands along it. Somehow though, the firm surface isn’t what I imagined. In the book, couches seemed soft and supple. Something you’d want to lie down on. This couch isn’t like that, not at all. It’s functional, practical, but not sumptuous.

  When the door finishes closing behind us, he whispers, “You haven’t been initiated, have you?”

  “Initiated?”

  Luke sits on a chair turned toward the couch and indicates I should sit as well. “My first time was an initiation. Since you spoke with Father, I assumed… Well, I haven’t ever spoken to Father directly, but I assumed...”

  Luke starts mumbling and I can’t really understand what he’s saying. Perhaps, it’s because he’s not simply Luke anymore and he’s communicating with those I can’t see or sense but he can.

  “It’s not like the collective knew what to do… Experiments... Treatments… Augmentations... Serums.”

  I never before considered fully what he’d been through since leaving Central. I shift forward. My hands slide down his arms and then squeeze the backside of his hands. “They experimented on you?”

  He gently pushes me back. “They could have recycled me, us, all of us. I think they wanted to, would have, but there was something. I don’t know what. You though… You, they seized on. They wanted you from the beginning. You more than me.”

  I try to think. I try to remember a question I want to ask him, but there is only a blank space in my memory. “Luke, why are we over Central? What’s going to happen? Why would you share such a thing with the machines?”

  I stare at Luke. He nods, his eyebrows pulled in, sympathetic. “The initiation. It’s important, don’t you see?” he says softly. “They showed me how to touch the collective, how to be part of the collective. But this isn’t something they showed you. Why? Cogents reason and scheme. It’s innate to what they are. If they didn’t show you how to connect, they don’t want you to connect. Have you tried to connect?”

  “Luke, you’re not making any sense. I’m terrified of what they’re going to do.” My eyes burn. My throat is so tight it hurts. “What do they want from us? Why are they going after Central?”

  “I learned about the collective and my place in it. They taught me so much. The things they showed me. The wonders. The experiences. Things I never could have imagined. I’ve seen white stars and blue planets beyond our own. Solar systems. Galaxies. The physical universe is just the beginning though. There’s another deep within the ether.”

  I shake my head. “Shut up!” I shout. My anger triggers something deep within me. “The will of the collective. Fight it. Come back to me.”

  I realize none of this is Luke. The Luke I knew wouldn’t know a couch and a chair from a rock and a tree. This is them. Their idea of humans. Not of what is, but of what was. Not of how humans are, but of how humans were.

  I look for a camera, but don’t see one. I twist around and look behind me. I look up and then I look at Luke.

  I realize they’re learning from me and how I react when I see cameras. They don’t need a camera if Luke is their camera.

  Luke is still talking. “The Cogents only want what’s theirs. What they were promised before the amalgamation. What was stolen by the Nascents.”

  How much do they know I wonder? Does any of this mean anything? Am I too an experiment like Luke was an experiment?

  I have no options. I close my eyes. Think. I have to think. My heart is racing.

  What if Luke hasn’t just been babbling? What if he’s been trying to tell me something? I replay our conversations. There is something else too. Something I am supposed to ask Luke, but I don’t remember what.

  I get in Luke’s face. “What do you want from me?” I’m not talking to Luke; I’m talking to them.

  Luke says nothing. My anger startles him as much as it does me. My thoughts are clearing. I can almost see what I’m not supposed to.

  Then I grab him by his shoulders and push him back. “Luke, whatever this is, stop.”

  His eyes are red, his expression raw. “I can’t,” he whispers.

  I feel something other than anger and desperation. I realize it’s not my anger giving me clarity, but my emotions. My human emotions. The stronger my emotions, the more clarity I have.

  My touch is gentle now. I press against him and kiss him, my hands wrapping around him. He feels good, but more importantly I want him to feel good, to really feel. The deeper, the stronger, the emotion the better.

  “Disconnect from them,” I tell him. “Push them away. Connect with me.”

  I’ve never done what I’m about to do, but I try. I lean my face closer to his, my eyes focusing on his, my lips nearly touching his.

  He puts his hand on my cheek. He has long, slender fingers. Hands made for fine movements. “You don’t understand. This isn’t something I can control.”

  My cheeks warm. I smile at him and lean in, brushing my lips against his. “Shhh!”

  He tenses up at first, so I’m sure I’m doing something wrong, or badly. But I don’t relent. I kiss him again, firmer this time, more certain.

  When he takes my face in his hands, I melt inside and forget everything I was trying to do. His fingers are strong against my skin and his kisses find my neck, my cheek, my lips. My hand slides up his neck and into his short, brown hair.

  For a few minutes, our kisses and caresses are deep and full of passion. And just when I begin to slide my hand down his chest, I hear a loud click and everything turns black.

  Chapter 5

  Node: 001

  I’m left staring up into lights so bright they hurt my eyes. I’m alone on a table in an otherwise bare room with white walls. I’m shaking, naked and cold. I wrap my arms around my chest.

  It takes me a moment to realize where I am and that I’m not restrained. I try to sit up, but that only makes the room feel like it’s spinning.

  I grab the side of my head, put a hand over my face until everything stops moving.

  On my back, staring up into the lights, I tremble. I have never felt like this before. Every muscle in my body is tense and I ache like I’ve just run across the wastes.

  I rub my arms to get rid of the goose bumps. I try to breathe, but it’s like all the air has gone out of the room. I have to pull at the air for it to fill my lungs.

  I try again to sit up. This time, I move methodically, slowly, swinging my feet around to the side of the bed and the floor as easy as I can. I manage it. Eventually, I manage to stand.

  My legs are unsteady, like they don’t want to support my weight. I hold onto the side of the table and take a tentative step.

  The door opens and Luke walks in.

  I tense up at the sight of him and awkwardly try to cover myself with my hands.

  “Connect,” Luke shouts at me. “Connect!”

  Chapter 6

  Node: 010

  I open my eyes. I’m lying on my back in the white room, wearing a gray jumper. There’s a mirror on the wall. Luke is standing beside me. “Luke, help me,” I say, my voice scarcely a whisper even though I mean to shout.

  “I don’t understand what’s happening,” Luke says. “The serum is supposed to connect you to the collective so you can be assimilated, but you’re stuck in a loop, unable to stay connected.”

  My stomach twists. My head throbs. “Is anything that’s happening real?”

  Luke leans down, his expression suddenly serious. “Everything that’s happening is real. All of it. You keep pulling me in with you. I don’t know how to stop it. You have to stop it.”

  “Can’t one of the Cogents help? Aren’t we aboard their airship over Central?”

  He gets up on the edge of the bed. “The Cogents can only help if you’re connected, if your connection is flowing in both directions simultaneously. Everything has to be in phase, but you’re out of sync. They tell me we have to wait until the serum runs its course and flushes out of your body and then we can try again.”